Shattered Kingdoms

This is a swashbuckler in neutral stance being attacked by a mercenary specialized in sickle, Byron, and a barbarian in fury using an epee, Taab. Gaewynth is a GM swashbuckler using a no-dachi and kama. She gets one riposte in the second round and absorbs a ton of abuse thanks to the 5-6 ap energy armor she's wearing. Hedgehog stance might have been a sort of nice answer to a mercenary or barbarian using a shield in defensive stance, but those two classes abusing the defensive stance are inherently in a superior position to the swashbuckler. The swashbuckler doesn't get any attacks unless riposte is triggered, whereas the defensive merc and barb still get to attack. Since the swashbuckler is utterly reliant on the parry skill proc then it's easy to see that the class is trash since there's a very small chance for it to fire in a stance that matters, one that actually does damage. I can't see a swashbuckler winning any battle even 1v1 with hedgehog stance. Even with a spirit aura spell the swashbuckler is at a disadvantage because the only thing they have to rely on is their hp pool and protection their armor is giving them. I see cabal guardians doing better against the sickle spec in parrying than a swashbuckler can manage.



It's little wonder that swashbuckler is one of the least played classes as this cabal guardian does far better than a swashbuckler would against a sickle spec. It's also little wonder that players consider a Fist swash as the only viable swash option. Nobody has faith in the core abilities of the class. Even with kip up, they're at a distinct disadvantage.

As a second point being the tank class they need the ability to take hits for everybody. Other classes that are considered tanks accomplish this through the rescue skill. Swashbucklers have to do this through taunt. Taunt in its current incarnation barely works because of the mechanics behind it. Furthermore:




The bolded part is not true at all. If something doesn't understand language, it doesn't understand taunt. Taunt is verbal only. If someone is deafened, or the swashbuckler is affected by songs of silence they cannot taunt. There is no body language or other stuff used in a taunt. Because of this, and the low success rate of taunt, rescue is an inherently superior skill to taunt, and coupled with taunt being trash for focusing fire on the tank and the swashbuckler being a horrible tank to begin with makes the class utter trash. At this point in time even though they have a comparable hp base to other warriors they do not belong in the warrior classes.

What I think that is happening is that there is some bug with dual wield in how it deals with weapon accuracy. This problem with parry only happens on the swashbuckler class.



That's from my rapier specialized mercenary, where I sat on the defensive stance and beat two other characters with my melee damage. It's not an even playing field at all.

How accomplished was she with parry/e-parry and finesse? Also, what runes were on those weapons? From my own experience, there is no reason why any swash can't at least parry half of the attacks from a sickle.

I have seen swashies perform better than this log suggests. That is not to say that Ardith has failed to make some good points about Swashbucklers, because I think he has made a few.

Lack of rescue does severely hinder a swashbuckler's ability to tank. The fact that taunt doesn't work on anything not flagged sentient doesn't help either, particularly in PvE. The general lack of damage reduction from not being able to use a shield is probably the most harmful part of swashbuckler tanking, though. If dual wield provided an innate damage reduction when dual wielding finesse weapons comparable to what a merc receives when wearing a board-and-sword style, that might make a significant difference in so far as making swashbuckler viable as a tank.

I don't think taunt's success rate necessarily needs to be buffed, but it does require less lag and to be able to hit non-sentient. Swashbucklers need to have innate damage reduction comparable to a shield when dual wielding finesse weapons. And they need a better bonus to parry/eparry than they get. Those three changes will probably effectively address the main points where they fall short as tank melee, those being the ability to redirect damage to themselves, and the ability to absorb or deflect that damage.

I'm not sure they need innate damage reduction. The last time I played a competent swashbuckler was around 2008. But the code worked differently back then and swashbucklers were badass. Now they're just full of suck. Fairly certain there's a bug affecting their to parry chances since mercs and barbs parry just fine, and swash gets nothing.

You have not.

It's possible with an appropriate buff to parry/eparry (or a resolution to any bugs in how that works, as you suggest there might be) would remove the need for innate DR.

DISCLAIMER: I am really not the best person to be discussing SK mechanics and number crunching. This is an opinion.


I personally think swashies need a focus. They're either:
A) A rogue-class that can kinda fight warriors but not on-par, or...
B) They're warriors and should have benefits to balance their drawbacks.


For option A, they should be able to hunt down mages/priests and the rest through the use of taunt much like a rogue chases down people through the use of backstab. A swashie should be given scrolls or some other magical device to make up for his lack of reach and lack of a way to remove buffs like etherealform, or taunt should be buffed to somehow remove spells gained from items? (doesnt actually make sense)


For option B, it looks like they seriously need some love. They seem to me weak at melee, have no real way of doing decent ranged damage and have no options for reaching weapons. Even with two weapons they get the same number of attacks as warriors with 1 weapon, they wear lighter armor and they lack a barbarians' resistaces to magic. I just don't really see what a swashbuckler actually gains for all these drawbacks other than looking cool with 2 swords.


I personally would rather see option B over option A. I believe hedgehog stance is a step towards an awesome direction, but I also feel it should allow the swashie to parry like a madman. I honestly wouldn't consider a 90% parry rate against anything melee followed by a 50% riposte chance on those parries as OP. I think it would be fair. Fair because of what the other warrior classes have in their arsenal in order to counter the swashie. Barbarians can use wildfighting, mercenaries can use second row or shoot arrows.


Just my thoughts.

The actual class serves no real purpose, and therefore should be deleted.

They can't tank.
They have no range attacks.
They have no spells.
They can't heal.
Their damage is mediocre at best.
No huge damage openers.
Taunt is easily replaced with Trip/Bash.

So what do they actually bring to the table aside from as said previously, They look bad [REDACTED] with 2 swords, and sadly Style doesn't get you far.

I can check again for bugs. But based on other comments that I've heard about merc and barb being overpowered, perhaps the real need is to make them a bit less adept at parrying.