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Okay Lets look at a really awesome Monster! The Black Dragon. He has an AC Of 18. You need to be afraid. Currently the Black Dragon is a level 9 which means that a player character should be about at level 9 to go toe to toe with the Black Dragon. This means that a fighter will have +5 attack from his class and probably a 20 in strength for +10 total. Lets just toss in a basic +1 magic sword for good measure. This means that a fighter needs a 7 or higher to hit the black dragon. Even with disadvantage a fighter will almost always hit the black dragon. Now you don't get your +5 to those attacks but it would appear to me that you can still use your Expertise Dice. One of the real problems is that you lost your strength bonus to damage and a 1d6 weapon isn't really going to make that up, but you did get two chances to hit a AC 7. If your first attack misses, you now have a chance to get your second attack to hit the effective AC 7  Dragon. You can pump your expertise dice into the monster with the die which hits.

In otherwords, because of the low AC on monsters, and the high to hit of PCs, it is entirely possible that TWF works awesome right now. So why all the complaints? I think this is primarly because people Love Advantage, but overwhealmingly hate Disadvantage. I also think there is something that just says a level 9 creature shouldn't be hit needing only a 7 on the die. The complaint about having disadvantage on TWF is therefore partly because it should be harder to hit a level 9 creature.

Yeah the four rolls is bad, and also I don't think the AC is going to stay low enough for long to make my point valid, though it might. Also as written two weapon fighting is probably bad for other classes beyond the fighter.

Nov 2, 2012 -- 10:46PM, Aesurtiel wrote:

Don't mae light of disadvantage. I have a d20 right here and rolling a 7 isn't as guaranteed as you say it is. Probability says you have a 49% chance of hitting with each attack and when actually rolling the dice it seems much worse than that. Besides that you'll almost never score a crit and you just aren't going to deal as much damage unless you've got weapons with bonus damage ddice. All that and rolling 4 dice per attack action is horribly slow.

I'm not making light of it. I personally hate disadvantage. Nor was I insisting both attacks always hit, rather at least one of the two attacks would probably hit. The benefit comes in for a fighter who if he misses on the first attack, can make a second attack and try again. The one attack that succeeds is the one you pump your expertise dice into. Now if you are not playing a fighter, TWF would be very horrible.

I think people disliking disadvanage is the real reason for the hatred of TWF, though so far WotC has believed that peple like Advantage/Disadvantage. This move on their part shows people love Advantage, but hate Disadvantage. If I had faith in WotC I would actually claim that the whole change to TWF was an experiment to see how well people like Disadvantage and to see the likelyhood of making class features that granted disadvantage would go over. (Looking at the barbarian's rage mechanic) 

Level 10 Dwarven fighter, +10 to hit, 1d10+1 (magic battle axe +1) damage, 4 attacks with disadvantage. 

I also tested a Human Fighter with +11 to hit, 1d8+1 damage... negligable difference. I forgot to lower the damage for the offhand by 1 weapon size for both dual wielders... oops! And no finesse axe? 

Use deadly strike with all dice on the first hit, and use glancing blow with all the dice on the first applicable miss (maybe its better to spread them out?)

This is a series of computer simulations of 3 million attacks each against 18 AC

Remember Critical hits do 8d6 extra damage with a magic weapon.

Expertise Dice only for deadly strike: 26.04 DPR

Expertise Dice also for glancing blow (max 3): 22.91 DPR

Expertise Dice also for glancing blow (max 1): 27.85 DPR 

Expertise Dice also for composed attack (max 1 glancing): 25.23

 Expertise Dice also for composed attack (no glancing): 25.12  

 Expertise Dice ONLY for composed attack (deadly strike crits): 21.34

*only 1 die is used for composed attack due to it being really bad (15 DPR)

It looks like you get +13 to +16 DPR if you cancel out disadvantage (you can't gain advantage).

  

Now compare to a human fighter with +11 to hit, 1d12 +5 + 1 damage, 2 attacks without disadvantage:

Expertise Dice only for deadly strike: 36.74 DPR

Expertise Dice also for glancing blow (max 3): 35.45 DPR

Expertise Dice also for glancing blow (max 1): 37.67 DPR

It looks like you get an additional 10 DPR if you have advantage

So you can see an interesting comparison of the different maneuvers here. The take home message is that you are losing 30% DPR by using two weapons so they should be used situationally. They aren't that bad once you reach level 10 but they it takes them a while to get that strong.

I did these calculations for level 1 fighters and dual wielding at that level is terrible, about half damage of normal fighting style. However, against a horde enemies who die in one hit* and have low* AC, it is advantageous to use two weapons.

* Enemies with both less than 5 HP and less than 12 AC for a  level 1 fighter.

For level 10 fighters as above, 14 AC enemies shrink the gap to about 20%. 22 AC enemies grow this gap to about 45%

So... looking at the math... I personally find it a little bit questionable that you lose so much damage just for the ability to kill 2 targets in one turn (or score a finishing blow against a single enemy with low health).  If you can manage to lose disadvantage regularly then it evens out though, so thats also something to consider. In addition, you get no additional penalties for attacking while prone, blinded, etc. Also, rolling 8 d20's is kind of excessive. but maybe thats your style.

I'm not entirely sure how you did those calculations, but Glancing Blow was changed so that you only add the highest roll to damage instead of adding the rolls together. So I wouldn't spend all my dice on the first miss if I were you.

I agree that disadvantage is the main reason for the dislike towards TWF right now. Unless the disadvantage goes away there really isn't any way that is going to change. I also agree that the drawbacks for TWF are simply too great for it to be useful.