Dual Wielding questions

cbarchuk

I've got an elven fighter/thief that is dual wielding various long swords in the main hand and kundane in the off hand. Is it worth putting two points into short swords since it will only affect my off hand weapon? I've also have belm, Usano's Blade, and spectral brand. These swords seem to be better than any of the long swords I have. Should I maybe roll with Usano's and belm instead? Just trying to figure out which combinations are most efficient weapon and proficiency-wise. Thanks.

Mitchfork

Your off-hand weapon only gets 1 attack per round regardless of your actual number of attacks (does Improved Haste change this to 2? I don't know) so I wouldn't put the points in it... plus a lot of tough baddies are just gonna be straight up immune to the weapon anyway. Better to throw those points into some blunt weapons or something else entirely to make you more versatile.

What long swords have you been using?

cbarchuk

Yea I couldn't remember how many attacks the off hand got. Anyways I've been using daystar the most. But I also have adjatha the drinker, dragonslayer sword, and angurvadal. The scimitars/wakazashis I've got seem better.

Lord_Tansheron

Spectral Brand is probably the most powerful out of the ones you mentioned. Daystar may be a choice against undead (double damage) but you might as well use one of the disrupting weapons in that case (Mace of Disruption or Azuredge) and chunk them outright...

As for the offhand, it's fairly safe to more or less ignore it in terms of proficiency. I usually put one point in to negate the penalties, then only spend more if there really isn't anything else useful to do with them. As @Mitchfork rightly said, your offhand APR are capped at 1 anyway (discounting Improved Haste) so there is no point in going for higher proficiencies, as their major draw is the APR gains. Ideally only 20% of your swings are made with the offhand, and so even the damage/THAC0 bonuses are only a very small gain. If you have anything else at all to spend the points on, chances are you're better off with that (e.g. the aforementioned anti-undead weapons).

cbarchuk

Thanks for the input guys. Should I stick with long and short swords to retain my elven THACO bonus or are the gains from using say spectral brand and belm worth it? Right now I have 2 pips in short swords just for kundane and 2 pips in longswords. If I used scimitars/wakazashi/ninja-to I would only have to put pips into one weapon type as opposed to two.

Lord_Tansheron

The elven bonus is not worth using weaker weapons for. It's only +1 THAC0, and most weapons will have a much greater gap between them than that. Spectral Brand is definitely enough better than your other choices to make it worth foregoing the elven bonus.

That being said, your proficiency points also matter. If you have no pips in scimitars but 2 in long swords, then Daystar (or Angurvadal, since you're already in Watcher's Keep) might be better than Spectral Brand. If you do have pips, though, Spectral Brand is probably the best bladed weapon you can get for quite a while. Only the blunt trifecta (Crom Faeyr, Flail of Ages, Club of Detonation) and arguably Celestial Fury are better, at least until you get to upgrade things in ToB.

Pantalion

Fighter/Thief? Sink some points into Bastard Swords and grab the Purifier, 30% MR is definitely worth a -1 to hit on Fighter THAC0.

Madhax

Pantalion said:

Fighter/Thief? Sink some points into Bastard Swords and grab the Purifier, 30% MR is definitely worth a -1 to hit on Fighter THAC0.

It's a sweet sword, but you can't backstab with it last I checked. I tend to do a lot of backstabbing with my fighter/thief, especially once Assassination is available.

FinneousPJ

If you have nothing else to put the points into, then sure. Otherwise I wouldn't bother. My CHARNAME uses Crom Faeyr/Belm without Scimitar pips and chunks everything in seconds...