First off, it has to be asked as to whether you're referring to Echani as the race (which is simple enough to do; just go with pale skin tone, silver/gray hair, and silver eyes, which, iirc, are baseline options for humans anyways) or Echani as the fighting discipline. As mentioned before, the race itself is trivial, seeing as the Echani are a near-human race with the only primary difference being cultural, which is easily accomplished through roleplay. As a fighting discipline, it's not really possible: the Echani are martial combatants but they don't use the Force, nor do they use heavy armor. The classes that fit *some* of those are Shadows (martial characters with acrobatic movement and light armor, but they use the Force), Sentinels (similar in vein to the Shadow, would be excluded because of the Force as well, but use medium armor, which just looks like leather, instead), and Scoundrels (melee based with some decent emphasis on punching and kicking, though it's less "martial arts" and more "fighting dirty", so, aesthetically it doesn't work well, not to mention that they use a blaster and shotgun as their primary weapons).

If I were making an Echani type character, especially your Miraluka/Echani hybrid, I would probably go with a Miraluka Shadow (pale skin with white hair) and, when 2.0 is released, swap to using an electrostaff: you'll get light armor, acrobatic movement, and you can just hand wave the Force techniques using whatever roleplay excuse you want (in your backstory, your character could be ethnically Echani and raised as such from a young age but taken into the Jedi Order and trained as a Consular which explains why you use acrobatic moves and Echani physical disciplines mixed with traditional Jedi Force powers; conversely, you could just say that those attacks "do not exist" as far as you care and explain any damage you might do with them as being different Echani techniques or modified effects caused by tweaking your shield generator).

I've actually been spending time over the last couple of months developing a full on Echani class (2 ACs, companions designed, story written, abilities and talent trees set up with numbers as well; the whole shebang) partly as an interesting piece of game development but also because I've always thought the Echani were an interesting part of SW canon. I plan on posting it somewhere on the forums (no idea where, but likely in the class forums since I doubt it would actually constitute a real "Suggestion" in the applicable sense) when I get done with it (just gotta finish setting up the tank/DPS CDs and 1 more talent tree; maybe 2-4 weeks more, depending on how inspired I get in the intervening time frame).

I mainly agree with Kitru here, but I want to point out that no matter the armour grade, you can make your character look as if wearing light and non-restrictive clothing.

As for species, I would suggest Human, because they have a wide range of customizable looks. Replicating an Echani look should not pose much of a challenge.

For class, I would probably recommend Sentinel (with vibroswords instead of lightsabers), because they don't have a lot of flashy offensive Force powers, plus their fighting style is rather mobile and acrobatic, and is primarily reliant on weapon attacks and kicks. So just spec Ataru and pretend Blade Storm to be an empowered vibrosword slash:rolleyes:

EDIT: And yes, I also want a proper martial artist class. No (visible) Force to speak of, minimal to nonexistent tech. High mobility, high control, high avoidance.

EDIT: And yes, I also want a proper martial artist class. No (visible) Force to speak of, minimal to nonexistent tech. High mobility, high control, high avoidance.

I'm designing them as Tech using class with most of the "Tech" powers explained as simply special attacks (like how Stockstrike is a Tech attack, even though you're literally beating someone with a rifle) and a few that are best explained as being modified functionality of the Generator/Shield (in the Echani backstory, they're actually massively fond of personal shield generators and were experts at both crafting and using them; as I see it, that means that they could enable their Generator to emit a piercing sympathetic screech and shockwave when they issue a battle cry or let loose with subsonic tremors and energy pulses when they land or need to catapult themselves away).

They're definitely high mobility (giving them a leap plus some other interesting goodies specific to each AC) but their control isn't really substantially higher than any other classes (I don't think I gave them a hard CC, so they would have soft CC, like a Scoundrels or Vanguards, where it's a series of low-ish CD stuns, slows, etc.). As for mitigation/avoidance, both ACs are in medium armor and have a base 10% Defense chance (so they've got good avoidance "standard") and one of the ACs is tank capable (I designed it to be like a compromise between Guardians and Shadows: lots of active mitigation with a distributed mitigation profile that focuses slightly heavier on Defense than Shield or Absorb). The people I've shown it to have given me very favorable reviews of it, though I'm pretty sure I'll have to revisit the trees as well as the mitigation math when 2.0 actually lands (since it's all kinds of screwing up the DR curves and whatnot).

^

Sounds absolutely delicious.

Might as well sneak in unique disabling mechanics, like precision strikes that disable all special abilities (including CC, defensive cooldowns and mobility) for X seconds.

Might as well sneak in unique disabling mechanics, like precision strikes that disable all special abilities (including CC, defensive cooldowns and mobility) for X seconds.

I've tried to stick with functionality that already exists in some form or another or is an extension of existing abilities. Disabling specific class functionality doesn't really exist in the game at the moment and wouldn't be useful in PvE (since said "special abilities" are intrinsic mechanics that can't be ignored) while being specifically disadvantageous to some classes more than others in PvP (imagine disabling survivability CDs, which would have negligible effect upon Sages since they have none, possibly excepting the new Force Barrier, while it would have a major effect upon Shadows, Guardians, and Sentinels), not to mention it's hard to define "special abilities" since it's not an explicit category of abilities (ex: is Defense Screen for Scoundrels in the same category of abilities as Saber Ward for Guardians?). As far as the game is, mechanically, concerned, there are only attacks (CCs are actually attacks that deal no damage), heals, and self buffs so, in order to do anything like you're suggesting, you'd have to either create an arbitrary list of abilities that would need to be kept absolutely up to date or go through the game and create separate categories of self buffs and attacks exclusively for that mechanic to be implemented. Either way, it's more work than it would honestly be worth since it would, functionally, be only useful for PvP against specific targets.

The "new" mechanics I've added are simply new for players: a disengage used by one of the ACs (yes, it's for a melee AC, but it's additional mobility coupled with a survivability buff and it's actually an integral part of one of the specs and makes for a really interesting playstyle with it; as far as the game is concerned, it's a knockback on yourself from your target), a teleport/nuke ability (a targeted AoE that teleports or leaps you to the locus of the attack; limited to a 10-15m range to prevent it from being abused in PvP; this is pretty much what Toth and both Kephesses do with their leap/nukes), and one spec gets an PbAoE pull (10m range that sucks every enemy in, just like a range shrunk version of the AoE pull that the miniboss droid of MP does).

The primary differentiation I've done is in creating largely unused priority/rotation schemas and the interaction of two discrete resources (the ACs both have a set up that uses one resource largely identical to a Shadow's Force resource and a second largely identical to a Sentinel's Focus) as a method of utilizing those 2 resources. It's not really necessary to reinvent the wheel when designing a new class, especially since, honestly, there's still plenty more that can be done with the existing toolbox: the existing mechanics in the game actually allow for the creation of pet classes that don't require any tweaking to the existing systems as long as you know which abilities specifically to mention using and how to manipulate them with other existing systems (for example, a pet could be summoned through the use of an unlimited duration self buff cloned version of the Athiss bioanalysis crew skill benefit which places a buff on you that summons an akk dog to fight for you; manipulation of its AI to control who it attacks would be accomplished through cloned versions of the "passive" and "attack" companion abilities which either zero out all threat or maximize the existing threat for the current target; my next project of interest when I finish this is to flesh out *that* class idea).

I've tried to stick with functionality that already exists in some form or another or is an extension of existing abilities. Disabling specific class functionality doesn't really exist in the game at the moment and wouldn't be useful in PvE (since said "special abilities" are intrinsic mechanics that can't be ignored) while being specifically disadvantageous to some classes more than others in PvP (imagine disabling survivability CDs, which would have negligible effect upon Sages since they have none, possibly excepting the new Force Barrier, while it would have a major effect upon Shadows, Guardians, and Sentinels), not to mention it's hard to define "special abilities" since it's not an explicit category of abilities (ex: is Defense Screen for Scoundrels in the same category of abilities as Saber Ward for Guardians?). As far as the game is, mechanically, concerned, there are only attacks (CCs are actually attacks that deal no damage), heals, and self buffs so, in order to do anything like you're suggesting, you'd have to either create an arbitrary list of abilities that would need to be kept absolutely up to date or go through the game and create separate categories of self buffs and attacks exclusively for that mechanic to be implemented. Either way, it's more work than it would honestly be worth since it would, functionally, be only useful for PvP against specific targets.

I didn't really have the patience/desire to search and research your post on the topic, so I won't comment on that what I did not quote.

As for disable, BW are doing that right now with Electro Net. Except it's selective disabling of mobility cooldowns.

And yes, I understand precisely what disabling everything but basic attack would mean. I play a healing Sage, among others. Not saying it's the way to go, and it can't be selective debilitation of, say, major offensive, or major defensive skills, but how's a short (2-3 sec) ability lockout worse than a hard stun (ignoring Resolve, of course)? So far disabling effects of Net can be overcome with the CC breaker, or, if I'm not mistaken, can be cleansed off, so I'd imagine this kind of utility would have a similar counter.

As for PvE, Obfuscate and smoke grenade don't apply to Ops bosses as well. So I don't see how something that's relatively useless in PvE can't be implemented as PvP utility.

Other than that, I'd love to see a "True Strike" mechanic which allows one specific, or a following attack to ignore all forms of mitigation and avoidance (other than raid encounters, naturally). Simply put, "Lol, you can't kill me while I'm getting healed to full" mechanics need a hard counter. WoW did well by making Paladin bubbles and Mage Ice Blocks removable by Warriors and Priests. I imagine Force Barrier would also meet rage and hate (probably to a lesser extent than Undying Rage but still).

End of mini-rant.

P.S. PBAoE pull is great. I've been pushing that for Defense Guards some time ago. Disengage, I'd rather give to Mercs/Mandos, since they have a jetpack already... from a "makes damn sense" point of view, rather than from game mechanics point of view.

My Kinetic Combat Shadow is ethnically Echani. To me, the KC Shadow felt the most "martial artsy", so I ran with that.

For gear, I went with as much Energy Armor (the invisible stuff) as I could. I opted for a simple black battle skirt, and the Battlemaster Footwraps for the barefoot effect.

Story-wise, I play my toon as an Echani combat instructor whose Force-sensitivity was identified quite late in life. Pale skin, white crew-cut, full white beard, body type 4 (for the heavy-G powerlifter effect).

I'm extremely happy with the way it's turned out.