What weapon/shield combo is best for sentinel (hunting)

Fosha

I am a sentinel and I hunt with spear and shield.  I've been eyeing a shield of absorption.  Before I buy it, I want to know if using a shield is the right thing to do.  I saw someone else (runewarden?) hunting with a battleaxe in each hand and was impressed.  Can I do something like that?  Or is it a class skill? 

Also, I've heard some reference to "sentinels and their hand axes".  I'm guessing that's player combat?  I tried a hand axe for hunting and I was pitiful.  Of course I haven't learned my skirmishing skills past thrust (like throwing) so maybe that was the problem??  Or is it that hunting is completely different that combat?  The little I've tried combat maul worked much better than thrust, but for hunting the reverse is true.

So should I be hunting like I have been?  Or with some combination of two weapons?

And of less importance, what about combat?

Alyxeri

Hunting, hands down the best combination is thrust with a spear/trident, whilst using a shield.

Dual-wielding is not for Sentinels; you can have your handaxe and trident wielded at the same time, but you cannot attack with both of them at the same time.

Definitely buy SoA as your first artifact; it's pretty much the best first artifact for any class that uses shields.

Handaxe hunting far outpaces thrust once you have an artifact handaxe, and are much higher level. Until both of those criteria are met, thrust is your goto attack. It's better than maul in practically every conceivable way.

Combat tactics is considerably different, and is probably something better learned IG!

Lyrin

Without taking crits into account, handaxe and spear seem to do the same damage per second.   The advantage of axe comes into play at higher levels where more frequent attacks with lower base damage mean less wasted damage (overkill) when big crits roll in.   Attacking faster also means that you have more time to bail out if things start to look bad when you're hunting.

The downside of hunting with an axe is that you have to have a wielded spear to use the bore and skewer battlerage attacks.   This means that you either stop using a shield and wield axe/spear or you continue to use axe/shield and include battlerage attacks in your hunting attack when you regain balance from the previous attack.   I.e.: unwield axe/wield spear/bore X/unwield spear/wield axe/throw axe at X to use your battlerage shield break while using an axe.  

All this doesn't really matter until you get to high levels and want to optimize hunting around critical hits.   Until then, spear/shield is a fine choice.

edit:   using an axe to hunt also drains endurance fairly quickly whereas the endurance drain with thrust is barely noticable.

Keles

So I tested this out in Manara on level 1 knolls. Since I'm barely coming back I wanted to see which was most effective at my level and I have a couple questions:

1) What's overkill? I can't seem to find anything on it...

2) Handaxe seems to do 10% damage per attack, where thrust with my trident does about 28% per attack. Am I doing something wrong with the handaxe? Was using returning, is there a different skill to use? Also, no way to double attack with the trident right?

Malaize

Keles said:

So I tested this out in Manara on level 1 knolls. Since I'm barely coming back I wanted to see which was most effective at my level and I have a couple questions:

1) What's overkill? I can't seem to find anything on it...

2) Handaxe seems to do 10% damage per attack, where thrust with my trident does about 28% per attack. Am I doing something wrong with the handaxe? Was using returning, is there a different skill to use? Also, no way to double attack with the trident right?

The person said you'd need an artifact handaxe, so if you don't have one just stick to thrust. If you do have one, then even if each individual attack is weaker, the rate at which you attack means you'll be dealing more damage per second.

Overkill isn't a game mechanic, it's just at gaming term for when you invest more damage into defeating an opponent than was necessary, and in Achaea that means you'll be wasting a few seconds off balance each time. Some people like to be as efficient as possible like that.

Rangor

Usually we have timestamps on our prompt so we can see how many % damage we do and divide it by the balance time, which gives us "damage per second". Spear and thrust should be your attack with the highest dps.

Mizik

oops, accidental necro

Exelethril

Steel tornado with dual wield is pretty strong.