To find the right equipment for current level can be valuable. If you gain 500xp for killing a monster in 1 hit its a xp/stam ration off 500 to 1, but if you use 4 hits killing the sam monster your xp/stam ration is down to 125 to 1. These calculators should help finding out how much attack an damage you need for this.
Disclaimer: Formulas is not officially approved by the Fallensword team. But own calculations using a spreadsheet and loads of data, shows that they are close. The Fallensword forum also has some formulas for calculation attack and damage, they are very close to these.