Slide sidetrack but as a warrior in my guild explained to me Titan's grip has awful AP scaling compared to simply using onehanders. This is because the base speed of the weapon is used to calculate the damage increase through AP, not the slowed speed. Effectivally one fifth of the warriors attack power is wasted on autoattacks when using Titan's grip. This is a rather huge drawback on the talent... with enough attack power a warrior is even better of using onehanders instead.

As for the advantages... There is one fury attack while dualwielding that benefits from using two 2handers and that is Whirlwind which is a very small fragment of the damage they do. Bloodthirst doesn't even use weapon damage and slam resets your white attacks swing timer (both main and offhand last time I checked) so it is not really usable.

It seems fury warriors are worse of then we are when it comes to their current WotLK talents tbh... but then again it looks like both them and us still need to get their polishing.

Not sure about warriors using even slower 2h weps in OH, but for me, a Mutilate rogue I'll be using a even faster OH weapon... Mainly 1.4 or so. Why? Deadly Brew!

With these changes in mind, my OH will proc Deadly poison, Instant Poison, and Focused Attacks, thus fast is the way to go. And besides the difference in dps was very low as it is now, however wotlk tiped the scales in favor of fast OH for me.

Well I know the base attack speed is used.

However, you have to also take into consideration they will be using instant attacks just like us, and when you scale in haste (which is becoming a standard stat on end game gear not to mention windfury is being changed to be pure haste instead of extra attack) you factor in percentages and the slower the weapon the larger the attack speed reduction will be (2% attack speed increase from a 1.8as weapon is a smaller increase in attack speed than that from say a 2% from a 4.0as weapon).

This is not saying that the 1.8 won't still be attacking faster, but the %'s add up relatively quickly.

Then you take into consideration damage ranges. For instance, two items I have to compare with are the titansteel bonecrusher and the titansteel destroyer.
Stats are:
Boncrusher (Main Hand)
113-330 2.50as
88.6 dps
59 sta
140 ap
29 expertise

vs
Destroyer (2 Handed)
507-761 3.40 as
186.5 dps
124 Strength
105 sta
54 hit rating

Now granted, these might not be on equal terms gear level wise, from the 88.6 vs 186.5 dps respectively, but they are both epic blacksmithing plans that I had to pull in comparison.

Now there is a 1.0 as difference in the two yet almost a 100dps difference. Not to mention look at the damage ranges, 113-320 vs 507-761. This is a recurring theme when looking at 2her vs 1her, even in the game. Now with the way melee haste adds up, won't warriors be doing a TON of damage in comparison to what rogues will be doing with the much smaller weapon dmg ranges? And warriors are getting improved threat reduction as well.

Was just wandering how weapons for rogues and our new abilities scale in comparison with this b/c they don't seem to be balancing 2h'ed weapons around the idea that warriors will be able to dual wield them now. Are we scaling equally as well to compensate for this?

Is it just me, or is the DPS on that 1H mace bizarreo low?

It has DPS stats reminiscent of a shadowpriest statstick, not a Rogue, or even a tanking MH.

I had to blink to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Are you seriously trying to argue how strong Titan's Grip will be based on a comparison between an 89 DPS one-hander and a 187 DPS two-hander?

Try picking two actually comparable weapons to make your comparison. Hint: a two-hander typically has about 30% more weapon DPS than a one-hander of equal item level.

This is fallacious thinking. Whether your base speed is 1.8 or 4.0, 2% attack speed increase is worth 2% more swings.

2% is 2% is 2%.

Doesn't matter what the base speed is, 2% haste increases attack speed by 2%, increasing white dps by 2%. Period.

The stats at lvl 80 scared me a bit. I mean 32 hitrate for 1% hit it seemed like alot. Then today I saw that Blacksmithing offhand dagger.

Saronite Shiv
122-183 dmg
1.4 speed
Improves hitrating by 98
Increases your expertise rating by 31
Increases your attackpower by 56
Required level 76

Thats some sick stats on a weapon. Also saw some tanking item with 156 stamina or something. Seems like we are getting some pretty high numbers on our gear. But seriously almost 3% hit from one crafted blacksmith item at lvl 76 isn't that quite insane? If epcis are even more over the top then that we might not need to socket everything with hit after all.

I think you are missing the way haste works here.

Yes, the slower the weapon, the greater the reduction, in time, due to haste, but this does NOT affect damage in any way.

Lets look at it this way:

Weapon A is a 2.0 sec weapon that does 100 damage every hit.
Weapon B is a 4.0 sec weapon that does 200 damage every hit.
In 4 seconds, both weapons will do 200 damage.

Now lets apply 10% haste
Weapon A is now 1.8 sec and does 100 damage.
Weapon B is now 3.6 sec and does 200 damage.

Yes, the .4 sec reduction is greater than the .2 sec reduction, BUT over the same period of time, 3.6 seconds in this case, both weapons STILL do the same amount of damage, 200.

So yes, 2% of 2.8 will give you the same net gain as 2% of 4.0.

This is not how haste is applied. A haste effect of 10% increases the number of swings performed per unit time by 10%. This is calculated as base swing speed divided by 110%. A 10% haste effect thus reduces a 2.0 second swing to about 1.82, and a 4.0 second swing to about 3.64. However, the principal point you made, which is that the ratio of swing speeds stays the same when you apply the same haste effect to both weapons, is completely true.

But then how will the damage output be when you are considering giving warriors the ability to take on 2 of these weapons at once. The damage on the big 2h'ers were always a great deal higher than those in which we get in 1 hand, the theory behind this was being you only had the 1 weapon and it was so much slower so it wasn't that big of a deal.

Question I was really asking is how is this going to scale giving the warrior the ability to take on one of this 2 handed weapons, with nearly double the damage range of the 1 hander, and letting them either take 2 of these or 1 and a fast off hander.

The weapon ranges I posted in a post before are a prime example. The 2 hander is 1 second slower, yet has almost 100 damage on the minimum range than that of the 1 hander, not even looking at the top end, and has like almost 40 dps than the 1 hander. Are we going to keep seeing these 2 handers like this in the game and how are the warriors going to be scaling with being able to dual wield with one of these in comparison to our damage output in the expansion?

IE, is it going to give them the equivalent damage increase as it would us being able to sinister strike or backstab with a 2handed weapon with the insane damage ranges they have, and still be able to get the huge dps from the off hand as well? Factoring in haste buffs and everything, the 20% attack speed penalty doesn't seem well enough to compensate and I am just wandering how our dps is going to scale in accordance to theirs come the expansion.

The drawback is that the 2Hers are normalized to 1H weapon speeds for attacks (I think it's just Execute and WW for instants, and not BT, for a warrior, correct me if I'm wrong). It's *not* the same as us using SS with a 2Her, because of that. (i.e., attack power normalization is AP / 14 * 2.6 instead of AP / 14 * 3.3)

Edit: Also if you read up a bit, the -20% haste is supposed to scale with gear/weapons pretty badly.

Also, I think worrying about anyone outdamage anyone is premature. Particularly when one of the classes is rogues, who haven't been balanced at all yet, hence we don't have the slighest idea how we're going to scale. So can we please stop worrying about it? Thanks.

Ald I know that you have mentioned earlier in this thread concerning endgame raiding professions. Now I've seen Glyphs for Priests and Shamans but haven't seen them for all classes. Though based on the relative strength of the healer glyphs it would seem that Inscription will be a necessary Min/Max raiding profession. So start banking those herbs or am i jumping the gun?

Most of those inscriptions are going to be tradable. The real question is whether there is not a first or second, but a THIRD greater glyph powerful enough to make the profession have a marginal advantage over the alternatives. From what I'm seeing of other classes, assuming glyphs are relatively easy to swap situationally (or at least, as easy as a respec), that doesn't look like it will necessarily be the case. If Glyphs are somewhat more permanent or expensive, people will need to make some hard choices between PvP and PvE focused glyphs, and taking inscription might make those choices easier.

I think it's, again, a bit early to say for certain. Glyphs are certainly doing nifty things for other classes, but, again, until they release our glyphs - not to mention the rest of our abilities - I don't think we can comment on the exact strengths.

That said: I think Blizzard will probably balance Glyphs to be a highly compelling option to encourage people to switch over to it. But, ultimately, we'll have to wait and see the stats on level 80 gear, our abilities, the available glyphs, and so on before making a final decision.

If you want to be concerned about warrior stuff at this stage, worry about whether Blood Frenzy and Trauma will actually be worthwhile raid debuffs, since they have significant impact on rogue DPS. The change of Blood Frenzy costing 5 more talent points to get means it will cost more personal DPS to get. If it ends up costing too much, it won't exist, which may throw off the balance of physical vs magical DPS. And if BF isn't worth it, Trauma alone probably won't be worth speccing for, which changes how rupture scales compared to Evis/Envenom.

To clear some stuff up though, TG is a white damage nerf and a yellow damage buff. Slam rotations may be the big thing with TG, as you can get your weapons to 2.5s swing times pretty easily, perfect for Slams, which aren't normalized. And Slam had a pretty big issue with losing DPS due to clipping WF and SS procs, which wouldn't exist with TG and the new WF. Bloodthirst won't change in damage compared to 1H Dual Wielding, but WW will. I hadn't read anything about 2H weapons being normalized to 1H weapons using TG, but WW would still be better when using 2H if that were the case, just not as much (though I doubt that they will be normalized to 1H speeds). And using a 2H weapon in 1 hand currently places an aura on the player that increases swing times by 20%, which means it affects your other hand, regardless if it is holding a 1H weapon. Thus, you won't see 2H/1H combos, plus that would really screw up Slam.

However, the big thing that makes TG good is that none of the attacks that you will use with TG have any bonus threat, while your rage dumps when using 1H weapons are Heroic Strike, with added threat, or Execute, with a 125% threat modifier. So, TG isn't that big a DPS upgrade normally, but it will greatly buff their ability to do damage during threat sensitive situations. On the other hand, TG doesn't really have effective rage dumps (HS costs 40-45 rage with a 2H weapon, compared to 30-35 with a 1H weapon), which means the scaling will probably be based soley on straight weapon damage increases, rather than the cyclical scaling that rogues and warriors both see currently (more damage -> more rage -> more HS and more OH hits/sec -> more energy => more specials).

Warriors also got a buff to Deep Wounds, in the sense that it will actually do damage, rather than being regularly reapplied (and resetting the tick time on it) before doing any damage, much less its entire damage. That will amount to a sizable DPS increase, even without new talents.

All that doesn't really matter though, because until poison/envenom damages are known, it's going to be hard to figure out how rogues specs compare to each other, let alone how rogues compare to other classes. And there's no indication that rogues aren't going to get an overhaul at some point that completely changes how stuff is balanced.

Armor penetration is completely bugged on the beta and is still in the very early stages of "evaluation" also, there seems to be a bug which had caused all the mobs to lose all the armor they had, so basically every meele character has 100% armor penetration in whatever gear...

Items - World of Warcraft

WoW, now, I'm at a turning point, how will these shiny things change the way rogues socket their gem slots?

Lets see some of the more interesting new gems:


Accurate Flawless Ametrine( Orange)
10Hit Rating, 10Expertise Rating

Deadly Flawless Ametrine( Orange)
10Agility, 10Critical Rating

Deft Flawless Ametrine( Orange)
10Agility, 10Haste Rating

Fractured Cardinal Ruby( Red)
140 Armor Penetration

Precise Cardinal Ruby( Red)
20Expertise Rating

Quick King's Amber( Yellow)
20Haste Rating


Hmm, lots of shiny new things we begged for ages( agil/crit gem for instance, haste gems for meele).
What I am wondering is, will these new gems have a huge impact on our socketing? The Expertise gems are looking the most interesting at this moment

Thats good news

But if you look at wotlk now , rogue still dont add anything to a raid , thats what realy disappoint me

Why would you want an agility + crit rating gem? unless they fubar'd the conversion, straight agility will be better for rogues. On a note to those "shiny new things", the problem for combat rogues seems to be in WotLK is that they still want to stack hit to a certain amount (though we have to quantify the Windfury totem change), so probably we just dont have the choice .... to make a choice e.g. for stacking ArP or Haste.

This one thing that concerns me, Koaschten. The "cappable" stats of arp, hit and WEx are the things I'm eyeing. Hit and WEx are largely linear in their benefits so the numbers game of balancing one vs the other is valid for all classes, but arp increases in value as you stack more of it. That's something that an item budget wont be able to distinguish. I thought I read that Blizzard was going to change the way armor mitigation works to make it more linear, but I couldn't verify the source, making that just pure conjecture.

Blizzard explicitly stating they want to itemize our gear to be useful / desired by even more class/specs and that we would be driven towards hit socketing is truly disheartening when you do back-of-the envelope math extrapolating from these data points. If they mean that a full rogue kit, sans weapons, would not go over 9% hit, that's going to mean we will need 15 sockets worth of pure +hit gems to get close to the cap. Sure, we'd prefer capping WEx once our specials no longer miss, but we get locked out of the increasing value of arp.

If there was a point in time where socketing full armor penetration over full hit was preferable, why *wouldn't* we socket ArP? I mean the only reason we socket for hit now as opposed to, say, crit, is because hit gives more DPS. We'll socket for whatever stat gives us the most damage.