Brainstorming for Dual Wielding skills

At this moment i not see any reason to use dual wield anything expect swords.
With swords we have 2 types of spamable multi target skills(cleave, lightning strike), 2 dot based skills for pvp and some bosses like Oak(puncture, viper strike), fast escape\engage ability(whirling blades), landscapes ignoring ability(leap slam).
With axes we have same but no whirling blades, slightly higher damage but lesser crit damage or chance to hit.
With maces, no pure phys damage aoe, no whirling blades. no dots.
With daggers\claws no pure phys aoe, no leap slam, but its int based weapons and leap can be swaped with lightning warp.

Can devs answer if they plan make, pure weapon based, daggers and claws builds more variable? At this moment every type of melee weapons have 3-4 aoes, whyle daggers and claws have only 2. I think nothing be wrong if infernal blow will be used with daggers, and double strike be rewamped to claw atack that deal 30% of weapon damage 2 times in area its already have splash animation, at high lvl ppl not using this skills cause have many better choises for weapons that requirements this skills.
When infernal blow aoe component will be have good sinergy with daggers crit chance, and splash on double strike makes claws builds viable.

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ykyshaeq wrote:

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With maces, no pure phys damage aoe, no whirling blades. no dots.
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Ground slam instead of cleave - it does benefit from the increased attack speed.
And leap slam instead of whirling blades (it uses only the main weapon so its the same as whirling blades, which also uses only the main weapon)

Also the ele bonus from scepters is global: 2x 20% increased ele damage scepter = 40% damage increase for spells and traps as well (i tried it ingame - the fire trap becomes really powerfull this way)

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ykyshaeq wrote:

Can devs answer if they plan make, pure weapon based, daggers and claws builds more variable? At this moment every type of melee weapons have 3-4 aoes, whyle daggers and claws have only 2. I think nothing be wrong if infernal blow will be used with daggers, and double strike be rewamped to claw atack that deal 30% of weapon damage 2 times in area its already have splash animation, at high lvl ppl not using this skills cause have many better choises for weapons that requirements this skills.
When infernal blow aoe component will be have good sinergy with daggers crit chance, and splash on double strike makes claws builds viable.

I too feel like claws/daggers are lacking in the AOE department, but this is mostly as a result of being trained to not use whirling blades. With the desync issues at this point it's just not reliable enough, and the targeting is difficult especially cause you have to reposition yourself after each attack. I feel like claw/dagger needs some sort of AOE that just hits what's in front of us.

One Idea I had was a Flurry attack, which is a cone shaped attack in front of the user, for which you quickly attack 4 times for 20% damage each hit (80% damage in all), dual wield of course would alternate weapons doing 2 hits of each weapon. This would fit with the fast sort of feeling that claws and dagger have, and would thematically make sense. You have a small weapon so instead of trying to make big powerful attacks you make many small ones.

Another would be Dancing Blades which is a 360 degrees aoe attack, in which your character spins around arms outstretched to slash at all enemies nearby, also doing 80% damage, with both hits for DW counting but at a penalty like with cleave (because spinning a full circle means both weapons would hit once). This would work well with whirling blades as you could dash into the middle of a group of enemies and then spin them to death. Thematically it would would also work because again, you can use small weapons with more ease and mobility than larger ones.

These are just two ideas (and the numbers can be adjusted for balance, it's more the concept that matters), and I'll keep brainstorming, as this is a topic that I've become strangely passionate about.


EDIT: I'd also like to point out that I have read the "this post" you mentioned earlier saying that cleave hitting with both weapons was a side effect of the animation looking too cool to pass on the opportunity (paraphrased that a bit for you ^_^ ). However, this just further creates a sense of imbalance in aoe options for claw/dagger users, as right now my strongest and most reliable "aoe" is spamming dual strike.
While my suggestions may include striking with both weapons when dual wielding, I'm trying to focus more on claw/dagger AoE rather than dual wield AoE, the dual wield bit is just a nice bonus I'd like to see. Should I be starting a new thread in a more appropriate location or keep my ideas here (or keep them to myself if the devs have their minds made up already)?

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Sony_Black wrote:

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ykyshaeq wrote:

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With maces, no pure phys damage aoe, no whirling blades. no dots.
...

Ground slam instead of cleave - it does benefit from the increased attack speed.
And leap slam instead of whirling blades (it uses only the main weapon so its the same as whirling blades, which also uses only the main weapon)

Also the ele bonus from scepters is global: 2x 20% increased ele damage scepter = 40% damage increase for spells and traps as well (i tried it ingame - the fire trap becomes really powerfull this way)

Whirling check colision which weapon u hit target(c)Mark in whirling blades topic. Leap so slow and iteruptable by stuns, i had 78lvl dw swords chars in 0 9 8 patch and using leap as escape ablity was suicide. Idk what now but in 0 9 10 combo builds with solo target weapon atack+spell aoe shines till ruthless act2 then it was underpowered and u will need chose of pure spell damage or pure weapon spec else u will never had enough dps or survive. I thought about using dw high crit chance sceptres with twin terrors in tree and using ground slam
but not sure if its works, cause gs shows not righ tooltip for atack speed its also can show not right information about crits if it use only main hand.

Double throw.

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ykyshaeq wrote:

At this moment i not see any reason to use dual wield anything expect swords.

You don't have to use a dual-wield only skill to get benefits from dual-wielding.

Think of your off-hand weapon like a shield that gives 15% block chance and 10% MORE attack speed, with the added bonus that you get to use some new attacks (kinda like how using a real shield gives you the ability to use Tempest Shield) and dual-wield specific passives.

This is what Mark has been trying to say forever, and I totally agree with him.

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pneuma wrote:

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ykyshaeq wrote:

At this moment i not see any reason to use dual wield anything expect swords.

You don't have to use a dual-wield only skill to get benefits from dual-wielding.

Think of your off-hand weapon like a shield that gives 15% block chance and 10% MORE attack speed, with the added bonus that you get to use some new attacks (kinda like how using a real shield gives you the ability to use Tempest Shield) and dual-wield specific passives.

This is what Mark has been trying to say forever, and I totally agree with him.

He isn't saying that you have to be dual wield if you want swords, or if you're dual wielding swords you need DW skills, he's saying that if you are dual wielding then swords are the best weapon of choice. This is because swords have the most and the best options available to them while dual wielding, as he detailed.

It's true that there is a perception that anything that doesn't hit with both weps at once is pointless for DW, but the truth of that perception has steadily declined over the months.

And that's a good thing, because it was a bad situation that demanded a lot of extra work making skills that worked for DW and DW only. Having DW be an IAS bonus with alternate OH stat possibilities than shields (most notably a lot of offensive stats like eledmg% and flat ele dmg, as opposed to the generally defensive bonuses on shields) is a better place for balance, even if its a little less exciting for fans of DW (and we're left with Cleave being a strange anachronism that will give Mark headaches forever :p).

I was thinking about a skill for dual maces that works kinda like the hulks clap.



Basically you swing your maces towards each other and crush enemy's caught between them. And a resounding crunch would be heard resulting in an aoe blind/stun, probably depending on the amount of enemy's crushed.