Dual Wielding and Dual Wieldable weapons.

[I<3Grunts]

This is a topic coming up alot some people think it balances out kills others think its overpowered but I think both are wrong dual wielding is meant to add pazzaz to ever sigle match. and heres dual weildable weapons:

UNSC:

Magnum, SMG, Sticky detonator.

Covenant:

Plasma Pistol, Plasma Rifle, Needler, Energy Sword.

Brutes:

Mauler, Brute Plasma Rifle, Spiker

Promethean:

Boltshot, Silencer, Weapon seen in halo legends origins.

[Lord of Admirals]

Dual Weilding, while infinitely cool, is possibly the hardest thing to balance in Halo. 

 

Let's use the SMG as an example.

 

If the SMG is as useful as the Assault Rifle on it's own, it will certaintly be overpowered when dual wielded. But. If you weaken its damage to balance it out for dual weilding, people will only use it when dual wielding. 

 

All dual weidable weapons are destined to be weak on their own, which forces players to dual weild them, and in turn, restricts player actions. 

[A6ENT of CHA0S]

Its a compromise. More damage in exchange for melee and grenade throwing capabilities. It could be further balanced by reducing accuracy/increasing recoil or longer reload time. Also, in Halo 3, dual-wielding didn't stack the damage, doubling the damage output of an SMG by dual-wielding. It was given different stats, while still obviosly stronger than a single SMG. It would usually have about 50% higher damage output, but only when fired simultaneously. If you fired only one of your SMGs, you would notice it actually would take more rounds than if you weren't dual-wielding. Also, while I'm not a big fan of loadouts ( it has had map-set weapons in all previous titles, so I don't see why they would try to fix something that wasn't broken, other than the obvious desire to appeal to new players with a CoD approach...), I could see an SMG as a secondary weapon. It could be something useful for CQC when your primary was a DMR or LR, especially if you could manage to dual-wield it with another SMG or Magnum. I agree that dual-wielding is a tricky thing to implement, but so are Armor Abilities. I would much rather have dual-wielding be an optional tactic and have Armor Abilities set on maps, similarly to Halo 3's equipment. Make people actually fight for the ability to fly or become invisible, etc...

[Composite Armour]

I think Dual Needlers should stay dead.

[A6ENT of CHA0S]

I think Dual Needlers should stay dead.

Agreed... Although Bungie took that out in H3 and, with the Needler used a a power weapon in H4, I don't think we have to worry about that. Hopefully ;P