I think the main problem with Swordsmen isn’t just the cooldown of abilities, but the scaling of abilities, lack of AoE ratio increase options from skills/gear, and the animation time/delay of abilities.
Not only that, but its much more forgiving to just play an Archer or Wizard to kill mobs quickly and safely at a distance, as opposed to being close to mobs and get pelted down by their attacks without something to compensate for having to do so. Swordsmen won’t have as many opportunities to attack mobs as Archers and Wizards do, so their kit has to take that into account.
I’m not saying “Make Swordsmen as good as Archers and Wizards”, I’m just thinking that Swordsmen abilities should have the following buffs:
-Animation cancel by jumping
-Reduced animation time of abilities
-Reduced animation delay of abilities
-Increased/adjusted hitbox-size of abilities
-AoE Ratio increase options in base Swordsmen tree and other trees and/or more gear options that increase AoE Ratio… and it should be more common.
-Higher damage increase per level of abilities
-Attributes that decrease the charge-time of charge-based skills like Cartar Stroke, Cata abilities, etc… and/or an attribute that reduces knockdown and rank 1 CC chances while charging such abilities to make them more worth using.
-And sure… better cooldowns of abilities… seriously can’t wait until we get Skyliner from kToS…
-Percent-based increases as opposed to flat ones (Frenzy and Warcry, for example, should give a percent increase like Archer skills do).
It’s really sad to want to use a cool skill like Barbarian’s “Stomping Kick” only to realize it suffers from a lot of the issues already mentioned (high Animation time, high animation delay, low AoE Ratio and low AoE Range). The cooldown is fine considering it has 3 charges, but please make such skills worth using…