Tree of Savior Forum

[PVE] What about Hop2 Cata1 instead of the usual Hop3?

So I’ve been interested in Swordsmen lately, mainly Dragoon because their costume is pretty kickass imo.

I’ve been searching for the builds, and most of them recommend sw1>pelt1>hop3>dopel>dragoon.

What if I take one rank of cata, so it becomes sw1>pelt1>hop1>cata1>hop2>dopel>dragon?
Is it worth it in the long run (so far)? I want cata because of the mount, and I don’t really mind not having 100% uptime of trot.

I haven’t decided yet what to be at rank 8, but probably I’ll go dragoon c2 because of dethrone.
I don’t have any plan to PvP or GvG at all with this one build, just straight PvE.

Thank you.

Edit: the skills will be something like this perhaps?
https://tos.neet.tv/skill-planner#1134749.23324555.153545.1a293a71.11253544.153555

Just my 2 cents:

If you’re going to be maining this for the long haul, it might be best to go with what’s conventional and somewhat tried-and-tested (by others) than what you think is theoretically convenient/good. Learned this the hard way (wasted hours). That’s just IMO. If you have the time though, you are always free to experiment with different builds until you find what you’ve been looking for.

On topic, considering you’re only going to be using it for PVE, you’d want a more optimal PVE build and having just 1 rank of Cata alone kinda messes that up.

I’d suggest dropping the Cata1 idea (it’s still OK for other builds like Squires and such) and instead go Sw2 Pel1 Hop2 Dop1 Goon2 (if you don’t like Hop3).

Having higher P. Barrier uptime will benefit you alot especially since you’re a melee class. As they say, a knocked down / staggered DPS is no DPS. Also, at high level maps where monsters can chain knockbacks/knockdowns, it becomes even more valuable than ever.

Restrain, while only level 5, can be boosted with Seedmia gem and Durandal to get to lv.8 (even lv.9 w/ cleric’s d.might buff) making it more than half as good as a maxed out one.

A higher level in Concentrate helps with your damage a bit (better than nothing) especially since 3 Goon skills are true multihits.

Gung Ho can stay at whatever level you’re comfortable using it with (since it does reduce def). I’d suggest lv.3 just for the attribute.

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I for one, look up to cata1 coz pet stat has no limit

if you play the game for 3years, imagine the extra hp/evasion/pdef you can get juz from cata1 (though probably need more than 3000mil silver investment though…)


plus now, pet can equip item, right?

so does the pet equipment bring over to your character when mounted?

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I do find Cata1 valuable in PVP. Impale, E.Wave and Trot (despite the uptime) bring CC and mobility to the table.

As for upgrading pets - I kinda stopped caring about it when IMC introduced pet bonus buffs. I mean: OBT I got spikey (being a Hunter I did upgrade his stats); then I get free Vel which actually has better stats than spiky; but oh that Penguin has mDef/pDef boost; later, you get crit rate from new ones. It prevents me from pumping silver into one pet because hell knows IMC might introduce a better one again.

If only they made it so that any stat investment in a pet is a team-wide thing and gets carried over to whatever new land mount you’re using, that would have been better.

The pet equipment feature might make me change my mind about it though.

Thanks for your input.

No, my problem doesn’t lie on hop3, but simply because I don’t know what else to remove/lower. I don’t think I should remove pelt for obvious reason. I was thinking about doppel, but cyclone is so satisfying to perform. So that’s why I decided to lower hop3 instead to hop2.

Also, you said [quote=“Biskee, post:2, topic:331935”]
and having just 1 rank of Cata alone kinda messes that up.
[/quote]
Can you (or anyone) elaborate more here, why? are maxed finestra and stabbing that important instead of lv 10 of each?

No that’s not what I meant. Hehe.

What I was trying to imply was that if you think you don’t need to go Hop3, you can pick Sw2 instead of Cata1 for reasons I explained in my 1st response. :slight_smile:

lmao I think we misunderstood each other here.

Let me phrase it better.
Why is cata1 bad, without mentioning sw2?

Cata is circle 3 or nothing.

The primary reason for getting Cata is mobility in the form of the skill, Trot.

Trot increases in player movespeed per level, +20 at level 15.

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I don’t like the idea of cata c1 instead of hop 3 for pvm.

Reasons:

  • Spear throw actually deals quite good dmg with Geras Spear (and I think it deals 3 hits now?).
  • Finestra 15 means you save 50 points in DEX.
  • Cata skills scale exponentially from class levels (Earth Wave will have both more atk and more number of hits, making it much better at cata c3 than cata c1)
  • Trot lvl 5 is underwhelming, it doesn’t boost your mov speed that much and being mounted means you lose on dash which gives you about the same mov speed as Trot 5 (slightly slower). It also doesn’t have 100% uptime

Mounting gives you the 25% hp bonus from your pet but I don’t think it’s worth cata 1 just for that. Evasion bonus is unecessary in pvm if you have Pelta and guardian lvl 1 (with reasonable dex).

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Guess I’ll just follow the mass now to avoid being too much of a burden in party play.
Btw thanks for all of your inputs, guys!

biskee is right, as a cataphract player i have to say i cannot imagine having only 1 cata circle, cataphract is a class that gets stronger the more circles and work you put into it, its a pvp class that never falls off while you reach circle 3
but the fact is, circle 1 does fall off, and cataphract generally doesn’t offer anything valuable for pve, if you really don’t want to go hoplite c3 you can do hop 2 corsair 2 dragoon.

Just as some additional info for this thread, Spear Throw dealing 3 hits now is in a pretty good shape:

His spear throw deals 30k crit damage on all three hits per mob in a nice AoE with zero cooldown. Only downside is the somewhat long animation.