I've had alot of fun with cloud pole/mace. And cloud pole/axe.

I've also had alot of fun with felar spear/hand.

I recently had some fun with elf sword/dagger, but that's hard to pull off.


As for what spec, especially if you never played a warrior past 18, I would suggest taking one of the "defense" specs first. For a number of reasons.

(pole/staff-spear/sword) The extra defense skill is nice to help your survivability. And, getting it as first spec means you will be tanking alot early, which means your defense skill will go up nicely. It's often very hard to work on a defense skill of a second spec. Why? because at 40+, what groups you will be in will want either good tanking, or lots of damage. And at 40+, if you don't have a high% in your defense skill, you will tank like poopy. And at 40+, the mobs you have to tank in order to get decent skill ups will kill you FAST. So take a spec with a defense skill as your first spec.


Pole is STR/size based with the "distance" skill (it's defense skill). That means Giants to get the most from it.

staff/spear is dex based. So a high-dex race will get the most from it. Also, wielding one weapon will limit your damage output unless you are a Felar. Felar get claw attacks, and have decent dex, which is why felar are typically choose staff/spear more than other races.

Keep in mind, however, that most of the high-dex races also have very low strength. If you let your carry weight get over half of your max total, you will start to tank like poopy. between 20-45 this can be difficult to deal with. Sometimes, just the eq you are wearing, and one extra weapon will take you to half your max weight. Meaning you will never be carrying much more than 2-3 pieces of food...if you want to actually tank better than a sleeping, drunk orc with parkinson's disease. Often, I've had to choose really bad eq over available really good eq, because the bad eq was not heavy and the good eq was heavy. I made this choice so that I could carry 10-20 pieces of food and spend a decent amount of time out ranking/exploring without returning to town to buy food every 20 minutes.


Sword is interesting, in that it has skills that are str based, and skills that are dex based. With high dex, you will get the most out of your defense skill, flourintine. But with high str, you will get the most out of skills like flurry and doublethrust. Significantly.

Keep in mind also, that many of the half-decent and better swords out there aren't light...and you have to wield two of them. I will never play an elf sword spec again because of this. I'll never play another sword spec with less than 19 str. Which is what I would consider minimum to have enough available wield weight to not have it be a real struggle to stay under half. Arials and h-elves get 19 str.