Dual Wield, useless, mostly.

I have to say one Point i havent considered is that you can use your offhand to gain certain stats a shield-user couldnt. Like when someone said Soultaker or Bloodthorn offhand just for the unique characterics.

To the guy who said that block means you take less damage. Its wrong. That Golem will still hit you for 5k when it hits and not for 3.75k. There is a big difference between block and actual dmg reduction unless u r fighting Mobs.

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RagnarokX wrote:

I have to say one Point i havent considered is that you can use your offhand to gain certain stats a shield-user couldnt. Like when someone said Soultaker or Bloodthorn offhand just for the unique characterics.

To the guy who said that block means you take less damage. Its wrong. That Golem will still hit you for 5k when it hits and not for 3.75k. There is a big difference between block and actual dmg reduction unless u r fighting Mobs.

ofc it's not damage reduction. it's damage avoidance.

in the ling run though, taking 75% of the hits comes out as 25% less damage received in total during a confrontation.

being damage avoidance has it's ups and downs, and with the system that GGG has for standarization of random numbers like block/evasion/acro/crits/etcm (i.e. not random, but it is 100% certain that you WILL block 25 out of 100 hits, no more no less (with a certain +- give or take ofc)( it comes out as one of the best (if not THE best) forms of survivability poe has to offer (even 7 endurance charges in the long run offer less EHP than 25% block which only costs 1 skill point for a dual wielder)

Actually he's right, block actually makes you take less damage overall. Five golems hit you simultaneously for 1k each=5k dmg. But if you've blocked a single attack = 4k dmg for the same period of time. Same for evasion.

Orly, half decent geared dual phys cleave 4L will get you to merc's doms doorstep without to much trouble. With good gear it is "the blender" and is a fantastic solo end game build. Cleave/phys/multi/ and ias, fire, LL, BM which ever you need. Using swords (axes arn't bad either) you can easily achieve 325% damage from passive nodes, more ias than you need and still have great defense. Do a youtube search of blender builds and I bet you can find some sub 10 second merc piety kills.

The way I see it is that block is damage per second mitigation, while Armour is damage mitigation.

In my opinion, Dual Strike needs to be set to 80% damage effectiveness and dual wielding given 10%-15% more attack damage. In such a case, dual-wielders would hopefully have more appreciation for dual-wield skills that aren't Dual Strike and Cleave (and they'll also stop hating on Cleave too... in theory, that is).

I would argue that the main benefit of Dual Wielding at the moment is not about the inherent damage of having two weapons. It's about being able to have two weapon's worth of offensive modifiers rather than one. That's why I chose to use Daggers as my DW weapon. Being able to get 80% innate crit chance on your weapon, by itself, is pretty powerful. Dual Wielding and using DS + Splash gives me about 50% more DPS on my dagger Ranger than Reave using 1h + Shield. Even without the innate mod, you can get Global Crit Multiplier, Weapon Elemental Damage, Life Leech from Physical Damage, etc. on weapons that you can't get on shields.


Also, using Reave leads to a much less aggressive and fast-paced play style than using Dual Strike + Splash. Since your Reave stacks reset if you do anything else, you end up cursing a group ahead of time, getting to the edge of the pack, and start Reaving until they are all dead. Whereas with DS, I Flicker into the middle of packs, chase down Rares (since the main hit does more damage) and can use other skills like Frenzy or curses or totems in the middle for utility. Using Reave feels more similar to my Freezing Pulse build than a melee build.


Honestly, I don't really think that they need to buff the damage on DW much, if it all. It could use a little more love perhaps in DW specific increased physical damage nodes - it seems silly to me for instance that there are 1h and DW nodes right next to each other that both give 10% increased physical damage, when one is far more restricitve - but I'm talking like maybe making the DW nodes 12% or something.

Where DW really suffers though, IMO, is survivability. The Devs have stated that DW is supposed to be halfway between 2H and 1H + Shield for both damage and survivability, but the 15% block you get from DW isn't enough, since you also lose a massive amount of Life/Armor/Evasion/ES from the lack of shield as well.

What I think would be nice is if there were more defensive DW nodes - particularly besides just raw block chance. Right now getting decent survivability as DW in Merciless is just as hard as if you are using a 2H, since the 15 to maybe 25% block (if you take a few passives) you get doesn't nearly compensate for the loss of so much HP and Armor / Evasion.

DW is boss, if you are playing the right build. For attacks, yes dual wield leaves something to want... but for on-hit effects (or on-crit) you can't beat DW, plus block... so nice.

If you aren't taking advantage of the innate attack speed and innate block, you're DWing it wrong (pun intended)

Dual Wielding's advantages lie less in the skills you can use and more in the huge efficiency and power of the nodes in the passive tree. The nodes are all quite close together.

My DW Scion doesn't actually use any melee for any AOE. It's all Spectral throw with life on hit, plus mana leech and LMP. All other melee skills are single hits. Dual strike is close to 5.2k damage( that was it says on my tool tip anyway). Heavy Strike+E charge on Melee Stun + Faster attack to aid in Endurance charges. I also use double strike to change things up. And for added Defense I use CWS-Molten Shell-Endurance Cry. I fell if I haven’t killed it already the mob must be pretty tough. My escape though is Whirling blades…if shit gets too out of hand….I fly away. I’ll then drop a shockwave totem and spam Spectral throw to heal up.

It’s working pretty good for me. I haven’t killed Dominus on Merciless yet…And that’s because I need more armor and health…I’m working on that. 

I think DW works pretty well.

In response to Dual Strike + Melee Splash:
Dual Strike uses both weapons. Therefore the damage effectiveness is 200%.
Melee Splash is 31% less aoe damage.
Do the math and for 2 gem slots you get an aoe attack with 138% effectiveness without using a Melee Physical or Melee on Full Life gem.

Basically it allows for a higher possible damage then Reave but is more dependent on links