(insert class of choice here)
(druid)
i've been thinking a bit about scouts and ranged damage lately(no surprise), and one of the biggest issues i have personally(most of you are just gonna roll your eyes and complain that there are larger issues etc) is the fact that bows are essentially useless for any scout main.
the over-dependence on damage essentially kills the flexibility of choosing between bow and xbow. there is simply no contest.
not only does it kill bows, but there is another issue as well...
the fact that attack speed increases have a substantially smaller effect for scouts than melee classes. even at attack speed cap, a 25% attack speed buff DIRECTLY correlates to a 25% damage increase, due to the fact that the output damage is a function of the char's DPS. since scouts damage is more dependent upon raw weapon damage rather than DPS, the attack speed increase has less effect, such that a 25% speed increase correlates to a <25% damage increase.
if scout damage formula was changed to model the melee formula a bit more, i think we would see a large improvement in scout dps.
going to test to get exact values.
did a quick test, and melee attack with stims hit ~23% harder than normal, yet ranged attacks with stims hit ~11% harder than normal.
was a VERY brief test, but results were already apparent. one may want to test some more, but the screenies of my test are here .
pretty much right on par with what one should expect with the current damage formula.