Vengeance

Now that I hit 50, I'm considering respeccing (again).

Current spec (without my 50 spec points, which were going to go to parry):

44 pole
40 thrust (should've stopped at 39, what was I thinking?)
42 shield
17ish parry

I've found that I've been using S&S more than pole in RvR as I try to wait for an opportune time to switch to pole as opposed to using pole full time. If the enemy is not focussed on me, I can use the pole at will and not worry about being blocked or having to burst the bubble first.

High, front loaded damage is king in RvR and I feel a bit gimped that I haven't taken pole alot higher. Further, I don't feel that parry is that useful in RvR, but it may just be my limited experience.

Also, 1h thrust bites for armsmen. Half of the styles are based off of evade, which we don't have, so I'm stuck using a crappy, low level, style that can be used anytime and it does pathetic damage (this is the only complaint I have about armsmen, btw).

So what I'm thinking of doing is:

50 pole: (for max damage and the Phalanx/Defender's Aegis combo for fleeing enemies).
39 slash (With +skill items getting slash to 50 will be easy)
42 shield
leftovers in parry

Or? This is the part where I'm looking for opinions from you guys. Should I stick to my original plan and try it a bit before making any hasty decisions? I want to stick to a hybrid template as I find the shield incredibly useful. Feel free to offer up opinions or flame as you see fit. :)

That's a good respec template. Unfortunately parry and block are still suffering from a bug in RvR combat: if your opponent is in a group of 8, even if only one person attacks you, your parry and block rates go way way down.

However, as a paladin I've found parry to be really useful. It's a good defense against dual wielding enemies (shields are halved). As an armsman it may not be quite so useful.

You also have the nice benefit of slam/switch to pole/lay down the law.

Slam is cool, but you should have other people in  your group handling CC duties.  I personally can't see spending 42 levels on shield if you're going to spec high in pole.  I think you are better off with a pole/parry combo or the high slash (or whatever)/ shield combo.  My point is that in the pole/shield spec, at any given time you're unable to take advantage of half of the spec points you've spent.  Personally, I think you're better off keeping pole and dumping extra points in to xbow.  I haven't played my arms much recently, but when I spent a few points on xbow the damage went noticeably higher.  Plus, it makes you useful on a keep defense.  :)

Axe: I have heard that about block/parry, but in my limited experience, I have blocked in RvR (not much, but it does happen). I don't recall ever parrying in RvR.

Ross: You are right in that you don't have access to many of your spec points as a hybrid at any given time, however being a hybrid offers a bit more versatility. Shield Slam is not really for CC, but more for fleeing opponents (which I've done effectively) or to just stun someone, then use some high damage pole styles. If you just go S&S with no pole, you are not using the one of the armsman's class defining abilities, which IMO is kind of a waste.

With regards to xbow: When we were defending Excal a few weeks ago, I got a bunch of RPs just by putting a single bolt into someone being fired up by caster. Call me a leech!

With my defensive skills at 43 parry (MoParry 1) and 64 shield (MoBlock 1), I block and parry often in RvR ever since the 'defense fix' a while back. However the rates do go down noticeably when I go to 8v8 scenarios. In 1 on 1s I can fight shadowblades and never get hit. (Rare, but it has happened).

I've gone RvRing with my zerker a couple of times in emain now and I've noticed that I evade way more than I parry despite the fact that my chance to evade is only 15%. I'm 37 spec in parry, so in theory, I should be parrying 23.5% of the time but that never happens.

Only person I ever recall parrying was a blue con reaver and the most he could hit me for was like 30 damage so it wasn't exactly a life saving manuever.

From what I understand, the problem lies in parrying while weilding a 2-hander. Dual-weilders apparently love parry, or at least they've seen 'em in RvR. However, they may notice it a lot more seeing as a number of dual-styles are parry pre-req.

When getting hit by DW'ers your chance to block is halved. When getting hit by 2 handers your chance to parry is halved.