Edit: Great to see the amount of attention this thread got. SR has received significant changes on kToS as of the r8 patch that addressed nearly all of the concerns offered herein. I highly doubt this thread factored into those decisions, but at any rate, the thread’s content is now outdated and irrelevant. SR is a functional and welcome class that is effective both in high level PVE and TBL alike. I’ve kept the original post below, but it should be ignored as it is outdated and inaccurate at this point.
There’s a lot of people up in arms about Swordsman, and that’s very understandable. Schwarzer Reiter, however, has some series problems of its own. I wholly believe this to be the overall weakest class in Archer’s arsenal, barring possibly Hunter (for PVP.) It is plagued by buggy, completely lackluster skills, and an absolute failure to meet the class’s concept.
SR is intended to be a highly mobile, mounted archer using a pistol. This it is not.
A Review of SR Skills
Retreating Shot: The best skill in SR’s arsenal, and the only reason you should roll this class. Retreating Shot hits many times, has a generous AoE, and can be used with auto attacks stacked on top of it for some pretty respectable damage. On the other hand, it is very buggy - ToS identifies pressing a key down and letting it go as two separate presses of that key, so if you press RS’s key just a split second too long, it’ll cancel itself immediately. This’ll just happen sometimes, too, even to experienced veterans of the class who work around it - I assume this is delay, but hard to say. Holding the key sometimes solves this, but then you have to hold a key for quite a long time, and you’re probably holding your attack key too. It’s a mess. Many times it just cancels regardless of what you do.
Concentrated Fire: The other ‘good’ skill in Schwarzer Reiter C1, Concentrated Fire is a faster Multishot with less damage and no crit attribute, and no overheat. It’s definitely usable, and there’s not much to say about it (it’ll aoe targets like multishot if you get sufficient aoe ratio from gear) but… what is it doing on this class? This class is supposed to be highly mobile, why is there an animation locked charge up skill on it? Don’t get me wrong, this skill is staple for all SR (we’ve only got 3 skills from this class in the first place - more on that later) but it’s really underwhelming for the cooldown and doesn’t fit the class concept at all.
Caracole: Disappointing damage, a bit of mobility, and AGAIN, an animation locked charge up skill? WHY? Almost every SR I know has this at 0 or 1, and for those of us with it at 1, it’s hardly if ever used.
Limacon: This skill is a joke. It deals roughly the same damage as an auto attack (this may change if you massively increase it from attributes, but honestly, come on) and devours your SP. If you have Running Shot, this is both slower and weaker than your auto attacks with Running Shot, and you probably do, because of our Steady Aim changes (more on this later, too) making Ranger a much less effective choice for SR.
Wild Shot: Another stand-still charge-up skill that we unlock on second circle. Again, no overheat. Again, disappointing damage. Multi-hit is fantastic in this game and gives SR some decent scaling ability but this is a rank 7 choice. You took 5 more levels into retreat shot, 5 more levels into concentrated fire, and 5 levels of this for the same circle that is giving people Musketeer and Cannoneer. Who in their right mind would make that exchange, unless they were already locked into SR and can’t take either of those classes as a result?
“But SR has cleared ET 10” - kToS SR vs iToS SR
Some of you may be familiar with a specific Schwarzer Reiter who is famous for having cleared ET10. This player is a known whale with +15 gear - and that’s perfectly fine. I whale a bit myself. But doesn’t this mean SR is a powerful class in PVE?
No.
You may or may not be aware of a skill called Steady Aim - this is a buff in the Ranger tree, that on kToS, was +45% skill damage and up just about all the time.
Here, it is very, very different. This skill is far weaker.
SR scales decently with gear, as all of our abilities (that you would use, anyway. I’m looking at you, Limacon and Caracole) attack multiple times. That means every +attack from upgrades are applied several times over. They DO NOT scale as well as +x00% skills from Cannoneer or Musketeer, due to the way those percentages are calculated, but they do scale decently. Better than classes with few multi-hits and no +x00% skills.
The problem is we’re missing 45% of the damage this SR puts out. That’s a massive gap. I don’t disagree with the Steady Aim change, because it was all but unanimously required in all archer builds on kToS, but I do have a sneaking suspicion that SR’s crippling weakness on this version is in large part because they’re balanced around that +45% being a part of them.
So what do we do?
This is a tough question. Something clearly needs to be done to help this class, but it’s not as simple as a damage number adjustment. Our most important skill has a crippling bug that causes you to shoot twice and stop a good majority of the time, and even when it works, it doesn’t compare with the other options.
Every one of these options requires the Retreating Shot cancelling to be solved for this class to be anything less than infuriating. Make it so the buff can’t be removed for the first 3 seconds and this is solved.
Possibility #1: Allow SR skills to be usable with a musket, and musketeer skills usable mounted.
This option effectively turns SR into a one circle dip class, but Archers are no stranger to such things (hello, Scout and Falconer) if they’re interested in a specialization. I remember seeing skill animations added to the game data’s animation indexes for SR skills with musket but these skills are still unusable, I’m not sure if they were finished or not. I really believe this (along with a fix for Retreat Shot random cancelling) to be the best fix possible for this class, and one that is feasible from a development standpoint, as it doesn’t require you to make new skills, just animations.
Possibility #2: Replace Limacon and Caracole with mobility skills.
These skills are a joke. They are literally not worth using. Even Scout C1 gets Flare Shot. Caracole hardly fits the “mobile archer” motif (yes, it knocks you back, but only after you sit still) and Limacon is rarely if ever worth using. A movespeed buff would be the simplest and most obvious choice, though I could see some PVP balance issues there. Limacon should be replaced by something similar that does what it intended to do better - perhaps the running shot “don’t slow down with auto attacks” effect as a selfbuff with something else on top of it, or a crit rate attribute.
Possibility #3: Massive numbers buffs across the board.
This is the worst, most shoddy solution and I honestly wouldn’t suggest it if it wasn’t by far the easiest for the developers to implement. Give Concentrated Fire a +15% or more crit rate attribute like Multishot, or perhaps the attribute from Rapid Fire (even mentioning that skill puts a bad taste in my mouth, though.) Retreat Shot should receive a careful, small buff in damage or duration (10-15% at most) or an attribute that isn’t worthless. While we’re on the topic, the only non-%damage attribute SR gets massively increases the cooldown on their defining skill and is not very useful in the first place. This is a pretty disgusting fact, too.
In Summary
I realize that SR is a single problem circle in an otherwise functional archetype, and that Hunter has their fair share of issues too. I realize this problem pales in comparison to the Swordsman issue, but it is also much, much easier to fix.
At this time, I’m rerolling my SR. I’m not happy to do so; I love the class concept, and have a fun time farming on him with Running Shot, but in the long run this class is broken and selecting it has forever gimped my character.
If the Musket idea is implemented, I will happily roll a brand new SR to go SR1 Musketeer. I think that’s an awesome arrangement and is competitive with Falconer Musketeer and Scout Musketeer as a specialist not unlike those two. If one of the other options or something similar is put in place, I’ll happily pick my SR back up.
But something desperately has to be done. This is an awesome class being completely squandered. It boils down to this:
Why would you ever take C2 Schwarzer Reiter when C1 Musketeer or C1 Cannoneer is such a massively, ridiculously better choice?
The only answer is that you already took C1 SR, and your skills aren’t compatible.
