(Cataclysm) Strength. One handers. Not free loot?

[Kelesti]

Well, Blizz did it again with another big kerflop.

Strength. One handers. Currently, there's one spec that drools over the prospect (go, you awesome Frost Death Knights, you), but... no one else uses them. Period.

But there is a possible outcome of this, in that one-handed weapons will no longer have "tanking" stats on any of them, and Warriors/Paladins will have the stats shifted out more onto their gear, and focus on DPS weapons as well (hit/expertise/mastery?).

I don't know, I just see this as a viable outcome from the mess, where instead of only one spec actually having any use from Strength One handers, Protection Warriors/Paladins will want them too.

What's your take?

*reposted in Paladin/Warrior forums as well*

[Claym]

I may be mistaken, but how do we know that with Cataclysm they won't move Enh shammies back to favoring strength? At one time, they got 2AP per STR and really didn't care for agility. If they move back that direction, then they'd broaden the appeal to the weapon class.

[Kelesti]

This would fix the problem of giving them a secondary stat (given the shift away from Intellect). But then it creates an additional problem in that they're sharing Intellect-less gear with Hunters, who would still want zero Strength, period.

I don't think Shaman are an answer here.

[Claym]

This would fix the problem of giving them a secondary stat (given the shift away from Intellect). But then it creates an additional problem in that they're sharing Intellect-less gear with Hunters, who would still want zero Strength, period.

I don't think Shaman are an answer here.

But that doesn't matter does it? Because rogues would want intellectless agi one handers, and they could split it with hunters. That way you have Frost DKs and Shammies on one set of one handers, and hunters and rogues on another.

[Claym]

But then shamans would want str on there mail gear, not just their weaps.

This is true

[Rexikar]

Yeah, frost DKs share in the enhance shammy itemization blues. (slow offhands FTL!) Shifting the prot classes onto more dps-oriented, strength 1-handers is a great idea, and works out for frost tanks too. Also there's reforging to consider. I know they said there would be restrictions, but swapping from strength to agility or vice versa doesn't seem like it's too extreme (on weapons anyway), so they could do something with that to help alleviate it. Especially since agility->crit is apparently getting reduced.

[Elanale]

It's intended for shield tanks, I imagine. If you haven't noticed, GC keeps hinting at tanks gearing more for DPS stats and threat.

[Melonberry]

They can't really be shared with tanks. Tanks want fast 1h while dps want slow.

They could of course redesign one of those so they both want either slow or fast.

[Caddyshack]

I don't see a problem with the way things are now. Seeing as arms warriors and ret pallies can use polearms but now they're all stated for hunters only they took away a one of the coolest weapon types to use as an arms warrior. =/

[Claym]

Well, another option is they could remove tanking weapons in general. Since defense is already going away from items (yes I know block, parry, etc will still exist) it could be feasible that they could move this direction. This would mean that warrior and pally tanks may find these weapons more desirable, especially if they have a talent similar to the DK ability to convert STR to parry.

Then the problem becomes weapon speed, but I don't see why they couldn't also have a talent that speeds up weapon swings, but the weapon maintains the same DPS while in Defense Stance/Righteous Fury. e.g., "Speeds up your weapon swings with 1 hand weapons by .3/.6/1 while under the effects of Righteous Fury/Defensive Stance." Or they could move tanks toward a model that the DKs share where slow weapons are better for tanking anyway. This involves offering more sustained threat that isn't dependent on weapon speed, but is also possible.

[raveger]

Strength. One handers. Currently, there's one spec that drools over the prospect (go, you awesome Frost Death Knights, you), but... no one else uses them. Period.

ACTUALLY you are wrong, i have a lv 80 warrior and i toyed around with the stats, and i got bladestorm + dual wield specialization, and i can pull approx 4k dps with it, and with the 5 extra points in cata i would most likely be able to pull more

[Dethric]

What if shamans get 2 ap from str and agi, making agility a tad better than strength, but still good enough to be viable?
As far as i know we will share gear with hunters, meaning no int anyways.

This would also broaden the spectrum of ring/neck/trinket choices for enh shamans.

Same could be done for rogues, and all of a sudden we have 2.5 classes (rogues want slow mh and a fast oh, dks and shamans want slow on both hands) that want str onehanders.

[Claym]

Strength. One handers. Currently, there's one spec that drools over the prospect (go, you awesome Frost Death Knights, you), but... no one else uses them. Period.

ACTUALLY you are wrong, i have a lv 80 warrior and i toyed around with the stats, and i got bladestorm + dual wield specialization, and i can pull approx 4k dps with it, and with the 5 extra points in cata i would most likely be able to pull more

Yes and DPS prot pallies can do like 4k DPS too. The problem is that if they go ret they can do 7k really easily. When you have the option to do twice as much damage, you take it. You may be doing just fine right now, but I'd willing bet that if you played ball in a raid with competent people in cookie cutter DPS specs with the same level of gear they'd leave you in the dust pretty quickly.

[seigfried13]

First off, I agree that pole arms are awesome on an arms warrior (looks wise).

Secondly, there have been speculated dual-wield 1h warrior arms/fury hybrids that have all be subsequently squashed as not viable, but with added talent points and mastery tree bonuses, the talk of hybrids, in general, being viable has gone up so it's a possibility, albeit small because I faintly remember a blue post reinforcing that Fury is 2h DW and Arms is 2H single, and they also seem to have a thing with DW frost DKs, so I logically assume (along with most everyone else) that they are receiving most of the focus by this change. A 1h DW arms/fury with flurry, etc would be pretty sweet if there was incentive to play it imo.

@Dethric: how about they just leave shamans with 1ap from both and accomplish the same thing without making the "AP" from agi on shaman mail OP

[Dethric]

@Dethric: how about they just leave shaman's with 1ap from both and accomplish the same thing without making the "AP" from agi on shaman mail OP

Because i thought i saw something about
- 2 ap from agi.
- No pure ap on gear.
- lower crit from agi.

Somewhere, but if thats not the case, 1 ap would be pretty much the same thing.

[Kelesti]

ACTUALLY you are wrong, i have a lv 80 warrior and i toyed around with the stats, and i got bladestorm + dual wield specialization, and i can pull approx 4k dps with it, and with the 5 extra points in cata i would most likely be able to pull more

/facepalm

This is just too priceless to not sig.


Okay, so Death Knights, given the haste pooling that is getting tossed into the Frost Tree, what kind of weapon speed would you be looking for, ideally?

[seigfried13]

Because i thought i saw something about
- 2 ap from agi.
- No pure ap on gear.
- lower crit from agi.

Somewhere, but if thats not the case, 1 ap would be pretty much the same thing.

Okay, if that's the case, my mistake from ignorance, sorry. If they are increasing Agi to 2ap (which makes sense now that I think about it, it is a bit late) then giving shamans 2ap from str would be fine. Again, sorry for the mistake.

EDIT: on second thought, with them removing the existence of AP, I'm not entirely sure how they plan to make the 1<stat> to 2<arbitrary pool> unless its as simple as having a modifier and a pool like AP that just doesn't get direct buffs or show on the character screen.

[Raptorg]

They can't really be shared with tanks. Tanks want fast 1h while dps want slow.

They could of course redesign one of those so they both want either slow or fast.

In cataclysm it doesn't matter for any tank.

It already doesn't matter for paladins, and in cataclysm, heroic strike will be changed dramatically.

[Kelesti]

If you give them 2 AP from Strength, why would they want the Strength weapons, seigfried, when the Agility weapons still give them crit (less, but it's there) as well as probably balancing their mana around the "main stat" of the spec. Shaman would still go for the Agility weapons.

If you made it better, then you create the problems with their entire gear set either having to split off (again) in itemisation (which is what we're trying to fix in the first place, this would be worse), or the fact that they're balanced around sub-optimum stat allocation at-best.

[Claym]

/facepalm

This is just too priceless to not sig.


Okay, so Death Knights, given the haste pooling that is getting tossed into the Frost Tree, what kind of weapon speed would you be looking for, ideally?

You'd still look for slow weapons. Assuming all attacks stay the same, they're based on weapon damage, which is always higher on slower weapons.

Many of you already know what the results of this will be, but let's do a numbers experiment. Assume you have 2 weapons, a 1.5 speed and a 2.6 speed. Each is a 179 DPS weapon. This means that the average attack on the 1.5 is 268.5 damage and the 2.6 speed is 465.4. Now, let's apply a 30% haste. The weapon damage damage per swing stays the same, but now we attack at 1.05 with fast weapon, and 1.82 with the slow weapon. In 1 minute we'd do 57 swings on the fast weapon, and 33 on the slow, meaning the white damage would be 15304.5 on the fast weapon and 15358.2 on the slow. This difference is largely negligible, and is basically due to rounding. The idea is that white damage scales proportionally to haste regardless of weapon speed, so we can't rely on white damage as a metric to determine the value of haste in regards to weapon speed. Since haste only affects how fast we white attack (not how hard), we still look to our specials as the metric as to which speed we prefer.

Haste pooling will not change our opinions on what weapon speeds we want as our special attacks which make up the bulk of our damage are either AP based (thus unaffected by weapon speed and as a result haste) or weapon damage based (which is indirectly affected by weapon speed, but unaffected by haste).