- Proposal
- Balance TKA by doing one or more of the following:
(1) restoring part of center of being (regular center of being for 4XXX TKA and advanced center of being for TKM);
(2) increase uptime of COB by 50-100%;
(3) increasing unarmed accuracy or unarmed damage skill mods in the TKA skill tree by 20% to 30%;
(4) either (i) granting TKA recon armor mitigation (light armor type) or (ii) increasing innate armor to 8000 protection for each armor protection type (kinetic, energy, and elemental);
(5) have focus movement break any and all types of snares and roots (including Jedi, except the 5 piece set for Ranger of course); and/or
(6) re-evaluate the effects of guardian strike and give TKA a unique ability like the other melee professions (fencer has bleed, blind strike, and high potency healing; beserker has armor break and crit increase; and lancer has intimidate and warcry). But TKA lacks an effective and unique combat ability/debuff. Perhaps a unique increase accuracy or increased knockdown ability. Something that makes the class unique and useful. COB and guardian strike are not potent enough and only benefit the user.
Open to other suggestions to balance TKA, but the following proposals seem to address what is precluding the profession from success. All the other melee professions have a unique role to play, but TKA has been neglected. Prepatch, TKA was much more tanky despite its low damage. But now it's the worst of both worlds, still low damage and not as tanky due to center of being nerf.
- Justification
- Although the latest patch made some significant improvements and skill point flexibility for the other melee classes, TKM appears to have been nerfed. After much testing on various jewelry sets and combinations, including a combination of a TKM build with a melee accuracy of over 300 and maximum unarmed critical chance, unarmed damage, and unarmed accuracy exotics, TKA still lacks sufficient damage potential and tanking for pvp with both normal players and jedi and are not a desirable profession for group pve content. Restoring center of being restores TKA to playing the tank role. Increasing TKA damage slightly prevents TKA from being relegated to the ignored "nuisance" in pvp fights. And granting TKA recon armor mitigation or increasing its innate armor to 8000 enables TKA to be a standalone advanced profession just like the other melee and ranged professions. As of now, TKA requires mastering another advanced profession to acquire armor mitigation or to forgo that path and rely on weak innate armor and a lack of numerous armor attachments. And even so, other melee combinations are much more effective, disincentivizing TKA. The 8000 innate armor option offsets the lack of TKA's access to numerous armor attachments. Other professions have the luxury of being standalone and obtaining armor mitigation and thereby reap the benefit of extra armor protection and additional armor attachments, which enables more skill point flexibility to mix and match other professions. Every other advanced class in the game has this luxury except for TKA. Lastly, focus movement at its current state is almost useless with sprint implemented. There should be some extra perk that comes with it, especially with TKA's low dps and the need to be close to his or her opponent. Every melee class except TKA has established a role in group content except TKA.
- Motivation
- In lore, even legends lore (the lore Restoration adopts), TKA is an elite melee art that rivals that of the Jedi arts. See https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Teräs_Käsi/Legends. Many players consider TKA the next best thing to Jedi from a roleplay and combat perspective, but are reluctant to use the profession for the shortcomings described above. This request is not to make TKA overpowered, but to address the shortcomings above. Even with the foregoing improvements, a standalone TKA would still have difficulty defeating the other melee and ranged professions (especially the ranged professions). This request is simply to balance TKA and have it be in the same footing as the other melee professions at the very least and to complement the other melee professions. Fencer, Beserker, and Lancer are professions we have in the real world. But TKA is unique to the Star Wars universe and should at the very least be on equal par to those professions.
Various balancing to TKA to make the profession viable in pvp and elite pve content (i.e., heroics).
