Fighting Techniques

[clefa221]

Hey, so I just got started into combat and I want to know which fighting style would be best to try to specialize in.

What are the benefits to each style, and what are the detriments.

[pedorlee]

Do you mean pvp or pve?

[DDDsDD999]

For skills to level you can go Unarmed Combat (UA), Melee Combat (MC), or Marksmanship (MM).

For a basic "which should I" in the short term, go MM early to hunt animals if you don't know how to combat, UA if you want to kill badgers/foxes/other "mid-tier" animals, MC if you have a sword and shield which make it fairly easy to hunt the upper tier animals such as bears/moose/lynxes at around 150ish MC. UA can take down the higher tier animals but you would still need a sword to hunt in a timely manner.

Don't bother with PvP if you aren't attacking noobs or don't have 150+ in UA or MC at this stage in the game

For a basic "which should I" as a long term investment for PvP:

UA is good if you don't want to carry around a shield all the time but just want to protect yourself (you should always have a sword, regardless of if you choose UA or MC) or expect to have pretty good stats (500+ UA at least) because Melee combat attacks get capped by your sword's vitality.

MC is good if you can get a decent sword and armour, and don't mind carrying around a shield. Best if you expect to be an attacker or otherwise prepared for any fight.

Hybrid is the most common I'd say, which is where you level UA and MC, usually with a focus on MC until you get to about the 300ish mark, and then level UA. Once your UA is significantly higher than your MC (600 UA to 300 MC probably), you can probably ditch the shield. The MC you levelled is still pretty worthwhile since you still want it for delivering killing blows.

MM is cheese. Any time that it's good it gets nerfed. If you don't mind carrying a quiver and bow around, and know what you're doing you could get away with it. But I'd just say ignore it. (It's good for killing animals that you can't kill because your UA/MC is too low, but in PvP it's pretty hit or miss.)