Is it merely preference? Or is there an advantage to going with a slower weapon with more damage like my MC'd karabela, as opposed to a little speedy short sword with way less delay? What say you?
Depends what you are doing. It used to be etched in stone that a priest should have a very slow delay weapon. Reason being was casting spells took a long time, and when casting you delay your autoattack, lowering your dps. Since they've given us the ability to change our spells into combat arts I don't see the need for slower weapons except in the case of fighting harder mobs where you need to heal yourself a lot. I've got a thex mallet at the moment, a by the time I get all my haste buffs on I think the delay is somewhere around 1.7. It's pretty perfect, it allows me to throw in one CA between my autoattacks and keep up a nice rhythym. On my templar, on the other hand, I keep him a bit slower in weapon delay because he doesn't get combat arts, so his spell casts are still a limiting factor. I'm assuming you are talking about soloing. Any grouping I try to use a faster weapon to proc any proc effects I may have which specifically proc off melee damage, like my group heal AA.
I'd say slow until you have & use the tso endline damage stance. Grab a range of weapons and see what parses better for you with ACT. Plus switch around depending what your doing, afterall your can change weapons during combat, slow weapons for moments with a lot of slower casts like heavy healing, faster weapon when using a lot of quick CAs. The TSO endline damage stance, procs glacial damage on every hit so if you are using that it tends to even out the autoattacks delayed while casting, making fast 1 handers deal often similar damage to slow 2handers, provided you are mixing in a fair amount of CA moves and using the damage stance. Heavy Hammer of Hard Knocks with 8 sec delay might gain me say 600 autoattack dps, but I might lose 400 glacial dps compared to using myth with 2.5 delay. There are advantages to 1handers though. Having a free offhand means you can add extra healing with star of malice for e.g. or extra dps with say a shield that procs a dps buff like the one from guk:OS. The natural boon healing seems better with a faster weapon too so you can afford to heal a little less, allowing more time for dps. Also you get 2 adornments, and usually better stats from 2 items than from a 2hander.
if you melee then fastest possible for natures boon procs. switching from a 5.0 weapon to a 1.6 weapon with basically the same damage rating. it was alot easier to solo. if your a stand back and cast kinda guy. then whatever has the best stats. i dont ever recommend 2handers. the additional damage doesnt make up for the lack of sheild.
Yeah, the block from a shield is hardly life changing, but the amount of useful stats you give up not having a second gear piece just isn't well reflected in the amount of useful stats/adorns on any 2 hander. With the myth conversion to a buff I bought a 2 hander with marks with 151ish rating - you do gain some autoattack, but overall I find my enervated myth with 118 rating and buckler of deadly chaos for the dps proc outweighs the 2hander, partly for speed & convenience with natural boon and damage stance proc on hit, partly because of having dual adornments.
Since I've converted my mythical, I pretty much keep my Thex Mallet on 24/7 for soloing and easy instance groups. When I need big heals I go mythical + secondary for pure stats, but now that mana regens no matter what weapon I have I like to be able to add DPS. It's that proc on the Thex Mallet that's going to be tough to upgrade, but I don't have any really good secondary items that would add DPS to a 1-handed scenario, so for me Thex Mallet is king.
I am playing with a twohanded hammer from the shard merchant with a 6 second delay for dpsing. With haste its under 3 seconds which seems to be about perfect speed for getting in ca's, heals, ect between hits but not watching the hammer of hard knocks slow cast with nothig to do. The animation for it I dont like though and put the HoHK in my appearance slot for its animation. I havent found a new onehander upgrade yet but am still looking and havent done the instances much at all either. Been mostly boxing alts for xp and aa on Oakum in the hole deep side of the rat area with all the 6 mob encounters.
I just bought that token 6 second 2 hander several days ago also. It's OK I guess but I still kinda like the woe hammer for a better chance at fat killing blows.
As others have posted, it really depends on what you are going for. For healing, I'd use a 1hander + shield and worry about stats before anything else. Natural Boon is nice, though you won't want to be in melee range on some fights during heroic/raid content. For DPS, You will want to have a slowish weapon with the widest min/max damage you can find. When you crit an autoattack, your minimum damage is based on the upper damage number on your weapon. (If I understand it correctly). Since its so easy to have over 100% crit as a warden, max weapon damage makes a difference. The slower weapon also makes it a lot easier to min/max your damage. Not only is it easier to avoid delaying your autoattacks with an ability, but you can get more done before having to wait for the autoattack to hit. On the other hand, 8s delay weapons just feel really boring and you won't get the most out of your DPS during a short fight. 5-6s delay weapons feel pretty spot on . Haste helps a ton, too. I am still using my T8 x2 DPS leather gloves for the 40% haste on them, and Nature Blade rocks .
Based on the weapons the OP used as an example, I'd guess the OP is lower level and still leveling, and in that case I'd without a doubt stick to a mastercrafted 2h hammer- I forget what it's called, and I've got a weaponsmith- it's got str/wis stats and has a 6s delay, for a decent amount of dps output as you are leveling. At 80, Thex Mallet (5s delay base) rocks for dps, but it's from a heritage quest that may be tough to get done now that people aren't doing the TSO instances as much. The fabled/mythical is horrible for dps, with the low delay and anyone using it for dps will be shocked at the increase in their dps potential with a nice 2h weapon. IMO Hammer of Hard Knocks (8s delay base) is way too slow and actually lowered my dps compared to the Thex Mallet. I've got my eye on one of two potential two handers from the mark merchant in Paineel once my warden is 90. They both have 6s delays and high top ends (cost 20 marks each). The stats of the two are different though, and one of them I think has a healing proc. For when I go to healing mode in SF, I will probably find a 4s delay sword with a high top end so I can throw on my star of malice, which by the way rocks for healing. Currently for soloing tougher stuff (the various ^^ named around SF outdoor zones) I use mythical in mainhand and the star of malice in offhand- but only for the extra heals the star provides. Once I have the mythical buff and a decent 4s delay, I'll use that and the star for soloing heroics.
For those that say the Myth weapon is horrible for DPS, I'd like to disagree. I posted a 15k zone wide in Outer Vaults using the Myth and solo healing. For two handers, anything over 6sec is too long for me. Inq's have their own speed buffs to make the 8sec ones viable, but we don't have such buffs therefore you're better off with a 6sec one. A nice 6sec dropped from Cooglius today, but unfortunately the Inq took it so I can't tell you how it parses, but will let you know if it drops again and can get you some stats for it.
