Eh, i doubt they thought of Retiarius as a pure dps, due to the CC and dagger guard. Fencers canât even properly use a shield due to skills and attributes denying defense and effect, and the new art will even explicitely require a dagger. So while one-handed, it provides the same defensive measures as a 2-h weapon userâŚas in none.
But yeah, i was more thinking about lancer and dragoon vaivora in the comparisons.
And they did give the dagger mastery to fencers with the new artâŚexcept that it largely cuts down epee garde final damage effect. It ends up with the same value of sharp spear, basically. As if they wanted to say âtheyâre giving them the same effect of one-handed spear mastery, so weâre giving them the same final damage bonus of the spear buffâ. And if that was the logic behind the art, well, itâs utterly stupid. Since this is only one of a plethora of bonuses a spear build is based upon, but the only reliable damage bonus a rapier class gets - epee garde:nobility (soon fencer:nobility) depends on boss positioning, matadorâs banderillero depends on having aggro, and both can be negated by other playersâ actions; worse yet, theyâre also exclusionary; only one person can have aggro at a time - meaning, all the other matadors will deal less damage, and thatâs something other builds never have an issue with; likewise, in cases where only one people can tank and be in front of the boss. fencers will have to disable nobility and miss out on an important damage bonusâŚand that is, yet again, something other swordsman builds have no issue with. Having multiple fencers/matadors shouldnât be penalizing, but thatâs just how it ends up by design.
And even when youâre alone and despite a gameplay that requires to pay attention to where the boss is facing, countering with muleta to reduce cooldowns, dodge with backslide to reset paso doble to do a bit more damageâŚhere comes some dragoon/lancer or doppel/bb that just gets aggro and you end up being unable to compete since your damage bonuses are gone (and they werenât as good as theirs to start with). A lot of jumping over hoops, and for what, if it doesnât even end up being rewarding?
To be honest, Matador is a trainwreck as it is. You can play it well and chain counters, paso doble, backslides to reset paso doblesâŚand while you exert yourself somebody else will just use one or two skills and put your damage in the shade. Olè requires too much points even if right now is the only saving grace of the class, and the only reason there isnât much complaining about it (well, aside from rapier users being mostly extinct) is because the rest of the tree is terribly lackluster. Backslide raises evasion - not by 100% despite its own description, luckily - but evading prevents Muleta from successfully countering. And even Muleta scales quite terribly, along with a bugged attribute (doesnât give the 10% bonus at 100 levels and the art enhance doesnât work at all). Capoteâs accuracy/evasion debuff is useless, and leveling it only raises that debuff duration by 1s per level. Faena requires a ton of points, itâs clunky, the damage is unreliable being a random amount of hits and even in the best case, with that SFR it will still be badâŚand the only way to increase its damage - a certain crit effect - works only on beasts. Does more damage to large enemies, and back then it meant bosses too, but not anymore, so itâs moot. And then Corrida FInale, that despite buffs still canât hold a candle to other classesâ final skills. Relies on aggro for banderillero damage buff, but cannot do nothing to prevent other classes getting aggro anyway.
It was a terrible design even before, but it only got worse with time. Aimless and outdated. Increases evasion, but canât properly work if you ends up dodging. Requires a lot of effort for little rewards. Provides a fairly large crit buff if you spend a large majority of pointsâŚbut then youâre unable to properly make use of it due to crit chance caps. Can reduce accuracy and evasion for a timeâŚbut then there is nothing where such reduction is actually used with. And most of the damage skills are fairly bad. Requires aggro to deal more damage, but you would need damage to get aggro to start with (and prevents other matadors from doing it, too).
Throw it in the bin, decide a concept, and follow it closely this time.
