What's the point of dual wielding?

[FlameWar]

Well, pretty much the title. I tried dual wielding either pistols or 1h melee weapons, and it seems like it's mostly pointless.
You get twice the attacks/shoots, but since the AP are also added together, you pay exactly as much as just getting a single 1 hand wepaon and shooting/striking twice for half the AP cost each. Same with ammo, where you start with twice the ammo since each pistol has it's own magazine, but you also pay for reloading each, so not much difference there.

Am I missing something or is the choice basically to bring a 2 hand weapon or just bring both a pistol and a 1 hand melee weapon? (or just leave the second hand free )

Edit:
First, to clarify sicne peopel seem to misread this a lot: I am NOT talkind about 2 hand vs 1 hand weapons. I am specificaly tlakign about DUAL wielding as it's normaly understood, so 2 pistols OR 2 melee wepaons. NOT 2 hand wepaons or mixing a pistol and melee.

Second to sum up the results so far:
Benefits that were found so far with dual wield compared to mixing rnaged and melee 1-hands are that you can mix damage types to pick and choose depending on enemy resists, and that you can have more ammunition/stabiltiy 'pre-loaded' so to speak for wepaons that use ammo.
Oh, and if you use the Heroci skil lfor multipel attacks/shoots, it is obviously better to have either a 2 hand wepaon or dual wield either rnaged or melee, as that gives you maximum result fro mthat skill.

[yippeecayyeah]

TL;DR:

Two handers, range or melee, are a more inefficient use of AP. Dual wield of all melee or all ranged a waste of efficiency and utility too.

I still dual wield but with one ranged and one melee equipped on all gangers but Heavy and Dead Eye and I have a pistol and a 1h melee in their bag for conditional use.

Thingy That is the Reason I Wrote a TL;DR, walloftext | on

I posted day one that dual wielding was the way to go.

Now I don't do it anymore and think it is purely conditional and this is why:

Melee:
There is no damage or AP advantage to dual wielding.

There is no incentive to wield two handed either.

Two Handed Weapons

Two handed is not an efficient use of your AP.

There are some abilities. The multi-hit abilities. That could stand to benefit from going two handed.

Three times a whole bunch is greater than three times half of a whole bunch but the AP for the two handed version of these abilities is double the AP of the single handed attack.

I use the heroic multi-hit ability on my gang leader. I get multiple kills per game no problem.

I got ten kills in my last pit match. 4 were from my gang leader tossing out a heroic multi-hit then finishing off with single shots.

Most often then I would have some spare AP left over to start softening up another opponent.

Single wielding a weapon is fine for me.

Doubtful if going two handed due to the lack of AP efficiency even with the ability to take down 200 HP with one heroic flurry strike.

Furthermore with so many "grab and carry" mission objectives using a 2 handed weapon will disarm you if you use the carry ability.

I don't put much faith in a weapon that makes me disarm myself in order to get victory conditions in match.

Dual Wielding

There is one case where I think that dual wielding in melee may pay off and that would be purely conditional and not to maximize AP economy and utility to kill.

That is when you either want two different secondary weapon effects without having to go into your inventory.

If you felt the situation required some multiple combination of Stun, Bleed or elevated Crit then dual wielding could sketchily and conditionally be justified.

I can't fathom a reason or use for this at the moment unless there are state effects I haven't seen.

Being able to stun and bleed or have high crit and bleed or any of those combinations without swapping into inventory does not seem wise at this time.

I have one gang at the highest difficulty and outfitted with Tier 5 weapons. I doubt if there are any spooky or hidden state effects worth putting both on rather than stacking by itself by using single weapon attack.

I don't think that there is any reason not to maximize AP economy and utility.

The only true and viable reason I think you would want to dual wield melee is for a 2 attack Ambush ability. Even that is too conditional for my tastes.

Ranged Attack

Two Handed

I minimize the number of gangers who carry two handed range weapons for the same reason I never carry two handed melee weapons.

If the gang member picks up an objective item they are disarmed.

Also in pit missions I nearly rage quit and started filing bug reports the first time I got hit with the "Shock Collar" debuff. I kept my cool and played through the match and took my beating.

On exiting the match I noticed the shooting = shock collar debuff rule.

Shock collar stuns you and does 50 to 70 points of damage if you fire a ranged attack or toss a grenade. AI does this repeatedly in some matches. Makes for easier kills. They do more damage to themselves than the grenades do to your gangers.

I equip my Dead Eye with an Autorifle from the hideout because if I am going to need long range it will be in the first turn or two and that saves wasting AP to go into my bag.

Autorifle because I feel it is the most economic two handed range weapon for the class. More actions between reloads.

I keep a single handed melee weapon and a pistol in their bag so I have a choice of ranged or melee if they have to pick up an objective or in case I go into a Pit Fight with Shock Collars.

I do the same with Heavies. I prefer the Autocannon. Their double shot or their heroic triple shot can often kill with one action. I keep a one hander and a pistol in their bags for the same reason as Dead Eyes.

In melee you should have it set up to go into your bag for a melee weapon instead of having strike disabled or having to go open handed which has a nice stun chance and slick animation but no real punch to it like an axe or a spud-jack.

Dual Wield

I can find absolutely no reason to dual wield ranged.

The rules are more restrictive than melee. You can mix weapon types in melee so even the secondary ability/state effect argument is gone for dual wielding ranged.

The only benefit for dual wielding ranged would be for a double strike overwatch of one handed ranged weapons.

There are some skills that favor one handed but I don't feel they are strong enough to support going into ranged dual wield.

Furthermore you can pick up the single hand range passive buffs AND have a single handed melee weapon and have the buffs and have the utility of not needing to spend AP to disengage or to go into your bag if OP4 gets you into melee. Also the economy to squeeze off as many attacks as possible if you had to spend AP to jump or to operate zip lines, doors, or elevators.

How Do I Set Up My Gang?

Weapon Choices:

I favor autorifles, autopistols, axes and a stun maul for the boss if I can get one from an OP4 ganger.

Auto guns for large magazines and multiple shots. Single shot weapons get resisted enough to make me not carry them. Small magazines like Las weapons and funky secondary mechanics like the three ways you can burn down a plasma weapon to make you either reload it or fix it makes me avoid them too.

I primarily use axes because - melee evasion and + melee crit is very easy to build skills for. Axes give you 15% crit above other weapons that you don't have to make room for in your build.

Stun maul for the 90% stun chance and because they are hard to find.

Role Choices:

Boss:
Best single handed melee weapon in the Gang in right hand and second best pistol in the left.

This is mainly because I am Escher. Were I Goliath I would do the same. Orlock and I would swap range to right hand.

If I don't have enough Autopistols to go around I will give the boss a Laspistol. Of all of my gang I am less likely to shoot with my leader because of the heroic melee flurry strike ability.

Hand choice is based on the fact that I always pick up objective items with the default left hand choice.

Mechanic:
Rivet gun on the machine arm. Second best melee weapon in right hand.

If I ever get a machine arm attachment that is better than the equivalent tier axe and is a melee weapon I would swap to a pistol in the right.

Mechanics can only pick up one item and that is in their right arm. So I have mine geared for range on the left arm because I haven't found a machine arm attachment that I like better than the rivet gun.

Saboteur:
Autopistol left hand. Axe in the right.

Flamers are charming but they have a magazine of three and the shortest range in the game and they can be fully resisted as they only have one shot.

Autopistols have large magazines and multi-shots. Seldom are they all resisted. Some damage is bound to get through.

I also pick up home made grenade ASAP because if a target is in range grenades don't roll to hit.

Dead Eye:
Autorifle to start the game unless it is a pit fight with shock collars.

Autopistol and an axe in their bag for conditional use.

Heavy:
Autocannon to start the game unless it is a pit fight with shock collars.

Autopistol and an axe in their bag for conditional use.

Combat Meds:

An adrenaline shot to the boss if I have one. Sometimes I need to scoop up a ganger who got over extended and away from the pack.

A med kit or other healing item one per ganger.

My Mechanic takes build med station as first skill. I drop this by extraction points at the start of the game if possible.

A full battle or until they are stunned buff like Wild Snake to the boss for melee buffs.

A single use of a -XX% to attack action potion of the greatest strength or tier for my boss.

The Saboteur buff skill is one of my early picks too.

The +15 AP aura or the +100% AP to use ranged ability aura on my heavy.

Turn one activate the Saboteur and buff gang before they split up.

Heavy aura choice made and on on first turn.

Also on turn one take the full battle melee buff potion for the Boss.

Before the Boss attacks their first target in melee have them take their -XX% to attack action potion. The Heroic triple strike at a discount and the 7 AP single handed melee strike can kill two enemies in the first turn if fully buffed out, you get enough crits, and the OP4 are nice enough to get within range.

walloftext | off

[Ciecieji]

There's a couple of legitimate reasons to dual wield.

Let's start with melee. There's two cases where dual wielding is better than using the two hander, first if you want to stack different types of debuffs. For example hitting someone with a crowbar (whatever they are calling it) and a chain sword lets you cut them for bleed and stun them, if you run out of charges in your chainsword you can keep wailing on them with the bar that has no ammo. Quality.

An other case that dual wielding is very nice is if you want to stack initiative buffs. I think the sword gives you a small initiative bonus, and two swords doubles it up.

Dual wielding in melee also lets you drop one for your friends if you find yourself needing an extra melee weapon. In practice this happened to me only a handful of times but can be useful in a pinch.

As mentioned by some others melee dual wieldingalso lets you make two attack rolls, splitting the rolls tends to be better IMO for two reasons; more chance to proc any skills you have that require a crit/graze/miss and because it moderates damage, which is typically in your favor due to the small hp pools. This is actually bracketed on when it's better, (i.e. if you can one shot an enemy with a two hander, but not with a crit/normal hit combo with your dual wield your two hander is better) but in general your down side skew with fewer rolls will more then offset your upside skew (unless you got crazy crit chance, then go with two handed you monster).


IMO dual wielding melee is typically equal to or better then single wielding a two handed weapon if the choice is between weapons of equal rank.

As far as dual wielding pistols goes, I think it's trash. The two handed guns are almost always better then two pistols. Yes, there are some pistols that can proc status effects, but why do that when you can kill everything with the autogun at almost twice the range? Plasma is horrible though, so if your only two handed gun is a plasgun you might go dual wield.

That being said, I think there's a number of house Escher skills that do give you substantial bonuses when dual wielding pistols. I want my shooters to use the range, otherwise I'd roll melee chars, so I can't see myself building one as a dual wield pistol user, but I think that there are some decent builds that rely on the Escher exclusive skills.

For the other houses I'd think about mixing a melee weapon and a pistol before going dual wield pistols. The biggest problem with that particular combo is that the stats and skills usually go for either melee or ranged so it can be kind of tough using the one your not so good at, still nothing like having 15 feet of range when you run out of movement points before you could show your rivals your new power sword.

The other thing I should mention is that carrying is a big thing in this game, so using a one handed weapon lets you scoot off with some loot, although I usually find myself killing all the enemies (cause they are so dumb) and then picking up two loots with all my guys on the last turn, however I think if you went for (i.e. speced carry/utility/survival) a carry build you'd want the one handed weapons more then the two handed ones (even ranged)

[TheChiv]

truthfully it depends on your style and what you get from drops, crates, and the shop. Yes 2h range has better damage and range, however THERE IS NO BOLT GUN. 1h has bolt pistol, which if you spec your deadeye right at about rank 7 you can have a dead eye with a 50%+ crit hit chance using 2x boltpistols thus your odds of getting a crit per 30 ap are good.

Sure you can get 6 crits with a rank 5 autogun for 210, but your odds of that happening a pretty crap.

It is also important to point out you can also mix and match your damage types to be more effective against armor like energy or piercing protection.

Plasma however is just garbage for 1h 2h it has some nice spike potential of 123 per 30, but the lower crit rate is a factor you have to consider.

For 1h vs 2h melee weapons you have to look at the effects of the weapons. 2x chainswords can stack 2 of bleed and if you can get 2x 30ap attacks that 4x stacks, though I have noticed a trend of stacks capping at 3x for the most part and have not tested the bleeds to much as ORLOCK HATES MELEE

[yippeecayyeah]

I don't disagree with the two gentleman above but I see things a little different for my style.

Then again my style is my style and your style is your own.

To me, mixing state effects with dual wield melee can be a "thing" but to be honest my favorite melee weapon secondary effect is the base 25% to crit on an axe. There are skills you can build that to easily and throw some nice damage even with lower tiered weapons early in the game.

I started a new game and I think I have played in 4 operations. Started noticing a lot of red numbers flying around in melee once skills started coming after the first match.

That and seeing a Dead Eye or a Heavy pull an axe out of their pocket and throw up red numbers thrills me like nothing else.

They are my fire support and conditional melee gangers at best but with an axe can throw around red damage numbers too.

To be honest the other two notable effects are bleed and stun.

Stun is great for potentially taking an attack away from an opponent.

Better still if you play Escher, hit them in melee twice, then on their turn they clear stun and disengage and stand there and blink at you and run off into a corner an kneel ending their turn fresh outta AP.

As fun as that is to see, I would much rather have them not survive to get another turn and with a single handed axe that is a rather common result.

Also with bleed the common way to get that is a chainsword. I refuse to play with a chainsword that needs batteries faster and more often than the Milwaukee impact driver in the garage.

Once again it is also fun to see an OP4 disengage to run off and squat in a corner and bleed out but again I prefer an axe so they don't get another turn at all.

The only advantage for two handed ranged weapons is up to 15 M more range for field of fire and overwatch.

It runs into the same economy of AP issues as a two handed melee weapon.

The same "disarm yourself" issues when using the Carry action.

That said I still use a Dead Eye with an autorifle and a Heavy with an autocannon but they are primarily ranged support for the first two turns and objective item mules for the last part of the game with a pistol and a 1h melee weapon in their backpack for conditional use.

On this new gang start my first 4 ops are all "perfect" games where I dropped all 10 OP4 from the other two teams and didn't lose anyone in mine. This is on Hard difficulty. My last run was on the hardest difficulty and I am stepping down from the top diff towards easy to see how the levels of difficulty change.

I am almost sure that any changes in difficulty are only two things:

The tier of the weapon the OP4 carries and the skills they have acquired through being a higher rated ganger with more XP.

To be quite honest top difficulty is lethal only during your first match because of your tier 1 and tier 2 weapons versus a gang with tier 4 and tier 5 weapons.

The AI in top difficulty actually plays worse than they do on Easy mode. The more skills the OP4 ganger has, especially buffs, the more bad decisions that they have the potential to make.

In easy mode they have a buff or an aura or two or some consumables to waste their AP on but they are more prone to attacking and doing damage. I have lost more gangers in my first few days of play on easy mode than I have on any difficulty. That's because I was learning how the game works and honestly Easy difficulty OP4 throw a higher percentage of attacks than any other difficulty because they don't have a lot of buffs to distract themselves with.

One of the reasons the top difficulty is to an extent easier is because the OP4 gangers get caught up in cycles where disengaging from melee, running half way across the map and buffing their buddy twice with the same ranged buff skill is higher priority to them then swinging that wrench upside your head and tending to business.

[FlameWar]

Originally posted by Final Cipher:

You get 'exhaustion' from doing too many attacks in one round, which can increase the cost of further attacks. Even putting skills aside, dealing the same damage in fewer attacks can save AP on exhaustion

Hm, are oyu sure abotu that? because either there's a bug for me for that, or it requires more attacks than a fighter can normaly do per round. i never run into exhaustions problems when i run through the full 5 attcks (or 4 with double strike) with a melee 1-hander.

[kongol36]

also if you read the tool tips you can switch hands when attacking or use both hands or usee left or right... your to used to playing fortnite

[Muscarine]

Originally posted by FlameWar:

Originally posted by Final Cipher:

You get 'exhaustion' from doing too many attacks in one round, which can increase the cost of further attacks. Even putting skills aside, dealing the same damage in fewer attacks can save AP on exhaustion

Hm, are oyu sure abotu that? because either there's a bug for me for that, or it requires more attacks than a fighter can normaly do per round. i never run into exhaustions problems when i run through the full 5 attcks (or 4 with double strike) with a melee 1-hander.

Nah, Exhaustion is simple debuff applied after using Entrenchment preventing the unit to use it twice a turn

They're confusing that with attacking characters using passives such as Fearsome Reputation or attacking with characters under debuffs such as Warcry : Destabilize

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by FlameWar:

Originally posted by Final Cipher:

You get 'exhaustion' from doing too many attacks in one round, which can increase the cost of further attacks. Even putting skills aside, dealing the same damage in fewer attacks can save AP on exhaustion

Hm, are oyu sure abotu that? because either there's a bug for me for that, or it requires more attacks than a fighter can normaly do per round. i never run into exhaustions problems when i run through the full 5 attcks (or 4 with double strike) with a melee 1-hander.

"Exhaustion" is from the "Entrenchment" skill(the one that cost MP and gives you 20 AP). It is a temporary debuff that denies you to use Entrenchment again in the same turn, and it goes away as soon as you press "end turn" on the character.


As for the whole dual wield vs single wield 1-handed weapons, it is about options.
As a Deadeye, dual wielding pistols(of any kind) gives Trickshot(40 AP) 2 attacks of both. Obviously, I could just use the 1-handed version(20 AP) and use it twice, but then I would only have that weapon type of attack.
Since enemies can have stronger or weaker types of armor, your Auto pistol might be very powerful against some enemies, but really weak against others(especially if they have that passive that gives the enemy more Hit resistance for each attack against them, and combine that with high Piercing Armor). On the other hand(litterally), you have a Laspistol, which only fires once per shot and deals energy damage.
And since you can choose to use both weapon, or only the left, or only the right, it gives you more tactical options.
In addition, certain skills trigger "on next attack", usually AP discounts. It then makes sense to do as powerful an attack as cheap as possible.

The downside to dual wield is that you have overall less carrying capacity. If you want to carry 2 barrels(or what ever), you can only ever have 5 items in your inventory. Otherwise there is no room for your 2 weapons when you pick up the barrel. A single 1 handed weapon can carry 2 barrels and up to 6 loot.


As for 2-handed weapons. Yes, they are more powerful per hit, but you are also spending more AP per shot. So if you want to spend AP on other things(like things in the environment or consumables, buffs etc.), you quickly feel constrained in how often you can get a shot off.

Another thing, which is a more tactical one, is overwatch range(obviously only pertains to ranged weapons).
Having different ranges of overwatch can be highly beneficial. Long range overwatch can hinder enemy movements, sure. But it might also activate on an enemy who is nowhere near to being a threat to you, who was going to engage another enemy gang, or might have very high evasion/hit resistance, and so makes the shot overall less effective.
Shorter range Overwatch only triggers, well, when enemies are close. This narrows it down who triggers it, giving you a chance to make it activate on the intended target.

In my current Gang, the Deadeye can easily get a dual wield overwatch down to 3 AP. If I wanted to invest in more passives, it could even be free.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by Muscarine:

Originally posted by FlameWar:

Hm, are oyu sure abotu that? because either there's a bug for me for that, or it requires more attacks than a fighter can normaly do per round. i never run into exhaustions problems when i run through the full 5 attcks (or 4 with double strike) with a melee 1-hander.

Nah, Exhaustion is simple debuff applied after using Entrenchment preventing the unit to use it twice a turn

They're confusing that with attacking characters using passives such as Fearsome Reputation or attacking with characters under debuffs such as Warcry : Destabilize

Dang, took too long to type all my stuff. :P

[Llama]

Originally posted by TheChiv:

truthfully it depends on your style and what you get from drops, crates, and the shop. Yes 2h range has better damage and range, however THERE IS NO BOLT GUN. 1h has bolt pistol, which if you spec your deadeye right at about rank 7 you can have a dead eye with a 50%+ crit hit chance using 2x boltpistols thus your odds of getting a crit per 30 ap are good

If you play the campaign, mission 4, one of your Deadeyes definitely gets an actual Boltgun. So it exists in game... somewhere.

[TheChiv]

Originally posted by Llama:

Originally posted by TheChiv:

truthfully it depends on your style and what you get from drops, crates, and the shop. Yes 2h range has better damage and range, however THERE IS NO BOLT GUN. 1h has bolt pistol, which if you spec your deadeye right at about rank 7 you can have a dead eye with a 50%+ crit hit chance using 2x boltpistols thus your odds of getting a crit per 30 ap are good

If you play the campaign, mission 4, one of your Deadeyes definitely gets an actual Boltgun. So it exists in game... somewhere.

If I ever find it I will use it on one of my deadeyes, however. Being able to consistently get a 120 damage spike ever 30 is a hella lot better then potentially getting 150+ every 60ap