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Sword and Shield

The Good: Increased chance to block the enemy's attacks; the Overwhelming Attacks proc has a very good chance to manifest and effective gives the wielder the power of a Two-handed user.

The Shield, itself, can often provide other bonuses besides the obvious -for example, many Shields have some form of Magical Defense and the shield itself usually adds to the fighter's overall defensive makeup.

The Bad: Can't strike multiple targets, and the One-handed weapons simply aren't as powerful as their 2-handed counterparts; if a fighter can't get a sizable number of Overwhelming Attacks, then the increased amount of time spent in battle with weaker 1H weps compared to 2H eventually results in the same amount of damage to the Player as the 2-hander -at least, that's what the stats seems to show.

Two-Handed Weapon

The Good: Easily the most powerful weapons in the game, these items can often do as much damage in a single hit as a comparable 1H can do on a critical!!

Their ability to damage multiple targets is extremely useful; they can significantly cut down the time that a given battle lasts (personally, I've 'measured' that a 2H battle can sometimes be completed in as little as 1/2 the time as a 1H battle with the same monsters!!).

2H weapons are often outfitted with nasty Procs like Penetrated Armor and Stun, which can do serious damage above and beyond their already high damage values -while 1H weapons have most of the same Procs, these don't seem to be as abundant in 1H Weapons as in 2H, and the Procs in 2H weapons usually seem to have higher % rates and durations.

The Bad: Virtually NO Block or Parry, unless your Weapon provides some; you are essentially forced to rely on your own personal DEX and AGI scores (plus whatever your Armor and Weps provide) to avoid getting damaged -if you ain't fast, you're going to take it all in the shorts.

Even with decent Evade, you'll still have to absorb many more hits over time than your 1H/Shield counterpart.


Dual Weapons

The Good: The obvious ability to get in a dual-hit; and recent iterations of the HV engine give the offhand weapon an equal chance to manifest its procs as the main hand.

One can mix-and-match any number of 1H weapons for the express purpose of stacking Physical Stats to meet a given goal -for example, if I wanted to, with the 1H Weapons in my Inventory, I could equip two of them to get +10 (!!) to my STR, or +3-4 to my END, or as much as 5-6 to my DEX!

One can similarly try to mix-and-match Proc stats as well, reasoning that if one wep's Proc doesn't get the badguy, then the other one probably will. Likewise with any protective bonuses to protect against magic, add to one's Parry stats, et al.

The Bad: Like the 2H, unless one creates a massive bonus to their evasive stats, and/or their weps greatly increase their bonuses to parry, then they otherwise pretty much have to take and endure whatever the enemy throws at them.

Personally, I haven't yet really seen the point at which the Offhand Strike becomes enough of a regular happenstance to be worth all that much; the chance to do so seems to remain pretty much the same no matter high the Proficiency in this style is developed -and IMO, that 2nd Wep is really little more than a creative way to boost offensive stats.





So......those of you who have trained extensively with all three styles: which fighting style is the best overall one to use in your opinion, and why??



(Note that 'the best style to use' doesn't necessarily mean that it is the style that you might personally like the most, just the style that best gets the job done IYO.)

This post has been edited by Thanos008: Sep 13 2009, 09:48

2h swords are the best for grinding.

dual or 1h+shield is better for arenas and both have their pros and cons but it depends on what armor you have.

This post has been edited by Eutopia: Sep 13 2009, 10:04

I spent a lot of time with dual wielding but the offhand didn't nearly trigger often enough, I felt.

Had a lot of fun with 2handers but in the 05 update the damage just became crazy and I wasn't able to get through 20 cake lvls with a 2hander.
Also, the 2hander wasn't noticeably more powerful, it was 7% more damage than a bronze dagger....WTF?
7% more damage and 700% heavier and 3X the miss rate. Massively unbalanced.

Sword and board is working for me now, got a 16% block shield that pulls it's weight and I had been using a bronze dagger I found on about lvl 5, has +33 to hit and 7% parry...hard to find a better dagger, strangely.
sword shield is definitely the way to go, the slightly improved damage of the other classes nowhere near make up for stopping more hits, especially now there are 9 monsters per round.

I use a staff (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Staff and shield cause I'm just that epic /flex

In all seriousness though I switched from DW to 1h shield purely for survival reasons. Extra damage means shit if you die in a third of the time...Now to just get the armor I want, since I have a shield with 17% block (though I want one with more (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif)).

My 3 most common load outs

I have stuck to doing arenas like this with all of them
Arena 1-2 nightmare
Arena 3-6 Heroic
Arena 7-8 Normal

Heavy Plate Chest the rest cloth and Tower Shield. Parry 10 Block 21 Evade 15. I can do all my arenas as above, and I can get to round 20 in cake just using crudes, of which I don't get enough drops and I end up buying 10-15 crudes ever so often. I take 5-10 damage average. For my dex/agi build this set up really sucks, especially full cloth, and I can't even bother running dualies

Heavy Plate everything. Parry 10 Block 21 Evade 1. I can get to round 30 in cake with crudes, it's a slog but I get there. 3-6 average damage. I could buy better armor, but I'm running level 75-170 gear that I got when gear came out with better stats then the garbage dropping out now and I'm pretty maxed proficiency wise in everything. I dodge 60% and block %40, so it's all those special gangbangs that end up making me wipe.

Heavy Plate everything but running my 2 hander I can go to round 40-50 in cake. Domino is around 30% and I have a 3 tick 70 damage bleed. I blow through rounds tactically in 1/2 the time the above builds take, I just have to stop mashing the number buttons and switch targets and let the dots do it to it. I still take 3-6 damage but only because I'm putting them down twice as fast. 2 Hander is the only weapon that isn't around %40, it's %10, and It's really fun right now, so that's what I'm going to be running for a while. My 2 hander has like 25 acc so it's just a bit less then most of the one handers I have in the closet. As it's a katana it shouldn't have like 25/30 burden interference or whatever, that's just insane for what it is (A FRIGGING KATANA!), got a bad generation roll on that one. Max burd/inter is like 90-100, and it doesn't even effect me! When I go down to like 40/40 or less.... it still doesn't do anything for me... and it's not like I'm going to be tossing spells around.

Not enough off hand and critical hits. I seriously should be running a decent rogue build, but nope, guess I'll have to wait till level 100. I have this aversion to light beer... just say no to light beer.

My staff? It's 0%, but I have a few nice staffs.

Stats usually about
Str 32 + 10
Dex 44 +5
Agi 44 +5
End 44 +8
Wis 32
Int 32

I used to be a 2handed users. You might want to add low accuracy to 2handed's con chart. I switched to 1handed+shield a while back and have no intention of ever going back. Survivability has been so much higher.

強力な盾を持っていれば
Sword and Shieldでもいいのかもしれませんが
今私が持っている盾では
あってもなくてもあまり差が感じられないので
今はなるべく早く敵を全滅できるように
Two-Handed Weaponで戦っています

I used to go duel-wield with a club of balance and a dagger for +70 acc, +16 dmg and 15% to stun.
Then I found a shield with 25 to block and have been sword and board since. With the shield, dodge and the parry+block from overwhelming strike I get hit 52% of the time. Along with that I wear full plate so the damage is usually negligible anyway. The accuracy of duel and the speed of 2h isn't worth getting hit twice as much especially since you can block spells. As you can guess I find this build to be the best, but it cost me a hell of a lot of credits to get it working so well.

Sword and shield.

I have a shield with a 20% block, it's 30 levels below me though. Half my level, but I still can't find a better one.

I have two plate armors, one chainmail and two cloth. I'd like some more plate though.

Can get to about round 50 in cakefest. I can only get to fresh meat though without elixers.

I used to use a staff but I had troble beating a test of faith then.

This post has been edited by nick321: Sep 13 2009, 13:25

Ive been DW+Magic since I started.

With cloth and light armour I get a pretty minor negative bonus' and with some decent 1h'ers (Axe and dagger) with a bleeding proc, I'm pretty much alright.

The damage mutlipier from the axe and the acc of the dagger gives me overall better stats than some of the 2hders Ive found/seen for sale.

Not forgetting that second wind sometimes brings me a few nice mana points, I just grind through mobs and heal when needed. My cure heals me for around 1/4-1/5 of my health anyways.

I'm using a two-hander right now, and the damage output is amazing, especially when Penetrated Armor comes into play. I have about a 28% chance of a Domino Attack, so when they trigger together, critters die.

Accuracy is a bit of a problem, but not enough that it's a complaint.

DW for the stats mainly extra dmg multipliers and accuracy bonus, plus I can get 17% parry reducing dmg close to what some shields are at. I sometimes use 1h+shield for grindfest.

Started with 2h, hated it. Switched to dual wield, loved it, still using DW.

You forgot staffs but yeah.

Another vote for staff.

You forgot staffs but yeah.

(Assuming that you're talking to me) I didn't forget Staves, I deliberately omitted them; I've never yet used one -although the ever-increasing pounding that I am taking from Magic is making me strongly consider training as a Mage for a while just to see if Magic Resistance can further go up by raising one's proficiency in it......

I bounce back and forth between DW and Sword/Board. I also keep a long sword in inventory for use every once in awhile.

I've worked mostly with 1h + shield, with a (rising) secondary in staffs. i occasionally 2h but more for fun than effect.

See a lot of 'Sword and Board;' I'm guessing that's why Tower Shields are so damned hard to come buy.


Now I'm SO glad that I never sold the one that I have -and I was THAT close to doing so, too, back when I won it a 'long' time ago.


I've probably seen 3, maybe 4 Tower Shields, tops, go through the Bazaar in the last few weeks.


This post has been edited by Thanos008: Sep 13 2009, 20:29