I have 50 skill on the jewels, 20 using mark of travesty in the head slot and 10 tactics on the talisman(soldier's medal) for a total of 800. The hardest part was the jewels and making sure I hit at least 100 real skill for each skill slot due to how the "extra" bonus is applied at 100 skill or above. example: Tactics at 80 real + 40 from items = 120 but the damage bonus for being at 100 skill or above does NOT get added so 100 real + 20 from items does more damage. It might take a while to find the perfect jewels, expect to pay a fortune on them. You also need to have 260 max stats to hit 150 str and cap speed @ only 15% SSI(zero on wep) with a double axe, 230 won't cut it. Naked 125 Str, 123 Dex, 12 int works. With suit aim for 150 str, 180 stam, 60-70 mana and 15% SSI on armor/jewels. If you can't hit that drop stam to 150 and go for 35% SSI or just accept a 1.5 swing speed and dump the extra stam into mana for a bigger pool.
DAMAGE: There are two things to remember, all damage is based on these two factors. Fall short in either and you will not do max damage.
#1 - Base weapon damage + skill modifiers + DI on items all raise the damage total you see in your status bar, the cap is 4x base damage. ie: a double axe with a minimum base damage of 15 can only be made to hit for 60 min damage with modifiers, skills and item DI.
#2 - Multipliers: Abilities like enemy of one and slayer mods etc can combine for a 300% (3x) damage boost. That damage boost is applied to the BASE weapon damage. example: my double axe with skill modifiers and DI on items is at 60 min damage so when 300% multiplier is applied that becomes 180 min damage. You never see hits that big because all creatures resist some of the damage but you can come close on some monsters if you reduce their defense, target their weakness etc.
If you do not hit the 4x base damage via skill modifiers and DI on items then the 300% multiplier will not allow you to reach max damage no matter what skills you choose! Look at your weapon's BASE damage and make sure your damage is 4x that when you equip it BEFORE casting any spells or abilities that would boost it(CW, EoO etc). Simple enough? 4x base damage + 300% damage bonus = two separate things you need to cap.
EXTRA damage: Assuming you hit the 4x base damage from skill modifiers and DI on items AND you hit the 300% damage multiplier via slayers or abilities then there is still a way to increase total damage output further. Poisoning for example, poison ticks are extra damage and increase your total output a bit. Provoke skill is another example, you do your damage and the damage done by other creatures is extra. Poison would be better on single targets and provoke requires multiple targets so you need to consider playstyle too.
Hidden damage: If you get all of the above worked out, which is no small task since it all decides what you put on your weapons, you can increase the damage more by reducing resistance to your output. If you don't have SSI on the weapon you can have HLD, for example. All of the damage output in the world doesn't matter if you can't hit or if it's resisted at a high rate. If you can work it out so that you hit caps without a slayer or SSI(or even DI) then you can add more hit properties for greater effect. HLD is one such property that is nice to have. Focus attack makes it better.
Skill modifiers: Anatomy, Lumberjack, tactics and base strength all boost damage, you need enough of these combined with your suit's total DI(100% max) to hit 4x base weapon damage. To test if you've got enough look at your weapon's base damage, equip it and see if you have 4x that in the damage box of your status bar without anything else being cast or used.
edit: my HCI is 45% and my DCI is currently 40%(I have 75% phys resist due to enhancements which lowers DCI). I'm aware of the bushido parry dynamics and the argument that you need to DCI, or very little to combat Chiv effects, but without Parry you need more.
It's all actually really fun, if not extremely expensive, to test. I'm finding that it's actually best to work on your suit to hit the 4x base damage before figuring out how you want to hit the 300% bonus cap from your abilities, slayer etc. There are a LOT of skill combo's and slayer type effects that allow you to hit the 300% cap so you might do well to focus on which combo gives you the most hidden damage for your playstyle. If you didn't hit the 4x base damage from suit DI + skill modifiers then you can't hit max damage, even with the 300% bonus. Considering ALL of the above it seems to come back to tamers being top of the food chain since they don't need much defense on their suits and so can focus on getting the most from everything else.
Tamer/bard should, theoretically, be capable of causing the most damage to a single enemy if other creatures are nearby. Tamer with range attack and bushido or chiv should top charts on single target fights and anything with whirlwind should top charts where there are multiple enemies. That's for PvM, PvP is an entirely different beast.
I'd love to hear opinions on how I could improve champ spawn results further. Right now I'm trying to see if I can switch to Halberd for my whirlwind and use focus attack as single target, the SS of 4.0 is a challenge but the base damage output is interesting, 18-19 vs 15-17 on the double axe. That converts into 72-76 base damage vs 60-68 on the double axe. Factor in the 300% bonus and you're looking at 216-228 damage per swing vs 180-204 on the double axe, a 20% increased min damage per swing. I'm not sure I can shoehorn enough SS on there via suit stam and would have to add SSI to the weapon to hit 1.5 SS. Is that worth losing a hit effect? Not sure yet.
If it can be pulled off it would be badass(and look badass). With the right mods vs boss you'd be doing double strike damage each hit, and getting double strike leech, without using double strike.
I'm starting to think that a "sampy" build was simply easier to reach max damage with by people who didn't understand all the intricacies but there are many possible ways to do the same damage without a sampy build, and those are much less expensive.