Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Slow Weapons Improve with New Dev

(Currently) Dev is being changed to a 80% Damage weapon attack. This is pretty major.

Follow along Here... ( Google Spreadsheet). 
^There are known issues/assumptions with the maths used, see notes at bottom

According to an old version of that sheet, Slower Weapons (nearly always) resulted in a net threat increase at Heroic Strike usage of less then 25% (slowing the weapon down from 1.5 to 1.7 was a loss, then it increased from there, and passed 1.5's threat at 2.0 and beyond). If you were in a low rage situation, you'd get more threat from the increased damage of Dev, then you would being able to HS more often. At 50% HS usage, it was about even.

With the new version of Dev, 
At 25% HS Use, slower is always better
At 50% HS Use, slower is usually better, and has the highest threat potential. (Decreases from 1.5 to 1.9, then increases, passing 1.5's threat at 2.5)
At 75% HS Use, fastest is best again. but only minorly, and at a significant required rage increase. Threat only decreases from 1.5 to 2.4, where it then increases from 2.4 onward. The threat difference between 1.5 and 2.8 is only around 5%, but when you consider that your using twice as much threat on Heroic Strike with a 1.5, it looks far less appealing.

Known Issues
You need to match up rage values on the bottom to see equivilencies, ect.
It assumes weapons with 100 DPS, and no other stat variation. 
It assumes threat modifiers on HS and Dev are not changing.

Summary
I'd like to try on one of my slower weapons for some fights post 3.0, assume these changes go through. While I may feel like I can't dump rage fast enough, my threat should improve, and it should decrease the impact of avoidance streaks on my rage levels. 

Thoughts/Impressions/Corrections appreciated. I'll share write access to the spreadsheet with anyone who wants it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting numbers. What'd be cool is to plug different DPS values into the spreadsheet and see at what point Slow weapons surpass Fast ones.

125 dps? 150 dps? Even higher?

We may see the day where we won't be using Fast weapons after all. (if itemization is catered to this, it'll certainly make paladins happy too)

Unknown said...

I only reserve putting in Wrath-Level DPS, until we have good Wrath +threat coefficients for Heroic Strike and such.

If these are known, I'd certainly make that version.

Also - I'm feeling like fast weapons may be the new flavor as well. Or rather, Medium speed weapons, and speed above or below normal will be a factor in choosing one (rather all tank weapons being in a certain range, as they are now)