Let me ask you something… If that build is so bad - despite its popularity - what would be a viable GvG/PvP build? I believe without Cata3 Swordies can’t even reach other players.
Pet1 really adds nothing to the build (some say the +25% HP helps a lot) but you can’t say Hop1/Cata3/Dragoon isn’t a viable PvP build, right?
Swordy 3 - Cata 3 - Dragoon/Doppel is way stronger and the only solid PvP/GvG Swordman build.
I had a 280 Hoplite Petla Cata on Ktos and it was awful, then I made a SW3 Cata and I was able to destroy nearly everything, but it was harder to level in PVE.
On the subject of archer buff vs swordie buff
" I even went so far as to explain that the buffs all improved with Rank, where Swordsman buffs stood out well at the Rank they’re given. "
I honestly don’t understand why the two are even getting compared when you’re ignoring the glaring fact that
A: swordsman is melee. Has to be at melee range to hit.
B: Melee has awkward hit box and targeting system (to the point that the game literally tells you that using your mouse to play might not be viable).
Having “slightly better buff” and “more potential damage” on paper doesn’t take account into the fact that you’re constantly getting kited and interrupted it’d take team work for you to get 1 combo off, whereas archer can just reliably dps from afar. It also doesn’t change the fact that you’re more liable to take damage as a frontliner and building evasion sux dik against magic damage.
The fallacy of dps swordsman only exist in dreams and pvp, where you have some chance against archers because you have skills that makes you resistant to kb, and that’s only if you build your character specially around pvp. Even then, you still get destroyed by wizards.
All these dps trees tbh are so baffling to me i do not understand why they’re even in the game.
Pretty unfair but true, after 4 swordsman characters I finally tried an archer. Well… Idk how IMC should buff swordsmans offensive potential to convince me return.
DPS swordsman is a dream right now. Hope it will become true some day and somehow.
How many times have I addressed this already.
Snipe’s damage significance 400% scaling isn’t remotely a large deal it’s from its 5997 base damage.
There are many skills in this game with higher damage scaling through their multi-hits then Snipe with inherit aoe to boot. But again you’re part of a group of the playerbase using vacuum comparisons and then removing any context.
Snipe uses 4x your physical attack and the skills base damage.
Zucken does 4x your physical attack and the skills Base damage, defense is calculated 4x. As a slashing type move it can get 50% more damage per hit on Cloth enemies for potential scaling of 6x (notably if someone uses Armor Break)
Zucken however has significantly lower base damage then Snipe.
There’s a difference from 5997 x4 vs 732 x4 or even 732 x 6.
The point of discussing Barbarians buffs was the argument about how “poor” swordmans buffs are when they’re not weak and how as the game progresses Archers and Swordsmen both get progressively stronger buffs in later ranks. Although whatever, miss the whole point.
Players often want to compare swordmen skills vs Snipe when Snipes main advantage is having an extremely high base damage in exchange for its lack of AOE prior to Circling and Joint Penalty support.
As we see from Pyromancers Fireball 15 (1500% of your magical attack), Multi shot 15 (1500% of your physical attack) Frost cloud (3100% of your magical attack), Possession (3000% of your magical attack) Carter Strike (600% your physical attack), hexen dropper, cyclone, Barrage, gravity pole, etc. There are a lot of moves with better damage scaling then flipping Snipe.
Snipe has the highest Base on a single hit of any skill prior to modifiers/multi-hits.
IMC in exchange throws whatever % they want, but the game isn’t operating like that. To make comparable damage they have to break into unrealistic %'s from what they normally follow. Base damage increases as you rank up, however Swordmen skills have generally low bases, and there are a few skills that have a decent amount of hits to make up for this.
Their buffs are already potent.
For instance they can increase the physical contribution of STR 30%, but you’re still looking at 732 base vs 5997 for instance. Where you might try to leverage the difference by Swordsmens AOE ratio vs Snipe but then Circling and Joint Penalty’s support marginalize aoe ratio.
How you went back to Zornhau I’ll never know.
At this point im at a loss and don’t think you’re even reading.
I’ve written (admittedly lengthy posts) going on multiple skills and hitting the r7 options and yet again you’re take-away is “He talked about deeds”.
I don’t want to assume you’re an idiot, but when you have that much content and sum it down to “he went on to deeds”, I’m not sure what to think of your reading comprehension.
This games pathing is very, simple.
You get damage skills, higher rank classes have higher skill bases.
These skills have modifiers, or they hit multiple times, or they feature Crowd Control/debuffs. To some extent there is aoe vs ST damage difference. The long and short is that you know the damage output of every skill by its hit count, modifiers and bases. Swordmens don’t have the damage bases that the other classes have and outside of Cyclone there isn’t the multi-hits. The buffs are fine, as is the scaling. Swordmens always going to have trouble when the game prioritizes a High base or a large volume of hits.
Same deal Sadhu’s eventually realize when Astral Body Explosions scaling means nothing because it’s base damage isn’t competitive. 400% x 0 is 0 (exaggeration).
At this point I’m thinking that you have not much experience about swordsman classes anymore and have been basing and numbers completely.
What did you want to talk about again? Comparing warcry on archer buffs? we’ve been there. It’s not reliable. Gungho and Concentrate? It’s more of a chore than a buff late game, you do 6000s per hit and concentrate adds 100 per hit.
Frenzy needs setup
Deeds needs setup
Warcry needs mobs to be near you
Archer buffs?..hah.
Oh let’s not forget swordsman buffs have downside on them,
Finestra locks you to spears, you lose evasion
Gungho reduces defense.
Deeds loses defense.
Warcry and Frenzy mentioned before.
The exaggeration of swordmen weaknesses followed by attacking parts of the kit that are already fine and sufficient.
With the general forum shouting out for a lack of % scaling, when Swordmen just lacks base damage on skills.
You attacked Deeds, as I brought it up in my post about Dragoon and Doppel’s damage contributions.
And yes, even without sneak hit, you’d be doing a lot more consistently than a frenzy or warcry. you are now back to gungho and concentrate, you’re probably not going to use frenzy too much as well if you’re grinding.
Ktos buff is perfect to balance things out a bit, which we do not have yet so I don’t really know.
That’s the difference of damage skills, not buffs.
Good grief. You even quoted it where the reality is that Swordsmen buffs are competitive for the ranks at which they’re obtained.
A Wugushi (for example) isn’t out shredding a Cata because of buffs, but because its skills are that potent at single-target damage.
Steady Aim 20% Doesn’t put Ranger over Highlander, You can go right back to ICBT2, change Steady aim to 20% (and the missile penalty) and Highlander will still shred faster. Difference is again damage skills (3x overheat on Barrage instead of what used to be 2).
The vacuum individual comparisons simply don’t work.
That /is/ the problem…and why people are having a hard time dealing dps as a swordsman post 200.
Basing on numbers alone and not experience, simply won’t work.
And no matter how you see it, these buffs actually matter on boosting archer skills, rather than swordsman buffs like concentrate which adds a flat 100, or gungho which adds 7X base damage while also eating your defense.
Oh and again with the base damage, that’s another problem.
EXACTLY my respose too. As a swordy-pelt-barb3-doppel c2, we have 6 (yes, six) buffs to keep on ourselves to even be NEAR the damage of other classes. Most of these buffs have a small timer and we have to be CONSTANTLY refreshing them, thus decreasing our overall DPS even MORE. Let’s count:
Warcry - (useless unless you are around a lot of mobs or inanimate targetable objects)
Frenzy - Have to STACK them per auto attack. Meaning you have to slowly ramp it up before it becomes any useful. And even then if you mistakenly auto attack something not other than your target it gets reset.
Gung Ho - Horrible skill late game (I’m talking 225+). Barely useful if anything at all it’ll fall off horribly. Decent for leveling but that’s it. Even then it lowers your defense so wtf IMC? Punish us even more.
Concentrate - Your only decent buff past 225+ but it only lasts 45 seconds and wears off after a couple of hits.
Deeds of Valor - Great skill, but very punishable. Still have to constantly cast to keep uptime. Lowers defense even more.
Pain Barrier - You NEED this abilitiy especially because swordies are up close fighting the bosses and the bosses do a TON of cleave and aoe swipes. Not to mention the CD is horribly long and the duration of the skill is terribly short.
Not to mention I’m forgetting a plethora of other swordy subclass buffs. I swear it feels like we have more buffs than clerics (and their subclasses) at one point. I have to constantly be refreshing and applying these SIX buffs JUST to do decent damage end game. Shits ridiculous.
rebuffing our buffs actually feels better if they did more, not just mere flats, at some point I only used pain barrier because the difference on parties sweeping mobs isn’t even there despite using our buffs. Now tell a wizard to not use quick cast (with the attribute) or the archer to not use their buffs, you’ll notice something out of those numbers flowing.
Not remotely the problem. I don’t want to go over the numbers of archer buffs again.
Rogue Feint+Barrage is 10x hits per barrage cast, for a total of 30 hits per cooldown of Barrage. You can do that in 3 seconds and Rogue isn’t even FOTM, at R5. That’s before Sneak hit, Steady Aim or potential of 2h bow mastery. That’s not a problem of buffs. Not to say that archer doesn’t have dud attacks of their own. Note Doppel and Shinobi both give up safety for damage dealing as IMC clearly tries to find a way to resolve the HP gap in exchange for power (1.3x modifier for pumping STR anyone?).
Not remotely the problem yes, but it is a PART of it which I mentioned days ago. It is a problem of swordsman skills in their tree. Buffs fail with the exception of few, base damage is quite in the same case. I can only mention a few skills being worthy, I won’t even include sept etoiles because hexen shits over it
You guys are missing the fact that we have to run around and cast our buffs right in front of bosses and ■■■■. While archers and wizards can cast their buffs at a distance. This leaves us more prone to getting interrupted or attacked BECAUSE we’re so close. I mean yea, we’re swordies and we’re supposed to be up close but when we spend relatively 1/3 of our time just recasting our buffs and then getting hit in the face it’s not very fun. Not to mention if we decide to run away from the boss just to cast our buffs (so we wont be interrupted) then we gotta run BACK to the bosses AFTER the buffs which work further to diminish our relative DPS.
Whereas archers and wiz cast buff where they’re at and continue attacking no problem.
This discussion is pretty much pointless. You are just going back and forth.
There are 2 different matters in discussion here. One is how much lower a swordman dps is compared to archer/wiz.
They can tweak the buffs, or they can tweak the damage skills, it doesnt matter, give a doppel or a barb a 10 hits instant low cd skill and his damage will be a lot better.
The other matter is how some buffs are unreliable in the current context. Having to hit 10 melee basic attacks to get 200 attack is just not worth it, on most situations you actually lose dps doing that. Removing that requirement is a must. Is it way too op to have a flat 200 attack buff?. If they dont remove that requierement, then the buff has to be much better, to make up for all the dps you are losing doing those autoattacks.
The 1.3x modifier is nice, but it is hardly enough by itself, as the total dps output increases just a little more than 5%. I cant say if putting together all the buffs ktos has on swordsmans will be enough, we may have to wait and see what happens there.
hmmm. And here I am a pelt C3 > Squire C1… going C3…sometimes questioning myself on why I got to this route. What am I thinking? This aint ragnarok Paladin… till I read this thread. lol haha. Hopefully all my hardwork will pay off in 200 levels above… cause I always envy those 2hand wielding jumping maniacs always killstealing me whenever I grind…
I’m up to 223 so far from nothing but soloing and lvl 100+ missions and my build is Swordie>Highlander>HopliteC2>Cataphract>Doppelsoldner>Dragoon
And swordsman buffs compete for cleric buffs and …swiftsteps