1H vs 2H vs dual wield

[MrJekylls]

Just wondering if there's a consensus on the best weapon type to use - 1 hand, 2 hand, or dual wield. Also, does delay matter at all, or do you just look purely at the damage rating? ie. You have a 20.5 weapon with 1.4 delay, and a 20.5 weapon with a 3.0 delay. Will they perform equally well?

 

Plus, with the new damage rating score, does anybody know the percentage to consider for when to switch over weapons.

 

What I mean is this -

 

I'm currently level 27 - I have two dual wield weapons with a 10.4 damage rating. At what point should I consider going to a 1H weapon for pure dps? Assuming that the off hand of a dual wield weapon is half the dps, that means (in theory) my damage rating is 10.4 + 5.2 = 15.6. So if I find a 1H weapon with a 15.7 rating, will I do more dps?

Also, what's the main difference between a 1H and a 2H weapon? My understanding is that, with both, you only use 1 weapon at a time. So why would you choose one over the other?

Anyway, sorry for the slightly confusing post. Mainly hoping some people with more experience and knowledge can shed some light on this aspect of EQ2.

[Kaplin42]

well i have partial answers for you.  im not much of a math wiz so all of that formula stuff is right over my head but here is what i know.

 

you would never drop duel wield for a 1H, except for two reason, one that 1H better be the Most uberest Club of Bashing that ever was in the game, two, you would switch to 1H so you could use a shield.  other than those two reasons, you would stay duel wield over 1H. 

 

Now for duel wield versus 2h.  this is a little more trickier as i understand it.  some will swear that 2h is better dps while tanking, others say duel wield, as it was explained to me, it comes down to parrys and ripostes.  with Duel Wield you are swinging a lot faster and a lot more times, which means more chances for parrys and ripostes.  if you are getting beat down by these, then switch to 2H.  that will keep your dps close, but with less swings and less chances for the mobs counter attacks

 

edited to remove the part where i was talkin out of my butt.

Message Edited by Kaplin42 on 10-07-2005 08:51 AM

[ganjookie]

I prefer a nicely wrapped 1 handed blunt..weapon, and a shield.  It helps to upgrade to chain armor to, so that your mitigation is boosted a lil more.  If you cant find any on the broker I think that FD is where you want to look for the SIF.  Once I got that I've pretty much stuck with it for the last 6 levels.  Now that I am 40 though I think I might go look for the TGR in SSF, I hear that is pretty good for the str and agi stats.

[MrJekylls]

I prefer a nicely wrapped 1 handed blunt..weapon, and a shield.

Do monks / bruisers still get an innate 'shield' ability? Is it worth it to use a shield?

On another note, what percentage these days comes from special attacks, and what from regular damage? If 75% is from special attacks, then it really does seem to make sense to use a 1 hander and shield. So you only do 65% of damage over dual wielding - 65% of 25% doesn't really matter. If that makes sense.

Of course that doesn't really apply if regular attacks count for a larger portion of damage output.

[ganjookie]

Im sorry I lied, we dont get shields, it is built in, you probably want to stay away from a 1hnd weapon, unless it is the most godlike thing in existance.  Stick to DW and a good 2hander incase your hit by alot of repostes.  It is also a good idea to have a secondary set of weapons in case the mob is immune to crush damage.  The Cestii and cestus use the crushing skill but do slash or pierce dmg. As for the percentages..no clue.  It depends on the mob, what CA's you cirrently have, and how much you feel like bashing heads in.  At level 40 I can take down blue, bluedwn^, with 3 or 4 CAs, and taht might inlcude..maybe 100dmg from autoattack.  White cons take 6 or 7 moves and a lil over 300 autooattack dmg.  Thats guesstimation though

[industrock]

I use my 55dr  RGF (3.8 delay) over dual weild for every situation, tanking or not tanking.  For 2 reasons:

 

1.  I'm always spamming my combat arts.

2.  Nothing procs your buffs/spells/imbued/items better than a 3.8 second delay weapon.

 

When using crushing fury with RGF, i always get at least one proc per swing, but usually get 2-3 per swing.  Most combat arts i use also trigger a proc as well.   I've never been able to do that with dual weild at all.  And with the lowered damage from Engulf by using a weapon, you need all the procs you can get.

 

I hate using 2h weps though, i much prefer the dual weild animations =)  but as far as dps/tanking, a flail is the way to go, imho.

[fur]

The reason slow weapons procc more is cause they swing less times, over time dw weaps with proccs will procc just as much as a very slow 2h like the flails, they have done the procc reliant on a world delay rather then weapon delay so that weapons are equal (cause if weapons procced 10% of the time having a fast dw weapon > slow 2h weapons, as they did in eq1), thats why a longbow (7.0 delay) will procc poison for a scout 100% of the time he fires it (or close to 100%).

Its easier to get one good 2h weapon then it is to get 2 dw's however having a weapon like sixta's in mainhand with prismatic in offhand was probably one of the higher damage combinations pre expansion, going dw or 2h is more about personal preference / availability of weapons then actual "best choice"

[industrock]

Weird, because with crushing fury, i proc 2-3 different things, PER SWING (8 times 2-3procs) when i use a 3.8dly weapon.  With dual weild, i rarely proc anything at all when using crushing fury.

[fur]

You got to use the same type of procc ( imbued weaps are very good for reason of testing) log your proccs with a imbued slow 2h vs 2 imbued dw's and youll get the same result i do , ie they procc exactly the same (with exactly beeing 1-2% differance either way, depening on lengt of fight luck etc) .

 

[fur]

Ok need to ressurect this post as ive been getting alot of strange readings when parsing as of late, first of all 2h vs dw before revamp was pretty much tied, but as finding 2 good dw's was a hassle and rgf was pretty easy to get if youre in a decent raiding guild, most people went the way of the 2h'er.

That beeing said ive parsed 100+ hours from 51>56 and the results are abit..unsettling, to start with my weapon combos are 2 t6 imbued cestii's, t6 imbued cobalt great mace , 2 t6 ironwood imbued batons. Switching back and forth with these while fighting armored scorps (+/- 1 level range) for about 6 hours killing 10 at a time then switching to next setup the weapon that by far did the most damage was...unarmed..

Ok before you start calling me a crazy liar here , i must stress the fact that i was in a static group setup which consisted of paladin (tanking) trouby , warden and myself. Str is capped out and then some and only using fbss for haste + trouby haste.

WIth weapons i got the highest dps rating with my cestii's, now that would imply that great mace would do even better cause its slower, but alas it did not, falling 20>45 dps below my 2X cestii combo on average. Now 2h has lower stats then dw but as im capped out on strength anyhow those points dont shift dps and even if they did not by 20+ dps.

What i noticed off the bat is that if unarmed proc goes off more then 3 times in a normal fast exp group it actually do more extra damage then you loose by not having weapons equipped. At adept 3 the procc is like 1100 at the highest and it proccs quite alot when fighting unarmed, also unarmed damage goes up quite abit by raising strength and the average hit is well over 250 damage.

So what does this mean? Not a helluva lot until we have some serious testing and multiple feedback to back it up.

What i truly wished is that they implemented some form of unarmed gloves or made unarmed flagged as "magic" .

Also i would not recommend using unarmed if you are low on strength and without haste backup as that truly makes a differance, in solo mode its not a contest , weapons>unarmed , but with good buffs backing up unarmed>weapons (at least t6 legendary and on non magic required to hit mobs).

I would truly appreciate some feedback on this by as many 50 bruisers as possible as this is to interesting to let go =)

Skull 56 Bruiser

Edit , I continued testing with same group setup killing giants in PoF (Kromtorr camp) for 10+ hours and the fact remains im doing more damage with unarmed then any other weapon in my arsenal

Message Edited by furok on 10-24-2005 05:02 PM

[MakhailSamma]

Thanks for the information. If you could log these parses and share them I would love to have a chance to see the breakdown.

Thanks a ton for you effort and time

[fur]

Heh im not a computer wiz so totally clueless when it comes to pasting in info here, i might be able to save it as a word document or have anyone in my guild that is abit more knowledgable do it, also did another 6 hour grind on giants yesterday and haste really plays a huge part in unarmed dps as well as beeing capped out in strength, i did over 50 fights total with only auto attack (to a general chorus of /gsay bruiser is slacking again hes only on auto , comments) and unarmed still do the most damage over time thanks to magmatic fists, without it its not even a contest its weapons all the way, now if only we could get our hands flagged as "magic" heh.

Skull 56 Bruiser

[Quicksilver74]

The biggest advantage to using duel wield weapons is also the extra stats, especially if you have very nice duel wield stuff.  Prizzy gives +2 crushing, Sixtas adds to crushing AND to defense (Nice to have when tanking).  Eithere high AGI weapons( good for avoidance) or high STR weapons(Good for DPSing), or a combination of both are awesome.  

 

   For an endurance fight I duel wield Cudgel of Reflection and Prismatic Baton, for stats, and effects.  Cudgel has 5% chance to heal you for about 361, (very very nice to have), and Prizzy does dmg proc as well as Mana regain.  Sure I have weapons that hit harder, but the abilities on those weapons owns for a long fight. 

[topher]

YES, i have noticed the same thing when fighting solo i do much better DPS fighting unarmed with magmatic fists AD3 up. It is especially noticable when im fighting groups of up to 5, when i use the AOE version of crushing furry i can do a TON a dammage. I am lvl 50 and using a legendary imbued fist wrap and a t5 fabled nuckle. The magmatic fists proc really adds alot of DMG and the proc rate is 10% so it goes off alot. i have seen it go off 3 times when i use crushing furry which can do 3k+ dmg.

I have even timed how long it takes me to kill mobs just using auto attack and no weapons is always faster, i am about to get 2 legendary imbued t6 weapons so things might change but with t5 weapons at lvl 50 no weapons is definastely better

[topher]

OH, by the way furok what r u using to parse, i would like to do some real DPS tests on this with my setup

[fur]

Ive been running combatstats for parses , remember though when i tested this i had trobuy buffs and mystic buffs up + paladin group strength buff so even without weapons i had 430+ strength so the loss of stats didnt matter, 2nd the procc when it goes off is a HUGE chunk of + damage , if it fires even twice in a short 15 sec fight its a big portion of our overall dps , now i have heard (unconfirmed as of today) that having t6 legendary or better (fabled) gloves equipped actually makes you able to hit all mobs as long as they are not crush immune? Can anyone confirm this? On long haul t6 fights where power tends to be in short supply even with pow regen, beeing able to switch to unarmed for some nice proccs when running on fumes might be a very viable option , alas without any means of making our hands able to hit bossmobs , unarmed will always remain more fluff then usefullness, which is abit sad tbh as it really sets us apart from monks. (we would of course still need weapons as to be able to hit crush immune targets, however it makes for more options=)

 

Skull 57 Bruiser.

[Gaige]

LU16 is going to address the disparities between dw and 2h (riposte and dps) and make them more inline with each other.

[Turb]

Heaven forbid we have some choice to make...I wonder what else LU16 will water down...

[Gaige]

It actually offers more choice as not everyone will go 2h because of the increased DPS and minimal ripostes.

 

[Raidi Sovin'faile]

Yep... when you have one weapon that is the best, then you'll see everyone using it. There'll be a few folks that don't, but most will use the best option available.. simple math.

Having everything equal means everyone can use whatever weapons they want. More variety is seen, since no one is using a single "best" combo.

[Turb]

Fair point

[topher]

ok, i was parseing dual wield vs no weapons using magmatic fists and i found everytime no weapons was better DPS. without weapons i averaged about 250 with weapons it was about 190. all parses were just me soloing self buffed

 

I am a 51 bruiser i have magmatic fists ad3 about 220 str self buffed the weapons i used where both t5 one legendary with 23dr and one fabled with 27dr. i was fighting lvl45 green heroic^^^ the magmatic fists proc would go off between 3 and 8 times per fight.

 

I should be getting my t6 legendary cobalt dual wield weapons soon, when i do ill retest the DPS with those and see how it comes out, but for now with my setup the extra dammage on the offensive stance proc out weighs using faster dualwield weapons.

[Laha]

I never like how the 1handed weapons were almost on par with most 2 handers...  considering realistically you'll get more of a punch using both arms and all.

[topher]

OK, for anyone still reading this post i just got my t6 legendary imbued DW and the DPS is better with them, not to mention the added stats

[Falwen]

Ok, I know this is probably a really stupid question, and I'm sure at my level I should probably know this, but I've always been absolutely TERRIBLE with acronyms... someone please help my befuddled mind and tell me what "RGF" stands for.  Trying to think of it is starting to hurt!  :smileyvery-happy:

Rainyn - 42 Bruiser, Nektulos Server

[TheSummoned]

Royal Great Flail :smileyhappy:

[Falwen]

THANK YOU!

[KetaDreams]

I personally never use a shield/1hb combination. I feel, even if I'm tanking, that I'm performing far below my potential as a bruiser when I do this.

I am dps more than a tank, so I prefer dual weild sticks or fists (weapon type doesn't matter too much, since each type is about the same as any other). I carry a 2hb when I come up against foes that riposte or parry a lot while tanking.