One-Handed keystones working with Dual Wielding
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Hey there, I've been leveling a dual wielder melee toon, and one thing that struck me as odd is that both the "Dual Wield" nodes and "One-handed" nodes apply to my guy. You might say "yeah, but you're dual wielding single handed weapons", which is true, but the fact is that because of this I have access to about twice the damage & atk speed related nodes on the Duelist region than a Two-hander or sword & board guy might want.
For example, I can take both Fencing (+18% damage with 1-handed melee weapons) and Gallantry (+18% damage while dual wielding), for some whooping results. Also, despite being a dual wielder, this makes me go all over the place to pick up great keystones that are not even in dual-wield regions. And also, a keystone called "Fencing" feels wierd for me because fencing with 2 swords is a no-no. Moreover, in the starting 4 paths you can take at the beginning stages of a Duelist, 2 paths can be taken for some awesome early DPS (1-handed path and dual-wield path). So anyways, I would suggest keeping 1-handed nodes only for sword & board types of characters, so that duel-wield regions of the tree feel more attractive... Maybe even change the description so that 1-handed damage nodes read like "+6% damage while wielding a single 1-handed weapon". Thougths ? Edit: I forgot to add that weapon specific nodes (sword/axes) add on top of the overwhelming choices given by access to both 1-handed and dual wield related nodes. So much good choices that weapon specific nodes can be ignored completely (and the restriction of specialising in a weapon type), which is a shame really... Last edited by Thalandor#0885 on Aug 21, 2012, 1:28:39 PM
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You can stack a whole lot of damage that way, yes... But then a monster on Merciless looks at you the wrong way and you die.
Sword and board doesn't get the IAS bonus and doesn't benefit from dual-wield bonuses, but the base block on shields is higher than dual-wield block (to my knowledge anyways), and you get a very large armor/ev/ES bonus depending on shield. Those defensive values mean you can take more damage passives compared to the dual-wielder to compensate. You also possibly have access to different skills, but that's just item type choice. |
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"Dual wield is specifically meant to be more offensive focused than one-hand + shield. You have all the one-handed-weapon passives (offensive) and the dual wield passives (also mostly offensive), but not the shield passives (defensive). They have the one-handed weapon passives (offensive) and the shield passives (defensive), but not the dual wield ones. Two-handed is less comparable - unless things have changed a lot recently there's more two-handed than one-handed passives, and two-handers get more benefit from each % increased damage because they have higher base damage. "I personally disagree with this change. using one-handed weapons should allow you to benefit from bonuses to one-handed weapons. Making only the one-handed weapons care about what else you're using makes them work fundamentally differently to two-handed or weapon specific passives in a way that will be confusing to many, especially since people tend to to read the passive descriptions carefully and might not notice the change. The game is already balanced around the fact that one-handed weapon passives work for one-handed weapons, and that's the only restriction on them - is there are imbalances due to that the solution is to adjust the number and positioning of the one-handed and dual-wield (and maybe shield) passives, not to make them work in a more confusing manner. Last edited by Mark_GGG#0000 on Aug 21, 2012, 11:02:47 PM
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With the weapon specific skills and dual wielding skills you could already sink every point you get into offense skill, the one handed weapon nodes being there hardly matters in that case. Having one handed weapon skills also gives the tree more design flexibility; the duelist's tree is more focused on using particular weapons or dual wielding, while the ranger doesn't really specialize in anything but bows, and gets vauge, flexible, but generally slightly underpowered one handed weapon skills that can be dual wield or one weapon and shield (whether or not those underpowered nodes are worth it is of course another issue). If the one handed skills couldn't be used with dual wielding, the ranger wouldn't be able to migrate into the duelist's part of the tree without her skills being wasted as well. The only place this inclusiveness is really harmful is the very beginning of the duelist's tree, where a dual wielding duelist not only has two paths out of his starting area but the two paths lead to large stat nodes of different stats. I think the bigger problems with his tree are this starting area problem, the fact that there a million axe nodes but only one sword node that is out of the way, and the high concentration of great, easily accessed nodes around thick skin and fencing that draws in pretty much every duelist or ranger I ever make.
(Yes I realize there are some small sword nodes that aren't attached to blade master around, but the value of small weapon nodes is pretty terrible, and not having a large node in a skill arc drags down the average value of the entire arc, not to mention the early placement of axe skills and fencing in their respective arcs lets you skip most of the small nodes, increasing your average gain further.) |
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