Way of the warrior 3
Single Handed 1 (or maybe 2)
Shield 2
Water Elem 3
Earth Elem 2
Leadership 2
Str 11
Dex 5
Int 9
Con 7
Per 5
More or less, final stats, on whatever lvl we were when we stopped.
You can call it weak, I never died (except that one time I blew a mine and 2 oil barrels at my face out of combat), almost never was close to dying, and dished out fair amounts of damage. I solo'ed the bandit camps on the beach while my co-op was AFK. I think I was around lvl 5. It has room for improvement, that's a given, I was mostly trying out stuff see where it got me.
Skill combos make for efficiency, and skills are "unlocked" with ability and stat requisites, so I just spent points to unlock the skills I needed, and stats to equip the gear I wanted. Worked perfectly fine. As a matter of fact it worked better than some of the previous builds I had tried.
Considering getting an ability to 2 requires 3 ability points, Lone Wolf goes a long way. Add to that the +WotW/+Elem gear mentionned before and you can quickly learn a lot of things.
Fortify + Rage is +50% dmg +5% crit chance -2 (yes 2) armor/ 3 rounds (8 AP total).
Phoenix Dive and Bull Rush will get you in and out of melee on demand with low AP cost and low cooldown, decent damage, ignoring all ZoC and providing the occasional knockdown which is always good, even better with Bully.
Lone Wolf + WotW + Con will give you tons of HP.
A good shield and shield specialist as well as a good plate armor will mitigate high amounts of damage.
Melees are getting a lot of bad rap. I played a melee of some kind at every stage of the alpha/beta and never had to complain. A lot of their capabilities and the buffs I use are % based, so scaling goes wild as better gear is obtained.
