Teras Kasi Archive

Ok, last time the big patch came out that messed with our HAM costs I handled my comments totally wrong, and everything degenerated into a big flame war. Sorry about that. Let me start over with this patch.

You have every right to feel whatever way you feel about the class. They're your feelings after all. And I agree that TKs should be able to be viable without having to invest in a bunch of other skill lines, etc. My post today is not disputing any of that. My post is only to say this: if anyone is feeling dishearted after the patch, I wanted to explain what I am doing that is allowing me to be just as effective in PvE (only talking about PvE here) as before.

First off, I am 2/4/4/3 - I didn't quite get to master before the patch, but I'm high enough to be pretty tough. I am human and here are my stats:

Health: 800
Strength: 400
Constitution: 400
Action: 800
Stamina: 500
Quickness: 500
Mind: 800
Focus: 600
Willpower: 600

I am currently a master brawler and medic in addition to being TK. This is where some people will want to tune out because they don't want to take any medical skills. The bottom line is, with medical skills I can still hunt the conning huurton stalkers I was fighting before the patch - without medical skills I will die every time. All you have to do is take "novice" medic, make sure your stats are adjusted so you have high mind abilities (it doesn't matter if your other stats are lower, you can heal them back up), then you can buy Stim B's which you can use with only medical knowledge of 5 which comes at the mere novice level - these things if crafted well will heal you for 300-500 points.

Ok so, in addition to having medical skills, with my stats geared toward regenerating my mind quickly, I also have the best non-CH pet you can have, a cowardly gurreck. These have 3200 H/A/M pools and do 150-160 damage every 2.0 seconds. No you can't just use them as a tank against high level mobs, they will die too quickly, but they can wear a few hits and they certainly can help you take things down. An extra 150-160 points of damange ever 2.0 seocnds is not bad.

So, I am a medic, I can use up to stim C's right now, but I was doing just fine when using stim B's (and I've seen stim b's crafted by master doctors that are better than the stim c's I currently craft), and I have a back up pet.

I'll tell me pet to /stay back a ways from a huurton lair. I will get one of them to aggro me and follow it back to my pet. Then I use my one KD2 to knock it down, through a blind and stun on it, and tell my pet to attack. At this point, I start spamming unarmed hit 2, without VKs on. Unarmed hit2 without VKs is doing about 750-800 damage for me, that's about double what I would do with VKs on and not styling. It's less than what I would do using unarmed hit2 and VKs but I use almost NO HAM when I do that style without VKs on.

I do that until I start taking too much damage - huurtons are very good about primarily hitting health and action pools, NOT mind. When I get too low, I use a heal that heals me most of the way back up. And by the time that is done, 30 seconds is gone and I can knockdown again. Meanwhile my pet has been damaging the hurrton too.

I'll kill the huurton and get a very healthy xp bonus. This is what I did this morning, after the patch. The net effect of the patch is that, with the exception of having to heal a few more times than I used to with stims, and using my pet to assist me which I used to not do, I am still hunting the exact same things I was hunting before the patch.

I hope that information helps others. PLEASE DO NOT misinterpret this as saying our class is perfectly fine or we don't have problems or whatever. I'm just saying ANYONE can get a cowardly gurreck to help tank. If you don't want to because your mad that you should have to do that, fine - that's your choice. Anyone can invest 15 points into novice medic for some acceptable healing, and a few more points in first aid/pharmacology for some great healing - it makes all the difference in the world.

Laur

Couple quick, serious questions in case this developes into flaming...

1) What are you using for armor, or are you going all normal clothing?

2) "I am still hunting the exact same things I was hunting before the patch. " -What kind of xp hit are you taking due to damage done by the pet? I'm curious if it's still "worth" hunting the same mob postpatch. My templates almost identical to yours save less boxes in the TKA tree... so I'm hoping to have similar results.

3) What's the base heals on the Stim Cs you are using. I make my own in the field and they tend to be the less effective/generic variety.

4) Most importantly, xp is nice... but have you had any luck angainst equal con range weapon wielding opponents? I tried hunting thugs for disks this morning and honestly... the exerience was such that I spent the rest of today playing Diablo 2

Thanks

***1) What are you using for armor, or are you going all normal clothing?

I do not use armor - I am a clothes freak. I HATE armor because its so bland and boring.


***2) "I am still hunting the exact same things I was hunting before the patch. " -What kind of xp hit are you taking due to damage done by the pet?

I take almost no penalty. Seriously, today using a pet I got about 300 less xp than I did the night before - 4700 instead of 5000.

***3) What's the base heals on the Stim Cs you are using. I make my own in the field and they tend to be the less effective/generic variety.

When I craft well, NOT using advanced controllers, I'm getting about 310-330 base on Stim C's. Using advanced controlers they go way, way higher than that.

***4) Most importantly, xp is nice... but have you had any luck angainst equal con range weapon wielding opponents? I tried hunting thugs for disks this morning and honestly... the exerience was such that I spent the rest of today playing Diablo 2

Keep in mind that I could only try out the new patch *very* briefly this morning - about 45 minutes. But yes, especially against equal con I've had some success in the following way:

What are the names of those primitives on dantooine? I can't remember but anyway, I run up to them and nail them with KD - KD2 includes the dizzy, but if using KD1 immediately slap them with dizzy. Keep in mind that you can now REVERSE KITE range mobs -- you run out of THEIR range while waiting for the timer to run out. By more often than not, they fall down because of dizzy, at which point, especially for an even con with all the extra damage I do, its no contest, even if they hop back up - that's enough time for me to win the day...

Keep in mind again, this is with medical skills. If someong goes sour, I can run off and heal and plunge back in. I again stres that I am not saying the TK line itself is not in need of help. I'm just explaining ways I've found to be successful.

Also, everything I'm talking about has to do with PvE. I know pvp is screwed.

Thanks selwynn, I was waiting for a good post on this kinda thing. it sounds like I should axe my swordie skills and put them into medic. Without KD2 or Dizzy I'll have to be VERY careful untill I can grab int power.

I have VERY similar skills... which is why I have so many questions. Tried a few different strategies to varying degrees of success... still having trouble with range npcs. I'm not dying to them... but blue cons give me enough frustration running away and shooting that I'm about ready to give up looking for disks

I tried using Unarmed Hit 2, but for some reason the attack seems to be greater than twice the speed of a normal attack with VKs on. I still find VKs to do better damage than UA Hit2 regardless of cheap HAM costs using 34-156 2.2 speed VKs. I also used Bersek for the first time since the last big patch and am finding it doing more than a 75 point increase. It was a min of 100+ on Rogue Banthas earlier, but I'll have to find another high hitpoint mob to get more accurate numbers when I log back on later. I'm thinking Berserk1 with VKs combined with Intimidate and blind might be more effective than UA Hit 2.

Will try logging and parsing tonight and see what sort of change some of the specials are actually making with and without VKs on. If anyone knows a light hitting, high hitpoint mob to test on... let me know

Wish I knew of some. I used to love leveling on mountain worrts. But I don't dare now. After getting eviscerated by a dune lizard I need to find a plan of attack before I try to kill larger things.

Can anyone explain to me why any post on this thread rates a 1? Just curious...

Good ideas there Selwynn, but still (as you stated) that requires med skills which not everyone is intersted in. I find huurtons to be no problem at all as long as you draw one at a time. I usually only use one KD anyway on them if any, and that's purely to give time to apply stun, blind, intimidate, and possibly dizzy, the KD is not used more than once in my personal style (at least not for the last month of course). Remeber that intimidate is one of our most useful abilities, but is far underused.

One person mentioned Mountain Worrts for XP. I trained on them for about an hour or two today, had some pretty good success. Not as much XP has huurtons by a long shot (only about 1600xp), but they are (a) weak, (b) slow, (c) non-agro, (d) non-killers, and (e) they spawn a LOT out of one lair. I'd suggest them to anyone who is busy doing something and doesn't want to pay too much attention to what they are doing, such as watching TV like I was. There is no risk fighting these and you can get about 100k XP per hour which isn't bad at all.

The main problem I see in this is that it is a PvE strategy, just as you admitted. This doesn't quite work the same for PvP and I think we need to start experimenting on this quickly. I think that the devs added our strength in this patch to balance out the KD timer by allowing us to deal more damage in those few seconds they are down. Also, I seem to be having wonderful luck all day today with kiting. It seems to me that now ranged defense is working as well as people are expeiriencing FAR reduced accuracy with ranged weapons while running. I mean this seriously, it seems like almost all shots from a guns miss me while we are running. I hope that this isn't justa fluke and that ranged really are being forced to stop kiting.

Please test these things people, and report what successees you are having.

Few things selwynn:

1) Cowardly gurrecks are *NOT* the best non-CH pet, they have the highest damage. Rock Beetles have AR1, 2200 HAM, 120-130(might have to check this) damage, and better resistances. This averages out to around 2x the lifespan of a gurreck against most creatures/NPC's.

2) Your strategy has the flaw of realising multiple professions in it's strategy. If you want a better strategy, I'll give you one:
Run up to a baz/nightsister/other high level creature, KD2 it to the ground, switch to rifle and kill it in 2-3 shots.(Strategies which rely on other professions aren't really "our" strategies in my opinion)

3) I suggest a migration of your stamina and constitution to minimal. Reasoning being that your regneration from these stats will never compare to the amount you can heal. My zabrak is as such:
Health: 850
Strength: 500
Constiution: 300
Action: 800
Quickness: 500
Stamina: 300
Mind: 850
Focus: 500
Willpower: 900
With the above build I can solo dathomir post-patch without too much trouble, relying on stims to keep me alive, and willpower to keep me stimming.

4) Lastly, I suggest investing in a pair of advanced-core vibro knuckles. Generally it's alot more efficient(especially once you get beyond Huurtons) to not special, and use regular attacks. Regular attacks don't drain HAM, so having your favorite weaponsmith craft a pair of advanced vibro-core knuckles is generally very helpful(I can hit for 600-700 on a regular hit with mine on a standing opponent).

Otherwise, good thread

Are you seeing any benefit to having strength and quickness above minimum? I leave them at min and raise each main stat to 1000 with no apparent bad effects. Mind regen also maxed, like that style a lot,

TKA is made for CH

Pet on mob , TK him to dead

1) Cowardly gurrecks are *NOT* the best non-CH pet, they have the highest damage. Rock Beetles have AR1, 2200 HAM, 120-130(might have to check this) damage, and better resistances. This averages out to around 2x the lifespan of a gurreck against most creatures/NPC's.

Oustanding to know! I will absolutely keep this in mind - anyone one Scylla have recommendations on where to aquire one?

2) Your strategy has the flaw of realising multiple professions in it's strategy. If you want a better strategy, I'll give you one:
Run up to a baz/nightsister/other high level creature, KD2 it to the ground, switch to rifle and kill it in 2-3 shots.(Strategies which rely on other professions aren't really "our" strategies in my opinion)

I am militantly anti-guns with this character. I feel that if I wanted to pick up a weapon, I would have picked up the marksman class, and I refuse to do so now. So, I guess I am just identifying an alternative approach.

3) I suggest a migration of your stamina and constitution to minimal. Reasoning being that your regneration from these stats will never compare to the amount you can heal. My zabrak is as such:
Health: 850
Strength: 500
Constiution: 300
Action: 800
Quickness: 500
Stamina: 300
Mind: 850
Focus: 500
Willpower: 900
With the above build I can solo dathomir post-patch without too much trouble, relying on stims to keep me alive, and willpower to keep me stimming.

Can I get as low as 300 constituion and stamina with a human ? I didn't think I could but I will check this out. Thanks for the tip. I also didn't think I could go as high as 900 willpower with a human but like I said I will definately check that out.

4) Lastly, I suggest investing in a pair of advanced-core vibro knuckles. Generally it's alot more efficient(especially once you get beyond Huurtons) to not special, and use regular attacks. Regular attacks don't drain HAM, so having your favorite weaponsmith craft a pair of advanced vibro-core knuckles is generally very helpful(I can hit for 600-700 on a regular hit with mine on a standing opponent).

This I know nothing about. The only VKs I've ever seen have been nowhere near the level of what you are describing. I guess I'd have to make someone custom design it or something ? Any suggestions ?

Thanks!

A note on losing XP to pets......

First off, i am a CH, so i have more powerful pets... but that's besides the point. The thing you have to keep in mind is.. it balances, because you get MORE XP when grouped, so even if you have a pet heaping on the extra damage, the XP bonus offsets it.

You can also group with a pet (or droid) and NOT have them attack, on anything you fight. It's a nice way to get more XP.