This is all assuming 1/1 speed on weapons.
The ideal number is 30 for single-wielding (you'll get this), 1 sec attack, 1 sec recharge. (1 attack in 2 seconds)
The ideal number for dual-wielding is 40 (you won't get this), 1 sec attack, 1 sec attack, 1 sec recharge. (2 attacks in 3 seconds)
The ideal number for triple-wielding is 45 (nope, won't get this either), 1 sec attack, 1 sec attack, 1 sec attack, 1 sec recharge. (3 attacks in 4 seconds)
The reason you won't get the ideal numbers is that recharge interrupts attacking (attacks are paused while recharging) and vice versa, but recharge doesn't interrupt recharging. So the ideal numbers rely on all weapons attacking once, then all of them recharging at once, unfortunately, this doesn't happen very often. Most of the time you'll see maybe a/a/r/a/r/a/r/a/a/r/a/a/r/a/r etc. the exact number of attacks per minute with the different wielding options is not known, because the formula for when each weapon goes into recharge is not known, you can see this easily by attacking a mob while dual-wielding, and watching the attack/recharge bars.
There's also other factors that have an effect on this, nanocasting resets attack bars, but does not effect recharge, you'll have less optimal attack/recharge cycles at the beginning of fights than after a while (it would seem), and I'm not entirely sure if movement effects which weapon is "active".
Also, no other weapon will attack or recharge when one weapon is in attack mode, so if you have one weapon that is 10/1, and two that are 1/1 (weapons a,b and c, respectively, you might have an (ideal) 60-second attack/recharge cycle like this:
Code: Select all
|sec|wep|mod|
|000| a| a|
|010| b| a|
|011| c| a|
|012|abc| r|
|013| a| a|
|023| b| a|
|024| c| a|
|025|abc| r|
|026| a| a|
|036| b| a|
|037| c| a|
|038|abc| r|
|039| a| a|
|049| b| a|
|050| c| a|
|051|abc| r|
|052| a| a|
Leading to 12 attacks per minute (and that's ideally), versus using one of the 1/1 weapons for 30 attacks, the 10/1 weapon for 5 attacks or both 1/1 weapons for 40 attacks.
How much time is allocated for each weapon, and how that is calculated, is a very interesting calculation, if it is allocated in a specific order, and all weapons have the same amount of time allocated, weapons with long recharge become significantly more interesting than weapons with long recharge (even more so than otherwise), since that weapon would end up recharging the other two weapons (ideally), giving you x extra attacks per minute without having any penalty.
So, to get back to the issue of how many attacks you get per minute, it depends, the numbers freeman posted are... strange, to say the least, and to get proper (ideal) numbers, you have to run tests yourself (freeman's numbers do not use 1/1 fist speed, and still gets ridiculously high numbers for PvP, and more normal numbers for PvM, smells fishy to me!)
) but simplistically 40 attacks per minute > 30 attacks per minute.
, which is why I was thinking about one.