Mechanics:Dual-Wielding

From LOTRO Lorebook

Dual-wielding is available to Champions at level 1, Burglars at level 10, and Hunters at level 10. In addition Lore-Masters can attain dual-wielding by acquiring the Legendary trait Deed:Lore of the Blade, which allows them to dual-wield a staff and a one-handed sword. Dual-wielding works much differently in LOTRO than it does in most other MMOs:

• Your effective Speed becomes the average of the Speed value of both your weapons (add both Speed values and then divide by 2). For example, if you have a 2.3 Speed weapon in your main hand and a 1.7 Speed weapon in your off-hand, your effective Speed is 2.0. It does not matter which weapon is in which slot; the effective Speed is the same with either possible combination.
• There are not separate auto-attack "ticks" for each weapon. Both weapons always attack on the same tick. Our two hypothetical weapons in the previous example would always attack together on a 2.0-second auto-attack tick rate.
• The weapon in your off-hand slot is capped to hit for the lowest value in the weapon's listed damage range, plus or minus a small percentage (usually just a point or two on either side of the lowest listed value). This means you generally want to put the weapon with the highest Min damage in your off-hand slot, but this advice should be weighed against all the other considerations covered in Mechanics:Relative Weapon Damage Factors
• The offhand weapon can still crit at a normal rate (with no penalties for being in the off-hand), but it crits for roughly double the capped off-hand damage range. For example, a 9 - 13 weapon in your off-hand usually hits for 9 points (sometimes 8 or 10 points), and it crits for around 17 points, give or take a point.
• The off-hand damage reduction mechanics described above affect only your auto-attack damage. All of your weapon-based skills that mention bonus damage based on your "off-hand" weapon are not affected by this damage reduction. In other words, if you have a skill that uses the "max damage" of the off-hand, and your off-hand weapon's listed Max Damage value is 10, then the bonus damage from that skill is based on a value of 10.
• For Champions only, the Fervour threshold of your various weapon-based active skills is lower (usually by one point) when you dual-wield than when you are wielding a single 1H weapon, a 1H + Shield, or a 2H weapon. When dual-wielding, the Fervour cost will be listed as a flat cost like "3 Fervour" in the skill's tooltip description. When you are not dual-wielding, the Fervour cost will be listed as a cost like "Requires at least 4 Fervour, but Removes 3 from Fervour", which means the skill still only costs you 3 Fervour, but you need to attain a threshold of 4 Fervour to queue the skill.

[edit] What does more damage? Dual-wield or 2H weapons?

It should be obvious that based on the preceding mechanics, a dual-wielding will always yield more damage than a single 1H weapon. What's not as immediately obvious, without careful examination of the listed DPS values for typical 1H and 2H weapons available to you at any level, is that in most cases, you can achieve a much higher auto-attack DPS with dual-wielded weapons than you can achieve with a 2H weapon.

However, your auto-attack damage is only one portion of your total damage equation, and it must be balanced against several other factors described in Mechanics:Relative Weapon Damage Factors.