Edit: As of the Hotbar overhaul pre-launch, this is no longer applicable and would need to be reworked. I still think dual-wielding is handled poorly (in fact, possibly even moreso now) but that will have to wait for another time. I understand that the Shift+[button] is a pretty decent way to handle changing your offhand weapon, and there are dedicated L and R slots (which I personally always keep empty because it lets me easily put away both hands' items) but I realized a system that would probably work very well alongside the current one - equipping at the same time. Basically, this is how it would work: Say you have a sword in your 1 slot, a shield in your 2 slot, and a pistol in your 3 slot. If you had misc. junk or your L/R slots equipped, you could do the usual Shift method to equip these, or, alternatively, you could press 1 to equip your sword in your left hand, and while still holding 1, press 2 to equip the shield in your offhand. Hold left, press right, both get equipped at once. Easy! Fast! No reaching for shift required! Of course the Shift method would still be useful if you wanted to keep your sword equipped but then switch your offhand to your pistol, you'd press Shift+3, instead of [hold]1+3 (or you could do the hold-way, of course, and just remember that you still need to hold the sword button unless you want to replace it with the pistol instead of the shield)
