I have been trying somehow to reimagine my Smiter build (back when I was on my first account) and this may help a lot!

with alteration and a shield a Breton can get 90% physical damage reduction and 90% magic reduction, just using ebony flesh and a shield (plus perks).

You can be the Juggernaught without even needing armour lol

I actually got interested in bashing from playing with something very similar to your Arbalist

I've definitely got it figured out. My next build will keep me tied up for at least another week yet, but when that's done I'm already chomping at the bit to put your findings to use. Any chance you might put together a build of your own using some of this stuff? You deserve to be the one who first brings it to the CB group. 

James, do you know whether bashing with a bow can trigger Quick Reflexes?

Incredible post James! I've always wanted to make a pure basher build just for fun. Keep up the great work man, I've learned so much from you already! :)

You can block with a bow, which triggers Quick Reflexes. I doubt a bash could though. Check out my build.

I've been strongly considering it but I always worry I'm not artistic enough to do the build section justice. Good ideas are fine but to me the character building group is about more than stats and figures, if you don't have an engaging character to go along with it then it falls apart. I'm absolutely in love with my Monk character and I think it would make a good first build. He specializes in hand-to-hand and uses curses (MFD and Drain Vitality) to afflict status damage and has been a total blast. A few people have asked me to post it so I might sometime this week.

You can bash with a staff? I actually didn't know that, probably because I never use them. That's something I'd have to look into.

I never knew that!

Just looking at the wiki it says they have a base damage rating of zero. If that is true then I don't think we can ever change that, all of these things I mention are modifiers to base damage so if it's zero then it's probably a no go.

You could use it to stagger-lock enemies probably, would still be quite handy. I do wonder how well it blocks damage though. Torches can be used to block but they actually have a hidden armour rating of 3 which is why they also do minute bash damage, staves might not have this so I'm not sure about their damage mitigation.

Definetly something I'm going to play around with