Marb
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Posts posted by Marb
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I had a dream once where the comm gear was filled with the current bulwark/bastion enhancements and grade 69/72/75/78 sturdiness/immunity enhancements were put into the token gear.
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Jugg dps falls behind in PvE, but it's viable. Rage is solid in PvP.
A Marauder is going to be able out dps you and provide invaluable utility to the group, and survive longer. You will just have to put those facts out of your mind.
I would stick to Rage for PvE as well tbh.
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Maybe it's an issue with terminology. It's hard to criticize hard-modes for being hard, when their name would suggest that, that is the intent. In progression terms, "Hard" really means "Normal", so in that sense, maybe some encounters are a little out of whack with the general difficulty curve. For example, I wouldn't say the new flashpoints are "Hard", but in comparison to the other flashpoints in the hardmode bracket, they are a little harder.
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I'm curious as to how a 5s duration would help in pve, no sarcasm. In pvp, Vengeance is a very good pressure spec against sorcs because of its high physical damage and the difficulty in shaking a well-played jugg, so 5s would be a rather serious buff, even if it were an on-demand ability. As far as the concern about an on-demand stun immunity goes, they could simply remove that part of it and make it more like hydraulic overrides. Physics immunity is a potent ability in this game vs ranged, as anyone can really tell.
Sorry, there are a couple of things I'm mixing up here. If unstoppable were tied to an instant ability, 4 seconds is fine, but unstoppable in its current form should be lengthened by 1 second (0.5 could be enough). Increasing the immunity to 5 seconds is to provide the entire ravage channel protection, as at the moment adding in the gcd from leap means that the last tick of ravage is never protected by unstoppable (a player who is aware of this will hit you with a soft cc just before the last tick). This will continue to be a vulnerability with the root on ravage buff coming in 2.5.
AP can use HO to protect their cast when it's in danger of being interrupted by physics, Vengeance has no such on-demand protection. The mechanic is there, but it's tied to force charge, which means that unstoppable does nothing for PvE. The idea here is to provide the immunity as part of a separate ability to mirror HO like you said.
Coming back to your original concern, Vengeance is a spec that must channel in melee range to do its damage. Providing roots, snares and cc protection are essential for the spec to perform, which WILL have a negative impact on the overall PvP environment (which has an overabundance of stuns, roots and snares already). The spec, and specs like it, would have to be redesigned, otherwise they will continue to necessitate the presence of snares, roots and physics protection just to make them competitive alternatives.
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Is anyone else concerned that a 4 second Unstoppable buff + a root on Ravage is only going to exacerbate the current issue where melee have incredible amounts of gap closers, snares and roots already in comparison to ranged classes' general lack of escape mechanisms? Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of both Carnage and Vengeance having a root on the skill, but current Unstoppable + Ravage root = overkill. Looking at this issue as a sorc main, jugg alt, but the combination seems overly strong vs other classes, too, notably if escape tools are on cooldown.
If unstoppable were tied to a short cooldown ability like enrage, as well as having the immunity extended by 1 second, it would help PvE vengeance immeasurably while also reducing the total uptime of the immunity (can't be used in pvp on every single charge).
It would also add a tactical element to the immunity like how hydraulic overrides interacts with advanced prototype (a spec also dependent on a channel).
I'm not sure how I feel about on demand stun immunity though.
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So all the guardian 72 gear gives shield/absorb or shield/alacrity and i know the alacrity is bad but i was hoping for stuff like defense/shield enchancements on SOMETHING. So when i asked fleet i was told i should get accuracy as a tank (so i don't miss and so i can pull or threat which sounds odd considering i haven't had a problem with my moves ever missing..) So now I am confused about the accuracy thing and frustrated since right now as much as i want to upgrade to elite gear I feel like trying to min/max anything for guardian tanking is impossible...
So where am i supposed to get shield/defense 31 enchancements AND do tanks even USE accuracy?
The most important thing you are upgrading at this point are your armorings. Mods from the vendor will be high endurance, but will suffice until you get oricon mods, which are also high endurance but will still be a huge upgrade going from 72 comm mods.
Replace the enhancements in the comms gear with immunity/sturdiness 66 enhancements (can't remember which ones are in the game), they can be crafted / bought from gtn. With that gear you should be doing sm df/dp and hardmode tfb/sv to get gear tokens.
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1. Combat Focus
2. Leap + Reflect
3. Guardian Strike + Riposte
4. Hilt Strike
5. Sweep
6. Blade Storm
7. Master Strike (The taunt is to ensure you don't lose aggro during MS which is just a pain)
Guardian openers are the way they are in order to sync ability use to their 12 second cycle, (long term efficiency in mind), but the focus loss from skipping saber throw is something you would easily recover from.
One suggestion I have is moving blade storm to after master strike. That would give you an extra riposte on the tail end of the sweep gcd just before Master Strike assuming there is focus left:
1. Combat Focus
2. Leap + Reflect
3. Guardian Strike + Riposte
4. Hilt Strike
5. Sweep
6. Riposte + Master Strike
7. Blade Storm
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Riposte shouldn't be part of a "rotation" it is off the gcd and needs to be used whenever it lights up, whether because you defended and attack or procced with guardian slash. Sometimes it procs as soon as you leap in and should be used immediately. Also makes for entertaining animations such as during execute phase when you use dispatch and then riposte while the lightsaber is still going through the flight motion.
Anyways...
Saber throw > Leap > Sweep > Guardian Slash > Single Taunt > Bladestorm > Master Strike > Hilt Strike
You want to use riposte immediately on proc as stated. If you get lucky and it procs from a boss attack during your sweep, then you should have it off cd as bladestorm gcd finishes, try to immediately use master strike as its fits neatly inside the cd of riposte. Also as other posters stated you want to use combat focus somewhere between sweep and bladestorm, also off the gcd. Following this you can use sundering strike and stasis to generate focus, and maybe depending on how well your dps use their aggro drop and the timing for a boss in the fight you can throw in a second single taunt as an extra cushion. Lastly, I am tired and maybe just hallucinating, but i believe taunts are off the gcd.
Riposte is sometimes represented in openers because it can help new guardians understand how it interacts with other abilities, and shows how to use riposte so that it doesn't light up during a Master Strike. If riposte procs before guardian slash, you should skip the filler after blade storm. if it doesn't and you just get the proc from guardian slash, you should use a filler after blade storm.
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The original design was that advanced classes that could tank were only tanks (each advanced class had two skill trees). Some of the in game flavor text and dialog may still reflect this. They then introduced a third skill tree which added a new role for most of the classes, like tank tree for assassins and healer tree for commandos. Guardians were given a dedicated dps tree with those additions.
I'm not sure how the shared trees were supposed to work in that original design. I would be interested to hear how it used to work from anyone who was in those early beta tests.
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Combat Focus is used if needed on demand. Always let the use of combat focus "float" because sometimes courage stacks will carry you through the opener with no need to use combat focus. Standard opener which has been mentioned here:
Saber Throw > Leap+Saber Reflect > Sweep > Guardian Strike+Riposte (single taunt goes here).
You can then go straight into master strike, or put up your blade barrier from blade storm. If you go for blade storm, use a filler move after it so riposte comes off cooldown again before launching into Master Strike. This ensures you're not wasting a riposte when using Master Strike:
Blade Storm > Hilt Strike > Riposte+Master Strike > Filler (aoe taunt goes here).
You will now be in a situation where all of your major abilities are on cooldown. Fill this deadzone in with force push or force stasis. Use sunder for the last gcd before sweep comes off cooldown. All of your major abilities will now be synced to your sunder, which (should) ensure you always have the focus to use them. If you favor putting up your blade barrier early in your opener, delaying sweep to put 6 seconds between it and blade storm's cooldown is optimal for focus management. This maximizes the use of courage stacks, resulting in extra slashes to burn off the spare focus. And don't forget to use riposte if the button is lit up, no matter what you are doing (it's off the gcd, and wont interfere with your abilities unless you are channeling master strike).
For more info:
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The abundance of mixed pulls with mobs using knockback's and snares can make it a nightmare for a new tank. Unfortunately these encounters require the tank to have prerequisite knowledge to counter them, and play in a way that may not be intuitive, such as face-pulling a pack of mobs, eating the knockback and then using your gap closer. An unexpected knockback and snare will render a tank completely useless on the pull, leaving the healer vulnerable to an alpha strike.
Knockbacks and snares shouldn't be challenges new tanks should have to face, not when they are learning how to engage targets and hold threat IMO. It's an issue with the difficulty curve for tanking, these sorts of mechanics should be telegraphed with cast times or something (like the droids in mando raiders), at least on the lower level group content. That would train low level tanks to get used to using their interrupt, leaving the insta knockback+snare recovery tactics for higher level content.
Even insta knockbacks being restricted to gold star mobs would be acceptable. Packs of silvers and in some cases, normals, should not have cc effects in the abundance that they do currently. Trash sucks more then usual in this game.
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It can seem overwhelming at first, but once you get into the habit of thinking of your stats as ratings rather then percentages, it does make more sense.
That link refers to ratings, which is the benefit you gain from gear and stims. To check what your rating is in any given stat, you need to mouse over the relevant stat (defense, shield, absorb). This will show a tooltip with detailed information. The number you are looking for is called "rating" in that tooltip.
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Unless you had netgraph up (shift-ctrl-f), you wouldn't even know if you dipped below 60, you would only know if you dipped below 30-35 frames per second. That's when the eye can pick up the tearing in the motion. Past 35, and you can't tell the difference. You meat betrays you, young Zeta_Scorpii.
Utterly false, the human eye can perceive differences in fps well above 30. This is a misconception going back to the decision to run with the 24fps limit for films.
Technically, the eye doesn't have an fps "limit" to how many frames it can perceive, because the human eye doesn't see "in frames". http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/ If you can't perceive differences in these examples, you have brain damage.
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In the first 3 minutes you reach peak dps phases (twh, jealous male and foul offspring alive) of the encounter. If you feel you should waste your defensive cooldowns for threat, use a blue medpack (~8k threat) or overcharge saber (~6k instant threat + ~2,5k additional threat from stance dmg increase).
A Surge Adrenal will generate about 2,4k threat from Force Lightning, then another 600 threat from the next casted Wither (with the other recklessness stack).
On the rest of the 10 seconds it will increase your surge rating by ~24% which means with 17% crit a 4,08% dps increase which means ~500 additional dps during this Phase. Even if you are lucky and get an autocrit Shock during that time, it's just another 500 dmg.
So at best, the surge adrenal will net you 4k-5k threat over 15 seconds, for a 3 min cooldown. Overcharge Saber and Medpacks will grant you more threat (and they will grant you the threat faster) while on a faster cooldown.
All in all, the threat these defensive cooldowns generate is medicore (~1-2 gcd) and totally screws you in your defensive abilitys. It's the tanks job to stay alive and not to generate more dps. Holding threat is easy, if you learned your opening rotation and if you taunt the moment you lose aggro.
Admittedly, I was thinking about this from a Jugg tank perspective. You guys do have better alternatives with overcharge saber and medpac cd reset on stealth.
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Also don't waste your adrenals for threat Generation. Your armor adrenal is one of your best defensive cooldowns, if you waste a surge adrenal for threat generation, you can't use this defensive cooldown for 3 min!
I would probably still use the dps adrenal on Writhing Horror. A lot of tank swap fights will let you get away with not using that armor adrenal for the first 3mins. It really depends on the encounter.
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We all know the official reasons for why they made this decision, but with the current trend of sending us planet hopping for different activities at level 55 (a good change), the planets really need to appear like they exist and move forward in time with us.
I would put this one up there with making planet hopping in the ship easier and quicker. Give visual variety to the planets, as well as continuing to add reasons to revisit them for elder game repeatable content.
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So basically they spent more money to modify an already crap engine to make it run in a way it wasnt designed to instead of using a cheaper engine with functionality. Why again did they do this?
Bioware used an early internal version of the Hero engine to get started right away. Adding in support for critical mmo features to the version of the engine they had was costly and time consuming. I'm sure later versions of the engine weren't anywhere near as bare-bones: http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars/
During all of this though, they had little contact with the people who built the engine, so it would be unfair to shove the blame on the engine itself, considering it wasn't even a finished version they decided to work with. Bioware made a bad call, but it was a long time ago, and now they are stuck with the engine, possibly with few people left in the studio who have specialized knowledge about it's quirks from pre-launch. The engine is genuinely responsible for some issues, but I don't think slower content roll-out is one of them. That would be more to do with the smaller team-size working within a budget. They have to prioritize stuff (cartel market
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The quote from James Ohlen is taken out of context slightly. The cost of making swtor was ...huge, one of the most expensive games ever made. People on the outside assumed it was because of the ambitious undertaking of the biggest VO project in history, but as James pointed out, the proportion of the cost that was spent on VO was not as much as people would think.
The point is that VO is expensive, it's just that the development cost blowouts to do with difficulties working with the hero engine was main reason the game cost so much to make. VO is expensive, but as a proportion of the overall cost to make swtor, it wasn't that much.
Bioware does need to be smarter with how they use VO in future content, even going so far as to save major VO work for progressions of the main story chapters, relying on more creative and sparing use of voiced dialog for everything else. Compromising on core narrative VO would compromise the entire premise of the game.
Imagine an epic world story arc composed entirely of non-basic speaking alien quest givers and mission terminals, punctuated by generic stock yes/maybe/no player character responses!
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This has been suggested before, but it was shot down pretty quickly because a bunch of armchair developers were certain that it was just bad coding and couldn't have anything to do with network communication.
The reality is that it behaves a lot like standard multiplayer-game client-server desync. There's a good chance that its also directly related to at least some of the rubber-banding and random instances of mobs being drawn in one location on the client but recorded in a slightly different location on the server (sometimes resulting in seemingly nonsensical "You must be behind the target" error messages). It would also explain why some people say they see it a lot, while others --for example: me-- see it very, very rarely. I live about 5 miles from the servers. My latency is low and I rarely see any latency spikes. As with most other games that see this sort of situation, it is more likely to occur at higher latencies.
Sadly, the fix isn't as simple as checking the "Avoid desync issues" checkbox on your compiler. This usually ends up being the result of optimization, and a good example of a case where making code run faster involves making it less tolerant of various error conditions. To fix it, you either have to come up with some clever solution, or do more error checking and lose some of the performance you gained with the optimization. The later is quick, but has design tradeoffs. The former is better, but may take anywhere from a day to a year. Again, if any of our local armchair developers have a good way of synchronizing a client and server across a link where latencies can vary by upwards of 300% across a few minutes, then they should speak up because they've got a bright career in development ahead of them.
I can't remember who said it or find a quote, but I do remember hearing something about the old ability delay issue being related to some sort of buffer the server has, and a throttle to prevent too many actions being performed within a very short amount of time. This was during the peak of the really bad animation/ability delay issues that plagued launch, but I can't help but wonder if they closed the book on that issue too soon.
Firing most of the people who did their head in trying to work with the engine during development probably wasn't the best idea, considering the alleged difficulty of adding multi-player features, which has been cited as one of the main contributors to the development cost blowout. If we or Bioware's QA could effectively diagnose and reproduce the issue, it would be a matter of prioritizing when to look into a fix for it. I fear that the issues are to do with the server, and as such, we as players can do little to help them diagnose it other then remind them with new forum threads that it's still an issue.
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Part of the reason why the false gcd/ghost abilitiy bug is so frustrating, is exactly the reason it's hard to fix.
There isn't much consistency as to when it happens. At one point I thought it was due to some weird sync issues with the client and server caused by low fps and higher client-side latency, but those factors don't seem to make it any more prevalent. It isn't as simple as an ability not responding to being activated, it's the fact that these misfire's TRIGGER THE HARD GLOBAL COOLDOWN, which is a really annoying bug, especially when a high APM is important (PvP and Ops).
My guess is that it is to do with activating abilities during a short client/server desync caused by high server load. This leads to discrepancies between what the server and client thinks happened:
- The client is convinced the ability was activated and triggers the gcd.
- The server thinks the ability wasn't fired and doesn't apply any damage.
- The client thinks the ability was fired and plays the animation without the server applying damage or triggering the cooldown.
- The server and client conflict as to where a gap closer should put the player, causing the gap closer to leave the player well short of their intended target.
This is probably a pretty bad run down and is ignorant of how data is actually sent and intercepted from client to server, but the point is that the server thinks things are happening that aren't happening.
- The client is convinced the ability was activated and triggers the gcd.
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Some veng juggs find the reliance on the channel a unique challenge to the spec that should be overcome with skill and timing instead of considered a design flaw, so the boost to the rampage proc is seen as a silver bullet for the current rng issues.
If the ability priority was loosened up a bit with lower rage costs and more damage loaded into the filler abilities, a rampage proc adjustment may not be as essential, and it would help the spec perform in areas where it currently struggles (target switching, movement, pvp). So I agree with this sort of alternative solution metal is talking about, but as ssfish mentioned in the other thread, boosting bleed damage would warrant a nerf to the upfront damage of impale and shatter, which would remove some of the burst potential.
It's a complex problem, and beyond a proc adjustment, veng will continue to present issues for some players in PvE and PvP because of its design.
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From what I gathered from the the patch notes, they aren't fixing any of the title entries, they are just removing them from the planetary categories so they no longer count towards the planetary codex total.
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Tumult was only usable on incapacitated strong or weaker npc's.
You could never use it in operations, and you could never use it in pvp. Are you suggesting they bring it back and just remove the enemy type and conditional restrictions?
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Being the strongest tank class in the game in both PvP and PvE, asking a tank question didn't seem to be very popular in comparison.
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Companion Respec Kits
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Marb
The idea is to separate the role from the character. Creating a choice that reflects on a preference for the character themselves, rather then the arbitrary role Bioware has assigned to them.
At the very least there should be secondary roles for companions that extend beyond their main stance/dps stance. There is no reason why Vette can't be a healer, but healer wouldn't suit Pierce or Broonmark. Picture being able to switch companions between two dedicated role templates each (not the lame dps off spec stance that all the companions have atm). So for example switching Pierce to dps would mean his skillset changes to that of a full fledged mdps companion (Torian, Jaesa ect.).