[Can we please have a new Assassin class designer?]

Well, they made Darkness more viable than it was before. Though I foresee a lot of QQ when Sins start healing themselves for 12% with uninterruptible lightning quite often.

 

The other trees? Madness looks a little better.

 

Deception? It was a joke, and it's still a joke. No change, really.

 

They did kill two hybrid builds, but we knew that already from the tooltips. So no shock there, pun intended.

 

Bottom line, I really don't think Bioware knows that the heck they're doing. I'm looking at Marauder changes, and THAT'S what they think will help the class? I doubt more than 5% of players will even be to notice the miniscule DPS increase (if any).

[Darkness Assassins whats your new build with the raze change???]

One thing that would go a long way towards increasing the PvP viability of madness/deception would be to buff the insulation talent to up armor by 30%/60% instead of 15%/30%. I'm not sure what number would bring us on par with medium armor, but that's about what non-darkness assassins need to stay viable.

 

Not enough. Not nearly enough, IMHO. Armor is highly overrated anyway.

 

Consider how many classes simply BYPASS it.

Marauder - Gore, ignores 100% of the armor.

Powertech - Rail Shot, ignores up to 90% of the armor, it's their hardest-hitting ability.

Operatives - Acid Blade, ignores 50% of the armor (may be less after the nerf).

Merc - Heat Signature, reduces armor 20% (one tier down).

Etc., etc.

 

Armor is one of the most overrated defenses in the game.

[Darkness Assassins whats your new build with the raze change???]

I noticed the harnessed darkness sometime last week, tthe tooltip change, however i also noticed that it doesnt work with wither. Making me think wither is pointless to have. ALthough i do useit in pvp, and its nice for aoe slow and less dmg, but we dont get credit in medals for that 5% less dmg it causes, it doenst go into protection so credit we dont get but as a whole i guess it helps the team. Also Wither would be much more useful if it was 30m instead of 10m. Getting deathfield for more dmg and more range, to interupt node caps might be a better choice, and in that case raze is the way to go for more dmg thus the 23/0/18 build.

 

Yeah, in it's current form Wither is somewhat lacking. And while you don't get credit for the 5%, your team will appreciate it. And you CAN feel it. I definitely feel it, when I'm being hammered by several people.

 

But if they make Wither proc Harnessed Darkness? It'll be pretty nifty. Those 3xHD stack lightning strikes hurt like hell and heal you for 12% of your total HP. That's nothing to sneeze at.

 

Having said that, I can't help but compare Wither to Combust on my Powertech. Combust is a lowest tier talent in Shieldtech three, a 2-pointer. Reduces all damage done by target by 4% for 15 seconds. Used with Flame Burst (instant single target, no cooldown) and Flame Sweep (instant AoE, no cooldown). Do I need to explain how monumentally unfair that is? 4% over 15 seconds, tied to a high damage AoE ability with no cooldown? All with 2 talent points in the lowest tier? Makes me shake my head sometimes.

[Powertechs need a flashier style...]

Yeah, flash is not necessarily a good thing. My Marauder with two glowsticks feels like I have a giant bulls eye painted on me.

 

Funnily enough, I did a little experiment - changed my crystals to green and blue from red. I get attacked slightly less now. This is purely anecdotal, but from now on it's green and blue crystals for me.

[Raze nerf !]

Maybe they just haven't figured out what to do with the other classes to remove the Hybrid builds. Have you checked tooltips on your Powertech lately?

 

Yep, first thing I did after checking my Sin was log in on Powertech and check their version of Raze (Prototype Particle Accelerator). Still same old tooltip. It's just Sins, from the looks of it.

[Why are they killing hybrid builds???]

All that aside you seem to be implying that BW should make every possible random allocation of talents not only function coherently but be equally optimal as proper build which if you knew about how hard it is to balance 8 unique classes in pve and pvp perfectly is impossible with only 'cookie cutter' builds let alone hybrids.

 

I don't think anyone is asking for random talents having synergy with each other or anything like that. But currently, each tree has junk talents in it. A lot of them. And they're fairly obvious.

 

When was the last time you saw someone SKIP Energize but take 3/3 Shroud of Darkness. When was the last time you saw someone skip Avoidtance, but max Recirculation instead? And when was the last time you saw take Oppressive Force but skip Torment? I've never seen it. Not once. Ever. Period.

 

Now, let me ask you, why are those talents there? Nobody will take them. I mean NOBODY in their right mind will take them! You have a limited number of points, and in every tier there's no-brainer skills that MUST be taken, and every tier has talents that can be skipped with no noticeable loss of...well...anything!

 

Now, instead of doing it that way, why not make all those talents worthwhile? That is, instead of the choice being obvious, where you are essentially being told "TAKE THIS!", and only given an ILLUSION of choice, why not actually give people the choice?

 

Balancing? Not good enough. You have a limited number of talent points, so you would have to make some choices, can't have everything. And as long as talents are well thought out, balancing shouldn't be an issue. Besides, the game balance right now is horribly broken anyway, even with the trees we have now.

 

I don't know. Call me old fashioned, but I like actual choice over an illusion of choice.

[Anyone notice the tooltip change on Raze?]

But on the flipside in this game, i hate the idea of all the sin dps running around in DC so they can get the main benefits of a tank and still have great damage.

 

You mean like most warriors are running Rage, and most Operatives are running Concealment and most Mercs are running Arsenal?

 

Every class has a strong spec. A spec that is most effective, with fewest shortcomings, and usually easier to handle, less prone to mistakes. People VERY quickly figure out what those builds are, and pretty soon you have 90% of a given class running around with a very specific spec.

 

This is called the "cookie cutter" spec. And this problem exists in EVERY MMO that has stupidly narrow talent trees with a lot of junk talents. Like WoW, AoC, SWTOR, etc. Where you don't see this problem is in games like EVE, where you are given an almost total flexibility and freedom of choice.

 

Only for now, we have quite a few choices. Quite a few hybrids. If the tooltips match the spells, most of the choices will be gone.

 

Instead of trying to FORCE people into 31-point builds, they should be cleaning up trees of junk talents. I bet you a half-eaten cookie that if the Devs right now took a snapshot of every Assassin's talent tree, 90% of people will have skipped the SAME talents. Those are JUNK talents. You know it, I know it, they know it. Everyone knows it. So why put them there, and then force us into a 31 pointer with stances?

 

Much better way would be to make ALL talents worthwhile. I want to have to gnaw my fingernails making excruciatingly difficult decisions on where to put talent points. I want viable hybrids. I want most people running around with unique specs, that they tailored for themselves to match their individual playstyle.

 

But I guess this kind of nonsense can't be allowed. It's 31 pointers or bust. Or so it seems.

 

As for BW's stance on Hybrids, my guess is they right now want to steer everyone toward specific cookie cutter builds, leaving people with pretty much 3 builds to choose from, to make balancing easier.

 

Before they look at talent trees, they need to take a long hard look at classes themselves. Take a Sorcerer, for example. The only class in the game with ZERO resource management. Imagine playing your Sin, but instead of 100 energy having 600 energy. Pretty OP, right? Well, that's what it's like for a Sorcerer any given day.

 

If they're worried about talent trees and balancing, they're WAY ahead of themselves. There's core issues that need fixing long before tweaking talents.

[Darkness Assassins whats your new build with the raze change???]

Valken, you're way off.

 

For one, I was in beta. And no, current tooltips are NOTHING like anything I've seen in beta. They're not old. They're new.

 

Second, it's not JUST 1.1. Patch 1.1, 1.1.0-something (a, b, c, I don't remember) AND 1.1.1. That is, yesterday's patch and the patches before it. Yesterday's patch changed Raze and some other stuff in Madness tree. Patch 1.1.0-something (pre-1.1.1) changed Induction. And Patch 1.1 changed Wither.

 

We have been seeing CONSISTENT changes to tooltips, all headed in the same direction - killing off hybrids. Patch 1.1.0-something killed Darkness/Deception. Yesterday's 1.1.1 killed Darkness/Madness.

 

Initially, I was with you on this - I just thought it might be a bug. But we keep getting these changes, and they're not reverting previous changes to original tooltips. It's too consistent. Once, in 1.1, I thought it was an accident. Twice, in 1.1.0-something, I got worried. But since yesterday with 1.1.1 changes? Now I'm certain. It's not an accident, it's not an oversight - there are directed and specific changes.

 

In short - I see no indication at all that this is a bug, as it has happened over 3 separate patches, and the direction is very consistent. And I see no indication that this is old tooltips, because I know what old tooltips were like. All signs and common sense point towards it being new tooltips from a newer build.

 

Though I take your point. I'll stop raging about it until we see the patch notes of the next build on PTR. I do expect to see all these as listed changes. Unless they're planning to ninja-whack us with them. Which is what they did with commendation PvP gear pricing. They nearly doubled the prices, and not a peep in the patch notes.

[Raze nerf !]

But the class was designed with the 3 charge stances, and really only DC was being used for everything. So to me that says the other two charges or trees were broken and now they are fixing it. If you are dps, you should not be ´as survivable´ or even close to that of a true tank.

 

My question is - why us?!

 

Out of 8 classes, 5 are designed around stances, same as us.

 

Warriors - stances.

Bounty Hunters - cylinders.

 

The three classes that escape are Sorcerers (well, duh, nothing ever touches them, probably get buffed next patch) and Imperial Agents. Though Snipers have Cover, which might be considered as sort of a stance, but not really.

 

And out of 5 classes, WE are the ones getting the nerfs to our hybrids?

 

I mean, I have a Powertech. Powertechs have SILLY powerful hybrid builds, like Carolina Parakeet. Actually it's a mirror of Sin Darkness/Madness spec. You go Shieldtech up to jet jump, and up Pyro to prototype cylinders, and end up with great mobility, great defenses and very good damage. But are they having their tooltips changed? Nope. Not that I know of.

 

So why us? Are we actually considered to be overpowered by the devs?

 

Really wish they would talk to us. The silence lately has been deafening. Unless of course you want to talk about irrelevant crap like the color of the lighstaber crystals.

[Darkness Assassins whats your new build with the raze change???]

With Wither triggering Harnessed Shadows? Definitely 31 into Darkness. Wither in PvP isn't actually half-bad.

 

Dump it on a group of people, cut their damage 5% and movement 30% for 15 seconds. That's actually pretty godly, just by itself. Yeah, it may not help YOU specifically, or give you more kills, but as a force multiplier it is rather significant. Throw an AoE taunt in there, and you've just single-handedly wrecked their day, -35% damage. Toss an AoE Discharge in there for -5% accuracy, and you just add insult to injury. People HATE me in WZs. I show up, and they start hitting like wet noodles, and I'm not exactly easy to pop.

 

Thinking 31/0/10, in the long run. Deception talents just don't seem worth it, especially considering positional requirement on Maul, I can't always go the way I want, gotta stick to the guy I'm guarding, and jockeying with Maul wastes time and you risk being knocked back somewhere you don't want to be.

[Undocumented Assassin Changes?]

If they plan to destroy hybrid builds then they better address madness and deception survability because playing a sin in PvP with anything but Dark Charge is a joke.

 

I'm looking into my Magic 8 Ball, and you know what I see?

 

They will do nothing about Deception or Madness survivability. Then, they will see people STILL using Dark Charge, regardless of their actual spec. And they will say to themselves "Hey, they're still using Dark Charge! It must be overpowered." And then they will nerf it to crap.

 

Wait and see. I'm serious. I can TOTALLY see it happening, the way things have been going so far.

 

Once you get a lot of gear it gets better.

 

That's because you're now killing undergeared people. Once everyone is geared, you return to status quo.

 

Follow me on this one. Expertise reduces your damage taken, and increases your damage done by an identical amount. Two people, with same Expertise, will have their respective Expertise ratings cancel each other out. Your +100 damage will be canceled by his -100 damage taken, and his +100 damage done will be canceled by your -100 damage taken.

 

When I see people say "get geared, it gets better", that's just a copout. It doesn't get better. You just outgear more people. But eventually they will catch up, and we're back to square one.

[Anyone notice the tooltip change on Raze?]

This isn't wow... thank God. If I wanted to play wow, i would go play wow. The moment this game starts copying dynamincs from wow I will quit and just go back to wow.

 

Yeeeeah...about that... http://auditorydepredation.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/1326231905169.jpg

 

The fact is, if they want to develop this game with spec'd stance locking, I would encourage it. I'm not here to play WoW after all.

 

Well, that's your prerogative. I'm pro-choice, in life and in game. Anything that limits my choices will meet a negative response.

[Darkness - soo OP right now. Here's why any other spec isnt nearly as good:]

3) Should I be wary about the Raze tooltip change meaning that it will eventually make its way into the talent itself and not be able to 23/0/18 anymore?

 

You probably should, yes. At least all signs so far point to the hybrid being killed, probably as soon as the next major patch. Don't go through the trouble of gearing up and learning a new build, as it may be dead in a month.

[Marauders are weak... And now boring...]

Reading these comments, I am beginning to think Marauders really NEED a force pull spell.

 

So many are saying "you can't charge into battle" or "you can't go into the zerg, you have to skirt around and try to pick at people". Yeah, with an organized group that doesn't happen. They stay in a zerg. And unless you charge in, you walk off with 0 damage done, while ranged classes (even close-ranged ones like PT) are still doing damage from range.

 

A pull would give a Marauder the ability to set up 1v1s. I mean, that's what I do on my Sin and Powertech. I pluck the guy I want to kill to where I want him, and I have a 1v1, or usually 1v3, he dies, I pluck the next one. As a PT, my grapple is on 35 second cooldown. Allows me to pick a zerg apart rather efficiently without sticking my backside into a bonfire.

[Raze nerf !]

This isnt really a nerf, and if you were not a tank running in DC to begin with you were doing it wrong.

 

I have to chuckle at this. A kid gets a new toy. A kid plays with a toy, perhaps not the way the manufacturer intended, but he's having a blast. The manufacturer comes in and messes around with the toy until the kid can't play with it the way he wanted, because that's not how it was intended to be played with. Doesn't matter that the kid was having fun.

 

Bioware - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Fix what IS broke. Like our passive talent, Assassin's Training. Or is that too obvious for you?

[Anyone notice the tooltip change on Raze?]

As for hybrid death, well i find to many mmo's with that last point talent in a tree design dont work well to having both hybrid and pure viable.

 

Actually yeah, they do. Some of the most fun builds ever come from hybrid builds. In WoW, a hybrid Affliction/Demonologist warlock was very fun to play. In Age of Conan, a hybrid Herald of Xotli was really awesome too. Etc, etc.

 

It's never bad to give people variety and choice. Instead of lack of variety and lack of choice. It also keeps opponents guessing. If they kill off hybrids, all the enemy has to do is look at what stance you're in, and they know what spec you are. Yeah, yeah, you can change stances in combat. But if they see you fighting, odds are you'll be in your preferred stance, and bingo, they have your build down to a T. And now they know precisely how to fight you. Now compare that to the present scenario. See a Sin with Dark Charge? What are the odds he's FULL Darkness? Actually, pretty low. Nobody expects it. And when I start nailing them with uninterruptible lightning thy go WHAAA?! But if these changes go live, they see Dark Charge, they know what's coming.

 

Anyway, my view is that forcing a specific stance for a specific spec is kinda dumb. As a warrior in WoW, stance dancing was basically required. Your interrupt only worked in Beserker stance, your Overpower only worked in Battle stance, etc., etc. If you were being focused, you popped Defensive stance and defensive cooldowns, etc., etc. Instead, Bioware decided to tie a stance to a tree, and for the most part you will be in that tree because it's usually not time-efficient to switch stances in combat. Makes the game more primitive than it has to be, and limits choices.

[Why are they killing hybrid builds???]

DPS were all running in DC which should have told you something was very wrong from that point.

 

Yeah. I just hope they don't decide that what is wrong is DC itself and nerf it into the ground.

[Penality for desertors]

when do you add a penality to players who leave warzones ???

 

Hopefully never. There's only 2 possible outcomes of a deserter debuff:

1. If it is severe enough - people will AFK instead of leaving

2. If it is weak - people will still leave

 

Neither will solve the issue of people not wanting to participate in a stupid or lopsided match due to poor matchmaking. My solution? Fix the matchmaking, so that people won't want to leave!

 

At the moment you just penalize those who enter to replace the stupid desertors.

 

Uhh, no they don't! I LOVE joining a game that is 2 mins away from being done. I still get 60+ commendations and full or near full XP. For virtually zero effort.

 

Has something been changed with last patch??

 

No. People have just gotten better at spotting morons and realized they don't need to waste their time, instead they can just leave and re-queue.

[The WORST pvpers i have ever seen in an MMO]

You do realize zerging and farming medals is more efficient than actually winning a match?

 

No it's not. I can manage maximum number of medals for my level (I can't top 500k damage at my level no matter what) while still winning the game. People are just morons.

 

And OP, I totally get what you're saying. Half the time Voidstar starts, I see my entire team to to the right door. Doesn't matter if the enemy sends NOBODY to the right door at all. They still all go there. I just shut my eyes and run away screaming (i.e. leave the match) when I see idiocy of that magnitude.

[Unable to interrupt Sniper/Slinger's attacks]

When in cover, they are immune to interrupts, but not crowd control.

When in cover and using Entrench, they are immune to both interrupts and CC.

[Wz win not counting not fixed.]

Yep, definitely not fixed. Very first game tonight was a win, and it didn't count.

[Warzones need a "forfeit" option]

Before forfeit option, they need to try better matchmaking.

 

The game is often matching teams with average lvl 25 to teams with average lvl 45. With a very predictable outcome. Matchmaking is pretty awful in this game.

[Marauder guidance/optimization for those struggling]

OP,

 

Really nice writeup.

 

But one thing to be aware of - you assume a lot of things. Like Assassins, for example. You assume they're Deception. What if he's Darkness spec? Totally different beast. He'll mostly use Shocks and Force Lightning, as well as Wither and Discharge debuff.

[Hey Bioware Ravage needs to be fixed!!!!!!!!!!!]

All channeled abilities for all classes have this bug. Not just Ravage. On my Powertech, the Unload ability bugs out too, just as often.

[Pyro PVP, What Class Do You Struggle Wth?]

Pretty much any class where the player knows how to play. That's for me, at least.

 

Poorly played - I stomp them regardless of class. Well played - it's 50/50 at best.

 

Biochem also is a big factor. On some of my chars I have no Biochem, and on some I do. And when I fight people, some have it, some don't. Whoever doesn't have it is at a HUGE disadvantage.

 

My personal feeling about the PT is that the class is very bland and simple. You don't really get anything serious in a way of tools to deal with situations that might come up, not the way some other classes do. I mean, Marauders get mobility and mini-vanish, Assassins get stealth and knockback/down, Sorcerers get a full toolbox, and so on.

 

Powertech - you try to DPS them down before they DPS you down. There's hardly any room for anything fancy. You have a whopping two CCs, not counting Grapple. A few defensive abilities, one on a long-ish cooldown. Come up against someone who has more cooldowns and DPS higher or equal to yours, and you're toast. The class doesn't give you enough tools to outplay your opponent the way some other classes do.

 

That's probably why you are having trouble with Marauders. Their DPS is at least on par with PT, probably higher. And their defensive cooldowns are more, and arguably more effective. Chaining Saber Ward, Obfuscate, Force Cloak and Undying Rage with Cloak of Pain running throughout, plus adding a Force Choke into the mix, it's possible that they can take more damage than a PT can. Without cooldowns, yeah, Maras are toast. But with cooldowns they can be tough as nails. At least well played ones are.