Commando Archive
Thread: Update on my template tests.
To give you an idea, this weekend i spent most of the time hunting enraged rancors..solo. I needed the rancor hides for my armor. Ive had six (yes, that numero seis, 6) enraged rancors attacking me at once and they all died before I was under 50% life. And im only wearing 62% kinetic ubese and my tkasi power boost self-buff stats bringing my stats to 1300/1300/1500.
my combat bar just spams miss miss miss miss miss then all the sudden a hit for like 600 damage, armor absorbing a lot of it and I only get hit for like 60 or 50 damage.
Also, just an hour ago I returned from my solo rancor hunt, entered trade outpost and saw a red blip..an imp coming out of the cantina. I had lost my tkasi power boost, so my ham was just 600/600/1000... but he saw me and went inside cantina as the first fireball hit him in the butt. I activated my 50% energy PSG on top of the armor i was wearing (which had 25% resist to all but kinetic which was 62% and no protect vs stun)
He went inside to get TEF groupies.. which quickly crapped out of that cantina like a bad case of diahhrrea. the overt guy and 3 others, one of them had a medic tag.
since i was at the gate entrance (40m), i switched to rifle and used flurry shot2 (rifleman aoe dizzy+damage attack, real nice) and hit 3 of them and dizzed 2, then used supression fire1 and saw one of the guys with guns flop over, the medic and a TKA were rushing up to me, the overt guy was also running to me and he had a flamethrower in his hands *urgh*. So I burst run and went behind the columns that hold the ship up (the one where the crash survivor usually stands next to) as I flameconed the tka.. missed the medic but the TKA got zinged, the flamethrower guy went around and fired the flamer at me..and MISSED (130 ranged defense at work? or just a lowlbox grenadeer monkey or both? who knows!).
He ran away from me after that.. the tka broke off for the cantina with the medic behind him, i tried shooting the tka down but flamethrower isnt very accurate on the move so i missed all shots, went inside cantina's little room in the back where I managed to flamesingle the tka,who went incap,the medic healed him up so I ran out into the main entertainment lounge, tried to flamecone but it missed (
), the tka fell incap from the fire burn, then the medic ran out so I chased him (didnt have time to db the tka), hit him with a couple of fireballs but the medic ran towards the gates healing himself.. when I noticed i was being shot from behind (I also noticed the TKA's icon inside the cantina turn into a corpse.. i guess he force of will'd and got the 3rd dot burn and died) the gun user apparently had gotten up from the dizzy and was using chest shots at me, so I did a 180 and flamesingled the gun user, he died instantly (db'd via macro binded to keyboard as I ran past his incap butt),went after medic again but the medic kept runnign away from flamer range and healing himself ..and the guy with the flamethrower had begun to chase me again. The flamer guy MISSED again with his special and that medic was hitting me hard with something.. i think it was an acid pistol or carbine for it was hurting me a lot more than the gun user.. and my PSG did not have much resist other than energy. So I switched to my E11 rifle and headshot2'd his head off rather quickly.. he kept healing himself (the little medic heal animation) for some reason.. i thought it was hilarious since i wasnt hitting his health or action..he helped me kill him in a way.. he fell over incap..
then the flamer guy got his 3rd luck and hit me with the flamer (
), the PSG took half the damage off and he hit my action bar (thank yawsh, my health was below half then) , but the dot was there. so I torched him back. The guy died instantly (again, db'd with macro). The medic stayed incap while I burned and fell incap, a nice rebel guy healed me (another overt that popped outta who knows where)..but the dot incap'd me again... tkasi force of will'd myself up to try to run to water, but got incap 3rd time before I reached the gates and died. (the medic guy had fallen incap in the space between the building with the mission terminal and the cantina, in that little corner)
For a fight against practically the 4 combat types in this game, all at once.. another 'commando' (meh, grenadeer monkey), a healer with combat skills (or a combat class with medic skills), a pure gun user and a melee class (tka no less) I think I did pretty well considering.
best of all was it used all my template's abilities. The ranged defenses worked wonderful, my combat chat bar was more miss miss miss from their part than them hitting me (from all 3 that used guns), the rifle flury2 and supression fire1 i opened the fight with took one guy out of the fight for about 5 or 8 seconds, the rifle headshot aided by the rifleman accuracy mods let me kill the medic in his one vulnerable ham bar, the flamer let me take 3 of them down.. 1 because he was too dumb to let me in close (gun user), another because he had no choice (tka) and the 3rd because he had to (flamethrower guy). Only the medic guy lived because he was wise to keep away from my flamethrower, but he fell to my rifle.
As ironic as it sounds, it was only a commando weapon that got me. Funny that.
My template is just that, mine. I know of a friend thats pistoleer/commando/smuggler and he does wonders with the launcher pistol (which is accurate out to 64m and gets the high speed and high damage from pistoleer). Ive seen commando/carbineers do amazing stuff (kd kd kd hehehe). I prefered the rifle because it gave the same damage from range as the other 2 but it gave me a heck of a lot more utility than theirs.
"master commando, tka 4-3-0-4, rifle man 0-4-0-4"
Well, with the melee defenses from tka, commando and rifleman, only high level creatures (enraged rancors and above) will hit you like twice a minute. With armor ontop of you, that damage you take is drastically reduced already. The melee mitigation 2 would reduce it even further, butif you think about it, wont the target be dead by the time they hit you once or twice? A mastermeleeplayer will break through your melee defenses regardless, and they will hit like a brick regardless. Just watch2 master tka's or swordmengo at it. Theykill each other almost as fast as they did beforethe mitigations were put in, unless they use CoB. Armor is still the biggest melee damage mitigator. As commando,a'ranged' class, you are supposed to be easy picking for a melee class, but in our case, we are extremely dangerous to approach on melee range because of the flamethrower. If a melee class gets past your flamer and into melee range, you are toast, no matter how much mitigation you have. Burst Run uber alles baby 
But if you want to keep the mitigation 2 then id suggest dropping the concealment tree in rifleman and trading it for the accuracy. accuracy and speed is all you really needfor pvp and pve, the concealment justgives you extra ranged defenseand +cover and 2 useless abilities (conceal shot.. why? you can torchentire nests,so why botherwiththis? .. sneak.. and you have no terrain negotiation so you can crawl real slow while retaining cover.. pointless really).
Well, I want balance 3 for the status effect defenses that are right there with melee mitigation 2 so that is one of my priority skills, 4 is not needed since I wil not be actually fighting unarmed ever that measly unarmed toughness isnt worth the 2 skill points.
The skill lines that give me the defenses are my priority also. Again its probably not necessary to have that much but it sure is nice the more and more I get so in my mind I want it.
I think I will stick with the meditate line and just try to use tactics while I hope for us to get ranged specials of our own and maybe some skill tape and armor attachments if they even work right yet to compensate for my accuracy. The idea of sniping shot to db a downed target at range is nice but I figure I'll just incap em till they die. If I need to get rid of them that fst cause theres that much danger around I'll have to just run away or take as many people with me as possible.
Again I keep praying for our own ranged attacks or some of our own accuracy/speed mods, even if just for the LP. It kills me that a pistoleer is better with my own damned weapon. lol
Ive been thinking about some pistoleer btu to have TK, rifleman, and pistoleer along with master commando, that takes 18 points just for the novices. What Im thinking is maybe keep my meditate 4, andprecision striking 4 and forget rifle since I really prefer to use my commando weapons and just want a way to support my commando line pick up pistol speed and acuracy skills then the rest in another line within that realm.
I wouldnt have 134 in both defenses but have 94 in each give or take 1 or 2 just from master commando and precison striking plus I think I'd be getting some extra melee defense from pistoleer, then I would be ver efficient with the LP.
I still think we should have our own speed/accuracy mods for our LP at the very least even if we dont get our own specials for it. The thing is, do I go for the defensive lineup using rifleman with TK or the offensive abilities I get from the LP if I use pistoleer?
Decisions, decisions.
Well, I got on and took a look and considered overall capability and overall fun factor and think I've finally decided that I want Master commando (done), TKA 0-3-0-4 (1 more level each skill) and then pistoleer 0-4-4-4 (Havent started).
While having less ranged/melee defens as my original plan I will have quite a bit still and also have a huge amount of status effect defenses which is cool but wasnt the deciding factor. I will not have anymore than novice TKA meditation but I can deal with that. What is the deciding factor is basically the fun factor of the LP. I love the thing as far as effects of sounds and images, but without pistoleer specials and accuracy/speed mods it seems to not be worth while n comparison to my FT other than range but then I miss so in order to get full fun factor out of my commando weapons, I feel that I need to give that a boost since I am a die hard for heavy weapons.
In the event to where we get our own accuracy/speed mods for the LP and pistoleer no longer effects it (unlikely but who knows what they will do?) I will pick up the rifleman skills and drop the pistoleer.
Glad I got a good internet connection and decent video card lol.
pistoleer is great too. You will be able to outdamage your rocket launcher with stopping shot 
and you do get stun damage with a tangler pistol... stopping shot with tangler hits forl ike 400 damage (heehee).
I'll wait until after the combat review, or until the charcopy hits test center to try the pistoleer. The accuracy mods in pistol may be lower and the long range ability be lower too, but it does have nice effect defenses.
On the Works:
Carbineer. Will post results perhaps in a week or 2.
I myself got tired of seeing crappy weapons for sale so I got another account started and made master artisan in 27 hours.
Next grind Im going to start the grind to weaponsmith. Once I get there,I will make the best damed weapons I can by searching all over the galaxy for the absolute best metal possible for our FTs, Grenades, HWs, and even the HAR. Then I will make a post for us with an honest to gods truth on what to expect in a standard FT without loot items, how good grenades can be, and whats my best HWs. From what I gather, HWs are very costly to finds the resources and make, so the masters dont typically waste their time finding the good material.
Anyway, I start school again this evening so I will be slowed down on my grind but I will give a report as soon as possible.