UC love (in General)

I think that the Combat Gi, one of the two items made specifically for a minion specializing in unarmed combat, is severely underpowered because it is equipped on the chest. This makes it extremely difficult to run a character that has a UC minion, and you cannot junction it to the jig.

It's easy to run other tanks because the best piece of equipment for other tanks is not worn on the chest (I'm excluding the TSA because it does not make or break a tank. It sure helps though!). For example: archers have the belegs gloves and a helm of clearsight. Other tanks need a lot of strength, which can be achieved with the TOA, tulkas and a HOE. But for UC, the best piece of equipment used to run the tank happens to be worn on the chest, so you cannot wear the TOA.

Also, I keep hearing that elven gloves beats helms gauntlets in boosting UC.

So, I propose that we change the Combat Gi into something that is worn elsewhere, or it can be worn under/over tattoos like the shirts we have.

Please post your thoughts on this matter, just no flaming or trolling. If you don't like it, state WHY you do not like it.

yep, i'm currently using my UC tank+jig char Starun, so I can understand your sentiments. However, the only replacement slot for Combat Gi can be Jiggy Boots [or some such name] or Jiggy Helmet, unless the Tunic slot is available with tattoo [jiggy] equipped, in which case you can have a Combat T-shirt.

Are you suggesting changing the name, as well? A Gi is an article of clothing worn on the torso.

I don't think it is overpowered, as you can equip a base Gi on a newly created character with only a base UC trained and get a very nice weapon out of it. Down low, that's as strong as physical damage gets, which makes it a great NCB running tool.

I think it's fine as is.

TSA can definitely make or break a tank. Putting one on can drastically change the mechanics of a tank. It's like the AC for a wall.

Just because the ToA exists doesn't make the TSA any less powerful. By your logic what we should be looking for is a UC tattoo rather than a simple maneuver of equipments.

That aside, I still don't feel this is the best way to deal with UC. The real reason UC can't do a thing isn't because of its dodging ability, it is because UC can't hit for significant damage. Sure, you can hit many times, but you'll find yourself slapping for 300k with millions of levels invested.

If UC needs a buff I think we seriously need to rework the damage. How about adding innate BL to the combat gi?

So you say that all monks have tattoos underneath their Combat Gi? :p

Of Course, why do you think they wear those Combat Gi to hold back the tremendous power held within there tatoos.

OB1, I'm saying the Gi is the opposite of overpowered. I personally would like to see it turned into a tunic. It doesn't make any sense to have two pieces of equipment specifically made for UC, one of which isn't even as good at doing its job as elven gloves, and the Gi which can't be junctioned to a specifically made UC familiar or worn with a tattoo. Other tanks are fine without oh say, the TSA, if they wear a TOA. There is other strength boosting equipment they can wear.

And about the TSA, I know it has the potential to make or break a tank. In my experience, people put TOAs on their tanks. If they find a different tattoo to be more suitable on another minion, then the TSA is definitely a great alternative. My point is if someone is going to have a tank on their team, I don't think a monk is high up on their list.

"Also, I keep hearing that elven gloves beats helms gauntlets in boosting UC."

Um... just looking at a 13% boost to level from EG (+15) vs. a flat 20 boost from HG (+13), I don't see any values of UC listed in the wiki where the 13% boost would outweigh the flat bonus from the HG. UC needs a lot of levels to get from one effect to the next.

"and the Gi which can't be junctioned to a specifically made UC familiar or worn with a tattoo. Other tanks are fine without oh say, the TSA, if they wear a TOA. There is other strength boosting equipment they can wear."

Firstly, I don't believe the JKF was meant to always be competitive with, say, a HF. As it says in the wiki, "Currently, the JKF fits the original profile of phasing out as the character grows (though some have found ways to use them at higher levels.)".

Secondly, UC tanks can be fine without a Gi. They can work with a ToA. Obviously they won't be as strong as if they could use both, but it's a choice one can make; the extra evasion and UC from the Gi, or the intrinsics and the PTH, which can be very useful given that many UC minions have an Ex/AxBow or SoD. There's still plenty of gear that boosts UC, like HG, EB, and AoF.

I don't know how to solve the 'problem' with UC (if there even is one), but a damage boost like giving the Gi BL is creeping into the territory of weapon tanks. IMO, UC tanks should have many weaker hits along with their evasion, as it stands right now. If anything, do something crazy (and original) like give trained UC some kind of magic resistance, or something like that. UC tanks are fine against other tanks for the most part, but can't do squat against mages. Or so I hear, anyways. Having numbers to back things up would really help. :P

I have run both a regular UC minion and I am running a JKF strat right now. From what I have seen the problem with UC is the damage. As you get into the higher regions the damage falls very far behind. You can get a little higher on the pth side than you could normally with a regular weapon. A bit better or about the same as if you had a USD weapon upgraded on the pth side. But in damage UC falls shorter and shorter.

The reason for this is because the damage is on a non-linear scale. This means that the more you invest into UC the less damage you are going to get out of it.

Adding BL would be a solution for a while. But it still doesn't change the fact that the damage is just going to fall shorter as everyone grows. The best solution is to put it on the same damage scale as everything else is on. That is to make the damage increase linearly. It will still not be a very big damage source. But it won't continue to fall farther behind as characters grow.

Yes, UC falls very short against mages, but a big part of that is again the damage. UC never was supposed to make you stronger vs mages it is supposed to give you a weapon. I personally think that a weapon created through giving up MPR should be more effective because you are basically shrinking your character to gain a weapon. If the weapon is inferior to a regular weapon why have it in the first place.

Especially as UC has no free 'X' Weapon Allowance, unlike every other Weapon.

No UC is completely free. CB wise.

"The real reason UC can't do a thing isn't because of its dodging ability, it is because UC can't hit for significant damage."

Yeah, I've said this multiple times. All UC needs is a slight boost to damage.

"Yeah, I've said this multiple times. All UC needs is a slight boost to damage."

i have explained, as nem did above, why that would be a stopgap measure at best in the other thread. have you looked at the uc xp cost curve artemis?

I have, yes.

and you realize that uc damage is the only damage in the game with a non-linear growth curve?

You realize that UC grants evasion and damage?

UC stops really giving any more damage after about 2 mil raw levels into it. The only reason you might train it is to gain that extra evasion, though it comes at a reduced amount to actually training evasion.

people seem to confuse us asking for uc damage to be linear in growth with equal damage. we are not asking for it to be equal, it does have evasion after all.

just like with the specialty weapons though, some have abilities and a lesser base damage number than others that have a higher base damage.

so to answer your question, are you suggesting that all weapons that do more than just pure damage (in effect special ability weapons) be placed on a growth curve due to the fact that they offer an additional ability?

evasion effect growth levels off as well since it is on a curve. that should stay that way in my opinion.

I would like to see no change to the evasion curve, staying non-linear.

However, I do strongly feel the damage part of UC needs to be more linear.

Or give the CGI the bloodlust skill at max level.

Since the JKF cannot use the BL skill but can get a skill from its minion, this will even things out for trained monks vs the JKF.

Dudemus: There is plenty problems with your chart. You simply can't compare the numbers from the evasion to the pth of the Hal. For one reason, you don't have equipment figured in I'm assuming. Equipment can boost evasion, but it can't boost PTH. Secondly, you don't have the ranged evasion boost figured in. If you have an 8M jig you are facing an 8M hal, you would have 1.33M exp into evasion, facing a 250 pth. If you have armor that boosts this by 50% (you can get this just by wearing the armor you use for a jiggy) you have 2M evasion. The ranged modifiers for evasion are 2.2 for round 1, 1.96 for round 2 and so on. In round on that gives you 4.4M evasion, and 3.92M in round 2. This gives around 194 evasion in round one and 186 evasion in round two. This leaves only 56 pth left in round one, and 64 in round two. This leaves about 160% chance that the Hal is going to hit in the first two rounds. But wait, what about those pesky ranged penalties. I'm not sure about how large it is for the elbow, but when I was looking at Vectoidz it seemed to be around a flat 60. That gives him 1 hit. Only 1 hit. This doesn't include the fact that with the jiggy, you can junction UC over. Ever tried junctioning evasion over onto a Hal? Yeah doesn't work so well. Alright, now that we see that the UC evasion evens overcomes the insane pth of the Hal, let's look at the SoD. Let's assume that I spent 200M CBD and that I have 250pth on my SoD. Ok, so we simply subtract like I did earlier and we still get the 56 and 64. Add this to the only 60 bth from the SoD and we get around 120 cth. But wait, the SoD, as you can see in my post about ranged magic penalties, has huge ranged penalties, around a flat 100. This lowers my cth on a 200M+ weapon to 20%, 20%!!! Of course as ranged progresses, this will get to around 100%, oh wow, on a weapon that I spent 200M+ CBD on. If you think that the bth on the elbow is too high, great fix that. If you think that the pth of the Hal is too cheap, fix that. But, if you change the evasion of the Jig and actually increase it, you will make it invincible to all physical damage, short of a huge NW elbow, that only a few of us can afford. Fix the problem, it's not the jiggy.

right now it requires an effective UC level of 16.36 mil in order to get a damage of only x6000. and x7000 could probably not be hit until 10 mil mpr.

and of course, I said that it could use a damage increase.

I see no problems with the way evasion works with UC right now. That is one area that a real UC minion outperforms a JKF as it gets 50% UC evasion as opposed to only 1/3 of the level.

i too was not asking for evasion to be changed at all with regards to uc or jiggy.

i am simply asking for the damage to be done like every other damage in the game. it might also be necessary to scale bonus to hit more in line with hal as well.

that is all i am asking for.

as for my chart, all that it was meant to show is that the bonus to hit linear growth on the hal far outpaces that on the jiggy. the damage is based on the same curves so the same effect holds true for damage.

You mean I did all that typing for nothing dang... :P.

The Pth considering how it is possible to increase it, by quite a lot if you are junctioning over UC looks to be pretty well balanced in my opinion. The pth of UC for both JKF and regular UC is rather balanced. The pth on the Hal might be a little high though.

I think most people think the PTH of UC and the evasion of UC are ok.

However, the damage is the area of concern.

Correct?

Right, you can get up to 2k x at less than 1.8 mil effective UC but when x is more or less capped below 6k x it really cant compete in damage.

i think the uc bonus to hit is likely fine. what i think may need to be tweaked is hal bonus to hit over time, unless it is capped somewhere which i doubt.

i feel that the hal should likely use the uc bonus to hit curve, but with a correspondingly higher number at each step.

which is pretty much what i think should happen for uc damage, it should be placed on the hal model but with a correspondingly lesser base weapon damage.

The damage scaling has to do with UC. I don't see why the Jiggy itself needs to be changed.

So, let's get the damage on a linear scale and turn the Gi into a tunic! Yay for logic. =)

"turn the Gi into a tunic!"

Very bad idea. Unless you want Walls to reach invulnerability to physical damage; if that happens, even worse for UC. =P

Right. Then make it able to be worn with tattoos. =P

If the CGI is to be made a tunic, then make its upgrade not count towards AC.

But better, just make it an amulet so it cannot be worn with an AoJ and junctioned to a JKF.

If the JKF gets the abilites of the CGI, that would be incredibly unfair to UC minions.

"Or give the CGI the bloodlust skill at max level. "

In my opinion, this is the idea that makes the most sense.

I would even go further and add steel skin at max level on top of bloodlust when Gi is worn. UC minions have always been DD spell fodder. This would at least give them a glimmer of hope to survive a few rounds of melee against DD spells.

"If the CGI is to be made a tunic, then make its upgrade not count towards AC."
Unupgradable?



"But better, just make it an amulet so it cannot be worn with an AoJ and junctioned to a JKF.

If the JKF gets the abilites of the CGI, that would be incredibly unfair to UC minions."

Would it be so horrible? Hal can use BGs. Magic familiars get NSC.

And JKFs get to use HG.

HG + CGI = unfair.

But in all seriousness, just give the CGI the inate BL ability.

Now, imagine a tank now choosing not to use the TSA and using a CGI instead of the inate BL. I personally have little problem with that.

A choice would be great. Use the TSA with more str=more ENC and regeneration vs using the CGI with Bloodlust.

If that is too much, just make the CGI BL ability only work when the user trains UC.

That's probably fine. The TSA needs some competition anyway.

If someone equips a melee weapon and trains UC, which takes priority in combat?

The weapon takes priority over the UC

Then having BL on a CGI can make a tank just train a base UC and get all that free xp benefit. If the CGI is changed.

I thought it was UC before weapon to stop this from happening if the CGI is changed.

" right now it requires an effective UC level of 16.36 mil in order to get a damage of only x6000. and x7000 could probably not be hit until 10 mil mpr."

now we truly know what makes jiggy cry! ; (