Celtic Heroes

As you get stronger weapons over time, giant swing gets stronger but pummel stays the same. So the closer you are to end-game, the weaker pummel is. Which is why giant swing would be better in these cases. However if you have the +x pummel damage rings, you can make pummel superior (atleaat royal or above).

Actually Pummel is far stronger than giant swing after lvl 145, but it has some kind of an issue against chaos resistance (as pummel is an unspecified physical dmg), and in general theres a screw lost in the resistance/damage types in this game.

Lvl 1-145 - Pummel is quite weak unless u have silverweb rings.
Lvl 145 + - Pummel gets stronger with ancient beastbone/dl gloves + at least one ring (or brace at high lvl). I have lvl 50 Pummel, I use only mighty brace from mordy and its enough for over 5k dmg, some ppl even use more than one piece of gear.

EDIT: The boost Giant Swing gets from each skill point/str/melee combat is very low, the main dmg is ur melee dmg (each skill point adds on average something like 30, on lvl 50 its total of 1.5k dmg, melee combat and str barely add anything) and so while its useful due weps, its weaker on other boosts. It fluctuate horribly, the cooldown is 20 seconds (doesnt match shatter that way) and the casting time is so long u can do more dmg with melee by that time due fluctuation.

Pummel, gets an insane boost from str at first (just for those who wanna check the skills dmg calculator, start pummel with 100 melee combat and 10 str, then add another 10 str or a bit more), and still a very high boost from melee combat. Each skill lvl can add far more than Giant Swing on average (its roughly 4 or 5 times from Giant Swing), so it can eventually have higher dmg (but again the resists issue). Pummel has 8 secs cooldown and 1 sec casting, if Shatter would actually last for 10 secs (it lasts for 8) u could cast 2 pummels per Shatter, also, even if ur wep is slower, pummel doesnt get slower, and as a warrior ur wep wont be faster. Only issue is the drastic str plateau.

Actually Pummel is far stronger than giant swing after lvl 145, but it has some kind of an issue against chaos resistance (as pummel is an unspecified physical dmg), and in general theres a screw lost in the resistance/damage types in this game.

Pummel is crush damage, regardless of the weapon you use. That's why it was very popular skill on the previous spider event boss (which dropped the pummel rings).

Pummel gets stronger with ancient beastbone/dl gloves + at least one ring (or brace at high lvl). I have lvl 50 Pummel, I use only mighty brace from mordy and its enough for over 5k dmg, some ppl even use more than one piece of gear.

Yes agreed. If you use a lot of +x pummel damage boosting gear, it becomes quite powerful because of its fast cast-time and cool down.

Giant Swing... fluctuate horribly...

All skills fluctuate by 50%. So the horrible fluctuation also applies to pummel.

Only issue is the drastic str plateau.

This is why giant swing will be better end-game if you don't use pummel-damage-boosting gear. The plateau is only getting worse, and pummel is 100% reliant on str. So, when new update is released and we get stronger weapons, giant swing will be much more powerful as it isn't purely reliant on str, while pummel wont. You don't need to wait till update though, if you managed to get a void halberd, you will start noticing how powerful giant swing can be in comparison.

So at the end of the day, it depends on what weapon and gear you are using.

Well ive used pummel since lvl 1 on 2 accounts and mainly used giant swing untill about 170. i thought gs was so op and pummel still op but still not as good as gs. my gs was hitting around 3.5k. Then i got spider pummel rings and instantly i thought gs was crap because my pummel was hitting 5k+ every time

But from lvl 1 to highest lvl u can get
I would say pummel since its faster reload and faster to hit and never gets interrupted
When gs can gl mate

@Immortalius :

1. Pummel isnt crush dmg, it isnt any specific type of physical dmg, ur more than welcome to retest the skill I love the most and tested the most.
2. U dont need to use a lot of +x gear, mordy brace alone adds + skill lvl, + melee combat, + direct dmg.
3. Try several Giant Swing hits and several Pummel hits, check which ones hits closer to max more often. Also, eventually Giant Swing is mostly affected by ur melee dmg, thus, if ur melee dmg is mixed between several resists, it is many times harder to actually work on it's resists, because Im not quite sure all the elemental dmg converts to physical (this game's systems arent the best).
4. Str plateau affects the melee dmg drastically as well, and as melee dmg is Giant Swing's main source of dmg, it'll affect Giant Swing drastically as well, then again ur more than welcome to check.

In general, my pummel is over 5k, my dmg is over 2.9k (dark halberd), I use only a single pummel item (excluding my dl gloves, but I dont really rely on the 5 skill pts, I can get them anyway) that is the lowest tier of that item (mighty out of godly, tier 1 out of 5). My str is 1445, so yes I could definitely see the very high impact on str's bonuses to melee dmg and pummel dmg, thus the str plateau hits both Pummel and Giant Swing very hard.

@Immortalius :

1. Pummel isnt crush dmg, it isnt any specific type of physical dmg, ur more than welcome to retest the skill I love the most and tested the most.

lol. Idk what kind of tests you did, but you should revise how valid they are because your wrong. Heres how I know:

1. I tried pummel before and after using lure of giants (crush) and then again with lure of assassins (pierce - since I was using a spear at the time). My pummel damage did not change when I used lure of assassins, but it went up dramatically when I used lure of giants. Coincidence?

2. Last events spider boss, weak to only ONE type of damage - crush. In fact it mostly likely had 0 crush resistance, because when I auto'd with my hammer I was autoing very close to my max damage. However when i switched to my halberd against the spider boss, my auto dramatically decreased, but my pummel, always hit close to my max damage (10x more than my auto) while every other skill was hitting less than 1k. Coincidence?

3. Why on earth would a programmer create "unspecified physical damage" for ONE SKILL, and then have to add "unspecified physical resistance" to every single mob and every single boss, purely to resist ONE SKILL in the entire game. Because I don't see pummel hitting max hit on every boss. even without proof, its illogical.

3. Try several Giant Swing hits and several Pummel hits, check which ones hits closer to max more often. Also, eventually Giant Swing is mostly affected by ur melee dmg, thus, if ur melee dmg is mixed between several resists, it is many times harder to actually work on it's resists, because Im not quite sure all the elemental dmg converts to physical(this game's systems arent the best).

They don't convert to physical damage. As you said, it becomes mixed. Your elemental damage boosts get added directly to your giant swing damage and stay as elemental damage. So if your giant swing damage is 4200, and you equip an offhand that adds 300 heat damage, your new giant swing is 4200 physical damage and 300 heat damage. Which could explain why you think pummel fluctuates less. Its not actually fluctuating less, its just that pummel is purely crush damage. It does not get any bonuses from elemental or any other physical damage bonuses with gear. So when you use Shatter, it is increasing ALL the damage for pummel, but not ALL the damage for giant swing - which makes it harder for you to hit max with giant swing. And while that may sound like a drawback for using giant swing, its actually a big advantage for many reasons:

1. Against chaos bosses - because your unresisted divine damage bonuses get added directly to giant swing damage, but they don't with pummel.
2. If you got any poison damage bonuses, again, only gets added to giant swing.
3. New lux is released with higher elemental/physical damage bonuses, giant swing gets a bigger boost, pummel stays the same. Get the picture?

Did the same test with lure of giants, had no effect on my pummel. Got kills over hammer users who have pummel on 200 spider, I have an halberd, and actually Im the first kill on spider on Belenus. Yes it is possible to have unspecified dmg, because it is the same on Rupture's DoT, and there are many other skills that can have certain dmg but its not exactly correct (poison doesnt affect bound spirits on necro, but stinging swarm does, so does rupture's DoT. Giant swing does only the divine dmg of ur melee dmg on necro bound spirits, pummel does some dmg [although very low] and it doesnt have any divine dmg bonus to that, but I have no clue where this dmg comes from). On 200 spiders poison was very weak, yet stinging swarm hit as if it didnt have any poison resist, yet shadowstrike hit extremely low.

So yes, there are screw ups in types of dmg and resistances on skills, its not just Pummel, but its pummel as well. Try crushing dmg as melee on a chaos boss (with or without the divine dmg, its 150 dmg difference) and pummel which is 'pure' crush dmg on chaos boss. Pummel out of 5k 'pure crush' dmg will hit the same if not lower than ur crushing melee (that we know will not be 5k) with and without ur divine, yet on snorri's adds that have chaos aura Pummel hits normally (and actually I get lots of close to max hits there) but according to some ppl (and I guess mage's dl offhand's skill) they have some divine resistance.

It would be lovely if this game would have normal well-working systems, but it doesnt.

For DPS builds its pummel all the way. If you make PVP builds, I dont know what to say, go eat some glue. Pummel is faster, meaning more damage over time and is comparable per hit as well, and I have endgame gear.

So pummel is useless for lvl 100 I got a silver web charm tht gives +5 to pummel. Should I respec and remove the points from protective stance to there?

Why not both???

So pummel is useless for lvl 100 I got a silver web charm tht gives +5 to pummel. Should I respec and remove the points from protective stance to there?

I recommend silverweb ring, a +5 one at least should do the job (the charm is great too as a bonus to the ring), but its mostly recommended as soon as u get ancient beastbone gloves and u have another pummel boosting item.