Teras Kasi Archive
Thread: Top issues of the week. Need everyones input.
TKA Issues:
1) Special move HAM costs, including knockdown. Especially knockdown.
2) Inability to hit larger creatures as they adjust themselves to 9m away (hit-box issue).
3) Inability to attack while moving faster than walking speed.
4) Defense not working, and not enough of it.
5) Now that the KD nerf is in effect, even Master TKA's are forced to resort to brawler abilities to be viable. Our skills need an overhaul in the worst way. Besides the obvious knockdown nerf adjustment, the attacks we get in the Precision brance do almost as much damage to our HAM bars as they do to the target.
6) For some reason, even though TKA's have an increaseddamage modifier, my /unarmedHit3 is doing less damage than it was before the patch. This needs to be looked at, since it is the was the other move I used besides knockdown.
Knockdown Nerf
No kidding. It is a joke that knockdown does more damage to us then to our target. Knockdown is a skill for an elite class, and most ranged classes have some kind of knockdown move. Obviously, our knockdown should have the lowest HAM cost, because we fight unarmed. I think that our success rate should be the 2nd highest, with pikeman having the highest success rate (try to dodge a swinging sweeping staff). The HAM penalties of knockdown are a joke. The designers saw that we had a useful skill, that the rest of our class was underpowered or not functional, and decided that we were somehow too good? This needs to be addressed, and if it is not, many players will be taking their money elsewhere.
Are defensive skills working?
They are not working. I never dodge anything. Lunge always works on me. I have no defense against anytihng, even if the numbers say I do. Things that con light blue to me can force me to kneel? This is totally bugged. Although, commando is totally bugged also, and instead of fixing the class, Q-3PO just said "it's supposed to be like that." We should watch out, because maybe we are supposed to be worthless.
We also need defensive special moves, like throws, chokes, locks,and counter attacks.
/stick command
This would be very nice. If not a stick command, then we should run faster. No matter what, we need to be able to hit while running. What about a ranged attack move, like a jump kick or uppercut or dive attack? These would all be excellent additions to the class (assuming they worked, and did not doo more damage to us then our target). Ranged users should not be able to use specials moves while moving. I barely understand how they can have shots that do knockdown, but being able to knock me down, with your back turned, while moving away from me, that is just unrealistic and imbalanced.
Another problem: when I use lunge/knockdown almost always the target drops to the ground then slides away from me IN A LOWER STANCE. I know I can't move when I am kneeling/prone, so why do my targest fly away? This is a terrible bug.
Another problem: when I go prone, I warp.
Meditation branch
Meditation
- Specials
- Knockdown Nerf
What's Wrong - Aside from the "fix" being completely lazy, nothing. My PA has a member who is both a master TKA and a master Pistoleer, so she brings a unique perspective to the balance issues, as she can compare them firsthand on the same character. According to her tests (all day yesterday), while Pistol Whip costs 50% as much as Unarmed Knockdown 1/2, it fails to knock down four times as much, making it twice as inefficient in the long run. It also does significantly less damage than it did pre-patch. Just because it costs less does not make it a better move.
How to fix it - having a special attack do so much damage to the player is insulting, regardless of how much it's worth. I've always hated the fact that I injure myself with specials, and this one is about the worst. Reducing the HAM costs on VK's would go a long way towards helping this for TKA's, but really, there needs to be an alternate solution. If the problem is that players are spamming knockdown, then simply introduce a time limit before the player can use knockdown again. Increasing HAM costs is a silly, "bad dog" solution. - Defensive Skills
What defensive skills? Unless you're talking about defensive skill mods, in which case the only one I can confirm to work is unarmed toughness. There's really no way to confirm that the rest work without mountains of data. - /stick command
No breakdown is needed here: just put in a /stick command that keeps the melee player close to his opponent and ignores latency. This should not require the player to already be in melee range to be useful: once the player initiates /stick, his character should single-mindedly approach his opponent to close the distance until the /stick effect is terminated. - Meditation Branch
Don't have any meditation skills yet, so I can't really comment. It does seem like a dull branch, though, and it doesn't really make sense to have it require unarmed XP. - Specials
What's Wrong - TKA skills are pretty boring. While I love watching unarmed combat, the specials themselves lack variety. For the most part, they are just different ways of applying damage, which the exception of knockdown and dizzy. All of the status ailment skills are in the brawler tree. Neither brawler nor TKA have any sort of bleed attack (to my knowledge).
How to fix it - Get creative.
My previous suggestions have included defensive maneuvers, special counterattacks, self buffs (other than Power Boost, which apparently is useless), etc. TKA needs more flavor.
It would be really nice to see PC's able to tank as well as CH pets. Could we get it so TKA's become more tank like? I know you already told them this, but SOE seems to need to be told things a few times to get the message.
Thanks,
Alchemy
1. SPECIAL DAMAGE WAS DECREASED, NOT INCREASED!! ALTHOUGH THE COSTS WERE INCREASED! FIX THIS NOW!
2.Knockdown costs should STAY WHERE THEY WERE!! THEY WERE THE SAME BEFORE AS CARBINE IS NOW; LEAVE OUR KNOCKDOWN ALONE!one!!!!!!!1!!!!!one!!!!1!!!one!!!!!1!!!one!1!!
3. MAKE POWER BURST WORK LIKE IT SOUNDS IN THE DESCRIPTION!!! seriously; we get HA wounds healed in exchange for 400 mind wounds? thats pathetic; how about making it work like berserk USED TO (double damage) for more time since it gives us WOUNDS!
4. Meditation XP; -_- nuff said
5. MAKE LUNGE WORK! Change it if you have to, make it reduce a player to a knee; then cap them to walking speed for 5 seconds or so.
1. Knockdown Nerf
2. Are defensive skills working?
3. /stick command
4. Meditation branch
5. Specials
1. HAM needs to be reduced, no questio about it. I went from 33 to 195 for unequiped VK knockdown which is comparable to what I see most people posting and that's a 600% increase. Knockdown was one of the best Teras Kasi specials we had. It allowed us to help groups take on the harder mobs and was the ONLY way a TKA had a chance to participate in endgame type battles with Dark Jedi, Nightsisters, Rancors, Grauls, and other one hit wonder type mobs. It was also a great boon to any TKA fighting in a group who was suddenly swarmed by multiple enemies because it game us a measure of crowd control. We could keep the enemies busy by taking the aggro without being mauled. If our defenses aren't going to be worth anything then we definitely need knockdown back to the old effectivenes because it was the only thing saving us from the heaviest hitting creatures.
2. Defensive skills are still not working. I mastered balance yesterday and was involved in some testing with friends and was involved in a few large PvP battles. 2H Lunge 2 dropped me every time it was attampted by a swordsman friend of mine. I was knocked down every time by Pistolwhip, which still does more damage than Unarmed Knockdown 2 or Unarmed Knockdown 1 and can still be spammed a lot more than the TKA knockdown. I was forced to kneeling by supression fire several times and knocked down by stopping shot several times. Defenses seem entirely usless in the balance tree. I do notice a difference between the damage I take in melee compared to my ranged friends, but it's not as much as it should be if melee classes are expected to fight any endgame creatures or NPCs. Unarmed toughness could use some tweaking to make us more useful in PvE. The resistances to blind, stun, dizzy, posture change to kneeling, and posture change to down seem not to work at all and need to be looked into.
3. /stick command is still a greatly desired thing since /follow does not keep us in range of our opponents. I would still like an apology from Q for his glib response:
If you can catch something, they’ll die, if not…It’s a trade off for the power of close range.
There is no way for us to catch anything that runs at the same speed as us. Last night I participated in some PvP and just for kicks thought I would use my personal TEF (that I was given because I was kited to death, incidentally) to initiate combat from point blank range. My first attack was a knockdown, my target stood up and started running almost right away and began spamming stopping shot which killed me. I really hope Q will adress his response to us because what he said makes no point. We make a tradeoff for being powerful at close range, except we don't seem to get anything in exchange. We're not more powerful at close range than most classes are at range so I fail to see his point. Perhaps if we had a 1500 damage attack with a chance of knockdown we would be powerful at close range, but I don't think that would bring any more balance.
4. While I think having a seperate branch for meditation is a novel idea, I don't agree with most of you on this point but please hear me out. By the time I make master meditation I will still have combat experience to eanr for master precision. I think this was done by the devs on purpose to prevent TKAs from gaining their last three skillboxes all at the same time, which makes sense to me. If meditation were on a seperate experience counter we would have a long wait between mastering meditation and mastering precision. If they perhaps tweaked the combat experience necessary for master precision I could see this being more viable. I understand people's arguements that how is fighting going to make us better at meditation, well if anyone looks into T'ai Chi Chuan you'll find a similarity there. T'ai Chi Chuan is basically meditation in motion with the attention fixed on every small movement and the flow from one position to another without static stops, relaxing the mind and harnessing the flow of Chi, so maybe you can think of it that way. I think meditate could made more useful if it actually improved the rate at which we heal instead of just allowing us to heal wounds when we get to master. The two specials in the meditation branch are semi-useless from what I hear as well. Power boost is nowehere near useful considering you have to be meditating to initiate it and is finished being useful almost by the time you stand up. Force of Will might be a little more useful if it didn't have to be used instantly because some mobs will instantly deathblow you. Maybe moving Force of Will into Meditation I and giving it a very low chance to succeed but allowing it to be tried once after incap and after DB would be acceptable. Then as a TKA progresses up the tree of meditation the chance for it to succeed will increase. This will make it so that you don't have to have twitch reflexes to make it useful in fights with one hit kill mobs (this is an MMORPG and not an FPS twitch-fest is it not?).
5. Specials seem to cost more than they are worth still. I didn't have a chance to test it yesterday but I will make sure to check Unarmed Combo 1 tonight. Before the patch I had Unarmed Combo 1 hitting for 1 damage compared to close to 200 HAM cost. I haven't tested the effectiveness of Warcry, Stun, and Blind. I was using dizzy on PCs last night and it wasn't doing what dizzy does to me I.E. keeping me flat on my back unable to stand up because I get the message 'you are too dizzy to stand up'. I still would like to see the specials in meditate tree fixed so they are more useful. HAM costs do not need to come down enough that we can just chain a bunch of combos together, but we really do need to be doing damage that's comparable to the HAM costs of ranged characters compared to their HAM costs or more if we're sacrificing range for up close power as Q suggested.
Besides that I think a lot of people have some very good ideas. I would like to see an increase in our damage with and without VKs because as Q3P0 said "It's a trade of for the power of close range," well, I want that power of close range. If we're supposed to be able to kill it if we catch it and they're not going to make it reasonably possible to catch them then I think we deserve to be more powerful at close range than ranged users are AT range. The way it stands now we do comparable damage when you factor in our speed, but this is only comparing our normal attacks to ranged classes normal attacks. The Problem comes when you try comparing our specials to theirs in which case we fall behind a lot, especially when our HAM costs come into play. If we're supposed to be making a trade of close up power for range then give us our close up power.
Thunderwolf, I think you're doing a great job for us. If I may make one suggestion: go into as much detail as you can when describing the kiting issues and need for a /stick command to the Devs. We really need you to please include as many ideas and suggestions as we provide (well, the ones that make any sense, at least). We're counting on you to make the Devs see our problems for our perspective. If you can get Q to provide us a better answer on the kiting isse that would be great because he did not explain himself, nor did even adress our actual concern...but when asked about Pistoleers he thinks dual wielding is a good idea...super.
Help us Thunderwolf-kenobi, you are our only hope.
Hi all. Quick post.
Is there a particular reason that "being able to attack while moving" is not in the top 5?
Oscu
1) Why is our KD cost so high. It's just silly to have ours cost more than pistoleers, and as much as many of the ranged KDs in the game
2) Where are the promised damage increases? We're all doing the same damage now as we always did.
3) We need more range
4) Is power boost working as intended?
5) Why do we have skills like combo that spread our damage out. These are useless. Please replace them with something that adds to our characters.
Dont have but 5 minutes till I am off.. so I am doing this....
1. KD nerf. This is the worst one! It costs WAY too much HAM to do a knockdown move, period! We don't have 4k + HAM bars like everything we fight at the master level. As a Master of the art, I can't do 5 knockdowns over the period of a fight and have any action or mind bar left to anything but stand there and let the game run itself. Obviously on the white cons we masters face it can take 3 or 4 KD's to actually KD the opponent, that leaves me with about 1/3 on all my HAM's (4 KD's) and I just leveled the opponent. 1-2 seconds later they are back up with still 3/4's of their HAM's (1/2 if whimpy whites) and it's all over when they recover because I can pull one more special move and then get that awesome message 'You do not have enough pool points to do this action!' Woot!!
How to fix it? Was it broke in the first place???? Obviously the best thig to do is lower the HAM cost!! PERIOD! An alternate option is puting a timer on the KD move, with the time between moves being reduced as you progress up the balance and condition branch on into master TKA. This however is rediculous as it makes no sense whatsoever. Basically, lower the HAM costs back down or your making the TKA a JOKE!
2. Defense skills. We have those? LOL Better up the numbers on them because I have never seen my master use any defense skills. I think TKA's would have much higher defense skills, like block, dodge, defenses vs. KD, posture change etc. But dodge and block moves should be much higher, thus taking away a bit of the need for the KD move to be used. We basically get hit ALL THE TIME in melee, pretty lame.
Sorry, I kind of gave my answer to the problem in the first part. Get us block and dodge ability and points!! Lots of em until we at least see some effect from them. As it is we must just sit there and take the blows because we sure as heck don't dodge or block anything. I can fight a green con and if they get the first swing, they hit me!!!
3. /stick command ???? I'll pass since I didn't realize we had a stick command Is this somethig like a follow command?
4. Meditation branch. I see nothing wrong with the meditation branch, except maybe we should advance with meditation exp, not unarmed exp. Other than that, meditation works very well!
5. Specials. Some of the specials are neat, like the multi target moves and obviously KD's (before the patch!) Unarmed hit3 is pretty cool too, or was. I never use Warcry! If it works the HAM cost is not worth the 3 second delay you get. Berserk I only use when I want to finish off someone who is about 1/4 health, usually after a KD is landed. Never use it anymore now, +75 pts, lol!!! Plus the obvious KD nerf being the worst!!! All the other moves like body attacks, head and body, etc are meaningless because they don't do enough extra damage to really make much sense in taking your own HAM away. They are great to show off, but that is it.
Ok you want input you got it,
The KD nerf is rediculous as I posted earlier it was our saving grace the item that made us useful, now a group won't touch us. They complain about KD spam fine put a timer on it, the cost before the nerf was fine. Give it a 10 second timer, if you are smart like a lot of us you already realize KD spamming is not necessary to fight, simply wait about 6-8 hits and hit KD again, but with the current application of 730 dmg to my ham for using KD with my knuckler (and no I shouldn't have to take it off to use my specials effectively) I die in a matter of moments to more than one blue or a single white. If this is part of their vision to make it take several thousand con blue kills to try to raise a level then good for them but that is not what those of us that casually play are looking forward to. Simply put the supposedly feared Teras Kasi Artist is now a complete waste of time because the move that makes us dangerous is not useable.
Defensive skills, we have NONE, we are supposedly at high levels able to evade blaster fire to quickly drop our opponent to the ground, THAT IS UTTER NONSENSE. Not only have I not once managed to dodge a blaster bolt I die faster to a ranged opponent than a melee. Now THAT IS BALANCE before patch yes I could solo some things that were admittedly too high, but why shouldn't I win a one on one fight against a mob that put his or her gun away and pulled out a knife when TK is supposed to be good at a melee fight? I still got incapped pretty easy against multiple mobs regardless of the color con. The fact is the only thing that unbalanced us before was we couldn't catch our ranged opponents which was pretty bad for us and the tradeoff was we could keep them down IF we could knock them down and now we can not even use our KD which was our DEFENSE and the ranged enemy can STILL just run and shoot us to death.
We don't need a /stick command what we need it to be able to punch while moving, the ranged can shoot while moving why can't we punch while moving?
The meditation branch is fairly useless except for stopping poisons and disease, the Power Boost ability is a joke, I take over 130 Mind wounds for a 30 seconds stat boost which does me no good then go sit in a cantina for a while. I have not gotten to Meditation 4 so I can not comment on the use of Force of Will. Give the power boost a useful long lasting ability for the damage it does to us or get rid of it, the cost on the mind wounds is far too great to find any use for it.
Our specials didn't need to do more damage, our specials needed to be left alone. KD was the most useful of our specials and with it useless to us now the other specials do not replace it, and as some are saying use lunge and dizzy, ok but I DID NOT become a TKA to use brawler specials because they nerfed the specials that TKA were given. The unarmed body/arm/head hits are useful mainly for finishing things off, the Combos look good but they are pretty useless overall and once again we end up back at KD because it was our useful special, I could care less if it only did a small amount of damage, it allowed us to fight effectively in most situations and gave us a fighting chance against the run and gun ranged folks who tore us apart bad again and again and now have no trouble with us at all. You want a useful suggestion for our specials, here ya go, give us back the one that is useful, and up the damage potential on the others, and when I say that I mean give us our KD back the way it should be WITH A TIMER ON IT and give our other special attacks a chance to do larger damage.
A comment made by one of the Devs was along the lines of if we could catch our opponent they die, funny thing is with our current situation not only can we not catch them because we never could, if we by some dumb luck blind side them and catch them we can not knock them down to the ground to beat them they run and we die.
1. Knockdown Nerf
problem: Costs far too much to be of any use, ever
solution: Lower the cost, just make it unstackable...give already knocked down things a huge resistsance to the skill
2. Are defensive skills working?
haven't tested, cant comment, I do however take quite a bit less melee damage than most
3. /stick command
need it to be viable in pvp, simple as that, also need to be able to attack while following someone with it
4. Meditation branch
problem: This tree is pretty much useless until master
solution: Kill two birds with one stone...some of us dont like being forced to use VKs, why not add a +1 armor piercing (while bare fisted) mod to two boxes in the meditation tree?
5. Specials
specials are great at lower levels, by the time you hit master though, most are useless...blind, stun, dizzy etc are pretty much ineffective on even cons and above for me at master level
re-nerf I used knockdown 2 and unarmed hit 3....now one kills me whenI use it and the other does less damage....all specials need to be looked at....
the body/leg/head attacks don't do enough damage to justify thier ham cost
the status attacks (blind, stun etc) seem to have little to no effect on most things at higher levels
the combo attacks I dont really see the purpose of, in what situation are we supposed to use them? focused damage has a clear purpose, not spread out...something with 0 health and 10000 action is just as dead as something with 0 health and 100 action
Tehax - Teras Kasi Master - Tarquinas
/sign
I have to say the Dev really out done themselves this time. They have single handedly ruined our class. We are absolutely worthless. Teras Kasi have the titale Monk at one point. Arent Monks on a pilgrimage usually alone finding answers to life's dilemmas?
I personally like to be solo and self-sufficient. This blatant disreguard for the whole idea of what our character is to be about, is completely unacceptible and i hope they see their wrongs and fix them soon.
Many have posted a quote from the SWG Guidebook that says it quite frankly how our characters were before the patch. Now if they are to leave it they need to reprint the Guidebook saying more like:
Teras Kasi Class is the most unliked underappreciated POS class to pick. Do not pick this class unless you want to be as usless as a 3rd Nut. Note: Dev believe that they would like to do away with melee all together so what the hay nerf them to hell.
1. Put KD the way it was before. No delay, just striaght -140. And lower it as we get higher lvl. Why does pistolwhip cost less then us now? Dont they have an advantage already? called "RANGE" give me a break.
2. If we cant hit things at a distance have the coding check if there are obsticles in the way (ie...mountans, hill buildings etc.) so MOBS cant shoot us through them.
3. Give us an inheirent speed to Burst Run and regular running. Seeing we are supposed to be the fastest. "close in quickly"
4. Does meditation even work?
5. If we cant use armor then we should have the advantage or better dmg and speed. (Armor inhibits us from healing normally, slows it drasticly). Just makes since...we have no armor we should be conpensated with speed and dmg. Unlike other classes that can use armor, can fight from a distance, can use specials skills with low costs. Go figure, maybe im missing something?
6. DMG 1/2'd. What's with this. Really no point. Leave it alone.
7. Do damg while running. Hell range users can why cant we? You mean to tell me a pistol user can eyeshot while running and we cant trip/knockdown a running opponent?
8. HAM costs across the board need to be reduced. Why do we do more dmg to ourselves then sitting there and take it up the you know what from a kimogila?
9. Beserk, where did you get the number +75? okwe deserve to be doing dbl dmg because we are getting hit on from the creature twice as fast also. They cancel each other out. Put back the way it was.
Okay, enough ranting. Point is that we as a whole would like to ask for your help Devs to help us be who the game wanted us to be.
Quote:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Facing an opponent armed with ranged weapons, high-level abilities enable his or her to evade blaster fire and close in quickly, bringing his or her enemy swiftly to the ground."
"Teras Kasi are leathal, nearly impossible to knock down or unbalance"
-Page 267, SWG Strategy Guild