Tree of Savior Forum

Let's talk about swordsman tree. Rant and ideas for Dev team

Class and Rank Swordsman
#1

Let’s face it, this post is a rant about the swordsman in general but is also trying to give some ideas to improve the situation

I have been playing swordsman from the beta till now. The tree has been most of the time in the bottom tier because of the lack of reliable controls, ranged attack and the problem of being a MAD character (Multiple Ability dependencies with CON, STR, DEX and SPR needed). It also suffer from the fact that the melee range is less forgiving (tons of damage with cleaves and AA) with few options to counter this fact. The only field of expertise of the swordsmen was the bossing but with the heavy nerf of the shinobi and the improvement of the other trees, the difference between a Ranged DPS and a melee DPS isn’t in favor of the swordsman anymore.

Let’s have a quick look about the principal problems of the swordmen:

I- Weapon-locking // Skill restrictions

Being weapon-locked cuts off the possibility of the tree resulting in choosing a class not because you like it but because it is one that is working with your previous ranks. I’m not even talking about optimization…
As an example, even if it is not the best you can play all the classes combinations of the Cleric and Wizard tree without resulting in a non playable character. Sadly you can’t do that with the swordsman AND the archer tree.

The non weapon-locked classes are swordsman, highlander and barbarian and most of them have serious power issues:

  • The swordsman buffs (gungho / concentrate) are both really bad with an awful scaling and the damaging skills are outdated. The only DECENT offensive skill is double slash.

  • Highlander is a mixed class, some of the skills are weapon-free but the other mechanics leaning for two-handed weapons are sword exclusive (attributes and crossguard).The class is combo based, rewarding a good skill rotation however why most of the combos are only partially usable with mounts?
    => You can use skyliner but not cross-cut? Skull swing but not vertical slash? :tired:
    On the other hand, Cross guard is mount usable but no mounted classes use a two handed sword and most of the 2HS skills aren’t usable on a mount. :tired:
    => Cross guard should be open for all the two-handed weapon to give options to the player. It will improve Cataphract and Lancer options a lot while enhancing the gaming experience: active blocking is an amazing and rewarding mechanic. It will also gives Highlander rawpower to compete with Peltasta (even for non shield users pelt is better than higlander).

  • Barbarian is really underwhelming and is pick mainly for 1 skill (cleave). The class is lacking a lot of damages to be competitive.

II- Weapon-swaping

Swordsman weapon-swap is way worse than archer ones. In case of the archer, the corresponding weapon is picked in your weapon-swap inventory when using a skill needing a different weapon than the one equipped.
With freezes, lags and server response, manual swap is way to slow and can’t be used properly resulting in a non-option.
=> weapon-swap should be the same for all the trees. It would suppress most of the weapon-lock related problems

III- Class exclusions

A new problem rises with the Rank10 expansion. The new mechanic to patch a class is to add an helmet (or a virtual helmet with an attribute, cf Rank10 attribute on R7 classes) on the class to improve its viability. It is lame but is helping to balance the game.
The problem is that you can’t use multiple helmets at the same time reducing again the number of options for the player. You can’t play properly Dragoon 3 and Murmillo together because you need the dragoon helmet to deal damage with the dragoon skills and you need cassis crista to use most of the murmillo skills.

=> an attribute should be added which gives the benefit of all the helmets the characters could use while wearing one. It will let the player to choose which one he wants to display.
If the effect is too strong, giving the opportunity to obtain different stances like a dragoon stance where dragoon skills are improved and a murmillo stance where the shield skills are improved. It will reward the player which are able to use the proper stance during with the right timing and more active gameplay to the swordsman tree. Instant cast helmet animation could also do the trick.
At the moment, changing the helmet is like a 3 seconds stun and ins’t realistic enough to be used properly.

The list could be longer with some other problems such as the overpowered Murmillo C1 and underwhelming C2//C3 (an award for the C3 which is insanely bad), the awful C1-C2 doppel and insane C3 and the real lack of power of Cataphract.

I really hope those issues could be reviewed by the dev team in order to make the game more enjoyable for the swordies ! I wish you all a pleasant time on ToS.

Parmenion

5 Likes
#2

its a reality that the Swordman(Rank1) need a update on its damage and scaling.

#3

Swordsman is my favorite class tree, however, I rarely play because:

  1. The lack of sinergy between classes, theres like, 5 or 6 effective builds with little to no variation;
  2. Mounted classes (the ones I love the most) are a joke on PvE - Cataphract is total garbage if you disconsider trot;
  3. The unforgiven gameplay - you must facetank everything to have A CHANCE (block/evade/miss/desynch) to deal damage
  4. To be effective, you are obligated to play builds you don’t like - I ultimately despise dragoon and I kinda have to play as one to be relevant
2 Likes
#4

yep the biggest issue is so many skills being locked to a single weapon type. i see no reason why they couldn’t drastically alleviate this issue by just opening up more skills to be used with other weapon types. for example, finestra should be usable with 1h swords and rapiers, crossguard should work with all 2h weapons, murmillo helmet should work while mounted, etc.
with that said, though, i’d actually like to see crossguard be removed and just give highlander an attribute (maybe at c2) to allow passive blocking - based on your block rate stat - with 2 handed weapons.
the other thing that needs to change, although it’s not directly in the swordsman tree, is that wizards should have to worry about accuracy and block penetration, in the same way that archers and swordsmen have to worry about it. not needing accuracy or block penetration is the number-1 reason why magic is, and will always be, the meta in pvp. just make it so INT adds accuracy, and SPR adds block penetration. then we can see the end of the full-con wizard meta.

edit: as it stands, the only viable pvp options swordsmen have for pvp are classes with the ability to ignore block (lancer and retiarius (retiarius has disarm) and the only viable archer class for pvp is musketeer due to ignoring block (cannoneer can also be viable in pvp but the gear investment alone to make it viable is simply ridiculous). wizards can just stack full con, giving them high block rate, while never actually having to worry about getting their attacks blocked themselves. ToS has almost no balance when it comes to pvp.

1 Like
#5

remove AAR mechanic
rework skills and effects that affects AAR (like how the removal of buff limits reworked daino)

I’m pretty sure the only reason why swordsman tree struggle with PVE or atleast trying to solo CM or CM5 is because of AAR.
While swordsman tree uses AAR and and need investments on AAR, PVE DPS wizards and clerics either has huge amount on their skill or they have fixed target. Infact I can confirm that my pyro3-psycho3-sage3 has atleast 4 infinite AAR (flame ground, fire pillar, hell breath, heavy gravity), unconfirmed infinite AAR (ultimate dimension, flare, Microdimension AfterEffects, Hole of Darkness) and Fixed targets (PP and gravity pole)

2 Likes
#6

not a bad idea at all. swordsmen skills are already limited by their hitbox size - i see no reason why the skills shouldn’t just hit every enemy as long as it’s inside the hitbox of the skill. the only issue here might be rebalancing retiarius’ pull rete skill… at level 15 it pulls 18 targets together, and if any skill could hit unlimited targets as long as the enemies are inside the skill’s hitbox, then this might cause an issue. i guess they could levae throw rete (which doesn’t pull enemies together) at retiarius c1 and move pull rete to c2, making pull rete cap at skill level 10 = 13 targets.

2 Likes
#7

Cross guard is like hidden gem, being able to block while not using a shield is already good, but then doubling the blocked target’s receiving piece damage for the next 8 seconds is a HUGE damn buff. Not to mention it doubles the lines as fake, making heavy pierce hitter like rete, dragoon and lancer opop. If it were to be usable by all two handed weapon, imagine buffs to dragoon and lancer without much effort? Currently you need to manual swap block for this to work. I don’t know why people always ask for easier execution.

I do agree on the AAR mechanic discussion where some skills AOE are already small enough, e.g. Double Slash, Hexen Dropper, etc. Giving them a fixed target hit might make senses. Pull Rete might need to change for this reason too, capping it at lv10 is a good idea though, you dont really have enough skill points in Rete anyways.

#8

I wouldn’t call it a hidden gem, it’s just something that’s there lol. Because it’s annoying to weapon swap when your weapon doesn’t swap back at times for most people. Some would say just put your weapons on the hotkey bar to avoid it but… lol that in itself is annoying. Another way to look at it is why go through the trouble when you can play something that doesn’t require you to do that in the first place… Then there is the fact that you can only debuff the target when you block the attack, which is another limitation as it only applies to physical attacks since magic cant be blocked. So Crossguard constantly ends up in these situations where it’s mostly never used/needed.

#9

I was actually expecting swordsman having the best auto-attack builds… I was wrong.

#10

Exactly, that’s why you have friends to play with. You don’t do everything yourself, if so, what its the point of it being an online game anyways. With that said, being able to pull it off only form a blocked attack makes it kinda lack luster, especially when some bosses only deal magic damage… i do agree on that, but making it block magics too sounds stupid.

#11

What do friends have to do with it?

#12

Let me rephrase, “other player”. Supportive builds can come into mind.

#13

What do other players have to do with Crossguard? Last time i checked and tested the damage increase only applied to the person who used Crossguard. Unless IMC changed it pretty recently, Crossguard’s effects would only help the “support”

#14

Aight… just confirmed that, din’t work :sweat_smile: but it increased the jolly roger hit count though.

1 Like
#15

one thing they should rework is how block works. For example on pvp perspective, chars full con are predominant and they usually build up full block, that itself neutralize mostly swordmans and archers sinse you must build up insane amounts of block pen!(like around 700-800 if you want to at least hit some mages/clerics). And about the Block Animation… not being able to walk is kinda rash.

About CrossGuard i can understand why you can not use it with a two handed spear.

Another idea is making more skills cast time scale with attack speed could make playing feel more fluid.

#16

While i do agree that the Swordsman tree is lacking in a lot of departments, by no means is it weak. Whats an obvious difference is that you will need to invest much more on a Swordsman than any other class tree to make it good. As a Swordsman main with mostly every build (except Dragoon) i can say that they can be strong, but will require a far greater weapon investment and a lot of attribute points to make it come close to the other trees, and in my opinion its not worth at the end since getting the good gear and points just puts them on the starting line rather than up to par with the other classes.

What kind bums me is that i usually love playing Tank roles in co-op games like this, and currently Tank Meta is non existent since the mobs just attack the melee dps or does what it wants with few instances of, say, a pelt taunt that doesnt seem to agro half the times

#17

I like shielded characters, but I totally dislike shield based skills, I insist there’s the lacking of 1h Sword character, some kind of Knight, the ones with plate armor, longsword and shield, that hits slash instead strike…
I concurr with you, Murmillo C2/C3 are awful, In general swordman class needs the flexibility to create sinergy like Clerics and Mages do.

#18

PvE wise most warriors do what they do well, not particularly great, but decent enough, it seems like most people make warriors for PvP which in the current way the game is, is a horrible idea. Especially with warriors having close to 0 defense against magic like block is to physical. And the skills that can help you either have to be in the range of a caster or have someone else take a hit so you can get close and CC or silence the caster.

#19

You need to use the skills with agressivity / hatred listed + all attributes + provoke 10 and very good damage.
In mmo if tanks have too low damage they will never “hold”, taunt in an efficient way.
I just did velcopter on my peltasa3fencer3shinobi, with more than good damage and good rotation etc the boss targeted me like 50% of times.

#20

Yeah, 50% of the times, that half the times, A tank cant be a awesome tank if the bosses only aggro 50% of the times, Im a Pelt2-Rod3-Nak-Reti3, i can more or less keep bosses on me, but im a bruiser, im not full tank or full dps, if a full dps is in my party then i end up not having enough dps to keep a boss aggro on me for long, and if i end up being the highest dps then…well thats a separate issue

If i want to be a Tank then the current way the game is doesnt let me be the Tank i want to be. The way the aggro system is right now is flawed in a lot of way, how it can be fixed, i dont know, since there is a lot of variables that go with what a mob or boss targets and for how long

1 Like