Best Dual Weild Ability?

esp1992

So what is the best Dual Wield Ability?

MashmalloMan

Kind of a weird question, every skill has it's benefits.

Flurry is probably one of the weaker ones right now, it's a channel. Right now you want to get more light/heavy attacks in with the update to their scaling so spending more time on the spammable means less dps. It is VERY cheap though and has multiple hits so it scales really nicely with a class like stamina sorc where you want lots of hits to proc implosion and crit surge, plus they have sustain issues.

Twin slashes, great DoT, one of the very few sources of bleed dmg in the game that completely surpasses resistances. Many don't know this, but if you were strapped for a single target spammable and you had no bar space and had to choose between Hidden Blade, Flurry or Imbue Weapon, it actually performs really, really well. The damage alone from the initial hit is around 200 x 2(250 x 2 with rending slashes) vs hidden blade at 650. Think about the bleed DoT and that it's cheap and carries dmg with the DoT when not using it. It's actually really good. OBVIOUSLY. You should use it for the DoT + another spammable though, but it's actually a good spammable too.

Whirlwind with steel tornado morph is the largest AoE spammable in the game, it has built in execute damage as well, plus the execute damage from dual wield makes it hit really hard on low health targets. Spin to win. Can be costly.

Blade cloak; self buff with 25% damage mitigation from AoE attacks with built in AoE damage in a 5m radius every 3 seconds. This is a great skill but it very expensive as well. It's needed in some end game content for damage mitigation where stam classes don't have shields and have to be more risky in melee range.

Hidden blade is a great spammable with the added benefit of providing major brutality, not needed for many people because of potions or class self buffs. Ranged skill on a melee weapon is nice not having to be in melee range for some gap closing. The cleave morph is arguably better in every way then the more dmg morph now that we have crushing weapon from psijic order as a hard hitting, cheap, single target spammable.

Use Shrouded Daggers for cleave. Mild Cost. Good DMG.
Use Crushing Weapon for single target damage. Low Cost. Great DMG.
Use Flurry for single target damage. Lowest Cost. DMG is okay but lower light attack uptime which is bad, harder to manage rotation because of channel.
Use Whirlwind for AoE spamable, High Cost. Average Damage/Great Damage in 40%-1% hp range.

Use Twin Slashes as a nice DoT + spammable from above ^. If you only have 1 slot it performs about the same as crushing weapon with a lower cost. Crushing weapon with full penetration on a boss would do more damage though because the full potential, at least on a test dummy is over performing from the bleeds ignoring resistances rending slashes.

boombazookajd

I'm going to base my opinion on what is used most by top players, and thats Rending Slashes (morph of Twin Slashes).

Flurry is trash, imo, but @Marshall1289 gave good advice on a stam sorc build, which I've never used.

So, as a stamdk/stamblade, it's Rending Slashes. Blade Cloak was useful until the nerf, even still it does help mitigate AOE damage which is useful.

For the love of god, don't use the noob-tube in this game (Flurry). It's a nice spammable, looks and feels fun, but it's a total waste of time when you could be light attack weaving.

BrokenGameMechanics

@esp1992 as @Marshall1289 reviewed so well on a per skill basis the DW skills seems pretty solid. Dagger, Tornado and Rending are all nice as Ranged, AOE and DOT skills. Right now for me in PVP I'd say hands down Daggers is my current fav.

I'll also add some highly opinionated color from someone who has only used DW for a long time.

A long time big plus to DW was it allowed a 5-5-2 build, i.e. running 2 full sets. When that was recently changed to allow all weapon/staff can run 5-5-2 sets this became a de-facto HUGE buff for every weapon skill line or a de-facto huge debuff for the DW line, depending how you look at it. Unfortunately DW did not receive any adjustment in damage compensation across the line when this went down.

Rending is pretty solid with the bleed, but has some caveats. Especially with PVP. While Rending is sort in vogue it's really not all that special. It is very solid as skills go however. It's talked about because PVP game play has deteriorated into a few niche builds that everyone reads about and zergs into. It's all cancer builds, all the time ,with entire swathes of straight up, normal builds completely non-viable. So one of these extremium niches are the Unkillables. These folks are super upset on the forums as since bleeds bypass resistances, they are seeing some damage, not excessive, but some where they are used to seeing very little. It's a vocal group and it's understandable. Many can only find time to play casually and if they like PVP a lot of them are probably going to be biased towards the meta-tank builds. Someone posted an observation about "when did Rending suddenly become OP, its been like that for years". Nevertheless, there is now a vocal and steady drumbeat calling out for nerfing Bleeds. Historical context says the chance of this happening is very high. I'm betting as soon as the current patch cycle. Big bleed nerf.

A few additional notes on Rending/Bleed, be aware the bleed can be immediately purged away.

Another poor design decision in my view, is that if you do put Rending on a NB they can just cloak and stop the bleed from tic'ing. Sigh. There was still value there from Rending in that combat situation since the 50% slow with a decent duration meant the NB could only get so far before being forced out of cloak which allowed a nice competitive balance. And ... that was just nerfed pretty harshly. The duration just got a huge 66% nerf to 3 secs, which means the slow is effectively no-effect now. The slow expires with the cloak, so they can just take straight off at full speed or re-cloak. So the once effective Rending slow is now of very little utility.

This also why the DW Ultis aren't so good and rarely seen in PVP. Super easy to heal through the tic, cloak or purge it off. Could be the most ineffective Ulti in PPV. Wait I take that back, the second worst Ulti in PVP to slot, there is the Bear.

Tornado and Daggers are both quite nice. For PVP Daggers also has a nice slow. Unfortunately, the same logic which resulted in the very recent big nerf to Rending slow certainly must apply to Daggers as well. So high probability that nerf is right around the corner similar to the Rending. I'm expecting they'll either drop it altogether or down to 3 secs to match the Rending neft. Which is a real shame as once again it offered one of the few competitive balance counters for NB. When a NB "runs away", which is most of the time, if you could get a Dagger into them and get the slow you or someone else in your group had a shot at running them down and keeping the pressure on. Buuuut ... that is now looking pretty dicey as NBs are a pretty vocal group.

Deadly Cloak is also nice, but also recently received a big damage nerf. In my opinion the nerf happended for the wrong reasoning. A number of skills were revamped across the board around the concept of "if it has a big effect, it should do little damage and vice-versa". Some big damage skills had de-buffs removed, others with CC/Stun effects had damage reduced. Somehow, someway, the 25% AOE mitigation was classified as a BIG effect like a CC or Major Buff and so received a major damage nerf. But as an earlier poster correctly pointed out, the 25% mitigation is the minimal need for a Melee / DW player to run dungeons etc. You have to get within 5/7 meters for Rend and Flurry, placing you in an AOE for short periods. Somehow this was translated as on par with a Stun, Knockback, Major Breach or Defile so ... big damage nerf. SMH.

Which leads to another big aspect of DW as a skill line, after the slow nerfs, effectively the entire line has no CC's, no de-buffs, no buffs (other than Major Brutatlity). This is massive in PVP. CC's and their (in PVP) de-facto unbreakability, are one of, if not THE dominant factor in winning in PVP combat, they have them, you don't (from DW). Huge disadvantage. Same for buffs, just one, Major Brutality, granted across the entire DW skill line. Other weapon skill lines have more effects and CCs in a single skill then DW has for all of its skills. Yea, read that line again a couple of times to sink in.

Now about Flurry. Looking at the tooltip it SHOULD be pretty darn effective. If you take tooltip, plus the DW passive for low health opponent, dizzy, immobilize, off-balance opponent Flurry SHOULD hit pretty damn decent. On paper Flurry should be a much BETTER executioner 1v1 then Tornado which is AOE with executioner additional damage. The reason why everyone thinks, without knowing, that Flurry is just "bad" is because Flurry is broken with at least 2 major bugs. Damage is incorrectly calculated and has been for a long, long time. Flurry never procs the off-hand (left) weapon enchant. Which is pretty funny considering the animation. All the other DW skills may proc either weapon enchant. IF ZOS were to every fix these 2 bugs in Flurry, which is hands down the most broken bugged skill in the game, Flurry would not be bad at all. Not best in class, but not a joke to slot.

Well maybe. Unfortunately if even the 2 bugs were fixed the channel self-interrupt nature of the skill from a Combat Design perspective may still leave Flurry as un-slottable. But we won't that until after the bugs are fixed and see how Flurry performs un-bugged. Step 1 is try and the bugs fixed and then go from there.

In summary for DW the recent big relative 5-5-2 nerf, the happening now Rending slow nerf, the highly likely to happen Dagger slow nerf, plus being the pauper skill line with but a single buff effect and zero CCs across the board, the single target spammable badly broken with 2 bugs, I would make sure these days to explore the alternative weapon lines before golding out my 1-H weapons. DW in the part of the ZOS cycle is currently the weakest overall weapon line by a decent margin.

OrphanHelgen

boombazookajd wrote: »

I'm going to base my opinion on what is used most by top players, and thats Rending Slashes (morph of Twin Slashes).

Flurry is trash, imo, but @Marshall1289 gave good advice on a stam sorc build, which I've never used.

So, as a stamdk/stamblade, it's Rending Slashes. Blade Cloak was useful until the nerf, even still it does help mitigate AOE damage which is useful.

For the love of god, don't use the noob-tube in this game (Flurry). It's a nice spammable, looks and feels fun, but it's a total waste of time when you could be light attack weaving.

They should buff back maelstrom weapons to 3k wpn dmg after flurry, and it's useful again

Amdar_Godkiller

For PVP, Cloaked Dagger is by far my favorite DW skill to use. Especially when defending a keep against a siege from teh wall. Bouncing blades are a blast.

Blood Craze and Steel Tornado are probably the most useful though. If your not using a Bow, however, that Cloaked Dagger takes the cake.

BrokenGameMechanics

@OrphanHelgen

Whether a Mael Weapon buff would or would not make it useful is in my opinion not addressing the true problem with Flurry. It has 2 big bugs, CP is not being applied to damage on the last 300% strike and off-hand enchant never procs. As a result Flurry does LOL damage numbers, like 375 damage per strike and then 1200 on the last strike, for a whopping low 3K worth of typical damage in PVP. And this is on POC build optimized to get the highest Flurry damage as is possible (no Mael, but gold weapons, CP allocation etc). It's a joke. You can stand 41 meters away, throw a Dagger and do way more damage then Flurry at 7 meters AND get a nice slow de-buff, plus a major buff!! Its pound your head on the desk stuff here. Flurry's description makes comparing tooltip damage to tooltip damage between skills difficult BUT if you run the numbers, Flurry should out perform a Dagger. It doesn't because it's bugged. Basically a Dagger get CP scaling and Flurry's 300% strike doesn't.

Step 1 - Fix the bugs so the skill works , i.e matches what the tooltip says.
Step 2- Yea, sure buff the Mael Weapons. Got my vote.

OrphanHelgen

BrokenGameMechanics wrote: »

@OrphanHelgen

Whether a Mael Weapon buff would or would not make it useful is in my opinion not addressing the true problem with Flurry. It has 2 big bugs, CP is not being applied to damage on the last 300% strike and off-hand enchant never procs. As a result Flurry does LOL damage numbers, like 375 damage per strike and then 1200 on the last strike, for a whopping low 3K worth of typical damage in PVP. And this is on POC build optimized to get the highest Flurry damage as is possible (no Mael, but gold weapons, CP allocation etc). It's a joke. You can stand 41 meters away, throw a Dagger and do way more damage then Flurry at 7 meters AND get a nice slow de-buff, plus a major buff!! Its pound you head on the desk stuff here. Flurry's tooltip make comparing tooltip damage to tooltip damage BUT if you run the numbers, Flurry should out perform a Dagger and it doesn't because it's bugged.

Step 1 - Fix the bugs so the skill works , i.e matches what the tooltip says.
Step 2- Yea, sure buff the Mael Weapons. Got my vote.

ah didnt know about the cp bug. Haven't used that skill for years:D

Chibs

Didn’t know about the cp bug. Very interesting. That does make sense though. When I was lower, I was doing higher dps with Flurry than Dagger. As my cp got higher, I began pulling higher dps with dagger instead. However I do feel flurry is good in PvP because Dagger is reflectable

BrokenGameMechanics

@chibs It is pretty bad. Really bad.

As a proof, I put my stam toon into Sword Dancer, +4xx damage for DW abilities, plus Automaton another not quite 400 weapon damage, a Weapon damage glyph on one sword, LA weaving and to keep it proc'd, all Weapon Damage jewelry, gold swords, 100 CP points into Thaumaturge to get the max 25% increase, 40K stamina, Major Brutality buffed, etc


In other words, everything I could think of to get maximum possible[1] (excluding Mael Weapons) damage output I could from Flurry/Rapid and I couldn't get even 4K total damage most of the time out of it. Maybe it got up to 5k, don't remember seeing it. A single Dagger at a safe, comfortable 41 meters away did tons more damage then closing into 7 meters and spamming Rapids and LAs.

[1] I wasn't trying to play with crit here, just simple, how hard can I get a basic Rapid's skill to hit on an unbalanced build.

BrokenGameMechanics

@chibs It is pretty bad. Really bad.

As a proof, I put my stam toon into Sword Dancer, +4xx damage for DW abilities, plus Automaton another not quite 400 weapon damage, a Weapon damage glyph on one sword, LA weaving and to keep it proc'd, all Weapon Damage jewelry, gold swords, 100 CP points into Thaumaturge to get the max 25% increase, 40K stamina, Major Brutality buffed, etc

In other words, everything I could think of to get maximum possible[1] (excluding Mael Weapons) damage output I could from Flurry/Rapid and most of time getting 4K -ish total damage out of it. A Dagger at a safe, comfortable 41 meters away does more damage, gives a slow debuff and the Major Brutality buff.

[1] I wasn't trying to put together a meta build here guys. Just something that I could use to convince myself there was something wrong with Rapids in PVP.

Stibbons

Flurry both morph are just useless.

Ragnarock41

I can't really tell which one is the best, but its clear which one is the worst: Flurry.

Gargath

Shrouded Daggers because of high damage (and Major Brutality), esp. when used after Caltrops.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Blood craze.

worsttankever

Is Flury still competitive in cp free pvp? Sounds like the only bug effecting it then would be not proccing both echants?

Ragnarock41

worsttankever wrote: »

Is Flury still competitive in cp free pvp? Sounds like the only bug effecting it then would be not proccing both echants?

Requires you to be glass cannon yet it also requires you to stand there like a dummy.

TL:DR, its not competitive and damage is bad even when you spec too hard into it.