About WM (something I forgot to mention). It's very useful for one handers but twohanders and polearmers can't really feel the difference (unless they spam katana and use light armor aka ninja but that's not very smart thing to do).
On the contrary:
...weapon proficiency has a greater absolute reduction in the time per attack for slower weapons than for faster weapons.
The reason why proficiency might be more noticeably beneficial for 1handers is because of the damage bonus it provides.
Let us summarize it. IF is better than WM.
But my questions was, is WM useful.
WM isn't useless. Strenght maybe gives you some onehit kills, but in the end you are so slow and dont have any athletics either.
No, weapon master is not useless. It is, however, one of the worst returns you can possibly make for the investment, for a pure proficiency build. This isn't an argument between weapon master and strength, this is a discussion about every single other thing you can use your skill points on besides weapon master. You can go high agility
and high strength by sacrificing points in weapon master, you know?
Anyway, here's what I mean about poor returns:
To put this in perspective, a level 30 character with 3 agility, no weapon master, and 110 polearm proficiency would attack ~5% slower than a level 30 character with 27 agility, 9 weapon master, and 180 polearm proficiency if both characters were to use a speed 94 polearm. The absolute difference in time per attack between these two characters would be ~0.06 seconds.
That's
less than a tenth of a second off the total time of one swing, comparing those characters. With a faster weapon the increase would be even smaller. And that's an exaggerated difference of 70 proficiency points! You would also be receiving about 10% increased melee damage in that weapon class, though, but to put
that into perspective, that's only a quarter of a skill point's worth higher than one power strike. If you didn't get
any weapon master, and instead put 6 of those skill points into 3 more strength and 1 of them into power strike, you'd
more than make up the difference in damage on top of having 3 additional hit points and
two extra skill points that you could put elsewhere!
Well maybe you didn't actually say WM is useless but OP was asking if it is useful and you run to say quite the opposite. Something tells me that you are stacking strenght and completely underestimating the importance of agility and the benefits it gives with athletics, and weaponmaster. Yeah when it really comes to it, it's just what you prefer. I know high IF with heavy armor is hard to kill and absorbs many hits but due to character's slow movement it is more likely to end in a situation where you are completely raped with pikes + other weapons, and there is nothing you can do because you are not able to move out from their range.
Yes. Lysander asked a question, and Rhaelys answered it. You just happen, apparently, not to like the answer provided. So Rhaelys stacks strength? That's called speaking from experience. There aren't many scenarios of getting "raped with pikes + other weapons" when you see Rhaelys
consistently perform as one of the top players on the servers that are relevant to these scenarios. The idea that having high strength somehow makes you helpless and lose your battle-sense is ridiculous propaganda. There is also the idea of a more balanced build, even one that favors strength just a little bit.
Isn't it ironic that a continent with less ranged tends to stack strenght and ironflesh even if they wouldn't neccessarily have to because they can simply dodge the few arrows that are flying on the server? And what about lighter gear and athletics in a situation where you are facing an archer? I would say agi build is more powerful since it can easilly dodge the arrows and actually catch the archer who is running away... Situation doesn't look so bright for str build because the bundle of sticks just keeps shooting you, hitting you every time while running.
That's not ironic at all, that's adaptation to a given situation. The so-called meta-game may be different on NA, but that's because we don't believe that the S-key is synonymous with the word "footwork" around here. I'm being insulting to you because you brought it upon yourself.
Anyhow, it's not
necessarily better or easier to catch an archer as a high agility build. Sometimes a shield works better, sometimes hiding works better, and running faster doesn't always make dodging that much simpler. Catching up to them, yeah, but then if you do get hit running that fast you're not only taking ever-so-much-more damage because of your higher runspeed giving
them a speed bonus, but you're probably in lighter armor to be able to run that fast and probably don't have all that excess strength and ironflesh to absorb as many of the arrow hits! It makes it more doable, but it also makes arrows much more dangerous.
Goddamn you Tears Of Destiny of Chaos...
Now this is just plain uncalled for.
I do not think anybody will advocate getting 9 WM for a melee non-hybrid build.
I do 
If this is the case, then why bother asking whether or not weapon master is useful? It seems like you made your decision before the discussion even began, Lysander.
Sorry for the horrible formatting.
