Through conditional animations, the same as on every spec that can both DW and single-wield or sword-and-board or two-hander.
…This has been the case since Vanilla. It’s not novel tech.
They would, because unless we decide arbitrarily to devolve to pre-1.0… 2H and DW wouldn’t share AA visuals.
We’ve seen this work, quite literally, on both Warriors and Hunters before their melee weapons were removed. And even Monks in MoP, before weapons became solely the 2nd (and 3rd) cloak slot(s).
No one has yet requested a mechanical difference, though — only a visual/cosmetic option?
While I don’t think there’s any point to balancing them just for a cosmetic distinction (i.e., we should do so only if we also intend to cause a gameplay distinction), it’s far from impossible to balance DW vs. 2H.
2H-only enchants were a thing, the devs can flip a switch at any time to allow 2Hs each to have 2 enchant slots, and proc formulas are not only adjustable but also commonly adjusted.
I have yet to hear anyone, even when asked or on that specific topic, say they picked a race based on it’s (minutial) advantage in overall DPS — only for, at most, pressure advantage in PvP or for encounter value on a very bursty spec. Any <2% difference within a build due to weapon choice (and you can get it to within a fraction of a percent) is virtually always hugely exceeded by choice in build, in spec, and/or in class.
What are you talking about, conditional animations? If you have a character with a 2h weapon they have a swing timer and damage range that matches that slower swing per second rate. If you visually change their weapons to dual wielding, how does the animation and damage work? One hand animations trigger more often and the hits are for less damage. So how would that work exactly?
Hop on a Frost DK. Auto-attack with dual-wielded weapons. Auto-attack with a single two-hander. Not the same auto-attack animations, at least on the races I play.
There’s no empty hand flailing about. There’s no floating weapon. There’s no desync between frequency of hits and frequency of animation.
It’s not theoretical. It’s been a thing since Vanilla.
Have it use the attack rate of the transmog, not the original weapon. What matters is the weapon’s damage- and procs-per-second. If a 2H goes DW, you split the damage and procs 67/33, or have only the mainhand trigger procs, still at normalized proc chance (less per hit, but with more hits, for the exact same ppm).
It’s much like the requested changes to Axe/Mace/Sword Mastery since Transmog first became a thing, by having the specialization follow the weapon’s appearance, rather than it’s original type.
I know how dks work because they can’t transmog a 2h into a 1h like you are suggesting as the fix for survival. The part I qouted is the piece you don’t get. That isn’t going to work. The player could play a dual wielder main that has much higher ilvl weapons that they transmog their fresh survival hunter as using now they do much more autoattack damage than they should. Attack rate doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The damage per swing is also part of that equation so now you’re talking about reverse calculating the damage range of the weapon which is no longer just a cosmetically solution.
I mean, if you’d picked gnomes, that’d be significant. But isn’t each tauren is at least half a ton?
/s
But, moreover, Troll, Worgen, and Void Elf generally sim just as well on most specs and Humans better than Tauren on MM and BM (and Dwarves tied on SV), no?
We can already do this with certain 1h weapons. Currently into pairs of the same weapon, only, just as we used to only be able to use shoulder pairs, but still, it’s there. It’s literally there right now.
They would have the dps consequent to their item level in either case.
But, more importantly, if we’re not letting SV actually get 1H drops anyways, then from where the heck did we suddenly get this chance of them having a higher ilvl DW set to then transmog into a 2H so they could actually use them?
The damage per swing is literally just their DPS divided by their swing time. Between higher damage per swing and higher DPS, you will take the higher DPS every time, because the AA is higher, the contribution to special attacks is higher, and enchant proc rates are normalized regardless.
From the rogue they play as a main or enhance shaman or whatever? Transmogs are accountwide. This was assuming you meant pull the entire damage equation from the transmog weapon.
That required special coding to do and isn’t just a cosmetic fix as Altani is suggesting. The reason it even took so long to implement was because of the additional tech that had to add to get this to work with the legion weapons.
^^This isn’t a cosmetic fix now. This is a coding change. You’d have to have code that calculates the damage per second from the actual weapon divided by the swing time of the transmog weapon. The skin of a weapon also doesn’t necessarily tie directly to just 1 weapon, it could tie to 2 weapons that have different swing times. Why recode how this all works when it’s easier to just let them get 1h drops. As a software engineer, I’m telling you that what you’re saying isn’t as simple as you’re making it out to be and this would require code changes much further reaching than just allowing them to use abilities with 2 weapons, which aren’t based on weapon damage anymore. Abilities now convert your weapon dps into attack power and so abilities that aren’t autoattack scale with just attack power to simplify their formulas.
But you said they’d be using the higher ilvl of the real DW gear, newly made possible by transmogging the DW into 2H, no? They already have the real 2Hs, though, and cannot collect the DW set.
Yes, they could now transmog the 2H into the DW, but doing so would be of no damage advantage, since they’re merely splitting their former autos and procs (100% main hand | 0% offhand) across each weapon (67% mainhand | 33% offhand).
No, just to inherit the transmog’s weapon type, whereby all 2Hs are 3.8s, and all 1Hs are 2.6s except for daggers at 1.8s.
They’re identical.
The sole additional code required is whether weapon type is drawn from the base item or from the item’s appearance. That’s it.
It’s the same thing as would benefit any sort of meaningful weapon-type customization, such as…
Frost DKs being able to pick between DW or 2H without needing 50% to 200% more weapons,
If MM could pick a talent to add some passive effects based on whether one is ostensibly using a gun, bow, or xbow, or
If Arms could pick a talent to add passive effects based on whether one is ostensibly using a polearm, axe, sword, or mace.
Such customization systems are currently considered implausible because they require so much more gearing; this wouldn’t.
If you’re saying to default them to those speeds. Again, new coding. And what if their actual weapon doesn’t utilize a normalize speed. Again, you’ll have to reverse engineer the damage anyway it’s not a simple 67%, 33% split like you think it is anyway since dual wielding does have an increased miss chance that I believe is still relevant.
The only disagreement is whether swapping between DW and 2H visually, as one would between sword and axe, should require one to have and maintain that many more weapons.
This also would apply to any mechanical effects we’d ever want to attach to weapon selection. Should they require separate weapons to experience without proportionately increased weapon-grind, or no?
I say no, and therefore prefer to be able to make such choices through transmog. Luca seems to be saying yes, preferring instead to offer such choices only through actual drops.
The first of your two examples is a purely cosmetic weapon, dealing a maximum of 1 damage. The other is from Classic. What does either have to do with actual retail weapons?
No, no. You said their actual damage would come from the equipped weapon. So your logic is adding up. Either they take the damage from the equipped weapon or they take it from the transmog in which case you’re back to my original statement, they could have a level 1 2h and transmog it to the 1h axes they got on their main enhance shaman and suddenly do more damage, so that’s a nonstarter.
If they are taking the damage from the actually equipped weapon, then now you have to write code to obtain attack rate data about the base item that the transmogged skin came from and again, skins aren’t necessarily unique to one weapon. And if you’re defaulting different weapon types to different attack speeds, again, that’s additional new coding.
Yes, everything would come from the real weapon except for weapon type (from the transmog).
As I already said. I’ll take that one thing more over needing 4 weapons to dabble in SMF, 3 to dabble in DW SV, etc. — be those options solely cosmetic or even, perhaps eventually, mechanical.
That’s all it comes down to: If there are to be multiple weapon configurations for a given spec, should they be swappable as easily as weapon type, runeforges, etc.? Or, as per pre-transmog, should you need a separate item for every option you want to use, even if there is no difference in output or profile (i.e., the option is solely cosmetic).
guys, I hate to be that dude but nobody that has any say in the direction of Hunter is listening/reading any of this lol. The best thing y’all can do is reroll to mage/DH/rogue where the dev in charge of the class plays WoW (insane how low this bar is) and also plays the class they’re leading (wish I was yolkin it up)