Martial Arts OR Heavy Weapons? - Kenshi 

Watching a Kenshi video with the Rimworld OST playing in the background really messed with my brain...

Seeing arms and legs fly off after being punched, will always make me smile

Martial arts deal monstrous amounts of damage and are arguably stronger than any weapon type in single target damage department. Out of all the weapons, only falling sun comes close at very high stats, but there are some caveats. Heavy weapons have significant advantage of range. Martial arts are hampered somewhat by longer animations for attack and very long dodge animations. Weapon block animations are nearly instant and also end quickly - meaning that a good fighter can get some attacks between blocks. Martial artist can easily get stuck in near endless loop of dodge animations - even if you are using 'martial arts fast dodger' mod. This alone is the reason why martial arts are not THAT great against groups of enemies. 2-3 beak things alternating their attacks can basically lock a martial artist, while any weapon user will likely be able to attack between beak thing animations. Another problem are attack animations themselves. Plenty of martial arts attacks have rather long windup to them - like all the jumping kicks and punches - these push character between the enemies and give them opportunity to attack.

I would say heavy weapons are probably more useful to have. Realistically, you don't fight single strong opponents all that often whereas groups are something you run into all the time. Plus, if you wanna fight something big and nasty such as a Leviathan, you might wanna have a good bleed multiplier because taking out actual body parts would take ages and the bleed multiplier on Martial Arts is Martial Arse. Unless you're playing a Skeleton, you get a lower bleed multiplier than even just a Jitte and even with a skeleton, you're still only at a fiths of the multiplier that any of the heavy weapons get. Martial Arts also get a massive 40% damage penalty against robots unless you're playing a skeleton or using robotic limbs. But really, it's mostly just about clearing out crowds. You constantly get crowds. Even if you're going to fight Bugmaster or Cat-Lon, you first need to get past crowds. Heavy Weapons are good with crowds as they can easily catch a number of enemies with every swing. Martial Arts have short range and I've noticed that the dodge you get instead of a block can sometimes be very impractical, especially in group fights as it can get your martial artist moving in the wrong direction and result in them being isolated and ganged up on from all sides. Plus, dodge animations are slower than blocking and if you've got a lot of attacks coming in, a martial artist may struggle to find an opening to attack themselves. One thing that's kinda frustrating about MA is the fact that you cannot force them. Your character will only perform them if they don't carry a weapon. Meaning, if you got a Martial Arts character looting a place on their own and they find a good weapon you wanna use on another character or keep around for when you hire another character, and if you're looking to optimize inventory space or it's a big weapon that doesn't fit in your inventory or backpack.. well, suddenly your character is holding a piece of metal they have no idea how to use and no idea how to block with as dodge is separate from melee defense, so every time you get engaged in a fight, you'd have to throw that weapon away and pick it back up.

I mean, punching people is fun, but Shek women with big-ass swords is hella hot!

Martial arts is better in my opinion but a huge ass sword is way cooler

Ahh, my Beep is a martial artist, he literally beats the limbs of the enemies (200-400 damage) usually if he hits vital parts enemy dies almost instantly. It's fun to watch enemies surrund Beep and then get beaten to death by a single attack (RIP Black Dragon Ninjas)

Just a few pointers: once you grab a Gorillo in Venge, go to the Rebel's Base bar north of The Hub, the beds there are free (there's also two free ones in the abandoned HN house in The Hub, the gorillos will heal a lot faster in beds than in Hive camping beds (which cost you money). Second: For automated Strength training, load up your character and leave them with just enough room to carry ONE barrel of water, then build a water tank far from a water well and give your character the job to haul to said water tank and they'll go back and forth lugging water barrels to the water tank by themselves until the end of time, also, don't forget to to carry a body, STR will train way faster that way, I suggest either amputee NPC or one of your skellies (so it doesn't go hungry), carrying dead bodies is buggy as they sometimes despawn.

I love both since both of them deals crazy amount of damage hence why i ALWAYS train MA for all of my characters as secondary weapon (atleast to level 50) alongside with their primary weapons but i still prefer heavy weapons way more than martial arts. Martial arts are very handy (heh) because you cannot be disarmed so you can always fight whatever and whenever, extremely useful when you're breaking out of prison and you lose your weapon because the police/guards took it. you have to be LITERALLY DISARMED (losing your arms/disabled, duh) to be unable to fight but that is also for every weapon. You HAVE to dodge attack because you cannot block with MA so you HAVE to equip light armor with small/zero protection against ranged attack. On the otherhand Heavy weapons are better simply because of the AoE attack AND ability to equip whatever armor you want so you can be whatever role in your squad, equiping heavy armor is the best because now you can tank BOTH melee and ranged attack so your character can survive way more than lightly armored MA user so they can fight longer = be more useful. I use Genesis mod which has new attack animation and HW attacks is just INSANE, your character will do more broad sweeping and charging attack which decimate your surrounding area like a fricking beyblade. i can confidently say that my best HW user can kill 5 times or even more than my best MA user can. Also a guy with bigass sword is just simply way cooler.

Best weapon/attack style: the one who drops limbs on the floor most often. Sad I can't grind them and sell hiver burgers.

Simple, short, informative. Very good video my friend

scorchlander, only scorchlander. best healing 1.1 and slower bleeding 0.9 + they are ok runners, and sheks are slow

New comment on old video, I think this is 90% solved. Nubs get regular polarms, experienced guys get paladin's cross, and absolute stad chads get falling suns. The thing people always missed was how fast your strength drops when injured even slightly, and how important armor penetration is. If you didn't lose the str req almost immediately then the falling sun is amazing, but the cross is a good balance. Weaker but lower str req is polearm. Also too, bonus section, you can put hungry bandits in crab armor and give them old world 1 or 2 bows and if the numbers are close to even they will win. Crossbows are op af if you position and don't kill each other.

Heavy weapons are better strategically but they won't make you see green numbers climbing above 700+

Martial arts is easier to cheese level, but it is terrible against groups imo just because of how much longer it takes to kill large groups. A single sweep with a falling sun can take down almost a whole melee threat. The dodging instead of blocking can have you dancing around all day. This is mostly personal preference unless you are fighting enemies with crossbow or turret backup, where it may matter.

here is a comment

Dude the rimworld music is tripping me out lol what game were we talking about again

to be honest, skeletons make exceptionally good martial artists... they don't take damage punching metal, being made of metal themselves, and if fighting other martial artists, the enemy hurts themselves by hitting you, even if you're fully unarmoured. yes, they train the skill slower, but that just takes more time, instead of limiting their maximum. i often use a group of skeleton martial artists for hilarious playthroughs, they're basically a mobile blender.

Both. 1 vs few: martial arts (and backup), fallen sun for the rest, chop chop

I have a squad of 6 and can't get anyone's martial arts above 70 without grinding. I wear garbage armor for MA, set up an outpost in bast and I've been fighting the holy nation, the uc, even literally killed meatlord by accident, he's dead. MA is so high damage at this level that my 6 guys don't get enough training, every hit either kills, maims or (most likely) they just dodge dance around for a while till they land a hit. How tf do you do this?

Honestly? Crossbows. Why have a lengthy 2-3 minute duel, when you can just lop off the guy's head clean off with an Oldworld or an Eagle's Cross in one shot. I mean melee combat is kinda satisfying and all, but in terms of efficiency? Well, there's a reason we don't use swords irl anymore.

Imo, martial arts starts absurdly weak, peaks in the mid game, and then falls off late game when you get top tier gear and typically fight larger groups. Heavy weapons are consistently good (not great) and then peak in the end game, where their only real competition are hackers and (heavy) polearms.

one thing wrong about the gorillo in the bed thing is that it does train dexterity at the same rate as martial arts

Martial art for me is for the "assassin pack", but armor + weapon/heavy weapon is more safe for me, like a lot of people comment here, you deal with lots of enemies in kenshi, and for this heavy weapon is much more safe.

did u just put rimmworld music in a kenshi video. reported. and then reported again;.;p;

I am not big fan of MA because it's overpower, i hate when in midle of my attack from the sky my opponent already beat the shit outta me and hype however it's pretty good 1v1, looks sick and deals crazy damage. But i don't know why i absolutely love when my giant sword makes 10 people and their legs fly only by one long attack, and when you have like 5 of them you just a grasscutter or legcutter

personally i don't like picking one over the other i just grab a few guys so i can have atleast one of each weapon type in my warband

I use 3 attack slot. Martial art in large group fighting is not ideal haha

Rimworld title screen music background !!!!!!

And here is another one

xD Yay Mentioning the punching the animal in the bed strategy! :p It looks like my teachings are spreading around (Im kidding I dont think I invented the method but im glad that someone listens xD)

Heavy weapons for groups martial arts for soloing katanas are also good especially odachi don't even worry about hackers or clubs or polearms unless your a hunter yeah the only weapons worth while are heavy katana and martial

i fucking hate when youtubers do the bit of not being able to pronounce a word so they just pretend to fumble around for 30 seconds instead of just looking up how to pronounce it holy shit pass next video

you can also use sleeveless dustcoats for MA if you want better protection. Or for even better protection, normal dustcoats.

Personally, I prefer heavy weapons, just because they do nearly as well as martial arts 1v1 at end game (martial arts do suck early/mid game, you really need the training) but heavy weapons do vastly better for 1vsGroup, martial arts characters tend to get suckered into chains of dodge animations and doing nothing when facing a group. Also using lighter armours does mean it's very easy with MA to lose your dodge by bad luck from taking a hit to the legs. Overall, it being kenshi, it's obviously best to have a small squad with 1 character to cover every weapon type.

I like both, and i just love how much insane damage MA fighters deal. Able to oneshot the strongest characters in the game... really oneshot to death Instant. But, they are a bit like glasscanons because of the less armor they got. Sure, high skill of doging does the job, but against foes with high attack level, you will get take the one or another hit. And then, your health can drown pretty quick, even with 90+ toughness. What is just awesome is, zu send in your heavies with the big ass swords, and then bring in your MAs. Limbs are flying everywhere 😁 You just bring doom and death upon your enemies. I like especially punching holes in the faces of that arrogant bigmouthed Shek with little (of course) Cyber-Beep

Chose martial arts because look "cool" or because is "cheap" is a weird way to take a decision. Heavy weapon soldier use a heavy armour too, wich combined with a high resilence stat will make the char take 1-10 damage from most enemies, wich makes them exceptional against groups because can take a lot of damage and can do a lot of damage in area (wich use to be 2-5 enemies hit per atack). I've send 5 party high level heavy weapon soldier with all masterwork to atack canfist and hunted him. Some of them went down but can go up after after a few seconds, as they receive a few damage wich allows them to keep fighting quick.

me and my dragon slayer mod which adds a 144kg monstrosity

the hard part to wait to grind training after we finish our outpost is, you cant build a good base without a good strong character

Isnt it better to wear medium armour for martial arts because when youre training you train faster without skill buffs and when you're high level, +4 martial arts wont affect you much but higher protection will. I only really use martial arts boosting clothes when im starting out and need those starter skills to actually get hits off on enemies

shek better

non skeletons do 0.6 martial art damage vs skeletons

Literally use both and everything else within a combat scenario no matter your armor (better if with samurai)

neither polearm or paladins cross is king what matters more in endgame is armor penetration and not raw dmg, since high level enemies have gear that get to 70 or 80% cut resist for MA, dodge is just inferior to block due to the long animation time, and the limit of only being able to use armor that either has low resist, low efficiency, or poor coverage is a big debuff to survivability The STR requirements of Heavy weapons is an issue because taking dmg to ur arms and torso in combat applies stat penalties that will drop ur strength. if ur not comfortably above ur str requirements by a large margin when healthy, taking dmg will quickly cause u to drop below str requirements. Meitou Frag axe requires 99 STR and 2 masterwork industrial arms to meet min requirements, and from there taking even a smidge of dmg will apply enough stat penalties to drop u below requirements. Plank and Sun are a bit more reasonable, but still has the same issue

I go falling sun and assassin rags on my skeleton, I defy everything you say

Heavy weapons if your taking on multiple stuff, or are defending a base. Martial arts for 1v1s. (Kinda rare to 1v1 in Kenshi though.) Heavy weapons are more practical, but martial arts is useful. Also Shek are the best for Heavy weapons, as they can wear more armor then a Skeleton and thus last longer in a fight even if they have less hp. There is a mod that pits an endgame Skeleton with 100 stats vs an endgame Shek with 100 stats. Both wearing samurai armor (As much as they can wear.) and the Shek wearing chainmail (Skeleton can`t.) Also using a falling sun. The Shek wins 70% of the time. Also, training in the fog islands is very dangerous early game. But if you know what you are doing you can get heavy weapons stats in the 50s fairly quickly.

Heavy armoured heavy weapon shek's are probably the strongest. End game armour matters. Then again I like to train on levithans I didn't even try the bed thing til a few weeks ago to make a few MA's , I was underwhelmed. Even a scorchlander trained to 95 dex/ma/60str (all though beating on a couple of old really tough beak things)and tough trained to 85 by bandit mobs, armed with MW assassin rags,chain shirt,cloth sammy pants,masked helm. Didn't stack up in most fights with my shek huntmans with 90dex from x-bow use and 90str/att/tough from melee w/levis. Edit the human trained faster , but the shek brought back 100's of 1000's worth of cats in pearls.

now a better question: which weapon type is better for an ARMY? Say I want to put together 20 or 30 dudes who all use a certain type of fighting, do i want heavies or martial artists?

I like to have both. The guys in heavy armor get to use taunts so my martial artists are free to pummel enemies. Also the best way to build up martial arts is to build an arena and equip everyone with practice fists. You prisoner gets really strong and then becomes a god at training your other guys. Then just recruit him when you are done with him for a new godly warrior.

can you share about your mod list

Hate to burst your bubble but there is a way faster way

Defense is better than dodge. AoE damage is better than overdamage on one enemy. It's simple. 7 minutes. Bruh.

Tip To Train Martial arts - 1 Kidnap a guy better a broken Skelleton so you dont make angry a faction and you dont have to feed them, also a skelleton repair bed. - Equip a Full Samurai Heavy Armour and the big BackPack. No Weapons. - Proceed to release the skelleton of the jail with a Katana in a closed Wall with another party member with at leas level 40 at assasination to knock out the Skelleton once he finish pounding the ass of your character in dodge training. Use the skelleton repair bed to repair the skelleton with carefull he doesnt run away. And Repeat until Level 100 dodge. This method easily increse the dodge level from 0 to 70 in 4 hours.

It does train dexterity when you bunch animals in bed.

Bad teeth has 30k cat weapons including falling sun.

I've found the best strategy is two martial artists (+ranged weapons) 4 heavies (h. Weps & h. Armor), 6 mediums with polearms. This can tackle almost all situations. The MA's are specialized long range and short range wrecking balls, large enemies like cleansers get worn down by the crossbows long before they can even reach the melee forces. One of those I always give a Paladin's cross. Anything can be tackled with the right approach

answer is heavy weapons because berk

Am I the only one who hates the exploits to train? It's a single player game so it doesn't bother me that others do it. But, when I look for Kenshi videos it's hard to find people not using exploits.

btw, for your martial arts fellas go pick them up a sleeved dustcoat, a leather turtleneck, and maybe some samurai pants, not sure what headgear but I use a tagelmust and it works pretty well. All of these have no debuffs for martial arts, some give martial arts boosts, and they're very protective especially when they're masterwork grade. You'll notice your Martial artist become a lot more tanky with this kinda set on, I was rocking the assassin rags, armored rag skirt, and the martial artists bindings for a while to boost my martial artists stats a good bit but after a point it's better to give up these bonuses for the more protective gear.

Martial arts saves you money

Great video, one small piece of criticism though. The background music is a little too loud. It's not enough to make understanding you difficult but it is certainly loud enough to be distracting. I'd personally lower the volume by about 25%

Punching Gorillos in the Hive Village WILL train up your Dex.

Katanas, obviously.

Based

RimWorld 🎵 music.

Did... Did you call gi pants G. I. pants?!

Kenshi video with Rimworld music....

Where's the armor video?

why Gorilo is better for training and not Beak Things?

Esperaba al final un 1vs1 entre ambos personajes...

Love the rimworld music in the background

Why not both?

It's not G.I. it's gi as in ghee

whats your problem with sheks man theyre cool

Nice, RimWorld music

Nice video dude, love the ending

Wheres theGameCoffee?

I think MA is OP in Kenshi

RANGED WEAPONS.

I just need a mod that makes martial artists dodge projectile.

Nice video 🔥

nice

MA is best on 1vs1, but if you're vs a whole army, MA user can be stuck inside an infinity loop of dodging while also with just one lucky hit from the enemy and your MA user will doom soon or later. Also training MA is really hard and take tons of time, best user for MA is skeleton but skeleton can't use helmet, in which if you're using hardcore mod like "Legendary of kenshi" where boss can basically one shot your skeleton if landing hit on the head. Meanwhile Heavy weapons have Falling sun, the infamous jack of all trades weapon, decent reach, not hard to dealing aoe damage while fighting a whole army, blocking animation is fast so you don't have to worry about infinity loop of defending. Samurai armor set also give you tons of armor while not even decrease any dex stat, let your character have more endurance and can tank more damages, don't have to worry about critital hit from your enemy like MA user. -> In conclusion, Samurai armor set plus falling sun is a meta build and you can fight anywhere anyone on the map with this set. While MA is kinda tricky and have alot of weakness, a glass cannon build.

top notch editing bro! Great vid

I don't think the whole investement and expenses part hold truw witout exploits both are very hard to train early on heavy weapons are just to slow and martial artist do no damage but you do wan't to get some good medium armor for them whish while cheaper isn't affordable either, you wan't to start with normal guys and switch some of them into martial artist or heavy weapon experts later wen you can confortably take on regular groups of level 20 ennemies witout issues as for combat just use both heavy weapons can get some respectable damage while taking most of the aggro at the start of the battle and martial artist make for great dualists that very quickly pick off ennemies

when you have one arm left MA still can fight MA better but I still use katana :V