Swordmaster

Many players are discounting the power of the Swordmaster. I think it is a perfectly viable character, with skills and abilities to absorb damage as well as deal damage. An early skill at level 5 is Phantom's Blade, which gives a 25 percent chance of activating a shield that absorbs 45 damage over 10 seconds at first, and it scales up to 322 damage over 10 seconds. Of course, this is one of the blade enchantments, and you can only have one up at a time. Another blade enchantment at level 10 is Nature's Blade, which allows a chance of stealing 30 stat points from an opponent. And it stacks. I have seen 3 of these enchantments on monsters, meaning I was stealing 90 points. These enchantments scale up with level, as well as Mastery points.

Some players probably don't like the appearance of the character. As a male, I have to admit it is a bit effeminate and fopish, but I don't let that bother me.

I find once I got the hang of the 3 or 5 part series in the Sword Dance, it worked well. I saw an opponent get my Quick Incision, then try to run. He died as he ran. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing a plan work.

One bigger problem I had on a large population server like Vortex is that many of the Destruction opponents in the RvR scenario were much higher level than we Order players. I saw many level 11's and I think a level 3 that is hiked up to 8 (without the skills) is not going to do much against a level 11, no matter what class the opponent is.

A build I came up with maxes the damage of the Swordmaster. I call it Da Killer or the Crit Hitter. It has +12% crit chance, +120 strength, and +30 weapon skills. I think all the talk about tanks in RvR is useless. You don't need defenses in PvP. The idea is to hit hard and hit fast.