Tree of Savior Forum

[Need advice] "Guild Master" build

That is the thing. If you won’t die as a Swordsman (unless you really screw up) regardless of what build you have, then it makes sense to deal more damage instead. More damage = more efficient party = more exp/hr for everyone.

Templar is not the problem in the build. It is everything before it, except arguably Squire as it is an out-of-combat utility class.

World bosses are camped anyways, most people keep track of them through the timers that are available through the different communities in the game.

You can’t aggro 21 monsters instantly as any other class except Peltasta 3 though. While this require a more stringent party composition, Aggroing 21 monsters while comboing with 1 or 2 AOE DPS give you the best farming speed.

Actually, I don’t have much idea on the DPS build of swordsmen. What class is the best DPS build of swordsmen and how does it compare with other multi hit class?

@Cathexis The main point of this build is to help the guild / party members in a way that it solely benefits them instead of oneself so I think Squire is sort of a must.

I understand that full support / full tank is not really a viable build for current ToS’s state as its difficulty is a joke more than anything (every class goes without any Cons and they still survive in late game). However, there is quite a number of kOBT players who start complaining about mob being “atrociously” strong as they are able to 2-3 shots them, specifically for the maps with stars so I see the potential of full support / full tank will have their demands increased in the near future if ToS decided to maintain or further increase the difficulty of the game even if it means only pure numbers are changed as a temporal fix of difficulty.

About aggro itself, some have reported that damage doesn’t matter when they party with certain high DPS dealers, some reported that aggro has bugs, some reported provoke attribute isn’t working properly, and some reported that damage is the main source of aggro values. I’m not really sure which one is truth.

I like your Peltasta 3 decision, but I think maybe you probably should focus more on tanking/controlling the mobs rather than Squire. Squire is good for your members outside of party but I don’t think the buff (except maybe the max HP buff) will help much at all.

I’m not sure what else you should go but probably Cataphract for extra movespeed to help with mob gathering (does riding and Swash Buckling stack?)? Or Corsair to increase your teammate’s damage?

I heard Slithering from Rodelero C2 is good for preventing magic damage too.

I think you should look more at the people that are already past level 100+ in the kOBT, they had no problems at all clearing the content with high damage builds and once they got out of Orsha, everything is business as usual.

Not only that, but most builds start truly reaching their potential once they reach Rank 5+, so at that point their damage will be good enough to deal with any mob in the game.

High damage is still the way to go and tanks are still unnecessary.

Here are my characters from the past beta:

  • Ken - Level 65 Swordsman C3
  • Shirudo - Level 195 Rodelero C3 < Hoplite < Peltasta < Swordsman
  • Repia - Level 200 Fencer < Barbarian C3 < Peltasta < Swordsman
  • Supia - Level 200 Doppelsoeldner < Hoplite C3 < Peltasta < Swordsman
  • Rongu - Level 81 Highlander C3 < Swordsman

Taken from another thread I made: https://forum.treeofsavior.com/t/review-mini-guide-swordsman-all-classes-and-best-builds/

Why do I bring this up?

Because most people tell their experience without context. When they say that they didn’t see the Peltasta in their party lose aggro, they are not giving any context at all. What members were in the party? What class build was that Peltasta using? On what map did this happen? etc, etc.

Which brings me to the screenshot. I played with many Swordsman builds, as well as partied with many others, allowing me to understand the advantages and disadvantages of picking certain class over another.

And I was able to test how aggro works competing against other Swordsman builds that people used (as well as other classes). With this, I can say for sure that damage plays a huge part in keeping aggro.

Just to put things into perspective, a level 200 Swordsman with level 15 Swash Buckling would lose aggro against my Supia (Level 200 Hoplite+Doppelsoeldner) in less than 5 seconds, and I didn’t even need to use Swash Buckling on my own. And they would never get aggro back, no matter how many times they tried using Swash Buckling after that.


This is really hard to say, as we don’t have any DPS meter available in the game for us to compare damage among different classes. But I can say for sure that there is a world of difference between the highest DPS builds in the Swordsman tree and those with sub-optimal damage.

To answer your question, the best DPS for Swordsman at Rank 6 is between a Corsair C2 and a Doppelsoeldner.

I think how the aggro is calculated is really strange. I’m not whether is my wiz 3 ele 3 killed the monsters before they lose the aggro, or they are just not aggro’ed at all. I’m pretty sure the Peltasta 3 will not deal as much damage as my frost cloud + quick cast against 15+ monsters in the dungeon.

Tbh the Peltasta 3 will only shine when partied with wizard class, they are not as useful comboing with archer/swordie though.

Full tank is probably not necessary at this point of the game (same as many other game at earlier stage), but it’s hard to say if they are required or not at later stage.

I am pretty sure aggro is based on damage.

If the mobs die fast, there is not enough time for you to take aggro. However, I am confident that you never partied with a Swordsman->Peltasta C3->Squire C2 in your party with your Wizard.

If you partied with someone using that build, and you were killing a boss in the 190 or 200 dungeon, or even a world boss, I am 100% sure that the Peltasta would have never been able to take aggro from you, unless you stopped dealing damage with your Wizard for a while (and then you would just take aggro back when you started using skills again).

@Mirarara The main reason that I picked Squire is that it can repair and increase the durability of the equipment. For a tank I think it’s a very convenient utility to have since the rate of durability being reduced is extremely fast. Plus you can do it almost for free for party / guild members too if you want to. And you can do it outside of the town as well, which is just too convenient to give up as an utility for oneself and party / guild members.

I’m quite unsure about Squire C2 though since there is already guild tower for storage and guild member teleport from Templar…perhaps I should drop Squire C2 instead?

@Cathexis I still believe that full tank / full support will somehow have their spot in the future if ToS still follows their steps. I think Orsha region is only a pool of water just to test how will the players react to the increased difficulty for now since it is still a BT. If ToS somehow decided to make it a game where everyone can solo in the end (I’m fine with quest related region, anything beyond that is quite unacceptable for me) without any investment of Cons and such, then I see no point of playing it as a MMORPG (you may have a different view on how should a MMORPG being designed and presented for the players but I adore the old-school MMORPG more).

About the aggro system…I’m really unsure about that. Not saying that I don’t believe your experiences, but perhaps a video or something similar would be more convincing (I meant, no one at this point had provided any video showing how aggro system actually works).

Ya, Swordsman->Peltasta C3->Squire C2 is actually very rare. Most Peltasta C2/3 that I met is able to deal some damage to take away the boss aggro from me, though I’m still doing the much larger portion of the damage (around 10k per second).

Is there any test on whether its actually the damage or the number of hits that matters when it comes to aggro?

As a Templar you can always let your party member to restock in town, and then recall them. Just repairing is not really enough imo as you would usually restock your potion during repairing.

Until this is the case, there is no point in worrying about tanks at all. There has to be DRASTIC changes to the fundamental aspects of the game’s combat system for them to become relevant.

Increasing the mob’s numbers changes nothing, as in the end their core mechanics are being a punching bag, and as long as that remains the same high damage builds will be the better way to go.

I never really bothered to film a video exclusively for aggro, as no one ever asked for one during the entirety of the beta. I assumed that most people were already aware that aggro is based on damage. So I can’t provide this for you, I will see if I find something on Youtube but for now showing my characters / guides / videos is all I can do to prove my experience with the Swordsman tree.

This would be extremely hard to test, as currently multi-hit skills are the kings of the game and they already deal higher damage than burst type skills. Which is why most people look for multi-hits for their builds.

Can a swordsmen really tank 20 monsters with 2k attack, while staying in one location without going for full tank build?

Yeah, myself as well as many others did it without spending a single point into CON. Many times not even using a shield.

Tanking in this game is mostly about being smart and position yourself (and the mobs) correctly, aligning them to the AoE’s from the party to optimize killing speed. The faster the mobs die, the less damage you have to tank.

And even then, high evasion builds are barely even touched and since heals are % based, then a full damage healer could just heal everyone in the party back to full HP.

Maybe it’s just me, but I never seen any non tank swordsmen that’s able to tank a big number of high damage monsters without running around and leave my spell AOE.

That’s probably why I prefer to have a tankier swordsmen (DEX or CON, as long as they can survive) so that my spell can actually deal damage

Swordsmen get a lot of HP naturally, and even more when using Plate Armor mastery.

Even then, I would just tank everything in Demon Prison District 2 and 2nd Demon Prison with all my armor broken, as I would rather stay for more exp, and I didn’t even need the armor’s defense, evasion or health bonuses to stay alive.

And I did this on 3 characters, which is many, many hours at the prisons. I know many people who did this as well, but I can’t do anything if you had bad experiences with other people.

I’m not really talking about both the Demon Prison though, even my wizard can survive alone over there without healer, so that’s not really a good example. I only need the Swash Buckling to gather the monsters over there, but it’s true that everyone can tank.

I’m referring to dungeon and map after you reach Rank 6, when the monster is dealing 1k to 2k damage. For example the Lepusbunny, or even tanking 10+ lizardman magician when you are close to rank 6. I actually have some dedicated tanker (with more than 30k hp) to cover for me so I progress through those map quite easily.

I used Demon Prison as an example, since it is the last map with high mob density that we had available before level 200.

No problems tanking the 175, 190 and 200 dungeons with 0 CON though.

I don’t think many people care about those mobs either (like the Lizardman Magician, Hallowventer Magician, Wendigo Searcher, etc). Sure, a few people struggled against them, but most of us had no problems dealing with them solo, even when doing those quests where you had to fight like 20 of them at the same time.

Since we are talking about Swordsman, then that was my experience. I didn’t have a single problem against those mobs solo, even when dealing with 10+ of them, while using a 0 CON build (also with totally different builds, full STR and high evasion).

Sure, the first time we all had to fight those mobs, we were surprised by their high damage, but once the surprise factor was gone, it was just about finding a good strategy to deal with them (blocking/dodging Wendigo attacks, good positioning against Hallowventers and fast killing against Lizardmen). Once you had this figured out, then they were very easy to deal with.

People that don’t have good solo builds, sure they might have to party up for a couple of quests, but outside of that everything else in the game dies very easily, including those Lepusbunny.

@Cathexis While it is good to see you come with a good intention to provide your insight and share as much experience as it required to justify how other builds might be more beneficial in the long run thanks to the current trend that ToS is going, but I’ll be really appreciated if you can give a little more relevant information in regard on how can I make a build that fits the thread’s intention.

Whether if the role of a full tank can make a spot in the crowd should be a question to be answered in a separated topic as it’s not supposed to be the main concern in this thread. I understand why you brought it up and I thank you for bringing it up as it makes me reconsider whether if I really want something like this, but it appeared that this is a role that I truly want to play.

@Mirarara When you say restocking potions, is it SP potion or HP potion?

Both, and this include dispeller and other utility item.

@Mirarara What if it is something like this instead?


Arrest from Squire is a great CC skill too.

Well, I did link the other thread where you can find my input on all the Swordsman classes and the “best” builds with advantages and disadvantages for each one of them: https://forum.treeofsavior.com/t/review-mini-guide-swordsman-all-classes-and-best-builds/

To be honest, any other build would accomplish much more to help your party and guildmates, but there are a lot of options to choose from: Highlander, Hoplite, Barbarian, Cataphract, Corsair, Fencer, Doppelsoeldner. So it would depend on what other choice you would like to explore, and I could help with that.

In my opinion, the best build for Templar right now is:

  • Swordsman->Peltasta->Hoplite->Cataphract C3->Templar
  • AoE taunt and all the tank benefits from Peltasta
  • Boss-killing skills from Hoplite and use of Spears which are the best weapons for killing large enemies and bosses.
  • AoE damage skills from Cataphract
  • Multi-hit skills that stay relevant for the rest of the game
  • Access to all types of damage: Strike, Pierce and Slash
  • High movement speed (easier to control mobs on certain situations)
  • Gets extra HP from mounting (and minor buffs to defense and evasion)
  • Pretty great for PvP, especially now that we have open field Guild vs Guild wars in the game.

You are good on all aspects of the game: solo, tanking, mobbing, bosses, PvP, GvG. It is a pretty self-sufficient build that has no problem sacrificing one or more circles for Templar.


Now, we all lived without a Squire in our party most of the time. And when we had one in our party, it would be rare for us to use Repair from the Squire, the only situations where we had to use them were:

  • Long grinding sessions at Demon Prison. But even then, most people would just rather go back to town to repair since they had to pick up/buy potions too (and they get to take a small break, which helps when you have been grinding for a long time).
  • Really bad dungeon runs, where the lack of damage made the run last so long that everyone in the party had to repair their equipment before finishing the run.

The Squire food is “just ok”. It was ok if it was there, and it was ok if it also wasn’t there. It didn’t make any real difference for dungeons once we were all Rank 6. The recovery buffs do become very good if you go with Squire C3, since you are able to get level 10 of them, but that is currently impossible as it is at Rank 7, which is the same than Templar.

I could see Repair and Base Camp become luxuries during long grinding sessions, but I think most of us would rather have more damage so we get more exp and can get the most out of the grinding.

Overall Squire is mostly an out-of-combat utility class, which is mostly used to make money by leaving your character AFK at popular locations with a Repair or Maintenance shop open. And going Squire requires commitment, as I consider that it is the best to go as high as possible (Circle 3) to truly get the most out of this class.

If we do remove Squire from your build, then you could easily pick up Rodelero C3, which is when your damage becomes “decent”, not good, just decent. But the Cataphract (or other) build is still far superior to Rodelero C3 on all aspects of the game.

The only real reason for picking up Rodelero is to participate in team-oriented PvP, where your teammates can take full advantage of your Rodelero kit by using good coordination and communication.


This is of course if you are looking to have a build that suits your needs, regardless of what class it uses.

If you still want to mainly use Peltasta or Rodelero, then no one can stop. Your personal preference and enjoyment of the game is what matters the most for choosing your build.