Dual Wield - Gameplay Mechanics

[Barsby 0]

So, I was just fiddling with gear as a way of avoiding the decision of quest vs pushing ahead on the main story and I noticed something odd... I'm on a dual wield character, one weapon with a lava rock in it, one with a magic pearl. My normal attacks show physical/fire/magic portions, but my combat art is only displaying physical+fire.

 

I stripped off the fire weapon and the display updated to be physical+magic and the damage figure increased (the magic pearl weapon is a higher damage weapon). I re-equipped the second weapon - the damage type breakdown did not change, it stayed physical+magic and the listed figure stayed at the higher value.

 

I take off the magic weapon and it all goes back to the original fire enhanced figures.

 

Is it a display bug, or is the combat art really only using 1 weapon, making the second weapon redundant except for normal left button attacks? The animation certainly makes it appear as though pelting strikes is using both weapons.

[Dobri 55]

Yeah, ANY combat arts uses only the right hand weapon. This means if you use a 2-hander, it's ok, but if you dual wield, only the right hand weapon damage is applied.

 

The left hand weapon in this case only acts as a booster (damage modifiers, elemental modifiers, CA modifiers and such) but plays no part in the CA damage calculation.

[Barsby 0]

Well, I'll be buggered. Thanks Dobri.

 

That's going to make it more annoying for a build that spams a CA and pretty much never uses normal attacks. I'll have to actually pay attention to mods/sockets on the low damage weapons that I currently don't look twice at. Kinda makes me wish I'd opted for a 2h build on my shadow warrior

[gogoblender 3,070]

The left hand weapon in this case only acts as a booster (damage modifiers, elemental modifiers, CA modifiers and such) but plays no part in the CA damage calculation.

 

I was looking for confirmation of this Dobri. Now I know it. Thanks for the headsup.

 

 

gogo

[Rllulium 0]

The obvious exception here is the Combat Arts that actually provides a second hit when dualwielding. Although only the right hand weapon's damage will be shown in the tooltip.

[Dobri 55]

You have a point. Pelting Strikes does use the left hand weapon when doing the multi-hitting.

[Rllulium 0]

You have a point. Pelting Strikes does use the left hand weapon when doing the multi-hitting.

I was mostly thinking about Combat Arts such as Callous Execution and Ravaged Impact, that provides a "double hit" when you are dualwielding.

[Barsby 0]

You have a point. Pelting Strikes does use the left hand weapon when doing the multi-hitting.

 

 

Ok then, I finally get it. It's just displaying the damage of the first hit (pelting strikes being the skill I was looking at while gear fiddling). I mean, I knew it wasn't showing the total damage of the attack sequence but for some reason it never occurred to me that the first hit would only be using 1 weapon. And from that, I've just now understood why normal attacks on my characters often look so powerful compared to CAs - being the combined damage from both weapons, and requiring both weapons to hit to produce that sort of damage. My own fault for building dual wield characters. The Dryad doesn't have better CAs, she just only uses 1 weapon

 

Yes, some days, I am a retard.

 

Thanks again.