An argument on the GameFaqs board about TWF vs. THW

[Neversoul]

I'm just getting into this game. I originally made a barbarian, because I wanted a kind of simple introduction into gameplay and I enjoy playing as a melee character. I set him up to use two handed weapons, and so far, things have been going really well. I'm level 3 and feel plenty strong. My weapon does 2d6+13 or so with power attack on. It seems like a lot of damage at this point in the game. And I have even been able to solo a couple Elite level dungeons.

I recently grouped with a ranger using two weapons, and it was pretty clear that I was doing more damage than him. Which I probably wouldn't have even noticed as I was just enjoying grouping. But he was apparently very frustrated by this and told me that later on, two handed weapons will be useless, and two weapon fighting is the only way to go.

I went to gamefaqs to see if a topic covered this, looking for information about it because I don't want to have a gimp character in the end game.

In a topic there, two people were arguing about it. One was saying two weapons was better and the other that they were more or less balanced in different scenarios. The one supporting the latter position posted some math. I don't know enough about the game to make much sense of it, but I wanted to bring it up here and see if I could get some opinions.

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"With no strength...

THF Great Sword
2-12 base damage
6-36 critical damage
x 4 hits = 8-48 base damage & 24-144 critical damage

TWF Rapier
1-6 base damage
2-12 critical damage
x 8 hits = 8-48 base damage & 16-96 critical damage

With a plus 12 strength modifier... (18 damage for two handed weapons)

THF Great Sword
20-30 base damage
60-90 critical damage
x 4 hits = 80-120 base damage & 240-360 critical damage

With a plus 12 strength modifier...(12 damage for single handed weapons)

TWF Rapier
13-18 base damage
26-36 critical damage
x 8 hits = 104-144 base damage & 208-288 critical damage

With a full 5 point power attack...(7 damage for two handed weapons)

THF Great Sword
27-37 base damage
81-111 critical damage
x 4 hits = 108-148 base damage & 324-444 critical damage

With a full 5 point power attack...(5 damage for single handed weapons)

TWF Rapier
18-23 base damage
36-69 critical damage
x 8 hits = 144-184 base damage & 288-368 critical damage

This is all against a single target of course.

With glancing blows landing on 3/4 of the hits and doing roughly 40% the damage of a real hit, this would add, on average, 9.6 damage per strike (27 + 37 = 64 / 2 = 32 x .4 = 12.8 x 3/4 = 9.6) if only one other target was affected. (round down to 9 for convenience)

With glancing blows against 1 additional target...

THF Great Sword
36-46 base damage
108-138 critical damage
x 4 hits = 144-184 base damage & 432-552 critical damage

With glancing blows against 2 additional targets...

THF Great Sword
45-54 base damage
135-162 critical damage
x 4 hits = 180-216 base damage & 540-648 critical damage

Hence there are three important sets of numbers here...

108-148 base damage of THW against 1 target
144-184 base damage of TWF and THW against 2 targets
180-216 base damage of THW against 3 targets

To me, this illustrates perfect balance between the two fighting styles, I don't think anyone could design better balance between them even if you wanted, they are mathematically equivalent while maintaining situational differences.

TWF is superior against single targets, is equal to THW when some glancing is in play, and is surpassed by THW when lots of glancing is in play. THW always maintains a higher capacity for critical strikes, while critical strikes are always more likely for TWF. Missing hurts THW more, but occurs less than with TWF."

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So...

How is the math he posted?
Are two weapons significantly better? Or are they more or less balanced?
Is it okay to keep my Barb as two handed? Or should I change things?

Sorry for the long post. Thanks a lot for your help.

[Clearlyop]

The math makes sense but he fails to address the main point. THW is more useful for taking down numbers where TWF falls a little short because of less glancing. But TWF is potentially more useful for taking down bosses and such because of the faster crit rate and attacks.
Even so this does not mean THW is useless on bosses, because you're still hitting for a lot and your crits are still huge so it just depends what you want to do, do you like butchering mass amounts of mobs and then just killing bosses? Or do you prefer Butchering bosses and just killing mass #s? Each is good for both ones just better for either particular task.

[ArkoHighStar]

at lower levels the advantage of THF is damage per swing, low hp mobs have a greater chance of dying on less swings so, even if you are both swinging at the same target you are more likely to strike the killing blow. At higher levels where mobs have immense number of hp's the speed of TWF dps ends up being more effective. This is a simplification but the basic thought more attacks equals more damage, despite the fact that THF does more damage per attack

[Angelus_dead]

To me, this illustrates perfect balance between the two fighting styles

There are numerous and serious problems in what you pasted, starting with when you searched for MMO information on gamefaqs.com.

You should probably use goggle.com and read about TWF/THF damage on site:forums.ddo.com. That would give you a better basis. And keep in mind that most of what you find will predate last week's patch, which was highly relevant!

PS. To give you a start, here are two specific problems (out of many). The sample weapons are nonmagical, instead of something normal like Holy Acid Burst Slicing. And the TWF guy uses a rapier, when Khopesh is the usual choice for someone who wants damage.

[Angelus_dead]

The math makes sense but he fails to address the main point. THW is more useful for taking down numbers where TWF falls a little short because of less glancing.

False. Although THF has a specific mechanic to add more damage against groups of monsters, TWF is still superior in that situation once all factors have been considered.

[SimVerg]

There are errors(THF gets +10/swing from PA, TWF gets 9 swings 4 main 5 offhand/animation cycle) but the two most important points missing from the analysis are on-hit effects(biased towards TWF due to its faster attack rate) and a realistic level 20 barbarian's strength(60ish or +25ish).

[Timjc86]

Bear in mind that the changes to attack speeds/animations last week may have changed things significantly. I have yet to see any thorough testing after the changes, so we may have to wait a little bit (or even do some testing of our own). However, it seems like the devs are at least trying to reach some semblance of balance between TWF and THF.

[ArkoHighStar]

Bear in mind that the changes to attack speeds/animations last week may have changed things significantly. I have yet to see any thorough testing after the changes, so we may have to wait a little bit (or even do some testing of our own). However, it seems like the devs are at least trying to reach some semblance of balance between TWF and THF.

this version is borked so to speak, while THF got a buff the end result was TWF also got a buff and tempest 3 got a huge buff

[Angelus_dead]

However, it seems like the devs are at least trying to reach some semblance of balance between TWF and THF.

It does not seem like that.

The stated and observed improvements from the change were to different aspects, such as BAB improvement monotonicity and lessening an exploit. The change increased the imbalance between TWF and THF, so there was no indication they had been trying to do the opposite.

We also don't have an indication from the developers as to where they'd like that balance to end up: a strong case can be made that TWF should be more damaging, so the question is instead how much it should lead by.