That was before attack speed was normalized for most attacks, this made the speed of the weapon unrelated to the instant attack damage. The only ability that wasn’t affected by this was hemorage, so you would gain damage by using a slow weapon and spamming hemo. Offhand should always be fast in order to increase poison proc chance.
Hmm, you may have me there. Is the damage of instant attacks calculated based off of attack power now?
I’ve never really gone in depth into the mechanics of damage calculation, so here’s some inof i found off the rogue forums:
[quote]Its what blizzard uses to normalize the damage on a special attack… it can vary by the weapon used for an attack (like shiv), and from one special to the next (BS may not have the same as SS or shiv for example). They did this so that slower weapons (past 2.00 speed normally) didn’t make it do exponentially more damage than more common speeds. Not all specials have this mechanic though such as our Hemo ability.
Example the Backstab Damage Calculation - Has normalization
Opportunity = 0.04 * Opportunity Rank
Lethality = 0.06 * Lethality Rank
Surprise Attacks = 0.10 * Surprise Attacks Rank
Modifier = Attack Power / 14 * 1.7 The 1.7 here is the normalization.
Normal hit = (Weapon Damage + Modifier) * 1.5 * (1 + Opportunity + Surprise Attacks)] + Backstab Bonus Damage
Critical hit = Normal hit * (2 + Lethality)
Example of the Hemo damage calc - No normalization
Modifier = (Attack Power / 14) * Weapon speed See uses the actual speed of the weapon as a multiplier to the damage
Lethality = 2 + (0.06 * Lethality Rank)
Normal Hemorrhage Damage = Modifier + Weapon Damage
Critical Hemorrhage Damage = Normal Hemorrhage Damage * Lethality
[/quote]