ever since dual wield's been changed to 'lol you can dw anything in the game but you need 99999dw to not miss every time' it's been plain stupid
even if you literally have nothing but perfect light armor and are dwing perfect beast claws you will miss about 80% of the time until you have the magic number of DW needed for the two weapons in my experience

basically, on some newb I've been playing every once in awhile... it took TWELVE dual wield to WIELD TWO SMALL DAGGERS without missing every single time
the way it used to be, i'd have been able to dual wield them with the default DW of 5, and probably could have DWed even bandit knives with less than 12

this is a suggestion for terulia really, since I know no further work's being done on FFO, but i want to make sure it's not still like this with terulia

also if it were changed back to the old, simpler way, mages wouldn't sacrifice a shield to dual wield a staff of the magus with their perfect moon staff of blundering without investing a /TON/ of exp.. which I think they should have to earn the ability to do that in the first place

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So if I get what you're saying, you'd rather Dual-Wield be changed so that you can only equip two weapons if you have the prof requirement for it, but once you can equip them they're decent at hitting (and raising it higher would increase chances of near-perfect accuracy). And doing that would force mages to have to invest a ton in Dual-Wield to even be able to equip another staff of the magus with their main power source. Sounds reasonable enough to me. Right now, Dual-Wield's sorta something you dump huge amounts of exp into once you're capped and can rake in a lot of it anyways.

To add on to your idea for a better system, I think nerfing the magic boost staves give, raising the natural magic stat for mages to compensate, and increasing the magic and magic resistance boost of mage armor would keep things in balance but make mages have more options among them. As it is now, mages seek out the best staff (as long as elementals or suffixes aren't increasing the costs to unbearable amounts) and then a usually low-tier of the magus staff in their second hand, and that's it, because otherwise their magic, even when capped, blows without that magic boost. Mage armor is super expensive, as it should be, but many people don't think it's worth going for when you can get faster, more explosive results with a chronos/power/moon staff instead.

With staves as necessary, you almost never see mages bother with other weapons or shields as much because if they need to cast right away, their magic will suck. Most would also rather raise armor prof to obscene levels enough to wear decent heavy armor, since they get more results than bothering with mage gear.

So to sum up: your idea on dual-wielding seems good to me, and it also touches on an issue about mages that's been bothering me since forever and I wanted to bring it up. I'd rather have staves be an option, not a mage's everything. It would also make mages with an of the magus effect be super rare and awesome, seeing as how they'd either have to invest an unworldly amount of exp into dual-wield, or be lucky enough to find a high-tier staff of the magus.

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Concerning Terulia and Magus staves:

January 14:
automatic game backups every midnight *o
EQ suffixes removed *

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On a whim, I grabbed two small daggers and swung a total of 150 times, and recorded each hit and miss. Level 22 black wizard, level 1 DW. I did not use Saber.

112/150, or 74.666~% accuracy rating. What I get from this is that one of your two statements has to be incorrect. Your supposed 80% miss rate with small daggers (given that you admit you start with a level 5 prof, where I have a level 1), or your implication that dexterity doesn't do anything to offset a weak DW prof (I'm pretty sure at level 22, I'd probably have a higher Dex rating than a level 1 thief simply by virtue of raw level up gains).

Now, this doesn't mean that dual-wielding is necessarily perfect the way it is, but if you feel a change is necessary, I think you might want to look over your argument and make it sound a little more reasonable, because I don't think hyperbole in this situation will help your point.



Edit: I asked Zeifer for his opinion, since up until recently he was playing again and stuck with his original build of a dual-wielding fighter in light armor. While he "wouldn't mind a slight boost", he didn't feel that his accuracy was quite the issue you seem to make it out to be. (He keeps his DW rating roughly equal with the prof requirement for his strongest weapon).

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Guess there's no point in worrying about magus then. I still wish staves would be less awesome and mages would be more naturally powered, but it doesn't fit in this topic anymore. :B

Maybe Cea can contribute if he feels like revealing his secrets cause I know he was all over dual-wielding as a knight.

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My accuracy is pretty good my beef is the billions of experience to raise Dual Wield.

So I can't really dual wield super high end over-priced items (like I would want to) just because of how hard it is for a fighter to raise DW :P

But at 30 or so DW you seem capable of a whole lot...

also this is not a late reply who dat

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*sigh*
What you guys are saying are nice and all but weapons are from what ive heard and seen and read are gonna work a tad different and im sure dw is gonna work slightly differently as well. I remember Dean and Marcus rambling on about it awhile back but I wasnt paying attention cuz its not in my job discription to care. Also looking at my cheat sheet for approved terulia weapons... I can say this we're not gonna have a kazillion different tier magic staves like power moon wizard etc. I also know certain prefixes are gone. However, i dont feel its my place to go spewing stuff on the forums. But i can tell you all, how ffo works mechanics to your mindset towards ffo you need to throw it out the window. They are two seperate games with only little in common.

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cool story stella I don't even know what this topic is about

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