Post by Heckler
Maybe my use of the word "Normalized" was improper. My understanding of Cat / Bear form "Paw Damage" is that you take the low-end damage amount, divide it by weapon speed and then multiply it by 1.0 (cat) or 2.5 (bear). Then you take the high-end damage amount and do the same, and that defines your in-form "weapon damage." This is functionally identical to simply multiplying the weapon DPS by 1.0 or 2.5 since all cataclysm weapons "normalize" to the same 1.0 Speed numbers for a given item level/quality.
Akirus the Worm-Breaker 1795 - 2693, Speed 3.6. In Cat Form, this weapon will add 498.6 - 748.1 damage.
Malevolence 1196 - 1796, Speed 2.4. In Cat Form, this weapon will add 498.3 - 748.3 damage.
A quick test can be done with little vendor weapons:
Short Spear &
Long Staff.
The formula for Cat form weapon damage is this:
LOW: (Weapon low-end damage)/(Weapon speed) + AP/14
HIGH: (Weapon high-end damage)/(Weapon speed) + AP/14
DPS: (Weapon DPS) + AP/14Any time you read "weapon damage" or "normal damage" in a Cat-form ability tooltip (
,
,
Shred, etc), it's talking about this damage.
An interesting side note, let's say we had 2 weapons both with 500 DPS. One does 1-3999 damage with a 4.0 speed (let's call this 'the Mace'), and one does 499-501 damage with 1.0 speed (let's call this 'the two-handed Dagger'). They will both add the same DPS to Cat Form damage, but they won't be identical. Let's say you have 14000 AP, your cat form damage will be:
Mace: 1001 - 2000
2h Dagger: 1499-1501
Both of them will be 500 DPS, so on an infinite timeline, they will both do the same amount of damage. However, the Mace gives you a much larger "window" of possible damage values when a Weapon Damage roll is carried out. The result is more statistical spread in the Mace damage output (higher highs, lower lows). Example: We push Mangle, the resulting (non-crit) damage will be somewhere between:
Mace: 6054 to 10649
2h Dagger: 8344 to 8354
The smaller "window" on the Dagger yields more
consistent damage output over a finite timeline; over an infinite timeline, they will both be identical. This won't ever matter in cataclysm though, since all weapons of a given item level / quality have identical "window" sizes. I don't think this was always the case, but a 5 minute search through the database I couldn't find any two weapons of the same level and quality (usable by Druid) that had different sized damage "windows" (window means percent-deviation from average, high and low).