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I have been swordman ever since i started this game. In my time as a swordman i see many changes and adapt to it as needed. They have been an increase of swordman on the server i play of late. i help trained people in PvP alot, friends, guild, even some so call enermies have ask for some pointers. it's nice that swordman isnt looked down as a joke profession. so here i will write a detail guide for swordman into PvP I dont see myself as "leet" PvPers but i do fairly well i think so this guide is to help you get into PvP. its isnt meant to be a master class lesson but it does assume you are not completely new
------basic------
As with all professions you play make sure you are fully equip and prepare. armour, food, spices, PSG as well if you can wear it. Have you're self ready for all eventuality. In this day and age mind poison is a big killer, so i suggest a canape on your quick slot. (i dont feel the need to list out the supplies individualy)
Weapons : always good to have a speed slice and damage slice weapons. This will give you more options comes in a fight. those who do not have melee migration will really feel the different when you hit them with a damage slice. swordman 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 thier proffession, what are these proffession weaknesses (take in accont people do cross profession for template so they arent 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 its kinetic and blast different is quite high. (usualy that isnt the case). So Know your enermy/figure them out. all good PvPer will tell you that is very important. As Tzu Su once said Know yourself and your enermy, you will be victorious every battle.Now you cant 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 dont get too brave.
-----The way of the sword-----
Our Weakness : our weakness inately is our lower posture defense. i have to say its next to nothing and in PvP it is non existance in pratical application. So take this in account of when you make your template. If your template dosent add lower posture defense you need to be awear of dizzy state and of course movement. its very constraining so how to live with it is to keep a mental timer to yourself. remember that they cant spam it on you because of the timer. DO NOT mistake knockdown timer to lower posture timer they are DIFFERENT timer all together. so dont say oi you said i wouldnt be knockdown 5 secound from the last one, well
if your last one was a lower posture then it can happen. so eat some KD food if you know they have KD move! =P Having count mentaly of when the timer will be up will give you a better chance to anticipate it coming. Better part of fighting is the anticipation!
Sword defense : so what can you do to get the most out of your defense? the first anwser if of course center of being. CoB last 32 secounds for non master brawler and 37 for those of us who are master brawler. The CoB macro can go abit 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 dont because of my template) but if your template dosent add much KD defense then do so when your foe is within thier attack range. better safe than sorry. KD without dizzy still lethal as you take more damage. when it comes to it everybit can make
a different. Swordman requires you to play the basic well so. dont be a fool and attack when its the right time to, dont run 60m just to get to a rifleman! i know its sounds silly to say the obvious but thats really swordman in defensive play the basic well.
Wielding the sword : Swordman may seems 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. warcy and intimidate is your friend, and in that order. remember warcry freezes them untill for a time unless they get hit, so use the oppertunity to slap intimidate and prep yourself if you havent 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 thier prey, thats us! Now that they are intimidate you will find that your area attack3 will now have a very good rate of slaping on dizzy AND lower posture at the same time. pretty cool huh? so keep them
intimidated. if you got yourself a scyth with good accuratcy on them. trust me even fencer can fall to the move. Dont forget about the timer! if they already kneel down a secound before and then you land a dizzy as they get up dont bother with it again, because its a waste of move. try again when the timer runs out. Unless you are master brawler then throw the lunrg2 at them ( in pratical PvP lunrg2 is secoundary to lunrg1 and area attack 3 because of the KD food that they may have eatten)
headhit3 are there to use as your leisure this is your main offense so treat it as such. True power is within the mind, so kill thier mind hehe.at times you'll find your opponent are well prepare in mind and it is thier 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 dont realise, that we can use Hit3 to take advantage of. Many PvPer's goes with thier favorite , 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, actualy hit them at random parts, so you can end up hitting thier arms or thier unprotected leg area (but most likely the arms) for a nice un armoured 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 suprise 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 dont recomend this as you main tactics. but somthing to think about. remember is a tactic dont work then use a new one
Remember your brawler move! lurng move is very good dont forget this move has a range of 20m (in reality it actualy has 18m range) So when do you use the move? when they are dizzy still standing, when they trying to get away or you running into the range fighters, remember when they try to run cap thier knees. heh heh. Lurng 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 pratical it seldomly work. Here again i will try to get you to remember how important warcry and intimidate are, they are what make your offense work so dont 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 swordman choice-----
I added this section as i have been ask many times about how they should do thier template and also i see the forum after ask for template here. this guides deal with PvP template, which isnt always ideal for PvE.
Using swordman 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 swordman great weakness is the lower posture in PvP its is non existance any good pvper will exploit it against you keep you on the defensive and thus cutting your chance for offense or even getting away.
Non combat support : Scout, medic and doctor are very useful. Scout are often underestimated in it's use. i would say any good melee fighter should have some terrain neg. No point being able to kill anything if you cant 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 pvpers really. as a swordman since we need to play the basic well this is worth considering in serious term.
Healing proffession medic/doctor will always be a great asset. Specialy against fencer and fencer is swordman's lethal foe. the dizzy and lower posture will get you alot without proper defense. Doctor is the ultimate defense. 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 defense using doctor but i would say the perks can out wieght 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 swordman offensive, this template is lethal in an old skool kind of way. (this is also the parth i take for swordman) This template may be lethal but it requires a great swordman skill to pull it off, this template also builds your skill as a swordman. So what do i mean as defensive combat? in a simple term more or less stacking defense together. Fencer balance line is a must for this one, it covers our hole in lower posture and make us extremely hard to knockdown. ineffect making us into thanks. the other lines are also good to take covering dizzy and our melee/range defense. Yes yes all great but isnt this just being lame defense stacker? in a way yes, but i dont think its lame since what we're doing is really covering our weak point which is defense.
The choices here is to go fencer, tka, or pistoleer. i dont recomend pistoleer in usual case because of the points involve it isnt a wise discion unless you have plans with pistoleer also. Pikeman dosent suit us it has mainly KD defense and thats not really helpful to our lower posture.
Going this route will make you into ultimate true swordman. since your main offensive will be swordman, yes dispite having fencer or tkm moves you will end up using swordman 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 verieties of moves. this route you can consider the range fighting option more such as rifleman. Offesive option dosent mean you dont gain defesive perks along the way so dont misunderstand it.
rifleman - will give you the option of taking enermies down before they get to you. this isnt really best for using swordman as a main but still highly effective killer combinding with high KD defense and range+melee damage migration. one to think about if you dont like taking risk in the front line rather draw them to you
Master brawler - this is would fit both defensive and offensive combat but i put it here as offesive because it is more apprent as offensive form. on offensive you have the knockdown move which is much needed variation for swordman'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 remeber you have extra 10 secounds on warcry and your intimidate 2 is god like in duration. really works well in offense as well as defense. +5 toughness is also a great defensive perks it really makes a different in a crunch couple with CoB bonus. it has as much defense 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 defense IE lower toughness and secoundary defense if you choose them as a "minor" profession. so choose them carefuly and ask yourself how often will you use them?
Combinding the three: i went mainly defensive, but actualy i combind the three on my template which include, scout and master brawler. The general advise here is keep it balance if you want to combind 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 shouldnt be a one easy will to kill you (apart from CM and all that jazz) I know i havent given you a solid awnser but part of the game is to explore i meerly 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 swordman keep 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 type 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 anwser is no it is not.
Right weapon for right occasion : So when is it right to use the scythe or power hammer? The simply anwser is scythe for those who have melee mitigation and power hammer for those who dont. however it is abit more deep than that. the scythe with better acc mod will give you a noticable better performace in landing the magic dizzy status, with a +17 ore better on the acc mod you can land it on even the toughest of defense stackers. So even if you are speed cap the scythe shouldnt leave your inventory.
Power hammer can be more effective against those who have melee mitigation if it was a high min damage acklay power hammer, idealy 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 isnt worth the slight risk.
The end conclusion is that you need both weapons each has thier 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 swordman 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 dont need to worry about caculating the AP damage differece when making a decision of which one to use.
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some questions that you might ask.
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 thier mind heal them off. keep intimidating them is the first one if they dont heal it then you're good to go. if they do they use abit of thier 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 cant 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 dont heal fast enough. try to sneak it in.
Is bleed any use after the nerf?
In my opinion its only use is to lure people into using thier mind. thats 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 , sweep? thier redudent moves, one of swordman on going
problem. you dont need to use it at all sadly.
Do Swordman NEED Master brawler?
Need, No. However it is a great asset to swordman since swordman do not have a knockdown move of its own. The extra speed is
noticeable,+5 toughness is great on anyone and of course the center of being bonus. if you can have master brawler then i suggest that you do. if you cant swordman isnt a cannon fodder without it so dont pee yourself
What do you suggest about weapons?
i covered this before, in the end it is also depending on your toon if you got alot of speed tape then Accuratcy and power takes priority. If not which is most swordman speed and accuratcy will take you very far. the weapons we have are natural quite powerful anyways. accuratcy 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)
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I hope my PvP foes havent been reading this..... but i hope this helps all the new swordman
to get out there and show people that Swordman are lethal =) i have a feeling i forgotten something... nevermind i am sure somebody will spot it and post it (i will add and modify accordingly)
Message Edited by Noc-turnal on 10-07-2004 11:56 PM
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