SwS questions

[Aara]

Just a couple of quick questions from a returning player aiming to go for SwS. Hopefully some of the vets can help out here:

1) with regards to gear, how gimped would I be levelling up with common items for C grade? I'm currently in the D-grade range with +3 brig and a common elven longsword, and have managed to save up some adena, but the C grade weapon prices look rather intimidating. 4 mil for the low-end weapons. 5 - 5.5 mil for the higher end weapons (i.e. samurai sword and berzerker). I know SwS dps isn't the best, and I'd love to be out there with an OE zerker weapon to compensate for that (who wouldn't?), but I don't think it's feasible first time around without a couple of months of farming cash. So I just want to make sure I won't be gimped if I went common weapon.. any thoughts? Is it *really* a huge deal to save up for a proper weapon to enchant and enhance it?

2) I read somewhere else that haste / +atk speed will affect our singing speed, is this correct? Just wanted confirmation on that one. If so, would I be better served (assuming I didn't buy common gear and could enchant it) to go with Focus enhancements (combined with Song of Hunter for some nice crits) or Haste? Or is there a better effect I'm missing?

3) How useful are the symphonies in PvE and PvP? (sword / psycho). From the description it's hard to tell whether they'd be a bread and butter skill or if they're useless, heh.

Thanks!

[Spudnik]

1. level using a Plated Leather set (not common) **OR** using a Darkscreamer with Focus (not common). if you have money for both, do it.

2. nope. best thing for you is to boost your kill RATE not kill SPEED. these are two different things altogether. kill RATE is a number that reflects how many mobs you killed in an hour; ive always found that high kill RATE makes for faster levelling. kill SPEED means how much time it takes to kill 1 mob. now, you might think they go hand in hand but they do not; high kill RATE can be by AOE, or by simply ploughing through a densely packed field of 1/2hp mobs. with a dagger, you have great attack speed and with Focus on that dagger, youll have a great kill speed and also efficient. just chain the kills up as fast as possible, youll level in no time.

3. not that useful. mana best conserved and used to plink arrows into your enemy.

[Alytha]

I haven't really played my SWS for an extended amount of time in 2 years, so I'm not sure how much has changed but hopefully this helps.

-Your armor isn't that important. You don't get that much heavy armor mastery anyway. Some stick with Tallum even after they get 3rd class change (I did). More importantly you want a proper weapon, not common. Best to go with one-handed sword and shield. Some SWS use duals, but we have no dual mastery, low strength and you can sing without them, so there is no need. Don't focus on being a DD because you never will be. For PVP, it's sometimes more useful to use a bow, even though there is no mastery, SWS can crit for a lot.

- Attack speed increasing singing speed sounds familiar. It could be casting speed, however. I can't really verify this for you right at this moment. But I'll post again if I find out. But I think you might be right.

- I find the AOE fear spell to be pretty useful in PVP. The AOE slow one isn't really that great. Arrest will be your best friend: bring spiritshots so it lands more. Entagle is secondary. Remember doing all this will eat your MP, and you may not be able to keep crucial songs up.

[Aara]

Interesting. Thanks for the tips, folks.
So far I've gone a path similar to what Alytha suggested - sword/shield and heavy armour. Since we have some skill/mastery in those lines, it made sense to me (even if it's rubbish). The only untraditional setup I had considered was using a bow, which I'm glad to see is fairly useful in PvP. Good stuff.

Spud - is it really that much better with a fast atk speed dagger over a 1h or 2h sword?

PS - nice sig. Loved that show. Laurie and Atkinson at their finest.

[Alytha]

It is more about play style I guess. Stick with traditional set up if you like to party. It is my personal opinion that parties work best for Swordsingers; they are support classes at heart and really good ones. However, if you want to solo, try your hand at some mixing and matching of equipment.

Parties may seem to slow things down to some, but not if you pick the right ones and right people: I suggest pole parties, summoner parties, or duoing with an archer. Everyone will need you.

Additionally SWS shoots up in levels quickly when it starts hurting for most: around 73+. If you can find a DD, a Bladedancer and an out of party VR buffer, Pagan's temple under Rune is your best friend ever.

[Spudnik]

Interesting. Thanks for the tips, folks.
So far I've gone a path similar to what Alytha suggested - sword/shield and heavy armour. Since we have some skill/mastery in those lines, it made sense to me (even if it's rubbish). The only untraditional setup I had considered was using a bow, which I'm glad to see is fairly useful in PvP. Good stuff.

Spud - is it really that much better with a fast atk speed dagger over a 1h or 2h sword?

PS - nice sig. Loved that show. Laurie and Atkinson at their finest.

well, considering youre in heavy, no it doesnt make much difference. were you in DD gear it would indeed make a big difference.

2handers and swords in general are only a step away from daggers. a better contrast would be to ask you to go use Fist weapons with haste or some such. THEN the lines of comparison would be distinct. as it is, thorugh, i see it as 6 of one half-dozen of the other. it FEELS faster in haste Dagger. the only glaring drawback (as with anything) is cost. then again crits are frequent with a dagger, and not *so* frequent with a sword; so really balancing SPeed and Focus ability (hence Dagger with Focus) is the ideal solution.

[Larena]

I really like using a dagger as a SwS; our weapon masteries suck anyway and you really notice the singing speed. It is much easier to sync songs with a BD using a dagger as you can sing so much faster you can wait until they do the first dance and still get your songs off before they finish. You might want to wait until after 49 (for song of hunter) as a dagger gets +120 crit from hunter while a sword only gets +80 crit (and a blunt +40 - never use a blunt), this makes up for lack of masteries. A dagger is also nice because it allows the use of a shield but it also uses more SS.

Arrest and other skills are also faster with a dagger but because arrest's land rate is based off of patk (also bsps isn't used when you use this skill) arrest lands more when using a two-handed sword. The dps (without SA) is about the same with a two hander, 1-hander or dagger. I don't like duals much; a two hander uses slightly less SS and usually has better SA choices. SA choice will over power any difference in base weapon - for no SA (ie common) I like daggers. Focus > Haste > Crit. Damage; everything else isn't for dps. ;)

I wouldn't worry too much about a good weapon until Ag as the lower levels go pretty fast and the difference isn't that extreme. A good +3 top Cg weapon with SA is much worse then a common Bg weapon and there are only 12 levels from 40 to 52 hehe.

A bow is good for PvP because you can stay out of the fray and have very nice archer buffs (if you are in a nuker party a shield might be of more help - you are not going to hurt ppl much anyway), a bow is totally useless in PvE because of mp - I run out of mp using a bow even at a raid let alone hunting.

Common armor would be great until Ag; the bonuses aren't that important (even up to Sg if you xp in parties). While we don't get heavy armor masteries after level 35 they are very good masteries so heavy armor is always preferred, the only exception being non-common Plated Leather for C grade - it is hard to beat +4 str.

On that note, a SwS really needs str to DPS well and with our already low con -con can be scary but you would really notice +5 str -5con tattoos, +dex will only noticeably help run speed but dex is not a stat to gimp. -con is hard on weight limit though which can be painful for C grade when SS weights a lot. I don't think I have ever seriously used entangle either though I don't do 1v1 PvP.

I never use the symphonies at all - they take a lot of mp and have low land rates. They would probably help sometimes (5+ mobs on you) but aren't strong enough for me to get used to using them.

Remember that while syncing songs and dances can be annoying (and they have to be synced or both of your mp pools are empty in 2 song+dance rounds) a BD is your best friend and a SwS+BD is a great duo. Hunter adds a lot more dps if Dance of Fire is up.

GL on SwS, a great class :D

[Larena]

well, considering youre in heavy, no it doesnt make much difference. were you in DD gear it would indeed make a big difference.

Sorry I don't understand this Spud, why does armor choice change weapon effects? Armor which boosts attack speed helps daggers more then swords (I loved tallum heavy for this) but only by a small amount, does anything else?

[Spudnik]

Sorry I don't understand this Spud, why does armor choice change weapon effects? Armor which boosts attack speed helps daggers more then swords (I loved tallum heavy for this) but only by a small amount, does anything else?

OP should be in Plated leather (Damage Dealer armor) given he is in C grade.

but he can't afford it, apparently.

its no worries though, C grade will breeze by in either heavy or Light, especially if he found some friends.

[Larena]

Ah I see, yes PL is best for xp in Cg, attack speed doesn't change between armors but you would notice the difference more as each hit is doing more damage.

[theoran]

Most of the questions have been covered pretty thoroughly already, but I will add that sword symphony is really fun in sieges, if you can land that on at least 3 or 4 people you'll enjoy seeing them all sprint in crazy directions (hopefully towards your clannies)

One piece of advice I'd like to add for learning to play a sws is keep track of how much you regen and use mana. You should keep track of the mana cost for each "song slot" so to speak as well as know roughly how much mana you regenerate every 2 minutes. Especially if it's worth it to be in walk mode (same mp regen as standing or close enough to it). Also just figure out your average mp regenerated per 2 minutes with you running between mobs. This way you don't need to find out if the song/dance pattern you're keeping up with a bd is destroying your mana after it's already started to do so.

A bit of a stumbling block for sws's tends to be learning how to overlap songs with dances. The cost for a song is determined by how many songs and dances are up when you *start* casting. For example, since it's common for a mid-level group to have 3 dances and 2 songs going a pattern I used was 2 1 1 1, or 2 dances, song, dance, song. I'll break down the cost:

BD does two dances, 60mp for first dance 90mp for second. However, you start the cast of your first song before he finishes casting the second dance, so you also get 90mp on your first song. If the bd's third dance starts before your first song finishes (if you're using say, a 2-h sword) it will cost 100mp, if not, 150mp. Your first song is done casting, so now there are 2 dances and 1 song up (third dance isn't done yet) so your second song will cost 150mp, bd's third dance finishes, your second song finishes. Total cost, 250mp or 300mp for the bd, 240mp for you.

To compare, if you did 3 dances then 2 songs bd would get 250mp, if you overlapped the first song you'd get 100mp on the first song then around 250mp on the second (fifth slot), if you didn't it'd be 150mp then 250mp, giving you 350mp or 400mp cost per 2 minutes.

It's a lot easier than it sounds to overlap songs if you're using a 1-h or 2-h sword, you just need to time the first one and have all songs after that run in quick succession and they'll overlap and you just have the bd do 3 dances without any delay between them. If you're using a dagger you may need to time each song individually if there's a big enough difference in attack speed. The upside of practicing with the 2 1 1 1 pattern is if you mess up and are a little late, it's going to be 3 2 (3 dances 2 songs) which the bd would've been more familiar with anyways, and you'll just spend a bit more mana. Oh, as a disclaimer, all song costs i've listed are approximate, no need for slight corrections :P

[topeins]

...and notice that, since most times the BD the one that starts, its mainly up to the SWS to correctly syncro the songs, specially if the bd you're partying with doesnt wait for you XD... if you're in a clan, you should quickly find how your bd partners work and find your syncro patterns, you'll never run out of mp, will keep your dances/songs up most of the time, your healers will be happy (as they dont have to recharge you) and your party members attck and def will be maxed out :)

[theoran]

it has the upside that if you're with a bad bd you just tell them to do 3 or 4 really fast and then you do the work timing it and it's no different than if you were with a good bd.

However, if you're with a good bd you can mess around a bit, like both doing 3 each, alternating the whole way through (so 1 1 1 1 1 1) which is really tricky once you throw cov into the mix (the bd in question had lots of haste gear so their attack speed was close to mine with a 1-h sword) and just messing around, changing who was leading etc. As long as the necessities are up the party won't care and it helps pass the time trying tricky patterns.

[topeins]

i think the main conlcusion after all these posts is that playing a singer is really fun..

all agree??

[theoran]

i think the main conlcusion after all these posts is that playing a singer is really fun..

all agree??

yeah, it's a great class with a lot of flexibility in parties.

[AquaSpark]

i think the main conlcusion after all these posts is that playing a singer is really fun..

all agree??

If playing sws was really that awesome, you would see a ton out there. Atm, the most I know are subs.

Playing a singer is fun if you like being support - yes. A lot of people like having kool skills and being able to pawn. For these types of people, playing a sws is boring.

[ackerman_SR]

A lot of people like having kool skills and being able to pawn. For these types of people, playing a sws is boring.


I will dissagree with you at the point about "oplaying a sws is boring".
My main is SR and my sub is SwS.I like the sws way more and i will explain you why :P

1)most of the people for pvp they ask for BD.without songs iof the enemy has songs you are pretty dead,so sws is a class most people are asking for in their parties,raids,xp,pvp.

2)Especially at 79+ sws is amazing character. Song of Silence/Sword and Psycho Sympony that is landing on people now.Because of the defence a sws has with heavy armor you can run inside your enemies and debuff them/fear them.

3)SwS has cool skills also : UD / Entagle / Arrest

4)Because of the Deflect Arrow skill and with wind storm archers don't do any damage....

5)SwS has high p def and m def and critting with a sws on an enemy (robe user) for 2,5k is not bad i think :P
pve = FB
pvp = Drac Bow

SwS is a DD after all :P