Swordsman Archive
Thread: SWORDSMEN'S ROUND TABLE: In the beginning there was a swordsman...
Personally, Ithink TKA'sshould havethe lowest of the toughness ratings, just for the pure fact that 1.) they have no weapon in which to block damage with, just their bodies (and yes, when you get hit anywhere on the body with a weapon, no matter what kind it is, it hurts), and 2.) they can heal themselves through meditation. Their forte should be dodging. With no weight in their hands, they can move the fastest, thus avoiding what would be the clumsy swings of other larger weapons. This shouldget a dodge penaltyagainst marks man though, come on... this is Star Wars, not the Matrix, where you can dodge bolts like nothing. Middle of the road, in combat, they should be good at all things, but not overly. They should be the fastest of all the classes, with the lowest of the armor ratings and damage.
Fencers should be the finesse class of them all. Beautiful acrobatic moves that do good damage against unarmored to light armored opponets. They should be able to target specific area's (like TKA's can) because a good fencer knows what area is open to attack and how to exploit that opening. While they shouldn't be the toughest of opponets, they should have the block and counter attack all the way up. Personally, I believe they should be the most defensive of the group. Able to go one on one with any one, including TKA's and win. After all, fencers were and still are master duelists.
Swordsman should be the tanks of the meleers. Large lumbering hits, that it you get hit by, is going tohurt. They should be the thoughest of the 4 classes, but have little to no special defensive moves (counter attacks, dodges...). If they have any,it should be blocking.A personal complaint here, Swordsman should have a Sword as their best weapon, not a hammar, I dont remember anyone in history, fact or fiction, carrying around a hammer with the title "swordsman". They should also be the battlement destroyers. Able to take on many small things at once or a singlelarge thing and decimate them.
Now, I believe pikeman should be a lot faster than they are currently.Almost every pike in the game (with the exception od the regular lance) is held in the middle, giving them 2 ends to attack with. While the weapon itself might be as heavy as a heavy sword, they do have twice the surfaces in which to attack. With this reason in mind, I think that the speed in which the normal attacks are made are faster. But, in contrast, the specials that can be made with a pole take more strength than that of any of the other weapons, therefore, thedelay of specials shouldeither stay as long or may be get a time increase. The role ofpikeman in the past has been to take out your enemy before they are in range to take you out.They should have the easiest time taking out mobs of things due to the large sweeping motion that most polearms tend to have, but unlessthey have the element of readyness or suprise on an oncoming attacker, theyshould watch out. May be not the toughest of the group, they should be up there, andhave a good array of deffensive counters.
In conclusion or to some up what I think:
TKA- Fastest attacks, lowest toughness, highest dodge, good counterattack, lowest damage, lowest AP rated weapons.
Fencers- Fastattacks, most diverse attacks able to targetspecific pools,high probability ofdefensive moves happening after the enemy tries to attack(counter,block, or dodge), One on one masters.
Swordsman- Slowest attacks, huge damage, toughest of the 4, has little to none deffensive moves (with block may be being added in), have a SWORD as the best wespon not thehammer.
Pikeman-Middle of the road combat wise, faster normal attacks,same or longer waits after specials, good chance for defensivemove,mob expert, longest range, ok toughness.
Range also has to come into play here with TKA's having the shortest andpikeman the longest.It just makes sense with what they have in their hands. Nowthis is based off of real world examples, and not allcould be viable for this game, but I tried my best to make sense of it all.
Guys,
Yet another correspondent is a swordsman. 
I view us primarily as the tanks - which echoes a lot of what I read on here. Generally, when I'm out grouping, I am the only one our Doctor bothers to buff. I can stand there, pummel whatever we're taking on and generally make out okay.
We're definitely not a "finesse" profession. But that appeals to my nature.
I just like breaking stuff.
B
Glyndo Malina, Retired Elder Smuggler 
i agree with most all of what has been said above.
teras kasi: fast low damage, able to take a hit and dodge decently, and posture down / knock down their opponent so they can get a advantage for dealinglow damage. and focused on attacking all areas of their opponent. light armor piercing because they can find the weakness in the armor
fencer: mildly fast, mid damage attacks, lots of dodgeing and parrying, and flankingtheir opponent, focused on body hits and able to block decently, light armor piercing as they can find the weaknesses in the armor as well
pikeman: able to take their opponents off their feet, thus attacking the lower areas of the body like the feet and legs.able to take hits so they can keep in the fight if somebody gets too close for them to use their weapon to its full advantage as a croud killer. heavy armor piercing as they take the feet out and use heavy attacks to pierce something.
swordsman: tank medium armor piercing, heavy hitter, able to cleave the skull like a hot knife through butter. able to take hits as their weapon is long and heavy, thus being slower to attack andleaves themselves open for damage. generally leaves their opponent dead or out cold before they take too much damage
as a side note polearms and heavy swordsman should be able to brace for a enemy that is charging, thus taking advantage of the weight of their weapons. ie: a rancor is charging at you, what are you going to do if you are holding a spear, lance, or some sort of polearm, brace one end on the ground and let the thing come into the sharp end of your weapon, thus impailing itself. or if your a swordsman you would sidestep the thing letting it slice itself open on the blade of your axe/sword or hammer you would wind the thing.
teras kasi being unarmed would be able to clothline some things, or a fencer would be able to sidestep and jab into the under arm area or some other weak spot on something.
someof my ideas seem longer, but for swordsman and polearm it tends to need more description as their attack base is a different style than fencer and teras kasi.
Conan is certainly the high damage, low defense type of swordsman. He uses something similar to a claymore. If you ever held one of those things you know, they are extremely heavy, and require a lot of strength to use. They're blunt edged, and have a very long reach and are acutally quite similar to a pikeman's long axe. The idea being to bash your oppenent with long sweeping motions before he can ever get close to you. They are not very accurate and pretty slow but the sheer momentum of a big hit can knock down even a heavily armored knight on horseback.
Our other example uses a totally different style of fighting however. The Samaurai's sword was a Dai-Katana, which may seem somewhat heavy but its considerably lighter than a Claymore. Its much quicker and sharp edged for lethal damage against unarmormed oppenents, but against heavy armor its disadvantaged as the blade us likely to crush, absorbing more of the impact than the target is. The Samurai style was more discliplined, requiring prescision and speed. Good defense and counterattacks were vital for survial. Sure they wore armor, but it was generally wicker, much lighter and much less durable than an medieval knight would wear.
"Ok, get to the point already, what does this mean in SWG."
Well first some slight rebalancing of our weapons.
Powerhammers should keep that high health cost, higher action but its mind should be reduced. Curved Swords are the oppisite with mind costing more than before, but not as much health or action.
The speed needs to be decreased on all of our weapons to take any adavantage of being a master with a quicker weapon vs a heavier weapon. With the current speed cap, a curved sword is not any faster than a cleaver at a master, and a Powerhammer comes close, which shouldn't be the case.
Armor pericing should reflect the weapon, not the class. Why are all of our weapons AP2? A curved should only be AP1 at the most and a Powerhammer should be AP3.
Finally the most important thing is change the accuracy of a weapon to effect your defense too. With the powerful but innacurate powerhammer your defense should suffer, the negative mod actually causing you to counterattack less often and get hit more. The positive mods on a Curved Sword increases your defense and you counterattack much more frequently.
These changes would allow more diversity at a master level than there currently is with our class. Two Master's should be equal if they fit the part.
Conan the Trendoshan is very strong and can wield that Powerhammer (Swg's Claymore) without incapping himself. He may not hit as often and take more damage but he makes up for it with his huge hits.
Samurai the Zabrak isn't really strong like Conan, but his high willpower lets him focus better. The high mind costs on a Curved are easier to take and he defends himself much better than Conan, even if he doesn't hit as hard.
To me, swordsman is a combination of discipline and strength. Some styles require more of one than the other but both are effective. I fear if we get pigeon-holed into the "kill fast, die fast" class, there is only going to be room for Conan's.
Wow, some really excellent posts on this subject.
Swordsmen: I agree with many of the people that have stated that our profession is not too far off from what many people like to play it as. Slower than the other melee profs with huge damage. I would very much like our profession to take less damage from a 'toughness' type modifier - I just don't see us as dancing around and dodging a ton of stuff. For this point - I agree with the poster that said we are like the 'Conan' or 'Samurai in full armor' types. We'll get hit a little more...but not take as much damage per hit- this would have the feel of us being 'the tough guys'. I really hope the devs make the changes to the cert system. I totally agree that it's stupid that we have to use a hammer to be the best swordsmen. Ideally, you can choose a weapon type (hammer/swords/axes) and be able to use that type with increasing effectiveness all the way to master. This would be even better if those different '2hand' classes made different types of swordsmen.
Fencers: I love the idea of fencers being the ones that can chose where to lay the damage on. Maybe to not have 2 cumulative bleeds, but 3 first level bleeds spread out through the class. So fencers would be nimble, masters of parrying and counterattack, and would be flexible to adjust to the situation
Pikemen: I would like pikemen to be the very best at attacking multiple opponents at once. Just think of episode I... Perhaps less damage against individual opponents, but the ability to spread that out over many opponents at once. I think pikemen should be the best at keeping a ranged fighter from kiting them.
TKA: I definitely think of TKA as being the ones that can inflict status changes. Definitely not as much damage, but effectiveness maximized by a bunch of status changes or effects. I agree...they have meditate (which might need to be improved), but they should be taking more damage.
Just my 2 credits
I have another thing about the swordsman proffesion i'd like to add...
Why havent they changed out our area attacks? We do area + posture change +POSSIBLE dizzy. With the posture nerf that was implemented that whole line of swordsman is basically useless because we have a skill that gives us area attack, and we also have one that can area posture.
Swordsman is the ONLY melee profession that does not have a status change effect skill, only the ones that have a slight chance of working. My suggestion would be to remove the current area attacks and to replace them with status change attacks. And in the box next to it to put in a +defense VS that status change. I think we should only get 2 status changes, one in #2 and #4 and have them be blind and dizzy. If you think about it, our area of skill comes from our head hitting, and 2 things getting slammed in the head is going to do to you is these changes.
We should get status defense the whole way up the tree of course, stun defense at #1 and KD defense at #3. Then you can move all the defense mods in the defense tree for status changes here and put in actual defenses in the defense tree, alternating +melee and ranged defense and +2h toughness.
This is just my thought on making our skill be able to stand with the best, please comment if you like this or not
Well for us as compared to other melee professions I think we should stand as the profession with the most melee toughness. We should have a somewhat low counterattack, medium ranged, melee defense, less AoE attacks, and really hard hitting attacks. Also we should have the second worst accuracy on our weapons, not horrible though. We should do the most damage.
TKA should have the most melee and ranged defense, pretty high passive defenses, and ok toughness, they should do the least amount of damage at really high speeds with many status effect attacks. Also have the highest accuracy.
Fencers should have really high passive defenses, very low toughness, and ok melee ranged defenses, fast attacks kind of medium damage, and poor accuracy, and some key status effects.
Pikemen should have the second best toughness, ok passive defense, AoE knockdowns, low melee/ranged defense, and AoE dizzy attacks. They should have Ap3 weapons that are almost as accurate as a TKA's fist. They should also have increased range.
First off, im Fencer and swordsman and im working on getting tka (**edit** unarmed xp)
Swordsman: we are big and strong, we hold huge 2 handed weapons, how can we not be. We hit fairly slowly with these weapons, and we hit VERY hard with them, our accuracy is good in melee distance against ranged (e.g: you try missing a guy holding a rifle when you are 1m away holding a greatsword... but then also try and get an attack by on a fencer who can parry every blow you try and make till you break through his defenses and tear through his soft underbelly). We dont need to be all fancy with knockdowns and dizzy's and blinds (although getting hit in the head would do this typa thing). We shouldnt be able to dodge attacks very much (its hard to avoid getting hit when you are carrying a huge weapon). Therefore we have very high dmg, slowish attack speed, almost no chance of our opponent not hitting us, but when they hit us we can absorb the dmg.
i as well agree with this
Pikeman -> Crowd Control(Carbinier). Lots of area status/posture changes. #3 on DPS, #3 on toughness/defense.
Swordsman -> Heavy Hitter(Rifleman). Huge damage with good piercing. #1 on DPS through armor piercing being fixed not necessarily speed, #4 on toughness/defense.
Fencer -> Defense Specialist(Pistoleer). Awesome status and range/melee defense. #4 on DPS, #1 on toughness/defense.
Teras Kasi -> Little of each(BH). Fast enough to engage in close quarters and dish out hits as well as take them, decent damage with some armor piercing, moderate defenses. #2 on DPS, #2 on toughness/defense.
My chef carries a two handed sword when out gathering resources so I am speaking as a swordsman player right now, not the chef correspondent.
I used to fence and we would do a lot of melee type tournaments. Especially the five man. And each man on the melee had a certain role. You put your strongest killer in the middle, and have him flanked by two other fighters who are balanced...have both defense and offensive skills. At the ends we put our fastest fighters who we call runners...who usually leave the others and tries to outflank the enemy...run wide and come at them from the sides or from behind.
Also, I have seen medieval recreationists fight as well. When they have a pikeman and a swordsman together, the swords man is defense and the pikeman is offense. The pikeman does most of the killing, and the swordsman is for when somebody gets inside the pikeman's reach.
I think each of the melee classes should have special abilities that can only work when they have their weapons equiped that give them a special place in combat.
Fencers are easy. When they have their weapons equiped, they have abilities that help make them run faster. They also have bonuses to defenses when they are running. Their disadvantages is that they have weaker defenses when standing still and don't do as much damage. This makes them good runners, trying to draw away fire and out flank the enemy.
Pikeman...have special damage that does leaves them exposed to attacks. They are slow, but they hit hard and they have greater range than other melee people. They hit harder than any other melee. They can also give their friends bonus against ranged combat that is in range of the pikeman...which is greater than a swordsman. The arguement being that if the ranged guy gets too close, he has to avoid the pikeman.
Swordsman are defense. They have special abilities that not only give them really good defense, but gives the people they are fighting with really good defense. Maybe they could have attacks that don't do much damage, but gives the enemies penalties for their attacks. And if they aregrouped with somebody within range, those people get bonuses to defense against melee.Plus they have the area attacks that can do damage to multiple enemies.
TK can have their own special abilities for healing themselves, and maybe some cool mystical type attacks. Not quite up to jedi level, but close.
This way, everybody has their role in the game. Fencers are good at flanking, swordsman provide defensive benefits to their comrads against other melee types and hit fast and does medium damage, and pikeman gives bonuses against some melee attacks and hits hard but really slow...and rely on swordsmen to protect them from other melee guys.
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that sounds so good to me, I really like your idea. To add to it, why not make it so that each type of melee gets a special armor, only wearable by a person of that class. Like swordsman, as you say are defensive, they can have like a midevil metal set, or a samurai suit.... the fencers could have a padded or lighter version, polearms- kinda in the middle... TKA with almost no armor, but closts that boost them to fight faster and deflect blows easier or something... this could even go as far as ever combat class. pistoleer armor, riflemen armor ect....it could totally breath new life into SWG. It would also give more of a purpose to armorsmiths... they would have so many different orders, they would be like real armorsmiths...
I really like your ideas even without the armor idea i had btw.
-sorde