That WWS would be very interesting to see...I had another thought though. Would the 5% crit from fist spec apply to your sword spec procs? I mean they're technically mainhand swings...

Having been playing with this spec for a while now, I've had a close look into most of what's been brought up.

Combat Potency does proc off sword spec attacks, even though the attack itself takes its damage from the main hand. This will no longer be possible in the patch though, as sword spec attacks will be changed to 'real' white main hand attacks.

Sword Spec *does* take its crit chance from your main hand fist, and so it gets the 5% bonus crit chance. I've pretty well confirmed this just through merging all the data in my SW Stats' time line and comparing crit rates between Sword Spec, normal attacks and sinister strike. This is something that wont change in the patch.

And as for DPS, this is probably the cleanest example I could find at such short notice:
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...=5104-5390&a=6
Taken from the night before we downed Morogrim for the first time. You can see fairly easily where sword spec takes its crit chance from, and where it takes its damage from (Main hand for both).
Myself and the top dagger rogue have roughly the same gear, and we tend to have fairly equal DPS on most fights, so there is certainly nothing lacking damage-wise.

The only problem I have with it, and its the reason I'm probably changing to pure swords as soon as the new arena season comes out, is that I think having the chance to proc an extra attack with your main hand is just plain old better than extra chance to crit with it, especially given sword spec will likely be able to chain proc come the patch (Will test this).

It'll also be able to proc Windfury D: Or poison if you're not lucky enough to have a shaman.

I tried the 5/5 sword and fist specialization idea on the spreadsheet using the season one gladiator's offhand sword/fist (same speed and damage range, same stats) and otherwise identical gear and specs. The dps change for these 5 points spent changing the fist out into the sword was slightly less than 6 unbuffed. You would think it would be higher, but apparently not.... so according to the spreadsheet the 5 points in sword specialization is worse than 1 point in murder.

Or its 8 in the morning and i was up all night, am I am totally wrong.

Somewhat of a topic ressurection, and sorry if this is posted in another area, but;

With the changes to sword specailization, and windfury, has anybody else been contemplating reviving this idea of sword offhand, fist mainhand? The sword procs from a sword in offhand are still better than offhand "procs" (i.e. crits) from fist specailization, owing to the attack occuring on the mainhand. (Crit adds 100% damage to the attack, whereas a mainhand attack would be around 150% extra damage (on average) over the offhand attack.)
However, it would seem that five percent extra crit, which affects yellow and white attacks, is better than a proc that can only occurr off of the white damage attacks. As mainhands are traiditionally slower weapons, the sword procs from the mainhand arent as frequent, as fist spec procs (extra crits) as these can occur from specail attacks too. Also, the specail attack crits gain the benefit of Lethality.

Since 2.2, sword spec doesnt "chain proc" off itself, nor can it proc off yellow attacks, having a sword in the mainhand doesnt seem as attractive as it did before.

I am planning to test this on the PTR as soon as the arena season 3 gear is released (as these are the weapons I will be using). I was thinking of a 16/45 build, which simpley means i drop 2 points from improved kick, and 3 points from vile poisons, and put these into fist spec, Hence changing my 19/42 sword spec, into a 16/45 fist/sword hybrid.

I would be interested to hear if any of my assumptions in this post are wrong, or if anybody already has some data collected reguarding fist/sword hybrid builds.

Even since 2.2, I don't see any particular advantage to fist MH/sword OH. The damage estimates I have put together seem to indicate that, from a sustained DPS perspective, sword spec and fist spec contribute almost identical amounts of DPS to MH attacks; it's been a while since I ran exact numbers, but I recall sword spec even being a bit ahead, even on the MH. Moreover, even if they were identical, I would expect Sword Spec to have better applicability to PvP, as it is hurt less by resilience and tends to be more burst-ish.

Hence, my assessment of first/sword spec, relative to sword/sword spec, is that it takes 5 points out of otherwise useful talents in order to allow you to use a MH that's not quite as good anyway. So, personally, I wouldn't bother with it.

Hmm, ok. Well i will still test it on the PTR, although im not sure how useful that will be. As for pvp, i respec maces for pvp anyways, so thats a bit of a none-factor in my descision, although ofc it will be very useful for more fiscially restrained players to consider.

Right, that's my point. The actual damage output from sword/sword and fist/sword is basically identical; however, for their to be merit in fist/sword, fists would need to do *more* damage to compensate for the extra talent points it requires. Since it doesn't, you're basically wasting talent points to do the same amount of damage, which is why I generally advocate sticking with swords/sword.

It does do more dmg then the sword however.. 5%crit worth of damage.
I'm too lazy to do the calculation how much dps that actualy is compared to the points in vile poisons and maybe lethality however.

With good (great?) gear I can see the fist+sword combo doing more dps then fist+fist or sword+sword combo since the 5% crit damage actualy scales with gear where vile poisons does not.

Yes, but I *have* done the calculations, and the main hand sword spec, which *does* scale, does as much if not more damage than the 5% crit from fist spec. So no, fist spec *doesn't* do more damage on the main hand than sword spec does. Fist spec MH does *as much* damage as MH Sword spec would... if you didn't take Vile Poisons (or whatever). The fact that sword/sword spec additionally gets to take those talent points is the reason why sword/sword spec is superior to fist/sword.

A guildy picked up the talon from Al'ar and went a hybrid fist/sword spec and after going KT attempts with it after I can surely say that his dps didn't DROP atleast :P