You’re all acting like Ele 3 does a bunch of damage to flying mobs when it doesn’t, and there’s more to Swordsmen then Skyliner -_- though the nerf was unnecessary.
We’re not just talking about flying mobs, are those the majority? Do we even have those in later grinding maps that give high exp? Do ele skills hit flying boss(yes)?
Oh look Highlander C3 builds died a few weeks after they realized how much dps they lost, yes it’s not about skyliner, but it DID a lot. that’s my point. And look how much they buffed barbs because highlanders are outdoing them, when Barb is supposed to be C3-C5, and HL is supposed to be C2-C4
Your forgetting the reality that Elementalist 3 damage is primarily hinged on Frost Cloud which varies in its effect whether the mob is flying or not, and if its flying then the damage of the class drops significantly. There are a (very small) amount of enemies that can remove or flip Frost cloud. Ele 3 damage isn’t impervious to critique, and it has shortcomings. Likewise, Archers are phenomenal against flying enemies.
How about people just be honest instead of melodramatic like school children.
Skyliner nerf hurt Highlanders yes, Highlander C2 is one of 5 linear options for a rank 3 (Hoplite, Barb, Pel C2, High C2, Sword C3) That one nerf is not indicative of the entire base class, Jesus.
That’s what Im talking about. I hate party grind or whatsoever. Im feel much more comfy with solo leveling. And thats why I can make any build that I want. Still dealing more damage then 50% of the archers and mages in dungeons and missions.
Well, we were talking about provoke and tanking. As damage dealer I definitely know that I should do. Weeks in builder and 4 dd swordsmans over 150lvl.
Then you realize, they still outdo you even with those shortcomings, hence the topic.
You know having an extra Fletcher or w3 ele3 does better than some random dps swordsman, right? Simply accept the fact that currently, we cannot do more. There’s enough threads that complain about it, I just dealt with it because sooner or later a balance patch should come.
Also my point doesn’t only revolve in Ele, I gave it as a sample because that’s the current state of the most wanted dps class, even if you go full con and use animus, you’ll do better as a dps. Naturally we have Ranger3 Fletcher archers or even sappers for other things.
But you will rarely see people looking for swordsman classes as a DPS, starting alemeth onwards, don’t even bother about flying mobs there, You’d likely end up in Alemeth>Evac>Storage>Workshop>Maven. Flying mobs that give high exp…? none, hence the ele popularity
Well, I dont know how is it in over then 200. But on my levels the strongest boss-killer is still hoplite. Idk but from first “stabbing” Im target of an each boss even with fletchers and elementalists in party (I have no provoke). There is still a chance that they are just bad, but all of them?..
In other situations u’re right we are much more weak in dealing damage.
Yes in missions I really like then I have fletchers and wugushi. And in dungeons linkers and elementalists. You are right. Random swordies are mostly just unskilled and very sadly equipped.
Like I saw hoplite-c3 - dopel with grey 2H sword TT. And one guy was c3swordsman-c3rodelero… facepalm
You are still on lower levels, you’ll see why others are complaining later on, even with a fully built dps character it really seems lacking.
As a level 276 Fencer, I can say my damage is good and enough to keep me satisfied, but my aoe attack ratio is in terrible tier I could only hit 3 medium monsters(which are very common later on) at a time. this drops my aoe dps significantly, I had to rely on barb skills for it, but you know they’re not really that powerful later on, just some bursts and stuns.
Throwing Gae Bulg on a pack of enemies Spikes party damage and thats moves purpose is for party benefit. You can get a fletcher or you can get 3 people going off of Gae Bulg.
Doppelsoeldnr has some of the most ridiculous scaling in Deeds 10 in tandem with correct Damage type even before Ktos.
Even now a Barb alone can reach 500+ Bonus physical attack on a boss between Frenzy, Gung-ho and Warcry (not including Concentrate), and Doppel 10 can double that to. Then correct damage types give +50% bonus on everything but Ghost. This is with the ability to generate 5x more aggro from its own damage, Block attacks (which boosts Piercing damage), higher base physical defense, far higher base health, and far more on-demand CC.
All pre-buffs.
The Swordsmen situation on these boards is so full of hyperbole it’s ridiculous. Like that thread which takes the single-hit naturally aoe Zornhau which serves as a catalyst to Zucken and compares it to flipping Snipe. Snipe which is a single-target nuke unless Circling/Linker/Full-Draw come into play and otherwise Zucken is able to deal out more damage per cast as a result of base AOE and its still not the main damage skill of C2 Doppel and being considered with Deeds of Valor.
Everything has to be stripped of all its contexts to give the weakest representation to the swordsmen line.
I can’t tell if many of you are intentionally deceitful or not, because any damage difference has to be multiplied to the 9th power for no reason whatsoever just to try and make a disingenuous point.
Then a horde of newer swordsmen players read the thread where a portion of the picture is being discussed and form opinions based on discussion that is missing information as people vent their frustrations.
Well, all swordies skills have that disadvantage. We don’t have that “400%+” or even “150%+”. Sigh…
And I also have fencer (c3highlander - corsair - fencer), but 183, if I remember right. And I like it too, but Im thinking about going to c2corsair. Idk. I already have c2 corsair but with rapier I think It will be new and positive experience. Cos I dont really like fencer second circle. I already have sept etoiles and louge and attaque coquille and flanconnade.
Doppel IS one of the best DPS swordsman classes, so no need to point that out.
Look at your warcry cooldown, look at your frenzy requiring you to stack. Compare them with buffs on other classes(archers in particular), what do you get? Yes these were fixed on kTOS, but then again, not here, yet, which I explained before as well(they buffed them for a reason, because it was needed).
I’m not sure if you’ve played other classes, but you can go try a ranger C3 and use barrage, it’s like doing what higher tier swordsman classes can do in AOE, with less cooldown at that.
Again, I’m not really complaining, but I already know that it is true that people are not looking for swordsman classes as a dps class.
Doppel has one of the greatest attack skillsets a swordsman class can have(lol DOV Cyclone), most people include 1 Doppel in their builds because it’s that powerful.
I’ve also started out testing different doppel variants because I’m nearing end with my fencer, waiting for C3…
I have dopel in my hoplite build. And also I will definitely try dopel c2 (this character is about 70-80 lvl for now).
I want to try all that swordies tree can offer. And also I will be ready for swordsmans buffs, cos I will have nearly all dd classes within my characters 
Every Swordsmen skill is a conditional 150%+ because of weapon types.
Less you all forget very few Archer skills benefit from the Weapon tree of Strike,Pierce,Slash,Ghost.
Excluding Ghost enemies all your damage skills conditionally benefit, which makes inherently means all Swordsmen class attacks scale by 1.5x on the correct enemy type (except for ghosts).
Archers in particular is disingenous. Archers have 3 considerable damage buffs. Sneak Hit, Running Shot, Steady aim and Swiftstep is significantly overrated (well I’d say…overstated) given the reality of Critical hits.
The Maximum damage a person gets is a 50% modifier from a critical hit + however much their critical attack contributes to their damage output.
As a 1.25x crit RATE modifier, Swift steps maximum possible contribution is 12.5% more DPS (as 25% of a 50% boost is 12.5% on average).
Yet we know on an enemy with 0 crit resist at 280. 500 crit rate is 75% crit chance. 1.25x500 of that brings you to 93.75% crit rate which is 18.75%. That’s 9.3% more average damage. To get 534 crit rate x 1.25 is 100% crit rate on 0 crit resist enemy. 533 maybe if it rounds up (as its 99.blah blah blah). 533 is 79.95% crit chance or 80%. 20% extra crit chance is literally 10% more damage. Or to put it another way, Swift Step caps out in practice at 10% more damage if you have a crazy amount of crit chance…
Steady aim 15 is 20% for 10 seconds, on a 25s cooldown. That’s 40% uptime. 20% boost. 40% of the time is 8%.
The basic benefit of Swift Step differs from Steady aims benefit by 2% except Steady aim doesn’t care if you have 0 or 525 crit rate, you’re getting that 8% average dps increase.
Recall that Archer already from the start has a 10% penalty on Medium enemies, 15% on large and XL…
Outside of Sneak Hit and Running Shot, archers buffs are very overstated in their overall contribution. Running shot doesn’t apply to skills and Sneak Hit requires the back which makes them fairly conditional in their own right. Running shot is obviously a very powerful AA buff but that’s what it has to be appreciated as, especially since archer AA’s are naturally single-target.
Sneak-hits large Crit bonus lets the archer pump more STR which lets Crit attack factor in more as a dps bonus. Very powerful buff, but its based on positioning.
Again not to be melodramatic, That’s just how things work. Now you talk damage on flying enemies and Archers have a great weapon bonus for that. Single-target? Archers have great damage skills for that and Circling/Linker can magnify that potential.
Otherwise most of their self-buffs aren’t huge deals. Part of why Circling is so awesome is letting archers get in on more of the aoe fun.
Otherwise, even when it comes to AA’s, archers are working at 1x/0.9x/0.85x per shot (pre running shot) vs Swordsmen doing 1x/2x/3x/4x depending on amount of enemies hit with aoe AA’s. Then a lot more naturally AOE skills, and so on and so forth.
The DPS contribution between Swordsmen and their contemporaries gets overstated although again Circling does help a lot to make those gaps.
I’m starting to think that you’re just doing this mathematically instead of actually experiencing playing an archer yourself.
A party goes walk, taunt, use buffs, kill/heal, walk. with that in mind you could use your buffs in an even more proper way and have it almost ready every wave, not just mindlessly using them. This would apply though if we are talking strictly about bosses, stationary parties won’t even be included here due to mob respawn time.
and if you haven’t noticed, upgrading archer weapons seems to do a lot more than just flat damage, that’s another thing.
I have 4 different archers and only 2 swordsmen. Not including Ktos and ICBT2 (in which case, yeesh)
If you go on a Per wave basis, Steady aim craps all over Swift steps damage contribution even in its nerfed state and yet most archers salivate over Swift steps attribute (which is fine given its only 1 rank, vs 3 ranks for Swift Step 15). Again, to repeat strongest buffs are Sneak Hit and Running shot. If you’re just going for boost in a moment, nothing changes except running shot not being relevant to skill damage and Steady Aim > Swift Step not including steady aims attribute which gives it even more damage.
Swordsman C1 buffs aren’t poor either given the buffs of Concentrate and Gung-ho are around 10% damage together when you’re hitting for 2k (5% at 4k)damage depending on your levels invested in them, Frenzy and Warcry can’t be permanently maintained but still contributed to that average as well.
Don’t be so bleak. Current trend of Swordsmen buffs has had them competitive with Archer buffs for the ranks at which they’re obtained (as in stronger at the time). Gung-ho and Concentrate out-perform Swiftstep for a considerable amount of time. At which point Frenzy/Warcry come onto the seen as a barb. Sneak hit then comes into play as a rogue, and then Deeds blows it all apart.
No one is doing anyone any favors by underselling swordsmen’s damage output.
@const.alexander
That’s a trade off for going that route. However to note is that Hoplite/Dragoon get bonuses for enemy size.
So, is it ok to get only a rank of Pelt? I am planning to make a Cata 3 / Dragoon build for GvG and thought of this build here:
Well, most popular dd swordsman build hoplite-dopel-dragoon have no strike damage at all. And few builds have 1-2 skills with one of the damage types, with cd without overheat…
As I know most popular cata build is highlander c2 - cata c3 - dragoon.
We are back here with you comparing a Rank 6-7(or 8) buff against lower tier archer buffs.
These lower tier archer buffs have better sustain overall compared to our current version of warcry and frenzy. and these archer buffs have little to no downsides on them, sneakhit is one, but it’s not even a big drawback for an archer to shoot at an enemy’s back.
Currently, for swordsman classes only DOV really shines in terms of amplifying damage, and it has a great deal of drawback at that, Obtained at rank 6 and a huge def loss.