Let's talk about Dual Wielding...

Idk.

Seems like physical DW users can "have their cake and eat it too".

They have access to higher dps 1handers.

They have more DW dps nodes. Hell they have them all. Every single DW node that increases damage is physical in nature.

They got the 20% more buff.

On top of all that, if they still feel they need a dps boost, they have access to all the same DPS options that ele users have. The can use auras (wrath/anger) that elemental users have. And Oh, they can use Hatred, which pure elemental users can't use(well they can, just wont do much). Of course not many specs can pull off all those aura's simultaneously, but some can and the trend is growing, not shrinking.

Maybe I'm just bitter. I have good characters. Physical 1her, 2her, dw, st, trapper, caster, summoner etc etc. Hell, I've dual wielded this dagger and it does 10x what a top tier elemental dual wield build does:



The disparity in logic between these 2 playstyles frustrates me, and I don't know why lol.

The buff was so underwhelming to me. I really thought that some really cool mechanic was going to be added. Or several lol.

But they choose to buff one very specific variation of DW character damage output.

Not DW casters. Not DW elemental users. Just DW physical.

To me, if I would have announced that I was going to buff a certain mechanic, I would have at least tried to throw in something that was at least more "global" to any and all characters that DW, regardless of damage type.

This buff just felt like an afterthought.

I guess it's because I find good pure elemental weapons (200-250dps), that, in my mind should make good builds. Time and time again I go back to pure physical weapons because they:

Do more damage
Have better passives (this is for DW or otherwise)
Have more/better support gem options
Leech. Totatally different topic lol
Have better weapon choices

etc, etc

Anyway, my rant is over for now, I've got people coming over for a bbq. I need a PoE break I think, I'll check back on Sunday guys.

GL to all you Racers!

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kolp wrote:

Maybe I'm just bitter. I have good characters. Physical 1her, 2her, dw, st, trapper, caster, summoner etc etc. Hell, I've dual wielded this dagger and it does 10x what a top tier elemental dual wield build does:

What attack speed weapons have you been using for elemental DW? In general you really want a 2+ attack speed weapon for it, even if such a weapon has lower dps on it than a slower one.

Ok since it is on topic, there is a question that is bugging me.
If I dual wield an axe and a claw.
I use the skill Heavy Strike.
Is the attack speed based solely on the axe?
The tool tip appears to average the attack speed between the weapons, while the wiki says this is a tool tip bug.

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Opinionated wrote:

Ok since it is on topic, there is a question that is bugging me.
If I dual wield an axe and a claw.
I use the skill Heavy Strike.
Is the attack speed based solely on the axe?
The tool tip appears to average the attack speed between the weapons, while the wiki says this is a tool tip bug.

The wiki is correct.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

I'm a bit confused as to why GGG went with %more physical (not even elemental) damage to "fix" the offensive DW problems. They could have kept the aspd flavor by increasing the 10% more aspd to 20-30% more aspd. This would add the same amount of final damage, but would favor elemental attacking (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

No, we couldn't. There are limits to how much total attack speed players can be allowed to obtain for multiple reasons, including technical ones. Substantially increasing the attack speed modifier for dual wielding was not a viable option.

I think 15/15/15 would be better than the current 10/20/15. Would that kind of small attack speed increase be viable?

I don't think dual-wielders would necessarily want a full 25%-30% attack speed anyway. At least not the ones which are anywhere close to having mana sustainment issues. I'm just trying to get a small attack speed increase nudge in there, for Reave's benefit. Also, 15/15/15 is super easy for new players to remember. :)

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SayyadinaAtreides wrote:

Source? Also, math?

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ancalagon3000 wrote:

Really, why every single element build tries to sacrifice a gem slot for a pen gem? Monster resists eat up a lot of elemental dmg

Yes, but keep in mind that penetration gem math is a bit wonky.

Assume your gem grants 25% lightning penetration (level 10). Assume a monster has 75% lightning resistance (which is very high for your average monster, even in merc). That gem is effectively a "100% more lightning damage" modifier (which is insane, given how well it scales with flat lightning, which is where most elemental weapon damage comes from in the majority of builds).

Now assume a monster has 0% lightning res, and you're using the same gem. It's *still* a "25% more lightning damage" modifier.

Elemental damage also has much better synergy for offensive curses (Warlord's Mark is your only real offensive curse for non-crit phys builds), with the ability to stack Elemental Weakness and Conductivity.

In short, saying that "every single elemental build needs a pen gem" is a fairly useless counterpoint even if you *do* understand how powerful elemental penetration is--almost all physical builds will take a Melee Phys or PPAD gem, which are substantially less powerful than elemental penetration gems and so probably pretty well balanced to a single elemental penetration gem. By that logic, saying GGG hates elemental builds because you'd "need" three penetration gems to equate to a physical support gem is even more pointless.

This doesn't even consider the fact that by their nature, flat elemental gem supports scale even better with the DW aspd boost than the various other phys-related weapon supports.

I'm not trying to say that elemental damage builds are terribly overpowered, although I might think they are a bit (I haven't thought about it enough to figure out what I think, and I don't care that much). But they sure as hell aren't *underpowered*, and they most certainly don't need a "more" modifier with DW the way that physical did.

Source = GGG a long time ago

Math = armor / (damage per hit x12)+armor = %mitigation

Your math is off and misleading. Let me walk you through this

A physical build will have 95% effectiveness *minimum* on any monster. Multiplied by mpd, that is 141% effectiveness. That is one gem slot.

On a lot of monsters, you can have as much as 40% resists easily to a specific element, any level any map. Packs of monsters with fire or cold or light res or resists all. That means your damage is 60% to start with, wanna use a pen gem, then that is 95%, put in WED you now have 150%, same as above for which you sacrificed 2 gem slots for instead of 1 which is very impactful and considerable. Wanna drive it higher than this, you curse, but you can also curse with vuln for physical builds. It is not always as easy as 40% resist, you cannot curse all monsters in the game, maps have no curse and 75% fire / cold / light res in them. And to begin with, physical damage can get more or less the same base range but with much easier % increase (WED is simply not that abundant in the tree, and it is not a common spawn on gear, much like chaos res)

Now all this text is sexy and fluffy and cute, and you think flat ele supports are stronger than mpd (BTW using a flat support = THREE gem slots now compared to one used up by just mpd, kinda keeps proving my point), but try out a pure ele cleave / reave / cyclone / dbl strike build and a phys version and come talk to me after that :) I compared merc phys reave to ele reave, i never use hatred or added fire btw ... the former cleared much faster.

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Opinionated wrote:

And how do you know how much armour monsters have?

This talk about elemental vs physical is nonsense. Hatred and added fire both get a buff from dual wielding. All skills that convert physical to elemental damage get a buff from dual wielding. If they gave elemental damage a separate buff then physical builds will double dip.

*Edit* I just did an in-game test. I gain 1100 cold and 1100 fire damage, just from dual wielding. I am not even using a mirror weapon. I gain 2.2k dps just from dual wielding.

We know hatred and added fire scale proportional to physical increases too. And if they cant balance around them because they are op, then they need to find an alternative solution than to keep gimping actual elemental builds.

You need a high pds wpn to scale hatred and added fire, I consider them an extra to pure phys builds and therefore part of them, if we make exception for 100 auras lowlife builds with mirrored daggers that can use a high pdmg weapon with hatred added fire wrath and anger all combined, I think the initial point of discussion was:

We are comparing pure phys builds (and their scaling with hatred / added fire put aside for now) to pure ele builds (wrath / anger / x-x ele on weapon and gear) like ele cleave / cyclone / reave. The FACT that there is barely a single guide to such builds that were fun and viable / competitive a long time speaks volumes to how bad they do at endgame in terms of deeps. And how badly ggg seemingly wants to keep nerfing them.

I do not think you know what double dip really means. If it reads 20% more overall dmg, there will be no 2x 20% multiplier stage as you are stating. It will not read '20% more phys, 20% more ele dmg' and take effect twice with hatred and added fire. Plus, that still leaves out non physical weapon builds. ('pure ele')

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Astarte911 wrote:

So, yea, the dual wielding skill total got outperformed by an skill, which is supposed to be for 1H ? Lolz..

Reave is supposed to be for dual wield (not exclusively, but primarily). It was designed around being best when you have the multiplicative attack bonus that dual wield provides.

(So I want to preface that I do not want to address this directly to Mark, in fear it will look like I am antagonising a developer, so I will try my best to make it look like a general reply, as if someone else had written it:)

How so? I wonder sometimes, do the devs and testers play this game? Did they ever look up the word 'incentive'? The facts and results show otherwise, it was clearly not designed well for dw or to incentivise it while using the skill known as reave. Dual wielding has too low % more aspd, low % block and it is simply not feasible to max it with the limited number of skill points, and now even this physical more boost is not enough.

Somebody mentioned dual wield should be 'not as much damage as 2 handers, not as much ehp as 1h / shield users' - and in fact it is not, but badly so. It is not a good enough medium between the two of them.

OP's summary is very well written and emphasizes my points, dual wield gives some but it is just that ... some, but still *not enough*. Outside of dual strike, dual wield would not even exist in the playerbase's minds as an option. Hint hint, every dual wield skill that was 'designed around promoting its use in dual wield' needs to swing both weapons, *without* having their damage effectiveness butchered to high hell like you did with cleave. I think you should introduce a skill or 2 like this, and then slowly tweak it patch after patch. I am no developer, but I cannot see reason as to why skills should / could not be microbalanced patch after patch instead of 'this patch it is skill y's turn, we have this one shot at it, and if it doesnt work, we will get back to it in another 10 patches' (someone correct me if i am wrong)

We keep telling you it (dual wielding bar dual strike) is mediocre at best, coming up with solutions - yet every 5 to 10 patches there is a small change to dual wield that does absolutely nothing for it, if not throw it further into the gutter (read: cleave situation).

Watching ele cleave die made me a saaaad pandaaa.

Here we go again... a skill being primarily for DW yet the only bonus is stacking AoE 10% faster.

We've already been through this, lets follow that logic, let me mention few DW skills:
- Heavy Strike, more knockbacks
- Cyclone, more spell procs in CoC builds, LGoH effectiveness upped by 10%
- Leap Slam, faster movement speed
- Ground Slam, more stuns
...

Every melee skill is primarily for DW?

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ancalagon3000 wrote:

I am still waiting for some kind of source that says what monster armour is currently. Wiki has no source. If we had any source it should be pretty easy to know how much life each monster in the game has.

You are late on the double dipping discussion. In order for it to work, GGG would have to add a new modifier; which we do not know why they did not. You can keep comparing pure damage types to each other, I will continue mixing damage types.

There are combinations of skills and off hands that arise when every dual wield skill does not use both weapons simultaneously. Use your imagination.