Dual Wield Delay and effect?

[Jakazz]

Ok this question has been puzling me for a while now. Does the delay of the weapon in your second slot matter? If i put a Sarnak Warhammer in primary and a Snowchipper in secondary will the snow chipper attack more frequently then if i put a Club of the ice ocean in my secondary. some people say taht delay doesn;t amtter in secondary slot but instead the level of your dual wield, and others say that once dual wield gets high enough both hands attack like primaries.

Please help
Confused lvl 53 warrior

[Donnel]

Each hand uses it's own delay to factor how often it attacks

The reason it sometimes seems like your second hand attacks slower, is because once it's delay is reached you have to succeed at DW before you can roll for attack, so if you fail DW (which you do alot at lower levels) you never see the attack on the secondary hand. Since it doesn't give a message when DW fails, all it ever appears to do when this happens is take twice (or even more) as long to swing with the second hand. This would also lead people to say that after DW gets high enough, both hands attack like primaries, because really, both hands always attack like primaries, it just takes that extra check to use the second hand.

This is why, when I am soloing and I need to proc some bandages, I will put my skinning knife in primary. More guaranteed swings (no DW check needed) = more chances to proc = more bandages in a shorter time.

One last thing.. When at lower levels trying to train DW... it would behoove you to get a LOW delay weapon (as low as you can get really). The more times the weapon tries to attack (the faster delay), the more times it checks DW. More DW checks = more chances to go up in skill

[Lillyann]

once dual wield gets high enough both hands attack like primaries.


Keeping in mind

1- according to formula (LVL+Skill)/500; a level 65 Warrior has only 61% chance to swing secondary hand. Probably more with Ambidextry, up to 71 %.

2- no damage bonus on secondary hand

a Snowchipper in secondary will the snow chipper attack more frequently then if i put a Club of the ice ocean in my secondary

yes

Sources : the warrior faq (http://www2.netdoor.com/~ddeas/wfaq.htm)
*might be outdated* dunno about the exact numbers on ambidextry or relevance of dual wield formula post 60..

[Donnel]

quote:
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a Snowchipper in secondary will the snow chipper attack more frequently then if i put a Club of the ice ocean in my secondary
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yes


Just to clarify, this is because the Delay on the snochipper is lower then the delay on the Club, not because of some complicated interdependency of the primary and secondary hands.

[Beornegar]

This is just based on my personal experience from when I was in my low to mid levels a few years ago, no parses math to back it up. I think it more or less agrees with what y'all are saying. Here goes:
When I was lower level (low 20's to mid 30's-low40's), it seemed that for dual wield to really work well I needed a fast offhand weapon...approximately same delay as mainhand or lower. As I leveled beyond 40ish, I noticed that quite often my offhand swings were independent of mainhand swings...matter of fact in many cases, my offhand would swing and ykesha would proc and I would kill a low level mob I was farming tradeskill stuff from without ever even swinging my wurmslayer. So I'd say go with same or lower delay in offhand until you level up past mid 30's low 40's, after that, go with fast weapon in mainhand and good ratio/stats weapon in offhand (can be slower and more damaging) for DPS.

Beo