by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Hello, everyone! My Name is Dannie “Image” Ray, and I’ll be here every Saturday explaining all things theorycrafting in an effort to allo everyone to better understand the finer aspects of Diablo 3. Lets hope you haven’t forgotten all the math you learned in school because we will finally have a chance to put it to good use.

Since Diablo 3 came out, people have been calling for a Barbarian that can Dual-Wield Two-Handed weapons. And who could blame them? What says Barbarian more than a maniac recklessly charging at you with two weapons almost comically too big for him?

World of Warcraft Warriors are already experiencing the awesomeness of huge weapons on both hands, so why can’t their barbaric cousins join in the fun?

Well, balance issues for starters. Two-Handed Weapons deal a lot more damage than their One-Handed counterparts, if you could equip two of the Former, you would have absolutely no reason to ever touch the latter. I’m a big proponent of Build Diversity, so I’d love to see every Barbarian be able to equip whatever Weapon he likes and have comparable performance.

We have to ask, how much is too much? How OP would be a Two-Hander Dual-Wielder? Is the Damage difference insurmountable or can we do something about it? What about Dual Wielding with a Two-Hander on the main-hand and a One-Hander on the off-hand?

First of all, let me state that wielding one Two-Hander and one One-Hander is something that I never want to see in Diablo 3. Were you to have a one of each, then in order to optimize your damage you would have to keep track of which weapon you are going to be swinging next and make sure that all your spenders and big hits are done so with the Two-Hander, while leaving all of the generators to the weaker one-hander. And while at first it might look like a good way to reward skill, I’ve had the experience of wielding two weapons with very different Damage while I was leveling up and it got tedious fast.

So with that out of the way, lets take a quick look to see how much better would  dual-wielding Two-Handers be, and then we can try to even them out to one-handers so you can play both options without feeling gimped.

First of all, dual-wielding Two-Handers would get us 750 extra Strength. That alone could be around a 5-10% Damage Increase depending on your gear level. That kind of bonus could be worth the Passive Slot by itself, so you can see why developers would be reluctant to implement Dual Wielding of these beastly weapons.

Still, lets take a deeper look at the rest of the numbers and see what can we do to even things out.

Two-Handers vs One-Handers

Without considering the Strength differences, Top-end Maces would be looking like this:

Two-Handers = 2672 DPS and DPH.

One-Handers =2154 DPS and 1795 DPH

Both would get 15% extra DPS from from the dual-wielding  IAS bonus. Since both get it, they cancel themselves out and can be ignored for now.

Basically, Two-Handers boast a 24% DPS advantage, and a 50% DPH advantage. Getting that much of a bonus out of a single passive is just way too much, but can something be done to set things in line?

What happens if we remove he 15% IAS bonus from dual-wielding?

Two-Handers remain at 2672 DPS and DPH.

But One Handers rise to  2477 DPS, while remaining at 1795 DPH.

Two-Handers now have around an 8% DPS advantage and a 50% DPH advantage.

This is still too strong. When we checked our Two-Handed Monk against a Dual-Wield Version, we found out that a 13% Edge on DPH did almost enough to compensate having a 23% DPS deficit. That 50% DPH advantage would “force” everyone to Dual Wield Two-Handers.

Furtherly Balancing Two-Handers

Ok, lets say you penalize all damage by 10% because Dual-Wielding weapons that Big is actually pretty hard to pull off.

Two-Handers would go down to  2400 DPS and DPH.

Dual One-Handers remain at  2477 DPS and 1795 DPH.

DPS is now even, the DPH advantage now is just 33%. We are getting there, this could still be too strong. This is just one passive, and with the right skills that 33% could be something too good to pass on even without a sheet DPS gain. If that was the case then you would be shoehorning players into playing a spec that took advantage of this boost. My balance instincts are telling me that we have to lower.

Lets try 15% decreased damage

While One-Handers Remain unchanged, our Trusty Two-Hand Maces descends to 2271 DPS and DPH.

Two-Handers now sport a 8.8% Sheet DPS deficit, the DPH advantage is reduced to 26%

Without that pesky 750 Strength advantage, those numbers would start looking pretty balanced. Lets then take away 10% more Damage and we have our final result.

A Balanced Solution

Strength of the Ancients – Barbarian Passive: You can now Dual Wield Two-Handed Weapons. While holding a Two-Handed Weapon in each hand you lose the Attack Speed Bonus from Dual-Wielding and all your damage is reduced by 25%

25% might be a tad much, or it might be just right. In order to find the real sweet spot we would have to do a much more detailed analysis to see the overall value of DPH over DPS. Maybe one day…

There you go, Barbarians can now Dual-Wield those huge weapons of destruction (hopefully) without breaking game balance. This talent would try to provide an alternative, without making it feel mandatory. The numbers would allow these Weapons to be worse than One-Handers in some specs, but better in others. The choice should also be pretty much intuitive.

We’ve Looked at the current woes of  Two-Handed weapons at large. But this is an entirely new approach, and one that could prove to be a real crowd pleaser. What do you all think, would Dual-Wielding Two-Huge Weapons be reason enough for you to give the Barbarian a try on the Ladder?

Let us know in the comments below.