Is dual swords on a magblade still a thing?

Nova_J

I have recently been seeing some old magblade builds that utilize dual swords and inferno staff back bar or vise versa. I assume that's for the increased weapon and spell damage that the sword buff passive gives you? I was thinking about trying something like that but with the new vamp spammable, having my spammable and execute on the bar with the swords with inferno staff for elemental wall. I would be shooting for less crit chance (between 50-60%)and more spell damage, but I dont know how much my dps would lose vs using an inferno staff. Or what set would be the best to use for this case.

out51d3r

I tested this recently on my magblade. Going dual wield gains me around 500 damage on my spammable, but costs me around 1500 damage on my light attacks. Not worth, unfortunately.

Dual wield definitely has some advantages though. It increases damage for both AOE and single target. Heavy attacks can be used to refill stam. Can be used to keep 4pc set bonuses when you do something like backbar clever alch. Looks way cooler.

Crash427

Only in certain niche cases, bomblades for example. Other than that you're better off with a staff.

Nova_J

out51d3r wrote: »

I tested this recently on my magblade. Going dual wield gains me around 500 damage on my spammable, but costs me around 1500 damage on my light attacks. Not worth, unfortunately.

Dual wield definitely has some advantages though. It increases damage for both AOE and single target. Heavy attacks can be used to refill stam. Can be used to keep 4pc set bonuses when you do something like backbar clever alch. Looks way cooler.

Is it still viable though? For vet 4man content at least?

Red_Feather

Endgame pve isn't broad enough for you to play around with things like that. In PvP it works though.

Nova_J

Red_Feather wrote: »

Endgame pve isn't broad enough for you to play around with things like that. In PvP it works though.

I'm not talking trials, more like vet dlcs dungeons at the most.

catnamedwill

Nova_J wrote: »

Red_Feather wrote: »

Endgame pve isn't broad enough for you to play around with things like that. In PvP it works though.

I'm not talking trials, more like vet dlcs dungeons at the most.

Vet DLC dungeons can often be just as hard as certain trials especially in hard mode.

Nova_J

catnamedwill wrote: »

Nova_J wrote: »

Red_Feather wrote: »

Endgame pve isn't broad enough for you to play around with things like that. In PvP it works though.

I'm not talking trials, more like vet dlcs dungeons at the most.

Vet DLC dungeons can often be just as hard as certain trials especially in hard mode.

Yea and I've done the majority of them, I just want to know if it's still viable in that content. I'm not looking for the best of the best, just a character I can have fun with and still do the job lol.

YandereGirlfriend

Yes, it is viable.

People get hung up on the difference between "BiS" and "viable" and mistake the latter for the former.

Vildebill

Nova_J wrote: »

out51d3r wrote: »

I tested this recently on my magblade. Going dual wield gains me around 500 damage on my spammable, but costs me around 1500 damage on my light attacks. Not worth, unfortunately.

Dual wield definitely has some advantages though. It increases damage for both AOE and single target. Heavy attacks can be used to refill stam. Can be used to keep 4pc set bonuses when you do something like backbar clever alch. Looks way cooler.

Is it still viable though? For vet 4man content at least?

You can do vet 4 man content naked, so it's perfectly viable.

Don't mistake viable for best in slot.

idk

out51d3r wrote: »

I tested this recently on my magblade. Going dual wield gains me around 500 damage on my spammable, but costs me around 1500 damage on my light attacks. Not worth, unfortunately.

Dual wield definitely has some advantages though. It increases damage for both AOE and single target. Heavy attacks can be used to refill stam. Can be used to keep 4pc set bonuses when you do something like backbar clever alch. Looks way cooler.

This. The basic attack is where the character is losing out. However, if someone is not doing basic attacks they are probably not concerned about their damage and as such might as well use swords.

MashmalloMan

Maybe wait for any information regarding U27, it should come out on pts in about 4-5 weeks. Can you do it now? Yes, but if your light attack weaving as you should, it will be noticably weaker, still doable, but weaker.

Why? In March, before U26 (Greymoor) launched on the PTS in April, ZOS released an early PTS update for light/heavy attack mechanic changes. It was largely hated by the community, but 1 thing was not hated at all. In fact most people seemed to support the decision.

ZOS was going to update light/heavy attacks to scale based on highest resources instead of the type of weapon. This meant you no longer hit like a wet noodle because your weapon damage and stamina wasn't high. There were dps parses of DW Sword Magicka users and they did fairly well. The only catch was the resource restore, still scaled based on the weapon type. So DW = Stamina return, Staves = Magicka return, etc. Imo and others, that was a fair trade that could actually benefit a good deal of builds. A pvp magicka setup could gain stamina return to do more roll dodges, etc.

Of course, ZOS chose to ignore the good feedback and scrapped the entire thing, but they said they would revisit those ideas. Since Greymoor has launched, I'd hope they would go back to those ideas for U27.

That being said, they have a whole laundry list of things they promised to do, but didn't. Class identity still sucks and no updates since U24, CP still being worked on that most likely requires the full completion of the skill audit and I'd say they're not there yet since dots were left in a bad place, Fracture and Breach debuffs still exist when they said they would combine them like they did for Resolve and Ward (this change alone means they'd have to potentially rework skills like Razor Caltrops, Pierce Armor and Warden's Shalks, possibly even sets like Night Mothers Gaze.

MashmalloMan

@Nova_J if you need a more concrete answer as to what effect DW Swords may have on your DPS potential, I'd say to first figure out how much Light Attack weaving actually contributes to your dps.

Using Liko as an example:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oqqssc7eqGQ

In this video, you will see he parsed 93k with 22k or about 25% of his dps from light attacks. Yes, these parses are pretty much perfect, but if your dps limit was 71k on a raid dummy, I'd say your more than capable of completing 4man dungeons. If you know what you're doing, then you're going to be stronger than most pug dps anyway.

On a 3/6m dummy which is closer to what you may experience in 4m dungeons, you can usually top out at around 45-60k dps, depending on if you have access to major debuffs and buffs. Take whatever you parse then -20 to 25% and you'll get a better idea. Most pug dps can't even break 20k dps, 30k+ and the entire thing flies by, 30k+ should be possible with DW Swords.

DW Swords give +6% damage done which can be equal or even slightly better than +8% single target damage done, it really depends on how much single target/aoe damage you use if your comparing these things directly. Most setups will have 15-30% of their total dps as aoe damage. Looking at Liko's parse, he was using about 20% aoe damage, so he would lose 2% dmg on 80% of his dps, but gain 6% damage on 20% of his dps. So imo, this part of the equation can balance out to be equal.

DW Swords also have higher base damage and more versatile weapon traits. You can do Nirn + Precise for example, this may make up for the fact that Destruction Staves double your base status effect chance. You'd most likely get less dps from burning, but a little higher dps from a higher base damage.

DW won't give you the 10% penetration, but that is only applicable on Destruction Staff skills and light/heavy attack weaving, as a MagBlade, you're probably using nothing from the skill line anyway.

So yeah. I think you can estimate about a 20-25% dps loss all things considered. Your weaving will do a little dps, but nothing to ride home about, I'm guessing like 3% of your total dps, if you're a Dark Elf, maybe 5-6%?

You will just need to test it for yourself to see. Go to the PTS if you can before you invest into DW Swords.