Myth Busted: Fast Weapon Upgrades
Monday, November 2, 2009 at 12:29AM | Stoneybaby That's right folks, you heard it here first, speed is what matters, slow speed weapons.
If you follow Elitist Jerks threads then there's absolutely no question whatsoever that slow/slow is the way to go for Enhance. But let's face it, not everyone reads EJ, not everyone stays up with the latest theorycrafting, and not everyone knows what's best for their class.
This week I came across two Enhance Shamans with fast weapons in their off-hand. In both cases they upgraded to fast ToC weapons from slow Ulduar 10 or Naxx25 one handers. That got me thinking, at what point are you better off using a fast off-hand? Were they right to grab that fast off-hand? What if you were a freshly minted 80 and managed to get yourself into a ToC run. Weapons are after all the hardest gear items to come by in game and with loot so plentiful in ToC and a plethora of fast off-hands dropping in all four versions, why not?. There's bound to be a breaking point where a fast dagger is going to be better than a slow mace.
Thus, this is a thought experiment to see at what point a fast off-hand is going to be a dps upgrade.
The idea was given to me by a friend who talked about an Enhance Shaman in his raid that had Angry Dread and Lionhead Slasher (Horde: Blood Fury). Presumably his thinking was that an iLevel 245 weapon would be a clear upgrade from an iLevel 213 one. I assume that it's not, but I also assume there is a point at which the fast OH would be an upgrade.
My method was to take Stoney's current gear in Rawr and just switch out weapons. I balanced gems to remain hit and expertise capped for all tests.
I used Angry Dread as the baseline weapon for two reasons. First this isn't about testing slow iLevel 245 versus fast iLevel 245, this is about testing the upgrade threshold. Second, at this point Angry Dread should be easy to come by; Naxx has been out for over a year, guilds have been farming it for a long time, and it's easy enough to still find semi-competent PuGs to at least get you to Noth or Gluth.
Initial Results
The baseline dps for Stoney using 2x Angry Dread was 7,533. Substituting the "upgrade" Lionhead Slahser reduces DPS by 172. Here's the breakdown:
| Ability | Angry Dread x2 | AD, Lionhead Smasher | Difference |
| Swing | 2222.25 | 2276.76 | 54.51 |
| Windfury | 796.04 | 803.20 | 7.16 |
| Flametongue | 586.25 | 515.44 | -70.81 |
| Stormstrike | 397.33 | 352.51 | -44.82 |
| Lava Lash | 351.34 | 224.06 | -127.28 |
| Magma Totem | 571.69 | 572.27 | 0.58 |
| Earth Shock | 564.23 | 563.79 | -0.44 |
| Flame Shock | 410.67 | 412.66 | 1.99 |
| Lightning Bolt | 931.00 | 874.81 | -56.19 |
| Lightning Shield | 361.02 | 423.74 | 62.72 |
| Spirit Wolves | 341.75 | 342.02 | 0.27 |
| Total | 7533.57 | 7361.27 | -172.31 |
As expected the losses of DPS come from Flametongue Weapon, Stormstrike and Lava Lash, which are based on base weapon damage. Faster weapons do less damage more often so they have lower base damage ranges and therefore do lower damage on abilities like SS & LL.
But what if you didn't have the chance to run Naxx25 to pickup Angry Dread. Your freshly minted level 80 Enhance Shaman has only had the opportunity to do dailies and has earned enough Champion Seals to get two Ironforge Smashers (Horde: Grimhorn Crusher). The baseline dps for dual wielding these in Stoney's gear is 7,394. Then substituting in the Lionhead Slasher once more we got 7,354, a difference of 40 DPS. That's right folks, i200 slow OH weapons out DPS i245 fast. It's not much, but it's still a downgrade and not even worth the enchanting mats.
The Breakeven Point
Like a good wanna-be Mythbuster, I'm going to take this to it's logical extreme until I find that break even point. It took some fooling around and lots of LOL's as my friend and I went back and forth with weapons to find that point where the upgrade to a fast weapon would make sense. And so without further adieu I present to you the fast-is-a-good-upgrade scenario:
When dual-wielding Stalactite Choppers upgrading to Lionhead Slasher (heroic) will be a slight upgrade!
If you are dual wielding the rare quality Sons of Hodir weapons and by some miracle of all things crazy in the WoW world you have the opportunity to jump in on a ToGC25 Lord Jaraxxus encounter, then by all means please do upgrade to the Lionhead Slasher in good conscience. All other fast weapon scenarios are side-grades at best, downgrades for most.
Conclusion
Only the most extreme circumstances are fast off-hand weapons upgrades for Enhancement Shamans. In fact, if you've got a fast OH right now I recommend putting it down and searching around on the ground for a heavy log. A stump with some leaves and maybe a nail through it on it is going to do you better than that zippy little dagger in your off hand. Besides, daggers are for Rogues and we don't want to be associated with them. Do we?
May all your hits be crits!
PvE, analysis, raiding, theorycrafting, weapon analysis 
Reader Comments (10)
I've come across a few enhance alts that actually did go to EJ, but didn't read the class mechanics post, but rather the new haste stacking BiS gear post. These players were also new to melee classes in general since they figured they'd skip the haste stacking and just go straight to fast weapons.
It took a fairly long time to explain the difference between the frequency of hits vs. the rate you hit at XD
Anyways, great post Stoney, I never realized how large the parity was for weapons of different speeds that were released over 9 months apart.
"Besides, daggers are for Rogues and we don’t want to be associated with them. Do we?"
NO WAI! But warriors....maybe...titans grip for enhance :D
[...] Myth Busted: Fast Weapon Upgrades at Big Hit Box. [...]
Awesome post. Even though a lot of this is on EJ, it's nice to see someone making the info more accessible.
Following the precedent set at EJ, I'm wondering if I just missed the part where you actually decided to "Sim it!", or are you a special snowflake? I wasn't aware that playing "Dress-Up" in RAWR was a very accurate judge of DPS upgrades. Especially since it tells me everyday that switching from My Tankard 'O Terror to the Heirloom mace will be a HUGE upgrade... <.<
I would advise anyone who has questions about their gear upgrades to "Sim it!".
Angry Dread is probably a poor baseline at this point as well: especially since my experience was that it was a stupid rare drop that you'd be at war with any other Enh Shammy in the raid for. Hit HToCh for 2 Aledar's Battlestar (iLvl 219) or drop by the AH for two Tankard's Of Terror (iLvL 226).
Even still, it's amazing how many shammy's I run into just don't want to listen when I tell them they'd do better dps going back for Greed + Pride over all the fast daggers they picked up off spec from somewhere.
I feel like this is a turning point for Big Hit Box. A watershed event, if you will. A snarky comment, while not strictly “trollish” the use of “quoting” does convey the dripping “sarcasm” of His Holiness PopeJamal. Is it wrong to feel like the vitriolic comment (to use a Mythbuster fav term) somehow legitimizes the blog? Is a blog really a worthwhile read unless it has some nasty comments? All questions for another time and one wiser than me…
Regardless, I should have been more clear about my methodology: I changed gear in Rawr, then exported the stats to EnhSim and ran tests from there. I followed a SR, SW, MW5_LB, FS, ES_SS, SS, ES, MT, LL, LS rotation. LL was not synced with WF CDs. I ran 5000 hours of sim and 8 minute boss fights with full 25-man raid buffs for each setup. Zerker on both weaps. At first I was running three 5000h tests for each, but that proved to be a bit of overkill for what really amounts to a thought experiment. So one 5000h/8m test was done for about half a dozen weapon setups. And it was all run in EnhSim, results saved to text files and exported to excel for quick calculations.
As an aside, I’d be willing to bet a better rotation could be made up to account for a fast off-hand weapon, but for the sake of consistency I decided to test using the same rotation that maximizes my DPS in Enhsim.
@Dave, I see your point. I did do tests with Aledar’s Battlestar as well, but even that i219 provided enough disparity to be laughable so I stepped down even further to the IF Smasher. When the IF Smasher was still rocking out the fast dirks I had to keep going down the weapon list. We were willing to go down as low as the Crimson Cranium Crusher for comparison sake, heck maybe even a Fist of the Bandit if necessary. But no matter what you use for the baseline, the result was the same: fast sucks for off-hand. Keep fighting the good fight.
And yes my dear readers, I am a special snowflake.
Great post. I will be showing this to the enhancement shaman that took the Icefall Blade from my rogue. *The Assassination Gnome prepares to nom on some draenei ankles*
That's fast off-hand....what about fast main-hand?
A fast main hand would be even worse then a fast off hand, as that would effect Windfury in addition to Stormstrike.
the stupid ads obn this page are killing me...nothing like being constantly distracted and interrupted to make u want to keep utilizing the same site >.>
the powers that be need to get their heads out of their asses.