"Hooah, bitches!" What's up rogues... Time'ta talk daggers. 'Nough introductions... down to the point; my dagger is everything to me. Without it, my most damaging abilities, ambush and back stab, can't be used. The DPS of my Merciless Gladiator's Shanker is 97.5. The DPS of my offhand, Merciless Gladiator's Quickblade is 97.7. Same DPS. Being a rogue, I wouldn't choose to use a sword or mace in my main hand, no matter what spec I was, because why on Earth would I want to use a weapon that'll instantly disable two abilities to me? I wouldn't.
But, this is why so many freakin' rogues use swords and maces in their main hand; they don't understand how DPS works and simply look at damage.
Ok, we can't compare the DPS of my offhand sword to my main hand dagger as my offhand sword, the "Quickblade", is faster than my dagger (and that's how I planned it, being in my off hand) so it's damage numbers are lower than my dagger. So we'll compare the main hand sword, the Merciless Gladiator's Slicer to my dagger, the Merciless Gladiator's Shanker.
When someone looks at the Slicer sword, it's damage is 203-305. The damage of the Shanker dagger is 140-211. People will look at the Slice and think "Wow, this is more powerful than the dagger.". No, it's not. The speed of the Slicer sword is a shitty 2.60 (seconds) and the speed of the Shanker dagger is 1.80 (seconds). That's when you ignore speed and damage and look instead at DPS; Damage Per Second. They both get 97 DPS.... 97 damage per second.
Now this is important, the DPS is the same with the dagger and sword, but... the sword takes away ambush and back stab with your main hand. So being a rogue, it's not about "What's your blade preference?", it's "Well I only get these abilities with the dagger in my main hand, so the dagger it is. I'm not going to limit myself."
So what's up? Why are so many rogues usin' swords and maces in their main hands? Because either they're a skilled (or unskilled) level 70 rogue that just doesn't know how DPS works between blades... or, the most common, they didn't know about how DPS worked between blades when they were first leveling and learning to use their rogue, so back stab and ambush was never available to them (and because subtlety heavily relies on daggers, most don't spec and learn to play subtlety). So after time, when they discover how DPS between blades work, and how powerful ambush and backstab can be, they never learned how to ambush or back stab in PvE or PvP, so they stick with swords or maces (and of course, stick with combat or assassination specs). And a lotta' rogues choose swords and maces because it's what they see everyone else usin', and some use swords because they think "A dagger is a weak, small sword... I don't want a small sword, I want a big sword.".
There's the honest truth about daggers... the reason why I use one and the reasons you don't see rogues using them enough. Although I've seen a big change in rogues in the past two years that I've been playin' on and off, there are a lotta' rogues usin' daggers. In fact, when WotLK comes out, when I come across a dagger more powerful than my offhand sword (probably the level 80 PvP weapons), I'll get a dagger and go double daggers simply to show some more dagger love...
Jeaxx
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