Teras Kasi Archive

and i don't consider that an exploit, because once in a while the enemy you attack will decide to go after your pet (droid) anyway, so there is still some risk involved.

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.

That has not been my experience with my non-CH pet. I always grouped. Before I used a pet offensively, I grouped with my droid. My experience before was about 4900-5000 grouped without pet attacking in that instance. My epxerience after having my pet attack with me was about 4700-4800. Not a problem for me personally.

Human minimums for strength, stamina, constitution, and quickness are all 400. Human maximum for both focus and willpower is 600. I use:

health 800
strength 450
constitution 400
action 800
quickness 450
stamina 400
mind 900
focus 600
willpower 600

(I think I got that right.) Using the theory that having 450 instead of 400 on strength and quickness is worth more than having 850 on health and action, and will let me heal myself less often.

I do think it's unfortunate that I have to have medic skills to survive as an unarmed fighter, but, well, at least it works.

As a note, I also fight in a full suit of ubese, with the helmet sliced fairly well on encumbrance. I can fight white cons for quite a while nonstop at unarmed 3. I don't get to do anything flashy, but I also don't have to fall abck on my other unsightly crutch (besides medical skills): the pistol. This is working much better than I had expected from things I've read previously, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out at higher levels. On the minus side, using TKA specials while wearing armor seems like utter suicide, so I'm mainly thinking in terms of "armor up to tank, armor down to do damage."

"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. "

Well duh. Hindsight is 20/20.... I'd forgotten all about that tidbit in my worry

Have fun trying to do any high end PvE. I suppose if you want to burn stim's all day while fighting red cons on a raid while all the ranged fighters just stand behind pets and deal their damage with impunity, that's cool - but it's a bit disappointing to me.

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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.

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All armor is being removed from any Non CH pet. So I suggest you stick with your gurreck unless you want to have to buy one again when the patch goes thru eventually.

"Have fun trying to do any high end PvE. I suppose if you want to burn stim's all day while fighting red cons on a raid while all the ranged fighters just stand behind pets and deal their damage with impunity, that's cool - but it's a bit disappointing to me."

I don't "burn stim's all day." In my last fight with a red con, I actually used zero - and no pet. I did that to see how bad the patch was. Granted the red had to be closer to yellow than not, and I was low on my HAM after the fight to be sure, but I woudln't expect anything less from fighting a red. Without using any medical skills I couldn't successfully do that every time but so what? With medical skills I can do it just fine. Ok, so you mention ranged fighters -- but ranged fighters doing what? Ranged fighters using a SECOND LINE to supplement themselves, JUST LIKE I'm suggesting with TK.

I guess it doesn't bother me that ranged fighers investing skills strategically into a second line are more powerful than TKs who don't want to stragically invest points into another combat line. I would EXPECT them to do better than the TKs. But then again, I'm the rare one, because I really don't sit around and compare myself to a ranged user that much, and its never really bothered me if a ranged user has advantages that I dont (seems only natural to me) -- I like being the underdog.

Anyway, you said it was just disappointing to you -- ok, I accept that and of course your feelings are understandable. But I guess its just not as big of a deal to me. As long as they don't make it so that my XP progression is brutally horrifically arduous, I'm fine.

I do agree that XP progression is fine, it just seems to be all the other aspects of the game that are becoming problems. I'm kind of confused why everyone is focussing on the leveling aspect as that really seems like the smallest effect the changes have had.

"I guess it doesn't bother me that ranged fighers investing skills strategically into a second line are more powerful than TKs who don't want to stragically invest points into another combat line."

I have a bit of an issue with this statement. Considering the situations we are talking about, and the problems people are bringing up, a TKA with a second line still is far inferior to other combat classes with second lines. A TKA /CH will still not be able to match up against a Pistoleer/CH in most given situations, and the same is true for most other side professions. Off hand I can't think of a single profession we can add that doesn't benefit a ranged user more. Combat Medic, Doctor, Combat Medic, and even Smuggler all benefit someone with a ranged skill more than they do a meleer in most situations. Ranged fighters using a second line strategically aren't just stronger than TKA's that don't... they're stronger than TKA's period.

I love my TKA, and I'll continue playing my TKA, but I'm fully aware that we have a limited functionality as the game stands now. I like being the underdog also, but they do need to include a way to make the class more useful in end game content.

Here's my (not original) hint of the day: get buffed.

I had a master doctor buff my primary and secondary health & action stats last night for the first time. It was unbelievable. 2.5k+ Health and Action and 1.5k+ Con & Strength. If you're willing to use a little Muon Gold to perk up your mind, you're almost unstoppable. You can spin all the specials you want with VKs on and hardly ever see your HAMs move.

The buffs last about 2.5 hours or until you die. The Muon Gold lasts for 10 minutes with a 3 minute downer that makes you vulnerable. Make sure you turn on the time stamp feature of your combat window and keep track of how longyou've been on the drug.

The thing about playing MMORPGs is that character development and use is a nearly constant state of Darwinian conflict: adapt or die. For now, I suggest you make friends with a couple of master doctors who will supply you with high powered stims and buffs.

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Selwynn wrote:
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

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Selwynn,

Very good post (amazing how tone makes a diffrence huh? )

Anyway, good to hear you having fun and continuing to progress.

dB

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RicoUnderwood wrote:
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.

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i just tried it out tonight just to see how i would do. dune lizards and mountain worts are still no problem even without a box in balance and conditioning. a solo dragonet is a tougher fight though.

This thread has been a good read. Thank you all who posted and to you Sel.

I have not played my TKA for a while in frustration with the previous issues. I did pick up medic skils and it wasn't too bad to use with my CH, so why not use it here with my TKA as well. Now maybe I can retrain my Ranger as well and go back to being superscout, hide hunter boy

"I guess it doesn't bother me that ranged fighers investing skills strategically into a second line are more powerful than TKs who don't want to stragically invest points into another combat line."

Heh, are you slow? What "other line" does a ranged weapon specialist have to invest in to hunt successfully now? I can guarantee you it's not brawler, yet brawler's must take a ranged weapon as well? I think we're clearly talking about different content here, and what is red to you now is much different to what is red to me still.