Post ended up kinda long. For the short version, just read the bolded conclusions.
There's been talk on and off about whether you should have a slow weapon in mainhand, fast weapon in offhand. Whether abilities are based on the total dmg showin in the character sheet, or just the main hand dmg range. I haven't been able to find any reliable info or tests, so I decided to do some brief testing myself. These are my results.
FoT (with Thunderclap)
For mainhand, I kept my normal ~900 dps fist weapon. For offhand, I bought 2 blue weapons with no extra stats:
Weapon 1: 29.2 dps, 1.50 AS
Weapon 2: 814.1 dps, 1.50 AS
Then I fought Ghom on Hell, using only FoT (no buffs, no sweeping wind, etc). With weapon 1, the fight took 38 seconds. With weapon 2, the fight took 21 seconds.
Conclusion: For FoT, the dps on your offhand is very important. Buying a cheap low dps weapon with high stats is not a good idea.
Sweeping Wind (with Master of the Wind) (Note that I haven't tested the effect of cyclones)
I then engaged Ghom on Nightmare (so I would be able to stay on full health without actively healing myself). I only attacked with Sweeping Wind, letting 6 of them do their full dmg (10 seconds per wind). I then calculated exactly how much dmg had been done by these 6 Sweeping Winds. I did this with weapon 1 in mainhand and weapon 2 in offhand, and then the other way around.
Weapon 1 MH, Weapon 2 OH (total dmg done from 6 Sweeping Winds, on 4 different tries)
167288
170650
170044
170328
Weapon 2 MH, Weapon 1 OH (total dmg done from 6 Sweeping Winds, on 4 different tries)
173618
178742
172801
171754
Conclusion: I can see no evidence that Sweeping Wind does more dmg with a slower weapon in mainhand. In fact my tests seem to show that a fast weapon in mainhand does slightly more dmg, but I have no reasonable explanation for that. Maybe just randomness.
I then did another test with Sweeping Wind, using same method. Except this time I kept my normal main weapon in mainhand, and checked out total dmg done with 2 different offhands:
Weapon 1: 29.2 dps, 1.50 AS
Weapon 2: 814.1 dps, 1.50 AS
Weapon 1 OH (total dmg done from 4 Sweeping Winds, on 2 different tries)
138577
137278
Weapon 2 OH (total dmg done from 4 Sweeping Winds, on 2 different tries)
166876
167690
Conclusion: The dmg on the offhand does affect how much dmg Sweeping Wind will do.
I did these tests basically to see if I should buy a cheap offhand, that's fast, low dps and high stats. My findings here show that is not a good idea. Note that I've only tested the 2 main abilities I personally use. I don't know the effects on for example Cyclone.
Interesting. Very good find on the ability dmg being based on what weapon is "active". That explains some weird numbers I saw while switching weapons around in combat. Makes me want to do some further checks on my tests, but don't have the energy for it tonight.
I think the conclusion stands that you should aim for 2 good weapons though, and not 1 awesome plus 1 stat stick. A low dps in offhand absolutely cripples FoT dmg, which of course is the main dmg ability.
Looks like the only relevant thing is weapon dps, a better test would be to use the slowest 2h weapon and a dagger with max attack speed that both have the same dps.
Yeah far as I can tell the weapon dps is all that matters. I actually have a 0.9 2h with the same dps that I played around with, but ultimately I decided not to do the test with it because I wasn't 100% certain the results could be compared 2h vs DW. Probably they can, but I'm just not sure there isn't some other factor there.
SW b - I did the same, bought a 8xx dps weapon and compared it to the 3dps offhand, sweeping wind damage was indded a bit higher, at least I think so, as I was just observing the ticks and it was a pretty small increase. I would like to see some further tests how exactly this works.
Yeah the difference isn't huge. There definitely is a difference as my test showed, but not as big as one would expect between a 29 dps and a 814 dps weapon in OH. Really not sure how to explain that.
One thing that could be of interest would be to note the character sheet dmg shown. With my normal MH + the 814 blue dagger, my character sheet says 22.2k dmg. With my normal MH + the 29 dps blue dagger it says 12.8k. So that's almost half, and I think that's what I would see in practice as well (with FoT included). But SW certainly doesn't do half the dmg, so there's something going on there.
the difference in damage depending on your offhand is solely the speed of your offhand. Faster offhand = more dmg. slower offhand = less dmg because SW scales off your total attack speed.
I did hours and hours of tests on my stream. If you are interested I can give you the video archive.
This movie is just the conclusion of the testing. I didnt do that in response to this thread, but i thought you might be interested in it.
the difference in damage depending on your offhand is solely the speed of your offhand. Faster offhand = more dmg. slower offhand = less dmg because SW scales off your total attack speed.
That doesn't add up. I tested with 2 different offhands:
Weapon 1: 29.2 dps, 1.50 AS
Weapon 2: 814.1 dps, 1.50 AS
Weapon 2 caused SW to do roughly 20% more dmg than with Weapon 1.
I really hate the mechanics of Sweeping Winds that it depends on the current active weapon instead of just defaulting its damage with the main hand, I find this mechanic to random or broken.
the difference in damage depending on your offhand is solely the speed of your offhand. Faster offhand = more dmg. slower offhand = less dmg because SW scales off your total attack speed.
I did hours and hours of tests on my stream. If you are interested I can give you the video archive.
This movie is just the conclusion of the testing. I didnt do that in response to this thread, but i thought you might be interested in it.
Wait, I thought Sweeping Winds damage is based off the active hand and has nothing to do with attack speed, as per what I understood in the video.. I guess the video needs a transcript.
I really hate the mechanics of Sweeping Winds that it depends on the current active weapon instead of just defaulting its damage with the main hand, I find this mechanic to random or broken.
I can understand the feeling and kinda agree with you. But as long as you got 2 somewhat similar weapons it shouldn't matter. Hopefully people aren't running around with 900 dps weapon in MH and 500 dps in OH.
There's been talk on and off about whether you should have a slow weapon in mainhand, fast weapon in offhand. Whether abilities are based on the total dmg showin in the character sheet, or just the main hand dmg range. I haven't been able to find any reliable info or tests, so I decided to do some brief testing myself. These are my results.
FoT (with Thunderclap)
For mainhand, I kept my normal ~900 dps fist weapon. For offhand, I bought 2 blue weapons with no extra stats:
Weapon 1: 29.2 dps, 1.50 AS
Weapon 2: 814.1 dps, 1.50 AS
Then I fought Ghom on Hell, using only FoT (no buffs, no sweeping wind, etc). With weapon 1, the fight took 38 seconds. With weapon 2, the fight took 21 seconds.
Conclusion: For FoT, the dps on your offhand is very important. Buying a cheap low dps weapon with high stats is not a good idea.
Sweeping Wind (with Master of the Wind) (Note that I haven't tested the effect of cyclones)
For this test, I bought 2 new weapons:
Weapon 1: 465-894 dmg, 1.2 AS, 815.4 dps
Weapon 2: 297-788 dmg, 1.5 AS, 814.1 dps
I then engaged Ghom on Nightmare (so I would be able to stay on full health without actively healing myself). I only attacked with Sweeping Wind, letting 6 of them do their full dmg (10 seconds per wind). I then calculated exactly how much dmg had been done by these 6 Sweeping Winds. I did this with weapon 1 in mainhand and weapon 2 in offhand, and then the other way around.
Weapon 1 MH, Weapon 2 OH (total dmg done from 6 Sweeping Winds, on 4 different tries)
167288
170650
170044
170328
Weapon 2 MH, Weapon 1 OH (total dmg done from 6 Sweeping Winds, on 4 different tries)
173618
178742
172801
171754
Conclusion: I can see no evidence that Sweeping Wind does more dmg with a slower weapon in mainhand. In fact my tests seem to show that a fast weapon in mainhand does slightly more dmg, but I have no reasonable explanation for that. Maybe just randomness.
I then did another test with Sweeping Wind, using same method. Except this time I kept my normal main weapon in mainhand, and checked out total dmg done with 2 different offhands:
Weapon 1: 29.2 dps, 1.50 AS
Weapon 2: 814.1 dps, 1.50 AS
Weapon 1 OH (total dmg done from 4 Sweeping Winds, on 2 different tries)
138577
137278
Weapon 2 OH (total dmg done from 4 Sweeping Winds, on 2 different tries)
166876
167690
Conclusion: The dmg on the offhand does affect how much dmg Sweeping Wind will do.
I did these tests basically to see if I should buy a cheap offhand, that's fast, low dps and high stats. My findings here show that is not a good idea. Note that I've only tested the 2 main abilities I personally use. I don't know the effects on for example Cyclone.
Interesting. Very good find on the ability dmg being based on what weapon is "active". That explains some weird numbers I saw while switching weapons around in combat. Makes me want to do some further checks on my tests, but don't have the energy for it tonight.
I think the conclusion stands that you should aim for 2 good weapons though, and not 1 awesome plus 1 stat stick. A low dps in offhand absolutely cripples FoT dmg, which of course is the main dmg ability.
Yeah the difference isn't huge. There definitely is a difference as my test showed, but not as big as one would expect between a 29 dps and a 814 dps weapon in OH. Really not sure how to explain that.
One thing that could be of interest would be to note the character sheet dmg shown. With my normal MH + the 814 blue dagger, my character sheet says 22.2k dmg. With my normal MH + the 29 dps blue dagger it says 12.8k. So that's almost half, and I think that's what I would see in practice as well (with FoT included). But SW certainly doesn't do half the dmg, so there's something going on there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z64T8tFgvlM
I did hours and hours of tests on my stream. If you are interested I can give you the video archive.
This movie is just the conclusion of the testing. I didnt do that in response to this thread, but i thought you might be interested in it.
Weapon 1: 29.2 dps, 1.50 AS
Weapon 2: 814.1 dps, 1.50 AS
Weapon 2 caused SW to do roughly 20% more dmg than with Weapon 1.
Wait, I thought Sweeping Winds damage is based off the active hand and has nothing to do with attack speed, as per what I understood in the video.. I guess the video needs a transcript.
Another question: the cyclones that proc off SW are based on SW's damage?
Based on weapon damage when SW was activated