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ragamer

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  1. Sigh... Ppl always eating the bait of P2W content. What will happen with PvE content hard to beat? At which rate you will progress through it? The drops the hard content will give... At which rate you will farm it if your team use/don't use those boosts? F2P/P2W models have a lot of "obfuscated" costs when analyzing progress speed... And don't be fooled, this rates are carefully calculated to "encourage" ppl to spend more and more... ...Not all P2W are the straightforward (but honest) plain advantages on PvP model you see around.
  2. You really need to read between lines to know what's going on, and have 1st hand experience with past "F2P migrations". - F2P announcement due to Subbers drop below 1M (but that are above the breaking point of 500k) -> The owner of the game doesn't trust future content will be enough to bring back subbers. - Rushed announcement when competitors are going to drop their bombs (MoP, GW2) -> Sub loss projection makes this game hit the Breaking Point sooner than expected. - Retroactive "F2P coins" for subbers now -> Conversion of game model to a FULL microtransaction model -> Devs will concentrate all new features to match F2P model conversion Release Date and seek to keep subbers interested until then. Regarding "what we have ahead" there is also things to read: - Remarkable overlook of Level Extension and New Planets previously teased on June -> F2P "new" content is just what was on the finishing "pipe" before the 2nd crew layoff -> Hint: Remarkable incisive clear labeling of "free to play until L50" seems to suggest Level extension may appear later as a payable "option". Finnaly I try to explain what "Conversion to F2P" is about and why it's used as a way to "save a game" (Notice that, contrary to most MMOs owners try to sell, "Conversion to F2P" HAS NOTHING TO DO with creating a F2P game, there are a bunch of really good F2P games around... But they were designed from the beggining with F2P in it). In a nutshell, migrating to F2P is basically a Playerbase replacement process. You go from subbers that have experienced old content that are mainly motivated to keep subbed by future new content to... ...Constant stream of new players that are exposed to old content that incurs in higher costs to traverse/use at the same speed as old subbers. This is how F2P conversions "save the day"... Instead of trying to keep players interested, you are after geting new players paying for a more expensive old content. Obviously generating new content is much more expensive than simply reusing what you have... So it's basically the standard "reduce costs approach" some companies in difficulties go for. So this is what will happen with the content in the future: - As Community is more volatile because F2P players are not retained, just "cycled". Content requiring Guilds will have the lowest priority of all because you will not have stable associations of players required for it. So you will see an increase on activities solo/party players can attempt. Conversion from MMO to multiplayer game. Notice that SWTOR MMO part was already weak (The max interactions you got was between 16 players), so it will be very easy to "convert" activities to party size. - You will see reused mechanics scaled, instead of new mechanics (Direct hint to class balance, btw). Art is cheap so you basically will see new art left and right, but at the bottom, you will be doing the same. One of the signatures of SWTOR, the voice acting, will go down the drain. You already got an example on Black Hole "quest line". Were you get 2 voice acted scene... And like 7 quests dropped at you through a console (ie WoW quest-hub style). Good voice acting is expensive, sadly. From the point of view of a MMO subbber, some1 that expects NEW content for Massive Groups added regularly (at least twice per year), ALL F2P migrations to date have been a failure because they end removing the 1st M of MMO.
  3. It's not related to levels or whatever... ...It's an anti-stealth run meassure FP bosses have (and some regular mobs... Patrol Droids for example). If you are stealthy and 40m or closer at the moment the Boss do the "pulse" (That eye-like icon that appears briefly on top of their heads) you will get a mark on you... IF you stay inside those 40m by the time the debuff on you dissapears (4s after the mark is applied) you will agro the Boss/Mob. Unstealthing after receiving the mark will not help you, blocking LoS will not help you. The only way to prevent the pull is to be farther than 40m before the timer ends. How to deal with this extreme nuissance as Shadow? 1st get familiar with the Pulse period... Stay visible and then stealth right after the pulse happens. Good tanks are aware of this and will pull taking this crappy mechanic into account. If your tank is not aware of this... The alternative is to sit at 41m from the boss stealthy and use your sprint on pull. It's an obsolete mechanic that was put there to prevent teams of shadows + scoundrels to skip a lot of sections of a FP... But this days, the paradox, is that you can skip far more bosses by simply moving carefully next to them than if you try to sneak past them.
  4. Max HP has always been crap on the fights were a pure tank is needed. You can forget about willpower/endurance debate... Keeping agro on you is trivial after the threat buff, and if your team needs extra DPS you can swap some of your tanking gear for DPS pieces, it's better to have specialized maxed gear for each combat than going around been a jack-of-all-trades sucking at everything you do. At the end is about which Tier of content you are facing mainly: - EV & KP. Keep your effective shield chance around 50%, absorption close to 45% (WIth the allocation you have on Columi is impossible... On rakata with some ENH jugling you can) and your defense around 26%. The rest can go on END (You should aim for something close to 23k). On this Tier you have a good bunch of encounters were your self regen will shine (Specially Soa and S&J) so endurance plays an important role still. - EC. Encounters are symetrical with generous doses of High Impact Physical/Energy attacks. Here you will feel the nerf on armor. So you have to balance it by the extra Shield/Absorption Mitigation, particularly important on Kephess as due to the high mobility involved your regen windows are reduced and, specially on HM, he hits like a truck and most his attacks can be shielded from. Try to aim to something close to Defense (28-29%), Shield 50% and absorption... As much as you can (You have to try to reach a minimum of 50%+, with 55%+ prefered). You can let your HP pool around 25k (Enough to eat 2 unshielded hits of Kephess HM). Commendation BH gear will not help you much here if you are migrating from Rakata as it will nerf your Defense with a lot of Shield rating (Depends also on which Implants you may get your hands into... As the good ones are MK2+) so when migrating all your armorings to 61 do not loose sight of how enhancements will be overloading you with Shield Rating and get extra pieces to convert them back to absorption & defense (use mods also to assist you here). EDIT: When I talk about "effective stats" they include full Raid buffs, including the Endurance+Defense Stim, Gear Set bonus and Kinetic Barrier up. EDIT2: Notice that, again, due to threat buff, unless you team really needs your DPS, you can ignore Double Strike and PA procs and just focus on generate as many 3/3 HS TK Throws as possible to max your Self Regen by redirecting all your Force to just Projects & ST, the occasional FB and ofc TK. EDIT3: Uff, sorry... The above stats are tailored to the 2 Relics I use, both proc based, The absorb rating one and the healing one. So I can go with a bit less base absorb than usual.
  5. It's discouraging to see a Senior Dev so disconnected from the reality of a class. He is talking about environments that have been changed on 1.3 dramatically both at mechanical level (Another systematic nerf to burst capabilities) AND at community level (Ranked WZ mainly). He seems also not aware on why "hit'n run" tactics are obsolete on most PvP scenarios... Downtime. Ppl likes to whine about been killed on 1v1 by an Infil Shadow but... Do they realize that during 2/3 minutes he is doing... NOTHING? Waiting for the optimal set of CDs to attack and perform the "hit'n run"... Instead of the most common "hit'n die"? (Notice that I keep using just Hit... Not Kill )... All this "philosophy" dissapears at the moment you check what a good teamplayer with a decent class/build does on those same 2/3 minutes. The main issue this Dev is not realizing is that... He is advertising Infil Shadows as only good at... ...Ganking ppl on Open world PvP... An activity no class should be designed for, ever... Even on games with emphasis on such activities (Not the case here, ofc). I suppose that when updated data on pressence of certain builds on each game activity comes to his desk he will have a harder time trying to bring the same generic comments to a Q/A Session... And I hope he learns also why labelling a certain specc as a "lone wolf" on a MMO is adding the last nail to that specc's coffin.
  6. Search "Project delay pvp"... ...You will understand why it has to be this way and why it's a decent middle ground combining functionality & appearance.
  7. It's painfull... Tried 4 times (The last one didn't count, tbh, because 6 guys were from the same guild and I was specifically invited as a "friendly" backup to patch their lack of healers on that day... With my Scoundrel Alt in Rakata gear, so go figure the level of outgearing of that run) Returning to pure PuGs... I have encountered all the bugs mentioned here just in the 2 1st attempts... In particular if you have ppl locked to some encounters... That seems to open the Pandora's Box... You will have ppl that instant travel do not work, split into different instances and ppl not getting the BH reward quest (Didn't finish any of the pure PuG runs... So can't confirm if lacking the "Group Finder" quest denies you the reward... As on HM FP you don't get any special extra quest and on the 4th run every1 had the quest and everything went smooth). But that's only the 1st problem... The next is a more crippling one. It's the PvP soloers... I don't know the rest... But over the brief period (All days since 1.3 hitted... Obviously on the HM T1 queue... No single pure PuG LI has been successfull so far) I have been systematically farming the 5 bh... I only found 1 person exclusively geared for PvE (He was in bad blues... But all of them coming from PvE activities)... The rest of the components of the PuG parties I have been tanking (On purpose... I wanted to check how the system is... Instead of using the easy approach of going with my Gm8s to speedrun farm this) have always come with PvP gear of varied levels. Why is this a problem? Simple... Months of WZ solo queues have created a habit on the "expected duration" on anything accessed through a queue... On the 3 100% PuGs to EV & KP I have tried... We lost ALWAYS at least 1 person at the moment I explained the average duration of a run... The persons that left were systematically PvPers (Notice what I call a "PvPer" here... Some1 with Valor Rank and good proportion of PvP gear). Coincidence? Bad luck? I don't think so... it's the filtering of 6 months of solo PvP queues that has "created" this common profile of player. On those 3 100% PuGs... I manage to explain patiently tactics to beat XR on EV twice (With the exception above of ppl leaving at the very moment I dared to say average full run duration... That forced us to recruit new ppl)... 1 EV failed on the way to Gharj due to ppl been frustrated by been killed on the trash (Healers weren't brilliant on that one) and the other at Gharj because the tank was a 1stimer (I was with my Healer Alt on that run) and, tbh, Gharj can be quite confusing for some1 new to MMOs and to tanking (It was embarrassing how he was treated, tbh... A lot of ppl is crying left and right about lack of tanks... But when they see a good willed guy trying to tank for the 1st time an OP that tries to follow the instructions of another player (me)... All are shouts and angry comments at him... From ppl that have no clue what they are talking about and are making the same or worse mistakes)... ...But Bonetrasher on KP, tbh, was a nightmare... Seem that doesn't matter how much times I explained it, but having a Giant Rancor looking at you makes the average 1st timer to run around like a headless chicken that invairably ends with an acid shower for him and with a lot of unnecesary damage applied on each Claw Swipe (There were 2 persons moving left and right all the time like if they believed moving around randomly will help them at all on PvE... I have seen it also on some HP FP this week... Is this somekind of autoscript/macro PvPers use to trigger facing errors while PvPing?). EDIT: To avoid confusion... When I say I have encountered almost exclusively ppl with PvP gear... It's not just them that are a high proportion of the GF users... It's that dedicated PvErs avoid pure pugs by organizing full parties (As they have been doing from day-0) and then using the random HM FP/SM OP queues... Thus they are "invisible" from users that are "pure PuGing". Even more, as I have been queueing as tank (mostly), even most partial PvErs parties secure by default tank (and healer usually) before even bothering with FP activities... Making even harder for me to see them. EDIT2: Before you jump to a wrong conclusion... I play on a PvE server with those characters.
  8. As expected... Rated PvP will make class teamplay flaws shine... ...And this is just Presesson 1... ...So after the botch 1.3 has been for Shadow in general, we can expect a swift revision on our "group contribution" (I hope also for PvE)... ...Specially when real items start to be poured that requires effective Ranked WZ performance, but there is a problem... ...Hurried forced "rebalance" process rarely work, break classes and tosses them into a long boost-nerf cycle. On the bright side at least BW Devs were wise enough to create PS1, instead of directly going with the Ranked PvP Bizz (Like the OTHER game foolishly did), to get some metrics on which Team compossitions dominate RWZ... So lets hope they do not turn blind to what the PvP Community is telling them... No, not whines on forums, but which teams they like to go with to a RWZ.
  9. A new patch comes, another test done and... ...1 stack of Clairvoyance is still not affecting Project at all so... As I have done in the past (since 1.1 when I 1st detected this)... Another post to report it, this time in its own thread. MODS: I placed this on the wrong forum... This particular bug cannot happen unless you are a Shadow. Can this be moved to the right section?
  10. My 2 prefered toons are Shadow & Scoundrel, and I have played BOTH (each in both main roles) on OP environment (I have slightly more experience with Shadow DPS, although). Scoundrels have higher potential of DPS IMO... But ONLY on static fights (Requires extensive tweaks of your gear... Even more than Shadows, specially when going from Columi to Rakata. From Rakata -> BH/Campaign things are more symetrical). The problem you have is your lack of mobility... It's horrible compared to Shadows and on demanding content you will rarely find such a thing as a static fight. The other thing is they lack Resilience... Don't get me wrong, you can be tough to kill as a Scoundrel because if needed you can heal yourself... But the degradation on DPS you suffer is much more than what Shadows suffer when subject to the plethora of anoying spike damage powers affecting a Melee. If you value versatility... Well you can't really compare both as the goals are totally different. The good thing about Scoundrels is that, if you plan your gear in a smart way, you can have top notch gear for heal & dps with just a few piece changes... Meanwhile, for been a Shadow tank you require a full regearing process each time you reach a new Tier. Also, regarding balance, Shadow tanks are in the lowest spectrum on PvE ATM and Scoundrel Healers are in the higher tier (Specially on dynamic fights)... But as with everything related to balance... it changes like the wind, so you shouldn't take any long-term decission based on the current status of each class. EDIT: Forgot an important note... ATM I'm in the process of evaluating how the nerf on armor debuff stacking is affecting performance. My shadow seems to have been more or less untouched (If you take the advantage of all the extra augment slots in fact the DPS is buffed). I haven't had the chance to test my Scoundrel Scrapper DPS still on demanding content after 1.3, but on paper, it will be hurt far more than my Shadow due to the higher reliance on Kinetic damage Scrappers have (To counterbalance, Scoundrels DPS scale far better with raw Cunning than Shadow's do with Willpower... So when I fully augment his gear I may compensate... But I repeat, I'm still in the process to check this).
  11. To the OP. Generally speaking... Yes you can get all BH sets... ...But you will not be close to top performance because most classes require a mix of BH & Campaign Armorings to reach optimum performance (ENH & MODS you can safely ignore... BH is the source for them)... ...Implants, Ear & Offhands are also randomly distributed in both sets (And by randomly I really mean it... Some BH are better than Campaign... But for other classes can be perfectly the opposite). Not to mention that the ONLY way to get MK2+ versions (Which are BiS for some classes) is to wait, patiently, for a direct drop from HM Bosses (And last Boss on SM). If you really want to get mad at the remaining design flaws on the loot paradigm BW uses, think on the following: - Why after 1.3 the BiS PvE Relic for most classes require you to PvP? - Why some classes can be fully geared without having to fully clear EC HM (This one is particularly funny tbh... They created armorings per slot but... They forgot to create hilts/barrels per slot, allowing offhand -> mainhand conversions in some roles for Jedi Knights, Smugglers, Bounty Hunters & Sith Warriors)?
  12. Remember... You will NEVER be assigned to a team that contains a person in your ignore list.
  13. At Rakata level... If the Tank & Healer are human, ALL HM are doable like that with the exception of LI. Requires a bit of tricky maneuvering and some direct commands, but can be done regularly (I did it as an experiment, ofc, a competent team of human players should be faster on most cases). EDIT: I mostly did this right before 1.2 hitted (And haven't dared to attempt LI, still ), btw... Not after 1.3 with the newly nerfed HMs, which, in theory would make this easier.
  14. I really was waiting for posts like this to appear... But so soon? It's what ppl really do not understand that if you have to wait for so long to get a group you will keep on waiting relatively longer doesn't matter what tool you use to assemble a team. If you think the queues are long now for DPSers... Wait a few weeks for the tanks that are using them now to be geared for full. Do you know the rate at which my tank is doing HMs? Almost instant (She doesn't need the gear... But I was doing this on purpose to recheck for the n-th time the placebo effect Automatic LFG tools are... And will keep on doing it to see how the abssence of tanks will increase the queue length for DPSer on the coming weeks) Now think how much time it will take me to gear her up compared to you (If we both started at the same gear tier)... And voilá... One tank less to help you. That's were Dungeon Finder tools backfire... If been a tank is usually a cumbersome role... Wait until all the generalized bad manners anonymous dungeoneering triggers, start to appear... Good luck trying to convince competent tanks to go with randoms anywhere. But do not despair... The Nerfing of PvE difficulty has already started. They started by reducing the difficulty of most HMs... When they realize that tanks are bottlenecking all their efforts they will simplify the role so it will be next to impossible not be a competent one by just pushing random buttons (The humongous buff to threat gen is also a good clue on what will follow for tanks... Gameplay-wise). Ultimately they will fail (Even after they extend the LFG tool to be X-server... That will happen also sooner or later)... Again, because doesn't matter how low you put your "skill threshold"... The main issue on why tanks are rare will be there and will keep on been excacerbated by Anonymous Dungeoneering... Some ppl is not mature enough to carry over their shoulders the flow of the typical PvE Dungeon run. EDIT: Dual specc or multi specc will not help neither... RIFT got the same problem... They never solved it. Because the reasson is deeply tied on what a role is expected to do on a typical Dungeon run... And how been permanently under the "spotlight" turns the experience into a stressfull one. It's something similar on what happened today to me on the different runs with my DPS... Each time I saw obvious sympthoms of ppl that have rarely steped into a FP before and I asked "any1 new to this?"... On the 10 runs I did today (with 2 different chars) I found 8 with this signs... Wanna guess on how many I got a sincere answer requesting tips on how to play?
  15. From here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=4449669&postcount=2 Relevant quotes: & I swear I saw the Sage notes also... But can be my imagination after reading the above 2 changes. Seems that "Pain Bearer" (Max of 8% self healing) is left intact, for now.
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