AdrianDmitruk
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The biggest consensus among Sages/Sorcerers was making Egress/Fadeout available for all specs. While the devs have asked for a sacrifice to get it, that looks to be a reality.
What other issues do folks believe will still exist post 2.7, if any?
Well I speak as a PVP corruption (2.0-2.4) and corruption/bubblemez hybrid (2.4-present) sorc. I've dabbled in full lightning, full madness, and 0/30/16 from time to time so I have some familiarity with our DPS as well.
The DPS truly needed access to fadeout to avoid facetanking, especially with the root inflation in the game (vigilance guardians have root hyperinflation, haha). So I'm glad they got it, even if they have to make a bit of a sacrifice to get it. I think Bioware decided to put it in tier 2 as a way of forcing the 0/30/16ers to pick a full spec, and believe it's a valid design decision--lightning had plenty of CC but no escapability, madness less CC but more mobile, and now both full DPS specs have that escapability. Trust me, as a sorc healer I am well versed in the value of fadeout.
But corruption in PVP remains fundamentally unchanged; the biggest buff for us IMO is not innervate getting immunity to pushback (we had 70% anyway, and tbh giving such immunity to hardcasted heals would make far more of a difference in being able to get a hardcast off before someone dies IMO) but rather polarity shift giving full pushback immunity. That's the only real buff for corruption I see as we can finally make WW semi-useful under pressure by popping PS and getting pushback immunity for it.
So corruption is still left wanting, the biggest issue with sorc DPS having (IMO) been addressed. With the buffs to mercs, corruption finds itself at the bottom of the 3 healers for PVP. Why? Let us consider the top third of our full heal tree, for it has lots of useless filler taking up space. Useful talent points between 22 and 35 in corruption:
1 point Force Surge (1 point is necessary but enough for Force Management under most circumstances if you're good, we don't want to consume and kill ourselves too much)
3 points Twisted Force
1 point Corrupted Speed
More useful for PVE than PVP but still has at least some value in PVP:
3 points Penetrating Darkness (should really be a 2 point still to free some space in the tree for a revamp, see below)
2 points Life Surge
So out of 13 points that we must put in corruption between our main channeled heal and our AOE heal, only five are truly, definitively useful and 5 are so-so useful. Keep in mind that the top third or so of full corruption has to compete with bubblemez for reactive CC to Make Them Pay for trying to kill us (of immense help in allowing us to save our Barrier instead of blowing it when the other team wants to force us to) and general arena viability!
Another 5 points, for a total of 10/13, are somewhat useful, but as mentioned above Penetrating Darkness can be consolidated a bit to free some space for an overhaul.
Talents in this category that could be useful with some buff love, but currently are lackluster:
2 points Conspiring Force (buff to 20%/40% slow)
2 points Corrupted Barrier (allow hot to apply to all, so we have a semi-out-of-LOS heal to help with positioning, and/or have it radiate a heal aura while in Force Barrier, see below)
Talents that should be added to fill the remaining deadspace in the top third of corruption tree:
--Give Overload at least as much airtime as Jet Boost so getting overloaded by a corruption sorc actually is of consequence/Makes You Pay, attach a slow to overload if Conspiring Force is left unchanged
--Take self-Static Barrier and/or Unnatural Preservation and/or Consumption off GCD (If consumption, add a short internal cooldown for balance purposes)
--Allow Static Barrier to crit (this would be awesome when used with Recklessness)
--Assorted other suggestions (see below)
Why is the top third of corruption tree in need of such an overhaul?
Well as much of a slap in the face H2F and Make Them Pay was to all of us, it nevertheless was a (poorly articulated) Dev Design for the class. It's also why I'm not pushing for a "real" DCD, because I know that it conflicts with said intended class design. Our challenge lies in convincing the Combat Team that we have incomplete tools to LOS/H2F/Make Them Pay; we basically need abilities that 1) buy us time to position (CC), 2) expedite positioning (Fadeout being moved down to Tier 2 so DPS could get it being a prime example of this), and/or 3) abilities that allow us to exploit proper positioning (eg. not requiring LOS), the latter of which we utterly lack other than dots (especially those of madness) ticking.
IMO the slated 2.7 change to Fadeout implies that the Combat Team is open to this kind of reasoning, whereas bluntly asking for another DCD is likely to be met with another H2F.
Currently both corruption and lightning have a major issue of being expected to LOS/H2F in arenas, but by LOSing we lock out pretty much any ability to affect others. Corruption needs LOS to heal, Lightning needs LOS to Make Them Pay. So if we're LOSing, we're not helping our team at all, we can only heal ourselves to full. In a warzone that is permissible as a team can usually hold an objective long enough for one person to come back from respawn. In an arena, LOS means the enemy just focuses someone else and 90% of the time, allowing that first death, for any reason, costs your team that round. Arenas are much, much less forgiving of the need to LOS and this is why sorcs struggle there. It is also why madness fares best as its dots keep ticking outside of LOS and they have some punch. The H2F Dev Response completely failed to account for this reality of arenas (which was predicted).
Now maybe having Fadeout up every 15 seconds (thanks to Force Haste) will allow lightning to pop in and out of LOS with guile; this remains to be seen. But full corruption needs to be out in LOS, risking leaps and pulls, to keep the team up, and ability to LOS is severely constrained by having to heal others on the team. Operatives can have their hots ticking away; mercs have their kolto shells that can last for several minutes now spammable on the whole group, our static barrier does nothing to actually heal health.
One of the solutions is to allow Corrupted Barrier to apply to any static barrier we cast, on anyone. We bubble up our team, they get hots while we LOS and H2F. Probably the least drastic of the possible solutions.
Another approach is to borrow from the discipline priest of WoW and allow us to heal directly through LoS. At last we could be properly rewarded for positioning ourselves with skill, rather than risk our teammates by doing what the devs expect us to do.
A third approach would be to give us a full-fledged group heal, much like the captain's Rallying Cry from LotRO. This group heal should share a cooldown with Revivification, so we must choose which one to use and which heal better fits the situation. Rallying Cry applies an initial heal and a HoT to everyone in your group (NOT ops frame) within your healing range, regardless of LoS. But it would only work on a fellowship-sized group or below, meaning that in a raid of 12, only the six people on YOUR side of the ops frame (including yourself) would receive the effect. In SWTOR an ability designed around the same principle would only affect a FP-sized group, i.e. the 4 people in your little section of the ops frame.
Rallying Cry has a 15 second cooldown (used to be 45 seconds speccable down to 15, which every captain did, so eventually that was streamlined). Equivalent SWTOR values would probably be around a 3K heal on all 4 within 30m+3-4kish hot over 15 seconds (in PVP gear). It's also a sticky heal. Revivification would still be much better for most PVE and some warzone situations, but a Rallying Cry-type heal would be much better suited for arenas and help us out with positioning. Again, for game balance reasons, this kind of heal should be mutually exclusive with Revivification and put Revivification on cooldown (and vice versa).
Note in LotRO this heal is instant (and also used to be gated by defeat events, a mechanic roughly comparable to ops' Tactical Advantage; recently that requirement was removed though defeat events still buff the ability), but as I am suggesting ways to make LOSing and positioning not entirely cripple our ability to support our team in arena I'd probably be OK with a cast time as long as it was kept reasonable.
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Did I hit a nerve bigboi?
You're lacking in individual skill cause you single target taunt healers.
But...but...certain healing classes were told by the Combat Team to heal to full and make them pay.
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Pretty sure Snipers would like a 30m Debilitate as well.
Would be a shame if the classes weren't homogenized to carbon-copies of each other in the name of PvP, right?
The difference is snipers never HAD a 30m debilitate.
Once upon a time sorcs did have 30m electrocute, before it was taken away in the utterly resolve-breaking 1.4 patch.
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Revert ElectroDart to 30m, or even 35/40, and lower its cool-down.
Why is this not even acknowledged as needed since 1.4?
Hey can sorcs get 30m electrocute back too?
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Good question! If you recall in the old schedule I had the full list of classes across both mirrors. We actually stopped the Class Rep system halfway through. What this list is, is the remaining folks who had not actually yet posed questions.
Example, Sentinels had submitted questions in the last round. This time around it will be the Marauder leader submitting questions. To simplify it (although maybe I made it more complex) I listed both sides of the mirror.
Hope that clears it up!
-eric
Unfortunately this kind of Convoluted Dev Logic created a situation like this:
Bioware: We're introducing Class Rep Q&A! Be sure to vote for your Class Reps!
Nibbon: Hey look I'm a top raider! Vote me for all your PVE questions! *Nibbon wins*
Psirebal: Hey look I'm one of the top PVP sorcs! Vote me for all your PVP questions! *Psirebal wins*
Bioware: Awesome, sorcs go first!
Psirebal: So we go squish as our escapability erodes with buffs to other classes, are constantly interrupted to the point we can never get a cast off, and have to kill ourselves to get resource back, what's up with that?
Bioware: You must learn to play defensively, LOS, H2F, and make them pay for trying to kill you; the skill cap of the sorcerer class may be higher than what some players are comfortable with
Community:
Bioware: Umm...maybe we should postpone the whole class rep thing until H2F dies down...
*Season 1 drops with none of the feedback from sorcs regarding balance actually acted upon. Presumably BW metrics show that maybe the sorcs had a point, because eventually we get yellow requests for feedback and an attempted buff here and there. For example, hey let's buff madness by nerfing corruption at the same time seeing as corruption is the only cleanse for madness anyway. To make it even worse let's make the uncleansable dot indistinguishable from another sorc's cleansable dot unless you have the time to hover over and read the debuff tooltip in PVP, which never happens. A few madness sorcs manage to do well, but no one even tries to corruption heal in ranked arenas anymore, and apparently ranked sorc heal metrics start giving you guys division by zero errors or something because points 22-35 in corruption tree are STILL nigh useless for PVP even after 2.7 changes.*
Bioware: Hey look we're finally going to finish out our Class Rep program!
Sorcs: Um does this mean we get to mulligan our class rep questions and get a non-H2F response? Maybe try to get some of corruption's PVP issues addressed as it's the spec that will be least affected by 2.7 while buffs to mercs leave us unquestionably the bottom of the heap? Oh wait, Nibbon was the PVE guy...nevermind.
*The few remaining sorc healers in arenas respec DPS as the last remaining reason to even bother with corruption, Fadeout, is made accessible to all (which DPS needed...but corruption did not get its issues properly addressed).*
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What the f...
in PvP
tl;dr: Put blue pve mods in your battlemaster shells if you want to keep the look while having half-decent stats in pvp.
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OK, so I have less than perfect vision. Unfortunately, it's only correctable to about 20/40. I also play from a laptop so I don't have the option of playing the game on an uber gaming monitor.
Under these conditions, the directional arrow representing your ship can look like an equilateral triangle, especially if you do not have the luxury of squinting at the map due to the wider combat environment. If the directional arrow is reduced to looking like an equilateral triangle to those with bad vision, it's quite useless for actually pointing in the direction that you are flying. This leaves players with less-than-perfect vision in the unfortunate position of having to fly blind, especially after flying in circles and other assorted maneuvers that change direction quickly.
This was NEVER a concern before GSF as even before the introduction of UI customization, the ground UI was plenty adequate for people with functional but imperfect vision to see (with the one exception of debuffs in ops frames). However the directional arrow in GSF is barely larger than those ops frame debuffs and FAR more important in orienting yourself--i.e. basic GSF gameplay. To make matters worse, it seems UI customization only applies to ground?
Ia a true aviator's numeric nav heading/compass (i.e. North 360, East 090. South 180, West 270, with more precision in between) really too complicated and/or technically challenging to implement? It would be of great benefit to those of us with less than 20-20 vision.
And while I'm at it, a true Attitude Directional Indicator might be nice too but I won't get my hopes up too high
TL;DR: Compass/nav heading for GSF do want
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So after Season 1 started I queued up on my sorc Andreus but only ever got 7 ranked pops before the queue completely died on my server, forever for all I know. Officially I haven't been able to play enough games to calculate an ingame rating (due to the 10 game requirement), but the leaderboards force-calculate a rating where my 6-1 record puts me at 1367, solidly within Tier 2.
Will I still be able to claim the season rewards, or must I revisit the Eternal Queue and hope to get three more games in to "officially" get a rating calculated now that the rewards are announced?
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They actually buffer recruit gear twice iirc. People still didn't wear it.
I just don't see the appeal of needing two or four sets to consume content on either side. I guess that my issue with this whole thing is this. Now that BW knows/acknowledged the flaws of the entire PvP gearing system, what will they do?
If the release a new PvP gear tier and increase bolster again, like they did with Obroan, and make all my current PvP gear(Partisan then, Obroan now) obsolete, I won't have much choice. It pains me to say it, and a lol at most ultimatums, but what else can I do?
It's not a sad day yet, but their response will be a day of triumph or epic sadness on my end....
Yeah, they "buffed" recruit gear when new tiers of PVP gear came out. The differential between recruit and BiS PVP gear remained as high as ever, maybe even increased. Recruit gear "buffs" NEVER kept up with other PVP gear inflation.
The problem with recruit gear was never the expertise, it was always that the other stats (mainstat, end, secondary/tertiary stats) were so ***** relative to the PVP gear tiers at the time that it was something to be jettisonned as soon as possible and skipping over it became very tempting. It was NEVER worth augmenting as you would either replace it soon (if you had a thick skin) or quit PVP after being roflgearstomped (if you did not have a thick skin) anyway.
As ridiculous as bolster is, it is better than recruit simply by virtue of keeping up with the aforesaid gear inflation. In fact, it's too good at what it does. All bolster of non-expertise gear should be the same, full stop, and all non-expertise gear should bolster to a set, small percentage (like 2%) inferior to the existing elementary tier of PVP gear (presently, conqueror).
And yes, bolster should outright CHANGE PVE crystals to expertise crystals for purposes of calculating its stats; that would eliminate a lot of the MH/OH crap that's been plaguing bolster since it launched.
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Allow movement during Force Barrier -no other action allowed- many times I have had Force Barrier go on CD and I get pulled or otherwise CC'd and also Force Barrier not working when CC'd some times...
Just allow us to move and it should help to compensate for the faulty game engine.
Yeah I literally had Force Barrier interrupted by a low slash once and died .5 seconds later...
That totally was not supposed to happen. Freak bug from a creaky game engine.
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Your augments are out of date. The augments for level 55 are MUCH better than the ones for level 50 (I forget the numbering though).
Most level 50 purple augs: +12 endurance, +18 other stat
Most level 55 purple augs: +20 endurance, +32 other stat
Multiply that across all your augment slots (which you probably need to upgrade to MK-9s) and it's a significant difference...
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Sorc Overload
in PvP
Yep, and apparently expecting Overload to be good enough to actually be effective is a L2P issue because if the ability misses due to not firing until the global after it's supposed to, or doesn't fire at all but goes on CD anyway, or Bioware's hamsters are on strike to protest poor pay and working conditions today...well clearly I need to L2P.
Yes the other KBs can experience this too and send people flying in unanticipated directions, but overload is definitely the most affected as it's the one that is most susceptible to miss.
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The operative class no longer exists. Just a practice class that cant actually be used.
Why the devs are absolutely determined to make 100% sure the class cannot be viable is a mystery when there exists another class nearly exactly the same in operation in dps but its just dandy no problems there. Even though its WAY WAY stronger more burst better defense and the weaker class gets nerfed more. LOL LOL
Its some kind of obvious internal bias. Logic is simply not coming into play. The only difference is the ability to heal and in dps spec you, dont.
We are directly telling the developers to do specific obviously needed things and NOT to do others and they ONLY do what told not too. You cant have my money anymore. Its cut off.
Don't you understand? Heal to full, DPS operatives can. They must learn to play defensively, heal to full, and make the enemy pay for trying to kill them.
Oh wait...
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Alacrity is meant to be Force-neutral, not Force-positive.
It speeds up your regen, yes, but it also speeds up your actions by the same amount, so the only way it gets to be Force-positive is if you're not doing anything.
And even then, we spend several hundred points just to get around 7%...
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Perfectly justifiable, and definitely a game changer. It's been too long, where Rage was just a spec anyone could run, no matter the skill level.
Now that it's actually going to take some real competence to run effectively, the game is going to be changing for the better by forcing a good amount of people to diversify. Even if the main problem is the overwhelming amount of people playing DPS classes that actually require skill in certain areas (IE, most bads run Sorc DPS on BC, and don't kite/run from melee).
Either way, glad to see they have finally taken out the easy mode spec. With buffs to Sorc healing and the Operative roll nerf as well as the killing of "lolprobe" from the Operative healer whenever a friendly is below 30%, it'll be interesting to see how the WZs are going to change.
Buffs to Sorc healing? I think you overestimate the effect of the extra 30% pushback resistance on innervate. We already get 70%. The change to polarity shift is more useful; we might actually be able to cast WW now.
The fact of the matter is our 22nd through 35th points in the corruption tree (between Innervate and Revivification) are nearly all useless filler. Only about 6 have any real importance for PVP; in PVE you can kinda nudge that up to 8 or so. While it's OK to have a little filler in a talent tree, 50+% filler in the top half is just too much, it dilutes the spec, and that's just begging for hybrids. Bioware has long been reluctant to improve the top half of our tree to make it actually desirable for some reason--this is why it was so easy for me to go back to bubblestun after arenas came out (in solo queue especially, I need the CC as full corruption is simply too weak in CC to justify its squishiness). Such a large portion of our pure heal tree is just...empty. Realistically it could all be replaced with overload improvement talents, Unnatural Preservation, Consumption, and self-Static Barrier off GCD talents, CC talents (for PVP), utility talents, maybe even DR (though I would rather have active abilities that require skill than passive DR).
I've made sure to point that out to the devs, including in yesterday's SWTOR twitch stream, along with the fact that 2.7 as currently planned is a MASSIVE buff to all sorc hybrids, in the hopes of getting the top tiers of full corruption more thoroughly looked at.
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I need to get a passport, as Vancouver is within a three-hour drive from me I believe.
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OK having seen what the devs propose, what say you know Sages?
Force Barrier is getting a decent buff. The random number generator is being reigned in and we may see the rise a deadly new hybrid. Can we reasonably ask for more?
I'm thinking that the biggest buffs to Sages have been the nerfs to other classes.
I said in the sorc thread that yes it's nice to finally see any kind of buff but I really don't feel comfortable with where in our talent trees the devs have put said buffs because every single one of them is in the middle of a talent tree where hybrids can easily get it. Worse, full 36 point builds become even less desirable relative to hybrids because hybrids can access more of the new buffs than pure builds and pure builds have no new improvements high in their trees (ESPECIALLY a problem for seer as there's so much useless filler between Healing Trance and Salvation). Since the devs have an avowed anti-hybrid stance we can't be sure the buffs will actually remain for any significant length of time.
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LOL!
He probably still remembers me asking about H2F during the Seattle Community Cantina
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I would not take Sith Purity as the heal is small and the purge ability no longer clears Madness dots anyways.
You don't take Sith Purity for the heal, you take it for the ability to cleanse physical slows and roots off yourself (and there are a LOT of them). Makes LOS and H2F much easier, especially if they CCed your sprint and then tried to rootlock you.
Trust me, I know.
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How many classes had changes in 2.6 that are getting changes in 2.7?
Use your brain.
I think you (and the poster above you) missed my point...misery loves company.
(Though I did tunnel vision my class by spec when considering 2.6, as corruption sorcs were left unchanged--I think that's what led to Illogical Thought Processes.)
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Buff our hybrid specs, Bioware will! (NOT referral scam)
Seriously though, each and every proposed modification to our talents occurs in the middle of our trees. Someone didn't think this through.
YES we need buffs. Yes I'll take what I can get. But speaking from my perspective as a PVP healer, the changes do nothing to make 36 point corruption remotely attractive--there is just as much useless filler between Innervate and Revivification as ever. Seriously, only Force Surge, the talent that speeds up Innervate (don't remember what it's called), and maybe Corrupted Speed are remotely useful. Conspiring Force could be, if the slow was buffed to actually be noticeable (especially against specs running around with passive 15% movement buff). And remember that in PVP the space between points 21 and 35 in our full tree STILL has to compete against bubblestun, which though nerfed, is still better in arenas than filler.
Contrast that to op heals where ops will gladly spend those points between 21 and 35 in their full heal tree, because those points are actually worth it (SIGNIFICANT buffs to their hots and surgical probe spam, rather than a measly 1% here and there? Yeah they'll take that).
About 10 talent points (at least) between Innervate and Reviv are useless enough to require a complete rework. That empty space in our tree would make an excellent place to give 36-point corruption any combination of CC (overload distance buff or slow attached to it, hello?), utility, or DR (prefer the first two as active abilities require more skill to play than passive DR) to make it desired in competitive play, WITHOUT buffing hybrids even more.
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Class changes are up and alas.... no changes for Commandos/Mercs. You (and the other Devs) make me a sad Jawa.
The mando/merc changes already happened with 2.6. You may well feel they are inadequate, but that is not unique to your class. Sorcs that want to heal in PVP feel the same way as Bioware seems more interested in buffing our hybrid specs(!!!) than actually fixing our talent trees to make full 36-point builds viable in competitive play.
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Crap, I suck. The stream will be happening tomorrow, I will edit the date into my original post.
Also, not to derail this thread but yes, as stated, you will get those posts today
-eric
Excellent.
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At least one of the 55 HM bosses does teach positioning (move the beast in the jungle biome to the spores and pop 'em). One of the Czerka FPs, but I don't remember which one.
I do believe the problem lies more in trying to PUG ops. In PUGs only bads you will find.
Sorcerer Changes Brainstorming
in Sage / Sorcerer
Posted