I was reading this old article on wowhead
At exactly 50%, dual wield will deal the same damage as a one handed weapon.
Proof:
Main hand dps = 100
Off hand dps = 50
Dps for one hand, after misses:
100 x 95% = 95
Dps for dual wielding, after misses:
76% (100 + 1/2 x 50) = 76% (125) = 95
That being said, anybody ever thought not dual wielding? Because havin 24% miss chance on an ambush isnt that great in the end. Wouldnt you prefer having 100% chance to hit on all your special attacks? Because in the end the overall damage increase only make a difference if the offhand does more than 50% f your mainhand, which will happen only when you pick the proper talent to boost your offhand damage.
I was considering taking instead the 5%crit dagger talent and the 5%crit from asn, then the rest to sub for great ambush and backstab. Is that viable?
The DW miss chance applies to the auto attacks only.
Special attack uses a different hit req value; being roughly 5% in PVP and 9% in PVE for attacks like Ambush and Backstab.
With how much hit is on gear, the DW penalty becomes not a problem in “classic era”
I would like to point our to the OP that your idea is not terrible at very low gear levels where you have no hit, but it will not help with problems like Backstab, Ambush, sinister strike and other special attacks.
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Pulling this out of thin air but I’m fairly certain you’re talking about auto-attack (white damage) dual wield hit chance, but special attacks (yellow damage) use a separate modifier.
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Okay going with your simplified math you are still missing these points:
- off hand raw weapon damage before the penalty is mostly the same as main hand as they are just weapons. So in most cases you are dealing with 100/100 and not a 100/50. unless your offhand is way outdated comparing with your MH.
- Most DW classes have talents that improves offhand DPS by 25% which is a must for DW.
- there are poisons, enchants, talents and etc… that can be proc-ed from your offhand.
They were not my maths, and even if my 2 weapons have the exact same damage, the damage of the off hand indeed displays as 50% of its original damage on the character sheet.
But i understand that in the end DW is a must for all previous mentionned reasons.
Thx all
True but then you calculated the 50% penalty twice.
once there
and once
in that 1/2.
Cheers.