Increasing Viability of Swordsman

[Lenny]

i’m really considering going cleric, cmon, inquisitor is like doppel with healing and safety zone, and if u take paladin u have barrier too

[sttr413]

Just something out of my head:

• Buff all anticontrols to be able to resist high level status at some chance.
• Buff at least some dodging/blocking stances for mdef or any other kind of magic resistance.
• Buff fencer dodge/block self-buffs duration.
• Buff pain barrier and restrain duration.
• Add attribute to disable or at least reduce Long Stride knockback. And/or reduce cooldown.
• Fix Giant Swing not working in PvP. Increase it’s range, decrease cooldown.
• Fix Doppel c2 2H-exclusive skills to always do intended number of attacks.
• Increase Cataphract’s Rush: Stun proc chance. And/or allow it’s procs to ignore Bloodletting.
• Make arrest do Paralysis.
• Improve both Arrest and Iron Hook targeting responsiveness.
• Make Keel Hauling no longer break hook’s paralyze effect while dragging.
• Remove Dual Weapon Assault’s requirement to press buttons simultaneously. As a radical measure - turn buff into no-cd skill
  consuming stamina, similar to Double Punch.
• Improve Gae Bulg damage and targeting responsiveness.
• Buff Pistol Shot range.
• Buff damage of a central Kunai (one). Pls note there is also a great suggestion on Ninja’s Kunai on ToS Forum.
• Buff Peltasta c2 and c3 damage.

[chillcross]

Buff Peltasta c2 and c3 damage.

Peltasta’s damage would be decent if they changed the High Guard attribute to affect all Peltasta attacks instead of only Umbo Rim and Blow.

[SlyGoat]

The high guard buff isn’t that incredible anyway since the 50% reduction still applies, so it sets the damage scaling to 330% but then reduces it by half so it’s effectively just 165% damage. Seriously they should just remove the damage debuff, leave the crit chance reduction and rim blow/umbo blow attributes intact, because rim/umbo blow do ■■■■ all damage anyway and highguard only has 50% uptime for a pitiable amount of blockrate increase. Applying it to all Peltasta skills would still be a net nerf, since in any build that isn’t some wonky pelt3squire3 which is by no means a PVP build, Pelt skills will contribute the least of your damage, even Butterfly is a pretty sad amount of damage.

Alternatively change the high guard attribute to effect all shield skills, then murmillo OP.

[chillcross]

While I’d love it, I feel like IMC wouldn’t let even shield bearing Swordies off that easily. Which is why I didn’t go for greed- I don’t see it happening anytime soon. It honestly shouldn’t be reduced so harshly, or maybe the attack down percentage could actually get better per rank up.

Dreams.

[Artreides]

the combat system is just right imo, its just the way it is now does not favor swordsman at all.

[SlyGoat]

Or maybe just reduce your attack by 50% (not a -50% damage modifier) and increase damage of shield based skills based on your block rate. That’d at least make it unique.

[Nekorin]

The current combat system isn’t favorable to swordsman is due to most/all of swordsman’s attacks can be manually dodged just by moving a little. This is made worse when the startup animation of the move takes some time to animate before the hit box even comes out. Hence making it even harder for a swordsman to hit the monster or player when they are running away.

Hence the suggestion, to have the swordsman be able to perform the skill while he is moving, this cuts away the startup “animation lock” making the swordsman more fluid and thus making the melee class more viable in pve/pvp.

[haukinyau]

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[SlyGoat]

Using skills while moving would help greatly in PVP. That’s part of why Cataphract and Doppel are the only real PVP-viable Swordsman classes, you can use Rush and Cyclone (with attribute) while moving so enemies can’t just move away from you constantly and kite in circles around a frost cloud or whatever.

However most Swordsman classes suffer from a simpler problem, which is they just don’t do enough damage for the drawbacks of their skills. Most Swordsman skills are on long cooldowns, they have tight melee range hitboxes, and they take too long to execute (which is partially related to being unable to use them while moving, but just being locked into an animation for a long time even if you can move is detrimental). On top of all that, most Swordsman skills have a pitiful multihit and no/low damage modifiers, so they scale abysmally.

I agreed completely, but guess what? Even if you make Swordsman skills usable while moving and activated instantly, they’ll still just do too little damage to be viable DPS. Swordsmen do burst damage, and they’re actually okay at that - Cyclone can pretty much oneshot most builds, as long as you can actually get in range, land it, and stunlock them before they’re able to use their defensive skills.

But PVE is a whole 'nother issue. Mobs don’t dodge your attacks, they’ll happily run right into melee range of you en masse; that’s why everyone loves Swashbuckling, after all. But even then, Swordsmen can’t do enough damage to be competitive with Wizards or Archers, even if their build is purely DPS specced with full STR and maximum critrate from equipment vs. a Wizard with like 100 points in CON and average gear. People will claim the tradeoff for this is being tankier, but that’s inaccurate - the tradeoff for being tankier is being melee, meaning you will just naturally have to soak more damage. Being both melee and doing significantly less damage is overkill.

I don’t think anyone is saying animation lock and immobility aren’t issues with Swordsmen, just that they’re not the only issues.

[haukinyau]

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[Domo_Kun]

Comparing those fluid execution of every melee skills/atks of old games like Dns or other action mmo like B&S makes ToS’s Swordies animation/ skill execution/ dps/ hitbox to look like pure trash in everything.
If its not because of the beautiful graphic/texture designs and BGM + Ro nostalgia then ToS is total crap when compared to current MMO standards lul

If only Tos skill/atk executions of melees can reach at least half of this. Keep on dreaming

[mystletainn]

count me in~

I’d say not all but can add variations:

• stay in place, e.g. bash
• moves in certain direction, e.g. make thrust like mini stead charge
• usable while moving (maybe slow down mspd while action), e.g. dust devil
• allow & give bonus after jumping (like stomp). e.g. vertical slash
• give bonus after running, e.g. spear throw change mechanic to linear

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actually BnS can do auto atk while moving at 100% speed (?) and i feel it kind of awkward hahah. definitely need more stop-move variations

DN really excel at timing, stop-move, 3d combat, skill chaining, skill interruptions.

ToS all skill pretty much executed within 1sec, stay in place, used 1-1-1-1 not chained 1-2-3-4, all charge skill interrupted easy af

[SlyGoat]

discussing Damage and Hitbox is derailing from the topic.As OP focusing on the need to improve the clunky animation.

no?

and i never deny swordman need extra DMG boost and fix the aoe problem…

The thread topic is “increasing viability of swordsman”. OP presented a suggestion and others proposed counterpoints and alternative views. If the thread title was “here is my idea about swordsmen, nobody offer any other arguments please, this thread is only here to circlejerk over my own idea” then you would be correct that any discussion was a derailment.

• usable while moving (maybe slow down mspd while action), e.g. dust devil

Dust devil usable while moving makes perfect sense. ■■■■, it should make you move faster when you use it. That’s some hardcore gymnastics.

[haukinyau]

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[Pururu]

Swordman need more utility and support, they will never really be needed if all they offer is damage that isn’t even better than classes like wizard or cleric that can do both damage and support extremely well at the same time.
Archer is in the same boat but it’s slightly better for them, i still wouldn’t bother with any archer in my party without the exp bonus though.

[Remlocke]

This makes me think that since we have Corsairs DWA to animation cancel auto attacks…why not have a skill animation cancel on another class (possibly a sharable buff)?

[Nekorin]

The thread topic is “increasing viability of swordsman”. OP presented a suggestion and others proposed counterpoints and alternative views.

Yes this is my intent. Overall we all want improvements in the swordsman class. Any suggestion, counter proposals and alternative views are pretty much welcomed. It also allows the devs to see the places they can improve though the eyes of us players, not just from one single player point of view but from multiple players.

Damage wise swordsman definitely needs more as compared to now. Very much unlike the spell casters where their spells can definitely hit, physical classes like swordsman and archers still have to get through 2 more barriers, block rate and evasion. Although we are able to crit, we have so sacrifice much damage stat like strength to increase dex to a certain amount to get the extra crit chance.

As my level is at a low 181, it is really hard for me to comment much on the damage department, hence in my OP I just present what I observed from my swordie pov.

[mystletainn]

damage wise i think imc at least already realise swordie is on the shortest end? seeing how in ktos many classes got buffed one by one, it’s just a matter of time til it gets “better” imo.

so yea nothing wrong with discussing another possibility to improve swordie viability

[Nekorin]

That is a nice suggestion, although I think it will be a tall order for IMC to cater to that lol.

You know when I first envision how a ToS swordsman class plays like, it will be something similar to Corsairs DWA, where swordsman can freely cancel their moves to each other, much like how a fighting game will be like. It will be really cool to see melees being able to chain their moves after one another in succession performing a combo chain. It also sets the entire tree apart from the other 3 trees.