Ranking of Archetypes based on solo capability

Rating points go for
1) Speed: Based on Nightmare - Ultimate difficulty clear time, bonus for special event bosses.

2) Offensive Power: Usually goes hand in hand with speed but in this instance relates to the biggest possible damage in one single skill use/cast.

3) Defensive Ability: How well it can take a hit. When solo, this becomes very important. Can also include unorthodox methods like continuous healing and barriers.

4) Prorative ability: How well the weapon selection can prorate its own damage. For in the instance of combo creation, lacking a skill which helps bolster your main type of damage can limit the amount and types of combos you can construct reducing the diversity of your character when tackling certain bosses.

5) Part Breaker: How easily the weapon can cause boss break parts to appear.

Each catergory pass indicates 1* and no additional * would be awarded for exceptional capability in that area.
________________________________________________________________________________

DUAL WIELD 1 HAND SWORDSMAN
- SPEED
- OFFENSE
- DEFENSE
- PRORATION
Rating: 4*
Clears bosses reasonably quickly, has high offensive power owing to attack growth from sub weapon and dual element capability. Defensive capability is extreme with several invincible frames skills which require timing. Unfortunately, it lacks the ability to break boss parts efficiently other than hard hit. Their prorative ability is dependent on the player themselves utilizing certain skill setup and auto attack cancels.

1 HAND SWORDSMAN
- DEFENSE
- PRORATION
Rating: 2*, 3* (SHIELD), 4* (DAGGER), 3* (KNUCKLE), 2* (MAGIC DEVICE), 2* (ARROW)
On average, the short comings of main 1-Hand Sword is its speed (excluding dagger) and offensive power (Relatively speaking). With shield, you are nigh unkillable yet your damage is rather lackluster, even on relatively good equipment compared to other archetypes (provided equalized equipment). With dagger, the range of attack expands as well as the proration ability but the defensive ability takes a hit as compensation. Knuckle skills allow you to break boss parts with extreme ease with the drawbacks being defensive and proration ability. MP recovery from knuckle skills are a gamble and as such are abysmal naturally. Magic Swordsmen have high damage output but their rate is slow due to magic cast time. As a result of a mix of magic and physical, magic swordsmen can prorate efficiently. Arrow Swordsmen would better serve as STR/TEC crafters to gain access to hunter trap skills. Arrow swordsmen deal no significant damage relatively speaking whether short term or over time and has range as their defensive capability, which doesn't really help VS late game bosses.

2 HANDED SWORDSMAN
- SPEED
- OFFENSE
- DEFENSE
- PRORATION
Rating: 4*
Is extreme in the areas of Speed, Offense and Defense (i-frame skill timing) but isn't very efficient in part breaking.

KATANA
- SPEED
- OFFENSE
- DEFENSE
Rating: 3*, 3* (Dagger)
Clears bosses reasonably quickly and has high offensive power and counter skills for defensive ability. Unfortunately, it lacks innate prorative skills/setup and they are the worst with regards to making part break appear. With dagger, has reasonable prorative ability and MP recovery in substitution for the larger damage a lack of sub weapon would cause.

HALBERD
- SPEED
- OFFENSE
Rating: 2*, 3* (DAGGER), 2* (ARROW)
Halberd is currently the strongest weapon in the game but have absolutely terrible defensive ability, proration and it is almost impossible to break parts. Dagger sub relieves some stress on proration whilst arrow provides range defensive capability which isn't much against late game bosses.

KNUCKLES
- SPEED
- OFFENSE
- PART BREAKER
Rating: 3*, 4* (SHIELD), 3* (DAGGER), 3* (ARROW), 3* (MAGIC DEVICE)
Knuckles has almost everything although their speed may be lacking compared to instant DPS skills like dragon tooth from halberd skills which require no cast time, they have other skills to supplement which do not take away from their main DPS during the charge of their main damage skill. With shield skills, their defensive capabilities become high enough to be a factor bringing it to perfection.
Using this weapon with magic takes away from the speed and offensive capability leaving everything else intact. They also gain unorthodox methods of defending themselves with barriers and HP recovery.

BOW
- SPEED
- OFFENSE
Rating: 2*, 2* (ARROW), 3* (KATANA)
Basically only has speed and offense owing to snipe and crossfire respectively with Katana coming in to fill the gap left by lack of defensive skills by providing counter ability.

BOWGUN
- SPEED
- OFFENSE
Rating: 2*, 4* (SHIELD), 3* (DAGGER), 3* (MAGIC DEVICE), 2* (ARROW)
Although lacking reliable armour break like bow, it makes up with generally higher raw damage and attack growth. Magic device takes away from speed alone and focuses on maximizing offensive power by efficient chaining of magic and physical skills in combos whilst adding some defensive capability in the form of barriers. Dagger adds some proration ability whilst shield adds the ability to break parts and defensive capability.

MAGIC DEVICE
- OFFENSE
- DEFENSE
Rating: 2*
Has high burst damage capability and unorthodox defensive measures such as a significant diameter repulsing magical wall, barriers and hp recovery. Lacks speed, inefficient in part breaking and has terrible proration ability due to only using magic skills.

STAFF
- OFFENSE
- DEFENSE
Rating: 2*, 3* (SHIELD), 3* (DAGGER), 3* (MAGIC DEVICE)
Has high burst damage capability and unorthodox defensive measures such as a barrier and hp recovery. Lacks speed, inefficient in part breaking and has terrible proration unless a dagger is equipped. Magic device fixes the speed problem if the player has a high cast speed build with magic warrior skills. Shield adds part breaking capability and even more defensive ability.

BAREHAND
- DEFENSE
Rating: 1*
This is a normal attacker build mainly though persons take martial skills to help augment it. Normal attack damage is terrible unless relying on additional damage boost and even then, it still is. As a consequence it's speed is low and it lacks innate part breaking skills
_____________________________________________________________________________

Seeking opinions and alternative bias. Also seeking argument on ratings.

PS: Note that this will be updated after testing out guard and evasion. Especially in the case of Halberd who has terrible defensive ability now.

 

For 2H, there is tempest for magic proration and also new skill, swift attack, for normal atk proration.

But, well... most of 2H nowadays only wanna jump around while stacking up hella lots of buff without utilizing other skills in their own main skill tree.

 

*facepalm* I keep forgetting swift attack, thanks!

 

most people ignore swift attack when it is a good combo filler that halves next skill mp and do normal proration.

 

In some katana build where it didn't have enough ASPD to auto attack without delay, tenryu ransei giving a buff to cover the problem, not to mention how simple katana basic damaging combo (for tier 4), making it easier to cover their damage loss from proration. So i would say katana rate will be around 3~4 star.
The same applies for bow and bowgun since they have too much space that it's so damn easy to prorate (well, except some of close range bowguns).
The only one that really dont have much way to prorate is halberd. I wouldnt say HB user have many way to prorate, because majority (i think) of them are playing in a pretty far range cause of the usage of GSW making them a bit hard to approach the monsters thus prorate less. Tho that 4m range of auto attack is pretty good to be called an advantage for prorating, just that the meta nowadays making 'em less prorating and more casting skills.

Btw, i think you should state that the categories won't give more than one star points no matter how overwhelming powerful the weapon in one of the categories, in case there's someone dumb enough to say one of the weapon have too much power that "who cares about part break" or whatever the other categories are


note: reaching the middle of night, my brain is too dumb to have a decent english, sorry if you're confused

 

Well whilst it might be easy to prorate, I was referring to skills which naturally allow them to do so in which they innately lack unless you take up such sub skills.
eg: throwing knife (Dagger), sub magic skills, swift attack for swordies.

The key to this list was really that it was completely for soloing, if they can prorate with normal attacks, ok but having a skill which prorates neutrally or magically helps physical attackers immensely when making combos.

 

ahh, you gotta explain it, even if it half-assed, it still better giving an explanation of what you trying to share, since some people like me tend to jump into conclusion
edit: i mean in the main post

 

Editted it in. Thanks dude

 

*Cries on Chronos Drive proration*.I've read somewhere that additional attacks from Chrono Drive is magic proration. Should be good while doing autos.
Mindless DT spam is indeed meta for this class.

As for Halberd defensive skills, I do think it is on par with THS since both need timing of skills in order to work. Dragon Tail's dmg reduction is useful for dealing with global attacks when not in range, I think reduction differs throughout the animation of the skill when I tested it. Dive Impact for Invincibility while in range, very difficult to time on hi-motion speed.

 

I thought chronos was Phys proration tho? I'll do a double check.

Dive impact really stinks because of that reason it works counter-wise to gsw and isn't even halberd's main dps so it suffers from lack of constant defensive measure and terrible synergy

 

The skills itself is phys.. Ticks do mag. proration. Does good at high motion speed since number of ticks increases with it.

 

*Delete*
Double-sent

 

from all i know chronos drive is a skill that inflict physical proration, the main hit is "affected" by physical proration and the additional hit is "AFFECTED" by magic proration, but not inflicting any proration

extra notes: any skills that do damage only inflicting one kind of proration, and any skills that have multi hits (included additional hits) only inflicting one kind of proration too

 

whops, my bad.

 

Can you elaborate on how part breaker contributes to a class' soloing capability?
I mean does it depend on how well it can inflict interruptions to stop incoming attacks or for something else?

 

By breaking parts you are able to get certain drops you would not have otherwise. It is more of a factor of gaining more from soloing a boss VS having to team up with someone else for the same benefit.

Interruptions go under defensive area but since most bosses can counter most types of defenses, it doesn't really work as a defensive measure in toram. Nor can you really place other weapon types with only 1 type of interrupt as a part breaker due to said counters. The most frequent countered interrupt is tumble whilst the least is stun, least in my experience so far so it may be subject to bias.

 

Oh, so being able to solo and getting part break drops is also a factor.
But doesn't that contradict the speed factor since to be able break parts you have to tap ridiculously fast or else it will affect the clear time somehow and I heard that tapping breakable parts gives delay to your attacks and skill casting.
This is just me, but doesn't that affect your soloing performance in terms of dealing damage as fast as possible and being able dodge/defend attacks without any delays? Idk if I'm wrong it's just what I think...

 

Well, yes it would affect clearing speed if you're aiming for breaking parts but no it changes nothing with regards to solo ability in that you are able to clear game content by yourself as opposed to needing a team.

You can use combos whilst break parts are showing so whilst there is a speed drop, a player experienced with game controls can minimize that.