At teens levels you'll most likely use whatever magic weapon you can obtain. Later on you'll most likely end up using 1HS (ghoulbane), 2HS (deepwater harpoon, etc), or 2HB (man-o-war). 1HB is not used much until hateplane, and piercing is not generally used much until Velious.
I do not feel it's critical to keep weapon skills current. If you obtain a weapon you're unskilled for you can max it out relatively quickly in a group. The group won't care or likely even notice since they aren't inviting you for your damage anyway. Carrying around a bunch of (usually heavy) weapons for skill-up purposes when weight and carry capacity are real problems is not desirable.
Damage caps do not work exactly like the above poster suggests. You are not actually hard-capped to those damage values (ie, my level 16 Shadow Knight on "Teal" hit for 30). The way it works on melee classes is from levels 1-9 you are capped to the equivalent of a 10-damage weapon, during the teens it's the equivalent of a 14-damage weapon, and during the 20's you get the equivalent of a 30-damage weapons. There are few 30+ damage weapons in this game era so that last one is usually a nonfactor. The distinction is slight but it's something to be aware of. This tends to favor 1H somewhat at lower levels--especially 1-9--because it's difficult to get full performance out of 2H prior to level 20 and especially prior to level 10.
Danth
|