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It's time to review the combat styles. Simply because I can.
School of Artorius
Dark Souls fans will be disappointed that the school's skills use a rapier instead of a two-handed sword. Min-maxers will be pleased that, much like the mastery itself, the skill tree is very strong. You've got parrying, counterattacks, and a series of nasty buffs, including a cluster effect that synergizes well with the counterattack skill.
Visterian Fencing
Another OP branch for an OP mastery. The same parrying, reduced attack costs, a rare accuracy bonus, and one of the best defensive abilities for a character focused on evasion and parrying. It's an upgraded version of "Fight to the Finish" on almost all fronts (it just doesn't remove debuffs, but doesn't receive them upon being hit either), and even the cost is the same.
Gladiator
The main plus of this branch is that it can be mixed with others. The only skills for which the weapon type is critical are "Cyclone" and "Piercing Strike." The abilities are situational on their own, being AoEs, and made even more situational by the fact that they are secondary to each other. Taking "Piercing Strike" on top of "Cyclone" will either double the damage/debuff chance (meaning the character will deal their normal damage and trigger debuffs as usual) on one specific template cell (with +1 range), or give all that plus one more cell (with +2 range). On top of that, the character gets a fairly situational debuff on attacks. I'm not sure what Revan's concept was in his head, but it looks like two versions of the same ability that somehow both made it into the final version. Unless in very rare cases, like "Way of the Tree," the piercing aspect provides some proc. As for the other abilities, "Fight to the Finish" is a double-edged sword—it can either save your life/bring victory, or guarantee that the character cannot be saved even by a medic's skill. Control is useful for any melee character, but synergizes especially well with spears and, to a lesser extent, two-handers or halberds. Armor wearing speaks for itself, and stubbornness should provide a significant health boost to the character (50+) and some meager regen. It'll hardly save you in a standard duel, but it helps with healing between battles and is potentially open to some "watermelon" methods. Not bad, but nothing special.
Traveler's Style
A very strange branch, although I like it thematically. And the list of abilities fully explains why the stat set for bastard mastery is so odd. Perhaps, if the core remains the same but we have more control over our skills, I'll take it for a character in the next exp. Here you have a bonus to the rare speed stat, along with crucial Action Points. And a small bonus to defense with damage. And a sort of duelist that works even in group battles, just not always. But the most interesting ability is hidden at the end of the branch and, given a huge amount of experience/proper luck, it allows you to either do terrible things by combining this style with something like rapiers (six attacks per action), or simply boost mediocre styles. It's just a pity that it cannot be combined with pistols, but there's nothing to be done about that.
Order of Krigsgotts Style
Another logical continuation of the mastery branch. Perhaps not as OP as rapiers or sabers, but still extremely strong, although it relies heavily on bleeding. Without it, alas, the most interesting abilities of the style simply won't work.
Guardsman
A fun branch for a tank, which also has a certain flexibility in weapon choice. Unfortunately, those weapon types are the hammer and halberd. It has a working taunt, unlike Amatonte, and an enhanced version of "Fight to the Finish," though not as broken as the one in the saber branch. It also has an improved and significantly cheaper version of "Cyclone" (full damage and debuffs for half the cost; the Gladiator, even with Piercing Strike, doesn't compare here). But the most curious part of the branch is "Titan," which allows (as I understand it) dealing damage to agile enemies by bypassing evasion. All that's left is to boost speed and stomp around near all the squishies.
Landsknecht
Aside from the first ability, which allows charisma to be useful even for a fighter, it's in many ways similar to the gladiator, but without control or "Fight to the Finish," instead featuring perks for evasion at low health and a very weak heal upon eliminating an opponent. There's only one AoE and it's not very cool, but instead of a second one, there's paralysis on attacks. I don't know about the price, but the combo is better than AoE+AoE.
Added after 2 minutes
I'll make the post a bit later, maybe in an hour or two. Heroist still has to talk to Yu anyway.
Happy Life
Siverfale
