If people said there was only one way to build then that would suggest big balance issues. Just depends on various factors, preference and since its capped you can't be the best in all areas. You have to sacrifice one thing for another, in this case manoeuvrability or damage or a mix. For eg. Kinngrimm's style is very defensive and fighting outnumbered, so he has high shield skill and can manuevre fast and choose when to engage or disengage. Someone else might not mind going slower and will want to kill in fewer hits instead. Kingrimm has like 4PS but high piercing weapon so does decent damage regardless though, but its quite short range I guess
You just have to go with a build and then play to your strengths and be aware of your weaknesses
nice that some guys get what i try to do
yes playstyle is the answer and you build and work actively on your playstyle over several generations. Till you found out what works best for you, what you want to focus on, what purpose you want to fullfill. If these things are answered you will know for yourself what stats you'd like to have and with what disadvantages you can live or work around them.
for me as mentioned it is very important to choose where, when and against whom i do engage. Surly getting peopel of guard gives you perhaps a kill or 1-2 free strikes, but often those who are not paying attention to their sorrounding have friends close by, if those then come chasing at you, you can either cut&run which is mostly unsatisfying to me
so i needed to find ways to survive ...
till gen 3 i was thrower/1h/sh hybrid , and well got most kills out of throwing which means i sucked at 1h/sh. But i liked the shielder them so i got rid of throwing.
Also getting killed by 2h spam was annoying as you perhaps know that by defenition of gamemechanics there is a attack and a block phase, someone who keeps attacking after his first attack spams, but not in his attack pahse, so normaly the other dude should hit him, but there is backpeddeling and there where awesome weapons like the meanwhile corrected long hafted blade ... all of that brought me to more agi/wpm/ath
Then i was just annoyed by those mass clusterfucks still with XP buble(you got xp only when people got killed close to you) with soooo much teamdamge. That turned me more and more to the flanks. On the flanks i faced 3 major opponents. Cav, Ranged and Ninjas.
All of these again brought me more to ath till i ended up on a 9/27 build with huscarl/sitesword/bamboo and light leather gear. I was killing a lot less then today but the combination was awesome
after a big respec i ended up with gen 16 less loomed gear but totally new gear loomed and my new weapon of choice was soon afterwards the steel pick. Vic666 always told me like that is the weapon no other weapon. After testing it for 1-2 generations i adjusted my build to even more ath for facehug and well i still use it. (man do i miss the good old siteword, much more versatile and fun to play, fuck you devs for nerving it into the ground)
What i am just telling you is a short history and how different experiences changed my perspective and therefor my playstyle. That all can be totally different on your site. Don't be afraid to test out. In the 26 generations i had there were at least 4-7 total fucked up builds in ... so what i still ahd fun testing them and afterwards i knew what not to do in the future.