Weapon types balance

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Jmancini wrote:

I'm gonna add that the lack of sockets/modifiers really does hurt the 2H'ers later on in the game.

In late Ruthless-Merciless with my 2H Marauder, I always re-rolled and farmed and re-rolled till I had pretty beastly mods on all my crafted gear, and I really needed it.

IMO, 2H weapons should have 3-6 sockets, and not MORE modifiers necessarily (would be a clutter with 7+ mods on a rare), but maybe stronger ones.

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ardikus wrote:

Unavailable

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Some points about dual wielding were raised in the feedback thread for the Cleave skill, and after some discussion we've established that the issue isn't with that skill itself, but with dual wielding in general.

In terms of melee characters, there are three weapon styles you can play - a one handed weapon with a shield, dual wielding two one-hand weapons, or a single two-handed weapon.

I'm starting this thread to get feedback from everyone on how you all feel about the general balance between these styles of play.

Currently, two-handed weapons hit harder than one-handed weapons, but tend to have a slower base attack speed (I think). Also, less gear potentially means less sockets.

Dual wielding alternates hits, meaning you need to find two weapons with decent damage, but comes with a base +25% attack speed just for wielding two weapons at once.

And of course using a shield is more defensive - you hit as hard as a dual-wielder, since you're using the same weapons, but you don't have the attack speed boost, instead you get the defense and block chance of the shield.

How are these options stacking up? I've got at least some feedback saying dual wielding just isn't close enough in DPS to two-handed weapons - the attack speed boost isn't enough to keep them viable.

So what do you all think? Ideally we want all three options to be viable as different builds, with different skills. There may well be some imbalance introduced by the lack of skills currently int he game, but I think we can still reason a lot about the base balance between the different approaches. Please give any and all feedback you can regarding these issues.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

While that's true I found dual wands to be a fun build for the unreleased dex/int class. Wands don't have to be for casters only, they can be dual-wieldable bows with better support fr elemental damage through passives.

There is at least some advantage I think to casters taking two wands, since I think some of the the more spell-like "+1 to level of XXX skill gems socketed in this item" mods are only for wands. But that may no longer be the case, I don't always keep track of such things.

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BattleSmurf wrote:

I think one thing that could bring duel wielding into balance with a two hander would be having skills like frenzy attack with both weapons. That might be overpowered though just something i noticed.

Deffinately do something for the duel wielders though.

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ardikus wrote:

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BattleSmurf wrote:

I think one thing that could bring duel wielding into balance with a two hander would be having skills like frenzy attack with both weapons. That might be overpowered though just something i noticed.

Deffinately do something for the duel wielders though.

Mark has some serious reservations about making any attack other than Dual Strike hit with both weapons, because in his opinion if another attack strikes with both weapons then Dual Strike becomes obsolete.