As many people are, I am extremely excited about Phase 2 of Season of Discovery. In general, I am in favor of basically everything the team has done for P2.
However, there is one thing that sticks out to me that causes some concern, and that is the apparent disconnect from the development team and how big of an impact weapon speed has on desirability of items. This was a lesson learned back in Vanilla that seems to have been forgotten, at least from the preview items for Phase 2.
Everyone who has raided BFD knows the fist weapons were not desired. They seemed designed for Shamans, who prefer, at minimum, a slow Offhand for Lava Lash. I am sure many know that the theoretical BIS off-hand for rogues and warriors is actually the 1.2 speed caster dagger from Kelris. Granted, these are somewhat outliers and really the only “misses” in BFD. I am playing horde so I am a bit unsure on how well the 2 paladin-designed maces are received.
However, compared to the mostly-well designed BFD weapons, the two 1-handed melee maces previewed in the discussion about phase 2, Mechanostrider Muffler and the warrior weapon, Sanguine Skullcrusher, have 2.4 and 2.3 weapon speed, respectfully. To be blunt, there is simply no reason for a 1 handed weapon to ever be in the 2.0 to 2.5 weapon speed range. No class wants weapons with “medium” speed. They either want weapons as slow or as fast as possible.
It is just disheartening to see preview items that immediately jump out as “bad,” especially an Epic weapon. I realize it is probably too late to change the items for Phase 2, but please be more mindful of the impact of weapon speed when designing items in the future.
This is more important for enhance than many classes. Need slow/slow, need axes with same dps as swords. Didn’t understand why the final boss dropped weapons with less dps than earlier bosses. P1 was a specific faceslap to enhance. Hopefully the dev shaman hate has been fixed for phase 2.
The fist weapons are my preferred weapon of choice for DW tanking because 1.4 attack speed is pretty rad for threat and I just like using claws whenever I can.
I’m certainly not going to fault anyone for choosing the weapons they want for playstyle/aesthetic reasons, to each their own. However, just from an educational standpoint, having both fast weapons is actually the worst option performance-wise you can get for shaman DW tanking. Unless it has been fixed, the amount of threat Rockbiter generates is a flat amount based off of your main hand weapon speed, even when applied to your offhand weapon. So for threat, Slow + Fast generates more threat than fast + fast because your offhand attacks get the same flat threat applied as if they were your mainhand speed. For DPS, you want a slow offhand for Lava Lash. DW shamans have zero threat issues at the moment, so there’s not too much reason to not just go Slow/Slow.
Hmm. I was under the impression that each weapon was calc’d seperately, this is interesting.
I was already using Serra’kis+Enforcer Axe for dps, and I pretty much didn’t want the cool claws that no one else in my raid wanted to roll on to go to waste so I decided to use them for tanking because I thought “oh, fast swing timers should be good for aggro”.
The vast majority of abilities in the game are normalized for wep speed meaning only top end matters. If it’s a 2.4 but still a higher top end (due to higher dps) it’s still better.
There are a few notable exceptions Sinister Strike being the main one.
I’m aware of the normalization, but I would consider it a large problem. Having the new shiny items be worse than, for example, the WSG pvp reward everyone is going to have instant access to is a pretty big miss in my opinion. I am hoping that all of the datamined items end up being incorrect, but I am not holding my breath for items they specifically previewed.
I don’t really understand weapon speed normalization. Is it not the case that an ability that does weapon damage +X, or an ability that does Y% weapon damage, will hit harder with a slower weapon with the same DPS as a faster weapon?
If this isn’t the case, then I’m unsure how damage calculations work.
If this is the case, then the previewed weapons seem antithetical to what most melee would target.
SpoilersWhen you include the datamined weapons, it feels like the weapons are designed specifically to shaft warriors - both dual wielding and 2h - and rogues for being too good in phase 1, while completely ignoring that paladins, enhancement shamans, and melee hunters often would want weapons with the same speeds.
So way back in the day in vanilla, most instant attacks did their damage based with the formula Damage = Base weapon damage + (weapon speed * attack power/14). Normalization replaces the weapon speed factor with a flat number based on the weapon type
1.7 for daggers
2.4 for other one-handed weapons
3.3 for two-handed weapons
2.8 for ranged weapons
Obviously, the normalization helped mitigate weapon speed being such a gigantic driving factor in your instant attack damage. Now, for instant attacks it is really just the damage range you see on the weapon as the factor. However, slower weapons still mean the damage range on the weapon is higher. For example, the level 38 version of Legionnaire’s sword is 2.7 speed, with 55-103 damage, resulting in 29.36 dps. While that DPS is lower than the 31.09 of the new warrior epic mace, it has a 2.3 attack speed with a damage range of 50-93. The Legionnaire’s sword is going to do superior damage with instant attacks. Slam procs with new runes, raging blow, devastate, whirlwind, etc. There are a lot of other factors at play for wanting slower or faster weapons, but I don’t want to get too far off in the weeds.
And now I’m confused again. A higher DPS weapon will do more damage on white hits? Or will it do more DPS when looking at sustained DPS over a time period? The second makes sense to me, but the first doesn’t.
The “roll” picks a number between the minimum and maximum damage, as I think is fairly logical. When comparing items, it’s a pretty safe bet to just look at the max damage, though. You can calculate the average if you really want.
Correct, normalization has nothing to do with white hits