normalized weapon dps

[Big Dick Dudley]

Are slower weapons still the best? I remember reading somewhere that all of the weapon based attacks like sinister strike or whatever is based on dps now, and not the top-end damage.

 

[The_Ham]

the bonus that the attack gets from attack power is normalized. so if you have say a 1.3 speed dagger and a 2.0 speed dagger, for the instant attack they will both be figured with the same bonus from attack power. the slower one will still hit harder than the faster one, but not as hard as it would have before the normalization patch.

edit: better explination

Base Damage

The base damage of any instant melee attack that does "weapon damage" is the damage per attack (not damage per second) of the weapon being wielded in the main hand. If your main-hand weapon is listed as "Damage 141-208", for example, your instant attacks will all do a base damage of 141-208 damage points.

As a result, a slow weapon will do more damage with an instant attack than a fast weapon with the same rated DPS.

To this base damage is added the damage bonus for the maneuver, if any, and a damage bonus based on the wielder's Attack Power.
[edit] Stormstrike and Mutilate

The Shaman talent Stormstrike, and the Rogue talent Mutilate, are exceptions to the main-hand damage rule. These instant attacks are assumed to be made with both wielded weapons at the same time, if the attacker is dual-wielding.

The base damage of these attacks is equal to the damage-per-attack of the main hand weapon and half the damage-per-attack of the off-hand weapon. Note that the rogue talent "Dual Wield Specialization" (rank 4 talent of the Combat Tree) will increase your off-hand weapon damage from 50% to 75%, which does affect the Mutilate skill. This is one of the few cases where having a slow off-hand weapon will result in more overall damage being dealt than having a fast off-hand weapon will.
[edit] Attack Power damage bonus

Instead of multiplying by the speed of the weapon, the player's normal Attack Power bonus is multiplied by a fixed number pulled from the following list:

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

Please note that all normal weapon swings were completely unaffected by this.

from Formulas:Instant Melee Attacks - WoWWiki, the Warcraft wiki