Brawler Archive

For your perusal, here is a copy of my current State of the Brawler. A prior draft of this has already made to the dev's and I've gotten some feedback on some issues. Unfortunately part of being a correspondent is having to hold back info at times. Let me just say that after becoming a correspondent I have found reasons to be increasingly more optimistic about the direction things are headed. I hope I can spill more later. =) Anyhow, here it is.

---

The brawler profession serves two sorts of player. The first type will be those passing through the profession on their way to an elite profession. For the most part, the path for these players is suitably challenging and interesting (the one exception to this being the unarmed branch, see below). Other players will seek to specialise further in brawling and will take attempt to achieve the status of master brawler. At master brawler there are several powerful abilities that can be very effective even when mixed with higher-end professions. There are some small concerns with these abilities noted below. There are also several general balance issues still at large for the brawlers at large that impact the brawler profession in particular and have been mentioned here.

Gameplay Issues

• Warcry
  
  • Warcry does not give a status icon. This makes it difficult at times to determine when it succeeds, and more importantly it can be difficult to know when it runs out.
    
• Lunge and other Knockdowns
  
  • There is currently a bug with knockdown where a second knockdown will cause a target to immediately stand. This bug can be incredibly annoying for grouped brawlers that wish to make a concentrated effort to put a target on the ground. One player will knock the target down and then it will stand up right away (ignoring warcry, dizzy, etc.) when another player knocks it down afterwards.
    
• Berserk
  
  • Berserk simply does not give enough of an advantage to used at high-end play. Initially berserk gave a percentage based damage increase. This was nerfed because the damage was too high (probably a good idea). However now the berserk skill adds a flat damage increase. This means that it does not scale well to higher-end play AND it is more advantageous for faster weapons than for slower weapons. It is recommended that berserk be put back on a %'age based damage increase, albeit with a lower % than before.
    
• Center of Balance
  
  • Center of Balance is not effective at the brawler (i.e. pre-elite) level. A brawler still rarely blocks, dodges or counterattacks, and the duration is quite short. This might be because brawlers do not receive any base dodging, blocking or counterattacking ability until reaching an elite profession.
    
  • If the latter is true, it would be nice to have dodge, block, counter attack and defensive acuity modifiers put into the brawler tree. This would hopefully boost Center of Balance. They could be bumped down from the elite trees or added as is thought best.
    
  • In general the initial duration of Center of Balance simply makes it unusable for a brawler. If/when CoB were fixed to actually be useful for a brawler then it should also have a duration increase.
    
  • The HAM cost for Center of Balance is very high, especially for the limited use it offers someone who is not yet in the elite trees. With 500 secondaries, Center of Balance costs over 200 ham to use (roughly 100 mind, 65 action, 35 health).
    
  • If nothing can be done to fix CoB within the brawler profession then it is recommend that it be moved to the elite professions where it actually becomes useful. Having it in the brawler tree as it stands only confuses people and leads them to believe that CoB is useless when in fact it is quite useful much later down the road.
    
• Moving Target Issues
  
  • It can be very difficult to hit a target that is moving. This has been explained as being due to server/client issues and a "fudge factor". Changes to this appear to have made this better specifically when specials are used but not for normal attacks. Hopefully this problem will continue to be monitored and some changes will be made to carry any benefits over to normal attack as well.
    

Balance Issues

• Pikeman Melee Toughness
  
  • Pikemen receive +4 modifiers to melee toughness where all other melee brawler branches receive +10. It is hoped that this is simply an oversight and should be fixed. Clarification is needed on this.
    
• Unarmed Center of Being
  
  • At master brawler, there is a +5 bonus to Center of Being duration for all melee branches except unarmed -- which looks like an oversight. Clarification on the status of this would be great.
    
• Unarmed Damage in the Brawler Tree
  
  • Whereas Teras Kasi artists deal excellent damage, the unarmed branch of brawler deals very poor damage making this branch much more difficult to finish than any other in the brawler profession (on the order of 3 to 4 times harder). It would be nice to balance the very powerful damage of Teras Kasi Artists with the very low damage of the unarmed tree in order to have a more natural progression.
    
  • It is common to compensate for the low damage and high delay of fists by using a vibroknuckler. This is an effective work-around but is probably not intended. This works because of the Teras Kasi damage modifiers and the fact that actual fist damage is negligible (it has been tested at 10-20 damage). The vibroknuckler, even while uncertified, causes almost as much damage and is much faster.
    
  • A suggested to fix to this is to break up the +70 damage bonus at novice Teras Kasi artist. Teras Kasi novices would instead gain only a +10 damage bonus. Each unarmed box in the brawler tree should have its damage bonus increased by +15. This would yield a better, smoother, increase in unarmed damage.
    
  • Another solution would be to increase the base fist damage significantly (i.e. to 50-60) and to then respectively lower bonuses received later on in the Teras Kasi tree.
    
  • A third suggestion is to provide brass knuckles or some other form of weapon available to a pre-Teras Kasi unarmed fighter.
    
• HAM Costs
  
  • HAM costs are generally rather prohibitive with specials on various weapons. Many brawlers are forced to use specials sparingly or not at all due to the high costs. It would be nice to see more variation in HAM costs, i.e. the introduction of low-cost specials or weapons to offset those with high costs, presumably with a trade-off in damage or effect.
    
• Ranged vs. Melee in PvP
  
  • The increased effectiveness of specials on moving targets should help out this concern, but there is still a concern that range combatants, through kiting and other such techniques, wield too much of an advantage against melee combatants.
    
• Weapons
  
  • A major concern for brawler weapons is that there are no components for enhancing brawler weapons with nearly the same effect as that granted by items such as krayt tissues for some ranged weapons. Vibroknucklers can be enhanced with vibro motors although these do not have comparable statistics to krayt tissues. Swords can be enhanced with rancor teeth, although these have poor stats and do not end up being very useful. Other melee weapons lack any means of being upgraded whatsoever. This creates a balance gap between brawlers and ranged weapons users when it comes to the high-end game.
    
  • Long Vibro Axe: the long vibro axe has incredibly low accuracy mods (-50 or lower are most common) that make it effectively unusable for a brawler.
    
  • Sword: the poor stats of the sword along with the fact that it is made available at the same time as the gaderiffi baton and curved sword make it ineffective for a brawler.
    
  • Rykk Blade: the Rykk blade has no stats that set it apart from a curved sword and therefore is not useful.
    
  • Heavy Axe and Two-hand Axe: some players have mentioned concern with the fact that the two first two "sword" weapons in the 2h Swords line are in fact axes.
    
  • Vibro Axe: the Vibro Axe has no stats that set it apart from other 2h weapons and therefore it is not useful.
    

Bugs

• There are no outstanding bugs to report at this time.

Wishlist

• It would be nice to have some more variation in the special abilities earned at novice brawler and master brawler, some suggestions follow.
  
  • Intimidate, warcry and berserk are all independent of individual brawler professions. It would be nice to see some branch-specific bonuses. For example, it might be that the 1h branch would obtain a bonus specifically to intimidate, 2h a bonus to berserk and polearms a bonus specifically to warcry.
    
  • It would be nice to see some alternative choices for defensive abilities. Instead of simply having Center of Balance, it would add a lot to this game mechanic if there were other defensive abilities that provided more specific defenses with different advantages and disadvantages to each ability.
    

StGabe.

Message Edited by StGabriel on 12-01-2003 03:31 PM

Good stuff, StGabe. I would like to add my opinion on Berserk2. My issue is more with the duration then with the effect.

Berserk1 = 20 seconds
Berserk2 = 120 seconds
Intimidate2 = 75 seconds

The duration of Berserk2 is so long that it becomes a hinderance. It prevents you from refreshing intimidate2 on a long, difficult fight where it should be ideal to use berserk2. I think 60 seconds would be much better, and it would still be 3 times longer then berserk1.

How about a /charlieHorse?

Kiting, and not having an equiv. of krayt tissues (rancor teeth should enhance, not crappily replace) sucks.

Where is the scythe?

I suppose this might be better placed in the Pikeman forum but as I'm still on polarms IV I will ask this here: If I can't use the long vibro axe (-55 accuracy mod on mine... it's awful), what should I use instead? It's too bad long vibro axes miss so much, they look pretty nifty.

You are best using a long lance or long staff or whatever its called, mine does 80-290 damage compared to the 99-390 dmg of my long vibro axe, its way more accurate which makes it the best choice until you can get the long vibro axe hitting enough, the same goes for the normal vibro axe, I use my 2 handed axe because it deals nearly as much dmg and its about 5 times more accurate.

I know the vibro weapons use motors which make the vibrate but do they really need to be so **edit** unaccurate? its appaling lol!

I say something is wrong when you actualy benefit from using an UN-certified weapon when playing an Unarmed Brawler.

EDIT: I made a few tweaks to wording and format and I included a new section in gameplay regarding a bug with knockdown moves.

StGabe.

OMG StGabe Joo r00lu r teh onwendge.....!!!one!!

Thanks so much for the Pike specific references...your a great Correspondent for all Brawlers!

Nice job Gab,
All well written.

Some possibles that i'd like to throw in:

Accuracies on all the melee weapons seem to be frequently in the minuses. Now if i can take a Scout blaster and stand at point blank range and get +8 accuracy or whatever, then tell me how a melee weapon is not as accurate?
The accuracy issues of all the melee weapon trees need to be looked at. They're all very bad at the moment.

Vibro Knucklers: Should put this in TKA forum i think, but it deserves mention here too. The range is still not at 5m as was originially intended. Stand on flat ground, at 5m and equip VK's and you'll get the combat spam of: "Target out of range" Try moving into 4m with some creatures and they move back out to 5m or more causing an effective kiting syndrome.

As far as the Beserk2 lasting longer than intimidate2, the simple solution is as follows: Use intimidate 2 twice. This'll stack it to 150 seconds.

Vibro blades on 1h, 2h and polearm seem to be useless. I used a gaderiffi baton to go through all the 1h tree once i was certified in it. It did more damage than anything else. I had a well made baton though hehe. Something like 2.1 speed and 300 max damage. (after slice)

Find out where the Scythe can be obtained. As we all want one, but no one knows where to get it and believe me i've tried running a lot of missions to find one.

---

RunemonIV wrote:

infact both sword trees are exceptionally overpowered and are easy to complete from 1-4 you can do them both in around 8 hours if you try hard enough

---

8 hours?
You can do both these trees in about a grand total of 2 hours

ermmm ok you actually helped my case more heh... i was doing all three one tree after another untill i got to 2 handed i went thru that fairly quickly polearm needs help

but anyway for a starting profession thats pretty **edit** uber to be able to solo banthas at your second skill tree

heh why not make a starting profession into a jedi?? hmmm? like hitting for 1k isnt enough for the 2 handed tree or 600 for the 1 handed tree

infact both sword trees are exceptionally overpowered and are easy to complete from 1-4 you can do them both in around 8 hours if you try hard enough

id like to see something for the polearm tree.. perhaps some effective speed mods to make up for thier crappy weapons at that level

and i can tell you right now that they will not break up the +70 damage at tka novice to give it to the starting profession infact thats about the only thing in the brawler line besides polearm that feels balanced...

uber swords are not.. sorry guys im mastering brawler will have it by tomorrow but,, when i can kill a rogue bantha at 2 handed 2 something is not right with the game... im taking level 17 missions with that weapon and completing them without the help of my tka skills with the exception of meditation and PB even if i had neither of these skill sets i would just have an extended downtime as neither increase my damage output in anyway shape or form

let me say this...

do not compare brawler with any other elite melee class because its a begining gig.. never designed to be anything more than a mild offensive set of skills

i would also like to add that your correspondant (he aint mine i wouldnt have him) is bashin tka on the discussion forum without lookin at his own hands

yeah im mastering brawler for the extra mods and to go into either fencing or swordsmanship.. probably the later because of the uber damage im doing at such a low skill level with that weapon.. it is already enough that a master brawler can actually hold his own against a tka master if the brawler uses his head.. ie: dizzy from the 1 hand and ualunge2 plus warcry 2 and intimidate can put a master tka on his rump.. infact i have a macro set up for pvp duels with the following (ill be able to use it tomorrow night) warcry2+1 hand dizzy+ualunge2 (which will effectivly knock someone down) after that do what hits the hardest at what ever ham bar you choose since masterbrawlers get that choice without combat exp if the opponent tries to get up ualunge one because by that time the timer will be up but the dizzy wont and down he goes again..