@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:
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.
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.
