Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Dual Wielding feels bad

yes, multi attack buffs like hunter's mark, Hex, elemental weapons, rage etc.

also you get bonuses from magic weapons and the like, so by 5, you are likely at +5

at level 5, there is a difference of approx 1 dmg per round in favor of 2handed. my calcs say 19.65 versus 20.84 (differs based on attack)

however, the dual fighting is more consistent, since you get two swings.

regardless, this damage is close enough that both are viable.

If you add in multihit buffs, as I said twf performs even better.

And yeah, a level 11 fighter probably wants to use a bigger weapon. But thats the nature of the class. Really, different builds should profit differently from different weapons.

Using a BA has different value for different classes. Many martial classes don't have great uses for BAs.

Point being, dual wielding isnt really that bad. Its not always optimal in every build/situation, But thats how it should be.

this gets improved in ONE dnd, but that has many other changes too, so its a bit of a different beast.

So the potential raw damage is about equal, but dual wielders have to spend all their bonus actions on damage to reach the damage 2hander-users can achieve, correct? Isn't that a huge sacrifice for basically nothing? You could just play 2hander and have about the same damage with no real downside in terms of utility/movement options etc. And the unneccessary ramp up required for classes like Barbarian who need to rage as a bonus action also remains.

Of course, one could argue that dual wielding isn't meant to be used by classes like barbarian, but (IMO) this is just sticking to the (flawed) DnD rules too strictly.

Dual Wielding is an idea many people familiar with real weapon fighting are allergic to. It really would be ineffective used by almost anyone. I'm still concerned about the feat, though. People keep repeating taking 18 dex is same damage at better accuracy on YouTube. Is It only viable after maxing out dex? And, wouldn't that mean the feat is really bad?

@professoryins I'll agree that dual wielding is stronger in BG3 due to the prevalence of magic/elemental weapons. Even more so if you can stack multiple extra sources of damage (flaming + Hunter's Mark + ...idk, something else)!

With the big caveat that it still requires a bonus action, which has downsides as said by:
That's my take on it (except for rogues). Plus, although BG3 buffs dual-wielders via magic weapons, it also hurts them in Opportunity Cost by adding so many homebrew bonus actions.

To zoom out a bit: overall, I'd be in favor of buffed dual wielding for Barbarians/Fighters/Rangers (in that order), and possibly buffed single-wielding for rogues.

A little bit, yeah. Taking the feat is mechanically worse than improving your Dex...with some caveats.
- If you have multiple magical rapiers but less-powerful and/or fewer shortswords, then you might want this feat.
- I'm ignoring the "you can draw or stow *two*-one handed weapons" aspect of the feat, which is irrelevant for BG3 afaik but might be important in tabletop depending on how strict your DM is.

And at lvl 6 (and every 2 levels after that) you can increase the DPR by ~3.3 for each Sneak Attack dice. Rangers are better at it though, since Colossus Slayer represents ~4.3 DPR with 3 attacks (3.9 with 2 attacks).

Of course, BG3 has completely thrown any sense of bonus action economy balance to the wind. Larian seriously needs to reconsider the BA and change a lot of it into actions, like hiding, shoving etc.

Since I was able to defeat the gnoll and get the blood-sucking hammer, two-handed weapons are indeed strong, but they have magical weapon effects.

If there are two blood-sucking hammers (choose dual-wielding proficiency), and a bonus action helmet, the barbarian may gain 2XHP by attacking for one round.

Oh, damn. I don't really know what the legitimate best direction for Larian is. I guess they'll be plying us with even more magical weapons, though. I may be wrong, but I don't think there's any good magical light weapons?

I've done a lot of dual-wielding in BG3 during my eight plus play throughs of early access, and I'd disagree that it's bad. It is by design not equally accessible to all, and hence I can see the frustration for those who might want to play a dual-wielding barbarian, but as another said, that isn't the way 5e is designed. It is viable on a fighter and incredibly good on a Ranger, which is the iconic dual-wielding class. I've played both Str and Dex build rangers and have found that dual-wielding is very good if built correctly. In fact, I'd say it's some of the highest DPS I've seen. Yes, there are times where you'll want to drink a potion instead of taking that extra attack, but most of the time you'll be able to kill things more quickly thus negating the need for potions. Similarly, there will be occasional situations where you can shove someone to their death instead, but in that case you'll hardly begrudge the lost attack. More often than not, however, you'll get one extra attack per round, and that is great.

This works the best with the ranger, because Hunter's Mark and Colossus slayer will add extra damage to those attacks, which has often allowed me to kill bosses in a single round. In prior playthroughs I would often cheese Gekh Coal by pushing him off a ledge. Larian removed this option in patch 9, but it hardly mattered. My dual-wield ranger killed him before he could get off a single action.

Yes, there are other options for that bonus action, and knowing when to forego the extra attack to do something else and when to not just adds to good strategic gameplay decisions in my IMHO. But the fact that it doesn't apply every round doesn't make it not good most of the time, which it is.

Some have critiqued that dual-wielding requires a feat and a combat style. I think the latter is required but not necessarily the former, which sometimes is a good call and sometimes isn't. Unless one is playing a thief rogue who is making two offhand attacks it probably isn't worth it if we can't apply the extra damage from our primary ability. The feat, however, is optional, and better on a strength build that a dex build. With a strength build it provides us vastly superior weapon selection in addition to the AC bonus and is worthwhile, but on a dex build it only gives us access to rapiers, and in that case as far as early access is concerned we might as well just take extra dexterity which effectively gives us the same damage upgrade while also giving us better accuracy and all the other benefits of dexterity. We'll still do a lot of damage, especially with help from Hunter's Mark and Colossus Slayer.

It is also worth noting that at least for Str-based rangers access to a wide variety of weapon actions is better than I thought it would be. In my earlier playthroughs I kind of ignored weapon actions, but some of them are very good. My Str-based ranger wielding Faithbreaker and Phalar Aluve had access to concussive smash, backbreaker, lacerate, and pommel strike all at the same time, which gave her lots of options for making opponents more vulnerable to attacks or making them take extra damage within a single encounter.

As far as DPS goes, it is also important to keep in mind that more attacks means more opportunities to hit. Even a well-built character will miss with their weapon attack sometimes, and it's always satisfying when my first attack misses but the offhand hits. If I weren't dual-wielding I'd have dealt no damage with the attack but because of TWF I was able to still do some.

I don't think TWF is by any means broken, and it certainly does require or encourage certain class choices and careful building and playing. As a TWF love I certainly wouldn't complain at all if Larian improved it, but I don't think its inherently bad.

On a Ranger, twf is usually fine lvl 2-10. Even beyond that if you multiclass with Rogue. But in BG3, the problem is that they've not only thrown the BA balanse out by making hide and shove BAs, but they added things like dipping and a number of abilities to offset the penalty from Great Weapon Master.

So it isn’t like twf can't perform, but man if it isn’t far from optimal as things stand right now.