Dual-wielding melee skills

I've seen a bunch of people talking about new skills for particular weapon types and so on recently, so I guess I'm just jumping on that band wagon and saying what I think would be cool.

I think we need some more skills for dual wielding weapons. At the moment, we really only have one. Dual Strike is the only skill in the game that is designed specifically to make use of dual wielded weapons in a unique way. Other melee skills can be used while dual wielding, but dual wielding in those cases really doesn't do much other than slightly increase attack speed. Typically, attacks with non-dual wield specific skills sequentially alternate the weapon that the attack is made with. There are some exceptions, double strike will only ever attack with the main hand weapon even when dual wielding.

Since dual strike is a physical damage skill, and it is the only dual wielding exclusive skill, if you want to use a dual wielding exclusive skill you have to go the physical damage route. At the very least, if you want to do elemental rather than physical damage, you usually have to use support gems specifically to convert your physical damage to elemental damage.

There are plenty of skills for melee, ranged, one handed, 2 handed, and spells that specifically intend to deal a bunch of elemental damage. Moreover, there are plenty of skills in the aforementioned category that have other sorts of bonuses applied to them. Flame arrow does tons of damage and converts physical to fire. Ice shot does less damage (though still quite a lot), and applies a cone of cold damage behind the initial target and some chilled ground. Infernal blow converts physical to fire as well as causing monsters killed to explode, dealing further fire damage to adjacent enemies. Static strikes deals lightning damage and builds up a charge that deals further lightning damage when it expires. Glacial hammer deals cold damage and has a chance to freeze enemies.

There's space for several dual wielding specific skills that convert physical damage to elemental damage and have some additional elemental effects like ice shot, infernal blow, glacial hammer, etc. Of course elemental effect need not be the only things. What about a dual wielding specific skill which caused bleed damage? Or a dual wielding specific skill that progressively reduced enemy move speed?

You forgot about Cleave. It uses both weapons simultaneously, and gives DW builds a strong aoe option.

Honestly, I'm not sure this is really a problem atm, but I'm always game for more options to be added to the game. What I think does need attention is 2h melee--especially for non staves.

Yeah, but cleave can be used with a one handed weapon and shield, or with a 2 handed weapon. It's not dual wield specific.

I think you are making a mistake by viewing it that way. Rather than focusing on how things are limited, focus on how DW might get more utility or options. The problem with DW (besides lack of shield) is that only 2 skills use both weapons at the same time--maximum efficiency. All the ones that alternate are less than ideal simply because they alternate. If other skills, like Glacial Hammer, were to use both weapons simultaneously, suddenly DW becomes a lot more attractive and you don't have to design entire new skills just for it.

Well, I guess however that goes is up to the Devs really. But a lot of the distinctiveness in builds comes from the fact that some weapons work better with some skills than others. For instance, axes don't typically work great for crit builds, and some skills like dual strike and flicker strike are better for crit than other skills like infernal blow. So most skills are targeted towards some particular group of weapons or other. I'm suggesting that DW should be treated as a group of options which could have some skills specifically targeted at it. It seems to me that making more skills do the same thing as dual strike and cleave when DWing is just reducing the distinctiveness in builds. It makes DWing a much less build defining choice.

The introduction of the new dual-wield gems depends on the creativity of the devs.

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AlbinosaurusRex написал:

I think you are making a mistake by viewing it that way. Rather than focusing on how things are limited, focus on how DW might get more utility or options. The problem with DW (besides lack of shield) is that only 2 skills use both weapons at the same time--maximum efficiency. All the ones that alternate are less than ideal simply because they alternate. If other skills, like Glacial Hammer, were to use both weapons simultaneously, suddenly DW becomes a lot more attractive and you don't have to design entire new skills just for it.

I suggested an easy painless way for ggg to do this over a year ago in a dual wield balance discussion. Basically it was to just use both weapons for all dual wield attacks and where existing animations are not sufficient, just speed up the animation to the point where it uses both weapons in the time it would otherwise use one. Then apply a ~20% damage penalty to keep it in line with proper balanced damage output. Dual strike can just disappear altogether as its existence dictates that it be superior to other dual skills.

Of course, instead of taking the time to fix it properly using my suggestion or any of the many good suggestions in that thread, they opted to make a pointless phys damage buff which did nothing for other skills trying to compete with dual strike.

Dual Strike and Cleave are problem children, not the image of what dual-wielding should be like. They've been the thorn in GGG's balancing side for ages and have only recently been addressed somewhat by bringing their damage down.

The point is that all one-handed skills are dual-wielding skills. Dual-wielding is supposed to be a middle ground between the heavy damage from 2h and the safety of 1h + shield, and to that end, it gets a moderate damage increase (multiplicative physical damage and attack speed buffs) and it gets a moderate defense (low-med block%).

If you really want "dual-wielding specific" skills, add skills that favor alternating weapons (such as a skill that alternates applying a mark then removing the mark for a damage bonus) or that favor attack speed (such as Reave stacks). Or just go back in time and remove Multistrike from the game so that GGG can raise dual-wielding's innate attack speed bonus.

My honest opinion:

1) In most RPGs i 've played(the vast majority), dual weilding is almost always the highest DPS option.

2) In PoE it was supposed to be somewhere between one handed and 2 handed in damage -> Thus the block. However 2 handed has the benefit of 2 6Ls so they are somewhat even. Anyway IMO DW should be the highest DPS option, while 2 handed should have other benefits, like crowd control, range and AoE.

3) I find the alternating weapon system stupid. If they want to make dual weild right, they should rework ALL single target melee skills to attack simultaneously with both weapons, and give the proper penalties to each skill, in order not to be broken. DW should have a good advantage in DPS over one handed, and as it is now, it's not really the case. In Dark Souls 2, the developers took the time to develop different moveset, with different damage modifiers for every single weapon class(sometimes the moveset differs even in weapons of the same class), when one handing, 2 handing and dual weilding. That's how it's done properly.

4) Two handed is in an as bad situation, but it's off topic to adress it right now.

5) Melee in general compared to ranged is in an bad situation, but it's off topic to adress it right now.

For once I really agree with the posts being made in a balance discussion thread. +1 to both of you.