Does Anyone DW Anymore or are Shields the Standard Now?

Basically title.
Everything I read online from past year-ish keeps saying DW has been nerfed into the ground so hard?

I always play bows so not too familiar with melee weapons as much.
The extra atk speed and block chance seems nice on paper. Can never have enough atk speed.

My understanding is that shields provide a lot of offensive stats (not sure about atk speed) on top of huge life/ES and other defensive stats.

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009Status wrote:

Basically title.
Everything I read online from past year-ish keeps saying DW has been nerfed into the ground so hard?

I always play bows so not too familiar with melee weapons as much.
The extra atk speed and block chance seems nice on paper. Can never have enough atk speed.

My understanding is that shields provide a lot of offensive stats (not sure about atk speed) on top of huge life/ES and other defensive stats.

When you dual wield wands or sceptres for spells, mine, etc, you get the benefit of both and get the buffs you mentioned above.

When you dual wield melee attacking weapons, you alternate weapons, exclusively getting the benefit of one at a time, and get the benefits you mentioned above.

So if you dual wield wands with 100% inc spell damage each, you get 200% inc spell damage.

Contrary to the above, when you dual wield two swords, etc, with 100% increased physical damage, you get the benefit of one at a time, or if the skill you're using doesn't use both hands, exclusively one of the weapons.

Additionally, spell casters can use stat sticks. Melee users cannot.

Dual wielding as a spell caster/trapper, etc, has many, many benefits.

Dual Wielding as melee is almost exclusively both a damage, and survivability nerf. Considering melee already does less damage, takes more damage, and costs more, you'll rarely see dual wielding melee. Melee is only 10% of the community already though. So I'd imagine less than 1% of people dual wield melee.

I believe physical attacks wanders suffer the same penalties to dual wielding - power siphon, kinetic blast, etc. They have been offscreen clearing for roughly 8 years at this point though.

Some would argue more offense > more defence. If you're off-screen clearing, I would agree. I will never play any ranged skill though.

"

hmcg020 wrote:

When you dual wield melee attacking weapons, you alternate weapons, exclusively getting the benefit of one at a time, and get the benefits you mentioned above.

This is not completely true. There are a few melee skills that lets you attack with both weapons simultaneously: Dual Strike and Cleave are the only two that comes to mind. The former has no damage penalty, while Cleave has.

On topic: Dual wielding melee weapons is more or less dead. It used to be very popular a few years ago, but they double nerfed it; it used to have a 20% MORE damage multiplier, and you used to be able to wield a so-called "stat stick", boosting your damage by a lot. When they removed those two, and a while after buffed the hell out of shields, dual wielding became bad, and has been bad ever since.

So I guess it's true what I read online that shields now have a bunch of real good offensive stats, like old 1H weapons used to have?
Do they just want everyone using shields at this point so people will stop complaining about mobs 1-shotting them?

I was thinking of trying poison again with new Cobra Lash this league but couldn't figure out why everyone is using a shield.
Thematically, it just seems to make more sense that you have a 'claw' in each hand...
And then the whole alternating weapons thing is weird and new to me. I figured CL and most skills that use melee weap would be hitting with both at same time, getting the base dmg of each with each attack.

I'll have to look into shields more to see what advantages they have over a 2nd claw, but I am definitely taking people's word for it here that DW is bad.

Perhaps it's time we have a discussion with GGG about the viability of DW builds?

There are few new trans gems made directly or indirectly for DW. The new Viper Strike seems to use both weapons at once without penalty, based on description, and so Bino+another high DPS one-hander seem perfect for it. New Cleave requires sword AND axe. Then there's Ice Crash and some more...

Shields are meta for a long time because PoE nowadays require yout to have way way more defences that in old days when DW was meta.

unless youre using weapons with global modifiers(dreamfeather, void batteries, ephimeral edge, nebulis) its really bad.

after some alteration spam you can get 30 reserve + 3-5% life/es on block for the modest price of 45c.(the current price of awakener orbs)

In combination with the changes GGG made to player stats which reduced effectiveness of dual wield and increased benefits of shields, is the simultaneous changes they made to enemies. It's just far too easy to get deleted from off screen by packs of enemies that shoot you before you can even think about being in melee range.

Yes dual wield can be done, but it's typically a massive disadvantage with virtually no upside and will get you dead pretty quick.

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Aldora_the_Summoner wrote:

It's just far too easy to get deleted from off screen by packs of enemies that shoot you before you can even think about being in melee range.

Yes dual wield can be done, but it's typically a massive disadvantage with virtually no upside and will get you dead pretty quick.

This is why I play bow builds.
Ranged is safe-ish.

I was thinking of just picking up 2x Wasp Nest sometime for CL and calling it a day as I don't know much about claw crafting.
Now it seems like I need to learn shield crafting too, at the very minimum.

What are some of the strongest shield mods that make up for the offensive benefits of DW?
I know shields have more block than the 15% you get with DW.
Not sure if shields can roll attack speed mods at all.

Also, on a sidepoint, if you're using a shield, doesn't that mean you have to invest more points into shield nodes on the tree in addition to your choice of melee wheel?

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Phrazz wrote:

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hmcg020 wrote:

When you dual wield melee attacking weapons, you alternate weapons, exclusively getting the benefit of one at a time, and get the benefits you mentioned above.

This is not completely true. There are a few melee skills that lets you attack with both weapons simultaneously: Dual Strike and Cleave are the only two that comes to mind. The former has no damage penalty, while Cleave has.

On topic: Dual wielding melee weapons is more or less dead. It used to be very popular a few years ago, but they double nerfed it; it used to have a 20% MORE damage multiplier, and you used to be able to wield a so-called "stat stick", boosting your damage by a lot. When they removed those two, and a while after buffed the hell out of shields, dual wielding became bad, and has been bad ever since.

Dual Strike has attacks at 70% of weapons' attack speed. So it's the best representation of dual wield.

Cleave is worse: it only takes 60% of the weapons attack damage at 80% attack speed.

These two skills do utilise both weapons though, you're right. I thought about that after I made the post and though, "oh well". These penalties do not effect spells, etc though.

Second paragraph: agreed.