[Suggestion] Martial Arts

General Feedback
#1

There’s been real grievance with the balancing of some builds, especially when it comes to Force things. I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to say that Martial Arts is very under-powered compared to other weapon skills.

Mainly, the weapon die on the power glove is abysmal. 1d3? Sure, ability modifiers will help greatly… but compared to a blaster pistol or even a two-hander? It’s absolute garbage.

Now, there are ways that the extremely large gap between Martial Arts and other weapon skills has been addressed, such as perks! But Circle Kick is badly bugged and no one would ever want to spread damage out when they can focus one person, Electric Fist requires 10 Scavenging (and has a 300 second cooldown!), Chi has a ten minute cooldown (and is a heavy SP expenditure), and Evade Blaster Fire has a decently long cooldown and even then has only a chance to work.

So I think the biggest issue for Martial Arts can be fixed extremely easily with one solution: Flurry of Blows. An extra attack will absolutely make up for Fisticuff’s terrible damage die. After all, if blaster pistols (with its extreme damage die of 2d6!) can get an extra attack… why not fists/staves?

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#2

Amen.

To me, martial arts is about speed, combos and flurries. Sometimes also about just one precise and deadly strike. Speed, agility, evasion, quick movement, and whatnot. Not overly beefy, but additional defensive capabilities. Here, it feels like I’m a warrior. One with bad damage, who only plays Martial Arts for the style, handicapping myself by not using a weapon with higher base dmg than my total damage.

While circle kick adds style, the feat itself is bad in almost all cases. It is ok if you can tank enemies conventiently and want to use it to apply more damage. But that’s almost never the case. In most cases, you want to delete the strongest enemy asap and thus not spread the damage nor change focus. It sometimes even messes you up by attacking an enemy who has a suboptimal distance to you, leaving you flat footed out of combat. Nothing you want to happen either.

I feel weak with my toon atm and while I can live with it, because I just play what I love, there’s always that thought “Why not 2 handed and go do those juicy 80+ crits”

#3

I’m also going to echo this, and also add that I think we could do something like the monk damage progression. Have the damage dice for unarmed attacks/power glove go up either with skill ranks or as a perk.

Weapon Finesse for martial arts would also be neat. Could also add new perks for disarm and knockdown to martial arts. I’ve only just barely started playing and made a martial arts character because rule of cool and I’m already asking the same question as the previous poster.

#4

Definitely agree that martial arts does essentially no damage - part of this is that the power gloves all also do essentially no damage. 1d3 + 1 from a power glove is still no upgrade to damage. Having some sort of damage progression tied to your skill rank would be nice, but I think easiest would be to just have gloves give plenty more damage.

I’m very glad that martial arts primary is strength as it helps keep the damage useful, but weapon finesse would be nice for people that main blaster/light armour and want the AB boost especially since it’s secondary is dex.

Another idea besides extra raw damage would be monk BAB progression - getting more attacks every 3BAB rather than 6 allowing you to potentially hit twice as often as a non-martial arts character but for quite a bit less damage.

I’ve not personally felt any desire to swap off martial arts (as it first the character) for two handed/sabers, but it’d be nice to not take up to 10 minutes to kill something just because it has 5 DR and my damage is 7-9!

#5

As a martial arts main, I approve of everything said here. :wink:

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#6

In a world with energy weapons, I believe that martial arts should be a bit weaker damage-wise, but I also believe there are ways to make it a useful skill. I would suggest giving martial artists more manuvers/moves, like crowd control, disabling limbs, effecting debuffs, subdual, improved defense, uncanny dodging and evasion, called shots, or the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart technique (also known as quivering palm!)

It would mostly be useful as a melee support roll I think, but you can really make it shine when combining it with force powers to make jedi-martial artists

You can also have Taras Kasi as a different discipline, a separate perk path that focuses more on hurting jedi since thats what the style was developed for. So disarming, force point drains, force immunity could go a long way

(mind I haven’t explored the current path as implemented, so if I’m suggesting things that are already done, sorry)

#7

So, just a further update as I get more into the system, learn things, so on.

I reached somewhere around 27 ranks in Martial Arts (MA) and decided to up my STR a little bit by going two-handed (TH). My 2 ranks in TH damage did, on average, 2.5x my 27 ranks in MA damage. On a critical with the vibroaxe, I did almost 6x my normal MA damage.

MA is no damage dealer, I know that. It shouldn’t be, either. TH should take that spot, but should my pithy 2 ranks in the skill mean I can do almost double my damage with a MA skill I spent hours and nearly 100 SP into perks? I don’t think so.

In case anyone needed some more evidence as to why MA should be buffed with an extra attack or scaling damage die, or whatever else was suggested above.

#8

Flurry of Blows and a perk line for just +1 damage per investment to Power Gloves would be sufficient in my opinion.

#9

Trap options are never good, I have not leveled into MA, but does it have the option for specialization like the other fighting skills? A possible buff would be to allow MA to pick up Greater Specialization as well for that +4 total.
Another option would be to give it things like slows, stuns, and other status effect type things it can do to make up for very low damage so it can be a more debuff focused weapon instead of raw damage, making it exponentially more useful to group play.
But even then it needs to be able to stand on its own for a lot of content

#10

MA is… in a difficult spot. It’s arguably the most specialized (which I define as the most SP expenditure) weapon skill, with a total SP count of 140 if you max everything out, only matched by Rifles’ 131 (177 if you also max other perks also related to ranged), but MA doesn’t have as much damage nor support options as Rifles.

A support, debuff role for MA would be fine, as long as they get a little more damage too. Because, jeez, I can out-damage my fists using a one-hander with a skill level nearly 30 levels below.

For reference, I did calculate the SP expenditure for weapon skills and trees at its max, listed below. The ‘potentially’ parts are if you buy all the perks that are not exactly direct to but at least relate to your weapon, i.e. Plasma Cell for rifles and pistols, or Deflect Blaster for Saber/Saberstaves.

140 SP MA
131 SP Rifles (potentially 177)
97 SP Batons
95 SP Twin Vibro
87 SP Blaster Pistol (potentially 133)
70 SP Finesse Vibro (potentially 83)
65 SP Sabers (potentially 76)
54 SP Saberstaves (potentially 65)
57 SP Vibro (potentially 70)
54 SP Heavy Vibro
48 SP Polearms

*anyone find any problem with my arithmetic, let me know! I’d be glad to reform my opinion or change this up.

#11

I think it’s only fair to state that the reason MA is so much higher is that it has two actives compared to the other melee, who sometimes have one, but mainly passive feats.

That said, the cooldowns are fairly long, so you’re buying an engagement ring when you use them.