It was brutal for republic on star farge last night. I warned people about it, but hopefully some of the people Pvping from RP servers adapt and improve. If not, it's going to be very unfun.

No word on this, so I guess while sentinel/marauders got a horrible change altered, operation screwjob is full steam ahead for infiltration shadows. Seems fair....

given what they plan to do with us in the 5.6 utilities stuff, the 5.5 nerf is even more damaging. Sure wish they would change their mind as they did for some of the sentinel stuff. For some reason, they are dead set on screwing infiltration.

You've demonstrated you can alter intended changes when they are not right, now please stop the utility destroying of infiltration in the upcoming patch. Taking away our ability to have a 30% DR while stunned is brutal, especially given you already crushed us with your 5.5 nerfs.

Well said, FlavivsAetivs. These changes, on top of what they already did to us in 5.5 are crippling... Let's hope they actually see reason. My money is on they don't

As others have stated, I don't see how these changes do much to solve the problems. In fact, given the nerfs to some DPS classes, you could say the net change will be zero.

Once 5.5 happened, as I've said many times, I totally lost any enthusiasm for PvP in this game, but I pinned some hopes that the utility adjustments would help. They've helped alright, but not in a way the devs would like. Now that I've seen the list, I am totally cured of my desire to play, period. These utility changes are so awful. I would really love to hear the Devs give explanations that make any sense, aside from the basic "we felt this was overperforming or this was underperforming". I'd love to see it, because there's no way they can justify them, especially taking away DR when stunned for shadows. How freaking hard is it to understand that you have taken the already all too often occurrence of being stunned a ton, and now made it all the most frustrating for the classes that going to be stunned the most, and just gave us shadows even more of a death sentence than your 5.5 nerfs already had? I don't like saying bad and negative things, especially knowing that people are trying to do the best they can. I still want to believe they are, but I must admit, stuff like this shakes my faith that they are. We are told the people who make these changes do in fact, PvP, but how can that possibly be? These utility changes, as is BW standard operating procedure, go to far to punish some classes and not enough in removing obviously broken OP crap for others. Instead of addressing valid concerns and moving towards having some faith restored by your player base, you have and will further alienate us and drive even the most passionate ones, such as myself, to a point where we question why we put ourselves through the unfun of playing your game.

So, after reading the utility changes, I repeat, we are screwed as infiltration. Now we don't get stun DR on top of it all? Some guardians INCREASED defensive ability? Changes to Merc do not go far enough and they will still be OP. Just a few of the niceties of the new utility changes. They have really screwed us, and I'm disgusted with the devs.

So let me get this straight...you destroy infiltration's burst ability with your nerfs (not just 5.5, but in general over the years), but then you are giving more classes more defensives? Is that really what I'm seeing here? You've taken away our burst and given every other class more damage and more defense over the years.... yet you haven't done jack S for our defenses (and don't give me changing the utility so it's AOE dam reduction all time not when stunned)...fighting head to head with other classes, we are at a disadvantage, one you've made worse over the years. Really disappointed in you devs.

The game has been skewed very much to ranged since at least 5.0, especially given that aside from arenas and hutball, the objective for each WZ is having to cap something which means you're forced into one place while trying to get said cap if on offense, or even worse for melee classes, when you're on defense, you forced to be close to the thing you must defend, and you're a sitting duck for the ranged. It's very frustrating trying to take down these ranged classes, obviously some are tougher than others, but in general, not a pleasant experience in PvP these days.

Since this nerf, my desire to PvP has disappeared. I tried serenity, it's not my style. I felt I was not helping during matches as much in serenity, so I went back to infiltration. Either way, every WZ feels like a waste of time. Yes, I can help objectives as infiltration shadow, but I really feel this damage nerf hurts my ability to defeat people in combat. Burst is gone, and without burst, we really don't have a purpose (when it comes to combat, in general). I don't ever claim to be the best shadow, but I'm not the worst. I'd say I'm above average to average, and isn't average where most players will fall within any class? I don't think changes to classes should be made because of things the ultrabest might be able to do with a class, especially when the changes are based on damage parse metrics on a dummy or whatever their target is. I think changes should be made based on how the experience for most players is influenced. And my experience, which is probably indicative of many, is that PvP is not fun in this game. This is a major problem that they have made worse.

Yes, healing was nerfed, and sage/sorc healing really got it earlier, but when the ability to do the damage has been reduced, then they're back to where they were before, in a sense. And healer issues are just one of the many things plaguing this game that just makes PvP totally not fun right now. It's just meh now.

The 5.5 changes have totally killed my desire to PvP. They really have. We still have near immortal classes and with my damage nerfed, trying to take someone down is even more frustrating. Since my individual usefulness has been gimped, I'm even more dependent on the intelligence level or willingness to play objectives of the people I get matched with, and frankly, people aren't displaying much of either these days. Overall, the PvP experience is just one of headscratching.... objective based games that favor ranged anyway, and ranged definitely has the advantage now. Nerfed damage that makes healer/tank combos even more difficult. Eternal slows. Stunlocks to death. Graphical issues that make it impossible to see what's going on. Mechanics left in games that make some classes unstoppable for certain things (sniper odessen deactivate. Op/scoundrel roll through everything to score in hutball. Some of this has been an issue for a long time, but the latest rounds of changes to classes, all the while leaving the most ridiculous WZ breaking class imbalances such as merc/mando potential 3 bars of health fun, just take away the desire to put yourself through it. Its just not fun to PvP, and I never felt like that before.

I can't speak about Ops and their viability compared to assassins now as I don't play one, but from my observations, they are still in a better place given their evasiveness. Since the 5.5 nerf, I don't think I've seen infiltration or deception used in WZs since Tuesday night. I haven't used it either. Just an exercise in frustration.

It's a ridiculous oversight that they can do that. Why we're still dealing with it years later, makes no sense.

Yep. Ran into those scumbags again today. Sure glad BW can't stop FREAKING HACKERS RUINING GAME PLAY. I've been seeing these clowns for 2 weeks now.

He's right. At present, there is no reason to use this class if you're new to it. Many other classes that are doing better and more fun to play now.

I think the nerf for deception hurts for PvE, but my first love is the PvP so that's really where I want to speak, and these nerfs are way too much. No matter what BW currently has the game being, the infiltration shadow was designed as a glass cannon...a powerful bursty class that, if played well, could decimate an opponent, but it's also a class that had no chance in a sustained fight... that was the design. Over the years, they have upped the damage, defenses, and mobility of the other classes, thus removing our burstiness and ability for quick kills, yet we shadows still have our inherent disadvantages, which they haven't addressed, and in fact exacerbated. They finally killed us in 5.5.

yeah, after playing it now, the nerf is totally too much and wasn't needed. Another headscratcher from the dev team. Can't use the class in PvP anymore, but at least we aren't slightly over the DPS target... sure glad we have a properly DPS nerfed class that will not be played now.

Like the title says? I'm curious as to the impressions. Are the effects of the giant nerf bat swung at infiltration as bad and harsh as thought? Better? Worse?

I would suspect the nerf was based more on PvE as opposed to PvP. It's all about that magical "overperforming" DPS metric they use, and PvP doesn't allow a constant rotation upon which to base that parsing type information.

Overall, I thought both expansions had good episodes. It's hard to top what the set up with the first couple of chapters, and when you're leveling alts, the stories do become tiresome, but for a first time play through, I was really entertained. I think the replay value and interest in each chapter would have been higher if they had found a way to get all the companions returned during them.

Original poster...very well crafted and thought out. Makes total sense.

Preach, brother. This nerf was not needed, and will just hurt the class. Stats can be made to support anything. It's the real experience that determines whether a nerf is needed. Play a WZ with a shadow and you will not feel overpowered. If your team has a healer, you'll feel comfortable, but you still won't be obliterating anyway. If your team doesn't have a healer, you'll be trying to like heck to survive and failing miserably in the end as an infiltration shadow. All this nerf will do is turn it into the new serenity i.e... no one using it. People will run to the tank spec even more than now, or they'll go serenity for the dots.

There are times when Nerfs are needed, especially in response to buffs given through other patches. The changes to Mercs are an example of this. Some help was needed for the class, but the changes swung the pendulum too far the other away (indeed, it swung that way too far for ranged in general). Unfortunately, we're still waiting for the nerfs that will take Mercs from their place of near immortality. Instead of 5.0 bringing things closer to balance, a greater imbalance was created, and the effects magnified by GC. While the devs did provide some insight into their approach as far as looking at their damage and healing metrics, the bottom line is that many of these nerfs, seemingly made in the name of things "overperforming" are causing more issues than they'll solve. In fact, the more glaring issues with class balance still remain and so now the Devs have created an environment where a majority will still be annoyed about the worst imbalances brought about by 5.0 and beyond, but will also be annoyed with the well-intentioned, but inappropriate nerfs to some of the classes. It just destroys my desire to play.