Weapon speed for Enhance?

[justinmccray111]

All of these "is X weapon better than Y even if X is faster?" questions can be answered by looking at the weapon damage, if (Top end + Bottom End)/2 is higher on the X than Y, then it's an upgrade for sure.

For example:
http://www.wowhead.com/item=81089 463 iLvl 2.6 speed
http://www.wowhead.com/item=87012 502 iLvl 1.8 speed

Axe: 6335 avg. damage
Dagger: 6308 avg. damage

in terms of pure damage, the dagger wins, but the increased stat gain is:

+169 Agility
+145 Haste
+324 Hit
-261 Mastery

Which should make the dagger winner in this case.

Good enhance shamans use slow weapons.

Bad enhance shamans use daggers

[Embermoon]

This is not entirely true. When adding attack power to normalized, weapon-based attacks, the type of weapon used determines the multiplier applied to the attack power contribution to weapon damage. One-handed swords, fists, maces, and axes receive a 2.4 multiplier, while daggers only receive a 1.7 multiplier. So even though a dagger might have a higher average damage than an axe/fist/mace, the axe/fist/mace will most certainly win out due to the extra 41% of AP scaling -- unless the dagger is of significantly higher item level than the axe/fist/mace. This is especially true of abilities which give a percentage damage bonus as part of the ability, such as Lava Lash.

Lava Lash receives the following damage bonuses:
+ 300% - baseline
+ 40% - if using Flametongue Weapon on the off-hand
+ 20-100% - Depending on stacks of Searing Flame

There's a potential for +440% weapon damage done by Lava Lash. Since the AP contribution is added to the weapon's damage to determine the overall weapon damage before applying ability bonuses, this means that an axe/fist/mace receives an extra 180.4% AP contribution which is very hard to overcome with a dagger.

Stormstrike works similarly, with a +450% boost to weapon damage. Thus, for Enhancement Shaman, daggers aren't even worth considering unless you're upgrading from something like questing greens to a ToT dagger. Even then it might not be worth it, would have to do some more math on that.

See Weapon Normalization for more details.

Thanks very much for that - I never knew that about normalization. (makes mental note to peruse wowpedia more often)

So, basically, in the case of Zeeg's, the fact that it's a 522 itemization, combined with a 2.4 multiplier to the equation, for being a one-handed mace, makes it just beefy enough to be an upgrade over the current 502 ilvl weapons with a 2.60 speed. That's good enough for me. I'll use it, until I can replace it with 2.60 speed 522s or better in both hands. (if they'll ever drop....)

[Rabble]

So, basically, in the case of Zeeg's, the fact that it's a 522 itemization, combined with a 2.4 multiplier to the equation, for being a one-handed mace, makes it just beefy enough to be an upgrade over the current 502 ilvl weapons with a 2.60 speed. That's good enough for me. I'll use it, until I can replace it with 2.60 speed 522s or better in both hands. (if they'll ever drop....)

Zeeg's is a very significant upgrade, despite being 2.4 vs 2.6 speed. All one handed melee weapons (except daggers) are normalized to 2.4 speed. That means even your 2.6 speed weapons only receive a 2.4 multiplier to AP. What matters when comparing two items is weapon damage.

A 2.6 speed weapon will have more weapon damage than a 2.4 speed weapon of the same item level. Since they have the same DPS value, one has to hit harder but slower while the other hits softer but faster. Thus, if you had to choose between the two, the 2.6 is the superior item still. Both receive only a 2.4 bonus to AP, both have the same stats, but the 2.6 has a slightly higher average damage to apply the AP modifier to.

In the case of your 522 vs 502 item, though, the 522 item's damage range is significantly higher than the 502, regardless of the fact that it's a 2.4 speed. In general, if you have two weapons of the same basic type (e.g. one handed melee axes, fists, and maces), the one with the highest ilevel will almost always be best. I'm not sure where the break point is, but I imagine it's only within 4 or 5 ilevels that an inferior ilevel item could win out. And this would only be the case if the higher weapon was poorly optimized stat-wise, and the lower item was perfectly optimized.

[Barky]

I recently got a Zeeg's in heroic, it was superior in weapon damage to my normal OH but not my TF main hand in terms of weap dmg, so its in the OH and it seems to be doing fine, obviously I'd prefer a TF weap again and replace it, but whatever :P