Fast 2h Weapons for Enhancement Shamans are underrated

[Millksteak 0]

Okay everyone, it's time I let you in on a little shaman secret. Brain Hacker is actually an awesome Shaman weapon, and everyone should buy it at level 55. 

But how is this, you ask? Isn't a slow two-handed weapon mandatory for all classes that fight in melee?

That's where you're wrong, kiddo.

Sometime halfway through tBC, a 3 second cooldown was added to Windfury - basically this made it so that it didn't proc several times in a row. However, many players forget that in vanilla, Windfury has no cooldown. This means that the only thing that would give shamans a reason to prefer slow weapons over fast ones would be their only weapon-damage based ability - Stormstrike, an ability that is on a 20 second cooldown and contributes little to our physical DPS anyway.

But alright. Slight advantage to slow weapons there. Stormstrike burst is cool indeed. But are there any advantages to having a fast weapons? There are a few minor ones actually, yes.

One advantage is that Flurry (which is a very big contributor to enhancement shamans total physical dps) procs faster if your mainhand is faster. With a 3.80 attack speed, the three or four swings it might take you to get your first crit can take up to 10 seconds, but with a 2.1 attack speed, it takes considerably shorter. Now of course, a faster attack speed also wears out your Flurry charges faster, but the more crits it does evens it out. The painful part is before your first crit, when you're whacking away with no flurry charges at all.

Another advantage, particularly in PvP, is overkill. Do you really need that 2k windfury crit on someone if they only have 500 hp left? A faster attack speed lets you shred your opponent down when they're on low hp, instead of waiting in between each swing. 

Finally, most theorycrafters very seldom takes into account the fact that all fights are not 1v1 where the two parties stand still and whack each other endlessly. Usually PvP consists of you running in, fighting for a couple of seconds, then running out, healing, running back in for a couple more seconds, etc. Especially when it comes to classes that try to kite you, or when you're changing targets after killing someone. If you fight for only 4.5 seconds, it's better to get off two hits with a weapon with an attack speed of 2.1, than one hit with a weapon with an attack speed of 3.8.

Now, I'm not saying fast two-handers are always better than slow two-handers, not at all. Those juicy stormstrike crits are a ton of fun, especially when they trigger windfury crits too :) But Enhancement Shamans are the only class on horde side that doesn't have to worry about attack speed. Slow weapons are good. Fast weapons are good too. Fast BoE Epics like Taran Icebreaker and Brain Hacker go for crazy low prices on the AH right now because half the server is playing a warrior, and slow two-handers are incredibly important for them. But for us Shamans, we can pick up Brain Hacker for 50g, and pass up on the Arcanite Reaper, which does the same DPS and only differs in attack speed, and is like 400-500g. This knowledge made playing my enhancement shaman a ton easier and more fun, so that's why I wanted to share it with you guys.

[kegboy 8]

i dont agree

[Undertanker 88]

3 hours ago, Millksteak said:

That's where you're wrong, kiddo.

 

3 hours ago, Millksteak said:

This means that the only thing that would give shamans a reason to prefer slow weapons over fast ones would be their only weapon-damage based ability - Stormstrike, an ability that is on a 20 second cooldown and contributes little to our physical DPS anyway.

In a PVP environment (which an enhancement would be a topic of more than PVE, and even in PVE) a slow weapon does many things for you.   First and foremost, the initial hit on the target.   You start a battle with 0.0 seconds on your swing delay (though is reset if casting which is why casting should be done during Shaman kiting).   So by having a weaker top end damage weapon, you greatly reduce your opener damage.   On top of this, as an Enhancement 2h, you should be Swing Timer kiting your mobs or people in PVP.    Low rank Frost Shock, or Totem.  Swing your auto, kite your target until your swing timer is ready, go in - hit - go back out.  Repeat.  Also if somebody it attempting to kite you, when you finally do get in range, do you want it to be a 143 base weapon hit or a 256 hit?

Stormstrike is apart of your BURST, who cares how it performs on a 100% uptime target (which you'll never have in PVP and shouldn't be in PVE solo if correctly Swing Timer kiting like you should be).   Ensuring it does max damage is critical to your success.

Windfury Weapon grants you 2 extra attacks.    Using your example of Brain Hacker vs Arcanite Reaper let's look at best damage.  143 vs  256.    What do you want 2 extra swings from?  286 damage or 512 damage?   That is a 78% difference.   You can not argue "but I swing 80% faster" because you are also not taking into consideration your start of combat 0 second swing timer, Stormstrike instant attack, and having such a fast weapon prevents effective swing timer kiting.

Flurry increases your attack speed by 30% for your next 3 swings.    Lets use your example again of Brain Hacker vs Arcanite Reaper let's look at the average DPS this time to see the what performs better.  Brain Hacker 56.7 DPS @ 2.1 speed.  You'll swing 0.63 seconds faster - giving you a 1.47 delay.   Brain Hacker has a DPS value of 80.9 during the duration of this buff.   A 58.55% increase.     Arcanite Reaper 53.8 DPS @ 3.8 speed.   You'll swing 1.14 seconds faster - giving you a 2.66 delay.   Arcanite Reaper has a DPS value of 76.9 DPS.  A 42.93% increase.      Brain Hacker by default already had 5.39% but only has a 5.2% dps increase after counting flurry.    I remind you again that you should be swing timer kiting and shouldn't be trading Auto-Attacks with your target, flurry proccing giving you a 1.47 delay makes this impossible and you'll take more damage in return.

In regards to "overkill" in PVP.  You can't go based off of crits.  You should perform whatever ability is needed to drop them assuming a non-crit without sacrificing kill time to allow your target to obtain another global and possibility turning the tides of the battle on you.  In a group PVP setting, your goal is to burst the kill target to sub 20% and let the warrior execute ASAP.

[Millksteak 0]

Great post Undertanker! I love it when other theorycrafters come in and cover things I haven't even thought about. I can agree that slow MHs are slightly better than fast ones for Shamans in PvP, mainly due to the fact that the first strike always skips the swing delay. However, the point I try to make in this post is that the difference between slow and fast MH is the smallest for shamans (far smaller than for example warriors or rogues), which is why they are still useful to us.

Swing timer kiting is a good point too (totally forgot about that one when writing this post at 1 AM), although all fights are not versus warriors that forgot to apply Hamstring to you. When going up against clothies you are usually on them for a couple of seconds, and then they blink/run away. 

Like many, I'd love to have an Arcanite Reaper but I don't have the time to farm gold for it, so I'm merely arguing for the fact that it's worth taking a faster weapon and playing a slightly different playstyle in BGs right after you hit 60, than spend hours farming for something that is only a slight improvement.

[Yxo 8,068]

Slow weapon means more time with no damage if you miss or enemy dodge or parry. Slow weapon can oneshot your enemy, but fast or middle-speed weapon gives me stability. So faster weapon has more some procs (that not has proc-per-minute mode) - for example, you can land 2 WF in 3 secs, and your enemy die earlier in some situations. By the way, fast weapon gets more profit from cheap enchant +9 damage.

I like speed about 3.00 on weapon, this weapon has good DPS and not weak crits. Now I wear Glowing Brightwood Staff http://db.vanillagaming.org/?item=812 on my 54 lvl and I like its damage and stats.

[Aethelwulf 12]

Burst damage is also higher value than sustained damage. If your windfury hits someone for sub-2k damage he will probably pot, self-heal, or make some distance somehow, so that's a lot less useful than a windfury that hits for over 3k damage plus a shock destroying them before they ever realize what happened.

[Obserd 0]

Might of Menethil is your goal <period>