I read somewhere that you should always put your weapon with the highest damage per second in the main hand when dual wielding… What is the reasoning behind this, or is this even true???
Main hand attacks first and gets then it alternates, with each weapon gaining an attack speed bonus (I believe of 15%). So, you want your first hit, most often, to be the hardest one you can deliver.
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The answer actually depends on what build you are playing, and what skills that build uses.
With Earthquake, for instance, all the damage comes from your main hand, whether those EQs are caused by Leaping, by Shouts, or by hard-casting it. So, as a result, you don’t even need to have damage range on your off-hand weapon- you can roll that off for something else. If the damage of your off-hand was 0, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. Of course, most of us play EQ using a 2-hander, but running Istvan’s Blades is a pretty decent setup even in non-season, and in season 27 it was the strongest setup due to being able to leverage the WW pull power well.
With Rend, it’s a bit different- your Rends caused by WW + Ambo’s alternate between hands for their damage. But hard-cast Rends only take their damage from the main hand weapon. And since only hard-cast Rends can proc Area Damage, that ends up meaning that, over the whole span of a rift, getting a 10% damage roll on your main hand is probably worth something like 9%, but getting 10% damage on your off hand is only worth maybe 1%. That 10% damage roll on the off hand only really helps a bit when it comes to the boss.
With other builds and skills, like LoD or IK HotA or MotE Seismic Slam, or Raekor Boulder Toss, the damage alternates on every hit, so there, it really doesn’t matter which weapon goes in which hand.
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Thanks for the detailed answer, just what I was looking for!!