Swordsman Archive
Thread: Wookiee = No Armor = Gimped?
I've seen plenty of successful wookee swordsmen. It seems like the health stats help out a lot. To be honest though, Ubese Armor is very nice to have. But on the downside, wearing armor and being say a doctor don't really go together (the mind heal is way too slow).
I personally would not be a wookie brawler, not if it's your intention to tank.
Now if you can get someone else to tank while you just concentrate on doing damage, then yeah, you've got a great race/class combo. Wookie brawlers are like rangers in EQ. Good damage output, but they aren't meant for tanking.
I'm a human swordsman and use armor all the time. Stuff hits me for 300 and it's cut to about 120 due to my Ubese armor. Very nice, especially when they hit me in the head. I think you're going to find that wookies will havea hard time tanking stuff with over 11,000 HAM simply because of head hits. A guy with a composite helm can survive over twice as many head hits as a wookie.
And the regen rate isn't really hurt by armor, except during the fight. I made aliases that instantly put on and remove my armor, so as soon as the fight is done I can type "/aoff" and I'm back in normal clothes immediately.
Armor rarely helps in PvP except against commandos, though. Almost everyone uses AP1 weapons, including pistoleers, and an AP1 weapon will go straight through any armor, including composite, with no deflection whatsoever. Only AP0 weapons are stopped by armor. (Though that can be helpful. I had someone shoot me for over 3000 damage with a flamethrower, and my Mabari gloves stopped 1800 of it. Since I was doctor buffed, I lived and killed the commando.)
Wookies were good in the early stages of the game due to lack of good armors. But as the game goes on, Wookies will seem weaker and weaker, because armors get better and better. Most melee combat classes didn't wear armor before because the encumb were terrible. Now with the aid of doctors that can buff your stats by 2k+ at a time for hours, and along with the help of chef buffs and smuggler buffs, the encumb on armor is becoming less and less significant. Even a mon cal with barely any stats can wear full composite just by buffing his stats to 2-3k. Wookies, however, are gimped now, because the clothing/tape modifers don't work, and also because we don't any unique types of protection. The few hundred extra stats on the ham bars will not offset what armors have to offer when used with buffs.
Scorpnstail wrote:
I am pretty new myself , but I can offer what I have seen up to this point .. Wookies are a viable melee class due to theextra Ham that they recieve .. I personally feel that armor is very overrated, and most of the time I don'twear much myself. I have meet quite a few wookie's who played a melee class and I have not heard very many complaints. hope this helps
Scorpnstail
Armor is most definitely not overrated and Wookies are the worst fighting class in general, hands down. 600 extra HAM does not make up for the fact that you cannot wear armor. In PvP I wear a full set of sliced Composite armor with 60+% resists (except electrical and stun). That meansthe damage I take is reduced up to 80% (actually higher since some pieces have up to 68% resists).
Sorry to say, but thatmeasly 600 HAM basically means nothing. Doctor buffs can increase all stats by upwards of 1000 (oftentimes 1500+). You will not even notice that 600 HAM.
No, this is incorrect. AP1 weapons ignore the 50% automatic reduction of armor. However, it is still reduced by the resists. So, for example, if you have 60% kinetic resist, the damage is still reduced by 60% regardless of what armor penetration rating the weapon has. If it's AR2 the damage is multiplied by 1.25 but then it is still reduced by 60%. AP and resists are not exactly the same thing. Also, the vast majority of weapons are AP0 (pistols) and even some heavier weapons.
Pecos wrote:
Armor rarely helps in PvP except against commandos, though. Almost everyone uses AP1 weapons, including pistoleers, and an AP1 weapon will go straight through any armor, including composite, with no deflection whatsoever. Only AP0 weapons are stopped by armor. (Though that can be helpful. I had someone shoot me for over 3000 damage with a flamethrower, and my Mabari gloves stopped 1800 of it. Since I was doctor buffed, I lived and killed the commando.)
Dont forget you have to add all the toughness and such that you get from master. That coupled with a 75 percent damage reduction. I think in order to play wookie effectively, you have to adjust the stats.My mind isat 1100 and 650 and 600 on focus and will power. I buff an average of 1500 on every stat. Thatgives me 2300 on Health and Action on average.I do deal massive amounts of damage and if my mind pool is going down too fast I Muon Gold it.
I can take down giant baz nitch layers on dathimir with me and my cowardly gurrack. 3200 ham. Granted I need to be patient and pick them off one at a time if possible. However I have taken 3 on at the same time and beat them. They are tough because they do hit the mind pool pretty hard.
If you like wookie, it is defenatly a good option..
Hmmm - I'm less optimistic than I used to be. The few extra HAM points are nothing compared to the damage reduction armor provides. An example from last night:
- Fighting a blue-con Mauler one-on-one, starting out fully healed
- He hit me for a total of 1462 damage over the course of the fight
- I hit him fora total of 4997 damage over the course of the fight
- I woke up in the cloning facility
So yes, there are serious balance issues when playing a Wookie brawler. They need to up the melee toughness and melee defense bonuses in the Melee class trees, and/or give us evade. Why do gun-users have much better close-range defense modifiers than melee classes? This makes no sense...
Hey - if it works... 
And it's not like the smell can make my maskscent any less useful. MoB's can already smellWookies from 128m+, apparently...
I just hope it doesn't only come in yellow... 
Remember that if you become a master swordsman you will still have enough skill points to master another profession. That and there aren't any players that can really tank against high level mobs. As such if you are going to be any type of melee class you are going to need to have something that can tank for you. I am almost a master swordsman (4/4/2/3) and a decent creature handler (3/3/1/4) so I use my pets to tank while I dish out the damage. I have been very succesful in this practice. I have some Novice medic skillswhich lets mesolo just about anything. I got whomped on whenI tried to "solo" a Dark Jedi Knight. 
I had to at least TRY to do it, but the Dark Jedi ended up making Wookiee burgers that day.
Isuppose you could tank with a probot as well but I haven't tried.