I've had 4 arial empire elites blades and this is my opinion of them (all hero'd and had them for about 200 hrs each with the exception of Kunir who I deleted pre-hero)
kunjiko - sword - whip / flail - balance of the sisters / flow of shadows
kresin - dagger - spear/staff - stsf / whirlwind of steel
kruniki - dagger - whip/flail - maelstrom / harmonious
kunir - whip / flail - hth - the potion quaffing legacy.
Kunjiko - This is pretty much cookie cutter I reckon. Swords give great defense and good offense. Whip flail is awesome for entwining any pesky thief. One thing you need to note with entwine is it screws up your dodging massively. balance of the sisters negates this somewhat by allowing you to entwine with your offhand so you are still parrying with a sword. people aren't going to be hitting you a lot cause of your high dex and throw in imperial defense and you won't get hit during rounds bugger all. However that doesn't stop you getting pincered to death or flurried (ignore evade here) and thats were flow of the shadows comes into it. It's not reliable by anymeans but gives you that added survivablitlty in combat and makes you that much harder to take down.
For the most part against any warrior (ignoring berserkers here - though you can just prep for them too) you can
imperial defense - wi sword / dual flail
entwine
dual sword
imperial offense
smoke em.
kresin - I chose daggers, and the spear / staff as i ended up fighting a lot of berserkers and this put out a lot of bleeding on them. however i didnt find it great against communers or mages. In hindsight I would have definately chosen mace instead which gives better - dex / - str than spear and has better lagging ability. With imperial defense having the added defense of spin with spear / staff is a bit of overkill. - STSF hardly ever worked for me. I would never take it as an arial again. Whirlwind of steel - kind of a waste with imperial offense. I would take this again as an imperial.
kruniki - daggers are pretty much awesome for arials, and i would always choose either swords or daggers with one. flails again I chose here for eyejab, strip and entwine. Mostly entwine because of thiefs and the fact I can't chase for crap. Combined with maelstrom this made him pretty tough against thiefs though I ended up facing bugger all of them. Maelstrom is awesome though as you can get the surprise on any assassin thief or ranger then entwine them... throw in an entwine and bingo... of course assassins can still vanish and both rangers and thiefs have other ways to get out but only if they have the right preps. (of course not having played a thief or ranger in 10 years there may be other ways I dont know about). Harmoneous seemed to work really well against things like pincer so means you could still get your arteries, hurls and the like in before too many rounds went past. I'm not so sure it was very good against bash.
kunir - this was my first attempt in the last couple of years with an arial empire warrior. flails and hth. Bad choice. Flails are great as are hard to parry / dodge but no idea why I choose hand to hand. Engima legacy I hardly ever used. I would like it more if you could you teleport potions in battles as when you fight paladins your going to get wrathed and cursed so cant quaff a return. guessing though that would make the legacy way to op'd.
In summary. I would choose either
dagger / hth
dagger / mace
sword / flails
legacies... all have their place but maelstrom is awesome... and I think this would be top of my list most of the time.
Just my 2 cents.
There are pbfs for all of these except Kunir so you can check them out.
Kruniki has the highest number of kills but I leveled slowly and pk'd a lot as i went as (arial warriors are really tough at the lower ranks) I'm not good at the high ranks as I dont know where to get any but the most basic of preps and my gear knowledge is limited so I rarely had better eq than anyone I fought at hero.
Also I could never be bothered taking the time to get great gear cause thats too time consuming and boring.
