I was planning the point distributtion for my Sw3-Hop3-Drag1-Drag2/Lancer and i have 15 points left for Hoplite skills. I Didn’t find much discussion on this matter after the combat patch… Which skill is better/more usefull in general?
Pierce atm is very very bad but if I understood it right it will be getting a synergy with Dragoon’s Serpentine (as described in dev blog).
Pierce bleed attribute can be useful for mounted Highlander 2 builds so at most I recommend 1 point spent into it for bleed utility to boost Skyliner dmg. You don’t have Highlander 2 so you shouldn’t worry about that tho.
I don’t know if they’ll be providing skill resets before this mentioned patch, so it’s up to you if you want to save up the points and check if Pierce will be better in future or not. If you don’t care about the patch, skip Pierce.
Good to know about the highlander synergy, will keep it in mind for future!
I saw the new synergy between pierce and serpentine, but i’m a little confused about it. In the translated patch notes it seemed that using pierce after serpentine would make the bonus damage go from 50% to 70%. In the dev blog it seemed that only pierce will get a extra 20% damage… Maybe i should put at least 1 point on it in case the translated info is the correct one. In any case, do you think the 20% increase ould be enought to make pierce worthly over stabbing?
Sorry, the way I described it is a bit misleading. Pick Pierce for bleeding attribute lv 1 only if you are a mounted class that can’t use Cross Cut. Otherwise Cross Cut is much better.
I think everyone is confused about this. Let’s just wait and see.
Not really. Pierce is much weaker than Stabbing even if it had +20% damage boost.
EDIT:
Stabbing may not get all the bonus from Serpentine (because it takes a while to deal all hits) but it still deals +blessing/elemental damage per hit and has overall more skill % factor than Pierce.
Ohh i see, thanks for the clarification!
Well, i gonna keep 1 unexpended point, just in case. I still need to choose if i gonna go Dragon 2 or Lancer, only Dragon 2 would have to worry about this new synergy… Thanks for the help!
Either way, Pierce shouldn’t matter for your build seeing you don’t have Highlander 2 in it. 1 point in Pierce would only be useful if you went Lancer and had Highlander 2.
Devs seem to be wanting to make Hoplites synergize better with Dragoon 2 while Catas synergize with Lancers. I have a Cata 3 -> Goon2 and a Hoplite 3 -> Lancer and I really wish I could switch their builds now.
Lancers are dealing more damage than Goon2 atm, but goon2 is still a decent class by itself. I would go Goon2 in your build just in case devs decide to make more synergies later
I rarely use stabbing because you are exposed while using it. The damage is lower than autoattacking especially when you have cafri/bless
Well he has access to lv 15 Pain Barrier, it shouldn’t be a problem standing still to use stabbing.
That’s only true if your weapon is very weak or you have barely no STR in your build. At endgame nobody is going to use Cafrisun and blessing damage is just a bonus but nothing to gaze at because of no scaling.
To be honest i wans’t expecting to use it to much, more as a filler skill anyway.
Honestly I was tempted to go Dragoon 2 rather than Lancer1, but as everybody keep saying Goon2 is bad I put the 2 on the first post. It is good to hear it is not so bad as everyone make it looks!
Goon2 class alone is weaker than Lancer, but the thing is that Serpentine works for buffing previous ranks skills too (while Lancer has barely any synergy with previous classes). You can make a Goon2 as strong as Lancer if you pick Highlander 3 and buff Vertical Slash / Skyliner with Serpentine’s debuff. Lancer, however, is a stand-alone class that does pretty well by itself regardless of what you pick before (Crush + Quintain combo is pretty strong).
Lancer being a 2h-spear only mounted class (skills can only be used mounted) makes it very hard to synergize with previous classes and limits builds a lot. Highlanders for example get very limited because you can’t use Cross Cut or Vertical Slash while mounted.
The annoying thing about Goon2 is the knockback from Dethrone which causes mobs client positioning to desync with server and the somewhat narrow AoE of Dethrone (it’s getting a 40% wideness AoE increase in future kToS patch tho, which might be very helpful). Gae Bulg mechanic of throwing the spear without aiming exactly where you throw and relatively short debuff time (you lose some seconds since you need to fetch your spear) makes the skill quite lackluster. But the rest of the skills are fine.
pierce imo is a much better skill, cause it doesn’t stuck you on the ground, but it’s only useful against bosses, but the plus is that it can fill in your rotation as a goon2 where’s stabbing cannot (is a 3,5 secs skill) despite being a 1500% (or 15 hits) is not worth it for the time alone required it, pierce is fast, yet annoying to land, honestly hoplita skill are almost all bad except for spear lunge and finestra, most of your time you will be using dragoon skills or swordsman rather than hoplita (aka stabbing or pierce) but against bosses or large enemies pierce is a better skill.
If u plan to go 1h spear + shield (which works great for full Finestra users) u should go also Dragoon 2 and these skills
Max (or die): Finestra and Spear Throw (getting a dmg buff on JP for long distance throws and here we got confirmed that long distance throwing wont force u to pick up the spear to attack again)
Max (depending on ur playstyle): Synchro Thrust (it does nice dmg for a short 15sec cd) or Stabbing (for bossing). In my case i have both equilibrated, yeah weird but works for me
Lv1 for utility: Spear Lunge (some ppl max it for the 700% dmg but i preffer synchro due to shorter cd and attribute helps u out a lot on dmg), Long Stride (its getting a damage buff too, at least in JP, but the cd is still super high but a dragoon without high jump is not a dragoon), Pierce for the bleeding DoT 10% chance and does x4 hits on bosses
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So it would be better if the char was a HL3 rather than a Hoplite3? Sadly mine is alredy a Hoplite1…
Well the giff on dev blog shows this skill and spear throw will give your spear back automatically back after the update don’t? Maybe it will make the skill less bad, it looks really cool xD
How annoying is it to use? When I created the topic my main concerne about stabbing was if the time need to perfome the skill would not be a drawback…
Honestly i didn’t thought about it before xD
If i go Dragon2 wouldn’t a two-handed spear be better than a one handed + shield? Shield with finestra looks tempeting for the block rate.
Exactly!!! I may put a point on it just to have a jump on the dragon!
Oh yeah, if you decide to go 1h spear and shield Synchro Thrust max is a must. That skill is pretty damn powerful. +50% damage from attribute and +100% damage from Counter (in case monster is attacking when you use it).
You also get +20% damage on medium size mobs for using 1h spear with Hoplite3. I consider that more useful than +10% damage on bosses with 2h from dragoon.
Not sure how Long Stride would be after patch, might be interesting (3 overheats and somewhat AoE). Not puting much hope tho cause animation and cooldown are still long.
I usually prefer HL 2 over swordy 3 (more dps) but Pain Barrier 15 and Double Slash are pretty neat too. I think HL 3 has more dps to boost with than Hoplite 3, but Hop3 is still a very nice defensive character (given you use shield or Initiate from Lancer).
Interesting information! 1h spear + shield is looking really interesting if I go Goon2. Weapon stats wise, do I loose to much if i go 1h spear rather than 2h spear?
I’m a full str lvl 330. Stabbing is weaker than autoattack even if you don’t have cafri. 1 line vs 2 lines of autoattack(sacrament).
No, in some cases you will actually have the same or higher PATK than with 2H.
You should be doing 9k+ per hit with Stabbing, and 16k+ with debuffs, (I have a Stage 6 Wingshard and I do about 12k and 20k). Stabbing is significantly better than auto attacking. Even with 50% attribute that’s 213%, and Stabbings hits are true multihits. In my case, my complete Stabbing does 3435% total. Stabbing is one of the best skills Hoplites have access to, it works perfectly with the debuffs. Unless you’re high DEX Stabbing will attack faster too which is critical to working within the debuff time frame. Additionally the Blessing nerf is coming.
its a wonky animation and if you don’t land it your character get semi stuck for a sec, still is better for large stuff, since its 3 o4 4 hits of 400%, with this new update it will even hit harden than most of dragoon2 skills xD, but the aoe ratio sucks badly, but with the width update you will have that solved with the new dethrone (almost 2 times wider).
As @Queue mentioned, 1h spear + shield is as good as 2h Spear. Not only you get +20% dmg from 1h spear and Hop3 but 1h spears are also much cheaper to transcend than 2h spears (thus they end up having similar atk for the same cost). But I’m not saying 2h spears are terrible because Sacmet is a monster, it has +700 atk against leather monsters and +2 AoE atk ratio. That’s about twice as effective as your lvl 15 Gung Ho against leather mobs…
In my opinion, Sacmet is much better than Pygry Spear. But sadly, the Regard Horn Pike bonuses are very weak and this 2h spear actually falls behind it’s 1h spear counterpart (Wingshard spear).
Overall, I think 1h/2h are both nicely balanced. I just don’t think 2h spear should take so much more gems to be transcended.
And even if 1h falls slightly behind in the dps department, having a shield with Finestra to back you up will make you considerably sturdier. You get around 40~50% block rate by having Finestra lv 15 alone without considering any CON or +block equipment you have. Having Finestra lv 15 without a shield is a big missed feature imo.
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Also Hop C3 gives 1h spear extra damage on mid size enemies (which may or may not include players depending on the last 2 months update)