What's better for Cleave, dual wield or 2H?

1) In preparation for Races, I'm making a new Cleave build in light of the recent rebalancing of nodes/skills. I'm wondering.. what is best for Cleave, dual wielding or 2H?

2) I notice that Cleave has a 40% Reduced Physical Weapon Damage modifier if you're dual wielding. Is this a set-in-stone number or does this number increase as the level of Cleave increases?

I may be wrong but as I understand it the 40% physical reduction on cleave is why people choose to go elemental. Then in keeping with this, they choose to go duel wielding for the following reasons

1) 2H would give more physical damage but you would only have 1 weapon to have elemental damage on... But if you duel wield then you have two weapons to have ele damage on... so two decent elemental 1H > one great elemental 2H

2) In addition to doing more damage via the elemental pathway duel wielding attacks much faster, again leading to more damage.

3) You can obtain bonuses to block while duel wielding that you cannot obtain using a 2h weapon

Again i may be very mistaken but that's how I understand it...

If you do want to go physical cleave though I’m fairly certain the 2H is better because it provides higher possible physical damage.

In short:

ele cleave -----> duel wield
Phys cleave ----> 2H

With ele cleave being the typical better and more prefered build.

"

Uthnara wrote:

ele cleave -----> duel wield
Phys cleave ----> 2H

With ele cleave being the typical better and more prefered build.

Ah yes, this was the answer I was expecting. With the recent buffs to Physical Damage + Monster rebalancing, I think I'm going to go 2H Phys Cleaver for Season 3 races.



Shhhh

the 40% phys reduction is because both weapons are used so if you had 2 weapons with the same stat you would still be doing 60% and 60% with each one for a total of 120% dmg this compensate the fact that a 2h weap usually has more than 20% the dmg of a 1h weap has.


- being mobility an important part of the game in order to survive and clear maps faster, (hiting and being able to stop and run) 2x 1h weaps win,

- if you have 2x 1h weap then your atack speed is faster so thats an extra implicit bonus

- all elemental added dmg from jewerly and auras is added to each weapon meaning you get 2x bonus for using 2x1h

- wont make this list long so basically having 2x 1h is in every single way better than having a 2h weapon

the reason for this is that this game does not repay the fact of doing 1 big chunk of dmg instead of more small ones. They have the stun mechanic that actually is useless, and freezing/shocking/burning does not help as much since cleave itself does not give bonus to elemental damage.

in the best case for a 2h being better than 2x1h would be a 6L marohi or being forced to use a kaom´s that does not let you have a 6L if you chose 2x1h. in iether of this cases leap slam/ground slam would be better options than cleave.

in short

2x1h cleave> 1x2h cleave in any case

(whats the point of doing 40k dmg on a swing that takes .5 second when the mobs die with 10k dmg) and if you use multistrike the time where you stand there like an idiot is increased.

Hmmmm

How about for short races though? I'm leaning towards dual-wield physical cleaver then. Would that be good for races? I do realize elemental cleavers are better than physical cleavers, but thats when you're level 70+ going into other class trees.

Like, within lets say, 20 to 30 points on the Duelist. Phys Dual Wield Cleaver > Ele Dual Wield Cleaver?

Sword/board doesn't even get honorable mention. So sad.