Currently leveling a warrior tank on classic and I’m getting mixed responses on what is the best one handed weapon to use. My main question is, do I want a fast or slow one hand weapon to go along with my shield?
Some have said faster for rage/threat but others say that the harder hitting one hand will generate more. I’m currently level 25 and rage/threat is sometimes hard to come by. Of course, many factors play into why this is happening but for now, I’m just looking for advice on the weapon speed question.
Specifically, for my human warrior tank, would you take the Cruel Barb (slower sword) or Butcher’s Cleaver (faster/weaker axe)? If you think the +5 to sword skill human trait makes the barb the clear choice please say so but I’m still looking for the answer to the speed question. Thank you very much.
Bump this. I have same question
I’m leveling my first warrior, I’m at 49 and have been asking everyone ingame this with no clear answer.
Right now I’m using 29.7 DPS / 1.5s Coldrage Dagger over 32.2 DPS/2.7s/AOE threat proc The Hand of Antu’sul, with the reasoning that recovering threat after a missed swing is more important than overall threat, but I’m guessing
Let’s think about how a warrior generates threat, and what the differences are between slow and fast weapons. A slower weapon will do more dmg per hit, but will hit less often.
A slower weapon is desirable for instant attacks, as they will hit for more dmg, but how much of your damage comes from white hits, and how much does your tps depend on that?
With a faster weapon, you will have more white hits, and generate rage faster than with a slower weapon, which will typically give you higher tps. You may see a warrior tank using a dagger for this purpose.
edit: Just noticed:
^ that’s a good point. You can always try experimenting, and see for yourself whether it’s easier for you to hold aggro with a faster weapon or a slower weapon.
I think faster is clearly better in really high rage situations, like tanking a raid boss, because you can dump rage faster with Heroic Strike when you get rage spikes, and so less likely to waste any rage from getting capped… which is lost threat.
Below that, I think it’s probably mostly personal preference.
Faster is smoother rage generation, so if you get 2-3 misses in a row, it won’t leave you rage starved for as long as would if it were a slow weapon. But it higher level content, most of your rage comes from incoming damage, not your own, so…
Also, if you use Cleave or Whirlwind, a slow weapon will hit harder. A slow weapon will also do more damage and generate more rage if you are playing Horde-side with a shammy in your group dropping Windfury.
I generally prefer the feel of a faster weapon, but I’d like to get some more feedback from others on this topic, too.
For example, as an orc, say I’m using Bone Slicing Hatchet, and Ony drops a Deathbringer. It’s a very, very slow weapon, but a huge dps increase over what I’m using, and it’s also an axe for the +5 weapon skill. Should I bid against the Fury warriors? It’s an interesting question.
1 Like
So I’m 60 impale Prot tank, and I just got deathbringer off of ony, I’ve noticed even tho it’s slow I’ve had higher rage pool opposed to when I used ice blade hacker which is .90 faster than deathbringer I’ve felt just as rage starved but with deathbringer my threat is more “solid” on a singular mob if you wanna call it that. Still experimenting with it, hoping to get the 1.70 axe out of strat ud for fury Prot tanking with the 2 axes.