New to Barb. Let’s say I’m doing double swing as my core skill with an axe and a mace. I’ll get the weapon expertise bonuses with them while wielding them during the double swing, got it. What if I ALSO select single hand axe as my “technique”, do I get the wielding bonus AND the technique bonus or just the technique?
Please provide a reference because I can’t find anything that clearly explains it. If you don’t have a reference, please tell me how you know for sure.
Dual Wield is tricky.
Each Weapon provides you with that Weapon Bonus for any Skills that use it. In the example of wielding an Axe and a Mace and you have Dual Wield Arsenal bound to Bash, your Bash Attack would get the Axe and Mace Bonus.
Here is where it is weird.
Techniques do not stack with the same Weapon type you assigned as an Arsenal Weapon. If you used the Axe Technique, it would provide zero bonus for the Axe but it would provide it to the Mace portion.
What is really really weird is that Bash requires a Mace to use. You can bind it to 2H Mace or 1H Mace. If you bind it to 1H Mace, as long as you have a single Mace included, you can use Bash. Both the Axe and Mace get calculated and used in the Bash. Your Bash will benefit from the 1H Axe, the 1H Mace, and the 1H Mace for the 1H Axe portion of the Bash. The Axe Bonus overrides the Technique and you cannot get 3 bonus from Dual Wield, which you would be, if you benefitted from the 1H Axe Technique on top of your 1H Maxe, 1H Axe Bonus, and 1H Mace Bonus.
One of the ways you can see this in action is the fact that 1H Weapon Techniques all provide you added benefit for using 2 of the same Weapon type.
It is hard to test this because both 1H Weapons get calculated together for purposes of Skill Damage instead of them hitting independently.
Attack speed helps a lot with DS. Swords work best imo although thats more for the s1 mechanics. Tomorrow after they explain overpower changes etc other skills will be good besides the usual suspects.
If you hover over the Technique icon (left side of the window there is only 1 icon to see on the left side part of the screen there, so easy to spot) it tells you exactly what it does.
One-Handed Axe Expertise
When using any weapon: 10.0%[+] increased Critical Strike Chance against Injured enemies.
That is what you get 
It does not work with the same Weapon Type. If you use a 2H Sword for Rend and use a 2H Sword Technique, you only get the 2H Sword Bonus assigned as the Arsenal Weapon to Rend. The Technique gives you no additional bonus to Rend.
Dual-Wield is a little different (in a bad way). Effectively both 1H Weapons are combined and you would gain the Weapon Bonuses of each of the (2) 1H Weapons, even if they are different. If you have a 1H Technique that matches either of your 1H Weapons, the Technique gives NO BONUS even though technically it should give you a partial Bonus.
Techniques are a very half-baked idea that need to be reworked to feel special.
I agree, it’s a really cool mechanic in theory but it needs some juice.
I’d love something like a mini skill tree like the blunt / mace passives towards the bottom, but for all weapons.
Long story short - for best results, your technique should be a weapon type that you are not actively using.
I would dual wield axes and use 2-handed sword for technique. That worked for me. Of course I don’t have a gg level 100 barb. I stopped at 96.
So when you DW, you get both of the equip.bonuses, but not the extra bonuses if you’re using two different weapons (you also gain expertise for both)
Setting your technique as one of the two weapons you are using literally does nothing. Ideally you want to try and max out any relevant techniques while climbing to 50, so you don’t have to mess around with it later.
2H Sword is still one of the most popular options for the free passive bleed damage.
THANK YOU. This was crystal clear. So in order to take full advantage. I should use a “technique” for a weapon I will not be wielding in my attacks. Correct?
That is correct
/Hate20char