Teras Kasi Archive
Thread: Your Armor Questions Answered
Excellent post, while I knew alot of this stuff already, its a good post, and should be helpful to newbies 
A lot of people don't really understand how to effectively use armor or what kind of armor they really need, and since I've been in the Armor business since day 1 I thought I'd try to educate the community a little on what you need and how to use Armor to its full potential. I'm writing this as a former TKA with this character (dropped it to go Master Smuggler as well, unsliced armor is only half the job in my opinion) as well as a current TKA with my alt who is nearly Master. These same principles could be applied to help any melee character decide what armor is for them.
What kinds of armor are there?
Bone - Forget it. Good against Energy. Extremely situational armor. Those situations are so rare it's basically useless.
Mabari - Very light weight, can protect you against kinetic (slightly), and is very inexpensive, if it's the only thing you can afford, hey, it's better than nothing. By the time you're TKA Novice though you should be getting something else.
Chitin - Still light, although heavier than Mabari, good advanced Chitin can get into the 50s% kinetic resist, which is nice, but generally ubese is much better which I'll cover in a bit.
Tantel - only 3 pieces, especially good against energy, might be decent armor if it didn't get the "random vulnerability bug" where resists will just randomly turn into vulnerabilities when crossing a server line. Not useful for a TKA.
Ubese - Ahhhh a PvEing melee player's best friend. Well, it's your best friend against kinetic damage dealing mobs. It does protect you versus other elements slightly, but that 20% resist isn't helping you much when a nightsister shoots you for 4k damage. Ubese is amazing versus kinetic dealing mobs, typically advanced ubese with a kinetic layer has 70-80% kinetic resist. Note that it is ubese's special resist and *can not be sliced*.
Padded - Should be a tailor item. Looks good. Terrible armor. The enc vs. protection tradeoff is just not worth wearing it.
Composite - The heaviest armor, composite also protects you well from all damage types except for stun. Most characters can not equip a full suit of composite unsliced, unless they're a human with highly migrated substats. Most advanced composite is in the 50-60% base resist range, with slightly higher electrical resist, and stun vulnerability. The total enc of a suit is typically around 520/480/550. Too high to be useful. I routinely slice suits down under 400/350/400, and the last suit I did was 360/300/350. An encumberence sliced advanced composite suit is not cheap by any means, but it will protect you extremely well on high level faction missions, nightsister hunts, nym hunting, etc. Anytime you're fighting high level mobs that do a variety of damage types, you want to be able to macro that composite suit on. Ubese weighs less/costs less/protects you better versus kinetic only mobs, but will not hold up versus high level npcs.
RIS - Right now RIS suffers from the "random vulnerabilities" bug. When you cross a server line anywhere from none to all of your resists could change into vulnerabilities. Until this is fixed RIS's value is questionable at best. It's also incredibly expensive, requiring many very rare/expensive loot drops to construct, a critical failure on one piece could put you out 1-2 million credits easily. The cost of this armor vs. it's protection make it a pretty poor option.
PSGs - No encumberence at all. Low durability. These things don't last long but they will soak up damage during that time. You may want to have one on hand for pvp or if you think you're going to get killed by npcs or something, but they're meant or recommended for regular use.
To me every TKA needs a suit of advanced ubese with a kinetic layer. My 74% kinetic suit absorbs 87% of AP 0 kinetic damage. So my damage mitigation kicks in first, limiting the damage range, then unarmed toughness and melee defense protect me, then whatever's left? Only 13% of that gets through. Not too shabby. I always use my ubese when I'm fighting huutons, pickets, rancors, or whatever kinetic dealing mob I happen to be fighting. Unless I'm buffed I take my VKs off to do specials, VKs add way too much to special move costs in long fights against groups of tough mobs.
When you wear armor it reduces your 6 substats, 3 of which I call your special move substats. Now my composite and my ubese both reduce those stats by about 300/350 each. I have a crate of Breath of Heaven (Master Chef drink) which adds 450 to each of those stats. So I can put my armor on, drink a BoH, and my specials are costing less than when I had the armor off. I just negated all of the drawbacks of my armor with one drink. Think about the power of that. I'm only taking 13% of kinetic damage. It makes picket/huurton fighting trivial, and allows me to tank things like gnarled rancors no problem. Ofcourse if some nightsister rangers or something spawns next to our group I just hit my composite macro, one button press and I'm suited up and ready for any damage type (except stun, which is very rare to encounter in pve)
This game is designed by the devs to be interdependant. It's especially apparent for artisan types, relying on each other for parts they need to make their wares. If you want to try to equip one weapon, and one set of armor, and leave it on all the time for all situations, and always spam the same specials regardless of what you're fighting, then that's cool. But you're playing extremely suboptimally. This game is meant to build a society, a community based off interdependance. For my TKA to reach his full potential, he needs doctor buffs, chef food (AFS, BoH, Tat Sunbun, Glucose, etc), muon from smugglers, a BE'd pet/mount, maybe BE'd clothes from a tailor, a vehicle from a Master Artisan, training for their pets/mounts from a CH, a nice VK from a WS, weapons and armor sliced by a Smuggler, etc. And in turn those artisans need harvesters from architects, houses and crafting stations, harvestable meat/bone/hide from scouts, merchants to advertize and get you there, entertainers to cure our BF and mind wounds, etc etc. It's a bit of an abstract concept, so some people don't really get it, and end up not playing to their full potential.
If you have the credits, I would strongly recommend asking around and finding out who makes the highest kinetic ubese on your server, and ask them if they'll sell it presliced for encumberence. Of course it'll cost more for presliced pieces. Set up an armor macro, there's one in the TKA FAQ. Pick up some well made Master Chef food. AFS is great, +500 mind -50 action, especially if you have any medic. I don't know how I ever lived without it :-) As a zabrak my mind is maxed at 1000, then I can powerboost to 1500 and take an AFS and I'm at 2000 until the powerboost runs out (the AFS always outlasts the PB by multiple minutes). Breath of Heaven will lower all your special move costs to levels at or better than your costs without armor on. I carry muon and use it as a 500 point mind stim if I'm going to get mind incap'd. I'd rather deal with a downer in 10 minutes than die right now, usually that's enough for me to turn the fight and win. Muon puts me up to 2500 mind on top of PB and the AFS. The encumberence sliced composite is great for faction missions, pvp, nightsisters, nyms, etc. I have one macro for each on my combat pane, one in F11 and one in F12, and it works out great for me.
To really excel in SWG you need to look at what each class can do for your character. When you do that and play the game the way it was intended to be played, it's amazing what you can accomplish. To create what I use every day it took a Tailor, a Chef, an Armorsmith, a Weaponsmith, a Droid Engineer, an Architect, a Bio Engineer, a Creature Handler, a Master Artisan, a Merchant and a Smuggler. I use a vendor to sell my armor, I use vehicles and PSGs, BE'd clothes and BE'd pets, trained by a CH, harvesters, houses, factories, medical droid, armor, weapons, slicing/spices and food. Could I just run out in clothes and a VK and spam UH2? Yeah I could. Would I be able to tank effectively on PA hunts? No. Would I be 1/3 as effective as I could be? No. Would I be proud of my character? No.
TKA is fun. We're powerful but with severe limitations. Namely no bleeds, one damage type, random pool attacks and poor pool targeting attacks. I think those are good trade offs for the power we do have. That power can be greatly enhanced if you're taking advantage of what others have to offer.
One last thing. When I'm wearing my ubese, my specials cost a little more (unless I drink a BoH), but an unarmored TKA is taking 769.23% more damage than me. Are my specials costing 769.23% more? Of course not. Maybe 60% more. And I don't even use them as much when armored, berzerk + vibros still works well for me when grinding TKA experience, or take off the vibros and do UH2. Now I wasn't a math major, but 769.23% more damage from dangerous mobs who are trying to kill you versus slightly more damage to yourself *which you're in control of* seems like a pretty nice trade off :-)
- Rorrak