Is it possible for a two-handed weapon to do as much damage as a dual-wielding monk?

Question

The question is pretty straight-forward: a monk can hold a single weapon (with or without a shield), two weapons or one of a certain subset of the two-handed weapons. Is it ever possible for a monk with a two-handed weapon to do as much damage as an optimized dual-wielding monk?

Answer 1

Overall DPS is a hard thing to qualify without a lot of number crunching however the logic behind the two different systems you mentioned are this:

• Using a 2 hander (2h) results in more damage on abilities than dual wielding (dw) - monk abilities do damage based on "weapon damage" not "weapon dps"

• Therefore a 2h with 100 dps vs dw with 100 (+15%) dps - the abilities the 2h uses will do much more

• The flip side to this however is that dw generates spirit much faster so you can use more powers, more often.

I can only assume Blizzard balanced this out so over time (say, a minute?) they are somewhat equal.

An example of my build: I use Fire Ally, Seven Sided Strike (+Ult AoE Rune), Serenity (+Heal Rune), Lashing Tail Kick (+360 Degree Rune), Evasion Mantra.

The ally is doing 40% of my weapon damage and 7SS is doing 777% (plus the explosions) the damage on these two would be much lower with dw although I would have more spirit to spend, but considering the build I use; I have two substantially long lasting spells, one with a huge cool down and two with low costs. 2h is a no brainer for me.

However if you wanted to use wave of light for example with it's huge cost of 75 spirit dw would be the way.