Dual Wield Mechanics
Our first native Dual Wielder, Lightning, has finally been released in Global and now would be a good time to cover how the Dual Wield Mechanic really works. As of the writing of this article, Dual Wield is only available through Zidane’s TM and natively in Lightning’s 6* form. In the JP version of FFBE, there are a handful of units natively and there are other sources of Dual Wield in the future (including Abel’s dagger). Dual Wield allows a unit to wield two weapons for any stat bonuses plus allows most attacks or abilities to hit once per hand.
The first thing you’ll probably notice about Dual Wield is that the view unit screen shows a single combined ATK stat of both Right-hand/Left-hand weapons. In reality, there are three sets of formulas the game uses when calculating damage done performed by units using Dual Wield which I will refer to as Right-hand Damage, Left-hand Damage, and Combined Total ATK.
Combined Total ATK
Let’s cover Combined Total ATK first since it uses the same exact formula used to calculate regular physical damage while using only one weapon:
While a unit is Dual Wielding, this formula is used only in rare circumstances such as calculating damage from LBs and other abilities that perform a single attack based on Combined Total ATK.
Right-hand Damage / Left-hand Damage
While using Dual Wield, for the majority of normal attacks and abilities, such as Barrage, Bladeblitz, etc., the game will calculate two separate attacks: one for the Right-hand and one for the Left-hand. The simplest way to determine how much you will do with either Right or Left-hand weapons is to take the Total Unit ATK and subtract the ATK value of the weapon in the other hand.
The total damage a unit will deal while using Dual Wield will be the total of both the Right-hand Damage plus the Left-hand Damage formulas.
Additional Multipliers/Modifiers
- Killer Trait passives: Any Killer Traits gained through equipping weapon are considered passive, meaning the unit itself gains the Killer Trait as a passive trait and attacks from both hands while Dual Wielding gain the benefit. The Killer Trait gained is not limited to damage done by the weapon itself. For example, a unit Dual Wielding Werebuster and Enhancer gains an additional Beast Killer trait passive and will apply to attacks made by Enhancer as well.
- Elemental Attribute Weapons: Oddly, weapons like Excalibur (Light Element) and Chirijiraden (Fire Element) which grant additional elements to attacks while using Dual Wield currently affects weapons in both hands. This means you can have Enhancer (no Element) and Excalibur equipped and both sets of attacks will have the Light element attached. From a game design standpoint it doesn’t make any sense and I’m uncertain if this is a bug or intended at this point, but it’s a good idea to keep this in mind when equipping your units for specific bosses.
Closing Thoughts
While Dual Wield can be useful for mages as well to help buff their MAG stat by equipping two rods for example, Dual Wield is simply godly for physical damage.
Monkun
NOTE: This article is in progress and will be updated with examples and new data/information as they become available.
References and Credits:
While some of the information was obtained from various sources such as the FFBE Reddit, Exviuswiki, and other Japanese gaming sites such as Altema and Famitsu, the majority of the research, data collection, examples, and theorycrafting is completely my own work. If you feel that I may have missed crediting a specific author or individual, please drop a comment below. Thanks 🙂