Shattered Kingdoms

The issue of upping the damage of high accuracy/speed weapons is that mercs will benefit more from it than swashies. Mercs do NOT need anymore buffs.

No! NoooooooOOo! Not the dipping sauce!
Honey Mustard!? Who does he think he isssss~?

-wiggles down Galactus' throat- T_Tv

Just hearing ideas being considered or applauded is good enough for Smoochy..xD

I would love to have them to have 2 abilities. First, enhanced kick: Adds a short delay on all of the opponents attacks. Second, kip up: Ability to jump up after being bashed.

You missed my point, I want skills to increase such just for swashies.

I don't know what you are talking about dude, you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

I went ahead and rolled and GMed a swashi over the bonanza, and did some testing.

First for PvE. There were a couple changes that went in that essentially make the dirt kicking, and trip skills useless. Undead can't be blinded period. Blindness/color spray/dirt kicking. That's actually a huge buff to the necromancer class, but that's another topic. Essentially if it doesn't have legs, it can't be tripped. On the flip side, the [REDACTED], can still trip you, though. That leaves taunt, and kick, as the only really useful skills. Disarm may come into play time to time, but theoretically it's better for a swashbuckler to leave a NPC armed so that they can get in ripostes.

Taunt is sort of useless in PvE though. A good share of NPCs just don't give a [REDACTED] about taunt, which really leaves the swashbuckler as a subpar tank since unlike with rescue she can't draw the fire to her, and actually do the role of what a tank is supposed to do: sponge damage better than the rest of the squishy adventurer/mage classes.

Kick, whatever. It's useless against heavier armor types. It's sad, because I noted during leveling that NPCs were doing a good 5% a kick to my swashbuckler. I thought maybe this skill had finally come into play, but nope, you can't kick a heavy armor character into submission.

I can't even begin to understand why my swashbuckler parries, and dodges less than my mercenary. I tested it with many weapons, claymore, bastard sword, epee, and wild fighting. Surprisingly the weapon I thought I'd do the best against, the epee, I did the same as the claymore. I never won a single battle against the PC I tested with.

Here's some changes that would bring swashbucklers up to snuff:

One of the biggest problems the swashbuckler faces in PvP is shields. Swashbucklers don't get to benefit from these awesome pieces of equipment. Shields need to be nerfed. Shields should not provide any armor bonus on the aggressive, and neutral stances, and should get the bonus that is provided on both of those stances when going defensive instead of the absurd bonus gained now. This will help increase the damage that swashbucklers can do by lowering the overall armor of barbs/mercs.

It looked like for a time that the weapon speed bonus from haste and enchant weapon didn't stack, which was cool, but I guess that was reverted. No reason someone needs to spam 5 attacks a round with a claymore or halberd though. Weapons like halberd are even worse since someone can stand behind a NPC, or another PC and shank a swashbuckler into submission, and there's really nothing that swashbuckler can do.

Taunt sucks hardcore. It's two rounds of lag, and has a high chance of failure. Moreover, it virtually *always* breaks the effect when a second pc or npc joins in the fray. That's not even to mention that casters can still cast high concentration spells like charm person while under the effects of taunt.

Mercenaries could stand to lose enhanced parry. They still get shield block, and the ability to summon raptor jesus and rain destruction from all nine circles of hell with specialize. It also needs to be changed back to do full damage when parrying a fist/natural weapon. In my tests of wild fighting, I barely parried any of the attacks to begin with, so I'm not even sure that would help.

Defensive stance is supposed to give a bonus to riposte, but good luck getting that bonus as a swashbuckler doesn't even parry, which is just weird.

Have you gone crazy, Ardith?

Ardith, I love you.

When I read your earlier post, I wanted to say that in the hands of a really good player, even a halfling barbarian can rule SK. The question is how to make swashbucklers a class that is enjoyable and fair even to the averate player.


I'm really glad you took the time to playtest swashies, my favorite class in the game. The results were pretty much what was expected, but it's good to have them confirmed like that.

One thing to expand on what you said, is the comparison of the swashie to the merc, and even the barbarian. These three classes are meant to be SK's 'tank and dps' frontlines, but the barb and merc have had a way easier life with this than the swash since the SK weapons overhaul of 2003 (or thereabouts). Something happened after those changes that really left the swashie behind, but having played with, and against swashies like Jinn, Arsilan and Feanor, I thought that the class was fine. It always bothered me however, how vulnerable the swashie is, at all times.

Like I said in another post, a swashie is forced, in all pve or pvp situations, to stand up front, with his mithril armor (dont even have supernatural skins anymore ), and no reach weapon. Further, he needs two good weapons, not just one, to be able to cope. Meanwhile, barbarians and mercenaries (who both enjoy heavy armor and a bunch of ways to mitigate damage/heal, and have other nifty tricks up their sleeves to be useful), can just whip out the 'anti-swashie' tactics when they see the swashbuckler, and really reduce his chances of victory to almost zero.
You said earlier that if mithril is fixed, and taunt is adjusted to the new changes, swashies would be A-OK. Do you still stand by that argument? I for one think swashies need a lot of things, to be made a class that is as enjoyable to play as a merc or barbarian.

Just examine what barb/merc enjoy for a moment:
Merc: Retreat, Rally (its something!) specialize. A merc can be really useful in most cabal/tribunals
Barb: Self-heal mid combat, unarmed damage, toughness, negation (i have no idea how that works btw) track, butcher, and a barbarian can also be really useful in most cabal/tribunals, if less so than the merc.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot, but try comparing a swashie's bag of tricks to the lists above. It doesn't get close, and, swashies also don't really benefit from a lot of cabal abilities like the other classes do.


tl;dr: Swashies are a really, really limited class in what they can do. Which is fine, but If that's the case, they should really be the boss at it. They should dominate front row melee, not tag along.


PS: I don't think that shield block is in need of a wimp, but maybe swashies can get a skill that allows
them to slip past it for example.

Sorry for long post. Potato.

There is no "anti-swashi" tactic. You do just as well with a weapon that can be parried as you would with a weapon that has a no-parry or massive flag.

I also didn't say that shield block needs wimped. I said the additional protection a shield provides for being worn needs wimped.

Punt is literally already a skill in the game. It won't be given to swashbucklers.

Someone once told me that swashbucklers have a double chance to parry due to dual wield.

That doesn't appear to be the case imo.

Increasing the chance to parry and taunt for swashies could make the class worthwhile to play.