Dual Wield tree is lackluster

Drachdhar

Title says it all.
It isnt bugged or anything, its just "meh".

Beyond Flurry, and its morphs, every other skill is something I dont even feel tempted to put a skill point into in case its a complete waste. Which is how they feel atm.
For a skill tree that is supposed to, in most peoples minds I think, to be heavy DPS it does not seem to deliver.
Currently feel I would have been better of going into Two Handed, but that would probably severely impact my Nightblade class skills in a negative fashion due to the way Magicka and Stamina boosts various things. Which there is a great deal of confusion about anyway.

killedbyping

Totaly agree. Flurry and may be the last skill is the only things you can use. Others totally sucks.
Whirldwind is totaly useles even in PVE also. It does nearly 0 dmg.
1 of the morth give better dmg vs low HP enemys, but i dont think that it can stack with DW passive which do the same for EVERY skill. Also, you can multiply 0 by any number you want, you still get 0 dmg...
Second morth give stamina for target hit. Also useless, even when you attacking millions of mubcrabs at the same time you still dont get even half of stamina wasted in return.

Me personaly went to 2H with NB. There actualy also not that much of good dmg output abilitys (we dont speak of Execute, because it only deal good dmg against low HP targets), but it give much more utility in battle and works much better than DW.
Ambush with uppercut is just... "wtf ?what happened to me ?" I manage to 1 hit every creep in Malabar Tor with that so far (expect of bosses ofc).

KenjiJU

Blood Craze keeps your hp in a good place. Whirlwind acts like AE Execute. From my exp, it starts working just below 50%. If you have other good AEs to go with it, it'll destroy groups of 6+ (I use inc. range. 5m is too short. It's a finisher anyway, so the stam regen won't be very useful as everything should be dead by the time it would have kicked in).

When I first got WW, I hated it and was underwhelmed, but now I almost never take it off my bar.

I can't speak of it with NBs or 2H, but I love DW on my Templar.

Rescorla_ESO

Whirlwind is one of the most misunderstood skills in the game thanks to the lack of info on the tooltip.

The tooltip shows how much damage it does to the target at 100% health. For every 10% decrease in the targets health, the amount of damage Whirlwind does increases. By the time the target is down to 20-30% health, Whirlwind turns into one of the best DPS skills in the game.

Ember Explosion (AOE blind) is very useful in PVP.

Lastly, Hidden blade is very useful because it gives you a ranged skill that snares. It also does good damage and you can spam it if you have enough stamina.

Brasseurfb16_ESO

Also, Whirwind can be used with Axes,with the twin Blade&Blunt passive, as an opener to bleed every target in the radius and increase your ultimate generation greatly over time.

KoooZ

Agreed, I gave up on dual wield with my dark elf DK and never looked back from 2hander.

PS: It's not luckluster, it's lackluster

fantom

You don't understand Whirlwind. It literally becomes an AOE execute when the mobs are down to ~25% health. This is default behavior btw. The morph doesn't add it, it adds range (5->12m radius, which is incredibly good).

You don't even need impale if you use whirlwind (against non-bosses). Just execute with WW instead, because most of impale's damage is wasted on regular mobs, whirlwind will kill the mob in 1 hit just like impale does.

Also Flying Blade is VERY good. It's an incredible stamina dump.

Blood Craze is "ok." It meshes very well with stamina cost reduction gear, and is useful while leveling.

Rapid Strikes is pretty ***, even after the buff. It just feels bad to be casting for so long as DW, and if you want to do good damage you can't dodge or block or interrupt.

Sparks/Explosion is incredibly niche, and mostly useless.

DW tree could use some buffs, and I would agree that it's "lackluster," but it's not totally useless.

Drachdhar

KoooZ wrote: »

PS: It's not luckluster, it's lackluster

I know, misspelled :P ... Think it even was the spell check that misspelled it somehow.

kitsinni

As a Nightblade opening with Lotus Fan, whirlwind makes short work of big groups. Especially if you can get behind a few in the group go in to sneak and open with Lotus Fan, whirlwind a time or two, lotus fan then a few more whirlwinds and the group of 5+ is dead.

Blood Craze is kind of so so. Against bosses added in with Swallow Soul makes for a good amount of healing. The issue is that a lot of stuff doesn't bleed and and low health mobs die before the bleed has a chance to do anything.

For me Dual Wield is the AE damage bar on my Nightblade but it can also be good for certain situation in single target.

Niminion

Whirlwind is my new favorite skill, I wish I had picked it up earlier. The tooltip reads 90, but the damage just gets higher and higher the lower the heath gets. The single target damage vs a low health target is very much worth the stamina cost dealing ~300 dmg during execute phases. As a sorc with the aoe stun ultimate I can run into a pack stun them all for 9 seconds and whirlwind the whole group down with seconds to spare, the more the better, at the end of the fight my ultimate is again nearly full. Who needs destro staff pfft I'll use my magika for real spells tyvm.

Blood Craze and Rapid Strikes are also fine each is very stamina efficient and the auto attacks are strong, very good sustain damage for DW. Maybe people are disappointed at the burst capability DW has which is meh I agree, making it not awesome for pvp.

Zalathorm

Use the following combo: Teleport Strike in -> Power Extraction -> WW

Using this combo at level 42, my whirlwinds start around 200 damage, and end around 500. With 3 or more enemies, I can spam at least 8 WW's, all of which are buffed from Power Extraction.

When you add in Veil of Blades, I can easily kill 5-8 mobs my own level with this combo.

Xiroku

Honestly, I feel 80% of the skills in the game need a massive overhaul. A lot of them are pointless compared to others, or are just plain bad. Not to mention how amazing pure magicka builds are compared to pure stamina or hybrid builds due to there being insane magicka returns in the destruction staff skill line and resto staff's heavy attack.

Quaesivi

I think the problem most people have with DW compares it to the other weapon skills and so on. Problem is that while 2H, especially, has a high burst, DW has more sustained damage overall, in the long run, they end up similar.

neiljwd

The last 3 skills all seem to be CC, and that's just not got a wow factor us solo soldiers -I get that CC's important, but i thought I'd pick the majority of my skills up AWAY my weapons - they should be for DAMAGE!

One of the last 2 skills in the tree needs to be changed to a big single target hit, maybe a CC as one of its morph. As it is, after whirlwind, I have nothing to aim for to help me fight standard battles, I very quickly became bored with the skill line.

Loxy37

What is luckluster? Or is that meant to be lackluster? Not being a idiot but wondered if its some new word that I am unaware of the meaning?

Aphilas

WW is the only good ability in DW tree.

Blood craze while cheap and all... simply doesn't put out comparable damage to similar abilities - for example fire dot from DK tree is also a cheap dot, yet it does more upfront damage, does more dot damage and on top of that benefits from DK passives by providing 30% snare for the duration of the dot...

Rapid strikes - tooltip says it channels for 1.3 seconds, yet in reality it is 2+ seconds duration. While it's a solid single target damage issue is that it snares your character a lot while you are channeling and there's no real way to interrupt the channel either. So as soon as you start it, for 2+ seconds you put a snare on yourself and can not, say, use a healing ability. On top of that, highest damage comes at the end of the channeling, so if halfway you get interrupted... You end up doing close to no damage at all. And then you have a bug which sometimes while using rapid strikes ability bugs your character out, leaving him in snared mode all the time and unable to use any of the abilities. Going into UI and out of it fixes the bug, but personally I've died to that bug more times than anything else. Specially annoying when fighting bosses and that one huge damage hit kill gets you because you were stuck trying to debug it.
Now, on top of all that crap... the morph which is supposed to increase your attack speed by 20% after performing rapid strikes - puts visual effect on your char yet it doesn't give any attack speed.
The ability is somewhat usable in PvE, but self snare and 2+ second cast time makes it completely useless in PvP.

These are two single damage abilities in DW tree which are barely usable in PvE and completely useless in PvP. Leaving DW without any single target DPS skill besides flying blade. Which has atrocious damage to stamina ratio.


Yes, AoE capabilities are awesome, but that's hugely irrelevant in PvP when you have pretty much 0 single target DPS.

Drachdhar

Well, sustained damage is pointless in PvP. Especially in ESOs pvp where battles tend to end pretty fast in my experience. Control or spike dmg is generally where one should invest, or good AOEs.
And ranged combat...
Granted my experience with pvp is mostly dated now since it was in the Beta tests... So maybe some things have changed, though I doubt it.

//Well, now I know where that stupid thing of not being able to move or use abilities comes from... Has cost me a few soulgems and hefty repair fees.

Hilgara

I have gone for a burst bar using skill abilities from a relatively small magicka pool and a sustain bar from a larger stamina pool. Single targets usually go down with ambush and surprise attack from stealth but if they are tougher I switch to the stamina bar that uses lots of bleeds and self heals stacked with elude and blur to make me very hard to hit.

killedbyping

How could Whirldwind become any good if enemy health goes down ? Whats wrong with your math ?
ZERO multiplied by million is still ZERO !
So ofc, it deal nearly no dmg when enemy have full health and start to do SOME damage when enemy goes down to 30%.
First of all, as i already stated, i dont think that this bonus damages come from ability it self. It comes from Dual Wiled passive which give bonus damage to ANY DW skill when enemy goes down to 30% and i dont think WW and DW passives bonus damage on low targets stack.

Also, the bonus damage you deal to low health targets with WW or any other Skill cant even nearly be compared to 2H Execute skill.

leandro.800ub17_ESO

DW base does more dmg (no skill here)
Just for example lv36 dmg for 1 hand dual mouse button is +4 then a 2 hand. This plus 2 enchants
Now add the +% last DW passive and you have more dmg.

True that the % less heath damage are not that different but you can get the opponent heath there quick without using stamina at all and save it for when the opponent is low on health.

With this said whats the best way to get opponent low heath fire aoe? I use shields and health steal. Depends on your build (aoe+magika or dmg+armor)

ZiRM

I really don't enjoy duel wielding in ESO. Most games it's fun but it just seems meh...

killedbyping

leandro.800ub17_ESO wrote: »

DW base does more dmg (no skill here)
Just for example lv36 dmg for 1 hand dual mouse button is +4 then a 2 hand. This plus 2 enchants
Now add the +% last DW passive and you have more dmg.

True that the % less heath damage are not that different but you can get the opponent heath there quick without using stamina at all and save it for when the opponent is low on health.

With this said whats the best way to get opponent low heath fire aoe? I use shields and health steal. Depends on your build (aoe+magika or dmg+armor)

We are not discussing DW regular dmg here. We were talking about DW skill lane which is total crap compared to other skill lanes.
Also, i dont know how you counted this, but for me, 2H weapon deal 1.5 more damage compared DW of the same level. (i don't speak about numbers you see on weapon description, but about actual dmg. and yes i have DW passive which improves off-hand damage).
Also, Ambushes with 2H weapon do almost 2 times more than with DW.

Arcanasx

If any of you have used rapid strikes have you noticed that it decreases attack speed instead of increasing it? It has been doing that ever since I had rank 2 rapid strikes.

Aphilas

Arcanasx wrote: »

If any of you have used rapid strikes have you noticed that it decreases attack speed instead of increasing it? It has been doing that ever since I had rank 2 rapid strikes.

Not 100% sure about decreasing but it certainly doesn't increase.

pknecron

kitsinni wrote: »

As a Nightblade opening with Lotus Fan, whirlwind makes short work of big groups. Especially if you can get behind a few in the group go in to sneak and open with Lotus Fan, whirlwind a time or two, lotus fan then a few more whirlwinds and the group of 5+ is dead.

Blood Craze is kind of so so. Against bosses added in with Swallow Soul makes for a good amount of healing. The issue is that a lot of stuff doesn't bleed and and low health mobs die before the bleed has a chance to do anything.

For me Dual Wield is the AE damage bar on my Nightblade but it can also be good for certain situation in single target.

Why would you worry about blood craze as a NB? Siphon is the most OP self heal in the game.

CapuchinSeven

pknecron wrote: »

Why would you worry about blood craze as a NB? Siphon is the most OP self heal in the game.

...because they stack? Why does that even need to be said.

Rhythmic

Drachdhar wrote: »

Title says it all.
It isnt bugged or anything, its just "meh".

Beyond Flurry, and its morphs, every other skill is something I dont even feel tempted to put a skill point into in case its a complete waste. Which is how they feel atm.
For a skill tree that is supposed to, in most peoples minds I think, to be heavy DPS it does not seem to deliver.
Currently feel I would have been better of going into Two Handed, but that would probably severely impact my Nightblade class skills in a negative fashion due to the way Magicka and Stamina boosts various things. Which there is a great deal of confusion about anyway.

I am vr3 Dual Wield user since level1.

Dual Wield in PvE deals best 1target damage in game.With low stamina cost.

Dual Wield in PvP with synergy of class abilites(esp Nighblade),is best 1v1 melee spec(i dont count spambash because its broken).

Hidden blades gives you non-stop DPS when you chasing target,and flury allow you to disintegrate you enemy,if you setup ur burst correctly.
But yes,understand DW is harder than understand 2h.

Dont forget about 10% crit bonus from daggers.
But this should be redesigned,because passive bonuses from other weapons,not nearly as good as dagger bonuses.

My advice as Nightblade who use dual wields:
0.DW useless in big battles.If you like siege battles,play 2h or bow.
1.Most points in magicka.Only 7/7 medium armor.
2.Shadow cloak+surprise atacks - core abilities,if you dont have this,i dont know why you play nightblade.
3.Use only one gap-closer.(hidden blade if u deside to go stamina build,ambush(lotus fan) if u go magicka.) shadow cloak can be also used as gap-closer.
4.Forget about "Strife",only syphoning skill which can be useful,is Crippling Grasp(cripple),if you wanna selfheal - play bow.
5.Dont spam mindlessly.DW is about control your opponent.
6.Rending slashes is nuke ability.Yes.Nuke ability.
7.Because of low cost of DW stamina skills,you have ALOT of stamina to break CC,or rolldodge.

Brasseurfb16_ESO

Rhythmic wrote: »

Dont forget about 10% crit bonus from daggers.
But this should be redesigned,because passive bonuses from other weapons,not nearly as good as dagger bonuses.

Hum, have to disagree with you

Swords give you 5% extra dmg with every dual wield abilities and light/heavy attacks. Daggers are only on par with the Swords passive twin blade and Blunt whenever both are at 0% critical chance, when your critical chance ramps up Swords become a clearly superior choice.

Also, a lot of people underestimate the axes because a lot of ennemies are immune to bleeds. But when they do work, they offer an extra source of dmg over time and greatly increases your ultimate generation when you use it with AoE skills like Whirlwind.

The only passive I may find lackluster is the mace one. It can get twice the bonus of Swords but this amount is relative to your target armor value. So it is much more situational compared to Swords but a Superior choice against high armoured targets.

tonykart34

My biggest issue with the lackluster dual wield tree is the final passive bonus. I mean Axes get a bleed and daggers get a crit bonus? huh? The whole point of a dagger is to penetrate and puncture... hence BLEED. An Axe chops and is a BIG HIT kind of weapon... not a slow death instrument.

I know other rogue classes in other games are about crit and daggers, but lets be real, these bonuses are backwards.

That being said, I don't see the point of any stamina abilites in the PvP world when you need to Block, Stealth and Dodge. Its too bad that Zenimax didn't consider how useless stamina costing abilities would be when deciding on making Block, Sneak and Dodge percentage based and not a raw number. Just stack magika and faceroll buttons guys!

Wish dual wield tree was better but the only use for it is niche and sometimes just raw, stupid preference.

Erock25

Sneak and dodge are % based off BASE stamina. That means it doesn't go up with attribute points or gear enchants.

NordJitsu

hahahah.

Flurry is the only bad skill in this line. Never ever use flurry. The number of light attacks you can do in that time do more damage than the skill. It prevents you from moving around and is easy to doge.

Flying Blade, Ember Explosion, and Whirling Blades are all crazy good. And I mean crazy good.

Blood Crazy aint too bad either for a single target build.

Dual Wield is quite possibly the best skill line in the game for DPS.