you missed the sarcasm tag arround
"Only 7-9 hits from a specialized shield killer weapon yeah? :-)"
so what did you do with 9 skillpoints? getting 4 more attribute points?
"And afterwards you can theoretically keep blocking manually."
In my case emphazise the "theoretically", anyone who has seen my shield fail knows that i am going down soon after
"The sidesword is practically equal to the katana in stats,"
practically if you dont add the shield weigth and animation time from the shield
"Of course this game is all about personal skill (and we dream about teamwork). That's why we are so anal about weapon balance! :-D"
you got that right
"Personally I think that pirat-like side sword was just trolling from the devs..Choosing a 1h wep is now a no-brainer, making all the other 1 handers obsolete. If the devs get their brains together they will rebalance 2h also so not everyone runs around with the greatsword sisters."
I started playing after the sitesword was introduced. But it wasn't my first weapon of choice. Long Espada and Wakasashi were my first weapons. Wakasashi was nice but looked awful with a shield, and long espada was just too long for my taste, got stuck everywhere. Sitesword was versatile, beside its speed it hasn't got the top place in any other area, and i chose speed over max cut//blunt/pierce dmg or weapon lenght etc.. Perhaps i am anal too, about my favourite weapon, i will play a little more with my thrower/polearm guy to get into the brain of 2h/polearms and blocking so i can see what they are whinning about and join them ;).