Theorycrafting: Is a level 1 skinning knife the strongest PROT warrior weapon?

Classes Warrior
1

Hello Folks,

I returned to the game after a very long time and while levelling up a warrior again, I noticed something interesting. While I was gone, the attack speed of all weapons was normalized to 1.8 daggers, 2.6 one-handed, and two-handers for 3.6 speed.

However, there is one weapon that is faster then them all and that is the skinning knife at 1.60 attack speed. Protection spec has a talent called devastator which grants a normalized amount of additional weapon damage per swing. But of particular interest, it grants a 20% chance to reset the cooldown of shield slam per auto attack swing.

I’ve found that with a lvl 1 skinning knife equipped and stat point allocations into haste, I can do slightly more damage than normal than with a traditional one-handed weapon of my level. Protection warrior abilities scale with attack power without taking into account weapon damage. With a dagger, a Prot warrior cannot use revenge, but that is ok as revenge doesn’t do much damage outside of aoe instances. Instead of spending 30 rage on a weak filler, you can instead reserve all your rage for ignore pains and shield blocks. Between hasted skinning knife auto-attack swings and a low cooldown thunderclap (avatar), the constant flow of shield slam crits can wreck opponents in PVP. Shield slam generates 15 rage and with constant shield slams, you be tough to kill with Never Surrender ignore pains constantly being ready for use.

I’m not maximum level yet, so I don’t know how things scale, but perhaps some of you folks might want to try it.

Thoughts?

1 Like
2

I laughed. Not in a bad way mind you. I find the whole scenario amusing.

3

I have the “Wow classic” mentality of trying to think outside the box. :wink:

To someone who played back then, low level items being stronger than max level weapons is not something unfamiliar.

4

Yeah. For a while Thunderfury was still amazing in BC so they had to nerf it, and Life Giving Gem was fantastic too, till they finally gutted it into absolute worthlessness.

As for your original question, my gut instinct tells me no, it isn’t better. You can revenge for free often, and your weapon damage is going to be far lower with a skinning knife. Plus you have to compare that talent to the others in it’s tier. So. I can’t say for certain without actually doing the math, but I’m pretty confidant.

5

It’s a meme build, and that’s about it.

6

At my level, the white damage loss is negligible from using the skinning dagger.

But if the damage gap from a weapon is too great at 120, a gale force enchant for 15% attack speed proc and a regular dagger might work.

7

It’s a lot more then just damage at max level. The go to talent in that row is Booming Voice, for several reasons:

  • Demoralizing Shout is our third most cast defensive, as it’s on a 45 second CD base. It’s affected by AM though, so you might as well cut that in half.
  • the 40 rage is enough to allow you to cast either IP or SB right away.
  • the extra damage makes our AoE even more effective, and also helps with our single target a bit.
  • thanks to azerite traits, the effects can last up to 14 seconds, which is a very solid duration.

This doesn’t even factor is the way Last Stand and Bolster affect our defensive Rage use (cuts it almost in half), meaning we can hit Revenge a bit more often and stack the effect of another azerite trait.

8

Thanks for the info on that^

After doing lots of tests on a target dummy, assuming you are using devastator though, my conclusion (out of using skinning knife, regular dagger, and regular 1-hander) is that one should use a regular dagger with the gale force enchantment.

The primary reason is that the deep wounds passive ability scales with weapon damage. At close to level 90 though, a skinning knife is superior.

9

I think the thing everyone’s missing so far is the secondary stats that are absent from the knife. At higher levels we’re talking 300+ stats you’re just not getting. Getting another 100+ mastery or haste just in stats has to be worth more than just attacking faster.