Dual wield daggers = fail ?

I wanted to make such build and while single target dps with dual strike is good i have major problems with aoe. I did try lightning strike but mana cost is high and dps average. I did try now cleave with a pair of rapiers and it seems two times better then LS....

is there any reason to go DW daggers rather then swords ? Is it possible for LS to outdo DW cleave? Thx for answers.

In general, melee builds on the right hand side of the tree do much better as hybrid builds.

You can add an AoE attack skill (lightning strike is a favorite here) but then you're going to have to stack some strength. I prefer instead to pick one of the hybrid-AoE abilities, say, firetrap or EK. The point of attraction for these two skills in particular is they're designed around not many passives being available to buff them.

Traps and EK have to be viable without a heavy passive investment. So you can get 4-5 skillpoints in fire/spell damage, or projectile/spell damage, and then focus the rest of your energy on dual strike melee.

Hope it helps.

By the way, in dual wield daggers land (especially if you go hybrid as well!) I really hope you're focusing on crit. But, crit is a little bit of a trap until you understand this game fairly well. That's a complicated topic, though.

Ek is kinda too mana heavy for a melee build unless bloodmagic. Guess you can BM support it but then the health cost is insane so you'll also need lifeleech and yeah, kinda annoying. Fire trap is great though, especially with the buff it got in OB, it does really really good damage at all stages of the game I find. Whirling Blades does alright damage too now. Not insane but not too bad, sadly it doesn't benefit from DWing. Nor does LS.

The main issue if you DW is that only Dual Strike and Cleave actually make use of the 2 weapons. Most of the other skills use main hand only or alternate weapons so they'd be just as useful with a shield which is a lot more useful than an offhand weapon to begin with. I think they should just add a Dual Wielding Proficiency support rune or something that'd work on melee attacks that can be used with 1H weapons, that automatically converts the dmg appropriately. Potentially could cause balancing issues though I guess.

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PyrosEien написал:

Ek is kinda too mana heavy for a melee build unless bloodmagic. Guess you can BM support it

All you need is enough mana to cast EK about twice, and a mana leech support.

If you want a fully mana supported EK with noting but DPS supports? Now, that's a different story. We're talking fully specced caster with a little tilt on melee, for something like that.

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PyrosEien написал:

The main issue if you DW is that only Dual Strike and Cleave actually make use of the 2 weapons.

This is false.

Dual strike and cleave are the only skills that both hit in a single strike with dual wield. They also both have different kinds of hidden down-scaling to accomplish that without both of them being massively overpowered.

Other skills are balanced both for single and dual wield. That is, you get the 15% more attack speed bonus; that and dual-wield block are the benefit. It's enough. You don't have to be using cleave/DS to make dual wielding worthwhile. That's an old myth.

Dont have Mana leech support so for now EK is out the scope. Trap is ok but i dont like the CD.

Dual strike dont have downscaling i think and cleave 40% penalty only applies to physical damage.


As for dual wielding you get 10% IAS (from wiki) and 15% block. Shields give way more block and got much stronger passives to support it. Ias alone is just not worth it from what i can see.

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Stt3r0 написал:

Dual strike dont have downscaling

Yes, it does. Not in an obvious way: Other single target abilities have significant damage multipliers, either direct or indirect. Examples: GH is a conversion ability, so it benefits more from elemental damage passives. It comes with a 125% damage effectiveness, and more utility (a freeze proc, and chill with 50% cold conversion). Viper strike and puncture get very large dot components on the side of their main damage. Frenzy has insane bonuses to physi damage and attack speed. The list goes on. Every single target ability has some major damage bonus; take a look at the damage bonus on dual strike. There isn't one.

There's your down scaling. 3% physi per level gem bonus, and no additional damage components.

I know what I'm talking about. You can dual wield GH just as effectively as you can dual strike. I've spent a little bit of time dual wielding.

~

Also keep in mind that, in the current state of the game, dual wielding gains a lot of its power from the passive tree. Blinding Speed (12% Increased Attack Speed), Ambidexterity (18% Increased Physical Weapon Damage and 4% Increased Attack Speed), Dervish (8% additional Block Chance and 10% Increased Physical Damage), and Twin Terrors (75% Weapon Critical Strike Chance) are some of the most powerful nodes on the tree, especially for daggers, and are only applied to dual wielding.

I recently made a dual wielding physical damage daggers build. It actually worked fairly well, and that can be attributed to the buff to Whirling Blades' damage effectiveness. Even though it may cause desynchronization at times, I think it's certainly a viable multiple target skill now when used correctly.

fast question does glacial hammer take same benefit from "increased cold damage with weapon" as from "increased cold damage?"

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Stt3r0 написал:

As for dual wielding you get 10% IAS (from wiki) and 15% block. Shields give way more block and got much stronger passives to support it. Ias alone is just not worth it from what i can see.

Comparing dual wield to a 1h-shield setup isn't a logical comparison. The first is a high-DPS setup, the second is a low-DPS high-defense setup.

If you want to make a comparison, look at 2h vs dual wield.

Dual wield: Gain 10% multiplicative attack speed (yes, you were right: but it's not just 10% IAS, the 10% is multiplicative). Typical dw builds achieve in the neighborhood of 30% block. See dervish.

2H: Lose that 30% block/10% multiplicative IAS in favor of some DPS. Yes, 2-handers are better DPS, by a hair.

2H notables are balanced on exactly the same scale as DW notables; you can't claim that 2h notables are "better".

It's a mana-defense-DPS tradeoff. You're reaching pretty far. I've boiled it down to the exact 3 things that separate DW from 2H. The big problem that plagues dual wield is weapon support in the same vicinity of the passive tree where you can find lots of dw passives. Specifically, the duelist area.

You might want to dual wield if you're benefitting from on-hit effects: blind, life on hit, status effects. You might want to dual wield if you want almost as much DPS as a 2-hander, but also enjoy the additional source of 30% multiplicative avoidance. You might want to wield a 2-hander if you're resource limited, or care enough to get another 10% DPS in trade for lower defenses.

nono 2H are out of my interest now ;]

As for glacial hammer vs Dual strike them im sure dual better with physical focused build. I know that glacial will benefit from the multiplicative nature of converted damage, i never said that dual strike does twice the damage of any other ability.

From my perspective now however converting to sword DW is impossible and with daggers dual strike & 1.1 IAS mult is not enough to keep me DW.
I just wonder now about synergising for LS with projectile damage and lightning damage nodes i would love to know if those multiply or add :S