Fencer Archive

Heya Lebowskee,

I did see a VB the other day without unit-- it did do about 10-12 less in the damage department, but the HAM costs were a lot better..

Hopefully, we will see better weapons (and not just ranged, who seem to get the vast majority of attention) on our server soon!

Seena

I just mentioned curved as an example. I always use a HAM or damage sliced vibroblade first to do special attacks at the start. Against armored opponents I usually do not switch from a vibro. A master vibroblade on Eclipse will usually have between 2.5 and 2.9 speed depending on how the weapon maker experiments. Fast/low HAM is better earlier and higher damage/low HAM is better later. I wasted a huge amount of money buying a bunch of blades and getting them sliced before I found ones I liked. Unfortunately it is almost worn out.

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PlatypusLord wrote:
Hi was poking though other professions forums. I am a TKA and noticed you where discouraged about the damage dealt compared to a TKA. There is trade offs of fencer vs TKA in damage. TKAs do more base damage than fencers currently. We never get armor penatraton but you only get it on one weapon. The stun baton cuts though armor like swiss cheese though due to armors complete ineffectiveness against stun damage. TKAs suffer a a 50% damage reduction vs light armor (player armor) and up to 1/8th damage on heavy armor. The fencers get bleed attacks, the TKAs get none. The TKAs get a better knockdown move but get no good damage specials. That all being said I think the fencers could use a little more loving by the developersbut I think the lastest announcement was a step in the right direction. Use melee have got to stick together

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I think you have a few things a little wrong. I believe that the penalty for light armor is 25%, not 50. Second, stun batons are AP0 and thus subject to the same penalty. The only AP1 weapons are the vibroblades. It is true, however, that most creatures, NPCs and players have lower stun damage resistances. Unfortunately. the current stun batons do not have an AP/speed/HAM/damage combination that makes them attractivein almost any situation.

Bleeds are an advantage. And the knockdown changes certainly should cause the developers to revisit the balance of TK special attack. Both fencer and TK are supposed to have large defensive bonuses that the developer just basically admitted are broken. TKs, however, do pretty routinely outdamage fencers (this may be level dependent because of the TK damage bonus), can target multiple HAM pools (a HUGE advantage) and have the life-saving meditate ability. Just being a melee profession guarantees that you are not going to be uber. I am assuming that TKs are just as affected by teh combat stutter step and attack movement bugs as other melee. But I must say that based on my experience fighting beside them, that TK is better off than fencer.

Actually Ilooli, as far as I know, you have it wrong on the AP. Perhaps you're confused on the two parts to AP bonuses/penalties.

If you have a weapon with a lower AP rating than the armor on your target, you suffer a 50% damage penalty for every level of difference. If you have a weapon that has a higher AP rating than your target, you gain a 25% damage bonus, although as far as I can see, AP bonuses aren't working at all (at least not on fencer weapons and pistols, which I've used). Penalties do work, however.

Stun batons are AP0. They, however, do not abide by the same laws as normal weapons. Stun weapons do stun damage, and disregard any AP value on target armor. The only thing that saves you from stun is the actual stuneffectiveness built into the armor. Given the situation, stun batons are very dangerous weapons.

Finally, a small opinion on bleeds, though it might be a bit off topic. I like bleeds, don't get me wrong. But realistically a bleed is dependant on 2 things: a) getting a good hit with it, and b) the fight lasting over 40 seconds. A poor bleed hit gains you very little. Also, to reap a benefit from a bleed attack, since it does no up-front damage, it has to last 2 ticks, or 40 seconds. From personal experience, I don't bother with bleeds soloing anymore. I hope that my fights don't last that long (and usually don't live if they do), and I'd rather have a hit in that queue spot that did measurable damage.

-Onei Linn

Iwould be interested to learn if Ihave this wrong. I read a discussion about armor on one of the forums and tried to confirm thatby watching thenumbers inthe combat tab, but I have not figured out how to log the chat channels so I am only getting snapshots on this. As I understood it, at Armor AP0, an AP0 weapon suffers no penalty.while an AP1 weapon receives a 25% bonus. That looks to be consistent with what I see when I compare my base damage with a curved sword and a vibroblade. At AP1, an AP0 weapon suffers a -25% penalty while the AP1 weapon receives it's base damage. Again, I think that the damage numbers look to be in that range. I think if the curved sword were generating half damage it would be noticeable and would make using a curved sword against an PA1 opponent silly if you had a vibroblade. I am inclined to think you are right about the bonus not working.

As to the stun baton, I understood that there are two levels of applicable penalty. One is the one related to armor level (AP0 (no armor), AP1 (light armor) and so on. The other relates to resistances. You can have creatures/NPC who are AP0 with resistences to some but not all types of damages. When you hit an unarmored target with 20% (for example) resistance, the resulting damage would be only 80% of what you would get against a non-resistant target. So, as I understood it, a hit on a lightly armored opponent with an AP0 weapon, it subjected you to two penalties--the 25% for armor class and then, theresistance that that form of armor provides against that type of damage. Again, that is how it seems to work, but i have not been real scientific about watching it.

As to bleeds, I tend to group since soloing bores me to tears. I do think you have that one right, and if you are in a group with petsthat will keep aggro, bleeds make a huge difference.

Here is the developer's explanation of how armour works

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/content.jsp?page=Advanced%20Guide%20Armor%20Fundamentals

In a nutshell, for every level the AP of your weapon exceeds the AF of your target, you get a +25% damage bonus off the top. Every level the AP of your weapon falls below the AF of the target, you get a -50% damage reduction. Then you apply the actuall resistances of the armour against whatever damage is left.

If an armour is vulnerable to a type of damage, regardless of its original AF it is considered AF 0 against that attack type. So if a critter is vulnerable to stun, even though it has heavy armour (AF3), it will be considered to have no armour (AF0) against a stun attack.(note that for weapons with AP values >0 and do damage to an armour vulnerability, I think there was a bug or something that failed to take the AP value into account when calculating damage. This may be fixed or I might be completely wrong altogether )

Also keep in mind that the % are not added together, they are applied one at a time. If you had a weapon with AP 0 and were attacking a critter with medium armour (AF 2), your damage would be reduced by 50% for the first level difference, then whatever was left over would be reduced by 50% again for the second level difference, and finally the remainder would have any resistances applied to it.

One last thing, there are three sets of attack types listed with armour, Special protection, effectiveness and vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities have already been explained. Effectiveness shows the protection against all attack types not listed in vulnerabilities and speciall protection. Special protection *replaces* the value for effectiveness of the armour against that attack type. Usually it is higher than the effectiveness, but if it is lower, it actually indicates the armour provides less protection against that attack type than for others.

This rambled a bit and you could have followed the link to get the same info. As an aspiring armousmith I think everyone should know how armour works.

Ryoko

Fencer, Armoursmith

Thanks for the post and the site reference. It is very strange because it dies ot seem like it works that way. I will post a little more after I have checked this out in practice.

Im my experience it works exactly as said. Remember the numbers in the chat box are not the damage beingdelt though, the actual damage are the numbers above the head of the mob/person you are hitting. Nice post above, just a small addition. Just because a specific resistance is not listed ( ie stun ) doesn't mean you will hit as if ar0. Stun HAS to be listed under Vulnerability to be considered unchecked. Not all resists are listed on the mobs con info all the time.