Teras Kasi Archive
Thread: What do you want TKAs to be?
Ok... huge amount of info there to sort through. I'm going to take a stab at summarizing the general feeling I'm getting from these posts.
Also, I want to make sure everyone understands the scope of the upcoming rebalance. It's not that they're going to be making a couple of tweaks here and there. They're going to be rebuilding the system from the ground up. They're rebalancing everything; professions, weapons, PvP, PvE... everything. We have a great opportunity to make ourselves into whatever we want, but staying where we are isn't really an option, because "where we are" is relative to other professions and Mobs, which are all changing in ways we cannot predict.
In terms of the "elite elite" TKA profession request, I don't think we're going to see that any time real soon. Essentially adding a new profession would be an enormous amout of work for the developers, and I can't see it getting on their priority list until the current professions are all working. I believe it will be most beneficial for us to try to balance our profession using the curent number of skill points, and provide elite-elite input in the future when there is a genuine opportunity to have it created.
Ok, from what I've gathered:
Offense
We want to be target manipulation specialists. We give up the raw damage potential of weaponry in exchange for the ability to do all sorts of other things to our opponents. We'd like to be the debuff masters, state change specialists. Instead of bashing our foes over the head with a hammer, we dismantle our enemies with a series of blistering attacks, leaving them unable to defend themselves.
We'd do our damage directly, leaving the bleeds to the weapon-users.
We'd do our damage one-on-one, meaning that AoE (Spin) attacks are expendable if the tradeoff is worth it.
We'd do our damage to humanoid targets. Our limitation to kinetic damage and AP1Teras Kasi was designed to be used against humanoid targets - our damage is limited to kinetic (quite effective against humanoids), and we have low AP, being able to pierce personal armor, but not higher level armors.
Defense
We seem to want to be more elusive rather than tough. We'd get our defense from dodge/evade and debuffing opponents rather than from having a higher "toughness" value.
We'd like a bonus to our defenses when not wearing armor. Perhaps a boost to dodge/evade while unarmored would be appropriate.
In summary, compared to other melee professions we'd have
- Fastest attack speed
- Lowest damage per hit
- Below average rawDPS
- Highest accuracy
- Most debuffs/state changes (that actually stick)
- Highest resists to debuffs/state changes
- Defense through evasion/debuffs rather than toughness
As usual, I'm counting on you guys to keep me on track here.
Mister_Heavy wrote:
In summary, compared to other melee professions we'd have
- Fastest attack speed
- Lowest damage per hit
- Below average rawDPS
- Highest accuracy
- Most debuffs/state changes (that actually stick)
- Highest resists to debuffs/state changes
- Defense through evasion/debuffs rather than toughness
I agree for the most part but I'm wondering how they will impliment debuffs that actually stick. I think that seems to be what TKA as you describe it would rely heavily upon. If our debuffs can't stick then we'd be useless essentially. Aside from that though you sum up my opinion of where the class should be heading pretty well.
PermaSt0ne wrote:
i see the purpose of this post but i do think it has low usefullness. Most of the TKA's think that their proffesion is just fine because they have no beef with it. They basicaly kill everything at TKM so mostly all you will get is " i think our perfesion is fine". You should be asking the other classes what they think TKA's should be because ours isn't as efficient as theirs, not as "balanced" as theirs, and we can see the huge diffrence between our class (swordsman, pikeman, fencers) and the TKA. Before you start flamin ask yourselfes, what do you see when you look at our classes? untill recentaly with the CoB for fencers who turn in to god for 30 seconds
TKA could beat us all down in a second and they mostly still can. SO honestly you guys can't see that you are overpowerd compared to other classes? i put "compared to" in bold because you guys arn't overpowerd in the game, you guys are in the right spot but the other melee proffesions are below you (way below you in the pikeman area) and we need some lovin from our devs *hint* *hint* Like Mr. Heavy said, we all should be at the same level.
Oh, and to the TKA's that say "we should be tanks", well if you guys are tanks then what the heck are the swordsmen and pikeman supposed to be eh? ALL brawler proffesions are supposed to be tanks just with diffrent weaknesses, strengths, and specialties. But in the end we all are on the front lines takin all the damage.
This is not a flame, so don't tiss. Why do we think we're tanks? The developers made TKA specifically for that purpose. Why aren't all the other brawler professions up to par? I don't know, but I do think they should be given more love than they have in the past. I do know that TKA will always be my base profession. After I get tired of Ranger, I'm going to master brawler and fencer.
Heavy, i agree almost entirely with your summary. Only thing i disagree with is your speed. You guys should be very fast. But fencers should be faster. ANd this is obviously the tought of at least SOME of the DEVs. In a previous post, when on eof them(i forget wich)( talked about how he invisioned the melee proffesions he said that Fencer should have something closer to a 0.5 speed cap and Pikeman should cap at about 3.0. I assume that TKA would remain at 1.0 and swordsman would fall some where in between. Would that be acceptable to you?
I feel that the TKA is the hardest class to sum up in few words, but the other three have obvious strengths.
Fencer-Speed
Sword-Damage
Pikeman-Defense
TKA-fill in the blank
thats all i have to say about that.....but one last thing....
How would you guys feel about some kind of "Armor Break" move? I got the idea from Final Fantasy, but i think it would cross over well and suit your class. Maybe you can get a move that basicaly removes or reduces Armor ratings when affected by kinetic damage? Or maybe some new kind of damage unigue to the VK so that it cannot be taken by other classes who armour break and then just switch to a higher damaging weapon. Or even better makeit so you can, so that classes can be mixed and matched better...but still kinetic damage.
Maybe it could last for about 5-50 seconds depending on your proffeciancy......mmm...i like that.....
ok... after a lot of thought I have figured out the answer to what really is a _good question_ (ty MrH)...
I would like TKA to be the class of the creative fighter.
Look... I dont care who you are, if you swap blows with a guy that has a gun, sword, vibrating axe or what-ever you will lose. I would like to be given all kinds of cool little special moves that I as a smart player can utilize to win the match. SWG has already done some of this...
For Example: All the Precision Striking moves...
I was in a fight one day with a Twi Carboneer fully buffed in 68% composite armor. Except he was a bit proud of his headress. I was un-buffed with no armor. I used WarCry2 to give me time to close the distance between us then Lunge 2 to put him on his back. 3 seconds worth of head hit was all it took to send MrUberDude to the cloning facility and inflate my ego 300% 
I would love to see more moves like-
Disarm - put enemies weapon back into their inventory
Remove Armor - Puts a random piece of armor back into target's inventory.
These are just a couple of not-so-well-thought-out ideas but you see where I am going. I fought a TKM that was fully buffed with padded armor while I had no armor and no buffs. I won. I want more tools to help me seporate good template from good player. I think the devs have a good start on this... let's keep up the good work
Basicly as I see it.
TKA: Speed
Fencers: Defense, Status Effects
Swordmen: Very High Damage
Pikemen: Slow speed, High Damage, Good Defense
Not to nerf TKA at all, the other professions need to be fixed. Fencers were the first, maybe they'll do Pikemen next...Doubt it...
vexingthought wrote:
I agree for the most part but I'm wondering how they will impliment debuffs that actually stick. I think that seems to be what TKA as you describe it would rely heavily upon. If our debuffs can't stick then we'd be useless essentially. Aside from that though you sum up my opinion of where the class should be heading pretty well.
Well, you can get items like +15 to warcry and intimidate. I figure they could put things like +20 to dizzy, +20 to knockdown, +20 to blind, and those types of mods (not necessarily those levels,but those types) in our skill tree.
As to where TKAs should fall in terms of speed, I'll request whatever this community wants, but my personal reasoning for thinking that it shoudl be faster than the fencer is that the fencer weapons aren't really like the classic epee you see in fencing tournaments. I was actually a competitive fencer in college, and I agree that you can attack crazy fast with a nice, light epee. However, the fencer weapons are things like the gaffi stick and curved sword which are slashing weapons, and would be slower than bare handed strikes IMO.
to me this is very simple :
It's very simple and it even said so in the skill tree ,
"TKM is the most feared melee profession" , meaning that we may not be able to face a gun , but when we get close , target must have little chance.
Right on, Heavy, I too used to fence. I completly agree with the posts on this forum, but I thought I'd add a few things. This is more of a general brawler overview with an emphasis on TKA.
First, Fencer- Second fastest, low damage, really high dodge. Basically a nimble fighter that can win a sustained match.
Swordsman- Heavy hitter, like most have suggested. But I agree that having the most damaging class also target the mind pool is redundant/unbalanced. Fencer should target the mind, Swordsman health, Pikeman action like it does now. Swordsman should have good defense, good damage, useful for engaging single enemies.
Pikeman-Ahh yes, the Pikeman. I suggest (like a few others) that Pikeman be the ultimate brawler tank. Let the Pikeman get wailed on by all the enemies, while the other professions do the damage. Give the Pikeman some badass AoE attacks, like they have now, only make them more powerful. Let the Pikeman use huge sweeps that lower the posture of all the enemies, and give them huge block bonuses. Dont have them be the huge damage dealers alot of people want them to be, that will just make them too similar to the Swordsman. Even though I'm not a Pikeman, I have an affinity for the "underdog" classes, and I think Pikeman is a really great concept that could be invaluable in PvE and PvP.
Finally, the TKA- This is a new idea I would like to suggest. I'm sure someone else has suggested this before, but maybe just not in a concise way, or on an older post. My idea is this- Make TKA the debuffing masters everyone wants them to, with blinds, stuns, dizzies, kds, etc. But also give them a unique stance for each tree that affords them a different damage type. That would solve the entire dilema of TKA weapons. Get rid of VKs, they arent necessary and dont fit with the overall TKA style. The TKAs are semi-mystical, let them channel their energies into heat, cold,electricity, or maybe even a higher armor piercing kinetic attack. I really think this would work the best, based on what I've read from the players and my own experiences with the TKA and game design in general. I think TKA players want to feel like they're something a little more unique than a pistoleer, or swordsman, or medic. If they cant have the power of the Jedi killer, at least make them feel like they draw some of the same power the Jedi utilize.
I should address, however, the other ideas about TKA. I believe we should be the fastest, faster even than fencer. Maybe our damage should be less to compensate. What we have to do though, is figure out what the difference between us and a fencer is. If the fencer has lots of dodge because they wield such a light weapon, why dont we dodge even better becuase we have no weapons? I'll have to think about what can set us apart from the fencer, especially since all the HAM pools are already taken. Nobody wants to hit all the pools equally, but we cant be the masters of all pools.
Also, as far as equipment goes, I would suggest either making armor on a TKA too prohibitive or give them their own special armor (I know thats asking alot, but I think they need it). Either give them higher toughness bonuses to compensate, or make them more like fencer, with good dodge. Either way, armor just doesnt really fit with the TKA style. Can you really imagine a frail Bothan wearing a huge suit of various metals and ores deftly pulling off combos and performing swirling roundhouse kicks? If TKAs are going to wear armor, it should be a special type with some protections to counter our weak non-kinetic resists. In fact, maybe it could be a more mystical type armor (again trying to include that Jedi-killing ability everyone talks about without overpowering the profession) with no kinetic resists (having no real substance) but some moderate heat, acid, cold, electric, stun etc. resists.
These are just some ideas for the developers. If you guys are really dedicated to bringing up the quality of the game, I think we'd love some good changes like these. Of course, its not necessary to implement all these, or even any of these, but I think they would add a lot to our profession. Please get to it when you have time, and implement as much as you can with the upcoming patches. I hope all of you find these ideas to be creative and insightful, and can use your own creative minds to further flesh them out.
Best regards to all of you,
-Troupe
Trust me, weve tryed this with commando, no one cares.
BenZion wrote:
to me this is very simple :
It's very simple and it even said so in the skill tree ,
"TKM is the most feared melee profession" , meaning that we may not be able to face a gun , but when we get close , target must have little chance.
I will give my opinion on what I feel TKA's should excell in.
Attack speed - TKA, Fencer, Swordsman, Pikemen - decending order.
Toughness - TKA, Swordsman/Pikemen/Fencer (TKA should have more, the others have dodge, block, and counter)
Overall DPS - we should try to aim for even, with TKA doing the lowest Damage per hit, and pikemen the highest.
Mob debuffing - TKA, Fencer, Swordsman/Pikemen
Area attacks- Swordsman/Pikemen, Fencer, TKA
Accuracy - I think we should be about even. when the slow types miss, it hurts. alot.
Bleeds - TKA doesn't need bleeds. the others do.
Precision damage - The other profesions do mainly the precision based damage. TKA's should only dabble. like they do now. they use if for a last hit, not as a main damage source like the others do.
State defences: TKA's should have the highest defences against states, while the others should have about what they do now.