Okay, this is bound to be long and rambly but stick with me on this because I think I may be onto something. Keep in mind that my Warrior will be level 8 upon posting this and is going full sword/rest shield.

So someone gave me a gift of a 2h sword even though I want to be a sword and board Warrior. Instead of being an ass and selling the 2h sword, I decided to experiment with it, trying to figure out the best time to swap to it to maximize my DPS while leveling. I started with blocking with my shield and using the block reactionary style Frost Cut with my 1h and then swapping to the 2h to finish off a monster while they bleed.

This is where things get interesting. I took my experiments a step further and found out you can block an attack with a 1h+shield and then swap to your 2h and use Frost Cut with the 2h weapon. So now when I block, I swap to my 2h to increase my damage with that style. This provoked further thought as I noticed when I swap from 1h to 2h, you swing your 2h weapon as if you had your 1h speed for that one attack. However, when you swap from 2h to 1h, you have to wait to swing as if you still had your 2h out.

This is where my thoughts are currently at. With fast enough reflexes, could you technically swing with a 2h weapon, swap to your 1h+shield until you are ready to swing again, swap to the 2h to swing and keep repeating that way? You can still block attacks between swings and use block reactionary styles but deal damage as a 2h character? It would be a way to maximize your DPS but still take hits as a tank assuming you can pull it off.

I would love to hear other people's thoughts on the matter. It is obviously no easy task especially considering I only have 60 Quickness compared to a fully buffed level 50 in RvR. Even if someone could pull this nonsense off, would it be practical in any regard since most tanks are simply peelers in RvR?

This is a very old and effective combat strategy. I would say Bullvii of Bossiney Cluster/classic was the most famous for it. He was a solo pole armsman back when defenders rage was a frontal style, and had a humongous growth rate attached to it. He would kite people all over the old bridges and just spam people down with it. To maximize his defense, he would time his swings and only have his polearm out for a half a second at the most, just enough to land the style. The rest of the time he was out of combat with his shield out. I wish I could find one of his old videos to show you how damn effective it was.

Yeah, I figure it was possible but it must have been damn hard for him to do, plus speccing an Armsman must have been a pain in the ass to boot to get a system like that to work.

I have to look into more styles that require a block to use compared to just normal styles to see if they are worth the effort of doing the weapon swap with them.

There was an armsman who used this method in solo pvp during Uth v1.

I mainly used it for solo pve, where I had lifetap 2h sword, 1h sword, and shield, and a health regen 1h sword.
Depending on the situation I changed out my 1h weapon.

It was funny when I farmed next to a hammer warrior. He often had to take rests, while I just kept on going.
The reactive styles in sword is so much better, and uses less end than hammer does.
The lifetap, and health regen items ment I did not have to rest to heal either.

You get used to your own swingspeed, but what is more important is that of the target which you are fighting.
What I did was auto-attack a target until I started to parry/block, engage if I had to, then I began my chains, and I would refresh the chain usually before I finished it, to avoid having to auto-attack (anytime style takes too much end, even provoke!).
I probably only styled with my 2h, and had shield down only for 50ms or so, whatever it took to actually style, then back to shield.
Auto-attacks was done with 1h sword, often the health regen one if I was below 80% hp.

Large Weapons is probably the line that benefits most from this kind of stuff in pvp, because there you have so many choices:
Target Parries
Target Blocks
In front of target
Behind target
To side of target
You parry


Note:
The delay until you can do your next attack depends on the speed of the weapon you did your previously attack with.
If you use a 4.2 1h weapon and a 3.9 2h, then you would notice less 'recovery' after using the 2h one.

Reads like it's super difficult but it's easily done and if you don't do it you are basically a gimp.
Pretty much standard tactic for any melee class, not more not less.

Auto hotkey ftw

This is a technique I use pretty often as well. I use the shield stun as well, when I can, on top of it. Shield stun, go to side or back and hit your positional. I could usually get 2 swings out before the stun wears off. Switch back to 1h and await my next opportunity. Using the reactionals or other attacks that have a stun attached to them gives you more time to do some 2h beat downs.

Geawiel wrote:This is a technique I use pretty often as well. I use the shield stun as well, when I can, on top of it. Shield stun, go to side or back and hit your positional. I could usually get 2 swings out before the stun wears off. Switch back to 1h and await my next opportunity. Using the reactionals or other attacks that have a stun attached to them gives you more time to do some 2h beat downs.

I'm not simply talking about using a shield slam to stun someone and then swap to a 2h weapon, I am talking about a Slwords style that requires a block to use and then swapping to a 2h weapon to use that specific style to get more damage out of it and then swapping back to a 1h and shield right after in hopes of blocking more attacks.