That is true. I'm still interested to find out why we would ever want to not use a shield (aside that passive of course). Are both weapons used for any calculation involving "weapon damage" or does it alternate between the two weapons? If the former, then there is a distinct advantage to dual wielding, if the latter, then a shield would be strictly better as it adds armor and blocking (unless blocking interrupts your attacks via an animation a la D2).
On the other hand if there is an attack speed advantage for both weapons (e.g. two weapons, each has 1.4 attacks/sec, but using both at once gives 1.6 attacks/sec on both) then spirit generation is increased. This gives a clear trade-off between increased defense and increased spirit generation and damage, which would require thought.
Back in D2, the assassin certainly was not meant to be wearing shields (claws provided far superior bonuses, and the skill claw block made up for the lost blocking rate). Perhaps monks simply aren't meant to.
A shield will grant you a block %, but because Monks have so many Dodge granting abilities -- a shield isn't necessary for the class.
It's possible shields will be attuned to roll more resistances than other pieces of equipment though.
2 weapons will most likely improve your rate of attack and proportionate damage by a small % -- but again, Monks have the 10% Dodge passive too. There is the consideration of your chance-to-hit as well. Wielding 2 weapons gives you another opportunity to hit a evasive opponent.
Early on in development, it was stated that 2 Handed weapons would roll more stats to make them more useful -- so a Monk Bo-Staff might have statistical advantage over shield+weapon and dual-wield.
I'm not entirely convinced that a shield is so undesirable for all builds. Personally, the build I've been looking at (keeping in mind we have no idea how this will all play out) depends more on life generation than on dodge chance for survivability, and so a shield's blocking ability may be more useful to my build.
It is important to note that unless the weapons attack faster, two weapons have no intrinsic advantage over one weapon in terms of hit ratio because the attacks will likely alternate between the two, resulting in the same number of attacks per time, and thus the same number of hits per time. If there is an increase in attack rate with two weapons, then what you stated is true: number of hits per time increases.
Unless I'm wrong, attack rate, hit rate and spirit generation will be identical comparing two (same-speed) weapons versus one weapon and a shield, with the added defensive benefit of the shield. To be wrong, either both weapons would have to be factored in at the same time when a tooltip says "weapon damage" (thereby increasing damage output over a single weapon) or there would have to be some sort of bonus (presumably attack rate) for wielding two weapons (thereby increasing damage and spirit generation with more attacks). If there is no bonus for using two weapons, then there is no point in using two weapons: a shield is strictly superior (barring item mods).
As for two-handed weapons (which I am not considering in the above analysis), these have an intrinsic benefit over dual-wielding and weapon/shield: they do more damage per attack, so skills that have a constant attack rate (spirit spenders probably) will do significantly more damage over the same time interval. They also have a drawback: slower attack rate means slower spirit generation, meaning fewer of those powerful constant-attack-rate attacks in the same battle, and fewer utility spells cast like breath of heaven or lethal decoy. So you are trading damage for utility in this case.
I see no similar tradeoff (yet) between weapon/shield and weapon/weapon.
Numerical example:
2H Weapon 0.5 hits/sec, 20 damage per hit, 10 dps
1H Weapon 1.25 hits/sec, 8 damage per hit, 10 dps w/ shield
1H Weapon 1.25 hits/sec, 8 damage per hit, 10 dps alternating between two identical copies
2H weapon equipped:
Lightning Fists will do 100% weapon damage per strike at the equipped attack rate, or 10 dps, generating 6 spirit per attack, or 3 spirit per second.
Seven sided strike will do 130% weapon damage per strike every 0.2 seconds (guessing, it doesn't matter as long as it is constant) for seven hits, or 130 dps. Cost is 75 spirit with beacon of ytar, so it can be used as often as 16.7 seconds approximately, or real dps of about 10.9 dps over the whole 16.7 second span.
Breath of Heaven can also be used only once per 16.7 seconds.
1H weapon/shield equipped:
Lightning Fists will do 100% weapon damage per strike at the equipped attack rate, or 10 dps, generating 6 spirit per attack, or 7.5 spirit per second.
Seven sided strike will do 130% weapon damage per strike every 0.2 seconds for seven hits, or 52 dps. Cost is 75 spirit with beacon of ytar, so it can be used as often as 10 seconds approximately, or real dps of about 7.2 dps over the whole 10 second span.
Breath of Heaven can also be used only once per 10 seconds.
1H weapon/1H weapon equipped:
Analysis is the same as 1HW/SH but with every attack alternating (as far as I know), minus the benefits of having a shield, unless there is an attack speed buff or similar, which would further increase spirit generation and dps (seven-sided strike would remain the same, but be usable more often).
Assuming weapon dps is balanced around normal attack, this actually shows that 2H weapons are superior for pure damage generation. For utility, 1H weapons may be superior.
There is a lot of information I don't know about the mechanics, so I am unsure on a few of these points. Anyone who knows for sure or has played, I would love to correct my analysis.
But we won't be able to really dive into the intricacies of 1h+sh, 1h+1h, and 2H combinations until the game is released.
For now, I'll simply say that a Monk's fist weapons are 1 Handed Weapons. Wielding two of them gives you more Monk Specific attributes. Like Spending X Spirit Heals X Life.
I don't know if shields give any class-specific bonuses.
That is something I wasn't aware of, but is of importance for those who wish to create utility builds. Utility will require more spirit generation, so 1h weapons may be more important for them, if my analysis is correct.
I can't wait to see how it all plays out though.
Edit: It will be interesting to see if a shield can be socketed with gems for resistance bonus. Stacking a single resistance is an excellent choice when using One with Everything, giving more gearing options compared to other classes. A shield with massive same-gem usage could completely take care of all five resistances all at once at the expense of one equipment slot (again depending on the math and how the game actually works). Imagine a shield with 4 rubies in it, giving 200 fire resist (making numbers up here). That's 200 resist all in one equipment slot. Now you can ignore resistances on all of your other gear (except fire, that may still be useful, in this case) and focus on damage, life, armor, monk-only benefits, etc., etc. I am eager to see if this pans out...
I believe they said that dual-wield would affect the speed of skills for the Monk. It would be akin to an assassin, where certain dual-claw friendly skills were faster, or the WW barb where he hit more often while whirlwinding with 2 weapons. As I recall with assassins, the difference was something like: dual claw= 2 attacks every 10 frames, single claw= 1 attacks every 7 frames... or something like that.
In addition, I believe they have stated that certain skills (long cooldown skills like SSS) would add the damage of both weapons for their calculation. I don't know if it would be a straight "weapon A + weapon B" calcualtion, but I assume it would be something to put it on par with a staff damage.
While I believe you (I find it hard to believe they would make one method strictly better than another, since they have deliberately stated they would balance all equipment setups) it would be awesome if we monks could source it! Or at least get some beta testers to test it!
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