Rogue dagger choice?

[r3nd]

So I'm fairly new to playing rogues.

One question about choosing daggers-what's important, the weapon damage? Or weapon DPS? Barring stats, of course.

This is for assassination, btw.

Thanks.

[Ashvael]

Speed is pretty important. 1.8 for MH, 1.4 for OH. Other than that, mostly it gets decided by itemlevel itself and in this tier (with more than one dagger choice) by stats. The DPS/weapon damage should be fairly similiar with weapons of the same itemlevel.

[r3nd]

Sorry, forgot to mention.

I'm still leveling, not raiding or doing any end game with this rogue.
So for leveling purposes, what should I be looking for to do more dps?

[RogueDurr]

So I'm fairly new to playing rogues.

One question about choosing daggers-what's important, the weapon damage? Or weapon DPS? Barring stats, of course.

This is for assassination, btw.

Thanks.

Assuming your playing assassination and using double daggers, weapon damage is important but the most important factor is weapon speed.

In your main hand you want to have a slow dagger, around 1.8. This is because of the weapon damage relationship with special attacks like mutilate. Slow dagger will have higher weapon damage thus higher special damage.

In your off hand you want a fast dagger, around 1.4 speed. This is so you can apply deadly poison quickly and often.

[r3nd]

Assuming your playing assassination and using double daggers, weapon damage is important but the most important factor is weapon speed.

In your main hand you want to have a slow dagger, around 1.8. This is because of the weapon damage relationship with special attacks like mutilate. Slow dagger will have higher weapon damage thus higher special damage.

In your off hand you want a fast dagger, around 1.4 speed. This is so you can apply deadly poison quickly and often.

Ok, so special attacks are weapon damage. Thanks.

[RogueDurr]

Ok, so special attacks are weapon damage. Thanks.

Its part an equation on calculating damage and normalized damage. (might be the wrong word for this).

If you take 2 ilevel 359 daggers, 1 with 1.4 speed and 1 with 1.8 damage, their dps is the same at 462.3. Say within a minutes time, both dagger will do the same damage but how they deliver that damage is the difference. The fast 1.4 dagger will do more attacks, but less per hit. The slow dagger with do less attacks but more damage per hit. The more damage per hit is the number that gets used in the special attack equation. So the slow dagger has a bigger number, meaning your special will have a bigger number.

[r3nd]

Its part an equation on calculating damage and normalized damage. (might be the wrong word for this).

If you take 2 ilevel 359 daggers, 1 with 1.4 speed and 1 with 1.8 damage, their dps is the same at 462.3. Say within a minutes time, both dagger will do the same damage but how they deliver that damage is the difference. The fast 1.4 dagger will do more attacks, but less per hit. The slow dagger with do less attacks but more damage per hit. The more damage per hit is the number that gets used in the special attack equation. So the slow dagger has a bigger number, meaning your special will have a bigger number.

Perfect. That was super easy to understand, thanks for that.

[shadowboy]

Lengthy explanation, if you're inclined to read the specifics on the interplay of weapon dps vs speed:


For special attacks, the speed is normalized to 1.7 for daggers, so the only difference in damage for special attacks between a 1.4 and a 1.8 dagger is the damage difference on the weapon's tooltip. The speed is not a factor for the bonus damage from attack power.

The formula for normalized instant weapon damage is this:
daggers: weapondamage + AP*1.7/14.
nondaggers: weapondamage + AP*2.4/14
Autoattack damage: = weapondamage + AP*weaponspeed/14

A higher-damage weapon's special attacks may not be able to overcome the extra autoattack damage from a higher-dps but lower-damage weapon. It depends on the dps difference and the rest of your gear.

I'll use examples to illustrate:

Mutilate hits for 180% weapon damage + 202 on a poisoned target (this is mutilate damage with the extra 20% poisoned bonus adding in)
Say a rogue has 10,000 attack power and is using Steelbender's masterpiece and heroic uhn'agh fash.

steelbender MH, uhn'agh fash OH (the 0.5 factor before OH is 50% off-hand weapon damage penalty):
MH autoattacks: 409.6*1.8 + 10,000*1.8/14 = 2023 damage, at 1.8s swing for 1123.9 dps
OH autoattacks: 0.5 * (521.8*1.4 + 10,000*1.4/14) = 865.26 damage, at 1.4s swing for 618.0 dps
mut MH = (409.6*1.8 + 10,000*1.7/14) * 1.8 + 202 = 3715
mut OH = (521.8*1.4 + 10,000*1.7/14) * 0.9 + 101 = 1851
Autoattack dps = 1741.9
Mutilate dps (assuming you mutilate every 4 seconds, which is not an unreasonable frequency) = (3714+1851) / 4 = 1391.25
Total dps: 3133.15

Swap the daggers around and here are your calculations:
MH autoattacks: (521.8*1.4 + 10,000*1.4/14) = 1730.5 damage, for 1236.1 dps
OH autoattacks: 0.5*(409.6*1.8 + 10,000*1.8/14) = 1011.5 damage, 561.9 dps
mut MH: (521.8*1.4 + 10,000*1.7/14)*1.8 + 202 = 3702.7
mut OH: (409.6*1.8 + 10,000*1.7/14)*0.9 + 101 = 1857.4
autoattack dps = 1798 dps
mutilate dps (assuming 4s interval) = 1390.0 dps
total dps: 3188.


In this example, even though heroic uhn'agh fash is a faster dagger, putting it in a main hand is higher dps in these calculations. (see the next paragraph for clarification as to why you would not wanna do it this way). The reason is that the higher damage range of the 346 blue does not outweigh the extra autoattack damage from having the higher dps 1.4 in the main hand.

Speed is important, as has been said here before, but off-hand speed is more important than main hand speed. You'll want your highest dps weapon in main hand, your fastest weapon in off-hand, and if you have a choice between 2 weapons of the same dps, slower is better in main, and faster is always better in off hand.

If you look STRICTLY at mutilate and autoattack damage in the example above, it looks as though steelbender's masterpiece in OH and heroic uhn'agh fash in the main hand is the way to go, but poison mechanics dictate that you want the faster weapon in the offhand--always, so you'd go blue in main hand and 372 in offhand. I chose an extreme difference in dagger ilevel to make a point. In general you're going to have 2 daggers of similar (roughly within a tier) itemlevel, so you will want to go with your slower dagger in main hand and fast in offhand. Putting fast dagger in off-hand is priority (if your higher dps dagger is faster than the other dagger, then put the higher dps, faster dagger in off-hand).


TL;DR: Fastest weapon in off-hand always, highest dps weapon in main hand AFTER you put the fastest in off-hand, assuming you have a choice at that point (ie, you have 3+ daggers to choose from).