Dual Wielding needs a rework, ASAP

It's been a few years since the last touch on the archetype, and after all these years, its completly dead. There is no point in dual wielding unless using very specific combos, like paradoxica + saviour or building around Dual Strike of Ambidexterity. There is NO reason to dual wield. It has lower damage and lower attack speed than two handed setups, and if you are going to use a one handed, just use a shield instead, since is better in all way around, be it with passive skill tree nodes or the item itself;

i think it would be very cool to see this being seen because it would be fun to have a new archetype to mess around: one of the reasons why melee feels so stale is because slams have been dominant for too long, its ok for them to be good IF we press all the buttons necessary (autoexertion is too op). But we also need other options to build around, PoE is not only about feeling the gameplay, but different ways to build a character. Thanks to the recent melee buffs, there is a lot of skills that became playable, which makes me happy, but it would be even better if there is other ways to build around, instead of using only two handed weapons.

i really thought that when gladiator rework came out, we would get something for dual wielding on it, since it fits the ascendancy very well (the splash art is dual wielding weapons!), but instead, we got retaliation skills, which have very specific uses but honestly, boring af.

what do you guys think?

I will speak only for dual wield casting. It seems decent to me.
I always want to use a shield... but even with shield caster passives
I inevitably find or buy a new caster wand, check what would happen
if i swapped my shield for the weaker original wand, and almost always find
its more damage! (obviously im missing block, ES and maybe the odd resistance)

I often decide to dual wield as a spell caster. its a tradeoff that I cant
see a problem with. more damage or more defence? you chose.

no idea at all about melee or non caster.

Dual Wield melee is def weak right now. If I was going to buff it I would start with the passive nodes on the tree they are basically not worth taking right now over other nodes with better masterys. Do I think dual wield needs to be as strong as 1h shield or 2h melee... not really there are already like two strong dual wield skills that might become too strong if buffed enough. So if I was going to buff dual wield in general I might look at nerfing the outlier in dual wield a tiny bit also.

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Dual Wield melee is def weak right now. If I was going to buff it I would start with the passive nodes on the tree they are basically not worth taking right now over other nodes with better masterys. Do I think dual wield needs to be as strong as 1h shield or 2h melee... not really there are already like two strong dual wield skills that might become too strong if buffed enough. So if I was going to buff dual wield in general I might look at nerfing the outlier in dual wield a tiny bit also.

thats my point here: we do have 2 skills that are good. but they are good, because the way they work, not because of the archetype: the nodes on the tree are indeed trash, but i dont think that only buffing it would be enough. I dont think it needs to be as strong shields or two handeds, but in the current state, unless you are using very specific mechanics, dual wielding is not playable

Speaking of nodes, I'm about to take both Deflection AND Swagger, whether I go dual wield or sword + shield, because they don't care about how you block to generate those charges !
(You could be using a staff to block, for all they care.)

No idea whether that's a good thing or not. Probably good, actually ?

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Mandatory request to show both of the dual-wielding bonuses to attack speed and block chance as pseudo-implicits on both weapons.
(Or maybe as a buff, top left ? Would be a shame for the screen space though...)

That's not something that new players should have to dig into the character sheet tabs to find out !
(See also : hidden implicit movement speed maluses on most of body armours and shields.)

Same goes for PoE2, especially thinking about the release of most of the remaining classes/weapons, them being most associated with dual-wielding.

P.S.: Somehow, I had never realised before that dual wielding wands also gives a chance to block !
(And the attack speed bonus too of course, but I'm not that surprised here.)
Good example right there why this needs to be less hidden.