Swordsman Archive
Thread: A new 2-handed sword that does stun damage?
Pykla wrote:
Less than 1 month to go now until they gimp us by removing all our head and mind shots, have you ever tried killing a buffed medic (let alone a doc)with 80% (or more) composite by hitting their health or action? it's IMPOSSIBLE, they heal much much much faster than we can damage them.
So i ask this, if you are going to take away our mind and head hits please give us a weapon that does stun damge so we can still be viable in pvp against anyone with composite armor and a few medic skills.
Relax (some anyway). They are not taking away mind damage. People are misreading the following quote to come up with that interpretion:
"The second aspect of the Combat balance will be the HAM redesign. A very critical part of the overall combat rebalance is the change to the functionality of the HAM system. This change will allow a greater ease in balancing overall HAM costs for weapons and special moves. It will also allow Mind to be removed as a special damage type and place equal emphasis on Health, Action and Mind pools for both abilities and damage."
People are reading "special damage type" to mean, "a type of damage done by specials." And they are failing to read that they want to "place an equal emphasis on Health, Action, and Mind." So ask yourself this. If they want equal emphaisis on all three pools, and they are removing specials that specifically target mind, why does it then not also say that they are removing Health and Action as "special damage types" and, therefore, the specials that target those pools?
The answer is that "special damage type" has nothing to do with damage done by specials. Instead, it refers to the fact that mind pool damage is treated differently than health and action damage, so it is a "specialdamage type" in that it is unhealable.
With the HAM changes we have already seen tested, we know that HAM costs will be assessed differently. HAM costs will no longer be assessed as damage, but willtemporarily deduct from thepool maximum. Since healsdo not affect the maximum value of the pool, allHAM costs will become unhealable.At the moment, onlyHAM costs to Mind are unhealable. That means that, with regard to special abilities, all three pools will then betreated equally. But they also want damage treated equally ("equal emphasis ... for both abilities and damage"). But they cannotachieve this by making Health and Action unhealable. This would cripplethree professions (Medic, Doctor, and Combat Medic). Therefore, the only reasonable conclusion is that theywillput equal emphasis on allthree pools with regard to damage by making mind healable.
How they plan to do this, I do not know. It could bewith a specialstim, or it could be healed along with Health and Action with current stims. And while this is not that much better than the way people have been complaining in that we no longer get to attack an unhealable pool,bear in mind that medical types use mind to heal. That HAM cost (the cost to heal the mind or other pools) will be deducted from their mind pool's maximum, and will therefore be unhealable. Since we are attacking the mind pool, we will still have some advantage in that we are attacking the same pool they are using to heal the damage we are doing. This will still give us an edge over those who are targeting Health or Action.
We will just have to see how this shakes out, but please do not continue spreading the rumor that we are losing mind attacks. The statement they put out could have been worded better, but clearly, it cannot mean that.
Our weapons have the WORST ham costs in the game.
We hit medic guy in the head for say 200mind damage
He heals back to full and that just cost him 75mind
WE JUST TOOK 200 UNHEALABLE DAMAGE FROM OUR POWERHAMMER...
75mind Vs 200 health it took to do that damage.... were getting screwed.
Bear in mind that they've already started to buff up mobs in response to tougher player characters, my guess is that when these changes go live we'll suddenly find it compltely impossible to kill Krayts or what have you without having to resort to exploits.
Jedika wrote:
All we have to do is get every swordsman... I mean EVERY swordsman to ask the devs to get us better whatever we want, and we have to have a reason. The weaponsmiths just screwed themselves over with the little experimentation change, but they did get the devs to change it. If we can all get together and do something like the wookies and try and crash a server we can get whatever we want. Hopefully it never gets to that point....
It may sound like little but it takes alot ofwork
the wookiees werent trying to crash a server - they were trying to get fixed since they have been ignored for 6 months
thanks
Except with the new changes you won't take damage. We got a preview of this change a few Publishes ago and let me tell you, it was refreshing to be able to not have to worry about killing myself outright using Specials. Here's what it will most likely do if the system hasn't changed:
Current System:
- Queue up special.
- Special goes off and damages you for a cost relative to the Weapon and Special used.
- Damage done by special is only healed through use of Meds or natural regen.
New System:
- Queue up special.
- Special goes off and takes a slice off the top of your maxHAM based upon the weapon and special used. I.E. If you have 1000 max health and the special is for 200, then you now have 800 max Health.
- The slice taken off regens at a rate faster than natural regen, making sure that you don't stay at 800 max health for very long (only takes a few seconds), whereas before, it was likely that the damage would hang around for a bit. You can't healthe 'damage' done this way, but it regens fast enough that it's not really an issue.
We swing powerhammer at say 2 seconds for a headhit3
headhit3 hits doing 1500 damage to Mr doods mind reducing our health to 800
we swing again and MISS...reducing our health to 700 (100 less from the regen)
we swing and miss again...reducing our health to 600...same story once again...
We are never going to match up to the damage output vs damage taken of other classes...
And this is my point Were going to suffer the most (along with carbineers) with the new system (what else is new) But its just going to be WORSE because we cant heal it.
I havent tested this but im pretty sure thats whats going to go on from your discription.
Im anxious to see it though... i wish they would let us COPY our characters to test...
I think that they would have alot more testing going on than they do.
Well, copy all you want. It won't do you much good to be a swordsman with no armor, a CDEF pistol and 250 credits. 
WarFerret wrote:
Anything that reduces the amount of specials used is in my estimation a bad thing, it's a move towards the EQ style "press A to attack" and go make a cup of tea style combat I found so very tedious in that game.
Bear in mind that they've already started to buff up mobs in response to tougher player characters, my guess is that when these changes go live we'll suddenly find it compltely impossible to kill Krayts or what have you without having to resort to exploits.
completely impossible to kill krayts without having to resort to exploits?
how about you get a group. seems pretty simple to me.
i do think that being able to solo everything in the game (thus being able to get any of the super valuable resources that you can loot off them by yourself) is fun and enjoyable, but id be willing to accept it for the overall good of the game. theres just something special when you take down a giant canyon krayt, lol. be really, i dont think itll be that bad taht you gotta use a group from here on out. might be better than we all expect, actually.
I'd just like to point out a few things.
First, the "HAM costs being the worst in the game" as one person said it. I have a BH character on Corbantis and I can tell you that even trying Underhand Shot with the EE3 (Marksman/carbine top level weapon type) will strip you for some 270 Health and Action. And that's just Underhand, the lowliest of atacks with the carbine. That's why people tend to use CDEF for knockdown effect and a whooping 130 damage. However, I think this is fair - the last thing I want to see is someone spamming one attack over and over and over... we had enough of that in Mortal Kombat, mkay? 
Second, the HAM costs will be unhealable, but they will also regenerate at an accelerated rate, separately from normal HAM damage. At least I read so. I think it's still unclear whether they'll will do it like that or just add a fourth bar, like the Force bar Jedi have. I seem to remember that it said this would remove the danger of players effectively incapping themselves - if that is so, the only way I see it is by the way of not applying damage to HAM from special attacks, accelerated regeneration or not, or... making that damage not count toward actual damage. As we have black bar to indicate our wounds, maybe we will have a shaded bar to indicate how much of our HAM pool we have left for specials, if you know what I mean.