Has anyone here ever given up on a BG series game in frustration and never played again because DPR or points allocation or whatevs was sub-optimal and the game impossible to complete?
So just play the game, envision your charname, and choose proficiencies accordingly. Srsly.
What is this blasphemy!!!!
Yeah I don't think their is any hope for people like @SomeSort and I. Personally I always spend more time theorycrafting wizard maths for a video game then actually playing it. PnP is even worse 20 hours a week for 2-3 months researching books and memorizing rulebook-lawyer-speeches just for a few small hours of playtime. The worst one I can think of is Path of Exile it's been over 6 months I refuse to play it again until I feel like I have Frankensteined a masterpiece.
Playing... so overated! *back to the whiteboard*
Try Ars Magica (nicknamed 'the Accounting' in White Wolf style). Gathering every benefit to account for your plans of the coming decades is a constant mental workout.
Question for @SomeSort and @Teo_Live (since I've not taken a warrior into the HLAs yet) - why, exactly, doesn't a 2HW Fighter benefit from Improved Haste the same way a 1HW fighter does? Is it the APR cap?
Yes
IW benefits everyone... But IW will benefit a Dual Wielder the most due making whirlwind almost redundant. So for hard battles every second round a warrior can spend his cast action on something other than whirlwind.
@SomeSort Glad someone backed me up there. Don't usually go into forum arguments, especially when it comes to 'opinion' vs 'pure numbers'.
@Teo_live remeber that in 'powergaming' playthrough you will end up with IH, if it is through F/M multi, F->M dual, thief multis/duals with UAI, arcane spellcaster in party or even ring of gaxx (cept wiz slayer), I can't imagine setup where fighter class does not get IH in full playthrough .So having IH and Critical strikes on fighter class is nothing new for pretty much any playthrough. Especially in LOB + SCS where you want to bring down everything asap. One thing I can stand behind as 2h with GWW is ravager+6 which has 10% chance for one hitting enemy but OHKO (one hit KO) attacks feels like cheese to me on LOB and doesn't work against most bosses.
The only weapon that sucks through and through are spears, they have nothing going for them. Patch spears instead...
I use spears with my Ranger characters because they feel roleplayish, however Imapler and Ixiil's Spike are pretty effective too. Spear of the unicorn is also a fairly nice one for earlier on in SOA.
I also stick with standard longbows, using the Elven Court bow most of BG2 (I do that quest early to get it), though I'd agree that Shortbows or even Croosbows de to Firetooth are probably stronger overall.
Re: recurring argument about most desirable weapon loadout abd number crunching:
Has anyone here ever given up on a BG series game in frustration and never played again because DPR or points allocation or whatevs was sub-optimal and the game impossible to complete?
Thought not. So just play the game, envision your charname, and choose proficiencies accordingly. Srsly.
I can only speak for myself, but I tend to find myself with two kinds of "free time". The first is truly free time, where I'm free to do whatever I want. For example, the wife and kids have gone to bed, everything that needs to be done around the house is either done or safe to ignore for a while, and It's early enough that I'm not ready to turn in. This time is perfect for something like playing BG2.
But during the day, I often find myself where I'm not totally free, but for one reason or another, I have at least some portion of my attention free. Maybe I'm watching the kids, but they're playing independently and don't need any active supervision. Or maybe I'm in the middle of a work project and need to disengage my brain from it for 15 minutes to get a fresh perspective or a second wind.
Obviously, it wouldn't really be appropriate to actually play BG2 in situations like these. (Though now that it's on my phone and tablet, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't tempting .) But I've got more than enough mental resources to *think about* BG2 without negatively impacting anything more important. Or maybe even come online and read about it or post about it. Theorycrafting isn't crowding out playing time, it's supplementing playing time. It's letting me devote more time and attention to a game I love, not less.
Some people browse facebook during times like these. I don't have a facebook account. Instead, I like to pick hobbies that have a vibrant meta so that I can devote this time to whatever my current obsession is. (A practice that might actually date back to the original Baldur's Gate, where I'd plan out parties in school to play when I got home.)
I get that I'm a weirdo and I'd hardly expect what works for me to work for everyone else. But it works for me, and has worked for me this way for decades now.
Has anyone here ever given up on a BG series game in frustration and never played again because DPR or points allocation or whatevs was sub-optimal and the game impossible to complete?
So just play the game, envision your charname, and choose proficiencies accordingly. Srsly.
What is this blasphemy!!!!
Yeah I don't think their is any hope for people like @SomeSort and I. Personally I always spend more time theorycrafting wizard maths for a video game then actually playing it. PnP is even worse 20 hours a week for 2-3 months researching books and memorizing rulebook-lawyer-speeches just for a few small hours of playtime. The worst one I can think of is Path of Exile it's been over 6 months I refuse to play it again until I feel like I have Frankensteined a masterpiece.
Playing... so overated! *back to the whiteboard*
It's amazing how much entertainment per dollar you can get when you're willing to devote huge amounts of time to just thinking about something.
Question for @SomeSort and @Teo_Live (since I've not taken a warrior into the HLAs yet) - why, exactly, doesn't a 2HW Fighter benefit from Improved Haste the same way a 1HW fighter does? Is it the APR cap?
Yes, basically.
The #1 way of improving damage is increasing attacks per round. The #2 way of improving damage is increasing attacks per round. After you've done #1 and #2, your primary focus should shift to increasing attacks per round, and then once you've got that settled you're finally free to focus on other things, such as increasing attacks per round.
A warrior's mission in life is to ramp up to 4-5 APR, and then from there to get it up to 9-10 APR. A pureclass / dual-class fighter (who duals at 13 or later) can get up to 3 attacks per round with any weapon he's a grandmaster in. If he dual-wields, that jumps to 4. If he dual-wields a speed weapon (Belm, Kundane, or Scarlet Ninja-To), he gets up to 5 APR. (Alternately, he can dual-wield non-speed weapons and equip the Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization for 4.5 APR.)
For multiclass fighters, Fighters who dual between level 7 and level 13, or the off-brand fighters who are limited to specialization (Barbarian, Dwarven Defender, Paladin, Ranger), they top out at 2.5 APR, which jumps to 3.5 when dual-wielding, 4.5 when dual-wielding with a speed weapon in the off-hand, plus an additional 0.5 APR from the Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization.
5 is the normal APR cap, and the only ways to break it are to cast some Haste effect on a warrior who is already at it, (which will push him up to 6 APR), or to use Improved Haste (doubles base APR) or one of the Whirlwind HLAs.
Now remember that a dual-wielder can easily be at 4.5 or 5 APR to begin with, so Improved Haste pushes him to 9 or 10. From here, Whirlwind Attack is either increasing damage output by 11% (if you're at 9 APR) or 0% (if you're already capped at 10). That's not really worth bothering with, so you're free to use Critical Strike, or to burn those HLAs on Hardiness or Greater Deathblow.
But a 2-hander is stuck at either 3 or 3.5 APR, (or less if you're a hybrid fighter who can't achieve grandmastery). Improved Haste only bumps them to 6 or 7 APR, which is well short of 10. In fact, 10 APR represents a 42% increase over 7 APR, which is quite a lot and means even in an environment with plenty of Improved Hastes to go around, the 2-hander still probably benefits most from Whirlwinding. And since Whirlwind and Critical Strike are mutually exclusive, that means no Critical Strike.
@Teo_live remeber that in 'powergaming' playthrough you will end up with IH, if it is through F/M multi, F->M dual, thief multis/duals with UAI, arcane spellcaster in party or even ring of gaxx (cept wiz slayer), I can't imagine setup where fighter class does not get IH in full playthrough. So having IH and Critical strikes on fighter class is nothing new for pretty much any playthrough. Especially in LOB + SCS where you want to bring down everything asap.
It depends. The only time I personally will actually be bothered with IH is if I am a NON-warrior as it will help the DPR be comparable to a warrior.
So many other things I can do with a 6th level slot. I am not saying IH is bad, just merely that it isn't a necessity to powergame a warrior (nothing really is tbh).
One thing I can stand behind as 2h with GWW is ravager+6 which has 10% chance for one hitting enemy but OHKO (one hit KO) attacks feels like cheese to me on LOB and doesn't work against most bosses.
Feels like cheese is an understatement lol. I had to mod the game so all on-hit instakill weapons get a save because of this. I found the best boss-killer to be Grief due to drain stacks. @SomeSort could be right with Blackrazor giving Grief a run for its money with an average level drain rate of 0.6 level per hit. Comparing:
+3 VS +5 weapon 7.5 average dph VS 10.5+10%poison chance -4 drain at 15% vs -1 drain per hit Immunity to charm/fear VS Magic Resist AC bonuses from both one handed and shield style VS -2 speed factor +1 damage from Two handed style
The latter Grief definitely wins hands down compared to Single Weapon Style from what I see. However comparing it with Sword+Shield or Two weapon style you could put the argument that Backrazor is competitive due to offhand magical properties of your choosing. Their is no right or wrong here I suppose each to their own (I still choose grief).
Remember that when Blackrazor's proc triggers you also gain +3 strength, which either means +3 or +4 damage per hit, which brings the two weapons into damage parity. It also gives you Haste and +20 HP. Also, Gram's -1 level drain is buried behind a save, (admittedly, at a -4 penalty), so it's not going to be draining one level per hit. It might be draining more like 0.4 levels per hit, depending on the enemy's base saves.
Blackrazor is such a tremendously good weapon that I think sometimes gets overlooked because of the +3 enchantment level. Shame it requires going evil to get it.
@SomeSort Hrm... the problem with the raw damage number crunching is that it ignores Multis and Paladin/Ranger/Barbarian not naturally getting past spec, which limits them to spec (3/2) + class + weapon APR. Since they're limited anyway, why not give them 2HWs to compensate? No, they're not going to get 10 APR Critical Strike rounds. They weren't going to get 10 APR Critical Strike rounds anyway. So why not crunch the numbers for them as well?
@SomeSort Hrm... the problem with the raw damage number crunching is that it ignores Multis and Paladin/Ranger/Barbarian not naturally getting past spec, which limits them to spec (3/2) + class + weapon APR. Since they're limited anyway, why not give them 2HWs to compensate? No, they're not going to get 10 APR Critical Strike rounds. They weren't going to get 10 APR Critical Strike rounds anyway. So why not crunch the numbers for them as well?
I did mention their lower APR. Off-brand fighters, (Paladins, Barbarians, Rangers, Dwarven Defenders), Fighter multiclasses, and Fighter duals that switch after level 7 and before level 13 are all limited to 2.5 APR, which can become 3.5 when dual-wielding and 4.5 when dual-wielding with a "speed weapon", and which can also increase by a further +0.5 thanks to the Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization.
(So a dual-wielding Barbarian can still reach 10 APR with Improved Haste if he equips Belm and the gloves, for instance. Or 9 APR without the gloves, or 8 APR with the gloves and without Belm, or 7 APR without either the gloves or Belm.)
The problem is that as a character's APR falls, Whirlwind attack becomes *more important*, not less. It's even more valuable for a "non-pure" fighter wielding a 2-hander to load up on GWW attacks than it is for a "pure" fighter wielding a 2-hander to do so.
Critical Strike boosts your damage in two ways. First, it makes every attack automatically hit. If your attacks were auto-hitting anyway because your THACO was so amazing, this basically just eliminates the 5% of attacks that would have been critical misses, so it's about a 5% damage increase, (very slightly higher, because math is weird).
On the other hand, if your THACO was so terrible that you only hit on critical hits to begin with, then this represents a 2,000% damage increase, (going from a 1/20 chance to hit to a 20/20 chance to hit is a 20x damage boost).
That sounds amazing, except in order for a single-class or dual-class character to get fighter HLAs, he needs at least 20 levels as a fighter (base THACO of 1) or 18 levels as a Paladin/Ranger (base THACO of 3). Add in strength bonuses to THACO (+3 for 19/20 strength, +4 for 21/22 strength), plus weapon enchantment bonus, plus any miscellaneous bonuses you might be getting from equipment, (such as Helm of Balduran's +1 THACO), and you're probably looking at -6 THACO minimum at this point, which isn't quite auto-hit territory against everything in ToB, but it's pretty close.
So most single or dual-classed fighter types with HLAs are looking at maybe a 10-15% boost to damage output because of extra hits from Critical Strike.
For two-class and especially three-class multis, the extra chance to hit can be much more substantial, especially early on. A F/T, for instance, will have a base THACO of 7 when he first gets HLAs. A F/M/T will have a base THACO of 9. They're not going to be hitting 95% of the time against a lot of ToB enemies.
In fact, in the most extreme example I can think of, a F/M/T who just got his first HLA, equipped with 19 Str and a +3 weapon and no other THACO-boosting gear, will have a THACO of 3. Against Demogorgon, I believe that's a 30% chance to hit, and activating Critical Strike represents a 233% damage boost even though Demogorgon is immune to critical hits.
But, you know, you're not often going to be facing Demogorgon with a triple-classed F/M/T who just hit 3m experience and also has terrible gear.
The other way Critical Strike boosts your damage is by making every hit a critical hit, which doubles the physical damage. This sounds like a huge boost, (potentially up to 100%); in reality, by ToB most everything is wearing helmets, and a lot of the stuff that's not is susceptible to Greater Deathblow instead. It's not nothing, but it's not as amazing as you might think it would be, either.
So let's imagine for a second that you've got an 80% chance to hit an enemy, and that enemy is immune to critical hits. If you activate Critical Strike, your chance to hit goes up to 100%, which represents a 25% increase in damage output. But most importantly, it represents a 25% damage increase regardless of how many APR you have. If you have 1 APR or 10 APR, Critical Strike increases your damage by 25%.
Now, compare this to Greater Whirlwind. I already mentioned that if you have 9 APR, triggering Greater Whirlwind increases your damage by 11%. At this point, it makes more sense to use Critical Strike rather than going for that one extra APR.
If you have 8 APR, then Greater Whirlwind gives you an identical 25% damage boost, and you're agnostic on both effects. (Notice the symmetry: going from 8 to 10 attacks helps exactly as much as going from an 80% to a 100% chance to hit.)
If you have 7 APR, then GWW gives you a 43% damage boost. At 6 APR, it's a 66% damage boost. At 5 APR, it's a 100% damage boost. At 4 APR, it's a 150% damage boost. At 3 APR, it's a 233% damage boost. At 2 APR, it's a 400% damage boost. At 1 APR, it's a 900% damage boost (!!!). Suddenly, that tiny 25% boost from Critical Strike looks like a big fat nothing-burger.
(Please be aware that when I talk about a "damage boost", I'm using "damage" as a short-hand for "the good things that happen when you hit an enemy with your weapons". If Critical Strike increases your chance to hit by 25%, that represents 25% more raw damage, but also 25% more chances to stun with Celestial Fury, 25% more chances to slow with Flail of Ages, 25% more chances to level-drain with Blackrazor, etc.)
Unlike Critical Strike, which gives you the same boost regardless of your APR, the fewer attacks you have the more you benefit from adding more attacks. So rather than "steering into the skid", so to speak-- recognizing that they'll have fewer attacks than a pure fighter and so ignoring APR entirely and just going with a 2-hander-- the off-brand fighter types find it *even more important* to do what they can to boost their APR. Because the less APR you have, the more valuable additional APR becomes.
The biggest example of this is pureclass Blades and Swashbucklers, who are melee classes that find themselves locked at 1 APR because they don't have any "warrior blood" in their build; almost all advice you see for them is going to recommend not only dual-wielding, or dual-wielding with a speed weapon in the offhand, but dual-wielding two speed weapons.
If you ever have a burning desire to Buckle some Swash, you're really, really going to want to put proficiency points in scimitars, grab Use Any Item, and put Scarlet Ninja-To in your main hand and Belm in your off-hand.
What you definitely, absolutely, without question do *not* want to do is equip a 2-handed weapon and resign yourself to a life of 1 APR. Unless you're really just going to load up on a million Whirlwind Attacks, make sure it's always active, and rest as often as necessary.
(Blades don't even have the option of Whirlwind Attack. Carsomyr on a Blade sounds like a great idea, but it's a trap. Avoid at all costs, unless you plan on using some sort of shapeshift exploit cheese to turn yourself into a Sword Spider with 5 Carsomyr attacks per round or something. Not sure if that's still possible in the latest patches, anyway.)
Anyway, that's your way-too-long, way-too-detailed guide to APR. It's really important because it's the best/easiest way to boost offensive output, the less of it you have the more important it becomes, this is why Improved Haste is the best and most important offensive buff in the game, (the best buff period if you're not no-reload), and it's why warrior-types usually load up on Greater Whirlwind HLAs until they're drowning in them unless those warrior-types are dual-wielders who can get by with Improved Haste alone, allowing them the luxury of taking lesser boosts like Critical Strike and Greater Deathblow, (or extra defensive boosts like Hardiness), instead.
What you definitely, absolutely, without question do *not* want to do is equip a 2-handed weapon and resign yourself to a life of 1 APR. Unless you're really just going to load up on a million Whirlwind Attacks, make sure it's always active, and rest as often as necessary.
This is exactly what I do
Whirlwind as you already mentioned benefits the people more the lower their APR. So a Two-handed swashbuckler well... you NEED to stock up on whirlwinds.
On weaker mobs IH with two weapon style will clean them up nice and easy. You don't need good weapons for this and belm will work nicely. This allows you to save your 1APR two handed whirlwinds for bosses (also allows someone use of that underrated 6th level slot). The best thing though is you won't be reliant on subpar junk like Belm in the offhand just so you can get that high APR. That really just isn't worth the price sometimes. Swashbucklers are not short on proficiency points so you can go can mix it up one and Two handed weapon strategies as much as you want here here.
Since SOOO many things are crit immune in ToB I would argue that it is better to spend a free cast action on something other than Critical Strike. Unless you have a garbage THACO (which is hard to do in ToB) most of the time all it will do is give a meager 5-10% additional chance to hit. One handed weapons GENERALLY don't have as strong on hit effects as two-handed (some exceptions apply but generally) so the main bonus you will get here with a one handed weapon is extra damage. Considering over all damage given/taken your best bang for your buck more often than not is Hardiness.
Now for my last rant here for a while (I won't have a computer with me for the next few days). Some people here I have noticed are also like me very critical of number crunchers as it doesn't really account much other than an enemy turning to paste ever so slightly faster (or sometimes slower if the number crunching is incorrect or misleading such as NWN powergamers). So I am going to throw a spanner into the works here and give a special shout out to a hidden gem many powergaming number lovers often fail to notice.
POWER ATTACK!!! WOOOO
Other than the obvious powerful defensive HLA's that people can use in place of critical strike such as Hardiness, I think their is a rare and often not thought about gem in Power Attack. It is a great alternative to critical strike for (situational) improved offense.
Power attack is a save at a -4 penalty so when combined with a high APR character like a DW IH warrior it will have a high chance of procing. Even on a enemy with saving throws higher than the sky it will still potentially offer [20] 5% chances of a stun per usage. A lot of enemies won't be stun immune and a successful stun usually is a death sentence to them or at the very least 2 rounds them not being a threat which will increase your survivability dramatically.
All critical strikes will do is slightly increase damage with a 5% extra weapon proc chance if crit immune or greatly increase damage if not. Their are so many types of characters out their that can do good damage... but their is very few characters that can dump a crap load save or suck chances onto an opponent at once.
I strongly believe 2 free rounds of a threat removal is worth much MUCH more than a mere damage boost. If the enemy is crit immune but not stun immune than it is a no brainier (which I believe will happen more often than not thus giving Power Attack more situational usefulness than Critical Strike). So yeah folks if you are a Dual Weilder and you want an alternative choice to the overused IH+Crit then I reccomend giving IH+Powerattack a try instead.
I was actually looking at Power Attack on the bgwiki. Is it viable for non-GM 2HW warriors?
Viable? Sure. Pretty much anything is viable in BG2.
Optimal? Nah. The lower your APR, the more important GWW is. Also, Power Attack is one of those abilities that gets better the more attacks you have. But even if you only have 5 APR (2.5 base + Improved Haste), you'll have a good chance of landing a couple stuns. My biggest gripe is the short duration of the stun, (only two rounds), more than the rate at which it triggers. I tend to find it useful but not really fight-shifting. Best used against mages and thieves due to poor saves vs. death.
(Note that since it lasts two rounds, you can stack it with GWW, but then you're burning through your HLAs in a hurry.)
Now, if you can keep triggering Power Attack to keep enemies stunlocked, it can be much better. But that requires having lots of HLAs to devote, which as @Teo_live mentions is much easier on a dual-wield / IH build since they aren't as reliant on GWWs.
Smite is another option. You can only take it once, and it has the (potentially) annoying knockback effect, (which is amazing on ranged attackers), but the stun is guaranteed. And the stun still triggers on enemies who are immune to the knockback, (Fire Giants!), and it also carries a free Critical Strike bonus for the first round. Great HLA. Shame you can only have one of them.
Ultimately, there are no bad warrior HLAs other than Whirlwind/Deathblow (which get straight upgrades in the form of Greater Whirlwind and Greater Deathblow), and War Cry (which is so, so, so, so, so garbage).
Okay then. Fighter/Mage mult with Improved Alacrity. Can she stack otherwise-incompatible Fighter HLAs during Improved Alacrity, or are they not affected by aura cleansing?
(I can see niche uses for War Cry, but not in ToB)
...I seem to be constantly derailing this. I prefer blunt weapons of various make and model, ranging from a sap to the Staff of the Ram.
Comments
IW benefits everyone... But IW will benefit a Dual Wielder the most due making whirlwind almost redundant. So for hard battles every second round a warrior can spend his cast action on something other than whirlwind.
@Teo_live remeber that in 'powergaming' playthrough you will end up with IH, if it is through F/M multi, F->M dual, thief multis/duals with UAI, arcane spellcaster in party or even ring of gaxx (cept wiz slayer), I can't imagine setup where fighter class does not get IH in full playthrough .So having IH and Critical strikes on fighter class is nothing new for pretty much any playthrough. Especially in LOB + SCS where you want to bring down everything asap. One thing I can stand behind as 2h with GWW is ravager+6 which has 10% chance for one hitting enemy but OHKO (one hit KO) attacks feels like cheese to me on LOB and doesn't work against most bosses.
I also stick with standard longbows, using the Elven Court bow most of BG2 (I do that quest early to get it), though I'd agree that Shortbows or even Croosbows de to Firetooth are probably stronger overall.
But during the day, I often find myself where I'm not totally free, but for one reason or another, I have at least some portion of my attention free. Maybe I'm watching the kids, but they're playing independently and don't need any active supervision. Or maybe I'm in the middle of a work project and need to disengage my brain from it for 15 minutes to get a fresh perspective or a second wind.
Obviously, it wouldn't really be appropriate to actually play BG2 in situations like these. (Though now that it's on my phone and tablet, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't tempting
Some people browse facebook during times like these. I don't have a facebook account. Instead, I like to pick hobbies that have a vibrant meta so that I can devote this time to whatever my current obsession is. (A practice that might actually date back to the original Baldur's Gate, where I'd plan out parties in school to play when I got home.)
I get that I'm a weirdo and I'd hardly expect what works for me to work for everyone else. But it works for me, and has worked for me this way for decades now.
The #1 way of improving damage is increasing attacks per round. The #2 way of improving damage is increasing attacks per round. After you've done #1 and #2, your primary focus should shift to increasing attacks per round, and then once you've got that settled you're finally free to focus on other things, such as increasing attacks per round.
A warrior's mission in life is to ramp up to 4-5 APR, and then from there to get it up to 9-10 APR. A pureclass / dual-class fighter (who duals at 13 or later) can get up to 3 attacks per round with any weapon he's a grandmaster in. If he dual-wields, that jumps to 4. If he dual-wields a speed weapon (Belm, Kundane, or Scarlet Ninja-To), he gets up to 5 APR. (Alternately, he can dual-wield non-speed weapons and equip the Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization for 4.5 APR.)
For multiclass fighters, Fighters who dual between level 7 and level 13, or the off-brand fighters who are limited to specialization (Barbarian, Dwarven Defender, Paladin, Ranger), they top out at 2.5 APR, which jumps to 3.5 when dual-wielding, 4.5 when dual-wielding with a speed weapon in the off-hand, plus an additional 0.5 APR from the Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization.
5 is the normal APR cap, and the only ways to break it are to cast some Haste effect on a warrior who is already at it, (which will push him up to 6 APR), or to use Improved Haste (doubles base APR) or one of the Whirlwind HLAs.
Now remember that a dual-wielder can easily be at 4.5 or 5 APR to begin with, so Improved Haste pushes him to 9 or 10. From here, Whirlwind Attack is either increasing damage output by 11% (if you're at 9 APR) or 0% (if you're already capped at 10). That's not really worth bothering with, so you're free to use Critical Strike, or to burn those HLAs on Hardiness or Greater Deathblow.
But a 2-hander is stuck at either 3 or 3.5 APR, (or less if you're a hybrid fighter who can't achieve grandmastery). Improved Haste only bumps them to 6 or 7 APR, which is well short of 10. In fact, 10 APR represents a 42% increase over 7 APR, which is quite a lot and means even in an environment with plenty of Improved Hastes to go around, the 2-hander still probably benefits most from Whirlwinding. And since Whirlwind and Critical Strike are mutually exclusive, that means no Critical Strike.
So many other things I can do with a 6th level slot. I am not saying IH is bad, just merely that it isn't a necessity to powergame a warrior (nothing really is tbh). Feels like cheese is an understatement lol. I had to mod the game so all on-hit instakill weapons get a save because of this. I found the best boss-killer to be Grief due to drain stacks. @SomeSort could be right with Blackrazor giving Grief a run for its money with an average level drain rate of 0.6 level per hit. Comparing:
+3 VS +5 weapon
7.5 average dph VS 10.5+10%poison chance
-4 drain at 15% vs -1 drain per hit
Immunity to charm/fear VS Magic Resist
AC bonuses from both one handed and shield style VS -2 speed factor +1 damage from Two handed style
The latter Grief definitely wins hands down compared to Single Weapon Style from what I see. However comparing it with Sword+Shield or Two weapon style you could put the argument that Backrazor is competitive due to offhand magical properties of your choosing. Their is no right or wrong here I suppose each to their own (I still choose grief).
Blackrazor is such a tremendously good weapon that I think sometimes gets overlooked because of the +3 enchantment level. Shame it requires going evil to get it.
(So a dual-wielding Barbarian can still reach 10 APR with Improved Haste if he equips Belm and the gloves, for instance. Or 9 APR without the gloves, or 8 APR with the gloves and without Belm, or 7 APR without either the gloves or Belm.)
The problem is that as a character's APR falls, Whirlwind attack becomes *more important*, not less. It's even more valuable for a "non-pure" fighter wielding a 2-hander to load up on GWW attacks than it is for a "pure" fighter wielding a 2-hander to do so.
Critical Strike boosts your damage in two ways. First, it makes every attack automatically hit. If your attacks were auto-hitting anyway because your THACO was so amazing, this basically just eliminates the 5% of attacks that would have been critical misses, so it's about a 5% damage increase, (very slightly higher, because math is weird).
On the other hand, if your THACO was so terrible that you only hit on critical hits to begin with, then this represents a 2,000% damage increase, (going from a 1/20 chance to hit to a 20/20 chance to hit is a 20x damage boost).
That sounds amazing, except in order for a single-class or dual-class character to get fighter HLAs, he needs at least 20 levels as a fighter (base THACO of 1) or 18 levels as a Paladin/Ranger (base THACO of 3). Add in strength bonuses to THACO (+3 for 19/20 strength, +4 for 21/22 strength), plus weapon enchantment bonus, plus any miscellaneous bonuses you might be getting from equipment, (such as Helm of Balduran's +1 THACO), and you're probably looking at -6 THACO minimum at this point, which isn't quite auto-hit territory against everything in ToB, but it's pretty close.
So most single or dual-classed fighter types with HLAs are looking at maybe a 10-15% boost to damage output because of extra hits from Critical Strike.
For two-class and especially three-class multis, the extra chance to hit can be much more substantial, especially early on. A F/T, for instance, will have a base THACO of 7 when he first gets HLAs. A F/M/T will have a base THACO of 9. They're not going to be hitting 95% of the time against a lot of ToB enemies.
In fact, in the most extreme example I can think of, a F/M/T who just got his first HLA, equipped with 19 Str and a +3 weapon and no other THACO-boosting gear, will have a THACO of 3. Against Demogorgon, I believe that's a 30% chance to hit, and activating Critical Strike represents a 233% damage boost even though Demogorgon is immune to critical hits.
But, you know, you're not often going to be facing Demogorgon with a triple-classed F/M/T who just hit 3m experience and also has terrible gear.
The other way Critical Strike boosts your damage is by making every hit a critical hit, which doubles the physical damage. This sounds like a huge boost, (potentially up to 100%); in reality, by ToB most everything is wearing helmets, and a lot of the stuff that's not is susceptible to Greater Deathblow instead. It's not nothing, but it's not as amazing as you might think it would be, either.
So let's imagine for a second that you've got an 80% chance to hit an enemy, and that enemy is immune to critical hits. If you activate Critical Strike, your chance to hit goes up to 100%, which represents a 25% increase in damage output. But most importantly, it represents a 25% damage increase regardless of how many APR you have. If you have 1 APR or 10 APR, Critical Strike increases your damage by 25%.
Now, compare this to Greater Whirlwind. I already mentioned that if you have 9 APR, triggering Greater Whirlwind increases your damage by 11%. At this point, it makes more sense to use Critical Strike rather than going for that one extra APR.
If you have 8 APR, then Greater Whirlwind gives you an identical 25% damage boost, and you're agnostic on both effects. (Notice the symmetry: going from 8 to 10 attacks helps exactly as much as going from an 80% to a 100% chance to hit.)
If you have 7 APR, then GWW gives you a 43% damage boost. At 6 APR, it's a 66% damage boost. At 5 APR, it's a 100% damage boost. At 4 APR, it's a 150% damage boost. At 3 APR, it's a 233% damage boost. At 2 APR, it's a 400% damage boost. At 1 APR, it's a 900% damage boost (!!!). Suddenly, that tiny 25% boost from Critical Strike looks like a big fat nothing-burger.
(Please be aware that when I talk about a "damage boost", I'm using "damage" as a short-hand for "the good things that happen when you hit an enemy with your weapons". If Critical Strike increases your chance to hit by 25%, that represents 25% more raw damage, but also 25% more chances to stun with Celestial Fury, 25% more chances to slow with Flail of Ages, 25% more chances to level-drain with Blackrazor, etc.)
Unlike Critical Strike, which gives you the same boost regardless of your APR, the fewer attacks you have the more you benefit from adding more attacks. So rather than "steering into the skid", so to speak-- recognizing that they'll have fewer attacks than a pure fighter and so ignoring APR entirely and just going with a 2-hander-- the off-brand fighter types find it *even more important* to do what they can to boost their APR. Because the less APR you have, the more valuable additional APR becomes.
The biggest example of this is pureclass Blades and Swashbucklers, who are melee classes that find themselves locked at 1 APR because they don't have any "warrior blood" in their build; almost all advice you see for them is going to recommend not only dual-wielding, or dual-wielding with a speed weapon in the offhand, but dual-wielding two speed weapons.
If you ever have a burning desire to Buckle some Swash, you're really, really going to want to put proficiency points in scimitars, grab Use Any Item, and put Scarlet Ninja-To in your main hand and Belm in your off-hand.
What you definitely, absolutely, without question do *not* want to do is equip a 2-handed weapon and resign yourself to a life of 1 APR. Unless you're really just going to load up on a million Whirlwind Attacks, make sure it's always active, and rest as often as necessary.
(Blades don't even have the option of Whirlwind Attack. Carsomyr on a Blade sounds like a great idea, but it's a trap. Avoid at all costs, unless you plan on using some sort of shapeshift exploit cheese to turn yourself into a Sword Spider with 5 Carsomyr attacks per round or something. Not sure if that's still possible in the latest patches, anyway.)
Anyway, that's your way-too-long, way-too-detailed guide to APR. It's really important because it's the best/easiest way to boost offensive output, the less of it you have the more important it becomes, this is why Improved Haste is the best and most important offensive buff in the game, (the best buff period if you're not no-reload), and it's why warrior-types usually load up on Greater Whirlwind HLAs until they're drowning in them unless those warrior-types are dual-wielders who can get by with Improved Haste alone, allowing them the luxury of taking lesser boosts like Critical Strike and Greater Deathblow, (or extra defensive boosts like Hardiness), instead.
Whirlwind as you already mentioned benefits the people more the lower their APR. So a Two-handed swashbuckler well... you NEED to stock up on whirlwinds.
On weaker mobs IH with two weapon style will clean them up nice and easy. You don't need good weapons for this and belm will work nicely. This allows you to save your 1APR two handed whirlwinds for bosses (also allows someone use of that underrated 6th level slot). The best thing though is you won't be reliant on subpar junk like Belm in the offhand just so you can get that high APR. That really just isn't worth the price sometimes. Swashbucklers are not short on proficiency points so you can go can mix it up one and Two handed weapon strategies as much as you want here here.
Since SOOO many things are crit immune in ToB I would argue that it is better to spend a free cast action on something other than Critical Strike. Unless you have a garbage THACO (which is hard to do in ToB) most of the time all it will do is give a meager 5-10% additional chance to hit. One handed weapons GENERALLY don't have as strong on hit effects as two-handed (some exceptions apply but generally) so the main bonus you will get here with a one handed weapon is extra damage. Considering over all damage given/taken your best bang for your buck more often than not is Hardiness.
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Now for my last rant here for a while (I won't have a computer with me for the next few days). Some people here I have noticed are also like me very critical of number crunchers as it doesn't really account much other than an enemy turning to paste ever so slightly faster (or sometimes slower if the number crunching is incorrect or misleading such as NWN powergamers). So I am going to throw a spanner into the works here and give a special shout out to a hidden gem many powergaming number lovers often fail to notice.
POWER ATTACK!!! WOOOO
Other than the obvious powerful defensive HLA's that people can use in place of critical strike such as Hardiness, I think their is a rare and often not thought about gem in Power Attack. It is a great alternative to critical strike for (situational) improved offense.
Power attack is a save at a -4 penalty so when combined with a high APR character like a DW IH warrior it will have a high chance of procing. Even on a enemy with saving throws higher than the sky it will still potentially offer [20] 5% chances of a stun per usage. A lot of enemies won't be stun immune and a successful stun usually is a death sentence to them or at the very least 2 rounds them not being a threat which will increase your survivability dramatically.
All critical strikes will do is slightly increase damage with a 5% extra weapon proc chance if crit immune or greatly increase damage if not. Their are so many types of characters out their that can do good damage... but their is very few characters that can dump a crap load save or suck chances onto an opponent at once.
I strongly believe 2 free rounds of a threat removal is worth much MUCH more than a mere damage boost. If the enemy is crit immune but not stun immune than it is a no brainier (which I believe will happen more often than not thus giving Power Attack more situational usefulness than Critical Strike). So yeah folks if you are a Dual Weilder and you want an alternative choice to the overused IH+Crit then I reccomend giving IH+Powerattack a try instead.
Optimal? Nah. The lower your APR, the more important GWW is. Also, Power Attack is one of those abilities that gets better the more attacks you have. But even if you only have 5 APR (2.5 base + Improved Haste), you'll have a good chance of landing a couple stuns. My biggest gripe is the short duration of the stun, (only two rounds), more than the rate at which it triggers. I tend to find it useful but not really fight-shifting. Best used against mages and thieves due to poor saves vs. death.
(Note that since it lasts two rounds, you can stack it with GWW, but then you're burning through your HLAs in a hurry.)
Now, if you can keep triggering Power Attack to keep enemies stunlocked, it can be much better. But that requires having lots of HLAs to devote, which as @Teo_live mentions is much easier on a dual-wield / IH build since they aren't as reliant on GWWs.
Smite is another option. You can only take it once, and it has the (potentially) annoying knockback effect, (which is amazing on ranged attackers), but the stun is guaranteed. And the stun still triggers on enemies who are immune to the knockback, (Fire Giants!), and it also carries a free Critical Strike bonus for the first round. Great HLA. Shame you can only have one of them.
Ultimately, there are no bad warrior HLAs other than Whirlwind/Deathblow (which get straight upgrades in the form of Greater Whirlwind and Greater Deathblow), and War Cry (which is so, so, so, so, so garbage).
Okay then. Fighter/Mage mult with Improved Alacrity. Can she stack otherwise-incompatible Fighter HLAs during Improved Alacrity, or are they not affected by aura cleansing?
(I can see niche uses for War Cry, but not in ToB)
...I seem to be constantly derailing this. I prefer blunt weapons of various make and model, ranging from a sap to the Staff of the Ram.