1.2 is here!

So the mega SwordMaster patch has finally hit. I was excited to patch up and see and test all the changes. And test I did, more than I have before. I found some interesting results and I definitely need to do a lot more testing but I will post what I found so far none the less. Here are my initial impressions:

My first thought is who patched in the massive lag? In PvE out in the world I was actually fine, but as soon as I stepped in the new scenario twisting tower or did any sort of orvr I was lagging pretty hard. I never lagged like this before. This hits SM’s probably double of other classes because we rely on a balance system to be able to use our moves. On a class without restrictions in a laggy situation you can mash one button and eventually it will go off, on the SM you sometimes are shown in the wrong balance and won’t ever get the move off no matter how much you mash because the game thinks you are in the wrong stance. Anyway this didn’t get me down too much, but it was pretty annoying and made it truly hard to test my actual performance in pvp which what I mostly care about.

I specced into a full Khaine damage build to try out ether dance (channeled damaging hit at the top of the tree). Let me say this, in pve and on stationary targets this thing is pretty nasty. When the lag issues get fixed in 1.2 I think this will also be nice in pvp. However as said before due to lag it was hard to test, I wouldn’t get near the full amount of hits off on anyone moving and I couldn’t compensate by staying on them because I was lagging as well. Still I could see the potential. I’d defiantly say using the damage spec was and is very powerful this patch, on par to or greater than before. I’m pretty happy with it though my results were unspectacular. Great Weapon Mastery is awesome to have and there are lots of tactics to make some really nice damage capabilities for a SM going with this tree.

I will over the next so many days test the other builds as well and hopefully report on them here. For now I would like to share my tests done on some of the opener’s a SM has available along with number from four of our damage tactics to compare. All tests were done at level 33, against a level 36 wolf using my Defensive gear (low str maybe 280) and 1h plus shield. I just wanted to get general numbers, I may re-run these tests using a 2her later for comparison. Spec was 13 Khaine.

Openers:

Sapping Strike – 78
EB – 69 (non debuffed mob)
GL – 97

From the looks here a Khaine specced SM can certainly consider GL instead of EB as an opener. It still has slightly more cost per use (5ap) but I’m just saying I found it a useful alternative and it has many instances where it hits much harder than EB. Of course using it means you won’t be using EA but that is ok too since my research on the tactics seem to show EA doing not as good of damage as the others as well.

Tactics:

EA – 26 a tic times 5, lasts 5 sec, 26dps
PE – 75 a tic times 4, lasts 9 sec, 33dps
CoT – 56 a tic times 3, lasts 3 sec, 56dps
DI – 71 a tic times 5, lasts 10 sec, 35.5dps

Initial thoughts are CoT is much more powerful than before, is it actually the best choice now? I’m not so sold yet just based on this evidence what is best but it would appear that CoT got a lot better and EA a lot worse. DI became pretty good, but not sure worth the mastery point when the other choices don’t cost one. Do all these abilities raise the same amount given the same amount increase in strength and weapon dps? If so then it would seem this scale is pretty telling, and that slotting EA would probably be reserved for SM’s that spec hoeth and use EB as their opener anyway, while even those SM’s may choose PE or CoT.

So that’s my results for now, I hope to run more tests soon.