How important is weapon skill really? What are the alternatives

So im leveling a gnome warrior on grobb cuz i wana indulge in wpvp, possibly start ranking again and eventually get into some end game raiding. The chances of me getting edgemasters at this point in the game are pretty slim. I’m not a fan of dps’ing with daggers so the aged core leather glove shenanigans are out of the question. So in y’all’s educated opinion how bad do i really need weapon skill cuz im thinking about just going without it. I know the chance to glance is 40% but those attacks dont crit anyway, so how much damage would i really gain. Also edgemasters take away a bunch of ap and crit from you since you cant run bis gloves. what are your thoughts

Weapon skill is singularly the most important stat your warrior needs for Raid DPS, and still great if you’re the tank.

Reason is, glancing blows massively nerf your damage, and the only way to reduce the damage reduction penalty is the weapon skill stat.

Weapon skill soft cap is 308, if you’re an orc this is automatically +5 points for axes requiring only +3 more if you want the realistic best bang for your damage output.

315 is the maximum real cap, but points past 308 suffer heavy diminishing returns. Most orcs I see in raid do not go past 305.

That’s the quick and dirty on weapon skill, but for way way better info get on the warrior classic discord.

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DPSing in raids without 305 weapon skill is a disaster and not really an option unless you intend to full on sandbag.

Edgemasters is the most prominent solution.

Others are Goldminers Helmet, Muggers Belt, Aged Coreleather, ZG sword-set, etc.

But yes - fight club is your best resource for this kind of stuff.

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It’s very important.

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Can I ask why can’t get edgemasters? Is your server really that small?

It’s probably too expensive. Currently on Westfall-A it’s 4000g on the AH - I’d assume it’s around the same for whatever server they are on.

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Bro. On whitemane is legit 6k. And even then I’d say its still worth it

Since you already have a 60 warrior, this is a surprising question.

Here is your answer, and it will not be a popular one.

You can get by just fine without it. Get everything to 300, and that’s all you need to do.

Weapon skill beyond 300 is very powerful, but, ultimately, only something the sweatiest NEED.

Edit: To address the second part of your question, the alternatives would just be stacking as much hit % as possible followed by crit %, str, and agi.

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then throw in 1k for a helm, 1k for the legs, 1k for an epic mount and he’s instantly re-rolling a mage/hunter to try to bankroll his “new” main.
And those are the prices on my server, not a high pop one.

Ya ew gross warrior as your first character was definately rough if you didnt lvl with a friend.

Ugh and then all those consumes

definitely not a new main, but ive always wanted to pvp on a gnome since its pretty much the bis race for warriors in the game…and yeah not looking to farm 5-6k gold for a pair of gloves lol

It’s important for min/max, but not required. It has a greater direct impact on DPS over tanking from the Glancing Blow penalty reduction.

However, the -3% to required hit for tanking is a big deal in early gearing, so it depends on when you come into a guild to hoover up gear.

In reality, you don’t need it, but I highly recommend it. Maladath alone won’t cut it, and for swords your only option in raids is going to be The Hungering Cold… all the way from Kel’thuzad. If you’re not doing daggers, Edgemaster’s is your only realistic option.

In practice with world buffs glancing is pretty small… sometimes i will do 100k dmg to a boss and only see <6k in glancing. Without world buffs I think its something like 10-15% of your overall dmg. While most people just reiterate that weapon skill is so important, they are probably referring to glancing being a significant chunk of your dmg. This is true. But the increase in damage you would get is not as huge. It is likely the same as if one of your full rage executes didnt get dodged.

Weapon skill isnt the end of warrior dps. A non weapon skill warrior can easily outdps a weapon skill warrior if they have good RNG, know how to itemize, and when to press their buttons. Also any weapon skill warrior can not have enough crusader procs in a given fight, lowering their dps far below what it would be if they didnt have weapon skill.

I personally run gauntlets of annihilation on a non weapon skill race, and it works just fine and I top dps meters frequently.

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If you are going to PVP, you don’t need the weapon skill.

For PVE, I got lucky and got a couple axes, so I picked up the miner helmet for 900g and rage generation is noticeably better.

But my gear sucks now. Lack of weapon skill isn’t as noticeable if you have amazing gear.

Two ways to put edgemasters / human skill bonus, are as follows

They’re about a 5-10% dps bonus.

They’re about equivalent of replacing your thrash blade with a brutality blade,

If you want some more specific numbers here you go:

My warrior sims about 737 dps without worldbuffs (human). If my warrior was a non-human with edgemasters, i sim at 725 dps. As a non-human without edgemasters, I sim at 681 (including some gear swaps to get the extra hit required).

Comparatively with worldbuffs (no songflower or warchief), 1070 (human) vs 1054 (edgemasters) vs 1000 (no edgemasters).

Ultimately, it depends on what type of guild you run with. If you, for example, pop juju might + juju power (instead of giants), eat smoked desert dumplings, while your peers just use stones mongoose and giants, you will have evened the playing field. However if all your dps are all focused on optimization, you won’t catch up to them.

For PvP, you don’t need as much hit gear. The little that you’ll need can be easily found in decent gear pieces which won’t sacrifice much of your other stats.

For this, there isn’t really a way around the hit gear. You need it if you want to perform well in raids. You don’t necessarily need edge masters though. My warrior currently has 9% hit with decent gear. I have to use a little leather in there, but it’s no big deal for a dps.

If you’re tanking, honestly I dunno. I only ever dps on my warrior.

Just wait until Naxx is out and get the sword of 1k truths from KT and it has +5 weapon skill. Problem solved.

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There is no alternative to weapon skill as it’s a raw character stat. That’s somewhat like asking what is the alternative to level 60 if I just want to stay at level 59.

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People know the math behind weapon skill perfectly. They’re comparing its actual DPS gain, I promise.

Weapon skill reduces the chance that your attacks get dodged though. If your Execute got dodged when you had weapon skill, it would’ve gotten dodged if you didn’t have weapon skill in that exact same scenario.

People math out their stats based on what stats give the best benefit, on average. People don’t go for the feast-or-famine, all-or-nothing approach except in the meme case.

Weapon skill does exactly nothing when the Warrior has perfect RNG. Weapon skill reduces the damage penalty on glancing blows, increases crit chance, increases hit chance, and lowers the chance to be blocked/dodged/parried. To put it another way, weapon skill reduces the effect that bad RNG has.

While a Warrior with weapon skill and bad RNG does poor damage, a Warrior without weapon skill and with bad RNG does abysmal damage.

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Well actual dps gain isnt very high on average. Simulations are around 40k. You fight 41 bosses a week. Feast or famine is all parsing.