Carry and attack with a weapon in each hand. Bows and harps cannot be dual-wielded.
Description
Dual-Wield is a Ninja support ability in Final Fantasy V. It allows the user to equip two weapons, one in each hand, with the exception of bows and harps. This causes all their regular attacks to hit twice, greatly improving damage output. It is innate to Ninjas, and can be used by other jobs after mastering Ninja. Mastering Ninja also provides the ability innately to Freelancer and Mime.
Obtained[]
Dual-Wield is innate to Ninja, and will be granted to any character equipping the job. It can then be used by other jobs after mastering the Ninja, reaching level 5 with the job, for a total of 690 AP (450 AP from level 3). Other jobs can then equip Dual-Wield in their ability slot, while Freelancer and Mime will have it innately.
Mechanics[]
Having Dual-Wield simply frees up both hands in a character's weapon slot. Attacks made by the character will then use both weapons in a two-hit attack, taking into account all the weapons' properties, including any potential special effects. Dual-Wield also applies to other abilities that perform physical attacks, such as Mug, Counter, and Rapid Fire. Spellblade will apply to both weapons when used.
There is a glitch in the defunct iOS and Steam versions involving the Dancing Dagger: if the player dual-wields it with another weapon and has the Dancing Dagger attack first, and it uses Jitterbug that kills the enemy, the attack from the other weapon will bring the vanished enemy back on the screen. The enemy counts as defeated, and will never attack. The battle is won after killing all other enemies.
Use[]
Dual-Wield can effectively double a characters' damage output by allowing them to hit twice in a turn. This makes the ability incredibly valuable for all physical attackers, and also effectively renders Barehanded (allowing two-hit attacks, but without equipping a weapon) and Two-Handed (allowing one weapon to be wielded in both hands, boosting that weapons' property but not hitting twice) obsolete. Alongside Counter, Dual-Wield is one of the best ways to increase damage output.
The best use of Dual-Wield is in combination with both Rapid Fire and Spellblade. By using Spellblade to charge a characters' weapons, and Rapid Fire to hit four times, the character will deal cause eight hits in a single turn, devastating most enemies, in particular the superboss Omega. This is only possible with a Freelancer, meaning that the user must be in the Freelancer job and will not be able to gain AP from battles, but that is the only major downside and the combination can easily defeat most enemies in the game.
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