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    Weapons Guide

    Heres another guide enjoy it. And remember to be nice and give REP.

    Choose Your Weapon!
    A quick guide to players' tools of destruction in World of Warcraft
    Perhaps you thought your warrior was stuck with the big hammer he was born holding, or that your mage couldn't equip a sword in the tradition of a certain white wizard of yore. I did, until a kindly soul introduced me to the local weapon master, and unwittingly prompted the idea for the guide set before you know. While weaponry is more crucial for front-line melee'ers, just about any class can benefit from an understanding of the attribute boosts provided by weapons and other equipment; something discussed later in this article.

    Before we get into the crux of the issue, let's take a moment to understand the weapon's stats: the information presented to you when you mouse-over the weapon's icon.

    Understanding Damage and DPS
    Damage is a hitpoint range describing how much hurt you'll put on your target per hit, and speed is how often you'll have a chance to hit. The damage range and speed (or "delay" between swings) in your weapon stats culminate in a value called "damage per second." This number is a simple average of the damage range divided by speed; it does not take into account critical damage, weapon bonuses (which typically benefit fast weapons more than slow ones; since bonuses are applied to each hit and faster weapons obviously hit more often) and the range of special abilities your character may enjoy by using a certain type of weapon. Nonetheless, DPS is an important baseline value when comparing weapons which otherwise similarly complement your skills and abilities.

    Weapon Speed (Or Why a Slow 44 DPS Weapon May Beat Out A Fast 44 DPS Weapon)
    There are times when you want a fast weapon, such as when you're fighting casters and want more chances to interrupt their spellcasting. More often, however, you'll want to use as slow a weapon as you can find with the biggest max damage. Many abilities cue off of the weapon's damage to determine ability damage. Also, many of these abilities are "instants" - or instantly applied within the same combat round as your normal melee swings. This means that if you have an ability that does a bonus of 100% weapon damage, and you only have a 2.0 speed weapon that hits for 75-100 per hit (or roughly 44dps) , it will do 100 base damage + 100 bonus damage. If you had a 4.0 speed weapon that did 150-200 (still roughly 44dps), it would do 200 base + 200 bonus damage. Since most of these abilities are on a cooldown timer of some duration (10-30 seconds) it means you will get to use it the same number of times per minute for each weapon.

    Assume a 10 second cooldown and the ability above. With the fast 44dps weapon you would get additional 600 damage over the course of 1 minute (assuming you have mana, rage, energy to use the ability every 10 seconds). If you did the same with the slow 44dps weapon you would cause an additional 1200 damage over the same time (Thanks to Messiah for this explanation!).

    One-Handed (1H) &Two-Handed (2H) Weapons, and Dual Wield
    The pros and cons of using 1H vs. 2H vs. a Dual Wield setup is a hotly-debated topic. To my mind, you can't go wrong if you accomodate your playstyle, maximize your crucial stats, and finally maximize your overall DPS (as opposed to the simple DPS reported in your weapons stats - a UI mod like CTMod is useful for computing "overall" DPS), you can't go far wrong. I'll leave a detailed statistical analysis to the mathmaticians; we'll stick to the basics.

    The primary benefit to using a one-handed weapons is that your off-hand is free to carry a shield or stat-boosting item. Other advantages include the aforementioned damage bonus being applied more often, the fact that more "hits" due to the higher speed of these weapons give you more chances to interrupt a caster (not to mention a higher chance of your weapon proc'ing- for a definition of proc, see below). Dual wield allows some classes (at a later point in the game) to equip a second one-handed weapon in exchange for a higher percentage of misses. Slower two-handed weapons do an incredible amount of damage for the reasons mentioned in the "Weapon Speed" section.

    So which is the right approach for you? It pretty much comes down to playstyle and stats. A shield opens up a whole line of abilities for warriors and paladins geared toward protection, so its probably pretty important for meatshields to carry a one-handed weapon. Rogues need a dagger (a weapon seemingly favored by many DPS classes) to carry out their backstab-related abilities. Casters need a lot of intellect, and staves, polearms, and daggers typically provide. For all the classes however, stats are king, and your weapons loadout should perhaps be slightly more geared to stats than DPS performance. To a point. It's hard to see how a 15 DPS weapon could ever win out stats-wise over a 25 DPS weapon for a melee-intensive character.

    You might have seen this graph before, but it's important to understand what attributes contribute to your playstyle:

    Stat Bonuses from Weapons & Other Equipment
    Stat Benefit The "Math" Best for...
    Strength Higher DPS, better chance to block 1 Strength = +2 Attack Power
    14 Attack Power = +1 DPS (Damage per second)...
    Therefore,
    7 Strength = +1 DPS Balanced melee roles
    Agility More melee critical hits, better chance to dodge, primary attribute for damage (rogues & hunters only) 2 Agility = 1 Armor point
    20 Agility = +1% to Critical hit (Rogues require 29 agility points to generate +1% Crit, +1% Dodge, Hunters require 53 points per pecent increase of Dodge and chance of Critical Hit)
    20 Agility = +1% to Dodge Offensive roles / burst combat (PvP)
    Spirit Increases health & mana regen 4 Spirit = 1 Mana regenerated every 2 seconds Magic users in an evenly-paced setting (e.g. a PvE dungeon crawl) where limited rest time is available between battles
    Stamina Increases hitpoint pool 1 Stamina = 10 Health points
    Defensive roles
    Intellect Increases mana pool, slightly more magical critical hits 1 Intellect = 15 Mana
    1 Intellect = +.01% to Critical Hit on spells (small, but it can add up!)
    All casters

    As I was saying, some weapons are better suited to some of these stats rather than others. Swords, axes, and maces are more likely to carry bonuses to strength and stamina, while some say daggers and staves are more likely to provide intellect and spirit boosts. Agility seems pretty well divided between all the weapons (from my cursory overview of the market on my shard). Be sure to look into the higher branches of your talent tree to see if you'd like to build your character to take advantage of any particular weapon-based abilities.

    Procs & Other Weapon Bonuses
    A proc is a chance to trigger a special bonus attack. The percentage chance of a proc is measured in PPM, or procs per minute- weapons with procs usually have a set PPM. PPM is then compared to the weapons speed and converted to a percentage base per hit.

    So for example if you are dealing with a 6ppm weapon proc:

    2.0 spd wep: 2.0 (seconds per swing)/ 10 (seconds per proc) = .2 procs per swing. = 20% proc/swing

    3.5 spd wep: 3.5 (seconds per swing)/ 10 (seconds per proc) = .35 procs per swing. = 35% proc/swing
    What this means is that in general you are much better off with a slower weapon to get procs on more hits.

    Other weapons offer bonuses to healing skills, shadow, etc. Be sure to read through all the information available on a weapon before committing to buy it (or sell it at a certain price, for that matter). Some weapon bonuses can really rack up the damage; e.g. a fire damage bonus would tear up against "cold" enemies.

    Ranged Weapons
    From my own unofficial analysis of the DPS stats of higher-end bows, crossbows, and guns, the three types of melee-class ranged weapons seem fairly similar. Crossbows are toughest to find (having the least variety), and are slow, but hit for the hardest- which might be best for one-shot pullers like warriors and paladins. Back-row death-dealers might enjoy using bows (which hit for slightly more) or guns (which are oh-so-slightly faster, and look wicked cool!).

    Mages and warlocks have their own form of ranged weapon: their wand. Wands can be interrupted just like traditional ranged weapons, but can be used when a caster is stifled, but have no activation cost to use and generate little aggro..

    Weapons Guide

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