2H styles suffering. What are people's thoughts?

[Cynaidh]

Just throwing in I agree that 2H warrior seems very low in the power rankings for styles.

Really to me the 2 of the bigger issues with 2H warriors are knockdowns and rounds with no attacks. Running at 10 activity level and have 10 points in light as a feather for it to still take 10+ rounds to get off the ground most of the time is just a huge deal break to me, its fairly much an instant loss if they get knocked down. Second is how often 2H warriors just wont attack at all in a round, even if they just are not stunned/hamstring'ed/knocked down it seems if you get attacked too many times before your turn to attack you just wont attack at all.

If light as a feather was buffed to be made more effective vs knock downs, and if some skill in the top of the warrior tree was added that gave them the ability to attack 1 time a round min (maybe on never say die since that skill is so hit and miss would make it more useful) that would do a ton to making 2H warriors more viable I think.

I myself wanted to stick with 2H warrior on The Behemoth but this past week i have given up on it being effective and am going to try out a defensive shield build on him.

[Kreegan]

Anyone tried to run war with full 196 armor, extra armour rank, full war skills, block rank, extra hp? Don't tell me Devastating Power makes that big difference in damage dealing. And don't tell me Adrenaline Rush is helping much when you land it AFTER you are cut to pieces already.

Why don't you try it? See, there are a lot of potential builds that might theoretically work - even in our own universe - but it takes... how much?... maybe half an year to get a new gladiator, bring him to Blood Gods and equip him with oranges, even if you spend lots of trophies on him and choose the ultimate best strategy for the end game. Without trophies - one full year or so. Chances are, the game will see quite some changes while you're experimenting.

Theoretically - and practically as you can easily check in the arena - a War in full heavy is incredibly slow if you don't stack Size and Agility. Slower than any type of Rage or Theatrics, no ifs. Size and Agility won't help you deal a lot of damage with 2H weapons, axes, maces, etc. heavy stuff. So back to an Agility-based build, which is already the crowd's favourite.

[Sotc]

I think Cyn's suggestions sound pretty reasonable. Just to belabor the point I made earlier I think knockdowns should have a hard cap (maybe scales to encumbrance or something if you really feel the need) much like stuns and blind have since they are similarly game changing.

[Alba Kebab]

Got nothing to add for 2h rage.
As for 2h war, I'm not sure if there are enough 2h wars running different builds atm to make any comparison meaningful. As far as I can tell most of the 2h wars that I see(of the few that exist) tend to lean more heavily on offence side, so I suppose I'm just echoing what the guys above already said about the need to have a balanced defence...

As for the knockdown penalty for wars in heavy armour, I'm fine with it, every class needs an inherent penalty somewhere to balance it out.
It prevents min-max power gaming so you can't use agility as a dump stat and still rock with heavy encumbrance and low agility, it forces you to strike a balance somewhere. That is a good thing.

[Kreegan]

Following your logic, the speed builds should deal low damage to compensate for their high attack rate. Where exactly is the balance in having one stat boost your initiative, attacks per round, damage and defense?

[Alba Kebab]

The speed builds still need enough strength to punch through armour, they can't run on agility alone. The ones that don't have semi adequate strength do deal low damage and have most of their hits deflected against armour.
You still need to balance strength somewhere when running a speed glad.

[Cynaidh]

Kreegan that's a very good point.

Back when the new skills trees came out it was added that agility weapons got there bonus damage from agility instead of strength, this allowed sword/exotic/polearm users to completely dump strength. The exact wording from the patch notes is "Agility based weapons get to use their agility to help boost damage instead of their strength."

So now you have when comparing strength vs agility and the information we get from the tool-tips of these stats in the game:

Str:
Increases damage your gladiator can inflict
Factors into how much armor/weapons you can carry before being encumbered

Agility:
Increases damage your gladiator can inflict with agility based weapons
Increases number of attacks per round
Increases your defense
Increases your initiative

Well this certainly is effecting 2h weapon users as they are stacking strength instead of agility and loosing out on really a ton of combat bonuses you get for stacking agility.

Looking at the top 10 of Blood Gods only 2 of the top 10 are using str based weapons, and those are gladiators by Sotc that are in full optimized legendary gear.

What i am wondering now is maybe 2h weapons aren't actually in a "bad" place but just that agility based weapons are way over powered at this point in the game, purely based on how much more combat effective agility makes you over strength. There is no reason for an agility glad to run strength as can be seen by the number 1 glad in the Blood Gods Arrrrrghpirate who has a 93 strength but does massive damage every blow from his 273 agility with his agility based weapons. But at the same time a strength weapon using glad has to increase his agility in order to increase his number of attacks per round and initiative, again one of Sotc's glads is a perfect example of this in having Arghpirate having 178 agility even though he is a strength weapon using glad. So while this thread started out about how 2H weapons are behind maybe its really strength weapons being behind agility weapons.

[Kreegan]

The speed builds still need enough strength to punch through armour, they can't run on agility alone. The ones that don't have semi adequate strength do deal low damage and have most of their hits deflected against armour.
You still need to balance strength somewhere when running a speed glad.

I suggest you scout Arrrrrghpirate, the long-time-number-one in Blood Gods and compare her Strength and Agility. Then you can edit your post.

Edit: Actually Cyn already pointed this out.

[Pit Lord]

Cyn you forgot two additional things about strenght based weapons:

1. Strenght based weapons increase hp.

2. Strenght based weapons ignore defense.

The second is very important for the metagame.

The metagame flow is fast/sharp/agility > slow/blunt/strenght > defense > fast/sharp/agility.

It is just a general flow of the metagame.

[Cynaidh]

Cyn you forgot two additional things about strenght based weapons:

1. Strenght based weapons increase hp.

2. Strenght based weapons ignore defense.

Yes I totally forgot that str does increase your hp some, good point!

The 2nd one i don't know anything about this, is this something that Nate confirmed while i was out? I know there are str skills that reduce you opponents defense in the rage tree, but i was not under the impression that strength itself did so, the tooltip for it doesn't mention that i dont think.