Warriors

Did you ever branch an advanced weapon with him, like pikes or what not? Did you ever do a lot of boxing with him, where you beat Runners up with your hands and them armed?

AI strength and endurance can't do it for you alone. You have to build on that by twinking Off/Def. Then while sword/boarding it, you can almost be immune to arrows.

/Magic stuff will still wreck you, of course, as ever it has ever been and even more so now. Which is why so few people invest the time into making a true super-killer mundane.

The general idea is they are going to calm you and laugh in your face, intoxicate you till you pass out, or just demonfire you 3 times for fun.
No skill is going to stop that.
Except bash.
Twink bash.

Sword/spear and board is the best combo.
Once you get shield to master only main hand it if you are fighting something you cant kill, once you master your weapon main hand shield all the damn time.

I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure I'm right.
Weapon skills effect your defense AGAINST a certain weapon.
So say you have 30 defense and you are fighting against someone who uses piercing.
But you have kick ass piercing.
You have '35' defense now because your piercing roll is good a f.

So because of that you will parry more, and block more, and dodge more.

Try playing a merchant like a warrior, you can't play full gickers like that now, but you CAN play a merchant with ZERO weapons skills and still beat the shit out of near any non-warrior, if you twink up your offense/defense.

EDIT: Some of the other classes may influence the brawl code though, so if you have to inflate your epeen just play dwarf warrior.

Merchants have been some of my deadliest characters... well, they had to be, lack of coded combat skill means you have to take down a potential threat before they become a threat. One day, I'll write up a merchant guide. Warrior is superior in combat because parry/shield use, but if you read the helpfiles, protectors get master parry and shield use caps. An all-around badass like a ranger, despite being able to branch parry, will not cap out at the master level, and their shield use will be abysmal. Sure warriors have little tricks in their basket, like kick, disarm, and bash, and two out of three do not apply to a mounted opponent. Also, try disarming someone who just shivved you with heramide and perraine, bfd, you're still dead as dirt. Also, you can't, bash them off a mount, if you're big enough, you can bash the mount but now you're fighting two opponents. They can use CHARGE on you, which will seriously fuck your day, and trample. They get master riding, and this in turn boosts their defense. If a warrior and a ranger/protector fight in the wilds? My money's on the ranger, nevermind they can shoot you in your stupid twink face with poisoned arrows.

But, god does NOT love you, and that duel-knife wielding ranger will ruthlessly shank your ass. See the log of Sirra's ranger taking down a powerful half-giant, or maybe that was someone else, let me find it.

I don't have strict evidence supporting this, but I was under the impression the higher your skill with a weapon, the better you are at PARRYING that weapon. Dodge is unaffected, but that is part of what makes advanced weapons so frightening, so few have them, which means almost no one has the parry bonus from the weapon skill. A certain long lived ranger I knew worked all four weapon types up to at least journeyman for that reason. It's obviously most apparent for warriors because they start with parry, but anyone with parry should receive the benefit.