Brawler Archive
Thread: Unarmed Damage pathetically low.
I have 4 boxes in Unarmed Combat under Brawler. I was preparing to make the climb to novice TKA when the VK and Berserk nerfs went live. I honestly didn't anticipate it would be this bad. I was having a lot of fun the way combat was pre-nerf.
As things stand now, I can hit for 60-85 on a normal hit, slightly more with special moves. Berserked, I hit for 100-160. Without my weapon, I'm dead meat. White cons take me about a minute to kill in combat. Blues,only slightly less. If this is the developers' vision for what combat should be like, I am disappointed. This post is not intended to be a rant about class balance or an "I hate the developers" speech. I'm trying to present my view of the class as it stands, and how it compares to other combat classes I have played and grouped with.
A primarily unarmed fighter does not have a ranged attack. In this game, that is a significant disadvantage. What we lack in range, we ought to make up for in power once we close the gap and can employ our fighting techniques. Because of this tradeoff, our damage in combat should be substantially higher than that of people who have the luxury of attacking from a distance. Yet, the way things are now is just the opposite. Our ranged counterparts outdamage us very severely. Even our brawler counterparts do as well.
We face a couple major problems:
1) Our special move costs are too high. This is being addressed on Test Center I am told, but it remains to be seen if this will put our costs on part with those of gun-toting professions.
2) Every other profession gets a pool-targetted attack by the third box in their base weapon skill tree. Unarmed lacks this. This is a major factor in how long our battles take to resolve, because we cannot target one of our opponent's pools. Combine this with our naturally low damage and you get a lot of dead unarmed fighters.
3) We have no weapon to modify our damage type and output. This really hurts. A lot of people thought if they changed the VK cert to novice TKA, we'd be given other weapons with lower certs to help us boost our damage. This never happened.
4) Members of other combat professions fare much better than we do at equal skill levels. Pistol, carbine, rifle, 2 handed melee, polearm, and 1 handed melee all kill much faster than we do and do substantially higher damage at equivalent skill levels. I know Holo's motto has become "don't compare to pistoleer" and I'm not, I'm comparing with all other combat professions. Most others that I've seen can eliminate white con mobs very quickly while we struggle with them.
I'm not trying to whine. My point is that what used to be a fun, fast-paced and interesting fighting skill has been nerfed into oblivion and simply cannot compete any longer. It is my sincere hope that this will be changed to reflect the combat abilities of other classes.
Check out willynh's thread about Brawler updates on the test center. It might make you feel a little better.
I can't wait for it to go live. 
One of the reasons I think that Holo always says don't compare yourself to other classes is probably because those other classes are going to get nerfed.
I'm still working on the 4th box of unarmed. White cons are 60/40 on winning. That's 60% dying. Just made pistol specialist and white cons are easy. The devs said that white cons are suppose to be 50/50.
One of the reasons white cons are fairly easy at pistol specialist is because of the bleed shot. Those bleeds are way too high of damage in my opinion. In the last couple of hours, I landed bleeds anywhere from 70 - 250. Also, with ranged weapons, you can kite a mob so you can do damage to them and none to you.
What I have been doing to gain unarmed xp is to bleed a white mob then melee it. A good bleed and a bodyshot2 results in me getting about 300 melee xp and about 30 -40% damaged.
I do agree with your point about being able to target the damage. With carbine or pistol, I like using legshot or bodyshot just to target the damage. The added damage from these moves is a bonus, but the big reason is it doesn't spread out the damage.
As for lower versions of the VK, if they raise the damage without them, what's the need? I would like them to speed up the unarmed attacks. Using VK at the 3rd unarmed box gives me about 10-15 less damage, but speeds my attacks up by about half (around 1 second). Unarmed should be a fairly fast attack.
Not to be mean and rude but... What did you expect? You're beating things with your fists.
And Teras Kasi are the most powerful Brawler profession, so you SHOULD work hard for it.
so i dont know there are some good and bad things about marksman like having to buy guns everytime you level up. Plus with unarmed it is perfect for being a CH. If everyone could be a master unarmed running around with 3 rancors cause they can biatchslap a rancor to death, then it would be no fun. It is supposed to be a hard profession but it should be relativiley balanced with marksman
Not to be mean and rude but... What did you expect? You're beating things with your fists.
sorry but this comment does fly in a game based on a movie where "realism" isn't a factor. unarmed combat in movies ranges from hardcore bad@$$'s to martial arts masters that using force of will, chi, or emotion take on guys with guns, demons, what ever. If realism is the case then you wouldn't go pistoleer because in almost any situation acarbine or rifle is better. In a game the classes can'r be equal but there advantages and disadvantages should be balanced...this i do believe is what they are working towards but please don't tell another combat class that spends as much exp and skill points that they should be as good and they should have to work harder. Things like BH that require an abnormal amount of points and exclude other professions have a right to have a small advantage over some others but thats about where it ends.
Digerati wrote:
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I totally disagree with the notion that unarmed damage has to be brought up to par with damage from other wpn trees. Everyone is always comparing this weapon to that weapon and whining 'Well, the other guys does this...', its a joke. Do you all want 4 trees that all do the exact same thing, besides maybe a different weapon graphic to hold?
If you are doing unarmed to get to smuggler or BH, who cares, its never going to be your main wpn anyways. If, like me, you are a master brawler, use a different wpn if your not happy with the damage of unarmed - there are four trees in the brawler profession. And if you are an aspiring TKA, suck it up, grind it out, and you will see your damage improve when you start doing the power tree in TKA. Last I checked, the TKA's arent whining about not doing much damage.
Jakari - Flurry server
You've basically said that instead of fixing it, that people just shouldn't use the unarmed line for combat; it should only be used to get to other professions. That's not a solution. There's no goodreason why Unarmed brawlers should be at such aline-by-line disadvantage to all other melee classes.
And while it'ssuper that you dida post-nerf XP-and-damage-crippledgrind through Unarmed Master so you could become Master Brawler and never use Unarmed ever again, that doesn't mean it's fair, or that we're all seeking the same goal as you.
Also, keep in mind that as long as it took you to get 75,000 unarmed XP, folks going on to TKA need another 125,000 on top of that! All while doing 60-80 damage with their regular attack.
Im not saying it shouldn't be used. It can be used to Blind and Stun your opponent. Used properly, these can save a lot of damage. A ranged combatant (BH, smuggler) who has unarmed master would be wise to switch to unarmed temporarily if he suddenly finds himself being munched by a mob or melee'd by an NPC. What if you didn't have a weapon for whatever reason? Say they reimplement Insurance, and you and your pikemen buddy didn't insure. Whos safer now on that hike back to their corpse? It's not useless, it's just not the best 'master' level combat skill to choose if you are only going to choose one of them.
You also say 'theres no good reason..', well I gave you one reason. Should we have all wpns do exactly the same damage? Does polearm do as much as 1h sword? Does 1h sword do as much as 2h sword? People are constantly comparing things in this game and expecting it to come out 'even'. Trouble is, your comparing apples and oranges. They aren't meant to come out even in all respects. Maybe they should be balanced and you might say that unarmed is unbalanced, but don't tell me that the damage unarmed does HAS to be in line with the damage the other lines do.
Unarmed requires no weapon to use. Unlike every other tree, you do NOT have to seek out a weaponsmith, pay your hard earned money, and then maintain and/or replace that weapon as it degrades. I know this probably doesnt seem like much to you, and you probably will just respond with 'well, I'd rather we had a weapon then do this crappy damage', but stop for a second and tell me again what the line is called. It's callled UNARMED. As in, fighting without a weapon. Maybe the devs should introduce a 'disarm' skill and then unarmed would be at an advantage vs. disarm since you cant disarm someone who's not using a weapon to begin with.
And as for the 125,000 experience to get Novice TKA - it's still not that hard. The 75,000 I needed for master took me MAYBE 18 hours of game time to get. 125,000 is not that much more, and I do plan on getting Novice TKA so I can get the defensive TKA lines. Lets say it takes 40 hours, thats still not much when you compare the time it takes to build up a character in other games such as Everquest. It's relatively easy.