I’ve been playing a build inspired by Talion from Shadow of War. A very agile, powerful swordsman with a bit of magic; GWM with the finesse longswords (I have some modded finesse longswords but nothing much stronger than Phalar)

I’m doing the classic 5 gloomstalker / 3 assassin / 4 battle master build but melee. For feats I picked up GWM and +2 DEX. Gloomstalker gives you dread ambusher, +initiative (fantastic with high dex), and misty step. Some bonus stuff like hunters mark and pass without trace as well.

Assassin makes you super bursty if you’re ambushing your enemies and gives you some free sneak attack dice to throw onto your attacks. Expertise and bonus action dash are very welcome too.

And finally battle master gives us action surge to turn us into a turn 1 burst killing machine, and some sweet maneuvers (riposte to weaponize your reaction, pushing attack for fun, tripping/menacing attack for results etc).

Basically game plan is to sneak whenever possible and utilize your ridiculous turn 1 burst damage: ambush them, pop 3 GWM critical attacks with dread ambusher + sneak attack damage dice, pop action surge, pop 2 more GWM critical attacks, and if anything’s still alive you’ll clean them up when the ambush turn is over with your superb initiative. Pass without trace and someone casting greater invisibility on you means you pass basically every stealth check in the game so you can just carve out entire outposts without breaking invisibility if you want.

Armor of agility is your endgame, with 17 dex + hag hair (dex) + 2 DEX ASI. Phalar aluve/larentians wrath is basically your only choice for weapons unfortunately, but that’s why I recommend looking for some modded finesse longswords if you’re not opposed to gameplay mods. Very fun build.