http://ddowiki.com/page/Attack_sequence

When you wield two weapons, even with the feats, you instantly take a -2 to attack.  Your off hand strike procs on a percentage based upon which feats you have.  You must have a light weapon in your off hand unless you have the feat Oversized Two Weapon Fighting. 

Most who play TWF dual wield two heavy weapons without the feat over-sized two weapon fighting citing a "not noticeable difference," but it is a costly error.  On a rogue, the extra feat is expensive and thus they don't take it and suffer an additional negative two.  That brings the your BAB down to 11, basically.

Really, this is was all fine and dandy until they upped the AC of many mobs and bosses on Epic difficulty.  You can still slide through levels 1-19 without much noticeable difference with a -4 to attack.

The Epic Midnight Greetings revamp has brought many back to using a light off hand weapon and changed this quite a bit. 

But why is the penalty such a big deal at high enemy AC?  Every time an assassin hits they deal 17d6 of SA dice on top of their base damage.  Missing even 5% of the time is a huge loss in DPS. 

Also, after leveling my THF assassin, I have found that where I normally cursed constructs and undead as "my weakness" they are not anymore.  I can slice through them quite easily now. 

I have never once said that my build is uber and ultimate and all must play it.  Rather, I find it a fun alternative to the cookie cutter build everyone else is playing with a definite lean towards kicking ass against epic bosses and Instakilling trash. 

So you give up a chance of 80% to deal another 17d6 + offhand weapon damage for +2 to-hit?

I say +2 to-hit because every rogue worth his salt will swap to a light offhand weapon when he notices he's missing.


Not saying your build is utter crap, i'm sure there are some nice 2HF weapons out there to play with.

But imo it can't compete with 2WF, no matter how you put it.

Especially if you haven't completely dumped int and are using EMG.

It lowers your to-hit, not your BAB.  There is a difference.  If you don't know what it is, you shouldn't be making builds and posting them.

Epoch wrote on Dec 14^th, 2011 at 4:35am:


Oh, so sorry, I tried to say to hit but had people upset about that.  So from now on I will just say it lowers your sex drive.  Can we all work with that?

Everyone always brings up DPS, DPS is not the pure intent of the build.  If DPS calculations were the only concern in the game, I would stick to a spreadsheet.  It is about a higher to-hit, lowered gear requirements, higher base damage, AoE sneak attacks (via cleave), shit tons of skill points, Fortification breaking, and a ridiculously awesome possible assassinate check.  Yes, it is not optimum DPS, it is optimum assassinate, overcoming the rogue's weaknesses, and adding more versatility.

Frankly, I saw someone intending to play an assassin III THF build.  I offered my advice based on my experience, as I play a quite successful soloable THF rogue as my main and a quarterstaff build in my dedicated group.  Do you have an constuctive advice or experience for this person?  I am sorry if the concept is a bit hard for your little mind to grasp, but I can't really simplify the concept when you only measure DPS.  Please, continue playing the same build as everyone else and have fun, being like everyone else.

Nerdychaz wrote on Dec 16^th, 2011 at 7:23pm:


You're looking at at least +4 effective assassinate DC from dual wielding over a single weapon. +6 when you include EMG in the offhand (unless you are single wielding an EMG?!) No THF'ing build is going to keep up in terms of assassinate as what a TWF'ing build will put out.

I don't like playing the same build as everyone else but at the same time I wouldn't want to play a worthless fucking gimp either.

Hence I went with an unarmed rogue 18 / 2 monk tactics/DPS build. It works wonderfully and has all the uniqueness that I like without inviting massive ridicule like your build is worthy of. Worst that can be said about it is that it is fucking ugly (but that's what /show helm/goggles is for).

Your build is the sort of unique that has its own bus service.