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Since great reckoning the only swords worth mentioning are very few katanas, they sort of lost their edge when axes and spears were given super cool tools to use, such as Axes being identified as critical mutilators, and spears being super accurate powerhouses with low critical rates, but swords were kinda left in the dust in my opinion.

While swords can be strong, only a select few are, those few being Wo-dao, Fuuma and Magical Star.

The first two are because they are katanas that can have rebelling enchant on them, and magical star because it's a casting regiment, other than that swords are rather lackluster in general and there's not much going for them other than skills, they don't even have a weapon identity really.

Swords lack as much accuracy as axes and spears, lower critical damage than both axes and spears, lower base damage than both axes and spears, lower critical rates than axes, but to a sword's credit they have more skills than both, power gradation and sidecut are pretty big admittedly.

I want to discuss possibilities of how to make swords seem more versatile in general, while not overbuffing them.

For one, I fully believe that most swords should be upped to 115% or 120% critical damage, axes have 120% critical damage but are further buffed up by spiked axehead and sub ranks of Deadliness to achieve 140% critical damage, so I believe 120% critical damage would be fair.

Secondly I think that some sword scalings should be discussed, namely those swords that seem light in nature (Hakouhen Katana, Moonblade, Spectre Sword, Tarnada, Yuki-jin, specifically) should have their STR scaling be swapped around to be ALL or at least majority SKI scaling.

Any thoughts that anyone would like to express?

Fists 105% crit good acc
Swords/bows 110% crit decent acc
Spears 115% crit Best acc
Axes 120% crit damage lowest acc
Daggers 130% crit good acc

This makes spears simultaneously better than swords in both accuracy and damage


Spears have Sill cut, coulour, lance de lion, ect.
Axes have admittedly less, no dash attack that uses voltiger, but they do have reaper scythe, which hits like a truck.


It's also worth noting that the bonus crit damage axes recieve don't behave the way you expect spoops.
the base crit of the weapon+guile is multiplied by the damage, then by 105 for the axe head and 110% for the deadliness. (and then multiplied by rogue works/hunted)

this makes these bonuses more powerful the more crit you can stack into via guile.

As someone with a degree of practical experience with swords, spears, and axes, here's my take on it:

I don't care how hard you swing a sword. It's in the technique. You'll often do more damage with a draw cut (placing the blade against the target and raking it across them, like using a knife to carve a roast) than a full swing. That said, a degree of strength is required to use it effectively, as you can't be deft with it if it's too heavy for you to fully use.

If anything, in addition to swapping some scalings around to be a bit lighter on Str and a bit higher on Skl and maybe a little Cel, might I also suggest variable damage based on armor type? Swords are inefficient against heavy plate to the point that soldiers would grab the blade and smash at the armor with the crossguard, but they also make very fast work of flesh and lighter clothing. Perhaps they could be given some uniqueness by giving them bonus damage against unarmored and a penalty against heavy armor?

I don't know how I feel about that ran. While I agree with you on the real life traits required to be an effective swords man(the majority of a good cut belonging to the foot work/core body) I'm not sure on how that should translate to the game, and to be honest it hasn't bothered me that much.

I feel as if light swords should be more skill and striking position based, and that bastard swords/greatswords should be more strength based, considering how some builds are in the first place.

I do agree and think that some differnce in weapon types like that would be neat aswell.

Light swords/medium swords= Hybrid weapons that scale of two stats equally
Large swords/greatswords= Str scaling dominating.
Katanas/shortswords=More Skill than Strength scaling. Or whatever the second stat is.

But I guess I am sort of biased since I was disapointed about the whole Katana strength scaling thing, mostly Yukijin, which kinda ruined my iceswordman dreams(well reduced the effectiveness atleast). But I also think it does make sense soooo, yeah.

because swords are so historically varied in the skills required to use them, unlike axes, and spears to a lesser degree, Perhaps we could change it so sword weapon parts effect the swords scaling, change it around a bit.

IDK if that would make you guys happy.

If we do something like what Ran suggested, we'd be rather compelled to do the same for all weapon times. And I'm fine with that personally. Though I get the feeling everyone's going to be more interested in a less ... drastic solution (especially Dev, whom I believe is working on making weapons more defined between their types).

On the subject of the Murder Stroke for swords. That could be a new Special Attack 1 to deal blunt damage and ignore armor type. Or it could be Special Attack 2, either way.

I'm leaning toward shifting scaling around, though I worry that Skill blades will just take over. Why build Strength if you're not a fire mage? If I recall, the Hakouhen used to have much more heavy Skill scaling.

I uhh, I think we should stick small scale for now, no need for any revamps, I just want a little *extra* edge added to swords to make them more versatile and considerable, like the points brought up in the OP or something, just little stat changes.

For the most part, I do agree with Spo. I was simply throwing that suggestion out as something for future consideration.