any updated dual wield build guide?

[Rukashu]

for 2 one-handed swords pls

[jotwebe]

Start with sword and light shield, put stat points in AGI and skill points in Swords, also Seize the Initiative. Prioritise getting actives. Maybe get Dash at some point. If you want, a crossbow in a alternative weapon set, maybe Take Aim, maybe Dexterity. Depends on how much you hate dealing with ranged enemies. Take Opportune Moment if you have energy problems. When you have AGI 18, take Dual Wield Training. Next level Flurry. Then Concentration. Now you have AGI 20, throw away your shield and get a start dual wielding swords.

Use Concentration, Fencer's Stance, and then use the sword skills. Flurry is niche since it reduces your Concentration stacks (if you have more than one) and is very bad against armor, but you can use it when you only have one stack of Concentration and/or Concentration is about to run out and/or you want to remove Elusiveness stacks from an enemy and/or you're facing low-armour enemies (all proselytes).

After that, build-wise, go for Armor Crusher, you'll need it for late game stuff. You might also want to pick up Deflect, maybe Elusiveness, maybe some Armored Combat stuff, maybe Dissipation from MM to help versus magic. Stat wise raise your 11s to 15, then max AGI.

Fill out the DW tree if you want more power against multiple enemies and/or like to play dangerously. Otherwise Athletics is very good, especially if you already picked up Dash. I'd recommend the Not This Time - Sudden Lunge path and the three capstone skills.

[Rukashu]

thanks friend i'll write that down

[Heau]

Are you playing with or without permadeath?

DW swords is probably the weakest DW because you only have 2 weaponry attack skills and one is onrush which is very deep in. Other trees have 2 weaponry skills early. Keeping distance not counting as an attack skill kinda messes up with the pace of concentration stacking and such.

But anyway, if you want to experience dual wielding before most of the game content is already dealt with, provided you don't play on permadeath, you can just start Cleaving strike/dual wield training. Use the best OH available to you (sword or not) until you get a second good sword. It's doable with permadeath too but its a squishy build so I wouldn't do it with swords as an extra handicap.

Besides that I guess I generally agree with Jotwebe going 3-5 DW only and going armor crusher instead later game. But permadeath or not, I'd grab elusiveness as soon as its unlocked. DW is naturally squishy and elusiveness is exceptional for just 1 extra point since about every build grabs dash anyway.

[Rukashu]

i see, im at lvl 8, no permadeath, i was following a guide but i realized it was outdated so i posted in here asking for help, im searching now for a mod to reset my points

[Man of God]

Dual-wield maces is ridiculously OP in the mid-game. It's near infinite stunlock provided you don't get too surrounded. Axes are also decent but I will agree that swords kind of suck in the mid to late game. The accuracy and less energy cost and fumble chance is nice in the early but useless later. You want something that rips enemies arms off and makes them drop their weapon or bashes their skulls in and keeps them dazed and stunned for mega damage.

I should update my duel wield guide. It's probably mine that you found which is outdated.

[Rukashu]

im at lvl 10 now, its ok for crit and ocunter, damage is ok too, i'll only change now if i found any mods that does that, but its pretty ok so far, 2 more lvl and i get the passive in warfare that does more damage vs armor enemies and stuff

[funkmonster7]

No need to restart, just dabble with a dagger offhand, sword only has 1 attack skill at the start but you can get Onrush by level 11 or 12. Get Double Lunge from dagger tree, and also the passive that reduces cooldown turn by 1 per dagger attack. This means whenever you attack with the dagger (Dual Wielding Training offhand hits count too), you'll cooldown Double Lunge faster.

DW swords is definitely kind of nerfed now, easily the weakest. But sword/dagger is a powerful combo, due to mobility from sword and dagger's skill spam, both weapons don't have high energy costs, both also play around with some bleed (but I didn't level up my sword bleed passives i.e. left side of the skill tree when I played my build).

You might get Gaping Wound as well, but up to you. I think my build had Gaping Wound in it, but you can go with only Deadly Strike if you like. Generally, my DW sword/dagger has 2 sword atk skills and 3 dagger atk skills, thus I can keep my Concentration stacks up as much as possible.

[jotwebe]

The nice thing about low energy cost weapons like 1h-swords is that they combo very well with Peak Condition from Athletics. Even more so in a Right on Target fencer build, but it should work decently with DW swords.

[Rabid]

Originally posted by jotwebe:

The nice thing about low energy cost weapons like 1h-swords is that they combo very well with Peak Condition from Athletics. Even more so in a Right on Target fencer build, but it should work decently with DW swords.

I have tried a lot of builds since the E3 patch but in spite of all the changes it still feels like dodge-based builds which invest a lot into agi and Athletics are still the best melee builds. Tier 4 enemies seem to be very effective vs armour builds even using heavy armour (which you have to specialise in due to the high energy cost of wearing it) or you can go for an agi build and have a nice big energy pool while still having plenty of defensive options

[Man of God]

Originally posted by Rabid:

Originally posted by jotwebe:

The nice thing about low energy cost weapons like 1h-swords is that they combo very well with Peak Condition from Athletics. Even more so in a Right on Target fencer build, but it should work decently with DW swords.

I have tried a lot of builds since the E3 patch but in spite of all the changes it still feels like dodge-based builds which invest a lot into agi and Athletics are still the best melee builds. Tier 4 enemies seem to be very effective vs armour builds even using heavy armour (which you have to specialise in due to the high energy cost of wearing it) or you can go for an agi build and have a nice big energy pool while still having plenty of defensive options

I generally found the opposite. Tier-4 builds absolutely KO you with a single hit if you are light armor and dodge focused. If you're an archer, not rocking an epic crossbow with armor piercing abilities, you're stuffed.

Generally I've had no problems whatsoever as a mage. Just roasting and melting enemies.

I've found with dual-wield. If I don't spec into Maces and just proc dazes and stuns non-stop, enemies will absolutely roll me. Swords are absolute garbage in this game imo. The tiny chance to block is not worth it, and their bleed chance is utterly useless on half the enemies in the game. You can't bleed deathstingers, undead, some bosses etc. Plus the bleed damage sucks. It needs a significant buff. Either buff it based on the attackers STR or something or based on the enemies VIT. It needs to scale a lot better than it does currently.

2H sword is for sure decent at just cleaving the heck out of grouped enemies. But dual-wield sword is just bad. Even 1H sword is better.

[funkmonster7]

1h swords can be DWed, but you'll only end up with 3 Concentration stacks, not 4. However, if you boost the base attack damage of swords (through Peak Training for example), it will still be just as powerful.

There is another good reason to DW two different weapons instead of the same type, and it is because of auto-attacks: if you rely a lot on auto-attacks, you lose 2 stance stacks for each attack, since you naturally swing twice per turn. This is the real downside for DW swords right now. DW daggers don't have this problem because they have around 4 weapon attack abilities, and they can spam attacks more quickly.

Swords don't have the best means to lower attack skills cooldowns, which means Athletic's Peak Training will be needed by DW sworders more than any other build. Since they use more auto-attacks than anyone else, means weakening the efficiency of their own Fencer Stance.

Thus, it is better to use sword/dagger now, since even with two attacks, you still only end up using 1 sword attack per turn, it makes Fencer Stance more viable at the very least. One other thing I noticed is Stance stacks don't account for the extra "other hand" attack from Dual Wielding Training; DWT allows you to make an extra attack from the other weapon when using an attack skill i.e. if you run a sword/dagger build and use Gaping Wound, your sword hand attacks at the end of Gaping Wound; similarly when you use Double Lunge, you attack with your dagger twice, but once with your sword at the end of it, for normal attack damage which is 75% x 100% at base efficiency. If you use Onrush with your sword on the offhand, your Onrush attack will be halved (due to hands efficiency at 50% base), but after making the attack you hit for a dagger attack at 75% hands efficiency. However, your Fencer Stance stack will just drop by one; meanwhile your Fencer Stance stack will not be affected if you used a dagger skill, despite making one extra sword attack at the end of the skill.

However, a normal attack will count as one sword swing.

I feel like to make swords more viable across the board, the bleed that they put on enemies should be changed to a different debuff with a different name, but effectively just the same as bleed. Something like "Slash Wound". This way, swords can still inflict "Slash Wound" on undead which don't bleed, but due to the application of "Slash Wound" the player still gets the buffs associated with the skill.

"Slash Wound" sounds dumb when you apply it on skeletons, but I'm only raising an example. I don't like the sword passives mostly because of its uselessness against skeletal undead.

[jotwebe]

Not super a fan of introducing an extra effect just for 1h swords, tbh.

I hope that at one point we'll be able to choose the type of contracts we take again, that'll make it viable to avoid undead contracts and help bleed/pierce damage heavy builds. With swords you can also leave off Gloat and Honed Edge and put those points into some utility tree instead - nowadays there's no CD reduction to loose out on.

Don't sleep on Deadly Trick with offhand dagger builds, btw, on my axe/dagger Jorgrim it has 105% stagger chance and 100% energy drain (with the axe hand, no less). It's also both an attack and a maneuver and as such benefits from Setup and Tactical Advantage. (Same as E4E). Using it on a build where I wanted to abuse this as much as possible, Sadly, the Tactics don't gel very well with DW since they lose stacks on every attack. That I'd like to see changed to something like at most one per turn. At least Thirst for Battle should combo nicely with the berserk stuff.

[Rabid]

Originally posted by jotwebe:

Don't sleep on Deadly Trick with offhand dagger builds, btw, on my axe/dagger Jorgrim it has 105% stagger chance and 100% energy drain (with the axe hand, no less). It's also both an attack and a maneuver and as such benefits from Setup and Tactical Advantage. (Same as E4E). Using it on a build where I wanted to abuse this as much as possible, Sadly, the Tactics don't gel very well with DW since they lose stacks on every attack. That I'd like to see changed to something like at most one per turn. At least Thirst for Battle should combo nicely with the berserk stuff.

That's interesting, how does this work exactly? Since it uses the same language as other weapon skills you'd expect the bonuses to only apply to the dagger attack.

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

I generally found the opposite. Tier-4 builds absolutely KO you with a single hit if you are light armor and dodge focused. If you're an archer, not rocking an epic crossbow with armor piercing abilities, you're stuffed.

Generally I've had no problems whatsoever as a mage. Just roasting and melting enemies.

I've found with dual-wield. If I don't spec into Maces and just proc dazes and stuns non-stop, enemies will absolutely roll me. Swords are absolute garbage in this game imo. The tiny chance to block is not worth it, and their bleed chance is utterly useless on half the enemies in the game. You can't bleed deathstingers, undead, some bosses etc. Plus the bleed damage sucks. It needs a significant buff. Either buff it based on the attackers STR or something or based on the enemies VIT. It needs to scale a lot better than it does currently.

I'm specifically talking about agi-based melee builds which use Athletics, i.e. Elusiveness. 8 turns of increased dodge and reduced damage taken is more than enough to get you through most difficult fights, at only a small skill investment. But if you're not using Elusiveness then medium armour is generally slightly better than light, and light armour only really becomes powerful once you hit Amity Brynn rep and unlock the duelist gear.

I do agree that bleeds are weak right now. I wish swords had some other gimmick, especially since bleeds are already a major component of the dagger, axe and 2h axe trees.

[jotwebe]

Originally posted by Rabid:

That's interesting, how does this work exactly? Since it uses the same language as other weapon skills you'd expect the bonuses to only apply to the dagger attack.

You roll against control resistance, switch places if successful, then attack (if successful) with the main hand (with bonus stagger, crit chance, and 100% energy drain). With DW training, your off hand attack comes after the switch but before the main hand, doesn't have any extra bonuses.

The nice thing with dual wielding a non-dagger main hand is that it'll typically do more damage than a dagger would - although maybe not more than a RoT dagger. And it's nice getting 100% energy from that damage.

[Heau]

Originally posted by jotwebe:

Originally posted by Rabid:

That's interesting, how does this work exactly? Since it uses the same language as other weapon skills you'd expect the bonuses to only apply to the dagger attack.

You roll against control resistance, switch places if successful, then attack (if successful) with the main hand (with bonus stagger, crit chance, and 100% energy drain). With DW training, your off hand attack comes after the switch but before the main hand, doesn't have any extra bonuses.

Last I checked, the skill increases your energy drain stat by 100% until the start of the next turn. If there are a few enemies it should give you the time to see whether the 100% ED is applied to the wrong hand or both hands when using it with DW training. Just need your char sheet open during the AI turn. I'm not validating his statement. Just saying it should be verifiable reasonably easily.