I figured this place is as good as any to help answer this question for me. Had Ilbis drop again last night (weve gotten two so far) and both of the rogues using them use CTS as MH and Ilbis has OH. Of course being the undeducated lvl 45 alt rogue that i have i asked which was better for MH. Rogue epeens ensued to the point i had them move the convo over to the rogue channel.

Debate ensues on our forums and of course Chalon's sheets show that CTS MH/Ilbis OH > Ilbis MH/CTS OH but one of rogues said the following:

How does that work mechanic wise? What is this AP point?

That rogue is an idiot. Ignore him, there is no such point.

Ah... None of that makes any sense, what so ever. No sane rogue would ever MH Iblis.

Slow Main hands for Sinister Strike and Backstabs.
Fast Offhand for poison applications.

White damage isn't normalized.

Ugh, one of the best weapons in the game in such unfit hands.

I assume what he means is that at a certain point; if the listed dps on a weapon is absurdly higher on a quicker weapon with a smaller damage window - instant attack damage wouldn't matter quite so much. The only weapon in the game currently that rings true for is Thunderfury.

He's wrong. Mainhand the CTS.

But doesn't every 14 points of AP give you 1 DPS to your white attack damage? Hence, its normalised before its even added?

But, hell if I know, I've never taken the time to read up about melee DPS and attack power. They're just a meat shield to me.

The formula for a weapon swing is:

Weapon Damage (A value between the minimum and maximum damage of the weapon) + (AP / 14) * Weapon Speed

So with absolutely 0 attack power an Ashkandi will hit for 1000 damage average?!

That makes no sense.

...

No, it doesn't. An Ashkandi, with 0 attack power, will hit for somewhere between the minimum damage listed on weapon tooltip and the maximum damage listen on weapon tooltip. The speed only multiplies the AP, not the weapon damage.

Um, no.

It would hit for exactly its damage range (between 229 and 334 per hit). Before armor mitigation, of course.

Oh duh.

I'm retarded.

Oh trust me the rogues who have Ilbis use it the RIGHT way. I was just wondering since this little argument ensued in raid chat last night.

Its depressing that rogues that have access to Iblis have no idea what is going on still :(

Sooo... I was right then, WHITE damage actually IS normalised, in the same way that spell damage is i.e. you get 1 DPS for every 14 attack power and 1 DPS for every 3.5 +damage (ignoring talents like Bane, Imp Fireball etc).

I'm not sure you understand what 'normalized' means. It's a linear increase in both cases.

Yes 14 AP = 1 dps is true no matter the speed of a weap for autoattacking, but normalized is the wrong word to use, since normalization means in WoW that certain special attacks are all at a set speed.

Google: attack power nerf.

Man, this forum attracts some people who have no clue whatsoever these days. Let me guess... you weren't around at the 1.8 "ZOMGNERFIMGONNAQUITWOWNOW!" cries when that was announced?

That's an extremely odd way of looking at it, since "normalize" means to bring back to normal, and AP/14 = DPS is pretty much the backbone of the physical damage system of the game and (AFAIK) has always been that way. Instant Attacks were getting out of line and were thus their AP modifiers were normalized as a result.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the purpose of the instant attack AP normalisation that weapons with long attack times didn't get a greater benefit from AP than weapons with quick attack times?

Isn't that the exact same thing that the white damage calculation does?

This is how the Everquest attack forumals worked. The Equivilent of attack power in that game was a bonus added into each hit. It would be the same amoung of bonus regardless of weapon speed. So if you had, say +50 damage bonus from attack power, that same +50 damage would be applied to each hit whether it was a 1.5 speed weapon or a 2.5 speed weapon. Maybe he was a former EQ player and was just trying to bring his knowledge from that game over into WoW?? I dunno.

Sure, if you want to call AP for white damage "normalized", why not?

I'm sure Hunters everywhere will disagree with that, though.

How is it different for hunters? Pardon my ignorance, but I'm as much reading these forums to learn as teach.