Two-Handed Weapons Viable?

It's been suggested before, but I would like to see damage mitigation for armor akin to Acrobatics.

Acrobatics - 40% chance to dodge all damage, 50% less Ar/ES

Armor mitigation - 20-40% innate physical damage mitigation, 50% less ES/EV.
- Requires a 2-hander in main hand and Resolute Technique for it to work (so as to not be abused by spellcasters/ST/CoC builds)



It would give 2-handers some much needed defense, and make pure armor builds viable by knocking the total damage done to a level that can actually be mitigated by armor.

"

TheGrixxitt wrote:

It's been suggested before, but I would like to see damage mitigation for armor akin to Acrobatics.

Acrobatics - 40% chance to dodge all damage, 50% less Ar/ES

Armor mitigation - 20-40% innate physical damage mitigation, 50% less ES/EV.
- Requires a 2-hander in main hand and Resolute Technique for it to work (so as to not be abused by spellcasters/ST/CoC builds)



It would give 2-handers some much needed defense, and make pure armor builds viable by knocking the total damage done to a level that can actually be mitigated by armor.

no! i like running ar/ev. it works. sort of.

what's wrong with giving 2H weapons parry/block just like DW ?

The bottom line is that crit 1H (daggers and wands) or OP because they have > damage than 2H AND they get block.

buffing 2H is not the whole solution- the nerf hammer needs to come out also.

Putting passives/notables on the tree seems like the best solution for 2h block, or buffing existing 2h nodes with block.

It can't be worded as "+x% increased chance to block when wielding a two handed weapon", because that would buff Wings of Entropy, which is already effective enough in block builds. Instead it would have to be called "+x% chance to block when not dual wielding and not wearing a shield".

Put small amounts of this near the duelist/marauder/templar starts and I think we should be good. This would give staff wielders more nodes to get block from as well.

Some days ago i got Olmecs sanctum as a map from zana, got oneshotted ther with 8500 life,

with spellblock i would have had a 75% less chance to get oneshotted

Lathi Staff (or) Quarterstaff seems to have 1.25 AS
And 6.68% and 6.5% base crit chance seems amazing

A Global Crit Chance of 502% (if we decide to travel a long path) with 74 points

I assume this will provide insane CoC



Attack, Minion, Spell, Trap, Totem .... anything can be done with global crit chance and global crit multi

We can also make 2h specific crit chance and staff specific crit chance for melee builds

I drop it here as well.
2handers are not the problem, it's this:

"

The only problematic thing is this typical Marauder build:
RT+Twohander+Armor+Life+Blood Magic Gem

Every single component of this is kind of in a good state, but the combination is horrible.

"Armor+Life" are not sufficient defense.
You can stack that shit as much as you want, you'll encounter situations in which you get raped.
That's why people stack other defenses (like block/IC), and even a twohanded build could do. But most don't, they add more life and more armor, but that still doesn't help, so they get rect.
Imho, it's their own fault, but I wouldn't mind if armor was turned into a good line of defense if one really focusses on it (alone).

"RT + Blood Magic Gem" is not leading to an impressing offense.
I've never ever seen a high DpS Dagger build with a BM gem, and I've never seen one for a reason, because that gem kills a 40% more damage multiplier. Instead - even without Acuity - Dagger builds work on mana leech/regen.
But most twohanded builds refuse to. Why?

Same with RT. Even the slightest amount of crit (like: crit roll on weapon, 3 twohander crit passives next to templar and a crit multi affix on amulet) already lets you outDpS any RT build. If you start stacking it, it gets serious business.
It doesn't get to Dagger level (as the passives are only half as good and you're working with 7%, no 10% base crit), but it gets way better than before.

"Twohanded" actually does good base damage (about 1.5 of onehanders), but suffers from being a bit slow, so it's not too great when looked upon in a full gear/skilltree environment.
Flat damage on gear is not as good, both because the initial damage of a twohander is higher than on a onehander (so 7-15 damage has less % impact) and because you don't use the flat damage it as often (because of attackspeed).
Passives are awkward, too.
What you want: damage, attackspeed, crit, accuracy.
What you get: damage, stun treshold.

I've made a twohanded Marauder build that tries to break this in all aspects.
I use (Phase) Acro +Lightning Coil +Vaal Grace, because Armor doesn't cut it.
I travel all over the tree to Ranger/Shadow to get to 40-60% crit/600% multi.
I pay my Cyclone with Mana.

All the issues of twohanded builds solved, easily crushes endgame, almost never dies to anything.
Is it as good as a dagger build? No.
But it's better than 99% of twohanded RT Armor BM gem builds.

The question that needs to be answered is:
How to buff the RT+Twohander+Armor+Life+Blood Magic Gem build?

I would not buff BM gems. The user says "fuck mana", so it's his fault that he doesn't want another damage multiplier.

I would not buff RT. The user says "fuck accuracy", so he's got to pay a price. If the price is crit, and crit is too good, then don't take this keystone, ffs!

I would buff Armor. It's just not a very stable defense.

I would buff Twohanders. Give them more useful passives, and let flat bonus damage on gear count twice (it also counts twice for dualwielding, so why not?).

Well, there's a few issues with 2handers

-Block and spell block are very strong right now, strong enough to outweigh the benefit of the extra dps of 2hander.


-2handers commonly get paired with armor (due to the placement of passive nodes for 2handed damage and weapon types that can be 2handed), which is in a lousy state atm compared to... well, basically every other form of physical mitigation (and offers nothing against most spells, unlike spell block, phase acro, MoM, etc)


-crit generally doesn't sync well with most 2handers, besides staves. There's not many crit nodes on the left side of the tree in general, and 2handers besides staves don't have a great base chance to make up the lack of passives. Crit is where it's at right now for dps, and the lack of ability to build crit reasonably also means lacking a solid means of shocking/freezing/igniting enemies.


-not having an item (be it a shield, weapon, or quiver) in your off-hand takes away potential affix/implicit boosts. Shields offer a boatload of extra defense through block and their defense rating, on top of any affixes they have. Off-hand weapons generally offer some degree of implicit affix and some block chance + attack speed, and potentially can offer a bit more from the affixes. Quivers offer a small implicit and a bunch of affix slots. Two-handers don't have anything for that off-hand, so in addition to not getting any implicit affix or block chance or defense rating or anything from their off-hand, they're also missing out on a bunch of magic/rare/unique affixes that a DW/1h+shield or bow user would have in that slot.


-flat damage effects (from auras, heralds, global affixes) benefit 1handers more than 2handers, while there's nothing that benefits 2hander dps more than 1hander dps. %damage affixes affect their dps both equally, but flat damage gives much higher returns to the lower-base/higher-speed 1handers than it gives to 2handers.






Of course, there's supposed to be upsides and downsides to 2handers, but right now it tends to feel like the downsides are just too heavy compared to the upsides. Personally, I've got a few ideas for changes:


-Nerf crit damage for 1handers/bows. Make them deal 20% less crit damage (so a base of 120% instead of 150%); crit's in a pretty strong state right now, it could use the nerf anyway.

-Add a new unsocketed item type for 2handers to use in their off-hand, similar to quivers. Have them provide small implicit bonuses like quivers, things like increased attack speed, +max resist, %physical resist... things to slightly offset one 2hander weakness of your choice, while giving them another slot to get affixes from (helping them pump up their res's or life or attributes or whatever else, same kinda stuff a quiver's affixes offer to a bow-user).

-add in some means of reasonably applying elemental status effects without crit (preferably via passives, not via a unique item... that'd just create unnecessary gating). Most 2hander weapons aren't great with crit, but that also nearly eliminates their ability to shock/freeze/ignite. It'd be nice if there was something that would enable ONLY non-crit builds to get those effects on attacks, maybe add in a notable (or 3) after Resolute Technique (similar to Mortal Conviction or Infused Shield) that allows all attacks an increased chance to ignite/freeze/shock, with the strength of the status effect being based on the respective fire/cold/lightning damage PLUS a percentage of the physical damage of an attack (so even a purely physical attack could apply status effects and with a decent strength).