I’ll be addressing IMC directly in this, but I’d like to discuss with the community for anyone who is interested.
Here is a fun question. When you join a party, what do you expect from your Swordsman? What is the number 1 thing do you hope he does? Most likely, your train of thought is, “I sure hope he put points into Swashbuckling.”
Many proposed changes can take weeks to months, especially when you have to make new art assets. This is about simple QoL changes that don’t require development of new content. I mentioned this in another post, but I’d like to discuss it here with the community.
Base classes core party abilities at a glance:
-Swordsman bring nothing to a party from their base skills.
-Clerics bring Heal.
-Archers bring Full Draw’s snare.
-Mages bring Sleep.
This is a bit of a scam (see what I did there). Those three skills from other classes are relevant to the party even late game. The solution you ask?
Move Swashbuckling to the base Swordsman class. This will make going c3 Swordsman worth more(another side problem fixed), and really the whole base class in general. This will also not force players to pick Peltasta, freeing up build diversity and player fantasy.
Currently, many players find you MUST go Peltasta just to feel good about partying. You can even have a DPS focused build and still feel like you must spec into Peltasta just for Swashbuckling. Other players are even advising newer players that they have to do this! If the goal is to not have every Swordsman have an AoE taunt, this is a fairly poor way to “balance” around that. Have you seen how many people post their builds on here and it includes Peltasta c1 and says, “Nothing else matters about this class. Get Guardian 1 for dodge buff if you want.”
It’s such a core part of the game, even how players see swordsman. This isn’t a “gain something, lose something” ideal or flavor that comes with picking a class. This is flat out what many players expect from their Swordsman party members. Can you imagine if Cleric didn’t have Heal? “Sorry guys, if you want to bring a heal to your party, you need to spec into Priest c1.”
While I’m here…
About High Guard:
To be direct: Make High Guard have a flat critical damage reduction instead of -50% of your entire base attack. You can build neither STR or DEX and feel good about using this skill. The measly amount of block cant even compare to the percentage block improvement (and critical chance) that Finestra gives. This skill is a trap for new players. The best thing to do here is either remove the crit reduction so its ok to build DEX, or change the -50% attack part of the skill so building STR is acceptable. This still actually gets progressively worse for your character the later in the game it gets.
I’m open to new view points from others, but no matter how I play it, look at it, review it, I can’t see how this would be a negative change to the game. (I’m sure there are some devil’s advocates out there though. )
Can anyone else think of other problems and targetted suggetions/solutions to build a better Swordsman?
Thanks for reading.