Just doing the math and testing it in combat, 2 handed weapons are inferior to both 1 handed and dual wield options. The overall DPS for 2 handed weapons is MUCH lower. I have yet to find a scenario where using a 2 handed weapon would be more advantageous overall.

 

Either 1 hand/dual wield styles need to have their respective recovery times doubled or the recovery time for 2 handed weapons needs to be halved or the dmg of each individual 2 handed weapon needs to be raised by 50%. Yes, that's right... as of now, there is that much disparity in their overall dmg output.

 

lowering the recovery time for 2 handed weapons by 50% would probably be the best option because of the faster combat in POE2. Watching a character just stand there motionless for extended periods while all other characters and enemies around them are moving in frantic combat appears odd and out of place.

Does anyone else agree with this or am I just looking at things wrong?

Apparently one handed weapons all have the wrong recovery speed value, "fast" instead of "average", so probably best to wait until later builds to judge it.

Josh has said that all the 1H weapons had their speeds set to fast for the beta when they should be average. That's throwing the calculations off.

There's a bug. One Handed Weapons all have only 1 sec recovery while they should have 3. That gives you the impression that two handers suck because their recovery is correctly implemented but very long compared to the actual recovery of all one handers. Only a few very light one handers shoud have this short recovery, but it was applied to all one handers accidentially. There will be a patch for the beta soon which will solve this issue.

 

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/931663699093307392

 

Whooha! There where multiple ninjas!

Edited November 19, 20178 yr by Boeroer

Revive this thread because I think even with the one-hand weapon recovery bug fixed, two-handed weapon are still severely UP because the new penetration system. 

 

A great sword have a basic damage of 19-25, attack time 0.7, recovery time 3 second. A sword has a 14-19 basic damage, same attack time, recovery time is 1.5 second due to dual wielding. So your dps with great sword is around 6 per second, sword is 7.5 per second.

 

Not to mention that with much faster recovery time, you can have better reaction over battle.

 

Secondly you get more stats bonus from offhand weapon. DOS 2 solves this by giving two-handed weapon double enchanted bonus. So if a sword gives 1 Str, a great sword will give 2 Str, I hope POE 2 can have a similar system to balance it.

 

Thirdly u have two weapon modal when dual wielding, which gives you more alternative. For example with sabre/dagger, u can set Parrying Blade on when being surrounded. One more modal gives more options in battle.

 

The only advantage of two-handed weapon is primary attacks, but that bonus is not huge because you still suffer from longer recovery time, with dual wielding u can do two primary attack ability when u can only use one with two-handed weapon.

 

The basic damage of two-handed weapon should be boosted to over dual wielding because all these reasons and balance concern.

What if two handed weapons got twice the benefit from Might?

 

That'd make the comparison with dual wielded swords or sabres more favorable. The upcoming change from one to two second recovery on fast weapons looks to make them approximately equal to slow speed one handers like swords. That fixes that problem but two handers will still be out in the cold.

Since DR is no longer a concern and penetration is the main mitigation, the advantage of more flat damage per attack is diminished against the more sustained damage of using two weapons. The damage of two-handed weapons should be upped or their penetration values increased even more to compensate.

There's also a problem among two handed weapons; compare greatsword, morning star, and estoc. 

 

The price the Estoc pays for the penetration bonus is so huge that for most armor ranges the Greatsword is far preferable due to higher base damage, despite lack of penetration. This will be especially true next patch when they move to a more graduated penetration penalty (a good change that was needed). 

 

Almost all the weapons need a fair bit of tweaking one way or another. From what they've said in the streams there are a bunch of tweaks in the next patch so let's see what happens.