Fencer Archive

After min/max'ing a bit and trying out various strategies, my fencer is doing pretty well. I'm fairly happy with him. I hunt occasionally with a person that is about as good with his pistol as I am with my vibroblade, and he is regularly impressed by what my character is capable of. I wear high-kinetic ubese and fight animals. I take very little damage. With the vibro I canuse somespecials if I want with not that much of a problem, and I just throw out a lot of damage with very quick attacks.

I've been wanting to upgrade my weapons for some time. In my opinion the vibroblade is definitely our best weapon except in certain situations where a stun baton might be better or at master when a well-made gaffi may be better. I did some research on my server, and found a fellow selling slightly better vibroblades than what I had (still not amazing but ok -- 35-137, 2.5swith 16/27/16 hams, the best I've found so far on Eclipse). So I'm sitting in his store right now and I'm looking at the other melee weapons. Ok, the vibro rocks the vibro knuckles. Great. It's definitely got the lowest hams of the lot. It has it's nice armor-piercing. But thenI notice a 2h curved sword. 67-244, 2.6s. And it's mediumAP.Ok the HAMs are about twice as high but who cares. Taking into account the armor-piercing the DPS is basically twice that of my vibroblade I don't even need to do specials with that and I'll be ahead.Then there's that power hammer that is also medium AP and over250average damage.At master 2h it would be attacking at 1.5s without specials, add in master brawler and you're down to 1.2s.

*sigh*

I'm trying hard to resist, but I find myself really feeling like I should give up on fencer for a bit and have some fun as a swordsman.

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StGabe

Hmm, I don't see why I would miss a lot. The range mods on the swordsmen weapons are all quite ok, and a master swordsman gets the same +accuracy as a fencer. The advantage that a fencer has seems to be defense. Better knockdown defense certainly. Actually though, the swordsman has a better toughness which is one of the mods that seems to work.

Hmph. I think I'm gonna go buy that 2h curved sword and play around a bit. I just made 2-handed II in a little under an hour of play. I was one and two hitting whites with a 2h axe.

I do really prefer the idea of a fencer. Hmm. I think I'll give both a shot and see what I think after a while. Probably right after I decide to go swordsmen they'll give fencers a much-needed bump.

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Fynne.

This past week I just got novice swordsmen and novice fencer, in hopes of mastering both professions. All I can say is that both are pretty equal in my opinion. My 2h curved sword is 92-309, 2.6sp (2.2 with the crate of powerups i have) and my Ryyk blade is 82-213 2.5 sp(2.1 w/ powerup). I don't remember the HAM costs on either of them. Both were sliced for dmg ( was hoping for speed at the time hehe). But, I'm gonna master fencer first because that's the one i see the least of on my server (Radiant).

Not to be hopelessly negative, but from what I've seen the 2h curved has better damage, same speed, better HAM costs and much better armor-piercing than the Rykk. The armor-piercing itself translates into even better DPS all around (if it is working at present) for an opponent of any level of armor.

I think that fencing weapons need a general bump up. I think vibroblade should be AP2, some of the other weapons should be 1-2, and should get a damage increase. The gaffi stick is just an anomoly. It shouldn't be our best weapon butit can be onlybecause weapon speeds are seriously messed up. It seems silly that a "fencer" has low armor-piercing values among the various melee classes. I mean, shouldn't fencing weapons be good at penetrating targets?

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StGabriel.

Gaderifi Batons. I just got one today, it's at AP0 but the damage range was 100-200 (not sure on specifics but min was higher than 100 and max was higher than 200). Very nice. The speed, if I remember was around 2.5-3.5 (still around that, don't remember specifics).

One problem with Swordsman is definitely the HAM costs, the slow speed and the horrible hit rate. You will miss a lot with Swordsman, but of course that is all compensated with the very high damage.

I wouldn't go to Swordsman if I were you. Since the knockdown/sweep gimp, you guys are the only melee who can actually knock people down in PvP with dizzy/lunge.

Lies, nothing but lies. TKA's get a Dizzy attack at Intermediate Power Techniques. I'm pretty sure that some of the Swordsmen's area attacks have a Dizzy component as well.

Besides, Lunge/Dizzy is still worse than KD. Lunge timers are so short, people can stand back up before you hit your dizzy if you lunge first, which means that the combo's wasted since you can't lunge them back to their knees for another 30 seconds. If you try to Dizzy first, I've been hearing that Dizzy is both much harder to land now and that it's duration is super short, which means that you might not be able to Lunge before it wears off.

PvP-wise (which is not my main concern, but is still relevant), swordsmen are gettinggodmind bleeds and mind pool specials. After the nerf, mind-damage seems to be one of the most important factors in PvP. So I don't see fencers winning many points there.

It's not like I didn't already know that ranged weapons are already much better off than melee. I guess now I'm just thinking that maybe swordsmen is a better compromise if I really want to go melee. I'm trying not to dump on you guys. I just think it's important to compare these two and see what a different there is. I'm keeping my fencer skills and hoping something happens. I want to be a fencer, I'm just not sure I can really justify it to myself right now. It's not that I think thata fencer is unplayable. I disagree with a lot of the whinging on here in that my character did quite well as a fencer. It just looks like he'll do much better as a swordsman as things currently stand.

So far I'm rocking as a swordsman. I didn't really get to play much since Istarted thisbut I'm nearly to 2h III with only about an two hours of working at it. If I remember correctly, I killed some yellows in 2-5 hits each. No specials.Of course I'm relying on my ubese armor to help me through this.

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StGabriel

I'm a 4 4 1 3 swordsman and I was hopping to be a monster in pvp with the area attacks but alas since the KD/ posture nerf I wasted my time going up offense well other than the toughness mods but yeah area attack 3 use to dizzy alot but now I get dizzy 1 out of 20 maybe. I hear that our hit 3 does dizzy as well but with like only 30% chance to. On the side of weapons I believe that Curved is not our best weapon once you reach battlemaster and master. I do about 3 times more dmg plus since I'm a wookie the overall ham costs are much better than curved. Though I wish as a SWORDSMAN our end weapon could be a sword but hey I'll stick with my Power Hammer for now.

Swordsmen are really just goofy Engineers with the big hammers they carry and Fencers are really just rent-a-cops with their batons. ~rollseyes~

"slightly better vibroblades than what I had (still not amazing but ok -- 35-137, 2.5swith 16/27/16 hams, "

You haven't looked very far is that's the best you've found

I am Cerf Agile, I run the only fencing network in SWG it seems, and I just so happen to be on Eclipse as well...anyways, if Vibroblades are your fancy, I'd check out Kanae's shop on Corelia - her Vibroblades are 35-144, 17/26/17 HAM, 2.5 spd. and at a really decent price (she's repsonsive to emails if you notice she's out of stock).

If you decide to stick with Fencing, send me an ingame email sometime if you're interested in joining the network...so far I've only made up a master list of all Fencers on the server and also a vender list of shops people have told me about and that I've personally gone out to look at.

Sounds very interesting, I didn't know that existed. I'm currently planning on dabbling in both swordsman and fencer. My hope is to hold on to fencer long enough for some much-needed fixes. I'll send an email.

I did do quite a bit of asking around, looking for ads and I even made a few posts on the Eclipse forum but that was the best vibro I could find (made by Sredna -- it was also very expensive at 20k). On another server (Gorath) where I have a newbie character I've found MUCH cheaper vibros (4k) with better stats than even the one you mention. *shrug*

I think SWG needs better ways to allow people to advertise. I like the fact that I have to travel around to visit shops but I just wish that there was a more expedient way for me to look at what shops I should be checking out.

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StGabriel.