The best dual wielding swordsman?

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anubite wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/9gqg3vw

Dual Wield Shadow with sword focus is easy and probably just as viable as Duelist (in terms of damage). The main difference is you will probably have a weaker mana pool and life leech. You'll have ridiculous critical damage though, especially if you use foils. Critical damage is really strong right now, so it's not a bad build to consider really.

I'd do a dw shadow like this

edit: modified build

I like the attack speed. In my experience, you don't need more than +100% HP.

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ac429 wrote:

I like the attack speed. In my experience, you don't need more than +100% HP.

you have a hell good gear then, personally I don't want to run with less then 3000 hp if I'm melee
And the atk speed can be obtained by haste+fancy foils+faster attacks

I feel the same way. I need 3k HP or more. The cool thing about Iron Reflexes is that it gives you a TON of mileage out of very little evasion. So, I usually focus on gear that have 80+ HP, rather than gear that have lots of evasion (although that's nice too).

Even with fancy foils, haste and attack speed support gems, I still like stacking attack speed, because it really makes good use of elemental damage from amulets, rings, gloves, etc. This is something I further improve via the 3 elemental attack damage nodes (and weapon elemental damage support gem).

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ac429 wrote:

I feel the same way. I need 3k HP or more. The cool thing about Iron Reflexes is that it gives you a TON of mileage out of very little evasion. So, I usually focus on gear that have 80+ HP, rather than gear that have lots of evasion (although that's nice too).

Even with fancy foils, haste and attack speed support gems, I still like stacking attack speed, because it really makes good use of elemental damage from amulets, rings, gloves, etc. This is something I further improve via the 3 elemental attack damage nodes (and weapon elemental damage support gem).

AAA, you play elementalish, I got it.
No i am way more physical, then use something like hatred or added fire damage to convert % of raw physical damage, and I like to leech a lot, thus the physical damage.
And, what skill would you use?Cleave?

Hmm, I would use Dual Strike + attack speed support + weapon elemental damage as my main.

Then, I would use whirling blades + hp on hit, for escape and gobbles of HP.

I would also use cleave + hp on hit to regain HP quickly, but I don't think it will really mass murder anyone at high levels (maps). It's a good rescue maneuver, but I think Whirling blades is better, because it's like GTFO!

Frenzy is also good, because it gives you frenzy charges which give you even more attack speed. I would go as far as to say, in my proposed build, use the extra frenzy charge bridge, instead of 2 dex nodes.

I would also use a mix of firetrap, beartrap, conversion trap, haste, grace and detonate dead. :)

EDIT: you know what's funny? Here's my 2-handed sword ranger. I think it's remarkably like what you might build. As you might notice, I made a mistake early on, and I'm in the process of fixing it right now. :P

And in retrospect, maybe my build could use a little more HP. xD Well, whatever you're comfortable with!

So, did OP decide?

I missed a hell whole lot of discussion, Very good stuff from all of you.

I think i'm still somewhat partial to the duelist for extra sword support. I've given up playing right now till the Tuesday migration, and ill think about starting a Shadow or a Ranger as a comparison and practice before OB hits.

Still, I'd want something with massive attack speed and dual sword play.

Dual Strike and Cleave seem inevitable for dual wielding to me right now - No other AoE that takes advantage of it.
I'm not partial to frenzy and flicker strike either, so no go there.

Oh - forgot - Since you theorized about your builds in length, i'd like to hear what type of defense you're planning (Eva? ES? hybrid of both?) and what main skills you're planning as well, just as you've started on the last page.

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Quick attempt at a ranger


Not sure if it's enough. The crit's there, as well as 134% life, but low str and not much evasion stacking to speak of. Might have mana issues as well.

My duelist ended up having 12k armor with IR, Grace and eva gear. 6.5k DPS from dual strike with Anger/Hatred with mana leech, added phys/fire supports and faster attacks. Cleave had about 2.5k with mentioned auras and faster attacks, life on hit and mana leech. I had about 1.9k life.

What i want to try and find out is if a build with dual sword wielding can do more damage while still surviving.

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And a 2nd ranger, which im quickly coming to prefer for swords.



Need to break this post into parts, i think.

Nice thread. For the new ladder I am planning to start as a shield and sword duelist again, but upon reaching the very late game will respec into dual wield.

I have been messing around with my build and I see that in order for dual wield to massively outperform sword and shield you need a very specific set of heavy armor/evasion +life +res gear, which can only be obtained by doing maps and maps and maps. This is necessary to be able to overcome giving up the shield, which provides insane amount of defenses by itself. During leveling through the difficulties you will be gimping yourself by not using a shield and probably dying a lot more than you need to.

The main thing I noticed is that once you are at that late game point it doesn't really matter if dual stike or frenzy is your main attack, because it will be all about the Cleave and you will be using your main attack only when focusing a boss or a very resistant yellow. Realistically frenzy is better because you will not have to use blood rage to build charges. But then again double strike has about 25% more single target dps and if quality gives more crit chance. (frenzy gave me 9100dps, dual strike -12k with the same support gems and items)

1 good rapier and shield gives me 3k dps cleave. 1 good rapier and 1 crapy rapier gives me 4800 dps cleave. So with 2 good rapiers 6000 dps cleave with 5.5 aps is very possible, which means of course cutting most large packs of monsters in 3-4 swings. Oh and these numbers can go even higher if you have your Cleave in a 6link armor.

My DS and Cleave never got near those numbers, not in damage nor in speed, Even if i resorted to frenzy.

I wonder what's the core difference I'm missing - bad choice of nodes or a gear/weapon difference?