Debating between 2 offhands, primary for rage generation when offtanking i.e. wearing tanking gear.

Corehound Tooth
57 - 107 Damage Speed 1.60
(51.2 damage per second)
+9 Stamina
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
Equip: +20 Attack Power.

VS.

Sand Polished Hammer
97 - 181 Damage Speed 2.60
(53.5 damage per second)
+9 Stamina
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
Equip: +20 Attack Power.

Interestingly enough they have the exact same passive stats, which makes for a neat comparison. Can someone assist with the math to show which will work out superior for the purpose of rage generation? One hits harder, one attacks around 50% more.

My impression based on limited understanding is CHT's speed will win out.

No.

Speed is meaningless for rage generation, only damage done. Even a +8 stone doesn't make the CHT higher DPS than the Hammer.

Well I'm no pro at maths or at warrior mechanics but, in essence, DPS should give a somewhat accurate view?
But there's of course also different situations and circumstances I guess where one is clearly superiour to the other, such as type and length of fight and stuff like that.

Oh well, I'll stay quiet and let the experienced people talk, speculation doesn't really help anyone.

EDIT: Turns out I'm a bigger idiot than I suspected. I read "Offhand rage generation" not threat generation. Feel free to delete this post.

Only part where offhand speed matters is flurry cycles and unbridled wrath.

If you have full unbridled wrath you'll generate 0.057rage/second more at a loss of 3.34 threat/second (assuming defiance). This is all before mitigation.

If you don't have unbridled wrath, just go for the higher dps weapon.

Actually, just go for the higher dps weapon no matter what.

True, the sand polished hammer is better. I was just pointing out where offhand speed makes any difference at all.

Only reason I'd take a weapon with less dps there is if the lower dps weapon matched up with a racial spec. But there is no dagger spec, so definately the mace.

Does that take into account the 1/2 DPS penalty from the weapon being in the Offhand? And isn't there some threat gain from the rage generated by Unbridled wrath? (Though that would probably be pretty small)

Edit: actually, some quicky theorycraft:

40% chance per hit for 1 extra rage is equivalent to 0.4 rage per hit.

Hammer:
1/2.60 = .3846 hits/sec -> .1538 rage/sec from unbridled wrath

Tooth:
1/1.60 = .625 hits/sec -> .25 rage/sec from unbridled - so .1 rage/sec difference


The DPS difference is 53.5 - 51.2 = 2.3, which is halved in the offhand? 1.15 DPS.


I don't know the Damage -> rage formula, or the threat per rage gained, but that seems to be the difference. 1.15 DPS vs. ~.1rage/sec

I also took into consideration the rage gained from having a higher DPS weapon in the offhand.

I didn't take rage gained threat (5 threat/rage I believe).

And I didn't halve the dps in the offhand when I was considering threat. =.=

All taken into consideration the difference is +0.057rage/sec for -0.97 threat/sec.

appreciate the assistance.

Just thought of something, what about windfury (I'm horde). CHT would proc it substantially more frequently would it not? Is that enough of a difference, or does the raw higher DPS on the mace still win out. MH is Thunderfury too, so more MH procs = more TF procs which are nice.

I'm not horde, but I believe slower weapons get a greater benefit from instant attacks.

Windfury isn't a normal instant attack. atm, its a flat 20% chance on any damage dealing attack to proc a mainhand attack with AP bonus.

CHT averages 37.5 attacks per minute, or 7.5 windfury procs (which is my specific situation will also be 1.5 TF procs)

SPH averages 23 attacks per minute, or 4.6 windfury procs (and 0.92 TF procs)

The normal attacks are irrelevent, so I guess its comparing the raw DPS increase on the hammer against the additional 3 MH windfury procs per minute on average, and the resulting slightly higher chance to proc TF on the target.

Problem is I still have no conclusion, since I'm not good enough at the maths. Does the comparison look logical?

WF procs mainhand attacks, but I thought your offhand can also proc windfury. I'm 2H 99% of the time hence the thread.

No, it's a MH temp weapon enchant (and it will only proc from the buffed weapon). Your offhand should be getting a consumable temp enchant (sharpening stones for warriors, i guess? rogues should obviously be using poisons).

EDIT: Never mind.

That simplifies things then. gracias.

The 2 weapons are nearly identical total dps wise. Noone else has mentioned this, but faster weapons also give you more consistant rage generation. This matters the most for execute spam where generating 10 rage every 1.5s gives you far better dps than 20 rage every 3s. 2.6 speed is too slow to hit every 1.5s to generate rage for executes. Its far more noticable with slow MH weapons but even with fast weapons, there are far too many times I'm pounding my execute key and not getting any executes for up to 5 seconds due to glancing blow/miss streaks.

Are we not ignoring the fact that an offhand can proc a flurry for the mainhand? Unbridled wrath?

All things being equal, those two factors alone would push the favor toward faster offhands. Obviously the procrates are normalized on enchants.

from what I understand most fury warriors generate more rage then they can spend anyway...so that hardly matters.

You are horde. Windfury is what causes this. One of the many reasons why blizzard may wish to nerf windfury is that it is a rage generator.

ahhh, did not realize that it might be much worse for allience.

HOWEVER, the purposed nerf will not affect WF's effect on rage generation. It will still affect auto-attacks as normal and it is those, not heroic strikes or bloodthirsts that generate rage.

Unbriddled wrath, yes, a little bonus to the offhand.

Flurry on the other hand, is something you apparently haven't understood.

Slow offhand = better.

Reason: if it's only about autoattacks, the faster will proc more flurry, but will eat flurry charges faster as well, while a slow offhand generates less, but gets more +dam from flurry proc's. It evens out in the end for auto attacks. Special instant attacks on the other hand, will proc flurry once in a while, if you then have a fast offhand, you'll eat the charges faster for less dps than a slow offhand which will eat less charges, leaving more charges for the mainhand.

Or, what i'm trying to say, a fast offhand eats flurry charges from specials faster than a slow one, and is therefore worse than the slow one, as you want as much flurry time as possible with your mainhand.