My current character is a Barbarian, and I have been playing him 100% offensively (i.e. no shield). I often switch between dual weapons and 2-hand weapons, depending on what the latest unique weapon is.
However, I'm not sure if I'm doing the comparisons effectively. There are factors like overall damage, attack speed, etc to consider, and I have only really just been focussing on the overall damage that the weapon (or weapons if dual wielding) can deal.
So what collection of information/calculations should be considered when selecting new weapons?
Best Answer
Aside from usual non-obvious stuff like Area damage, Skill damage and Sockets, there is one main issue when comparing dual wielding to two-handers.
It is weapon damage (not damage per second, note that character screen does show your overall DPS, despite saying "damage"). Two-handed weapons have drastically higher damage per swing, but do less attacks per second. While this is not an issue for skills that depend on Fury or generate it, it matters a whole lot for cooldown-based skills.
Simplified example:
Using Cleave, both these setups will deal 115*200% = 230 DPS.
But Earthquake, that is based on cooldown, will deal 4800% weapon damage per 60 seconds, regardless of weapon attack speed!
Hence:
In short: remember that most heavy cooldown-based skills ignore your weapon speed. If you are running a Leapquake build, get that two-hander.