sideburnz said:
The reason why the MH glaive is pretty good is because its a 2.8 speed weapon and as such Obliterate will hit harder due to DK abilities not being normalized to weapon speed. It's not much of a damage boost, but it is a damage boost.
Death Knight abilities are normalized.
With agility no longer granting dodge or armor, the only benefit DK's receive from it is melee crit rating. The 22 agility on the Glaive thus translates to 16 crit rating (17 with BoK - this crit doesn't benefit your diseases or HB / IT, which might reduce it's value by 20% or so, but a negligible change in the big picture). Thus, the stat differences between a S4 Mainhand and the Glaive comes out to:
Glaive MH:
12 hit rating
16 stamina
S4 MH:
6 crit rating
12 resilience
7 haste
38 attack power
Assume, for the sake of argument, that the 16 stamina / 12 resilience and the 12 hit / 6 crit + 7 haste are equal. These are extremely rough estimates, but since only attack power affects the math below, we will assume that the Glaive has no stats, and that the Brutal Glad weapon has 38 attack power. Whether that can make up for the increased DPS and superior weapon speed offered by the Glaive is what I'm intent on finding out.
Assume a Death Knight with 2500 attack power with Horn of Winter and no other buffs (2538 with the Brutal MH - he uses the Brutal OH in both calculations). He has the Annihilation and Threat of Thassarian talents, the Obliterate glyph and two diseases on his target. We will now calcuate the mean output of each scenario. Lots of other modifiers can come into play (enemy resilience and armor, Merciless Combat, Frost Presence, buffs or debuffs) - but they won't drastically alter the resulsts, and are thus left out.
Glaive:
Maihhand damage: 2823
Offhand damage: 1740
Obliterate thus comes to 4563 damage.
Brutal:
Mainhand damage: 2769
Offhand damage: 1751
Obliterate thus comes to 4520 damage.
From this we can deduce that most weapon based strikes will see an approximate one percent increase in damage. While glyphing Howling Blast and Frost Strike is great fun for BG's, I assume we are evaluating arena here, and thus glyph Obliterate and Frost Strike. This means that the three main sources of damage (FS / Obli / Autoattack), all of which together make up perhaps 80% of your damage are boosted more by having the Glaive equipped then the Brutal mainhand. It's safe to say that the 6 crit on the S4 weapon and the 12 hit on the Glaive roughly cancel each other out. The 16 stamina vs. the 12 resilience might seem like an obvious choice, but depending on your current level of resilience, the stamina might actually yield a higher EH (and along with that, bigger Death Strikes and pet sacs). The resilience is preferable in most cases though. Not taking into account any racial expertise bonuses, we are left with the 7 haste on the Brutal weapon versus a roughly 0,6-0,7% increase in overall damage.
Thus, we can conclude:
If you use the Obliterate and Frost Strike glyph (Arena), the Glaive is superior.
If you use the Howling Blast and Frost Strike glyph (BG's), the S4 weapon is superior.
This thread is beginning to sound like Alister McGrath and Bill O'Reilly guest hosting The View. "I'm right and you're wrong - not gonna tell you why, that's just the way it is!". Notice how I use mathematic and empirical evidence to support my claim. The 70-79 section has taken a hit in terms of quality ever since Sanitarium stepped down as a mod.
Also, to whomever mentioned Berserking, Black Magic or Aunt Ginny's Cookie Weapon Enchantment - how many good DK's do you see that use anything but disarm, Razorice or RotFC?
and how did it go !??