I did a highly unscientific test. I got rid of all damage passives, gear with +damage and my sorceress, and then I compared the time it took to kill skeletons with rend in the Cathedral with the following two weapons:
762.4 DPS dagger (11870 DPS on character sheet)
speed 1.61
damage 292-658 (avg. 475)
760.5 DPS mace (11820 DPS on character sheet)
speed 0.9
damage 715-974 (avg. 844.5)
The DPS on my character sheet was within 1/2 of 1 percent with each weapon, but the average damage of the mace is about 78% higher than that of the dagger.
For testing purpose, I rended (rent?) skeletons in Act 1 on various levels of the cathedral. For the mace, I felt like they were dieing in about 2.5 to 3 Mississippis. For the dagger, I felt like it was more between 4 and 5 Mississippis (some in the same group would die in 4 and others would die in 5). If it is based on weapon damage and the mace killed in 2.75 Mississippis, I would expect it to take 4.9 Mississippis for the dagger to kill the skeletons. This appears to be consistent with my results so I feel like the OP is correct and the damage is based off of straight weapon damage. This comes with the caveat though that I was not using a stopwatch, just counting out loud (and I think 7 of my Mississippis are approximately 5 actual seconds based on when the dot ended) and trying to gauge things, but it felt pretty clear that rend damage was lower with the dagger than the mace.
One other note is that it feels pretty clear that the actual animation of the rend itself is faster with the dagger than the mace. This isn't super relevant damage-wise since the dot takes place over up to 5 seconds (or up to 7), but it can be relevant if you plan to dot-kite. It may also explain why the dagger felt a little faster than 4.9 Mississippis on average as I started counting from the time I hit the button and not when the dot appeared.
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...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
The single most important piece of gear is the 2h weapon. For 2h weapon you will only want to look at the min-max damage number and not the dps. This is because furious charge and rend takes the same animation time regardless of your attack speed. I would suggest going for 0.9 speed mace here for the damage and the weapon master bonus. However, if you find bash animation taking too long to avoid some damage, this also works with slightly faster weapon.
Good guide. I'm not sure about this part though. Can anyone verify this? I was under the impression that static-speed attacks based their damage on DPS and not on damage per hit. It should be relatively easy to test though by using a two-hander with no strength / crit and a one-hander (or two of them) with roughly the same dps and no strength/crit.
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...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
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762.4 DPS dagger (11870 DPS on character sheet)
speed 1.61
damage 292-658 (avg. 475)
760.5 DPS mace (11820 DPS on character sheet)
speed 0.9
damage 715-974 (avg. 844.5)
The DPS on my character sheet was within 1/2 of 1 percent with each weapon, but the average damage of the mace is about 78% higher than that of the dagger.
For testing purpose, I rended (rent?) skeletons in Act 1 on various levels of the cathedral. For the mace, I felt like they were dieing in about 2.5 to 3 Mississippis. For the dagger, I felt like it was more between 4 and 5 Mississippis (some in the same group would die in 4 and others would die in 5). If it is based on weapon damage and the mace killed in 2.75 Mississippis, I would expect it to take 4.9 Mississippis for the dagger to kill the skeletons. This appears to be consistent with my results so I feel like the OP is correct and the damage is based off of straight weapon damage. This comes with the caveat though that I was not using a stopwatch, just counting out loud (and I think 7 of my Mississippis are approximately 5 actual seconds based on when the dot ended) and trying to gauge things, but it felt pretty clear that rend damage was lower with the dagger than the mace.
One other note is that it feels pretty clear that the actual animation of the rend itself is faster with the dagger than the mace. This isn't super relevant damage-wise since the dot takes place over up to 5 seconds (or up to 7), but it can be relevant if you plan to dot-kite. It may also explain why the dagger felt a little faster than 4.9 Mississippis on average as I started counting from the time I hit the button and not when the dot appeared.
Good guide. I'm not sure about this part though. Can anyone verify this? I was under the impression that static-speed attacks based their damage on DPS and not on damage per hit. It should be relatively easy to test though by using a two-hander with no strength / crit and a one-hander (or two of them) with roughly the same dps and no strength/crit.