Given that I've downloaded a lot of my gear, the stats I'm looking out for the most are the
- +X skill] items; because they boost your skills and thus the damage output, regeneration time of your combat arts, increase your combat art execution speed as well as the CA's itself and its damage (if you have the lore part) (I think there's a list in one of the posts about where to download the amulets. Socket them in half of your armour slots)
- items having Regen per hit; because each hit will reduce the cooldown regeneration of your CA's, meaning you are able to use 7-10 second regeneration CA's and still having them active again within 1 second. Yes, it works thàt good.
- fire and ice modifiers as well as the +Z% physical damage increase rings; With these I'm not only meaning the lava chunck and ice shard, but also rings offering +Y% to either fire and ice.
I.e.: a weapon doing 200 physical and 25 fire damge, got a 50% conversion lava chunk and a "Fire damage +20%" ring socketed. That means that the physical damage is reduced to 100, while firedmg is increase to 125 because of the lava chunk. However, with the +20% ring, the fire damage is increased with another 25 points because the ring increases your already high fire rate. If that ring happens to have a 2 sockets, adding a +Z% physical ring, would increase damage even more.
- Rings and amulets increasing your resitances against damage over time, chances to wound etc. One of the reasons I said to use the+X skill items in only half your armour sockets. Because these rings and amulets (the ones having all the nice coloured stats) are put in the other half of the sockets.
- aspect increasing items like rings giving a bonus to your main CA's or giving a general bonus to one of the aspects you're using. I.e. a ring giving +5 to Pelting strikes is nice, however a ring giving +2 to Exalted Warrior Aspects may work better as it reduced the regeneration time of the CA's, while at the same time increasing the CA's too.
- If I'm able to socket them; rings giving points to Dual wield. The reason, the higher that skill, the faster you swing your weapons (capped at 150%), but more important, the higher the chance you do a critical hit too. And we all know, crits kill.
The list of items I'm using is in my first post; as well as the reason why I'm using them, so I won't explain that here.
As for your question about investing a single point into swordlore to unlock the "special" benefits of those weapons; I've always been reluctant to it as it would also mean - imho - that you would need to do the similar thing for hafted weapons; as you're using both as a Dual Wielder. That is, I am, as there's no use to dump a good hafted (hammer, axe) weapon in favour of a bad sword or dagger. That also means you're dropping two skills to unlock a feature you're only using to unlock benefits for the first 74!! levels, as it won't do a thing after your character hit level 75, since you need Sword Mastery for that. Or, if you're aming at getting the bonii after mastery (and for the other 125 levels) as well, bascially wasting 75-150 skill points into two skills you don't use at all; simply because mastery only works if you reach the hard cap (75) of a skill. Not by getting the soft cap. which may be well over 75 skill points at some point by using +X skill items.
Not to mention, the attackspeed and crit hit chance are based upon your DW skill, so no use to invest in sword and / or hafted lore as well.
But that's my opinion. Other players think the benefits of having the last modifier of a weapon unlocked for the first 75 levels works better, even if you're dualwielding, because the higher DW skill will override the lower attack speed and crit chance Sword lore is giving. Plus the fact they drop only one point in it, makes their build stronger as they can invest more points into the other skills.
So yes, when using Dual Wield only, the other bonii based upon sword lore or hafted lore won't work.
However, if you're using the community patch you've got the chance to find (or download them if you want to) items that use Dual Wield as modifier. Disciples of the Architect (staves) is one of those sets, the Flesh eaters axes are another, the Remnants of Drizzt are a DW sword set and the Night and Silent Water are the DW "unarmed" weapon DW set.
Personally I found the axes and swords weak compared to those I'm currently using, so I decided to drop the idea of using the modifier in favour of the better damage I'm still doing with the weapons I'm using. And since I've downloaded most of my items, upgrading my weapons / armour when the minimum level unlocks isn't a problem anymore.
Anyway, I hope I've been able to answer some of your questions. Have fun with the game and the build!
Thorin