Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Best Combat profession to complement the BE
SomeUser wrote:
TKM has to be the way to go if you want a good fighting class to go along with BE. Sure Swordsmen will drop a creature faster **but** you cant heal your own wounds and disease. You also get a free buff as a TKM **and** you can use "force of will** to get right back up if you get incapped.
If you know how to play TKM right it is the best profession to go with MBE for fighting purposes. The only things out of your reach is Krayts and NightSister Elders.
Well, I use cho-nor-hoola and only very rarely get diseased. And, I have enough medic skills to heal myself with Stim C's. I've fought multiple enraged rancors at a time and came out unscathed (this is with ~60's kinetic armor, doctor's buffs and a double dose of brandy). I find that very few creatures are resistant to blast damage, and hitting the mind pool for up to 4K a pop drops things fast. I'm not saying TKM isn't great (I hunt with one quite frequently) but I think swordsman is equally as good.
Message Edited by AnitaSWG on 05-04-2004 07:43 AM
AnitaSWG wrote:
SomeUser wrote:
TKM has to be the way to go if you want a good fighting class to go along with BE. Sure Swordsmen will drop a creature faster **but** you cant heal your own wounds and disease. You also get a free buff as a TKM **and** you can use "force of will** to get right back up if you get incapped.
If you know how to play TKM right it is the best profession to go with MBE for fighting purposes. The only things out of your reach is Krayts and NightSister Elders.
Well, I use cho-nor-hoola and only very rarely get diseased. And, I have enough medic skills to heal myself with Stim C's. I've fought multiple enraged rancors at a time and came out unscathed (this is with ~60's kinetic armor, doctor's buffs and a double dose of brandy). I find that very few creatures are resistant to blast damage, and hitting the mind pool for up to 4K a pop drops things fast. I'm not saying TKM isn't great (I hunt with one quite frequently) but I think swordsman is equally as good.
Oh, and I can't remember the last time I got incapped PVE.. it's been a very long time..
I would go out on a limb and say swordsmen is better then TKM due to the reasons you stated (mind attacks and blast damage)
The best thing would be to go meditate 4 in TKM and Master Swordsmen with MBE and novice medic... butthat would eat up all your skill points with none left over formask scent
So while swordsmen is better, IMHO, in killing stuff the fastest I just feel, IMHO,a MBE who is sampling creatures, that tend to disease and poison, would benefit the most from the TKM meditate line. The sacrifice of killing speed for the ability to cure any disease (including the AOE ones from the bull rancors and the screechers) or poison, with the ability to heal all your wounds without have to use wound packs, and the free buff and "get out of jail free card" (power of will) makes TKM the better choice for MBE. Also, with unarmed toughness TKM get a natural armor of 50% res (I believe that is what it works out to) that stacks with armor you are wearing. I dont know if swordsmen get a melee damage bonus.
However, I'm not knocking Swordsmen in the least. Without a doubt, swordsmen is a more powerful PvE and PvP profession. When I drop MBE I think I'm going to be heading over to the swordsmen profession myself as it looks very cool
Message Edited by SomeUser on 05-04-2004 06:53 AM
Vezek I'm Master BE, Master Rifleman, Novice Creature Handler(0000), and Scout (4040)
Rifleman lets me clear up spawns for less risk sampling. I can often pull things solo. I kill the undesirable critters, then go in to sample. I can kill fast enough that I can collect my own meat.
Novice Creature handler lets me grow mounts for sale, and lets me use a level 12 mount for myself, which kicks much butt, without being over the top. I use my cu pa mount as a sample platform, by means of a dismount/sample/remount macro. If I can't outrun the critter that gets on me, I can use my dismount/attack macro. This usually buys me enough time to put the pestering critter down with my rifle.
Scout gives me better mask, nuff said.
I currently have 15 SP left, which I'm keeping in Artisan, for mining.
TK is also a very cool profession. It's kind of funny - used to be that every other person was a TKM. Nowadays I see master swordsman everywhere, maybe even more than TKM.
I guess my perspective is a little skewed - I use my swordsman skills for harvesting meat way more than I bother with DNA sampling (although I do sample along the way as I hunt). As someone mentioned, there are different areas you can concentrate in with BE. For a pet-making BE I'd say TKM looks like a good complement. If you want to harvest your own meat to make food additives, swordsman is quite possiblya better choice. I can pull in 15K carnivore meat in 2 hours of soloing on Endor. I haven't found disease to be much of a problem - I think I kill stuff before it has a chance to zap me. That and I always use BE-enhanced cho-nor-hoola.
Now if you really want to have fun - partner a swordsman and a TKM and go kill acanyon krayt. Yeah, yeah, I know some folks do it solo, but we still had fun. Between the two of us we took it down to about half before some other folks showed up and "helped." We still got loot rights though. The only mistake we made was not bringing dizzy stimpacks. Next time!
Anyhow, it is possible to be a BE and still have viable combat capabilities. I've got master BE, master swords, scout 4-0-4-0 and medic 4-0-3-4 (something like that) and hold my own just fine.
Message Edited by AnitaSWG on 05-04-2004 09:32 AM
SomeUser wrote:
Also, with unarmed toughness TKM get a natural armor of 50% res (I believe that is what it works out to) that stacks with armor you are wearing. I dont know if swordsmen get a melee damage bonus.
Swordsman do a ton of damage, but with either the power hammer or the scythe, you cannot spam specials without draining yourself very quickly. With those knucklers you can spam all day long, or you can switch to a pair of high damage ones and use the default attack. Because of their speed, TKAs still do a ton of damage.
Swordsman do get toughness, but not as much as TKA. It does stack with armor, although there could be a cap for both. I usually prefered being unarmored so I could use the bigger specials (I also had creatures to take the damage).
With doctor'sbuffs,2 brandy, and wearing full composite armorI can spam any and all of my specialswithout draining any HAM at all. Especially with a power hammer. The only time I run into problems is in exceedingly long fights (like an hour to kill a Kraytor 20 minutes to kill some really high resist Nightsister). Even then I think a dose or two of accaragm would fix that problem. I do notice a bit of a hit using a scythe, but to be honest I use a power hammer most of the time.
Not trying to argue which is better, but I just wanted to say I've no problem at all spamming specials. My usual fight consists of a mind bleed followed by 4 or 5 mindhit3 and the beast is dead. I actually prefer soloing so I can just use mind hits and not feel like I'm working against my groupmates in dealing damage.
Anyhow, to each his own!
--
Daota
Well.. I have finally decided to modify my little lady BE's template. Might take me a couple of months.. but that's ok.
Right now, she can sample fine with no fighting skills. - hop on a speeder and zoom.
I gather resources with my hunter/explorer.. he is master rifles/CM and will be changing to MCH in the near future.
So for Evyl, I am planning on having her give up her music and go Ranger. As a BE interested in specialty creatures, I need her to be able to find selected targets. Ranger is the way to go for me.
Ah, I should state that I use no buffs (besides the innate TKA power boost) what-so-ever. Armor rarely. In that situation the TKA with low-HAM knucklers will be better than the Swordsman for a long fight.
If you use buffs then it is true that Swordsmen do devastating damage. If you think the power hammer is great, try a well-made scythe with high-end Genoshan components...
Seiryuu wrote:
Not trying to argue which is better, but I just wanted to say I've no problem at all spamming specials.
Ah, I should state that I use no buffs (besides the innate TKA power boost) what-so-ever. Armor rarely. In that situation the TKA with low-HAM knucklers will be better than the Swordsman for a long fight.
If you use buffs then it is true that Swordsmen do devastating damage. If you think the power hammer is great, try a well-made scythe with high-end Genoshan components...
Yes, I use buffs.. they are easy to get, and I easily make back the 10K or so it costs me to buy them. And, 3 hours is about my evening play time so it works out great. Get buffed, grab a couple missions to pay for my travel ticket/cloning/buffs, and then wander around killing everything I come across.
I have several nice scythes (not uber, but decent).. I like them just fine... but so many creatures have low or no resist to blast damage that I usea power hammer as my primary weapon. Now, if only a scythe did blast damage!
Sorry to totally derail the BE forum today.. but my swords/BEis the character I enjoy playing the most, so I get a little enthusiastic about the combo.
Message Edited by AnitaSWG on 05-04-2004 07:30 PM