As we're getting closer to CT going down, i'm wondering how much of an upgrade this will actually be in raid situations.

Currently 31/20 arms, human warrior. Thanks to the racial I have 305 2h sword skill, so it does mitigate some of the glancing blow dps reductions.

Would the move to the DEoI, factoring in the loss of 5 2h weapon skill (going axes) put it above ashkandi for raid dps still?

I just don't want to waste a good upgrade if the returns are minimal at best.

Somewhat tangential, but related: we actually used DEoI as our niche for Paladin 2H weapon access (they really started complaining after our 8th and 9th Ashkandi's dropped and we wouldn't let them have any). The logic being that even though 2H are always more of a raid upgrade for Warriors than for Paladins, using that logic at every single tier of loot causes your Warriors to bank things at pretty high rate while your Pallys never get anything. So you occasionally have to choose a tier at which to open up priority. DEoI, ilvl for ilvl, has the lowest PvE efficiency of the currently relevant weapons.

Especially when its in a Paladin's hands.

We have 3 raid active paladins, and only one of them ever fires up the 2h (HoR already)

I'm the lead in points for the 2h users, but I don't want to hog something like that for minimal returns.

I feel the 5% crit vs 5% double attack to be about even pve wise.

Paladins should heal.

Here's a fairly simple analysis of the difference between sword and axe spec:

D=weapon damage
C=crit rate
N=number of hits

(assuming impale, ignoring procs, misses, etc.)

Axe - the crit rate is increased by 0.05 (5%)

D * (1-(C+0.05))*H + D*(C+0.05)*H*2.2

Sword - you swing 5% more times. This is simply modelled by setting the number of swings to H*1.05. This takes into account the fact that the extra swings can crit at your crit-rate.

(D * (1-C)*H + D*C*H*2.2) * 1.05

Plug both of these formulae into a spreadsheet, plug in your favorite numbers and you'll find that weapon damage and number of hits are invariant. The only thing that changes the balance is crit-rate. At precisely 16.6666666 crit rate, sword spec is balanced vs axe spec. The higher the crit rate, the more sword spec benefits, however the total damage benefit is 0.15% at 20% crit and 0.5% at 30% crit. I.e not very much.

The takeaway is simply, if you have a proc based weapon or enchantment, and your crit rate is high, swords are marginally better. If you're relying on crit-triggered effects or your crit rate is lower, you're better off with axes. For example, slow swinging axes will find that the damage from deep wounds will easily outweigh the difference between sword and axe spec at higher crit rates.

Because the difference is so small, you'll probably find the +5 sword racial to be quite significant.

Thanks for that.

Easy maths for arm warriors and 2-h. Axe spec increase your crit by 5%. This mean a slightly higher deep wound chances and 200-220% damage.

Sword spec give you 200% damage but the 2nd attack get a chance to also crit, which when you simply add the numbers turn out to be 225% damage overall (25% of your sword spec proc will do 200% damage + the original 100% damage for a total of 225%(0.25 * 200 + 0.75 * 100)).

Impale should increase both numbers about equally but since sword spec is known to interrupt the normal swing timer when it proc on special attacks, this will lower your dps a bit.

In short they are close to the point that it would be impossible to notice the difference in normal gameplay imo, maybe a slight advantage to sword spec due to how impale only work on specials but the crit on a sword spec proc work on all the attacks.

For what it's worth, my own dps calculator give a 15 dps advantage at around 1761 attack power (include weapon stats, BS, might) with around 25% base crit. 529 versus 514 favoring the dark edge of insanity.

If I include a 5 skill bonus on ashkandi for humans I get to around 524.4 dps, which is still lower but barely any difference.

Good thing the paladin Hamlet is talking about is known as the best healer on the server.

So in that Thorb, there's a bit of a dps upgrade after factoring in the 5skill loss, but nothing to write home about?

I don't know, I'm at the level we can kill nef and don't have "full aq40" gear yet but I'm unable to find that, at least as horde yet. Having sulfuras it's hard for me still to justify going after high end 1-hander just to try it out. It will happen eventually I guess. We also got a warrior trying DW fury with the 65 dps dagger from naxx, the harbinger. He's still kinda new at DW but is in general a solid dps warrior. The fact it's a dagger is not optimal for warrior but people have said that for DW it's not supposed to matter that much and the stats are great overall. His off hand is still kinda weak. Anyway maybe eventually I'll "see the light" but I have yet to be outdamaged by a DW fury warrior on our raid.

There is also the problem of itemization. It seem that there is way too much +1 hit on high end warrior gear that is the "best" anyway for those slots. You basically have to downgrade to crit gear if you use 2-h. This might skew the gear toward dw versus 2-h. For example I just got the breastplate of annihilation which put me at +7 to hit. Over +6 is wasted on 2-h, so for me, getting the trash bp from naxx with 40 str/2 crit is better for pure dps then bp of annihilation. Or a similar deal with titantic leggings versus general rajaxx legs, etc.

Maybe some warrior who got both an high end 2-h + 2 good 1-h and tried both spec can swear DW is better but at my current level, bwl, I'm not seeing that yet.