Teras Kasi Archive

Hi all,

Seeing as how I had this discussion with another TKA last evening about not wearing any armor and previous posts regarding this issue. I thought I might bring this to everyones attention.

Flight wrote-

"Lets start off by establishing my experience. I run 3 accounts. One is purely a Crafter - Master Armorsmith/Tailor/Artisan. My second is a Smuggler/Pistoleer, who I decided on to slice my armour, make spice to go with it and to test out the armour in the field. My third character is a Doctor, so I understandhow doctor buffs affect armour wearing. I dont have a chef but I have sourced plenty of Tatooiine Sunburn and various foodstuffs. I have played far too many hours ever single day since the game was released and it has almost all centred around making and testing armour.

So, lots of folk complain about armour and how it doesnt work and how useless it is. I start off by wondering how many people understand what governs armour use and wearing it. The basics are the h/a/m encumberance stats on the armour pieces.

The important issue here is that the h/a/m encumberance is deducted directly off your secondary stats - so if a piece of armour has a h/a/m stat of 100/20/10 it will reduce your strength and constitution by 100, your quickness and stamina by 20, and your force and willpower by 10.

If you find you cannot wear some armours it is possibly because you have done a stat migration and reduced your secondary stats too low so that you cannot wear armour.

Now, Const, Stamina and Willpower dictate the regen of your primary h/a/m stats ( Health, action, Mind) so this is why many folk take off their armour in between fighting.Wearing armour basically cuts your primary h/a/m regen to a crawl. This is an annoyance, but as it is so easy to make one hot key to instantly equip/unequip a whole set of armour it isnt a killer (search my posts by name in Armorsmith forum for that Macro).

BUT, the real killer, and the reason why so many folk think armour is totally useless, is that the middle of each stat (Strength, Quickness, Focus) actually dictate how much primary h/a/m your special moves etc cost. If you solo wearing a decent set of armour the vast reduction in these secondary stats means using special moves you kill yourself rather than it being the mob killing you. And this is why people get the perception that armour is useless. In fact it is not useless. It is worse - it is actually detrimental.

So, I have to raise these questions, and then make a suggestion, with the devs :

i) Was it your intention that people who dont get doctors buffs or use food should find it impossible tofight wearing armour? The fact is if you wear armour you cannot use special moves.

ii) Are you aware that, as a separate issue, some races simply cannot wear some armour types because the limit on their stats prohibit it.

iii) Are you aware that the vast majority of people do not wear armour the vast majority of the time. And from an authoratative perspective I would recommend they dont, under the present system.

I would suggest that how armour should really work would be :

i) That the encumberance values on armour should stay.

ii) That the limit of armour a person can wear should be limited by armour in such a manner that once the total ham encumb of the armour they wear excedes their stat then they cannot equip any more armour. It should not reduce, however, a persons strength, constitution, quickness, stamina, focus or willpower.

If you dont agree then at the very least a drastic rebalancing of h/a/m values, secondary h/a/m effects/costs and race stat limits needs to happen. Armour as it stands verges on being totally useless and detrimental in 99% of combat istuations."

Original post can be found here- http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=408829

IT's about time someone exposed, in well articulated words, how freaking stupid armor stats are programmed.

Typical SOE...

I never wear armor simply because you kill yourself, as you say, whenusing it. I'm beginning to wonder ifI should even use specials period because of the extremist programmer HAM costs.

Typical SOE...

It's so apparent that SOE doesn't have a clue how combat and balance should work.

I wear my adv chitin armour and tantel helm when fighting rough stuff all the time. it doesn't "kill me"... i have to time my specials so that i don't go far enough down that I can't heal myself before the mob kills me sometimes... but that easy enough. (I'm a doc too - i use my own crafted D'stims) When over 50% of the dmg the mob does is being absorbed... i find it hard to believe that not wearing armour would help me on harder monsters.

That being said - i got tired of wearing armour for a while. The things i was fighting just were not worth it to wear it because i killed them fast enough that getting hit was no longer a problem. But when i'm soloing a red con that i'm not meant to be able to solo - armour is priceless.

Also - i don't think that people realize... i hunted for a long while in just the bracer/gaunts/shoulder/boots wearing a smock underneath that. (smock doesn't allow you to wear the BP or the Leggings) and a suprising amount of dmg was taken by those pieces....(looking at combatchat window) it seems dumb.... but its true =)

J/Tharg!

I have just started to wear my armor all the time. I have an almost complete set of unsliced composite armor (minus helmet, gloves, boots). I do no use many special moves accept the ocasional KN or Intimidate.I did a quick test using Unamed Hit 2, w/o armor it cost 168, with armor on it cost 208. The 40 point diffrence is nothing when the mobs is hitting me for 100-150. You can't beat seeing, "So and so hits you for 140 damage, your Composite Chestplate abosorbs 98 points of damage." With out armor I would not last long against those types of hits. Even usingthe full array of semi-worthless TKA special moves, taking all of those hits isnt worth it. Having Medic skills helps a lot, but many people dont want to go down that road.

For all of you people on the fence, wondering whetherto get medic skills or not - at roughlya cost of 60 mind points (per cast) you can be healed for 400 points or more. That will save you in a battle or make mostdown time trivial. Healing your own wounds is nice also.

Sadly, TKA should not have to wear armor toplay the game and have fun. Nor should we have to pick up Medic, Creature Handler, or Ranged skills. I can't wait to see our class truely "balanced" ("balanced" from a players point of view not a Devs).

p.s. - I only solo, so I cant talk about group efficiency with armor(or w/o)

TKA's wear armor?

Am I the only guy who only wears a black Smock with a black rice hat anymore?!

Right now i have a complete set of (mostly) unsliced bronze composite armor. I will explain how and when I use this armor.

1) When the mobs attack with ranged(especially when they are using ac 1 or higher guns/attacks) Most advanced creatures do, and they hurt a lot.

2) When the mobs target mind(or secondarily health action) Tuskens are known for this, although several others will hit for >1000 to any specific pool.

3) When there are more than 1-2 attackers. Great for accidental multi pulls, or just mass death.

I will essentially put it on whenever I feel that I am coming under hard fire. In a group or solo, these are the rules. I keep it on my second hot bar, along with my clothes, to switch on and off quickly. I have heard of macros to do it also. I should make one eventually.

At all other times I take off my armor, unless I want to look cool. I take it off to heal, travel, etc.

For reference, I can only wear helmet, leggings chestplate, boots, gloves, and one other piece. I am completely migrated into secondary and play as zabrak. I find it useless to have so many pool points. This is enough protection for most fighting. I have rock bottom stats with it on, and use over 200 HAM for every move(with VK on, the only true way to do damage, anyone who says otherwise is lieing). In fact it leads me to believe there is a maximum for every move, and at a certain stat level it no longer matters. It will not increase anymore, or only very little.

The recent "rule" changes also screwed me over, becuase it took away some of the stats that I thought I had, and wont allow me to migrate anymore.

I like the changes suggested above. Armor should have tradeoffs, but not so heavy a penalty.

I have been saying for 2 months how useless armour is to the TKA class.

I am glad to see a master armoursmith agrees.

Having to get naked of all your gear to do special moves is stupid

I can understand armour making you move slower, but that is about all. I can understand different types being heavier etc etc.

But the way armour is done in this game makes it worthless. I feel sorry for the armoursmiths

As it is now my doctor wears armor all the time (only puts helmet on in certain occasions.) My TKA/Commando never wears it.

Medical professionals don't have to worry about health or action regen, everyone else does. My TKA/commando has novice medic just to cover the times when berserk fails 5 or 6 times in a row.