Swordsman Archive

One of my big gripes about melees is that on top of their other problems, the profession trees seem stacked against them. Especially the non-Teras Kasi. Let's look at some specialty elite combat classes:

Bounty Hunters -- require marksmen.
Combat Medics -- require ranged support.
Commandos -- required marksman and unarmed and do not allow you to substitute another melee.
Smugglers -- require unarmed and do not allow you to sub in another melee -- also they'r specials are all oriented towards pistols.
Squad Leaders -- require ranged support.

The existence of ranged support is itself a slight against melees as ranged people have a nice easily obtainable support branch for their combat skills that we do not have.

More importantly however, it makes no sense that so many elite combat classes are either skewed against melee in general or skewed against non-TK classes. It is impossible to be a master combat medic and a master melee even though you can master a ranged weapon and combat medic. This makes no sense. Why does the "combat" in combat medic imply ranged weaponry training? The same for squad leaders.

Furthermore, why are Smugglers and Commandos biased towards unarmed? Why can't a smuggler wield a knife, a sword or a polearm?

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StGabriel.

you can't master melee and cm, because you also need the marksman ranged support

that was his point..

I never thought of it that way Gabe.. What would the fix be? some kind of shield defense proffesion? I guess your suggesting something that works in tandem with melee tanking other than CH or some med skills? which is why I picked those two up.

What his point is, is that there are no hybrid professions that make you take up a mellee profession other than unarmed. This makes no sense seeing as how nearly every other sub profession goes into a hybrid profession. What he and I both want is a hybrid profession that uses swords obviously. A fix would be to make more hybrid professions. But I guess we have to wait to the expansion for this. Even then I'm sure we get shafted.

My solution would be: open up some of the classes a bit.

You don't have to remove any reqs just make them more general.

-- Smuggler should require filling out one ranged tree and one melee tree. It shouldn't matter which you choose. Also they should get a special or two that have to do with their unarmed abilities and not just their ranged.
-- Similarly a commando should require any single melee tree, and not specifically unarmed. They will still be biased towards ranged but oh well.
-- Combat medics shoudl require any single combat tree. Ideally there should be a melee support branch of the brawler profession but I see no way of adding that without breaking the current symmetry of how professions work.
-- Squad leaders should also require one single combat tree of their choice.
-- Bounty hunters could stay the same -- I see them as a bit of a lost cause. If you really want to make them more melee friendly allow them a choice of either mastering marksman or mastering brawler. I'll admit that doesn't make a whole lot of sense though.

In addition they should consider elite classes that are more tied to brawlers for the expansion.

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StGabriel.

What they need to do is add a profession called Sensei. Make it a utility hybrid profession, one that adds things like defense/meditation/faster running speedand various other melee abilities. IMO our problem is not our damage, but:

1. Lack of defense

2. Lack of speed

3. HAM costs

This new hybrid profession would help address those issues, and be something cool we could do AFTER we master one of the weapon melee professions. Instead of using weapons xp, the Sensei profession would use combat xp, 17.5k combat xp for the first boxes, 25k for the second, 35k for the third, and 45k for the 4th. This way you can still use your weapon that you have specced in, be it Fencer/Pikeman/Swordsman. I think it would be something funand not imbalancing at all. Heh TKA get enough that they really dont need this in my opinion, yes they could stand some improving like adding a bleed etc, but us swordsmen(women) need it a lot more.

So'nos

Master Heavy Swordsman

Ahazi