I'm sorry if this has been answered before, but after a week of searching, I'm still confused. My Monk is level 26 and on my character screen, it shows my DPS as 96.1 and a delay of 2.3 with no weapons equipped. If I equip two one-handed weapons, my DPS doesn't change, but my delay does....it seems to be an average of the two weapons? I also get a DPS for each of the equipped weapons with is usually lower than my 'overall' dps. So, why do I have multiple DPS stats and multiple delay stats? Why does equipping weapons not change the top DPS? Why are all the weapons I find and can make (fistwraps) have twice or more the delay that my bare fists have? The only reason I no longer equip weapons now is because I attack a LOT faster and, therefore, seem to do more damage. I like having the stats and procs from weapons, but waiting 4-6 seconds for one auto-attack seems ridiculous...I'd rather do lower damage per hit and attack faster than let a mob bash on me for several seconds before I hit it and maybe kill it. What am I missing here? -Gil102
Bare fists have always been faster weapons, and lower damage per hit. A long time ago, one of the brawler AA lines required you to be unarmed, which is no longer the case. I'm not sure what the base delay on fists is (you can find out by turning off your offensive stance and group buff and also unequipping any item that adds to attack speed), but as you lvl and get better buffs and items, it will be pretty fast. You will want to use weapons of the same delay to better time CAs between auto attacks, and you want weapons anyway cuz stats. Your DPS mod comes mainly from items, but also from AAs and items. The higher your DPS mod, the higher your auto attack damage. In regards to procs, the proc rate in most situations is not affected by your weapon speed. There are not many procs that will happen often enough to warrant faster weapons (IE proc on every hit). In the end, you need to play in a way that makes it enjoyable for you, just remember that a 4 second weapon will be a lot faster at 100 than it will ever be at 26. Hope I was helpful.
Treiko, Thanks for the answers. I had assumed that proc rate isn't based on attack speed (my post wasn't very clear on that), just that it can be a nice perk. I would love to use weapons with something less than a 5 delay if I could find or make them, but they are just way too slow. Are you saying that the auto attack rate gets faster with level no matter a weapon's delay, or that because skills and abilities that increase attack speed get better with higher levels, then high delay weapons will become faster? If it is just a matter of getting faster attack speed, then what level of haste do I need to make a pair of 5 delay weapons attack as fast as delay 2 weapons with no haste?
OOOOH. DIS MY THING Monks and maths! Soooo duel wielding use to be a viable option back in early EQ2, especially when leveling. This was because you were lucky to see much if any str on weapons and the damage ratings were low, so using your fists gave you a similar damage rating. When dual wielding you want 2 weapons with the same delay on them. This is because you want an auto attack timer and between auto attacks you want to be using spells and combat arts. During the casting of a spell or combat art you can't melee, and for a short recovery time afterwards you can't. So if you hit off these abilities between auto attacks you will improve your damage. As a rule of thumb, the faster a weapon is, the less damage it does, but it does it more often. This means that generally a 6 second weapon and a 4 second weapon of the same tier have the same weapon rating. Weapon speed, on none TLE servers, can be modified by some items you can buy off the broker for a few gold. Now in older content you got 2 second weapons and 6 second weapons and all sorts, but those are only good for dirges to abuse VC with. Weapon swing speed is also modified by haste/attack speed. At 100% haste the swing speed is reduced by half. This then hits a soft cap so at 200% attack speed, you swing 125% faster. So a 6 second weapon becomes a 3.6 second weapon. Weapon speed depends on if you want to proc more and how long do your spells take to cast. So for a dirge, who has long costing buffs/spells they want a 6 second. Where as a monk whose CAs cast almost instantly, you can use a 4 second and get more hostility procs. DPS modifys weapon damage, as does weapon damage bonus, but you need to look in your window to see how much damages your weapons do as their base and max hit.
Lea pretty much covered the answer for this one. In the end it comes down to gear choices and buffs. Though even at your lvl there are 4 sec delay weapons, you need to look for maces and clubs or fighting batons.
There are 4 and 6 second weapon mods made by woodworkers and weaponsmiths that can be be applied to weapons to either bring dual wield weapons to a common 4 or 6 second delay if the base delays are different or you just fancy a faster or slower delay. They can also be applied to range weapons. Check out the broker for them, they shouldn't be too expensive as they use common mats. They can also be removed - but lost - by right clicking on the weapon and selecting the remove weapon mod. (Not sure of the exact wording - but it's fairly obvious what the option is). BTW, these are not adorns, just a semi permanent mod to the delay stats. To apply the mod, the weapon(s) need to be in your bags and not equipped and you just click on the mod then click on the weapon, in a similar fashion to applying adorns.
Thank you everyone for the information and advice. I'm using two 4.0 delay weapons now and it seems to work out pretty well. A few things I have noticed that kind of annoy me as I feel they are intentional FUs to players: 1) As soon as you equip a second weapon, it adds 1 to the delay for both weapons, THEN applies haste...so my two 4.0 delay weapons are now 4.6 delay. Kind of a dick move. 2) Hand weapons (Cestus's, Katars, Claws, and Fistwraps) that are made through Weaponsmithing only appear in the X9 level recipes (19, 29, 39, etc.) yet only have the lowest level in that tier for stats (10, 20, 30) so since you can pick up better weapons through quests during the entire level, it isn't worth wasting your time levelling up Weaponsmithing to make weapons that will probably be replaced as you go through that tier. I think I finally figured out how to 'respec' AA points...its not very intuitive and for a few hours, I thought that stats gained through AA weren't applying to my character (0% crit chance even though I put points into the INT line to increase crit). At least now I can kind of play around with stuff and see what I like as far as AA.
1) As soon as you equip a second weapon, it adds 1 to the delay for both weapons, THEN applies haste...so my two 4.0 delay weapons are now 4.6 delay. Kind of a dick move. It's not a "dick move". A twohanded weapon isn't twice as good as a onehanded weapon. There's no reason dualwielding should be either. In classic D&D if you tried to dualwield then you would take a small attack penalty on your main hand and a big penalty on your offhand, unless you had class or other abilities to remove those penalties. If you're better off dualwielding than you are with a single onehander, then take the improvement and be happy. Giving you more damage isn't a dick move even if you feel entitled to even moar damage. 2) Hand weapons (Cestus's, Katars, Claws, and Fistwraps) that are made through Weaponsmithing only appear in the X9 level recipes (19, 29, 39, etc.) yet only have the lowest level in that tier for stats (10, 20, 30) so since you can pick up better weapons through quests during the entire level, it isn't worth wasting your time levelling up Weaponsmithing to make weapons that will probably be replaced as you go through that tier. Nothing is forcing you to keep your crafter level equal to your adventure level. Go ahead and level crafter up to 29 when your adventure level hits 20, so then you can make yourself some on-level L20 equipment. Then when you hit 30, level your crafter skill up to 39 and repeat. If you're unhappy that quested gear is going to replace your handcrafted gear anyway, that has nothing to do where in the tier your particular recipes are; it just means that handcrafted isn't awesome, so make mastercrafted and deal.
I forgot to mention the delay. I also believe off hand weapons cant reach the same damage levels and cant trigger flurry or multi or something. You are also able to use clubs, stsves, mallets, hammers, maces etc which I know you get earlier.
