Warcraft Melee vs. Lower Levels

 For my sins, I've done a bunch of classic world of warcraft research. Ran out of useful things to practice research on. Result: there's a poorly-known fact I'd like to spread. Basically it's the following, although they have one error. https://github.com/magey/classic-warrior/wiki/Attack-table

 Assuming attack skill is maxed, each level delta changes mob parry and crit taken by 1%, while dodge and miss change by 0.5%. That means, ignoring block because it sucks, level 30 fighter hitting a level 29 mob has a total of 3% extra base damage over hitting a level 30. 28, 6%. 27, 9%. Etc. (Giraffes &c can parry for some reason. Unlike players, mobs can't not have parry, and they usually have block tho nobody cares.) Further the 30 player takes 0.8% less damage from the 29 mob. Including the base chances of 5%, it's 93%/89.2% => 4.3% more effectiveness against mobs one level lower. The player can win a fight with something that has 4.3% more HP, and of course lower level mobs have less HP. 8.6% against -2s. Huge. Likewise, going up you lose ~4.5% per level.

 By contrast, magic has no parry (or dodge) chance, so it's only miss and crit. 2% per level.

 Both melee and magic suffer horrible discontinuities at mob level +3. Magic starts getting +10% to miss each level on top of the +1%, and the mob gets an extra +6% parry and 1.5% to be missed. Then there's crushing (half-bonus crits) and glancing. Players don't see any of these gains against mobs -3. Incidentally, mobs at +3 also resist +hit to the tune of 1%, meaning you have an 8% base chance to miss, but need +9 hit to eliminate that chance. Finally, non-inherent defence skill does nothing against crush chances. Talents and gear are ignored.

 A little more detail: at equal level, the attack table is 5% chance to crit, 80% chance to hit normally, 5% parry, 5% dodge, 5% miss. (Again, ignoring block because it's block.) 80% + 2x5% crit = 90% base DPS.

 The attack table of a +3 mob against you is 5.6% crit, 15% crush, 4.4% dodge, 4.4% parry, 4.4% miss. You're looking at 2% crit, 40% glance@65% damage, 14% parry, 6.5% dodge, 8% miss.
+3 = 99.9% base DPS.
You = 59.5% base DPS.
Effective damage bonus +3: 68%, 23% per level. That is, they have higher stats because they're a higher level, and those stats are performing 68% more effectively than they would otherwise be.
Alt, effective damage penalty, you: -40%. Like fighting an even-level mob that always and instantly debuffs your damage by 40%, and has extra HP.

 Basically, only fight orange mobs as melee if you absolutely have to.
Notice the progression? +1: 5%, +2: 10%, +3: 70%. This is why melee gets wrecked by orange mobs and casters only have to worry about running out of MP, especially if they use being a priest or CC to ignore incoming damage.

 Negligible, but I'll mention anyway that +2 mobs have a 5% chance to crush.
 On the plus side, killing a +2 mob give 10 more base XP plus a 10% bonus.

 

 On level -5 mobs, they can no longer parry you, and you're working with 10% base crit.

 By level -10, you cannot miss and they cannot dodge, although you need to be level 50 before -10 mobs will not be grey.

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 Better known but never said in one spot: in general, by intentional design, two-handed weapons do 20% more damage than one-handed weapons. 90% * 1.2 => 108% base 1h DPS. The base dual-wielding attack table is
5% chance to crit, 61% chance to hit normally, 5% parry, 5% dodge, 24% miss. The off-hand weapon does 50% damage, meaning base damage is 150%. 150 * 61 + 2x5 = 106.5% base DPS.

 Dual wielding is supposed to be identical to two-handing. That is, 1.2 * 0.95 = 1.5 * 0.76, but the effects of dodge and parry are not independent of miss due to using an attack table rather than sequential rolls. They should have made dual miss +18 instead of +19. 108/150 = 0.72, 33% total avoidance at 5% crit. However, attack power benefits dual wielding at +50% the rate, which means 1hx2 generally has slightly higher DPS rather than 1.4% lower. The only classic class that can both dual and 2h is the warrior. In other words, sinister strike and eviscerate are balanced around dual-wield damage, whatever it ends up as, while flame shock and lightning shield are balanced around two-hand damage, and finally warriors have battle shout, which was probably tuned to make 2h and 1hx2 work the same. 

 Item level 24, wingblade: 15.68 dps. Crescent staff: 20.34. Hence, attempted ilevel 24 one-hand DPS is 23.3, meaning intended breakeven attack power is 107. If I'm reading this right, warriors get 3 str per level, meaning 25s already have nearly 200 AP while naked, plus BS at 55. Dual: 36.1 DPS, 2h: 34.7 DPS, ~4% lower.

 Basically players don't like dualling because the miss streaks feel bad, while 2h lets them play big numbers game. The dual crit streaks and endless 2h swing timers get broken window fallacied - those dogs aren't barking. Therefore they say 2h is 'better' to justify what they wanted to do anyway.