Dual Wield - Damage Comparisons

The point of this thread is to try and nail down whether a dagger or sword rogue is better from a pure dmg output standpoint. Obviously swords have a higher base damage threshold than daggers but because they require str and dex to wield, as opposed to daggers which only require dex, I'm curious which would be better in the long run.

First off, weapon damage bonuses:
(Damage bonuses from weapon type give a straight increase, 1 damage bonus in Swords give +1 to min and max damage when using a sword.)
Every 2 points in Str gives +1 damage bonus to Swords.
Every 4 points in Str gives +1 damage bonus to Daggers.
Every 2 points in Dex gives +1 damage bonus to Swords.

For Daggers Dex is a bit different giving +1 damage bonus for every (roughly) 1.3 Dex.
So the growth, starting at 0 Dex 0 Damage, would go something like:
1 Dex = 0 Damage
2 Dex = 1 Damage
3 Dex = 2 Damage
4 Dex = 3 Damage
5 Dex = 3 Damage
6 Dex = 4 Damage
Etc.

Str gives a damage bonus to most weapon types and is a requirement for using heavy armor and many weapon types. Aside from this it doesn't appear to impact any other stats. Dex gives a damage bonus to Bows, Swords and Daggers and is a requirement for using medium armor and those same weapon types. However, unlike Str, Dex also increases your Armor, Crit %, Dodge %, Damage Reduction and Magic Resistance.

This being the case it's obvious that for building a Sword Rogue you should only put exactly as many points into Str as is needed to wield your swords, then any further points would go into Dex, since the damage bonus is the same and we want that Crit% increase. Whereas a Dagger Rogue would avoid any points in Str in favor of Dex. However, that doesn't answer which will yield higher damage in the end. For that we need weapon stats too. I'll use the Legendary Dagger and Legendary Sword for comparison as they are both level 31 weapons.

Legendary Sword: requires 36 Str and Dex to wield. Dmg: 79-142
36 Str = +18 Damage bonus, 36 Dex = +18 Damage bonus. with bonus: 115-178
Legendary Dagger: requires 54 Dex to wield. Dmg: 59-117
54 Dex = +41 Damage bonus with bonus: 100-158

Rogues start the game with 8 Str and 15 Dex, there is no natural stat growth. By level 31 you will have 62 stat points to distribute. With a Sword build that means 28 points in Str for 36 and 34 points in Dex for 49. For a Dagger build all 62 points go to Dex giving 8 Str and 77 Dex. Base Crit% is 5.0%, Dex increases Crit% at a rate of +0.1% for every (roughly) 2.1 points.

So with this in mind we end up with:
Sword Rogue: Damage - 121-184, Crit% - 7.3%
Dagger Rogue: Damage - 120-178, Crit% - 8.6%

Obviously as we go higher the difference between them grows in favor of a Dagger build, using the same weapons at level 75 the difference, while still mostly negligible, becomes more noticeable. If we then plug in higher level weapons, the Str requirement continues to grow, diminishing the Sword build's Crit% return. While the Dagger build continues to grow in both Crit% and damage bonus since the Dagger damage bonus growth is higher.

So in the end (assuming my math didn't go astray) the Dagger Rogue finishes with higher damage output and Crit% making it the better choice, it would seem.
I await input, corrections and criticisms.

very interesting stats makes sense ill be making a rouge for magic find after my warrior is done and this will help lots maybe then i can add my 2 cents about this.

Awesome post! Welcome to the forums!

I've been wondering about this exact issue so it's nice to see some numbers. I'm surprised how close it is, I'd assumed daggers would be well behind on pure damage, with a faster attack speed to make up for it, giving roughly equal dps.

Is there an increase in attack speed when using daggers vs. swords?

If so, it seems daggers and pure dex beats swords hands down...

finally someone posts one for the rouge eheh

Ive been wondering and experimenting myself with the sword and dagger build.

and i would have to agree and its better to go with the dagger build. plus so far i havent found a single immortal sword with critical dmg. since i use the daggers with dodge and critical hit.

Thanks for replies/welcome. As for attack speed, there doesn't appear to be any appreciable difference between them. Hard to say for certain without some more exact testing than just naked eye/counting but if there is a difference it's at least safe to say that it's not very significant.

I have started my rouge and so far i think dual daggers is just a bit faster then sword and dagger.

Just got my rogue to 34 and loving the hell out of it another rogue joined my game last night and we burned through the priest all the way to the first elemental tower. Right now im using 2 daggers only because two of almost the same dagger dropped but i had wondered about this as well when i was partied up with Hideo because he had 2 1h swords.

I find that daggers>sword but bow>daggers.

Whilst the dual wield allows sword use of course and the damage difference doesn't seem that great, that increased strength does allow some better armor.

The increase in strength adds to overall physical damage and dex adds to the sword damage.

Basically put my rogue on full dex with daggers will do 389-424 damage
While my 50/50 rogue for swords will do 424-460

Criitcal difference about 5%


so while the crit chance is a little higher the 2h swords will hash out more damage per hit.

Since crit damage = 2.98 x regular attack with find weakness.


so lets do this. out of 100 hits. % for crit is 35/40 respectively (through my skills sets) Damage will be max per hit for calculating purposes.
swords v daggers.


Daggers: (immortals)
Crit total= 50560 normal damage= 25440 Total damage= 76000
Swords: (immortals)
Crit total= 47950 normal damage= 29900 Total damage= 77850

So spike damage Daggers would work well.
Long term, you are looking at swords.

I prefer swords for long boss fights, but Daggers are very good for working out the mobs. Not to mention that pure dex builds for daggers are better for bow users.

How much strength do you need for the immortal one handed sword so I know how much to put it when I respec

Yukio, think you could throw together a dedicated melee build?

Graihl wrote:

Yukio, think you could throw together a dedicated melee build?

@Graihl: The dedicated melee is a suitable and devastating long range attacker as well. The mini build is on a reply for pathfinder.
@Shakey: I do not remember. Though i split str and dex evenly, but you might just want to drop the magic finders and get some str and dex adders with crit.

Its cool I ended up guessing from a level 61 item and respec'd to get 70 str and 107 dex after which I killed the dark fairy again and one dropped a couple times more killing her a second dropped so im kickin ass now lol.

Yukio (Hideookino) wrote:

The increase in strength adds to overall physical damage and dex adds to the sword damage.

Basically put my rogue on full dex with daggers will do 389-424 damage
While my 50/50 rogue for swords will do 424-460

Criitcal difference about 5%


so while the crit chance is a little higher the 2h swords will hash out more damage per hit.

Since crit damage = 2.98 x regular attack with find weakness.


so lets do this. out of 100 hits. % for crit is 35/40 respectively (through my skills sets) Damage will be max per hit for calculating purposes.
swords v daggers.


Daggers: (immortals)
Crit total= 50560 normal damage= 25440 Total damage= 76000
Swords: (immortals)
Crit total= 47950 normal damage= 29900 Total damage= 77850

So spike damage Daggers would work well.
Long term, you are looking at swords.

I prefer swords for long boss fights, but Daggers are very good for working out the mobs. Not to mention that pure dex builds for daggers are better for bow users.

Wouldn't the crit just make the damage only 2.98x whatever its supposed to be and not be in addition to normal damage? Your numbers seem to be correct, but the wording sounds off to me at least. It looks like you're showing the crit damage and then adding the normal damage to it. Which to me doesnt sound right, because if normal damage is 25440, then a 2.98x crit should yield a damage of 74811.2 and if those 2 are added together that would be over 100k.

Note I am adding total damage together. the crit and the regular damage are sep. I added the both to monitor DPS not total crit hits. (this is what the thread was originally about. DPS.) Read the part where it says out of 100 hits. If you are confused.

though for some reason my math is wrong.

(Crit*AttackMax*CritMod2.98)+(AttackMax*RegAttack#)= Total Damage out of 100 hits.

Dag: 40(424*2.98)+(424*60)= 75980 per 100 hits
Sword: 35(460*2.98)+(460*65)= 77878 oer 100 hits.

NOTE: I DID HAVE THE % CRIT MIXED Up. DAGS HAVE 40 AND SWORDS ARE @ 35. rEGARDLESS, THE NUMBERS SHOW SWORDS ARE HIGHER.