Tree of Savior Forum

Swordsman is a joke DPS at high levels, but why? (this post was made in April, before R8)

Class and Rank Swordsman
#335

One thing I’ve realized while party grinding in the 270s is that Archers and Wizards aren’t favored as damage-dealers solely because of their damage, but because many of their endgame cookie-cutter builds employ abilities that are so easy to use effectively.

As a Swordsman, I have to bob and weave to avoid damage, and I have to rely on the mobber/taunter to keep the packs of mobs in tight groups or my abilities lose most of their effectiveness. The archers and wizards I’m seeing in parties at this level have no such issues. They simply point and click to blanket large areas with their ground AOE zones or projectile barrages.

To make matters worse, PvE encounter design at this level necessitates this form of mindless gameplay by throwing archer, mage, and mid-ranged melee mobs into most endgame grinding zones. These types of mobs have particularly spiteful AI and will refuse to aggro properly, leash at random distances, and run past the taunter to swing at thin air, making tight grouping nigh impossible.

1 Like
#336

This is input from a C3 pure con pelt that actually WANTS to tank
,is almost unkillable ( i say almost because i ended up in a random dungeon run with 2 MORE tanks and 2 dps , no healer, to put me in my place LOL)
and who cant even 1 shot a level 19 at 90 XD (this is not a complaint im just saying this is what my builds weakness is and i still love it)

I don’t understand why the dps builds don’t have more buffs that lower tankiness but boost damage, like the pelt has 2 skills that cripple your damage but make you tankier (i call them the make myself hit 1s buttons)
why not the other way around?

also to the swordsmen in here saying take peltastas taunt and put it on swordsman, that would make me quite sad as it is literally the 1 trick pony of the peltasta with everything else just kind of being there to help that 1 trick move be as effective as it could be

that being said i think peltastas other moves should have some sort of provoke stacking and that putting a provoke passive on the base class of swordsman was a bad idea because all it does is get the swordsman i am trying to protect killed in parties

also i think this game should have more consistency
when i look at the Skill calculator i notice something right away
there is 4 colors of classes, red,green,blue and yellow

in my head i go

‘‘oh ok
’‘blue = tank
red= damage
green = support and
yellow = merchant’’

this is absolutely not the case LOL
example
rodelero is blue , so i would assume he is a tank that i can take c3 of to go with my pelt

he has 1 SINGLE SKILL that increases his survivability …which also happens to be the 1 trick pony of THAT path , slithering, to evade magic

he does have alot of cc ill give him that, but i am not sure if any of them work on bosses so i feel like his cc is very limited in usefulness

so rodelero is more of a …weird shield dps class
(which should have a red circle imo)
that has cc but cant dps nearly as good as the other swordsman dps class? thats a little odd to me, what role are you trying to fill if you take this class?

my other choice for pure beefy tanking is squire …which is supposed to be a merchant class but happens to have the most godliest stun on the planet , so godly that im going to take squire over rodelero godly…

16 monsters including bosses stunned for 10 seconds and 50% reduced phys def on all the stunned monsters?

wat da hail

like why isn’t this on rodelero? squire also has a 40% hp food buff which i think will be more useful to me than slithering as pure con
at least give rodelero arrest and then give squire some merchant attack like throw money at monsters or something, isn’t that what squire was for ? making money? give him another shop then lol

now my choices of being the pure solid tank have been narrowed down from ALL this ‘‘variety’’ from all 4 base classes

to being a 2 trick pony pelt rodelero
(swash and slither)

or being a 3 trick pony pelt squire
(swash and arrest and hp food)

the fact that the merchant class is better at tanking then the tanking class is silly

the fact that Taunt is so important for tanking that not only do these dps swordsman have to take it to be useful later, but if you want to be an actual viable tank you HAVE to be a swordsman because the other blue icons in the other classes dont really have much to offer either for aggro grab

like whoever was joking about archer being a tank, with all this variety i actually think archer SHOULD be allowed to be a tank

Quarrel shooter is a blue icon, it has a cc and it has a a shield deploy that taunts but the taunt is kind of sad, and its missing the ‘‘survivability buffs’’ to actually be a tank and it has running shot for w/e reason that makes people play it for that run and gun feel and they still play it as a dps’’

cryomancer would be a great tank, it has freeze cc spam, but this blue icon also has 0 survivability buffs and 0 taunts

paladin is the weirdest of the bunch on this list
he has 0 cc 0 taunts and super survivability solely based on the fact that he is in the cleric tree and will have enough heals to be invincible

why would u want to pick this? if u want to be a tanky support you can literally pick any other tree in the cleric path and go full con
like what does the paladin really offer here?

imo every blue circle in the game on all classes should have a survivability boost move, a taunt move and some ccs to make the game balanced that way you aren’t stuck with 1 real tank class out of the bajillion classes we have

and if it wasn’t supposed to be that way, why does the swashbuckling move exist then?

if 5 dps are in a dungeon, they will kite it absolutely fine
if 5 healers are in a dungeon, they will have infinite survivability and be fine
if 5 tanks are in a dungeon its going to be a brutal struggle full of absolute pain and suffering

if theres no point in tanks because 5 dps don’t even need a tank then what is the point of peltasta existing in the first place?

if there is no point in peltasta taunt, and there is no point in swordsman dps builds, then what is the point of swordsman existing in the first place?

really the whole system is an absolute gong show right now but considering there is more ranks to come imc might just be planning for the real endgame

we also need like support archers with healing arrow shots and support trappers with medkits and supply crate buffs and etc for the other classes too that way all 4 base can be in any role if they choose

#337

Swordsmen do have abilities that trade defense for offense…

Gung-Ho (cant be used with Guardian)
and Deeds of Valor.

Rodelero is about throwing CC on targets and killing them while they struggle to do anything about it. Note they class has two 100% bonus to Strike benefits which end up as 200% when stacked which basically goes into Slither in, hit, High Kick them, and then drop blows. Buffs in Ktos make this easier with Shooting star being strike so you can really dig into them.

#338

oh , well then they just need to tweak the buffs allready existing to nerf more tankyness and boost more dps
and
also remove the provoke so the dps isnt killing themselves

#339

You can already turn Provoke On/Off at your leisure.

#340

Upon checking this 2 links, I lost all hopes on swordsman.

Swordman rank 8 predictions by the links

  1. Matador- Yup so we literally tame bulls with a red cape. Bullshit.
  2. Mumillo- Shield class. Yup useful. LITERALLY USEFUL FOR GOD’S SAKE. (sarcasm intented)
    3.)Lancer- God ■■■■■■■ damn it imc. Another spear based swordsman? This hit my nerves. I hope this doesn’t become cancer like dragoon. For some reason they should make hoplite the base swordsman class instead of swordsman since imc itself is a big fan of spear types
#341

Has it ever occurred to you blue icons are actualy utility classes and not just tanks specifically? Makes more sense doesn’t it? No? Ok. Never Mind. I’m out.

#342

But I though Quarrel Shooter was a tank, and Paladin :frowning:

…

#343

It all makes sense now. Sorcs and Necros are supposed to make money AFKing like the rest of the yellow-icon classes.

But wait… Fletcher?

#344

World Boss merchant.

1 Like
#345

On topic: It all starts with our incredibly bad scaling base class “swordsman”.

Every other class has some kind of % scaling.
Archers: %crit, attackspeed.
Cleric: % based heals (no damage here I guess)
Wiz: % cast speed and % damage.

How about fixing gung ho and concentrate?
I mean, compare concentrate with blessing, and then keep in mind that blessing scales with int and spi in ktos patch. don’t give me that “c2 class > c1 class” crap… There are a lot of classes going base class to c3, so apparently c1 class > c3 class in some cases.

#346

Sometimes it baffles me how swordman qqs just because they need to take 1 circle of peltasta to be wanted for party
While i dont know about archers and clerics, lets see the wizard ones.
Utility:
Cryo will NEED cryo 3 to be wanted
Chrono? Also 3 circles
How about the godly wiz3 ele3? They NEED wiz 3 to function properly
And how many people taking 1 circle of linker being left in favor of the c2 linker ones?

How come you qq this much when the only thing you need to sacrifice to become ‘meta’ is one rank 2 circle?
Edit: i am supporting the argument that swordman needs to scale better on some of their skill though

#347

i’m guessing - based on playing other mmo’s - it’s probably because most twelve years old are inclined to pick melee dps classes that will either make them a badass ninja or a kewl kirito.

for some common builds, i have yet to see a sensible reason for taking other circles over pelt.

#348

Why people keep discussions like this goes beyond my comprehension. Do you play for fun? If the answer is “yes”, play it. If the answer is “no”, play another video game. I play melee only in every single game and although I feel swordies could have more roles, I’m having fun with my Corsair, my Cataphract and my soon to be Doppel. There are so many games I can play but I’m having fun playing ToS for now. Can’t we keep things simple?

#349

This is actually ONE OF (I just felt I needed to capitalise this) the reasons why I became interested in Swordsman, after trying almost all the Wizard classes. Elememe and Chrono3 just outshines (I care because I’m a team player) every other Wizard build too much (pve) and sadly, these were two of the 4 classes I found to be the most boring, along with Cryo3 and Thauma.

Thankfully for Swordsman, all you really need is one circle in R2; and thankfully, Swashbuckling is one skill I find to be really fun. I like how I’m in control of the group and everyone’s at the back seat just spamming skills.

@danielnito007
For some people, it stops being fun when people won’t take you into their parties because you don’t bring much into the party, which won’t be fun for them. Then you have to solo 230-280.

#350

Wall in response to scaling buffs on Gung-ho, Concentrate.

Swordsmen always lacked the damage output of other classes, just in closed beta with a low level-cap there was a lack of mobs that lived long enough to justify the other classes high damage skills. People saw this as they approached 200, but the Highlander-Barb bandwagon and “omgerd archer sucks” bandwagons weren’t listening.

They can buff the Gung-ho and Concentrate, but the reality is it’s not going to mean anything unless you break the skills. Swordsmen don’t have the same amount of physical attack applications, they never did.
Swordmen isn’t crying out for buffs.

How damage works in tree of savior.
Multi-hits are multiple applications of your physical/magical attack.
Some skills have modifiers in them, that work similarly from an effective damage standpoint in most cases.

Carter Strike is 4 hits with a 50% modifier.
Thats 6x applications of your physical attack. 2 overheat so 12.
If you hit Leather its 5x/11x, If you hit Plate its 8x/16x.

Multi-shot 15 is 16 applications (mind you Missile does have a damage penalty) on 2 overheat for 32 applications. However Multi-shot does not start out with aoe ratio like Carter does, so it’s weaker for multiple enemies. However even early on. Flame Ground 5 is 26 applications (over its 20s duration).

We see this expand.
Needle Blow, Feint + Barrage, Wugong Gu, Snatching, Coursing, Retrieve, Magic Arrow, Retreat Shot, Electrocute, Frost Cloud, Hail, Psychic Pressure, Cure, Possession, Zaibas, Carnivory, Flesh Cannon, Flare Shot, etc.

Swordsmen don’t have a lot of high volume multi-hits.
Pouncing(ktos version), Rush, Cyclone, Bushin’d Kunai are the main ones.
Stabbing, Sept Eptioles, Hexen Dropper are another set after that.

Earth wave (2.5x modifier), Seism (1.7x modifier) obviously aren’t going to compete and to make them do so you’d need to have buffs be giving absolutely ridiculous modifier bonuses.

Swordsmen have this issue before buffs are taken into consideration.
They either have base damage high enough to kill mobs so quickly that their lack of physical attack applications doesn’t matter in practice, or they feel the loss of damage.
The only super buffs are Deeds of Valour and Shinobi bushins, both of which increase your vulnerability and Bushins have their own issues.

If someones expecting C1 skills to remedy all their damage concerns, they’re way out of touch.

1 Like
#351

Didn’t help that r7 didn’t exist, and c2 Magic Arrow is only 15 hits instead of the 25 hits it has at c3, which in addition to lower skill damage, probably results in it being about half the damage of c3 one.

#352

Probably because peltasta is a “must have” that is completely out of ouch with some builds. People get wiz3 because quickcast is a incredible buff, and people get peltasta only for convenience. To a Dps, peltasta is a wasted rank.

Say i’m making a DPS 2-HSwordsman. Peltasta will bring nothing in terms of damage for me, but the meta dictates that I ‘must have’ it

Now, would an cookie-cutter elememe get stronger without Wiz3?

TL;DR : Peltasta is a chore, Wiz3 is optimization

2 Likes
#353

imo they have to implement much more circles which are able to TAUNT, each class should have one taunt option, or they have to fix the damn MOB ai to be more aggresive like in RO, in ro there was like no need for a taunter, only a mobber as base aggro was insane.

In this game in 95% of the maps the density is so low and the mobs react to incredible slow its really super annoying to not have some kind of gathering skill. This is also why wizards are A HUGE PAIN to level, leveling my wizards has been the worst mmo leveling experience i had. Utterly retarded how IMC thinks this is fine.

#354

swordies have %hp. triple base hp mod and more from squire, swashbuckle, and higher block rate.