Swordsman Archive
Thread: State of the Swordsman Profession 10/31
Hiya all,
in case you visit other profession boards on a regular basis you might have recently noticed that some of the other correspondents started posting a "state of the profession"-thread on their boards. The reason for this is basically to define a baseline / starting point for what i call "the new and improved correspondent program" being introduced by Thunderheart.
Some of you will probably say now "Omg....not another list of our well known issues, we want to see results !!!". I agree and understand.
The difference, compared to the past 3 months, is though, that this time there is going to be a whole structure behind it. It's not another list which will get lost somewhere in a communication hole, but something that will be worked on and something we will get feedback on. Expect to see more info about the whole structure from Thunderheart and / or through the feedback we will get.
Concerning my work on the Correspondent board: Yes....Dan, the combat designer, is aware of most of our problems...i can definitely confirm that. At the same time, and i want to be honest with you, i have learned for myself, through my work on CB, and you might have probably noticed it as well, that some fixes / changes / addons require more development time than others....probably longer than some of us might think. So please don't expect any one day wonders concerning some issues and expect some of the stuff to take a little bit longer to be fixed / changed / added. At least we will have a better overview about what is going on with the new structure. Another thing i have noticed is that sometimes we might be confronted with changes we didn't necessarily ask for and might not seem very logic at first sight: please be aware, and i'm sure that most of you are, that the balancing process hasn't come to an end yet and that some changes have to be seen more in an overall picture rather than profession specific. It seems logic to me that balancing a 33-profession-monster like this might be pretty tricky.
But enough of that for now....
Please find herafter the "state of profession" i've been writing last night. It would be great if you could read through it and do the following:
1. Simply state if you agree / disagree
2. Add possible comments.
It would be awesome if we could stick to that structure as it will make it easier to work through it afterwards. In about a week the outcome will be analyzed, possible changes will be made and the final result will serve as a baseline for the steps to follow.
Thank you.
Have a nice weekend and happy scary day 
State of the Swordsman Profession
The current state of the Swordsman profession is a bundle of questions and issues, being partly the result of the default game design but also of the changes made in the past couple of months:
1. The specials
a) Variety
Together with a couple of other specials a swordsman acquires the following 7 specials throughout his career, as being described by game design:
1. Two-Hand Sweep 1: This melee attack can lower the posture of a single target
2. Two-Hand Sweep 2: This melee area attack can lower the posture of multiple targets at once.
3. Two-Hand Area Attack 1: This melee area attack can lower the posture of multiple targets at once.
4. Two-Hand Area Attack 2: This melee area attack can lower the posture of multiple targets at once. This is more damaging than two-hand are attack 1
5. Two-Hand Area Attack 3: This powerful melee area attack can blind, and damage and lower the posture of multiple targets simultaneously. This is more damage than two-hand area attack 2.
6. Two-Hand Spin Attack 1: This melee area attack can damage multiple targets at once.
7. Two-Hand Spin Attack 2: This melee area attack can damage multiple targets at once. This is more damaging than two-hand spin attack 1
When getting theanswers to our first mail we sent out to the Devs we were told when it came to this issue that we need to be informed better about what our specials do. Two months later the community knows very well what those specials do and don't do and unfortunately in-game reality confirms what this simplelist of descriptions hints to: A lack of variety. Solutions seeked vary from adding things like KD andspecials that cause different states to specials dealing with better defense abilities.
b) Wrong descriptions or things not working as described ?
Essentialy 2 specials:
1. Two-Hand Area Attack 3: This powerful melee area attack can blind, and damage and lower the posture of multiple targets simultaneously. This is more damage than two-hand area attack 2. This special doesn't blind but dizzy's
2. Two-Hand Hit 3: This powerful melee attack inflicts more damage than two-hand hit 2. ...and in addition to that it dizzy's
c) Specials affected by changes
Before the introduction of the posture timer a swordsman was able to inflict a knockdown to his opponent by using a combo consisting of a posture change + dizzy (2hAreaattack3 + 2hAreaattack3 or 2hAreaattack3 + 2hHit3). Unfortunately the introduction of the timer caused the chances of landing such a combo to decrease dramatically as the chance of landing a posture change has decreased, is penalized by a 30sec timer and the posture change itself only stays in effect for approximately 2 seconds.
Seeked solutions go from remodification of the timer, posture down length to introducing a straight KD or other solutions listed under point a)
d) Fun factor
Right now, since the introduction of the posture timer described in point c), a swordsman's bread n butter are our powerful Mind and Head hits, which cause mind bleeds and have quite often saved our lives. Therefore the community faces the current changes to DoT introduced on TC with some sceptism and fear.
2. HAM cost
As things currently are, Swordsmen share the following slogan together with Carbineers: "We can kill ourselves faster than our opponents do". A reduction of those costs is urgently needed, because improvements to defense for example, as they are currently being tested on TC, don't make any sense as long we are still able to kill ourselves with a couple of hits.
Weapons which are mainly affected by high cost: 2h curved sword, Power Hammer, Vibro axe
3. The "Out of range" - issue
Like point 2 this needs an urgent fix, as most of possible future addings become useless if we are not able to hit our opponents while running. This problem applies to all kind of different game situations: PvE, PvP and when fighting large animals. Currently there is a fix for this being tested on TC which consists of adding range to melee classes.
4. PvP
A tricky issue as thisconcerns all the combat professions and the overall balancing process. The community is aware that balancing is still an ongoing process, eventhough we don't know what the "masterplan" forsees and what the Designer's overall vision is. But by the way things currently are, we see our class still underpowered. Some percieve our damage output as being to low compared to other classes, others would like to see being given more defense/toughness abilities against KD/dizzy-fests and general special-spamming of our opponents.
5. General defense / Toughness
As described in point 4 this issue affects PvP but also PvE. As things currently are, it's not really the melee classes who are the classic Tanks in a battle but more player owned creatures. With the defensive abilities we currently have, we don't see ourselves as being able to match up with those creatures, which takes a bit from the fun factor and we would like to see more defensive abilities and or stats. The Center of Being special and an overall increase on some of our defensive stats currently being tested on TC is certainly a step in the right direction, but should be in our eyes only a start as we would for example like to see an increase in our ranged defense. In addition to that, while looking at and comparing the raw figures of stat increases foreseen for the different combat classes in these changes, we fear that there will be no remarkable change to the overall situation, as almost every class gets an increase, and therefore the changes might not get us closer to the currently stronger classes and therefore it's currently not seen as a further step towards overall balance.
6. Where is the scythe ?
As far as we know, we are currently the only class in the game which gets certification for a weapon no one has ever owned. We've been told in the answers to our first mail of issues that the scythe would be a quest reward weapon. Unfortunately it hasn't shown up in the game until present day and so far investigations about its whereabouts remained fruitless. There is wide belief that a certain weapon in Nym's Palace on Lok is supposed to be the scythe and therefore theories go towards assuming that the scythe might be a reward for Nym's Themepark. Unfortunately, to the writer's knowledge, that Themepark remains broken until present day. This is an ever returning topic on the Swordsman's board and while we understand that some of our issues might take some time getting fixed, we don't understand why a seemingly simple issue / question like this remains unanswered until present day.
7. Weapons
One of our issues since we sent in our first mail was the lack in variety of our weapons. We are swordsmen, but currently there are only 2 swords at our disposal in the game, next to 3 axes and a power hammer. Our novice weapon is an axe and the most powerful weapon we currently have, by pure damage costs, is the power hammer and not a sword. There is certainly a non-sword-blade faction in our community but overall we would like to see more swords showing up, preferably not simply existing weapons with new skins, but weapons with different abilities like electrical/cold/heat.....
In case any input is needed from the designer's side, there are quite a few related threads with ideas regarding this topic on our board, that the correspondent would be gladdiggingout for him. There are indications though, that all this might recquire a more lengthy development process, but the community would be glad to see this as one of the top priority longer termprojects for our class.
We would also like to seesomething comparable to crayt tissues on guns for our current weapons. There is wide belief that rancor teeth are supposed to do the job, but either they are broken or are not intended to enhance a weapon's quality in first place.
8. Solved Issues
- the empty finesse box: 2hMindhit2 has been moved to the empty finesse box and defensive stats in Master finesse have been increased as recompensation on TC.
- delay / "pulling sword" has been removed when attacking
9. General stuff
Fun factors
PvE damage output, Mind bleeds
Not so fun factors
All the above mentioned issues
General issues also affecting the Swordsman profession
Mob warping and body sliding
Favourite weapons
2h curved sword, Power Hammer, 2h cleaver
Seldomly used weapons because of stats
2h axe, vibro axe
10 . Wishlist
More animations
Gorecki
Swordsman Correspondent
/agree
I think we could use some more defense mods too. Also I'm wondering why counterATTACK is in the defense column?
b) Wrong descriptions or things not working as described ?
Also mention to change the description for counterattack. It is nothing more than a renamed block/dodge move and its description should reflect that.
/Agree
And, just to put in a quick word about Rancor Teeth - they do work as a substitute for a sword or reinforcement core (optional part that is worth putting in all swords/hammers etc) however their stats compared to the sword cores I can craft myself are just laughable.
Adv sword core is about 43-43 and a bonus to speed (I forget how much) while the last Rancor tooth i saw was 5-50 and +1 (yes it makes your weapon slower by 1 second)
Not hard to see why most WS's don't bother using Rancor Teeth when making Melee weapons!!
+42 damage, -0.58 on the speed, using Dolovite Iron with a UT of 825. (Advanced Sword Core, of course)
I would imagine that higher quality Dolovite Iron should yield better results, and should know by tomorrow.
I only have one thing to add, and this isn't really an issue specifically with Swordsman, or if it belongs on the list.. but I think it needs to be asked..
Why in the hell does TKA get everything we do (and alot more actually) in only 3 lines of their profession? plus the bonus Meditation line ontop of it?
SURELY somene could see that was WAY out of balance with the other melee profs. We need some uber extra ability line.
Yeah I know, i'll keep dreamin'