thanks mate, I appreciate the feedback, I also got a properly made unbiased class guide for pally if you wanna check that out!
I kinda like 1H Swords like Flame Sword, at the start I used a 2h sword with normal speed and got annoyed with always needing SI so I bought a Flame Sword and it's my main weapon now. It attacks fast and doesn't rely on SI buff, it's very cheap (it's cheaper than crushed skull, a perfect clean flame sword is only like 1b or so while skull is around 2b), doesn't require any DEX, allows you to use guardian and is a kinda unique and rare weapon. Crushed Skulls aren't that unique, around half of the Paladins I've seen use BW but there are not many people who use 1h sword. Also while it sucks with SI you can buy some cheap Claymore and switch to it when you got SI, even if you have to buy both it's still a lot cheaper than a Stonetooth with their current prices (135 atk for like 9b) If you want a perfect weapon Stonetooth is probably the best choice though since it's too expesnive to perfect both a flame sword and a claymore. As for Skull/Claymore, the normal speed is pretty much forcing you to make an SI mule and bring it every time (unless all your runs have buccs in them) if you want good damage You gain 19% more DPS with SI (which is a huge difference), so while you can say DPS is not important you will lose the Paladin's main advantage over Heroes/Drks (1vs1 damage) and might even fail some shao runs due to a lack of damage. With Claymore you can just switch to ST a 1h sword without SI so it's less troublesome, but with a Skull you are kinda stuck with it
After some friends seeing 2h sw pallys hitting 199k without crit on boss runs (prob with god items like 20 att shoes), i kinda lost hope on making a perfect crushed skull. I also got curious on how difficulty is to hit 199k on Dragon Clamore in mw20 + echo + apple + crit. If u r a sw pally that achieved this damage, pls let me know your gears.
You need around 14.5k range to hit 199k crits (not that difficult , 9k range clean will already get like 15k with apple+echp) on non holy weak but hitting 199k without crit need very high range (nearly 18k) On my lvl 182 paladin I got around 15.7k range with claymore on apple/echo (around 9.7k clean) . I have 51 total atk gear (glove/shoe/cape) but a weak 131 atk claymore. I hit something like 175k max without crits in bosses (higher in dunas/toad 1st body though) On BW you get a lot higher range though, someone borrowed me a 138 atk skull and when I used it with my 20 atk shield my clean range went up to 10.8k.
i have 8.7k with mw20 and get 14k with apple and echo and i can still hit 199k with and without crits
14k can't hit 199k unless you get crit on holy weak, blast without crit is 1131% (580%x 1.3 from charge x 1.5 for ele weak) on fire/ice/lightning weak which will only hit 155k or so
Thank you for this essay on damage output! This has helped me in the weapon selection process for my paladin