Benefits of dual wielding?

Started playing the game the other day and so far I don't see much benefit from dual wielding. I've only found two skills that use both weapons (Dual Strike and Cleave) so it seems to me that dual wielding is a bit superfluous and limited. So, am I missing anything here?

dual wield allows you to block attacks. I find dual strike to be very powerful and the DPS numbers it gives lie, it's actually double that.

A shield in the other hand also allows you to block attacks, and provides extra defense on top of it. So from what I see, dual wielding basically shoehorns you into using two weapon skills (Dual Strike and Cleave) because if you use any other you're just wasting your off-hand slot. If you want to base your build on any other of the multitude of interesting skills, dual wielding is pointless, which is a bit of a bummer.

+1 Exxar

Dual wield ought to be more useful/exciting than this.

Going dual wield also allows for insane attack speeds.

Which means that even if you 'waste' the damage of your offhand, you can equip a defensive stat weapon and use a main hand skill for damage. Which will be a lot higher compared to 1h+shield.

My shadow build has 80% increased attack speed from passives alone.

15% extra from basic 3 frenzy charges and another 40 from attack speed support.

135% inc attack speed. Or thereabout.

Where do you get all those dual wielding speed bonuses? As far as I can see, passives that grant them are few and far between.

There are only ten nodes that specify attack speed when dual wielding. And they are spread way the hell and gone. There are another 10 which just say "attack speed with one-handed" which still lets you use a shield. There's 30+ that just say attack speed.

Dual wielding gets you Dual Strike. That's it. You need to waste nodes on dual-wield block to equal what you get for free with a shield, and you get much better defense from the shield that from a weapon.

Dual Wield needs much to make it viable.

I would have to agree with Wippit on this one.

When you equip a shield, there are very obvious immediate benefits you gain. A significant block chance, as well as a significant defensive benefit based on the type of the shield to either Armor/Evasion/Energy Shield.

The first time you equip a second weapon, there is no immediate benefit. I know I found myself questioning what the use of it was when I first did it. I wasn't attacking with both on each normal attack, I wasn't attacking faster so far as I could tell (in fact, if you get a slower weapon in your off hand you are in fact attacking slower overall by default).

There should be some implicit benefit gained by dual wielding that doesn't require you to use a specific gem, or take specific skills. As with every other option in the game, it should have it's own benefits that can then be enhanced through the skill tree.

The most obvious benefit would be attack speed. Maybe you get an inherent attack speed bonus just for wielding two weapons (maybe your off-hand takes half as much time to perform its attack or something). I also think there should be more skill gems that take advantage of the fact you are dual wielding. It's possible this is already in the works, GGG seems to add new skill gems with every major patch.