FinneyOwnzU wrote:
Whatever changes may or may not happen with swashbucklers, kip-up should be factored into the equation since it is extraordinarily useful. I suggested this before and I still think it is a good solution, so I will mention it again: hedgehog should be redesigned to increase the swashbuckler's armor while in that stance to be roughly equivalent to tanso steel.
I don't really think parry is the issue holding swashbucklers back, but rather it is armor. Mercenaries and barbarians both can wear heavy armor, which mitigates a lot more damage than mithril. Whatever changes are made, I would prefer to see it done in small increments. Another decent change would be to give taunt a single purpose, increase its chance to succeed and decrease the lag associated with it. It should either be a mechanism to lock the target in the room OR to reduce peak intelligence. The fact that it does both is why the fail rate is so high and the lag is so long. Give it a single purpose and make it worth using. I would prefer the anti-caster version of lowering peak intelligence, but either would be fine.
the lock-in room feature is rather useless as it tends to break in group PvP from others attacking the target rather often. They have trip anyway, which is the better prone inducing skill. I disagree with you on the parry point. When the skillset worked with my last swashbuckler, Arsilan, he was a great character. Now the skillset doesn't work, and you're left with a rather lackluster character.
And I always tended to use taunt for it's intelligence disrupting ability over it's room-locking ability, even though during the time I played Arsilan it was completely broken and almost certainly ensured that someone was going to die.