Fencer Archive
Thread: Fencer Issues and Visions
Implementing melee classes in a universe meant and created for ranged professions is a daunting task, but something the developers of Star Wars Galaxies must undergoe. For the sake of diversity and mechanics, SOE has created a number of close combat classes for our use, and two years ago, they were simply alternatives to being a ranged glass. There were no exact distinctions or class roles between ranged and melee professions, and there was a variety of dominating skill templates, including Smuggler/Pistoleer to Teras Kasi Master/Doctor. Changes were made in the old system, pre-CU, to balance the classes and define thier roles a little better. In essense though, there were no class roles, but rather niches and tasks classes excelled at. A Teras Kasi Monk was adept at controlling herself, healing her ailments, and outputing damage quickly. Riflemen and Swordsmen were a bit more fragile but could destroy opponents who were not careful to check thier head armor. Fencers and Pistoleers were exceptionally agile and resiliant to state effects that others imposed on them.
Now though, after this Combat Upgrade, classes have been assigned roles, and much of thier past skills and niches have been forgotten. More importantly, in these first stages of the CU not all these roles are achievable by their classes current skill sets. SOE must be notified of these short comings and helped in creating thier new vision for Star Wars Galaxies.
Fencer Issues
Currently, Fencers are able to conduct battles and get along well with the right supporting templates, but still lack in certain aspects of gameplay. Where other melee classes are beginning to excel at thier roles, Teras Kasi tank, Pikeman can control and damage a great number of mobs, and swordsman can do damage like no other, fencers are falling behind in effectiveness.
The War of Attrition
With the Combat Upgrade, most combat players have chosen to take a healing profession (Doctor or Combat Medic) with thier class. This change in game dynamic has effected PvP and dueling for fencers greatly. One of the desired effects of a fencer is to be able to cut off an enemy's action supply and win the fight through a war of attrition. Unfortunately, because of the CU's changes to class prereqs many players are able to get sufficient enough abilities to complete negate this fencer ability. Further, through food stacking, and spice, and alternative buffs, most players can render a fencer's binding attack docile and harmless.
Understandably that is the desired effect of consuming food and spice, and currently binding strike does give an edge in combat, but is many and most cases, not a winning one. A fencer should be able to cut through an opponents buffs, and expose them. At the time, any class with 4xx4 doctor, or an action buff can negate this ability, leaving the fencer with a very limited arsenal of alternative attacks.
A Fencer's bleed attacks are taken care of easily enough because of this shift to doctor and combat medic supporting nearly every class. At times, there is almost no use in even applying them as they are rendered useless with a heal over time of even a simple bacta shot.
A Teras Kasi Artist with the Knuckles of Katarn can easily outlast a fencers action pool even with a bleed and binding strike. Marksman classes aren't in range of a fencer enough of the time for these attacks to be applied liberally enough to become effective.
Many fencers means of survival don't even come from a fencer's own skills even. CoB is commonplace, and many fencers are migrating to some swordsman trees to be able to do respectable damage.
Weapon Diversity
This is a problem with all classes, and must be attended to. Pre-CU I was often switching between Ryyk, Gaffi, and Stun batons to be able to suceed in PvP. Now I stick with my Blade of Nyenthis'oris. Its damage is nothing to be gawked at yet fencer lacks the abilities to utilize it properly. Fencer's need weapons they can use. Perhaps instead of the heavey damaging Nyenth, and more useful weapon that is faster and perhaps has DoT modifications. This would allow fencers more chances to apply thier bleeds and stick thier binding strikes.
There are more issues, but I'd like to open this post to everybody to correct me, and to voice thier own opininions about alternative issues. The reason I don't go further is because much of the beef that I have with the fencer class is based in the core systems of the game and certain abilities of other classes, and I've always prefered not to attack classes, but rather get my own fixed.
one word BRAVO!!!!!
i totaly agree with what you have said but where you have ended, i will take over. you dont like to attack profession and nore do i, but i think it has to be done. ill start with teri-kasi. and befor i start i love all melee profs, but somthing has to be done. with teri-kasi, first of all there is alot of deffence that comes with teri-kasi from the defence tree as well as the advanced center of being. i wouldnt have a problem with that, but the problem comes where the new wepon " the knuckls of katarn" are a very, very uber wepon for teri-kasi. with this wepon not only to the teri-kasi have an unbalivable amout of deffence, but now they have it with damage as well. my problem isnt with the wepon, but if your willing to give this much damage to a teri-kasi mabe you should take some deffence away. next, pikeman, as you have said they do alot of damage to mobs. well i actually dont have to big a problem with pikeman. my biggest problem lies with swords man. this profession, if done properly, is very very uber. the hammers are coming out stronger and faster. not only do they have the powerful hammers they have the extremly power ful attacks. which leaves me with fencer. i love the profession, but. there are no good attack, like teri-kasi. but there isnt a a huge deffence bonus like teri kasi. and we do have a fue debuffs, but that isnt helping us because as far as i can tell binding attack doesnt work, and with all the founds and buffs, and lower sac pu's it doesnt do anything, and cripple attack can only do so much. so after all that lol what i suggest happens is, fancer gets a better damage attack as well as teri-kasi, or just make scatter and combo attack for both profs better, and that will relive alot of problems. another suggestion is make our de-buffs more power ful, the only one that i can think of would be biding attack because it dosnt seem to do much. if those changes are made we might have a better chance at pvp'ing, we do have that blade that i couldnt spell if my life counted on it, but a wepon can only do so much, if we have little defence. one thing i do like very much about fencer is blinding attack. thank you very much and if u dissagree with any of these PLS critisise me.
ralphydeaglo wrote:
one word BRAVO!!!!!
i totaly agree with what you have said but where you have ended, i will take over. you dont like to attack profession and nore do i, but i think it has to be done. ill start with teri-kasi. and befor i start i love all melee profs, but somthing has to be done. with teri-kasi, first of all there is alot of deffence that comes with teri-kasi from the defence tree as well as the advanced center of being. i wouldnt have a problem with that, but the problem comes where the new wepon " the knuckls of katarn" are a very, very uber wepon for teri-kasi. with this wepon not only to the teri-kasi have an unbalivable amout of deffence, but now they have it with damage as well. my problem isnt with the wepon, but if your willing to give this much damage to a teri-kasi mabe you should take some deffence away. next, pikeman, as you have said they do alot of damage to mobs. well i actually dont have to big a problem with pikeman. my biggest problem lies with swords man. this profession, if done properly, is very very uber. the hammers are coming out stronger and faster. not only do they have the powerful hammers they have the extremly power ful attacks. which leaves me with fencer. i love the profession, but. there are no good attack, like teri-kasi. but there isnt a a huge deffence bonus like teri kasi. and we do have a fue debuffs, but that isnt helping us because as far as i can tell binding attack doesnt work, and with all the founds and buffs, and lower sac pu's it doesnt do anything, and cripple attack can only do so much. so after all that lol what i suggest happens is, fancer gets a better damage attack as well as teri-kasi, or just make scatter and combo attack for both profs better, and that will relive alot of problems. another suggestion is make our de-buffs more power ful, the only one that i can think of would be biding attack because it dosnt seem to do much. if those changes are made we might have a better chance at pvp'ing, we do have that blade that i couldnt spell if my life counted on it, but a wepon can only do so much, if we have little defence. one thing i do like very much about fencer is blinding attack. thank you very much and if u dissagree with any of these PLS critisise me.
ok ok i can agree, but like u said low sac, it is like 75 sac or somthing like that i belive, that means they can attack ALOT, so mabe they do as much damage but we can only do so much with a sac of like 95 on the blade and then they can keep going, so ill stick with my main concern that i belive we need our binding stike fixed to do more, because as far as i can see it does nothing.
thanks for the critisism
If you remember, pre-CU, fencers we able to dodge and use CoB without having to rely on spending SP in TKA to be able to take even the smallest amount of damage. The CU has killed a lot of the old aspects of fencer, such as a fencer being a fast, agile, and well balanced offender. Describing a fencer now in those terms would be a joke.
The reason I first took fencer so long ago was because of its interesting defense styles, rather than its offensive ability. I saw fencer as a profession that weathered its enemies assaults until the time to strike was right, sort of a Mohammed Ali attitude. I think thats what a fencer is supposed to be.
Message Edited by Fredwroc on 07-18-2005 01:21 PM
In addition, I believe, if medical professions can be implemented correctly, a fencer can have a more defined role in PvP. As it stands now, through armor, and then fact that is is too easy to place points into Doctor or combat medic, any duel or PvP fight can last upwards of 20 minutes, many classes roles in PvP are obscured by this. Hard hitters such as riflemen and swordsmen should be focused on taking down thier enemies before they can lay thier debuffs on them or pull some other trick, TKMs are built to take the damage until an enemy is depleted of all will to continue, and then slowly but efficiently defeat them. Other classes such as Pistoleers and Carbineers are for keeping an enemy down and out, while pikemen can deal with a larger onslaught of opponents while his allies take them out (a very group oriented class I think).
The role I believe fencers should be playing is a tank occupying class, or sort of a middle ground. Not necessarily damage takers themselves, but through abilities such as dodge and the old resistances,debuffs, should be able to deal with classes that don't hit hard but can stay in the fight for a long time (TKMs). Not necessarily damage dealers either, but coupled with thier resiliance, bleeds and useful defensive attacks, such as blind, and snare, can down a target that doesn't usually go down to the heavier instant damage of other classes.
Of course, a fencers weaknesses would be those that cannot kill the targets a fencer is made for, such as big DDs. With a fencer's dodge being her main defense, being hit by a hard attack would be devestating. Being a middle class, excelling in taking down tanks, and doing well with other players of thier level, a fencer's bane would be the distant attack of a rifleman, which a TKM might be able to stand up to, but a fencer would have to try hard to avoid.
I'd like like theBlade of Nyenthis'oris animation fixed.
Add in a couple more crafted weapons that are better than the converted ones. Example if I want a stun baton I have to get a pre-curb one becuase the ones that WS can craft are just sub par 
Valcyn crafters are some of the best in the game, and I've spoken to one of the top valcyn WS and he says he can't make anything like the current SB I have. More CRAFTED weapons with them able to reach about 1k damage cap (not as high as swordsman cap) This is also a pikeman issue, their general crafted weapons are sub par as well.
Bleeds are useless (BH issue as well) In fact the only good dot in the game nowis Force Choak. CM dots arn't that great but at least they can stack several different ones on the same target. Fencer Bleed and BH bleed are pethetic and a waste of action. However ticks of the pre-curb DOTs would be over balanced. Maybe something that overloads infusion (force or master doctor) would be good.
I persoanly think that Binding strike works about right and we do more damage than a TKM with Knuckles of Katarn, (they no longer stack weapon and inate damage)
Blind is current broken so no point using it.
Snare is GREAT though a root would be nice.
Maybe instead of having to to rely on COB fencer should get a similiar, (I'd call it parry or duelist stance but they are already taken), but not as powerful, special in one part of the tree, (maybe master to stop stackers and dabblers) something like +400 for 45 seconds?