Has anyone in beta actually tried rolling through with a Wizard or WD wielding a 2-handed sword, axe or mace? According to the filter they can wield them.
Heck yea it is. I use a 2 hander all the time when I make a wiz or a WD. Hell I use some high DPS bows on my wizard, since it's fun to shoot arrows when I'm out of arcane power.
From my experience 1h+offhand is superior in every way. I had a 16.8 dps wd dagger last patch with a 1-2 damage offhand with some extra stats and I could get up to I believe it was 200 DPS with soul sacrifice up.
Aside from items that are unique to particular classes, the only restriction on items is level. Your wizard can use two-handed maces. Two-handed weapons have a greatly increased amount of DPS (around twice as much pure DPS), which will have to be compared against the faster casting and additional attributes on the offhand. I just how they are closely balanced.
In the beta it is many times the best choice DPS-wise to use a two-hander, since your options are limited. In the full game I'd wager that the best combos for casters would be a one-hander and off-hand (wand for Wizard and Mojo for Witch Doctor), since they'll be getting class-specific bonuses from them.
Min-maxing via damage increasing gems, uniques, and other high-end items that add a flat damage per attack will benefit fast casting items more. I see 3 distinct possibilities:
1. Blizzard just doesn't balance very well and either one-handed or two-handed is strictly better (base staves have about 200-250 more DPS than wands and other one handers, so it is possible that off-hand bonuses just aren't enough to make up that difference).
2. Two-handers are always going to be more DPS, but its is close enough that some people will want to use one-handers because casting faster is more efficient (fewer wasted casts)
3. Two-handers are better until the higher stages of min-maxing, when the quality of your flat-damage increases and other procs outweigh the DPS difference.
My personal experience is that the highest DPS weapon you can equip 1h/2h whatevers, is perferable if attack speed is not a key concern. As a wizard i would recommend taking the highest DPS weapon you can find, early game its hard to beat a bow/crossbow. then build up a 2h crafted weapon from your blacksmith. This will leave your damage output independent of drop quality. You won't always find a nice 1h or wand/orb.
Statwise, INT is useful as it gives 1% increased damage per point. However you total damage in beta is low enough that stacking INT at the cost of raw DPS is not efficient. As your damage is often <30 as a wizard, 1 INT is actually a 0.3 damage increase =(.<br/>
Resourcewise. +Arcane/Hate/Mana/etc hit/total/regn is useful but often doesn't make enough difference compared to raw DPS in the beta due to the nature of fights being short and the lack of really draining abilities.
Attack speed can make a difference depending on playstyle but for the wizard, only the 3 signature spells really have an effect on cast speed. When you have a fast weapon AND enough +IAS, you can really shoot fast arcane missiles. However +DPS is very comparable and affects many secondary spells that +IAS does not. Wave of Force and Arcane Torrent really are powerful in beta and benefit greatly from raw +DPS. This may change when you unlock the +arcane power per hit talent/rune(s). If you're relying on fixed life leech per hit you'll need IAS for sure but if you can kite well, you might never get hit throughout the whole of beta except for one or two stray missiles.
To be honest ... there is not a single 2H weapon in beta that has shit on the 1H + OF item for the casters. Everyone above that says it does is ignorant.
Since patch 16, there is a vendor that can sell +2-4 damage, +5% attack speed rings.
these 2 rings + offhand item give you +5-10 damage. Considering that 1H weapons attack drastically faster... and ALSO gain even MORE attacks per second than a 2H weapon from weapon speed perks... 1H weapons come out on top.
Example:
12-21 damage Staff (1 attack per second)
8-16 Wand (1.4 attacks per second)
The offhand 1-2 damage orb + A good wand is probably the best balanced combination in beta. However neither can be found reliably,
There is no method to craft a <L13 orb and the crafted wand is simply too low tier to reach the level of damage needed. You need to rely on Cat4/Unique/Champions to drop the ilvl 11 wand (11-13 DPS) and hope for enough +MF or plain luck to get good +dps mods on it.
Even with this combination, do remember that the best 2h weapon of ilvl 13 or less has a base of (18-20 DPS) not counting affixes. With slow weapons, +dmg mods give higher +DPS.
To be honest ... there is not a single 2H weapon in beta that has shit on the 1H + OF item for the casters. Everyone above that says it does is ignorant.
Since patch 16, there is a vendor that can sell +2-4 damage, +5% attack speed rings.
these 2 rings + offhand item give you +5-10 damage. Considering that 1H weapons attack drastically faster... and ALSO gain even MORE attacks per second than a 2H weapon from weapon speed perks... 1H weapons come out on top.
Example:
12-21 damage Staff (1 attack per second)
8-16 Wand (1.4 attacks per second)
This gap increases even more when you get +stats and get +5% attack speed gloves.
Well yea, it's beta. You outlevel the content after you level past 7. With this type of advantage it's always going to be better to go faster (in this case 1h + OH) because you usually kill in one hit therefore the faster you cast the faster you kill. It's also unbalanced atm in part due to the items available. There just aren't many good 2 handers that drop by level 13 compared to 1 handers.
But in something like inferno where I highly doubt unless you are uber geared (which will most likely take many, many months, if not even longer) you won't be one or two shotting things, which by then it's a tossup if you have two weapons of equal DPS, and becomes more of what you like to play with.
Oh I'm sure there will be a spreadsheet where X plus X item and OH will over a period of however many attacks / groups / minutes will do X more damage, or vise versa. But here's to hoping it's balanced enough that even though you *might* do more damage with one, you can still use the other and be just as efficient, or close enough it doesn't matter.
Example:
12-21 damage Staff (1 attack per second)
8-16 Wand (1.4 attacks per second)
Of course, but we're talking about the full game. The top end wands have a base DPS of 243.6, while the highest base staves have 584.5 DPS. 2 handed weapons do more than twice the damage of one handed weapons as you get higher on - the question is whether flat damage bonuses can get high enough to make faster weapons worthwhile.
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/#filter=wizard
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/#filter=witch-doctor
1. Blizzard just doesn't balance very well and either one-handed or two-handed is strictly better (base staves have about 200-250 more DPS than wands and other one handers, so it is possible that off-hand bonuses just aren't enough to make up that difference).
2. Two-handers are always going to be more DPS, but its is close enough that some people will want to use one-handers because casting faster is more efficient (fewer wasted casts)
3. Two-handers are better until the higher stages of min-maxing, when the quality of your flat-damage increases and other procs outweigh the DPS difference.
Statwise, INT is useful as it gives 1% increased damage per point. However you total damage in beta is low enough that stacking INT at the cost of raw DPS is not efficient. As your damage is often <30 as a wizard, 1 INT is actually a 0.3 damage increase =(.<br/>
Resourcewise. +Arcane/Hate/Mana/etc hit/total/regn is useful but often doesn't make enough difference compared to raw DPS in the beta due to the nature of fights being short and the lack of really draining abilities.
Attack speed can make a difference depending on playstyle but for the wizard, only the 3 signature spells really have an effect on cast speed. When you have a fast weapon AND enough +IAS, you can really shoot fast arcane missiles. However +DPS is very comparable and affects many secondary spells that +IAS does not. Wave of Force and Arcane Torrent really are powerful in beta and benefit greatly from raw +DPS. This may change when you unlock the +arcane power per hit talent/rune(s). If you're relying on fixed life leech per hit you'll need IAS for sure but if you can kite well, you might never get hit throughout the whole of beta except for one or two stray missiles.
Since patch 16, there is a vendor that can sell +2-4 damage, +5% attack speed rings.
these 2 rings + offhand item give you +5-10 damage. Considering that 1H weapons attack drastically faster... and ALSO gain even MORE attacks per second than a 2H weapon from weapon speed perks... 1H weapons come out on top.
Example:
12-21 damage Staff (1 attack per second)
8-16 Wand (1.4 attacks per second)
4(no OH item) + 12 - 8 + 21 = 16-29 (1.1 attacks per second) 33.5 DPS
5+ 8 - 10+16 = 13-26 (1.54 attacks per second) 40.04 DPS
This gap increases even more when you get +stats and get +5% attack speed gloves.
There is no method to craft a <L13 orb and the crafted wand is simply too low tier to reach the level of damage needed. You need to rely on Cat4/Unique/Champions to drop the ilvl 11 wand (11-13 DPS) and hope for enough +MF or plain luck to get good +dps mods on it.
Even with this combination, do remember that the best 2h weapon of ilvl 13 or less has a base of (18-20 DPS) not counting affixes. With slow weapons, +dmg mods give higher +DPS.
Well yea, it's beta. You outlevel the content after you level past 7. With this type of advantage it's always going to be better to go faster (in this case 1h + OH) because you usually kill in one hit therefore the faster you cast the faster you kill. It's also unbalanced atm in part due to the items available. There just aren't many good 2 handers that drop by level 13 compared to 1 handers.
But in something like inferno where I highly doubt unless you are uber geared (which will most likely take many, many months, if not even longer) you won't be one or two shotting things, which by then it's a tossup if you have two weapons of equal DPS, and becomes more of what you like to play with.
Oh I'm sure there will be a spreadsheet where X plus X item and OH will over a period of however many attacks / groups / minutes will do X more damage, or vise versa. But here's to hoping it's balanced enough that even though you *might* do more damage with one, you can still use the other and be just as efficient, or close enough it doesn't matter.
Of course, but we're talking about the full game. The top end wands have a base DPS of 243.6, while the highest base staves have 584.5 DPS. 2 handed weapons do more than twice the damage of one handed weapons as you get higher on - the question is whether flat damage bonuses can get high enough to make faster weapons worthwhile.