I know that stabbing is really strong especially with Prep, but you literally go 3 circles for 1 skill since pierce doesn’t really do much without shock and everything else is basically unusable.
Is stabbing really that great to outweigh the benefits of PB/Guardian?
I’m trying to fit in Pelta 2 in any swordman build I make. Guardian from Pelta 2 is way too good now, doubling your defenses and giving you 20% damage resistance is a huge difference in survivability compared to any other class. I even added Pelta 2 to my Doppel 3 two hand sword build.
I think Stabbing alone isn’t enough to justify Hop 3. I’d much rather get Barbarian, for frenzy (which increases your phys atk by a % value and +atk speed), Warcry (decrease enemies phys defense by 10%), Seism (which isn’t all that weak), and Cleave (which gives the really sweet slash dmg debuff).
Even if Stabbing gets 9000%+ skill factor (doubled with Prep), it’s still one skill, prone to interrupts, prone to misses due to mobs/boss moving around, without overheats, without a good enough AoE.
Comparing Barbarian 3 vs Pelta 2 is a much tougher call, I suppose to answer that you’d have to check if you have enough skills to fit in a steady rotation (without waiting for cooldowns) to be able to sacrifice those barbarian circles. Depends if you’re getting shinobi at higher ranks (which would increase your copy-able skills cooldowns) and how many filler fencer skills you get.