High DPS = Bad leveling
 

I noticed that I was getting more rep for killing mobs with less DPS. This was across the board smoke gernade was getting me more than the others. Cutless and daggers not doing combos, clicking my staff instead of build a charge. So i decided today I would try a new approach and made a new toon.

My goal was to do no quests except weapons and ports and only put 1 point into damage types cannon balls etc.

All skills are going up faster.

At lvl 8 with 5 points in attune on the doll and only one in poke using only poke on 5 lvl 8-12 wasps i was getting 100 rep for each kill = 500 rep a kite.

You are correct. But you have to balance that out with how long it took you to get that 500 rep.

If you can use higher DPS to get 300 rep in half the time, then the higher DPS is the way to go.

Personally, I'm sticking to the middle ground.

It's pretty simple to understand, really. More attacks = more rep. With more damage, the enemy dies faster. You would get less combos, less attacks, and therefore less rep. With less damage, you can hit the enemy more. You would get more combos, more attacks, and therefore more rep.

Then there are the other variables like the level of the enemy, your own level, etc.

Brilliant Plan.... I have to try this myself with a new toon... And pass the info along to my G/F she is only now hitting 18 after a week & half of playing

It is the way the game is.....you get rewarded with skill points but penalized if you actually use them the strengthen your weaponry. Shiver, you would actually get better reps using the #2 skill on staff than just the spurt. Also the throws on dagger (#1-4) net the max reps on a red enemy. Yesterday on my lvl 35 pirate, I was able to get almost 400 reps on one single stump. Here's the way I did it:

Pull sword and use #2 & 3, pull doll use chain and curse, pull gun shoot him 25 times with the Silver shot, repeat sword and doll again, 25 smoke bombs, repeat sword and doll again, dagger throws 1-3 for 20 throws and repeat sword and doll, finish off on dagger. Try it, it works, takes forever though lol.

LOL angel that sounds like me and molusks/brines

i had it down to about

dagger asp dirt
10 barely charged take aim
2 banish
1st 2 cutlass skills
voodoo curse, shackles
back to dagger cuz its ready
more barely charged lead take aim

etc etc etc would get me around 500

i had a pretty good system where i would time it pretty good :) but i never tried on stumps cause they move...and hit. so i mainly just pure trained on them (dagger/pistol) and couldnt hit em with a grenade even if i try...sure hit myself alot though..pretty cool you could squeeze those points out of them!

Well Angel, it's like how was mentioned before: you might kill an enemy fast, but over like 5 mins. you could have gained more rep. than just slowly killing an enemy with weak attacks to get full rep. It all depends on the quantity of the same creatures around so that you can kill various of them fast, the amount of these creatures you actually kill, what you waste, the rep. you gain from killing each of them fast versus killing a creature slowly, how much ammo or how many daggers you use up, how long it takes to kill an enemy slowly, and how many you kill in a set time period.

It all depends on the numbers. :D

I prefer to skill up my combo skills - when I need to kill an enemy, it's done.
With my regular attack skills, I usually keep one dot on them - less damage, more rep.

The way reputation works is: the amount of damage combined with the level required to use that skill. For instance, if you killed a Cadet with Bladestorm, you will get 3 rep. If you kill at cadet with Sweep, you will get 0.

thats true, but who says u cant do both?

for instance i use banish when training my grenades, on the voodoo users, i get about the same rep for using it a few times as id get from "pure" leveling an enemy with flame skull, but the added bonus of training multiple weapons ( my max grenade rep as well) so i believe both are viable techniques, what she is doing is training MULTIPLE weapons, so her time isnt wasted imo, as itd take just as long as grinding out each individually for lower reps.