You gain a bonus shield recovery bonus in runes ontop of the various bonuses from defense. This is the ultimate shield using warrior. If you manage to find a +2 to all Skill item, you can have 3 Wolves.
2 Wolves, 1 Driad, 1 Lich-King, and seldom an Outsider. and the skill points are not so many anyway. Warfare Dual Wield may seems strange with Defense as you cannot use the shield, but there still plenty of useful skill: Battle Awareness, Armor Handling, Adrenaline, Rally, Colossus Form. and look for (epic) Stonebinder's CuffsĮtb: Honestly, it depends a lot on what you want to do. (*)ie, try to have Dex 300 and Str 120 by Gorgons Bosses in Epic. You will improve it even more with Mandrake and Blade Honing. Warfare focuses on one enemy, Dream focuses on groups. Nature + Dream has only one pet, but also works great among other reasons the Dream's skill Master Mind increase the effectiveness of all pets! If you manage to find a +2 to all Skill item(*), you can have 3 Wolves. 2 Wolves (push the Skill to 7 asap), 1 Driad, 1 Lich-King, and seldom an Outsider. On the other hand it is not very "versatile" you become a melee powerhouse, but that's about it. IMO it is less thematic, but similar argument can be done for a Earth based character. 16 points in the Mastery, max those two skills and for the rest just play as you would play a Storm-only character. Even if you dislike the undead feeling of Spirit, you can use Spirit only for its Ternion and Arcane Lore skills.
But here are some suggestions:Ī wizard-like character: Storm + Spirit. Honestly, it depends a lot on what you want to do.