I've been Polearms for two Gens, and 2H for the other three Gens, not a huge amount of experience compared to most of the folks here - only been playing since last August; however, I can tell you that comparitively, I'll take pretty much any 2H wep I've tried over the Bec. Recently, I've been trying the Bec again to see if I could make it work, but man, it's got some huge disadvantages.
Here's what I can gather from using it so far:
Pros:
- Decent thrust dmg coupled with great swing dmg. Awesome against heavy armor.
- Pole-stun, obviously.
- Not a horribly expensive weapon to repair.
- One of the fastest polearms to use (93 spd vanilla; 94 spd loomed)
- Better than most polearms in tight spaces.
Cons:
- Gets out-ranged by almost everything. It's the same length as a Short Spear. Most times I try to stab a 2H-er or even lots of 1H-ers, they stab me instead.
- Same on the swing. You gotta just about face-hug someone if you don't wanna be outranged. Fighting back-pedalers with superior length weps can be a bitch.
- Slower than most 2H-ers and 1H-ers so you can easily be spammed if you don't have a good Agi build (mine is 15 atm which was probably a mistake for Polearms).
- No bonus vs shielders.
- Seems to clip on every-fucking-thing; the ground, the stairs, the wall, the ceiling, other people, the trees, the sky, the list goes on.
- Breaks damn near every godam round. Not THAT expensive but shit, 756g every time whether you win or lose can still suck. None of my other gear breaks half as much as this thing, and I've got 146 WPF in it.
