Fencer Archive

I really don't have much coherant to say, just a bunch of things that have been running through my mind and experiencesabout this fencer class of ours.

Does anyone have a really good Rykk blade?

All the Rykk blades I've seen here onAhaziare trash compared to a masterwork curved sword.

Our resident master weaponsmith here on Ahazi, Kaoz (probably the best weaponsmith on Ahazi...at least ranged weapons anyhow), produces Rykks which have gone through several incarnations and seemingly have halted at something around 55-155ishdmg at 3.0 or 3.1 with some ham in the 40s and 50s.

I bugged him today (politely) to make me a curved (I needed something to replace the rantok). He madea curved sword (for free) that was151 max damage at 2.6 speed with about the same ham cost (a fraction less)asthe rykk blade (the curved had higher health cost while therykk had higher action). After I got a good dmg slice on the curved sword(24% I believe). It became 80-181 dmg at 2.6 speed. Oh, and don't forget all those ranged accuracy penalties Rykk blades have. I haven't seen any stun batons for sale (can anyone posts some stats?). As a sidenote, I picked up an FWG5 pistol for my friend made by the same guy. 40-175dmg at 2.1 speed (base). He got the speedslice to 1.6.....jeez.

But, really, my trusty rantok still might be my favorite sword because of it's low cost. 171 dmg (sliced) at 3.3 speed. Speed doesn't really seem quite as important now that I've gotten the +20 weapon speed from advanced footwork. A 3.3 speed rantok with the +20 speed is more than enough to do a posture change and get 2 dizzys off before an Npc stands up again. The fencer specials is what makes the class shine and having a low ham costing sword is what goes with that...

I'm a fairly hardcore rebel and I participate in imperial vs rebel skirmishs almost daily; I also have participated in a fair number of duels. For PvP, I would say low ham and dmg weigh about equally and a moderately lowspeed is all that is necessary. Maybe it's just me but lunge+dizzy does not work well at all vs a ranged attacker that knows he's doing (i.e. running away and shooting at you). Lunge lasts all but a fraction of a secondvs a PC and is generally not enough time to get off a dizzy vs a quick witted player. The fact that I have to spam lunge (your target is out of range) while chasing a player aroundwith server lag does not help us out at all. I'm embarrassed to say this but I've practically killed myself with ham cost in duel (the other person never hit me). As soon as the duel started, he started running. Fortunately, I caught him spam lunges before he got very far and once I was sure he was prone (I hit with 4 lunges total), then I hit dizzy a couple times (ok maybe 3 or 4 times, I did it until I was sure he was knocked out). He got knocked out without having fired a shot and by this time I didn't even have enoughham to perform a special attackso I finished him off (well it was a friendly duel so no deathblow) with regular attacks. I probably wouldn't spam so much, but it's the only way I can get it to work vs players because I've been gyped so many times by people sliding around on their knees and getting up and running before I can even land a dizzy. Generally, I don't even use lunge vs ranged attackers although it may be useful vs other melees in some instances (usually they won't try to run away).

Largescale PvP is a bit complex for a fencer. Generally, It's best to wait until the enemy is firing at other something other than you and then rush them, especiall with all these crazy ranged knockdowns and eye shots. They're usually slow or might not even bother to switch targets to a fencer rushing at them. They are also less likely to run away, or at least in a direction that is totally opposite from the way you are coming. Always scan for enemies and players with TEFs; I've set my tab key (cycle target) to Zero on the number pad for ease of use. Most TEs don't even know they have the flag on themselves and they become an easy kill, watch out for retaliation...they almost always do because you'll have a TEF from killing them. If an enemy has anything less than 3/4ths health/action, has a small health/actionbar,or has substantial wounds, it's probably just best to run up and hit them with the novice fencer ability 1hhit2(orif you already have a stronger attack, use that). With a good sword, you'll generally do a solid 600-800 dmg(even armored). There's a good possibility of doing 1000+. I've literally killed a line of 4 enemies with just one of this attack on each. Of course, having a deathblow macro linked to each of your special attacks helps. I'm not sure of the exact spelling of it, but for novice fencer ability, it would besomething like /melee1hHit2;/deathblow ...if they get incapacitated by the special they'll automatically be deathblown (usually in mid-air)...no wasting time selecting them or hitting a different macro. I have a different hotkey set just for the ones with deathblow (you don't want to be deathblowing someone automatically in a friendly duel now). I learned this the hard way, however. I was in a duel vs some trash talking imperial inanchorhead...it wasn't a friendly duel to say the least.He replied, "Pfft" to my challenge to duel to him and accepted. I quickly proceeded to knock him down and incap him. However, his jerk doctor friend was quick to heal him before I fumbled around trying to deathblow him, he got up again with a good portion of his health back, but Iwas able toincap him again. However, it happened again. He got healed once again, and now I was low on health from performing so many specials and he managed to incap me thistime. Somehow he mustered up the "courage" to give me a deathblow after he was repeatedly healed from incapicitationin a duel...I'd also like to thank all those slow witted rebels for standing around and watching all this anddoing nothing...At least, they finally wised up, after I was already dead of course,andslayed his imperial doctor friend, who had instantly gotten a TEFfor interfering.

Anyways, what other options does fencer have besides lunge+dizzy and 1hhit2 (aka Cho Sun, I think). I did not know this until I tested it out, but 1h health hit1 also has an amazing health bleed attack attached to it. In the description it says nothing of bleeding, just something about wounding. It does both. And they both hurt bad. I've only just recently started to use this, just the past day. I did one test on my friend, one shot. It did 300 or 400 damage andwounded his strength by 130 and **edit** near incapped him from bleeding. I'm a novice doctor and he has some medic training...but he still almost got incapped. The attack itself+the first bleed, which I wasn't expecting, practically incapped himright there. I used a stim C real quick and then we both started healing the bleeding and I had to use another StimC before we got it under control. Needless to say, I wanted to put this attack to the test in rebel/imperial pvp. Well, it's good but not great. Bleeding is much more powerful with a ranged weapon than a melee. I guess it could be useful vs another melee...hit them with bleeding and then turn and run hehe. I incapped a few people with it, but in both cases I was already either deathblown or incapped myself...you can't deathblow someone if you're already incapped or dead. That's not a fair trade. The times I used, I wondered if I was just better off doing my special dmg attack for a possible 1 hit kill+deathblow. It's comforting to know that you've at least wounded them when it hits.. But **edit**, that bleeding can be horrific. I hit a novice doctor with it just once before I was killed. He tried to stop the bleeding first before healing his own dmg first. Big mistake, he got incapped after the 2nd round of bleeding. In a duel, I got owned by a smuggler (eye shot, eye shot, eye shot), but I hit him twice with health hit and he just enough time to say, I'm going down" before getting incapped from the bleeding, even while a medic was trying to heal him. He also claims to have suffered 200+ wounds. It's not something to always use; it's something to pick and choose. VS melee or if you have the time vs ranged, do health hit and then body hit2 (400-600s dmg to health usually, 800s high). You might go down, but they're definately going with you. Of course, all bleeding pales in comparison to rifleman mind bleeding. You can't heal the dmg it's doing and it costs a good amount of mind in order to stop the mind dmg it's doing to you.And once you get incapped by it, you're down for a long, long time guaranteed. You'd just better hope there's a friendly doctor around to heal the bleeding before it incaps you.Give it a shot though, if you can heal bleeding; I once was able to stop my own mind bleeding after a rifle was shooting me in the head...barely.

Scattershot....I don't have this one yet. Any good?It says it attack alldmg pools.It's probably low dmg but It could have it's uses...hitting a doctor that keeps healing himself...is one that comes to mind. If he's hurting his mind...you probably should too. This isour only way to guarantee (if we connect that is) ahit to action or especially a mind pool.

Ahh, I got just a lot off my mind right now. Please read and respond.

/waves to Asenka

Good points matches my Beta and Live tests pretty well, glad you got around to finding health hit 1, That one move against a line of Imperials saved Anchorhead inthe biggest Imperial invasion of Anchorhead the final day of Beta, health hit 1, retarget to PC, move HH1, retarget, move, HH1, retarget.... so on...

I did get incapped but I bled dozens of PC's in my side long run on the Imperial attacking line, and before I got DB'd I turned the camera around to watch as sucessivly each one of the people I hit started dropping the tell tale bleeding icon showing over each one as they went down.

In duels it's great if you do, Dizzy, Lunge 2, Healthhit 2, Body hit 3 repetedly. Composite armored commandos look at their screens in shock and horor when they get killed by a Fencer.

Roogah

/waves back

Heya! Are you Calypsa?

So gladsee an experienced fencer on Ahazi So jealous of your sword, and your advanced footwork. Question: where did you level up so quickly? What are good mobs for our kind to kill?

Thanks for the excellent tip on health hit. I totally didn't know there was bleeding involved in this skill and I'm ecstatic when I got to try it out. Way cool!

Gah I know I had more to say.. so tired right now.. must... go... to sleep... will talk to you more about this later

Any word on an Ahazi fencer PA? I just met a really good fella named Lazerus, novice fencer. Good player, excellent fencer. We're travelling out together to do battle as a fencer team. Battles like this is turning out to be an absolute killer.

Unfortunately, both of us are going imperial, which means that some day you and I will have to be butting heads But, we are still fencers at heart and will always remain such, aye?

Heh, I was suprised the other day when you asked what my swords stats were and I looked at it again. I don't know why I've had 181 stuck it myhead when it's actually 80-190 ^ ^.

Xping...I'd say the best XP had to be when I was grouped with 2 high level TKAs on Endor killing a lot of pubrams and pretty much whatever else (they are so uber with their knockdown+dizzy(one move)....lunge+dizzy is patheticby comparison ). I couldn't even get lunge+dizzy to work against those goblin looking things...must be because they are too short to be able to posture change..hehe.

The Tuskan camp by wayfar used to be good until so many people started camping it and now there's a lot of high level people so all the tuskans die in about 1/2 second. The Tuskan compound is probably still pretty good...just don't die, because it's a long, long run back. I used to solo a lot of faction missions...it makes finding high level npcs (that you can lunge+dizzy) fairly easy.

We really do get gyped in the xp department. We can't do knockdowns vs creatures and we're meleeso toughcreatures will automatically aggro on us (if you have parts) and we die. Group with TKAs or find the best xp npcs that you can take down...Stormtroopers seem to be about my limit. I might have to give those npcs on Lok another shot though.

Too bad about the imperial thing....ah well, I've been known to fraternize with the enemy XD.