Development Cycle Archive

OK, here's a draft of what I'm eventually planning on presenting to the developers regarding what we want the TKA profession to be. This is a work in progress, so have a look, and post any comments you might have.

For the record, I'd like to say that I'm pretty excited about this

Teras Kasi: The Mystic Warrior

The Teras Kasi community has taken the opportunity to gather and present its thoughts on the evolution of the TKA profession. Below are a number of key points and comparisons regarding how we see TKAs fitting in with the rest of the brawling community.

The main offensive strength of TKAs will be our ability to apply state changes to our enemies. We want to be the class that achieves victory by degrading our opponent's ability to fight back. We like our current assortment of debuffs like blind, dizzy, stun, intimidate, and knockdown. We would like to see improved and expanded versions of these skills. Improved versions of existing skills like Stun2 could dramatically reduce our opponent's to-hit rolls. Completely new skills like "hobble" could greatly reduce the firing of our opponent's defensive skills (dodge, evade) for a period of time. Skills like intimidate 2 and warcry 2 could be further augmented through the TKA tree.

In addition to a wide variety of state changes, we would need our state changes to be highly effective. If they're to be our main advantage, they need to be comparatively reliable. When we use Knockdown, it should generally stick. When we use dizzy, our opponents should generally become dizzy. Bonuses to causing stun, dizzy, knockdown, etc. should be a part of the TKA skill tree. Of course, this will have to be balanced, but as our primary offensive strength, we would need to be able to rely on these skills.

In terms of speed, we see ourselves as the fastest brawling profession. All other professions must swing a weighty weapon, we have no such encumbrances. If you're lowering the speed cap to .5 seconds, we see ourselves as the profession that fills that slot.

We do no see ourselves as "the damage dealers". Weapons were invented and used because they are more damaging than bare-handed strikes. Weapons trade versatility for damage. Therefore, we see ourselves as having the lowest damage per hit, and the lowest overall damage per second of the brawling professions. Our debuffs and state changes will allow us to compete, but in terms of raw damage output, we see the weapon-using brawlers doing more than we do.

We would like to get rid of Vibroknukclers. We are an unarmed profession and we dislike having to rely on weaponry. As an alternative, we would like some of the benefits of VKs worked into our skill tree. For example, the attacks in the "Precision Striking" tree could be so precise that we are able to find the inevitable chinks in our enemies armor. Therefore, when using head hit, body hit or leg hit, we would be granted AP1. We do not need AP2 or AP3 as those ratings are reserved for vehicles and tanks, and we would not have trained to fight these things with our hands.

We would like the ability to do restraint damage. A major aspect of martial arts focuses on holds, chokes and joint locks, and these moves are lacking from our skill tree. Furthermore, restraint damage seems to be a natural part of unarmed training in a galaxy where many of your enemies may be highly resistant to regular, kinetic damage. Since we will have no weapons, restraint damage would have to be achieved by the use of new "grappling" skills. These could be called "Wrist Lock", "Arm Bar", or any number of other suitable names.

We do not see ourselves as having the ability to apply any DoTs. We will leave bleeds, poisons and the like to the other professions.

Area attacks seem more suited to the broad strokes of a weapon, and we are willing to give up all area attacks in pursuit of the various advantages described above.

Offensive Summary:

• The most debuffs & state changes
  
• The most effective state changes and debuffs
  
• No weaponry of any kind
  
• The ability to do AP1 with the precision striking skills
  
• The ability to do kinetic damage with new, "grappling" skills
  
• No bleeds
  
• No area attacks
  
• Fastest attack speed
  
• Lowest damage per hit
  
• Lowest overall raw damage per second

As the profession that can cause state changes, we would like to be the profession that avoids state changes. A Teras Kasi Master should beextremely difficult to trip up, knock down, stun or dizzy. Our training in applying these states to our enemies teaches us how to avoid them ourselves. Our inner focus would make us exceptionally difficult to intimidate, or terrify with cover fire or a battle cry.

Furthermore, rather than our current status as the "toughest" profession, we'd rather be the quickest. We see our defense being centered around dodge and evade, rather than in simply being able to soak up more hits.

In keeping with our reliance on evasion, we would like bonuses to our defenses while not wearing armor. Ideally, a TKM would be more effective when unarmored than when encumbered with the bulky confines of a protective suit. Perhaps our passive defenses would only be exceptionally high while we're unarmored. Clearly this would be a difficult thing to balance, but we're interested in at least exploring this opportunity.

Finally, the meditation line provides self buffing and augmented recovery. We love the meditation line, and although we have a couple of small things we'd like changed, we would like for it to remain basically as it is.

Defensive Summary:

• High/Highest passive defense mods
  
• Highest resists to state changes/debuffs
  
• lowest "toughness" score
  
• Self buffing and recovery through meditation