Others will provide better answers. But for myself, I would get a soldiers metal for about 10 million gold and use it to take tactics to 120. The tactics scroll will cost you about 100 million gold if you need one. If you are playing at Deceit, I would get the sterling silver ring to raise swordsmanship to 120. Swordsmanship scrolls run around 14 million gold. Assuming you are a long time player and lots of gold and don’t want to invest a lot of time training skills up to 120. For the long term others should provide better answers than this one. I believe taking the six skills you have to 120 is still a very viable template. You could also think about Bushido and spellweaving. There are some excellent templates listed in other discussions in this forum. You might consider doing a few searches here.
Take swords to 120 (katana) or switch to fencing (leafblade). Put the rest at 100. Add 99/100 necro for vamp form and you can have a shield using samp.
A lot of shields have swing speed increase and damage increase.
It won't hit as hard as the axe samps but it'll be a lot cheaper and it'll still do the job.
Drop parry add resisting spells take all 6 skills 120 get a decent shield and radiant scimitar and you can gow do event as you train
If you want to leave the character as is, but max the skills, that is a perfectly viable template for most of the game. If you can find a partner to x-heal, the two of you can take down everything in the game.
If you want to make some skill changes, look at the numerous other builds that use necro for life or mana leech, or bushido. There are as many templates for melee fighters at this point as there are players.
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For reference, the current template I'm using in Deceit is:
120 Swordsmanship
120 Tactics
120 Anatomy
120 Healing
120 Parry
120 Chivalry
Str 148
Dex 150
Intel 17
My gear is mostly looted, and I would say high-middleish in terms of intensity, with much room for improvement. I have not yet built any custom weapons for the event and so am at a fraction of potential power. I am averaging 10ish drops an hour but have seen as high as 14, no potions, and have claimed the Vambraces, Boots, and Talisman.
Without Resist I have to really watch the debuffs and use Remove Curse frequently. However, I can solo all of the paragons in Deceit in less than 2 min (I use the EoO buff as a timer) and can frequently deal with multiple paragons at once, except multiple rams and/or poison eles. I end up picking up a lot of the stuff other players leave behind.
I would like to increase my power with custom weapons but haven't bothered yet as EoO and CW have gotten me by so far.
If you stay pure Paladin, I would strongly suggest getting your Karma to 32k, as that has significant effect on the Chivalry buffs.
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Urge's suggestion of a Katana is a good one, as both Double Strike and Armor Ignore would be available on a single weapon. However, you will be dealing less damage.
I would suggest three separate 1 hand weapons, situation dependent:
1. Double Strike - Scimitar (12-16 base damage)
2. Armor Ignore - Longsword (14-18 base damage)
3. Whirlwind - Bladed Whip (13-17 base damage)
The Scimitar also has Paralyzing Blow, which can be very handy if employed correctly.
As a paladin, you don't really need 100% ele damage on your weapons. It's nice if you don't want to cast CW all the time. However, anything above 51% will allow you to use the Swordsmanship mastery Onslaught to reduce the opponents resist in that damage. So, you can set your weapon damage to a creature's lowest resist, drop it even further with Onslaught, and then use CW to drive all your damage there. It's quite effective, makes the weapons much less expensive, but does require a lot of interaction.
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Good luck!
Possibilities are endless and everyone has good ideas except dropping parry for resist. Bad idea.
Resist can easily be replaced by using backpack items and chiv spells.
It would help if you had an idea if you want to go straight warrior or samp, cheap or all out.
A trap box macro will break para from anything. Apples and chiv remove curse fixes curse.
I'd personally rather roll the dice on a parry roll than play it safe with a random curse.
I have yet to be killed with paralyze from casters or Rams(physical). some rapid heartbeat but the mobs seem to miss while I am paralyzed.
You can put apples on a key in EC. I also build with extra stamina to avoid hit speed slowdown. The casters do like to Clumsy you.
Love how Kyronix put the stamina to 10 on the sleeves!
Parry counts towards mana reduction for special moves on weapons, as opposed to resist. With proction on, just cast remove curse. Also, as far as I remember, you need to maintain 140 dex (i.e. not stamina) for max bandage speed, so you want to overcap dex in case you get cursed (which happens with or without resist anyway).
If mostly pvm then just adding lumberjacking will give a nice damage bonus. Also, at GM lumberjacking you can make pretty good money chopping for ambers, shards, parasitic plants, etc. I saw one vendor in Magnicia market buying crystal shards for like 60k a piece. Just jackoff in ter mur and you'll get them.
I don't think you really need parry but it is always nice for a warrior and I think you still have a chance to parry with 1 hand weapons because you'll be using an axe so it is not a total loss but you could stone parry and train resist. You can GM resist pretty quickly on sea serpents.
Also, just cap your chiv at 80 so you can increase other skills over 100. I don't think there is much benefit for a ton of chiv as most of its intensity is based on karma.
Then just go damage increase on everything which is capped at 300%.
Here are the damage bonuses for your guy with GM everything. The second number is legendary.
Anatomy 55% - 65%
Tactics - 150% - 170%
Lumberjack - 30% (or 10% chance to inflict 100% increase)
So at GM you get a 235% damage increase with an axe. All you need is 65% more to be capped which you can easily find an axe with 50-70%. Then you can overcap with jewelry or just go with jewels that have hit chance increase and swing speed which are I think are slaughter rings instead of vicious.
Lastly, make sure you have over 100 str and 100 dex. With chiv you can still CW to hit lowest resist and you should be hitting pretty hard.
