2H vs Dual Wield?

[erneiz]

What are the main advantages of going with 2H over Dual WIeld and vice versa? How does melee and range differ between using 2H or Dual Wield?

[AccelExhilar]

It completely depends on your class and build honestly. In general 2H weapons hit harder and slower, dual wield hit lighter but faster and carry slightly more stat bonuses with both weapons combined.

[erneiz]

I'm currently a Warder. I've been using 2H since the start but I found a mythical relic recipe that allows me to dual wield. I've been weighing whether to try to respec or just keep rolling with what I have. Currently nothing seems to be able to kill me aside from Moosilauke PermaFreeze and the mysterious 1hit kill reflection bosses (like Mad Queen and the Immortal).

[Azunai]

2h doesn't require a specific mastery or special items to unlock. anyone can use a greatsword or rifle in this game. you need to be a nightblade (or find some item that allows dual wielding of melee weapons) for DW melee. DW ranged always requires special items to unlock (afaik the inquisitor class that will be released as part of the expansion will unlock dual pistols as a class skill).

the main difference is how the damage scales. dual wield makes better use of flat damage boni since they apply to both weapons. 2h tends to scale a bit better with % damage since the base damage of a twohander is so much higher than onehanded weapons. once a DW build has enough flat damage, it will outscale (and out-dps) any twohander build.

that's only a very general trend, though. in practice, a dedicated twohand build can still wreck anything in the game quickly, and a half-assed DW build will just be a squishy glass cannon that is too much glass and not enough cannon. in my experience, it takes more effort to make DW work, but when you get it to work, it really shines.

EDIT: since you mentioned warder - don't bother with DW. as a warder, you have access to the twohand passives from shaman and you also get to use menhirs will from soldier. all of that stuff will not work when you switch to DW. not worth it.

[erneiz]

Yeah, I get the feeling I should just roll with my 2Her for now. For future reference, how exactly do you make a good DWer? It seems like you can't really screw up a 2H build as long as you pick up Kraken and stack life leech. Is there any such "rule of thumb" for DW?

[Matthew]

2h would be much better if you could apply 3 components.

[Finnvbot]

Originally posted by Matthew:

2h would be much better if you could apply 3 components.

Imagine the ragdolls after you hit a mob with such a weapon of doom. Choo choo, all aboard the r**e train! (seriously, did they really censor this word?)

Well, Blademaster (Soldier + Nightblade) is a no-brainer choice for DW: stack pierce damage and OA to high heavens and boom, you've got yourself a build that kills stuff really fast. It can be reasonably tanky as well. Bleed-focused Trickster (Shaman + Nightblade) is monstrous against the living (Undead are a pain in the neck) but you have to adjust your playstyle accordingly, since you'll probably end up doing more damage over time than upfront. There are some more excellent options out there but these are the ones I have tried for DW and they work great.

[Azunai]

there is no simple rule of thumb for DW i guess.

from experience, you want much flat damage and high attack speed. both go hand in hand. flat damage isn't normalized for attack speed, you also gain more from it by attacking faster. so basically attack speed makes flat damage better and flat damage makes attack speed better. that's the basic idea.

that basic idea also works for any other weapon damage based build, but DW inherently scales better with flat damage (since it applies to both weapons), so there's some extra synergy here. also onehanded weapons are inherently faster and have lower base damage.

so far, i've played a pierce blademaster, an acid witch hunter and a lightning trickster up to ultimate and i have a fire saboteur that is currently at the start of elite. i also have a ranged DW sorcerer. the common idea of all those builds is to find a solid source of flat damage to work with from the start. endgame items can also add a ton of it, but i don't like to use some cheap levelling build and then only switch over to the real build when the toon is already level 70 or something, so access to a good source of skill-based flat damage is a high priority.

for the pierce BM that was really easy - just max the base dual blades skill and you're set. other sources can be added later (i went with cadence & deadly momentum and used 100% armor penetration to convert all of that raw physical damage to pierce)

for the acid WH, i used lethal assault (modifier of amarastas blade burst - similar to how deadly momentum triggers off cadence) and later also nidallas hidden hand. blood of dreeg (occultist) also adds some base acid damage. there are also a bunch of *really* nice acid damage daggers that work nicely for that build.

the trickster uses mostly lightning damage from savagery. it's a bit low-ish, but in the end i got savagery to max ultimate rank (26/16) and it does quite a bit of damage. i also added a ton of damage from the eye of storm mythical relic. she also does tons of damage through the synergy of wind devils & the tempest devotion (each wind devil can have its own tempest lighning storm)

the saboteur simply uses firestrike as main damage source and will later also max out flame touched.

the gunslinger sorc used firestrike & flame touched and IEE from the arcanist tree.

one thing to note about dual wielding: the default attacks doesn't always use both weapons. i think it's something like 50% of attacks using both, the other half of the attacks use only the main or offhand. the nightblade WPS and the WPS from dual wield enabling items all use both weapons, so even when the WPS only displays for example 80% weapon damage plus some flat bonus, it's still a (small) damage gain (since the standard attack it replaces only uses - on average - only about 75% of both weapons). of course a WPS like execute (that uses ~250%+ WD) is a major boost to dps. the dps number on the character sheet doesn't take any of those skills into account. so the real dps tends to be A LOT higher than what the sheet number suggests.

[Pickle Bath]

There can certainly be an argument for DW vs 2hand for some classes. Warder is not one of those, and imho they are meant to be 2handed users.