Dual Wield Improvements

I recently started playing as an Evasion/Dodge/Dual Wield based Duelist and I had a few thoughts that could make the experience more rewarding.

As I understand it, DW was supposed to be a compromise between having all the defensive benefits from a shield and having great offense from a 2 handed weapon. Unfortunately it has become a poor compromise to most players because of the high-damaging nature of Merciless content and lack of interesting/supporting items and skills.


Passive Tree Changes

Shield nodes have a lot of extra bonuses aside from block chance. You get x% more defenses from the shield, x% more energy shield, all resistances, and even spell block. Adding a few of these mods with lesser values to DW nodes would be great.

In particular, it'd be nice to alter the two nodes with DW Block in the cluster on the bottom right of the tree near Ondar's Guile to include:

-5% to All Elemental Resistances while Dual Wielding (first node)
-6% of Dual Wield Block Chance applied to Spells (last node)

If you believe these are too far into the defensive, increasing the x% value on current DW Block nodes or the total number of DWB nodes on the passive tree would be nice. It is difficult to specialize in DWB as a core defensive stat since the nodes are quite spread out.

A Duelist must spend 67 points to get every DWB node. (Scions could save a few points.) Doing this provides only 42% DWB, adding in the inherent 15% bonus to blocking that bumps you up to 57% which is still 18% shy from the maximum block chance.

Although possible, aiming to maximize block from the passive tree means that you give up any life nodes, resistances, and so forth that aren't on the direct path which means you're build is probably only viable very late game after a lot of grinding.


Item Changes

Unique items are the only way to currently get any bonuses to Dual Wield Blocking. Aside from Wings of Entropy, none of the items that provide a DWB bonus are considered as viable offensive end-game weapons. (As far as I have found in my own experiments and in searching through the forums.)

As others have suggested, I also urge you to give non-unique Daggers, Swords, and any other relevant 1 handed weapons the chance to roll this mod. Having a maximum roll of 11% chance to Block while Dual Wielding would be ideal.

In this scenario you can max out block chance from skills and the passive tree with: 38% from Tree + 15% DW Bonus + 22% Weapons = 75% total DW Block Chance.

A Duelist with two weapons with a maxed 11% DWB mod could save anywhere from 8 to 12 passive skill points on the current tree since they would no longer need that final 4% from other character class zones.

Even if a player didn't want to max out DW Block on the tree, having 37% block chance from two maxed weapons is at lest closer to what shields provide, and is technically higher for pure block. This still appears balanced to me since weapons aren't nearly as likely to have armour, evasion, energy shield, or resistance bonuses which shields commonly have.


Skill Gems

Overall, there aren't very many DW specific skill gems. Here is a defensive DW skill that I think could be easily implemented as it is based on Tempest Sheild.


Tempest / Frozen Blades
-Intelligence, Dexterity
-Spell, Lightning / Cold
-Reserves 20% of Mana
-2%-4% Additional Chance to Block while Dual Wielding
-Has 10%-20% Chance to Shock / Freeze on Blocking while Dual Wielding

(Volcanic or Poisoned Blades could also be interesting, since it could Ignite or add a Chaos Charge that does a % of combined physical weapon damage as Fire or Chaos)


Conclusions

In general, I've had a good experience Dual Wielding but my playstyle has had to change according to the limitations of the role (going DOT instead of PDPS to keep a high block chance from low level unique weapons). I can only hope that you will give more attention to the passives, items, and skills for Dual Wielding in the future.