Dual Wield vs. 2h parses from current PTS.

Masel

Hey!

I wanted to showcase the difference in pve-parsing between dual wield and a 2h weapon. The difference (based on my parses) is roughly 10% single target dps, which you trade off for a little bit more aoe damage. First of all, I did all parses with the same setup:

2 Medium Stormfist (so i could sustain alone)
5 Perfect Relequen
5 Advancing Yokeda
Infused Maelstrom Bow with absorb stamina enchantment.

Difference between dual wield and 2h was solely:

Dual wield with double infused (dagger+ axe) with poison and berserker enchantment.

2h with Battle axe, infused berserker.

I did around 25 different parses, but I will just show a few of them where the differences are pretty clear. I did parses on all classes, and the relations below hold for all of them in roughly the same magnitude and the same direction.

The Differences between 2h and dual wield consist of the following:

1. Second Enchantment, poisoned status effect and Full power of infused:

When you use Dual wield, you have access to a second enchantment. But not onyl that, the enchantment has full power (so it is equal to a 2h enchantment), and with the recent changes on the pts, procs all the time. On top of that, the infused trait is one of the few that actually retains the full power on a 1h weapon. So combining these two mechanics already put dual wield quite far ahead. Finally, sicne you can run a poison enchantment with a 20% chance to proc the poisoned status effect on a dual wield weapon, it will net you another dps gain, in this case it was a difference of roughly 400. Adding the 2k from the poisoned enchantment already leads to a dps boost of 2400 just from the second enchantment. Here are the examplary parses from my stamplar selfbuffed testings:


Dual Wield:





2h:





2. Heavy Weapons bleed:

When you look at the two contributions to dps from the two bleeds, you can see that the heavy weapon bleed does not do a lot more damage than the twin balde and blunt bleed, even though the chance to apply it is halved. This is due to the fact that the bleed only starts dealing damage after two seconds, meaning that an increased chance will often just lead to you refreshing the dot before it does something. Dual wield grants you close tot he same damage from bleeds with just one axe, and then enables you to run a dagger for 5% critical chance. In my parse, i have 3.7% higher critical chance when compared to the 2h parse (due to back bar times):





The two bleeds had roughly the same uptime, so here's another source of dps advantage from dual wield.

3. Basic Weapon Damage

Dual wield ahs the highest base weapon damage in the game, because you get 6% additional weapon damage from the offhand. This leads to a discrepancy of roughly 200 weapon damage in the end. Another reasonw hy dual wield outparsed the twohander. On top of this, the dual wield passives just fit more into the pve-scheme: you get additional critical chance, execute damage and damage against cc-ed enemies. To get higher damage on a twohander, you have to actively heavy attack just to get 7% more from the next direct attack. Straight off weaker in terms of damage output.


I will present this to the devs in hope of getting the weapons more in line.

Cheers,

Masel

WoppaBoem

Good work. To bad to do, I am looking forward to the change for my PVP build. However I can support the nerf for infused trait in half to match the 2h weapons. However people asking for changing nirnhoned and this makes no sense as the 1 handed weapons have less weapon damage this would impact S&B to much.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

WoppaBoem wrote: »

Good work. To bad to do, I am looking forward to the change for my PVP build. However I can support the nerf for infused trait in half to match the 2h weapons. However people asking for changing nirnhoned and this makes no sense as the 1 handed weapons have less weapon damage this would impact S&B to much.

Why would you be for halfing infused but not nirn? S/b doesn't run nirn. Halfing infused would make it more important to run an ice staff back bar/make ice staff tanking more appealing. Though you are correct that the off hand nirn is useless, it only adds 12 weapon damage, but dual wield doesn't use nirn off hand, they use nirn main hand/infused off hand. 2 full weapon traits.

@Masel92 what do your parses look like using that set up? Nirn main/infused off hand, as that is the most commonly used set up for dual wield, not infused/infused.

And thank you for doing this, you always bring the data.

Masel

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

WoppaBoem wrote: »

Good work. To bad to do, I am looking forward to the change for my PVP build. However I can support the nerf for infused trait in half to match the 2h weapons. However people asking for changing nirnhoned and this makes no sense as the 1 handed weapons have less weapon damage this would impact S&B to much.

Why would you be for halfing infused but not nirn? S/b doesn't run nirn. You are correct that the off hand nirn is useless, it only adds 12 weapon damage, but dual wield doesn't use nirn off hand, they use nirn main hand/infused off hand. 2 full weapon traits.

@Masel92 what do your parses look like using that set up? Nirn main/infused off hand, as that is the most commonly used set up for dual wield, not infused/infused.

And thank you for doing this, you always bring the data.

Nirn could also be cut in half, yeah. Its useless on the offhand, but grants a normal value on the mainhand. So it is pretts similar to using double infused.

WoppaBoem

I run nirn on S&B in PVP. You can do some good damage with it in group play on a DK with invasion, pierce armor, double dot poision, venomous claw. This goes off very fast and then ranged DD backing me up means you rip trough people. The extra weapon damage is really important in that setup.

Masel

WoppaBoem wrote: »

I run nirn on S&B in PVP. You can do some good damage with it in group play on a DK with invasion, pierce armor, double dot poision, venomous claw. This goes off very fast and then ranged DD backing me up means you rip trough people. The extra weapon damage is really important in that setup.

Yeah shield and board isnt as much of an issue, since the offhand enchantment isnt as powerful on the shield. Dual wield is the real issue with enchantments.

WoppaBoem

Dont forget the infused S&B Tank in PVE with Crusher and weaking enchantment. I understand the difference between H2 and DW is bigger on the moment due to upcoming changes but maybe H2 needs to buff rather than hurting S&B builds because of a melee DPS struggle between DW and H2. Merci

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

WoppaBoem wrote: »

Dont forget the infused S&B Tank in PVE with Crusher and weaking enchantment. I understand the difference between H2 and DW is bigger on the moment due to upcoming changes but maybe H2 needs to buff rather than hurting S&B builds because of a melee DPS struggle between DW and H2. Merci

This way leads to more power creep. The game is already too easy, or so many people say. Think of this as less of hurting s/b and more of buffing ice staffs. You are more tanky with a s/b but if you want to have a full strength enchantment, you use a staff. Or two hander, there are tanks that run that too.

I have done some quick maths, right now, with 20%, nirn adds 200 base weapon damage. With a staff, this is the same. With a two hander, that has a base weapon damage of 1571, it is 314 base weapon damage. I am not sure how to balance this out. Do you try to half it to match the two-hander, which would be 157, or ~12% extra or do you get to balance against the staffs, which would be 100, or 7.5% extra base weapon damage.

Kanar

Thanks for doing this testing and creating the data. It supplies evidence for what long-time 2h users have been saying.

Thorstienn

The problem at the end of the day is the game design (re weapons)
Changing the way traits work would improve 2h, but in turn also buff staff (which doesn't need it), inversely nerfing dw in turn nerf SnB (tank weapon and a PVP option)
Just buffing the 2h skill line (passives etc), buffs the strong stam PVP weapon (which I hear doesn't need).
Ultimately leaving the only option as nerfing the dw skill line: and everyone cries about nerfs, and would just lead to lower stam DPS across the board, inadvertently buffing mag DPS (which doesn't need it.)
Meanwhile I would like all weapons to be more on par (even front bar bow).

katorga

How about it is not supposed to be 100% balanced? DW is the dps weapon, 2H, the burst weapon, 1HS the tanking weapon. This is like complaining that fire staff is unbalanced because it does more single target damage than lightning or ice.

Buff bow.

Volckodav

from pvp side you select 2H mostly for momentum. rework this skill and really less people will use 2h.

Nox_Noir

How much do the actual skills available from the weapon lines play into this in your opinion?
Rending slashes is way superior as a dot to brawler, and DW attacks has some execute amplification and bonus to disabled enemies. Could the availability of a good execute (reverse slash) for classes that don't have a class execute offset this?
So in a nutshell, if we exclude double enchant and extra stats from the equation, how much difference would the skills and passives still cause?

Masel

Nox_Noir wrote: »

How much do the actual skills available from the weapon lines play into this in your opinion?
Rending slashes is way superior as a dot to brawler, and DW attacks has some execute amplification and bonus to disabled enemies. Could the availability of a good execute (reverse slash) for classes that don't have a class execute offset this?
So in a nutshell, if we exclude double enchant and extra stats from the equation, how much difference would the skills and passives still cause?

Brawler isn't that far behind. Compare the tooltips, brawler deals more initial damage, but less dot. The overall damage is comparable and not a source of vast differences. I used reverse slice in cases where an execute was necessary and it didnt contribute that much to dps because class skills snyergise with the respective kit better.

On Stamplar and Stam DK it barely made a difference...

LioraValkyrie

katorga wrote: »

How about it is not supposed to be 100% balanced? DW is the dps weapon, 2H, the burst weapon, 1HS the tanking weapon. This is like complaining that fire staff is unbalanced because it does more single target damage than lightning or ice.

Buff bow.

This is my opinion also. Nobody questions that you MUST have a bow back barred on a stam build to produce effective DPS. If DW/Bow and 2H/Bow should be equal, why not 2H/DW as well? The problem is not that these weapons don't all produce identical DPS output in every combination, but that ZOS does not inform players from the outset what each weapon excels at and consequently people become attached to their weapon of choice before learning whether or not it is effective in the content they enjoy playing.

What_In_Tarnation

LioraValkyrie wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

How about it is not supposed to be 100% balanced? DW is the dps weapon, 2H, the burst weapon, 1HS the tanking weapon. This is like complaining that fire staff is unbalanced because it does more single target damage than lightning or ice.

Buff bow.

This is my opinion also. Nobody questions that you MUST have a bow back barred on a stam build to produce effective DPS. If DW/Bow and 2H/Bow should be equal, why not 2H/DW as well? The problem is not that these weapons don't all produce identical DPS output in every combination, but that ZOS does not inform players from the outset what each weapon excels at and consequently people become attached to their weapon of choice before learning whether or not it is effective in the content they enjoy playing.

This is true tho, I wanna back bar DW and front bar 2H while deal the same damage like 2h/bow and dw/bow.

LiquidPony

LioraValkyrie wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

How about it is not supposed to be 100% balanced? DW is the dps weapon, 2H, the burst weapon, 1HS the tanking weapon. This is like complaining that fire staff is unbalanced because it does more single target damage than lightning or ice.

Buff bow.

This is my opinion also. Nobody questions that you MUST have a bow back barred on a stam build to produce effective DPS. If DW/Bow and 2H/Bow should be equal, why not 2H/DW as well? The problem is not that these weapons don't all produce identical DPS output in every combination, but that ZOS does not inform players from the outset what each weapon excels at and consequently people become attached to their weapon of choice before learning whether or not it is effective in the content they enjoy playing.

Or even ... DW/DW. It would be really cool to be able to run something like Master/Maelstrom DW on one bar and Asylum DW on the other.

Unfortunately there's just no getting around Endless Hail. I'd like to see something like Shadow Silk get buffed/tweaked (it has a huge total tooltip but it's just not really viable because of the range limitation) because that would open up some interesting build possibilities. I suppose the problem is finding a way to buff 2H/DW or some other skill line in a way that doesn't just dramatically increase DPS for DW/Bow users.

Masel

LiquidPony wrote: »

LioraValkyrie wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

How about it is not supposed to be 100% balanced? DW is the dps weapon, 2H, the burst weapon, 1HS the tanking weapon. This is like complaining that fire staff is unbalanced because it does more single target damage than lightning or ice.

Buff bow.

This is my opinion also. Nobody questions that you MUST have a bow back barred on a stam build to produce effective DPS. If DW/Bow and 2H/Bow should be equal, why not 2H/DW as well? The problem is not that these weapons don't all produce identical DPS output in every combination, but that ZOS does not inform players from the outset what each weapon excels at and consequently people become attached to their weapon of choice before learning whether or not it is effective in the content they enjoy playing.

Or even ... DW/DW. It would be really cool to be able to run something like Master/Maelstrom DW on one bar and Asylum DW on the other.

Unfortunately there's just no getting around Endless Hail. I'd like to see something like Shadow Silk get buffed/tweaked (it has a huge total tooltip but it's just not really viable because of the range limitation) because that would open up some interesting build possibilities. I suppose the problem is finding a way to buff 2H/DW or some other skill line in a way that doesn't just dramatically increase DPS for DW/Bow users.

Yep, in that regard endless hail is just too good not to have it.

Nolic1

Some one else said it but one handed weapons have a 1335 base damage while 2 handed has a 1571 base and this is at gold quality. So that is a 236 weapon damage difference and even with dual wield and the 6% makes it 1415 total weapon damage not even coming close. The problem is when you attack with 2 handed is it counts as one attack in light and one attack in heavy and all abilities as well unless your hitting more then one enemy. Dual wield is counted as one attack on light attacks and the throwing blade and blade clock the others count as 2 plus its heavy is also counted as 2 so the damage out put is increased by about 30% over the 2 handed if you account for the chance to proc the enchants and how many you have.

But above the main poster shows a 4k difference in his rotation but this is only accounted to the Templar so if you take the skills used to the 2 and account for all the dual wield that get 2 hits and account for the enchants that is about a 30% difference in the damage on the skills that count as 2 hits and enchants which makes a 4k difference over all 2 handed is still in the same place its been for a long time is parse tests.

Reality is 2 handed does do more base damage and overall is super close to dual wield but does not offer that same amount of damage output do to the fact some of the skills and heavy attack on dual wield get counted as 2 hits to 2 handed always counted as one hit this brings the 2 handed to just under the dual wield in damage on a rotation.

30% extra damage is an estimated difference but close enough to the real thing and only applies when you get the hits that count as 2 attacks and the enchant.

Nord_Raseri

when all other weapons got a buff to either heeavy attacks, light attacks, or both, two hander(excluding staves) got a nerf to both light and heavy attacks. they should just buff either light or heavy attacks to the 2h weapons.

TheYKcid

Masel92 wrote: »

3. Basic Weapon Damage

Dual wield ahs the highest base weapon damage in the game, because you get 6% additional weapon damage from the offhand. This leads to a discrepancy of roughly 200 weapon damage in the end

Not disagreeing with the main topic, but how did you end-up at a difference of 200 WD?

Gold-quality, non-nirn dual-wield provides 1652 WD after applying the offhand passive, compared to 2H's 1571, which is a difference of just 81. If you use a setup with nirn on the DW mainhand, vs. a nirn 2H, the difference drops to 46 (since 2H gains 35 more WD from the trait, as it has a higher base WD value).

Even accounting for WD multipliers (major/minor brutality, Dawnbreaker passive slot bonus, etc.) it shouldn't come close to 200.

mr_wazzabi

Masel92 wrote: »

Hey!

I wanted to showcase the difference in pve-parsing between dual wield and a 2h weapon. The difference (based on my parses) is roughly 10% single target dps, which you trade off for a little bit more aoe damage. First of all, I did all parses with the same setup:

2 Medium Stormfist (so i could sustain alone)
5 Perfect Relequen
5 Advancing Yokeda
Infused Maelstrom Bow with absorb stamina enchantment.

Difference between dual wield and 2h was solely:

Dual wield with double infused (dagger+ axe) with poison and berserker enchantment.

2h with Battle axe, infused berserker.

I did around 25 different parses, but I will just show a few of them where the differences are pretty clear. I did parses on all classes, and the relations below hold for all of them in roughly the same magnitude and the same direction.

The Differences between 2h and dual wield consist of the following:

1. Second Enchantment, poisoned status effect and Full power of infused:

When you use Dual wield, you have access to a second enchantment. But not onyl that, the enchantment has full power (so it is equal to a 2h enchantment), and with the recent changes on the pts, procs all the time. On top of that, the infused trait is one of the few that actually retains the full power on a 1h weapon. So combining these two mechanics already put dual wield quite far ahead. Finally, sicne you can run a poison enchantment with a 20% chance to proc the poisoned status effect on a dual wield weapon, it will net you another dps gain, in this case it was a difference of roughly 400. Adding the 2k from the poisoned enchantment already leads to a dps boost of 2400 just from the second enchantment. Here are the examplary parses from my stamplar selfbuffed testings:


Dual Wield:





2h:





2. Heavy Weapons bleed:

When you look at the two contributions to dps from the two bleeds, you can see that the heavy weapon bleed does not do a lot more damage than the twin balde and blunt bleed, even though the chance to apply it is halved. This is due to the fact that the bleed only starts dealing damage after two seconds, meaning that an increased chance will often just lead to you refreshing the dot before it does something. Dual wield grants you close tot he same damage from bleeds with just one axe, and then enables you to run a dagger for 5% critical chance. In my parse, i have 3.7% higher critical chance when compared to the 2h parse (due to back bar times):





The two bleeds had roughly the same uptime, so here's another source of dps advantage from dual wield.

3. Basic Weapon Damage

Dual wield ahs the highest base weapon damage in the game, because you get 6% additional weapon damage from the offhand. This leads to a discrepancy of roughly 200 weapon damage in the end. Another reasonw hy dual wield outparsed the twohander. On top of this, the dual wield passives just fit more into the pve-scheme: you get additional critical chance, execute damage and damage against cc-ed enemies. To get higher damage on a twohander, you have to actively heavy attack just to get 7% more from the next direct attack. Straight off weaker in terms of damage output.


I will present this to the devs in hope of getting the weapons more in line.

Cheers,

Masel

@masel92

Reversal of the light attack nerf is a good start in fixing this. Did you get to discuss the light attack nerf? If so, what was their reasoning?

Masel

mr_wazzabi wrote: »

Masel92 wrote: »

Hey!

I wanted to showcase the difference in pve-parsing between dual wield and a 2h weapon. The difference (based on my parses) is roughly 10% single target dps, which you trade off for a little bit more aoe damage. First of all, I did all parses with the same setup:

2 Medium Stormfist (so i could sustain alone)
5 Perfect Relequen
5 Advancing Yokeda
Infused Maelstrom Bow with absorb stamina enchantment.

Difference between dual wield and 2h was solely:

Dual wield with double infused (dagger+ axe) with poison and berserker enchantment.

2h with Battle axe, infused berserker.

I did around 25 different parses, but I will just show a few of them where the differences are pretty clear. I did parses on all classes, and the relations below hold for all of them in roughly the same magnitude and the same direction.

The Differences between 2h and dual wield consist of the following:

1. Second Enchantment, poisoned status effect and Full power of infused:

When you use Dual wield, you have access to a second enchantment. But not onyl that, the enchantment has full power (so it is equal to a 2h enchantment), and with the recent changes on the pts, procs all the time. On top of that, the infused trait is one of the few that actually retains the full power on a 1h weapon. So combining these two mechanics already put dual wield quite far ahead. Finally, sicne you can run a poison enchantment with a 20% chance to proc the poisoned status effect on a dual wield weapon, it will net you another dps gain, in this case it was a difference of roughly 400. Adding the 2k from the poisoned enchantment already leads to a dps boost of 2400 just from the second enchantment. Here are the examplary parses from my stamplar selfbuffed testings:


Dual Wield:





2h:





2. Heavy Weapons bleed:

When you look at the two contributions to dps from the two bleeds, you can see that the heavy weapon bleed does not do a lot more damage than the twin balde and blunt bleed, even though the chance to apply it is halved. This is due to the fact that the bleed only starts dealing damage after two seconds, meaning that an increased chance will often just lead to you refreshing the dot before it does something. Dual wield grants you close tot he same damage from bleeds with just one axe, and then enables you to run a dagger for 5% critical chance. In my parse, i have 3.7% higher critical chance when compared to the 2h parse (due to back bar times):





The two bleeds had roughly the same uptime, so here's another source of dps advantage from dual wield.

3. Basic Weapon Damage

Dual wield ahs the highest base weapon damage in the game, because you get 6% additional weapon damage from the offhand. This leads to a discrepancy of roughly 200 weapon damage in the end. Another reasonw hy dual wield outparsed the twohander. On top of this, the dual wield passives just fit more into the pve-scheme: you get additional critical chance, execute damage and damage against cc-ed enemies. To get higher damage on a twohander, you have to actively heavy attack just to get 7% more from the next direct attack. Straight off weaker in terms of damage output.


I will present this to the devs in hope of getting the weapons more in line.

Cheers,

Masel

@masel92

Reversal of the light attack nerf is a good start in fixing this. Did you get to discuss the light attack nerf? If so, what was their reasoning?

We discussed it yeah, but we didn't reach any agreement if you mean that... I still think it's weird that ranged light attacks hit harder than melee, but I guess for now we have to live with it..

Masel

TheYKcid wrote: »

Masel92 wrote: »

3. Basic Weapon Damage

Dual wield ahs the highest base weapon damage in the game, because you get 6% additional weapon damage from the offhand. This leads to a discrepancy of roughly 200 weapon damage in the end

Not disagreeing with the main topic, but how did you end-up at a difference of 200 WD?

Gold-quality, non-nirn dual-wield provides 1652 WD after applying the offhand passive, compared to 2H's 1571, which is a difference of just 81. If you use a setup with nirn on the DW mainhand, vs. a nirn 2H, the difference drops to 46 (since 2H gains 35 more WD from the trait, as it has a higher base WD value).

Even accounting for WD multipliers (major/minor brutality, Dawnbreaker passive slot bonus, etc.) it shouldn't come close to 200.

Look at the parse. Berserker uptime is the same, and that's pretty much the only thing that can cause it...

Mettaricana

If they'd stop netfing dmg on everything the two handers does it'd be more even give back heavy attack dmg un nerf the traits for twohander a bit. Better passives

Strider__Roshin

TheYKcid wrote: »

Masel92 wrote: »

3. Basic Weapon Damage

Dual wield ahs the highest base weapon damage in the game, because you get 6% additional weapon damage from the offhand. This leads to a discrepancy of roughly 200 weapon damage in the end

Not disagreeing with the main topic, but how did you end-up at a difference of 200 WD?

Gold-quality, non-nirn dual-wield provides 1652 WD after applying the offhand passive, compared to 2H's 1571, which is a difference of just 81. If you use a setup with nirn on the DW mainhand, vs. a nirn 2H, the difference drops to 46 (since 2H gains 35 more WD from the trait, as it has a higher base WD value).

Even accounting for WD multipliers (major/minor brutality, Dawnbreaker passive slot bonus, etc.) it shouldn't come close to 200.

It's true actually. Nirnhoned main hand with an infused + WD enchant on your off-hand and the difference is quite significant.

For starters Two Handed weapons should give you more weapon damage naturally.

Second, all 1-H traits should be half of what 2H gives; not just sharpened and defending (there may be others, but those are the two that come to mind).

Strider__Roshin

I also believe that 1H bleed damage should be cut in half; only matching the 2H axe bleed when you have 2 equipped.

OrphanHelgen

It's not the 2 hander or dual wield itself that does the dps.
Look yourself, its maelstrom bow, caltrops, relequen etc.
Which is why we look at the dual wield passives and get slightly more stats, one extra enchant plus the 25% dmg reduction from cloak.
There is no 2 hand skill on the parse which then comes down to the passives only.
The unique passives in therms of dmg for 2 hander, is the 10% extra direct damage you gain after landing a heavy attack, which you and others don't use.

To sum up, good job testing, but it still clearly shows the massive design fault of unique playstyles.

kojou

They should just add 3-4% crit to one of the 2H passives and be done with it.

It is a small change that will even out PvE, and not hurt PvP IMO.

usmcjdking

Call me old fashioned but I'm of the opinion that 2H PVE should be balanced around the strength of Wrecking Blow and not weapon passives or enchants.


Some quick fixes to 2H that, IMO, would bring it in line with DW.

Reverse Slash: Logarithmic function instead of standard scaling function. It needs to cap earlier at it's maximum (cap damage at 12-15%) or have a higher total multiplier to accommodate.

Wrecking Blow: Reduce enemy physical resistance by 1000 for 5 seconds. Can stack up to 3 times. (Enemy debuff)
OR
Wrecking Blow: Increase all damage from 2H skills by 10% for 5 seconds. Can stack up to 3 times. (Self buff)

Option 1 on Wrecking Blow gives it a place in raids where it gains significant raid utility. Option 2 vastly increases the damage burst with execute combos.

LiquidPony

Daus wrote: »

I also believe that 1H bleed damage should be cut in half; only matching the 2H axe bleed when you have 2 equipped.

Do you ever stop asking for nerfs?