Dual wield vs. Single WeaponFollow

your off hand item does 1/2 the normal damage when its in the off hand.

So say your sword does 50 DPS and you have 2 of them, one for each hand, thats 50 main hand DPS and 25 off hand DPS.

overall you would have 75 DPS, but keep in mind that when you have an off hand weapon your miss rate goes up to something like 20% instead of the base 5% miss rate.

Dual weapons: .8*Main DPS + .4*Off-hand DPS

compared to basic DPS of single weapon.

are you sure about that?

if i have an off hand item and i switch it out for my sheild (on my warrior) my main hand doesnt change....

I duel wielded axes for awhile then switched to polearms. I'm very happy with polearms. They are a little bit slower but I get to do raptor strike every other swing. So against really tough mobs or multiple mobs I go raptor stike for 100 dmg (I'm lvl 26 by the way and only have a plus 4 str) then mend pet by the time mend pet is done my raptor strike is ready again.

I'm going to be hitting level 20 with my hunter in the next day or two so this is an important question to me.

Based on posts so far it would seem the total combined DPS for dual wield is only slightly higher than when wielding the primary 1 hand by itself. Is this true?

Would I be better off using a polearm or a 2 hand weapon instead of dual wielding 2 1 hand weapons?

Ignoring stats like %crit and attack power on a weapon and going for pure melee damage, dual weild is probably better, I don't remember the exact mathematics of it but I seem to remember it being true.

However, a hunter is not going to be meleeing for a long period of time. A hunter is going to be running through a mob or person to WC + RS. This means that you want that one hit to do as much as you possibly can. Now you could say that with your off-hand hitting as well, that would still do more.

However, this logic is flawed, because two handed weapons tend to hit much slower, meaning that with a similar dps weapon, that one hit will be much harder.

So to simplify: if you want to extensively melee, play a warrior or rogue, or failing that dual weild on your hunter. If you want to kite and do damage, have the slowest 2h weapon you possibly can.

Now, I have completely neglected stats. Random BoE green 2hs will more than double the stats of a one handed weapon, meaning that for most of a hunter's levelling he should use a 2h. This changes slightly in the endgame where you might have to choose between dual dawn edges (1% crit on each) or a barberous blade (1% crit and 60 attack power or ~4.3dps).

This is more of a personal preference, but here is the mathematics behind stats (crit and dodge scale with level, what is shown here is for a lvl 60 hunter):

1agi = 2 range attack power so 7agi is 1dps
53agi = 1% crit (approximate)
26agi = 1% dodge (approximate)
1stam = 10 health
1int = 15 mana

You can find your crit rate by mousing over the attack icon in the spellbook, however crit rate is also affected by weapon skill so bear this in mind, if you are comparing 2 x 1handed axes to a polearm and you have 300 in polearm and 150 in one handed axes then of course it will look like you have a lower crit rate. Your melee weapon skill doesn't affect your range crit rate, but it does affect melee crit rate (which is shown in the spell book). You need to add 5% to the crit rate if you have the Marksmanship talent.

Heh. Hope I've covered any possible questions.

Edited, Thu Jul 7 00:26:45 2005 by Lobsterok

I'm a mid level hunter at 35 and I train up 1h and 2h swords. I tend to favor dual wield if I have just the right weapon (low delay, + to agility) however since I picked up the archeus from the Mor'Ladim quest in Duskwood (some time ago) I'm thinking 2h sword is the way to go. (That's just my preference.) I can say that there are noticable differences in dual wield and two-hand styles. For example fighting a higher damaging mob 2h style is way too slow. It's even harder to hit while dancing (running jumpimg around enemy hoping to score hits while enemy misses), but for a regular mob 2h slays em. The reverse happens to me when I dual wield I'm not so hot against slugging it out with a mob but the low delay helps me out when dancing in PVP. I'll have to try everything out again when I hit 40 but I think what I said will hold up.

There was an absolutely amazing blue post in the warrior section of the official boards many months ago. I swear that post was around twenty or thirty paragraphs long. It was describing how everything “warrior” worked. I think I saved that post, but I expect finding it now would be akin to searching for the Holy Grail. Anyway, one of the things explained in that post was that the devs went to great pains to make wielding two weapons and wielding one two hand weapon comparable to each other. This is the reason the miss rate was increased for duel wielding along with half damage from the off weapon. So without taking class skills into account, duel wielding and two hand weapons should produce about the same DPS. Specific skills can make certain weapons more advantageous, which can be very significant, but other than that it’s mostly just a mater of taste.

I tend to duel wiled with my hunter. If I got my hands on a nice 2H weapon I’d happily use it. But in general I tend to like the look of duel wielding. And since my hunter rarely melees, and I don’t PvP, my weapon choice makes little difference beyond stat bonuses.