Bro, when a lot of different people complain about the same thing, is because it have one or more problems. Just give a quick look to sword C3 and all others rank 3.
And sword C3 is only the point of the iceberg; just look to peltasta C3: except for shield buckling, this cicle… No, the entire peltasta is a complete trash. I can go priest c3 and have much more tankiness and much more damage than the only defensive class in the entire swordsman tree.
My personal guess is that one of reasons for using current system is to enforce players to change their play style and adapt over time. That being one of solutions meant to ease repetitivesness of grinding.
It does get a bit disappointing when you’ve gotten used to and liked the play style of your lower circle class though. The game will eventually force you to move on from it.
Actually, the opposite of current system would also not be a good idea.
If, let’s say, Swordman C3 was able to match C7 classes in damage, there would be no point to get those classes. You would just get C3 Swordman and focus on utility skills on higher circles.
The problem of obsolete classes and skills would remain but in reverse.
I believe that the best solution here would be trying to hit the point of perfect balance. Lower circle classes should be viable end game but not achieving as great efficiency as the higher circles or they should come with some other considerable drawbacks. (I don’t know if that’s the case right now, as I haven’t yet reached the end game content.)
Current solution of +X00 damage to skill might actually be a good way to go, as long as it doesn’t get too far ahead of impact of character/gear stats (which, in most cases, affects both C1 and C7 skills equally, as far as I’m aware).
Assuming that skill damage values were to be balanced perfectly, current system would allow players an interesting choice:
a) get damage from low circles - it’ll be mediocre end game but you can focus more on support skills/classes later,
b) get support skills from low circles and damage from higher circles - you’ll get top efficiency.
Generally, all the other base classes have something useful to the late game. But swordsman have… gung ho? concentrate? slash? pain barrier is useful, but it’s duration on lv 1~5 is very low and the cd is considerable high for such skill. I really want to believe that IMC is working in some other thing, because if they think that swordsman c1 c2 c3 is ok, i will become very worry about the future of balance in this game.
Not really. Higher classes offer you new skills. Since skills have cooldowns, you will up your DPS by having more usable skills. Your wait time between cooldowns will be considerably lower with each new skill you learn.
Also there is another way to fix the problem.
There could be “swordman skills” available for basic level not job level - active skills.
Classes would give “buff skills”, rarely “active skills” and most of their skill would be upgrades to existing basic swordman skills.
For example:
Swordman have basic skill called “bash”- 150% attack + 300 damage.
Highlander turn it into “cartor strike” - adds aoe based on charge level , turn the skill into charge skill, adds additional hit for each charge level, +20% attack +200 damage to existing bash values.
Where barbarian into “seism” (without need of highlander before it) - adds aoe, +30% attack + 300 damage, +1 overheat, +1 hit to skill.
If you pick both you have large aoe skill, with possiblity to charge it for more hits and aoe, +50% attack +500 damage +1 more quaranted hit and +1 overheat.
All upgrades stacks, higher class rank upgrade take priority in way of skill working or you turn off/on the way you want, if you pick multiple upgrades to single skill.
This way you upgrade the playstyle you really want, you focus on some tree and every class becomes usefull. Every choice you make will create some impact on the end outcome and it will boost your stats in some visible way.
Imagine what wonders you could do with your builds. For example you could focus tons of power into 2 skills with each having over 4 upgrades. Other people would upgrade 8 skills instead and still be really good.