Shattered Kingdoms

Spoken like a true swashie, thank you, shut all the whiners up.

A swashie landing ganks without taunt? Not against an experienced player - ie. someone flying and having a single WoR potion...

I guess all I'm trying to say is this: the class needs work, as many will agree here, but I think taunt isn't "the answer." It's just what exists right now. All of these arguments that rely on swashes being a gimp class to justify taunt are focusing on the wrong thing. Swashes need something, but taunt, as a skill by itself existing in the mechanics of this game, is [REDACTED]. Swashbucklers could be a class that hits once a round with canes and has the hp pool of a sorc. It doesn't justify the introduction of a skill of this nature to any class, nor does it make an otherwise boring and arguably sub-par class anything but a still-boring one-trick tool. Don't just change taunt into something less, change swashbucklers. Make them into something more.



If there is anything unifying or agreed upon in this long [REDACTED] debate, it's the crappiness of swashbucklers as an interesting and powerful class.

Alright... now that's really all I have to say.

If you want to wimp taunt,

Give swashies something to compensate for their -shit- hp etc.

Yeah swashies don't deal a great deal of damage compared to other melee, and they have a hard time taking hits. Either give them more HP or give them the ability to hurt some more. Maybe give them something like an improved kick that actually does a decent amount of damage.

I like my idea of making swashies stronger the more enemies that are attacking them. Boosts to damage/hit/parry/riposte to make it so that if a swashie gets the enemy melee in a group all focused on them they are doing back solid damage to everyone targeting them via riposte. It would add tactics to swashie pk and make them more fun to play.

People seem to always be saying that swashbucklers have jank HP, but it's just not so. Swash, merc, paladin and hellion all have the same HP pool. I guess it's just because swash doesn't get heavy armor.

Also might be because swashies can't treat CHA as a dump stat to get more HP trains.

As I understand, the INT penalty occurs in 3 stages, with a total of 6 INT points being lowered (2 at each stage). This occurs with each successful taunt. Add a willpower save to it, lower the INT reduction to 1 point at each stage and keep the delay for taunt repetition. Problem solved, for all sides. Taunt also leaves after roughly 10-15 rounds of combat, so you can still have your "nimbus" effect, with the opportunity of getting free if things are looking bad for you. Honestly, if you're at an equivocal level with the swashbuckler of ANY class and you can't survive 10-15 rounds within the parameters I just described, you need to reevaluate how you're playing and possibly ask some players for help in improving your abilities and effectiveness.

Swashies aren't broken in the least right now, as is evident with the lack of 20 of them on at any given time (I think I've seen maybe 5 in the last month). They're not OPed with the taunt ability, because it can just as easily backfire on the swash. I remember I had a swash about 6 months ago, just after the buff to taunt was added that made the opponent unable to flee and used it on a rogue, who then proceeded to own my face into the dirt. Achernar had it exactly right when he said they're not completely dominating the MUD right now and destroying other classes to the point that NOBODY wants to play for fear of getting swash ganked at every turn. I think everyone forgets (and someone besides me can dig up the old forum posts, because I don't have a vested enough interest in this argument) that there was a significant amount of QQing this time last year, maybe a couple months into 2007, when swashies were underpowered because they had the smallest skillset of any class and their taunt ability was a joke, hence the buff to the taunt ability.

Now, if you skipped the overtly long diatribe of my second paragraph, in summation, the improvements in the first paragraph are more than acceptable to help balance out the skill. I would be very delighted to see other improvements to the class as a result too, especially in regards to dual wield (a bunch of people are right D when it comes to that skill being obtrusively slow to master).

Kevin

The only reasons we don't have more swashbucklers is because we have two tribunals who are given swashbucklers in them to make up for that, and because swashes are BORING. Not because they are balanced.

If you honestly think that the int loss is the imbalanced part of taunt..you don't pk in this mud, and you shouldn't really be contributing to the pk balance discussion.