Blade School overshadowing other melee options.

I agree that like most skill systems, it needs work, but lackluster? Killing 3 higher level mobs at once, while keeping 1-2 of them crowd controlled almost 100% of the time is more along the lines of overpowered, IMO.

 

CC durations that are what - 1/5th that which air magic gets in AoE form? Crushing blow got nerfed hard back in r21 or so when they made it a tier 1 single target stun that reaches 2 seconds that costs 12 focus per use. Knockback is situational good, but melee players don't want their bread and butter skills to move their target away. Break Weapon and Break Armor both offer moderate single target debuffs (people were talking about them being bugged.. i can't confirm that) which last all of 10 seconds. Berserk is hated by just about every player that has every tried it.

That leaves me with Ground Pound (fantastic skill) and Knockdown (decent skill).

Sure, when I'm leveled i can take on hard mobs(and more than 3) - but that's mostly the raw damage(from overtuned passives) and ground pound. With axes bugged against hitting more than 1 target atm, I'm not even using a single bludgeon skill except ground pound.

 

I was using crushing blow and knockdown as my two primary attacks, but i switched crushing blow for earth fist because its faster, does the samedamage and hitsmultiple targets.

I do use it against resiient foes tho in combo with earth fist for the armor debuff

 

Earth fist also costs 40% as much focus as crushing blow.

I too am using earthfist (in conjunction with ground pound) this release so i can hit more targets.

(also i've looked into using the combo but haven't tested it yet)

 

I'm confused. So even though people realize the other schools are more beneficial in PvP, they're calling for Blades to be nerfed because it is a pure DPS tree? Isn't that the point and the intentional design that it lacks the other nifty status effects and deals pure DPS, so it should be the best pure DPS tree?

 

I'm going to stop you here because pvp is largely beside the point at the moment. Every single melee tree is overshadowed by magic and archery last i knew in pvp.

As for the balance discussion, I'm not sure too many are calling for swords to get nerfed. I would say most considered swords more polished than that other trees. The polearm knockdown has been buggy for months, and we are discussing various things about bludgeon.

Personally, i don't think bludgeon is bad - but that doesn't mean it doesn't need redistributing the power throughout the tree.

Finally, in a game where everyone has magic, weak status effects in a tree mean a lot less....

 

I have the impression too, at least from a mid level avatar, that melee weapon damage in pvp is really not effective...

Anybody can confirm that it is not good at high level too?

 

Was the damage agaisnt cloth armored targets? Have you tried pole arms?

The way the damage resistance works now, it doesnt take much to mitigate msot of the incoming damage from people. And the ability to parry, dodge, block, and avoid melee attacks makes them easier to block than ranged or magic (which can only be avoided by 3 of the 4)

Pole arms are supposed to be the weapon type that ignore shield blocks and have the ability to ignore damage resistance.

 

Even agaist a cloth armour (with of course defence stance,death shield etc etc) a stone fist does way more damage than a 2h weapon...the 2h weapin damage looks, at least at mid level, not effective at all...

 

While I understand that polearms do have 1 armor piercing ability, it is still going to run into issues with Death Shield, and you aren't going to win a PvP fight using a single ability.

Between Deflect, Shield of Ice, Defensive Stance and Death Shield, I don't think melee weapons make much sense as a PvP primary damage source.

That is not to say that some people won't run builds that counter them, or that they can't be used as part of other builds (I could see the armor piercing attack used as a humorous reinvention of Hally mages).

 

What i meant was thier ability to ignroe active defenses like blocks and parrys. They are better suited to do damage to targets with alot of physical defense.
Defelct should have no affect on a polearms ability to hit. At least it is intended to work that way

 

I think there is a logical fallacy between your first and second sentence. If you are right (I'm going to assume that you are), polearms are better at getting through parry and deflect. However, there is still resist, avoid(if this doesn't work either please tell me), dodge and the death Shield mechanic which all resist physical damage.

I think the piercing attack DOES mitigate some of them, but then polearms also have to deal with the fact that they are the lowest DPS of the melee trees, so I really am not sure you can declare them the best for PvP.

 

With the way damage resistance is working now, if you have 15 resistance and 30% max, you should mitigate 30% of all incomign damage up to 15 damage total, so if someone hits youf or 30, it should hit for 21 instead, but if they hit for 100, it should hit for 85. raising your resistance to soemthing that mitigates low/mid level attacks isnt too difficult with allt he spells and passives that do so, so raising your max % would probably be what i would look at. If you factor in the 15 or 20% of damage death shield negates it cans tart to add u p to alot, with ice shield and evasion active you are gonna have between 10 and 15% damage avoidance maybe, so throw tha ton top along with the dodge % and deflect % from shields. Also shield passives give a flat bonus to defenses rather than defence base don the type of shield used, so wooden shields are also extremely good mage defence, but as far as the active defences (usable skills) go, a pole arm is supposed to bypass them, except for Dodge and maybe avoidance.

I'd say if your not usign a pole arm your gonna have a harder time meleeing defensive people, but i think your spot on with the suggestion that defensive stance combined with death shield are two of the biggest factors in melee mitigation for mages

 

polearms are intended to work this way, but im not certain if they do becaus ei havent tested them or talked ot anyoen who tested them. But if they do, the resistance should also be negated by the pierce ability. But the death shield, ESPECIALLY if heavier armored folks are still usign it, should cost mroe focus for what it does, and/or have a active duration lowered to match its cooldown so that its mroe imperative to stay on top of it to keep it up.

Does death shield defend agaisnt spells too? Most spells are suppsoed to be susceptable to msot of these defences as well

 

Death Shield does not reduce damage from spells (or even the NPC mage auto attacks)

I'm still confused by what you mean by Pierce Ability... Are you referring to the passive neither of us has tested or the active attack? If the former, I know it doesn't go through resistance and if the latter I refer you to my early comments about using more than 1 ability in PvP.

As for resists working against magic if it's a mixed bag. I believe avoidance works against some things but not all. I know for a fact that Shield blocking only works against some skills (usually fist/touch skills or rays). Damage resistance does not do anything against magic. I suspect dodge works at least somewhat and haven't the faintest idea on parry.

 

....after further testing...melee damage could work...I have to go deeper to find out...

 

Would be happy to test with you

 

...just whisper me in game...

 

From what I've tested, dodge works against ranged attacks and melee attacks, but is harder to raise than the avoidance stat or parry.
Parry only works against melee attacks, from what I've seen. That is, you can't parry an arrow or ranged-magic attack. However, parry raises quite quickly by level, comparatively.

 

So does or does not dodge work against ranged-magic attacks?