I read somewhere that weapon speeds were normalised in SOD.
Anyone knows if this is true?
By normalised I mean your instant skills that do “weapon damage” treat every one-hander as 2.4 speed and daggers as 1.7 speed to calculate the Yellow damage of the skill.
It was like this in 2019 classic as well, some abilities aren’t but any that do weapon damage plus bonus like mortal strike tend to be normalized. Tbh it’s kind of lame, but I guess without it everyone would just be bummed that these devs legit can only make fast weapons anyways.
Don’t know if I have a preference one way or the other. I just wanted to make sure it was the case to see if I had to worry about slow weapons or not for instant attacks.
So an Arms warrior could be using something like the 2.0 sword from ZF and it wouldn’t make a difference then.
Technically slower weapons even with normalization do tend to hit a little harder. This because they have higher base damage which when you plug into the normalization formula makes it hit a bit harder. You can do this yourself on wowhead get the formula find 2 identical dps weapons at different speed and then do it yourself.
Ok so upon further research I think I understand what you were saying.
The normalisation appears to be only on the Attack Power multiplier.
So a 100 max damage weapon would do 100 from weapon + 200 from AP (for example)
And a 50 max damage weapon would do 50 + 200 (assuming the same AP)
Yeah, that is correct. Most instant attacks have had their AP contributions normalised since 2006.
At lower gear levels slower weapons are still preferable, as they do higher base damage, but as your AP increases relative to your weapon DPS the difference becomes negligible.
Essentially, for PvE just use the highest DPS weapon you have, unless that weapon is abnormally fast and only marginally higher DPS.
In PvP burst damage matters more, and so slower weapons may be favourable over ones with more DPS if you are lining up Instant attacks with your weapon swings.
Yes, instant attacks have attack power normalization. This is to prevent weapons with a slower speed from always being the best option regardless of ilvl or weapon dps over better weapons.
Often referred to as the barman’s shanker incident, since that’s the most ubiquitous item that rogue’s used over MC epics.
yes this has always been a thing. this is why most melee classes prefer slower weapons. because a slower weapon means a higher top end damage which means harder yellow hits.
Why would they have runes that add to attack speed if it all gets normalized? 
I’m not sure, not that I’m aware of. There are a few specific things but most are now quite apparent based on meta playstyle, the big thing that comes to mind is Seal of Martyrdom which is 100% AS normalised.
Are you sure you don’t simply mean AP normalisation? I believe that is active based on the patch classic and thus SoD set from.
The weapon speed normalization is only on instant attacks.
100% no. WF crits with two handed specialization + flurry (2.4 with the STV PVP Totem) are the same as a slow 1 hander. It’s the reason two hand enhance is extremely bad ATM.