Swordsman Archive

Now that I've finally hit Master Swordsman, I decided to spend some time testing out our different attacks and seeing exactly what the difference between them was. Part of the reason I want to do this is to finally figure out once and for all, what the difference is between the Area Attacks, Sweep2 and Spin Attack 1/2. Anyway, I didn't quite get that far yet as I haven't taken the time to figure out the damage/time difference for them. This is what I have so far.

Hit1- Health 0.5, Action 1.0, Mind 0.6, Time 1.5, Damage 2.5 (possibly 2.0)

Hit2- Health 0.75, Action 1.25, Mind 0.75, Time 2, Damage 3.5 (possibly 3.0)

Hit3- Health 1.0, Action 1.75, Mind 1.0, Time 3, Damage 4.5 (possibly 4.0)

Head Hit1- Health 0.5, Action 1.0, Mind 0.5, Time 1.5, Damage 2.0 (possibly 1.5)

Head Hit2- Health 0.75, Action 1.25, Mind 0.75, Time 2, Damage 3.0 (possibly 2.5)

Head Hit3- Health 1.25, Action 1.75, Mind 1.0, Time 2.5, Damage 4.0 (possibly 3.5)

Just a note about the damage and time numbers: I figured them out by spamming these attacks on a lair between 20-25 times and then getting the average damage. I'm not 100% positive about the damage. It's possible that they're all 0.5 lower than what I have listed here (could have had a bad run of standard attacks that I based it off of). I'm going to have to test a little more and see for sure. Feel free to do some testing if you want to verify my results. In particular I'm not sure about the damage of normal hit3.

When I was testing it, it's average came out as barely higher than HH3, but it seemed to hit for higher damage than I saw HH3 do. It may only be 0.25 higher, however, so I'm not totally sure.

As far as the time goes, I'm pretty sure this is right. But, sometimes it's hard to tell because, due to lag, the combat spam has irregular numbers sometimes. This is due to lag, so it kind of throws a monkey wrench into it (ex; you hit a lag spike and then you get 5 attacks listed as occuring on the same second). I did all of the time checking manually and I didn't parse it. Also, another problem is my PH speed is 5.3, and when reduced 80% due to my Master Swordsman and Master Brawler, it comes in at just over a second. Which also made judging it a little more difficult. To the best of my knowledge this is correct though.

That's all I've got damage and time numbers for so far. As far as HAM goes, I'm almost 100% positive these are correct. Here's the rest of the HAM costs:

Area Attack 1- Health 0.5, Action 1.25, Mind 0.5

Area Attack 2- Health 1.25, Action 2.0, Mind 1.0

Area Attack 3- Identical in HAM cost to AA2

Spin Attack 1- Health 1.0, Action 1.5, Mind 1.0

Spin Attack 2- Health 1.25, Action 1.75, Mind 1.25

Sweep 1- Health 0.75, Action 1.5, Mind 0.75

Sweep 2- Health 1.25, Action 2.25, Mind 1.0

Lunge 2- Didn't Check HAM, but Time seems to be 1.0 as I had no delay before my next attack when I used it fighting.

Additional info:

Also, I'd like to report that the 1 second cap comes into play after the time multiplier. So, for example, if you have a 0.5 second Curved (after skill speedreduction), you can perform any attack up to a 2.0 time multiplier at the 1 second cap.

Finally, just looking at the HAM I can tell you the PH is our best weapon hands down. Why? Because all our attacks multiply action much more than health, and it has a small action cost. If you put a health reduction weapon mod on a PH you suffer minimal action drain and health drain is also cut down by 33%. The Curved Sword is the worst weapon in terms of HAM usage because its high action gets multiplied quite a bit. You're better off with a Cleaver, especially if you put an action reduction weapon mod on it.

So, anyway, there you have it. I still need to finish testing the rest. Unfortunately testing stuff like how often state changes occur (posture down, dizzy, etc) will be pretty much impossible, so I won't be able to include that part of the equation. It's possible that Hit3 doesn't do much more damage than HH3, because of the fact it causes an occasional dizzy.

I'm sorry, the numbers I listed for Sweep2 are wrong. I think it's actually:

Sweep2: Health 0.5, Action 2.0, Mind 1.0

Not sure how I screwed that one up so badly.

Bleh, not my night:

Sweep 2- Health 0.5, Action 2.25, Mind 1.0