[NEW MERCENARIES] Please note that all new forum users have to be approved before posting. This process can take up to 24 hours, and we appreciate your patience.
Sword Lann here; attack capped and around 45 speed, but only 126 critical chance.
I get outdps'd by a scythe evie with around 21k attack at Lugh - not by much but still.
When duo-ing with an Arisha or Kai I tend to get outdps'd by at least a whole bar or sometimes even more.
I play on the Australian server and there aren't a lot of fellow Lanns for me to compare to.
I'm starting to get a bit discouraged and considering abandoning ship.
Is it just me?
Comments
All of this is assuming everyone isn't using waking stones...
Scythe or any other fast moving/range character is going to do better on Lugh or lord glass. You are running to maybe get 1 crit glide while they are winding up + landing their practically guaranteed smash.
Then for lann 126 is sadly still on the low end for crit on s3. You can still have tons of fun, but you wont be criting 65 % of the time, and that is where all our dps comes from.
But if you really want to tell how you stack, just run a havan. If you can't be # one or basically tied when everyone is capped (no waking stones) then you likely can start looking at your play style.
But again... If you are having fun then why worry about dps?
Yeah of course I play for the fun but after a while the same routine of basically getting my behind carried by my friends tends to make me feel bad(probably a pride thing). I've been trying to experiment with different rotations lately but we'll see how that goes.
And about the Havan thing, I used to be able to keep up in dps with others(a Kai and Arisha) but that usually took a lot of crits and an extremely aggressive playstyle and even then they'd still be able to be up a notch by at least 1%. Now I just can't be bothered to go all out.
I guess I'm just becoming tired of playing really hard just to match in damage, and wondering if there was may be an inherent issue with twin swords or me.
Spear
Sword
These guys look really nice, not gonna lie. But I might be overlooking certain things. Like these guys might be just insanely geared or insanely good. But Raidhunter back in the days had to be insanely geared and insanely good to do Glas Ghabhlean solo. It might be the same up to today even. EDIT: In order to be a good Lann in general.
XGun Kai is the runner up and is pretty much on the same level as scythe evie. Very viable in probably 95% of raids as he really has no weaknesses. Also has very high potential for burst damage and as long as he's not attracting aggro all the time he has every opportunity to use this potential.
Arisha is a very strong character that takes a good deal to play optimally but also plays to her strengths a lot more when a boss can throw aggro her way. It's not surprising that you'd lose to this character by a large margin especially in small parties.
Sword Lann is on the weaker end of the spectrum, was given a buff at one time that greatly increased his damage at the cost of making him harder to gear up and then devCat subsequently nerfs his damage to what it previously was so that he is no longer strong he's just harder to gear. He doesn't take a great deal to play optimally but can be impossible to take advantage of his damage if you're not capped on stats. It's very rare nowadays to see a sword lann take top damage. Unfortunately because of the character you play it's possible to do very little damage simply because you got unlucky.
However it could just be you from time to time. It's hard but not impossible to make a weak character shine. There's always something you could've done better over the course of a raid. I play relatively weak characters mainly and I've gotten a lot of surprised responses for my play over the years. At this point I'm so heavily geared out that it's expected I do well but I still find ways to improve my play.
Say you are duoing Lugh with a Scythe Evie, her blink covers a tremendous distance and can immediately follow up to her combo chain which has excellent mobility and hitbox that chasing down the boss and keeping up her sp for reaper isn't much of an issue. Sword Lann is stuck with his lousy mobility from slip/nimble along with mediocre sp gain meaning you will have a much harder time keeping up sh when it is off cd if you ever have to go chasing him across the map.
Only tip I can really give you in a party environment is to try to predict where Lugh will pop up and try to stay together with your other members as he is one of the few classes to benefit greatly from good positioning.
I would consider him towards, if not at, the bottom. Even at crit cap I still often go several smashes without landing one. Throw in accidental gust stings, the near impossibility of using gliding fury after gust sting, gliding fury not working due to lag, high stamina consumption, poor mobility, and risky wind rarely proccing in parties--you're left with a weak character and clunky gameplay.
The insane crit resistances of future raids makes things even worse for us. Start saving your money because a 95 weapon will be mandatory. It's grim.
Honestly the only way you really loose majorly dps wise is if the boss moves a lot, or if you are running something like royal spiders where CB can hit all 3 at the same time...
Folks do need to remember that waking stones toss in a lot of confusion when comparing dps. Most of us don't bother with them, but there are still enough folks that only run with them... (I only use them for reducing sp cost on slashing high.) And characters like Kai etc really like to use them on the heavy hitter attacks that they don't use much, but a 10% increase equates to a large gain in dps.
That said I don't look forward to the crit res increase. It makes it so that you basically have to upgrade swords again. (And it feels like yesterday when I thought the lv 90 crit jump was too much.)
This would be a very welcomed change. I always felt that gliding fury, at least, should always proc. Lightning can be the crit-dependent treat.
I feel like the RNG procs make Lann one of the most insanely skill-based characters because if you see the blink and get trigger happy over a heavy hitter, you deserve to die.
One thing that I believe the devs should stop doing (EDIT: IF they don't plan on reworking how gliding fury works) is increasing the critical resistance of mobs. If you want mobs to be tanky, why are you only making them tanky vs. Lann? Why the double standard? Just increase their HP, increase their defense. This is the only part where I honestly think the devs just want Lann to be insanely gear dependent. I understand they need money but there's better ways to make money you know..
Sure, Lann might be fun to play (if it wasn't for the glue effects from body block), but after a bit, you'll question yourself what are you doing (like the whole game).
Explaining myself: why do I hate cinematic things so much, like the big time waster boat/travel start? While it's a nice thing to be looking at, it'll get boring after the umpteenth time you repeat and this game is about grinding, so you know you're gonna repeat the same things over and over.
The same oxymoron (I hate this word
They took the simple step to simply increase his damage output by increasing his critial rate and damage while also giving him some buffs, still for damage, but nothing else for survivability and that's his other big weakness: he can only rely on dodging. If you're fighting against a boss that has a good range and attacks a lot, you're just gonna find yourself positioning over and over waiting for an opening (Lord Ancient for an example) and if you're not the one having the aggro you're gonna have more problems, 'cause you know you're not the one conveniently driving the enemy.
This also means vella, arisha and kai (who can just sit in a distance and spam without aggro) will come out. The kits that these 3 characters have are versatile and pretty much good against anything.
Its sad to say that sword Lann is weak right now and will probably stay that way. Even as a Lann that's capped you will constantly be outdps'd by characters with equal and even far less stats then you and they will beat you with far less effort. And as Dyu said we really don't have any other helpful skills. My sword Lann currently sits at 138 crit, 86 bal, 74 attack spd with a +15, all skills and attack capped. My pillar karok has 129 crit, 87 bal, 58 attack speed with a +13, all skills and attack capped. My karok does quite abit more damage with far less effort, can survive alot better, has a dodge that gives mobility (vs sword Lann dash which has a pause at the end where your locked in place for half a second), can clash, and has decent range of sp skills such as howl and shout.
That negative mobility (the pause) on slip dash makes it very hard to cover distance which is a HUGE disadvantage when your trying to do a complete dodge vs iframe dodge and in places like Ein Lacher where the bosses tend to want to walk ontop of you before they attack it can be almost impossible to not get stuck on their feet preventing you from getting away without a hit. You will mostly likely spent 10x or even 20x the amount of time it would take another class to complete.
Lann also suffers from attacks using far too much STA which forces you to either STA pot or locks you into using slashing high whenever its up, which isnt really a bad thing esp if you add in a werewolf paw which will make you insanely fast and also abit more mobile but it gets boring chaining the same skill.
Lastly lets talk current end game Neam. My damage range is about 8%-15% depending on pub or not. If i'm doing it with the people in my guild (whom have around the same stats), id be lucky to get around 8%-9% with the top dam of like 24%++ coming from like a xbow kai or scythe evie. Thats 3X the damage which to me is just insane, considering i'm on Neam nearly entire fight with 0 or 1 deaths and hardly using pots.
So to me its just a mixture of low damage,outdated mechanics, weak sp skills. So if anyone wants my advice id say don't make a Lann as your first character, because they are heavily dependent on having high/capped stats and even when they do get there......they will always be lacking.
STA, well obviously that is only on sword, but after you build enough to do you first slashing high you really don't ever have issues unless you have a boss that runs away for the entire duration you pop it ;-)
There is no doubt that lann isn't the easiest. (And I really really don't want them to make him any easier. He already is easy mode compared to what he was. And your example of Karok is basically sleep mode. IE super royal lag = no issue for Karok but lann and most of the other characters can't even get a wind up going let alone time an att off of a crit.)
That said, I really really wish we went back to where we didn't post the #1 dps all the time... I know some folks liked using it to figure out good att moves, but if you ever plan on playing this game till you can even afford end game gear you better enjoy your character before you even look to hit that #1 dps. (It will take years to go from 0g, lv 0 to fully geared/nearly always in top 1/4 dps on any run you know.)
And lets be honest... With Lann you will always be in the top 1/4 in nearly any raid you have down once you manage to get fully capped gear. The only time you wont is if the other people all use waking stones/stims/try hard while you just goof. (And having a raid down is not the same as not needing hp pots... Surviving is easy, attacking without out getting hit on lann isn't.)
And fir the crys over Kai having huge dps... Just realize they have to fill with wakings stones on key DPS moves like 2-3 times a month, while a lann needs to fill it every 3-4 runs. That said I know like 2-3 kais on west that can consistently out dps my lann... and I hardly ever use waking stones. (Course I will say I do try hard too often ;-)
Ok, going to end my rant. Just sick of folks QQ over lann because he no longer instantly will have a 10% dps lead over any other character because he was unbalanced.
Let me fix that for you. "Lann's Berserker spirit will give as much dps or more to HALF the party then nearly any other buff out there." It does not buff magic attack unless that was changed and I don't know about it. And yah cool currently there's neam and royal raids that I can use it on.
You have played a sword lann right? You will constantly run out of sta building up to that first SH and even after that you will not always be able to chain that move (esp if your also chaining that AWESOME berserker spirit skill that you claim is so great). And even if you can chain it that locks you into the same skill over and over. Nearly everyone that plays an end game sword lann says they constantly run out of sta.......You are the only person i've ever heard say otherwise.
I don't want Lann to be easy just more rewarding to play and more useful in a fight.....If the way to achieve that is straight DPS boost im all for that and im sure everyone else would be too.
Maybe I said that wrong so ill correct myself. I have spent a large chunk of time doing neam compared to anyone I know, I know when to attack and have nearly perfected my timing. I'm not running around trying to survive, i'm doing dps nearly entire fight with constant combos and crit. If you don't see something wrong with another person who has done the fight alot less doing 3x and damage then i'll never be able to convince you of anything and you should just stop wasting your time reading this.
Ok, not sure what point your making here...
OP asked for advice so I listed all the shortcomings that effect most lanns and also why there aren't many end game capped lanns around (I can count the # of end game capped sword lanns that play almost daily on East with 1 hand). Lann was over powered for like 1 month then nerfed, no one is "QQ"ing over not being OP they just want to have decent end game damage compared to other classes. I mean I dunno what you expected this thread to be about. Its like going into a burning house and being like what the hell is with all this fire in here??!