With recent weapon changes, which does more damage? buckler or dw?

Lightly scanned forum and didnt find anything on it. I'm sure it's there somewhere but I'm short on time. Is buckler still the way to go for dps or dw?

My understanding is, in the best case scenario, DW by a very, very slim margin. Generally though, it's not worth sacrificing the defense that a buckler offers.

You talking from a DPS point of view as in, never tanking or you talking about tanking?

why limit yourself to a berserker if you never tank?

Technically DW should be better DPS but it appears that in real world scenarios this just isn't the case. The reason being, with the diminishing returns on DPS and Haste, if you can buff yourself to a decent degree already then you'll see a greater benefit from putting your AAs in the Buckler line than you would using DW and putting your AAs into, say, Wis/Int for additional DPS and Haste.

Question: Do abilities like the Dirge's CoB trigger on double attack hits? I don't know for sure. If not, then you might see a greater benefit using DW depending on your group setup.

Generally speaking though, Buckler is the traditional Zerker spec for good reason (which IMO is unfortunate but that's a whole other thread).

Hope this helps.

Skel@Butcherblock wrote:

How is it limiting? We can wear plate yet still do 1500 - 2k+ DPS we can set ourselves up in such a way when the expasion is released so that we can tank the big stuff OR use Buckler line at the same time........not that it matters because your thinking of betraying to Guardian after RoK, right Skel? All you eq2flame boys are considering it so I read, well not all, but most. You guys should of seen that SoE were going this direction since LU24 when they removed the arch type system from the game, some of those posts are funny though, people complaining about KoS being the death of the zerker, when thats funny, that is when Buckler line was introduced......anyways.
Reason I asked him if he is speaking from a DPS or Tanking point of view is simply because Dual Weilds when grouped correctly easly out parse Buckler seeing buckler requires you to be facing the mob for ripostes, you cant do that without facing it, not to mention that Dbl atk bonus is only 60% not taking into account any outside varibles from buffs or gear bonuses which this guy most likely doesn't have.
For the same reasons Skel can't go into detail on why Berserkers will be out tanked by Guards in RoK, is the same reason's I can't go into detail on why new spec's will have to be tested when RoK is here, Buckler line simply will not be the end all be all spec anymore, as sad as it may seem to some of you but I think it it is fair to say you had a good run with it, and besides, those who have been here since day 1 or played ANY SoE game should know too well that they tend to throw a spanner in the gears when things become way too "trivial", which is exactally what Buckler line has done to this class.

-Aonein- wrote:

Bit of a rant but an excellent post nonetheless I thoroughly dislike the Buckler line because it's removed all variety and become a requirement, rather than an option, which defeats the entire point of AAs. After all, they exist to offer customisation to seperate players but right now they merely act as another goal to achieve and only offer distinction to those who are willing to **** themselves in the name of roleplaying.

I can only hope that SOE have recognised this and T8 changes things from how they currently stand. Good ridance to the Buckler I say.

MightyThor wrote:

Not all entirely true, the defense hit you take on Offense stance can make a big difference in your ability to tank quite succesfully mobs that are level 71+, seeing the Avoidance/Defensive abilities of a player is based off a even con mob and they scale up and down with levels means that 455 is the cap for a level 70 mob, but if you have 475 or 490 and are fighting level 75+, it is going to make a huge difference.
Answer to your question is yes, CoB will proc of auto attack damage only, so as long as the double attack triggers of a auto attack then yes it will. It will trigger of Open Wound's also, not sure on the AGI Open Wounds effect, never tested it.
Buckler is the unofficial zerker spec because it is easy to work around, Reversal and Dbl atk make up for certain utility classes not being present when you can't get them, but keep in mind, it isn't a 100% chance to Dbl atk like Dual Weilding is providing you are talking about from a DPS point of view, they are how ever if you follow the trend of zones for example Shard of Fear OR New Tunarian Throne room, where mobs have a chance to stun or fear you on every hit, reactive proc, obviously any set up where you can get alot of swings in small period of time here is bad, bringing back the flavour of 2 handers in a small, yet situational way.
So, in a nutshell, yeah Buckler still for now does good DPS, alot of matched quaility tank classes are having no problem matching our DPS now Pallies, SK's and Guards all having no trouble parsing 2k on raids, and seeing that the Zerker class has somewhat almost exhausted the KoS AA tree for majority of it's DPS potential for this class, it doesn't allow for a substantial increase in RoK, the spell upgrades won't be enough too keep us upto speed because we are already being matched by the other pure tank classes anyway, people have started to realize this and already begun flipping out over it, Guards how ever will get a nice boost out of it while also retaining thier elite raid tank stature, which is why alot of them like I mentioned earlier are considering jumping ship to Guardian, it isn't only that though, there is more too it then that though which has to do with RoK content itself.

MightyThor wrote:

On principle I agree with this sentiment, but from a practical standpoint the issue that always comes to mind is that when SOE refactors or normalizes something, players get painfully ... um... what's the word...

-Aonein- wrote:

first off, whats the point in wearing plate if you NEVER tank. Second, if you want straight DPS assassins and swashies can easily put out 3-4k zonewides. So yes, you limit yourself if you never want to tank, by about half the damage.

If you want to tank sometimes and get great dps while doing so, a brig or swashie can tank all the heroic content fine while doing a good amount (1k+ dps on the high end) more dps than a zerker. In the end, with our avoidance cut down severely by a lack of shield, I would love to see a parse of damage taken by a dual wielding zerker and swash/brig on the same mobs--I wouldn't be surprised if the swash/brig took less damage overall due to their higher avoidance.

-Aonein- wrote:

Good point about Offensive stance and thanks for answering my question about CoB.

Regarding DPS from other tanks, yes, I too have noticed that the margain between our DPS outputs is getting quite slim and I also agree that it's going to get worse, not better, considering we have so little to gain from adding extra AAs to our class tree.

However, I have the suspicion that this is intentional because I've seen our T8 RoK spell (note: I'm NOT in the beta) and it looks like we're getting quite a large boast to our tanking abilities, far more so than any other tank including the Guardian. I wouldn't be at all surprised if SOE want all tanks to be viable raid main tanks and less of a gap in their DPS.

the fact remains, why drop the shield and take 20% more damage and do ~6% more DPS than vice versa? it might be a decent spec for when you can hot swap your AA specs but currently i think the people asking this question are complete newbs to this or any game seeing as how there is much better pure DPS classes out there than a plate tank has to offer.

Lyger@Mistmoore wrote:

The fact also remains that we are first off tanks, DPS doesn't matter if you have a group set up correctly and can hold agro just as well as a Guard can with his/her 700 DPS, speaking from a group point of view here.
That and the fact that alot of the Buckler spec'd Zerkers will soon find how hard it is to tank stuff when having a 25% chance to be stunned, feared on each attack, ethier that or reactive proc debuff Druids will play a huge part in RoK.

avatars already have way worse proc's then that and buckler spec makes no difference.

Skel@Butcherblock wrote:

No offence Skel, but you know what your problem is, you compare everything to a raid enviroment when majority of this games player base doesn't even raid or raid hard core, at most, most guilds will raid twice a week.
Not only that, but there is probally less then 2% of this games population even attempting avatars, where the MT is being spammed with what ever cure needs to happen to keep him from being stunned or feared unless its non-removable and besides, most of the Avatar reactive procs are pure Damage shields or a large chunk of avoidance/mitigation percentage, so yeah, in this case it isn't going to effect Buckler spec'd zerkers.
Buvlas from Eq2Flames has just joined our guild and we did SoF with him tanking the other night and he had to take his Buckler off from being consta feared on the Gargoyle, add to the fact we had a Brig, Dirge and Illy all of who have fast attacks by way of attack speed and multiple dot effects they can stack, who were randomly getting feared in the mix making it near impossible to keep everyone not feared.
Fact is, we have seen a glimpse of what SoE has planned for RoK and as I pointed out before, if you guys want to stick with your beloved Buckler spec, you better find a druid who is prepaired to go down the AA line that allows them to remove these reactives or your going to have a tough time doing alot of stuff.

-Aonein- wrote:

The 2nd attack from double attack does not trigger procs, so why should you be stunned more often?

So you think i havent ever done SoF then? I took my raid in there? yeah...

Just to chime in here on SoF. My group cleared SoF our first trip through.

The group was Zerker (me), Templar, Warden, Monk, Warlock, Illusionist.

Of that group the only person with raid gear is the warden, it was the monks first night back from a year long hiatus and only had 60aa. I am buckler spec'd and tanked the entire zone in offensive stance. We had no deaths to any of the epic bosses and took out all three.

I had zero problems with being perma stunned or feared - I never even turned off autoattack. All in all i'd say the zone was trivial


Edit: At the time I was using droag kukri and badge of service

I tanked SOF with buckler spec no problem. So I don't understand why you think we're gonna have issues in RoK Aonein. Personally I get tired of buckler spec because of the lack of variety between myself and other zerkers but I'm going to continue with what's been working great for me untill someone can prove a better alternative.