Looking for Build Direction

Hi Guys,

I just found this game about a week ago... and I've quickly become hooked. (What a fantastic job the developer has done!)
Anyway, I've run into a pretty solid wall yesterday with my first glad and am looking for a bit of direction with how to continue building and with fight strategy. He held a pretty decent 85% win streak for a while, but now in the upper portion of the Elite Bracket I've only won two out of the last 8 games or so.

Anyway, here he is...

Level 17 Human War
Strength: 74 +1 trained
Intellect: 75 +1 trained
Agility: 64 +5 trained
Stamina: 72 +2 trained
Size: 70
Presence: 74
Chi: 69
Health: 536

Equipment: All greens
Dual Short Swords (weight 3, speed 2.9 at 91.3 and 68.1 dps)
Heavy Helm (weight 6, 24 armour)
Ringmail Chestpiece (weight 17.4, armour 24)*
Banded armguard (weight 9.2, armour 28) and Ringmail armguard (weight 4.4, armour 22)
Light leggings (weight 3.9 and 3.5 at armour of 12 and 11)
Mods and Buffs:
+8 Strength
+1 Agility
+6 Stamina
+2 Size
+12 Presence
+4 Chi
+1 Attack Power

Current Encumbrance: 30% at 50.4 lbs
I was running a light chestpiece that was about half the weight and armour at 25% previous to this morning, but last night one of the more senior members mentioned warriors can go a bit heavier and into the yellow and be ok.

Skills:
Blades at 7 + 9/10

I've been focusing primarily on training the weapon skill. I did dump some training points into stats as mentioned above (mostly to experiment). I'm not sure which direction to head with the skills. Grim Determination and Iron Jaw don't look spectacular, but I was told it could be worth dumping a point into each to unlock the next tier. I'm also not sure if I should stick to only warrior and go for Armoured Fortress or if I should branch into Rage/Theatrics.

For fight strategy I was previously running:
Start of Fight at Activity 6, Slash, Aiming for weapon-arm, defending torso, at 5 Bloodlust
I am slightly inured at Activity 4, Parry-slash, Aiming for head, defending torso, at 7 Bloodlust
I am moderately tired at Activity 3, Slash, Aiming for back-leg, defending torso, at 5 Bloodlust

I've changed it up this morning to:
Start at Activity 4, Parry-slash, Aiming for weapon-arm, defending torso, at 5 Bloodlust
Opponent is tired at Activity 6, Slash, Aiming for head, defending torso, at 6 Bloodlust
I'm moderately injured at Activity 5, Slash, Aiming for weapon-arm, defending torso, at 7 Bloodlust

I was thinking that since I'm no longer able to just overpower opponents anymore that I should look at trying to tire them out a bit and then go on to the offensive.

Am I on the right track here? Is the fight strategy sound and the heavier equipment okay? (Should I continue with dual-weild or is using a shield better?) Any advice on skill training?

Thanks for any opinion, insights, and advice in advance!

Hi there Stormcloak!

Looks like you've gotten a great start all ready! Going to just put in a few tips/suggestions here in no particular order. :)

First I'd suggest doing skill trains before stats the skills seem to have more effect at the beginning of the game, personally i get to 100 skill trains before i touch my stat trains.

When picking a weapon skill take a look at your stats and which stats effect the weapon skills, mainly your looking at Str and Agil. Intelligence effects every weapon, and if you want to use a two handed weapon or a pole arm they both take stamina also so you can not really worry about those when picking a weapon skill as all weapon skills take Int and all multi hand weapons take Stam. So looking at your original stats you had a str of 73 and agil of 59 now on this glad i would have looked for a Str based weapon since there is a 14 point difference in the favor of Str. Now for warriors that would be Axes and Maces for 1-handed or Two-Handed Weapons if you wanted a large weapon.

As for going for Armoured Fortress or branching out, I think you need to decide if you want this gladiator to be offensive or defensive. If going defensive then Armoured Fortress is really worth it, and I highly suggest it, I'd also suggest picking up Master of Arms for a defensive glad, so you can use a shield in your off hand. If your going to go offensive again i look at Str vs Agil, with a high str I will do some skills in the Rage tree (almost all skills in the rage tree take str), with a high Agil i'd look more at the theatrics tree (again almost all the skills in the theatrics tree take agility).

I see no issues with your fight strategy especially if your planning on going defensive, that's a very viable stat for a defensive glad.

Sorry - to be clear with the stats, those numbers listed were the start stats plus how much has been trained into them. So Agility was 64+5 trained and now at 69.
I did realise after I started training blades about how the skills fit into the weapons. Looking back I do think going with axe/mace would have made more sense. So, if I do get Master at Arms then my axe and shield (if I were to switch) would be at the minimum of either that or my highest trained weapon skill, right?
With encumberance being in the yellow, does it affect weapon speed, initiative or anything or does it just affect energy use?

Yup if you end up with 10 blade and 10 master of arms you could then use a mace and shield at max effectiveness.

As for what encumbrance does, I don't think anyone knows for sure but you can read the tool-tip for Light as a Feather in the warrior tree and it says some of the things it effects. It says "allowing them to be less encumbered which offers numerous benefits on the sands such as increasing their initiative and the ability to get up off the ground quicker to name a few." so encumbrance effects initiative and ability to get up when knocked down for sure, but that tool-tip says that's only a few of the things encumbrance effects.

Okay... good stuff to know. Any thoughts on whether he'd be better suited to offense, defense, or mid-way... or could it go equally well either way?

Really I think either way for that glad.

Also make sure you check for new glads each day when the slave market refreshes, you can have up to 5 glads in your stable, i believe slot 2 and 3 are unlocked with gold, 4 and 5 take trophies to unlock if i remember right, getting some glads in slots 2 and 3 to use to try stuff out is a great way to learn.

In the slave market slaves over 900g are some times usable, for a good slave I always tried to make sure they where above 950g starting, and if you find one over 1000g you've probably found something special.

Well, after running with the heavier armour and new strategy, I've had a record of 46-8-5 (w-l-k) in the Black Market and 4 wins, 1 loss in the arena. Quite a few of the wins were through an exhausted opponent (and a handful of those where I was behind). Hopefully I'm on the right track. I just gained another level (Tank is now available and I got to 8 in Blades). I guess I'll run this for a few days and see how he performs, but am still open to advice (thanks Cynaidh!)