your offhand weapon determines the speed of the dual attacks, both the click right and left, and the hold right and left mouse button attacks. i use a mace in the right hand and a dagger in the other and the dual attacks are super fast. swinging both weapons in the click attack is faster then swinging the mace by itself, but the downside is that you cannot move your character when doing the click attack. you can really murder ppl with your dual hold attack because if finishes quickly when your offhand is a dagger. the limit of your damage ability then depends on how much stamina you have. combine this with high armor value and health + elemental fury shout and you will be unstoppable on any difficulty..

Something that I've learned that is absolutely deadly with a dual wield build is that the Power Attack speed is also determined by the off-hand weapon, and that if that weapon is unenchanted, you can use an enchanted weapon in your right hand and still be able to use Elemental Fury shout to power attack at that ridiculous speed! This makes for probably the strongest DPS I've ever seen in this game.

Using dual Scimitars - an unenchanted in the off-hand, a dual enchanted Fire/Shock damage in the right hand - with one rank of Dual Flurry and Dual Savagery, using Elemental Fury and my Redguard's Adrenaline Rush, I was able to effectively wipe out the entire population of Solitude before my 60 secs were up on Expert

Also using the same combo I was able to bring down an Ancient Dragon from approx 90% health in under 10 secs! Crazy stuff, plus you look cool as hell spinning around at the speed of light.

Indeed.

OP, you speak of not noticing a big difference in attack speed (other than the dual power attack), but just trust in the perks and build your dual wield character for a while. When you've at least got both ranks of dual flurry, go ahead and move to another character without those perks and pick up two weapons. Then you'll really see a difference.

I go with dual-wield almost all the time. Only when I need a spell in the other or am RPing in Blades Armor for the MQ do I not have Mehrune's Razor in the left and another choice weapon in the right.

No reason not to dual wield for a melee build. You don't need to block because of how easy it is to hit 80% mitigation on physical damage and you take things out with one power attack when perked up.

A roleplaying build that is why it matters.
Just try it for a roleplaying build.

To wield 2 weapons at once, silly.

It isn't really, when your sword is engaged in a dual with one and somebody else attacks, but in game it made to be the deadliest of all combatant.

That's what they thought about Musashi too.

Dual Wielding is ridiculously overpowered actually. You can dish out an awesome amount of damage in a small amount of time if done correctly. My Ranger has 12 Archery perks and uses an Ebony Bow, and I only have 6 One Handed perks and use Blades Swords(which are a lot worse than Ebony) and yet I still dish out more damage Dual Wielding.

DW is the highest damage output for melee. The drawback is not being able to block. Though lets be real, that's not really an issue.

akimbo swords or axes r the best. just avoid the specific weapon perks (bleed/crit) because they are useless. get the extra damage for dual wielding power attack perk, its like shooting the enemy with a striker extended mags damage proficiency that shoots mini nukes.

Dual wielding is super fun and just plain awesome. Slice and dice through your enemies in no time at all.

Combat is more button mashing than finesse for this game, so dual wield = greater dps = better.

That is like asking a hologram of a long dead alien race that worked itself into extinction just to turn their whole planet into a ship... "because it's cool"