We’ve been discussing 2-Hander buffs for a while now. Right now on live, 2-Handers are almost always less powerful than dual-wielding 1-Handers for a few different reasons, and we wanted to rebalance them for Patch 2.1. We had two options to address the issue:

1. Make new 2-Hander passives and buff existing 2-Hander passives for Barbarian, Monk, Witch Doctor, and Wizard.
2. Buff all 2-Handed weapons baseline and adjust Heavenly Strength accordingly.

After trying both options out internally, we decided to go with option 2. This solution has two desirable benefits: 1) it’s immediately noticeable to all players when they pick up a 2-Hander and see the DPS number both significantly higher than a 1-Hander and higher than pre-Patch 2.1 2-Handers and 2) changing 1 passive is less of a jarring overall change for players than changing/adding 4 passives.

In the upcoming PTR patch, you should see the DPS of 2-Handed Melee Weapons increased by 23-26% across the board. The goal is to get the raw DPS of a 2H build to be close enough to the raw DPS of a Dual-Wield build that the weapon choice is mostly determined by the legendary powers on the item and by the build you are using. Some of the tradeoffs of 2-Handers vs. Dual-Wielding are that 2-Handers are intended to make more efficient use of resources and hit harder for skills with cooldowns while Dual-Wielding is intended to generate more procs, Life on Hit, and give more of certain stats. Currently, the raw DPS gap is large enough that Dual-Wielding feels like it is always the right answer.

To summarize the changes:
The DPS of 2-Handed Melee Weapons has been increased by 23-26% across the board.
This applies to the following weapon types:
2-Handed Maces
2-Handed Mighty Weapons
2-Handed Axes
2-Handed Flails
2-Handed Staffs
2-Handed Swords
Daibos
Polearms
In direct response, Heavenly Strength will now reduce damage done by 20%. With both changes, Crusaders using a 2-Hander should see a very small DPS increase.
This change is retroactive to existing live items.
This change only affects level 70 two-handed melee weapons.
This change affects two-handed melee weapons of all rarities.

We are still considering additional changes if needed but this should be a solid step towards making 2-Handers viable again for all classes.

finally lizard dev team using their brain properly

they raise the dps range, but forgotten one thing, max stats

syukur i simpannnnnnnn 2H item. Syukurrrrrrr

Maximus and the furnace gonna be huge.

Furnace will be nerfed soon...but.........diabos will be usefull..yay...!!!

this is great. i am so sick of dual wielding with melee chars.. while they at it, 2 handed melee weapons should be able to roll 2 socket.

to compensate the loss from dual wielding. hohoho. lucky i still keep my 'flying dragon' for my monk.

new looks of my 2-H weapons in PTR:

Can someone confirm if the current 2 handers damage range has been adjusted or you have to re farm it

it's retroactive, all existing 2H (in PTR) in my stash got buffed

Good news. Looks like my maximus will be ready for some firestater crusader 2 hander steamroll. + 10% damage from hellskull shield.. this is going to be epic.

LOL! Heavenly Strength has no love this round... with 20% reduced damage when using 2H, in nutshell, even if there is buff, it's very little for crusader...

Y u no buff 2 hander for DH!

Just did a run and the buffs pretty small though can see difference but T6 is still steamroll as far as shotgun goes

The reason why i always keep most of looted gears these days in ROS (one unique gear for each chars). lol

FINALLY could use a few hours to TRY RoS again...

Damn.. even the yellow 2 handers are quite powderful..

I think coz sentry too Op di.... later forum not happy.

it's time for 2 handed weapons to shine

This change is retroactive to existing live items. .....oh wait ...when will 2.1 be live? years from now?

But looking at ur picture it still lose to 1H? Dmg MINUS 29.4%

That's because that 2h has no socket yet. Will use Ramalandi's gift to add a socket when 2.1 goes life.

I think Ramalandi won't be so easy to obtain. Maybe drop rate like getting a Kukri or Wand of Woh....

Which means ...ccb knn ...QQ again..Fu

U hokkien lang?

Yay, zombie bears could be relevant again.

NOT THE BEAR AGAIN I HATE THE BEAR...

hi abam zorro, NAK boleh? boleh laaaaaa

how's that so?

The current 2H weapons have low DPS.
1H weapon + mojo are better than 2H weapon.

With the buff of 2H weapon, bears build could be a viable build again.
Bears build used to be one of the best builds in D3 ver 1.0 with 2H weapon (i.e. skorn).

Bears with fetish armies, zombie dogs and gargantuan.

skorn is cos of the LoH, CHD, and bleed over 5sec, no?

Skorn was used because of high damage, low attack speed, CHD and LS during the vanilla D3.

I play current pet and dot build.
Both of them can't beat the syiokness of spamming zombie bears.