Swashbuckler's Tutorial - The Swashbuckler & her specificities

[Nymeria]

The swashbuckler and her specificities

The Moon Elf Swashbuckler (or warrior), is a melee class. Regardless of your choice to play crit or cast, you will be a close range fighter.

When it comes to the weapons, you have two options:

Play with a 1-handed sword
Play with 2 weapons: A rapier & dagger combination

The best option is rapier + dagger, for several reasons, but the main one being the debuffing part. Indeed, there are some debuffs that you wouldn’t be able to use with only a 1-handed sword.

⚠ If you use Rapier + Dagger, you always have to equip the rapier first. The dagger automatically goes off if you unequip the rapier. This mechanic is very similar to the scion summoner. ⚠

As mentioned earlier, you could play it, cast, or crit. As you can guess, it means Swash, is a hybrid class.

Swash's tutorial table

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A Hybrid class

This is without a doubt one of the most enjoyable things about the swashbuckler class, you can either choose to go cast, crit, or hybrid.

According to your choice, you will need to look for different stats in your gear and adapt your skill build, but we will focus on that later.

The possibility to be hybrid is based on the passives and two in particular that will make you able to improve your crit & cast specs.

Kin sense : Increasing your critical hit rate & damage
Improved Strike : Increasing your elemental & dimensional damage. (Yes, this passive used to be an attack booster after blocked hits in the past, but it’s indubitably a great opportunity for swash to deal some decent cast damage now).

Past the hybrid side of the class, it is also important to know that there are some sequences you need to respect on the swash for some skills to function properly.

Swash's tutorial table

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The specificities of the swash’s abilities & buffs

The main thing to start with, are the masks (all the buffs from the “class” category on the skill trainer).
For the most experienced people, it may seem like a numb thing to talk about. But for any rookie or newcomer to the class, it is important to know the way it functions.

If you don’t buff Masquerade Master First, you cannot have more than 1 mask active (aside from masquerade master).
At level 5 (which is necessary for a swash due to the resistance buff), you can have all the other masks active.

An example of Mask Buffing sequence with Mask Master :



This order isn’t a must, only the masquerade master’s position shouldn’t be changed.
And you probably wonder why it is important to have all masks active at the same time?
There are two reasons:
They all buff different stats : Dodge / Block / HP / Elemental Damages & Resistances..
They reinforce the other skills (i’ll explain right after) by leveling them up while being buffed.

Chant levels up 4 important swash buffs: shout of insight (party buff), smart weapon, sword stopper, force armour. Its the only reason to keep it on your skill build after finishing the leveling part.

Fires levels up the passives (Power Surge / Kin Sense / Dodge Form / Grace / Improved Strike)

The three other masks are leveling up some offensive spells.

Also important to know, if you don’t buff masquerade master before trying to put on your second mask, you will automatically replace your first buffed mask by the one you buff then.
Here is an example :



⚠ If you play with a ranger in your team, make sure you have all your masks up before she buffs elemental fortitude . This buff removes your Masquerade Master (since it gives more resistance). If you have all masks active you can rebuff them. If not, you will have the problem of the second video example. ⚠

Now that you know a bit more about the mask buffing part, the hybrid side of the swash and the specificities of some of her buffs, we can dig deeper into her abilities and the way to have them optimized.

Swash's tutorial table