I see a lot people mentioning in the forums dual-wielding two axes or two swords. What is the benefit to this over dual-wielding different weapons? Do you get double the stats from the skill if you wield two of the same? Or is it just to save skill points?
It's pretty much to save skill points. In Going Rogue, you have to worry more about not dying, and a dual wielder already gives up their shield to do extra damage.
Isnt the dual-wield skillset horribly bugged at the moment too? I coulda sworn I'd heard that somewhere.
In my own personal experience, the 3rd and 4th level do nothing, and I don't think the seconds stat boost is applied, but can't recall for sure. I am pretty sure these are known bugs though.
It's horribly bugged, yes... but not 100% useless. - The stat bonuses for slvl 1-3 don't get applied. - The stat bonuses for slvl 4 are SUBTRACTED instead. But.... + At slvl 1, you get the damage of both weapons with no penalty. + At slvl 2, you still get a chance to proc Offensive Maneuvering. So you basically just get it and never put points into it (Unless you really want Offensive Maneuvering).
Dual wield lets you hold 2 weapons without penalty, and double your primary weapon bonuses while doing so. Dual wield don't need the counters or the later levels to be good.
It's because taking 2 Weapon skills (to avoid the penalty for wielding a "bad" weapon type) just isn't worth it. You're never going to have enough skill points to climb both Weapon skill trees all the way, and so if you pump both of them enough to say, get the Active ability, you're getting 2 Actives that are only marginally useful on top of an eclectic set of stats since each weapon has its own "stat theme" in the skill tree. You're basically giving up something really useful (like a magic school or burglary or fungal arts or whatever) in order to avoid penalties. It's a bad trade, especially if you're playing on Going Rogue.
You get twice the weapon bonuses. For swords for example you get the Swords skill stats once for each sword. So it's a very cheap and efficient way of building your char when going melee build because you have at least one extra skill (presuming you were taking 2 weapon skills before). It hurts a bit whenever you see or get a crazy arse weapon which you "can't" use, but in the long run it's much more worth it because weapon skills take the most effort to level up and if you are going for the 2 of them, that 5 skill points you use to level up the second one are 5 skill points that are taken of some other much more useful skills.
