Swordsman Archive
Thread: A New Swordsman... help! Some questions... (no, not what line should I go up!)
Hey all, and avete... I've finally made it! And had enough combat xp to get my first Finesse box straight away.
Now I solo quite a bit, so I'll be taking the first box of the defence line asap for the damage mitigation. How noticeable is the damage reduction from critters when you get this first mitigation box? Or should I try not to get too excited until I get up to Mitig 2?
My M2hSword/MDoc goal means I'm saying farewell to my paltry pistoleer skills. Am I going to miss my health bleeds? I rely on them quite heavily atm. Looking at the 2hSword skill set, I'm worried that although the mind bleeds are obviously an asset in PvP, most of the other specials (head hits apart) target the health/action pools, which I'm not going to be able to bleed.
I'm not going to be able to master brawler - it would limit me to 0-3-4-0 doctor, not the way I want to play my char. Will this rule me out as an effective PvP player?
Can someone explain to me what Centre of Being does? As an Apprentice 2hS, the answer seemed to be 'not much'! Now that I'm starting to get some significant modifiers, I reckon I should figure out what I'm supposed to be doing with it...
Right, off to buy a Power Hammer, if nothing else, then just because I can! I've read the forumla where people are advised to use the PH for bleeds then switch to Curved Sword or whatever they normally use for their regular combat attacks and other specials. Do creatures have melee damage mitigation, and if so, won't this really hamper the power of the PH to get a really good bleed in? Should I really bother with a PH, my Curved Sword is pretty reasonable for someone with hardly any credits to her name!
I guess that I'm going to have to start getting into more hunts now... it's no hardship really, I'm looking forward to the more social aspects of the game (though I'm limited in the amount of time I can play, so longer hunts are just not an option). Would a Doc/2hSword be considered an asset in a hunting group? What about a PvP group?
Heh, sorry there are so many questions! I've lurked on this board for a little while now, ever since deciding (well, me and my Holo!) to head in this direction. Since the announcement of the end of hologrinding, I've realised that given the time I can play I'm not going to be able to master the profession in time to get credit for it under whatever new system they come out with. I'm one of those people that have really benefited from the idea of the holo system, though - without it, I probably would never have tried a melee profession. Scratch that, I would never have tried a melee profession! So far, though, I'm finding that I really enjoy it. Can't say I'm not pleased that the holocron system is going the way of the dodo, though - I can't take NPC city cantinas any longer!!!
I'm really chuffed to have made Novice Swordsman, it's taken me a long time (did I mention I can't play often, heh???) and for me, Mastering the profession is going to take months and months. Which makes it a worthwhile goal. Glad to be among you all finally.
Oh, by the way, my posts can get quite long sometimes, so I apologise in advance for boring you all. I'm a lecturer in the real world, you see — I can't help it!
[Edit: Fixing HTML tags]
Message Edited by Ethalsar on 02-06-2004 10:44 AM
Message Edited by Ethalsar on 02-06-2004 10:45 AM
I'm a master doc/swordsman at the moment as well, and we're always useful on hunts, you can never have too many doctors on a hunt, as if you have the one doc there's always the chance they'll go down and then you're buggered. My guild has three master docs/melee fighters, so we very rarely visit the cloning center
I didn't really notice much advantage to mitigation I, when hunting for XP I rarely fought anything that was likely to kill me (mostly because I couldn't get those missions from the terminals) and with a combination of 2handedmindhit1 and 2handedheadhit2 I found that most things would drop in 3-4 hits, even red cons.
At the moment I rarely use any of my other attacks than those, simply because they're so effective (and also because I'm only just above novice swordsman and don't HAVE any of the other attacks yet
- but I've mastered swordsman before so I'm not a newbie). This time going through I'll probably go for techniques first, then offense then defense, primarily because having migrated all my stats into my mind pool, then eating food and slapping enhance D's all over I have 3k+ health and action and 2k+ mind, so nothing I'm liable to fight for xp stands a chance of killing me - just don't get too close to Jantas until you get some mitigation, those guys are nasty.In terms of whether to go with the curved sword or PH, I personally just use a high accuracy PH by Ezo (though if you don't have a lot of credits, I wouldn't recommend going to Ezo
) as I feel a great deal of satisfaction seeing a third of a creatures mind bar disappearing with one hit but see how you get on with the sword, I tend to find that unless it's a red con, the creature will be dead long before the bleed even ticks, so I wouldn't worry too much about weapon swapping.Center of being helps you avoid getting hit (allegedly), what I have heard with 2hs though is that it mostly results in you getting off an absolute shedload of counterattacks, which are supposed to be an unblockable hit, (allegedly), we get plenty of bonuses to it in the defense line, but my primary defense method is killing my opponent before it has a chance to kill me
The lack of master brawler will be a disadvantage in PvP, but you have a few tricks up your sleeve as a doc anyway, KD/Dizzy isn't the "I win" combo it is against other professions - create a macro that consists of /stand;/healstate self dizzy;/stand; and spam it anytime you get knocked down and you'll be back up on your feet in a second or two. Always land a mind bleed with the first hit if you can, that way even if the person delays you, they're still losing mind unless they're a medic as well and then they have to waste time removing the bleed from themselves - I dueled a TKA who KD'd/dizzied and delayed me with warcry, but my first hit on him was 2handmindhit2, which ticked while I was on the ground, I only had to slap a second head hit on him when I got up again to incap him.
I don't have a lot of time to play during the week either, but I tend to make up for it at weekends, when we tend to arrange hunts for xp and cash, I'm glad the holo system is out the window, because the last silent profession could take you a year if you're a casual gamer, let's just hope the new system doesn't have too many time consuming blind alleys.
Incidentally, if you're looking for a hunting group and don't mind hanging out with a bunch of evil Imperial types, send me a mail in game, we have a small guild and town on Dantooine and hunt there a lot.
As a fellow Trandosian, have you completely maxxed out your stat migration to mind? How much primary and how much secondary? I'm due to start making my first Enhance Health/Action B's soon, and secondary A's, so am slowly moving my stats over -- don't have reliable access to good buffs yet. With my 110 droid out (R2-Dr!) I can usually get myself an extra 200-300 on my A packs; not fantastic, but I'm getting there slowly! But the species lower limit on the Health stats is going to be a little irritating for moving everything else over to mind, I suspect.
Also, have you got armour recommendations for a Trandoshan self-buffing killing machine?
(Hmmm just realised any armour I get will have to stay unsliced until I get some decent imp rank... At least those dirty rebs will be having a harder time of it than us fine peace-loving and law-abiding upstanding supporters of the status quo!)
Ezo's shop - is that on Tatooine? Could be thinking of another place though. Currently on Corellia, visiting to collect herbivore meat - just in time for the resource shift, sigh.
By the way - I'd rule out being a lecturer. Too interesting, too enthusiastic and you smile too much. No good to anyone if you're either sending students to sleep or scaring them. Really, it's the future of higher education.
I've moved all my stat points over to mind but the caps are a bit limiting, I have 1000mind/500focus and 600 willpower with the rest of the points just in health and action, but with food this goes up to 2k/1k/600 so regen is a bit slow but you can take more of a beating.
I don't actually wear any armour most of the time, I have a full set of basic composite, but found the mind cost with the power hammer prohibitive, however with ryshcate and fishak surprise I think this will be much lessened, but I haven't had the need to put any on in a while.
Ezo's is on tatooine, just outside Bestine. He's good, but very expensive, LK/KK-Tech are good suppliers at a good price on FarStar.
The Corellian Herbivore meat at the moment is great OQ, but it's PE is a bit lacking, Dathomirian Herb meat is only marginally lower OQ, but much higher on the PE scale, so overall it's better for Adv. CRDM's (victimise Malklocs, they're decent xp for our level and drop 40+ units each) - we quite regularly organise harvesting trips
There's some Class 4 petro on Endor right now, but it's not great, better than nothing if you don't have anything else though. Good resources to harvest right now are Dantooine berry fruit (just shifted in last night, very good quality), Talusian water vapour (high OQ, reasonable DR), Tat Fibreplast, which is good, but not the best I've seen and the really high quality Duralloy steel that's spawned on the server, very useful as a general inorganic. Dathomirian Avian meat isn't bad either right now, but it's a pain in the arse to collect, still at least you're not having to resort to slaughtering rasps by the thousand.
Keep in mind what Damage Mitigation does.It reduces the range of damage a weapon or creature can do. It does not reduce the overall damage it can do. At mitigation 1, the reduction is 20%. But this does not mean that a weapon or creature that does 100 - 200 damage will now do 80 - 160 damage. The 20% is a reduction in the range, so it will do 100 - 180 damage after damage mitigation 1 is factored in. That is only a 10 point reduction in the average damage done vs. no mitigation at all.
Also note this means that if this weapon/creature hits you for minimum damage, you will take 100 points of damage (in this example) whether you have no damage mitigation or if you have damage mitigation all the way up to mitigation 3.Again, using this example, not that taking 20 points less damage if they hit for max damageis a bad thing, but Damage Mitigation is more helpful the larger the damage range. For instance, if this attack came from a weapon/creature that did 100 - 400 damage, level 1 mitigation would make the new range 100 - 340, saving you 60 points of damage if they hit for max damage.
The issue you are going to face right now is that you are more likely to be fighting creatures that have lower damage ranges, so Damage Mitigation right nowwill not be as helpful to you as it will be later on when you are fighting much higher level creatures. The Devs, in fact, have stated that Mitigation will not be much of a factor when facing creatures below level 30. So you may be better off looking to a different strategy. You might want to consider the Techniques line first, instead, for the speed. If you stay with Defense, do so for the other bonuses you are picking up. Mitigation right now is not going to be that important.
Sotaudi wrote:The issue you are going to face right now is that you are more likely to be fighting creatures that have lower damage ranges, so Damage Mitigation right now will not be as helpful to you as it will be later on when you are fighting much higher level creatures. The Devs, in fact, have stated that Mitigation will not be much of a factor when facing creatures below level 30. So you may be better off looking to a different strategy. You might want to consider the Techniques line first, instead, for the speed. If you stay with Defense, do so for the other bonuses you are picking up. Mitigation right now is not going to be that important.
Hmmm good point you raise. Blast, now I'm going back to the drawing board to have another look! I may still go up defence for the other mods as it's the line that seems to have the largest number of skill mods... but I'll certainly take another look. I do rather like the idea of having some defence against posture-changing attacks, even a defence vs knockdown at lvl IV. Hmmm, ponder, ponder.
Any other views on this?
This question now messes up the title of my original post! Apologies...
WarFerret wrote:
State changing attacks aren't that big a deal for us docs, we can cure stun, blind, dizzy and intimidate, even if we're dizzied and knocked down we can spam a /stand; /healState self dizzy; macro and we'll be back on our feet in seconds.
Yeah, I'm liking this macro. I'd rather not get knocked down in the first place, though!
StGabriel wrote:
Bleeds have changed (see my post on this), and I think you'll find that the swords bleed is more helpful anyway... [snip]
I would not use a power hammer until later on in your career. Wait until you have better accuracy and speed bonuses. Also, I don't believe that mobs have any mitigation.
A doc/swords should have very nice damage output, should be a decent tank with some armor, and brings buffs/revives/heals. I'd love to have that in any hunt I'm in.
Read your post on bleeds a while ago, and stopped stacking them way back then (my pistoleer bleeds that is) - didn't want to get reliant on something when the nerfbat cometh. Right, I'm getting the message about mitigation - not a biggie, yet.
Think I'm still going to experiment with a PH and mind bleeds, but I'm re-thinking my planned progress. I'll be going up the middle two lines together until 0-3-2-x and then have another look. People always write that they'll be doing such-and-such a line first — why go all the way up to the fourth box before getting the first box of other lines? Is there some advantage to doing this that I haven't thought of yet, or is this not as popular a tactic as it sounds?
Firstly I want speed, as swordsmen, our best defence lies in a good offence, so coupling 2handed head hits from techniques, with the mind hits from finesse gives us a high damage rate with high accuracy (well, high for us anyway).
Secondly, your xp cap is only twice your next highest box, so if you have all three of the lowest level boxes your xp cap remains 500k (the lvl 2 boxes are 250k each), whereas if you go up techniques say, your cap becomes 900k. Now admittedly this is not generally a big deal since our xp gain rate is actually not that fast, but if you're approaching your next level and go out on a big hunt you won't find yourself capping out and wasting xp (this is a real problem if you're trying to master say squad leader, where the xp gain rate is so rediculously high you have to constantly head back to civilisation to train).
Bleeds have changed (see my post on this), and I think you'll find that the swords bleed is more helpful anyway.
Master brawler is very nice. However master doc offers some very nice things as well. There's a definite trade-off. In PvP, master doc is gonna allow you to heal poisons and diseases which is going to be a nice boost.
I would not use a power hammer until later on in your career. Wait until you have better accuracy and speed bonuses. Also, I don't believe that mobs have any mitigation.
A doc/swords should have very nice damage output, should be a decent tank with some armor, and brings buffs/revives/heals. I'd love to have that in any hunt I'm in.