Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: a question about VK's and ham costs
Recently made about five of these low ham knucklers fora TKA/Doc on our server as a special order. I made him several knucklers, but he was most thrilled about the 110 damage 2.9 speed 22/35/22 knucklers I made him. I was confused as to why, so he explained the reasoning behind it.
At mastery, a Teras Kasi Artist hits their speed cap with a 2.6 knuckler. 2.9 was just a shade above the cap, and did not alter dps to a great extent.Even at this low damage, it still provides a 20% dps increase over base fists, and adds light armor piercing. Besides, as he told me.. TKA's do insane damage regardless of what they are using as a weapon. His main concern was mind use, as it cannot be healed. Thusly, he can fight longer and harder.. using more specials.. with a low ham knuckler.
So, in the future I will be offering ultra-light knucklers to my customers in addition to high damage knucklers.
IggyDeath wrote:
Recently made about five of these low ham knucklers fora TKA/Doc on our server as a special order. I made him several knucklers, but he was most thrilled about the 110 damage 2.9 speed 22/35/22 knucklers I made him. I was confused as to why, so he explained the reasoning behind it.
At mastery, a Teras Kasi Artist hits their speed cap with a 2.6 knuckler. 2.9 was just a shade above the cap, and did not alter dps to a great extent.Even at this low damage, it still provides a 20% dps increase over base fists, and adds light armor piercing. Besides, as he told me.. TKA's do insane damage regardless of what they are using as a weapon. His main concern was mind use, as it cannot be healed. Thusly, he can fight longer and harder.. using more specials.. with a low ham knuckler.
So, in the future I will be offering ultra-light knucklers to my customers in addition to high damage knucklers.
Um, does that TKA realize that he could get a very high damaging VK, and slap on a 30% Mind cost Power Up, and go from 35 Mind to 23 Mind, and maybe even add to his Min damage, or speed (won't really need speed with a good VK)
Not only that, but those .3 speed that puts him "just shy above the cap" take a big chunk out of his DPS, plus, he doesn't take into account speed penalties for using special moves.
And of course, then there's the fact that damage is a multiplied version of your base damage. That's where TKA get all their big damage boosts. An extra 30 damage on the VK adds maybe 100-150 actual damage.
Seriously, not for anything but a Doc/TKA should be walking around with H and A buffed to all hell all of the time, therefore, they should just migrate their stats to max out their M. I used to be a Swordsman myself, and I was also a Medic...my stats were migrated so I had totally maxed out Mind (I beleive for Mon Cal, it's 1100 Mind, 900 WP and another 800 or 900 Focus...this was a while back, I'm fuzzy). I was walking around with like 700 Health and Action. But, I went out into the field, and spent the day just spamming away specials with a 2HCS (which has a 60 Action cost, btw). I could keep myself alive and pumping out some major damage just by using STIMs...no buffs whatsoever. Of course, you could say that I wasn't fighting anything REALLY dangerous...but, still, the same principles would apply anywhere. (And, well, then again, I'm rich, and wear 80% Ubese armor, and walk around with a Mtn. Kreevol and a Probot with a maxed out Med Module...your mileage may vary. And yes, I kept my sword powered-up 24/7.)
Anyway, point is, considering all the drawbacks a low HAM weapon has, there really is no point to making one. Perhaps if someday in the future, they allowed for a 30% HAM reduction AND some decent damage (not an 80% difference in DPS...maybe 30-40%) with Experimentation, I'd say YEAH for HAM cost reduction...but, for now, it's borked.
1. a normal VK 38-147 @2.2 35/51/35
2. bare hands
3. low HAM VK 34-115 @2.9 24/36/24
So consider that our ultralight knucklers get a 30% speed slice bringing the speed down around 2.0 (Powerups can take this further down to 1.7, again an option you don't have with fists alone.)