2H and dual-wielding

[hapro]

So I've always used 1H+shield (unless I find an absurd 2H early game, but I eventually switched it out) but I'm wondering about the viability not using a shield, since a lot of people say how great the Minotaur Axe is. I have a pre-32 ranger right now and with a spear/shield I have 85 DV, but if I switch to Executor/dagger of death, my DV drops to about 35 (PV is ~50). Are other people going around fighting with DVs lower than their PVs? Seems like you're just asking to die if you're running around in the higher-level areas. Or maybe it's OK and I just don't know because I've never tried it?

[yhal003]

Dual wielding I have no experience with, but two handers are very viable. One of my barbs won the game using death blade almost exclusively and death blade is not a great weapon. Fire power is more than enough to compensate for the lack of DV, because you kill enemies faster the risk of getting hit is reduced. You do need to be more careful to avoid being surrounded and guard against ranged attacks though.

35/50 is good enough if your offence is adequate, but mixing anything with executor is a bad idea. Executor is best one-handed weapon in this game (except justifier for pals), and any off hand weapon will reduce its effectiveness.

[Blasphemous]

As long as you have paralyzation resistance, you can even run around with 20/40 dv/pv in the late-end game, it's perfectly feasible.
At that point you have to health pool to soak in an occasional crit and other effects are diminished through resistances so really the only thing you should worry about is paralysis.
Death ray resistance has a guaranteed source and petrification attacks are quite rare, though deadly with low dv and no resistance.

[Blank4u47]

If you've been using spear/shield combo the whole game I'd recommend keep using the spear in your right hand for the DV bonus, and the axe in the off hand for damage. Also if you just dual wield two spears you won't really lose much DV.


Edit: I'm guessing your spear skill is about lvl 12 so just wielding spear in right hand and executor in left would give you about 49 DV and two spears would give you about 59 DV.

[nanomage]

DV loss is alright, a decent 2H is a reasonable tradeoff. Dual wielding not so much, because your attacks take more time (energy cost is around 1500 iirc). You've got two attacks to benefit from your massive Str yes, but also two attacks to be reduced twice by enemies' PV. So for dual-wielding you don't exactly get the same sort of the deal as with twohanders.
I had a char who dual-wielded a whip of the snake with serpent's bite and i thought that one was decent, but he would probably still have been better off just pairing the dagger with a shield.
Now of course two particular daggers are a different story entirely, but generally dual-wielding is meh

[Blank4u47]

Sorry to disagree nanomage but there's a lot more to dual wielding than that, by the time both weapons are lvl 12 dual wielding costs 1100 energy. Other advantages include getting additional DV from your weapon skill (50%off hand value) the ability to use 2 artifact weapons which may have additional resistances/slaying powers, and because you get 2 hits, there's twice the chance to score a critical. Not only that, but Rangers dual wielding get a bonus to-hit right from the start.

Now as far as comparing 2h weapons to dual wielding, yes you get a ton more damage which effectively nullifies monster pv. But by mid-game you should have a high enough str plus rings of slaying/damage which will do the same thing, which then allows you to enjoy the versatility of using all those super cool weapons you find at end game.

[nanomage]

but on lvl12 your melee attacks with 1 weapon are down to ~750 or so as well. It will surely still boil down to the same 1.5 increase in attack time for 2wielding vs 1 weapon.
Adom is split in turns so I can understand where this "twice the chance to score a critical" comes from, but it is actually a mistake to think so. In the time it takes you to deliver 2 attacks in dual-mode, you could've dealt ~1.5 attack with a twohander, not 1. So you get ~1.5 chance of critical hit (assuming 1.5*1.5~=2 for simplicity).
Everything else you state is indeed correct and it's just my opinion that these things don't outweigh the sheer power of a 2H.

[Blank4u47]

You are correct there, but the numbers are a bit off, at lvl 12 attacks cost 700 for 1 weapon. If dual wielding with skill at 100, then attacks cost 1100 so that's 1.57 attacks for every 1 made. (Ok, yeah I'm obscesive)

Also the point I was trying to make about 2 chances for critical hits I had phrased poorly, I meant in double the chance in 1 turn before the enemy retaliated.

After I say all this, I would like to point out that against more powerful or faster foes I do often switch to a shield until they're dealt with, 2 weapon combat is much better for clearing the riff-raff and training your weapon skills faster.

[JellySlayer]

My experience...

For two-handed weapons, if you use a polearm like RCT, you probably will not notice the loss in DV too much compared to spear + shield. It's a bit down, but there isn't a huge difference between 60 DV and 80 DV as long as your PV is pretty good.

If you're using the minotaur axe, it really doesn't matter as long as you have paralysis resist. Pretty much everything dies in 1 hit regardless. 10 DV/50 PV is totally fine.

If you happen to find a really good staff, you should be able to get about equal, maybe even slightly better DV than spear + shield unless you have a really good shield with high skill.

Dual-wielding is almost never worthwhile. With the possible, possible exception of Needle + Sting, you should never do this. Maybe in a speedrun it would save some turns, I guess, so there's that. [edit]Although in some other thread I think we figured out that Trusted One + good weapon dual wield is actually not so bad. Using a powerful weapon like Executor with a mediocre weapon like Dagger of Death is a very bad way to dual wield, IMHO, since Executor is slaying and the other isn't. Dual wield bloody daggers is probably decent, I guess. Does +Crit stack, I wonder?

[Blank4u47]

I agree with you about dagger of death and executor being a horrible combo. But I disagree about dual wielding not being worth it, at least with my play styles.

And yes dual wielding bloody daggers is pretty great, but no their +crit doesn't stack I've tried it out.