Im thinking of testdriving a Thane, and some help would be appreciated.

Thinking of making Troll with 10 str, 10 con, 10 qui.

And could someone shed some light on the issue about going 2H weapon VS shield and weap???

Some say more dam with 2H is the best, and some claim you NEED to have shield because of some stun-skill and to protet against arrows..

Commments please....

P.S. I want this Thane to be for pure R VS R either attack or support, any idea will be helpfull.

Well...

If you went for a 2hander you could use a 50/50/28 spec (SC, Weapon, Parry) which would give you quite a nice damage output when you take into account recastable bolts, insta dd's, and the high weap skill...

I suppose its a perfectly viable tank, and you would be able to get guard 1 with the dregs just on the off chance you ever are required to guard. But then you can't forget the added advantage having slam can bring you. Its like 9 seconds of free hits (thats 2-3 swings of a 2h beast from any position you like) then back to shield/weapon whee you can block quite a few attacks.

One think you wouldn't want to do is go 50 in hammer as a 2hander, as that style is off an 'after-block' chain.

So either Axe (which is off a front positional chain and gives a bleed effect), or sword (which is a back positional and gives a -snare?- effect)


Myself i'm looking at a final spec of 48/42/39/15 (SC/Shield/Hammer/Parry) which to me is fairly solid, i can't hit for as much but my defense specifically blocking/guarding skills would be fairly good.

One think you might want to remember before you decide is that thanes/skalds are on the same HP table as Shadowblades/Hunters which is the second lowest in midgard (In between casters and healers) so you might want to think about that before you commit yourself to anything.

Arch, SB's have more HP than thanes/skalds/hunters, etc :P

Fine, point that out why don't you. :)

Hmm...

First of all, in the creation I would put my points 10str/con/pie, althou I shared my points 5 dex/qui/str/pie and 10 con. Anyways, quickness is useless to you.

Quote from Archeon:
"Myself i'm looking at a final spec of 48/42/39/15
SC/Shield/Hammer/Parry) which to me is fairly solid, i can't hit for as much but my defense specifically blocking/guarding skills would be fairly good."

I have this spec and I must say it rocks. I did some comparison with Stonebridge, he is a 50 thane with same RR/race as me, he is specced 44 hammer (+14 from RR and items) and with 44 spec he gets 30points more weaponskill then I do with my 39+14 (I have 1251 ws with selfbuff), althou I think I had 7 points more in Str, but still the effect on damage is so small that it cannot even be noticed, and the benefit of Sledgehammer(44 style)isn't as good as the extra 15 parry you can get for speccing 39weapon.

Thanes defensive abilities with this spec is almost on par with warriors. I can solo Umbrood warriors (red con mobs in DF that drop diamond seals) with only selfbuffs. Note that I have spellcrafted set that makes it easy, althou I could solo them with epics too.

2handed can be a viable spec, I have considered few times respeccing to it, but I am afraid of loosing my Godlike Pve abilities so that's why I have this spec. 2h thanes are often underestimated. I think that everyone underestimated Bjaadi before the duel tourney, and those that saw how effective he was will prolly never do it again. He was really really close to win Montarlo, who won the thanes and the tourney champions titles. But yes, I know duels don't mean anything when compared to rvr.

And last thing about weapon choises. If going 1h, there is only one option - hammer, hammer is the best choise for all classes with less then 50 points in weapon.
2h on the other hand is a bit trickier. It is true that axe and sword are great with 50 weaponspec, but I think that hammer is underestimated as a 2h weapon. Imo sword is better then axe, because axe lacks decent no-opening style. As a warrior I would spec 50 axe, cause of the good styles it gives to pve when using 1h and shield, but with 2h thane, when you don't have the option of switching to 1h, Sword wins because it has high level no-opener (Polar Rift), and a great level 50 style (ragnarok with from behind opening,) you would prolly use only these 2 styles in rvr.But I have already heard rumors that all from behind styles are gonna get hurt when they change the area where you can hit them from. This will hurt Hibs most(annihilate), but would also make sword worst weapon in mid.

But as a great hammer fan. I wouldn't pick either axe nor sword, these are weapons for warriors. Thanes should use hammer :) I would pick hammer, because it has best styles in midgard.
- Provoke is the single best no-opener in game, it hits for great damage, has low fatigue cost, and a taunt as a bonus.
- Lambast is the best parry-opening style in midgard, it beats Reinforcements and Cleave easily (not including Aurora Borealis. Lambast has great damage, and low end usage as all good hammer styles. Will be a great style when parry/block gets fixed in next patch.
- Conquer, this style compeats with ragnarok as best from behind style. In next patch it will get a root effect to prevent opponents from running away, it also has low end usage. Only downside is that it doesn't have any to hit bonus.
- Sledgehammer is a followup style for conquer. It has immense damage and medium fat cost.

So for 2h thane spec I would recommend following spec:
44 hammer/48 sc/39 parry/8 shield. Why?
- No need to get more then 44 hammer because level 50 hammer style is completely gimped
- No need to get 50 sc unless they change the str/con buff to be equal or better to best shammy buff.
- Rest of the points go into parry to give a decent defence and to aid the chance to use lambast style. And leftovers go to shield to give guard 1 and engage, engage can be used for example on keep raids, if archers starts to get too annoying.
- Low fatigue styles
- Hammer was weapon of Thor

I hope you were brave/patient enough to read this long and confusing post :) Feel free to discuss.

P.S If rvr is going to be your absolote primary goal, choose warrior or savage

Wow thanks a bunch!

And yes i did read it all, actually i red (how is that spelled? read in pastsentence) it 2 times!!!

Since i coming for true RvsR I have now made a norse warrior. Accidently autotrained to level 8 (was in group) HE HE HE didnt know i could autotrain.

Theres no accident in autotrain, its just something all warriors do :-)

No no you misunderstand... i know all other weaponstyles autotrain.

But since i didnt have time to train ANY weapon style i have now autotrained ALL weaponstyles :D