Commando Archive

Okay spankling, you obviously are not being overly creative in your creature hunting if you die to blue con mobs. No offense, but the only way that could possibly happen to me is if I were afk or got swamped with more than 2 blue cons. It is a problem when you run into a ranged mob and a melee mob at the same time, but that is a seperate issue. In fact, when grouped with a CL34 pet, blue con mobs don't ever touch me or my pet. You can say "Karlos is full of it!" all you want, but here's how...

At 64m with mask scent on, pick out unsuspecting blue con (light armor, less than 40% heat resist) mob that does not bring more than 1 friend. Whip out LP, kneel, /healthshot1, switch to FT and autofire. At 20m /flamesingle2 (outside range I know, but it always lands due to latency) and mob is dead sliding at your feet. Mob has not been touched by pet or myself in melee. This can also be done with white and yellow con mobs as long as they are either vuln to heat (if armored) or only minor resists to heat (<20% with no armor).

As far as my TKA suggestion, I was doing this just today... mob starts to melee me when kneeling with FT in hand (took at hit for 750, composite ate 350), I dropped to unarmed and stood up and began getting hit for 90. This was during a flamecone1 special wait period. Heal self at end of wait, melee mob until it died, 2 heals used total. Now here my pet did save my butt, because it was engaging the other 2 mobs that rushed me... but that is not the point.

With the upcoming CH nerf the pets will become virtually worthless to us (Mobs will ignore your pets and target you) so I predict a giant migration to commando/TK. But hey..if the devs aren't going to use our unarmed requirement for anything but a cruel joke (unarmed spec with a melee vulnerability /laugh) then I say we might as well take advantage so the points go to some use.

Now this I totally agree with. The idea that we have to get through unarmed 4 and take a melee penalty is beyond all reasoning. The objective of my post was not to say we deserved the 2x melee penalty, it was that there are ways around it for the time being. My own personal opinion is that the only penalties against melee should come based upon your stance, not what you are holding.

Once again please don't flame until you have read my whole post. Thank you...

good thing i bought 2 graul maulers before the patch *whew* also, i find that commando xp in groups sucks. with my graul maulers and can solo mobs that yield me 4000 HW xp per kill, and its cake to do it. i went from FT 2 to 4 in about 5 hours. 3/2/0/0 CH was the best investment of points ive ever made. ive been commando for9 days now, and already 2/3/4/0 - finding this tree very easy to climb

on a side note - grouping in this game is just a joke. there is no reason to do it, and all the groups do is disorganize combat and lower your xp. in fact, the ONLY reason i can ever justify anyone for grouping in this game is to power level CH xp, anything else is just retarded.

As far as my TKA suggestion, I was doing this just today... mob starts to melee me when kneeling with FT in hand (took at hit for 750, composite ate 350), I dropped to unarmed and stood up and began getting hit for 90. This was during a flamecone1 special wait period.

Interesting, Bikebum. I know that wasn't the experience I had earlier equipping a wear of VKs, and others are reporting the same problem with a variety of other weapons. I'm not a TKA though. How high up TKA are you? The only thing I can think of is maybe you were still suffering the damage penalty, but the unarmed toughness mods were in force to reduce the damage?

Just a shot in the dark, I'm guessing trying to find a theory that supports everything that's been reported. Would you mind running another experiment? Repeat what you encountered above, but instead of switching to unarmed switch to a pistol. I'm really curious to see if what you're encountering is tka based or not.

I'll go run a quick test in game myself and report back in a few minutes.

Some more data. This time I paid a little closer attention the differences in going barehanded and using a pistol. I took on a couple of piket longhorns.

With flamethrower equipped, I would take upwards of 650 damage.

With a pistol attack, I would take around 350 damage.

Switching to barehanded after using a flame special, I would take 150-200 damage.

Switching to pistol after using a flame special, I would take around 350 damage.

I'm guessing two things here. The first is that we are NOT now vulnerable during the delay period if we switch weapons. I wish I'd watched my combat logs last night more closely, but it certainly seemed to make no difference for me (or several others) then.

The second thing is that unarmed toughness seems to really be making a difference, even the 20 points of it we get from going up unarmed IV (I have no tka either).

Well, I was attacked by a Rottweiler (kinda like a slice hound, some DB too ) once, I was 14 so thats not quite novice brawler (?) and all i had to do was kick it in the mouth.

Not sayin' thats big game but hey, the scale kinda makes it seem bigger, (i.e. a wookie that rips people's arms off=cannibal dewback (as a master commando nonetheless), 14 year old=mean dog)

And technically, as I understand it, defeating a alligator/crocodile on land would be much easier than you think, ( the average man can easily hold one's mouth shut) rips some nostrils and eyelids open and hear it squeal.

With a furry animal trying' to bite me, If I had a flamethrower, I wouldn't care how big it was, it would be on FIRE, therefore, pre-occupied.

p.s. don't bother complimenting the grammar.

oh what the heck 90 posts

Yeah, I hate it when ppl use pets everywhere, and the fact that most prety much have to, includnig me now.

I've been running tests on dantooine with vortitor lizards. They can survive a flame single I but will go down from the bleed within a few ticks, making them survivable during experimenting.

If I attack them with a pistol, I'm taking between 90 and 180 damage. Average is about 120.

If I attack them with the flamethrower equipped I'm seeing damage as high as 424. Average is probably about 280 or so.

But if I do a special with a flamethrower and switch to a pistol or barehandfor the delay period.... I'm taking 180-260 damage or so, with an average around 220.

I don't get it. I'm definitely seeing more damage when switched to another weapon during the delay period then I do if I attack with a pistol, period. But it's not as high as the max penalty I'm seeing if I keep the flamethrower equipped. I'll keep testing, but could a few of you do so as well? The more sets of numbers we get the easier it'll be to find a common answer.

Romana, I have not invested any points in TKA (although I have about 200k unarmed exp and maxed combat exp atm). And after I posted this evening I went and paid careful attention to my damage logs when I switched weapons, etc. I noticed 2 things happening. I was on tatooine today, so I took several matriarch bantha missions to test. For those who don't know, matriarchs are yellow when FT is equiped (red anything else), and the spawns often have bull banthas which are typically white. I do not have the numbers here because I was not really trying to be scientific about my experiment.

1. Firing a FT special and unequiping to either unarmed or VKs resulted in a drop in damage taken. However, I cannot confirm when the damage drop takes place because: I would pull with the FT and fire /flamesingle2 at 20m, immediately unequipping the FT. Usually the mob would hit me hard 1x by then (assuming 2.5x melee damage adjustment here).However this is where it got messed up, sometimes the 2nd hit would be for high damage and sometimes reduced. Personally I blame this on latency and the whole client side descrepency in this game. That said, any subsequent hits would be for reduced damage. The problem is, if you have a mobs aggro, you cannot switch back to your FT, you are forced to melee until the mob bleeds to death. Also, you would have difficulty surviving two 2.5x hits landed if you don't have 40% + kinetic resist armor (without buffs, etc etc). I think this is a serious problem. Even though I have learned to adapt, a white or yellow con mob should not be able to incap me in 2 hits (even unarmored) when I have spent nearly all my skill points in combat skills and have a whole tree in the Brawler class.

2. There are still "holes" in our armor. Prior to the patch it was well documented that several locations when hit resulted in bypassing armor. This was particularly noticable with the BH eyeshot, as it's hits almost always hit an armor "hole" and resulted in negating even the best resists to 0 AR, 0% resist. Apparently this bug in armor still is not fixed. Since I was intentionally allowing mobs to close within melee for my experiment, this bug alone led to incredible amounts of damage taken on several occasions. I never got incapped tonight, however I was extremely careful in my positioning for taking damage. Should a composite armored commando happen to be kneeling with a FT in hand when a mob strikes this armor "hole", a single hit from a mere blue con mob could incap them. This bug bothers me due to the excessive warping of mobs, particularly around structures, hills,and when newly spawned. If I were on anyting but flat ground (tatooine bleh!), most likely my tests would have had several incaps.

Essentially what am I saying?

1. Well,my experience is that equiping VK's or merely unequiping FT (only having unarmed 4) usually results in negation of the 2.5x rifelman vs melee penalty.

2. Armor is now required for the commando class, but that armor will not always protect you due to bugged "holes."

3. And to remain on topic, having a pet to shield you will help immensly. (Note that I tried not to use my pets as much as possible except when I felt either I use them or I die) When engaging mobs solo, if those mobs BAF, you are nearly required to have some pet to tank the add until you can deal with the first mob.

For those of you who need my full specs to compair: Commando 2440, CH 3212, Medic 0100 and prerequisites. Personally I am in the process of maxing out my unarmed, pistol, rifle, carbine, CH, and combat exp while I run several tests on commando performance with those skill sets. Once I find the combination that works best for me, I will adjust from there.