I keep hearing that the heavy swords are nerfed to the point that the reduction in hits and speed outweigh the benefits of wide reach and knockback. I find this upsetting if true because I already invested a lot of time and money into leveling one of these weapons. I also heard the cutter/striker sword tree is unbelievably good in both damage and versatility in comparison. Is there any way the heavy blades can be made beneficial or unnerfed as severely as they were?
Troika/heavy swords upsettingly nerfed?
An overall damage boost amongst that tree might benefit it, or not as severe of a speed loss, instead of 2 and a half notches, maybe at least 4?
I might misremember a few of these numbers, as i'm now fairly tired, but i did a little testing with the kor, versus the striker.
With a level 10 kor, my swings were 22+28
With a level 4 vile striker, my swings wer 14+6+14+6+14+6+(something)
I'm not sure what the final strike was on the striker, but the last slice does more than the first set, which is actually only 3 strikes, each of which is followed by a ghost strike, hence the alternating damage amounts. Given the strikers speed, this means the DPS on the lower level striker is equal to that of the max level kor.
With the charge attacks, the strikers damage roughly double per swing, with a full series of 3 slices, 3ghost slices, and a big swing with knockback. It also seems to rattle some monsters enough that they can't attack until the attack ends. Using it against poison skelies kept the skeles from attacking until they were out of the barrage, which pushes them back at the end anyways, meaning I can run or shield before the one I hit can get me.
The charge on the kor, also seems to do roughly double damage, but it only roughly doubles the damage of the kor's initial strike, and it takes a large enough time between letting go of the mouse, and the strike landing, that tree construct types can smash you, before you smash them, and skeles can often get a swipe in before you release, nulling you charge. The knockback on the kor's charge is impressive, but seeing as the attack is so slow, the only time i've been guaranteed a connection, is when the monsters are facing my allies instead of me, and i circle behind them. However this means that my knockback, is pushing the monsters towards my allies at a fairly high speed. We've lost a fair bit of health when tree constructs I smash, smash allies as they slide across the room.
This puts the kor's biggest obvious edge over the striker, as a potential weakness, if not planned out carefully.
Everything ELSE about the weapons is slanted heavily towards the strikers.
Strikers can poison, preventing healers from drawing out battles. By contrast the kor's stun doesn't seem to prevent the mobs from doing anything, including teleorting (really, why can frozen or stunned wolvers teleport?)
Strikers do more DPS
Strikers have shorter delays both before, and after, their strikes
Having more swings per second, strikers get a wider range of exposure times to pick from
The kor, however, can get to its second/final swing faster than the striker. This means that if a gremlin needs to be knocked down again, a kor can do it slightly faster than a striker. However because of the recovery time between the final swing and being able to swing again, the striker will still be doing more damage, especially if the striker wielder charged before the gremlin got back on its feet. Overall, this makes the striker capable of soloing, and deadly in a team up with a kor. However the kor needs the striker, while the striker simply benefits from the kor.
You do have to keep in mind WHY these heavy class weapons have been nerfed. They have an incredible knock-back. Using them correctly is very safe because enemies can't quite hit you. That's why they deal less damage, because they offer higher safety.
Except against monsters who can attack much faster, such as gremlin mages, skeletons, or gremlin bombers who can sidestep the attack, and toss bombs, which are rough times if you accidentally double swing and leave your self very overextended. Or against a a group of tree constructs, who are wide enough that they stand far enough apart that one of them is likely to be able to swing at you before you can get to the knock back strike on all of them, or wolvers who will teleport behind you while you do the extended second swing forwards.
Do not forget the power of a Troika-tree weapon's charge attack. It can deal massive damage, deal the stun status and knock all enemies away from you (suprisingly large hit-zone). Hitting enemies that dodge with the Troika is just like learning to shoot them, you must anticipate them and the the enemies come to you. Though it is not a very loved Sword type I'm still seeing it used to great effect by the occasional player.
But that charge attack is double edged. Chaos to the AI is quickly overcome, chaos to the human teammates needs a fraction longer to respond to. I think if the charge attacks had slightly longer range, with more damage, and/or the pause between release and strike was shorter, the whole tree would be much more effective.
Nooblar, fast attacking monsters are no problem if you are able to attack on the right time and at the right distance. I still stand by my point that the heavy-class weapons are incredibly safe if you wield them well. On top of that they give you a big tactical advantage. Being able to push around about any monsters far and quickly without problem is something you shouldn't forget about them!
The charge attack however, I do not like. Apparently heavy-class swords have an increased base charge time, which comes down to nearly twice as long compared to a Calibur-class type. Being able to dodge enemies long enough in the heat of battle for you to finally charge is impossible in a lot of cases. If for anything, I would love to see this changed.
It's generally because the swords do 2-3x more damage in one swing. Base damage isn't a concern when you use damage increasing items, you'll outscale other weapons per swing in terms of damage and utility.
If you wore the Seraphic set with a Khorovod the damage could easily climb over 70+ per swing on normal monsters, but I'd have to test it first, it might be more.
I know in tier 1 on normal monsters my vile striker does 43 damage in one swing, so it could be much closer to a 4x boost in attack for a Khorovod.
It's generally because the swords do 2-3x more damage in one swing. Base damage isn't a concern when you use damage increasing items, you'll outscale other weapons per swing in terms of damage and utility.
If you wore the Seraphic set with a Khorovod the damage could easily climb over 70+ per swing on normal monsters, but I'd have to test it first, it might be more.
I know in tier 1 on normal monsters my vile striker does 43 damage in one swing, so it could be much closer to a 4x boost in attack for a Khorovod.
i dunno. i have the jalovec and khorovod and they don't seem very bad to me. except for the fact that the Khorovod's charge attack's rocks disappeared....
11/11/11
The day all 2010 threads revived from their graves.
Khorovod used to be beast. Now it's just "meh". Other 4 star weapons do a lot more damage like the striker tree. The only thing the Khorovod does that other swords don't do too well is knockback. Khorovod is still best at that. But in my opinion the knockback isn't worth the reduction in power. Khorovod should be a bit stronger imo.