After about 7 months of messing around on my Silver Ranger I decided to head back to my Swordsinger. Right now, after much thanks to selling off my Majestic Light and Soulbow I currently have a full Tallum Heavy set and a DLE with soon to be Crit Damage. Obviously for pvp I'll eventually craft a Carnage bow so I can sit back in those archer parties and hopefully KS a pvp point of two.
But since my main goal is to party and push to 75+ so I can sub and third class, what is my best options for pve setup? Right now with BD dances I am at just about 777 atk speed with zerk. With Hunter I crit about 1 in 6 swings, sometimes more sometimes less just seems to depend sometimes.
I wasn't going to purchase any tats but have heard mixed things.
So opinions, options, and interesting comments from other Swordsingers would be appreciated.
If your just PvE right now (pushing hard for 75) than I suggest +5str/+4dex -9con tattoos. This is my current setup: you will have low hp and be very easy to stun but do quite a bit more damage, it won't change things completely but you will sometimes pull agro off a similar level BD (who doesn’t have tattoos) or a glad who isn't using skills.
I can still tank angles at WoA at 72 without VR if there is a BD with dance of vampire and the healer is skilled during spawns or bad tanking (very low hp buffer for a tank). Of course DDs in party often pull agro but arrest works well for getting it back. I am in tallum heavy and have a +7 SS w/ accuracy (borrowed off of a battle prophet, not my choice of SA).
Of course you would probably want to remove some/all of these tattoos for PvP once you hit 75. The only expensive tattoo is also the least important so if money is an issue you can skip the +4dex, +4str-4con dyes are pretty cheap and +1-1's are also not too bad.
Another option is using a dagger; song of hunter has a noticeably stronger effect on a dagger vs. a sword. When hunter is up you get a better crit rate with a soul separator than an infernal master w/ focus. Of course SwSes don’t have masteries for daggers but with the current DW+DoF crits are so much stronger you do not mind not using your masteries.* It looks like Interlude is going to change the patk vs crit rate equation though so then you might want to switch back to a sword.
*especially since the SwS only gets tank masteries which do not add much patk.
Appreciated, thanks for the info, looks like I may end up selling my DLE before to long. I hadn't really considered getting any tattoos but I guess the +4 Str might not be a bad idea. Due to the fact I am in a clan that actively pvp's I may not want to lower my con much more then that. If it matters at all. I have issues with C5 and how strong some classes are damage wise.
I have Tallum heavy and Damascus Focus with NM shield at 68 and a +4 str tatoo. Works fine for me, crit a ton and even with low patk I crit decent enough to scare an unsuspecting robe or light armor class ^^
I compared Damascus +3 Focus to Soul Separator +3 Crit damage with PP and songs, the damage was pretty even, with the damascus MAYBE edging ahead a couple %.. not noticably though. With BD the dagger would've been more powerful. Tests were conducted several times on NPC over 30 secs of hitting.