Dual wield wands and melee weapons

First off, I would like to say that this discussion is based off my wand witch. I intended to make a character where all my dps would be based off of wands, not spells. When I first made this build, I had the idea of dual wielding wand and dagger. The reason I would use a dagger is because I intended to use flicker strike, and to boost the crit chance on wand.

I immediately realized that you cannot equip wands with any other 1-handed weapon. Why is this? Is there much of a difference between equipping a wand and dagger vs sword and dagger?

Would this cause an imbalance? It might, but witches can already wield two daggers to have insane critical damage. Allowing both ranged and melee weapons at once would increase the variety of possible weapon combinations, and actually make wands viable as a source of dps.

Is GGG planning on implementing this feature? If not, why?

I guess right now I'll have to rely on elemental hit and frenzy for damage. I'll let you know if this current build is viable once I reach merciless.

I think it has something to do with the fact that one is a ranged weapon and the other is a melee one.
But probably GGG can give you a better answer.

With there being a relatively good amount of freedom in terms of character builds, I would love to see a wand/dagger combo. However, as awesome as it would be.. I have no idea how difficult that would be to program.

Also, how would the attacks work? Would you simply use the wand attack unless you were in melee range of an enemy? If so, what would be a suitable melee radius? Should you shoot first with the wand and then run up to the enemy to melee? I think these are where the issues would be.

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FaceLicker wrote:

With there being a relatively good amount of freedom in terms of character builds, I would love to see a wand/dagger combo. However, as awesome as it would be.. I have no idea how difficult that would be to program.

Also, how would the attacks work? Would you simply use the wand attack unless you were in melee range of an enemy? If so, what would be a suitable melee radius? Should you shoot first with the wand and then run up to the enemy to melee? I think these are where the issues would be.

If I remember correctly, Torchlight had something like this. If you equipped a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other, you would only use the pistol at range and the sword if you are within melee. I don't know if it would be harder for PoE, since the skill gem system is way more complex then anything torchlight had. It would be neat if GGG was able to implement this but if its impossible due to the current system then I understand.

They'd need to code specific behavior for mixed range/melee combos so the melee attack only activates when you are actually at melee range.

That being said, that doesn't sound like an insurmountable problem or anything. It might be interesting to see.

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DoctorZuber wrote:

They'd need to code specific behavior for mixed range/melee combos so the melee attack only activates when you are actually at melee range.

That being said, that doesn't sound like an insurmountable problem or anything. It might be interesting to see.

Or, just allow Left Hand and Right Hand to be mappable. This goes beyond wands and daggers, but any dual wielding weapon. Would really like to see this implemented.

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MeltingPoint wrote:

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DoctorZuber wrote:

They'd need to code specific behavior for mixed range/melee combos so the melee attack only activates when you are actually at melee range.

That being said, that doesn't sound like an insurmountable problem or anything. It might be interesting to see.

Or, just allow Left Hand and Right Hand to be mappable. This goes beyond wands and daggers, but any dual wielding weapon. Would really like to see this implemented.

You make it sound like this is easier to implement, but it really all boils down to how weapon damage (and how your attack skill) is actually implemented in conjunction with dual wielding.

For example, are your left and right attacks truly independent? In some games, instead of taking the time to program independent attacks with different weapons, they just alternate which "default" attack is done to the enemy, average the attack speeds of your weapons, add perhaps a little speed bonus to make up for the hackjob, and call it good. I haven't played a DW character on PoE, but if they do THAT then it could be quite hard to implement either of these ideas.

If attack swings and attack times are truly independent (a good way to test it is see if equipping one weapon with a very fast swing, say 1 second, and another with a very slow swing, say 2 seconds and see if every few attacks both swing at the same time and the one hand keeps attacking quickly while the other keeps attacking slowly) than this probably would be easier to implement because they would already have some of the work done and it would be a matter of recoding how they implement "attack" as a skill to allow seperate "attack" skills for each weapon.

Since they seem to be able to release skill gems fairly quickly, I assume creating a second basic attack skill for a second weapon wouldn't be too difficult, but it relies on how weapon attacks are coded in-game.

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Kraide wrote:

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MeltingPoint wrote:

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DoctorZuber wrote:

They'd need to code specific behavior for mixed range/melee combos so the melee attack only activates when you are actually at melee range.

That being said, that doesn't sound like an insurmountable problem or anything. It might be interesting to see.

Or, just allow Left Hand and Right Hand to be mappable. This goes beyond wands and daggers, but any dual wielding weapon. Would really like to see this implemented.

You make it sound like this is easier to implement, but it really all boils down to how weapon damage (and how your attack skill) is actually implemented in conjunction with dual wielding.

And you try to make it sound impossible, or at least very difficult. I'm sure if the devs choose to they can figure out a simple way to handle it. And I think it does have some potential to be a nice feature.

Just boils down to whether or not they think it's a good idea or not.

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Kraide wrote:

You make it sound like this is easier to implement, but it really all boils down to how weapon damage (and how your attack skill) is actually implemented in conjunction with dual wielding.

Whether or not it is 'harder' to program is probably of secondary concern to 'will it make the game better.' Which it may or may not. Personally I would use it.

Of the two methods mentioned, one arbitrarily chooses a skill based on a distance, that distance is not easily measured by the player. The other gives full control to the player, in a simple and straight forward manner.

The game obviously treats the hands as two separate entities, the stats say so (main/off hand), the skills say so (duel wield heavy strike applies each weapon individually), the animation says so, the only thing missing is the ability to control the offhand.

While this will not likely be a priority for GGG, I hope its something they consider. Skyrim being what it is, it's not really a stretch of the imagination to believe that people may want to control both hands.