[Yinikren]

No, the mainhand damage bonus alone covers the 3 damage difference off backstabs if you choose to weapon swap. You guys severely underrate the mainhand damage bonus, which is the same reason weapons like a Revultant Whip get made fun of, despite being so fast that the ratio literally does not matter because you are swinging almost twice a second. Why the hell do you think the mosscovered branch got nerfed?

You basically hit a point where you are attacking so fast that your mainhand damage bonus makes up for (and exceeds) any damage you would get from wielding a higher damage, slower weapon. Check on the velious forums about everyone bitching about hitting for minimum damage a LOT during boss battles because of mob AC - Trust me, you'd much rather be hitting for minimum damage at 7 delay than at 12.5. You got babied with low AC Kunark mobs.

Let's do some maths. A rogue at 100% haste mainhands a Thornstinger and then a Ragebringer to test his mainhand damage.

With the Ragebringer, he swings 48 times a second (600/12.5). Of those swings, 60% ((240skill+60level/500)=.6) are double attacks. Accuracy at max weapon skill on an even con mob is around 66%. Your minimum mainhand hit will always be 12 (Damage bonus of 11+1 for connecting) So, for the numbers:

48+60%= approximately mainhand 76 swings per minute. Around 50 (66% accuracy) of those land. So just for turning on autoattack, your Ragebringer does a guaranteed 600 damage a minute from your damage bonus alone.

Now he mainhands a Thornstinger, which gets 66 swings a minute, or 105 with double attack factored in. That's 69 average hits per minute for 828 guaranteed damage. See where I am going here?

That's guaranteed, unmitigated damage. You can't hit lower than 12, so on these bosses where it actually matters, the faster your hits, the better off you are in the long run.

For funsies, ranger math works out to about 1068 damage per minute just from the mainhand damage bonus when wielding a revultant whip.