I really love dual wield, I like hitting fast more than I do hard but in the current state of the game, 2handers outshine dual wield in raw damage in every way shape or form.

A quick fix would be to make any class with "flurry" type ability (multiple auto attacks) have a chance to dual wield on each of those attacks. That should bring it in line with 2handers for flurry classes (War, Ranger) but monk, rogue, and bard would all need some different loving.

I see two solutions for the non flurries, a massive increase in chance to dual wield or give each of those classes a flurry ability. Monk could tie it to a cheetah strike and reduce it's cd, rogue could tie it to hyper strike, and bard chant of battle (oh gawd please, would make bard early levels tolerable).

The real winners in a buff to DW would be rogue, monk, and bard since these are dual wield specific classes. I might be biased because I play a lot of bard but monk and rogue could certainly use the love imo.

Edit: Do it for map who was brave enough to use his legendary for a 1hander!

I could simply make 1h weapons more powerful with skills on a global. And 2H would be king of auto attack builds. This might be a gud idea.

I still think this will restrict certain classes from being required to play one or the other (flurries would still use 2handers). Your change would help rogue and monk though, which is where it is most needed. I'll just be sad I won't be dual wielding on my ranger.

The rogue gains a +100 poison damage buff from the 20pt Widow Strike talent. It's a nice incentive to dual wield but I'm concerned about scaling. Are you saying a +100 elemental damage perk like that is completely eclipsed by elite 2h weapon auto attacks? If so, should that perk deal bonus percent damage instead of flat?

Edit: I'd probably take the talent either way because of the boost to Widow Strike DoT damage.

I don't know if the new changes went into effect yet but I did some comparison testing, I did some regular swarm chaining in Nightmare Arcturin

Dainyo Giri / Bone Razor: 2.1k
Claw of Darafur x2: 2.3k
Ragestriker / Bloodletter Lancet: 2.3k


Curse of Ghalentus: 3.9k
Curse of Ghalentus again: 4.1k
Serrated Blade of War: 4.2k
Granite Face Smasher: 3.8k
Runestone Maul: 4.0k

So yeah. Are the new changes live? I'll run the tests again if they weren't here.

100 poison damage on a rogue with like 50% haste - ~1.5 attack speed, ~40% chance to dual wield ~40% to double attack ~75 skill haste puts the 100 poison damage at a free 300 dps or so. Useful, but not going to close the gap between dual wield and 2handers.

Your tests aren't very fair if you're using equipment and talents designed for a 2H build. A 1H build would emphasize +elemental damage and physical damage. And what class were you? SKs heavily skew in favor of 2H damage because of gasping frenzy.

With dual wield in general I think it will always have problematic scaling from how the dual wield skill mimics the EQ system. Why not make dual wielding have a set chance and remove the scaling DW skill from the game?

I don't have the exact numbers on how DW chance scales, but at early levels you have a very low chance to trigger your offhand hit making DW worthless at the start. That chance gets higher as your skill goes up through leveling. I anticipate a system like that would make balancing DW vs 2H impossible because you would have to pick a single point on the curve when determining the damage to delay ratios of the weapons. All levels outside that point on the curve would be skewed.

I like your idea Maelfyn of DW granting an inherent bonus to skill haste. I think it would a good way to distinguish auto attackers vs. global-cooldown classes.

This was my ranger. Its a flurry class so naturally favors 2handers even though one of the lvl20 bonuses I have is increase dual wield chance (spirit of wolf, 12%). All gear was the same in these tests, mostly defensive gear because if you gear for damage, you're not likely going to have the status reductions to survive. Besides, you would need A LOT of +damage to close that large of a gap.

Wheres Mukkel right about now. He should put down his legendary for a minute and do some dps tests for comparison as well.

Edit: Part of the reason monk and rogue are so bad is because they don't flurry so their auto attack damage is garbage and their skill damage isn't near high enough to compensate (rogue maybe cause backstab is nuts but I played a monk to a pretty high level). Auto attacks are the primary damage for the melee classes that do decent damage.

Warriors are a flurry class too! Don't worry though, I'm leveling up something to test this more right now.

I'm guessing you're Terraith.

Nah that's my rogue.

This is about the only game ever where my constant complaining actually gets recognized on the patch notes. He's increasing dual wield chance on top of increasing skill damage for dual wielding. Now the question is when is this patch going to go live.

He's also nerfing monster cast time (yayyyyyy)

Haha yeah. Forums aren't just a place to vent. I love how much activity and interaction we have here.

Maelfyn, your support of the game convinced me to back your project. I don't know how you find the time to do it but you're doing an awesome job.

Thanks bro. I'm trying to do this full-time. Imagine my response times then!

Now that the changes are live, I redid the tests. My dual wield chance went from ~50% to ~72%

Claw of Darafur x2: 3.2k
Claw of Darafur x2: 2.7k
Ragestriker / Bloodletter Lancet: 2.8k
Ragestriker / Bloodletter Lancet: 3.1k

A noticeable buff, but I think rangers and warrior are still all going to be using 2handers. I might not have the best 1handers available, I'm not super impressed with any of these like I am my 2hander. We need more people to do these tests!

I'll give it some time to marinate. We'll see how the players respond over time. I want both to be viable, but it's pretty tricky to get it right because there are so many moving parts. Like are you truly gearing for 1H, etc? 1H builds would favor skill haste, +to hit damage, and so on.

For non flurry classes I imagine they are very close. Need a monk to test it though.

In any case I think it should at the very least be viable. That's the goal at least. I'm not aiming for absolutely parity here. Just viability. There's too much variety in this game to aim for parity.