The Nick weapon mastery property is a bit of a game changer, and a big part of that changed game is that it will allow you to stack off-hand hits with the extra attack granted by the Dual Wielder feat.
Since the 2024 PHB has come out, I've been champing at the bit to try out a few new character builds - among others, I've made multiple versions of my old dragonborn Eldritch Knight, and while I'd love to be able to customize my ability score bonuses from the Sage background (I'll take Intelligence, but I really need a +2 for my Strength, unless I want to go back and do a crazy Shillelagh build, but then I'd need to take the Guide background, which doesn't boost Intelligence either, so... Essentially, until we get customizable backgrounds or just giving origin feats of the player's choice with old backgrounds, you're going to be a little stuck except perhaps if you play a human) for now I might just pick up a similar old background like the Cloistered Scholar so I can have my freedom of boosts.
Anyway, while dual-wielding has become a lot better, the Great Weapon Master feat has also become a lot better. While the boost to damage is lower (it's now your PB, rather than a flat 10) the massive upside here is that you no longer take a -5 penalty to your hit. Now, as long as the attack is part of the attack action (and this is something I got wrong with my earlier look at it when talking paladins) you just get to add your proficiency bonus to the damage.
And, according to some hypothetical ranges of AC, in basically all cases except against targets with extraordinarily low ACs like Zombies or Gelatinous Cubes, the fact that you're not taking a penalty to your hits makes you ultimately deal more damage (and you hit more often, which frankly just feels better).
The question, though, that I had, was how it compares to dual wielding.
For a Fighter, my initial guess is that it'll do better. The reason for this is that, while classes like Barbarians and Paladins (and Rogues, but they're not likely to be wielding heavy weapons unless they somehow get proficiency in longbows or heavy crossbows) tend to add damage to their attacks, while Fighters tend to get more damage simply by doing more attacks.
In other words, bonuses like Rage and Radiant Strikes really benefit a lot from getting additional attacks, while Fighters' level 11 feature is an additional attack. And again at level 20 (though essentially we can say that the number of attacks per attack action a Fighter has for the most levels is 3).
So, here's what we're looking at:
Dual Wielders - using two light weapons (presumably d6 weapons if we're not pulling Shillelagh shenanigans) we get effectively five attacks per turn by level 11, unless we need our bonus action for something. Three primary attacks with our attack action, and then we get our Nick attack with a scimitar (I think that's the only d6 light weapon with Nick?) still as part of the action, and then finally our dual wielder feat attack with our bonus action. If we take the Two Weapon Fighting Style feat, we're adding Strength (or potentially Dexterity, as Scimitars and Shortswords are also finesse weapons) to the Nick attack, but not to the attack granted by Dual Wielder.
Now, the math gets way more complicated thanks to the Shortsword's (or Handaxe's) Vex property. There are a lot of ways to get advantage on attacks, so I'm tempted to be lazy here and just ignore it and go for potential damage rather than looking at hits and crits.
If we assume a +5 to Strength by level 11 (which might not be such a safe assumption given all the half-feats - still, we could start off with a 17 in Strength, boost it to 18 with Dual Wielder and then grab two other feats that boost Strength at levels 6 and 8 - the only reason I'd feel skeptical is if we wanted to get War Caster on an Eldritch Knight) we're looking at 4 attacks that hit for 1d6+5 (we're also not assuming we get any magic weapons) and then one more attack that deals 1d6 flat.
This brings the potential damage to 5d6+20, or about 37.5 damage per turn.
With Great Weapon Master, again, we're only relying on a single feat here, and can have the same Strength progression. Aesthetically, I love the Maul, but I also think that the Greatsword's Graze mastery could be really, really good (always be damaging). Still, the math starts to get a bit hairy, and I'm lazy. So we'll talk just potential damage. You could also take a Greataxe of course, but I think this might be more appealing to a Paladin or Barbarian, because I think you do get to add bonus damage to the cleave attack, the only thing you're not adding being your Strength. Of course, it's also a bit situational.
The math here is relatively simple: our Maul or Greatsword hits for 2d6+5 (our Strength)+4(our proficiency bonus at this level). So, 2d6+9, or an average of 16 damage per hit. With three attacks, that's 48 damage.
I think my instinct was right.
I really think you can't ignore the power of adding your proficiency bonus to your damage - something that is fully multiplied thanks to your third attack.
Essentially, if Dual Wielding and Great Weapon Master are balanced against each other assuming you have two attacks per action (which is true for Paladins, Barbarians, Rangers, and Monks - as well as Fighters at levels 5-10) our third attack upsets this balance. (Indeed, if we rewind to level 10, we're essentially subtracting 1d6+5 from the dual wielder, for a total of 29 damage, versus subtracting a full 16 from the GWM, for a total of 32 - still better, but closer.)
Getting magic weapons can shift things toward the Dual Wielder - it becomes another one of these bonuses multiplied by the extra attacks. But assuming that if the dual-wielder gets a pair of +1 weapons, we should also assume the GWM gets a +1 weapon as well, meaning that we're just adding the bonus a number of times equal to the difference in number of attacks to see the difference in damage potential - which is two. Even with +3 weapons, the Dual Wielder's total is only going up by 6 compared to the Great Weapon Master, when the GWM was already 10.5 damage ahead.
Now:
How does layering Polearm Master on top of that look?
What we gain from Polearm Master is a bonus action attack that deals 1d4+5. Unfortunately, and unlike my post about paladins, because this is a bonus action, you don't get to add that proficiency bonus to this damage, so it really does sit at 1d4+5 (though if you have a +1 polearm, it should confer this bonus to both the regular attacks and the Pole Strike.
And, you know, we get reach if we're using a Lance, Glaive, Halberd, or Pike. (And thankfully Lances now only get the good part of their special properties).
What we give up is a bit of damage from downgrading from 2d6 to 1d10.
Our level 11 Fighter who took Polearm Master as one of those feats at level 6 or 8 and who is fighting with any of those 1d10 polearms will be doing 1d10+5, then an additional 4 for GWM, so 1d10+9 for each of these hits, or 14.5, which then comes to 43.5, and then slap on that 1d4+5 (which averages to 7.5) and we're looking at 51 damage.
So it definitely looks worth it to downgrade our damage dice for that additional attack, though again, it costs a bonus action - the pure GWM will only have to worry about using their bonus action for their Hew attack, leaving their bonus action free on many if not most turns. That said, it's only 3 points ahead of not getting that attack at all.
And I think it should be obvious that GWM is still contributing more damage here than PAM - to look at what this would be if you only had Polearm Master, just subtract 12 from the PAM's total damage potential, putting it closer to the Dual Wielding set-up.
Also, as a minor note: GWM is the only version of these for which Action Surge is truly multiplicative - Dual Wielder and Polearm Master both use a bonus action, which doesn't get replicated by action surge.
So, my recommendation if you want to really push your damage as a Fighter is to go with Great Weapon Master as soon as you can pick it up, and then possibly Polearm Master if you want to push things further (nicely, these can both boost Strength).
Ok, now let's look at Barbarians.
Barbarians don't really get a clear damage boost feature at level 11 like Paladins and Fighters do (Brutal Strikes does come online at 9, but it's fairly weapon-agnostic given that you can only use it once a turn and its damage dice don't care what you're swinging).
The big, key thing here is that they will get a +3 bonus to damage thanks to their Rage (and I think Barbarians are very unlikely to run out of Rages now).
Here, my instincts are pointing toward Dual Wielding probably being the way to go. A Handaxe or Shortsword in one hand and a Scimitar in the other will let us take advantage of Nick. That said, we don't actually get Fighting Styles, meaning outside of going to old sources for Fighting Initiate or the like, we're going to have to lose that 5 on our off-hand attacks. We will still get our +3 Rage damage bonus, though.
So, with the Dual Wielder feat, we're going to be making two fully-functional attacks with our action, each dealing 1d6+5+3, or 11.5. Then, our Nick attack will do 1d6+3, or 6.5.
Now, here we do hit a bit of a jam - we can't make the Dual Wielder attack on our first turn, because we need our bonus action to rage. We're only 1d6+3 damage on that turn, but depending on how long combat goes, it might not be totally fair for us to assume that we'll get plenty of turns after that with our full complement of attacks.
On the other hand, Rage now lasts 10 minutes, and if we're in a combat-to-combat situation, we might still be raging from a previous encounter (or from Rage-stealthing to sneak up on these fools).
So, screw it, we'll assume you're already raging.
Thus, it becomes pretty simple - two attacks that deal 1d6+8 and two that deal 1d6+3. So, 4d6+22, which comes to 36 average damage.
With GWM, we're looking at just two attacks that are hitting for 2d6 (or 1d12, in which case we'd have to dock it a single damage point over the two attacks) +8. That's 15 damage per hit, for a total average of 30. Actually at this point quite a bit behind our dual-wielder (doing 5/6 of its damage).
Now, if we use Polearm Master alone, we're looking at two hits for 1d10+8, or 13.5, doubled to 27, and then our Pole Strike is hitting for 1d4+8, or 10.5, putting us at 37.5.
Fascinating! So, in this case, the Barbarian's best damage comes with Polearm Master.
If we're worried about going into combat without raging, we'll need to subtract the bonus action attacks from the DW and PAM builds on the first turn, pushing their first turn (and only that, most likely) down to 29.5 and 27, respectively.
Now, I suspect that a combined PAM and GWM build will be our best by a long shot.
Here, we're looking at two attacks for now 1d10+12 (5 from Strength, 3 from Rage, 4 from GWM) each for 17.5, combined to make 35 damage (only one behind our dual-wielder when they're already raging) and then getting to add that same 10.5 once we're raging as a bonus action, for a total of 45.5.
My Bugbear World Tree Barbarian with the insane reach on his attacks is looking better and better.
Again, there are nuances here that I'm 100% breezing past. The constant advantage granted by Vex (and once you get to level 13, you're basically always going to have advantage between Vex and Studied Attacks) might really make a difference. On the other hand, Graze from Greatswords and Glaives might actually wind up adding more damage (especially against foes with high ACs).
Given the lack of nuance here, I think we can actually use the Barbarian as a model for the Paladin - instead of a rage bonus we're adding our 1d8 Radiant Strike damage - which on average is actually better than the Barbarian's bonus. Paladins can also take a Fighting Style, and while Great Weapon Fighting is actually pretty much useless (2d6 goes from an average of 7 to an average of 8 - worse than when it just you re-roll 1s and 2s, which got you an already-pitiful 8.33) the Two-Weapon Fighting Style feat actually adds a decently hefty chunk of damage - basically 5 at this level.
So, if we're adding 1.5 to each attack (as 1d8 is 4.5 on average and that's 1.5 higher than the flat rage bonus of 3 - and we're not even touching on the fact that it can crit) and also adding 5 to the Nick attack (the Dual Wielder attack doesn't benefit from this fighting style) we're essentially getting 6 extra damage from Radiant Strikes and 5 from the TWF feat, so the Paladin's dual-wielder damage is 47 (before we get into potential additional boosts like the excellent Divine Favor - which we might genuinely have to consider if DW still comes up short of GWM).
In the case of our pure GWM character, we're just adding that 1.5 to two attacks, so we're only really looking at 3 more than the Barbarian, so 33.
A pure PAM build will add 1.5 three times, or 4.5, which puts us at 42.
Finally, a combined PAM and GWM build will give us 1.5 three times, but is otherwise the same as the Barbarian, so we get 49.5. Ah-ha! We've finally outpaced the dual-wielder.
But, what about if we add Divine Favor?
This just adds 1d4 per attack. Our dual-wielder is only making one more attack per turn than our GWM/PAM, so the difference just comes to 2.5.
And wouldn't you freaking know it? That's precisely the difference between our Dual Wilder and our GWM/PAM before accounting for Divine Favor (because both are reliant on a bonus action for their full damage, they'll both be held back slightly on the first turn - the dualwielder loses 1d6+1d8 damage on turn 1 compared to the GWMPAM (or "Gwimpam") losing 1d4+1d8+5, meaning dual-wielders have a slight edge here.
So, what's my takeaway here?
Well, first we've got to acknowledge again that some masteries might really make a huge difference while others might not - Cleave is awesome if there are two enemies next to one another, but does nothing if there aren't. Vex could be enormous, but if you're, say, a Vengeance Paladin, you might have advantage already thanks to Vow of Enmity.
There are also other, non-damage things to consider. Reach weapons have the very helpful advantage of not forcing you to get into melee with foes with a normal melee range. If you're persnickity about things like somatic components, using a single two-handed weapon might be better than dual-wielding, as one of your hands will be free when you're not in the middle of attacking (though the new rules on drawing and stowing weapons might make this less of an issue).
And then there's which weapons you actually find. In the Curse of Strahd game I played in a few years ago, I'd been intending to go Polearm Master with my Paladin at first, but then we got a +2 Greatsword and I was the only one who could reasonably use it, so instead I took Great Weapon Master at level 8 (very shortly before the campaign kind of fell apart).
As a DM, I'd generally try to ensure that if someone took a feat for a particular weapon type, I'd try to ensure that there were such weapons to acquire (I'm really hoping we get more non-sword magic weapons, because it feels like 90% of the magic weapons in the 2014 DMG are swords). But if someone is running a published adventure strictly by the book, it might be easier to take some of these feats than others.
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