UPGRADE Dual Wielder in Sage Advice & Errata 5.5

I'm not sure there is, ultimately, as much confusion about it as it may seem looking at discussions. I think the vast majority of people arrive at the JC ruling after carefully parsing the wording of everything and there are a few people that don't, mostly trying to find some excuse that some things you can do with it couldn't possibly be intended (see below). For example, whenever I've seen it come up, it's usually one person with the alternate reading (or just general confusion) and a bunch of others trying to explain why the JC reading is correct.

I also cede that that particular reading gives us weapon swapping with a shield, which, regardless of how much I dislike it and feel it's well outside of the fantasy of a "two-weapon fighter", is also RAW.

The text on dual wielder is pretty clear

 When you take the Attack action on your turn and attack with a weapon that has the Light property, you can make one extra attack as a Bonus Action later on the same turn with a different weapon

if you attack with a light weapon you get the option to make a bonus action attack.

the text on light property and nick is clear as well

light property

When you take the Attack action on your turn and attack with a Light weapon, you can make one extra attack as a Bonus Action later on the same turn. That extra attack must be made with a different Light weapon, and you don’t add your ability modifier to the extra attack’s damage unless that modifier is negative

if you attack with a light weapon you can make a bonus action attack. if nick didn't exist you had the dual wielder feat you would be able to make a bonus action attack and have the choice between which source it came from. Just has if you have 2 ways to cast misty step you would choose which one you decide to use.

nick

When you make the extra attack of the Light property, you can make it as part of the Attack action instead of as a Bonus Action. You can make this extra attack only once per turn.

now one of your 2 potential bonus action attack is part of your action leaving the other one as a possibility for the bonus action attack.

now the two weapon fighting style says

When you make an extra attack as a result of using a weapon that has the Light property, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of that attack if you aren't already adding it to the damage.

this says if light property is what let you make an extra attack you can add your ability score. Both nick and dual wielder require you to have a weapon that has the light property in order to be granted the extra attack. Thus, you can apply your ability to the damage of both dual wielder and nick attacks.

Seems like letter of the law interpretation to me now is this broken?

If you do DPR calculations of dual wielding and great weapon fighting it is very similar for the entirety of the game. The biggest difference comes from things like attacks of opportunity, magical weapons and action surge are things that will benefit great weapon builds more and some spells like divine favor, conjure minor elemental(errataed version is still too strong), font of moonlight will benefit dual wielding more. Seems like a good place to be, both options are viable and there are reasons to want one or the other.

I wouldn't mind a sage advice confirming it so players who are unsure can reference it, but i don't think there is a need for an errata or wording change so far.

The one place where rules as written fail in my opinion is by not requiring you to be dual wielding at any point to use dual wielding features. This allows a rules as written loophole where you can weapon juggle to benefit from the features while holding a shield in the other hand. Obviously DM discretion if you can do it at your table, but it would be nice if the official rules covered it since it is an obvious case of RAW and RAI been different. to me the simplest solution is to make this change to the light property and dual wielder feat: 

When you take the Attack action on your turn and attack with a Light weapon while holding another light weapon in your other hand, you can make one extra attack as a Bonus Action later on the same turn. That extra attack must be made with a different Light weapon, and you don’t add your ability modifier to the extra attack’s damage unless that modifier is negative

When you take the Attack action on your turn and attack with a weapon that has the Light property while wielding a weapon in your other hand, you can make one extra attack as a Bonus Action later on the same turn with a different weapon

Maybe i'm missing some edge cases, but it would cover dual wielding as stowing a shield take an entire action not just an object interaction and not requiring the attack to be made with the weapon you have in the other hand allows for thrown weapons to work with dual wielder+nick. I don't know if dual wielder was meant to allow the extra attack to be made with a weapon that isn't light so I'm not changing that part of the text.

Quote from SoppyDnD >>

to me the simplest solution is to make this change to the light property and dual wielder feat: 

I would change that slightly more

Light property: When you take the Attack action on your turn and attack with a Light weapon while holding another light weapon in your other hand, you can make one extra attack as a Bonus Action later on the same turn. That extra attack must be made with the other a different Light weapon, and you don’t add your ability modifier to the extra attack’s damage unless that modifier is negative

When you take the Attack action on your turn and attack with a weapon that has the Light property while wielding a weapon in your other hand, you can make one extra attack as a Bonus Action later on the same turn with the other a different weapon. If the other weapon is a light weapon with the nick property, you may make this attack in addition to the attack granted by the light property.

(the last sentence is just clarification).

Yeah I didn't put the other weapon in my text for the specific situation of a thrown weapon build where you have a thrown weapon in each hand. Saying the other weapon would stop you from getting all your attacks since the other weapon will be inside the monster(hopefully) by the time you make your bonus action attack. You would get the bonus action attack with a returning weapon however and that feels wrong, having different number of attacks based on gear. Should thrown weapon builds have similar dps to TWF builds is another discussion entirely, personally I think it's fine given you are forced into a str build it doesn't scale as well with magic items and the range is close enough that you are pretty much in similar danger as you would on a melee build.

Quote from SoppyDnD >>

Yeah I didn't put the other weapon in my text for the specific situation of a thrown weapon build where you have a thrown weapon in each hand. Saying the other weapon would stop you from getting all your attacks since the other weapon will be inside the monster(hopefully) by the time you make your bonus action attack.

No it wouldn't. You only need to be wielding two weapons at the time you make the attack that unlocks the extra attack, you can make the extra attack even if you are no longer holding two weapons.

I see what you mean with the rule as follow

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Light property: When you take the Attack action on your turn and attack with a Light weapon while holding another light weapon in your other hand, you can make one extra attack as a Bonus Action later on the same turn. That extra attack must be made with the other a different Light weapon, and you don’t add your ability modifier to the extra attack’s damage unless that modifier is negative

When you take the Attack action on your turn and attack with a weapon that has the Light property while wielding a weapon in your other hand, you can make one extra attack as a Bonus Action later on the same turn with the other a different weapon. If the other weapon is a light weapon with the nick property, you may make this attack in addition to the attack granted by the light property.

(the last sentence is just clarification).

 this is what would happen on my turn if I have a character holding a dagger and a handaxe with the dual wielding feat. I take the attack action

I throw my dagger, it has nick I can now make an attack with the handaxe as it is the other weapon, since the dagger has nick this attack can be part of my attack action instead of as a bonus action. I also get dual wielder granting me the ability to do a bonus action attack with the handaxe as I attacked with a light weapon with a weapon in the other hand and it is the other weapon.

what i though was: I throw my handaxe as part of the attack action, then I want to throw another axe for my bonus action, but I can't, because the other handaxe is not the other weapon, the other weapon is the one i just threw. 

however it works because I could have brought out a second handaxe before making the second throw so I would be allowed to have a bonus action with that 2nd handaxe thanks to dual wielder, not sure what the advantage is to specify the other weapon vs leaving the text as is, but whatever wording they feel is best i would support as long as you can't get the bonus action attacks with a shield and you can with 2 weapons i'm happy.