ever tried to Dual-Wield with only one weapon?

[Sar]

i´am playing around with some dual-wield tactics, and i tryed out what happend when you only use one fast fast weapon in your mainhand and no weapon in your off-hand.

as far as i notice, you get the same "miss-rate" like 1h+shield, but your bare hand (unarmed) gives you some nice damage and rage-generation. my miss-rate for both hands is about 9% and i´am acutally doing better than with two weapons.

it sounds wierd, but plz test it.

[Hogart]

lol this sounds rather wierd :D

[Sar]

if you have a nice 1h-weapon just try it. i don´t call this über or 1337, but i was really suprised how good this works.

when you have the two minutes, put the off-hand weapon in your backback and push up your "unarmed" skill, just see what will happen.

good luck guys!

it would be nice if other people could write their experiences with this "wierd" :D tactic.


greets,
Sar

[Inconsiderable]

someone made a post about it 1-2 weeks ago on blizz forum:

dps with no offhand weapon is better than using a 35-40 dps offhand weapon

[Olon97]

Tried this last night. Subjectively it seems to work well - feels like I'm getting more rage (I do have unbridled wrath). Now that I have my unarmed and my offhand weapon at similar skills I'll try to collect some comparative combat stats data to be a little more precise about the relative performance...

[Sintor]

Hmmmm... I'll compare it with my Deathstriker mainhanded.

[darkstryke]

Expect it to get nerfed next patch or so. It's an unintended side effect of dual wield training and bare fists counting as weapons.

[Sintor]

This miss rate went down, yes. The average dps also went down.

[Olon97]

At level 43, repeatedly fighting the exact same level 40 mob (cave with high respawn) with only normal strikes:

Main hand weapon (29.7 dps - 1.5 spd) / offhand unarmed:
342 hits, 395 swings, 40 misses.
10.1% miss rate, 13.4% miss/dodge/etc.
Average DPS (measured by combat stats mod) - 56.3 (low 45, high 70)
Average hits per kill - 31.1
Average swings per kill - 35.9
Average misses per kill - 3.6
Average rage gained per kill (including charge each fight) - 93.4

Main hand weapon (29.7 dps - 1.5 spd) / offhand weapon (29.7 dps - 1.9 spd):
170 hits, 252 swings, 77 misses. (fewer total kills, dinged at the end)
30.6% miss rate, 32.5% miss/dodge/etc.
Average DPS (measured by combat stats mod) - 57.8 (low 53, high 69)
Average hits per kill - 25
Average swings per kill - 38
Average misses per kill - 12.2
Average rage gained per kill (including charge each fight) - 96.8

This was with unbridled wrath only at level 2. All relevant skills maxed.

Unarmed was slightly lower DPS but more consistent. Much less streaky. I'll be using unarmed "dual wield" unless Blizzard changes the miss rate or I get a 1h that offers an improvement in DPS I can't ignore.

I think unarmed's DPS scales up (due to attack power & skill scaling) but is usually below the more elite 1h options for any particular level (just an estimate - don't hold me to that).

[Sintor]

Just depends on the quality of the weapon. You should compare 1h/unarmed to 2h, since that's essentially what you are creating. With two really good one-handed weapons, the dps average is a bit farther apart.

[Kintoun]

It's the same for rogues. I found this out quite some time ago. The trick is however your unarmed skill MUST be maxed. If it is even one point away, you're dealing far less damage, unarmed dmg from skill isn't like weaps. For a rogue the DPS of the empty offhand is better than most offhand daggers WITH poison. Really weird.

[Sar]

it like to see there are some "mike tysons" around :lol:

but would you call this a major bug/exploit, which is going to be fixed in the future? if i think of huge money i spend for offhand-weapons in the past, i´m getting mad.