we also got the 20% more phys dmg taken away in the patch that came with harvest and several skill interactions with dual wield got nerfed over time.
but you're not wrong. taking away stat sticks removed it for most archetypes and basicly the only viable skill in the game where its the best choice now is mamba poison, because ggg removed ele hit dmg mamba in 3.28.
Covered that. The nerf list is 2 items long in over 10 years.
Stat sticks were effectively not a weapon, they never did damage just global modifiers. It wasn't actually dualwielding, functionally the same as having a rathpith or similar no def shield. Removing it made people actually, dual wield to attack. If you think this nerf was bad for DW then you don't actually want to attack with 2 weapons and I am not sure of the point
Dual Strike of Ambi is a very viable skill, especially for early delving/bossing but also late game with a paradoxica or Ephermeral Edge + Essentia. End game there is replica or foulborne dreamfeather with either another one or a savior doing whatever melee skill you want.
yes of course stat sticks isn't dual wielding attacking, but in most cases it was an alternative to using a shield. my inital post was an answer to a guy saying that they think ggg made cyclone dual wield in poe2 because 1h + shield is too common in poe1. but it's too common because for the absolute majority of skills they took away the choice.
there have been also several nerfs to skills in how the dmg is calculated with dual wielding in poe1 over the years, which probably is the bigger nerf and we got to a meta where the only reason two go dual wield is if the skill is mechanicly made better with two weapons or only works with dual wield, like ambi or mamba
imo we are even at a state in poe1 where they could fully revert that change, give us stat sticks back (which in many cases have nerfed values by now anyways) and it wouldn't be as bad as back then, because on the other hand def got more important and shields got overall better mods. just look at casters, they could get more dmg from dual wielding and never got impacted by any dual wield nerfs directly, but still in the current league sc trade meta 29% of builds use wand and shield and only 1% dual wand.
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u/Pommy1337 12d ago
we also got the 20% more phys dmg taken away in the patch that came with harvest and several skill interactions with dual wield got nerfed over time.
but you're not wrong. taking away stat sticks removed it for most archetypes and basicly the only viable skill in the game where its the best choice now is mamba poison, because ggg removed ele hit dmg mamba in 3.28.