21/18 instead of 21/15

[Laufknoten]

There is no such thing as using a weapon at its full potential. The only benefits wpf give you in combat are attack speed and damage. Now this amounts to 15% damage and 6.5% attack speed per 100 wpf. Which is not a whole lot, but that is beside the current point. The important thing is that these benefits are percentual. Percentually, every weapon class gets the same benefits from wpf. When looking at these benefits absolutely, it is a difference case. Let's compare a Danish with a Nordic Champion Sword and how much damage and speed they gain from a 100 wpf.

Estimated attack durations are taken from WaltF4's graph in this thread, this is very rough but it's all I got to prove my point: http://forum.meleegaming.com/beginner's-help-and-guides/game-mechanic-megathread!/

Danish
Attack duration: 1.19 - 6.5% = 1.112 (-0.077 s change)
Damage: 41 + 15% = 47.2 (6.2 c change)

NCS
Attack duration: 1.16 - 6.5% = 1.084 (-0.075 s change)
Damage: 32 + 15% = 36.8 (4.2 c change)

The point is that 1h, due to low attack duration and damage, benefits less absolutely from the percentual wpf bonuses than slower, high damage weapons do. Similar, but then the other way around, to the way that 1h benefits more percentually from the absolute damage bonus from heirlooms.

Afaik 100 effective wpf makes your weapon as effective as it is listed on the site, so with 1 wpf you do 15% less damage, like stated in WaltF4's thread. That means if you use a sword that does 28 damage with only 50 wpf the weapon will only do 25 or so damage, highly decreasing it's effectivity. I know these are just statistics, but I used a lot of low cut damage swords and 28 is kind of like the "glance-threshold" for those weapons. Everything below will get you a lot of glances against heavy armored guys. So one more point in damage can be a lot for a 1h while most 2h do a ton of damage anyway.
You are right that 2h benefits even more from WPF, but 1h needs wpf just as much. What I want to say is that 2h have high damage so even without wpf they still do more damage than a lot of 1h with 100 effective wpf. They will be damn slow and glance more often, but they can still deal a lot of damage, potentially.   

 

[CrazyCracka420]

Agreed garison except for your 7ps versus 6ps agrument.  All of my level 30 builds were with 6 PS, and I notice a large difference in 1h's when I go up to 7PS, I feel much more adequate on the battlefield than with 6 PS.

[Osiris]

i suppose it depends what he is using

if its mw NCS then 6 is fine 7 is deadly.
if its a normal NCS then id go for 7

[CrazyCracka420]

i suppose it depends what he is using

if its mw NCS then 6 is fine 7 is deadly.
if its a normal NCS then id go for 7

Yeah I agree, I had a KAS (same stats basically as NCS) and always had 6 PS when I was retiring, it certainly is adequate, but 7 was much much nicer (little more damage and almost no glancing).  6 PS with +3 KAS is really all you need, but 7 is very nice

[Laufknoten]

Yeah I agree, I had a KAS (same stats basically as NCS) and always had 6 PS when I was retiring, it certainly is adequate, but 7 was much much nicer (little more damage and almost no glancing).  6 PS with +3 KAS is really all you need, but 7 is very nice

Someone once stated that 3 loompoints equal roughly one point in PS, so once you masterworked your sword you can go down with PS and still deal as much damage as before.
The 21/18 build (especially the lvl 31 one) is the best for shielders who use swords imo. If you go Kingrimm style and use the steel pick or some other blunt/pierce weapon I would say 18/21 or 15/24. (I think Kingrimm only has 12 str and 3 PS, but I'm not sure. He still deals a lot of damage with his mw steel pick. Or whatever he is using, now that he can't use it anymore.^^)

[Teeth]

Afaik 100 effective wpf makes your weapon as effective as it is listed on the site, so with 1 wpf you do 15% less damage

Which means that 150 wpf will make you do 107,5%, which means there is no full potential as you did state before, but this is nitpicking.

WPF helps 1h a lot.  I disagree with those that say 0 wpf is ok for 1h.

Nobody is saying that, 0 WM, which means that you still have like 115 wpf.

And 15% damage increase for every 100 WPF (7.5% per 50WPF is actually very good, that's one more Power Strike basically) but I do not believe that is accurate, as I was under the impression WPF x PowerStrike (minus other variables like enemy armor/health and soak) are what takes your damage into consideration. 

Gaining 50 wpf does in fact cost you 6 attribute points though, which is quite expensive compared to 1 attribute for PS. For the same cost you can get 12 hitpoints.

This is the wpf and powerstrike relation
(WPF*0.01*0.15+0.85)*(power_strike*0.08+1.0)

Which gives me 1.56 for 100 wpf and 1.67 for 150 wpf. 1.56 and 1.67 is a 6.6% difference. Of course due to the multiplicator the increase gets lower at higher wpf comparisons, but because the wpf value is such a small factor in the formula, 15% per 100 is a close enough estimate. It is actually only 13% when going from 100 to 200.

[the real god emperor]

Level 30 (4 420 577 xp)

Strength: 21
Agility: 18
Skills to attributes: 8
Power Strike: 7
Shield: 6
Athletics: 6
Weapon Master: 4
One Handed: 140

i got a NCS, and thinking to build like this.  I think IF is not necessary, cuz u re holding a shield to cover you. Your shield is your shield.

[Penitent]

Level 30 (4 420 577 xp)

Strength: 21
Agility: 18
Skills to attributes: 8
Power Strike: 7
Shield: 6
Athletics: 6
Weapon Master: 4
One Handed: 140

i got a NCS, and thinking to build like this.  I think IF is not necessary, cuz u re holding a shield to cover you. Your shield is your shield.

Oh you silly naive shielder.  Don't you know that you need IF and armor to defend against teamhits, and not the enemy? 

Seriously though, you are correct that IF is not absolutely required, but it helps.  Don't be lured in to thinking the shield will save you though.  It only helps against enemy attacks from the front, not friendly ones form the back/sides.

[Fredom]

Well, I would go for 2 Ironflesh + so more than 2 Ironflesh immediately. Without Ironflesh a peasant will cut the fuck out of you, I tried this out for myself and a daggermy old friend ran around my head and with 3 hits he brought me into the sky. ( I was wearing Huscarl's Round Shield, Sarranid Guard armor, Knightly Arming Sword and Novogrod Helmet, Splinted Leather Graves etc.) So don't do the mistake to not getting any points into IF. At lvl 30 go for atleast 3 Ironflesh, you will see, that you do better than without any Ironflesh.   

[Jack1]

I'm not a shielded but.... With my +1 mail I usually take 2-3 hits average.... If I can keep speed boy noises down and wear my plate armor, I can take 10+ hits at 21/18 with 4 IF. If in nail I'de say 4-5 hits

[Phew]

I noticed a big improvement in performance going from 5 to 6 athletics as a shielder, and a smaller one going from 6 to 7. I don't notice a big difference between 6 and 7 power strike. Higher athletics increases your chance of landing held strikes to the head, which is where your damage comes from as a 1h (like 50-100%+ more damage than a non-held torso hit).

For IF, in most builds you usually get a choice between 1 more power strike or 6-7 ironflesh. So it works out to ~8% more offense or ~23% more defense. You get more bang for your buck for choosing IF over PS (a dead guy does 0 damage). And it doesn't matter how good you are at blocking with your shield, you will take a lot of hits from behind (both teammates and enemies), so you need armor and IF.

So I say go 18/18 and spec IF before going for 21 in Str or Agi. And weapon master sucks right now, but I max it every gen because devs have promised WM buffs for years. They keep letting me down though.