UO Second Age

My first dexer here that I've been training uses swords because that's what I've scavenged around banks, but I also want to start a fencer. After reading some of the old threads (kryss vs. katana), I'm reluctant to waste my time. My recollection from the t2a days, playing two swordsmen and two fencers, is that my fencers were competitive, and that there was very little difference, over time, between the katana and the kryss.

It was especially fun getting a few lucky rolls in a row against players who thought the war fork was a "useless" weapon.

Depends on if you simply want to kill people. Fencing is pretty over-powered in terms of looking bad-ass.

Orsi wrote:Depends on if you simply want to kill people. Fencing is pretty over-powered in terms of looking bad-ass.

I used to PVP with my bard with moderate success, so I'm not opposed to that. (He didn't appreciate being attacked by an inept lone pk but was smart enough to high tail it away from an expert, or recall from a gank without asking questions.)

Actually, it was my friend's bard, until I had my own, and my friend didn't appreciate logging in to find his bard's fancy title degraded when I lost. I never cared about that stuff.

Sorry to derail my own thread: Are you saying swords are more effective in practice, and fencing weapons still look cool? I always thought a DP halberd was the coolest weapon, but that is NOT era accurate.

It's cool to not do what everyone else does. Fencing is viable if you really want it to be. You may have to fight differently than you would with a sword for it to be effective, but then again, fencing is different than swords in the first place.

Fencing is arguably the best dexer weapon skill. Awhile back they made the kryss the fastest weapon in the game, I don't remember the kryss being more popular then a katana for townies on OSI but oh well. But for a tank mage anything but a hally mage puts you at a disadvantage.

Orsi wrote:It's cool to not do what everyone else does. Fencing is viable if you really want it to be. You may have to fight differently than you would with a sword for it to be effective, but then again, fencing is different than swords in the first place.

I prefer field PVP, so I'm not overly concerned with the perfect dueling template. But if fencing is noticeably disadvantaged then I'll choose macing. For my mage that's what I plan on because I've never played that template.

I've been so consumed with making cash that I haven't bothered testing things out on the test shard, but I have enough houses now that I can focus on character development.

Dr. Octagonecologyst wrote:Fencing is arguably the best dexer weapon skill. Awhile back they made the kryss the fastest weapon in the game, I don't remember the kryss being more popular then a katana for townies on OSI but oh well. But for a tank mage anything but a hally mage puts you at a disadvantage.

I remember the kryss being faster, but less consistent in damage, but I was also mostly playing an archer mage and swords mage during the t2a period this shard targets.

But you answered my question - there has been a change which makes fencing useful. I wasn't getting that opinion from the old threads I was reading tonight. Thanks.

(After three weeks, I have to say this is the best shard I've played since OSI t2a.)

Apparently it seems to lean toward the fact that you have to create the same old cookie cutter Swords Tank Mage template and be like everybody else

Izual wrote:Apparently it seems to lean toward the fact that you have to create the same old cookie cutter Swords Tank Mage template and be like everybody else

I'm going to put macing on my first mage because I've never played that template. I'll probably have archery on my first dexer, but I'm done with archer mages for a while.

A kryss is somewhat faster than a katana. What is inaccurate about a DP hally though?

Umm,

Fencing is the best dexer style melee skill. I even have a tank-fencer, because short spears are so cheap and I can run around with a +20 vanq all the time for pennies. Not to mention that the weapon cycling is a bit faster because of the increased weapons speed.

The war fork is a people killer, especially when your opponent has high armor.
The kryss is great for scaring off all of the little tank-mage types in the land.

I really dont see how you could think it's nerfed


As for archery, I am really looking forward to the proposed weapon swing changes, so we can finally end this hally-matic pvp, where did this even come from? Archery should be much better whenever that change happens. The damage on archery is very nice too. My two main pvp type characters are fencers and archers.

Derrick wrote:A kryss is somewhat faster than a katana. What is inaccurate about a DP hally though?

You can DP a hally on this shard? I thought that was gone by this era. Was it UO:R that change came in?

MatronDeWinter wrote:Umm,

Fencing is the best dexer style melee skill. I even have a tank-fencer, because short spears are so cheap and I can run around with a +20 vanq all the time for pennies. Not to mention that the weapon cycling is a bit faster because of the increased weapons speed.

The war fork is a people killer, especially when your opponent has high armor.
The kryss is great for scaring off all of the little tank-mage types in the land.

I really dont see how you could think it's nerfed


As for archery, I am really looking forward to the proposed weapon swing changes, so we can finally end this hally-matic pvp, where did this even come from? Archery should be much better whenever that change happens. The damage on archery is very nice too. My two main pvp type characters are fencers and archers.

I've only been here 3 weeks and have been concentrating on making gold and placing houses, so my character development is somewhat lagging. (Bard is coming along well, and the easy stuff with a dexer and a thief is done. Plus I have two decent tailors! The poor lumberjack is on strike, but I let him place a house for all his efforts in the early going.)

But to answer your question: I was reading some old threads and that had me somewhat cautious about starting a fencer because the consensus seemed to be that it was the weakest of the melee skills.

They fixed the fencing speed problem along time ago.

I think it's the best melee skill because..

a.) Everyone has red pots, events are unlimited food, so mace is a waste.

b.) It's the fastest weapon class

c.) It has some of the highest (if not the highest) DPS (long spear et al) Great for PvM

d.) Almost all of the weapons are usable! The only garbage fence weapon is the pitchfork, even the dagger can be fun v. a mage if you have a nice vanq.

e.) Magic weapons are cheap because the "usable" weapons drop more in this class than the others. For example, swords has the hally, katana for the most part, and they are stupidly expensive due to morons in our economy. The vik, broad, axes are reasonable, but not as great, and the rest of the weapons, skin knife, butchers, longsword, scimitar, cleaver are all crap, and they take away from the usable magic drops. Maces has the war hammer, qstaff primarily. The blackstaff can be okay, and I personally sort of like the war mace, but the rest of them are garbage compared to an equal calibur weapon of a different class, again taking away from usable magic drops.

f.) Currently (this will change) one of the primary focuses of tank-pvp is yo hit your target as soon as you have the swing, and make them wrestle so that they lose their swing, thus perpetuating the cycle of you hitting and them not. Fencing has a nice speed which lets you refresh faster and get in more hits, though most (myself included) dont really have the timing down, or care to make a macro to take advantage of this.

Swords:
a.) has crappy magic drops, high prices
b.) Is the least effective dexer skill as far as DPS and speed.
c.) Really only works on a tank mage that wants the highest damage, without playing hally-joust.
d.) It's really the most popular tank-weapon because the hally-damage, and people just want to link that to a mage-combo.

Maces:
a.) Low damage in general (but a bit more than fence in some cases)
b.) Can be good, but it's pointless in the current events.
c.) Can break armor, but realistically, the use of armor here is limited, and people repair way more than they did in T2A because there 3423052 smiths.
d.) Unfortunately does not break peoples trammely-blessed-masks.!!
e.) Again, crappy magic drops, high prices on the 2 good weapons.
f.) In it's defense, it is nice vs an opponent in a long (non event) battle, but usually people will just recall when they run out of stamina potions/food.

Thanks, Matron! (A good war fork was always one of my favorite weapons.)

I've never had a mage with macing and think it would be fun to have mana free range attacks with wands, although it might not be the most effective tactic. I just want to try something different than the characters I played on OSI shards.

(Admittedly my memories of t2a are a bit blurry, because I took a hiatus due to real life business and came back to play Siege, and also started on a different regular shard with new friends playing an archer mage. My fencing memories are pre-t2a and early t2a.)

So, Derrick, we can poison halberds? WOOT! (It's starting to come back to me that UO:R was the single handed poisoned weapons change, but I was wrong about t2a, so...)