Guild Wars 2

one-handed weapons need 5 skills even if they aint that strong as two items in hands
title says it all.

do you agree or disagree??

why? they’re one-handed which means you have an off-hand that you can use as well…. Though it WOULD be interesting seeing a charr wielding a one-handed sword using both hands

While it’s a nice idea, I disagree. Thief already kinda does this but that’s because of the mechanics of how a thief’s weapon bar works with the third skill.
The reason I disagree is that firstly, it doesn’t make a tonne of sense, how could you make someone with 1h+barehand slightly less equivalent to say someone sword+shield? Well one way would be to give them less skills….
Another reason is that two handed weapons have larger stats to make up for the fact that one handed weapons allow you to hold two items; meaning if you decided to run around with only a single 1h weapon equipped you’re giving up about half the potential stats you could have with two one handers. They could implement code that buffs the stats of a single one hander if it was the only thing you had equipped but I feel that would just make the weapon overpowered and every one hander would essentially be two handers. You could also argue that the lack of stats would be the disadvantage of not having an offhand but I think it would be really hard to make 4 and 5 skills on a one hander appealing enough to forgo having an offhander.
Thirdly, if I can have a full weapon skill bar by holding a sword in my main hand, does that then mean I could have a full weapon skill bar by holding a focus in my offhand? It may sound silly but if they implemented main hand one hander full skill bars, people would then start complaining about not having that option available for offhand items (Imagine a full weapon bar for having only a shield equipped…).
All up, I like the idea but game mechanics wise, I don’t think it really works and is pretty much fine the way it is.

(Edit: fixed a typo)

The solution is simple. (Not being a GW1 player, it’s what I thought a focus was to begin with. Focusing solely on your main hand). It’s basically an empty stat boost for your offhand that expands the number of skills from your main hand. I always thought it would be great to be able to equip one 1H weapon and have it be effective.

I’m sure there are more people out there who would love to see this in an expansion perhaps.

yeah maybe like its faster then a sword/shield combo

The thief has something similar, in that he gains a 4th skill if he has nothing in the off-hand.

Personally, I don’t see any reason why every one-handed weapon in the game shouldn’t have an additional two skills. Nothing unbalanced, keep them on-par with the off-hand skills, but an option nonetheless. Naturally, equipping an off-hand replaces these two skills.

Think of it as adding another off-hand weapon option for all classes, except the off-hand weapon is invisible and you do all your animations with your main hand.