For clarification, I didn't make this post to complain or start a debate. I just want to express my concerns that I know many others share. Why? Because we care, and for the reasons stated below. I also want to learn more about duel wielding and see if I can gain anymore information on it.

First off, duel wielding has the potential to be a very awesome feature, if done right. If not, then it kind of takes out all the fun and ruins the purpose. To those who care about melee combat, this may be an important subject to you for that very reason.

From what I've gathered, we can't block while duel wielding. It's also been confirmed that we can only attack with one hand at a time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no rolling either, right?

Well, that leaves many of us worried because how is that suppose to be of any benefit? We don't have many defensive options. As for myself, I'm also worried that it won't be fun because it seems rather limited. Quite frankly, I don't think it'll reach its potential based off of this information alone. In fact, I've yet to find a good thing about this feature except that I can wield two weapons at the same time, but that's it....

I'm also having a hard time seeing the offensive advantage in this. Right now, I'm picturing a warrior running around his opponent while repeatedly hitting him, one swing at a time, taking turns with each hand. That doesn't seem like fun to me. Now I'm imagining the same scenario, only with multiple enemies and they're all hitting my character while he does his thing. I really don't want to have to revert to hit and run tactics in those instances. It'd just be more frustrating than challenging because during that whole time, I could have blocked or rolled or performed a back flip (can we do that?)....

This leads me to believe that duel wielding will be useless, at first. I'd assume there will be a perk which would allow us to swing both weapons at the same time and perhaps even knock back the enemy, taking him out of the fight for a bit. Of course, I expect more perks than that. Also, we saw in the trailers, some guy used like a force push type of dragonshout to get him out of a really nasty situation, similar to the one above.

I really hope that when duel wielding, we don't have to rely on perks for offense and dragonshouts for defense. In fact, that's another concern. I really don't have any interest in using dragonshouts at all. I hope I don't have to rely on them. If I do, I hope it's only to take down a dragon or two.

Thoughts?

Pete has been wrong a time or two.

I might be grasping at straws here, but If you saw the Quakecon demo it looks as if Todd is blocking with his left sword from time to time,as it leans in to the middle of his screen several times. That certainly doesn't look like an attack. If it isn't a block, why would the left sword lean in like that? I think the timing of the audio is off, but you hear a clang sound which sounds like two swords clashing to me. I'd say that is possible evidence of blocking while dual wielding two melee weapons.

At 1:03 in the official hd footage you can see the left sword in the blocking position I am talking about.

Maybe there is a chance to parry perk that automatically tries to parry occasionally at random? Maybe both bumpers pressed at the same time blocks? Is there a list of what each button does anywhere?

If there absolutely is no way to block, then perhaps this meat grinder they talk about is pretty powerful (alternate triggers and it creates a swinging motion) and reduces the need for block?

I'm not really concerned with it that much. To me dual wielding is more than just melee. It's sword and spell, it's spell and spell, it's torch and sword, etc. But a block or parry would add realism and be very welcome.

What hasn't been said about dual wielding already? It's been discussed over and over and we simply don't have all the info yet. We haven't seen all the perks and we don't know the damage rates. We simply won't know anymore about it until launch.

duel weilding is about taking your enemy down quickly it gives you more access to the one handed perk tree because you can use two different one handed weapons it gives you the option to pioson those to weapons and/or enchant them with up to four offensive enchantments two each its up to you to fully optimize the dmg so your enemys dont have a chance to hit stratagy FTW