Woot! Melee got(slightly) nerfed!

The mechanics of most instant melee attacks will be modified to improve item balance upon the release of patch version 1.8. Currently, instant melee attacks do damage based on the damage range of the weapon, plus a bonus for the player?s attack power. This bonus is then multiplied by the speed of the weapon. As a result, slow weapons do more damage than is intended, and fast weapons are considered inferior by most players. We are changing the way the attack power bonus is calculated for instant attacks. This change will NOT affect attack power calculations for normal melee attacks. Instead of multiplying by the speed of the weapon, the attack power bonus will be multiplied by a fixed number pulled from the following table:

Two-handed weapons: 3.3
Daggers: 1.7
All other one-handed weapons: 2.4

As a direct result of this, many weapons will shift position in their relative power. In particular, many epic (purple) quality items will now be more powerful than slower superior (blue) weapons. For the purpose of instant attacks, the Arcanite Reaper and the Barman Shanker will drop slightly in relative power, while Typhoon and Alcor?s Sunrazor will increase in power.

We expect to see the total damage output of a Mortal Strike warrior go down about 4% with the Arcanite Reaper, and up about 4% with Typhoon. We expect the total damage output of a Backstab rogue to go down about 2% with the Barman Shanker and up about 2% with Alcor?s Sunrazor.

This change was not made to reduce the power of instant attacks, but to correct the relative imbalance of weapon itemization. At a given level requirement, epic quality weapons should always be more powerful than superior quality weapons.

Please also note that all normal weapon swings will be completely unaffected by this change. The following abilities are affected by the design change: Sinister Strike, Ambush, Backstab, Whirlwind, Mortal Strike, and Overpower.

already got nerfed with the weapon switch thing

Welcome to the World of Magecraft... again.

Welcome to the World of Magecraft... again.
oh shut it.

-4% wowzer

warriors still rape

I don't consider this a nerf. It's a nerf to slow weapons, sure, but it's a huge buff to fast weapons.

Eshkander's Right Claw is actually a viable rogue weapon now.

Melee itemization is fixed now! Hooray! (Suck it down casters. :()

So does this mean rogues can actually use the Warblades from ZG now and they act as 2.4 speed for instant strikes?

Now as a fury warrior I have to compete with rogues :(

cool they took warriors def down 33% last patch and now are hitting our damage output next patch sweet

edit: also the timing is nice too... right after zg introduced the 3.8 two hander and 1.9 dagger

Okay that blows on the grounds that one fuckin' warrior in my guild swears on DWing daggers all the time claiming much higher DPS than anything else. Now I don't give a fuck if that's true or not but what gets me I'll have fighting with him over dagger drops. And this little "nerf" only serves to increase his incentive to take my daggers and probably say something like "Take your swords and go Combat bitch..."

Okay that blows on the grounds that one fuckin' warrior in my guild swears on DWing daggers all the time claiming much higher DPS than anything else. Now I don't give a fuck if that's true or not but what gets me I'll have fighting with him over dagger drops. And this little "nerf" only serves to increase his incentive to take my daggers and probably say something like "Take your swords and go Combat bitch..."
That would be fury.

That would be fury.
Fean is the rogue ... not the other way around

this is a nice change, imo. no longer will people fanatacize over the 3.8 speed 2handers or the 2.8 speed swords. you look at the dps, and what you see is what you get.

these predetermined weapon speed values for instants curve weapon power so that you have a much greater variety of weapon options to choose from. it also places the MC/BWL epic 2handers as close to the "experiences no change" line as possible.

of course, all this is only a fractional dps difference (the sky is falling, wtf), but it makes loads of "useless" weapons (typhoon, eskhandar's, etc) just as viable as their slower counterparts. i consider this a buff :)

It's a nice buff for up and coming warriors (i have a lvl 38) but for the ones that spent countless hours getting rank 14, Ragnar etc it is a huge slap in the face. Oh you spent 300g and 400 million hours farming for AR??? Aww here you go, take any random 2h drop from MC now instead. Sorry little fella!

Yet another example that blizzard does not understand their own game at a fundamental level.

Every time I see someone work hard for a really rare item, blizzard increases the drop rate 100 fold, or nerfs it in comparison to similar items.

I cannot wait untill blizzard pisses on the priest community by making the eye of shadow solo-farmable.

This doesn't really change anything, honestly. It nerfs a couple VERY SPECIFIC anomolies. Namely, Arcanite Reaper, Barman Shanker, and the new Destroyer of Worlds from ZG. Other than that, slower is still better. The damage you do on an instant STILL factors in weapon damage, and at similar DPS ratings, slower weapons will ALWAYS hit harder. This doesn't suddenly make Shadowsuck or Julie's Dagger, or Alcor's Sunrazor desireable, it just makes them not *as* shitty. Everyone will still want the exact same weapons they did pre-patch (minus the specific ones I listed).

Oh you spent 300g and 400 million hours farming for AR??? Aww here you go, take any random 2h drop from MC now instead. Sorry little fella!

Nobody keeps their AR when they can get an OEB or any of the rag weapons. The only shitty one is still Vendorstrike and nobody will ever grab that POS.

I cannot wait untill blizzard pisses on the priest community by making the eye of shadow solo-farmable.
You already can. Even then, until they fix the enchanting problem it's debatable whether it's worth getting over the SOD or the BWL staff.

People bitch to bitch, it's not like they're going to suddenly throw down their AR's and Shankers in disgust. They'll still do thousands of damage per hit, now they'll just be able to do it without crunching numbers through freakin maple to figure out which weapon would be theoretical best with 1400 attack power when the sun is in the right azimuth. And you might lose some damage in the 20's.

So my new Halberd of Smiting will be even more effective now?

So my new Halberd of Smiting will be even more effective now?

slightly, and only when compared to slower weapons.

after reviewing the damage formulas and seeing how weapon speed is taken into the equation twice now (with the preset values for one of them), you can really see the change is a lot smaller than it may have seemed at first.

i thought they were un-fucking melee weapon itemization and opening the door for people to grab other weapons. in reality, the biggest thing they're doing here is preventing things like shanker from out-stabbing a CHT when fully raid buffed. slower weapons will still be better assuming equal dps :-|

So my new Halberd of Smiting will be even more effective now?
that thing would be about 500x cooler if they made it look like a UO halberd