02-18-2005, 04:20 PM
Some points.
-At one time testers showed that holding one weapon gave the same miss rate as dual wielding but only if you trained dual wield - it was possible to eliminate this by holding a torch in the off hand. Those tests were from back in beta I think.
I suggest testing with a torch or similar item in the off hand.
-Dual wielding is still doing more damage even with the higher miss rates(regardless of poison).
Before talents DW adds 50% to your base damage with the of hand but also decreases your total damage by "25%" due to a higher miss rate. It hard to say the true effect on miss rate but its always less than 1/3 of landed hits so DW always wins. Then when you add in DW specialization and poison as you mentioned DW comes out way ahead for rogues.
-Also the idea that one weapon gives more consistant damage is a bit over stated by most people.
Yes your main hand misses more but you also have the off hand hitting ussually.
Consider this case(using 2 identical weapons for ease of calculation) with a main hand hitting for 100 damage. Using your miss rates.
1 weapon - 100 damage .825 of the time, and 0 damage .175 of the time.
2 weapons - 150 damage .543 of the time, 100 damage .194 of the time, 50 damage .194 of the time and 0 damage .069 of the time.
If you have rogue combat talents the varience is even less, also if you use a faster off hand the varience is less..
At one point people thought DW might be hurting the hit rate on finsihing moves but that idea is pretty much abandoned.
-At one time testers showed that holding one weapon gave the same miss rate as dual wielding but only if you trained dual wield - it was possible to eliminate this by holding a torch in the off hand. Those tests were from back in beta I think.
I suggest testing with a torch or similar item in the off hand.
-Dual wielding is still doing more damage even with the higher miss rates(regardless of poison).
Before talents DW adds 50% to your base damage with the of hand but also decreases your total damage by "25%" due to a higher miss rate. It hard to say the true effect on miss rate but its always less than 1/3 of landed hits so DW always wins. Then when you add in DW specialization and poison as you mentioned DW comes out way ahead for rogues.
-Also the idea that one weapon gives more consistant damage is a bit over stated by most people.
Yes your main hand misses more but you also have the off hand hitting ussually.
Consider this case(using 2 identical weapons for ease of calculation) with a main hand hitting for 100 damage. Using your miss rates.
1 weapon - 100 damage .825 of the time, and 0 damage .175 of the time.
2 weapons - 150 damage .543 of the time, 100 damage .194 of the time, 50 damage .194 of the time and 0 damage .069 of the time.
If you have rogue combat talents the varience is even less, also if you use a faster off hand the varience is less..
At one point people thought DW might be hurting the hit rate on finsihing moves but that idea is pretty much abandoned.