Tree of Savior Forum

The Swordsman Problem/ Did I fix Swordsman?

Class and Rank Swordsman
#1

This was probably suggested / figured out before in some other thread on this forum but I don’t feel like going through the mountain of posts, sorry.

So, after reading some other threads and seeing comparisons between Swordsman and other classes like Archer, something hit me… Gung Ho and Concentrate might actually be wrongly implemented.

To start, I’ll cover Gung Ho: the ability gives a +(8 + (Level * 3)) flat boost to damage; this was probably meant to be a percentage. Some of the Archers’ skills have a percentage involved, it would be kind of fair if Swordsman had a small percentage scale working on normal attacks and skills while Archers get a high percentage scale that only occur on their skills. The amount of damage you could get from this skill would greatly increase DPS (don’t know if it would end up being more than Wizards/ Archers, though) and it would make sense as to why Gung Ho and Guardian can’t be used at the same time, as one would greatly increase DPS and the other greatly increases evasion.

As for Concentrate, I think it WAS meant to work like Blessing; a second hit of damage on top of your initial hit, however, Concentrates damage would have been a percentage BASED ON THE INITIAL HIT (as an example: you do 300 damage with your normal attack, with Level 5 Concentrate, 11%, your second hit would do 33 damage.) This would also make going circle 2 and getting the attribute incredibly desired as the second hit could do MORE than the initial hit. The one thing I’m still wondering is if this would/ would have made it too good even with the limited number of hits Concentrate has and not having constant uptime unless you level 10.

Just curious on other’s thoughts on this; Could this have been their plan that they messed up? Would/Could this help the Swordsman class? Is this just more useless theorycrafting and is there a point at all? =P

#2

You forgot the Shinobi class that specifically and intentionally utilizes Swordsman skills…
Shinobi summons 5 clones.
Which means the value of Gung-Ho for a Shinobi is actually 5x in total damage output (so long as the clones don’t jip)

#3

in all reality, it won’t help unless each tree is given fairly even ability selection based on # of hits, amount of base damage + attack power + scalings per hit, modifier amounts, cooldown vs duration and cooldown vs # of hits, and variance of aoe and single target based on all the factors + synergy with existing class buffs/debuffs.

archer classes tend to have the most skills with high # of hits, and the most spammable skills that have damage on top of physical attack and modifiers, and usually lowish cooldowns. wizards have the strongest per use skill in the game, along with both them and archers having % scaling buffs available on top of wizard having stronger / more uptime flat scaling buffs than swordsman. wizards and clerics can play around with cooldowns thus improving the long cooldown skills or low uptime buffs of other classes, but swordsman doesn’t have much that benefits much by these mechanics (let alone on a scale as large as wizards with high cooldowns, or archers with strong uptime-based effects such as steady aim / retreat shot) Also, swordsman has the least number of skills that do damage as a hit and forget that allows you to do other stuff at the same time for more damage.

some ranks of swordsman bridge 1 or 2 gaps by a some amount compared to other ranks (hexen dropper 7 hits, cyclone 12-16 hits, bunshin x5 to many skills, etc) but is still far from the other class trees by far.

#4

And most of swordsman buffs have drawbacks in them.

To name some:
Gung-ho: Def reduction, it’s actually big if you upgraded attributes
Restrain: HP reduction, it’s only a little but there’s still something

Others:
Warcry: Needs a number mobs near you to be effective
Frenzy: Charging time, half stacks to keep it when changing targets, else you lose it.
Finestra: evasion loss, doubles when you have splash attribute
Deeds: Mega def reduction, requires you to get hit.

I don’t want to include these but anyway:
Guardian: Attack Reduction
High Guard: terrible attack reduction

Look at buffs on other classes, one click, straight up buff.
Let’s compare two of the best buffs on their respective classes
Quick Cast - Rank 3, 100% uptime, no drawbacks, no setup
Deeds - Rank 6, not 100% uptime at Rank 6, Big def loss, setup.

3 Likes
#5

Fair enough on both accounts. I just thought that if Gung Ho and Concentrate scaled/worked better it would alleviate some of the problems everyone seems to have with Swordsmen DPS. If Gung Ho gave a 35+% boost at normal attack and skill damage, it could make them on par with some of the other DPSers. (Swordsman got a +30% STR buff in kToS, Gung Ho would probably be better in some cases). Even with the DEF reduction from Gung Ho the boost would be worth it. But, eh, guess I’d have to do the math.

#6

Some fixes I could think of that would help Swordsman classes:

  • Damage: Higher damage multipliers
    just because it would make more sense than randomly making skills do multi-hits
  • AoE: Reworking AoE Ratio and land deployments
    AoE ratio is too difficult to increase and it barely adds anything when you do. Like 3 AoE Attack Ratio headgears + Brandish + Vubbe Gloves + 2 Glad bands let’s you hit 4.5 more medium monsters? When a lot of land deployments can hit everything inside its AoE. “Monsters/bosses can easily get out of land deployments” isn’t even a good reason since we know that they can but they don’t and if they do, that also means they also ran away from the swordsman; also, monsters/bosses knocking swordsmen away happens more often.
    Maybe they can do something like AoE-Ratio based skills being able to hit everything in range, but damage is reduced (with a minimum) if you don’t have enough aoe ratio
#7

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

#8

damage multipliers on skill damage would be almost as good. say physical damage 400% + 500 base damage, would be equal to a 4 hit skill with 125 base damage but with applying other modifier damage only once. only issue is, we need these numbers to be rather large to match huge # of hits skills – and tos client can only recognize up to 99999 damage i thought. with large large large multipliers, this becomes too easy to become capped much sooner than it should be. plus there are situations where some skills are doing 75k+ damage over time atm, but are no where near that “cap” because of how many hits it takes to get there.

the ratio concept is interesting, but i doubt the balance/programming teams will bite. plus its easier to make and balance just adding in new skills later that are deployable/trueaoe.

as for other stuff, bleeds need to be stronger for swordies if thats going to be our only damage over time hit-and-forget tool. we spam skills, but other classes hit a duration skill and then smack other buttons at the same time, in many cases doing more than double our damage from the 2 things at once mechanic alone, before even factoring in the other unbalanced dps variables there are.

#9

like, wtf devs are thinking lol. and its not hard to fix…
and totaly agree with @haukinyau, swordsman should be able to hit everything they actually hit. at least with the normal atacks.