Tree of Savior Forum

Objective Disadvantages of Swordsman

There have been many topics about Swordsmen balance. In this topic I don’t want to argue about Swordsmen being balanced or unbalanced, what I want to do is make a list of objective disadvantages the Swordsman class has. I want to reiterate the word objective. The idea is to achieve a list that is 100% correct, to a state where no one can argue with it. I want this to be a quick reference list we can all use. The point of this is to paint a basic picture about the difficulties of this class. I hope it can serve as a guide and as a reference for further debate. Feel free to correct and argue anything I have said, I’m aiming for correctness. Please add to the list with anything you can think of. Remember, we’re trying to find an objective list, data and logic is strongly encouraged, I don’t want this to be a complaining thread, I just want to find objective truths about the state of Swordsmen. I plan on keeping this list up to date for months to come, as well as crossing things off as the game further evolves. Thanks in advance for any discussion.

Index

1. Melee
2. Repair
3. Three Stats
4. Damage and Survivability
5. Skills Don’t Scale
6. Magic Defence
7. Small Hit Boxes
8. Weak Single Target Auto Attack
9. Skill Rotations
10. Unable to Move During Attack
11. No Auto Weapon Switch
12. Knockdown
13. Higher Level Enemies

1. Melee

Fighting in melee is a disadvantage. That means being in range of the enemy, a Swordsman has to cover more distance when running from heavy AOE, or range limited attacks. The extra movement means Swordsmen have less of an opportunity to do DPS, it also means not always making it out of enemy range in time so they end up taking additional damage. Fighting in melee range also means being knocked down more, further adding to less DPS. Enemies running away further hinders Swordsmen as you then have to chase after them, oppose to just using a quick range attack to end it. Melee is also a huge disadvantage in PVP, as enemies can run away while attacking you, and can do more damage to you as you’re closing the distance. Another problem is fighting higher level enemies, which, due to damage, can make it very difficult to contribute to the fight, (see 13.) for more details.

2. Repair

Point one leads me to the next point, repair. Swordsmen have to repair their equipment more, even if they are a DPS build and aren’t taking aggro. Due to being in melee range they will end up taking more damage then their counter parts who don’t have to be in range of enemy attacks. So in the end, they have to repair their equipment more.

3. Three Stats

Although there are full STR, CON, and DEX builds, I would argue the majority of players pursue some kind of synthesis of the three stats. This means they can’t always min-max as much due to spreading the stats around. Also, if a Swordsman wants decent defence against Magic Attack, they’d need to invest into SPR, investing into four stats would be sacrificing survivability or attack. (See 6.) for more details on magic attack/defence.

4. Damage and Survivability

What I mean by this is sacrificing damage to have some survivability, or the other way around. It seems an example of a good balanced build is a full CON cleric. They have high survivability, to an extent where they can tank (minus aggro pulling,) while still doing comparable, if not more damage. I am using this as an example, my point is finding a balance is difficult for Swordsmen, especially when there are other potentially better options out there.

5. Skills Don’t Scale

Most Swordsmen skills don’t scale. Most give a flat value and even max attributed are at best mediocre. In regards to the C1 Swordsman skills, Concentrate, Gung Ho, and Pain Barrier don’t scale. Concentrate barely adds any damage and using it past the very early levels is not even worth it, plus it has a short duration for the damage you do get. Gung Ho has a decent duration, but the damage gained isn’t much, plus there is a penalty just for using it. Pain Barrier also doesn’t last long, and when fighting enemies that have knockdown, especially since most Swordsman are tanks. On top of all this, you have to cast three skills just for some mediocre effects, that’s just further wasted time.

Note: 16-08-2016 Update has made Concentrate scale

6. Magic Defence

Swordsman take more damage due to melee range (see 1.) This becomes even worse because there is no good way to defend against magic, without taking other penalties. A Swordsman could switch to cloth armour in the middle of combat, but that’s just more things a Swordsman has to do to stay alive. The alternative is putting points in to SPR, but that has heavy penalties. (See 3.)

7. Small Hit Boxes

On both auto attacks, and skills the hit box and range are small. It is incredibly easy to miss, with the enemy being able to move only slightly to waste the entire skill. Even with a spear the hit boxes and range are much to short. With Swordsman’s low SP, missing a skill just makes it even worse. (See 3.) as to why investing in more stats like SPR is usually harmful.

8. Weak Single Target Auto Attack

Swordsman objectively, do less damage on auto attack. Especially combined with small hit boxes, (see 7.) which can cause you to miss, further decreasing the already low damage.

Note: They have a good auto attack against multiple enemies.

9. Skill Rotations

This is partially build dependant. There simply isn’t a lot of skill rotation that takes place. You can’t combo your skills up other then maybe a debuff then a skill attack, that’s really it. Combine this with the small hit boxes (see 7.) which can cause the few skills that you have to miss, and it’ll severely damage your DPS output.

10. Unable to Move During Attack

Swordsmen are unable to attack and move/rotate at the same time. This causes problems especially when you take into account the hit boxes. (See 7.)

11. No Auto Weapon Switch

Swordsmen have no auto weapon switch, it has to be done manually, on top of having to be done manually, it causes frame drop causing it to sometimes not work correctly.

12. Knockdown

Originally I added this to the first point, (see 1.) but I feel that it requires its own section. Swordsmen spend a lot of time getting knocked down, and the only way to really prevent this is Pain Barrier, unfortunately Pain Barrier has issues of its own (see 5.) Being knocked down is devastating in PVP, and PVE. (See 1.) for more details.

13. Higher Level Enemies

This is very related to point one, (see 1.) however, with the recent mission changes it has become more apparent then ever this is a serious disadvantage. Fighting in melee against higher level enemies is extraordinarily difficult. For reasons mentioned in point one, (see 1.) it can be difficult to avoid AoE attacks, or a quick aggro switch from a boss, and a Swordsman may get hit, but due to the level difference the damage can be enormous. If the Swordsman is a tank, they may be okay, but due to things like Magic Defence being difficult to obtain (see 6.) even they may have a borderline impossible time of contributing. Compared to ranged classes, who don’t need to be in range of enemy attacks often, melee at times is basically not viable. The ranged classes can just keep doing DPS out of most of the harms way, even a lower level can be a major contributor because they’re not taking damage. A lower level Swordsmen however, may not be able to risk getting in close enough to do damage, because the damage they receive is simply to much.

23 Likes

yeah. it’s come up a lot. not sure what the reasoning is for swordsman having rubbish damage and not necessarily much better tanking. they need more access to skills or buffs that defend against magic, or, damage equal to wizards. without bumping aoe ratio probably.

2 Likes

Even a quick temporary solution would be heavily buffing the Swordsman C1 buffs. They don’t scale, and Concentrate and Pain Barrier don’t last near long enough. It’s honestly not worth the time to cast Concentrate, more damage is done just by autoing for the extra few seconds. I think I’ll add that to the list actually, buff’s that have no scaling and don’t really last long enough. Even Gung Ho barely increases damage, and on top of that there is a penalty for using it. They’re just bad skills.

The sub point of being melee

  • Small hit box of skills. Out of all trees I play, swordman is the easiest to miss.
  • Few rotations + subpar auto attack damage. I never understand the point of this. Most swordman builds have really few skill rotations (only highlander and fencer are abundant in skills). I am fine with auto attacking if it is somewhat useful, but it’s really weak. Comparing to wizard, same damage, but wizard attack can’t be missed or blocked. And archer and cleric have higher auto attack damage (lol wut?)
  • No reach. Being melee is on thing, having no means to close gap or catch opponent at range is another. Somehow, swordman has both
1 Like

Concentration has already been buffed on KTOS and scales with STR and DEX.

By the way, if you want to cast Concentrate/Gung Ho faster, you can cancel its buff animation by jumping.

As soon as it’s in ITOS I’ll edit the list. Thanks for the tip on jumping. :slight_smile:

Absolutely, I’ll add all three to the list immediately. Thanks.

IMO, atm we need rework on sw skills, like scaling % damage, and the skill cast animation are sucks. (im playin high 3 dopp2) Most of high3 and dopp 2 skills, got like 0.5s cast time animation, unless you use pain barrier, mostly mobs lv 240+ will knock you down.

AA is nice with my dopp 2 build, FOR under 10k hp mobs. (you’ll find some under 10k mobs on high lv ex. workshop and inves room)

And maybe IMC should make sw AoE skills became “true aoe”, ex cyclone got 9AOE, if you got 6 medium size monster, you’ll only hit 5, bc medium size mobs “eat” your aoe by 2.

2 Likes

We definitely need a rework on skill scaling. Auto attack in general seems to be lacking, but agreed that it’s okay on low HP mobs. As for “true AOE”, I see this as an opportunity to make the circles different. Some circles should have an emphasis on “true AOE” while other are more focused on doing higher damage to smaller amounts of targets. They tried doing this but it seems to have failed, (Sword vs Spear for example.)

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Yeah, it just doesn’t make any sense that archer skills scale by %, but swordsman skills do not.

It would make more sense if it was the other way around, since Archers already have the vantage of being ranged dps. (I don’t think it should be like this though; every damage skill should be % based).

Swordsmen should be rewarded for using melee weapon, but they’re not. There is just no advantage to being in melee, the extra HP Swordsmen get is simply not enough to counter the major drawbacks.

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I just want more aoe attack ratio and slight wider hitbox as a fencer. I also would like to have a chance to block magic auto attacks but no more than that. I hope that special armor set they’re working on strictly for swordsman has good amount of magic defense. I’ve always thought concentrate should be some sort of dex boost as the name implies while gungho adding a small % damage.

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All Swordsman need a wider hitbox, but I play Hoplite so I’m spoiled a bit, I feel for you fencers. I think it would be great for Blocking to at least have the chance of minimising the damage received from magic attacks, that seems like a great compromise. As for Concentrate and Gung Ho, maybe they should just combine them, having to launch a bunch of different buffs that don’t last long anyway is incredibly tedious. I think another idea would be moving Guardian to Swordsman C1, and letting us switch between the two, while removing the disadvantages of both. Want more DPS? Sure, go with Gung Ho, want some Defence? Go for it with Guardian.

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Some said that cyclone are “king of aoe” within sw class skills, yet you cant hit more than 5 for med-size, and 3 for large-size.

Oh… dont forgot the next update about cards system, the cards effect favor… you know wiz and archer. LMAO.

[Chapparition Card] Increases magic attack power by [★]% for 10 seconds when using an SP Potion.
R7 wiz with 7pcs *10 chapp cards?

[Werewolf Card] When attacking there’s a [★]% chance your attack will be judged as attacking from behind.
R7 rogue anyone?

meanwhile on phys attack…
[Genmagnus Card] Increases physical max attack by +[★]

you can get % increase on damage but it depend on monster type,size or element.

[Reaverpede Card] Increases damage on medium sized monsters by [★]%.

dunno about this one, you cant get stunned when PD is around with BL.
[Minotaur Card] When dealing physical damage, there’s a [★]% chance to inflict the stun debuff for 3 seconds.

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Our straight hitbox is pretty good atm with the recent hitbox but I dunno if IMC will widen our hitbox since it goes against the concept of the class. The one skill that has a preety annoying hitbox is Flaconnade. The thing is that swordies scale so bad with dex stat tbh compare to archers that we’ll need a lot of investment into it if we ever want decent crit rate without hoplite 2 at least. There’s a lot of rework to be done tbh. Dragoon skills need more overheats or better scaling

I dunno if IMC will ever introduce automatic weapon swapping as it drastically makes a huge improvement in dps in certain builds or I’ll need to make a guide about a work around it -___-

It depends on what IMC does. If they let Swordsmen rotate/move during attack then sure, that’s fine. But if they don’t allow for rotation/movement, then they need to widen the skill radius.

true true. /20characters

Aren’t Swordsmen going to be able to use the card system?

i mean, the cards effect (for now) are more favorable to wiz and archers.
sw can use cards too, but you know, no scaling % damage on patk (like chapp card that inc matk in %)

Oh, yeah I looked over the entire post. (Here for anyone reading: http://www.tosbase.com/news/243/Upcoming-Feature-Monster-Card-Equip-System/)

I see what you mean. I honestly don’t get it. I just want some communication from IMC. Even if I disagree with their reasoning I’d just like to know why they balance the classes the way they are.