Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
- 6.2K All Categories
- 3.1K Everything Achaea
- 1.5K North of Thera
- 26 Archives of the Terraformer
- 257 The Matsuhama Arena
- 885 The Golden Dais of Creation
- 299 The Scarlattan Theatre
- 149 The Blank Canvas
- 2K Getting Help
- 412 General Questions
- 258 Quick Class Questions
- 1.3K Tech Support
- 313 Client Help
- 486 Curing Systems and Scripts
- 841 Off-Topic
- 255 The Wander Inn
- 586 The Universal Membrane
- 298 Class Discussions
- 298 Individual Class Sections
- 20 Alchemist
- 9 Apostate
- 30 Blademaster
- 9 Depthswalker
- 14 Druid
- 4 Infernal
- 20 Jester
- 19 Magi
- 34 Monk
- 11 Occultist
- 8 Paladin
- 7 Priest
- 29 Runewarden
- 18 Sentinel
- 26 Serpent
- 20 Shaman
- 9 Sylvan
Blademaster bashing and more
After hearing several complaints about BM bashing over the weeks, I feel it would be best to bring this topic forward.
While BM did get a slight boost to damage against mobs recently, this still didnt bring them much in par to other classes and they still frankly remain as a bad choice for bashing purposes. I will list why below.
- May not use a shield, thus no access to an SoA
I am not certain why this is, but frankly it is coded in that Blademasters are not allowed to wield a shield, as we get this message when we attempt to: 'True warriors have no need for shields.', which in itself is pretty false.
- Have low armor options
A blademaster may only wear up to ringmail, which alongside not having a shield would make one believe they should have some form of counter to the lack of defense with sublime damage, however that is not the case either.
- Have 0 utility
Battlerage aside, Blademasters have no form of utility to take advantage of in bashing in comparison to other classes. They have no form of speed boosts, no forms of heal, no forms of passive curing, nothing. This makes them highly lacking in higher tier bashing. The sad part is that the abilities are in fact -there-, but cant be used since they require Shin.
- Stances
While Blademasters do have stances to try and switch it up, in their current vulnerable state most blademasters can either rely on Mir or Thyr. Thyr is frankly not much an option, since it reduces damage and you are still pretty vulnerable, thus we turn to Mir. Most blademasters will utilize Mir for bashing, since it gives more defense, however the trade-off is slower attacks in comparison. For high-tier bashing, it is near suicidal to -not- use Mir. This brings us to the last of usable stances, considered a near Taboo: Arash. Arash will give boosted speed and damage in exchange for a 20% increase in damage. This with an already squishy class is suicidal and thus why no one will touch Arash unless they are fighting some low-damaging mobs (and I mean really low mobs). In conclusion, it's Mir or bust
- Battlerage
The battlerage for Blademasters gives them access to amnesia and weariness, which would likely be based on the assumption to try and reduce incoming damage for the squishy blademasters. Let us think of this in realistic bashing terms, we all know that a basher that is using rage for defensive purposes is then sacrificing damage, and this should generally be used against certain mobs (or groups of) that are deserving of this sacrifice of speed for defense. Thus, in the Blademaster's current state, it would be assumed they should utilize these defensive capabilities far far more often simply to stay alive, thus reducing their speed greatly. It is a far better option to focus on lower mobs and utilize full damage battlerage, rather than higher ones with slower bashing.
Some simple suggestions that I have made before:
* Allow Blademasters to build Shin while bashing. This alone would fix -a loooot- of the problems with their bashing. By giving them Shin, you give them access to use: Healthtrans, Bind, Manatrans and even Phoenix. This would not only saturate their bashing utility but also increase their effectiveness.
* If Shin is out of the question, then adding more damage may be the best answer to their lack of defense: Allow Sternum to be used on mobs? Allow Multislash to be used on mobs? These are general suggestions.
While BM did get a slight boost to damage against mobs recently, this still didnt bring them much in par to other classes and they still frankly remain as a bad choice for bashing purposes. I will list why below.
- May not use a shield, thus no access to an SoA
I am not certain why this is, but frankly it is coded in that Blademasters are not allowed to wield a shield, as we get this message when we attempt to: 'True warriors have no need for shields.', which in itself is pretty false.
- Have low armor options
A blademaster may only wear up to ringmail, which alongside not having a shield would make one believe they should have some form of counter to the lack of defense with sublime damage, however that is not the case either.
- Have 0 utility
Battlerage aside, Blademasters have no form of utility to take advantage of in bashing in comparison to other classes. They have no form of speed boosts, no forms of heal, no forms of passive curing, nothing. This makes them highly lacking in higher tier bashing. The sad part is that the abilities are in fact -there-, but cant be used since they require Shin.
- Stances
While Blademasters do have stances to try and switch it up, in their current vulnerable state most blademasters can either rely on Mir or Thyr. Thyr is frankly not much an option, since it reduces damage and you are still pretty vulnerable, thus we turn to Mir. Most blademasters will utilize Mir for bashing, since it gives more defense, however the trade-off is slower attacks in comparison. For high-tier bashing, it is near suicidal to -not- use Mir. This brings us to the last of usable stances, considered a near Taboo: Arash. Arash will give boosted speed and damage in exchange for a 20% increase in damage. This with an already squishy class is suicidal and thus why no one will touch Arash unless they are fighting some low-damaging mobs (and I mean really low mobs). In conclusion, it's Mir or bust
- Battlerage
The battlerage for Blademasters gives them access to amnesia and weariness, which would likely be based on the assumption to try and reduce incoming damage for the squishy blademasters. Let us think of this in realistic bashing terms, we all know that a basher that is using rage for defensive purposes is then sacrificing damage, and this should generally be used against certain mobs (or groups of) that are deserving of this sacrifice of speed for defense. Thus, in the Blademaster's current state, it would be assumed they should utilize these defensive capabilities far far more often simply to stay alive, thus reducing their speed greatly. It is a far better option to focus on lower mobs and utilize full damage battlerage, rather than higher ones with slower bashing.
Some simple suggestions that I have made before:
* Allow Blademasters to build Shin while bashing. This alone would fix -a loooot- of the problems with their bashing. By giving them Shin, you give them access to use: Healthtrans, Bind, Manatrans and even Phoenix. This would not only saturate their bashing utility but also increase their effectiveness.
* If Shin is out of the question, then adding more damage may be the best answer to their lack of defense: Allow Sternum to be used on mobs? Allow Multislash to be used on mobs? These are general suggestions.
1
Comments
I have enough resources to try any setup anyone wants to suggest, Mir, Sanya, Arash "speed-hunting" (it's not even fast). Mir + burst setup as well. Overall I'm simply not impressed.
Having personally assumed this and tried, I can say without a doubt that unless you have a veil, you'll still die a cruel cruel death. Mindnet doesnt pick up when veiled enter.
Not bulletproof by any means, but still a credit to them.
and not a justification to being weak, either. Haven't tried since the damage boost but I was definitely not a fan before it.
Just adding a flavourful bonus to each stance would be enough for me to love Blademaster hunting. By flavourful, I mean something that shows me that it has an effect, not just altering damage, speed, or resistance.
Something like this would be cool for monk stances too.
That is Phoenix.
They're worried that if we're able to gain shin from bashing denizens. We'd be able to spam SHIN PHOENIX over and over.
Though I think if they just cut the shin gain by 50% or less per hit on a denizen. They'd be able to adjust how often we can use SHIN PHOENIX while hunting.
You wouldn't be able to use it against denizens any more often than you can against players and it's not exactly like you can chain phoenix to make BM invincible normally.
Hell, the ability to remove all of your afflictions at once is way less useful while bashing since it's not like you're getting out of mobs' lock attempts.
And as far as just straight-up healing, isn't healthtrans just decidedly more efficient than phoenix?
But yes, it'd also be pretty easy to balance the bashing utility by just altering the shin gain rate from denizens, especially if it were just a flat amount per denizen sternum strike.
It'd also be nice from an aesthetic standpoint. The whole thing with BM is combining a slash and a strike and it's sort of weird that that's not represented in their bashing attack - sort of like monk if it bashed with only SDK and no punches.
It's always been odd to me that BM doesn't use their second hand at all during hunting, either by striking or by wielding a shield. It's like we neuter the thematics of the class to consolidate their hunting into one attack. I think this is a bad design, but it could be hard to re-code it to work this way.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
I also don't know if your numbers were meant to be serious suggestions or just example numbers to give an idea of the general purpose of each stance, but with the numbers you gave, it looks like there'd basically be no reason to use anything other than doya (or arash if you're fighting really weak stuff). Doya would boost dps by about 25% at level 25, up to about 45% dragon, with no other crit bonuses. If the accuracy reduction for thyr is supposed to mean you miss 15% of the time, it will reduce your dps by a few percent, all told. The damage reduction from Mir would be a huge nerf compared to the current version (unless you mean for it to also keep the current damage reduction, in which case it would be a very small buff), with a minor nerf to dps to boot. I'd have to look up some numbers, but I doubt 1 shin per 10 spent rage would be enough to keep up with natural shin decay; if it were enough to let you healthtrans for a point or two every 5 seconds, it would basically be a 20% dps boost (better than thyr, worse than doya).
Of course, you could tweak the numbers to get the relationship you want between the stances, but the broader point is that it would be hard to balance something like that in such a way as to not end up with one stance being the clear default choice, with a couple others maybe being situationally useful (not to mention the difficulty of also balancing it against the other classes). I'm sympathetic to the desire for the stances to offer meaningfully different strategies, but it seems like it would most likely end up being a lot of effort just to end up with something that would end up functionally very similar to the current situation.
I don't know why... but I don't feel like mir is effective for me. I only take -100 less damage on mobs that deal a lot of damage per hit like the Knights. It doesn't really justify the lessened damage and slower attack speed for a so-so boost in damage reduction. I'd rather hit and run, and use shin daze and nerveslash to mitigate some of the damage.
The whole point of bashing as Blademaster for me is to go through mobs as quickly as I possibly can. If I wanted to face-tank every mob. I'll do that in my Bard or Runewarden form.
*edit: But yeah... I also feel that Blademaster doesn't do serpent-tier damage. Like... Magi with 18 int, Aldar Diadem, and level 3 collar (tested with Lhachman, who has these stats) can do as much as my arash stance drawslash (str 18 + level 3 band) per staffcast while having the defense advantage of SoA + Stoneskin + Diamondskin. So if you want the Blademaster's squishiness to be a trade-off in hunting... can you at least make them deal a little more damage than classes that have the same bashing damage output, but have way more defense options than the Blademaster will ever dream of having?
Hell, with my strength. My bard jabs do as much damage as my thyr drawslash, with both at the same 1.7s speed. Yeah, people can argue, "Oh, but your crits are weaker with Bard." But tell that to standard 40% crit rate with aim-to-kill trait and a huge plethora of defensive options via SoA, hallelujah, gigue, wassail, continuo, anthem, and aria.
I think I'm at 5000 health with level 2's.. and I can't tank two watch outriders without running.
I like the idea of the stances having more meaning behind them and more advantages.
I also would really love it if the AB of each stance gave the actual numbers of buff/debuff given by each stance. Such as:
Thyr: 15% increase in attack speed, 50% increase in accuracy, -20% decrease in in damage.
It would really help -a lot- in trying to understand them more and pick the best options, especially for new Blademasters.
It would indeed be nice to have them in the AB files. In the meantime, for reference, the damage adjustments relative to sanya are:
Thyr: -20%
Mir: -10%
Unstanced: -5%
Doya: +5%
Arash: +10%
Balance times are 10% shorter in thyr and (I think) arash, and 20% longer in Mir and Doya. Arash might only be 5%, I don't remember for sure at the moment.
The defensive effects are a bit harder to test, but I think Mir and Arash decrease and increase damage taken by something like 20-25%, respectively.
Accuracy effects are even harder to quantify, but they don't really matter for bashing.
The more important question is where to bash; should you use Mir and hunt slowly in a higher level area or use Sanya/Arash and hunt more quickly in a lower level area? The answer to that depends greatly on which specific areas you're choosing between, and your level/artefacts, so you'll really just need to try them and compare.
If you're not sitting on a mountain of strength (18 or more) and don't have a level 3 band. Sanya/Arash.
From my own experience. I clear faster with Thyr, but that's only because of the 18/19 strength + lvl 3 band + level 3 crit pendant makes up for the 20% reduction in damage from using Thyr stance.
17 strength + level 3 band + level 3 crit? Sanya/Arash is better.
18 strength + level 2 band + level 3 crit? Sanya/Arash is better.
19 strength + level 2 band + level 3 crit? Sanya/Arash is better.
Full con build (16-19 con) with minimum 12-16 strength? Sanya/Arash is better.
Always pick Sanya/Arash if you are wondering which offensive stance to bash in.
Crazy people like me who state that Thyr is better have the stats, crit rate, and max level band to make up for that 20% drop in damage from Thyr stance.
- BM PVE DPS numbers or testing-based estimates
- Every other class's PVE DPS numbers or testing-based estimates (primary stat should be the same value as it was for BM testing), so you can show that BM is worse
- BM PVE damage mitigation numbers, and numbers for health regen/recovery options that pertain to PVE
- Every other class's PVE damage mitigation numbers and PVE health regen/recovery numbers, so you can show that BM is worse
- An objective breakdown of BM Battlerage effects, so you can say "these aren't good enough to compensate for weak DPS"
- An objective breakdown of any BM utility relevant to PVE, so you can say "these aren't good enough to compensate for weak DPS"
- Any other pertinent issues BM contends with in PVE that do not affect other classes
Right now the first post in this thread reads kind of like "buffs plzzz", with some facts but a lot of what sound like opinions, to which the obvious responses are "why", "no", or "no plans at this stage, bring it up next classlead round". Clearly stated facts are harder to dismiss.
I've never had any issues with bashing as unartied BM and I'm almost Logosian. Hell, I rarely ask for runes/harmony. Any times I have died in PvE have been my own fault instead of the classes fault.
Sanya/Mir for new areas or vs high DPS mobs. Arash for familiar areas. I notice that it's quicker XP to bash large mobs of weak things over bashing one or two strong things (though I like doing this once in awhile to spice things up). BM's are great at cleaning up trash mobs.
The main tip I would give to BM's who are starting out is to really take advantage of the CC we have in battlerage (Shin Daze and Nerveslash). The damage mitigation is great vs big boy mobs. Save leapstrike and spinslash for trash mobs. Plus if you are hunting with friends, it makes their lives easier and they won't be as mad at you if you have to run.
There is no shame in leaving a room to heal for a few seconds. We have fast balance recovery so it feels like we're supposed to do this alot.
Sure the Endurance drain sucks but that's not a class specific issue.
Race: Xoran
Bard with 18 strength/14 int and Soulpiercer: 4% damage per jab at 1.7s
Blademaster with 19 strength and L3 band: 5% damage per drawslash at 2.0s in Sanya
Runewarden with 20 strength and Dreadblade: 6% damage per focus speed/slaughter at 2.9s
Currently I hunt Moghedu and Dun as either Bard or Blademaster these days. At level 94, I've finally obtained the critical percentage rate (http://www.achaea.com/forum/critical-hit-guide) to make Blademaster hunting a worthwhile alternative to Bard bashing (cause hunting as a Bard for 4 hours straight can get really boring).
I personally think, especially with the damage comparisons between my current three classes listed above, Blademasters can out-damage a 2-handed Knight when they have the right stats. Squishiness aside, they're getting pretty close to having a good spot in hunting!