Swordsman Archive

Message Edited by Koule on 06-21-2005 09:26 AM

Alright, twice in one night, same advice(you dont have to take it, but hink on it). What i have done is such Master Swords/Master Doc, with master balance conditioning in tka. I was a TKM before CU, absolutely loved it.....but i just couldnt stand it so i switched. Anyway, with the master swords, and a pretty good hammer(im not a big fan of the hammer, but it works well) you can do some really good damage. Give you a couple pointers on why to, or if you are going to go to something like this.

1) Cant say what damage you do as TKM, but here are some basic numbers...this is with a 1080's damage hammer with 104 sac, really the only important stats you need to look for(if you can adk a hammer, or dont mind the decay, use soem action powerups, will make a HUGE differance)....Say lvl 82 piket for a grinding mission, with armor break will hit normall for about 700 damage, but i can use head hit, and critical hit a lot before my action runs out, doubling that damage output. Say, you want to hunt NS, sure(just an example, i hunt them often enough, though i dont know why) do about 530 a hit and again, about double that with head hit/critical hit.

2) If you think swords are slow...you're right, but in this template you will be master doc, so you will have one incridibly useful ability...Adrenalin boost increases your combat speed by 40 points(not sure what that does exactly, but it makes a huge differance, i cant stand using a hammer wihtout it)

3) Defense wise, i dont see any loss to tkm because of improved cob, +500 to defense for 40 seconds. So, you can run around with 700-800 melee and ranged defense all the time(that high of number really only helps agains the big mobs, but it still is very useful)

4) As long as you can keep your mind up, you can heal a lot of damage....if you want some pure healing numbers(now this is not tested) with caf for mind regen, you can probally heal around 5000+ damage a minute, and keep that up for at least two minutes(just a basic idea, but that is over time with heals, wont help much against the things that hit for 800+ damagea hit) If you get in a jam, booster blue and rubi bliel, and you can easily doubly those numbers. Just remember....bacta infusion.

5) Tanking.....You will be a really good tank, for anything you want, especially with area taunt from swordsman, and the taunt bonus from tk(although small) you can draw agro, and let others beat down the mob. It kind of takes you out of a fight for a while, but i have tanked up to 10 lvl 82 pikets on a grinding mission for over a minute because 1, i wanted to see if i could, and 2, there was an idiot in the group.

i know this is kinda long winded, but i really hope it helps. I personally love this template....and really the only down side, is my armor, which i should note is just as good as a tk's armor 6k resists battle armor, takes a beating with the things i hunt.

I thought I would try something the other night to see if it made a difference. I normally go for full professions because I think dabbling can be messy but I really wanted to try a reduced Doctor with M.Swords template to test the pvp and pve abilities. I decided to test Brawler 4/4/4/0, TKA 2/4/1/4, M.Swordsman, Medic 4/0/4/0 and Doctor 4/0/0/1. I wear the BE clothing Shirt, Bandolier and Pants all with Melee + Ranged Defense +16, I also use a Necrosis Shock arm and a ADK'd Necrosis Executer Sword (unsliced). I have an [Improved] Center of Being (CoB) macro running which tells me when it's about to end so I can stand still and reapply it (I also loop this macro if I fight really hard mobs).

I tested this setup on a guild mate Jedi in a duel and won, I took500 damage (in total) from the Jedi although he did say he was suffering from lag so I will have to redo the pvp test sometime. I completed some missions and came across cl 81 melee only creatures(non group aggro, thankfully)and I thought this would be a good test, still thinking I was cl 80 I hardly took any damage and killed the creatures in a very short time, healingtwicewhen I took 400 damage (in total). I also found out that without my CoB macro running I take 192 damagebut with my CoB macro running I take 112 damage (42% reduction in damage taken). For this test I didn't use food or drink. I also tested this on some Rebel missions cl 76 ranged and while I take a little bit more damage in single hits, the heals and the shorter cool down timers seem to negate the damage taken as well as a good weapon for payback I will test this with a hammer and sythe just toget a more rounded opinion though using more standard weapons.

Now for the really interesting bit, I noticed that my cl was 74, I thought omg, how can I be taking down cl 81 random spawn creatures with ease, as this cl doesn't noticeably affect my ability and only reflects that I have a fewer elite combat profession skill boxes than I had with my previous template. I was sceptical of this template at first because I wasn't impressed with M.Doctor but this has got me thinking whether I can reduce TKA skills to obtain more Doctor skills to get a nice balance. For me the important TKA skills are Powerboost, [Improved] Center of Being and innate defense, on the whole including Doctor and dabbling in TKA has opened up more powerful strategies to me than M.Swordsman/TKM/M.Brawler/Pikeman 1/2/4/0 ever could. The other important thing to bear in mind is that I can still use stim d's and as these heal 1k of damage with instant burst run effect food I do very well. I will test this template today on Dathomir and Endor as they seem to havepowerful creature spawns, I may look for a Kimo on Lok also.

Message Edited by Koule on 06-22-2005 09:15 AM

Excellent discussion. I've been having a similar discussion with bikebum and we went a slightly different direction in keeping Doc 4004 and TKM (I was MDoc/TKM pre-CU as well). The real choices you have in mixing TK/Sword/Doc are:

• MSword: More damage with PH


• TKM: Max innate armor - no cost


• Doc: 4004 you heal and buff


• Doc: 4000 or 0004 you lose healing or buffs but gain TKM/MSword damage/armor


• MDoc: Rez

Each has a drawback as defined:

MSword/TKM/Doc 4000 or 0004

• Max damage


• Free Max armor


• Lose extra healing (infusion and shot) or buffs

TKM/Doc 4004/Sword 1444 (or 4144)

• Free Max armor


• Extra heal/buff


• Lose PH damage

MSword/Master Doc/TK xxxx

• Max damage


• Heal/buff


• Lose free maxarmor


• You can futz around with TK options but CoB is essential and Power Boost is nice if the points exist for it.

After all the reading I've done and excellent suggestions peoplehave put forward what I've concluded on the best template is: It depends on what you want to do.

1. If you like doing damage and healing and can afford Armor - MSword/Mdoc/some TK(I think this is the best template for PvP, Solo and great with groups) the only real drawback here is Free Innate Armor.


2. If you don't want to spend the money on armor and like to damage things keep TKM/MSword/Doc 4000 (good solo template and cheaper with Innate Armor) or TKM/MSword/Doc 0004: Need to figure out if Stim's + Adrenalin boost (Doc 0004) are better than Infusion/Shot/Stab and speed pup's (Doc 4000).


3. If you don't want to spend money on armor, like to heal/buff your friends but want to defend yourself well enough: TKM, Doc 4004, Sword 4144 (or whatever).


4. TKM/MDoc/Sword xx4x? - haven't really tried this out but you will do very little damage. Great for grouping if you want to rez, heal and tank with friends who can deal damage. Free Innate Armor! But really - all you get here is Rez vs. #2 or #3 and MUCH less damage output.

If Armor cost isn't a problem #1 is the only logical choice (as pointed out by Corran85). Great template for everything.

There aremany combo's within those four but that's the basic effect. I have chosen #3 so far as I enjoy grouping with friends and the healing + buffs are something I like to be able to provide my friends and I don't want to buy armor. I went out unarmed last night and was fine with my fists using sword specials. My friend is Level 15 so wasn't much help but we had fun with Level 78-82 missions. Losing the PH definately hurts my damage output but I'm ok with that as I won't solo often and don't want to buy armor constantly.

I hope to try some swords and test against my unarmed damage output. Unarmed wasn't doing too badly - vs. Level 80-82 Dewbacks I was doing ~800 (I'll try again this weekend and postactual numbers)with armor break and using Head Hit fromsword. Icould kill 3-4 in a row without rest alternating Melee Hit and Head Hit withhealing before my action ran out - need to get CoB on a timer!!!Katern Knucklers, NExecutor swords will make a difference - I haven't seen any other nice swords for non-Master Sword that are better than unarmed yet. Maybe that's just my Galaxy (Naritus). I'm hoping I can find a weapon that is better than unarmed although a PH will always be the best option if you are Master Sword.

So hope that helps. Choose what you like based on what you intend to do and what you enjoy!

Shadow'd

Message Edited by ShadowJJ on 06-22-2005 02:07 PM

Message Edited by Koule on 06-23-2005 10:37 AM

I'm settling for MSwords/TKA 4/4/4/0/Doc 4/0/0/0 and as cl 77 it worked very well against some vicious cl 80+ mobs. I tested this on Enranged Rancors cl 80 on Dathomir and it worked well, I managed to control the fight healing every3rd'ish hitand kill the Rancors quite efficiently. I then tested this in a group with a Master Commando, Master Doctor and Jedi padawan cl 73 and we killed some Canyon Krayt Dragons quite easily and it was fun. I haven't tested this on a Kimo yet but I will attempt to solo a Canyon Krayt Dragonand low level Kimo to complete these tests, i'll post some hard figures at the weekend as a summary to my contribution to this post.

I have done a few more tests with a slightly different template MSwords/TKA 4/4/4/0/Doc 4/0/0/0, this allows me to complete the FS grind byreducing to TKA 2/4/4/0 while maintaining a strong defensive and offensive abilities. As well as using a standard CoB I use a CoBHeals macro, I made a copy my CoB macro and included /BactaInfusion and it looks like this:

/CenterofBeing;
/pause 20;
/BactaInfusion;
/pause 20;
/alarmaddin 0 0 The CoB effect is ending in a few seconds, so STAND STILL!!!;
/pause 5;
/ui action toolbarSlot08;

I tend to use this when fighting extreme creatures like Krayts in a group because I can monitor the other group members and identify when other tank group members should use taunt to draw the aggro, this means I can recover while someone else is pounded for a few seconds, then I draw the aggro back.

My standard CoB macro is better for pvp and normal pve because generallyI prefer to have manual control of my heals, also if I click on another player in a frantic fight I would apply /BactaInfusion on them. My standard CoB macro looks like this:

/CenterofBeing;
/pause 40;
/alarmaddin 0 0 The CoB effect is ending in a few seconds, so STAND STILL!!!;
/pause 5;
/ui action toolbarSlot07;

Message Edited by Koule on 06-28-2005 09:45 AM