The intention of the thread is to point out disadvantages, melee is a disadvantage, there should be some benefits or other balances to make melee worth it. That being said…
You’ve persuaded me, you make very good points. Making damage type more effective by both decreasing the penalties, and increasing the advantages emphasises the unique system that Swordsmen have access to.
Swordies skills should have a second or less invincibility/superarmor frames. Doesn’t feel right if your a barbarian and small mobs or enemies can easily push your around instead of trading blows with it.
I’m not sure if this at all has been mentioned, but it does pertain to mobility. I’d like if swordsmen had some type of stat based immunity (stat based to provide some type of balance for PVP) to movement interruption. It would be some type of calculation involving STR and DEX
As it is currently: Group Mob - Input Turn - Get Hit/Turn Interruption - Skill Whiff
You can always run out more to turn, but then the grouping has a chance to widen, killing some AOE. It would help in grouping flank enemies in your attack as well.
This would only apply to basic enemy attacks, though, not skills.
That’s a very good point. I feel like knockdown/push resistance needs to be increased across the board for Swordsmen especially, (maybe Clerics as well.) Just a few minutes ago I ran a mission with three of us being Swordsmen, literally just people flying around getting knockdown even if we blocked. Hard to tank when you can’t even pop an HP potion cause you’re knocked down.
Good idea, it would help in PVE too. And like PantsuWarrior mentioned, having normal enemies knocking Swordsmen around so easily is ridiculous, and I think some of the boss knockdown gets a little out of hand as well.
I would prefer if Stabbing get turned into a buff. Something like:
After (X) consecutive normal attacks Stabbing animation starts. It has 3 stages that increases damage per stage.
stage1:after 3 consecutive hits
stage2:after stage1 5 consecutive hits, damage +10% stabbing speed +20%
stage3:after stage2 7 consecutive hits, damage +20% stabbing speed +30%
Just some idea 
Swordie Powerhouse/Assassin builds, Plate for tanks Leather for DPS specialists 
Edit: another idea
Running/Dashing for 3sec provides ‘Momentum’ buff: ending dashing with skill/attack increases damage by 10% and atkaoe ratio by 3 and 20% to cause knockdown on target.
I’m not sure about Stabbing like that. That seems to limit a hoplites options. I’m 152 right now, C5, so I go:
Spear Lunge->Pierce->Spear Lunge->Stabbing
Having Stabbing become automatic causes me to have to either time when I use Spear Lunge or just guess. A combo idea like that is pretty cool though.
Stabbing is fine, great burst damage if use properly. One thing tho, its animation should keep target stuck in it. Stabbing is useless in pvp is even if you manage to catch someone noob enough to be caught in its low animation, they can just move away
Swordman just need buff for ASPD
I’m not sure just increasing attack speed will fix all the imbalances but it would fix a lot of the issues when it comes to skills specifically. Fully agree on Stabbing, making it pin targets in place would be great. It’s essentially useless in PVP, and even sometimes in PVE.
All …in this game all is a disadvantage for swordsman. I am serious. And it is alarmingly stupid.
I realized some, if not most of the R7 skills are single hit (and most likely R8 too)…
If you look at it closely, that makes skills like Gae Bulg absolutely bad compared to the worst multi hit skills, I would love it if single hit skills actually had % damage instead of flat damage…maybe they were meant to be one hit, but that doesn’t mean they were meant to be worse than R4~R3 skills…
I’m pointing this out mainly because of Dragoon C2’s new skill which looks like a copy paste of Gae Bulg minus the spear grabbing part, while the damage can look pretty nice:
It is still one hit, 10k in one hit on a 2H spear from a R7 C2 looks terrible to me.
we still don’t really know if it works the same or if IT IS % damage on low gears, but its best to leave this suggestion here.
Oh and, while we’re at it, maybe some of the buffs among concentrate/gungho/guardian/pain barrier should go to the 2nd row of the buff slots…
Thanks for getting some actual numbers. Although we don’t know the equipment and gems, the skill does look somewhat weak, and this is on top of the other disadvantages Swordsmen suffer from.
I’ve never understood the trend of arrows being more deadly than a full blade to the body.
Melee is a huge disadvantage that’s made a lot more apparent in this game than others due to the fact that almost all bosses have huge aoe skills that can almost half health you easily, regardless of the defense you have.
I actually like the stance idea and I believe that would actually help out a LOT. Having stances just based off of stat’s would be a concept too. Would make people feel better about stat distribution and what not.
Another important thing to note is that as Swordsman, we are running the same speed as other classes. We do have a run mechanic, yes; however, the fact that it drains our stamina so fast is pretty ridiculous. They can run away for a little bit, we’re out of stamina and we’re now at another HUGE disadvantage. I suppose this is fixed by the mounting classes, which I can’t complain about that unless it comes to PVE. Just seems odd that we aren’t able to even have access for a quick get in and get out approach in order for survivability during PVE.
The stance idea seems really solid. A removal of the negative effects and making them purely positive would probably be the most balanced.
For the movement speed, a partial solution could be giving many different circles access to similar skills as the Hoplite’s Long Stride, expect maybe less cool down and more overheat. Either way, you do being up a good point about mobility.
Good news from the last patch, Concentrate now scales with STR and Dex.
The threat should be toggle able.
For example, I usually always play with provoke disabled. Don’t need additional aggro on my DPS build, even though I took a circle of pelt.
I don’t see why not, that would allow for further customisation.
I meant to say i always have provoke disabled. Unless there is a healer and i am expected to tank.
Meanwhile, Lancer gets to have 3 neato burst skills (I won’t even mention the bonus effects/debuffs they do):
Crush - ez 6 digits
Headstrike - 40% crit chance + 30% 2.5s stun chance (add Restrain and do the math)
Quaintain - 2-hit skill
1st hit
2nd hit
I won’t take those videos as reference because if I’m not mistaken:
-All skills does 80k+ total, regardless of class, no debuffs involved.
-The character there is using Lolopanther 2H spear, and its glowing which means past +15, I won’t be surprised if it was +100.
Which makes the easy 6 digits multi hit kind of invalid, I will stick to KR player’s opinion saying Lancer is bad for PVE, or at least, worse than others.
Yeah, as I’ve said in other threads, it’s all theorycrafting for us right now since we really don’t have enough solid info about the R8 classes yet. We are also not sure if IMC will or will not make adjustments that would make the iTOS version of these different to the kTOS ones.