what skills to get from the rage/theatrics tree

So, got a new War glad who I am quite happy about. I don't want to make him a pure tank even though he has the stats for it, his strength and agility are only 1 point apart and are both respectable so I figured if I wanted a more offensive glad I should dip into one or both of the other trees.

I plan on duel wielding maces/axes, so I was curious about what skills to go for. Barreling attack seems like a good one (what determins the success of it to go off in combat, is it the same as a normal hit or does it take into account strength or size or something?)

Another one I was considering was Signiture move, my War's best stat is stam so I figure even if I can't beat my opponent I can at least keep him off balance long enough for his stam to wear down.

So the skills I was looking at were:
theatrics:
called shot
iron jaw
signiture move

rage:
barreling attack
brute force

so between brute force and athleticism I should be hitting more consistantly, with called shot I should hopefully be hitting my targetted bodypart.

with barreling attack, hamstring, signiture move, feignt and war cry I should be stacking a bunch of various penalties on their attacks, attack power, defensive power and other statistics.

Now, there are a lot of skills, some of which I may not need, just wanted to see if this was a viable way of building a offensive War. Also, do active abilities cost extra energy to use? cause if they do I might wear my glad down quickly if I have too many.

My war Shikii carries maces and im making him fully offensive.
Called shot is in my eyes a wasted skill unless you are Theatrics with level 10 knockout.
Most body parts have about the same armour rating so hitting special body parts would only factor in what might happen if you do a critical hit on htem.

I wonder how War Cry works aswell I do put points in it but i have yet to see it work on opponents initiative in fights.
Also if you are going for barelling attack Death From Above is a must it is a shame not to make use of trowing your opponent on the ground.

Since you are going for penalties to your opponent you might also want to consider putting Create Distance into your build^^

I would build my offensive war slightly differently than you would but both would work just fine :)

well there are only 2 skills in theatrics before signiture move, one of them is iron jaw (good skill, but don't want to spend all the skillpoints leveling it to 10) and the other is called shot. I figure if I put 5 points into each it won't take so long to level them and that will help a bit. I figure I could aim for their legs so that along with barreling attack I might have a better chance of knocking them down (I assume if you blast their leg enough it would knock them down, I might be wrong).

Also, with called shot and athleticism, if I could consistantly hit, say their weapon arm/hand then there's a decent chance of disarming them as well as if I get a serious injury there there's a greater chance of hitting it repeatedly. Anyway, since I don't know the actual percentages it's hard to know how useful it actually is.

Yea I forgot create distance, that's another skill. What's a good level to get skills to to make them effective without maxing them out? I was thinking of just maxing out weapons, then getting other skills to around 5-8 points each depending on the level of importance.

any idea about my question on whether using more active skills eats up more energy?

I don't know for sure if active skills use up more or not but I don't think they do.

As for the skill level thing higher is better especially with hamstring level 10 in that gives a 75% penalty.
Compared to the 25% of level 5-6(Don't remember exactly) that is a huge amount.

The biggest difference's in strength are level 9 and 10 unlearning skills isn't expensive so if you save the trophies you can always train in some skills first and unlearn them later when your glad hits his max of used skills.

That way you can let your glad fight at his currently maximum potentional and level 1 of his skills at the same time, as thus by doing so your glad would still have a good set of skills while training the skills you want him to end up with to their max

I heard you get a high level skill and then unlearn the skills prior to it and use the points elsewhere, is this still working and is it meant to work that way (don't want to do it and then have my skills wiped or something becuase I took advantage of a bug or something

when you say the biggest difference in strength of a skill is 9 and 10 does that mean the skill takes the largest jump in effectiveness from level 9-10?

Yes that is exactly what i mean.
As for the skill thing: Just checked it still works *was wondering about it myself) but note that once you unlearn and you get below the normally required skillpoints to level the skill you won't be able to level it more.

I don't think the bug is supposed to be there, either that or its there with the purpose to make you spend more jewels xD