I've had my fill of my tanking follower holding his/her shield up doing nothing. Time for a dual wielder. Any advice on how to best get them to do it instead of single wielding is appreciated. Prefer heavy armor and high health.

Thanks.

don't give them ...wait for it....a shield.
this way, they'll use weapons with no shield.
even a mage follower, if i give it some swords will use them rather that magic (it's main powers)
but i love it when she's using "dual staff"

Funny.
However, Mjoll for example will single wield, even without a shield, at least sometimes. So I was wondering if there is a trick to forcing.

You'll have better luck getting a heavy armor type to use a 2 hander then dual wield.

I've looked into it and I don't believe it can be done. Would be nice though.

Maybe since they can't be killed having them do massive damage would seem unfair. More likely, it was just too much of a hassle to program that option into the NPC's tactics.

It seems your problem can just as well be solved by a two handed weapon user, no? They never stand around doing nothing.

In that case Mjoll the Lioness is your woman.

Janessa? (the dark elf in whiteruns archer shop) Dual-Wields. Can't give much specifics as I dumped all followers, but I know she was using a steel dagger/iron sword for quite a while.

Janessa is a light armor user. If OP is on PC, he can use the NPC Editor to change the fighting styles of any NPC. So, with a little tweaking he could make any heavy armor user a dual wielder.

I read that Janessa was the only one that dual wields. When you talk to her, she says a bunch of stuff about stealth, so I'm guessing she isn't big into heavy armor. Like others have mentioned, it might be better to just give them a two handed weapon.

I'm currently using Janessa and she is a beast in combat. As long as you give her some good armor, weapons and health potions, she is not too bad at tanking. Plus if your the sneak type another added bonus.

Mjoll is your best all around tank in my opinion. She has four specialties; heavy armor, two handed, one handed, archery. She will use the bow when she can't rush the fight, or if you take away her good melee weapons and leave her with a good bow. She seems to prefer an ebony blade on right and a staff of fireballs on left over the legendary Deadric two handed with double enchantments, and I haven't figured out why yet. Super effective crowd control tactic though......