Brawler Archive
Thread: A Plea for all my Unarmed Brethern.
Let me start off by saying one word.
"Viability"
First and foremost the Unarmed profession has been beat down because of damage reduction across the board. This does not include those Brawlers who use a stick or a sword to fight with their damage is just fine.
This issue is directly effecting those of us who wish to be Unarmed specialists who plan on moving to TKA with just our fists.
We as a community are not asking to be uber we just want to be "Viable" our viability atm is questionable at best. The exhoribant HAM costs along with minus to hit numbers while in optimum range for striking and our sub par damage in comparison to any other fighting class in the game has alot of Unarmed people very frustrated. I dont know how many times my specials get outdamaged by "Normal" shots from lower tier ranged guys this is not right. I am putting myself at great risk by being engaged with creatures at point blank. There are tons of Ranged guys who just easily surpass us in rank because of the ease of killing due to damage output and no down time.
Secondly, Damage
Our damage thus far as Unarmed is quite pathetic in comparison to ALL other classes including our stick and sword wielding brethern. I am dismayed watching the combat numbers in my chat box when grouped with others. I FIGHT to get 100 damage if i am lucky off a special at Expert lvl. Yet an intermidiate marksman is hitting for 150's with a good weapon and that is AVERAGE. I dont mind that they dogood damage thats not the point, the point is should i not be inflicting AT LEAST as much damage in my chosen profession when i am 2 Tiers higher? What is the thinking behind this? It boggles me to no end.
Thirdly, Specials
Our specials in my opinion have little to no effect. Stun seems to do absolutly nothing in my opinion but have a special animation. Creatures still hit at the same rate, inflict the same average damage and dont seem to be effected by it at all. This true also for "Blind" and "Intimidate" War cry does have a small benefit that i have noticed, it does increase the miss rate to some extent but even it is pathetic. Unarmed lunge..hmmm what can i say. So i make my opponent kneel but i cant get another attack in before they stand up again. I am not fast enough. Also the skill is VERY buggy against a fleeing opponent, just yesterday i was chasing a Rogue Corsec guard who was shooting over his shoulder. I hit him with Unarmed Lunge, his character pauses for a mili second and kneels, but then while on his knees "Slides" along the ground at a full running speed so i still cant hit him. What the hell is up with that? This seriously needs to be fixed asap.
Lastly, To hit numbers
I really have to stress this one, it is a problem that others in this forum have pointed out time and time again and can get NO dev response on if its intended or not. But let me put this to you. All you unarmed out there try this on for size. Move up to a creature and dont attack. If you stand next to it your at a -5 to hit. Try kneeling next to it. The number goes from -5 to +5 hmm kinda strange dont ya think? Especially since we cant fight from our knees, if i cant ATTACK at all why is my to hit number strangely better then when i can. Now it gets even better, Go prone, this doesnt always do something but on some creatures the to hit number goes to +10! As if i can hit something Unarmed while lying in the dirt! This is BUGGED. It has to be. there is no way it cannot be.
In closing i would just like to say i love the game so far, the work that has been put in is great! I just am pleading with the devs, SOE in the past has always been VERY quick with the nerf bat without seeing how it will effect ALL classes as a whole. The berserk damage nerf was meant to curb the ungodly damage that Stick and Sword wielding brawlers were doing with it. But i bet you never checked the damage output on the Unarmed types did you? If you did i dont know how you could not see that you have beat us into almost non-viability. All the Unarmed fighters on this profession board have pointed out the flaws, the community for the most part if you ask them (those in the know) will tell you its true, now its time for action. I am not sure what the best course of action is, There are those who say that increasing our damage a bit and increasing our speed a bit would help. There are those who say lowering HAM costs would help. A myriad of other ideas.
All i know is that Unarmed fighters are suffering because of oversights and short testing times to see what the problems would be if you changed certain things. Test longer, ask people, Do what ever it takes to make it right. We are the customer, and its in your best interest to help make as many people satisfied as possible.
Thank you.
Ceta
Another fine example of unarmed inadequacies, last night I took a kreetle destroy mission. When I arrived I stationed myself at far range and set up to pull my targets with a body shot 1 pistol shot. Much to my suprise, Kreetles dropped in one shot. Lair is clear so I unequip pistol and approach lair and attack a few times with unarmed hit 1 to spawn a few more, I got like 15..doh.. I pulled them out 40 m and commenced unarmed stun 1 at an avg of 1 to 2 m. At expert unarmed and after seeing my advanced pistol drop them in single shots, I expected to see them drop in a single hit, but this does not happen. Where body shot1 does pure damage to their health pool and thus drops them fast, my unarmed damage is spread across all three pools there by requiring me to do 3 times the amount of damage to drop the same mob.
So oh mighty developers, if you do nothing else for unarmed brawlers, then at least make each of our special moves attack only a single pool. This would provide an instant improvement to our viability. But also, I have to agree, unarmed brawler skill trees need some tweaking on either amount of damage done as you progress up the tree that parallels other classes and weapons. Ultimately an unarmed master hits either A) for more damage by increasing damage of his special manuevers or B) for more damage by increasing the number of attacks he lands successfully in the same amount of time it takes a weapon user to fire a single shot. Changes A or B along with targeting individual pool per each special move would be like putting a turbo charger on a 4 cylinder and make alot of us unarmed brawlers much happier and definitely more viable to SWG.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Thanks, Sylune_heart, for laying these things out in a rational manner for those who have not experienced it first-hand.
I now use mindshot 2 for 400-470 damage. Since I go prone before engaging, I can usually get three or four of these off before the mob even considers charging.
This was the guy's first batch of this weapon, too. He had not used the best materials or gotten a feel for how experimentation is best spent on these. I would hate to see my damage output with a well made rifle or one of the higher tier weapons I am qualified for.
I totally agree with you on this topic. I've noticed novice marksman kill animals in my group with as little as 2 shots, while I spend most of my time trying to do things to try and slow the enemy down. The thing is most of these command abilities don't give any real advantage to the brawler at all.
I'm going for Teras Kasi Artist, some marksmanship (only to advanced), a bit of polearm, some medic and a lot of scout, but I really want to be TKA. However, if they don't do something to improve the potency of our brawler profession its just going to be a waste of time devoting all that XP to an elite profession that is less effective than a novice marksman. How they equate this to being balanced I have no idea. Sure, if you shoot something with a blaster you expect to get more damage on it than hand to hand, but the damage is so biased towards marksmen that its unfair. Not to mention the point mentioned earlier about our Stat Mods being screwed up. As a brawler we should be able to take advantage of more evasion and defense Stat Mods within our skill trees since we are usually the ones who have to get up close and personal with the enemies.
I also agree to a large extent about devoting certain attacks to certain single HAM pools to give us a better tactical advantage rather than making all our attacks damage all three HAM pools almost equally. This actually makes us prolong the battle when we have to damage all three HAM pools at once rather than targeting the one which we see as being the weakest.
The last point I'd have to agree with are the absorbent taxes on our character HAM pools when we use attacks which should be giving us a tactical advantage like stun or blind, but in actuality don't do anything to the enemy worth mentioning, but make us lose a lot of HAM pool points along with the mutual beat down we take while fighting which is not only unfair, but it causes us to go down in battle twice as fast as a ranged character.
I do think these and other issues mentioned with regard to the Brawler profession really need to be fixed as quick as possible before everyone decides to just drop the profession all together and go for the skills that do the most damage.
Zechs
Please Dev's, don't you notice a trend here?
I am not going to give up on Unarmed just yet but i am on the edge of decision. I actually picked up a pole arm last night. Here is what really gets me! I don't even have Intermediate Polearm, the VERY first swing i made with a n00b pole arm from a mob drop did 196 damage. Sure the polearm swings a bit slower. So i put this to the test.
I am Attacked on sight by Thugs, so i put myself out of the frying pan an into the fire and run head long into a group of 7 of them. I am just using the pole arm itself, NO specials at all. Guess what i manage to kill ALL 7 of them and walk away. If i tried to do this at Expert unarmed i would be standing in the cloning center. Trust me i know this for a fact. Not to mention the fact that that pole arm gives +5 to hit at optimum range for striking.
I will plead until i am blue in the face if have to. Unarmed needs HELP and it needs it fast or people are NOT going to go that route PERIOD. I realize that TKA's are the most feared Melee class, but how can you justify making it so difficult in the brawler tree? As many have pointed out we are tired of being outdamage by lower tier ranged professions HANDS DOWN. Even the other Brawlers that use Sticks and Sword are making us look like fools at lower Tier skills! I am tired of being ignored on this.
Now i realize that the game is only just only over a week on the shelf. But....if you can justify NERFING Beserk in LESS then a week, then is it too much to ask to help Unarmed brawlers in at LEAST the same amount of time? In my opnion this GAME BREAKING for Unarmed. It should be TOP priority.
Please HELP
Ceta
I think I've had a change of heart. I need to do some more studies, but I've been soloing white cons without using specials, and I seem to be doing just as well if not better than when I use my specials attacks. This is pretty ridiculous. They either need to turn up the power on these specials, or turn the ham costs way down imho. When I do use my specials, I tend to do them in this order - Blind, Stun, Intimidate, Warcry. I have watched the HAM drain when I do this - it's friggin HUGE! So huge that it seems to negate the whole _benefit_ of using them; a benefit which I am thinking is dubious at best. It's like giving the mob you're fighting a ton of free damage to yourself.
As a side note, I think berserk did need to be nerfed; it was too good - but please seriously look into our special moves.
HALELULAH!!! (or however you spell it) this post is SOOOOO TRUE!!!! I played Beta and was a Brawler there and ama Brawler in the Live game. I love the Brawling apspect! I was even a Monk in EQ but thats besides the point. My other Unarmed Brethren are correct more needs to be done with our Kind. I love the Game and I love the Devs. so please fix it for us.