Hello Saviors!
This topic is my point of view of the Swordsman class in Tree of Savior.
I’d like to address some issues of the class, and what I’ve felt playing the class.
=====Before I get started just some notes:=====
1-First of all, English is not my native language, so I might make some mistakes while typing this wall of text.
2-Secondly, I absolutely love playing the Swordsman class, it’s my favorite starting class by far, but that’s due to the “melee” concept, in other words, I just like close ranged combat.
3-I do look at other starting classes as well(Cleric/Wizard/Archer), in my vision some classes’tree also need some buffs/nerfs or even mechanics rework (like Sadhu/Hunter/Necromancer), but this thread is specifically about Swordsman.
4-This is MY PERSONAL OPINION, you do not have to agree with all of it, or you may not agree with anything at all, and that is perfectly fine, but please leave a post if you agree or disagree with something and telling why, because a simple “You’re wrong” without any arguments are just meaningless and stupid for me and many other people that are reading your “answer”.
5-This is a PvE discussion
6-Please, healthy discussion, no fights. Not too much to ask right? =)
7-For the love of your mom, don’t post that Swordsman are supposed to be exclusively a TANK in this game, that makes no sense at all since swordsman have lots of DPS trees, and the base class itself is focused more on DPS than tanking.
Swordsman are supposed to be able to follow any kind of path, depending exclusively on you. ToS GAME CONCEPT offers you the ability
to become anything you want to become, anything you want to make our character look like: PURE DPS/PURE TANK/OFFTANK/SUPPORT/ETC
8-I’m aware of the recent buffs that Swordsman received in KToS, however I didn’t think it solved the main issues with it
Well… with all that said here I go!
I’ve been playing 3 Swordsman characters through the course of my playtime:
SW1>Pelta1>Hop1>Hop2>Cors1>Cors2>Dragoon1 (almost there)
SW1>High1>High2>High3>Barb1>Doppel1>Doppel2 (stopped playing because this build is bad till you reach Doppel2)
SW1>High1>High2>Barb1>Barb2>Fencer>Fencer (Currently Barb2, but I plan to go Fencer2)
Currently Swordsmans position at the game post level 160~170 are… pretty awful… And I’m going to list the issues in topics:
====Issue 1 - Playstyle and stats====
For start Swordsmans are a MELEE class, like I said above, the concept that I love in MMOs and other games, but in ToS being a melee character is
just really bad. We have to battle as frontliners, surrounded by mobs without any kind of reliable damage mitigation or protection from our trees.
“Oh just build a high CON character!” or "Oh just build a high DEX character!"
Because how the game was made It’s kinda complicated to properly build a swordsman at the moment. If you build a really high CON character, you lose a huge DPS and bonus from STR, sure, you can SUSTAIN more damage because of the higher HP, but in the end, Swordsman still takes tons of damage (even with good plate gear and a properly leveled PLATE MASTERY attribute) and at some point you can get bursted down by physical mobs or you’ll simply sit and wait to regen all the time every 10 mobs you killed.
If you build a high DEX character you still exchange STR DPS and it’s bonuses, but you can get some crit rate, and most importantly, can completely AVOID physical damage with evasion.
However you’ll end up with a low HP pool, and since evasion from DEX are purely based on luck, so at some point you can get bursted down anyway.
High STR means you don’t have CON nor DEX which is not viable, because you need at least some CON in the current patch.
A balance between the two stats seens ideal a build like 70~100CON and 2:1/1:2/3:1/1:3/N:0 STR:DEX can do the trick, however it’s more of a safety measure than a solution itself.
"Oh but Peltasta and Highlander can block, they actually CAN mitigate damage!"
Yes, we can mitigate only PHYSICAL damage. However:
1-Peltasta needs a SHIELD equipment to do it. What if I’m playing Corsair C2/C3? What if I’m playing Two Handed Spear Cataphract or Dragoon? Rapier and Dagger Fencer?
2-Highlander needs a TWO-HANDED SWORD to do it, and the block rate is freaking awful (yes, even with STR scale…) It consumes a considerable amount of mana to block and it also has a delay before the skill gets actually active.
3-If you block you’re not attacking
3.1-Even if you weapon switch to block, you still not attacking if you’re blocking
3.2-If you don’t have any of the block skills on the build (went for pure DPS) you can’t block even switching weapons, thus can’t mitigate damage
3.3-If you’re using High Guard from Peltasta tree, you’re losing a potential DPS rank for it and losing DPS from the skill (-50% damage -10 crit rate at level 1) and the block rate added from it is EXTREMELY LOW!
4-If you’re kiting, you’re not attacking (unless you’re jumping into auto-attacks, and not everything is kiteable)
5-You cannot block any kind of magic…
Oh… Right… Magic…
This game has tons of magic mobs that you can’t do almost anything about it as swordsman, they just throw unavoidable targetted magic at you and all you can do is suck the damage.
You have to stay close to them to attack and they attack you at a considerable distance, so until you approach, you take damage.
Also some mobs have really high HP (Elite Mobs), if a group of 5 spawns near a you as a Swordsman, you run, because if you stay, you’ll end up on the ground, we cannot fight due to the lack of CC skills (Issue nº2) and/or protection.
====Issue 2 - Crowd Control (CCs) and kiting====
First of all let’s take a look at Swordsman CCs from R1 to R7
Swordsman
Bash = Knockdown+Knockback > Slow cast, extremely bad damage
Thrust = Stagger > Extremely slow cast, extremely bad damage
Restrain = Stun > Random chance
Highlander
Wagon Whell = Knockup > Slow cast
Crown = Stagger
Moulinet = Stagger
Skull Swing = Knockback
Peltasta
Umbo Blow = Stun or/and Knockback > slow cast, random stun, too much knockback if attribute is ON
Rim Blow = Knockback
Barbarian
Helm Chopper = Stun > random chance of stun
Seism = Stun > random chance of stun
Hoplite
Long Stride = Knockdown+Knockback > Gap closer, scatters enemies too much
Cataphract
Steed Charge = Knockdown+knockback
Rush = Stun > 5% chance…
Rodelero
Shield Charge = Knockdown+knockback
Montano = Spin+Stun = Spin 100%, random stun
Targe Smash = Knockback
Shield Shoving = Interrupt
Squire
Arrest = Bind(Skew)
Corsair
Iron Hook = Stun
Dust Devil = Spin
Keel Hauling = Stagger
Doppelsoeldner
Mordschlag = Knockback+Knockdown
I might have forgot something on the list, but you’ll get the idea anyway.
PS: Cartar Stroke, Earthwave and Doomspike are not on the list because if the knockback is active is usually bad for you and your team, it disrupts when you’re dealing with group of mobs.
Now let’s see what we can do while jumping into a direction, essentially kiting and attacking at the same time:
1-Auto attack > low damage compared to skills
2-Embowel > low damage, slow cast, glitchy, extremely weird skill with long animation and animation lock towards the end of the skill
3-Stomping Kick > same as above
4-Jolly Roger > doesn’t do damage
5-Keel Hauling > Single target, unable to pull if multiple hooks attribute is on, which should be if you’re a Corsair
As you can see, we have tons of disavantages compared to all other classes and we start to suffer a lot when we reach the point that we start to get melted by high ATK mobs or/and magic mobs, because we Swordsman have little to no kind of defense against it, be it CCs, kiting ability, defensive skills… we have almost nothing. Like I said above, if you’re using one of your defenses you’re not doing damage, and staying behind a lot in DPS.
Even SLITHERING from Rodel2 which is the only thing that we have for simultaneous magic/physical protection, is not that good for
defensive+ofensive purposes, you can only tank with this ability, if you attack it immediatly ends your skill and be punished by a wave of attacks afterwards.
(Don’t get me wrong on this one guys I agree it’s useful at some point and has a nice concept into it, and in kToS the cooldown is 20s instead of 28s which is nice)
Going back to Swordsman CCs, they are extremely bad, even past R5 most of our “reliable” CCs are knockdowns which becomes useless against already mentioned elite mobs.
Elite mobs are immune to knockdown, stagger, knockbacks and knockups which most of our CCs comes from, and if they’re magic, you cannot even kite it.
Seism and Helm Chopper have a random chance to stun (which was buffed in kToS, but we don’t know how much till it comes to IToS) not to mention the horrible attack range of all of Swordsman
skills, which bring us to issue 3.
====Issue 3 - Attack range and animation====
Swordsman skills attack range are HORRIBLE, holy ■■■■, I know it’s supposed to be a close range class but… it’s just TOO CLOSE RANGE, we don’t have ANY gap closing skills except Hop2 Long Stride and it has a freaking long 49 seconds cooldown with the attribute, sometimes Swordsmans are just face to face to their target and miss their skills because the range is not enough!
An example would be Hop1 Stabbing and Pierce: If you’re auto attacking with a 1H Spear at medium range, if you cast any of those 2 skills, you just won’t hit the mob you’re currently auto attacking.
Because of some weird hitbox programming you won’t reach and your skill will be hitting the air unless the mob you’re fighting steps forward to reach you or something.
Seriously, do the test yourselves if you don’t play Swordsman, it has an extraordinary retarded hitbox compared to a simple auto attack, why a skill that you use the tip of your weapon does not reach your enemy if you’re reaching it using autos?
I mean, why Thrust from Swordsman1 can reach a target far away and those 2 skills from Hoplite which uses a long attack range weapon does not? Even Bash, also from Swordsman1 reaches longer!
It’s not just Pierce and Stabbing: Helm Chopper, Skyliner, Moulinet, Pommel Beat, almost all Rodelero skills have bad hitboxes.
And the animations for some skills are worse, it makes no sense the huge animation lock or the casting animation itself that Swordsman suffer for some skills:
Thrust, basically the entire animation, you can cancel at the end if you jump cancel properly or spam another skill button;
Bash, the cast at the start, you can jump cancel after the slash;
Pierce, at the start and towards the end;
Moulinet, towards the end;
Crosscut, torwards the end;
Skyliner, towards the end (according to the kToS patch notes they removed the animation lock, we’ll see);
Embowel, the entire animation… and it’s not even a true multi hit skill! And the cooldown is freaking long!
Stomping Kick, the entire animation, also you have to freaking jump to use it? Really?
Those last two are special mentions because the animation for it makes them so slow that no one actually spend a single point into it because how the animation for it works
"Oh but you can jump cancel some skills!"
I’m aware of that, those skills mentioned cannot be jump cancelled at all except for Bash and sometimes Thrust
I know that not every animation can be super fast because of balancing issues, but I don’t think removing the animation lock or making it a little bit faster or at least reducing the animation lock would break the game at all.
====Issue 4 - Damage/Cooldowns (mainly little tweaks)====
I won’t say anything here about actual numbers, there are many threads talking about Swordsman damage, but yes, it’s low compared to any other DPS class it’s around 30%~50% of what other classes can do.
But I think most of that, is due to the issues listed above and some numbers that could be tweaked like Gung Ho and/or Concentrate being “%+Flat” base (just an example).
If we could stay a little bit safer around mobs and reliably be able to output our skills, the DPS would increase to around the same level as other base classes and with the little tweaks that is already happening is kToS I think we can experience a much better enviroment for Swordsman and they won’t be invited to parties just because of SWASH BUCKLING.
Thanks for reading this giant wall of text ^^
TLDR;
Risky no reward concept
Bad CCs
Weird animations/small reach
Low damage