Well... Polearm?Follow

If you're tanking, the reduction in damage you take through shield is significant (both directly through shield blocks and the extra DEF they give, and indirectly - e.g. by shield bash interrupting spells/JAs, or at later levels through shield blocks allowing you to do things like cast utsu without being interrupted when hit). And don't forget we also get TP for shield blocks now! Using polearm would remove this source of damage reduction from you, and you would notice the lack. You'd also miss out on shield skill unless you were syncing.

I've messed around with staff and great sword in things like beseiged and PLD can put out some good numbers (especially /SAM. or /THF for pure epeen WS damage lol), but our polearm skill is lowest of the three 2H weapons. And 2H weapons don't really get the massive edge over 1H weapons until you start getting things like double attack or hasso from sub, by which point the skill difference will have widened and you'll be losing out on an awful lot of accuracy, merits/2H bonuses or no.

If you're just DDing*, polearm will still be less accurate for you than sword, but sword WS suck until Vorp, so I guess if polearm gets a decent lowbie WS then it might be a viable option if you're syncing. It might be worth trying, if you're in a party with friends and you're not gimping your defensive stats to do so, or you're just messing around for a mission or key farming etc, but don't count on being able to do it in a pickup. The utility of shield is just too great to lose for day-to-day stuff.


*which is fun but highly unlikely to happen given the general lack of tanks for exp

Edited, Aug 21st 2009 4:48pm by KisharBlack