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ive been gone for about a year and a half. I'm getting back into this game after xmas and just been trying to read up on all the changes since i quit (a friggin lot) One thing i dont understand is this weapon normalization thing they did a while back. Ive read a few explinations of it but i just dont get it, does this mean that the weapons speed on a weapon doesn't matter at all anymore since they're all set based on weapon type now? Im pretty confused. Can someone who understands it explain it to someone whos been gone from the game for quite a while? My mains a rogue that was mostly combat build when i was playing, was up to lvl 40 or so

It doesn't affect anyone at your level to a great extent, so I wouldn't worry about it.

Ok, I'll try and explain it as a rogue myself

Basically, as it was before, the damage bonus your attack power gives to instant attacks (like sinister strike, backstab etc) was multiplied by your weapon speed, meaning the slower your weapon, the more damage it did. This made particularly slow weapons disproportionately good, I think the blue Barman Shanker from BRD was better for large ambushes and backstabs than epic daggers from MC.

So now each type of weapon uses a set speed for the multiplication, and weapon speed doesn't matter. You still want to go for a slower weapon where possible, but only because from two weapons with the same dps, the slower one has the higher damage range (ie it hits harder but less often). So basically it's damage range you want to look at for mainhand weapons now, not speed.

Hope this explains a bit, I'm not great at explaining stuff!

Hmmm, just to add to that, damage range doesn't really help you much except to let you get those very high damage crits occasionally, there is a slight effect on crits due to the way damage for crits is randomized. The big effect from a slow weapon is that you use less energy/rage/power for your special moves over the same time period, this is however partly offset by a higher proc rate for poisons for a faster weapon in the case of a rogue for instance, hence may still look for a slow main hander and a very fast off hander (especially with talents that give extra energy on off hand hits, obviously faster weapons = more hits).

Um, well, I'm sure I confused someone...

ya i had it explained to me really well on allakazams board, i get the math behind it now.. personally i think its kinda stupid, why even use speed at all in the dmg calculation of moves, just take that part out entirely, but whatever

one thing im not clear on though is what moves have the new normalized dmg and which dont. it seems some do some dont. i.e. i dont think hemorage or evicerate are normalized, but am pretty sure sinister strike, and backstab are

anyone have a list of whats normalized and what isn't? Why the hell dont they just normalize EVERYTHING. I dont understand their logic on some things

I believe all moves are normalised - eviscerate has nothing to do with weapons anyway, while I'm fairly sure I heard that hemorrhage has now been normalised too; it was the only one that wasn't normalised in any case.

And Alanthus, damage range is the most important thing for a rogue mainhand. Speed is nice on offhand, yep, particularly with the combat potency talent, but for mainhand it's damage range all the way - whenever I look at Recap to see how my damage is made up, over 30% is sinister strikes, often more like 35%. And that 30% relies a lot on the damage range, a weapon that hits less hard is going to reduce my overall damage, even if it has higher dps, unless it's a very big difference in dps and a small on in damage.

no not all are normalized, it seems hemo is not.. for rogues i thnk ive lockedit in as Ambush, backstab, mutilate, & sinister strike are normalized


i dont get whey they dont jsut normalize everything, it just makes it confusing. or better yet just take the damn speed multiplier out!

Ok, hemo was the only one not normalised for rogues, anyway - I was under the impression it either had been normalised in the last patch or will be in the expansion but that might be wrong.