Tree of Savior Forum

Guide to Fencer / Doppel / Bullet Marker [PVE]

Class and Rank Swordsman
#1607

If you are a dex-heavy fencer using full leather gear, you’d hardly need pain barrier to begin with. The extra duration of pain barrier will mainly benefit high str Fencers. If you were really that concerned about knockdowns from weak monsters or whatever you want to call it, you would be going with a Dex Fencer to begin with, negating the need to spend 2 circles (sw3) to get 10 more seconds on Pain Barrier.

Yes, Concentrate with the str scaling will be fairly strong. We’re talking about 400~ total damage on Concentrate with 550+ str. But one major problem: Fencers are about having consistent dps by spamming Flanco/Composee. Unlike Doppels, Fencers lack multi-hit skills that takes advantage of Concentrate (8 hits from Sept, 4 from Lunge, 5 from Esquive). You are not going to benefit from Concentrate as much as you’d think.

So not only will you be less effective at the whole “not needing to manually dodge” thing because you are 100% reliant on pain barrier as a str heavy build, you are also not able to make effective use of the supposed benefit for going Sw3 (str scaling Concentrate). Would you not call this a subpar build in comparison to the Barb3 or HL3 variants?

#1608

Got Karacha Dagger recipe today from Dullahan. Nice. Looks easy to make. Just need to farm some money for mithril or farm some mirthril.

#1609

Spam flanconnade/composee > get 300± bonus damage x2 per hit, it’s a lot if you look at it.

The problem with knockdowns/pushes is that even if they miss they actually ruin you. this doesn’t apply to all, but it does apply. and eventually PB15 will help you further in bosses.

#1610

A Sw1 Dex Fencer will have a 150~ damage lvl 5 Concentrate, so you are paying 2 circles to get 150-250 more per hit, which is not that much. You are also not accounting for higher crit rate + Concentrate not scaling with crits or Attributes.

Sw1 still provides 19s of Pain Barrier. 19s PB + High Evasion >>>>>> 29s PB with no evasion.

#1611

You touched a subject hidden before: High STR.
In the STR vs DEX debate, I stand with High DEX, not even because of Crits, but because of Evasion alone.
I was considering that you were speaking about a High DEX Fencer build, which can dodge the knockdowns enough to have 50% uptime on Pain Barrier.

Now, if you’re talking about High STR builds, I’ll have to say to you that they’re just trash, period. How many times in Siauliai, with my Pelt1>Barb3, HighDEX 0-CON, I became the tank because the other Swordmen, usually all Catas, went STR+CON, and got knockedown/killed all the time.
Every single time was the same, some of then even have Swash Buckling from Pelt, and proceeded to use it, just to take the Aggro away from me and die. The situation was even worse, because with that, they picked up all of the Healer’s Tiles, leaving nothing for me, who had low HP and was face-tanking.

So, speaking of HighSTR, just don’t do it in the first place, that way you’ll not need more Pain Barrier.

Well, nothing to say here. BUT I prefer having a hard time upping a good character than an easy time upping a bad one.

#1612

Paying two circles to get more PB and concentrate.

Now what else can I get on rank 2/3?
Pelt - okay, can be taken later
Sword 2 - no
Barb 1 - Helm Chopper, cleave, okay, not very useful on bosses except for cleave if you need more slash damage

SW3>insert 2 fillers>fencer 2

You get consistent flat 200-300 damage with level 15 concentrate, 29S Pain barrier, high evasion. Compared to barb 3 where you need setup for your frenzy or monsters near your warcry, this adds to your PA which is nice, but remember, “setup”.

That’s why I said, Flag yellow miss from corsair+high evasion+level 15 PB.

#1613

You just forgot Highlander, which have the best set of skills of Swordman’s Lower Levels.

#1614

Yeah sorry, but I’ve already accepted the fact before that cartar stroke is definitely a beast.

Both Crown and Cross Guard however requires you to have a decent str, or even high str at that. which makes PB even more valuable for your 2 missing class fillers after SW3, if you decide to take HL after SW3 on a high str fencer.

#1615

I have not much experience with fencer, but I’ve noticed fencer is very independent, so a sw3 fits perfect for him.
For me I would go SW3>HL1>COR1>FEN2. To deal with cloth enemys you can use dust devil, flaconnade and cartar stroke.

#1616

Correct. Fencer 2 Alone does almost all the damage you need, people pick barb for AOE support and PA support. this is why even Pelt2>rodel2 does pretty nice damage, but now with the new stance people might be less interested in pel2>rod2

The only thing lacking in fencer’s skill set is a reliable strike source, which i brute force all the way with coquille>composee This makes HL a reasonable pick after SW3 if you don’t like pelt, cartar stroke.

#1617



They have 116, 144 and 185 INT, respectively.
Say, with 300 DEX, you can still have 100 STR - Enough to reduce their INT drastically.
Also, even at lv1, with 100 STR, Cross Guard gives you an absurd amount of Block (considering lv280): 985

So, Highlander doesn’t lock you with HighSTR either.

#1618

985 blocking isn’t high by the way, this is coming from me with 1200 block from cross guard…now with that 300 dex and 100 str, which is actually very similar to mine…

You still get physically hit quite often, I would say around 20-30% chance. see how PB remains relevant? Applies to me even more as I like to kill multiple monsters at once, speaking from experience.

#1619

My doppel has 147 str with lv 4 crown.
All I can say is not enough to deal with them. With that stats its only reduce half of damage.

#1620

Oh by the way I just tried C blocking with my fencer again after quite a while where I haven’t used my shield. it was a whooping 2.2k block and it’s still very normal for me to get hit from to time while blocking and having evasion, that’s on saalus by the way.

If you end up having <1.5k block at level 280 it’s very lacking with cross guard. Better put that at level 5 with some higher str.

#1621

@Lostac
Again, I prefer having a hard time upping a good character than an easy time upping a bad one.
And yes, because against Bosses, Highlander have Skull Swing, Crown, and in some cases Cross Cut.
Cross Guard would be good only to have that Pierce buff, as Evasion would be better to be relied on.
Edit: Investing in STR is not worthy for Cross Guard, it’s better to just get more skill lvs.

You see, there’s only Pain Barrier for Sword3, and it’s not even 100% uptime, it’s 74%, compared to 48% from lv5.

@Kascly
Of course, Skills have their own damage. Even if you reduce their INT to 0, their skill damage would also exist.
But are you sure saying that reducing 50% Magic Damage isn’t worth?

#1622

Apparently upping a sword3 is harder than upping a HL3.

By yourself you don’t need skull swing, it’s only there to boost other types of attacks which aren’t your core, it does help though.

Since you want a high evasion fencer, then your cross guard becomes less reliable. evasion comes first before blocking, better count that out probably.

Again, sword 3 for PB and concentrate, 300± flat damage added to your hit becomes significant compared to 111 of which we have now, spam that composee 10x as a filler while waiting for your other skills to cooldown and then you already get around 6k bonus damage. this isn’t bad where concentrate doesn’t have any real setup other than casting animation.

#1623

Surely no.
I don’t know if you tried to do solo cristal mine mission where shadowgaler is presented. You get hited almost every hit and crown effect will make it easy.

#1624

Skull Swings helps the whole party, works wonder with Crosscut+Skyliner if the boss can bleed, and ease your rotation with Coquille due to higher duration.
Cross Guard, again, would be for the buff, and this time, really, situational - like doing FullTank, “Hold C” style.
300 Flat damage is for HighSTR builds. On HighDEX you could get to the 200s only.

If you say that Sword3 is harder to up, even with lv15 Pain Barrier, then there’s no use for him indeed.

#1625

When you realize that majority of the party consist of mages now and only 1 archer, you’re probably only helping 1 other person other than yourself.

Assuming we still get the old concentrate attribute of +100, and my current stat ratio I would get somewhere around 270 bonus damage per hit.

I don’t even know what we’re arguing here, Kascly already pointed it out. fencer c2 is very strong independently and you choose your base classes as a support, to me, that’s 15PB, and lv 15 concentrate for future patches, while the two remain blank could be corsair and the other one is undecided.

#1626

Question in between to both @Lostac and @Palazzo or anyone who is reading here and have some late game time.

Concerning both present and future time, how will be your strategy concerning skill resource (aka SP)? Because either path, your SP charges will be heavy, ya know, the other Fencer issue.

I kinda know Lostac’s case, but not Palazzo, and I think HL based builds are more SP costly than barbs/sword3 which is very important for long play.

Even with pots not yet inflated, they still cost some.