Currently 34 trains, about to be 35. I've been using OHB and shield for quite a while now, but I'm finding that I just don't have proper stopping power. It became painfully obvious when sent to kill Storm Giants today. Even with trying to leg, then aim for the head, it took a lot of swings to get them down, and then a couple more to get the crit-kill. I noticed a good deal of problems w/ shadow mares as well.

I still have my yearly fix-skills left over, and I'm trying to decide if I want to use it to convert to two-handed weapons. To get to 2x in THW, and 1x in dodge, I would (obviously) drop all my OHB & shield, but I'd also drop 15 ranks of religion lore (down to zero), and about 12 ranks of armor use (down to 94). My agidex bonus is 38, so I get 3 seconds shaved off (for a normal 5 sec swing/ with a two-handed sword). Any input on if the shift would be worthwhile?

Thanks in advance.

OHB/shield works well at the higher levels at least. My approach is 1615 or cman SBASH to start, followed by a triple mstrike or an aimed shot to the head. At your level 30 ranks of mstrike for a double mstrike would be reasonable. Maybe post a few clips of your paladin in action.

I still have my yearly fix-skills left over, and I'm trying to decide if I want to use it to convert to two-handed weapons. To get to 2x in THW, and 1x in dodge, I would (obviously) drop all my OHB & shield, but I'd also drop 15 ranks of religion lore (down to zero), and about 12 ranks of armor use (down to 94). My agidex bonus is 38, so I get 3 seconds shaved off (for a normal 5 sec swing/ with a two-handed sword). Any input on if the shift would be worthwhile?

Thanks in advance.

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My advice is caution. Making such a drastic change like that to your training plan usually doesn't end well. You think it'll turn out well because it'll fix one issue, but it opens up a good bit of others. In this case, you'll gain killing power but you'll lose a good bit of defense, and sometimes the loss of defense is too huge to overcome because you have to drastically change your hunting tactics.

With the thw/dodge route you'll lose TPs (so aux skills - like the ability to make things kneel), speed (7-8 second ambush and you'll need to ambush with any weapon at some point), bolt defense, encumbered defense, setup cmans (sbash), and possibly a chunk of regular DS if you have a good shield, and you'll have to rebond to your weapon and learn new tactics. You may not even gain a killing advantage if the things you're hunting have a ton of natural padding.

So I would ask these questions about your current route.
-Are you strictly relying on 1615, or are you using setup cmans - like sbash?
-Are you 1xing MO? MO is very important for ohb/shield plans, probably the single most important skill in my opinion.
-Do you have crowd press?
-Do you have a decently enchanted blunt?
-Are you using a morning star?
-Do you have a good shield or is it basic 4x? - A crappy shield now could make the shift easier.
-What is your current strategy for taking out creatures? 1615/ambush leg/ambush head? Or something else?

Dgry

I've got a log I can post that shows a strong hunting example, wearing a full set of mass spells. I can post when I get home. What's the best way to show it? Just my attacks, my commands to swap stances/aim, or show enemy swings as well?

I'll edit to whatever is easiest.

Here's the mentioned log. 17 storm giants and 13 skeletal giants engaged. Its 35 pages in word, so figured a Google doc would be better.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3btnPLN4ayQelc4ZWc2Y243cGM/edit

For tldr: 16 storms killed max/min/mean of 70/12/39 seconds;12 skel engaged at 46/0/23 seconds.

Here's the mentioned log. 17 storm giants and 13 skeletal giants engaged. Its 35 pages in word, so figured a Google doc would be better.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3btnPLN4ayQelc4ZWc2Y243cGM/edit

For tldr: 16 storms killed max/min/mean of 70/12/39 seconds;12 skel engaged at 46/0/23 seconds.

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So a few things.
You're right on the cusp of being able to crit kill with headshots when one is legged. However, since you aren't quite there you usually end up ruining the head as a targetable spot (rank3 head wound). Once that happens I didn't see you retargetting to aim at the neck or eyes. I would recommend trying to boost your AS via outside spells/imbeds and see if you can push an aimed head strike into one swing kill territory. If one or two spells can't take you that territory then you either need to move away from aiming completely or find something that has less padding/DS.

As far as mstriking, I didn't notice any focused mstriking. Since we've established you can't guarantee crit-kill with a hit to the head when it's prone, you're not going to crit kill it when it's standing. If you can't crit kill something while it's standing then open mstriking is a waste of your mstrike if you have the option to focus one. Open mstriking is good for disabling (stunning/delimbing/knockdowns) and killing (with a high enough end result). If all you're doing with an open mstrike is blood loss and minors, it's best to use focused mstrike, which is better for stacking wounds and draining health. So I just checked your training, and you don't have enough to focus mstrike. Focused mstriking is nearly a requirement for one handers.

So, your options.
-Find different prey - something a bit softer, giants are not the best prey for one handers as they don't tend to stay stunned and have hefty padding
-Take up THW - you are pretty much hunting like a THW user would. You will lose on some skill points doing this, you also need to verify you won't cripple yourself from defense loss. I doubt you were using zealot, but that'd be a good test of how you'd do with THWs compared to ohbs. Use it a few hunts and see how badly you get trampled.
-Tweak your existing training. You need to be able to focus mstrike with ohb. Also, I haven't run the numbers so it's possible you could be 15 points of AS away from headshotting giants, or you could be 100 points.

Dgry

Thanks, and like I said, this was an impressively good hunt for me. The skeletal giants aren't an issue at all really, and the storm giants are 5 trains over me. So it's possible that's where part of the issue is as well. If you look at the start of the doc, you'll see my skill training. The open mstrike is a mixture of hoping for a knockdown, and giving them blood loss. I'll be gaining a few points as I finish bonding to my spikestar (swapped a level ago away from a warhammer).

I'll give the zealot thing a try and see how it goes as well to get an idea about a THW.

Thanks again.

Appoloin

Meant to ask about this. Not too familiar with how that works. So once a location gets a rank3 wound, it can't continue to be attacked to trigger a death crit? Beating a location into invulnerability so to speak?

Appoloin

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Yes. Once a body part (excluding the chest and maybe abs/back) is a rank3 it's considered to be gone. Any further hits to that body part will be redirected to the chest. So if you ruin the head as a targettable area, you should go for the neck, then the eyes. Usually with a one hander if you work your way through all of those parts then it's out of blood anyway.

Dgry

The reason you are missing openings is that you are poorly trained to aim. Aiming skill is the average of CMan and ambush skills. I wouldn't go as far as 1x ambush, but you should get some ranks in it. You shouldn't be missing openings at all when going for those leg and head shots on a giant and it will probably take you 5-10 ranks of ambush training to make that happen. Lots of MOC if you want to kill by bleeding out, some ambush if you want to crit kill.

You'll want more eventually, because you'll want to be able to reliably hit harder targets than heads of prone giants, but you ought to train enough now so that you never miss openings on those basic shots (leg of a standing, head of a prone giant). With 150 CMan ranks and 25 ambush ranks = (250+105)/2 = 177 aim skill I can still miss the occasional opening on the most difficult targets with my star, but I stopped missing the basic ones with about half that. You have (132+0)/2 = 66 aim skill. 10 ranks ambush would take that to 91, which I am pretty sure would get you reliable basic shots and 5 would take that to 78, which might. I'd train 5 the moment you can scrape together the points after getting 1635, and then add another 1 each level if you missed an opening during the previous level.

A drawback of the star is that it has a chance of puncture damage as well as crush, and puncture damage is not a guaranteed kill however hard you hit the head. Hit the head hard enough with crush, or the eye hard enough with puncture, and its a guaranteed kill, but a weapon that does both never can guarantee a kill. You will always be liable to crit out the head and should be ready to switch. As a matter of style, I always switch if the first head shot doesn't kill, whether or not it critted out, but its only necessary when the head has a rank 3 injury (which can be direct or from stacking Rank 2).

I doubt its worth switching to the eyes at your training. You probably are better just using unaimed shots, because you'll miss too many openings. When you get better trained to aim, there will be times when you crit out the head, switch to the neck and crit that out, and switch to the eye for the kill. I've never yet critted out all 4 but on rare occasions I have only got the crit kill on the second eye.

I wouldn't rush beyond MBP at the cost of nerfing important attack skills. Unless you have something nice waiting in a locker, or your RP demands full plate, it can be better to wear MBP even when you have the full plate training. Its situational which is mechanically better.

You want to be in MBP if a critter throws a manoever at you, and in full plate if it throws a warding spell at you. If you hit it rather than missing an opening, its not doing either.

Thanks guys, what I think I will end up trying is dropping armor down to 100, upping ambush to 10 at least, and then dumping points into MOC until 30 ranks. Hit 35 last night, so I'm thinking I can get a good chunk out of the way by 36.

>>Once a body part (excluding the chest and maybe abs/back) is a rank 3 it's considered to be gone. Any further hits to that body part will be redirected to the chest.<<

Correct, except I thought the attecks were redirected toward the back instead of the chest?

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