Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Off hand or dual wield?

I have a scoundrel / necro oriented character on tactician difficulty. I can't decide between Single hand dagger or dual daggers.. Dual Wield skill gives a nice dodge bonus but with single handed you get to use sucker punch. Since enemies have so much physical armor and sucker punch's damage isn't high I dont know if its worth it. What would you guys do? Can u help me a little please? Thanks:)

The later you get into the game (aka Act 2) the more your equipped weapons lose importance.
Don't invest into dual wield or single handed skill, they're not worth it, max out warfare first, then scoundrel instead.
Especially once you get the big hitter necro skills you will never basic attack ever.

What are you talking about? If, at any point, you use your weapons to attack physically, or in other words, are not a mage, then your weapons remain critically important and need to be upgraded each level.



Dual Wield is useful for a specific dodge-oriented build, which usually means taking Parry Master and being a Dwarf, as well as looking for 3%/7% dodge bonuses on gear. If you're willing to commit to that, you can get over a 50% dodge chance.

Single-Handed for Sucker punch is usually done for a build focused more around CC and status effects. Polymorph is a good addition to such a build.

Otherwise, dual-wield and stick with Warfare for raw damage.

I don't think you read my post as a whole, but picked out what you disliked about it.
I was talking about leveling dw/sh and as equipped weapons go I specifically talked about higher leveled necro skills, which don't scale of your weapons at all, so you only equip them for passive boni like crit chance and stat bonuses.

My level 20 necro still has level 15 wands equipped, because they have a slot each (3 int with power frame) give 2 base int each and have 10% crit chance each, so I get + 10 int and +20% crit chance off them.

I have over 80% crit and my bloodstorm does 15+k damage on crit in a huge AoE which usually oneshots most encounters but if people stay alive I still have Grasp, Skin Graft and my single trarget necro spells whzich do 7k each.
My low level wands do up to 1k damage, if I had higher leveled ones they would do 4k, but what's the point if I never get to use them OR my Skin Graft anyway (I start encounters with Apostheosis) most times i don't even get to use my single target stuff and keep in mind I'm actively trying to end the encounter in turn 1 if I would just wait for the next 2 turns of bloodstorm to do work I wouldn't need anything besides bloodstorm...

Skills are always better than basic attacks it's just before Act 2 your skills are less effective that's why you use basics more, but once you get Skin Graft most skill based builds can just spam their skills and once you get Apo you stop trying anyway.

laidback, you can unequip your off-hand weapon during combat to gain Sucker Punch. It does not cost any AP to unequip something, and it only costs 1 AP to re-equip it. So you could think of Sucker Punch as a permanent 2 AP ability where you don't have to pay the full cost in one turn. Then you don't have to choose between the two.

Like Stabbey and VC said, Warfare would be a better investment than the Dual-Wielding ability since Warfare increase ALL physical damage by 5% while Dual-Wielding only increases weapon damage. In other words, Warfare will improve your Necromancer damage skills, while Dual-Wielding won't.

Oh ok good thing I've been pumping warfare then
I didn't know about equip and unequipping so I guess sucker punch for 2 AP when needed is the best solution as u said.
Thanks for the replies. I only wanted dual-wield skills for the dodge effect, and maybe just a little plus to scoundrel abilities via weapon damage. I will use dual daggers with warfare maxed then

Weapon combat abilities also improve damage of skills that are based on weapons.
For example bonus in single weapons will increase base attack damage, but also damage from Crippling Blow, from example. But not Tentacle Lash or Shield Bash.

For example, for Archer, I would always first focus on Ranged weapon ability, before Warfare, since pretty much all damage skills for Huntsmen are weapon based. And ranged gives both damage and critical bonus, unlike Warfare.

Idk if this got changed at all, but a couple of weeks ago only warfare's damage was multiplicative, while other skills only additive.

What player1 said is true, although it's a little misleading given the context.

Weapon abilities increase weapon damage. Some skills' damage are based on weapon damage, such as Crippling Blow. Therefore, those skills would get an indirect damage boost from weapon abilities.

Necromancer skills may do physical damage, but none of them are based on weapon damage, so none of them would receive a buff from weapon abilities. player1 didn't actually say that it would, but given the context, someone could misinterpret it that way.