Your party’s Rogue sneaks up behind the latest opponent, pulling out rapiers in both hands. She takes a stab with one, then the other, scoring two serious hits and dealing significant damage.
Under normal circumstances, the rapiers wouldn’t count as light melee weapons, and the second strike wouldn’t be allowed. Still, since this Rogue took the Dual Wielder feat, she can use her bonus action to attack again with the other rapier.
What is the Dual Wielder feat?
The text of the Dual Wielder feat reads, “You master fighting with two weapons, gaining the following benefits:
- You gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand.
- You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren’t light.
- You can draw or stow two one-handed weapons when you would normally be able to draw or stow only one.”
We’re going to break down who benefits the most from this feat and who should skip it below.
GameCows Tip: The weapons with the Light property are: clubs, hand crossbows, daggers, handaxes, light hammers, scimitars, short swords, and sickles.
Dual Wielder Feat is Most Useful For
Melee Fighters will find this feat useful if they want to take advantage of larger weapons with bigger damage dice. Fighters already get an absurd number of attacks and often don’t have anything meaningful to do with their bonus actions, so Dual Wielder can help their action economies. Note that this feat applies solely to melee weapons, so ranged Fighters and Rangers likely won’t find it helpful.
This feat could be handy for Barbarians since they are often built around melee and can add additional damage dice via their Brutal Critical feature.
The ability to attack again as a bonus action could be tempting, but Barbarians are a MAD class (Multi Ability score Dependent), meaning they have two primary Ability Scores (Strength and Constitution). They only get the standard number of Ability Score Increases (five total), so finding the right time to take this feat can be challenging.
Dual Wielder Feat is Least Useful For
This feat doesn’t apply to ranged attackers or spellcasters, so they won’t be considered here. Some other classes that might think about Dual Wielder are Monks, Hexblade Warlocks, melee Rangers, and Rogues.
Warlocks and Rangers don’t get extra ASIs, so they have to think carefully about the trade-off. Monks already have a way to designate their monk weapons and have a feature allowing them to use their bonus actions to attack again as long as they make an unarmed strike or use a monk weapon.
Rogues work best when they can apply Sneak Attack damage to their attacks, but you can only use Sneak Attack once per turn.
Rogues can apply Sneak Attack damage again only if they use their reaction to attack since it’s not part of their normal turn. But Dual Wielder wouldn’t give them much, especially since Rogues have so many other options for their bonus actions. It’s far better to disengage and get away from the enemy than to take another swing.
Check out our full Feats 5e guide as well as other feats including Tough 5e Feat and Observant 5e Feat.
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