Thinking of going dual wield

**gakky** · 07-08-2012, 00:41

Originally Posted by magicrectangle

I dual wielded my way through a3 and a4, and as I said above, had better survivability that way than with a shield, thanks to the massive LoH boost from a second weapon.

That is an extremely low crit chance for a cyclone oriented build. I have 35% dual wielding (45% with a shield), and my gear is far from perfect.

No argument on this one, you need good damage, high crit damage (or a socket), and good LoH on each weapon for it to be worth it.

True, and this was a very good reason not to dual wield back before the attack speed nerf. Now that attack speed has been halved on items, that 15% is a lot more attractive.

You also haven't accounted for the fact that cyclone deals your mainhand damage, regardless of what it procs off of. Mainhand mace + offhand dagger can churns out a lot of cyclones, all dealing mainhand damage.

I did not know this. Do you have a reference ? I would have thought Cyclone would use DPS from both weapons. What about SW itself ?

Cyclone isn't my main damaging skill. In fact I only recently switched from Blade Storm and Crippling Wave Mangle to Cyclone and TC. I acquired some reasonable LOH amulet and ring (total 900 LOH and 500 replenish).
I am in the process of moving from LPSS to LOH and more crit and also gearing for OWE which never considered until recently. No way I could afford that much crit chance without totally gimping everything else.
And my actual crit with shield is 17/80.

My weapon is 990 DPS 142 vita 2.03 spirit per second. Extra 25 LPSS from Helm.
Now I do have a nice fist I found 685DPS +623LOH +socket with cold damage. I tried dual wielding but my damage went down a bit and defense went way down. The cold damage didn't seem to do anything useful except lots of fun corpse shattering.

**Dethklok** · 07-08-2012, 00:42

Originally Posted by magicrectangle

I dual wielded my way through a3 and a4, and as I said above, had better survivability that way than with a shield, thanks to the massive LoH boost from a second weapon.

This.

Dual wield is crap unless you are using it to stack a property that weapons can have but shields cannot; this gives a lot of people a bad first impression of it (and rightfully so). However, if you are good at math, you'll realize that going for 20% block rate is retarded when you could just get 40% more life on hit instead (and that's not even factoring in the increased attack speed).

**gakky** · 08-08-2012, 06:59

I wasn't even factoring in block but I do see now the benefit of DW. As you can afford better gear you reach a point where DPS is limited and you tend to get weapons with huge expensive bonuses on them instead. It's the bonuses that make DW viable, the speed would seem a small bonus. A shield will easily beat DW where you don't have any great bonuses. This is where most people reside, and that view tends to stick.
I am almost at the point where DW will be better for me - but not yet.

See the other thread on SW main-hand. SW alternates between main and off hand so a small off hand is risky.
But also see AS increases Cyclone damage way more than you would expect. I am definitely going DW soon.

**windstriker** · 08-08-2012, 16:16

Originally Posted by Dethklok

This.

Dual wield is crap unless you are using it to stack a property that weapons can have but shields cannot; this gives a lot of people a bad first impression of it (and rightfully so). However, if you are good at math, you'll realize that going for 20% block rate is retarded when you could just get 40% more life on hit instead (and that's not even factoring in the increased attack speed).

The extra LoH is nice, but you seem to miss some stuff. For me example while playing in act 3, what usually kills me is being CCd in arcane, why phasebeast can be such a pain because they are hard to run from and they procc nightmarish a lot because of their attack speed. And there, the extra 1500 armor, 50 resist and some block is quite useful... Especially when my 950 LoH keeps me alive and kicking in most situations.
What is not to be forgotten, however, is that if I can deal a lot of dmg fast, I may be able to kill 1-2 of those phase beasts before I run out of serenity and blind which may very well be even better than the shield in these situations. And also, with extra LoH and AS I may be able to reach full life instantly the few seconds when Im not CCd, and then that may be what makes the difference between life and death instead.

It is hard to choose, and I really want to try dual wield again. Atm Im using overawe because of the extra dmg, but if I dualwield I get extra dmg there and can go for some dodge for the survival instead. Someone with some input of how it feels in act 3 inferno would be very nice before I spend 30 mill on a second weapon!

(To be added, when I feel that the rest of my armor will be enough to keep me alive without the shield, I will change as fast as I can. But I need some more armor first...)

For reference to understand where I am atm

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/F...72/hero/357121

Edit:

Originally Posted by gakky

I lose a massive amount of defense too (1400 defense is like 140 all resists).

1400 armor is actually a lot more than 140 all resist for most people, as most already have high resist on their monks but lack some armor and as long as you have less armor than resist armor should be valued higher (in a 10:1 ratio, ofc)

**nintes** · 15-08-2012, 12:26

The idea that resists and armor have diminishing returns is false, as explained very well here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/top...9150485?page=1

The moral is, its fine to stack one to the detriment of the other, if you keep finding/buying that kind of item. Especially true for us monks, cos we have flat resists

EDIT: I know the post is mainly concerned with armor vs llfe, but the moral can still be applied. This is because armor and resist (as far as i understand) work in pretty much the same way (armor reduces damage from all sources, monk res also reduces damage from all sources). Of course, there is probably some mechanic that will screw me over and make me look stupid. There always is..

**magicrectangle** · 15-08-2012, 15:38

Originally Posted by nintes

The idea that resists and armor have diminishing returns is false, as explained very well here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/top...9150485?page=1

The moral is, its fine to stack one to the detriment of the other, if you keep finding/buying that kind of item. Especially true for us monks, cos we have flat resists

EDIT: I know the post is mainly concerned with armor vs llfe, but the moral can still be applied. This is because armor and resist (as far as i understand) work in pretty much the same way (armor reduces damage from all sources, monk res also reduces damage from all sources). Of course, there is probably some mechanic that will screw me over and make me look stupid. There always is..

Suppose you have two bins that get multiplied, and 8 total things to put in them. If you put 1 thing in the first bin and 7 things in the second bin, when you multiply, you get 7. If instead you put 4 things in the first and 4 things in the second, when you multiply, you get 16.

You can call it diminishing returns if you want, but that's not really what it is, it is just better if you balance between the two. Now the formula for armor and resists isn't quite so simple, but it is fundamentally multiplicative, so the same basic logic applies. Forgive me for going a bit math nerd on you:

$\newline {\color{White} Let:}\newline {\color{White} A \equiv \textrm{ Armor}}\newline {\color{White} a \equiv \textrm{ armor damage reduction}}\newline {\color{White} R \equiv \textrm{ Resist all}}\newline {\color{White} r \equiv \textrm{ resist all damage reduction}}\newline {\color{White} D \equiv \textrm{ total Damage reduction}}\newline {\color{White} m \equiv \textrm{ monster level}}\newline \newline {\color{White} \textrm{Then we have:}}\newline\newline {\color{White} D = 1-(1-r)(1-a)}\newline \newline {\color{White} a = A / (A + 50 m)}\newline {\color{White} r = R / (R + 5 m)}\newline$

$\newline {\color{White} \textrm{Combining, we get:}}\newline {\color{White} D = 1 - 250m^2(A+50m)^{-1}(R+5m)^{-1}}\newline\newline {\color{White} \textrm{Now lets impose the constraint that we have to trade}}\newline {\color{White} \textrm{armor vs resists at a 10:1 ratio, and say we have a total of}}\newline {\color{White} \textrm{10,000 armor points to go around:}}\newline\newline {\color{White} 10,000=A+10R}\newline\newline {\color{White} \textrm{Now lets let }m=60\textrm{, and solve for D(R):}}\newline\newline {\color{White} D(R) = 1-900,000(13,000 - 10R)^{-1}(R+300)^{-1}}\newline\newline {\color{White} \textrm{If we graph this function:}}\newline$

$\newline {\color{White} \textrm{We can see a maximum at }R=500\textrm{ which corresponds to }A=5,000} \newline{\color{White} \textrm{ or an "even" split (considering our weighting factor) between armor}}\newline {\color{White} \textrm{and resists.}} \newline\newline {\color{White} \textrm{We have minima at }R=0\textrm{ and }R=1,000\textrm{ that is, if we have all armor}} \newline {\color{White} \textrm{or all resists, our damage reduction is at its worst, and if we have a }}\newline {\color{White} \textrm{balance of both, our damage reduction is at its best.}}\newline$

Long story short, use an effective health calculator to see how good each stat is for you, given your current gear.

**pulli** · 15-08-2012, 23:15

that is considering armour & resist is equally easy to gather. As a monk it is way easier to get all resist high (thanks to OWE).. Like 900 resist, 750 armour is easier than 800 armour & resist.

**magicrectangle** · 15-08-2012, 23:21

Except that it eats up two stat slots on the item to get that much resist. A barb can get as much resist as a monk without wasting a second stat slot thanks to impunity. That makes resist all very good for a barb. For a monk, resist all and resist one add together to give your resist all stat, which makes resist all (as an item stat) actually comparatively quite bad for a monk compared to a barb, and compared to armor.

Exactly how good it is for you, as always, should simply be read off the EHP calculator, since it is different based on your current gear, but easy to get high resist all isn't the same as the resist all stat being good. Because we have naturally high resists (and comparatively low armor) that actually makes armor a much better stat for us when considering it on a given piece.

What the above graph is telling you, is that if you have a lot of resists, armor is better for you, and if you have a lot of armor, resists are better for you.

**gakky** · 16-08-2012, 08:56

Indeed. I am finding at the high end the best gear does not have my OWE attr. The problem is items have limited attrs. 60 resist all from OWE is not as good as other attrs such as 80 resist all or 300 stat.
It makes gear much cheaper as you go up. But in the end it is a weak point, especially with OWE using up a search slot on GAH.

**nintes** · 16-08-2012, 10:49

Thanks magicrectangle. Its good to see someone correcting someone else on the internet without being a prick. Everyone listen to him and not me, cos he clearly knows what he is talking about and i dont.

Now I take the time and actually do the math, you are a 100% right.

Its because of that phenomena where 10x10=100, but 9x11 only gives 99, and 8x12=96 and so on. You just pretend that this is the damage reduction from armor and resists and it is easy to see why it is better to keep them closer together