Many of these issues that you’re currently facing have been discussed to death on these forums. I believe that the main problem with Swordsmen gameplay mechanics pertaining to both PvE and PvP is that they clash horribly with how those modes of play are designed. I’ll cover the PvE aspects in this post, and hopefully someone else can chime in for PvP.
PvE
Monster AI - Monsters randomly run away at double movement speed when they are low on health, and sometimes far beyond their original leash limits. This “flee” response cancels all forms of “soft” CC (knockdowns and knockbacks), which are the only reliable forms of CC that most swordsman classes will have at their disposal.
Monster Pathing - Monster pathing in this game is horrible, since monsters have a minimum range from which they will attack, and will always move in such a way as to maintain that minimum range. This makes it extremely frustrating for us to group them up (even with swashbuckling) and AOE them down, since most of our abilities do not extend past melee range (and some do not even extend to melee range).
Monster Hitboxes - Monster hitboxes do not sync correctly with their game sprites. This results in monster sprites rubberbanding (like the Dullahan after a charge), or simply teleporting away after being visibly knocked down or knocked back, making it extremely frustrating for us to connect with our offensive skills.
Monster Skill Design - Many melee-type monsters (especially at higher levels) have some form of devastating melee-range attack (cyclone/whirl), a knockdown/back effect (almost every boss ability), a stacking armor reduction/damage taken debuff, or a melee-range CC (freeze, sleep, stun). This means that melee classes (swordsmen in this particular case) are heavily penalized for engaging in melee combat. Unfortunately for us, we often have no choice in the matter due to the following issues:
Skill Hitboxes - Many of our skills have pointlessly narrow hitboxes, which make them very difficult to aim properly, especially in AOE situations. This, combined with poor monster pathing/hitbox coding, and monster design that discourages melee combat, forces us to pay extra attention to positioning (our own and our target’s) in order to both deal damage and avoid it. This makes for very inefficient gameplay, since a not-insignificant portion of our time in a PvE encounter is spent repositioning and not doing damage.
Skill Animations - Swordsmen classes have a few relatively powerful offensive skills (in comparison to those of other class trees). Unfortunately, many of these powerful skills are hamstrung by long channeling animations that root us in range of the many interrupts, knockdowns, knockbacks, and special abilities of monsters in melee. This ensures that we cannot make full use of these skills without using Pain Barrier, which only prevents knockdown/back and stagger but does nothing for freeze, sleep, stun, or the extra damage that we take by being in melee to begin with.
I may have missed a few more glaring issues, but I’ll have to edit them in later. However, the TLDR for this wall of text is:
- Monsters run away, we can’t catch them or stop them.
- Monsters are pansies and prefer to attack from minimum range.
- Monsters can dodge our attacks through shoddy hitbox coding.
- Monsters have 10192841821 ways to punish us for being melee.
- Skill animations force us to take all 10192841821 to the face.
- Skill hitboxes are the size of a fly.
