Hello there!
Well, I wanted to ask you how was that experience like?
I participated for the last icbt a bit, and afterwards I couldn’t because I had to study, but playing with some friends they began complaining about how the swordman was so “broken” in comparison to their classes. I myself had a bunch of builds from other classes that I wanted to try, so I was a bit concerned when I heard that. And it is true that a lot of times “swordman” classes always get all of the spotlight. (they are sort of like the Gryffindor of MMO classes)
So, well, with this post I would like to ask you all if you think that’s true, or if it was true and they balanced things out, and what your general experience was as a Wizard/Cleric/Archer and if you enjoyed it.
Feel free to dump any thought or analysis here! I’m eager to know what you guys felt like.
Swordsman classes are really good, yes. However, I don’t think they’re necessarily broken. For example, when I played my C3 Highlander/C2 Squire, I felt like he was at his best when killing normal monsters, but when I started to play a C2 Cleric/C2 Krivis, I felt like he was best against bosses.
Swordies are hella good for pve(ezpz grinding and boss fights), but they are easy prey in pvp.
I don’t think that’s true at all.If anything,this game caters to swordsmen more than any other branch.
I went wizard,which I think is actually broken compared to the other class branches of the game.Went Wiz > Pyro > Cyro > Ele C2 > Alchemist.INT still needs work to be comparable as a stat to other ones,Mage Tower was a nightmare,level 140+ wasn’t solo friendly anymore [even pumping CON didn’t help as much as it should have],Alchemist needed some work;and I think it’s an issue when the best thing for all Wizards to do is to equip a dagger and weaker one handed rod instead of a staff.I could go on,but I think you get it.
I still had a fun time,please don’t get me wrong.It’s just that my experience was anything that wasn’t a swordsmen or cleric [past a certain point] struggled hardcore.Kill stealing was also common by swordsmen and archers.
Swordsman are indeed super strong from early game. However, they fall off quite easily in higher level as other classes have skills that scales better or have better utilities. While they have dash which are exclusive to their class, the lack of ranged attacks are also exclusive to their class 
. Swordsman is also not a PvP character. They get rekt easily 
I’ve played a Wizard in iCBT1 and iCBT2 and what I can say is that they are weak as hell in early level with their single-hit auto attack that sucks in lag and your skills sucking up all your SP pool quickly. They become stronger at rank 3 onwards as most of their skills synergise well with other class’s skills (Ice Wall + Psychic Pressure) or their support skills are powerful and loved by others (Linker & Chrono Buffs). Plus, with Chrono’s Haste boosts your movement speed to match Swordie’s Dash. They are also extremely powerful in PvP due to their CCs.
Archers have a similar case as Wizards being super sucky early on but it remains quite sucky later on 
. They do get IMC-senpai’s notice and they are getting buffed patch by patch.
Never played a Cleric class but they’re great support(as what they should be of course) and with a decent build, they can dominate in pvp.
No surprise…Your build doesn’t have any synergies at all…Pyro 1 - cyro 1 and ele 2…srsly ?
To OP: yes, swordies are op at early game but fall off later and eventually catched up by other classes, also they suck in pvp.
@Melon, by “broken” I mean not-balanced, Over-Powered, that kind of stuff. Sorry if I didn’t explain myself well ><
@rudeus123 that makes a lot of sense, actually.
@mikai and @Kiyoshiro, well, my friends actually complained that they couldn’t grind anything if there were swordies around…Grinding in this game seems like a very key aspect 
I’m not sure what mean by ‘broken’, if you mean that they are merely DPS and nothing else than I guess yes. In my opinion:
Swordsman is all about DPS, it mainly depend what weapon/strategy you like to use.
Archer is basically same with Swordsman.
Wizard is most versatile, it mainly depend what role you want to play, be a DPS, Support, Crowd Control, even a Tank, or you can hybrid any of them, of course the more non-DPS you choose the more difficult to level up.
Cleric is mainly as a support of survivability, but they can become DPS in quite limited way, especially feel it at rank5 onwards.
The main problem is, this game currently not emphasise on unavoidable damage / dead have less penalty and survivable with TP revive scroll, so Swordsman no point to play as tanker and Cleric also no point to get so many defensive buffs.
If you mean PvP, I think only Rodelero is good, but until we got mechanism to anti crowd-control (eg: Int can reduce frozen chance & duration), then yes swordsman is bad in PvP.
Yes, that is true! Specially if there’s a pelt-barb 
If you grind alone as a cleric… 
you’ll take forever(so grinding w/ a party is highly recommended 
)
Don’t worry about KS, at higher levels the multihits aoe magic dps like elementalist and druid are the ones you should be careful most when they are around.
1 cast Frost Cloud/Carnivory > all of your lured mobs gone…
Swordsman isn’t overpowered, but it’s overrated because they often get the highlights considering how they are able to easily KS other people’s mobs in just 1-2 hits. And as the others have said, PvP Swordsman builds will be underwhelming compared to the other PvP classes.
they are overpowered in low levels early game, mores so once they get their 2H swords as the swing them like maniacs and kill steal every single creature in sight. their advantage soon falls out at higher levels as other classes catch up in damage output.
Swordsmen are easy to play and easy to do DPS on under 100. Archers/Wizards easily out-DPS swordsmen later though. Archers are more build-dependent though, yet a wizard could take 1 of every class and still do good DPS.
I’ve played several swordsman/archer/wizard/cleric builds. For cleric, I like to either play full support or support melee. My role in parties is clear, and I don’t know if that relates to this post at all so I’ll leave it at that.
For archer, I’ve learned to build around AoE ( not taking ranger c1 at least is a serious mistake unless your build can’t take it for some reason ). My first archer was a archer c2 / sapper c2 / fletcher, and it was pretty awesome. The traps do a ton of damage, and let you have fun AoEing mobs. Then I made an archer c3 / wugushi, and it was fun for a while, until I realized my only consistent AoE was Gu Pot on a long cooldown. 1 rank in ranger would’ve saved me there. I then tested out ranger c3 / rogue vs ranger c1 sapper c2 rogue, and found them to be pretty similar to each other in DPS, but different in playstyle. Both do a lot of damage, and I haven’t yet been able to out DPS them on any swordie build I’ve played.
For wizard, it’s pretty easy to have fun with. You could go cryomancer psychokino pyromancer linker etc and still do good damage. Playing a cryomancer c3 was a ton of fun, and I will probably revisit that now that they’ve given cryo some significant buffs. I made a pryo linker as well, and it was pretty fun, easy mode DPS while being highly desired in parties. Also a cryo psychokino, which was a great boss-killing machine, and generally quite fun to level.
I dunno what else to say, unless you’d want a bunch of specifics about different builds. Swordies aren’t overpowered at all, and it’s hard to out DPS well built archers/wizards as a swordie late game.
I feel cleric was by far the strongest branch, i dunno why everyone is so focused on swordies.
Swordies only brings damage and taunt, that’s it. I only want one in my party really.
Clerics? I’d gladly have them fill the other 4 slots, one can be swapped for a wizard with linker but nothing else. Their damage paths are arguably better than wizard (because fireball can’t deal their dps unless some classes do nothing whatsoever), higher than swordies or archer later on, and bring decent utility simply because of R1 (seriously safety wall in it’s current state shouldn’t be a R1 skill). All that is a result of IMC granting like half of their support classes with a good multi hit skill that keeps piling up and end up granting them godly damage on top of good damage oriented class that will do the same (minus utility). Meanwhile in the wizard branch, you pay the price massively for taking a support class, no damage skill whatsoever.
As a result clerics end up being good, if not the best, at everything.
Swordman is not broken. It is good, but it just that other class need some buff up.
All we keep getting is unlimited nerfed instead.
i played all of the main class trees to 150-200 heres my short summaries for them
swordies are the best bang for your buck imo, they are strong early and dont need that much, but in the later levels you go the more youll have to spend on them, they keep their good damage if you keep your gear good.
clerics are the best econ class, they cost little through out the whole game, some branches of cleric are god tier farmers like wiz classes or strong melee dps like swordie classes, all while being able to support, which makes them versatile
wiz have some of the most satisfying play patterns, namely in nuking stuff with massive aoes, they also have some of the best offensive support skills in the game, and really good CC
archers are like little babies you feed and take care of at the beginning, but as they grow they get more and more independent and start destroying, they have really good steady dps, and are beast against single targets
Its easy to understand why one would say swordsmen are easy and strong at early levels.
Early levels are basically Z attack of savior.
Swordsmen have the highest hp pool
Swordsmen have the highest Z attack ratio
Swordsmen have the highest damage on Z
Mobs start really weak and you dont have to worry to being damage at all.
All those things combined would make them really good at early stages where people are still learning the game. So the easier classes could appear broken.
As you advance into the higher levels of dificulty you notice you can’t stand still pressing Z as you used to, here high skill damage becomes more imperative, so you will often wait for cooldowns while dodging things around. So classes at higher skill damage with lower cooldowns become favorable.
Swordsman = Gryffindor || bravery, chivalry
Wizard = Ravenclaw || knowledge, intelligence
Cleric = Hufflepuff || patience, dedication
Archer = Slytherin || resourcefulness, deception
*flies away
Never said it did.I’ve said in older topics that I strayed from my planned build,which was Pyro > Cyro C3.After actually playing,I realized I would have had a hard time no matter what I went on Wiz branch;because it needs more work.It worked better than most probably think,but ultimately I agree with you.
As an archer c3 scout c3 i had easy times soloing bosses but had hard times when it came to fit in the group to grind in demon prison’s maps due to lack of aoe’s (until c3 scout). I felt like without linker in team i was not providing much to killing enemies, sadly. I also had difficulties fighting vs magic type enemies. Archer with dex build sure is either fragile vs magic or lack of dmg to kill fast enough. I had serious problems in one of the later missions in temple with flying pumpkin monsters - they were very bulky and very fast and i couldn’t gain distance from them and i couldnt cast multi shot not actually any other instant cast skill in fact without being hit in return due to delay we have when we stop to cast the spell. It was serious pain and i failed there. I then tried again after rank up to c3 scout - then it became possible but still hard and time consuming.
I also didn’t realized early that archers will have to change weapon from bow to something else if they want to remain strong (rogue = dagger+crossbow, swartzeraiter need gun, cannoneer will require to upgrade cannon as separate weapon or you have to change both hands into musket…). This really made me loose the will to continue playing as archer. I changed to wiz/cryomancer and i liked it, though cooldowns were too long, but jumping while charging skill was SO convenient. Archers didn’t had this luxury… Not to mention Wizards can go full INT and be awsome. Archer cant go full STR not full DEX, wich means it will eiher lack of dmg or lack of accuracy or lack of dodge to fight vs swordies full dex builds who will have enough accuracy to hit hard and kill archer fast. I got seriously disapointed about what imc did to archers in their game. I couldn’t even push swordies in pvp so i couldn’t gain distance. Whats the point to be ranged if you are ending up to fight in melee anyway… Then there was gringing in group - with huge hp and easy aoes from basic hits swordies had no problems to survive there. As archer with dex in build i had to hope for dodge to trigger to not die… Many times my casting was interupted or i couldnt aim due to lag. This was very unpleasant experience alltogather.
Yet i enjoyed putting more effort into this game then others. Many players were approving my build choice and were saying nice things to me such as that i am hard worker, great job, wow you picked hard route - nice! So those were good moments. The Split Shot felt rewarding in terms of aoe, but stats were still the issue. I had wish that DEX would boost ranger attack, like in other cool mmo’s i played. And most of scout spells were not worth using or even pointless, so i had small hope imc would revamp this class somehow.
In the end i dont think i will make an archer again unless they improve it somehow. There’s too much struggling in this class and many people even say that archer is not meant to be your first class - wtf?