Swordies and Archers both suffer from weapon requirements for various classes and builds which do not make realistic sense and limit the player’s options. I’m going to post a list here of every single skill I feel should be improved and the weapon requirements expanded to include other weapons, so as to make Swordies and Archers have much more build freedom and less restrictions. This will also include mounted requirements. I’ll keep this as short and sweet as possible, and include reasoning for specific classes below the full list.
-Swordsman-
Highlander
Crosscut - Usable mounted
Cross Guard - Usable with Two-Handed Spear
Vertical Slash - Usable mounted
Peltasta
Swash Buckling - Usable with Primary Weapon + Pistol
Shield Lob - Usable mounted
Hoplite
Synchro Thrusting - Usable with Rapier + Shield
Long Stride - Usable with Spear + Dagger
Spear Throw - Usable with any weapon (throw A spear, but not YOUR spear)
Barbarian
Cleave - Usable mounted
Rodelero
Targe Smash - Usable mounted
Corsair
Quick and Dead - Usable mounted
Impale Dagger - Usable mounted
Squire
Deadly Combo - Usable mounted
Doppelsoeldner
All Skills usable with a One-Handed Sword except Zwerchhau (see below)
Retiarius
Trident Finisher - Usable with Two-Handed Spear
All Skills usable while mounted except Dagger Finisher (see below)
-Archer-
Archer
Heavy Shot - Usable with Musket
Twin Arrow - Usable with Musket (perhaps change the name to Twin Shot?)
Quarrel Shooter
Deploy Pavise - Usable mounted
Wugushi
Poison Pot - Usable mounted
Jincan Gu - Usable mounted
Rogue
Capture - Usable mounted
Schwarzer Reiter
Limacon - Allow Limacon’s buff to stay after a dismount BUT is inactive until remounting (ie: not usable but still there)
Bullet Marker
Double Gun Stance - Allow buff to stay after mounting BUT inactive until dismounting (ie: not usable but still there)
(See below for Reiter/BM)
Hackapell
Leg Shot - Usable with Crossbow (no +Pistol requirement)
Above Specifications
Doppelsoeldner
Right now, Doppel is known as the “Two-handed Sword-only” class.
One-handed Swords in ToS however, are sadly not even necessary or useful in any way, and are usually replaced, seeing as very r6+ is Pierce-type (Spears/Rapiers) except Doppel, Templar and r8’s Murmillo (who will usually use a spear anyway). It’s to the point that Archers use swords more than Swordies can, to be honest. You barely see swords.
I propose to allow Doppel skills to be usable with One-handed Swords, to ease restrictions going into any new and exciting r8 sword options that may eventually come, and referring to Doppel as “The Sword” class. This buffs One-handed Swords beautifully with their inferior physical attack, giving them a strong damage option to supplement it like Doppel. (Which as a plus, would also give Murmillo a new interesting option… Doppel-Murmillo.)
Retiarius
This is mostly a buff to the poor, lowly Cataphract.
Known as the fast-over-weak block penetrator and formation-breaker, it always seemed like Cataphract’s initial design choice was revolving less around DPS, but more around CC and maneuverability. However, there’s nothing for Cataphract to r8 into that isn’t a DPS option, leaving it’s weaker skills rather lackluster as filler and making it feel very out of place in PvE. I believe most Lancers even opt-out of Cataphract in PvE over Hoplite, or take it only for Acrobatic Mount and Trot.
I propose to make Retiarius skills usable mounted, so Cataphract can become a quite solid CC and support option. (Especially as say, a Pelt3-Cata3-Reti2 for instance)
Reiter + Bullet Marker
Limacon and Double Gun Stance are both removed when dismounting and mounting companions, respectively.
Since they are the core skills of each of these classes, this hurts Reiter a lot as they can’t dismount and remount without losing Limacon, and it has a 35 second cooldown. This also hurts BM, as mounting a pet (for getting around the world faster) causes them to lose DGS.
I propose that Limacon and DGS stay active while dismounted or mounted, but aren’t usable (their effects would not apply). This makes both classes less clunky in general, and allows Reiter to pick classes like Sapper that require dismounting, and allows BM to get around a little quicker.
And that’s all of them.
I kind of want to end on an personally important side-note, though.
As someone who is a magic-user mainly (but has played a majority of the classes a bit), I feel a lot of the reasons players choose not to play ToS is because of the amount of limitations there are set to content, classes, and the like.
This game from CBT unto now has always been a very unique and beautiful experience to the MMO genre due to it’s multiple class options, but chooses to stray away from the thing that made a lot of people love it in turn to make the game easier to balance as a whole.
For Wizard and Clerics, this is not much of an issue because their limitations are tied to things that are easier to deal with or have already been buffed (Wizard’s and Cleric’s limited DPS options were supplemented by buffing those options and just giving more DPS options, which in turn made Wizard very strong and fun with their multi-hit aoes and offensive-support, and made Cleric a very broken class tree coupled with it’s very, very superior defensive-support skill set).
However for Swordies and Archers, their limitations can’t really be changed without changing the realism that each class provides (while they have much more prevalent DPS options, they suffer from smaller aoes, aoe-ratio limitations, weapon limitations, mounting restrictions). Buffing the damage may make the class stronger, but it doesn’t make them any less clunky and eventually turns the game into a mundane damage race.
I understand that restriction breeds creativity, but I also feel like the changes I mentioned allow more creativity for those willing to chase it without changing the realism.
That’s the reason I wrote this topic. As you can see… I’m not exactly a frequent forum poster and tend to read a little more than I speak, but I still hope it’s received well. Have a nice day!