Elyx
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Didn't look it up when I wrote that, but i mean since it random proc it is pretty close to critting, maybe it happens a bit more often. Staying at 3 stacks of TA when no actual burst healing is required is not that hard at all, so this is my reference to giggling comes from in that case.
easy to confuse that with the other talent we have Patient Studies, which return energy on every Dx scan crit. Both talents are pretty awesome.
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On a different perspective, my favorite solo build is something like this:
you get the best of both worlds. and instant HoT, an instant burst heal, solid energy regen, increased TA stacks, and buffed laceration/cull. you can heal most Ops up to HM's, and at the same time do enough damage to pull aggro away from your tank companion. solo mobs god down quite fast with this build. comp taking allot of damage? back up and heal. comp doing fine? throw out some solid damage. I've had 5 lacerations back before with this build, which takes down mobs fast.
Only difficult part is choosing which side to level up first. I honestly did the healing tree first. I kept my comp geared well ( i use DPS comp once Im post Alderaan), and let her deal most the damage. id follow up with backstabs and DoT's and whatever else i had. but if you want to try the DPS route, you can alwasy level up the Conc tree first. either way, its a great spec for leveling and solo work.
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iirc they were all done. they covered most the Op concerns in the smuggler questions, and the officially put the "clas rep" system on haitus. This could be why you don't see any activity.
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Not that I agree, but Bio indicated that they thought the entire class was too "slippery", not just the healing spec. that, and they also indicated that the now think that the Op isn't supposed to use cover...so I doubt well see it return any time soon. Our best bet is to push them for the buffs to our defensive abilities outside of shield...the one thing that they said we did need.
the reason they took cover (a big defensive ability for DPS Ops) is a mystery to me....I can only hope that they plan on following up (soon) with more talented defensive abilities. that in addition to our energy buffs...AND if the change to our "energy dump" works out (couldn't udnerstand why they would increase the damage to an ability that costs energy when were already starved for it in the middle tree...go figure).
As long as they give back defensive abilities to make up for it, it's not a real loss. IF.....
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It may seem somewhat backward at first glance --weapons, in this game, are fundamentally "stats-sticks," no more-- but at the same time, the from of those stat-sticks is pretty much locked in vis-a-vis certain aspects of class-balance, especially between the mirrors.)
Actually the only class that really uses its weapon for stats only is the sage/sorc. all others have skill damage based on weapon damage. if you switch out your weapon for a lvl 1 green its quite easy to see. and some are more dependent on it then others...a guard/jugg is very dependent on weapon damage as an example.
On the subject, I'd love to see more flexibility. The first time I saw the cannon and fell in love with it i though to myself, "that is a cool tank class!" I was quite disappointed to find out that the healer got the cannon! I assumed that such a massive weapon was for the tanky class...I would prob roll a vanguard if i could use the cannon.
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My Concealment Operative hit level 46 today and the only trouble I've had is that my burst damage is so high my tank companion can't always hold it. Tonight, while the armor reduction from acid strike was working, I've managed to one-hit-kill about a dozen enemies with a backstab. I've soloed almost every Heroic 2 and 2+ that I've encountered plus a handful of Heroic 4s.
I have died to bosses because I have to confront them and their minions out of stealth, but have always gotten them on the second try.
I think this is the issue with concealment. notice tank companion? this means the comp has threat...and therefore the backs of the bad guys are available. Good tactics! For the OP...this is one of the concealment crutches. we need backspace. time at the rear. our biggest DoT, and our big damage dealers, require exposure to the opponents back.
and our big "Opener" requires stealth to boot
we also have energy management issues. it relies on timing and coordination that honestly isn't always there in PvE, unless you set things up that way. with a tank comp, as an example.
Here's another option if you'd like OP: run a hybrid. my favorite build to date for solo PvE and smaller heroics. you run up the medicine tree just high enough to get surgical probe and surgical precision, and then up the Concealment tree to get culling. that way you get the energy regen from your default healing ability, and the energy return and buffed damage from Laceration.
One of the reasons this works so well in PvE is that past culling, most the talents are buffing your positional damage (which unless you set things up is situational at best in solo play). most your up front damage is from laceration, corrosive dart, and such. So this build takes the best of the upfront damage, and combines it with a higher tactical advantage limit, better energy regen, and 2 extra instant healing abilites to boot.
I run this setup with a DPS comp and burn through content. when the comp is taking heavy fire, i stand back and heal, when they're not, i slide up and burst the mob down with 3 stacks of TA and my laceration. There are times when i've chained 5 lacerates back to back. its a ton of damage. it's also very fun as well. I often will heal low level FP's and heroics quite easily with this build as well.
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We don't need the root we need other things. For PvE it is worthless.
I disagree. I find that mob movement is very irritating...can't tell you how many times a tank or other DPS have KB'ed a mob out of my range, or pulled it...and i waste 2/3 of my ravage.
However....at BEST it's a QoL change. not a fix like they think it is. Or perhaps its just a small bone...the one that they can give to us at the moment while they fix other things.
But I do agree that this isn't the help that ravage needed. in PvP it needs KB immunity in addition to the root (as well as other things), and in PvE we need a higher proc rate (or more abilities that proc it is probably better). but yeah...this and a few other changes to other classes leave me scratching my head. like....what about all the other things that are forefront on our minds? .
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The idea that the class was not designed with cover benefits in mind is ludicrous and insulting. To dismiss it at this point, after TWO years is a joke, and paints the person who wrote such a statement as not only clueless, but incompetent. This requires that this faulty claim must be disproved.
Very well thought out post Vorna. And I agree that removing cover now is just silly...no matter what their excuse is, the benefits of cover have been know for years as you stated, so they shouldn't try to cover it up with "we didn't expect smugglers to use it". thats just silly.
I would like to point out a few things about your post however. first off, you forgot to add 2 things to the smugglers list of movement abilities:
for one, our roll. you may disagree, but at this point it's one of my more favorite movement abilities, on par with my juggernauts leap. although the energy cost is high, it is spammable...a decent tadeoff in my opinion.
second (arguably) is stealth. it's not an instant gap closer like leap is, but it is a movement ability, and a powerful one when used right. and Bio does consider this when they take into account classes movement.
Also, you added things to your "list" that are not equivalent abilities. force bubble is not comparative to leap, or our roll...it seems like you merely added items to your list to make smugglers look worse off.
Which brings me to my second point. though the specs do need some polish and work (im a fan of scrapper, and it needs some help for PvE), your overall post paints the smuggler/agent as a broken class that barely gets by only because were such amazing players. to tell you the truth, the class is not in a bad spot. all 3 specs are viable and can fill their respective roles (scrapper again needs some help and is behind a bit, but not by huge amounts). Dirty fighting in the hands of a seasoned player can challenge gunslingers and marauders on the damage parses. and sawbones is arguably the best healing spec in the game.
So I agree with you in the context that the change is simply unneeded...I just disagree with your method. you don't need to make smugglers look like yesterdays trash just to convince others that this change is silly....we all can see its silly. I just hope Bio can realize this too. and if they drop cover for us, some recompense needs to happen. adding a passive, as an example, that allows smugglers/Operatives to use cover abilities without cover is a good start.
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yeah I didn't get this change either. they're discussion about the smuggler was that the healing spec was too OP due to "defensive abilities", and move them over to the other trees.
....but instead, they hurt the WHOLE class...I don't get it. do they think that sawbones is the only tree that uses cover? it makes no sense. perhaps they plan on buffing the DPS trees...but why not at the same time? why hurt the whole class, but do nothing positive? where are our energy buffs for scrapper? where are the defensive talents that you said you were going to migrate over?
guess helping the class isn't as important as nerfing it.
...and ironically, the gunslingers still get their defenses....the class that they said they needed to reduce their damage and utility on...
I don't understand Bio. why are you telling us one thing, then doing another? I think it would help to explain the logic in the blog. I would assume that the dev that did the blog is aware of the discussions around the 3 questions...our energy needs...
the buff to our quick shot is great, and much needed (scrapper could use an energy reduction on that too btw, its stil pretty expensive). I just don't get the cover change. I could honestly care less about cover, id prefer our defensive abilities to lie elsewhere...it just doesn't make any sense
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this definitely needs to be addressed and reworked then.
what needs to be addresses and reworked? as far as I can tell, they are addressing and reworking the shield....do you want them to address and rework it again after they rework it?
if you mean the skills that we need under cover, then I agree. while they are killing cover for the smuggler, they should add a passive that allows use of skill that normally require cover to be used without it. problem solved...two problems actually. i felt a bit silly dropping into cover just to fire off sabotage. perhaps its time to give it to us as a regular skill....
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There are always exceptions to the rule, and it's very likely that the conditions were just right to produce 2.7k in an actual raid. However sin dps is far too RNG, positional (dec) and squishy (even if you completely disregard the lower dps) to make it anything less than last choice for any progression group. So while a sin happened to be in that group, they would have been better served taking almost anything else.
that's a cop-out. you could say the same thing for just about ANY spec out there. with the exception of a few specs, all classes deal with RNG, some more then others. and it could be the exception...and it could be the benchmark. saying its the exception favors your position in the argument, but it's not really what we should take as a fact.
The point CZ was trying to show (which is real) is that sins/shadows do increased damage during the burn phase, enough to make an impact on the metrics...and they get a bigger burn phase buff then most other AC's, which is why its critical to account for in the overall picture...which is why dummy parses are bad for comparisons.
That being said, they are doing less then expected...and Bio is buffing this. so really I don't see any reason why the OP should worry. this is IF the changes they make actually make a difference. But it is obvious that they feel the sin/shadow needs some help. and were getting it sooner rather then later.
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not to offend, but this is what you get for wanting mitigations like the other tanks.
in early game, sin/shadow was quite the OP tank. the combo of decent mitigations and the self heals made them OP. they were the tank of choice in mosy situations. Bio needed to cut back a bit, but at first they didn't want to kill your uniqueness either (believe it or not), so they cut back on your armor and passive mits.
the end result was sensitivity to spikes. shadows and sins across the game whined. but Bio couldn't move you back to being a broke Overpowered class...so it was either mitigations with no self heals, or self heals with reduced mitigations. trust me...they've tried 2-3 different levels of each to try and balance the two out, and this is the end result.
But Bio has also clearly noted (for a purpose) that they also like the idea discussed in the forums about giving some of those self heals back as a defensive cooldown, so the shadow/assn still has a "flavor" to them that the others don't. I think this is important to remember....they don't want to kill the uniqueness of the shadow, but balancing out the self heals and mitigations wasn't working.
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the issue they're describing OP is the environment where in short "burst" situations, our damage is good. outside of those cyclical short term environments, our DPS is bad. bad enough that we score low overall in comparison to other classes.
Scoreboards in PvP have so many variables they are not a good indicator of a class potential, period. Parsing in PvE is more accurate...and this is where the weakness in Damage is showing up. If every fight was 20 seconds long, and allowed a shadow/assassin to burst out of stealth, our damage would be stellar. but you get outside that window, and your overall damage drops considerably.
You would have to post regular parses in raid environments and compare them to get a real picture of your overall PvE DPS...the sheer fact that you have skills to hit on a regular basis is no indication of decent DPS whatsoever.
And this is where people are/were noticing the shortfall. I personally am still undecided if the fix is going to resolve this, and if its the positive changes people are looking for. I know myself that I was hoping for something different for Balance/Madness....instead the one skill we get tired of spamming gets a mild buff. Oh well...Im hoping the changes impact infiltration better.
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Seems to me that they intend this ability to be a "save your butt" ability, and not a pro-active way to reduce damage. If you think about it...the lower your health is, the more effective this tool is. if your at full health, losing half is huge. if your at 10 health, losing 5 isn't anything compared to living for 4 seconds longer.
But I do agree with a previous poster, and I've said this about the jugg/guard ability as well...temporary health hurts more then it helps. in this case, it's the reverse, but essentially the same
but it's not completely worthless...it's just not a regular rotation tool anymore. it's a save your hide ability, much like the merc's ability they recently changed. it gives your 4 seconds to pop a medpack or have a healer get you past the danger line.
the health cost could be adjusted now though. perhaps 40 or 35% instead of 50. that way you are taking a hit for using it, but not so much that it nullifies the healers ability to heal you past that one-shot zone.
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Welcome to SWtOR.
game released in Dec 2011, and it took them until 2.0 to finally make the guardian/juggeranut tanking tree worth using. Assassin's/Shadows have had issues since 2.0....while I support your general frustration with the class, it is getting changed soon, and you have yet to beat the top winners for having to wait.
this is like complaining after the milk has been spilled and already cleaned up.
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Tbh i would level your scoundrel. They are amazing fun and i dont see them as OP i just see them as complimenting all the things a sage does badly with as a strong point and vice versa.
So when groups are spread out - scoundrels have an easier time keeping them up. when people are grouped together then sage will excel.
sages and scoundrels both have pretty awesome spike avoidance, shielding and hots.
I doubt we will get any nerf with exception to maybe some sort of survivability nerf in pvp of some sort. Healing wise the class is where it should be.
Exactly. Based on you logic OP, I should prob stop playing my Guard, because at some point here they're going to get nerfed. And my commando too...after all, they are doing well in DPS, so a nerf is on the way. while were at it, I should stop playing my sage as well...because you know...they will get nerfed. it's inevitable.
Nerfing, buffing, and the associated ill informed opinions of players are all part of an MMO. You know whats funny? a guild friend of mine who heals on an agent just recently got dropped from PuG Ops so they could take a sorc, cause the Op leader thought sorcs did better healing. Yet here we are, worried about getting a nerf cause our healing is too OP...
..you can see how opinions are silly at times. stick with the class you like. if your in a guild that has Op leaders with enough intelligence to aim their little soldiers the right way in the bathroom, they will bring you because your a good player, not because your playing the FoTM class.
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Wets is right. Bio from the beginning designed gear so no single piece is perfect. Token gear is closer, but it's flawed on purpose, so you will have to use comms to min/max in the direction you desire. this flexibility was not just for forcing replay, but also for variety. no matter what we think, not everyone has the same approach to their goals in game, and this design allows people to choose...whether they want to optimize one thing or another.
If you want cookie cutter gear, Modern warfare and Halo are thataway...
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It may sound odd...but after leveling multiple toons through all the story lines in the game, one of the biggest frustrations I have with them all is the required travel time in each story-line. I've gotten used to it though...but one thing that still bugs me is the quests all STILL require you to go to your ship, travel back to your home world (or wherever) manually, run through the space ports...etc etc. in a game that provides (at cost mind you) faster porting skills (like port to home world), forcing us to spend an extra hour flying back and forth is simply silly.
The quests need to be able to recognize when you arrive at your home planet or destination regardless of how you got there. For the benefit of new players, the wording on the quest can remain simple. change the quest directions to "travel to coruscant" and in the quest details, you can indicate either use your ship, or a fast port option.
I have port to home-world on many toons, and I rarely use it. 98% of the reason a high level toon will go back to home-world is for class quests...you are killing most the reason to have that porting ability in the first place.
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Source: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6801929#post6801929
From Mercenary's top 3 questions answers:
So what we got that is worth nerfing?
Cloak? But we need to be in the melee fray with weaker armor.
Undying Rage? It already cuts our health by half, and it was BW who gave us back the extra 1s with PvP set bonus.
Saber Ward? That would affect Jugs too, so I doubt it. And it got a long cooldown anyway.
Camouflage? It is our threat reducer too, and it needs to be at 45s.
That is about it. I guess they can make Camouflage give no damage reduction for its duration, and remove set bonus and talents that buff Undying Rage, so that it is set on 1.5 min cooldown for 4s no matter what.
you also missed another portion of the comment, where they indicated that certain classes are simply doing "a bit more damage then we would like" they didn't specify mara/snipers, but i have a strong feeling that they do indeed mean those classes (and possible all the other classes that are currently doing more damage then the merc)
So not to be a gloomy george, but I would be prepared to see your damage drop as well in future adjustments. Or more specifically, the COMBINATION of the high DPS and survivability. So my thought is that they will balance the two out. a bit less survivability and mitigations AND utility. don't forget they brought that up as well.
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Judging from those comments it looks like they'll be doing away with the hybrid tax soon enough. The reasoning they provided almost mirror the ones given by WoW/Ghostcrawler back in 2008.
As a marauder I hope our utility and dps isn't gutted or "normalized" for PVE (and PVP) since we are frontline fighters and there are many more fights mechanics that are melee unfriendly. For example, most raids wouldn't mind having all ranged dps while all melee dps would raise eyebrows and present more challenges on fights like HM Tyrans and Titan 6. But I'm not holding my breath.
I wouldn't want to see overkill either. although im not happy with the current OP state of the mara/sniper, I dont' want the class to drop below where it should be. And I agree, fights need to provide enough balance and/or flexibility that raid don't want to switch out melee class A for ranged class B. although that isn't really what this argument is about. Juggernauts have a melee range spec, as to Operatives. that's a different argument (although I agree with you strongly on that).
In essence, if you read their comments, they want to end up exactly where ghostcrawler said he wanted pure DPS classes to be...roughly 3-5% ahead of the rest. that being that all other ducks are in line...utility needs to be equal across the board. functional utility that is. if everything else equals out, a pure DPS class that is PLAYED WELL should top hybrids by 5% max. in a progression guild where everyone else is putting in 100%, that should be enough reason to bring a pure DPS AC in itself. in the other 98% of the game, it simply will be a wash. bring the player, not the class.
On the general topic (not your comments specifically Pro) I honestly do not expect many Mara's or Snipers (since the indicated both) to want the change, and I expect most of you to find some odd logic to disagree. the arguments IMO are simply invalid....everyone knows the usefulness of both classes + their DPS that is far too high is resulting in raids with a predominance of just those two classes (Bio even knows AND admits this) so the nerf is coming, no matter how people want to spin their logic and class comparisons.
EDIT: Upon reading your comments Verf, i agree with your direction. adjust talents so there's a larger tradeoff for defensive skills. I think thats a good direction to take the conversation.
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I'm guardedly Optimistic. Just been playing MMO's for too long...
They discussed expanding space flight in a previous blog (a few times actually), and indicated they were working on it for this next expansion. perhaps it's the scope of it that excites everyone. Im pretty sure it pumps the PvP crowd. many peeps have been waiting for a space battle aspect for a long time.
looks nice, but at the same time I've been excited about many things that just didn't turn out the way anyone expected. NOt trying to douse anyone's enthusiasms...just been on the receiving end of far too many unmet expectations myself.
And since I rarely PvP anymore, I'm also seriously hoping that there's more to it then 12v12 space battles. more to the PvE side that is. You know...cause the 8v8 pvp battles were so successful...and everyone LOVES the 4v4 arenas...especially in the random queues...so 12v12 will undoubtedly be a HUGE hit...cough...
Please note above sarcasm. far too often what is advertised, what we expect (or hope) from the ad, and what is eventually delivered are usually far different. So I hope people aren't expecting this to be the answer to all their SWtOR problems, but simply a nice and needed addition to the space game. IF it all pans out...the ad, though well written, lacks ALLOT of detail that i hope they shed light on in the next coming months.
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Van's don't need a CC. there are times when I wish i had one on my guard/jugg, but overall, the guard and Van tank AC's are balance around not having a CC, and having more effective mitigations and defensive CD's. Shadows are balanced around a CC that only works once. out of combat, in stealth. quite a few limitations really. and Since i play a shadow (as well as a guard tank), I can tell you it isn't half as useful as the CC that DPS classes get.
If van's got a CC, then Guards would need one as well. And I guarantee you that we'd probably also lose something focused around our mitigations or defensive CD's, whether talented or not. And I for one am not willing to give up those defenses just to gain a CC. Nor do I think we need one. I've never been kicked from an Op on my guard because I was a tank that couldn't CC. never. ever. It's simply not a group/Op necessity. and solo play the classes do fine.
and even though our "leap" is gated by talents (one of the few reasons I level up as a tank spec so i can GET IT), we also have a Pull as well...something that guards dont have. shadows have the pull, but they don't have a leap (though the get a quickie speed boost...but not the same thing). so were the only class with a fully functional leap and a fully functional yank. im happy with that.
EDIT: Now that you think about it, I almost wish our Leap was default, and our pull was talented. perhaps its because I come from a guard/jugg background, but I enjoy the leap far more then the pull. don't want to lose either tho
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Unless you can provide factual evidence like statistics and charts, then your whole point means nothing and is just pure conjecture.
It's conjecture that apparently Bio supports.
Nothing against PvP nor those who enjoy it, but Bio dev's had said in the past that this is a PvE focused game. period. doesn't mean that they won't add PvP material, nor even make changes that impact PvE for PvP's sake, but I think the serious PvP players have to realize that they aren't the primary focus.
There's nothing wrong with a game that emphasizes PvE instead of PvP. Just like there are MMO's that do the opposite out there (Aion, GW to name a few), this one is PvE > PvP.
I don't have an issue with PvP...I jsut don't have any empathy for the serious PvP minority who thinks the game revolves around them. Now...I DO empathize with PvP players who love star wars...this is pretty much THE star wars game atm. So I hope at some point they develop a game for you. This one probably wont be it.
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Good Responses Eric. Tell the dev's that this post and teh shadow one were probably the best thought out and most informative of the whole process...hopefully you'll start using this model .
Notes;
Good to see you recognizing the OP aspect of maura/sent and slinger/sniper. when you join an OP run that has 6 gunslingers theres something off balance. prior to 2.0 mara/sniper were both in good positions...decent' damage and a bit of utility. now they are THE choice for Ops runs. its broke, Im glad you see that.
DON"T CHANGE HEAT RESOURCE! my gosh, please don't. Im tired of seeing class differences disspearing because people whine about this or that. you only need to make a few small changes.
Our resource is more like a smugglers, but our heat management is more like a Sorcs...but with a CD. we need more active heat resource options. the baseline is fine. add a talent like the scoundrel has in the healing tree that feeds back heat on crits....or have a talent that reduces the CD of our heat return with crits on auto shot.
and it sounds like DPS specs only need to get there free rail shot back. Personally, Id like to see a slightly shorter CD on it as well. it feels just a bit too long for a decent rotation. But....if you choose to use this option as heat reduction for the DPS classes, it NEEDS to be an inherent ability on the class. anytime you have a set bonus that is required for the class to function normally, then that is BROKE. that in itself should be a simple chance really...and doesn't need allot of testing, as it has already proven itself in the field via the set bonus.
But back to the resource management. giving us heat back on crits like the smuggler has would give us a smoother over-time heat return (or cooling, however you want to refer to it as). reducing the CD would give us more access to our burst heat reduction. I guess its an issue of....do we want less return over a longer time frame, or our burst recovery more often?
I like the burst idea. I've always enjoyed the burst capability of my merc, and that goes along with it. but either one is fine.
SCORPIO customization?
in Combat Styles
Posted
Just as an FYI, prior to 1.2 (or 1.4...can't remember exactly), there were no moddable techstaves or techblades in the game, and all melee weapons required Hilts (which dont use AIM as a stat). Bio fixed it. interesting history tidbit
Necro'ed thread +1