Fencer Archive

hi all. ive just gotten novice fencer and im wondering, what tree do i climb first. all your help is appreciated. thanks.

This is a highly discussed topic in this forum. I would recommend footwork as your starting line.

so footwork is the wound thing, not damage. but it gives me all the skill mods, so i wont be doing much damage will i?

foot work adds speed which in turn increases damage. Ihowever recommend at least getting techiniques I before going all the way up footwork as body hit 2 will greatly ease your efforts.

Footwork is the speed thing. More speed = more damage... at least until you hit the cap. Footwork is also the Center of Being thing. Better CoB = Survive longer in battle.

The bleed attacks (often thought to be "wound" attacks because of poor wording on the skill description in-game) are just a nice bonus.

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XingYuen wrote:
This is a highly discussed topic in this forum. I would recommend footwork as your starting line.

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You know it's very clever how that worked out. I did fencing (the sport) for about7-8 years, basically high school through college. In this time I got fairly good at it, saber was my best weapon although I was quite good at foil as well. Icompeted innational events, circuit events, and a couple ofinternationaltournaments. I got pretty good at it, good enough that earned my 'A' rating in saber, taught a college athletic course in fencing, and even coached their fencing team for a couple years.

In all my time of taking and giving lessons the one overriding principle that I both learned and passed on to my own students was that FOOTWORK was the most important skill to learn. A person with good footwork could move so much more gracefully and quickly and score more points against someone who instead learned only the finer finesse details of feints, parries, and ripostes.

While my students tended to have a certain blunt awkwardness to their style, they many times beat better, more experienced fencers because of good timing and movement. I think it's great that the Fencer trees worked out this way, whether it was intentional or not.

So far, everyone on this forum has suggested getting footwork first. So that is what I did. I am currently 1-4-1-2. Now I'm wondering what I should get next. Should I go up the stances line for the melee and ranged defense bonuses or should I do the technique line to get body hit 3.

body hit 3 (sai tok) is amazing. it's like one handed hit 2 (cho sun) in strength, but always to health. and it's only a little less powerful than one handed hit 3 (cho mok).

so my recommendation is technique.

Hi,

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MalformedURLException wrote:
So far, everyone on this forum has suggested getting footwork first. So that is what I did. I am currently 1-4-1-2. Now I'm wondering what I should get next. Should I go up the stances line for the melee and ranged defense bonuses or should I do the technique line to get body hit 3.

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Wouldn't matter how you go from that point. I am from the time before the patch so there wasno CoB. I figured I should do first tier to get as much defence and melee toughness as I can. Yes, bodyhit3 would be better, but generally it mattered less once you have health hit 3. I was bleeding 1500-2000. It didn't matter where I was hitting.

However, I rememberwhen I filledthe last two box (top boxes of the third and the fourth tiers), I remember spamming BodyHit3 since Iwas taking absurdly powerful mobs on Dantooine and I needed to down mob as fast as possible. (But then itmay not bepossible if I were to do that withoutthe first tier. Who knows?)

So in the end, it doesn't matter as long as you have health hit 2 and body hit 2. Whichever suit your style. (I kinda like Scatter hit 3 ... very funky special. I was a real eye catcher when I used it in a group hunts.)

Qui'lu of Chilastra