| Swordsman PvP guide : Swordsman PVP guide ------ basic ------
Weapons : always good to have a speed slice and damage slice weapons. This will give you more options come in a fight. Those who do not have melee migration will really feel the different when you hit them with a damage slice. Swordsmen defect is without speed tape we are fairly slow compare to most profession. So a speed weapon should more or less be your main weapon against meleers. Take notice : Now that you are prepare with all the gear. you need to take noticed of your foe. What is their profession, what are these profession weaknesses (take in account people do cross profession for template so they aren't always what you think). Look at the damage you are doing also, not all armour are the same sometimes they have funny stats to them. Blast damage might be a better call if it's kinetic and blast different is quite high. (Usually that isn't the case). So Know your enemy/figure them out. All good PvPer will tell you that are very important. As Tzu Su once said Know yourself and your enemy, you will be victorious every battle. Now you can't be victorious every battle but you can get close anyways, I will also cover the know yourself part too Timing : know when it is right to attack and when to wait. If a rifleman is aim at you from 60m then obviously find some cover and wait. I would say your attacking distance is about 35 meters. Too much farther than that is unsafe risk against range fighters, so don't get too brave. ----- The way of the sword ----- Our Weakness : our weakness innately is our lower posture defence. I have to say it's next to nothing and in PvP it is non existence in practical application. So take this in account of when you make your template. If your template doesn't add lower posture defence you need to be aware of dizzy state and of course movement. It's very constraining so how to live with it is to keep a mental timer to yourself. Remember that they can't spam it on you because of the timer. DO NOT mistake knockdown timer to lower posture timer they are DIFFERENT timer all together. So don't say oi you said I wouldn't be knockdown 5 second from the last one, well Sword defence : so what can you do to get the most out of your defence? The first answer if of course centre of being. CoB last 32 seconds for non master brawler and 37 for those of us who are master brawler. The CoB macro can go a bit wonky if you start to lag so do keep an eye on it. CoB is your life line so use it. Eat KD food if you know that your foe has KD move (I normal don't because of my template) but if your template doesn't add much KD defence then do so when your foe is within their attack range. Better safe than sorry. KD without dizzy still lethal as you take more damage. When it comes to it every bit can make Wielding the sword: Swordsmen may seem to have a few moves, and I would say we do, but the moves we do have can be very lethal. So here is how to get the best of them. Warcry and intimidate is your friend, and in that order. Remember warcry freezes them until for a time unless they get hit, so use the opportunity to slap intimidate and prep yourself if you haven't already done so! Warcry is also your tool to get into range fighters, it gives you cover just enough to get in close and do the damage. Imagine a guy with a big chuck of metal screaming their heads off before bashing their prey, that's us! Now that they are intimidate you will find that your area attack3 will now have a very good rate of slapping on dizzy AND lower posture at the same time. Pretty cool huh? So keep them Headhit3 are there to use as your leisure this is your main offence so treat it as such. True power is within the mind, so kill their mind hehe. At times you'll find your opponents are well preparing in mind and it is their highest stats with all sorts of buffs. So this is again. Where you can use 2handed melee hit3. Why you ask? Because it also can dizzy them and give them other bar to watch. I will also share with you guys one of the thing so call PvPer's don't realise, that we can use Hit3 to take advantage of. Many PvPer's goes with their favourite, helmet, chest, gloves and boots armour set. All good and well against a pool target, headhits always hit's the head, body hit's the chest and leg hits some reason hit's the boots or (legging for trandoshan). So what's the trick? Random pool hits, actually hit them at random parts, so you can end up hitting their arms or their unprotected leg area (but most likely the arms) for a nice unarmoured damage, a good hefty 200 damage a hit if catch them unarmed. (Yes it really is true I know I tested it, very much the same as in PvE mobs hit's you at random parts) A nice surprise if to take advantage of if your other tactics fail. This may sound really cool but remember using this you go by luck/probability, so I don't recommend this as you main tactics. But something to think about. Remember is a tactic don't work then use a new one Remember your brawler move! Lunge move is very good don't forget this move has a range of 20m (in reality it actually has 18m range) so when do you use the move? When they are dizzy still standing, when they try to get away or you running into the range fighters, remember when they try to run cap their knees. Heh heh. Lunge is also a good first hit, when you run at people, sneak in a hit before the fight is always a good thing. Yes it is possible to land you're area attack 3 dizzy before they get up if you have a fast weapon (or speed tapes) possible, in practical it seldom work. Here again I will try to get you to remember how important warcry and intimidate are, they are what make your offence work so don't ever forget them! Nobody says you have to stand still and fight! If you have to move around to warcry and intimidate then or, pull back and whatever other reason then do it! ----- The swordsman choice ----- I added this section as I have been asking many times about how they should do their template and also I see the forum after ask for template here. This guides deal with PvP template, which isn't always ideal for PvE. Using swordsman as your main game there a few routes you can take, you can branch out to non combat supportive, defensive combat, offensive combat (which also branch into melee and ranged) As I have said swordsman great weakness is the lower posture in PvP its is non existence any good PvPer will exploit it against you keep you on the defensive and thus cutting your chance for offence or even getting away. Non combat support: Scout, medic and doctor are very useful. Scouts are often underestimated in its use. I would say any good melee fighter should have some terrain neg. No point being able to kill anything if you can't reach anything before they kill you. Being able to out run people in a chase or getting away when things turn bad is an ability for all PvPer's really. As a swordsman since we need to play the basic well this is worth considering in serious term. Healing profession medic/doctor will always be a great asset. Especially against fencer and fencer is swordsman's lethal foe. The dizzy and lower posture will get you allot without proper defence. Doctor is the ultimate defence. Your status cure will keep your melee foe very frustrating as you can cure off all the status you can even get up from dizzy/KD with a proper macro. In the days where combat medic is the playground bully and DoT weapon is the fashion Doctor can really laugh it off. You may lack many defence using doctor but I would say the perks can out weight what you lost in trade for doctor skills. It keeps you alive and it keeps your team mate alive who can help you stay alive. Defensive combat: This one is for pure swordsman offensive; this template is lethal in an old school kind of way. (This is also the part I take for swordsman this template may be lethal but it requires a great swordsman skill to pull it off, this template also builds your skill as a swordsman. So what do I mean as defensive combat? In a simple term more or less stacking defence together. Fencer balance line is a must for this one; it covers our hole in lower posture and makes us extremely hard to knockdown. In effect making us into thanks. The other lines are also good to take covering dizzy and our melee/range defence. Yes all great but isn't this just being lame defence stacker? In a way yes, but I don't think its lame since what we're doing is really covering our weak point which is defence. The choices here are to go fencer, TKA, or pistoler. I don't recommend pistoleer in usual case because of the points involve it isn't a wise choice unless you have plans with pistoleer also. Pikeman doesn't suit us it has mainly KD defence and that's not really helpful to our lower posture. Going this route will make you into ultimate true swordsman. Since your main offensive will be swordsman, yes despite having fencer or tkm moves you will end up using swordsman the most anyways because of our mind damage and we can dizzy people the floor as well. Offensive combat: much like defensive combat route expect what you need to aim to do here is to give yourself the best varieties of moves. This route you can consider the range fighting option more such as rifleman. Offensive option doesn't mean you don't gain defensive perks along the way so don't misunderstand it. Rifleman - will give you the option of taking enemies down before they get to you. This isn't really best for using swordsman as a main but still highly effective killer combining with high KD defence and range melee damage migration. One to think about if you don't like taking risk in the front line rather draws them to you Master brawler - this is would fit both defensive and offensive combat but I put it here as offensive because it is more apparent as offensive form. On offensive you have the knockdown move which is much needed variation for swordsman's moves. This gives you the option of alternative lower posture with knock to negate the timer effect on them. Is 70+ points worth it for just those moves? Well remember you have extra 10 seconds on warcry and your intimidate 2 is god like in duration. Really works well in offence as well as defence. +5 toughness is also a great defensive perks it really makes a different in a crunch couple with CoB bonus. it has as much defence as offensive but offensive gain is more pro active. Other melee profession - its perks in offensive is very clear when you chosen to take them but remember whiles you are using it you are giving way in defence IE lower toughness and secondary defence if you choose them as a "minor" profession. So choose them carefully and ask yourself how often will you use them? Combining the three: I went mainly defensive, but actually I combined the three on my template which include, scout and master brawler. The general advice here is keep it balances if you want to combine the three. Look at yourself and ask if you were to fight yourself how would you beat yourself and that will reveal to you your weakness. if you have a balance combination there shouldn't be a one easy will to kill you (apart from CM and all that jazz) I know I haven't given you a solid answer but part of the game is to explore I merely guide you to the doors and tell you what lays ahead it is up to you to go in and find out if it works for you. ----- Weaponry ----- well this is a newly added section as we had healthy discussion about this I thought I pull out some of the good comments made and also added my own advise to this. Overview: So what do swordsman keeps as his side arms? Well the sad fact is it really comes down to scythe and power hammer, always make sure you have both. It's always good to have two damage types but the reason goes far beyond that. In current state of PvP the melee mitigation hits us hard, and what would otherwise be our best weapon (power hammer) is not longer as such. In someway it is good because we then become more varied, in most way it just annoying. In normal cases the scythe will have higher min damage and better acc mod than power hammer. This may sound like the scythe is a better choice but the answer is no it is not. Right weapon for right occasion: So when is it right to use the scythe or power hammer? The simply answer is scythe for those who have melee mitigation and power hammer for those who don't. However it is a bit deeper than that. The scythe with better acc mod will give you a noticeable better performance in landing the magic dizzy status; with a +17 ore better on the acc mod you can land it on even the toughest of defence stackers. So even if you are speed cap the scythe shouldn't leave your inventory. Power hammer can be more effective against those who have melee mitigation if it was high min damage Ackley power hammer; ideally you want to have 250+ min damage to make it worth using in a melee fight. The -40 does hurt us, but it not so bad that the reward isn't worth the slight risk. The end conclusion is that you need both weapons each has their own occasion to be used, using them at the wrong time will hinder your effectiveness. Remember that they are both armour piecing 2. This means 25% bonus over armour resistance, Armour piercing works as 25% for each armour rating over, composite armour is armour rating 1. If a weapon is AP1 it gets no bonus if it is AP0 then it loses 25% damage over armour resistance. Luckily us swordsman are blessed with having AP2 for all weapons. It's not great but it's better than none. Both scythe and power hammer has AP2 so we don't need to worry about calculating the AP damage difference when making a decision of which one to use. ---------------------------- So you say intimidate, is important but what if they have doctor skill? Well doctor will always be a tough one for us in that they can remove any status thrown at them and has huge healing ability also. The best way is to take them down by mind damage, and force them to use up their mind heal them off. Keep intimidating them is the first one if they don't heal it then you're good to go. If they do they use a bit of their mind so a bonus for us, so do it again and throw in the dizzy and bleed whiles you're at it What if they are pump up with food and not using up any mind cost at all? Keep doing it anyways they can't attack you whiles they are in healing animation. So it works as a free hit effect and bash in his mind, lower posture/kd all gives you free hit. Not all doctor has an always work dizzy/KD heal so landing the Dizzy and lower posture with area attack 3 is still a good one to do if they don't heal fast enough. Try to sneak it in. Is bleed any use after the nerve? In my opinion its only use is to lure people into using their mind. That's all its good for to me. What do I do against rifleman/CM? Apart from killing them before they kill you? Nothing =P (even if you are a doctor) So what about some of the other moves? You mean the area attack, spin, and sweep? Their redundant moves, one of swordsman on going Do Swordsman NEED Master brawler? Need, No. However it is a great asset to swordsman since swordsman do not have a knockdown move of its own. The extra speed is Noticeable, +5 toughness is great on anyone and of course the centre of being bonus. If you can have master brawler then I suggest that you do. If you can't swordsman isn't a cannon fodder without it so don't pee yourself What do you suggest about weapons? I covered this before, in the end it is also depending on your ton if you got allot of speed tape then Accuracy and power takes priority. If not which is most swordsman speed and accuracy will take you very far. The weapons we have are natural quite powerful anyways. Accuracy mods and speed mods power up is handy for me I would say min damage power up is the toy against meleers (but remember the power up comes at the expense of weapon decay, use it wisely) |