Pet Dual Wield Mechanics?
 

52 levels into my enchanter and I'm still not really clear on this. There's a lot of conflicting info out there. Maybe some of it was true in the past and no longer is; I have no idea.

For simplicity's sake:
Does a humanoid charmed pet benefit if I toss him 2 rusty daggers?
Does my animation pet benefit if I give him 2 rusty daggers?
Does a mage/necro pet at this level benefit from 2 rusty daggers?
Does giving a pet a torch still help at all?

I play with a mage a lot and I'm never sure if I should be asking for summoned dags or not.

Fairly sure handing any humanoid charmed/mage/nec/animation a non-magic weapon will render its melee attacks non-magical, making them unable to hit magical things. (undead/elementals/many others/etc.)

Pets past a certain level (39+? 44+?) always dual wield when summoned, so there's no point in handing them any weapon unless it has some stat/proc (resistance/ac/snare/root/tash/etc) you want. (tinfoil hatters say it helps them max hit more, never seen any proof though)

Also http://wiki.project1999.com/Pet_Guide

Edit : You can always just watch your pet hits to determine if it is dual-wielding. If it hits at most 2 times per round (not counting specials like kick/bash/spells), it's not, if it hits 3-4 times per round, it is. Keep in mind some charmed things might be holding an invisible 2hander gimping their DW ability permanently (or sometimes you can have a melee disarm them for you)

Pets can use equipment, so loading up your pet with garbage that's going to rot anyway (not including notrade..pets won't use that) can be an easy/free way to boost their stats. No good for chain-petting or charm soloing, but in a duo+ situation where you have the same pet for a long time, it can help immensely.

Edit2: It's worth noting negative stats are useful for charming, as -MR gear will help charm stick, and you can get the gear back if you kill the pet.

Yes
No
No
Yes

Even though torches were supposed to be fixed, I ran across a former chanter pet in SS once that was perma hasted and had 2 torches. It wrecked my epic and killed me. Guide at the time said there was nothing they can do.

I don't think they can see the haste buff on the NPC, but they were able to tell me that the cube had 2 torches. I ended up killing it after running back and eating the death. It certainly drained a ton of my mana.

Yeah, torches still trigger dual wielding. So do mandolins, horns, lanterns, all kinds of other random off-hand, non-weapon shit.

Pets WILL hit harder when given a weapon with a damage stat higher than their own fists are. That can usually only happen at the lowest levels (pet's level 10 or lower etc).

Giving a rusty scythe to your level 4 animation or skele pet really does make a difference against those nasty gnoll guardians.