Weapon Question

[Carp The Fish]

Currently, I have the choice between a 502 fist weapon, a 489 fist weapon, and a 489 dagger. I am staying Combat because my only off-hand dagger for the other two specs would be a 463.

I have two main questions:

1. What are the benefits of dagger off-hand versus fist weapon off-hand?

2. At equal item level, which off-hand is superior with my current gear?

Thanks for the help.

[Kael]

For single target, if you can KS ideally, the fist weapon is ahead (<1%). If not, the dagger is ahead. To the best of my knowledge* that gap is widened while cleaving, as poisons are less significant and KS/flurry deals significantly more damage.

[Kezuma]

aside from your weapon of choice why u use mastery gems for combat?
other than that the dual fist is fine

[Coldkil]

As Mugajak said. Double slow is on paper better, but requires a nearly perfect use of KS exactly on cd, and if you delay it too much the bonus damage is easily lost.

If you cleave, a dagger is better in any case. Which is kinda the only use of combat, ergo for my char i decided to just run with the dagger offhand, so i need to spend less dkp on gear

[eijin]

If you cleave, a dagger is better in any case. Which is kinda the only use of combat, ergo for my char i decided to just run with the dagger offhand, so i need to spend less dkp on gear

errr, why use a dagger for cleave? slow weapon's advantage is KS, dagger's advantage is posion. if youre cleaving you still get the advantage of KS, while posions dont reflect over with BF. of course, the difference is still small, so i fully understand your gear choice.

[Carp The Fish]

Good advice all around.

I'm using Agi and Agi/Mastery gems because those are my Assassination gems. I wanted to see which spec is more/less dependent on gemming, and Combat is less reliant on the gemming (loses less DPS) than Assassination is. I've been doing that because gems are still fairly expensive on my server, but I'll re-evaluate that this week since I've got a heroic fist weapon.

[Coldkil]

errr, why use a dagger for cleave? slow weapon's advantage is KS, dagger's advantage is posion. if youre cleaving you still get the advantage of KS, while posions dont reflect over with BF. of course, the difference is still small, so i fully understand your gear choice.

More cleave damage. Simple as that. Even if a slow OH hits harder, the total damage "reflected" by BF is still less than using a dagger OH. Also again, if you don't use perfectly KS, a slow OH becomes a dps loss.

[Kael]

More cleave damage. Simple as that. Even if a slow OH hits harder, the total damage "reflected" by BF is still less than using a dagger OH. Also again, if you don't use perfectly KS, a slow OH becomes a dps loss.

I'm missing why there's more cleave damage, since MG was normalized and I can't see why a fast OH would grant more base melee damage. The point about using KS for a slow OH stands, but what's causing more cleave from a dagger exactly?

[Coldkil]

More autoattacks, and with it being OH, the 25% damage penalty hits way more a slow weapon than a dagger. Just do some tests autoattacking dummies, and look at BF/overall dmg.

[eijin]

i still dont get it.. so dagger hits for 1800 every 1.8 sec, fist hits for 2600 every 2600 seconds.

at this point the dagger is doing 1000 dps and the fist is doing 1000 dps

but wait! they are offhands, so they receive a 25% penalty
1800*.75= 1350 per hit
1350/1.8= 750
so looking at 750 dps from the offhand dagger

2600*.75=1950 per hit
1950/2.6= 750
so looking at 750 dps from the offhand fist

25% is 25%, it will hit everything the exact same way. thats the great thing about percentages. its flat.

[Carp The Fish]

i still dont get it.. so dagger hits for 1800 every 1.8 sec, fist hits for 2600 every 2600 seconds.

at this point the dagger is doing 1000 dps and the fist is doing 1000 dps

but wait! they are offhands, so they receive a 25% penalty
1800*.75= 1350 per hit
1350/1.8= 750
so looking at 750 dps from the offhand dagger

2600*.75=1950 per hit
1950/2.6= 750
so looking at 750 dps from the offhand fist

25% is 25%, it will hit everything the exact same way. thats the great thing about percentages. its flat.

Where did you get "Dagger hits for 1800 and Fist hits for 2600 from...
That isn't how the system works, you would calculate it for the weapon's tooltip lowest damage. Or at least that's what I would think.

[eijin]

those are random numbers taken to be easy. but percentages arestill the same. why do you think you would take it from the lowest damage? my dagger does between 4415 and 8201 damage every 1.8 seconds (average of 6308 damage every 1.8 sec, or 3504 dps). the equivilent fist does between 6378 and 11846 damage every 2.6 seconds (average of 9112 every 2.6 sec, or 3504 dps)

if it went off lowest damage than fist would actually be -better- (2453 vs 2452) but still pretty much equal.

then being OH everything above is decreased by 25%

[shadowboy]

Slow offhand is better for cleaving due to killing spree cleaves, and even THAT depends on the asses of the targets being closer than 5yd to each other (read---if their back ends are spread too far, then KS may not cleave and cleave fights become weapon-type-neutral).

Basically for your offhand you want to use the one that has the higher dps and better stats, regardless of speed.