Swords questionFollow

Higher delay

Those numbers are the ones from your character sheet for white damage. Basically, the formula for how much damage an auto attack swing is going to hit for is:

Base Weapon Damage + (Attack Power / 14) * Weapon Speed

Basically, slow weapons hit less often but get a larger boost from attack power. You need not worry about this. Because of the math behind it, you only have to consider the DPS of the weapon to determine which will do more damage (strictly from auto attacks). Also note that the offhand weapon will only do 50% damage as calculated by the above formula, you can boost this to 75% by taking 5/5 DW spec in the combat tree.

You may also hear things about normalization. This refers to our instant attacks (backstab, mutilate, sinister strike, ambush) that are "normalized" at a certain speed. That means, they get a weapon speed multiplier of 1.7 for daggers and 2.4 for all other 1h weapons. This was made to keep lesser quality weapons from being better than higher quality weapons simply because of their speed. Hemorage, ghostly strikes, and riposte remain "un normalized." All instant attacks use the same formula (as above) to calculate "weapon damage." So when you read the SS tool tip and it says "weapon damage + X," the actual "weapon damage" is being calculated using the above formula with 1.7 for "weapon speed" if you're using a dagger and 2.4 for swords/fists/maces. This also explains why you sholdn't use sinister strike as your primary attack if you're using daggers (a similar sword would get more damage from your attack power due to thie higher multiplier).

Here's a brief example. We'll assume that the rogue is level 70, and has both sword and dagger skills maxed. We'll assume 1400 attack power, and compare two weapons: the gladiator's shanker to the gladiator's slicer.

For auto attack damage in the main hand:

Shanker:

(127+191)/2 + (1400/14) * 1.8 = 339

Slicer:

(183+275)/2 + (1400/14) * 2.6 = 489

These figures show that the shanker will hit every 1.8 seconds for an average of 339 damage, and the slicer will hit every 2.6 seconds for an average of 489 damage. Over the course of 60 seconds, both weapons will do about 11300 damage, assuming that all hits land (and don't crit).

Now lets look at an average sinister strike. Max level sinister strike does weapon damage + 98 and is normalized (1.7 for daggers, 2.4 for swords).

Shanker:

(127+191)/2 + (1400/14) * 1.7 + 98 = 427

Slicer:

(183+275)/2 + (1400/14) * 2.4 + 98 = 567

Now consider that SS is an instant attack, meaning you can do it whenever you have 40 energy (assuming you tallented it... which you better have). So, every 4 seconds (or the time it takes to get 40 energy), you can hit for 427 average with the dagger, or 567 average with the sword (assuming normal hits not crits). The same holds true when you compare two swords or two daggers. The one with the highest average damage range will allow you to hit harder on your instant attacks. The one with more DPS will do more "white" auto attack damage over time. You also have to consider that faster weapons also proc poison more often (it's based off a percentage chance on hit, and faster weapons hit more often). In general, follow the "slow" mainhand and "fast" offhand rule when compairing similar level weapons. However, in your case, the sword of omen makes a much better main hand than that green because it is of better quality. Despite being much faster, it also has a higher average damage range, and thus is a better main hand weapon.

Edited, Apr 29th 2007 11:37am by LordMeridus