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« on: May 07, 2012, 07:01:43 pm »
I can offer you my POV, from a different perspective, a n00b one.
I have been playing M&B for a decent amount of time in single player, but in multiplayer I don't even have a week behind me. Not just in cRPG, but in any form.
When I first started cRPG I been trying out different things shield + 1handed, shield + polearm, polearm, 2handed, and while they all were with crappy equipment and at a low level, perhaps I got the wrong picture I think that it gave me at least a chance to feel out different things and how they work. Eventually I respeced to pure shielder build from the solid builds threads because I found shielder to suit me the best. Archery I didn't try because I tried it a bit in native and single player found that I'm retarded for archery. Cavalry - same thing.
Pure polearm - one has to rely on manual blocking which an experienced player will get around easily if manual blocking is not your second nature. One does get into problems when two people gang up on you because one goes for the head you manual block overhead and while you're blocking overhead the 2nd one hits your body. When using a shield and using polearm one handed I found the ability to only to thrusts to be very limiting in terms of damage it does. If the other guy has a shield I found it to be nothing but simply poking at a shield and not actually doing anything useful. Good thing is the range. You get to keep enemies at a fair distance from you. Perhaps ideal combination would be polearm + shield when facing multiple enemies.
2handed - same thing as pure polearm. One thing I forgot to mention there but which also applies to pure polearm - archers. You're exposed and if you don't zig zag you'll die easily by someone you most likely haven't even seen. And one easily forgets how to zig zag to confuse archers you don't even see, when you're in a fight with an opponent you can clearly see.
Shielder - offers best protection against multiple enemies, offers protection from archers. Also I found it that shield + pick or a sword gives me more versatility offensively because I have serveral attacking moves, and not just thurst that shield + polearm gives me. But I chose it because I found out that I stay alive the longest with a shield. You don't have to worry about blocking, about chosing which side to block etc.
Problem with two handed and polearm is at a start you die a lot. You have a low level character, you have crappy equipment and also in my case you have 0 experience and you're going out against guys who have better equipment, better characters and more experience. You die a lot and you die fast, so most of the battles you sit majority of time there watching other players and you always watch the guys who have best K/D ratios. Sometimes, they're cav, sometimes they're archers, sometimes they're twohanded or polearm but rarely (perhaps never) is it a shielder, at best it's something like an archer who uses shield + 1hand for melee. But you're sitting there watching a guy tear through opponents with a greatsword or a maul and you're thinking to yourself that's easy and he can do it because he has good equipment. If I had equipment like that I could do it just as easily, so you get better equipment and you learn that it's not all down to equipment. Point is that sitting there watching better guys do it easily you think it's easy, but as you don't see shielders go out and dominate the battlefield when you play as a shielder you follow around guys who actually do and you mostly go there just to help him, be a support guy that will at least distract an enemy or shield him from enemy archer. Sometimes you even steal a hit or a kill(which I still feel bad about doing because some other guy does all the work and I just get in there for a final hit and I get credited for a kill, it doesn't feel right). The biggest advantage of that is that you watch that better guy play, and it's different then watching him when you're dead because now you're there somewhat involved and you watch what he does and you learn and you get better. I think I learned more playing as a shielder then going out with a maul trying to emulate those guys when I lacked the basic knowhow. Sure shielder has some problems like short range which forces you to get close which can be a problem against polearm, a good 2hander or an archer with top equipment will destroy your shield in a couple of swings, but every class has weaknesses and one has to find out what weaknesses he can overcome the easiest.
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