Dracosz
-
Posts
641 -
Joined
Content Type
Forums
Blogs
Events
Articles
Downloads
Gallery
Posts posted by Dracosz
-
-
Sages do an absurd amount of damage and have very strong control. That being said, the skill cap for the class (learning to avoid and counter marauder/Powertech burst setups) is much higher than any other class in the game at the moment.
-
Nerfs? We are getting a slight damage nerf, but damage is not our main priority in the first place. Threat is being fixed, AoE threat is being fixed, and overall, our rotation is becoming even more streamlined. I am confused how we are being nerfed that badly? A slight damage reduction on Crushing Blow and a damage removal of Backhand does not qualify all the changes together to be a nerf in my opinion.
EDIT: Unless you are talking about PvP, which is another story.
The damage nerf is still *very* significant from a PvE perspective. While the threat gain will be nice, it's still sad to see them moving forward with these changes without taking the feedback from the community into account.
-
I've played rage a few times in raids just to gauge it's effectiveness. It was actually my spec of choice for a short time in 1.0 for the surge scaling since we needed something with bursty dps to take down the 50k-200k health mind traps on Soa at the time (nobody in the world ever got the 200k mind traps, lol).
While Rage *can* work in 1.2 for PvE DPS. (I was pulling ~1400-1600 DPS) you have to keep in mind that my tests in HM EC were with FULLY optimized gear with raid buffs and a stim (77% surge, 630 bonus damage, 102% white attack accuracy, 28% crit). With the same exact loadout as vengeance I can average 1700-1900 DPS (I've actually broken the 2k marker on kragga which is our best fight since he has horrible armor and we can go through the rotation with little to no movement to clip our ravages).
The big issue for rage at the moment in PvE DPS is that for optimal rage efficiency you need to itemize for crit (for overpower to work) which sadly sacrifices too much power at this junction.
-
hey thanks a lot for sharing this! Gonna help a ton, looks like you guys both (you and Jubei) focused heavily on power/surge, kinda feels like a rage build lol. Would you mind posting ur pvp spec as well? I'm much much closer to full WH than I am campaign.
Keep in mind that this is without a rakata might stim, so my stats are even higher (~630 bonus damage and a little over 28 % crit).
For PvP, I run 3 different specs. 7/32/2. this spec (when I'm lazy and don't feel like respeccing) and a slightly modified version of this spec where I drop a single point in Rampage and Sundering saber to pick up unyielding. I've been finding accuracy to be a VERY strong talent and losing it seems to hurt my damage more than losing pooled hatred. That being said, I love pooled hatred so it's often a toss up.
I also tend not to max out Stagger and only tend to put one point at most into it, though that's very much a comfort zone thing. I've gotten to the point where I feel I can choreograph most, if not all of my opponents movements thus limiting the need for the extra time on the snare. That being said, it's not something I recommend doing until you're used to the delay and client/server lag.
-
Overhead Slash isn't that "bursty" imho, certainly not compared to Master Strike or Dispatch which is of course an almost automatic crit.
And I think you misunderstand me. I always use Master Strike when it becomes available, I took the talent to reduce its cooldown, I took the talent (obviously) which gives OS/PB a 30% to reset it - it's a much better move than anything we've got. I'm just saying that the DoTs applied from Overhead Slash, Blade Storm and Plasma Brand are quite good and there's often plenty of time to apply all three because you don't get lucky and Master Strike does not reset. They're not Watchman good or Madness Sorcerer good or Dirty Fighting Gunslinger good but these classes don't have Master Strike either
And no, our damage doesn't need a buff, I fully agree.
Ok, good. We're in agreement
-
Lately I've gotten into playing vengeance spec and having a rather difficult time getting used to it. I get few medals compared to my rage spec. I know it isn't true that rage spec will get more than venge will just because it gets high aoe dmg.
Would anyone give me a few pointers on how to play in pvp and pve as dps veng and what rotations I should be using. I read a few guides but it wasnt answering my particular questions.
Thanks guys!
If you don't have gear, vengeance isn't for you yet. It's very much a spec that hinges upon having a decently high stat threshold that's optimized before taking it out for a spin. Rage, despite it's mechanical flaws, has a very nice floor to use with respect to how much optimization needs to be done. You *will* get more medals as rage in lower gear levels simply due to the fact that you will almost certainly get annihalator and potentially the healing medals.
As far as mechanical play goes, don't think of it as a rotation. Think of your priorities. Here's a few general tips:
- Savagery is your biggest launching points for damage. Always try to keep sunders up
- Never scream immediately after a charge and get the shatter/impale off before you do so to maximize your opening burst.
- Get used to the timing and positioning of ravage.
- Use intercede liberally
- Begin to think of creative uses for saber throw (this one is REALLY important imo, Saber throw is more than an opener, it can hit hard enough to be a finisher at times and get sunder stacks for swaps).
- Get used to the flexibility of unstoppable
- Master using Enraged Defense, this move WILL save your *** if you time it right.
-
Speak for yourself son >_>
-
http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/a28f4cff-f107-479e-a4b0-3dcb4f2200af
For those of you that were wondering about my gear/spec/mod loadout, here it is. I've found that losing the crit on malice, while irritating, is made up in part by battle cry since fights in EC require you to move around enough such that the gain from battle cry does help keep rage levels high (plus I'm just too used to the talent in PvP, so it's more a personal choice). There were a few things on this that were missing before (namely the 26 might armorings in the chest were might 25 armorings) but thankfully, the fatman has a very dilligent crafting crowd :3
-
DoTs in PVE is alot different because the target is alive alot longer than fighting someone in PVP. It was pretty obvious by my post that I was doing the comparison for PVP purposes (mentioned sages having some mitigation, my guardian in full augmented WH Vindicator, etc).
DoTs tend to be more useful in PVE since you are less likely to pull aggro with them, they can reach their full duration several times over, and keep applying damage after you've been knocked back. But even still, you should NEVER NEVER NEVER put plasma brand ahead of master strike in a priority rotation. If even one of the three strikes crit, you are doing multiples of the damage of plasma brand. Master strike should be used as soon as the cooldown is finished, ahead of any skill except dispatch. Plasma brand and overhead slash are principly used to proc a zen strike, finishing the cooldown on master strike so you can hit with it more often.
That is the secret to Vig guardian DPS, sorry i let the cat outta the bag guys..
Meh, that's what happens when you scan a text. That being said, letting your dots clip for ahit ny period of time is going to result in a net loss of DPS. Master Strike, while certainly strong, actually loses priority in the rotation when we hit 30% on a boss due to the fact that keeping up savagery becomes all the more important.
In PvP I've found that the emphasis is far more centric on mobility and protection and while getting off a full ravage is unquestionably strong, it's not *as* important as you're making it out to be. We *can* afford to clip ravages in a PvP environment so long as we're prepared to follow up the lost damage. To me, I see it as less of a priority rotation in ability usage and more of a situational priority. In PvP sunder and plasma brand are the two best moves you can open with on any target EXCEPT a sage (since an impale will ALWAYS hit harder on them initially and make up for lost damage with shatter). OR if someone is low for a savagery-buffed vicious throw let by an imaple. Jumping into a ravage straight away is just grounds for that player to root and run or pop a cooldown. By letting damage sink in incrementally and then bursting out ravage it becomes MUCH harder for them to handle all the damage as there are at minimum four sources coming in (scream dot, shatter dot, impale dot and ravage).
The internal damage and dots really add up, especially against heavily armored classes like PTs and non-sorc healers who can withstand much of the up front burst and mitigate master strike more easily than other classes. If you've gotten the charge off (which I hope) the rage from it and a subsequent sunder will let you get a good edge on most targets.
TLDR: Master Strike and Ravage are certainly our strongest abilities in PvP, but stating they have unquestionable priority over all our other moves really makes it seem like you just want to tunnel damage rather than set up for it.
-
It's not your DoTs that melting a target.. Your DPS actually goes up using MS in place of PB, you should be only using PB to reset MS. The DoTs are just gravy, Master Strike is your staple, build your rotation around it and you'll find that Vig Guardian DPS is perfectly fine and in range of Sentinels. We don't need buffs to DPS because they buffed the crap out of our BEST attack in 1.2...
That is NOT how DPS works in PvE in any way whatsoever. If you check ANY parses the dot on Shatter (plasma brand) is our second highest source of damage. It's critical that we keep our dots up on a target at all times (meaning cycling through shatter/impale/scream) as they really do add up.
-
16k Ravage? Sure ...
That´s nonsense.
And that´s not the only exaggeration.
Not nonsense at all. If you have fully optimized gear and stats it's quite the norm.
I should add that my group has two other armor debuffs (from 2 arsenal mercs) which *will* hurt the overall damage in the patch, however, it only works out to be a 6-9% DPS loss and when you consider the static stat gain we will all get from additional augmented slots the losses should even out.
-
There are only six people in this thread suggesting that the Guardian isn't an avatar of awesome?
Clearly that means that these six people are the only players who think so.
Let us just ignore the points I brought up, you just said that the Guardian is the best balanced class in the world, lets just ignore that classes are balanced against each other and not on their own, without adressing my points or bringing up points of your own, so that is obviously the truth.
But what is that? A screenshot of a Guardian doing more than 500k Damage, without any context?!
Unheard of! This clearly disproves everything I said about the Guardians performance being to unstable.
Man I wish I could do that much damage, just one single time, than I could stop begging for a buff and start being pro.
By the way, this was sarcasm, if you can't take me serious anymore because of that, I'll shed a single, sad tear of sadness. (sarcasm, again)
Nobody has said that the guardian is the BEST DPS class out there, merely that it's actually viable in both PvE and PvP contrary to the suggestions of several other posters in here.
-
That's a good spec, I'll give it a try and see how it feels with Sonic Barrier instead of Deafening Defense, sounds like a fair trade. The only thing I'd change in that build would be in the immortal tree, I'd to remove 1 point from Quake and put it on Unleashed, the 15 seconds can make a difference between a node cap and another and fire stuns in Huttball, with the amount of CC in this game, anything helps.
Now about the numbers you pasted, 427k damage in this spec? Without Shien? I don't really know if these numbers can be reached, most I ever got in a Voidstar was 212k on full Vindicator BM gear with the augmented War Hero Lightsaber. Maybe we just play differently, I could see us getting up to 300k damage if we focus on enemy healers all the time while guarding ours and throwing taunts around. But I tend to focus on not only guarding and taunting, I also stop my damage rotations when healers say they are being focused and I intercede back to them, then Force Push, Force Choke, chilling Scream and Intimidating Roar the DPS around him to buy him some time. This kind of game play won't allow you to do that much damage since damage is not the priority and it's situational. Plus there are times when I simply slow or stall people so they don't reinforce a node or in the tunnels in Voidstar, I spam chilling scream, force push those who pass by me and charge to root people, during these CC times I'm not doing any damage. I don't see how you can get up to 427K damage even in a voidstar match by playing like a tank should play, many DPS don't do that all the time.
Regardless, thanks for the build suggestion, I'll test it.
If you look at schwarzwalds immortal DPS spec thread, he was hitting 400k/100k on the 1.2 PTS in battlemaster gear. It's very much possible to do so, if not easier than it was before.
-
Power has no DR.
If you're below 1550 Str, go with the one with higher str, otherwise, the higher power one will always win out.
-
The most hard core raiding guilds I knew of on my server ( before the transfer ) used to sit there theorycrafting everything and using MOX combat logging all the time in their Ops runs, and I kept hearing from them how Guardian DPS is just not there. Yes, some Guardians do great... for Guardians... But compared to an equally well geared and proficient Sentinel or Sage, there was, according to them, a wide gap. You don't like hearing that? Well, neither do I.
My main has been a Guardian from day one, and I certainly "felt" like I was powerful, and destroying everything with ease. I definitely didn't want to believe this report I was hearing telling me my preferred Class is weak. But I also didn't want to stick my head in the sand to protect my ego. So I started paying attention to logs and scorecards, and taking tons of screenshots, and did a little testing with training dummies using MOX, and running it on myself during Ops, and looking through combat logs from other groups, and asking friends to run tests on the training dummies... and while my results are not conclusive or complete yet, from a fair amount of investigation I am seeing that indeed Guardian DPS (with the exception of Focus line in PvP specifically) is not only lacking, but quite a lot behind other Classes.
It annoys me that people reply saying "you must not know how to play. Not only is that rude, it's ignorant, in that I did not say my own DPS is my only benchmark for Guardian DPS overall. I said I looked through pages and pages of other people's parsed combat logs, and had other people run tests etc...
In the end of the day it may be true, (and that would be the best news imo) that our DPS on Vigilance Guardians is equal to and not at all less than that of other Classes in their respective DPS builds... but all the garbage responses on the forums where people are just feeling L337 is just very annoying. I am also fairly confident in the data I've seen so far, and that despite some people feeling uber on their Guardians, that in fact an equally competent and well geared Sentinel or Sage will destroy their top DPS, by no fault of their own, but simply due to imbalances at present.
Anyhow, the best way I've seen so far to try to come up with well tested and accurate data is to
a) go to http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/ and fill in all the info for a Guardian in Vigilance spec
b) download http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft-swtor/
c) upload the Guardian profile you created on Ask Mr. Robot to the Simulation Craft program and have it simulate 25 thousand 10 min trials.
d) repeat the same process for a Sentinel giving them the exact same tier of gear on Ask Mr. Robot, and test using the same buffs/debuffs, and all variables on Simulation Craft being the same. Rinse / repeat for Sage, and for Gunslinger and for DPS Commando, etc...
N.B. When you run Simulation Craft, find the box where you have it run the trial simulations in the real play condition which takes into account needing to frequently move from target to target. It has a setting for this, which is important, because in actual game play a ranged class just tabs to the next target while we melee folk accumulate a lot of time wasted moving to new targets.
If you follow the above steps, it seems you should be able to get fairly accurate data comparing DPS output form these different classes.
A lazy and less accurate approach is to simply review the ranked logs people have uploaded to Ask Mr. Robot. You can look through dozens of pages of Ops logs from all different groups, and it makes a graph for you to see which classes got the highest DPS. (There are no Guardians anywhere near the top of ANY of the logs I saw.) Someone was arguing that none of the Guardians in those logs are running DPS, but that is a) absurd to claim in a factual way, because there's no way he could know that. The logs don't say what build someone is in. They only say which Class, and they are from tons of different groups on different servers... and b) I'm in some of those logs, and I definitely do run all DPS traits and gear.
Anyhow, as I've said before, I really think some people have a tendency to respond defensively, because they don't want anyone saying they aren't the best, or anyone thinking they don't contribute as much as someone else could... and while I also feel that way, and want to know my contribution as a Guardian is second to none... the best way to ensure that IS the case, is to do careful and thorough testing and make sure that if there is a balance issue that we ask to have it addressed. If we stubbornly insist we are the best we only ensure that we will not get the needed attention from our Devs, and we succeed only in gimping ourselves and our peers who play this class.
I'm not going to bother breaking down this monstrosity of a post, but let me touch upon a few key points that I think you seem to be missing.
Firstly, simcraft trials are non-conclusive. As a poster above mentioned a lot of them take into account variables that are not quite applicable to fights (IE abilities that can only be used on trash mobs/adds). They never have been conclusive for anything apart from setting the tone for DPS specs.
Secondly, players have shown with their own logs and data that the numbers are there. We have highly competitive DPS that any good raiding guild will recognize and desire and there have been ample screenshots of juggernauts pulling excellent damage.
As far as your comment about your "top tier raiding guild" goes, I honestly think they need to get their heads out of the spreadsheets and into the reality of the situation. I've seen a lot of these hypothetical DPS charts and none of them have held up to snuff (some of the ones that I've seen said that it was impossible for any class to pull over 1500 sustained DPS, which is nonsense).
The fact of the matter is, we've offered constructive advice such as offering to take a look at your specs, advice on gearing/rotations and far more. Yet you and several other posters have only flung a continuous tirade of drivel back at us.
Maybe it's the player, not the class that needs fixing.
-
hey dracosz and jubei, I just switched to veng from rage about 1-2 months ago so still trying to figure some stuff out. If you guys don't mind I wanted to run a few quick questions in here
1. What are your stat priorities? From what you stated above I'm guessing: Surge to 78%, Crit to 28-30% (buffed), rest is power?
2. Do these stat priorities differ in PvP?
3. Which augments are you using for PvE, strength or power? Does the answer change for PvP?
PvE: Power is king, keep your crit w/ buffs above 28% (or at it). Accuracy should be as high as you can take it without dumping crit. As far as numbers go... I tend to experiment a lot, but here's my personal recommendation:
98% Accuracy: Unquestionably important, when you get to HM bosses seem to have higher defense so don't let this drop. I've been going up to 102% lately (at the expense of ~20 bonus damage).
28% Crit: This is a nice round number which I've found works quite well in PvE.
75%+ Surge: Never drop your surge below this if you can afford it. Try to prioritize getting to this ASAP.
PvP: Same priorities apply except that you can tone down surge a bit since it's not as readily available. I still recommend keeping a high accuracy % though.
Augments: Power, straight up. The overkill augments are just fantastic
-
Rage can pull some fairly decent numbers in PvE, but it's never anything special on long-term encounters. The best it can really do is completely shut down the adds on kephess.
Also, we're getting a static 370 power gain when you consider the new slots that will be augmentable (belt/bracer/both relics/focus)
-
Fully buffed:
619 bonus damage
28% crit
78.11% surge
99.78% accuracy
@jubei
The bonus damage gain is worth the accuracy lost so long as you are careful not to drop a lot of crit at the same time, I accidentally dropped some mods which brought me to 26% crit w/ buffs which was pretty awful.
-
I don't have the parses here but the marauder in our guild (who regularly pulls 1950ish dps) was talking about how each % of accuracy past 98% seemed equivalent to a 40 power gain.
-
Yeah I did have a look, since you guys are claiming master strike is a super effective attack, and apparently it was the one most used by the Guardian and it looks as though the guardian in question was built around using master strike, quite a lot. Now if you look at the Sentinel, whom came in second on the totals they used master strike for 12.1% of their damage and a total of 6 times. They also used slash (isn't that the throwback focus dump skill we get when we are Jedi Knights) for 14.5% of their damage output and they used that 30 times. Take a look at the Guardian whom got 21.1% of their damage from master strike and used it a total of 15 times. Guardian's next highest skill as far as damage totals was Sundering Strike (which is understandable considering it is an armor debuff and an attack), they got 12.5% of their total damage output from that and used that particular skill 46 times.
The log suggests that master strike deals out more damage than overhead strike, something my own observations concur with.
I also noticed the logs are seperating the damage done by the burn effects from plasma brand away from the initial attack... If I'm reading the numbers correctly this would mean that Plasma brand actually did 15.2% of this Guardian's total damage once you factor the burn damage into the equation this attack was used 23 times.
I've never disputed that master strike from start to finish dishes out more damage than a single plasma brand, considering master strike is basically 3 seperate attacks rolled into 1. What I have said, is that I can get multiple attacks into the same window that it takes for master strike to operate. So in what I am bringing up is the time it takes for master strike to work vs. the number of attacks I can bring into play in the same window. Remember unlike Master Strike, Plasma Brand's DoT is working for 12 seconds unless a healer removes the effect regardless of you moving around or using other attacks.
Getting back to the logs, I considered it rather interesting that Sentinel used slash 30x, seriously I actually have slash off of my hot keys in favor of other attacks such as overhead strike, plasma brand, blade storm, master strike, dispatch, etc. While slash does damage, it isn't the biggest damage dealer in a Jedi Knight's arsenal. Now I know with shien, Guardians have an easier time with focus to some extent, but still they have to have a better skill in their arsenal than that...
Btw, I also had a look at the accuracy numbers and saw why the Sentinel got clobbered by the guardian... The guardian had 100% accuracy, while the Sentinel's 3 highest damage skill according to the total missed 21.7% of the time, the second highest in their damage output missed 16.7% of the time, in fact there are 3 instances where master strike missed. While the total number of avoids as a percentage is only 9.5%, when you stop look at the fact that the sentinel missed their target 54 times, with 23 of those hits being in the top 4 as far as damage outputs. It isn't exactly surprising that the guardian outperformed the Sentinel (whose biggest damage dealer is apparently a burning effect and not an actual attack).
Kinda easy to get better damage numbers when they person you are comparing it to can just barely hit the broadside of a barn, and at point blank range no less...
Marauders get more benefit out of using vicious slash (via berserk and other talents/abilities that make it free and hit in an AoE) In addition, misses are natural for DW DPS.
Your analysis is bad and you should feel bad...
-
It was a fun build while it lasted, RIP.
-
Surge is the best start for rage while power is the gift that keeps giving. You should make it a priority to get to at least 75% surge while stacking all the power that you can. You don't need to really worry about crit at all.
-
For the past 2 weeks I've soloed the heroic 4 black hole dailies. Being able to solo heroics is something you can do as a juggernaut once you have gear. Sins just have an easier time off the get go since they can skip trash packs, otherwise, it's doable as any class except for a merc healer, really.
-
Our guild's marauder hits 1950 on a pretty regular basis
Returning Player, Which server?
in PvP
Posted