Dagger+Shield vs Onehand+Shield: What makes more damage?

[Duc]

Question above.

[Chaoslink]

Whichever has the most stat boosts for your abilities. Generally I never have shields on my melee and run wand+shield on most everyone (that uses a shield). But those characters don't even use the weapon itself, they just use the stats on it.

[Martin]

Not to mention that Sucker Punch ie no shield in off hand is awesome lol.

[jdash417]

What chaoslink said my healer/battlemage never uses his basic attack . It is shield throw and whatever magic spell is needed. I am running a predominately physical damage party so works well with my play style and like others have stated is super op late game.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Martin:

Not to mention that Sucker Punch ie no shield in off hand is awesome lol.

Right? A single hand dagger scoundrel built with warfare gets so much CC with sucker punch as well. Mix some cloak/invis pots in there and you don't need the durability you get from the shield.

[DarkWolf]

Fire wand + poison wand for some explosive action

[Ptolemy]

The only reason I’d take dagger is for the rupture chicken combo. I think the tick scales only with weapon damage (and maybe warfare) so you get full usage from it. But they nerfed the chicken combo so it’s probably not worth it any more.

Either way you’ll be doing garbage damage. Shields aren’t for high-damage melee characters, they’re for casters and supports where weapon damage doesn’t matter.

Take one-hand for the better armor clear on your battle stomp and charge.

[wendigo211]

For the first 2-3 levels, probably one-handed +shield, after that dagger + shield. The one-handed weapon have higher base damage, but the backstabs will surpass that damage until late game when you can get your base critical hit chance up.

[Ptolemy]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

For the first 2-3 levels, probably one-handed +shield, after that dagger + shield. The one-handed weapon have higher base damage, but the backstabs will surpass that damage until late game when you can get your base critical hit chance up.

It depends what kind of build you’re going for. Dagger will do more single-target damage, but your AOE will do less. I prefer the AOE for help with clearing for knockdowns

[Gregorovitch]

For warfare/strength melee builds I would go 2H and for finesse/scoundrel based classes I would go dual wield daggers every time. Damage output is everything, you want to strip their armour and dispatch 'em asap, and 2H and twin daggers do vastly more damage than anything else does on the melee side.

For casters I use shields for the extra armour and the useful Shields Up ability. This precludes use of proper staffs which are twe-handed but casters almost never use their weapons after the first 2 or 3 levels so the weapon/wand they carry is irrelevant really.