Fencer Archive

Hello, having grown tired of my master sharpshooter, I recently moved servers from Chilastra to Tempest. I decided to go for fencer, mainly because the style of combat is the total opposite of my rifleman skills.

I am currently working on finishing off one-handed weapons four, and start the slow climb to novice fencer. My questions are as follows:

(please note that I am still trying to adjust to the tactics required for this class)

1. What creatures are generally considered efficient sources of xp? As a rifleman, I tried my best to make Banthas an endagered species. Recent changes to these creatures make this a no-go.

2. I am currently using a curved sword, 2.3 speed, 94-224 damage, ham costs around 25/53/25 (I think, doing this from work). I am enjoying the low ham costs on these weapons, especially considering the fact I can stim my health/action back up. As far as I have been able to find, this looks to be the most efficient weapon available, any one feel like giving their opinion on this?

3. I usually run around with my stats buffed by a doctor friend, another friend is working his way through dancer/musician, so I am covered for stats. If that is the case, and I can scrap up enough money, would I be better servered with chitin/ubese armor, or going for full composite?




Any input from those knowledgeable to this class would be greatly appreciated.


Kalir Raymnon-Chilastra
Master Sharpshooter, 4/4/3/4 Creature handler, Master scout

Hric-Tempest
Novice weaponsmith, Novice medic, novice pistoleer, novice scout, Aspiring Fencer.

That's a nice sword you got there. A bit better than mine. Very nice. I've pretty much stayed on Tatooine since I started so here's what I hunted.

Mountain Woorts. I killed a lot of those ugly beasts.

Sycks are good for a little while.

Banthas are not bad.

Womp rats and the like. Avoid the bigger ones for a while though.

When you start moving on up into the fencer trees, give squills a go.

Use intimidate a lot, keep some good stim b's handy and migrate your stats to your mind as much as you can without killing the rest of your stats. Keep your willpower up so you can regen mind faster and put a little into focus so your specials wont kill your mind too terribly fast. Some ppl like armor, some dont, that choice like all others, will be up to you to decide.

That's all I've got for now.

I have a total n00b question as well, as I am also a soon to be Novice Fencer myself on Scylla.

Does increasing your strength, say for example by drinking a Tatooine Sunburn,give extra damage while in combat? Or does that not affect it at all?

I believe that strength only helps to reduce the amount of health that a particular move will use. As in, the more strength you have, the less health a high level move will suck out of your HAM bar.

I may be wrong though, or just confused..

i'm wrong and confused. and i drink a lot of it, but i've never known it to increase damage. it does help if you want to strap on that composite chest plate, though.

I moved from Corellia/Talus to Tatooine to level into the Fencer trees. Corellia doesn't have a lot of critters between bagerasets and the wrixen. Humbaba was good but too rare close to the cities.

On Tatooine my absolute favorite trying to reach Novice Fencer were the scyks. Worth about 600-700 one-hand XP and 100 scout XP each. They're usually found either in lairs or in packs of five (which respawn quick enough that you can sometimes get 12 scyks from one 10 minute stretch).

Mutant womp rats have similar XP and tend to be a bit easier, because they are generally escorted by regular womp rats. Of course, regular wompies have half the XP reward of the mutants.

Of lesser reward but easier to find (they should be very common for destroy missions at that level) are cu pas and regular wompies. Valarian enforcers are the sweet humanoid opponents here. Trandoshan slavers are too easy.

I found in Anchorhead I can regularly get destroy missions within 700m for over 1000 credits, which is as efficient a spot as I've found for XP+creds vs. time. Using burst run back to the city after finishing each pair of missions, it's not too hard to pick up 20k XP and 15k creds per hour.

Composite isn't all its cracked up to be. Get a non-ch pet like a grand wrix, keep your distance from creatures, and mash in your specials without that lofty composite. It is possible to use very good composite and just fight creatures without using specials - but that can be a slow, boring process. Dispatching creatures quickly seems to be more entertaining, cheaper, and gives less headaches. Having high mind stats don't hurt to heal the other two stats, especially since fencing typically stresses mind.

For armor, my suggestion is mabari or padded with extremely low HAM. Don't even worry if it doesn't have high resistences - you need all of your body flagged as "light armor." Light armor will cut damage in half against creatures that have no armor piercing (and most don't). Creatures also tend to use kinetic - hence I noted mabari. In effect, you're getting 60% damage reduction for piddly HAM encumberance - allowing you to use your specials as you please without fear of being torn to shreds by gubburs.

For training as a fencer, I suggest climbing the footwork tree first. That will give you the speed to use the high-damaging, low-speed weapons like gaderiffi baton. You can get a gaderiffi baton to about 300 damage with a good slicer and you'll be able to attack every second with that thing. This will quicken your grinding since you can dispatch some pretty hefty mobs quickly.

A fencer with good stims, mind, pets, and fully armored without using much HAM can stand up to most of the complications you will come by.

just a small note: i don't think a grand wrix is a non-CH pet. cowardly gurreck is, and so is the kahmurra. grand wrixes are level 22, and i think you have to have at least two boxes in CH to use one.

and i thought a light armor rating only reduced damage by 25% for creatures with AP0. that may have been misinformation, though.

AR1 protection reduces damage by 50% over AP0 attacks, Altair. In the other direction, AP1 attacks vs. AR0 protection have a 25% increase in damage.

Yeah, the way I look at it is as long as the total HAM hit for all your armor is less than half your secondary stats, it works out in your favor against AP0 things (including 90+% of PvE). You take 50% of damage, so if you're halving your regen rate that balances out and you're left with the resistances of the armor as a bonus.

ah, ok. i assumed it would be the same reduction/addition each way. that does make the less expensive armor seem better than i previously thought (mabari, etc).

we can see a creature's armor, i wish we could see their armor piercing.