In PoE a 1H weapon has 3 gem slots and an off-hand item (shield, etc.) also has 3 gem slots … in order not to penalise someone using a 2H weapon these have 6 gem slots to make things even (you could say 2H users are slightly OP since they can have 2 6-link chains).
In LE you’re penalised for not using a 1H weapon and something in the off-hand slot since all weapons only have 4 AFXs which means someone using a 2H loses access to 4 AFX stats which a 1H user has in their off-hand.
Why?
Why is the game designed to penalise someone wanting to use a 2H weapon … even without Exalted and higher gear an off-hand with 4 x T5 AFXs adds a lot of character power … why don’t 2H weapons have 8 AFX slots to make things fair?
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If someone wants to argue that the AFXs in the off-hand are from a different subset of all AFXs than a weapon then that’s easy: a 2H weapon has 4 1H AFXs and 4 off-hand AFXs!
2 handed weapons have basically doubled base damage, but i agree with u when the matter is dual wielding, same damage and 4 more affixes, i think that 2H weapons should have like, one more afx tier or something like that, so it feels like they are focusing more in raw power than variety
Y’all realise the numerical value of the affixes is roughly double on a 2h right? I’d argue the 2h is better because you only have to get lucky enough to create 1 item which has the same statistical value as two.
Being dual wield is penalized if you didn’t know. At least Sentinels take 9% more damage when dual wielding.
In LE being tanky is far more important than dealing damage because you will just get oneshot at some point, so dual wield builds become not viable 9% sooner than 2H.
2H weapons already have exclusive affixes and they are very competitive in terms of damage. They are the middle ground between maximum dmg (dw) and less daamge but more defense.
I never had the feeling of being at a disadvantage when using 2H.
Spend somw more time exploring the game and it’s systems. Like other people have said, 2h weapons have higher magntidue affixes as well as exclusive affixes you can’t get on 1h weapons. Just cause its different or more difficult to build doesnt mean its worse. It might be worse for your situation and your gear/passive setup, but you can build differently.
As stated already, 2-H has roughly doubled implicit and affix values, but I’d argue that DW/1H-Shield can be more valuable than 2H when it comes to very lategame itemization, (i.e: having 2 4LP weapons). I mean, imagine having a total sum of 48 afix tiers in DW against 24 in 2H. Even if 2H afixes are stronger, the possibilities are endless in DW.
I don’t have any particular feelings about this topic, I think what EHG did works.
That said, having 8affixes in this game is more of a curse than a blessing. Getting two exalted items of the implicit type you want and getting them to have the all the attributes you want them to have is much less likely to actually happen.
Dual wielding especially has a massive uphill battle against RNG that I don’t think folks appreciate. I do, because I’ve been trying to build a dual wield shaman and it’s just a giant pain in the ass.
So no, you aren’t penalized stat-wise. Yes, you are advantaged RNG-wise.
