My Skill Analysis: Bludgeon

Just for my own peace of mind and hopefully for making a good case to improve skills. I've decided to go through the non-magical skill trees one at a time and offer my commentary on the skills within. First up.. Bludgeons.

In looking at skills in general it seems to me that many of the skills are in a particular tree not because they have anything really do with the item the skills are based on.. but rather on traditional class based skill sets. Which, in a "classless" system this doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Bludgeons focus a lot on strength, stun and knockdown effects as well as causing damage to your opponents weapons and armor.

Crushing blow: A chance to stun. This is pretty darn vague but you could argue that any sufficiently strong blow could stagger and stun an opponent.. I'd rather not nitpick why other weapons wouldn't have the ability to stun also as I know there's a balancing act that has to happen between skill trees so I'll let this one slide.

Knockback: Same as above.

Knockdown: Now here I'm starting to have some issues. Knocking down an opponent is not necessarily a weapon based skill. It's not about only brute force but how that force is applied which has nothing to do with an exclusive set of weapons. While this skill should remain strength based.. it really belongs in Tactics.

Break Weapon & Break Armor: This one is misleading in its function. Bludgeons really do damage armor.. but what these skills do is essentially apply buffs or debuffs to temporarily reduce effectiveness. In the very least I think these need to be renamed to more accurately reflect what they do.

I understand here that actually causing damage to gear may introduce a 'not-fun' factor for your opponent and would make bludgeons overpowered which is an undesirable effect.

Berserk: What in blue blazes does this have to do with bludgeons??? This belongs in Tactics.

Ground Pound: Seriously? How is this even remotely possible? Yes I understand the need for an AOE attack like other weapons have.. but pounding the ground? The way this is described it's totally a magically based attack. Otherwise at most you might confuse your opponents as they wonder what the hell you're doing and if you're even sane.

This skill should be switched to be similar to Whirling Blade. Would make a lot more sense that way.

Innate skills: Stunner, Crusher & Breaker all seem ok. Pretty straight forward.

 

Ground pound was the reason i gave up on this skill tree.
It totally goes against the feel of the realism of the graphics.

 

I love your non-magic skill analysis postings! Wish there's be more than one like.

How does any of the defensive skills (shield/pole arm/...) warrant an increase in damage resistance? It would be logic to result in an altered 'to Hit' chance, but not in damage resistance. There's plenty of these kind of 'illogical' in-game effects in combat.

 

Better might be a skill that damages and stuns every target in a 135 degree arc in front of the character. The weapon skills need more to vary their AOE attacks.

 

I believe Trip is also another varient of Knockdown. I agree with you that they could both be melded as one in Tactics.

You forgot to mention that Knockback is a self-defeating skill at the moment....

Knockback a spider? Great, now it can reach you but you can't reach it.

Same with two handed skeletons and bears.

 

Good thoughts on bludgeon. At first I tried magic and now Im all bludgeon, tactics, heavy armor, focus and the life tree since I make a paladin and try to help new people as much as I can. I agree about the tree fo bludgeons and also I think the animations are off for many bludgeon hits. I like the idea of whirling blades. My beserker in Tera was a bludgeon person, and I could hold down the 3 key when my whirling axe skill was available and do some damage to everyone around me. I don't pvp so I know pvp might have a concern with this for some reason I don't know, but my experiences are reflective of pve playing. I also love the charge and knock down and stun my oponent skill. I don't feel we have it enough with bludgeons. I want to charge from a bit of distance to cover ground, perhaps it can be blocked sometimes, and sometimes not, but I'd still want the option. As to the beserker part, I disagree a bit since it may take a bit of beserker rage to carry that heavy axe around and send it home to my oponents skull. Ground pound is another aspect that could be tied into raging at the ground to stop the foe in their tracks with a bit of a stun, so I am not against it, but I think it needs some love. Temper, temper. Talking to myself here when using my axe I'd rather have the charge I mentioned and whirling axe though for fun. Thanks Bowen.

 

This is a good point but it's more general and less skill tree specific so it's just been sitting in the back of my brain so I hadn't given it a lot of thought.

I suppose I just wasn't thinking about it because I was going to touch on that problem with pole arms but yeah.. knockback has that issue.