Teras Kasi Archive
Thread: Frustrated with TKA.. Advice requested
Well,
I know how you feel, been there. I'm currently 2 skills away from achieving TKM. It's been a LOOOONG road to get where I am. I only have the up most respect for those who have already made it to TKM.My advise;
Make sure your Knucks are up to par. Good damage, and atleast 2.2 speed.
Have one good set of armor and a personal shield, make sure you take the armor off when not fighting.
You will notice the road does get easier, as you get further along. I've been a solo TK since day one. I occasionaly group. But very rarely. You may want to drop some of your other skills and grab the popular CH. Since the pets can then take the damage for you. Allowing you to nail whatever you like. Also, you may want to group on some more difficult planets. Maybe Dantooine to start out. Hurrton Stalkers give atleast 2-3k per stalker.
Good luck
I find its relativly easy...
Wear armor, use kd + intimidate, and you should be able to take yellow cons without help. For red cons you may need pets or stimpacks, but you should atleast be taking yellows solo. You can easilly kill creatures for 1k-2k exp like this.
If you want to go incredibly fast, get some minor ch skills, have a pet tank redcons on advanced planets.(not insane redcons, just the minor ones, like baz nitches etc. This should get you 3k-4k exp per kill.
once you get some defenses you will take a considerble amount of damage reduction. i'm 0/4/4/3 and i barely take any damage from a giant baz nitch which is stunned intim and blind. i get hit for maybe 21-50 dam per hit, and he misses over 1/2 the time. i dont wear armor. but i am also a CH which helps because i have 9k tanks.
if you want to get good xp, get a good pet tank, or just learn to grind out lame xp mobs. yesterday i grinded for about 2 hours and got 275k unarmed xp and moved up to master balance which was really worth it.
Krayts really aren't the right things to be hunting with any melee class, at least ones below master level. They are not good exp for their difficulty and time to kill, and death is very likely. I tend to make unarmed exp rather quickly actually. The trick lies in a few simple ideas:
1) Buff -- Always buff yourself before a fight. Find a master doctor, preferably, and pay him the 3-5k for a 2-3 hour buff. Once buffed your HAM costs even with armor and knuckler are minimal. To take care of mind use, use muon gold now and then. This spice boosts mind 500/500/500 for 10 minutes. Doc buffs + spice + food mean huge ham and low ham costs. This makes it very easy to do large amounts of damage with specials and thus get large amounts of exp while grouped.
2) Wear armor -- Sure wookies can't and if you are one that's a shame. The point is, with doc buffs armor becomes much less encumbering. The HAM costs associated with it virtually disappear. The extra protection combined with buffs makes you very hard to kill by all but the most elite creatures and NPCs.
3) Hunt in small groups -- Don't go after big game in large groups. The time to kill big game makes the creatures worthless as far as exp gathering goes. You want small groups and medium to medium-largegame. Large groups with medium game doesn't work either. With 20 people shooting a medium sized creature you just wont have time to get to it and deal out much damage before it drops. With a small group you should be getting between 2-4k per kill. Also, make sure to kill the lairs, if you do enough damage on a creature lair, you should get about 4k.
4) DEBUFF! -- Too often players overlook the advantages of intimidate, blind, and stun. These really do make a difference! If the creature does less damage to you, you dont need healing as often, and you can do more fights without resting thereby getting more exp. Use debuffs for most fights even if it means trying to debuff several times.
5) Watch your MIND pool -- I see more TKAs mind incapped than any other profession. Why? because unlike a rifleman who sits in the backfield sniping until he runs out of mind and then simply waits and autofires, a TKA is in the fray and low mind spells certain death. One lucky hit from a creature and your gone. Temper your specials like unarmed hit with the more mind-friendly berserk. If you get to 50% stop spamming specials and start using berserk. There is nothing that will slow down exp gathering more than cloning!
In the end your goal for exp is to be a specials spamming, high HAM, well armored tank, that is in a small group that does less damage per second than you. All of that equates to very efficient exp gathering and actually is quite fun. I am always very happy in groups like this and can go for hours without getting bored.
Good luck!
I hear you. But as a Master Ranger / Teras Kasi Master, I don't think it is fair to compare obtaining mastery in a non-combat profession like Ranger to a combat profession like TK. TK is like the old school magic user. It is brutally hard at first and becomes much easier as you go - Ranger is like the thief as it is easy to progess and progessively more uselsss.
My tactics: I've always used intimidate. Early on I used warcry, berzerk, and the best unarmed hit I could. I looked for clothes and skill attachments to augment these skills where I could. As I moved up the precision line I added the specials from there as needed. When I got KD I started using it with dizzy on humanoids (before the 30 sec timer). I also used blind as soon as I got it. I use spice and buffs as much as possible. However, I got master without the benefit of armor or pets. The importance of all of these specials cannot be overstated.
Getting a group of 5 to Endor and just grabbing missions is perhaps the most rewarding way to play in terms of both XP and cash - it goes quickly too with all the chatter. Or since you're a ranger, go to dantooine and do Piket missions to get their hide and meat. Forget the Krayts - as a Ranger/TKA all you do is point them out to people and watch the fight. Trying to level solo is much much harder until late in the profession when you can start soloing mobs like baz nitches and giant baz nitches without much trouble. Then you start racking up the experience. I hate to think how much quicker it would have gone if I actually used armor and pets. 
Sleestack wrote:
I stared out a brawler in BETA because I knew it would be more of an elite class as I assumed a huge majority or players would go the way of ranged weapons, which turned out to be true. I started an unarmed char the day the game went public and was proud that I chose a profession that was tougher to achieve than most.
At this point, several months later, I have four, yes four boxes filled in TKA (0/2/1/1). No, I have not beenexclusively working on this skill, as I am a novice weaponsmith and close to master Ranger, but have been working on TKS the entire time. I have almost made Master Ranger (AND Master Scout) from no skill, in the time it has taken me to get just those 4 boxes in TKA. That seems just a little out of balance to me.
I cannot group because groups tend to go for large mobs, such as Krayts, and I either get no xp or get incapped from one or 2 hits. No fun. Even hunting lower level mobs it seems like I am lying on my back half the time, and am the only one constantly getting incapped (assuming no other brawlers present). Last week I went out with a group, we hunted and killed 5 krayts, I was incapped on each one, and averaged 600 xp points for each one. 600??!! I can solo mobs for 1.5-2K on my own. I was to assume a TKA is not meant for groups, even though we are considered tanks.
On fighting, I have tried every combo available to me (KD, stun, blind, hits, etc.) and tried many suggestions from this forum. I can not find anything CLOSE to just spamming zerk, and find all the other special moves worthless, except for in dueling and PvP. (Don't do much PvP for obvious reasons either.)
I have a friend who just started SWG a few weeks ago and will hit Master Pistoleer very soon, WAY before I will even come close to TKM. I can't even describe how frustrating this is. No, I am not a hardcore grinder and only average 2-3 hours a night playtime, so I don't expect miricles, but come on!! I really don't see how people have even made TKM without spending all day every day just grinding, and that sucks. Hell, it was easier to grind through higher levels in DAoC, than these low levels in TKA.
Anyone else run into this frustration, or am I doing something wrong here? I really don't want to throw away my TKA, but living as a full-time solo'er is no fun either. The way it is going, I can see it taking another 4 months to get to TKM, and that just does not seem right.
Umm...Me and my buddy have been doing our training on Lok and Endor and so far I'm 0343 in the boxes. In 10 days ! Maybe you should try some new huntinggrounds ?
Well, i personally have not seen anything of the slow grinding aspect of TKA skill tree. Maybe that is because my RL buddy has been going for BH and Polearm... he has had it pretty slow. In comparison im basically zipping up in skills non stop 
I have never had any trouble, and with the recent damage upgrades its even better. Now that i have mastered Power i seldome use Vibros and it works great. Im going for Advanced Balance and then max Meditate, and precision as i go. I am currently getting some Commando to have something more to play around with, if i hadnt gone that route i would have taken master brawler.
I understand how it can get frustrating, but i have been fortunate and have had no trouble... it will only get better =) As i have been grinding to get Novice Commando i have been incappedand killed more than i have during my whole TKA/Unarmed carreer 
hehe. Im simply not used to the style of ranged combat, i'll learn in time i guess.
As for soloing, red yellow white, its all about what creature it is, or rather how much ham it has some reds go down in a flash, and some whites die real hard. Most times though, its about the ham. Or lack thereof as it is...
Anyway, the future for TKA looks bright, stick with it.
/Noz
"OK, I am about ready to give up TKA and I really don't want to..."
Man do I know how that feels. I spent alot of time mastering TK and have to say that it is the coolest profession that I have played in this game and I have played a few...
Teras Kasi, Creature Handler, Commando,Combat Medic, Doctor, Weaponsmith, Entertainer, Architect, and Chef (I have 3 accounts)
I got so tired of the 'fixes' and gave up every ounce of TK I had a month ago.....and I am much happier for doing so.
Yet, I am still drawn to these boards to read what other new masters have to say on the matter because deep down I am still TK
valkari, i dont know why you quoted me on that....it makes no sence. you get the wrong one? i dont hunt with groups, ive been goin solo the whole time. and if you read it, ive leveled faster solo then i do in a group.
side note. i read this yesterday, then went out and tried some tips. all i gotta say is that one guy is right.....Talus is a very good place to hunt at. creatures can be takin down in mearly 10 secs and cough up anywhere from 1.3-2K a pop or even more. and they are everywhere. nice. missions pay well too.
Two words of advice;
"Fort Tusken"
In my travels, there is no place better for melee to lvl.