Post by Arideni
The number of abilities you can "get off" correlates directly with your skills being used, etc. As far as how many Mortal Strikes vs. Bloodthirsts are used in the same time period, it doesn't likely matter at all.
Normalized has nothing to do with "getting off" abilties, it is purely & earnestly a "nerf" to fix an oversight with itemization.
Normalization simply means "to be normal or make normal" in the sense we use it. It refers to weapon speed, however there are some things about it that aren't so obvious. For starters, it does not affect white damage hits. What it does do is replace your weapons' actual speed with a
constant value (i.e. 1.7 for daggers & 2.4 for other one-handers). This only occurs when calculated the attack power bonus portion of the damage formula. You can identify the attack power bonus formula as it is
boldened in the following example (see
below).
This is the full damage calculation (for normalized special attacks):
x = base weapon damage,
y = attack power,
s = normalized weapon speed, and
d = total damage:
d = x +
Note:
s variable in the above formula represents the normalized attack speed of your current weapon
* based off the values listed below:
- 1.7 for daggers
- 2.4 for other one-handers
- 3.3 for two-handers
- 2.8 for ranged
*druid feral attacks are not normalized
Post by Arideni
Doublediamond410:Normalization was introduced in patch 1.8 (Hunters in 1.10). In the old versions of the game, that is prior to the patch introducing normalization, the use of the above formula with weapon speed changing based on itemization sometimes caused lower quality weapons to deal more damage than epic counterparts. This was a very important issue because Molten Core & Blackwing Lair were the only dungeons with epic loot tables at that time.
A classic example of this was the fabled rogue dagger
Barman Shanker which, due to it's unusually slow speed, created such an attack power bonus that it easily outdamaged some epic weapons (for abilities such as Ambush, this was at the time considered one of the best weapons pre-Anh'qiraj raids). As you can see in the link, the dagger drops in a level 48-60 dungeon & as you can guess, the rogue ability
Ambush was normalized (along with a lot of other moves for all classes). This is also a leading example why there are little to no daggers in Outland with a speed of 1.9-2.0. So, now you have a basic understanding of why these changes were needed so badly.
f you're interested in an example, read on-->
To get a grasp on just how much a weapon's speed can change an item's worth, we'll look at the level 60
GM dirk. Without going over the actual numbers here, it was said that even though the daggers in expansion may outweigh the GM dirk early on, because of the low speeds in Outland they could not outpace the white damage (of the GM dirk). So, in essence the slower level 60 dirk was a good deal better than the daggers in TBC until around level 66-68. Before TBC expansion was released, there was a large grind for most rogues to the GM Dirk & it was attributed indirectly to the weapon speeds. Some rogues even took two of these daggers for their new talents in the talent revamp (the addition of the Mutilate talent). Whether this holds up for new level 60s coming to Outland I am unsure (read: don't grind a GM dirk & expect it to be as useful now as it was a year ago).
Benefits of normalizationWithout going into lengthy detail, we can exemplify one of the benefits to normalization best by using the hunter as a model.
Hunters long had issues between PVP & PVE concerning choice of weapon speed vs. damage (don't we all?). On one hand, they wanted fast weapons for PVP so they could pop off shots at you left & right without stopping (kiting is key here). On the other hand, their main damaging move,
Aimed Shot, relied on weapon damage plus
x amount. The slower the weapon the higher their Aimed Shot would be...you can see where I'm going with this. In PVP, they needed fast weapons, but that would hinder their greatest damaging ability (Aimed Shot).
That's where normalization comes in. With ranged weapons fixed at 2.8 speed in abilities like Aimed Shot, a hunter could select a lower damage, faster shooting weapon for quick-paced battle in PVP
without having the damage of said ability reduced! Genius!
Note: Of course, by selecting a weapon with faster speeds than 2.8 their actual white damage will naturally be lower, as is the relation between speed & damage range. However in PVP this plays less of a role due to the fact players require burst damage over sustained damage for fast battles.