ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I was cruising through the Old Forest as a Dwarf Fighter, and realized that there's a talent tree for Sword and Board and Two-Handed weapons, but not for dual-wielding. Am I missing something?

Fighters can't... Well, they can, but the off hand does *way* less damage (50% I think?)

Only rogues and reavers (and maybe a couple more)... Have it specifically. Rogues have 2 trees dedicated, but I've not played a reaver yet.

Mindslayer can triple wield, with third in psychic focus? Didn't played mindslayer yet, so not sure.

Any class can dual-wield if they want to, but only rogues, shadowblades, temporal wardens, and reavers have actual talent trees for fighting that way.

What those classes have is a means of offsetting the damage reduction that occurs when you are dual-wielding. AT Tlevel 5 you are capable of dealing the same damage in your off-hand as in your main hand.

Typically this is Dex based so the obvious pair of weapons here (unless you are playing a Reaver) is Moon & Star.

The only weapon that can be equipped in the off-hand is a shield or a dagger. You cannot dual wield swords, axes or maces. Reavers are an exception to this.

Reavers and anyone with the bottom half the telos staff.

Dual-wielding can be nice for some classes, even with the damage hit. Mindslayers in 20b (though not in the next beta) benefit from conduit going off on the offhand weapon, which can be an extra 210+ damage per round by the end game.

Sun paladins can technically benefit from weapon of light doing something similar, though they're much better off just cycling pummel/overpower/assault/brandish. There's a few classes that give that sort of damage on strike.

Arcane Blades actually do surprisingly well with dual-wield, due to having a second weapon to benefit from frost hands, at least in the early game -- I had one AB that found a pair of slime daggers, and between freeze and slime-slowing, basically stunlocked the minotaur boss, as well as several other major critters. Lost that AB to a crash/bug type thing, but I'm about to start it back up.

Even without class specific synergies, anyone can benefit from having a second chance to proc freeze or slow, via icy/elemental or slime-covered daggers. That's often of much greater benefit than what a shield or 2-handed weapon can do for you, if your class doesn't specifically take advantage of those item types.

Damage on daggers does tend to be much much less though, even factoring in the second strike. And you have to rely on two stats for damage output, not just the one.

It would make some sense for fighters to have the dual wielding tree available though, perhaps locked, to give them additional options. (And I mean the primary dual-wielding tree, with all the passives for dual-wielding - not the tree with Lethality in it.) Not all fighters need wield sword & board.

Frumple wrote:Even without class specific synergies, anyone can benefit from having a second chance to proc freeze or slow, via icy/elemental or slime-covered daggers. That's often of much greater benefit than what a shield or 2-handed weapon can do for you, if your class doesn't specifically take advantage of those item types.

I would like to point out that an icy shield gives a chance to freeze when you get hit. This combined with a weapon that does bonus cold damage can be very powerful for tanking large melee mobs.
You could use an alternate set if you find two equally good main weapons, and swap to shield / dual wield when fighting mobs/single targets.

Grey wrote:It would make some sense for fighters to have the dual wielding tree available though, perhaps locked, to give them additional options. (And I mean the primary dual-wielding tree, with all the passives for dual-wielding - not the tree with Lethality in it.) Not all fighters need wield sword & board.

I have been playing with the idea of a dual wield warrior of some sorts, but it never turns out to work due to the current dynamics. Changing the damage bonus of daggers and adding this passive tree might make that possible.