Blade School overshadowing other melee options.

After trying out different schools for melee combat against monsters, I feel that the Blade School is overshadowing the rest in terms of monster clear speed.
Blade School has passive that boosts both Attack Speed and Critical Chance at the same time, this combination along already overpowers other melee Schools.

The fact of that you can inflict damage over time/ making multiple strikes and spam Coup de Grace at a dying enemy puts Blade School's killing speed on top.

I am sure Polearms and Bludgeon's combat shenanigans are great in PvP situations. However PVE wise there aren't a lot of incentives to choose either of them over Blade School.
I hope this can be somewhat balanced in the future release.

 

Blade also I think has the most combos of any skill currently (when taking into account the magic boosts)... but its been awhile since I've checked combos as there are almost no magic only combos.

 

I think combos have taken a back seat for a good while now, but I'm sure all the schools will eventually be getting some love there.

 

Eventually, yes. But currently blade is the way to go.

 

Well if you use combos sure.. it got the most work done so far. I tend to not use them.. and when you don't rely on magic there's a lot of combos that are useless to you.

 

I am not even talking about the combos here. Blade School's passives and active skills are already making it the best faculty to take in an Novia Combat Academy.

I do have to rant about the Bludgeon School with regard to why Berserk is even a skill there? Just because I like to use big axe or hammer that makes me needing anger management? I would think Berserk is more fitting to the Tactic School but then again we already have Reckless Stance :/.

 

I also think, the starting area should not only offer a sword, but also any other melee weapon ... and the base fight skill would get its skill points after you equipped the weapon of your choice.

 

*nods*

 

I haven't used all of the different weapon types enough to judge how balanced that they are, but I think that the existence of magic probably makes balancing the different weapon skills difficult to accomplish. Bludgeon and polearms can both add some utlity and prevent damage, but why give up a significant amount of melee damage to do that if you can do the same things with magic without giving up the damage?

 

Wow, you've already gone thru different schools sufficiently to make that determination ?
In under 3 weeks from wipe - that alone is impressive.....

 

I try to use a different school within each release/ compare to my friend's combat result and etc. I do not have the time to go through all three at once.

 

Chris is convinced that this is a really strong skill, and i guess he thinks it helps to differentiate the bludgeon school.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/berserk-skill-duration-not-scaling.48661/

 

-50% damage avoidance, ouch, no thanks.

 

Yeah. The stacking with stances he mentions is either stacking it with offensive stances which heavily reduces resistance (so you have at or near zero of both defensive stats as a melee user), or stacking with defensive stance which slows attackspeed (anti-synergy for damage %) and still lose all avoidance chance.

Add to that the short nonscaling duration and I currently think it is a terrible skill.

 

I haven't bothered with bludgeon in a while, but when I did play with bludgeon, the innates and berserk made it even more unappealing to me; break armor and break weapon also seemed a bit weak to me.

 

I actually like the innates.

The biggest issue I see with the bludgeon actives(except berserk) is that almost all of them are single target.

I love groundpound (both strong and just plain fun to use), but the only other multi-target skill is knockdown and even that only hits 2 targets.

 

I did my best to parse out damage differences between using Splintering Strike + Armor Break and without, in R28 or R27.

I could find no discernible difference, at all, in any way, in hundreds and hundreds of auto attacks. There was no damage difference, by parsing the logfile, with the armor break+splintering strike (or individually) versus without.
If it doesn't affect auto-attack, then I don't see the point.. players are better off spamming anything else if the debuffs have no value.
What I mean by that is.. if a single instant cast direct-damage spell does more damage immediately than having the debuff on a target does over the duration of the fight, there's no point in using the debuff.
This is combat design 101, but apparently has escaped the notice of Portalarium. Debuffs have to be extraordinarily significant in resource acquisition games with guarded nodes, because the only thing that matters is making fights as short as possible (DPS).

Put glibly? Armor Debuffs? Ain't nobody got time fo dat!

 

I'd be happy to retry your test in R29 so that we can better show proof of bugs if they are there. Next week or so I hope to have time to finish off my parser and do some testing.

I general i agree with your glib comment , though against some miniboss a 30 sec debuff can be important(provided it works)

 

Magic-only combos make up about half of the current in-game combos

 

Ahh, Chaos has the most of any combos currently. Maybe I should look into picking up the chaos school so I have some combos I can use.