Best Hunting Specialisation

If you have rainbow criticals then dual wield anything would make hunting a lot more colourful for you: https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/bU2-xzaN

After the recent changes, 2h talked the crown artied too.

Still 2H!

We should commit, as a community, to figuring out a way to do the math on all this with respectto crits/attack speed.

I can't weigh in on what is the best spec, as I have only tried 2H.
I can say that in many years of playing IRE muds, 2H runewarden is by far the best bashing class I have ever experienced, by far - and I've been some of the more ridiculously good bashing classes over the years (example: a wardancer bashing with dual shields of protection (absorption here) artefacts in early imperian).

Survivability?
I'm level 80 and have died once only while bashing (trying to solo Belladonna somewhere around level 70 - don't do it). I haven't been only grinding the safe areas either - always pushing for harder areas and better XP, so while that is anecdotal evidence, it's still pretty compelling results.

Artefact-wise, don't even bother with a weapon for bashing. Just bash with a forged warhammer. There's a thread detailing why.


My advice: go 2H, pick a race that lets you evenly raise strength and con (dwarf for me), and instead of buying artefacts, get avoidance/minis. If you do save up for artefacts, buy +crit or increase your tankiness more if/when you think it is lacking.

If you're bashing you don't need a high investment in chivalry (just the various defs that buff your char, like resistance and weathering), and to be honest, not that much in runelore either. Rune armour is an extra 5/5 to your armour stats. Everything helps but avoidance will help more so after jera/algiz I'd focus on avoidance before returning to get berkana and then the rune armour/blade as a lower priority.

Edit: the lesson cost to switch specs is quite low, so you could use 2H until you think the crit advantage of a dual wielding spec makes it worth switching specs.

Kriex said:

2h by far is the best hunting spec for Runewarden.  It hits hard and with x16 crits (at level 95, about 15%-18% of my total crits are x16) you can one shot most things (Sidhe in Annwyn, Elite and Knights in Mog etc).  Your already tanky with runic armour and by speccing +con (I am a dwarf miner, and trait specced for +con). You only really need to hit 16 strength without fury for pvp (anything more is great but a broken torso dsb at 18 strength (16 base plus 2 with fury) is 92%+ health on someone).  If your going only for hunting and not looking to get into pvp then get an artefact hammer. Speed on hammer is a little faster.  If your planning on getting into combat get an artefact bastard sword.  I have a level 2 and with the nimble trait my hunting balance is around 2.9 seconds a hit.

While DWC is faster and has the ability to crit more, your still needing 3-4 dsls (at around 1.9-2.1 seconds of balance per hit) to match 1 slaughter attack from a 2h. 2h crits are worth more in damage too.  From my testing (16 str, lvl 1 scims for dwc, lvl 2 bastard for 2h, lvl 2 crit pendant) it takes a dsl with a double x2 crit proc to match my normal base hit for 2h. So any crits I get as a 2h (roughly a 36% chance at 95) means my DWC counter part has that many more dsls to do to catch up.

2h allows you to tank mobs easier because you hit harder and can potentially one shot mobs with smaller crits.  Meaning you are hitting and running less.  

I will always tell others 2h is greater

You're*

Kriex said:

 If your going only for hunting and not looking to get into pvp then get an artefact hammer. Speed on hammer is a little faster.  If your planning on getting into combat get an artefact bastard sword.  I have a level 2 and with the nimble trait my hunting balance is around 2.9 seconds a hit.

Hammer is naturally faster than bastard, so definitely use for hunting. 
However, don't bother with an artefact hammer for hunting. There is no measurable speed increase, and no measurable damage increase.

In fact, weapon damage does almost no extra damage to denizens, for 2h. Against a target I was doing about 70% damage to per hit (stirges in great rock being my test mob), jumping from forged to L2 bastard only netted 1% extra damage.

A L2 hammer might be nice. I don't have one, but I'd expect a 0.2 second speed increase. Totally not worth it for hunting though.

If you want to hunt with a bastard, a L1 is definitely good, with a nice speed increase. L2 is slightly less return but also good. However, I still bash with warhammer mostly, so: 

Hunt with a forged hammer and get +crit instead.

If you really want that weapon, for the cool factor or whatever, apparently you can borrow one for evaluation if you contact admin.

Agreed. Just pointing out that the damage for pve isn't there, and the L1 hammer speed isn't there, so there are better pve arties. The OP isn't interested in PVP.

Because I made the mistake myself (though I don't regret it as it still has pvp impact).

As I said, no measurable speed increase with L1 hammer. Makes sense given the stats (the stat diff between forged->L1 hammer is not on par with forged->L1 bastard). L2 hammer probably noticeable, BUT at the cost he will get better return (in his case clearing speed) spending those credits on +crit. 

I'm not saying there is NO benefit with a L2 hammer. I'm offering advice on value for money, and pointing out that he will see no benefit with a L1 hammer.