Sorry to necro but the reason it is being interpreted that Dual Wielder allows the gauntlets to work has to do with the specific wording of the feat, not merely that it removes the requirement for the light property. In other words it alters Two-Weapon Fighting.
"When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand."
"You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't light."
In my opinion the feat changes the wording from holding to wielding pretty unambiguously. In other words it completely rewrites the restriction on what kind of weapons you have to be using to use Two-Weapon Fighting. Basically the struck phrase is replaced with the underlined phrase. These phrases are almost identical but change "light" to "one-handed", and "holding" to "wielding". I believe that the second wording change is material.
Now I can see an interpretation that "holding" and "wielding" are not mutually exclusive and unlike the word "light" the feat does not explicitly call out the word "holding" as being nullified. But that's not really how the rules in 5e work. The feats and other specific rules don't explicitly call out every single word of a general rule that they modify unless it's actually a key word such as the light property.
It's naturalistic language so interpretations can differ, but the main thing that line of the feat is doing is changing the restrictions without altering how Two-Weapon Fighting functions mechanically. The designers did not completely rewrite Two-Weapon fighting because they assumed that they could describe changing the restriction naturalistically and let it be understood that the mechanics of Two-Weapon Fighting do not change, and that we would be able to sus out what parts of the text are mechanics and which are restrictions. I would argue that you only need to satisfy the restrictions imposed in the feat to execute Two-Weapon fighting. The feat is clearly overriding that part of the general rule and placing it's own restrictions in place of the previous ones.
"Each of the armor's gauntlets counts as a simple melee weapon while you aren't holding anything in it, and it deals 1d8 thunder damage on a hit."
I understand the importance of lawyering above, but I think its worth checking this sentence with bit of common sense. Its clear that, not holding anything else, you are already wielding two weapons from the get go. It does not make much sense to specify that, if we are only allowed to use one of them. Compare it to the Infiltrator armor, that clearly states you only have one lightning launcher on your armor there.
Now with even bit more common sense I think you can argue to not even needing the Dual Wielder feat. Imagine if you put a dagger in your off hand. You would be able to attack with it as a bonus action, because it has the light feature. Drop the dagger and you can no longer off hand attack? Does not compute.
It's not about realism at that point, it's game design. 5e, at least in the original ruleset does have that weird rule that you can use Dual Wielding with two daggers, but not with two fists. I don't think we should start again with the whole discussion, there is no new information to add to this.
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Sorry to necro but the reason it is being interpreted that Dual Wielder allows the gauntlets to work has to do with the specific wording of the feat, not merely that it removes the requirement for the light property. In other words it alters Two-Weapon Fighting.
"When you take the Attack action and attack with a
light melee weapon that you’re holdingin one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a differentlight melee weapon that you’re holdingin the other hand.""You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't light."
In my opinion the feat changes the wording from holding to wielding pretty unambiguously. In other words it completely rewrites the restriction on what kind of weapons you have to be using to use Two-Weapon Fighting. Basically the struck phrase is replaced with the underlined phrase. These phrases are almost identical but change "light" to "one-handed", and "holding" to "wielding". I believe that the second wording change is material.
Now I can see an interpretation that "holding" and "wielding" are not mutually exclusive and unlike the word "light" the feat does not explicitly call out the word "holding" as being nullified. But that's not really how the rules in 5e work. The feats and other specific rules don't explicitly call out every single word of a general rule that they modify unless it's actually a key word such as the light property.
It's naturalistic language so interpretations can differ, but the main thing that line of the feat is doing is changing the restrictions without altering how Two-Weapon Fighting functions mechanically. The designers did not completely rewrite Two-Weapon fighting because they assumed that they could describe changing the restriction naturalistically and let it be understood that the mechanics of Two-Weapon Fighting do not change, and that we would be able to sus out what parts of the text are mechanics and which are restrictions. I would argue that you only need to satisfy the restrictions imposed in the feat to execute Two-Weapon fighting. The feat is clearly overriding that part of the general rule and placing it's own restrictions in place of the previous ones.
"Each of the armor's gauntlets counts as a simple melee weapon while you aren't holding anything in it, and it deals 1d8 thunder damage on a hit."
I understand the importance of lawyering above, but I think its worth checking this sentence with bit of common sense. Its clear that, not holding anything else, you are already wielding two weapons from the get go. It does not make much sense to specify that, if we are only allowed to use one of them. Compare it to the Infiltrator armor, that clearly states you only have one lightning launcher on your armor there.
Now with even bit more common sense I think you can argue to not even needing the Dual Wielder feat. Imagine if you put a dagger in your off hand. You would be able to attack with it as a bonus action, because it has the light feature. Drop the dagger and you can no longer off hand attack? Does not compute.
It's not about realism at that point, it's game design. 5e, at least in the original ruleset does have that weird rule that you can use Dual Wielding with two daggers, but not with two fists. I don't think we should start again with the whole discussion, there is no new information to add to this.