While your all skills are on cooldown, Spear Throw is the only way to do damage with a skill. And you can spam it just under your feet, be it boss or be them mobs. Zero cooldown is still a thing.
Truth! But the animation delay is SO shitty…
And I run out of SP as it is…
In conjunction with Swash it works wonders. You can just Block with a Shield, then spam it.
And about SP… well, that’ a problem, true, but still should be enough for one dungeon run or so.
I personally do it better with Linker in party, anyway.
alchemist potions will take care of SP
I barely have enough silver to afford repairs + attribute upgrades + weapon and armor refines as it is… SP pots just don’t fit in my budget lol
Use Campfires, Luke. Use them…
But it would be nice if they reduce SP cost of ST. But they probably won’t. They will nerf it, of course.
Lol that IS what I do. Campfires. Slows you down SO much though.
The OP’s build + some input here definitely worth to keep an eye
I wonder if you can do Doppel’s Cyclone and Hop’s Long Stride while mounting, someone enlight us !
Cause if its possible to do so, ill might take C2 Hop + C1 Cata instead C3 Hop
You can’t do this, while mounted.
Yeah, i just found the sadness from other thread
■■■■ you can’t do while mounted :
Peltasta - Shield Lob, Butterfly.
Highlander - Cartar Stroke, Cross Cut, Vertical Slash.
Hoplite - Long Stride.
Barbarian - Giant Swing, Stomping Kick. Embowel?
Rodelero - Targe Smash, High Kick.
Squire - All Squire skills are unusable whilst mounted.
Corsair - Jolly Roger, Dust Devil.
Centurion - All Centurion skills are unusable whilst mounted.
Doppelsoeldner - Punish, Cyclone.
Super sad and hafta redo my build D:
So guys, I’ve been theorycrafting.
Apparently Synchro Thrusting is actually better than Pierce if you use a shield.
Contrary to popular belief (most people never take Synchro thinking it’s bad).
Here’s the math:
I’m comparing them both at level 9 because that’s how many points I have left over in my build, which I’ll post at the end of this.
Pierce:
Attack: 619
Small monsters: 1 hit = 619 damage
Medium monsters: 2 hits = 1,238
Large monsters: 3 hits = 1,857
Bosses (with attribute): 4 hits = 2,476
Cooldown: 30s <- IMPORTANT!
Synchro Thrusting:
Spear attack: 491
Shield attack: (Shield DEF x 5 + 491) = 931 (My shield gives 88 DEF)
Total attack: 1,422
Cooldown: 15s <- IMPORTANT!
Now, at this point, Synchro is already better on small and medium monsters, IF you have a shield equipped.
So you’re thinking this is situational, right?
Nope, because of two things: Overheat and Cooldown.
Synchro has Overheat, meaning you can use it TWICE per cooldown.
And then its cooldown is HALF the Pierce cooldown.
This means you can actually cast it FOUR times in the same time frame as it would take you to cast Pierce ONCE.
So, at the end of 30 seconds, the maximum damage Pierce will do (disregarding your weapon damage, and Spear Lunge), is 2,476.
Synchro, on the other hand, will have reached a whopping 5,688!
Provided you have the SP, of course.
Now let’s factor in Spear Lunge.
Spear Lunge gives +50% PIERCE damage.
This means it will raise Pierce (the skill)'s damage to:
928.5 = 1 hit
1,857 = 2 hits
2,785 = 3 hits
3,714 = 4 hits
As for Synchro Thrusting, the spear damage is [Pierce] and the shield damage is [Strike], so Spear Lunge only affects the spear damage.
So we get:
491 + 50% = 736.5
Shield damage remains unchanged: 931
Total damage: 1,667.5
And then, we multiply that by 4 because we can cast this 4 times in the same time frame…EXCEPT, Spear Lunge only lasts 6 seconds so it will expire after we use Synchro twice. So it’s 2 hits with the Lunge bonus, and two normal hits.
Total damage over 30s = 3,335 (with Lunge bonus) + 2,844 (normal hits) = 6,179
So this concludes that people who say flat out “Don’t take Synchro” haven’t thought it through. If you have a shield, TAKE IT.
(NOTE: This is all just skill + 88 DEF from the shield. No weapon damage has been accounted for.)
(NOTE 2: You should still get 1 point in Pierce for more overall DPS)
Also, thanks @Satoru and @rastmusician for helping with a lot of this!
Now for my build:
Does pierce count as a multi hit? Cause if so, wouldn’t for example bonus of 102 ice damage from ledas shield be similar to the bonus from shield defense for synchro thrusting?
Yes, synchro thrusting would then be buffed too but synchro thrusting does just 2 sources of damage whereas pierce does 4 on bosses ( if I’m correct ) and less on smaller things.
With your math, synchro might still be a bit ahead but with spear throw spam I am not convinced you will actually have SP to use it.
Hi guys,
Sorry if i’m being kinda " off topic " but i didn’t played on kToS and really can’t see why people are that hyped about Dragoon class, could someone explain me ? Thx
Any skill that does more than one hit with just one cast, is “multihit”.
And no, Pierce has ONE source of damage, but it hits 4 times if it’s a boss AND you have the attribute.
Synchro has TWO sources, spear and shield, and it only hits once, but like I said in the post, you can use it 4 times in 30 seconds, as opposed to pierce one time. And then there’s my whole math explaining how the 4 Synchro hits will actually do more damage overall, in the course of those 30 seconds.
Pierce is still better as a “burst” damage skill because you do all of its 4 hits on the boss in one split second, whereas for Synchro to come out on top, you need to invest the full 30 seconds in it.
There’s also the Synchro attribute that raises the [Pierce] part of its damage by 10% while reducing the [strike] part by 10%, which would change everything and make Synchro benefit more from Spear Lunge, and the shield part of it would become less significant (but still, consider how Lunge only lasts 5 seconds and it has overheat so that’s a total of 12s, meaning not long enough for it to affect all 4 Synchro uses).
Okay so lets say you do have ledas shield, priest buffs, concentration, gung ho. All that additional damage will apply to both hits from synchro thrust, but will all of that additional damage Also apply to all hits of pierce? I’m just trying to figure this out in my head aswell, I’m not actually saying your math is bad or anything.
Also, among others synchro thrust has aoe, its small its 1 but with correct equip it can raise to 12 so it’s something honestly. But then do you think it’s good enough not to use spear throw in that time and have pierce just as this one trick pony to use every 30 seconds?
Basically, I’m not asking if synchro by itself is better then pierce. I’m asking with all the things included, and the fight going on for longer then 3 minutes for example, would you actually gain a significant amount of extra damage from switching to synchro?edit: and be able to sustain it SP wise.
I say Synchro is better with a shield and for long fights where you hit them for more than 30 seconds.
In the 15 seconds cooldown, you hit Spear Lunge, Stabbing, Spear Lunge, Pierce, Cyclone x2 then spam Spear Throw until Synchro is back up. Or maybe Mordschlag if it’s a cloth target, etc etc
SP wise, I can’t answer you without proper testing. But, in my experience playing and watching videos, ONE rotation like that should kill everything except bosses… And right now I don’t have Synchro in my build in kTOS, so I will only be able to completely verify once iTOS hits. But at this point I’m decided it will be in my build for sure.
I might give it a try, would you mind keeping this topic updated aswell if you do try that build eventually?
If nothing else, if your tests prove it is much more beneficial then a spear throw spam in between waiting for the cooldowns I can always reset into synchro thrust. If spear throw wouldn’t have the aoe it has, I would consider going synchro thrust more.
I know that once we get alchemist pots it shouldn’t be much of a problem, but I’ve been a full spirit archer for the most part last beta and as much as it was effective to a point, I really hated that build with a passion. I don’t want to have to invest into spirit to keep the dps up because at that point the dps might become combarable to pierce while your other skill suffer… so I will just stay like this for now ^^
SPR is definitely a nono for swordies no matter what, right now.
The SP gain is not worth it considering what you lose by not putting those points in STR or even DEX.
And yes I’ll keep it updated, but also I’ll post a bunch of theorycraft like this in my guild page, once it’s up!
So keep an eye out for that 
Would be cool, I like theorycrafting. I can give you some of my theory in pm’s if you want, but I doubt it would do you much good since I’m not as experienced and my theorycrafting might sound like a newborn’s babble. 
You still might be able to point out stuff I missed, so go ahead!