Swordsman Archive

Ok, so I thought I'd post something summarizing why damage mitigation was and is a problem for Swordsmen as it has come up a few times recently and it is important that the community understand why there is concern here (especially when choosing top 5 issues).

Personally I was strongly against damage mitigation in PvP from the moment it was opposed (at the time I was brawler correspondent) and have been harping on it ever since. I do most of that in the Corr forum though so you guys haven't necessarily seen all of my discussions.

First of all let me describe exactly what damage mitigation does as I know that a lot of people are still unclear about this. Many think that damage mitigation 3 is a 60% reduction in damage taken. That is incorrect. It is actually a 60% reduction in the RANGE of damage taken.

Let's look at an example. Suppose someone has a weapon dealing 1-200 damage and another person has a weapon dealing 51-150 damage. The RANGE of potential damage is reduced with damage mitigation and so after applying damage mitigation 3 to each of these they would have the following damages:

Weapon #1: 1-200 ----> 1-80
Weapon #2: 51-156 ----> 51-90

Now there are two main problems with this, in my opinion anyway:

#1: Damage Mitigation is Inconsistent

We see this above. Presumably weapon #1 and #2 are roughly equivalent. However against a person with mitigation 3, weapon #2 is quite superior, as we saw above. This is due to the fact that it has a tighter range. Essentially mitigation greatly increases the value of minimum damage.

Different professions with different weapons have very different damage ranges and variations in minimum damage. As such they will be affected more or less by damage mitigation. For swordsmen we see that two of our primary weapons are highly affected: 2h Curved swords and Power Hammers. Other professions see a much lesser hit. Fencers with Gaderiffi Batons and Stun Batons are hit a lot less by this. The best case is Teras Kasi as most of their damage comes from their damage bonus which essentially feeds straight into minimum damage. A Teras Kasi who is attacking with their bare hands deals 250-260 damage. This incredibly tight range guarantees that they will see almost no effect against an opponent with mitigation.

#2: Damage Mitigation Hurts Us Against Ranged / Kiters

Damage mitigation was originally intended as a PvE-related item and the effects on PvP were simply additional "benefits". In PvE I admit it makes some sense. It helps us be tanks. However in PvP mitigation serves to raise the bar for defenses in general but without raising the melee players defenses against ranged attackers. This means that, relative to other players, melee players are more vulnerable to ranged attacks and kiting.

Damage mitigation partially replaced the old system where we had damage modifiers against targets wielding certain weapons (heavy weapons and rifles). In that system we had a significant advantage gainst ranged opponents: if we could reach them. The change in systems meant basically a double nerf for us against ranged opponents. We dealt less damage against them and they dealt, relative to other profs, more damage to us.

Since that time we were given an accuracy modifier against opponents wielding certain weapons, however this really does not help that much if/when we hit most of the time anyway (which is common).

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Now both of these points are somewhat general however I would say that the two professions hit hardest by these changes are Swordsmen and Pikemen and as such they warrant concern and should even possibly be a top issue for us.

I agree. This hits us the hardest and there should be a change either in our weapon damages or how it works in PvP... in PvP if it reduced the MIN damage or a straight 60% total reduction... it would be great. But then fights would last until all the cows got home. Im not sure what the devs were smoking when they though this was a good idea.

So this skill as it is makes us need toughness to stand a chance in PvP..and we dont have that either. So whats a good way to fix this???

Yet another instance of the devs lack of foresight.

Yes, it nerfs Pikemen and Swordsman while making TKA and Fencer even stronger than us, moving things in the opposite direction from 'balanced.'

they just need to give melee users soem to-hit and damage modifers against ranged opponents again.

i thinkt hey gave us to-hit mods versus ranged last patch but i never really tested it

the fact of the matter on this one is that the reason for mitigation was to stop most of those people running around with those weapons that had a range of say 97-522

Not really. This is one interesting effect of mitigation but the point was really for mitigation to act as a specialized defense against higher level content. Low level critters have a very tight damage range and are much less effected by mitigation. The mitigation change dovetailed with the creature rebalance.

It's funny that we're still pushing this around. One of my first correspondent forum posts was a critique of damage mitigation (long before it even hit TC). My suggestion at the time was simply to make mitigation be PvE only as that is what it was intended for and the impact on PvP was so inconsistent.

Now that mitigation has been accepted as a part of the system for so long that maybe it couldn't be taken out so easily. Or maybe not. I dunno, what do you guys think? Would you rather see mitigation retooled for PvP or simply thrown out (i.e. it would be PvE only)?

StGabe.

Message Edited by StGabriel on 03-29-2004 11:46 PM

Message Edited by Awik on 03-30-2004 12:42 AM

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Would you rather see mitigation retooled for PvP or simply thrown out (i.e. it would be PvE only)?

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they should remove damage mitigation from pvp until they have time togreatly expand our weapon selection and give us more choices so we're not gimped

and after all that is done, what did they accomplish? not much,really!just reduced pvp damage even more and widened the power gap between novices and masters

however, we wouldend up with a tighter damage range on some of our weapons, and that'sa good thing for everybody, whether they pvp or not

I think we all know the pain of lady luck handing out five or six lousy damage rolls in a row.having more consistant weapons would help that

I dropped swordsman the day that mitigation went live. I had not lost a fight in over 2 months and I was killed by a TKM who I seemingly could not hurt. He was shocked by this as much as I was since everyother time we had fought he hardly ever got to hit me.

Swordsman damage range is far too wide for our 2 best weapons to be truly useful against a melee master profession.

I dont think it should be thrown out completely... I think changing the way it works for PVP is a better idea. Even though buffs and armor do make damage a moot point... some of us like challenge in the game,

...so we dont wear armor or run around buffed into god mode...

anyway lets get mitigation changed for PvP... Im not too sure how to do this and have it fit the big picture since i dont know evrey aspect and variable of the system... thats the devs job.