I’ve been trying to find information on the mechanics of dual wielding vs. a single 1-hander and can’t find a good source. When I dual wield (I’ve only done it with ranged weapons) I seem to attack with both weapons periodically. Does anyone know the chance of this happening? Can I increase it with stats?
Also, is that double attack the primary benefit of dual wielding? It also seems like it increases my attacks per second, even not including the double attack. Is this the case? If so, what is the aps increase?
When dual wielding you have 25% chance of hitting with your main hand, 25% chance hitting with your off-hand and 50% chance hitting with both at the same time. Primary benefit? Basically 50% chance of double damage.
What I know. Dual Blades basically gives you a 50% chance to attack with both weapons at once.
The skills after it like Belgothina Shears (also known as Weapo pool skills) Can proc off of any autoattack. These procs override the “normal” dual blades attack.
So if a weapon pool skill does not proc you still have a 50% chance to proc dual blades at least. So end game if you have a total of 80% chance to proc weapon pool skills that 50% is actually 10%. Hope i didn’t confuse you.
Here is a quote from Nine for verification:
Originally Posted by Nine
Attacking with both weapons has a 50% chance of being used when a proc does not activate. The way it works is first it will check if the proc activates. If no then a default weapon attack is used. Then it checks which weapon will be used (right, left or both). In actual use, if you have an 80% proc chance then 10% of your non-proc attacks will be with both weapons
Thanks for the info on left, right, both. That makes sense, and the info on WPS procs.
Does anyone know about the attacks per second? Is my aps higher dual wielding than with just a main hand pistol?
With respect to the “both” attacks, how does that work with %weapon damage skills. Take fire strike, if I get a “both” attack does my fire strike do double damage?
Attacks per second? Well concidering you have 50% chance of attacking “twice” at the same time when using default attack, it has to be higher. But if you mean does dual wielding have actually faster attack speed, then no. If somehow you wouldn’t proc those dual attacks at all when dual wielding, single weapon would be just as fast as dual wield.
For the other question, as far as I know skills like fire strike that replace default attack do get full benefit of dual wielding, as in both weapons get full bonuses from the skill when both attack at the same time. But this is where my knowledge of the mechanics start to get hazy, so don’t quote me about that.
I’ve seen this posted before, but I’m not quite sure what people mean by it. I’ve tested various DoT skills with dual-wield and it isn’t beneficial to any of them as far as I can tell. Nidalla’s justifiable ends doesn’t benefit, nor does flat DoT granted by skills (overload, whatever the modifiier on pneumatic burst that gives frostburn is called). I think dual wield only benefits DoT in that you can have two weapons with a DoT attached, but that’s not huge. I certainly haven’t tested everything, maybe storm touched, for example, benefits from dual wield, but I doubt it.
Short version: Fire Strike replaces your default attacks and is well-suited for dual-wielding and WPS, basically acting as an independent multiplier on all your dual-wielding skills.
Thanks for the link, that’s good info. So in the fire strike tooltip it says it does a %of “main hand damage”. Does this mean that if you attack with your left weapon, or both weapons, that damage is always calculated based on your right hand weapon? Or does the weapon damage of the left hand matter if that gun is the one that attacks?
On that note, does savagery work similarly? I’ve done a bit of testing and the double attack still only builds one savagery charge, but I’m trying to figure out of it hits for double damage, and if the left hand attack gets the skill’s full benefit.
Fire Strike itself doesn’t determine which weapon you attack with. It just multiplies that damage, whichever one is attacking. If you attack with the left due to dual-wielding, that’s what you get. Same for the right. If you attack with both, you attack with both Fire Strikes.
I haven’t played a lot with Savagery, but my understanding is it basically works like Fire Strike, except you have to build the charges to get the full effectiveness. If you do a double strike with dual-wielding, it doesn’t build additional charges, and the same goes for Cadence.
From messing around with the training dummy this seems to be the case. Thanks for all the help, I have a much better handle on how dual wielding works after the thread.