As a trident main since I started in 0.14, I’m really excited to see polearms get some love. They’re already an incredibly strong base for melee and hybrid summoners. I pulled out my regular TriMiFi^Oka to see if it was going to be better than a trident, this is the mindless tabber I spam out in my spare time so I have a really good feel for how changes impact the build. My feedback is all anecdotal based on two runs on the same seed (10471022400646612837).
I landed a pretty solid seed and was quickly gifted a partisan which felt strong initially, but it seems to take a lot of damage compared to a trident. I had an electric brand which isn’t the best brand for a low speed (0.7) weapon, but is generally decent against the things I was encountering in Lair, Orc, and Late D. I could tell that it was weaker than a demon trident which is to be expected, but in order to gauge relative strength to the base trident I reran the seed when I wiped shortly after entering S-branches.
I didn’t exactly match the kit between runs due to gifting, but the differences aren’t meaningfully different outside of a slightly less strongly enchanted trident of draining. The main 3 fights I distinctly recall are melded blobs, obsidian statue, and Nessos which the were easier with the partisan, about the same, and easier with the trident respectively. The overall feel though is that the trident has a much smoother mindless play style at least through S-branches which is probably due to the steep skill cost of going from 14-20 polearms, even with Mino’s superb +2 aptitude. The extra skill investment was probably more worth it for the extra axe cross training to supercharge the broad axe I had as a swapper for when I inevitably get surrounded.
Overall, for a pole arm melee the partisan is not worth sacrificing skill points before s-branch at least. Considering a +9 Trident of freeze/drain/protection/vamp are all viable for 4 rune, partisan could help against crystal golem/OOF/big skull/toe as an option but skill investment doesn’t feel worth it in the long run. I can see where they might become worthwhile to invest in around the time you’re prepping for a 3rd rune, but by then broad axes aren’t much more costly and already pretty likely to drop. From my experience with MiFi, that would be about the time I’m going from 20-22 in defensive stats so the defense lag wouldn’t be as noticeable as it was earlier when I was skilling up from 9ish fight/armour/dodge/shield.
On a summoner, I doubt I’d consider anything but a unique partisan due the steep skill investment. Especially with the new forgecraft school, those skill points are better invested elsewhere and a trident is more than sufficient for a summoner hybrid.