I’m curious what the break down is because I feel like I’m just missing something, if I don’t use skills that require shields, or passives that focus around blocks, is there ever any reason to use shields or 2handers once I’ve unlocked dual wielding? Currently fooling around with paladin build so I feel like I’m definitely missing something important here.
Different item types have different bases, which come with different implicit modifiers and available affixes.
Essentially, it depends on what you are trying to achieve.
For example:
- If you’re dual-wielding or 2h, you won’t hold a shield, so you cant rely on block to sustain your health pool.
- if you are using 2h, you have less affix slots available than you would with dual wield or shield based build
Experiment and see what works for you 
2 Likes
Dual wielding increases the damage you take, you basically never want to take it unless its needed to enable a build
Ah! I have a ton of stuff that gives me health on melee attacks, so I thought more dual wielding would work for that, but I’ll keep experimenting on stuff!
DW - you die
2h - you do damage
1h+shield - stupidly tanky
In most scenarios you do enough damage to progress further, but the limiting factor becomes your HP pool.
2h gets access to Titan Heart, which is 15% less damage on top of huge hp increase.
Using a Bastion of Honor in the shield slot roughly translates to 30-40% less damage taken
Using DW makes you take 15% MORE damage
2 Likes
Having increased damage taken, increases what will one shot you. Your sustain doesn’t matter for one shots. The main thing when doing builds in LE is realising you need the bare minimum to have enough sustain, and that the only important thing is reducing what things will one shot you. This is why dual wield sucks.
NOT if you have Hammer Of Lorent! jus sayin