What the other guy said. Heals are green and cosmetic preference isn't really a good enough reason to give commando's a heal that won't get them focus fired on in PVP.

This is a statement that claims exact information. If you were just "using intuition to speculate" then provide proper context instead of acting like you knew something. But since you're asking me to use logic, here's some logic you hadn't considered. This game was released on a deadline with some features to be included at a later time after further development. Dual speccing most significantly. Dual speccing is, from a game mechanic standpoint, very similar to both respeccing, a feature that is in game, and advanced class changing, a feature that is not. So, logically, time constraints works as an explanation for the absence of this feature. And since neither of us has any hard data to support our respective theories we can't know which one of us is right. We can know which one of us was impertinent enough to claim the mechanic was rejected without any hard data.

I did, and I also read a class description in every other MMO that I've ever played. You know, those other MMO's that you claim give NO information. If you're only going to read part of a post, then only quote the part that you read, it makes it easier for the rest of us to both gauge your attention span and the part of the argument that you've actually registered. Although since you completely missed the point in this case, I'm not sure how that would have helped us here.

I like Aric cause he can snipe with an auto-cannon.

I'm not sure you're actually privvy to any internal testing information. Why don't you just fess up, you made something up that sounded good and authoritative, but were talking out of your ***.

I would argue that most games you have significantly more information. In WoW, for instance, you may not be able to see a Mage's talent trees from the character creation menu, but you have a brief description of "mages" and, well, it's a mage, an archetype lodged securely in the world's conscious. Where as "Jedi Sage" is nowhere near as cleanly understood. Then ofcourse you have the added aggravation. Say you chose a shaman and decided what you really wanted was a druid. In WoW you go back to the character creation screen, you make a brand new character and, chances are good, you end up picking a different race. Your journey starts anew, in a new location, you do new quests, and you level with new powers. In SW:ToR, if you decided you wanted to try a new advanced class you'd make a new character, do the exact same 10 levels worth of questing using the exact same abilities. You'd get to level 10, choose your new advanced class, play it through the exact same missions you already did when you were falling out of love with your first character, and only then find out if it plays better for you than the first. Now, if this game had another year and the budget for an entirely new voice cast, I'd say they should just permanently split the Advanced Classes and give each its own story line, cast of companions, and wholly new experience. Since this game doesn't have that, screw it, give us limited advanced class respecs.

I've never played a Gunslinger or Sniper. Regarding Commandos, it is not hard to level a Commando, the story line is interesting, and almost all of your companions use heavy armor with aim so there's a pretty great 'hand me down' factor to gearing.

The problem here is that there is no easy and fun way to make pure specs the only viable specs. The usual way to guaranty a 31/x/x talent build is to make the 31 point talent awesome, sounds like a good idea and it appeals on an emotional level, but when you break it apart it's not that great. Awesome powers will be used, they will become a significant part of your power priority list or rotation and an integral part of how you play your character. You don't get your 31 point talent until level 40, at earliest. It's not strong game design to have your play style shift monumentally to account for a powerful new ability so far into your leveling. Even while it gives rise to hybrid builds and then complaining when hybrid builds get thrown under the bus for overall game balance, I do like that Bioware is giving out spec defining talents around the third and fourth tiers. I suppose Bioware can make the choice that Blizzard did and give your character a spec defining ability when he spends his very first talent point, but the cost of that was locking players into their first talent tree through the majority of their leveling and that was kind of a tall price.

Mods, change this title to something productive like "Shadow Aesthetics" and sticky it immediately!

That's a very good question. The philosophy in this game seems to be to give people their awesome talent around the third or fourth tier of their talent tree. Madness gets Death Field, Deception gets Induction, Darkness gets Dark Ward, and you see the same thing in other talent trees. Tracer missiles, Laceration, Ataru Form, Obliterate, Shien Form are all tier three talents. I think the reasoning is to give players the spec defining abilities as soon as they can because Bioware has invested so much time into making the leveling process awesome. The other possibility would be that Bioware wants people to use Hybrid builds, but given current patch notes we can be pretty sure that's not the case.

Well, when it comes to a talent tree there are generally two schools of thought that I've seen. Yours, that talent points are to be spent building your character into the closest approximation of what you'd like to play that the game makes possible. Or the other, talent trees are designed to give players a few significant choices and to guide players into learning the proper way to play their character without overloading them with all the complexities of their class. Games like Champions Online excel at the prior, games like Cataclysm WoW succumbed to the later, games like Rifts still try to walk a balance between them not too successfully, and with this patch, SW:TOR tosses their hat into the more limited camp. And on a completely unrelated note, I look forward to the increased degree of fail that will occur when WoW removes the talent trees that did half the work of teaching new players their class. True that, Bioware appeared to be on the fence and current game design could have gone either way. Unfortunately current game design is also heavily flawed in terms of user accessibility (seriously, look at the balance shadow rotation, it's 10 powers, one used on a situational proc, one used to refresh a self buff, and one used on a cooldown, add to that three DoT's, that's more than most players want to keep track of). With this patch it's pretty clear that Bioware has no interest in supporting hybrids and a viable hybrid is going to be a fluke of the talent tree. I wonder if this is what people mean by 'killing hybrid specs?' And I don't think you're trolling. You've explained your position well, I think I understand your gaming philosophy, what you want to see next in TOR, and how you'd prefer to see the game grow. I actually feel kind of bad that Bioware has opted to go the other direction because you seem like a cool player and the kind of person MMO's need more of. But even deciding that they'd rather take a pass on balancing around hybrid specs, Bioware has plenty of work to do to earn their 15 dollars.

No, I understand all of that. My point is that allowing hybrid builds should not, and is not, a priority. Killing hybrid builds is also not a priority, it's either going to be an unintentional side effect of standard balancing, OR as we see here, done when a spec buff in mid-tree, combined with another spec buff in mid-tree, might be over powered. Maybe that's what people mean when they say Bioware is targeting hybrid specs, but that still doesn't make it their intention. The priority of this game, and any game, should be developing 24 balanced specs with distinct play styles that are viable in both end game PVE and PVP. That is, if you're counting, 48 different play experiences that the Bioware mechanics team needs to nail down in an ever changing maelstrom of tweaks and nerfs. THAT is the priority. Refer to paragraph above. Doing 24 pure specs right is working harder than the developers of any F2P game. If they do this right I will GLADLY pay them 14.99 a month. Okay, I thought this would be clear from the context but that was my assumption and I take responsibility for my message not reaching you clearly clearly. The talent trees and specs are the mechanic we are discussing, the talent tree in this game is far closer to WoW than DDO, CoX or CO. I don't know anything about Ragnarok Online so really can't say. Now, in the response I was making, I was saying that it is all well and good to point to a vastly different game and say that they have better hybrid playstyle support, but it really has nothing to do with this topic. Except those aren't trees. They are level required feats with the occasional preqrequisite feat. Not saying it isn't a valid way to make the game, not saying I didn't 't have fun when I played DDO. But that's not how SW:TOR got made and unless we want them to spend another year or two back on the old drawing board to ape this system instead, it's not really relevant. Every game designer needs to balance this need for player choice against game balance, game accessibility, story content, aesthetic appeal, in cases like this the demands of the intellectual property holder, and a dozen other variables I can't think of off the top of my head. Would it be awesome if I could have a trooper with a techblade and as close to a hockey mask looking helmet as I can find, hunting down gown wearing inquisitors? Absolutely. Would it be even more awesome if I could switch to a defense heavy techblade spec after an evening of getting chased around battle grounds in my trooper healing spec? You betcha. With 8 advanced classes already in, a talent set up similar to WoW's, and an IP holder who might not want to see Jedi's getting stomped by a dude with a monofilament machete, do I expect to see this happen? Not anytime soon. But if I DID see this, I think it would be done better by creating an entirely new advanced class with its own mechanics, game play challenges and flavor. I'm not against game diversity, far from it, I'm just against this idea that hybrid build viability should take precedence to game balancing.

Okay Vesper, see this post, see how it doesn't take a position, makes no assertions, advances no argument and seems to have no purpose other than a quick insult. THAT is trolling. And MustardPunk, with three pages of class balance and game philosophy discussion going on THAT was what you felt you should say? Well, it's your time I suppose...

Disagreeing with you doesn't make me a troll, it just makes me someone with a better understanding of the game. So I will take your claim that I am a troll as your admission that you have nothing further to contribute in this discussion and I thank you for your time.

A question I ask myself every time I read one of your posts. Okay, for one. These changes DO address complaints people have made about the specs, and I HAVE answered this question, the answer is in those sentences you've now admitted to not bothering to have read. Again, also addressed, in the part you quoted. People want a more mobile tank so they use a hybrid tankasin, so what? If they sacrifice aoe control they are making a weaker tank, and you know what, I'm okay with them making a weaker tank if that's how they want to play. BUT the developers are going to balance encounters and mechanics around an optimal tank, and that means that hybrid specs will suffer twice as often when needed balancing occurs. That's nice, add Co/X and CO to that list and you're still talking about games with entirely different game mechanics. THIS GAME has mechanics closer to WoW than to any of the games you've mentioned so THIS GAME will have problems that mirror WoW's. Yeah, hybrid's CAN be done, but not using THIS GAME's mechanics. PS; For a guy trying to take the intellectual high ground on understanding game mechanics, you say a lot of things that show you really don't think about the game's mechanics at all. edit; I'm not against hybrids, I'm against whiners claiming that Bioware is "out to get" hybrids without understanding ANYTHING about this game.

Quote the next sentence of mine and you'll see I've already addressed this point, thus making your response pointless. Within 3 months this game's community will have decided upon their cookie cutter builds because, and this is important, that is the system TOR has RIGHT NOW. Regardless of whether the optimal specs are hybrids or pure, there still remains only ONE optimal way to spec your character for a given task, there are only 4 given tasks that you can assign your character to. Any choice you make, whether it be for uniqueness or just lack of game knowledge, will only weaken your character. And if this is the only insight you provide, I would suggest that you just stop commenting.

I like the idea of a tech blade/tech staff using player character class. I think using the word "need" here is a bit strong. As far as using "electrostaves" those are willpower items, so the class would end up wearing consular robes... not ideal for a tech based character.

Perhaps they wanted to see how one 'stance dancing' fix worked before implementing both, and then it's quite possible that they flipped a coin.

This is only a nerf if you're a hybrid tank. If you're playing balance as a pure DPS this is a buff, and one I look forward to.

Call me crazy, but I prefer the gravel and random debris.

This is actually the PERFECT solution. It solves all problems raised, it was mentioned back on page 1, and it was never talked about again. The moddable tech blades, tech staves, and any other AIM melee gear can use 'barrels' in place of 'hilts.' The barrels are already in game, so absolutely no modification needs to be done to loot tables. It doesn't require that any characters using AIM gear switch to another primary stats, so game aesthetics are unaffected. The barrels are already crafting by Armstech's, the people who currently benefit from craftable techblades so their craft would not be devalued. The only downside is how strange it would feel slotting a gun barrel into the hilt of your techblade. But that's minor compared to the amount of work other suggestions would require. /thread

Actually these are buffs that will make play easier and future balancing simpler. Which is probably why it was only obvious to you. This buff allows deception assassins to use assassinate during burn phases without penalty to the number of induction stacks they get and shocks they throw. It simplifies the assassins burn phase rotation and increases their damage output. That the same benefit can not be given to madness and darkness assassins is a matter of game balance. That this kills a certain hybrid build is an unanticipated, and largely irrelevant consequence. This buff makes the Madness rotation simpler by making Raze procs far more predictable. If you've ever seen the Madness rotation you'll know it needs that, and far more, cleaning up if just for the sake of the number of hot keys I can conveniently reach. I look forward to this change whole heartedly. The requirement that it only proc on those affected by the madness tree discharge is to temper the buff in AoE situations. Can't just have someone dive in, melee AoE and get a free Crushing Darkness every time, particularly with a spec that already has a strong AoE attack in the form of Death Field. Again, I'm sorry if these changes hurt a hybrid build, but my point remains, this isn't intentional, and in the grand scheme of things, the developers already have enough to worry about it with the 24 specs they expect players to use, they simply can't invest the time to protecting and balancing hybrids as well.

Looking over the patch notes for inquisitors and shadows I'm not seeing anything outside of standard balancing, certainly nothing to make me think it was a conscious attempt to nerf asassin hybrids. In fact, it overall looks like the specs are getting buffed. And your suggestion that they buff powertech prototype is, I'm sure, well taken by powertechs and vanguards, but with 6 other classes in the game, I'm not sure how you think that solves the problem. Or what it has to do with hybrids, try and stay on topic.

Hybrid specs are a pain in the butt to balance and extraordinarily vulnerable to inadvertent nerfing. Thinking about it, if the game developers need to make changes to either of the two talent trees that make up the 'hybrid' it can destroy the viability. This isn't intentional, it's just what happens to hybrid specs. It's hard for a game developer to balance 8 classes and 24 specs, they can't, and won't, invest a lot of time in hybrid specs after that.

I wanted to play a ranged DPS class with cast times and for that reason the commando appealed to me.