dual wielding DPS: what gives?

[Hexprone]

I've just started a Warfare character, and (probably foolishly) I put six points into dual wielding right away. However, I still find that his listed DPS is lower when he has two weapons equipped than when he has just one.

I thought it might be because the weapons I had equipped (axes) were too slow. I swapped them out for a couple of short swords -- green ones! -- and found that the DPS number dropped even lower.

What am I doing wrong? Or is the number displayed for DPS not actually all that meaningful?

[CRCGamer]

Dual wielding is subject to the quality of your weapons, the quality of your available buffs, and most importantly your overall attack SPEED. Because every one of its passive is a %chance to activate per attack. So the faster you attack and have the various options available within dual-wielding the better it gets.

However Warfare's bread and butter is Onslaught which increases your damage and with Ardor it also increases attack speed simultaneously when stacked up. Look into THIS skill branch first, 'cause it isn't worth poking at dual-wield until you've a few points into each of its passives and have access to Ardor under Onslaught.

[Jhonny G]

The damage calculation in your character sheet only shows your base damage, as in, without any passive abilities, skills and crit chance factored in. So the damage you're seeing is just the raw base damage of your character.

I'm running around with a dual weilding warrior as well and even though it shows my averege damage is around 250, it's actually closer to 600 in actual combat once the different abilities start to activate.

[Kamboyah]

You need items. Very good weapons and armor.
I have warfare/storm and this guy would do no dmg until I activated maxed out storm damage aura.
Also, I couldn't do Typhoon. A friend gave me full Imperial set with swords and Typhoon dies.

[NasiPuti]

Dual wield is objectively worse than spear shield until well into the late game and you have an ideal set. Even then in most cases a good spear shield combo will be better in effectively every way. It should end up having the same if not a little more DPS and will have vastly superior defensive capabilities. Spear shield has kinda been the OP thing in this game.

With the recent changes to resistances the only real viable dual wield builds I see happening are ones that are used to gain significant resistances off weapons that feature nice resistance perks while still maintaining respectable DPS. This is something I can see dual wield doing rather well since there are swords with 100% resistance per weapon.

[Jet Uppercut]

Dual Wielding gives you a % chance to swing with the off-hand weapon during a normal attack, as well as a % chance listed on skill to do the double attack and the other skills later in the Dual Wield tree. So you want both of your weapons to be pretty close to each other in quality. You also want any +% damage or attack speed bonuses you can get on both weapons, since % damage bonuses apply to both weapons and attack speed, if both weapons are of the same base speed, gives you a very large boost to DPS since they'll both be attacking that much faster. A lot of people say Dual Wield isn't worth it until late game, but if you have two Valor of Achilles Relics and two Of Destruction maces, you can start dual wielding very early and get some very high DPS, especially with Onslaught. You can one shot your way through Act I & II if pick up two Veteran's, Relentless or Of Reckless Power Maces/Axes. Not easy to come by, but if you keep checking the shops they'll pop up eventually. Wouldn't recommend using Swords with Dual Wield until later into the game, since piercing damage will actually reduce that damage output early on for a dual wield build. Unless a Sabertooth drops or something just stick with Axes/Maces until the end of Normal and look for those affixes. The listed DPS will be less than half of your actual DPS.

[Kotli]

The DPS meter dont take into account any skills inculding the duel wield passives. You also get a 10% AS penalty for using 2 weapons.
So the displayed DPS is ((DPS weapon 1 + DPS weapon 2)/2)*.9
That is 2 100 DPS weapons will be on the character sheet as 90 DPS. But you have 12% double hit minium this put you DPS at 101. With all skill maxed you minium DPS is 157.5 just from double hit. Havent factored in the bleed +50% damage multi-target extra weapon buffs/debuffs etc. With these factored in you DPS from duel wielding is likely to be 3x that of single.