Thoughts? So far i've tried Swords (mostly) and Maces (entire tree) but not Axes. Maces seemed better than swords both skill and stat wise, and at least on paper axes looks like the weakest of the three. Yea/nay?
I'm not sure about Maces, but I do agree that Axes seems to be the worst of them. I've even seen more cool staves than axes. And Unarmed can be pretty good as well, if the rest of your gear is good.
Axes are pretty weak. I think the strongest one is 20 damage pre-Krong, and the mastery has the worst stat increases. If you are using any spells at all, I think Staves are the best. I think their attack ability has a high chance to stun.
Staffs kind of sucks. You won't be killing things in melee very often because most of the staffs have bad combat stats. As you said, you'll mostly be using the staff for the magical bonus. But if you're not killing things in melee, you don't really need the staff skills - you get the bonus from a staff just for wielding it. It's self-defeating.
Counterattack is the best defensive/offensive ability, it negates an attack completely and gives you a free attack,so I would say swords+dual yielding are the best. (When it will be fixed,right now the all the dual yield skills are bugged).