Teras Kasi Archive
Thread: TKA or Swordsman?
Barring Rifleman, Swordsman and TKA are the only professions (except BH) that can hit the mind. I say "barring rifleman" because I am a Master Doctor, and a slow weapon with enormous mind costs and horrible acuracy at close rangeis not practical... So i am left with TKA and Swordsman.
I currently am quite close to master pistoleer, but i have discovered that it is pure uselessness in PVP... 1) Im dead meat against any BH with eye shot... I am rotten, decintigrated dead meat if the BH has novice medic and stim B - that negates all damage i can do... TKA and Swordsman are the only professions with mind attacks.
Swordsman appears to be more focussed on pure mind damage, but i hear that TKA is just plain better...
Advice would be appreciated, thanks everyone
Well Swordsmen at the moment are not very great, but that *seems* to be changing. They do great mind bleeds... Power Hammer.
Teras Kasi dont get DOT (damage over time) attacks like bleed... but in the end its up to you.
I'm probably leaning more towards TKA... They get dizzy and kd for crying out loud lol - ive been dizzied/kd'd before, and its not fun - cant do a **edit** thing till the dizzy clears
But that lack of bleed/ability to bleed is a good point
just read the other melee boards, everyone will tell you that TKA is the most powerfull melee. There may be reasons to take other melee profession like swordsman for bleeds. But it will not change the reality, they are all weaker.
it's simple;
If you want swordsman for any reason, then you should really really consider going with master brawler as well. The lunge2 is a flat out kd at 15m, and warcry is a 20 delay ae effect.
If you don't want master brawler then you should just go with tka, it'll save you alot of problems in the end. We basically get everything, minus bleeds. Here's the tally;
TKA
-Hit any any pool
-KD and dizzy in one move
-kd and dizzy in 2 seperate moves
-heal poison, disease, bleeds and wounds
-power boost
-Defenses against swordsman
15more against dizzy
20more against posture changes
30more on speed
15more on range defense
(those are the main defensive advantages, there's others but don't matter)
Swordsman
-Specialze in head hits
-have more damage types than tka(kenetic only) like blast(powerhammer)
-Mind bleeds on par if not greater than rifles
-no KD but a sweep attack, makes them kneel
-no dizzy
EnigmaticJedi wrote:Barring Rifleman, Swordsman and TKA are the only professions (except BH) that can hit the mind. I say "barring rifleman" because I am a Master Doctor, and a slow weapon with enormous mind costs and horrible acuracy at close rangeis not practical...
If you can master the rifleman the speed will be close to cap (1s) because u get +90 to rifle but the mind cost will stay...
If u want to do mind damage forget the tka. The mind damage in pve will be around 400-800 for a master (estimation),
in pvp it will be less.
But the combo KD + unarmed hit is still very powerful.
I think a tka will easy kill a Swordsman because of this.
Problem of the swordsman is that he has not really a cc skill if he is not master brawler.
But even with KD it is hard to get a running target ....
yea, if you are a doc, your best bet is combat medic for mind poison/disease. As a brawler of any type you'll be wishing you had some range.
I happen to be a Master Doctor and Master Swordswoman, and love it (bored during my server downtime this morning so checking out forums I normally don't 
).
The TKA definately gets a lot more tricks at their disposal (the meditation line is incredible) but the lack of a bleed really can't be underplayed. I cannot tell you how many people I have killed just with Mind Hit 2 with a power hammer, let alone those times I have the ability to stack the two bleeds (you can). The swordsman mind bleed is the most powerful bleed in the game, AND hits the mind pool.
But it really comes down to what you want to be able to do. Swordsmen are built around offense, TKA more around defense/balance. Because of my bleeds and area attacks I will kill more people in less time than any TKA, yet the TKA will last a great deal longer against said people if they're all targetting him/her.
Also, slight correction, swordsmen do get two dizzy attacks (area attack 3 and two hand hit 3) as well as a slew of(read: too many) posture change attacks. So it is possible to manufacture your own 'dizzy knockdown' but it is a lot harder to pull off as our dizzies are only about 30% stick compared to the TKA 75% or so. But when Area Attack 3 does both it's effects (posture change AND dizzy) it is an attack to be feared by anyone in striking distance.
-Shi
thank you for the correction, i wasn't sure bout the ae attacks the swordsman get, and couldn't find any data on it with the resources i had (servers down).
Which makes me wonder how nasty a power hammer with a 1.0 speed can be... hmmm would be nice to be able to beable to hit as fast as a tka with a power hammer... hmm now i must speak with my weaponsmith friends and see what they can come up with.
Steegee wrote:
yea, if you are a doc, your best bet is combat medic for mind poison/disease. As a brawler of any type you'll be wishing you had some range.
That is a very good idea - I'd forgotten all about combat medic as a profession... It would go quite well with my Doctor skills i immagine, and that **edit** mCM mind poison is absolutely insane
Thank you, you have given me another option to consider
But before you jump on it i have to tell you the changes that have been going on on TC for the CM.
Poisons don't incap you they lower the stat to 1, but can not incap. And they gave CM the ability to heal mind damage, but at the cost of alot ofbattle fatigue i believe. Note these are on test only..... and may/may not be moved to live in the next major patch.
Steegee wrote:
But before you jump on it i have to tell you the changes that have been going on on TC for the CM.
Poisons don't incap you they lower the stat to 1, but can not incap. And they gave CM the ability to heal mind damage, but at the cost of alot ofbattle fatigue i believe. Note these are on test only..... and may/may not be moved to live in the next major patch.
Not just battle fatigue, but wounds as well to the healer.
I'm in your same dilemma Enigmatic. I masteredrifle first, then swordsman, but I'm continually drawn to drop my sword for somevibroknucklers. In fact, I've already picked up the TKA meditation tree,I'm waiting to see what the next patch (whichseems to be bringing about apretty significant brawler change) will hold for the two classes before I make my final decision.
Shimond and Steegee give sound information/advice on both classes. The Mind Bleeds from a swordsman are THE BEST in the game, even more so than riflemen. Yesterday, no lie/exaggeration,I hit a BH for a 1k mind bleed (read: overkill, lol). Shimond also mentions that swordsman are more offense, while TKA are more defense, also very true. If a master TKA and a master swordsman squared off, using "finese moves" (KD, dizzy, blind, etc.), the swordsman will win 90% of the time, because they dish out damage faster than the TKA. But of course, "finese moves" are a TKA's forte...
I've PvPed with master TKAs before, more than just once or twice, but probably a dozen or more times, and let me tell you, even though I have a ranged and weapon mastery, the onlyplayers I fear more than them are BHs and CHs. TKAs are toooough mofos. I remember once when I was powerboosted, sporting 1200, 1200, 1500 HAM, when I noticed an Imperial TKA snooping around AH. I opened up on him with my rifle, when he starts charging me. I wasn't going to be able to take him out with my rifle alone, so I figured I'd surprise him by pulling out my sword at the last moment, figuring he would be expecting his first hit to get the 2.5x damage from melee that riflemen take. Turns out I was the one surprised, as he hit me with KD+Dizzy, and I was on my back. I watched the pretty colors in my HAM bar skid down to zero as I fought to stand up. The time from the KD+Dizzy to my incapacitation was probably 8-9 seconds.
That's just one example, and not worthy of making a decision over. That story alone could be countered by saying "that's just some bad luck". But I have a handful of other stories that go the same way, so many that I no longer feel that I'm suffering from "bad luck."
Anyways, all that said, I'll finally get to the point. Since you're a Doc, if you want to be more effective in PvE, go swordsman, they dish out a ton of damage, massive mind bleeds, and they can also do Blast damage with the powerhammer, and kinetic with their other weapons. If you want to be more effective in PvP, go TKA. Powerboost, KD+Dizzy, Meditation, can't go wrong there. With PB you can throw a bunch of HAM points into your mind (nice for a Doc I would imagine), and keep the same HAM when using powerboost. Ex: If you had HAM of 700, 700, 800 after PB that would be 1100, 1100, 1200. If you migrate to 600, 600, 1000 after PB you'll still have 1100, 1100, with more mind 1500.