2h sword vs. dual wielding

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Anybody ever really done the math? I heard there was a thread where someone calcutated the 5% per dual wield swing to miss etc, and gave the % chance per round you could do x' damage

 

Taken right from Dan Simpson's guide:

Edit: That example is more of a Single Weapon Style versus Dual-Wield, but you get the idea. Dual-wield is worth it, but mostly for the off-hand weapon's effects rather than pure damage, seeing as you can only ever get one attack for the off-hand.

 

So if we follow this idea given the weapons he uses the Two handed weapons would make up for any bonus other than special powers of the offhand weapon just by rough estimation. I'm betting that the math would come out to say the same as well.

 

one other thing to consider is that if you hit more often you can disrupt spellcasters more often making an advantage. Does anyone else think thats worth mentioning or is that not powerful enough to warrent attention?

 

Remember that two weapons usually give you more bonuses than one - for eg, Drizzt's Scimitar +5 (+3 in fact) and another one that gves you bonus attack. With better strenght, two-weapon style is much better.

 

Most of my high level two-handed weapon fighters kill Mages so fast and they attack like 3 times that it's not a matter of hitting them more. Primarily I find where hitting them more has really helped me is when hitting them more has extra affects. Like the wizard slayers spell failure affect. 5 times is a lot more affective than 3.


However the bonuses really you have to consider the bonuses your getting and how they take affect. And make sure they aren't overlapping bonuses you get from the weapon in the primary hand except for a couple acceptions. Crom Faeyr is a great offhand weapon. Lot's of bonuses that apply without swinging it much. Something like the mace of disruption. has some use but some of it's best powers don't see much use because it gets less swings.

Sticking a +4 long sword in your off hand does not net you any bonuses to really consider doing it. Then things like the Ravager +6 and it's ability to outright kill most opponents with a given probability becomes extremely useful.

 

two handed weapons really come into their own with Whirlwind - because it *sets* the number of attacks to 10, the +1AC bonus coupled with the extra damage makes it really worth it (as duel wielding wouldnt add anything in the way of attacks). Baisically, during BG1 wielding a single weapon is most effective (and the only available option), but during BG2:SoA duel weilding becomes more effective provided the characters strength is great enough and has decent THAC0, WW and GWW shifts the emphasis back to single weapon style.

Also (not mentioned above) a single, single handed weapon allows the user to wield a shield, which can be a great advantage (+4AC, added resistances etc) over the possibility of the few extra dammage points added by the 2H weapon.

 

Actually if we really got into argueing the numbers and the advantages. It becomes truely an either or situation. More damage means you have less need for that AC because you are getting hit less. While more AC means your potentially getting hit less so you can deal more damage. And yet some of those two handed weapons have real potential to add fights extremely quickly either with large ammounts of extra damage added on(which only a 1 single handed weapon provides), or outright quick kills(vorpal,still only one single handed weapon).

Two handed weapon style even increases the damage with a two handed weapon on every hit. A potentially good thing for anybody wielding one.

Single weapon style gives a complete bonus of 2ac. Cutting further into the gap between it and even the best shield cutting the margin to merely +3. Neither of which has anything really in the way of bonus protections. The use of anything truely substational in the way of additionally bonuses cuts it to a mere to +2 AC at best. But you cannot use this style and the shield together. Finding yourself again in the grip of more damage means needing less potential protection to more protection allowing you to last longer.

So it seems that Single Weapon style truely only factors in as the middle ground. It does get the lowered critical hitpoint but doesn't give increased damage and a small AC boost.

The argument over AC and damaged is really between two Sword and shield style and Two weapon style it means. Depending on what your wanting to do most of the two handed weapons have the same powers as single handed weapons. The one exception seems to be Negative plane protection. Far as I am aware there is no two handed weapon that provides this.

So when you really want to argue over every last little point. You only have two choices. Total AC which your forced to use sword and Shield Style because it's got the better AC increases.

Or you must go for damage which numbers speaking is with two handed style and a two handed weapon. A couple of the two handed weapons even roll a 1d12 for damage.

But then greatest damage can't even be done by a PC if we do consider all of this. Sarevok's death bring assault combined with a two handed weapon seems to be the ultimate in damage dealing setups. Which is probably why he comes so geared not only to two handed weapons but the most prevelant kind of two handed weapons.

But this seems to be talking about numbers here and what does the most. Two handed weapons has a higher average damage. Which if I'm not mistaken should come out higher than single handed and at least comparable to dual wielded. Factoring in bonuses to just what does the most damage doesn't count.

Then we are looking at the two handed weapon. And ultimately what bonuses you can get from shields or other weapons or whatever partly matters on just what class and kit you are. While a wizard slayer absolutely shines from being able to hit as many times as possible at all times because of it's latent affects. The Kensai on the other hand you can basically say is the king of two handed Weapons because it's all about maximizing damage and killing the enemy before they even get the chance to hit you. Nobody can deny that the best maximum damage comes from a Kensai wielding a two handed weapon. Specially when they do it 3 times in a turn. And as you yourself pointed out that two handed weapons have through HLA's the potential to hit as many times as dual wielding which is the most direct source of more damage for single handed weapons. That increased damage stacks up over the same number of hits.

The ultimate factor in bonuses however is us, the player, and our prefered style of playing that makes one option more appealing over another. I for example never dual wield on more than a couple of my characters. Have an idea of what kind of weapons I want to use and focus on those. Increasing my abilities in those weapons as far as possible and maximizing my potential. I never even looked at weapon speed as meaning anything special just like many others until I really payed close attention to my latest wizard slayer. Then I realized that low weapon speeds and multiple hits means a lot between getting most, if not all, of my hits in first because the latent power of my character matters on being used before they can cast. if they are particularly slow I can get a lot of hits in. Each one of those hits has an affect beyond damage that turns combat in my favor. If i'm slow as well. They still get to potentially do a devastating attack before most of my hits go through.

Those big two handed weapons. Biggest thing against them is that they are slow. But you get all the bonuses that make them at least as fast as most of the single handed weapons and that doesn't matter anymore.

You don't and it's a big difference. You don't believe me. Go make yourself a thief. give him a couple of little daggers and load him up on two weapon style then go find one of the fighter guys and give him a nice slow two handed weapon without the appropriate style. I bet you most if not all of the thieves hits will land before the the fighter manages to get through with his swing. Then you'll see the invisible power of weapon speed at work.

 

Speed is really only critical if battling a spell caster, with the chance to interrupt his spell. It's not as big of a deal in melee fights. This is especially true if you put ** in two handed weapon style, which, in addition to granting a critical hit on a 19 or 20, also grants a -4 speed bonus. Once the -4 speed bonus is factored in, wielding a 2-handed weapon is as fast as all but the fastest one handed weapons.

OK, let's delve into this damage issue a little deeper. While I like the general setup of Simpson's Guide, I think it is somewhat flawed on two fronts:

1. It is using a very low level fighter as an example. If Bill has a base THAC0 of 15, that means he's a 6th level fighter. Even a fighter getting a fresh start in Irenicus' dungeon is 7th level, 8th if you played BG1 first. So firstly, it's not a realistic starting point, as the penalities are largest when you have a low level character, as you don't have sufficient proficiencies in your weapon and two-handed style.

2. He also starts by analyzing a character without a strength bonus, which again is not particularly realistic. It is true that 9 represents the minimum strength for a fighter, but I don't know of any fighter with a strength this low. It is more reasonable to assume that early in SoA, you're either going to have a high strength to begin with, or purchase a strength enhancing item fairly early on.

So here is my proposal: We'll use a reasonable level fighter - I'm going to go with 12 here (the extra 1/2 attack at level 13 makes the math a pain in the butt), which means he has 8 proficiency points to work with. We'll also say he has a 19 in strength. This would be attainable by either using the Girdle of Hill Giant Strength, available as soon as you get enough gold to purchase it, or by going through BG1 with a character that had 18/xx strength and used the Tomb of Gainful Exercise (or whatever the strength enhancing tomb is called) to raise it to 19.

Finally, we'll assume the following: He's using generic +3 weapons, that don't give him any special abilities, and we'll assume he's using a fairly high damage weapon. (No sense in comparing a two handed sword to dual wielding daggers.)

1st scenario: two-handed sword +3 vs. two 1d8 +3 single handed weapons. This covers long swords, scimitars, and is pretty damn close to bastard swords (2d4) as they would only offer a 0.5 damage increase over the others.

Base THAC0 for 2HS at level 12 = 9 -3 (weapon), -3 (stength) = 3.
Average Damage for 2HS = 5.5 +3 (weapon) +7 (strength) = 15.5.

Damage through hit rolls:

19-20 = 33 (max weapon damage is 13, which would be doubled, and then the strength bonus of +7 is added in, but not doubled)
3-18 = 15.5
1-2 = 0

There would be 2 attacks per round using this setup, so we'll double the average for damage per round. Do all the math, and you're average damage per round is 31.4.

For 2 1d8+3 weapons, the base THAC0 main hand still works out to 3, but the offhand (assuming 3 proficiency points spent it 2 weapon style) will have a THAC0 of 5.
Average Damage per hit (both hands) = 4.5 base +3 (weapon) +7 (stength) = 14.5.

Damage through hit rolls:

20 = 29
3-19 = 14.5
1-2 = 0

Again, two main hand attacks, so we're looking at average per round (main hand) of 27.55

Off-hand looks like this:
20 = 29
5-19 = 14.5
1-4 = 0

Only one attack per round here, so no need to double. Total is 12.33.

12.33 + 27.55 = 38.88

Two weapon style does considerably more per round. If you happened to be using an off hand weapon that granted you an extra main hand attack, the average jumps to 53.66, which completely blows the two handed weapon away.

New analysis - what about when GWW is used? The hit table is a lot easier, as you'll have to be at least level 21 to use GWW, and given weapon proficiencies, bonuses on weapons, stength, etc., your THAC0 is going to be well in to negative numbers by now, meaning you're only going to miss on a roll of a 1 (critical miss).

We'll still assume a strength of 19. However, by this time, we'll have to assume you've gotten hold of some pretty decent weapons. Let's just say our 2-handed weapon is Warblade 1d12 + 4, and we're dual wielding Celestial Fury along with a weapon that grants an extra attack like Belm.

With GWW, attacks are set to 10. That means Warblade will be swung 10 times, where as CF and Belm will be swung 10 total: 9 with CF, 1 with Belm.

Warblade:

19-20 = 39
2-18 = 17.5
1 = 0

Average damage per swing: 18.78 (x10) = 187.8

CF + Belm

20 = 33
2-19 = 15.5
1 = 0

Average = 15.6 (x9) = 140.4. Add in Belm (average damage = 13.5 for a total of 153.9.

ACK! I forgot the 5% of a bonus 20 damamge on CF. That increases average damage per round by 10. So the total is actually 163.9.

So once you get GWW, the trend reverses and 2-handed weapons are superior.

Now I will await for others to totally rip apart my analysis

EDIT (Likely first of many): Stalkwalker correctly points out that you can get bonus damage once you reach specialization in a weapon type. I figured I may as well go all-out and assume grand mastery in the weapon, which adds two more points to the damage on top of all of the other bonuses. Once we facter that in, the differences become even greater at early levels.

In the first comparison, we'll assume that the two weapons are the same weapon type (e.g., dual wielding scimitars) so that it is possible to have the grandmastery bonus for both weapons and still have 3 stars in two weapon style. It isn't possible at such a low level to have 3 stars in two weapon style, and have grand mastery in two different weapon choices (you only have 8 prof points at level 12, and you need 13 to meet the criteria). So, what's the results?

Two Handed Sword now goes up to 35.4.
Two weapon style goes to 46.88 if using a weapon that does not grant an extra attack, or 61.66 if you are using a weapon that grants a second attack.

In the second comparison, both numbers increase proportionately, as you get 10 attacks either way. So both increase, but the difference remains the same:

War Blade w/GWW = 207.8
CF+Belm w/GWW = 183.9

[ January 27, 2006, 20:21: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

The thing about BG2 that makes dual wield so appealing is that magical weapons basically grow on trees. Almost straight out of the beginner's dungeon you can pick up weapons like Belm and the Flail of Ages, dual wield them and hey presto, your lowly level 7 fighter has four attacks per round.

In fact if you take a level 13 fighter with weapon specialisation, and give him Belm (or the Scarlet Ninja-to if you have UAI, which is +3 instead of +2) and the gauntlets of extraordinary expertise or whatever, he'll have five freaking attacks per round, base. Which means you don't need to even waste time with whirlwind, because you can get the same effect from improved haste, with a longer duration to boot. Which in turn means you can use a far more devastating HLA like critical strike or assassinate instead. It's really not as cut and dry as it seems, even if it didn't seem very cut and dry to begin with.

 

^I can't agree more. Dual-wielding is the absolute attack-power in damage and number of attacks. However some two handed weapons are actually vorpal and can prove to be far more devastating, like chopping a head instantly rather than damaging. This should come into consideration also.

 

If you really want a vorpal weapon there's always the Axe of the Unyielding. But slay effects don't work on a lot of foes.

 

you did point out one problem in the stuff that was posted from Dan's guide that I just noticed.

He didn't use uniform weapons all the way along.

For you while I'm looking you didn't seem to factor in the extra point of damage that you get from having a dot in Two Handed Style. It's a small ammount but it does change the numbers a little.

Also Celestial Fury is a good example of what I was talking about to begin with. The bonuses on the weapon are the real deciding factor on what we use. Though I do admire your using it to compare to the war blade to keep things fair since Katana's are the one single handed weapon that actually roll a d10 to keep up with the bonus that the War Blade and Carsomyr get to their damage by using the next bigger dice. that was smart thinking I wouldn't have thought to use.

Belm is another example on the bonuses on the weapon being a reason to wield the weapon in a second hand and a primary reason to pick it over just the ammount of damage. It's special power. Additional damage in the form of an extra attack. It also doesn't take into account that if you stick belm in your primary hand and the celestial fury in your off hand (silly to do I know but still) that you actually cancle out Belm's bonus ability of the extra attack.)


But all of this has lead into the real point of my argument. It's the bonuses we can tack on more than the weapon. Like in the armor post about the best armor when we got off pure numbers there was mention of that weapon that reduces thaco. Ultimate attack are the weapons that reduce level. What's more the ultimate damage than reducing their hitpoints utterly afterall. Isn't this part of what makes Vampires so utterly devestating if your not careful?

For those thief types. The Mask +5 shorsword has a 15% chance of draining a level as well as it's chance to entangle enemies.

[ January 27, 2006, 20:09: Message edited by: starwalker ]

 

In my experience, dual wielding just absolutely trumps two-handed weapons all the way through the game. Using Belm, you'll have double the attacks most of the way through. Even when Belm sucks you'll have an extra attack with your main hand over a two-handed wielder. It's when you get access to the HLAs that dual wielding really lurches forward though, because the two-handed folks are stuck using greater whirlwind while the dual wielders are cleaning house with critical strike.

I've got no head for maths, but here's an equation: take the most damaging one-handed and two-handed weapons (I'll say Flail of Ages +5 as best one-handed, no idea what the most damaging two-handed weapon available is, possibly the Staff of the Ram?).

Average the damage done in one attack by the one-handed weapon, multiply it by nine, and add the average damage of one attack from Belm - or don't, if you're feeling charitable towards the two-handers. Now multiply all of that by two for critical strike. (Actually, I'm not 100% certain whether critical hits are just the normal damage doubled, but we only need double damage to prove the point here.)

The best possible base attacks per round you can get with a two-handed weapon is 3. If you use greater whirlwind, you essentially have to match 18 attacks from the one-handed weapon with 10 attacks from the two-handed weapon, which I believe is impossible. If you use improved haste and critical strike, the same as the dual wielder, you have to match 18 from the former against 12 from the latter, which I don't think is possible either. And if the dual wielder is a fighter/thief using assassinate then he'll just completely leave the two-handed wielder in the dust.

 

Belm takes both of it's hits. Set your game to pause each round and you'll see if you manage to take all 5 of your hits that 2 of them will be marked with the indicator of "(left)". This is your off handed weapon. In otherwords. this is Belm. It is not your primary weapon. But when playing like this I noticed the number of hits a turn can be inconsistant. Ranging from a hit from each weapon to when all 5 hits are taken place. i wish I had a place to post screen shots but even when you take all 5 hits this is how it all works out. Meaning that bonus on the weapon applies to itself. Not your main hand weapon. Which is as it should be.

So out of the 9 your probably only going to make 6 swings with your mainhand weapon with belm in the offhand. 9 is what Improved haste tops out at. Can't get any higher without Greater Whirlwind. even if your making 5 attacks a round. With most dual weapon combinations however you will only have 4 hits a round. This is pivitol in why Improved Haste tops out at 9 as well. Because you are actually taking 8 Improve hasted swings plus the 1 special power swing from belm.

Two handed weapons can actually net you a total of 4 extra damage through proficiencies related to them when all maxed out. The Weapon style nets you a +1 as well. It's also easier because to get the real advantage of dual weapons you would actually need to get 5 in two different weapon proficiencies as well as 3 in dual wielding.

As for the matter of the flail of ages. without adding in strength damage it only does 30+10 for the added damage which will only do 40 damage on a critical strike in it's biggest form. in Lesser forms it's considerably less depending on which one. the 3 head version from SoA for example can only do 29 considering only proficiencies and not strength modfiers for both

Carsomyr is capable of doing 52 on a critical strike as a +5 weapon under the same conditions if it is a situation that it deals all of it's damage. It actually does 56 under best conditions for it's +6 version.

8 hits of critical strikes for the +5 Flail(supposing you found a way. dual wielding two or whatever) is 320 damage. Carsomyr does 312 in 6 hits just in it's +5 form. it does 336 in it's +6 form. Both weapons under their best hitting conditions.

I can give up 8 points for Carsomyr's extra powers. But that again gets into the point that the bonuses on the weapons are everything.

Without their bonuses and considering just proficiencies the +5 flail is only capable of 30 damage on a critical hit giving it a total of 240 when using improved haste and 8 hits. Carsomyr is capable of 42 damage on a critical hit which means in 6 hits it does 252 damage. Carsomyr not only wins the WhirlWind Argument but it also wins the Improved Haste argument if you don't consider their bonus powers.

Carsomyr +5 has an average damage of about 13.5 damage while The +5 flail of ages is only 11. And all I'm considering are proficiencies and the damage of the weapon with no powers added in. This means Carsomyr does an average of 81 damage. the Flail does 88 average damage.

Add it in and Carsomyr does an average of 20.5 with all it's powers working for you. Flail of ages still does 11+10. It's average damage doesn't change but it's special power adds on a fixed ammount. Carsomyr's average damage with all it's powers is 123. the Flail does 88+80 because of that fixed damge on the hits again.

The problem is. It's all about the bonus powers. It's not just about the damage a weapon can do but what else can it do? The only reason most of us would ever bother dual wielding Belm or Kudane is either we got them extremely early without the extra attack they give.

The bonus powers are what make the Weapon whether it's the 10 varied elemental Damage from the full flail of ages. The chance to vorpal something, the Strength from Crom Faeyr. The ability to dispel. Whatever it is.

Go Check out the Ravager and try to think of it's Maximum damage on 6 hits. a total of 20 damage possible with maximum proficiencies for two handed weapons and halberds. Another 18 possible for it's special power(and assuming the save is failed). That's 38 damage. Over 6 hits it's 228 damage. 6 Critical hits it would be 348 damage without a strength modifer just for 6 hits and maxing all damage. And yet on top of each of those 6 hits it's got a 10% chance of cutting somethings head off for an instant kill reguardless of it's hitpoints. Something that the only things it doesn't work on are Dragons. Certain super powered undead and Several of the later bosses not to mention it's a +6 weapon. Only one defense against that.

Average damage is much lower granted...But it's all about the special powers on the weapon. Which has been my argument endlessly. specially considering the only way your going to do some of these things realistically in the game is to import your character into the beginning of SoA with tactics mods or something and with tricks to keep your eq and go ballistic.

But still. Endlessly your arguments have always hinged around one very specific thing. The bonus powers of various weapons such as Belm. Many of which are ultimately more important than just how much damage that we do.

Otherwise we wouldn't keep the Mace of Disruption around and use it so much. I mean for undead isn't that like the ultimate damage dealer? no vorpal. No percentage of it working just. Fail and your dead. Even if it fails you roll a bigger dice pool against that specific kind of enemy. And on top of that it gives the power to be protected from the worst attacks undead. Level draining. But the Mace of Disruptions damage as far as a weapon against other things is mediocre at best. Even after being upgraded. It's the bonus powers we swear by and keeps us naming this weapon for use again and again.

Afterall. how many of us swear by Keldorn wielding Carsomyr? How many of us swear by the Staff of the Magi? How many of us have said that Crom Faeyr really is best in the off hand? It's not for it's striking power afterall.

 

Nope; it should, but it doesn't. I've dual-wielded Belm against numerous enemies that were immune to it, and I only ever got "weapon ineffective" once per round. But I did get an extra attack with my main weapon. Go figure.

 

Done. Five attacks, Belm in the offhand, Flail of Ages +5 in the main hand. I get four attacks from the flail, one from Belm. Tested it ten times, same result every time. Perfectly consistent with the game's mechanics, because the game doesn't care where the extra attack per round came from; the offhand weapon only gets one hit per round, no matter what.

With improved haste, I went from 5 attacks per round to 10 attacks per round (where'd you get the 9 maximum thing from?). Of those, eight came from the main hand, two from the offhand (apparently the effect just double-times two normal attack rounds).

Anyway, on with the show. Like I said, I don't have much faith in my own mathmatical ability, so instead I figured I'd just let the game do all the calculations for me. Started a new character, a pure fighter with STR 14 for no bonus damage. Levelled him up enough to give him a couple uses of critical strike and two stars in all of two-handed weapon style, scimitars, flails and two-handed swords, and three stars in two-weapon fighting. I gave him Kai and Use Any Item using Near Infinity, then used CLUA to give him the gauntlets of extraordinary specialisation, flail of ages +5, Belm +2, and Carsomyr +6.

This guy has no damage bonuses from anything except his weapon specialisations (two stars), and +1 damage on two-handed weapons from two-handed weapon style.

So then I created a suitable monster, turned on kai and critical strike and smacked it with the Flail of Ages. 32+2+2+2+2+2. 42. Okay.

Switched to Carsomyr and gave it another whack. 46.

And, incidentally, Belm scored 28.

So, math time: 42 x 8 for the flail, plus 28 x 2 for Belm. 392. Or 336, if you want to ignore Belm.

And, 46 x 6 for Carsomyr. 276.

Just out of curiosity, I tried kai without critical strike to see how GWWing with Carsomyr might perform. My man hit for 23 with the holy avenger, so that'd be 230 at most. Not even close.

Damage-wise, a whirlwinding two-handed wielder can't even compare with a critical striking/improved hasted dual wielder. The two-handed wielder needs to use improved haste and critical strike to even come close to matching the dual wielder. But the problem there is that the dual wielder then has more attacks. More attacks mean that when you add the strength bonus, the damage will skew even further in the dual wielder's favour.

Test this all out yourself if you have the time. The only mod I'm using with this installation is Baldurdash. I won't even go into the bonus powers debate, because then you're just arguing over which weapon is the best. But as far as raw damage goes, dual wield has a clear advantage as far as I can see.

[ January 28, 2006, 18:30: Message edited by: Prine ]

 

ummm partly because you didn't care what you hit. You have to remember I said when all of Carsomyr's powers come into play and Much like the mace of disruption they do not work on everything. If you actually check the weapon it gets additional damage against certain kinds of opponents. More specifically Chaotic Evil ones. For that matter there are enemies that are immune to basically all of the elemental damage off of the flail of ages. which can actually lose you a good deal of damage.

Also those gloves you gave them added the two damage to make it 32 instead of 30.
It's also why the Carsomyr did 23 for your calculations instead of the 21 telling you it should have been 210. you actually added two extra because your entire total is +2 to attack and +3 to damage. you gave the equivilant of +2 and +4. 1 damaged doubled is 2. However you did give the numbers to show what a carsomyr +6 would do because fighting a chaotic evil opponent then your total damage for a critical hit would be 56. 5x2 instead of 6x2 because you gave it two extra damage already. This is also why you got 336 instead of 320. You have 16 extra damage thanks to the gauntlets.

I actually have a screen shot of my equipment and my number of attacks that can prove it's only 9. But perhaps your balderdash fixpack changes that. It's something I don't have. I only have Ascension and Kelsey installed.

[ January 28, 2006, 20:15: Message edited by: starwalker ]

 

You want to compare, let's compare. NO specials, absolutely nothing but base damage.
FoA +5 has an average of 9.5 per hit, Carsomyr +6 has an average of 12.5 per hit, Belm has 6.5 per hit.

9.5 * 8 + 6.5 * 2 = 76 + 13 = 89
12.5 * 6 = 75

Even if Belm were ineffective, the FoA still wins out by a single point. How about max? FoA +5 has 12 max, Carsomyr +6 has 18 max, and Belm has 10 max.

12 * 8 + 10 * 2 = 96 + 20 = 116
18 * 6 = 108

Well, will you look at that. And for the trifecta, let's give min a whirl. FoA +5 has 7, Carsomyr has 7...er, never mind. FoA's already won with more attacks before even considering Belm's 3.

And if you're not happy with this for some peculiar reason, let's take some non-magical ones perhaps. I'll even take away everything that could possibly affect it:

Katana and wakizashi (fitting, I think) = 1d10 + 1d8 = 2-18
Long sword and short sword (another fitting combo) = 1d8 + 1d6 = 2-14
Two-handed sword = 1d10 = 1-10

Pretty simple. Naturally there are times when a two-hander will out-damage a dual-wield, but those are few and far between. Dual-wielding still gets it overall.

 

A good ammount of the dual wields don't even match your idealistic claim. Then again realistically the Katana is not a weapon able to be wielded in one hand. So I don't know why I'm argueing this. People will think what they want reguardless. But maybe I should download that fixpack.