If You Axe Me...

[misterbill5]

I think if I were to play through again, I would use the Axe or maybe Daggers or Spear instead of what I chose (Sword and Board). I keep finding epic weapons of every type *except* sword. I dashed in and grabbed a Barbarian Poleaxe (Epic 74 Prowess) and have been using it instead of the best sword I have been able to find so far, the Longsword (Rare 45 Prowess). The axe is slow, but damage is 98 compared to 44, Focus is 6 compared to 5 for the sword. I even trained in basic Axe Fighting to get a bit more damage plus Execute.
I have the Misty Step spell, but no Rune so I can't get the Sword in the Stone and the even better 5000 gold sword is not yet available from the Ruin Raider vendor...
I am thinking I can always use the Potion of Forgetfulness and respec to Sword after I actually have an Uber weapon, but for now (Level 17, Chapter 3 with Expedition set up and ready to go), the Axe seems to be the better choice...
What weapon did you specialize in and what do you think about the respec idea? Any thoughts on my strategy?

[CronicDemise]

I'm about 50hrs in and I think nearing the end of chapter 4, and I agree it's felt like epic sword drops were lower for most of the game. But I think that's because where I've found these more powerful swords seemed a bit more hidden than others.

I ended up sticking it out with sword and board rather than respecing. It's felt so fun getting down the perfect block timing to then stun enemies and control the flow of battle. And now that I've got the legendary sword, I feel unstoppable*

*until I'm surrounded by multiple enemies that are pretty strong

[misterbill5]

Originally posted by CronicDemise:

I'm about 50hrs in and I think nearing the end of chapter 4, and I agree it's felt like epic sword drops were lower for most of the game. But I think that's because where I've found these more powerful swords seemed a bit more hidden than others.

I ended up sticking it out with sword and board rather than respecing. It's felt so fun getting down the perfect block timing to then stun enemies and control the flow of battle. And now that I've got the legendary sword, I feel unstoppable*

*until I'm surrounded by multiple enemies that are pretty strong

The Sword in the Stone or the one sold by the Ruin Raiders?

[Portico]

I played a daggers build initially and later specialized more into magic due to how high focus building daggers got. I got real lucky as I went around robbing Remnants, including Boris who drops some extremely good daggers in act 1. And he's the easiest one to rob because he's off in a secluded spot.

[Hentaika]

Battleblade(65)+crestshield(52/44/18) are both easy to get relatively early into act 1.
IIRC both drop from the mandragora guy whom you want to defeat anyway to get mandragora back. He is tough but he is just one enemy so you can go all in with traps and throwable items with the +100% damage accessory for those.
Both pretty much top tier among non 'big effort' things.

Easy alternative is pretty much only the 'great axe' with 90 damage.

Yeah, you can get legendary daggers instead, but at that point you would be able to defeat anything anyway.

Spear is by far worst in terms of getting something good in act 1. It does have some good 'super early' stuff and an amazing 'alternative' skill when used one handed.

Dagger has a point where you can relatively easily get ~30 damage ones with 0 effort, but those quickly get out of steam. Daggers generally have problem of not having enough damage to get through heavily armored enemies.

Axe/Sword are 2 main choices for sure.
Technically in end game daggers are viable due to great force generation but at that point any weapon would win you the game anyway.

Also if you don't plan on going full mind - getting ~40 STR once you got some starter utility traits is good idea and will allow you to use fists instead, which will be better until you get some top tier ones when paired with guarantee critical with fists accessory.

[Zuvio]

endgame axe + all axe skills, around 35 strength including perma pots, rest of points in mind, get 60+ focus, get spell blaze (buy 1K or get from library), get ring of old blood. With this build you can facetank everything with consumables, single or multi mobs doesnt matter and kill them fast with blaze.

Easiest build for everything in the game though, I found to be 100% MIND caster with 100 focus and pre-cast thunderstorm, then blaze when its up. You 3-shot golems if no lightning hits, the toughest fight in the game behind the remnants hewer camp was boring, because i was waiting on focus regen to cast blaze. Just nuked everything!

[misterbill5]

Thanks guys! I did the Expedition quest and got my Rune which allowed me to grab the Sword in the Stone across from the Misty Step spell...Killing the Harpies now, and still haven't trained the third level of sword fighting. That sword has about double the damage and more focus than the axe I was using, plus is FAST instead of SLOW, so DPS is probably more than double now...I guess I can buy an even better sword for 5k gold from the Ruin Raiders eventually....
Only question now is whether to use the Memory Loss potion just to recover the 3 LP I spent on Axe fighting...maybe switch from slingshot to bow...hmmm....