Dual wield logic

[kjs86z2]

Originally Posted by Crede [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Without knowing your class or budget, 2H will generally put out superior dps relative to the cost. Like a Reaver with a 40/40 ratio will blow away most 1hnders without spending serious money and/or raiding. Best 2hnders without breaking the bank are gonna be Reaver, IFS, and Woodmans Staff.

this

not to mention less dmg taken when tanking

[Goregasmic]

Parses in the ranger thread show that 2handers are more cost effective when it comes to droppables but 1h do hold their ground. Depends how much effort you want/can put in but it is a lot closer than people claim. This comes from a big 2hander fan. But yeah, at lower levels 1handers offhand double attack suffers from the DW check and your ripostes will be weaker on top of being riposted more often. That and the odd damage shields or when you're not quick enough on enrages. With most of the 2handers previously mentioned you can pretty much coast to 60 without looking back.

I'd even put peacebringer ahead of IFS if I wanted to nitpick, just 1k and should parse slightly ahead due to IFS being 33% slower for only 4 extra damage bonus.

Spade/AP work too with less class restrictions. Exquisite also but often poor value for what they are as they're often barely above AP for like 5x the price.

[TheBlob]

Originally Posted by Lyta [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Okay, for some reason i had the idea that offhand only triggered when main hand went off.

Can you say anything more about this main hand bonus?

I think this was an urban legend on live. I remember thinking I should put the faster weapon in my primary weapon slot so the offhand one would swing faster.

[bcbrown]

Originally Posted by Goregasmic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Fair points. I mentioned <28 because that's the scenario I ran the numbers on back then, with no dmg bonus you're basically dealing with 2 offhands. I've always had trouble inserting the DW variable into DPS calculations because that page has no confirmed numbers. IIRC I've seen parses more around 65% but I'm really not sure. DSM probably has it in his calculator?

Also, to add another layer of complexity, it seems(?) double attack doesn't fire from offhand until 150 or so (lvl30) so it is probably an incentive to use the better ratio in mainhand until significant damage bonus kicks in to get a bit more bang for your bucks. Low DW chance and even lower DA on OH is why people will say to not bother with 1handers when 2h damage caps are lifted but that is somewhat beyond the point.

Yep, as you said, when in doubt math it out. It may change as you level and the damage bonus becomes more important and DW skill increases.

The DW wiki includes a formula as well as a table for lvl 50/60, and I've found it to be accurate. The last time I parsed DW success rate was at level 51, where I found it to be 65%, matching that table. The example I gave was for monks with a higher skill cap; they should be at ~75% at lvl50 but I don't have a monk to test that.

One method for checking DW success rates was already posted, using fight duration divided by adjusted delay and then scaling by DW and DA skill checks to compute an expected number of swings and comparing to the actually recorded number of swings. That works well, but I prefer a different methodology that with a few assumptions allows you to directly measure the DA and DW success rates. Both, of course, require different weapon types in mainhand and offhand so you can tell which is which.

The central assumption is that both weapons have an adjusted delay significantly longer than one second. In that case, if you have two swings in the same second you can assume that's a double attack. So first you collect all swings or attempted swings, then count how many timestamps have a single swing and how many have two. The ratio is the double attack success rate. Then, you add the counts to find the total number of successful dual wield skill checks. Dividing the fight length by the adjusted delay gives you the expected number of swings if dual wield is always successful, and dividing the actual number of successful DW skill checks by that theoretical maximum gives you the dual wield success rate.

Here's an example from when I was level 51, Infestation offhand, 22% worn haste. There were 405 timestamps with a single piercing swing and 457 with two piercing swings, giving a 53% DA success rate. The fight duration was 1944 seconds, the adjusted delay was 14.75, and so with a 100% DW success rate you'd expect 1317 rounds of attacks. Compared to the sum of 405 and 457, that's 862/1317, or an observed 65.4% dual wield success rate.

This approach breaks down when the offhand is fast enough to potentially swing twice in the same second, so for example I can't use it with my shiny new Barbed Scale Whip.

I hadn't known that DA doesn't fire offhand till lvl30, that's interesting. My baby ranger is 30 already so I guess testing that will have to wait for the next ranger. Another interesting point of trivia for dual wield is that you can skill up while wielding a shield. Also, Jimjam once mentioned that weapon procs can fire even when you fail a dual wield skill check, which is part of why I think it can be a good idea to put a weapon with a good proc but a poor ratio in the offhand.