Mhm. I looked through those, I saw the tendon which seemed major but then again that was a whole year ago - the recent surge towards PB happened in the last few months (since BC and AL stun was nerfed, I guess!).

Did tempering affect some warrior specs more than others?

I've sort of wanted to go warrior for a long time - it seems nice and complex. I suppose axelords can still swing a big axe for big damage Veyrzhul-style.

nah tempering is the same, but people can get the prec/speed or whatever stats they want. Also, the mechanics behind the the way precision works was changed. Not to discourage you, but I think you'll find that just about every class has their simple strategy that they have to pull off and it is pretty much always the best way to go.

But on the plus side, it's always refreshing to learn a new class since the things you need to react to are also different and that is real difference between each class I feel.

Damage warrior does't really work any more, especially not with the influx of demis. When I first went pureblade, I made a damage weapon (fully runed with elementals, around 400 damage stat with all mods), but it really didn't work out so well. Then switched to precision and it was just awesome.

Xenthos may be right in that Axelord has nice critical wound level afflictions, but one problem is that those are all swing affs.
A huge boon of pb is that you can get the nice heavy wound level afflictions (tendons, collapsednerve) with jabs, it makes them alot more effectively usable.

As someone who has been pureblade, and only pureblade, since 2007, the changes that have made it a decent choice are varied.

-Gaining collapsed nerve in place of the unreliable and largely ineffective crackedelbow (swing only) as a heavy arm wound helped give PBs more hindering than they had.

-Preventing severtendon from being cured by allheale helped to let this heavy wounds hindering affliction actually be useful- prior it was cured to quickly for the PB to capitalize on at all.

-The addition of disembowel as a critical gut wound, while not particularly threatening all by itself, gave PBs another kill avenue to be protected against, as well as the possibility (though difficult) of a stacked regen cure between disembowel and ruptured stomach.

-Weapon stat changes- When I started, we were told "get a speed weapon for hunting, get a wounding weapon for fighting, and a damage weapon for group fights". Then stats were changed around to where it was all about speed and having demistats. When this happened, PB was bottom of the barrel. AL had double tap, BC was wind spamming, and BM had pin. Precision, the compensating factor for two handers having the lower versatility and much lower wounding opportunities than the two weapon specs, was rendered largely to a state of "necessary, but still useless". Speed weapons ruled the day. Since the stat values have been readjusted, precision is meaningful again, and thus, so is the extra precision gained from being a PB or AL.

-Fight atmosphere changes- Get a zerg, spam broken hinders that lock people in/out of a room (unless they do exactly the right thing in a .5 second window, which prolongs the two-button win lockdown for a few more seconds), dump a mana kill or a timed insta on them. PB's the only knight spec with a timed insta (though a slow one, compared to bards). Ergo, decapitate, which was rarely seen outside of pit-cheese before, became the knight kill du'jour. It helps also that you can decapitate as well with the worst claymore ever made as with an over-runed wound machine.


I like pureblade, as it doesn't rely on a one-trick win (apart from the insta kill stuff, but that's a larger issue than one knight spec). It is a spec that I've found is a while in building up wounds, in part because it lacks a trick (and by trick, I mean doubletap, wind spam, pin- the spec certainly can put people into a bad place, but it takes more effort than spamming one affliction) to stop people from defending themselves, but overall it is well balanced and versitile. Then again I'm sitting on a pretty expensive toy in Akui's sword, which defnitely helps with the whole wound thing. In fact, I'd like to see what an AL could do with a similar set up. A high investment AL should be able to still build wounds by strategically working around parry and keeping ahead of curing them, much like PBs do, until they can score their high end stuff.

(Heck, give me runes I can move without penalty to different weapons, and I'd even try it. HINT HINT.)

But for a low investment knight, stick with PB for the insta, or BM for general better-than-other-stuff-ness, pinleg, and the fact that, with Xenthos and Vath and Shuyin all being BMs, it will probably be protected from nerfs until the end of time itself.

(hehe. I called them BMs.)

Though, with AL's girth of salve cures, if they had an ability similar to the shofangi one that temporarily stops salve applications, or even a way to delay people from curing slickness for a few seconds, it would revitalize (maybe even over-vitalize) the spec.

All I got from that is 'go PB and get it destroyed'

Actually, all I got from that is that you need thousand of credits invested in weapon runes to be effective.

And that, unlike with all the other archetypes, there are two skills designed specifically to prevent warriors from being effective - combat, that will stop a warrior from hitting altogether, and resilience to reduce the damage and wounding they do when they actually hit, or shrug the poisons. Not including rebound and natural miss tendencies. Not to mention the fact that we need to hit the same body part several times to cause any serious damage, compared to monks that only need to actually hit you, no matter where, to start to really hurt, making bypassing parry and stancing a breeze.

Ignore me, it's been a long time since I was able to find any rational reasons to be a warrior, and not any other archetype. Although being able, in the most extreme of cases, to deliver four afflictions in one hit (two wounds with each weapon, two poisons for each weapon), plus health damage sounds pretty good. Wait, no, monks can truelock you in one form, if I am not mistaken.

I thought Sojiro went Pureblade for decap, with the new skillflex thing. Hm!

Also, I so have nerfed Pinleg.

(Imagine how fun it would be if you still couldn't cure while pinned!)

Yea, what you talkin bout willis. Any class I have been has gotten nerfed. Blademaster, Bards, Precision warriors, Damage warriors, Pyromancers. I could only imagine it'll be Blademaster again whenever I get around to it.

Monks remaining OP doesn't say much about how warriors compare to the base. Knight on knight combat has always been a bit of an issue, and ALs (and BCs, to a lesser extent) have been shut out of that matchup, which is the biggest problem. There's also the more subtle problem of some specs possibly being strictly worse than other weapon specs. There is no generic knight vs. clothie issue at the moment.

Pureblade has had its rough times though now I think it is a lot more viable than it was and certainly a lot better off than its other 2hand counterpart.

I wasn't saying it isn't doable, there are good warriors out there. I was simply saying that because of the above reasons I wouldn't choose to be a warrior. The OP was asking for advice about warriors, after all.

I thought the comparison with monks was appropriate since they are the only other wounding class.

Monks are a wounding class in the same way that druids are a damage class.

Ok.

Huge necro I know (sorry bout that), but I wanted to find an existing thread. Anyways, so from what I've read I should probably change to pureblade because Axelord doesnt do crap in 1v1 or group fights?

ALs are pretty much out with the changes, yeah. Pureblade is a pretty good choice if you do it right.

Bah. What are some good stats for a pureblade sword? Also, what afflictions should I be working on?