Tree of Savior Forum

SW3>CATA3>GOON2 or LANCE1 (STR or DEX?)

Class and Rank Swordsman
#1

Atm I am currently SW3>Cata2.

I recently made a switch from Cleric to Swordsman and I plan to play my cata3 as my main. ( Only have 2 characters and I just can’t stand Pala3,monk1,inquisitor anymore, they feel soo slow and need to setup everything in place before able to burst damage, I really enjoy playstyle of cata so far… all the charges attacks I’m loving it!)

But I am wondering if the concept of DEX>STR applies to swordsman as well? Previously I know inquisitors is better to go full dex. But what about swordsman?

Concentrate self-buff to my surprise, actually scales with STR and DEX! Currently I already have 30con, around 100+ dex. Should I cap my con at 30, dex at 150 and the rest into full STR? Or Reset my stats into full str? (I was in party with another SW3>Cata2 and he did more damage than me with STR+dex build. We have pretty similar gear, both of us lydeka, I use red gems and he used green gems)

Next question is… I can’t decide between Goon2 or Lance1… How is Lancer in PvE? I want to PvE alot!

edit: lastly, is it worth taking 1 point out of doom spike and earth wave to put into steed charge 1 and impale 1? It seems steed charge has a 300% attack modifier? Better than what most people say?

People also say gungho is better than concentrate but I think they are mistaken because concentrate now actually scales with STR and DEX compared to last time when they had no scaling at all.

edit2: Plate or Leather armor? I think plate is better if I add STR and more CON? But with most suggestion pointing to 30/50/100 con rest into DEX, isn’t leather armor better since leather armor scales with dex? But it feels wrong to wear leather armor though. Cataphracts, lancers and Dragoons are heavy armor class…

edit3: Did I screw up my SW3 skills? I actually got 0 in gungho and 15/15 in concentrate instead. But somewhere I read people get 3/15 gungho for the attribute. Maybe I should have went 15/15 gungho and 0/15 concentrate for a dex+con build without str?

#2

Full STR is strong at first because there’s barely any other source of damage. But as the other sources of damage increase (e.g. Transcended weapon, high-base damage skills), the impact of the Phys. Atk gained from STR decreases, and the impact of the Crit Rate gained from DEX increases.

Lancer isn’t very good when compared to Dragoon in PvE, and it’s too easy to compare them.

#3

Dex is superior until you can reach ~85-100% crit or if you need Block Penetration for some reason. I’d put a little more points into Con just to be safe as melee (though it doesn’t matter as much for Cata in PvE since you can move around pretty fast)

There is no “armor class”. I wear cloth on pretty much any char for the magic resist.
Back in R7 it was plate for everyone.

1 point out of Earth Wave for Steed Charge is fine. It’s really up to preference.

#4

In this case, should I go for leather armor instead of plate?

I know plate scales with HP so the more HP you have the better it will be. Oh and for Monks of course for more stamina to DP…

Leather scales with dex, so if I am going high dex with abit of con, no str, i think leather will be the obvious choice?

#5

Why is Lancer so bad? He seems pretty good at C1. Dethrone and Serpentine debuff are basically the only strong points of Dragoon C2, while Lancer still has 2 more Circles to bring better skills.

If it wasn’t for that high price of Lancers knockdown chance attribute, the class would be even better.

Any idea if Shinobi works well with Lancer?

About leather armor:
It’s quite the opposite actually as leather scales better with characters who have less DEX. The reason is that the armor mastery and the higher evasion rate provided by leather armor have a diminishing result in proportion to your level and DEX. E.g. if I invest into the attribute of Leather mastery I get 75 evasion at max attribute level with 4 parts of leather equipped.
75 Evasion is equal to the evasion at level 74 for a character with 1 DEX, and 50% for a character at lvl 149 with 1 DEX. If you invest in DEX, every point invested into DEX diminshes this further, and at some point, even your equipped shoes will give ~2 times the dodge rate of your leather armor mastery, not counting the 330 evasion from getting to level 330.

At max level without any equip or DEX, 75 evasion is basically only an increement of ~23%. That’s still good for any character without DEX, but bad for characters who have high DEX but don’t have buffs that can amplify the 75 evasion (e.g. Sadhus OOB attribute : Evasion1,5 or Archers Swift Step: Evasion1,06/-/*1,2).

At lvl 330 with Cloth shoes and 300 base DEX, the 75 evasion bonus would only have 10% impact on your total evasion.

So, leather is good on melee for early-midgame (lvl1 - ~lvl280) but falls off tremendously later on (unless you get Solmiki Leather set because of the evasion and attack bonus) on DEX builds.

On a side note: leather shoes in most cases only provide 15-20% more base dodge rate, and the increement per upgrade level is the same for same grade/level items, regardless of cloth,leather or plate.

#6

Thanks that was enlightning! Didn’t know it worked like that. So… should go plate mastery? Or cloth mastery? For a high dex build.

#7

Currently only cloth mastery is really worth investing, because it’s harder to get much mdef/ you have to sacrifice more (your card slots e.g. for Nuaele cards or your Practoniums for Lionhead Shield/Ermengard Shield).

Rank 8 Monsters basically hit medium-high damage physically because of Aspersion buff and yellow gems on armor, while you can be sure that their matk will hit like a truck unless you’re a Class that can mitigate magical damage well enough. If you’re confident enough to tank those 3-5k hits every 2-3 seconds with your 40-50k HP, go ahead and take plate.

If you take cloth,you get 25 free mdef, max SP increase and 15% magic damage reduction, which is a lot if you consider we’re talking about several k magic damage (around 400-700 damage at least unless you got tons of mdef). Additionally, you can stack decent mdef with more or less basic lvl 200+ cloth gears (around 200-300 in total), and will get a nice boost on max SP and SP recovery rate, depending on your armor choices.