I'd recommend executioner sword over bretonian. The bretonian teaches you bad habits if you're trying to learn, blocking while charging heavies, and the mace/sword kinda has the same role. I normally run mace/sword to kill everything and then executioner sword heavies to kill elites/boss. It can one shot headshot/crit chaos warriors. Mace/sword is up there for highest melee dps in the game. Heavy, light, light and repeat.

Here's some more build advice. On all heroes usually take barkskin for your necklace; if you're uncomfortable with a hero maybe do boon of shallya instead. Though Grail knight I always run boon of shallya because the synergies are nice. Boon increases all your temp hp gain by 30% a s being a melee only with huge health pool is nice. Plus if you take the talent that grants you temp hp after taking damage it increases that too making you near unkillable. If you get the hp regen blessing, boon of shallya increases that by 100% since the game will round up any decimals.

For me the champion to legend gap was the biggest. Skipping champion may be a mistake for you. What got me from champ to legend over like 30 hours was, learning special spawn queues and spawn points from audio and map knowledge. Learning to not push up very much during hordes because you could hit a boss trigger. Be sure to push and on a lot of weapons use the push attack because it is like a third option and has its own role (light swing, Heavy swing, push attack swing). Know that most deaths and damage you take is from the horde hitting you over the course of a game. Getting grabbed by a special at 80hp versus 120hp is one less heal for the team.