Teras Kasi Archive
Thread: What do you want TKAs to be?
i think TKA should be speed and stuns+blinds+Kds+dizzies etc..
TKAshould be able to dodge crazy since they have no weapons to slow them down.
TKA should also not do too much dmg since after all we only use our fists.
Swordsman: highest dmg, fights best against single targets, slow attack.
Pikeman: best with groups (think matrix here) with area Kds and Area dizzies and area "targeted" attacks.
Fencer: second fastest attack, second lowest dmg, highest dodge and chance to evade attacks, lowest toughness (very near impossible to hit but when hit go down fast)
I think we can all unanimously agree what we want TK to be, but what we are lacking of course are Lightsabers and a force power bar.
what i still don't undertand is, how is pikeman supposed to figth groups of peopel when we can't take one?
People who are saying "TKA should stay the same", please remember that we're talking about what roles TKA should have, what strengths and weaknesses TKA should have, but *after* the big combat changes that are coming up. After those changes, no profession will be the same. All professions will have stages of weapons with increasing power as they level, for example, which actually removes one of the really different things about TKA: right now, we're the only profession whose baseline damage really increases as we level. All other professions have access to weapons that are quite powerful within a short period of starting out. After the change, we've been told that all professions will have "basic" versions of all of their weapons available early on, followed by increasingly "advanced" versions of their weapons.
Another thing I could suggest is: it's fine to say "TKA should be the same", but please make sure to describe what you think TKA is now. Are we defensive now? Are we offensive? What are the properties (in a general sense) that you think should remain the same?
OK, here's a draft of what I'm eventually planning on presenting to the developers regarding what we want the TKA profession to be. This is a work in progress, so have a look, and post any comments you might have.
For the record, I'd like to say that I'm pretty excited about this 
Teras Kasi: The Mystic Warrior
DRAFT
The Teras Kasi community has taken the opportunity to gather and present its thoughts on the evolution of the TKA profession. Below are a number of key points and comparisons regarding how we see TKAs fitting in with the rest of the brawling community.
Offence
The main offensive strength of TKAs will be our ability to apply state changes to our enemies. We want to be the class that achieves victory by degrading our opponent's ability to fight back. We like our current assortment of debuffs like blind, dizzy, stun, intimidate, and knockdown. We would like to see improved and expanded versions of these skills. Improved versions of existing skills like Stun2 could dramatically reduce our opponent's to-hit rolls. Completely new skills like "hobble" could greatly reduce the firing of our opponent's defensive skills (dodge, evade) for a period of time. Skills like intimidate 2 and warcry 2 could be further augmented through the TKA tree.
In addition to a wide variety of state changes, we would need our state changes to be highly effective. If they're to be our main advantage, they need to be comparatively reliable. When we use Knockdown, it should generally stick. When we use dizzy, our opponents should generally become dizzy. Bonuses to causing stun, dizzy, knockdown, etc. should be a part of the TKA skill tree. Of course, this will have to be balanced, but as our primary offensive strength, we would need to be able to rely on these skills.
In terms of speed, we see ourselves as the fastest brawling profession. All other professions must swing a weighty weapon, we have no such encumbrances. If you're lowering the speed cap to .5 seconds, we see ourselves as the profession that fills that slot.
We do no see ourselves as "the damage dealers". Weapons were invented and used because they are more damaging than bare-handed strikes. Weapons trade versatility for damage. Therefore, we see ourselves as having the lowest damage per hit, and the lowest overall damage per second of the brawling professions. Our debuffs and state changes will allow us to compete, but in terms of raw damage output, we see the weapon-using brawlers doing more than we do.
We would like to get rid of Vibroknukclers. We are an unarmed profession and we dislike having to rely on weaponry. As an alternative, we would like some of the benefits of VKs worked into our skill tree. For example, the attacks in the "Precision Striking" tree could be so precise that we are able to find the inevitable chinks in our enemies armor. Therefore, when using head hit, body hit or leg hit, we would be granted AP1. We do not need AP2 or AP3 as those ratings are reserved for vehicles and tanks, and we would not have trained to fight these things with our hands.
We would like the ability to do restraint damage. A major aspect of martial arts focuses on holds, chokes and joint locks, and these moves are lacking from our skill tree. Furthermore, restraint damage seems to be a natural part of unarmed training in a galaxy where many of your enemies may be highly resistant to regular, kinetic damage. Since we will have no weapons, restraint damage would have to be achieved by the use of new "grappling" skills. These could be called "Wrist Lock", "Arm Bar", or any number of other suitable names.
We do not see ourselves as having the ability to apply any DoTs. We will leave bleeds, poisons and the like to the other professions.
Area attacks seem more suited to the broad strokes of a weapon, and we are willing to give up all area attacks in pursuit of the various advantages described above.
Offensive Summary:
- The most debuffs & state changes
- The most effective state changes and debuffs
- No weaponry of any kind
- The ability to do AP1 with the precision striking skills
- The ability to do kinetic damage with new, "grappling" skills
- No bleeds
- No area attacks
- Fastest attack speed
- Lowest damage per hit
- Lowest overall raw damage per second
Defense
As the profession that can cause state changes, we would like to be the profession that avoids state changes. A Teras Kasi Master should beextremely difficult to trip up, knock down, stun or dizzy. Our training in applying these states to our enemies teaches us how to avoid them ourselves. Our inner focus would make us exceptionally difficult to intimidate, or terrify with cover fire or a battle cry.
Furthermore, rather than our current status as the "toughest" profession, we'd rather be the quickest. We see our defense being centered around dodge and evade, rather than in simply being able to soak up more hits.
In keeping with our reliance on evasion, we would like bonuses to our defenses while not wearing armor. Ideally, a TKM would be more effective when unarmored than when encumbered with the bulky confines of a protective suit. Perhaps our passive defenses would only be exceptionally high while we're unarmored. Clearly this would be a difficult thing to balance, but we're interested in at least exploring this opportunity.
Finally, the meditation line provides self buffing and augmented recovery. We love the meditation line, and although we have a couple of small things we'd like changed, we would like for it to remain basically as it is.
Defensive Summary:
- High/Highest passive defense mods
- Highest resists to state changes/debuffs
- lowest "toughness" score
- Self buffing and recovery through meditation
Message Edited by Mister_Heavy on 12-19-2003 08:34 AM
"grappling" moves would be awesome i would give up some of our damage for that.
Hypatian wrote:
The final thing I'll do is tie this thought into what we've been talking about for Teras Kasi artists. Some of the suggestions we've had have been about penalizing the use of armor and perhaps reducing unarmed toughness. If we do suggest that, it's very very important to think about the impact on high level encounters in groups. Say we gave up the majority of our toughness, and became unable to use armor. At that point if we want to survive aggro on a level with our groupmates, our damage-avoidance skills and our debuffs have to be so good that we can survive aggro as well as another melee profession would. The problem with that scenario is that if it's our avoidance skills, it's still a situation of "you get hit once, you're dead" at higher levels. That's really upsetting when it happens.
This is my main concern. I personally don't see a problem with not wearing armor but I DO see a problem with it if our toughness is also decreased. I believe our natural toughness has to be high so we can not wear armor. I also like the concept of special armor just for TKs but that could be difficult to implement unless it was "mystical" and put on similar to PowerBoost is with a timer, up-time and down-time.
I am also very concerned with the concept of our DPS being less than other classes. Let me be clear - Damage Per Second can be very unbalancing. If you put a person with high DPS with a Slow attack, they will always kill a person with a lower DPS even with the fastest attack and high defense skills. I have played way too many fast attack, low DPS characters in other MMORPGs that were fun to play until I had to face the slow plodding, heavily armored, high DPS slow attack guy which would maybe miss me three times but the fourth hit, whap dead. I would be sitting there hitting them everytime, dink dink dink and they are just shrugging off the low damage because they know, eventually they will hit me. And because as luck or programming would have it, they never miss that much.
Put in other terms: DPS must be balanced by Defensive mods so that over the entire time period of a combat duel the actual amount of Damage done Per Second by both combatants of equal skill is similar. - This is of course in terms of combat professions in PvP. The winner of such Duels then is based on the players skills of using every capability their profession has to offer and not just the fact that a particular type of melee class just will always win.
This is 100% true. I would not want to give up our damage without a proportional increase in our defense. And I would not vote for making TKAs "unable" to wear armor. Rather, we may get some bonuses when choosing not to wear any.
lupto wrote:
Put in other terms: DPS must be balanced by Defensive mods so that over the entire time period of a combat duel the actual amount of Damage done Per Second by both combatants of equal skill is similar. - This is of course in terms of combat professions in PvP. The winner of such Duels then is based on the players skills of using every capability their profession has to offer and not just the fact that a particular type of melee class just will always win.
I love your overview, Mister Heavy! As long as we understand that these are recommendations for a general idea of how we should work--what we're good at, what we're not good at, etc., I think this gives a very clear vision to the devs of the *kind* of fighters we'd like to be. The specific suggestions are fun, but it could all end up in the wash trying to balance things. A firm understanding of what sorts of fighting we can do should go further than specific ideas about how that might be implemented.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing how things pan out.