Two Hander or Sword and Shield?

[Vanimur]

I'm wanting to make a character that's mainly in someones face for melee but will use magic to cc people who have high physical armor. My question however is, what weapon type would be better, the high crit and high damage two hander or the sword and shield for survivability?

[Yojo0o]

Two-handed is significantly superior to sword and board for any warrior.

I'd generally recommend against splitting between magic and physical damage. Instead, having some abilities like Medusa Head or Chloroform can be great for CCing off of damage dealt by a mage ally.

[Vanimur]

Originally posted by Yojo0o:

Two-handed is significantly superior to sword and board for any warrior.

I'd generally recommend against splitting between magic and physical damage. Instead, having some abilities like Medusa Head or Chloroform can be great for CCing off of damage dealt by a mage ally.

I probably should've prefaced this, this is for a solo build. No companions

[Yojo0o]

Then I would say even more to focus on two-handed physical damage. You need to scale your damage to efficiently disable enemies, there's no room to hybridize.

[The.Spaz.]

Two swords all the way BABY!!! Huge sucker for dual wield str/dex builds. Blame the barbarian from Diablo 2. It left a lasting impression.

But if you don't generally main phyical/melee characters and its just a means to an end:

Sword and shield offers the best defense and tactical offense as there are a few skills in warfare that require a shield to use. Its like the best balanced build if you are going pure physical.

Double handed are great for taking down chunks of armor and large pools of health. But they don't necessarily have to be most damage dealing build. They lack the defensive skills of a sword and shield but have enough health and armor to take a round or two of beating.

Never bothered with single handed. Having a free hand doesn't offer any bonus's unless you choose a perk.

Dual Wielding is pretty exotic build for a warrior in modern RPGs unfortunately. Most games these days won't even offer the option and would require an entire change in class to be able to only wield knives so I can't vouch for it as a lone wolf. But for my first blind run of this game and that too on tactician, it has so far worked quite well I must say. However, since your character is all about full offense, you have to invest in maximizing your evasion skill as your character will be a glass cannon compared to the other two builds.

Hmm... I might have to do a second playthrough with a dual wielding Lone Wolf at some point.

[Spawnling]

1. If you play an elf, shields are no option.
2. If you want magic, stat sticks (whatever gives the best bonus to your build. Two hadned, dual wield, wand and sword if they give the right stats)
3. If you main physical and strength, two-handed.

[sbszine]

It depends on the type of character you want to play. For a DPS type character, two handed for sure. For tanks, support, everything else, I reckon go shield and weapon, just because two items gives you double the rune slots, double the stat buffs, double the item abilities, etc.

[Chaoslink]

Sword and shield is probably the worst weapon setup you can pick. The shield is nice for the sustain, but your lack of damage just means you'll take longer to CC everything and you'll end up taking more damage than the shield provides as a result.

For your solo idea, avoid magic damage and only use magic CC like Chloroform for enemies with NO magic armor. Even if its low, it'll likely be more than is worth you trying to break through. Don't worry much about the spells side of that build.

[The.Spaz.]

Ironically the way things landed for me, of the two warriors Ifan actually does the most DPS and he is a dual wielding warrior. Thats not to say my two handed Red Prince is inferior, he is no slouch and generally is good at whittling away larger health pools. During the wreckers cave section, I experimented with Ifan quite a bit, pitting him one on one against an enemy and then having him support another team member in a larger battle. So far he tends to be quite capable and often ends up being the last one standing or the one to land the finishing blow.

So yes, two handers can easily be the most DPS dealing but with a little experimenting, you are not locked into only using that style of combat to gain the most damage.

[Panne of Koeke]

It doesn't matter. They have their own strengths, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with either.

Two-Hander benefits:
- High auto-attack scaling
- High physical damage weapon skill scaling(Warfare skills)
- Typically synonymous with higher crit chance/crit damage
- Better for fights with smaller numbers of enemies or single major boss
- Overall more consistent damage

Sword n Board benefits:
- Significantly higher armor scaling and usually extra constitution/resistances
- Shield Bounce is a lovely damage bonus
- Both Shield Bounce/Tentacle Lash don't scale off weapons so are still ludicrously strong
- Better for fights where enemies are very bursty and require the extra fortitude
- Works well with Retribution/Reflect + Shackles of Pain to make up for lower weapon scaling

Depends on the situation and your thought process. You either think (a). If I kill the enemies fast enough, there won't be as much damage to worry about tanking. Or (b). If I'm beefier, I'll win through sheer tenacity.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Panne of Koeke:

Sword n Board benefits:
- Significantly higher armor scaling and usually extra constitution/resistances
- Shield Bounce is a lovely damage bonus
- Both Shield Bounce/Tentacle Lash don't scale off weapons so are still ludicrously strong
- Better for fights where enemies are very bursty and require the extra fortitude
- Works well with Retribution/Reflect + Shackles of Pain to make up for lower weapon scaling

Depends on the situation and your thought process. You either think (a). If I kill the enemies fast enough, there won't be as much damage to worry about tanking. Or (b). If I'm beefier, I'll win through sheer tenacity.

While that all sounds good in theory, it doesn’t really work out that way in practice.

You don’t really have higher armor going sword and board then you would with a shield on any other character and mages don’t really suffer much downside using a shield while a melee build absolutely does, not to mention the physical armor gets redundant and your magic armor is still somewhat low even with the shield.

Retribution and shackles sound good in theory, but you’re going to need quite a few skill points for this to really come together. It won’t really come online in the early game. Only really work here since it’s a solo build as well.

It’s not like it can’t work, but unless you’re not playing Tactician, having just two main attacks and relying on taking damage might leave you quite vulnerable. It takes being CC’d only once to lose a fight and enemies typically will deal more damage than you can reasonably heal through.

[Caesar]

focus on strength and wits, play fane and you'll be fine for solo

[Qwesar]

early on shields are quite strong because the SHIELDS UP ability is a lot stronger than the ALL IN ability. SHIELDS UP was giving me 3x more armor than ALL IN damage. And armors are critical for avoid being cc'd yourself. Shields are more versitile too, can be used with wand/sword. I think shields are a little better for mages, esp summoner than they are for Sword and Board.

[Janthis]

Sword and shield might seem tempting for the extra survivability, but as someone else said, 'you'll just be the last one to die', as enemies will always target your weak group members anyway. If it's anything like DOS1, two-hander beats all in terms of pure damage, and a dead or disabled enemy can't hurt you.