Improving two weapon combat

[AlterAsc]

It would make a lot of sense that a full-on assault with two heavy weapons would take more time to recover from than two light weapons, hence a higher energy cost.

What you suggest makes sense. However making arbitrary rule stating that weight matters for attack speed but only for dual-wielding does not.

[JellySlayer]

What you suggest makes sense. However making arbitrary rule stating that weight matters for attack speed but only for dual-wielding does not.

Making weight matter to attack speed for all weapons might actually be a nice way to think about balancing the various weapon types, as well as weapon + shield, etc...

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Making weight matter to attack speed for all weapons might actually be a nice way to think about balancing the various weapon types, as well as weapon + shield, etc...

Sounds good to me in general, although it should be done with care, as it could render e.g. Big Punch really underpowered.

[psy_wombats]

I think solutions where dual-wielding weapons under the weight limit (with bonuses for Two Weapon Combat, rangers, etc) isn't penalized at all. The damage bonus from a 2H is roughly equal to the DV from a shield should be roughly equal to the two weaker attacks from lighter weapons.

[Burb]

Honest question, does anyone really use TWF except for needle and sting? I suppose rangers are okay with it too early since they dont get the -6 to hit penalty and have a wider range of weapons they can use, but even still it seems unlikely.

[Blank4u47]

I actually use it often, depending on what weapons I find. Generally for non ranger characters I play i wait until mid-late game to use it extensively because I'll have found decent armor which I'll have then Smithed up, and by then I'll also have decent ranged damage and/or spells. My favorite combo right now is whip of the snake and whip of slaughtering paired with ring of master cat and bracers of war all to get dx super high in order to reduce the energy cost of dualing whips and providing super dmg bonus

[manseman]

I actually use it often, depending on what weapons I find. Generally for non ranger characters I play i wait until mid-late game to use it extensively because I'll have found decent armor which I'll have then Smithed up, and by then I'll also have decent ranged damage and/or spells. My favorite combo right now is whip of the snake and whip of slaughtering paired with ring of master cat and bracers of war all to get dx super high in order to reduce the energy cost of dualing whips and providing super dmg bonus

With two of the best artifacts in the game you can pretty much wield a Si and still do ok.

[_Ln_]

Honest question, does anyone really use TWF except for needle and sting? I suppose rangers are okay with it too early since they dont get the -6 to hit penalty and have a wider range of weapons they can use, but even still it seems unlikely.

I have completed the game with dual-wielding as melee only (dagger Assassin), it's pretty fun.

I'm a fan of dual-wielding in general, especially with slaying weapons.

I think we need to look at it from another point.
Let's check 3 factors: DV bonus, damage bonus, energy bonus over 4 categories:

Weapon type	DV bonus	damage bonus	energy bonus
One-hander + shield	+2	+1 (abundancy of artifact slayers)	+1
Offensive twohander	0	+2	+1
Defensive twohander (polearms, staves)	+2	0	+1
Dual-wielding	0 -- +1	+2	-1

I'm not a big fan of nerfing everything, but in this case it seems pretty reasonable to bring these groups to a common point. And this should be done by nerfing everything else!

1. Shield nerf (it is already proposed several times in some ways or another). My personal preferred solution is to utilize already existent shield classes to add EP penalty on every action while in combat (small - 100 EP, medium - 150 EP, large - 200 EP, tower - 300 EP, can be adjusted).
2. EP nerf for twohanders (this is much less of an issue since they are on a smaller scale of OP, so I'm supplying it for consistence).

[AlterAsc]

The thing with that table is that dual-wielding is not much better in turns of damage compared to 1H. And 'true' two-handers deal much more, they scale with character strength enormously well and they have less problems when it comes to overcoming enemy PV.

Nerfing everything else doesn't solve at least two problems.
One - once you find much better (basically slaying weapon), TWF becomes obsolete. With your proposed shield nerf you might as well go for single weapon route.
Two - game still wants you to dual-wield light weapons. Yeah, eternium flails are not so heavy, but characters get access to pair of eternium weapons only in late game usually. Which is really late. And don't you dare bring reality into my ADoM with saying that it's hard to dual-wield flails, my assassins weighting 6 stones had no problem backstabbing enemies with 1200s axe.

Making Energy cost depending on weight/class of the weapon is a drastic change. Then for balance we'll also need to have less St scaling with lighter weapons. Personally i think that's going too far.

Honest question, does anyone really use TWF except for needle and sting? I suppose rangers are okay with it too early since they dont get the -6 to hit penalty and have a wider range of weapons they can use, but even still it seems unlikely.

Practically noone ever does, but when they do, most of the time they use daggers. Rangers' lesser limitations on weight only comes around at lvl32, so they too dual-wield daggers (or swords) for the most of the game.

[Blank4u47]

Practically noone ever does, but when they do, most of the time they use daggers. Rangers' lesser limitations on weight only comes around at lvl32, so they too dual-wield daggers (or swords) for the most of the game.

i feel that is very untrue, a little penalty to-hit may make a difference in the early game, but by mid game or even a little earlier it doesn't restrict you much at all. most 1 handers are in the 40-70s range, and mithril weapons aren't rare at all. usually by the puppy cave you have an adamantium weapon or two. i never use daggers while TWFing unless im playing an assassin or a thief for that extra backstab damage from class power and dagger x3 backstab dmg. one of the greatest abilities of TWF is that you can combine the higher defense of a spear or whip with a higher damage weapon class like mace, sword, or axe. it can also be used as a training tactic for a specific weapon group, put a weaker weapon in the right hand, and the strong one in the left, and suddenly you are training skill marks 2x as fast.