sword spec worthless?Follow

ive been thinking of my talent build and im having serious thoughts about going sword spec. Im a Rogue btw... im doing a combat build and dont wanna go daggers spec, i need to go sword, mace, or fist, or something. Originally i was gonna do sword then i looked at what it does...meh. Id like to go fist but honestly theres almost no decent fist weapons in this game, so thats kinda out. Im not too thrilled about maces either, that leaves me back with with swords. But the bonus you get from sword speciallization.. .well it just seems to suck. Is it just me?

Spending an entire 5 points to get only a 5% chance for an extra attack seems lame to me. that means in 100 swings i'll get maybe 5 extra swings off.. wee. The extra crit rate seems much better on daggers or fist weapons (dagger will be in my off hand) or the extra skill with the mace and stun also seems like a better bet. because thats guarenteed boost to chance to hit, PLUS a stun bonus equal to the crappy extra attack % from the sword

honestly. is it just me or does that bonus from the sword spec just suck? What am i missing? I even read that its not a free attack that it just resets your attack timer

Back when I played my sword rogue, it was very sweet. Plus I used a thrash blade, which has a similar effect. I would chop through just about anything like crazy. Throw a slice and dice in every once in awhile to improve the effect.

I don't know if the mechanics of it have changed since then, that was along time ago.

Sword spec is the greatest rogue spec.

If you're talking about just the talent (which it seems you are), it procs for me roughly 2-3 times a fight.

By the way, when you're talking in WoW terms, 5% is rather significant. Also, Slice and Dice will help you proc it even more.

Purely in theory, a 5% increased crit chance... only increases your damage by 5%, the same as Sword Spec. In actuality, the differences are quite large.

First off, the Sword Spec proc can miss/be blocked/parried... but it can also crit. It adds the most autoattack DPS out of all of the specs, even against a high-evasion target like another Rogue, but because it _does_ reset the swing timer it may end up being inferior for Rogues when compared to a crit spec, like Fist Weapons.

I can't say anyhting from experience, but just going over how it should work out crit chance should beat out teh same chance to add an extra attack (given the same weapon damage and speed, which daggers and sword won't have).

On white dps swords win out by just a bit. Given no talents 1 crit is teh same as one proc'd extra swing (+100% damage on crit), but extra swings have a chance to crit which raises the white dps. But on abilities crit goes up a huge amount, since a critted ss is better than an ss+second swing. Then there is balancing the better damage of sword SS strikes with talents that increase crit damage.

I'd take Vataro's word for it since speculation is rather inconclusive.

disagree. in group pve, swords are probably a bit superior to daggers (i'm going by our top equipped rogues, where only one dagger and about 3-4 sword/mace rogues are up there; a certain sword rogue normaly wins on dps).

for solo pve, swords are better, because it's hard to position yourself for bs all the time and thus aren't at your most efficient with your main attack.

in pvp, daggers have the advantage of burst damage, but again, positioning is hard. i'm not a big pvper, so i'll leave this one to someone else.

Shoot I don't know much about rogues, but I can tell you this.

My near-47 paladin is using a Thrash Blade and is full Protection spec, so when I get the Thrash proc'ing with my Reckoning, believe me the opponent feels it. Not only does it hold aggro very well when I'm getting super fast Judgement of Wisdom procs, but it does considerable DPS for a Paladin, too. I'm getting about 71 DPS from my setup.

Once I complete Protection to 42, I'm going to decide which of the other two trees I'm going to develop. What I do depends on how I'm playing this Paladin when I hit 60; though I intend to tank most of the 5 mans I join.

Actually the math is a bit more complicated. Let's just say you're fighting something with a 6% avoidance rate. You have a 10% additional "miss" rate, and let's say just 20% crit rate. That means that your "base" damage is 104% of what you'd expect from 0-crit 0-miss 0-avoid attacking. Get +5% to crit, and your damage will increase to 109%, which means you're getting a 4.8% increase in damage from where you were.

However, with sword spec, you have a 5% chance to get an extra attack, doing on average 104% of auto-attack non-crit damage. This means that sword spec will give you a 5.2% increase in damage.

Doesn't sound too bad, but let's pump up those stats? Drop your miss rate to 4% (it's possible, that's what mine's at) and bump your crit rate to 30%. Now you're gettin some real nice gear, with your base damage being 120% of the 0-0-0 scale mentioned above. Now add +5% to crit, moving it up to 125%. Your damage only went up 4.16% compared to what you were previously doing.

Yes, +crit gives diminishing returns. :)

However, for sword spec in this case, you're getting a 5% chance to get an attack that does, on average 120% of auto-attack non-crit damage, giving you a 6% increase.

I would think he means he has 20% +hit, rather than going off the strict combat tables.

woo, details here please. when i was playing my rogue last i went mace for the stun factor and it was awesome. i could expect to stun at least 2 times per fight when melee and when in an instance depending on the overall DPS of the group i could get as many as 4 or 5 stuns in per fight.

so what did Blizzard do to mace spec as of the 2.0 patch or what ever patch # it was that screwed up this great talent.

what? +skill no longer reduces glancing blow effects. it still does the other stuff. otherwise it would to nothing. details?

with +hit items you can go below 5% miss.

*blink*

No. No, it won't.

WORKING FROM A WARRIOR'S PERSPECTIVE HERE, since I have a better understanding of the math/Warrior abilities... and I'm not sure what kind of a miss rate that Sword Spec procs use (base miss rate? 5%? Hmm).

Consider the raiding warrior. We are going to assume the following values for simplicity's sake;

25.5% Crit
1500 Buffed AP (including BS, etc.)
6% Hit

Which are decent stats but far from obscene - still, no slouch here. This theoretical warrior, who we'll call Groucho, has Sword Specialization and happens to be fighting a handy boss mob, who we'll call Marx.

Now, on any given swing there are four possible events;
a) Groucho whiffs for whatever reason (Dodge, Parry or Miss) and deals zero damage.
b) Groucho lands a Glancing Blow and deals 70% damage. (White damage only.)
c) Groucho lands a hit and deals 100% damage.
d) Groucho lands a crit and deals 200% damage. (220% on Yellow)

Now, let's put all of this together...

Groucho has 6% hit, which means that even against boss mobs he will never miss an attack ('miss' miss, as in the actual miss event). Because he's standing behind the boss, Groucho cannot be parried by Marx - but he can still be dodged, at a 5.5% chance.

Event a = .055 * 0

Groucho can no longer reduce glancing blows (damn you, Blizz!) and therefore has no way to reduce the 40% glancing blow rate against a boss mob.

Event b = .4 * .7

Ignoring event c for a moment, Groucho has a 25.5% crit rate (reduced to 25% against a boss mob due to the defense difference).

Event d = .25 * 2

And event c is the 'catch-all' event, taking the remainder probability and multiplying it by one - to whit, 29.5%.

Event c = .295 * 1

So, when you add them all together...

.055 * 0 + .4 * .7 + .295 * 1 + .25 * 2 = 0 + .28 + .295 + .5 = 1.075 of your 'normal' damage per swing.

Now, assume that you added in Axe Spec to the equation... you'll change the equation to;

.055 * 0 + .4 * .7 + .245 * 1 + .3 * 2 = 0 + .28 + .245 + .6 = 1.125

Or, compared to the previous number... a 4.65% increase in DPS.

Now! Sword Spec.

It will proc on attacks that connect, and _not_ misses... so, going by the previous number, it should have a chance to proc 94.5% of the time. Moreover, it follows the same numbers as previously used - it should land for 1.075 of your normal damage.

.945 * .05 = .0473 * 1.075 = 5.08 increased DPS, or 1.126 damage per swing - a slight bump from the Poleaxe Specialization, but it is there.

But the more significant portion of all this is how it interacts with special attack damage. It adds 4.73% of your normal white hits to damage but you ALSO generate rage off those attacks. Or, to put it another way, on every damaging special ability it reads;

"Has a 4.73% chance to deal an additional 1.075 white damage and generate rage"

...or, to use Groucho as our example...

1500 AP * 3.8 / 14 = 407.15 (Not normalized)
High Warlord 2H Sword (294 Average Damage)
-----
701.15 'base' damage * 1.075 = 753.73 damage pre-mitigation

This works out to (Speed * 1.25 + Damage / 61.5 = Rage)
3.8 * 1.25 + 753.7 / 61.5 = 12.26 * 1.075 = 13.18 * 1.25 (Endless Rage) = 16.47 Rage 'returned' on average.

Even figuring that it will, on average, only save you half the time before your next swing the increased rage is pretty huge. ~16 works out to reducing the cost of your Mortal Strike by ~50% and will cause you to actually gain rage on Hamstrings/Pummels/Whatever.

ok so no affect on soloing or normal instance?