Time for a change...

[Larkan]

Hello,

I am level 65, currently making a change from playing sword & board to wielding two handers and I have a couple of questions:

1) What CMANs are best for two handers?

2) How do you use offensive CMANs? (is there a CMAN which you open fights with generally?)

3) Is elemental deflection (think this is what it is called) useful? The cman which allows you to blat away spells with an ensorcelled weapon

4) If you have spare training points as a two hander is it always best to put those in dodge? (assuming you have put some in MIU / AS / climbing / swimming etc.

If you have any other pointers for someone making this transition let me hear them!

[Warriorbird]

I like wspec, bonding, and surge.

I use guild feint a fair bit. After slamming my AS higher I spend time berserking (I have a fair bit of MO)

Once I ensorcell my lance I'll likely get spell parry.

I trade off on my extra. At first I pushed armor to get 150. Now I'm pushing Dodge.

[Androidpk]

If I was playing a THW warrior I would definitely be using stance of the mongoose. (Which I would pair with parry mastery.)

[TheBastardOfStark]

Executioners stance is good to look into.

edit: Dervish is also very nice to look into if you focus m-strike.

Also dodge should try to get atleast 1x imo

[Warriorbird]

I use Whirling Dervish. I'd say Dodge should be 2x minimum.

[Jeril]

My combat maneuvers were something like this before I switched from two-handers to polearms:
Jeril, your Combat Maneuver training is as follows:

Skill name Mnemonic Ranks
Combat Focus focus 5
Twin Hammerfists twinhamm 1
Mighty Blow mblow 1
Sunder Shield sunder 4
Hamstring hamstring 2
Charge charge 2
Subdual Strike sstrike 2
Specialization I wspec1 5
Weapon Bonding bonding 5
Combat Mobility mobility 2
Bull Rush bullrush 2
Surge of Strength surge 4
Parry Mastery pmastery 1
Cunning Defense cdefense 4
Griffin's Voice griffin 3

Spell parry seems neat but I never really had an issue with bolt/ball spells. I never picked up mongoose because the places I hunt a random +3 seconds of rt could get me killed. Griffin's voice was my choice of stance because it allowed me to have holler up a lot more often and if I wasn't really using holler much I was making use of growl and bellow.

I'd also suggest picking up 40 ranks of shield use and 4 ranks of shield bash and shield charge.

After making sure all the basics and armor are covered I would aim for 2x dodge as well. After that is kind of up to you, if you want more stamina push for more PF if you want more DS push for more dodge. If there is some other skill you feel like training go for it.

[Archigeek]

Good advice from Jeril.

[Larkan]

Thanks to your help the transition has gone smoothly, it has made a huge difference in terms of how quickly I hunt which is great. I have a couple of follow up questions:

1) Is Pmastery effected by what weapon you use? Or is it just a flat 5% per level?
2) I have often read that at cap you need at least 60 ranks swimming and 50 climbing, is this true?

Think that's it for the moment, thanks again!

[JackWhisper]

50 of each gets you into every capped hunting area with a 90%+ chance of not screwing up and drowning or failing somehow.

[Astray]

Good advice from Jeril.

Jeril knows all about being a warrior. Especially when it comes down to where to put the sword.

[Androidpk]

Parry mastery is a flat 5%.

[Jeril]

I had 50 ranks of climbing and 70 ranks of swim(Mostly for Nelemar) at cap. As PK said parry mastery is as it says, a flat 5% per rank.