Questions about Warriors, Weapon speed, and Weapon DPS.

[Azrael]

I've read several times that I should go for the slowest, hardest hitting weapon for MS, but at what point do I sacrifice some MS dps for overall dps from the weapon.

I've been passing on faster, higher dps 2handers to group mates in fear that they won't outdamage my current weapon ( http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?i=5700 ). There are a couple weapons I've seen up in the AH and from mobs that my group will be doing that I just don't know if I should go for. Basically what I'm asking is, at what point do you ignore the weapon speed and go for overall weapon dps?

I'm not saying I want to go for 2.80 2handers but just as an example http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?i=20324 is much faster than my weapon, has higher dps, but MS's wouldn't hit as hard.

Any insight would be appreciated.

[Grombar]

Unfortunately, it's ALL about weapon speed. The difference between those weapons you listed is 4dps. Just 4. I don't know about you, but over half of my listed dps comes from attack power. Honestly, the difference between 100dps and 104dps on normal swings is pretty insignificant.

Also, remember that your attack power adds DPS, not flat damage. So the slower the weapon, the more damage per swing your attack power adds. All this adds up to mean that with a MS build, slower is better in almost any situation. One funny side effect of this is that you can have two weapons with exactly the same damage range, and the slower one (with less dps) actually ends up being the more effective weapon.

Of course, you also have to consider the other benefits of the weapon... passives, procs, etc. Looking at the two weapons you linked, there's no competition. The cleaver is by far the better weapon.

As a quick (and very over-simplified) example, lets take those two weapons you listed (ignoring passives and procs) and assume 50dps from attack power:

Cleaver: 127-191, 3.8 speed, 41.8 dps
each hit (with AP added): 317-381

Gatorbite: 117-176, 3.2 speed, 45.8 dps
each hit (with AP added): 277-336

Already you can see the vast differences in each hit. MS is going to do 40-50 more damage (before armor) with the cleaver. If you use MS every 10-12 seconds, you've already made up the DPS gap. And that's not counting the bonuses from crits! If you have deep wounds and impale the difference grows even more. Then add in all your other abilities that favor slow weapons... enrage, overpower, cleave, slam, sweeping strikes....

You can see where this is going. Anyway, the BEST thing to do is just try the weapoons out, and parse the data for yourself. Though this can be long and tedious =).

Hope that was some help.

[Xzan]

I was wondering the same thing actually, and ironically using the same weapon :P.

Thanks for clearing that up.