Cataclysm Loot tables for Combat

[Deleted]

Soooo, I've looked through the Cataclysm boss loots and vendor lists. I've noticed that there is no fast combat offhand option (unless I've missed something). All I saw were daggers (not so great for Main Gauche, especially since Mastery is all over the equipment) and slow Axes, Swords. Could this mean that blizzard wants us to use slow offhands, or am I going crazy with boredom?
Ty for your opinions

[Axlash54]

It means not everything has been implemented or discovered. I'd wait awhile before concluding anything along these lines.

[Lugo Moll]

All I saw were daggers (not so great for Main Gauche

As far as I know, weapon type has no relevance for Main Gauche.

[phayze]

Why would you be using a 1.5 speed sword offhand when there is a better 1.4 dagger offhand you could be using as combat? You do realize there are no more weapon mastery talents, so you pick the best weapons you have, regardless of class. This may be Blizzard's way of keeping the 1.4 speed daggers, knowing all 3 specs will use them, and not bother any more with fast-ish axes, fist weapons, or swords that no one would use. Even a die-hard sword rogue wouldn't choose a 1.5 sword over a 1.4 dagger.

As to Axlash - this has been beat to death on numerous other threads, both here on MMO and on the official beta forums: fast offhands are still the way to go, significantly, under the current system (both at 80 and at 85). Now we get to wait til Blizzcon is over and see if rogues and enhance shammies get some love with the next round of buffs.

But knowing Blizzard, we'll get something like "Blind will now make your opponent cry after the effect wears off. It might be due to the fact that they're laughing too hard, but they'll still cry." Meanwhile we'll get another 15-line buff/nerf/clarification for Paladins.*

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*The last statement is borne out of frustration, for those comically-challenged.

[Deleted]

Why would you be using a 1.5 speed sword offhand when there is a better 1.4 dagger offhand you could be using as combat? You do realize there are no more weapon mastery talents, so you pick the best weapons you have, regardless of class. This may be Blizzard's way of keeping the 1.4 speed daggers, knowing all 3 specs will use them, and not bother any more with fast-ish axes, fist weapons, or swords that no one would use. Even a die-hard sword rogue wouldn't choose a 1.5 sword over a 1.4 dagger.

As to Axlash - this has been beat to death on numerous other threads, both here on MMO and on the official beta forums: fast offhands are still the way to go, significantly, under the current system (both at 80 and at 85). Now we get to wait til Blizzcon is over and see if rogues and enhance shammies get some love with the next round of buffs.

But knowing Blizzard, we'll get something like "Blind will now make your opponent cry after the effect wears off. It might be due to the fact that they're laughing too hard, but they'll still cry." Meanwhile we'll get another 15-line buff/nerf/clarification for Paladins.*

----

*The last statement is borne out of frustration, for those comically-challenged.

Because Main Gauche is a normalized yellow dammage.

[phayze]

Because Main Gauche is a normalized yellow dammage.

Even more reason. I'm going to assume you don't play a combat rogue, so I'll try to explain the mechanics for you.

Combat Potency - Every *offhand* hit has a 20% chance to proc +15 energy. Therefore the faster your offhand, the more energy you get. The more energy you get, the more damage you do (SS + finishers). This is why, for example, having a iLvl 232 dagger at 1.4 speed is better than iLvl 264 at 1.8 speed.

Deadly Poisons - while the # of procs themselves have been normalized a long time ago, they are still dependent on the weapon speed. Therefore the faster the weapon, the more "procs" you get. Since the way DP works is once you have 5 stacks up, it'll proc your other weapon's poison automatically (in this case your mainhand poison which is still better to be Instant). Again, it is better to have a faster weapon to get more DP procs.

Main Gauche - let's for a moment ignore that it's a terrible Mastery in its current form, both at level 80 and 85 [this has been debated and mathematically modeled on many other threads, no need to re-hash it here]. The fact that you're saying MG is normalized means weapon speed is not an issue. [BTW, I've seen this statement tossed around, but I personally haven't seen a blue post or an EJ post saying it one way or the other. I'll assume you're right because it makes my argument stronger in this thread's debate, but hopefully someone can clear this up for me].

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So once again, I would like to ask: Why would you use your 1.5 speed sword/axe/mace/fist offhand when there is a better 1.4 dagger offhand you could be using as combat? I'd love to hear more pithy one-liner answers.

[Deleted]

Because Main Gauche is a normalized yellow dammage.

> Implying Main Gauche is even remotely useful to us in it's current form

[Deleted]

phayze: Daggers use this formula for normalization: normalized_damage = base_weapon_damage + (1.7 * Attack Power / 14)
Other one-handed weapons use this formula: normalized_damage = base_weapon_damage + (2.4* Attack Power / 14)
This means Swords, Axes etc. will hit harder with Main Gauche than daggers. I've read on EJ, that using an axe with 1.50 is a very slight dps increase to using a 1.4 dagger. That being said, I find it curious that we haven't seen a fast offhand axe or sword whereas we have plenty of mainhand options already.

[phayze]

Rekmor - you're right, I forgot that swords/axes get bumped to a 2.4 speed. I still haven't seen confirmation though that MG is normalized. I'm not saying it isn't (it actually would make sense that it is), but I'll go and scan the EJ forums a little more thoroughly later. Keep in mind that Blizzard also tends to change its rogue skills to not unfairly punish daggers by usually giving daggers around a 50% damage increase for things like this when it comes to daggers [i.e. look at skills like pre-4.0.1 FoK or current Hemo as examples], and I would not be surprised if in one of the upcoming patches Blizz addresses this very thing for MG.

That said, that very slight increase of MG favoring the the axe/sword/fist vs. dagger, compared to the huge dps loss from Combat Potency and Deadly Poisons. My guess is Axlash was simply trying to either troll or unsuccessfully trying to be funny.

[Deleted]

Rekmor - you're right, I forgot that swords/axes get bumped to a 2.4 speed. I still haven't seen confirmation though that MG is normalized. I'm not saying it isn't (it actually would make sense that it is), but I'll go and scan the EJ forums a little more thoroughly later. Keep in mind that Blizzard also tends to change its rogue skills to not unfairly punish daggers by usually giving daggers around a 50% damage increase for things like this when it comes to daggers [i.e. look at skills like pre-4.0.1 FoK or current Hemo as examples], and I would not be surprised if in one of the upcoming patches Blizz addresses this very thing for MG.

That said, that very slight increase of MG favoring the the axe/sword/fist vs. dagger, compared to the huge dps loss from Combat Potency and Deadly Poisons. My guess is Axlash was simply trying to either troll or unsuccessfully trying to be funny.

http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t105429-...anics_testing/
Stop being blind because of your arrogance, you will improve...

[Powerogue]

well we don't spec into weapons now, so you can use a slow sword and a fast dagger.

It still annoys me though that we have contradicting mastery and talents, as we still have the "chance on offhand hit to restore 35 energy" talent, encouraging fast offhands.