What Went Wrong?

[Tarot Cards]

My starter gladiator, a 2H War, was doing great all the way through the Gladiator tier, getting ranked 2nd there. The moment I hit Veteran tier, I started losing, badly. And I'm still losing more than winning as I go into Elite tier. I've played around with different strats, and managed to come up with a set of actions that helps me lose less than normal, but all the same, I've gone from a 70% win-loss ratio to a much worse ratio. Right now, she's wearing all green medium armor (any heavy armor puts her in the orange zone, which absolutely murders me when trying to land enough attacks or avoid running out of stamina) and wielding a green 2h mace (no good blue 2h have popped up in blacksmith recently). All skill points are in 2H weapon skill, which just hit 7. Her stats are

Strength
65
Intellect
56
Agility
64
Stamina
64
Size
56
Presence
65
Chi
58

And my fight strategy is this:

Priority 1: Standby Activity: 10 Bash Head Defend Torso Bloodlust 10
Priority 2: I Am Moderately Injured Activity: 10 Parry-Bash Head Defend Torso Bloodlust 1
Priority 3: I Am Moderately Tired: 4 Parry-Bash Head Defend Torso Bloodlust 1

What can I do to improve my glad?

[riggen]

10/10 bash,10/1 parry/bash OH NO NO NO NO NO NOOOOO. NO. Really, NO.

The gladiator's stamina is pretty low, hell, I wouldn't dare go for that kind of activity without being in the green encumbrance area even as an Urk with that one.
Either lower your activity/bloodlust by 4-3 points each, either wear lighter armour, either both. You should begin seeing results.

[Prinny]

First of all, try to search in the slave market for a better glad, 56 size didn't really cut it for war gladiators before and with the new weight changes even less.
What could work for decreasing your encumbrance would be switching to lighter armour though for a war you will never see me drop below medium. Theyre war gladiators theyre supposed to wear heavy armour not pieces of rag!

Later in the skilltree when you reach 55 skillpoints in the wars tree you can get the skill "Light As A feather" which decreases the bad effects that encumbrance brings meaning you get exhausted less fast and will attack more often resulting in you being able to wear some heavy armour pieces whilst doing the same amount of attacks.

Weapon is key, try to get a purple weapon, considering your gladiators weapon skill i will assume he's still low lvl so the purples are still slightly cheap and the purple weapon will last you untill lvl 40ish since that is when it will attain greenish weapons stats.
Train your weapon skill to 10 ASAP having it at 10 makes you fumble less and you will see him getting more hits instead of fumbling throughout the fight.

I would also try to tune down your activity to the point where you do 1 attack a round most of the time (some rounds its allowed not to strike but try to bring this to a minimum)

[Tarot Cards]

Thanks for the tips, I'll try turning down my activity. The reason I had it so high was because I figured that without a 10, I wouldn't attack nearly often enough. I had it at 6 at one point a while back, and found myself being pummeled to submission by ragers and theatrics before I had time to land any meaningful hits. Been investing a ton of points in weapon skill, but at level 7 it's not budging. About what level do you reach rank 10 in weapon skill? I'm level 15 and chipping away slowly, heh.

[Dainoji]

It's a fine balance and I still struggle with it and I think it changes depending on who you are fighting. Attack too much and pass out, attack too little and get beat down. Once you get your weapon skill up to 10 you'll have more freedom. I think I usually get to a 10 in my weapon skill sometime between level 17-20 if I focus only on that. You can probably start branching off a little bit once you hit 8 if you want a little variety and a reminder what the green check mark looks like