Dual wielding

Summary
Dual wielding is a feature found in Halo 2 and 3 that allows you to wield two weapons at once, effectively doubling your firepower at the expense of meleeing/throwing grenades. One of the best ways to dual wield is the SMG/Plasma Rifle/Plasma Pistol combo (also known as the noob combo) which allows you to take down your opponent's shields with the energy of Plasma and then use the aptly named "bullet hose" to rip through the flesh of your opponents very quickly.

A bug happens in multiplayer when a player has a weapon in his backpack and dual-wields two of the same weapons. Though you don't shoot with them all, you do get 50% extra ammo, which can come very handy on big maps or on campaign maps with Flood or Hunters.

Advantages
When a player is dual-wielding, he or she is able to put many more projectiles in the air than if he hadn't been, causing more damage and eliminating targets faster than if he had only been using one weapon.

Plasma weapons can be combined with human weapons, easily taking down the shields then finishing off the target.

Disadvantages


When a player is dual-wielding he/she must drop the left weapon in order to melee or use grenades. While dual-wielding it is possible to use grenades and/or melee by pressing the corresponding button for either action, unless the player is using the "Boxer" button layout. In which case pressing the melee button only functions to fire the left weapon, the player must first drop the weapon by pressing "Y" and then melee.

When a player must reload their weapons, or if the weapons overheat, the player is vulnerable, and the reload time is also much higher than wielding a single weapon and reload it.

In order to switch to the secondary weapon from the dual-wielding position, the "Y" button must be pressed twice. Once to drop the left weapon and a second time to effectively switch to the secondary.

Weapons that have the dual-wield option do not have Zoom features and are generally less accurate at anything farther than mid-range.

Also, the Plasma Rifle, Brute Plasma Rifla and SMG's rate of fire is slightly lesser then normal and the accuracy goes worse.

Changes in Halo 3
The major difference between Halo 2 and Halo 3's dual wield is that the player now can control the reloading far more accurately. In Halo 2, you had to reload the two weapons simultaneously. In Halo 3, you could reload the left, right or both, independent of each other. A minor difference is that Bungie is making it a lot less desirable by making you start out with a non-dual wieldable weapon. By doing this, multiplayer gameplay is balanced.

Dual Wieldable Weapons

 * SMG
 * M6C
 * M6G
 * Plasma Pistol
 * Plasma Rifle
 * Brute Plasma Rifle
 * Spiker
 * Energy Sword?
 * mauler

Rules for Dual-Wielding

 * It must be a generally smaller weapon.
 * no scope
 * able to effectively control with only one hand

Related Links

 * Triple wielding