Guild Wars 2

So I was playing around with my new thief and decided to try the empty off-hand “dual” skills. I realize that they’re not going to be worth having an empty hand, but I wanted to play with them just for the sake of trying it out.

Except, it’s apparently impossible to do that as an alternate weapon? If I have dagger/dagger as my main set and equip only a pistol as my alternate, switching automatically gives me pistol/dagger. The only way it seems possible for me to use those obscure skills is to be equipped with only that dual weapon and have no alt at all, except maybe shortbow.

Is this a bug, or how it’s intentionally (albeit annoying and frustratingly) supposed to work?

It’s working intentionally. It allows people to not need to purchase a whole other weapon for the alternate set since they’ll already have one equipped.

I.E., a player wanting D/D and D/P only needs to buy two daggers and a pistol instead of three daggers. It’s an effort to keep the weapon costs something like that of classes which have a lot of 2h options.

The game effectively forces players out of using a single one-handed weapon by denying them out of the other two skills as well.

That’s unfortunate. It could be so easily changed to allow both functions by just putting a bare hand icon in the options when you click the off-hand slot. I suppose I’ll have to just add that to the list of easy improvements that will never happen.

My bigger question is why did they even bother with that skill set up in the first place? its not like that 3rd skill (sans an offhand weapon) is so wonderful that it is worth losing 2 additional skills on your bar, and its the only class that works that way. i mean, did they honestly think that people would opt to cripple themselves skill wise and just use 3 skills on one class? This is even more evident now with the NPE as well. it just feels wrong in so many ways. Has Anet ever said why they designed it this way?

I think it became that way as more of a side effect than intentional feature. There’s no “default” #3 weapon skill for thieves, since their class mechanic is that it’s determined by the combination of their weapons. So rather than stuff another mechanism beneath that, they just made an empty hand count as another combination for that skill. It put those attacks in a rather strange place, since I doubt they much expected people to use them, so they’ve just been sort of swept under the rug without being either removed or justified.

It’s too bad, because making “single wielding” like that more viable would create some more interesting variation in build variety, and I’m sure many people would enjoy it as a stylistic choice alone. There are plenty of things you could do with it, like traits for buffs with an empty hand, or even making the 4 and 5 slots bare-handed attacks like dazing your enemy with a sand throw or lengthening their weapon cooldowns with a disarming grab. As it is with the auto-equip mechanics, not many people would sacrifice an off-hand weapon for it, especially when doing so forces you to either take a shortbow alt or have no other weapon set at all.

Single wielding is very viable, trust me.
Check videos in signature for proof

They could do something creative with having an empty hand. Someone already suggested bare handed skills. They could also give a buff like quickness, or increased initiative regeneration etc. etc.

The single wield was added as a last minute for tutorial. All other professions would have access to 3 skills with their one-handed weapon.

Although, initially, you could also loot bags and weapons in the tutorial.

I like the idea of one-handed, but I feel like instead of making it give you kitten skills, you should get a different variety of skills that get replaced with off-hand skills. It would also need a bare-offhand checkbox, though.

Things that I’ll never see.

I’ll def check that vid out later. For me though, I think that if they are going to have them in the game, they need to give that skill a little extra…something, to make it a thing that more thieves might say, yes, this is definitely viable for me. I don’t know what that something would be, but it would definitely be something that should compensate for the loss of 2 skills in the bar. Or maybe as others have mentioned allowing for some kind of punch and kick default in the final 2 slots while single wielding. Maybe the punch can daze for 2 seconds and the kick can do a small knock back/interrupt with both doing small damage and be more general utility type things that won’t throw off the balance, but add to the game play.

You’re always at an inherent disadvantage when not dual-wielding if you can. There is quite literally zero benefit to wielding one weapon rather than two in any given situation. Single wielding isn’t viable; the video is just a demonstration that the thief’s power doesn’t come from weapon skills and bragging rights for the maker.

The video even says “even while handicapped”. The point isn’t that off-hand dual skills are bad, but that there’s no incentive to take them other than “for the heck of it”. Even choosing them solely as a personal style choice is badly hindered by the mechanics that force your alternate to be shortbow or nothing. You’re losing not just the 4 and 5 skills, but the stats and upgrade slot of an additional equipped weapon. Someone with a character build specifically to the meta may still lose a duel to an experimental character; maybe the fight just went badly for them as some do, maybe they’re not used to fighting that sort of enemy, maybe the other player was just more skilled. None of that disproves any of the imbalances that cause the meta in the first place.