Should I have a weapon set for 2 handed option? I'm a barb/warrior and plan on doing dual weilding with a sword/mace combo to level both types. (Maybe with a back up sheild combo) Should I also have a 2 handed weapon on the go I was thinking 2hand slash but wasn't sure. Or am I just wasting my time using 2 handers?
I would look to acquire at least 1 of every weapon type you can wield, and swap them out after each level to max all skills - you never know when you might fall into a fantastic weapon, and no skill means it's not that fantastic. 1h + shield really only used for tanking major mobs - 2h will give you far higher DPS than dual wielding will.
The reason why 2h weapons seem lackluster at lower levels is that your damage is capped, so you seem to land same damage hits but at slower pace. Once you are past damage caps (one is at lvl 20, next one I think is at 30), you can really feel it. Compare weapons from same class. Elaborate defiant cutlass is 20/24. About 0.83 ratio. Elaborate defiant claymore is 45/33, 1.36 ratio. Almost twice. Yes, you can wield two 1h weapons, but there are a number of restrictions affecting the off-hand weapon. Especially once you get flurry (primary only)
First damage cap lift is at level 10. Under level 10, any weapon with more than 10 Weapon Damage is treated as a weapon with 10 damage. At level 10, through level 20(?) it increases to 14 damage. In the mid 20’s it goes up by a few points per level, though I do not have a breakdown of the exact caps at the various levels. At that point it is basically high enough that you won’t hit a damage cap again. There have been a few times where the damage cap was specifically increased at higher levels so players would not be able to hit it. Actually, upon reflection, there is still one attainable damage cap I’m aware of. The berserker TBM skill, Dichotomic Rage, maxes out at around 750k damage per hit. I do not know what that would be in terms of weapon damage. If you see crits harder than that, say in the 1m to 3m range, the actual damage line that follows it is limited to a mere 750k-ish (750k plus bonuses).
