OK, it's been a while since I read this, so time for a new round. For the record, total 4k+ giant here.
Skills -
I don't see why you emphasize r9 Stomp as an early priority skill. Stomp is useful for the STR, and the title, but the skill itself has VERY limited applications. Aside form Snow Zombies, Wendigo, and Spiders, it has little to no real use, due to the minute damage output.
I put in r9 Stomp in the beginning to activate the Bold enchant, which although it only boasts 1 strength over Giant, the strength gain from the skill/enchant itself is valuable.
Also, Charge is far more important than Taunt. It may not be as much strength, but it's a mainstay tactic for giants. Smash->Charge->Smash will kill most things in the game at one's current level of play.
Actually, for the transition between sub-1000 and over-1000, I had trouble deciding which skills to rank first (those skills being Taunt, Charge, Assault Slash, and Throwing Attack). So I'll rework the numbers and try to fit in some Charge/AS because they're extremely good offensive attacks.
As for Trans skills, you definitely want to rank Demon of Physis first. I was a late-comer to GFS, but now it's far and away my favorite skill. :D I'd also rank Shield/Life/GFS all to r7 or so before taking any to r1. You can get all 3 to r7 and get 2/3 the effectiveness of each for the cost of ranking any one to r1.
I've actually never thought of it this way. Personally, in terms of achieving the best damage as early as possible, I'd go Beast->GFS or the other way around first.
Life Skills... Prod Mastery should be number one in terms of effectiveness. The only problem is that it would make ranking refine that much harder, but if you get to refine early you should still be OK. Giants are Stam-eating machines, and the 150 stam from r1 Mastery is a must-have. And why would you suggest ranking Enthrall before First Aid (or at all really)? It's 1 less dex for 4.5x the APs, and FA gives 40 HP too. Other skills would be far more useful.
Humm, I didn't put much attention into the recommended order of life skills. Not really sure to which rank you can rank Refine to before you can safely rank PM (since a recent patch has nerfed Refine). First Aid is most likely a better choice to go first than Enthralling; I'll change that.
I find your magic section seriously lacking. Don't get me wrong, Mana Shield is an awesome skill, but without a mana pool and added INT for efficiency, it's very weak. At the very least max out Magic Mastery and Meditation for the MP. Ranking Thunder to r6 or so is also very useful for both the MP and the ability to raft solo, and fairly AP-efficient (AP cost skyrockets in the last 5 ranks). You also need to learn at least rank F heal.
I designed this guide to focus primarily on max damage melee, and any other skills pertaining to survivial based on secondary stats or damaging purposes other than melee, especially in the magic section, I left out just because many people have different orders of which to rank such skills in.
As for Alchemy, Cold is an obsolete ES so I would remove Frozen Blast entirely. Shock Master title was also nerfed, so I'd remove it. Shock is a huge AP sink for its new, small boost. Also, you need to add Life Drain to the mix -- giants eventually have huge HP pools, and will get pot poisoned easily if you use HP pots. LD is a great way to avoid that.
Right, I've been meaning to remove Cold just because it's a hassle to rank Frozen Blast, but just for prettiness sake, I put in Cold because I didn't want to put Metal Needle twice xD. Yeah, I'll remove Cold xD. Shock, since it's in purple color, I intended it to be ranked late in the endgame (because of the very small marginal increase in max damage). I consider Life Drain to be a survival skill xD.
When you come to the Enchants section, I find your guide very confusing. First off is your use of the Tragic Enchant. Potion poison status is not something you want to be in for melee. HP poison lowers your STR and WIL, MP lowers INT as well. Avenger also has a pot poison boost, which you seem to factor in. Frankly, this is where your guide drifts too far into theory and not practice. Theoretically, you can maintain the fine line between maintaining pot poison status and not having it drop stats, but in practice, things do not work out that way. When you need stam or MP for mana shield or HP (since you have no LD skill in your build) you gotta pot, and it's gonna affect you. I would totally remove Tragic and any Pot-poisoned effects from your guide. Burst Knight is a good replacement for Tragic as low-end ES go.
HP Potion Poison lowers WILL and INT, so only critical and magic damage will suffer (and at sub-1000, critical isn't that big of a factor in damage). Burst Knight, because of it's wide range for Strength boost (1~10) and its unavailability on the market, I didn't put into the guide.
Also, with enchants like Conceptual, you should use the ES-related titles, in that case the Maiz title. That title gives 12 max and 3 crit on top of the 5 max from the enchant, which is better than the Stomp title (16 max). Also, I think using titles in the enchant section at all is a mistake, unless the enchant requires them.
I took the Maiz title into consideration and because it's a title that requires the user to consistently discover the Ruins before someone else does (thus the title isn't readily available to everyone), I didn't mention in the guide. When I first made this guide, I actually put in "the Hungry" as a viable title to go along with Habit, but ever since the release of the Stomp Master title and Extraordinary as a replacement, I'm not sure I need to mention titles? I mean, I might as well factor in titles somewhere, and I'm too lazy to move the titles elsewhere.
I also think you have too much of an emphasis on max and not on crit. You overuse the Oblivion ES, which kills Luck. For someone age 17 with a non-Artisan weapon that may work out ok, but for someone age 10, using dual artisan-upgraded warhammers, or using luck ES like Ancient and White Horse, it works counter to their build. Boots for example -- I would take Fleet (9 max +2 crit) over Oblivion (10 max -15 Luck). +1 max is not worth losing 5% crit. Losing crit is especially bad since your calculations further operate on the theory of having an R5 or R6 weapon.
True indeed that Oblivion lowers luck, but this is a guide, although probably good on paper but not in practice, that focuses on max damage. I figured I might as well leave Critical out of the equation. I mean, the luck bonus from every endgame weapon/equipment still overrides the -Luck from Oblivion enchants. Although the amount of critical might be lower, it's still your choice. if I were to factor in Critical, for one, it wouldn't be a guide on max damage, and for two, it would require alot more logistics (adding in skills that contribute to Will, adding in critical enchants to boost to 130%).
Here's my current (endgame, but not theoretical best) gear:
Vine Dexterity Cowboy Hat (+13 crit, +10 max). Blunt Dex would work for Helms.
Ancient Glass Fragment Flamerider (+4 crit, +16(17) max, +5% bal)
Fleet Viscount Val Boots (+2 crit, +17 max)
Expansive Peaceful Val Gloves (+5 crit, +16 max)
I have 2 EQ accs, but no Stouts yet. working on it. (+28 max)
If I were to change it, I'd be looking at something like this (theoretical max)
Vine Marauder Hat (+15 crit +10 max)
Relax White Horse clothes (+4 crit +17 max 5% stam reduce)
Restored White Horse clothes (+21 crit, +5 min, +12 max)
Steel Needle Peaceful gloves (+9 crit, +22 max)
Crit ES you can replace with max ES once you reach ~130% crit. Very few mobs have >50% protection, and the ones that do are so much over it's pointless to try to include them. So anything over 130% is pretty much overkill. But if you don't have that kind of crit, you're better off sacrificing a point or two of max here and there for a few points of crit.
I totally agree, but I don't think I can handle putting a whole new section that devotes contribution to both Max Damage and Critical.
EDIT:
Sorry, with all the negative criticism, I just wanted to say that even if it has its shortcomings (IMHO), it is still a very helpful set of information for a player looking to be one of the Awesome Race. :D
Responses in Bold! :scrub: