Teras Kasi Archive

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Kelvarn wrote:

Having been a TKM for over a year now (Was TKM/Mfencer for 6 months prior to CU, but was TKM for 11 months Pre-CU), I am at a loss as to how anyone can say that TKM is now worth anything at all. As a Tank (the primary focus), TKM is all but useless as you have to taunt every 5 seconds or so.

Not a bad thing, however, the action cost of everything when using Unarmed skills makes it so that TKs are only usefull for around 45 seconds to 1 minute before they have to sit down and re-gen their action bar (something that comes back just as fastif you sit as if you meditate).

Also, the damage system for TK is seriously nerfed as using the basic melee hit allows for almost triple the damage of advanced combo hit (TKM move) at the level of TKM (I tested it myself, please, other TKMs, verify it so that you can see what I mean). As a TKM/Mfencer, was doing 126 damage with no type of knuckler on, but was doing 336 with basic melee hit.

TKs are almost usefull in several capacities, however, most other melee professions are almost always better in each capacity (IE Knockdown, intimidate, damage, etc). I can understand that the original TK system was way out of line with other damage out puts, however, the new one has neutered the TK completely. Improved COB is a very nice thing as it almost halfs the damage taken by the TKM (Taking on Necrosis solo as TK/Fencer, ICOB dropped damage taken from 1.4k per hit to 861 per hit), however, again, it is required for almost all fights in order to keep the TKM from being brought down in a few seconds, thus depleting the action bar of the TKM that much faster.

The thing that I see is thus, TKM was an UBER NASTY class Pre-CU just by itself, now they just seem to be a class that is utilizedto stop people from having to buy armor when using another melee profession. I understand that in order to be effective at the high end creatures (CL 80+), you are required to have another proffession as well asa group, however, needing a minimum of two to three TKMs to tank anything in the CL85+ range is annoying and takes up precious space when you consider that only 8 people are allowed in a group, thus making it harder for a well balanced group to take anything in the CL90+ range, especially when you consider that in that range and above, the NPC/Creature is hitting a TKM for close to if not above 1k damage per hit. Thus making it a requirement for TK to be (close to if not actually) Master doc or Combat medicin order to be effective as a decent tank. I personally would like to see a TKM brought more in line with the other melee combat classes as far as damage or other things so that TKs are closer to what the stated use of a TK is supposed to be, IE Tank.

Maybe re-do the damage output and amount of damage done with higher level techniques, or the amount of damage that a TKM can mitigate with ICOB. Something that makes playing the TKM more enjoyable, and less of a requirement for all things melee profession. Also, talking to one of the DEVs for SOE/SWG at San Diego Comic Con, they stated that the damage for any type of Knuckler does not stack with normal TK unarmed damage, which I see as a crime as all damage done by TK is done with the power of his muscles, thus making a TK almost nothing without good knucklers. A quick fix to that is to dumb down the amount of added damage that a knuckler does, but allow the damage to stack again.

And that brings me to the Meditate tree in TK. Wonderful that a TK can meditate away his wounds, add a little more health, and other kinda cool tricks, however, I fail to see how any of that comes close to compensating for the other problems in the TK profession. Maybe a 1k boost for Powerboost for more than 10 minutes (having to stop every 10 minutes in the death watch bunker or some other place like that is almost suicide), something that allows for a focused, powerful strike (with high cooldown timer and a warm-up timer) would help to bring TKM more in line with a decent profession. And since we are on the subject of the meditate tree, Force of Will is something that needs to be mentioned.

Pre-CU, FOW allowed the TKM to get back up immediately from incapacitation with around 1/2 of his health, action, and mind stats. Post-CU, FOW doubles to sometimes triples the incap timer. I sincerly hope that this is a bug on the CU publish (and hope even more that sometime in the future that the DEV teams get around to fixing it). Bring it back to reviving at half stats (IE instead of having a full 3k health bar, either have only 1.5K health bar for a short time and be at 50% mind and action, or have the full3k health bar, but only 1.5k of health and have to heal the rest of the way, and again, the 50% mind/action). No matter whether youlike TKM or not, there are still severe bugs that need to be worked out due to the CU.

I wouldhowever, like to state that if the DEVs would do their homework on things (IEfor TKM, watch someBruceLee movies for ideas about martial arts, which is pretty much what TK would be considered), theCombat upgrade would have been more of a successful move asopposed to a nerf. And I will say that were I not going full template Jedi (something that I had actually contemplated not doing for a large part of the game), I wouldhave stayed with TK/Fencer tilI could not play the game anymore.

Talric Kelvarn of Starsider (former TKM/Master Fencer now 4020 TK/Jedi)

PS. This is more of what I believe of TKM than anything else. I appreciate any thoughts that you have, however, this is not agripe session, just my way of helping people that are getting into the profession get an overview of what the profession looks like. This is in no way a slight to other people on the boards, or to the DEVs of SOE/SWG or any affiliate companies. All comments contained herin are the opinions of one person, and not to be taken as a general concensus of TKs of the Starsider community. Well thought out replys/comments are encouraged, however, flames and other general comments of the less than intelligent variety will be directed to the round file in my basement.

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