As someone with the gloves, Edgemaster’s, I feel both relieved that I have the one item which allows me to break through the barrier of glancing blow damage reduction, but I’m also annoyed that I have nothing to look forward to in terms of an upgrade. Glove drops no longer matter to my character for PvE.
Obviously, this potent effect from weapon skill, and from an item like Edgemaster’s, isn’t intended; or it would seem unintended. Were a player to use these gloves outside of raid, they’re actually pretty terrible gloves due to how weapon skill functions, yet they become full game BiS the moment an enemy is level 61+. Additionally, the racial passives, which are designed to be enticing but not overly powerful, that increase weapon skill become the best PvE racial passives by a massive margin.
This is a reality of vanilla, and now of classic, but how does everyone feel about weapon skill and sources of bonus weapon skill and weapon skill break points?
The first warrior with two l33t weapons in your raid is going to be someone with edgemasters who can wield both edge of chaos and CTS. I was the top dps in my guild for a while with Deathbringer and Core hound tooth while the other warriors were waiting for the Brutality Blade/Viskag drop that never came.
How much more DPS are Edgemasters over say, Flameguards for a Human Warrior with CTS? They “need” Edgemasters, so you should be able to tell me and it should be significant, right?
This min-maxing sickness is a little bit excessive at this point.
As I said above, the first warrior with two l33t weapons in your raid is going to be someone with edgemasters who can wield both edge of chaos and CTS. I was the top dps in my guild for a while with Deathbringer and Core hound tooth while the other warriors were waiting for the Brutality Blade/Viskag drops that never came. Now Viskag is outdated and I’ll be running around with Edge of Chaos while they still won’t have CTS. Lol.
Edgemasters keeps you at the top of the meters regardless of which weapons are dropping, and when something crazy like Edge of Chaos drops you’ll have priority on it. Have you seen the stats on THAT weapon?
Alright, so I’m looking at logs and this isn’t the case. You said Warriors NEED Edgemasters; how much better are Edgemasters than Flameguards for a Human Warrior with CTS and Edge of Chaos?
Weapon skill was stupid for exactly that reason, that’s why they got rid of it later on. It just took them a couple of expansions to realize it was a lame idea. I can’t remember if it had the same level of impact after vanilla though.
Edge masters are currently listed on the AH for around 5,000 gold on my server. They’re a mid range, BoE item that is the absolute best dps item any warrior can attain until you get the hungering cold from Kel Thuzad.
To me, it seems quite obvious that in the first half of Vanilla the original developers really didn’t understand their own itemization.
I think they wanted people to learn weapon skills like EverQuest made them do but didn’t fully understand the power of the skill or the power of putting that skill on gear. A lot of stats seem to be this way to me, like caster +hit or the few items/skills that grant extra attacks.
The problem with weapon skill in particular, is that unlike spell hit or free attacks…the bonus it really gives you is opaque and nebulous. You have to go out on external sources to even understand what the stat even does, let alone how powerful it is.
Thankfully though, this is a solved game. We all know how powerful the stat is now…kinda sucks because everyone know how absurdly powerful items like Edgemaster’s is now and can charge accordingly.
It is fun to look at the old wowhead comments on Edgemaster’s. At first it was considered DE/vendor trash.
And what’s even funnier than that is that at first, it was. It was only in patch 1.4 that they fixed a bug where weapon skill wouldn’t go over 300 no matter what you did, along with fixes to many other laughably broken core mechanics.
Rags died a week later or so, though that probably had more to do with them fixing bugs where he submerged and didn’t come back up.
It took something like a year after that for the wowhead comments to really realize how awesome weapon skill was.
I’m a big fan of obtuse potency. Coming from Diablo 2, I’m used to the idea that a not insignificant amount of “BiS/Pre-Bis” items can be found starting in the later levels of mid-tier difficulty. But that’s where the obtuse part comes in, you have to envision the build/spec/talent/complementary gear/etc that takes advantage of the potency, or hold on to the items long enough for their power to become apparent.
Is it obvious, though? You called it obtuse, and I would agree. As someone else noted, many people continued to vendor/DE the Edgemasters long after it became the thing that has ruined all other glove options for you. And then there’s this…
… how many people would wear them everywhere because of how much they cost on the AH and their place at the top of a BiS list? If you have to read a guide, or watch a video, or consult a list, then it isn’t obvious, that’s all I’m saying.
I think it’s part of the good stuff. Definitely has a place in an rpg. On the flip side, I like +Defense, too. Different weights, coefficients, it’s all good. Obvious potency is also good, Sword of a Thousand Truths, etc.
Its fine, theres plenty of other pieces of gear you can still get, and if you PVP theres gloves you’ll still want over them. Honestly though you don’t need them unless you really have to be THAT guy, lol.
I feel like you overshot the nuance in the question I presented and went straight to slamming retail on very general level. I agree, retail is bad and shallow and nothing feels worth the time investment, but there are clear oversights to how dramatically weapon skill affects raid damage within a very specific bracket of bonus weapon skill.
It’s worthless until +5, and if not for sources that are already granting more than +5 you wouldn’t stack it further because there is a severe diminishing return for stacking beyond +5, and then an even more severe diminishing return for stacking beyond +8. It has more depth than anything you’d find in retail, but it also screams “oops” from the devs.