Bashing Class - No Artefacts, No Knights

Mellexo

Are most classes pretty much equal for bashing that are not knights without artefacts? Maybe an SoA if anything? 

Kiet

If you really don't want to play a knight it's not that big a deal. It's not like knights bash twice as fast as other classes, they just have a good mix of dps/tankiness that requires no investment. You can get dragon as any class (though don't do it as snb knight).

Mexis

Awesome! From reading forums for bashing, it makes it seem like really serpent with artefacts and knights are the only way to go if you're serious. I just don't like knights, like playing them and whatnot, just can't connect. 

[Deleted User]

That's not necessarily true, a lot of classes have very reasonable bashing. Shaman, bard, even jester and magi come to mind; most classes perform in the middle with some strengths and weaknesses. They don't have a huge artefact investment because you can generally afford to spec for constitution without much penalty, and magi gets some added tankiness from its primary stat (intelligence scales with stoneskin/diamondskin). Serpents are only at the top of the list with a pretty huge investment, largely because your garrote speed scales with both the lash itself and your dexterity, with no discernable cap as far as I know. The downside is that investing in dexterity usually comes at a penalty to constitution, and the lack of scaling on denizen attacks means your health level can really be the critical factor in your bashing speed - having to run too often or even worse embrace death will really hit your efficiency more than what your individual attacks do.

Focus on what is fun for you otherwise and invest appropriately, having enough tanking ability to comfortably bash and having crit bonuses makes a bigger difference than class selection outside of the outliers. Just try not to die much and you'll get to dragon eventually.

Cooper

Serpent "with artefacts" is an understatement. Even full level 3 arties with every talisman out there, I run the risk of dying to some of the things I bash if I'm not careful. 

[Deleted User]

I don't think Serpent is that stellar without dcape, tbh. Even with full level 3s, Thiev was struggling with a few things that he blitzed through as Bard... The moment he got cape all that became a non-factor though. I don't think Bard is that great without some measure of investment, it's okay, but Shaman is definitely fine from my observation of Elisella bashing.

If including factional classes, Sylvan is decent and doesn't need SoA (can't use it properly anyway outside of arti armour since staves are 2handed). Priest is alright, too. Every class can get to dragon 'fine' though, just to varying degrees of monotony.

Maerethryn

I haven't gotten past 80 so keep that in mind, though 80 has more health than it used to. Shaman is personally my favourite with no artefacts, just trans Curses and a tiny bit of Spiritlore. Apostate is noticeably tankier with Putrefaction and Demon Armour but also significantly slower than Shaman. Two dual bleeds does like 35% less than damage than curse/jinx iirc.

[Deleted User]

Decay dps is fine. The problem with Apostate isn't that dual bleed sucks. Dual bleed is their secondary bashing attack anyway...

The problem with apostate is you have to choose between quick-witted and nimble for your traits. If you wanna hunt (and use decay) you ideally need to go quick-witted else decay is slow. Even then you 'need' diadem if you want decent speeds... If you wanna do combat you have to use nimble (and thus use the inferior bleed bleed, or the god awful slow decay).

Alchemist suffers from the same issue, except Alchemist doesn't have a balance-based secondary bashing attack.

Lavanda

Bashed to dragon as shaman. Highly recommend. 

Curse bleed, jinx bleed bleed, repeat. Attune Marak and Garon always, choose between Daina and Ri'shen as your third attune. Bind Arius to finish targets through their shield so you don't have to waste rage, and keep both Daina and Ri'shen bound regardless of which you attuned because both their actives are good. Kill speed is great, tankiness isn't amazing but doesn't need to be.

Elisella

Knights are decently tanky and can put out a good bit of damage, but the single best artie for bashing is Shield of Absorption, which knights can't use unless they get artie armor (which is going to be 1350 credits versus the SoA's 800) or they go Sword and Board which is its own special brand of hell.

If you want to reach dragon on a budget of "Tri-trans class skills, no arties", I'd vote either Shaman or two-handed knight. Both put out decent amounts of damage and can be reasonably tanky, although two-handed really shines if you can scrounge up enough for an artie sword.

Shaman has the added bonus of being able to leech off of your friendly neighborhood bashing machine (There's at least one in every city and you should be able to convince them to let you make a puppet of them).

Aodfionn

Even with SoA, snb is so hellaciously fucking slow that it's simply not worth it.

[Deleted User]

Aodfionn said:

Even with SoA, snb is so hellaciously fucking slow that it's simply not worth it.

I think that's what she meant :P It's the only one that can use SoA without arti armour, yet even with it it's still really bad.

Elisella

Aodfionn said:

Even with SoA, snb is so hellaciously fucking slow that it's simply not worth it.

It's currently bugged anyhow.

Rend and Slice have the same damage and speed versus mobs, rather than being different. The shield smash is also a laughably tiny portion of overall damage: A double world-shattering crit combination with a L2 sword, 16 strength, and SoA only did 40% to a Vertani guard. In contrast, a single Bleed crit as Shaman does ~64%.

If they fixed those things and balanced the damage slightly better between the sword and shield hit, it'd be a little slower than DWC but tankier and I think that'd be an acceptable compromise.

Elisella

More SnB PvE weirdness on a baby alt I played around with over the past day or so.

1. In terms of bashing attack speed, the only thing that matters is your weapon level. Rend and slice have the same balance and damage. The "KILL" command uses slice over rend, but they're interchangeable. Smash with a buckler is the same balance as smash with a tower shield, both in combination and just by itself.

2. A tower shield does a negligible amount of bonus damage over a buckler. To give you an idea of how tiny this bonus is, have some numbers against a regular rat. Control numbers are 15 strength and Gifted Weaponmastery with a forged longsword. There may be weirdness at actually relevant skill levels that I haven't tested myself/gotten someone else to test.

Combination with tower shield: 73%

Combination with buckler: 68%

Smash with tower shield: 20%

Smash with buckler: 15%

I currently don't have numbers on where SoA falls into this, but I'm betting it falls under the buckler category.

Either way, your shield is almost irrelevant. 5% more damage against a rat is going to be imperceptible even as you get into Manara, let alone anything worth bashing later on. The one relevant thing for your shield is in the damage reduction: Tower shields have better resistance than bucklers, but that's a moot point because you're going to want an SoA eventually.

tl;dr- Nothing except your weapon level affects SnB balance, the tower shield is the best thing to use before you get an SoA because it tickles your foes slightly more and offers actual damage reduction, everything about SnB in PvE is a lie except that it's bad.

Sena

Elisella said:

1. In terms of bashing attack speed, the only thing that matters is your weapon level. Rend and slice have the same balance and damage. The "KILL" command uses slice over rend, but they're interchangeable. Smash with a buckler is the same balance as smash with a tower shield, both in combination and just by itself.

This is very obviously a bug and not something to base actual advice on.

Proficy

Not very obvious, as it's been brought up [atleast by me] countless times and was said to be what it is. Which is sad because when 90% of my time is used hunting, I cant justify being in that spec...

Sena

Proficy said:

it's been brought up [atleast by me] countless times and was said to be what it is.

Do you mean admin said it was intentional? Was there any further explanation? Because a massive unannounced change to how things used to work* that also contradicts multiple AB files seems pretty obvious.

*It's been a couple years since I checked, but there were definitely large differences between buckler speed and tower speed and even bigger differences between slice and rend. I can't find the full details, but forged longsword slice/smash was 2.3s with buckler, 2.7s with tower. Rend/smash with a training broadsword (the only rend data I can find unfortunately) was 5s, while slice/smash with the same sword was 3.4s. All at trans.

Minifie

Sena said:

Proficy said:

it's been brought up [atleast by me] countless times and was said to be what it is.

Do you mean admin said it was intentional? Was there any further explanation? Because a massive unannounced change to how things used to work* that also contradicts multiple AB files seems pretty obvious.

*It's been a couple years since I checked, but there were definitely large differences between buckler speed and tower speed and even bigger differences between slice and rend. I can't find the full details, but forged longsword slice/smash was 2.3s with buckler, 2.7s with tower. Rend/smash with a training broadsword (the only rend data I can find unfortunately) was 5s, while slice/smash with the same sword was 3.4s. All at trans.

I’m not sure if it just is something too hard to fix, or what have you, but since the absorption fix there really is very few reasons for snb to be as weak as the raw damage is. Make the hunting 3/2.9/2.8/2.7 accounting for arties, and have damage differentials based on bard (80% damage on rend/slice, 20% on shield), make the damage of the combo equal to 1.4x a dsl (2s vs 3s), or even make the speed/combo damage the same as dwb morningstars with longsword/dwb flails with broadsword and it’ll be balanced by being slightly tankier by not having the balance reduction on kill if the first half of a whirl kills, and the fact big crits with shield hit are piss poor (ala any crit dor dwb and dwc is always good, while getting a prc on accentato vs jab is gobshite compared to the reverse).

even just had hack/bash and leave slice/rend for pk, and hack can’t target limbs so it’s just a slow, raw damage pk ability. I can swap over and do a full days hunting as snb again to get new numbers, but from memory the same level of artefacts put it still worse than firelord bashing, which is worse than dwalker bashing...