Paladin or Darkknight (Greatsword)

[Ele]

It would be stupid for a PLD to drop his sword and use a fist, lol. First off, he would do jack shit for damage. Second he could not parry attacks with a fist. And third, PLD does not need another interupt attack as there are others that have them too. DRK gets weapon bash and the spell stun. BLM i beleive can also stun and there are probably others, but i dont know them. So i beleive it would be foolish to give up a sword. PLD probably have like an E rating in H2H anyway so he would miss half the time, plus he would just look gay swinging his fist at the mob

[Mithrael]

You can't use hand-to-hand weapon skill when you have a shiel equipped, even if you aren't carrying a weapon in the other hand

I don't know offhand if unequiping your shield resets TP.

[Voyager]

Yea, TP resets if you unequipe a shield. Well, it was worth a shot.

On a side note, there is a HtH parry skill, called Guard. It's just Parry for HtH.

The inspiration for this was from when I was helping another char hunting Magicked Skulls for the sub job quest, as a lvl 20 odd War/Mnk. I had been using sword and shield, and tanking, but I was doing very poor damage against the Ghouls, so I just deided to try using bare fists and see what happened. I was actually doing more damage to the Ghoul with bare fist and a shield than I was with a sword, so I just stuck with fist. We didn't have a full party with much healing, so we were resting quite a bit between battles, so I never even tried to use a WS.

Harry Voyager

[ENWEH]

Guard reduces damage, parry nullifies it. A tank (PLD) always wants parry over guard because of this.

[Carbon]

For what it's worth, I know a DRK who exclusively uses Great Sword, even after Lv60 and Guillotine. I don't know if he even has scythe leveled at all. I've never ever seen him with a scythe.

Yet, he does do awesome damage with Sickle Moon, comparable to what I've seen other DRKs do with Guillotine.

[Quezi]

Do you like great sword for the way they look in game, of becaus you like the idea of a 'greatsword useing charicter'?

If its that last one, just make a SAM. If its the idea then theres good reasons why SAM should work, idealisticly.

First of all, 'great sword' may be kinda confuseing, the proper term for a european sword wich you use two hands to wield is 'long sword'. No, a long sword is not a large one handed sword as diablo or other things may have you convinced, while it could be used one handed, it is a two handed weapon(such as a katana could be used one handed or two handed, it is a two handed weapon. A one handed wepaon is a weapon designed for one handed use only, such as a gladius, shortsword, scimitar, rapier, and so on). This is mostly what is also called 'hand and a half' becaus anything that absalutley required two hands to use at all would just be thrown away as useless as its user would become fatiged after just a few minutes of fighting. So forget everything hollywood and conan have told you and realise that 'great swords' are about 3-4 lbs, can be used in one hand, just not as effectivley as with two, and are not simply bashed into your opponent. Thats starting to sound alot like what the samurais use!

All your flashy fantasy crap asside, there are six cuts and one thrust. The same holds true in germany, southern africa, japan, the middle east, india, ANYWHERE people use swords, thats the basis for every single style, school or technique ever formulated. The only real differance between the two then, is one favors thrusting, the other favors slashing, that and a curved blade is better on horseback.

The swords themselves. European swords are hardent to about 50-52 or so on the rockwell hardness scale. Katanas edge is hardend to about 52 or slightly over, whereas the spine is left softer to help absorb impact. See japanese steel was crap, their only source of iron was from sand with trace ore deposits, becaus of this they HAD to do all that folding and diferential tempering in order to keep the blade from just being useless, folding it ensures that the impurities where distributed evenly to eleminate weak spots in the blade, but even then the steel itself is still lower quality, so the differential tempering helped absorb impact so the blade would not shatter. This means that they could afford a harder edge, resulting in a sharper sword, but also that relativly speaking the blade was softer on a whole, and more prone to bending. In the end it balances out and each are good.

So as you see, a SAM is just what you are looking for, as they are almost mirror immages of a greatsword useing knight (well, samurai had better bow skills). Before anyone flames, please do not compare samurai to european peasants. If you really want me to go into detail on the simularities then i would be happy to, but i do not think its warrented and i would hate the flock of kiddies who think that a katana could chop a bar of steel in half to flood in here yelling.

Anyway my whole point is. I to wanted a sort of 'sword master' type charicter, and i considerd DRK but really, they have their scyths and they just dont seem to be the sort of dedicated sword users i was after, so i picked samurai. It can work for you to!

If you on the other hand just think greatswords look 'cool' in this game well, i gues DRK is for you, altho i would probibly take PLD as i also kinda like shields, and really pld tank so well you will find yourself in some situations where the differance between a shield or no shield would be so small that it really doesnt justify not doing the extra damage a greatsword would pull out.