At the moment, a good meta for highlander builds use swordman for buffs, highlander for utility, and the final circles for damage.
As a swordman, if you intend to take cross guard, include level 1 thrust into your build. Thrust provides pierce damage, which you will lack since there are no other skills that will provide it for you, and you will be unable to equip spears. It costs 8 sp, has no cooldown, is cheap to attribute up, and has several other beneficial effects. When you stagger enemies with cross guard, every thrust attack will do double damage (stagger debuff), and every thrust will do a multi hit (thrust attribute). In thrust’s case, the multi hit is calculated with the original hit, meaning if you crit the first thrust, the second attack (the multi hit proc) will also crit. Thrust’s bleed sucks though, so don’t sword2 to get restrain just for thrust bleed. (though restrain for it’s own sake can be pretty good).
In other words, if you cross guard stagger into thrust spam against a leather enemy, your damage will be multiplied by 1.5 for pierce vs leather, 2.0 for stagger debuff, and ~1.75 for the second hit (the second hit will never do as much damage as the first for reasons you can find in multi hit mechanics). That adds up to a whopping 525% damage for 8 sp, before leveling the % damage attribute at all. Add in the % buff Highlanders get on crit attacks and this adds up to some fair damage.
One other great thing about cross guard is that staggered enemies are immobile. That’s right, even bosses will be unable to move after you stagger them, provided they aren’t immune to the debuff, and I haven’t found one yet that is stagger immune.
But the real reason cross guard is great isn’t for your own benefit, because if you go highlander you are probably sacrificing cata, pelta, or hoplite. Highlander can do damage, yes, but their best role is actually utility. If you cross guard stagger, skull swing an enemy, then your hoplite ally hits the spear lunge into stabbing, you call that the eraser, because boss HP will just evaporate.
The other great utility skill for highlander is Crown, which I tested and found that it doesn’t just reduce target int and spirit, it annihilates it. On 120 spirit, 70 int cleric, crown reduced both stats to One. Why is this good? Int is magic damage. I took my l 190 to the 90 dungeon to farm necro (easy anyway, but regardless) when I crowned Necro, his magic attacks went from doing triple digits to 1s. I lv 15d my crown, so the debuff lasts longer than the cooldown.
That’s icing on the cake compared to what the reduction in the spirit stat is worth. In PvE, spirit is block penetration. You crown a mob, and you erase it’s block pen, making your cross guard (or shield, if you sword and board) that much more effective. PvP, crown is that plus mana pool, plus many cleric buffs are effected by the caster’s spirit. If you crown somone with high spirit, you could erase half their mana pool and decimate their regen. Provided PvP fights last longer than 10-15 seconds, it is a definite advantage.
Catar and wagon wheel can be pretty useful too. Wagon is a good juggle, and you can combine it with bash and dash to keep your enemies knockdown. Catar isn’t terrific PvE as a utility skill, though it is good for damage, especially since it is blunt type, so use it on plate targets. It’s not great in PvP as a damage skill, since you have to charge it (though if you are on point with bash and dash, you can easily get a l3 charge onto a single target). Catar is decent as PvP utility though, since l1 is enough to send enemies flying and your 2HS is going to hit multiple enemies, and you can change your facing while you charge. I’ve used it like so: Make sure knockback is enabled. Rush just behind the center of gravity of enemy formation. Provided you aren’t ccd or dead, charge catar and turn so you face back into their party. After .5 seconds, let it fly and send 3-4 of their squishes flying out of their formation and into the waiting arms of your formation. Works in reverse also, make enemies who want to get in your face gtfo.
The last utility would be the crosscut bleed. That ■■■■ hurts bad.
