Stat Sticking and Dual Wield improvements

Kind of want to put my thoughts down on dual wielding in path of exile and how it basically is non existent.

Stat Sticks

We need to bring this concept back. But also improve on it because it was a very fun mechanic for melee back in the day and that is what melee needs... fun!

For those that don't know, you could at one point wield a weapon that was a different class from what your main weapon was but gain it's global stats on it as well as the dual wield bonus. A basic example is also from the wiki but it works. Using a mace/axe to use earthquake in your main hand, but wielding a sword in your off hand like Prismatic Eclipse. Earthquake can't use the sword so it doesn't but you can gain the attack speed, phys damage, mana leech, or weapon range from the unique. You could also use Whirling blades as a movement skill which normally you could never do as an EQ build.

Varunastra Effect

To further improve this we need to add one more mechanic that I'm going to call the Varunastra Effect. It's currently a unique sword that nobody uses that allows you to allocate any one handed weapon node on the tree and benefit from it. This should apply to dual wielding but in a smaller scale. You should be able to scale your damage based on either weapons class. So you can pick up mace and claw nodes if your wielding a mace and claw. This is important because this holds back dual weilding in PoE. Currently you'd be very ineffecient to go through sword and axe nodes if your wielding both since they only effect that weapon class.

The possiblities of this change could be amazing imo. Especially when you consider cluster jewels, masteries, regular/abyss jewel scaling, annointments, etc. It opens up more possible builds which is always a good thing.

Actual Dual Wield

So we can't just improve stat sticks then call it a day because nobody will still want to actually Dual Wield. What I mean by that is your actually using both weapons to hit enemies with.

My solution to that is to make a new support gem where you gain a more damage for dual wielding but then gain a buff if you've attacked with both of your weapons recently or in the last 2 seconds. This buff would net you even more damage. This base damage and buff needs to more then a typical support would give. I'd say probably say in the 60-70 range. We need to award players that actually have 2 weapons to use. Stat sticking characters couldn't really benefit from this because you'd have to attach this to your main skill and you don't want to use your stat stick as a weapon.

Also adjust the dual wield nodes on the tree and masteries to further emphasize using both of your weapons.

You still can gain access to cross class usage but both have to be able to use the skill. So you could mace/axe Earthquake, gain access to dual wielding and scale through both types of nodes/masteries.


Final Thoughts
Dual wielding has so much potential to be cool in PoE. Stat sticking would be way to bring some power to uniques/mods that may not be that popular. Actually dual wielding can breath life into a dead archetype. And remember, giving up a shield to dual wield is a real penalty cost. Shields have become so good in PoE over the years that your giving up some of that to benefit of defense for offense.

All in all it promotes the archetype and a ton of new build options all across the spectrum for melee.