Best 2h Weapons

While this is all essentially correct, the relevant information here is that the top-end damage from Glowing Brightwood Staff and Executioner's Cleaver are exactly identical at 191. The fact that they now calculate weapon damage for skills based on the same 3.3 speed is what flips the viability of these two dramatically from actual Vanilla WoW (pre 1.8).
You're missing half of my point. Executioner's Cleaver will have more damage than Glowing Brightwood Staff at 49 due to scaling.

Tooltips in a vacuum don't illustrate the bigger picture.
 
You're missing half of my point. Executioner's Cleaver will have more damage than Glowing Brightwood Staff at 49 due to scaling.

Tooltips in a vacuum don't illustrate the bigger picture.
Could you explain more about scaling, using EC and Brightwood Staff as examples?

All I'm doing here is converting dps into average weapon damage per swing, which is Weapon DPS + (AP / 14) * [Weapon Speed]. If there's another coefficient for weapon speed, I don't know anything about it and could definitely be a game changer.
 
My third example. AP increases dps at a flat rate. You get more weapon damage per dps for slower weapons.

10 dps 1.0 sec = 10 a hit
10 dps 2.0 sec = 20 a hit

increase dps by 1

11 dps 1.0 sec = 11 a hit
11 dps 2.0 sec = 22 a hit

1 dps increase makes the 1.0 second weapon hit 1 damage harder
1 dps increase makes the 2.0 second weapon hit 2 damage harder

Slower weapons damage scales better with attack power. Executioners cleaver will (by around 40-50) hit harder than glowing bright wood staff.

Just put all your gear in the wowhead gear planner. You're missing the forest for the trees.
[doublepost=1569898796,1569898260][/doublepost]I cherry picked the highest AP set I could find just to further illustrate my point

https://classic.wowhead.com/gear-pl...QGTu0HKYkITp_KJahOLQE1C0UxDEw3TzxDBLEQAywSMu8
Glowing Brightwood Staff

https://classic.wowhead.com/gear-pl...QGTu0HKYkITp_KJahOLQE1C0UxDEw3TzxDBLEQMtoSMu8
Executioner's Cleaver

Sorry if I'm coming of as pedantic. I really enjoy discussing this stuff with people who are actually trying to think why something is good rather than following copy/pasted guides.
 
My third example. AP increases dps at a flat rate. You get more weapon damage per dps for slower weapons.

10 dps 1.0 sec = 10 a hit
10 dps 2.0 sec = 20 a hit

increase dps by 1

11 dps 1.0 sec = 11 a hit
11 dps 2.0 sec = 22 a hit

1 dps increase makes the 1.0 second weapon hit 1 damage harder
1 dps increase makes the 2.0 second weapon hit 2 damage harder

Slower weapons damage scales better with attack power. Executioners cleaver will (by around 40-50) hit harder than glowing bright wood staff.

Just put all your gear in the wowhead gear planner. You're missing the forest for the trees.
[doublepost=1569898796,1569898260][/doublepost]I cherry picked the highest AP set I could find just to further illustrate my point

https://classic.wowhead.com/gear-pl...QGTu0HKYkITp_KJahOLQE1C0UxDEw3TzxDBLEQAywSMu8
Glowing Brightwood Staff

https://classic.wowhead.com/gear-pl...QGTu0HKYkITp_KJahOLQE1C0UxDEw3TzxDBLEQMtoSMu8
Executioner's Cleaver

Sorry if I'm coming of as pedantic. I really enjoy discussing this stuff with people who are actually trying to think why something is good rather than following copy/pasted guides.
Edit: The normalized weapon damage formula can be found here, and only applies to instant attacks, not white damage.

So we definitely got our wires crossed in this thread, and I've added white damage to the original post as well, based on wowhead's calculator.
 
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okay this is how I know I that weapon dps really doesn't matter
by your math nightblade is the best weapon in 39.

this was common knowledge at 39 back in bc / wrath:
anyone that says nightblade is the best weapon at 39 is dumb and should be made fun of

Edit: was sauced when I posted this toned it down
 
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Hi everyone, I updated the first post with a lot of revised and new information.

For starters, I removed the non-normalized calculations and replaced them with normalized calculations. I also spent a lot of time trying to puzzle out why my figures were so different from what wowhead's gear planner was coming up with, and I realized that normalized damage values (the formula for which can be found here) were only applied to instant attacks, so things like Mortal Strike, Overpower and Whirlwind. Not white damage, which is what wowhead's calculator displays.

With that in mind, I've included normalized damage for instant attacks, white damage, AND mortal strike damage (and crits!) to the first post. I hope it clears up some confusion and helps some people out.
 
I'm afraid you've lost me again.

I'm operating under the assumption that base weapon damage is tooltip damage because that's what it says here.

"Base weapon damage is a weapon's inherent damage, displayed in the weapon's tooltip."

Another interesting resource I came across while reading up on all this was this page, where a guy discovers that the Classic beta was using Legion's normalization values instead of Vanilla's. He's got a bunch of his testing written out, which is similar to how I've done it and where I got the idea to include Mortal Strike values.
 
ok then if thats how it works then I'm definitely wrong about instant attacks

I got white hit scaling mixed up with it. I'm too hung up on shaman where white hits > all

edit: I multibox four warriors / shaman and I've been glancing over their combat logs now that you got me interested. Somethings off but I don't have a big enough sample yet. You're closer to being right now than I was.
 
ok then if thats how it works then I'm definitely wrong about instant attacks

I got white hit scaling mixed up with it. I'm too hung up on shaman where white hits > all

edit: I multibox four warriors / shaman and I've been glancing over their combat logs now that you got me interested. Somethings off but I don't have a big enough sample yet. You're closer to being right now than I was.
I have a hard time imagining anything beat PoD's weapon damage at 39, but now you got me curious to look into it... who knows, little math could end up saving people a few thousand gold LOL

Edit: I did the math.

39 Warrior with 500 AP

Pendulum of Doom:
242-305
Normalized Weapon Damage (Whirlwind & Overpower)
266-330 White Damage
74.52 dps

Nightblade:
215-264 Normalized Weapon Damage
196-246 White Damage
79.04 dps

Staff of Jordan:
236-298 Normalized Weapon Damage
250-312 White Damage
76.05 dps

Nothing else even comes remotely close, so there's no point in checking more.

I could maybe see Nightblade with Fiery being useful for high-AP, low-crit sword builds against something like a disc. priest, since you don't have Mortal Strike in this bracket and they won't be dodging much for Overpower procs.

Faster swings and more consistent rage generation + higher dps has its uses against targets you aren't jousting and are frequently rage-starved against, but for 95% of your gameplay I think people basically have it right with PoD and Crusader.

Ironically, if you're an enh shaman, Staff of Jordan might be on par with or even more useful than PoD for the stats and spell damage.
 
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Stoneslayer vs Kang, which is better? Sword spec is betteer. Stoneslayer is slower but it has less max damage. Did they not normalize the instant attacks anyway resulting in Kang hitting harder with instant attacks?
 
Stoneslayer vs Kang, which is better? Sword spec is betteer. Stoneslayer is slower but it has less max damage. Did they not normalize the instant attacks anyway resulting in Kang hitting harder with instant attacks?
Instant attacks are normalized so Kang's is better for MS / WW because its base damage is 4 higher than stoneslayer.

Stoneslayer autos outscale Kang's at ~280 AP.

You'll be around ~700ap with a balanced set - at ~700ap kang's will hit ~4 damage harder on instants, and stoneslayer will hit ~10 damage harder on auto attacks.
 
Does The Jackhammer have any home in 40-49?

I've picked one up for ridiculously cheap.
 
why is pod not even on the shortlist
 
I have a hard time imagining anything beat PoD's weapon damage at 39, but now you got me curious to look into it... who knows, little math could end up saving people a few thousand gold LOL

Edit: I did the math.

39 Warrior with 500 AP

Pendulum of Doom:
242-305
Normalized Weapon Damage (Whirlwind & Overpower)
266-330 White Damage
74.52 dps

Nightblade:
215-264 Normalized Weapon Damage
196-246 White Damage
79.04 dps

Staff of Jordan:
236-298 Normalized Weapon Damage
250-312 White Damage
76.05 dps

Nothing else even comes remotely close, so there's no point in checking more.

I could maybe see Nightblade with Fiery being useful for high-AP, low-crit sword builds against something like a disc. priest, since you don't have Mortal Strike in this bracket and they won't be dodging much for Overpower procs.

Faster swings and more consistent rage generation + higher dps has its uses against targets you aren't jousting and are frequently rage-starved against, but for 95% of your gameplay I think people basically have it right with PoD and Crusader.

Ironically, if you're an enh shaman, Staff of Jordan might be on par with or even more useful than PoD for the stats and spell damage.
How's lumbering orge axe and pacifier match up using your math?
 
why is pod not even on the shortlist

There's just no conceivable advantage to using it in this bracket as far as I can tell. It's worse than EC in every metric.

PoD
((650/14)*3.3) + [127-191] = 277-340
Expected Mortal Strike Damage: 387-450
Expected Mortal Strike Crit: 774-900
Normal Attack Range: 296-360
DPS: 82.09

vs.

Executioner's Cleaver
((696/14)*3.3) + [127-191] = 291-355
Expected Mortal Strike Damage: 401-465
Expected Mortal Strike Crit: 802-930
Normal Attack Range: 315-380
DPS: 91.48


How's lumbering orge axe and pacifier match up using your math?

For Lumbering Ogre Axe (530 AP):
230-283 Normalized Damage
252-306 White Damage
71.5 DPS

Pacifier (536 AP):
230-282 Normalized Damage
256-309 White Damage
70.71 DPS
 
you guys are completely and totally missing the point of pod/pvp then

bc the reason you use the pod is to oneshot guys with the proc ...
3 additional dps won't win you games, but a doubleproc from pod will
 
you guys are completely and totally missing the point of pod/pvp then

bc the reason you use the pod is to oneshot guys with the proc ...
3 additional dps won't win you games, but a doubleproc from pod will
If it has a high ppm I can see it being useful here, but I've never used one and figured with damage that high it was very low.

I've also never heard anyone talk about the PoD procs being meta relevant, only its speed/top-end, since I don't play 39s lol
 

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