Ok so I never got a response on a good soloer so I was debating between Skald and Summoning based SM.

I think I have decided to go with Skald but it is still up in the air.

I was going to go Troll 15str/10Con unless someone says differently and I was going to keep songs maxed and rest in hammer.

Is the summoning based SM going to be a lot better at PvE though? I mainly worry about not getting a group as Sm and figured Skald would be in more demand. Any help would be appreciated.

If I do decide to go Summoning SM what race and stat distribution should I go?

Quik wrote:Ok so I never got a response on a good soloer so I was debating between Skald and Summoning based SM.

I think I have decided to go with Skald but it is still up in the air.

I was going to go Troll 15str/10Con unless someone says differently and I was going to keep songs maxed and rest in hammer.

Is the summoning based SM going to be a lot better at PvE though? I mainly worry about not getting a group as Sm and figured Skald would be in more demand. Any help would be appreciated.

If I do decide to go Summoning SM what race and stat distribution should I go?

If you want to do pve only, it's hard to say. With some decent gear, skald can pretty much chain yellow mobs with some rest for power and health regen. You will also find xp groups easier as a skald. On the other hand, it's not bad to level summoning till lvl 20 for solo xp, then respec to bomb and find some groups. As far as rvr goes, a summoning SM is bad. With the right spec, SM can be a strong rvr class and you can end up winning lot of 1v1 fights or join groups that want you, but the soloing problem is lack of speed, so you will get zerged a lot. Never take constitution as a starting stat on tanks, it's kinda useless. For a skald, I'd go either 15str/10qui or 10str/10qui/1char. Although 10 quickness does not add much to your attack speed, every little bit really does help, so it's better than a few extra hits you'll get with 10 con. Maxed songs are a good spec, even for lvl 50. I normally never went more than 34 in hammer, but 39 is fine too, rest parry ofc .

Summoning SM is not a very good soloer these days. You want to group with a healer if you want to play that class.

Race doesn't matter that much for skald, but I would personally pick dwarf since he have the best race resists.
For starters it is 10 str (damage), 10 dex (parry), 10 cha (spell damage).

When you level, you do it like this:
(You pick axe or sword, both are fine, just do NOT pick hammer!)
lvl 2: 2 in axe/sword (do not use the style, it is a waste of endurance)
lvl 3: 3 in axe/sword
lvl 4: nothing
lvl 5: 3 in axe/sword and 4 in battlesongs (both first dd's)
lvl 6: 5 in battlesongs (first damage add chant)
lvl 7: 5 in axe/sword (increase your melee damage)
lvl 8: 6 in axe/sword (first anytime style that you can actually use!) and 6 in battlesongs (first mez)
lvl 11: 8 in axe/sword (increase your melee damage) and 10 in battlesongs (important! second health regen, you solo so this will cut your downtime by a lot)
lvl 12-19: do as you want, maybe get battlesongs higher for higher damage add at 14, or weapon higher, but do NOT go higher than 18 in battlesongs, and 15 in axe/sword!
lvl 20: respec out of axe/sword, and put those points into hammer,, you should now have 15 hammer and 18 battlesongs (highest possible battlesong while keeping 15 in weapon for provoke)
lvl 21: 15 hammer and 20 battlesongs (you get dmg add at 19 and new health regen at 20)
+++ do as you want, maybe increase hammer a bit for more damage that way, but new damage add is at 25 in battlesongs, so it is a bit away