Character Creation - 1st and 2nd weapon focus - Reason to specialize?

[TomReneth]

Something that have bugged me a bit while I've been planning my 2nd charater is the choices you get for your primary and secondary weapon. This wasn't something I thought about on my first, as I was a 2-handed/Vigor style character with the War Mage background, so I didn't really need to. However, as I've planned to do a more "pure warrior" with the Soldier background on my second playthrough, I've stopped and looked at the benefits of specializing in only weapon types. And I have to say I am unimpressed.

Not only are the bonuses for picking a weapon skill as a secondary miniscule (+4 total), but the secondary benefit from a magic specialization, in addition to giving twice the skill points, also gives you 5 of those points in one of the most useful dialogue based skills in the game (lore). You can also gain access to Sigils not readily available right away for your mage companions this way. And, yeah, you get an additional talent point, but you don't get that much freedom in choosing which ones.

So, maybe I'm missing something, but is there any reason besides roleplaying to pick two weapon specializations? Because it seems to me that going with magic as the second option is the most powerful choice.

 

[RoboticManiac]

You determine which skill tree your two 'free' levels go into. And your starting weapons. Aside from that, not much- unless you're a mage as you said. In that case, you gain access to spell types you otherwise wouldn't have for quite a while.

 

[BoogieMan]

I chose double entropy and got nothing but a single debuff for my trouble.

 

[TorquemadaStark]

I'd say, pick something that really matters. Because with a full party, doing every possible quest in a solo run (which, admittedly, skips a bunch of them, as you butcher whole areas) I had lvl 16 by the end.

 

[KDubya]

My first guy was an unarmed guy with shock mage. The core can be bought for a low price and the skill gains are just OK. I trained in Lore every level up and was a monk-mage. On hard difficulty seemed pretty good but his defenses were not great.

After Act 1 I bumped it up to PotD and re-rolled as an unarmed with warmace. The +2 to two handed was a waste but it let me have another Power ability so I could have both Palm Strike and Sunder. This effectively gets me an extra level up. Now I am training Dodge each level up to get decent survivability.

I like the more focused second build better. The extra ability in my main tree lets me get to the higher abilities faster.

I start with the fire core for starting the riot in Bastard City so the team has free access to an attacking spell path without further investment.

My next planned character is a Agility twohander going with Noble (for the skills), Two handed for the skills and Cleave, and either dual wield or unarmed for Flurry of Blows and light armor for the deflection. Plan on sticking mainly to Agility for whirlwind, charge and the multi-hit attacks which should be nice with a damaging two hander while deflection and a high Parry which will also stop ranged should help defensively.

My though is unless you are planning on using a staff no good reason to ever take the mage at the start. Not sure that a javelin and shield guy who slings spells would not be better than a staff using mage but still need to try it out.

 

[MadDemiurg]

Reason to start double mage is that you start with a talent in mage tree, which you want 6 points in for 4 extra spell slots.

All starting melee and ranged talents are worthless unless you actually plan using a weapon.

Going mage + melee is imo pretty bad though cause you only get 1 weapon talent. If you want anything to do with weapons, better get 2 cause sigils are very easy to come by anyway.