...
Dual wielding will probably yield much higher damage only in those cases where the user has two magic items equipped, both with substantial magic-enhanced damage bonuses on a hit.
Also, landing a maneuver. If some of them are "when you hit with an enemy", you may even be able to double down on some, or at least have a much greater chance of at least landing it once. The stats go waaaay up when you have advantage too, it's like having double advantage, if you are looking to land at least one hit to proc your weapon (okay, sorry for the Everquest terminology...not sure what else to call it). Let's just say, it's very important to land that extra fire damage in an ice realm, you probably would rather two flametongue short swords than one flametongue longsword.
Also, it remains to be seen what the higher level DW feats will be like, I predict by level 9 or so you'll have people being able to dual wield two longswords, or , and maybe by level 15 the damage / 2 will disappear.
I see DW now as doing less overall damage unless certain situations or magic items are available, until a certain level, so that you trade off early DPR for later DPR (which is a huge opportunity cost since you're much less likely to reach that level). I like that Conan single wielded his bastard sword most of his career, then later on went on to use the Father's sword at the same time as his Atlantean (in the latest movie), or use a battle axe in his offhand (in Conan the Barbarian) or Mad Martigan grabbing that extra bastard sword in the last battle and kicking butt all over the place...
I see two larger non-finessable weapons only at higher levels, and the damage penalties reduced, or perhaps the AC bonus increased.
When the number of CS dice gets large enough, the weapon damage die becomes less and less of an issue, and not having to halve your Deadly Strike regardless of whether you only score one hit or two will give you a much deadlier minimum expected damage. It's like in videogames, would you rather never dip below 60fps, or get a wildly fluctuating range of 40-90 fps? (slightly higher avergage but much greater variance). I think we all know the answer.
We still haven't seen if there are any magic items yet similar to the Sun Blade in Pathfinder, which is a bastard sword wieldable as if it were a short sword, resulting in a mathemagically advantageous way to get around the finesse limitation. I predict we will see such items in later splat books. Of course, you can't build your PC around having a certain item if you don't know you'll get it, but in a campaign where you may have an heirloom weapon, you could do it.
That all says nothing about double weapons, which will probably one day make it into the game in a later book, just like they did in 2nd edition. In Pathfinder, a double sword or orc double axe is the only way to get 1d8 dmg, similar to a longsword in each hand, in a viable way, at level 1.
Dual wielding will probably yield much higher damage only in those cases where the user has two magic items equipped, both with substantial magic-enhanced damage bonuses on a hit.
Also, landing a maneuver. If some of them are "when you hit with an enemy", you may even be able to double down on some, or at least have a much greater chance of at least landing it once. The stats go waaaay up when you have advantage too, it's like having double advantage, if you are looking to land at least one hit to proc your weapon (okay, sorry for the Everquest terminology...not sure what else to call it). Let's just say, it's very important to land that extra fire damage in an ice realm, you probably would rather two flametongue short swords than one flametongue longsword.
Also, it remains to be seen what the higher level DW feats will be like, I predict by level 9 or so you'll have people being able to dual wield two longswords, or , and maybe by level 15 the damage / 2 will disappear.
I see DW now as doing less overall damage unless certain situations or magic items are available, until a certain level, so that you trade off early DPR for later DPR (which is a huge opportunity cost since you're much less likely to reach that level). I like that Conan single wielded his bastard sword most of his career, then later on went on to use the Father's sword at the same time as his Atlantean (in the latest movie), or use a battle axe in his offhand (in Conan the Barbarian) or Mad Martigan grabbing that extra bastard sword in the last battle and kicking butt all over the place...
I see two larger non-finessable weapons only at higher levels, and the damage penalties reduced, or perhaps the AC bonus increased.
When the number of CS dice gets large enough, the weapon damage die becomes less and less of an issue, and not having to halve your Deadly Strike regardless of whether you only score one hit or two will give you a much deadlier minimum expected damage. It's like in videogames, would you rather never dip below 60fps, or get a wildly fluctuating range of 40-90 fps? (slightly higher avergage but much greater variance). I think we all know the answer.
We still haven't seen if there are any magic items yet similar to the Sun Blade in Pathfinder, which is a bastard sword wieldable as if it were a short sword, resulting in a mathemagically advantageous way to get around the finesse limitation. I predict we will see such items in later splat books. Of course, you can't build your PC around having a certain item if you don't know you'll get it, but in a campaign where you may have an heirloom weapon, you could do it.
That all says nothing about double weapons, which will probably one day make it into the game in a later book, just like they did in 2nd edition. In Pathfinder, a double sword or orc double axe is the only way to get 1d8 dmg, similar to a longsword in each hand, in a viable way, at level 1.