2.- If you watch the streams of the korean server, people are already 160~180+, and the mobs have been pretty much as easy as ever.
3.- In my opinion mixing Highlander with Fencer isn’t that much of a good idea after the changes on kOBT, but if you think that is the best tank build in the game, then use that one.
I can’t give you much help with your minimal information posts, with no explanation of what you have found during your research so far, what you have thought about building so far and your questions about said build, and the “sighs”.
Yeeeeaaa…thing is, their are other highly experienced swordsman players that suggested Leather for a reason, and played multiple Sword builds to at minimum 80+ for a reason…think you yourself may wanna do some research. That and well, you yourself stated that it is the best tank build… its in your OP…
Swordsman -> Peltasta -> Highlander C3 -> Fencer
Advantages
Best tank in the game
Better at bosses than it’s counterpart
High burst damage through Lunge and Slash-type skills
Access to all types of damage: Strike, Slash, Pierce
Has consistent access to Bleeding
Has access to Armor Break
Can use a shield when required (Block)
Disadvantages
Has to stick with Rapiers, so it cannot use Cross Guard
Rapiers have low durability
Isn’t as good as mobbing as other builds
As long as you are using a spear, the buff will remain active in your stats window. This means that it will have effect on everything you do, including auto-attacking (primary and secondary) and skills.
The buff itself is not applied to the weapon, it is applied to your character.
No matter how you look at it, Plate gives the best stats all around for a Swordsman.
There is also the situation of particular builds. For example, Hoplite doesn’t really care about evasion and the stats Plate gives are better for those builds, while Corsair really likes to have the extra stamina so Plate is better too.
What about DEX builds, wouldn’t they want that extra evasion?
Not really. They are already building heavily into DEX (which gives Critical Rate, Evasion and Accuracy), and the amount of points they need to feel comfortable with their Critical Rate gives more than enough Evasion already.
The difference between Plate and Leather is only 94 Evasion, which isn’t gonna do much when you are already dodging as much as you can with your DEX alone.
No one has done extensive research on how Evasion works in the game yet, but there is definitely a soft cap as it is impossible to dodge 100% of the attacks.
Here is one my favorite videos about this topic that Mixology made to test Evasion in the game: ‘Perfect Dodge’ and Sadhu class
On the other hand, all the stats you get from Plate will help your build more since you can take advantage of them.
What about Vubbe Fighter Gloves and Cafrisun Set?
Cafrisun doesn’t work with Concentrate anymore. And in my opinion, in the first place it wasn’t worth giving up all the stats on better equipment to get a very small extra amount of damage.
Vubbe Fighter Gauntlets are nice to have at low levels, but eventually every build outgrows them. From my experience, it is around Rank 5+ when most people stop using them in their builds.
The gloves also got slightly more difficult to get now, and by the time you get them you might not even need them anymore. If you can get them sure, use them, but don’t go way out of your way to get them, it is not worth it.
Hoplite also doesn’t really need the gloves, since they get Finestra.
What about awakened items?
From my experience, even using the best awakened items still results in Plate winning over Leather.
You could go around and look at every possible combination of awakened items and find out one that could work better for one specific build while using Leather. But it wouldn’t apply to every Swordsman build, and overall most if not all the builds benefit from Plate more.
Vubbe gloves are useful in pve for as long as there isn’t better aoe gloves. And imo evasion is much more useful in in pve than defence and accuracy is much more useful in pvp.
Maybe from those sets plate is better, but maybe future will have actually better dps stats on leather.
That is the point though, once you are past certain threshold of evasion it means that adding any more results in a waste of stats. It is inefficient to force the use of Leather past that threshold.
Then you look at the difference of Accuracy between using one or the other, and it is not a meaningful difference that will have an impact on PvP (16 difference at level 120, 19 at level 170). Meanwhile the extra HP, Stamina and reduced Physical Damage from plate armor will have a much larger positive effect on PvP.
You can do the math yourself. Using leather is just not smart to get the most out of equipment.
Like you said, maybe it could change on the future. But that is a big maybe and basing conclusions on assumptions is never a good idea. So right now, backed up by real data, plate is better.
Plate is probably best in pvp, but i still think leather has more value in pve as i said vubbe gloves are useful and imo best gloves atm so you either go with 3 plate 1 leather or 4 leather.
But but but…what if your a swordy who has a Cleric > C2 Priest > C3 Paladin > PD buddy that is constantly with you healing, buffing, supporting, etc all the time, wouldst thou want thine leather then?
Also as for a tank build, honestly I want the hardiest build possible that can maintain threat. Whats your new recommendation since your original post builds are all now obsolete?
On the contrary, that just makes Plate even better.
The benefits it brings make your heals and buffs more efficient. And the combination of two people playing together makes it even more unnecessary to use Vubbe Gloves as a Swordsman, which is pretty much the only justifiable piece of Leather to use at low levels. This will hold true even better at higher levels, when both go into more difficult maps and the damage mitigation from Plate + Paladin will come handy for 3 star maps.
I mean, you say that, but at the same time don’t provide any elaboration to build the case where this would hold true.
From my part, I already provided you with:
A link to the entire Item Database.
A video where Evasion was tested and shows how it is impossible to 100% evade attacks.
Took the armor we have available at level 120 and 170 and made the basic math to compare them while using level 50 of their respective attributes.
Pointed out how different builds benefit more from using Plate instead of Leather .
Pointed out how there is a threshold for the Evasion stat and why Leather is bad in this case.
I gave exact numbers on how 4 pieces of Leather are inferior to 4 pieces of Plate, so the only remaining factor is the use of Vubbe gloves for a 1 Leather + 3 Plate armor set. For this, I already said that every build outgrows the use of Vubbe gloves.
Hoplite-based builds do it before everyone else because of Finestra, but other builds still require to get the most out of their skills until they get enough skills for their rotation (which happens around Rank 5+, but guaranteed at Rank 6). Corsairs want to use 4 pieces of Plate for the extra Stamina which helps with Double Weapon Assault, while Doppelsoeldner gets Cyclone and Fencer gets enough skills to fill their entire rotation.
There is also the fact that past Demon Prison, every map goes back to be a “quest map”, where mob spawns are low and instead of long fights there are small skirmishes where AoE Range doesn’t make any difference. It also doesn’t help when there are many people playing the game, so you have to compete for mobs in the map (this also happens at low levels), so AoE Range becomes meaningless in these situations.
Then there is party play (for grinding parties and dungeons).
AoE Range isn’t as effective as when one is alone, since every one in the party contributes with their skills to the total AoE of the party. And let’s be honest, most of the AoE damage comes from Mages/Clerics/etc (all kinds of different builds). Not to even mention how a linker practically nullifies the need for more AoE range.
At higher levels most content outside the “quest maps” are for parties, so the use of Vubbe gloves is unnecessary and the damage reduction from Plate becomes more valuable as mobs start dealing way more damage. At this point DEX builds already have way more Evasion than they need and it becomes more important to reduce the damage that does get through instead of getting more Evasion (because it won’t make a difference, as there is a threshold past which there is no more benefits gained from adding more to it).
This will be even more important with the addition of the 3 star maps past level 200, where more HP and straight up % damage reduction increase their value in a build.
I pretty much already covered everything on this topic, so I think this might be my last post on it. Anything else would just mean going around in circles again.
I do see the benefits of using Vubbe gloves for particular situations (solo grind at Mage Tower, for example), but for everything else Plate will be better and there is simply no justification for ever using 4 pieces of Leather as a Swordsman.
These things are easier to tell once one is playing the game, and most people are able to figure out why using Plate is better as they keep on getting more used to the game and reach higher levels (reason why it was extremely rare to see a level 200 Swordsman still using Vubbe Gloves during our last iCBT2).
Maybe I can’t convince you that using Leather is inefficient for PvE, and that is fine. I am just typing this for anyone who reads these posts in the future when looking for information or for me to reference when this question arises again.
Hm, well plate will add more defense and thus more defense from Aspersion…that and…heh…you should see what was just posted up on Chaplain Cleric class…Im kinda wondering if thats a troll… because it looks like a senior class to the Priest… http://www.tosbase.com/game/classes/Chaplain/
Any fencer builds that actually utilizes the fencer skills in pvp? No matter what I come up with, I can’t think of anything that will use fencer skills in the main combo.
Anything with Barbarian will probably go bash>x>helmchopper>Cleave> x. I guess you could put in the fencer skills in the x spots but I feel like everything else would do better than Fencer… Fencer is so pretty though.
Do you think it’s ok to go 3 plate + leather gloves? Or is the full set much better with the mastery?
When you PvP as swordman the first thing you need to think about is how to catch the opponent first.
While barbarian -> fencer path is quite good in throwing out skills, they lack that catching mechanic.
So basically you want to open with Seism for a chance to stun opponent in place, then helm chopper -> cleave (for crit) -> lunge (pierce weaken enemies) -> flanconnade continuously for damage.
Well it is possible i under value defence but imo physical defence has almost no value to me so only thing plate gives is the damage reduction % and hp so the question becomes do you have enough evade if yes then plate is better if no then leather. I don’t know how much evade is necessary so i had huge amount during icbt and i didn’t take damage from almost anything except magic so best armor would have been cloth and not plate.
Maybe you can swap gloves if you are in party and don’t need AoE but during 1-200 levels of icbt i always needed aoe more i could get better and i played barb which have large amount of aoe so classes like highlander will need vubbe gloves even more.
Vubbe gloves also give 10 Str for that i would probably wear them rather than the best plates that only give defence. In fact i would probably wear armor that gives 1 dex rather than any amount of defence because once you got high evade i only care for dps stats now maybe after 200 it becomes too hard to just wearing random ■■■■ but that is what i wore during icbt.
So as long as you don’t provide me with accurate evade math i will not know how much evade is needed only thing i know monsters will get more and more accuracy so evade will be needed pretty much always. I also don’t go for “full” dex builds i feel once you got decent enough for nice crit, nice dodge i feel str will give the most dps after that and con the best defence. So the more i can skimp from dex for dodge purposes is more i can put to str because items give great crit rates and evade and stats give great str and int.
Flanconnade, Attaque Coquille and Sept Etoiles have fast animations, so you can easily use those as damage fillers in between your other CC. Even though Lunge has a longer animation, you only really need to land the first hit for the debuff to apply, and you can follow it up with Seism. Esquive Toucher is bad though, so I wouldn’t use that one.
There isn’t a “perfect formula” for PvP. It is always about who gets more creative with their skills, tactics and general strategy to come out with the victory (better ping will always help too). Sure, PvP is bad at the moment because they still need to work on balancing skills/classes around a PvP mode, but that will come eventually.
For the 3 Plate + Vubbe gloves, I think it is fine if you have those gloves available to you (If you have to farm for hours to get them, it is not worth it). But like I said, every build outgrows them and eventually it is smarter to use 4 pieces of Plate instead of Vubbe gloves. For this, I say it is as soon as you get out of solo grinding Mage Tower (just before reaching Rank 5, or at Rank 5+). Hoplite-based builds don’t really ever need the gloves though, because of Finestra.
And it is not like you have to throw them away. If you ever feel like you could use them, then bring them out. If you feel like the extra damage reduction from 4 Plate would help you more, then switch to using that instead.
If you are a Corsair C2, you most likely want to stay with 4 pieces of Plate because of the extra Stamina.
I remember a guy on these forums raging about how evasion was broke in pvp on his lvl 17x Cata and my only question was “Are you still using vubbe gloves?” his response “Oops”. Vubbe gloves are good for low levels but severely over rated and over used.
