Posted by pintose on September 7, 2000 at 18:35:21:
In Reply to: yeah - depends on who you expect to be fighting..... posted by Magtograme on September 5, 2000 at 21:14:59:
> mace is good for mages, cos you get lagging attacks with cranial and it hurts gnomes more... pincer lags as well Im told but not as well > axes are harder to parry I think than maces and will scare the shite out of most assassins. > sword is superb if you expect to have to attack groups of people (cos of riposte).. which is why I chose it being a rager. > you get better defense with swords as well with flourintine over axe and mace.. so dont expect to tank as well with either... > hope thats of some help here is what is best for what broken down by spec dagger-best for getting you dead, do not spec in dagger it is bad juju! if you plan on being a rager defuinentaly make sword or hand one of your specs, for anyone definentaly make axe or mace one of your specs, when useing both make sure to master whirl and boneshatter, and use them in rapid sucesssion, it will bassically kill anything cause of the dex/str loss. and arial goes to 11dex and most will go down to 5 or 3 which means their ac skyrockets and their dodging stops. again swords give you a fighting chance against anything that hits as hard as you do othwerwise it just comes down to who kills who first, and against offensive majors it will always be them, kind of funny cause i can kill just about any non master transmuter in about 3 rounds out of form, uless they got aura and shield or barrier up. but it only takes them 2 rounds for a lion to kill me and a tiger about 9.
> boneshatter is great for making people unable to use their weapons... axes for destroying them
whip-it works, though i didn't really like it cause though strip and choke were nice on a cloud there are much better ways to do these things, that don't require you to dodge instead of [arry basicaly.
sword-FUNFUNFUN swords are the best all around spec in the game! if you make a cloud giant, or any giant for that matter, and you plan not to have a bunch of buddies to spell you up all the time this is the best spec you can take. works extremely well with maces and axes, which i know for fact don't parry jack shit. flurry is another bonus because you can wield some pretty wicked swords and cloud giants for some reason or another get massive amounts of mvs, maybe cause they fly but regardless my current giant pintose has about 850 mv at rank 49.
axes-the killed of paladins and anyclass that is not a mage. I cannot stress enough how weaponbreaker and shield cleave combined make up the best set of pking skills ever. unless of course you fighting a felar hand spec or assassin with turn blades mastered, even then overhead and pincer are heavy damage attacks, pincer lags you for 3 rounds and them for 2, disembowl i have personally never used but i hear it is decent. ohh and not good againast major offensive forms at all, because they hit harder then you, with maybe the exception of the ram, whirls str/dex affect is nice too.
mace-one of my favorite, the mage killing spec, with the exception of conjurers with archons and major trannie forms. boneshatter at hero rank is -10dex/str, that is enough to make anyone piss their pants becuase you loose a lot of hit/dam from natural str and you won't be dodging much after that. cranial works exactly like a bash except it lags you for 2 instead of 3 rounds if you miss and does the same amount of damage as backhand. backhand is great once mastered because it will never miss and hits harder then most regular blows, hitting a powerful blow every round kicks some serious ass against arials and others who dodge or block everything else, also drum allows you to hit like 10 attacks every 4 rounds of combat if you hit 2 full drums, which is better then flurry cause it cannot be parried or dodged and because it does not have any affect on your movement.
polearm-unless you expect to be getting attacked a lot i would not sugest it, the strength of cloyud giants realy is their ability to dish it out even with distance and all you still get hit a fair amount and you deal a lot less damage, if you want defense go swords otherwise this is useless, which i learned the hard way.
spear/staff-slightly better then polearm, especialy if you go rager/bersekrer cause your deathblkows on pugils get downright sick after rank 20(which is when you get pugil i know)
hand to hand-a good all around spec especialy against people who are always disarming you and dirting you, also stun can save your life! it makes fighting large groups easier if you casn stun all of them then switch to say swords and tear them to pieces one by one really quickley. or combined with spears you can get a really sick impale!
endnotes
Your best bet is to go axe/sword or mace/sword or axe/mace or hand/axe or mace.
hope this helps