Ranged Weapon Damage

[finnachta]

I have a question regarding the Weapon Damage and how it relates to attacks. From what I understand, all attacks are normalized around the DPS number on weapons. Please correct me if I am wrong. Before going further, this question is not on which weapon is better when taking secondary stats into consideration but rather just the weapon damage itself.

First, I read on Normalization but was confused as to value of what base_weapon_damage was when looking at a weapon's tooltip. According to Weapon damage, Base weapon damage is defined as " a weapon's inherent damage, displayed in the weapon's tooltip" but when looking at a weapon's tooltip you see a range of weapon damage and not a specific number unless it is referring to the DPS number.

Take a look at the following items:
http://www.wowhead.com/compare?items...79;81693;89399
(Yan-Zhu's Pressure Valve was not included in comparison due to different speed)

WOWDB tooltips for your convenience:
Firebelcher Hand Cannon Tempestuous Longbow Amber Sprayer of Klaxxi'vess Houndmaster's Compound Crossbow

They all have a DPS of 3,285 however the Min and Max damage on Houndmaster's Compound Crossbow has a smaller range of damage resulting in a higher minimum damage and lower maximum damage. Does this affect the damage output of this weapon compared to the others drastically? First instinct would tell someone that the weapons with 12814 would have the ability to have higher hits but would that mean it also has the ability to have lower hits as well; and if so, would this larger spread have any impact worth worrying about?

I appreciate your time.

[Delaios]

No, if weapons share the same speed and DPS value, it doesn't matter what their damage range is. They average out over the course of a boss fight (average weapon damage = DPS value * speed). Any difference you might see, is because of RNG. And RNG doesn't favour one weapon to another.

A weapon with a slightly higher top end than another weapon (with identical speed and DPS) does give you the potentially highest damage done, if RNG decides to only roll crits and top end weapon damage. But it also gives the lowest (only hits with low end weapon damage). Averages is what's important, not worst or best case scenarios.

[Aertea]

WoW is a number driven game, things tend to obey the laws of statistics. Range is just that, range. Larger range means more variance, but in a large enough sample it will all average out the same.

[jacobs8891]

thanks for the information.it will be very helpful.