The only reason I'll reply to that is because I woke up early to try to work on stuff, only to forget it was tuesday and the servers were down. All you would have to do is google DW vs. 2h DK and you'll come up with a ton of literature on the subject. Why should you not DW? OK here we go.
A.) DWing really only increases white damage, white damage is a small part (30% or less) of DK dps.
B.) Any ability that reads "X% weapon damage plus" will do more damage with a 2h 100% of the time. Nearly every ability DKs have is based off of weapon damage. There are 3 exceptions: Blood Caked Blade, Necrosis, and Killing Machine. Those are the only 3 talents in any tree that benefit more from DWing than 2h
C.) If tanking, you have to deal with parry hasting the boss "Well what about expertise Dilbert, you can negate the boss parry!" True, but while you're stacking expertise, I'll be stacking other stats like mitigation or health.
D.) The only situation that I have ever seen where DW has come CLOSE to beating 2h has been when you have been fighting a ton of different mobs and you get lots of KM procs and just howling blast yourself crazy. It has never done more single-target, ever. That means you can do more on raid trash that doesn't matter much (how many go mostly afk during trash, I know I do and I was the raid leader) or you can do more against the boss when it really matters.
Yes you CAN Dual-wierd. Yes it does enough to be within 5-10% of someone using a 2h. No it will never pass them. They intentionally designed the class so that DW does not surpass 2h in any way so that the majority of DKs stick to 2h. Do you want to know Blizzard's mindset on DW vs. 2h? Here:
Ghostcrawler wrote:
This is a controversial topic that seems to bleed over into every thread, so in a desperate attempt to contain it, I'll start this new thread to focus on the topic.
The design is that the death knight can dual-wield or use a two-hander. I know not everyone agrees with that design, and you are certainly welcome to debate it in this thread. My suspicion is that most DKs will use the larger weapons, since a certain famous rune weapon is a two-hander, and just because it fits the kit for a lot of people. But we aren't trying to specifically punish or promote one-handed weapons either.
The design is that neither wins out and becomes the obvious choice. We are trying to do that in part because it's so rare. All rogues DW, but no paladin does. All Fury warriors DW, but no Arms warrior does. We have sprinkled the trees with talents that benefit one system or the other. Typically, dual wielding eventually wins out, damage-wise, over two-hander use. As such we can't promote DW too much or it will dominate.
Tanking is a special concern. It is NOT the design that all death knights dual-wield when tanking. There is probably a slight motivation to do so because faster swings can be useful for generating early threat, and because you can stack mitigation by choosing two tanking weapons, which are all one-handed. Working against that is the parry counterattack of most bosses, which works against dual-wielding. We do have some knobs to turn here, such as making the parry rune enchant benefit two-handed style more than one-handed style. This is something we are going to keep a very close eye on. Again, the design is that both styles are equally useful.
Ghostcrawler wrote:
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GCs post just confirms everyone's suspicion that they allowed us to dual wield because its easier to share dual tanking weapons than make tanking 2 handers.
That certainly wasn't the point I was trying to make. Forgive me if I wasn't clear. Our intent is for DKs to tank with two-handed dps weapons. However, because we allow DKs to DW we know there will be motivation to try and DW two one-handed tanking weapons to stack mitigation stats.
I'm not sure if that's a good idea if many bosses continue to parry. Nevertheless, if we find all DK tanks DW then we'll make changes to make 2H more viable. DW should be as equal to 2H as swords are to axes (for a DK without racial weapon benefits).
Edited because I like this quote too:
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Again, I don't have any problem with there being a dual wield capability for DKs. I just don't want to ever have to dual wield to stay competitive. I want to stick with 2 handers