Jump to content

OneShotXV

Members
  • Posts

    74
  • Joined

Reputation

10 Good
  1. Yeah this is the normal behavior, the dps left outside the group can pull with any damage unless it fixates on tanks, then theres nothing you can do, its just gonna go to them. It usually happens once or twice a pull, the tanks just have to move together out of it.
  2. If you're saying that dps shouldnt have defensive utility at all and raid survivability should rest entirely in the hands of healers, thats a different argument (not sure I agree with it entirely, but it has some valid points). Until here i was under the impression that you were saying more skilled players were being passed up for raid spots so a raid could have more sniper shields, which I dont think ever happens. But as it is now, everyone has utility, and I think it would be nearly impossible to reach a state where raid utility does not factor into group composition at all. DPS is fairly balanced, even including pyro and concealment really when you bring them off a dummy and into a live fight, but other classes bring different things to the raid. Snipers really have sub par defensive/survivability right now in the personal sense, which i feel is largely made up for with shield. Generally I am so opposed to this because I feel there are many more important things in the game that are in actual need of fixing and dev time is very limited, even within the sniper class itself. More skilled players are never being passed up to include an extra shield into a raid, so i just do not see this as a problem.
  3. That definition of stacking doesn't really make sense to me. There's something making you take those 2 extra mercs and sitting those 2 snipers other than their skill as a player, why does that not matter to you? Why is one reason to load up on a class better or worse than any other that's what I don't understand in your argument. If you have to choose between two equally good players, you have to make the decision based on what that specific class beings to that specific fight. There will never be a way to change that. And were discussing something that applies to probably one single fight in the entire upcoming nightmare tier, maybe two. Obviously I have no idea whats coming in nightmare DP, but really the only fight i see chaining shields as a legitimate advantage is the final phase of the council in DP, and even that dies quickly enough that you don't really need more than 3, which is a typical number of snipers to bring to a raid anyway. Of the 5 nightmare fights I have actually seen in this tier, none of them rely on shields heavily, you make use of the ones you have, but certainly nothing really depends on them to the point that you would bring a lesser player simply because they have a sniper as opposed to another ranged class, which is what you seem to be implying happens frequently. It was an example, certainly not the only possible one I was just showing that other classes get stacked for things. And yes, you do have to stack operatives for that, stealth has a cooldown. I've seen like 10-11 stealth rezzes executed in a single fight before, and it was many operatives doing it. Its the exact same thing as shields, not 100% necessary to the fight but it helps, and its usefulness increases in the number of people who can do it. And so your argument is it is okay to stack classes for personal abilities but not for raid-wide abilities? I don't understand where you draw the line on what abilities and classes it is okay to stack and which is not. And I'd like I've said, stacking happens so rarely, it something that matters for the first few kills of the hardest nightmare bosses when you are effectively undergeared, and only in cases where one class has an unintentional ability to negate or mitigate a key or difficult mechanic of the fight. and like I said before, all the instances of sniper stacking that I could think of before had nothing to do with ballistic shield. You cannot achieve this without sacrificing the uniqueness of classes. There will always be reasons to stack certain classes on certain fights. Even if you just nerf snipers to the point they are totally unplayable there will still be some occasions where groups will stack other things, its unavoidable. I still think you are drastically underestimating the development it would require to make this change. But aside from that I just think it is better to balance by buffing other classes that lack something instead of just removing utility from another class. Honestly i think the biggest effect of this change is not even trading a sniper or two out for a merc or sorc, but in many cases it will lead to bringing a 5th healer instead of a DPS in general. Right now I think most guilds will 5 heal less than 10% of fights, but without shield I think that number would go up by a bit. Either way I would prefer they make a meaningful well thought out change such as adding other raid CDs instead of just the simplest fix possible... If you want to put a lockout in to shield, I think it has to cover the whole raid regardless of positioning, just make it the same as bloodthirst, but instead of increasing damage just reduce the damage taken. As i've said before, the shield mechanic does not lend itself to the addition of this debuff. Just as they expanded the effectiveness of bloodthirst before adding the debuff (increasing its range by 10m and making it affect 12 more targets than it did before), the same thing would need to be done to the shield, you cannot add the debuff mechanic without also making it so those who do not benefit from the effect do not get the debuff. Maybe this is easier to implement than I think it is, but I really think it is very bug prone. There is. Snipers and marauders have the raid utility because they are the only pure dps classes. If sorc dps becomes inviable, you can become a healer, if Jugg dps is bad you can tank, if sniper dps is bad, you get benched. Thats why they have these abilities. Even if they are putting out low numbers there is still a reason to bring them to a raid. They re rolled snipers when snipers were absurdly overpowered (my main was a marauder until Nightmare Dread Guards, at which point it was just better to have a sniper). They are not any more, now theyre kind of average, but if you spent all that time working at and gearing up a sniper, there is a switching cost associated with going back (and despite this, many have still re rolled sorc or merc). No one is playing a sniper because of the shield, I really don't understand where this notion is coming from. Obviously when you are considering balance of abilities you aren't considering entry level gear. PvE should be balanced for groups going into Nightmare content in BiS gear from the previous tier. How many phases of high AoE damage are there in the game right now where your raid can be stacked within a single sniper shield? In all of TfB/SV/DF/DP I can think of one or two in 22 fights...
  4. classes that can take a lightning ball at no damage (arsenal, juggs, marauders, assassins maybe?, anything that can take zero force/tech damage for a few seconds) have a distinct advantage during that fight. True this can be done with a sniper roll too, but the timing on that is much trickier and the margin for error is large to the extent its not worth trying until the ball hits high stacks anyway. I think its gotten way off topic at this point anyway, and it may even be a 16 man vs 8 man difference too if you dont raid 16s. If theres anything to take away from anything ive said in this whole thread its that there is no problem with the way the shield functions and given all the nerfs snipers have taken recently, time for the devs to leave them alone and fix other things that need it (and all this is moot anyway since the devs will never see this thread anyway and its not a change they are seriously considering lol)
  5. Chaining sniper shields is in no way broken. Thats the point. Its not even close to broken. Its just a nice defensive utility give to a class with very little by way of defensive utility. I also do not think it was coincidence that bioware gave the two raid cooldowns to the two pure DPS classes in the game, since they bring very little else to a raid other than pure numbers, and pure numbers is almost never enough to justify a spot in a raid. When i talk about replacing snipers with mercs for NiM Brontes, they are all playing arsenal anyway, so fixing the proc does nothing to change that. DPS utility on that fight is almost all about minimizing the massive raid wide damage taken as opposed to needed to push out top numbers in most phases. Minus shields, snipers are quite bad at that. Honestly I would rather see them give another raid wide defensive to another class if this was a balance issue (like giving sorcs a throughput raid cooldown or something) before they take away the only real one in the game.
  6. Is stacking operatives for stealth rez? Is stacking vengeance juggs to taunt + saber reflect brontes's lightning balls? Is stacking marauders with undying rage and arsenal mercs with chaff flare talented okay for the same reason? Classes have different utility, there will always be reasons to bring one class over another. Further, there are 6-8 ranged dps spots in a raid, and only 3 ranged dps classes. Bringing someone more than once has to happen, and if all else is equal you take the class whose utility fits the fight best. When groups were bringing 8 snipers or more there was a problem, right now its pretty balanced, and if it favors snipers at all its just because people played them from before the nerfs and didnt switch back since they were used to the class and fight specific strategies. Theres no need to change anything.
  7. Wait wait wait. So 3 snipers and 3 mercs is considered "stacking" snipers, but 1 sniper and 5-6 mercs is totally balanced?
  8. I think tonight it was 3 snipers, 2 sorcs , 3 mercs, 1 mara and one op, although that changes day to day and fight to fight. I dont consider that stacking, were just ranged heavy since thats benefical, but balanced among the ranged and there are limited options. But were this change to go through that almost immediately becomes one sniper maximum with like 6 mercs except on very specific fights, since it would just be bad to bring more when we could all just play mercs or sorcs instead (for the same reason that we now use way less marauders ever since the change to bloodthirst...) 3 or 4 shields is still useful but I dont think bringing it up to 8 or 9 would really help us that much. As it is now the use of like 3 shields keeps our dps comp balanced, where as a max of one would lead to stacking in the other direction, towards mercs. I still think you are underestimating how difficult this would be to implement in the existing code without redoing a lot, i dont think its as simple as applying the logic from bloodthirst to shield. Also i could see scenarios where if you press them closely enough together you can get two off before your client reacts to the debuff and such. Idk, maybe im wrong as obviously i havent looked at their code, but it just seems bug prone since the two effects actually behave so differently.
  9. Not just me obviously but half the raid, while the other is under another shield popped at the same time, yes that happens all the time, which it said later in the post that you conveniently left off of your quote... And true it is a simple implementation but its also an awful one, and thats my point. You could do something like that but it would nerf an ability that does not need a nerf, and also i feel would be harder to implement than you think still, and would not be able to use the existing bloodthirst implementation without the changes i already said. As you propose it, again, it gives the debuff to everyone when you cast the ability, but the beneficial Aura gained from standing under the shield is in fact not a timed ability but position based. Therefore if you apply the debuff on application of the shield, then you cannot walk into it and gain the beneficial affect. If you apply the debuff after the shield ends, then you can still chain two of them. It would require a lot of implementation overhaul to achieve what you want in any form, even the simplistic one mentioned because it does not behave in the same way as bloodthirst. It would likely introduce tons of unwanted bugs and be a big hassle to everyone, when in reality the ability is not broken now. It does not create PvE imbalances, and there is no issue with the skill as it exists. Guilds are no longer bringing 6-8 snipers to a raid, it is not optimal to do so. The only time it would be beneficial to load up on snipers would be their other abilities which occasionally can play niche roles in a fight as i already said. Changing shield would be a needless nerf, change nothing in terms of raid composition, and be a general waste of developer time and probably cause more bugs anyway.
  10. The way you propose it would mean that if a sniper popped the shield on just himself, it would give the whole raid a debuff even if they never benefitted from the effect, or that you cant pop two distinct shields on two separate stacks of people at the same time though. It would require a redesign of the ability or at the very least a lot of work and a few important design decisions to ensure that these two scenarios are possible (mostly the second one), while still disallowing chaining the shields. The potential for bugs is enormous if you have to trigger the debuff by entering or leaving the shield at certain times if you are not the caster. Exactly... Most of sniper stacking previously was only because they did more dps than everyone. This has gone away since they are now middle of the pack dps-wise, and groups bring many less snipers than before. Stacking snipers for the sole purpose of abusing chained shields really was not a common thing and had little if anything to do with their prominence in many raid groups, excluding a small number of very specific circumstances.
  11. Its kind of ironic then, that in the last nightmare tier I can think of 4 bosses where stacking snipers was really useful, and absolutely zero of those instances were primarily based on abusing Barrier. Guards favored rolls for cheesing doom and lightning field. Thrasher could make use of diversion to drop the demolitionists from cover and make them attackable from the ground. Styrak was all leg shot and cover pulse on chained manifestation, as well as diversioning the lightning manifestations. And hateful was mostly the self cleanse from evasion on deathmark and the lack of the ability to be pulled during cover. I dont think the shield is as powerful as you are making it out to be. It is useful generally in the very specific circumstance of high burst AoE Raid-Wide damage for a short period of time when the group is stationary and stacked. I can think of one phase in DP/DF on one fight that truly meets this criteria, and maybe one or two in the previous tier. So like 10% of fights a chained shield would be super useful? And even in the final phase of the council and the reanimated dragon phase on Styrak, they dont last long enough to chain like 6-8 shields anyway, you can get like 2 or 3 if you dps is slow. Honestly that does not occur nearly enough in any content we have seen thus far to make it a super overpowered ability. Its good to have for sure, but it is certainly not gamebreaking in any way that it needs to be removed. Also as for the proposed lockout on the ability, I see no way that would work without changing the whole ability. Would the lockout apply to the whole group regardless of whether you benefited from the shield or not? Would it apply to only people under the shield? If so, then just anyone who was in it at any time? Or if you were in it for a certain duration? It would effectively destroy the ability when it is not imbalanced or in need of a nerf in any way. You say the mechanism already exists from the marauders bloodlust but not in this way, since that is a buff applied to the whole raid and anyone who gets it gets it on application for the full duration and gets the debuff at the same time. For this to apply to sniper shields using the existing mechanism, you would need to change it to behave like that where its a raid wide damage reduction regardless of positioning instead of a static shield on the ground, which seems like a lot of work when there are many other far more real balance issues to be addressed, not to mention it removes some of the uniqueness of the ability.
  12. Pretty much that. Also devouring microbes below 30% your DoTs are stronger than even a hybrid snipers. Plus thanks to The other part of the lethal takedown skill your cull does more damage than a hybrid's cull anyway. And even worse, a MM snipers Corrosive Dart consuming ticks without the lethal dose talent is a raid wide DPS loss anyway. Those are more minor than the timing of the cull, but all of that adds up to a raid wide dps loss of lethality if you have other agents in the group soaking WB, which sorely hurts the spec.
  13. You are right, that statement is completely true. It is also intentionally highly misleading. Saying "most 16 man guilds used 5-6 healers for progression" implies two things, neither of which are true: 1) There exists 16 man guilds who used 6 healers to progress on nightmare fights. 2) Most 16 man guilds never used less than 5 healers to progress on any fight. True you didn't explicitly say those things so you are "right" on a technicality, but the implication is very clear and everyone knows it. Your statement is correct, but so is saying that 8 man guilds used 2-4 healers for progression. A more accurate statement would be some 16 man guilds used 5 healers on some progression fights, mostly those whose outgoing damage was badly scaled so the encounter demanded it. Further i fail to see why that is even a bad thing. If it turns out tyrans has absurd damage and no enrage timer in Nightmare DP, will you still 2 heal it on 8 man out of some kind of sense of pride in sticking to a "traditional" group composition? It doesn't make any sense. Anyway, to the real topic, since I have literally no idea how this thread got turned into a debate on how many healers 16 man guilds use ill only speak to sniper/slinger since that's the class I know best. I'm not sure its technically a "balance" problem but it seems weird to me that out of the three "pure" trees (excluding hybrid since Bioware doesnt like hybrids and will not balance for them most likely), two of them require melee range of the boss to actually achieve maximum damage. I feel that roll damage really should not be part of the core rotation in any sniper spec, although as it is lethality is weakened by not using it and engineering is obviously completely dependent on it. Further, in lethality, weakening blast's ability to be consumed by the DoTs and Culls of other agents is problematic, as it makes lethality really only playable in a situation with no other agents in the group, or it will under-perform, leaving hybrid as the real single target option in fights without heavy target swapping. I think the ability itself could use some re-tooling, or being replaced by another ability to make the spec more appealing.
  14. In theory Obroan relics should be third BiS behind DF and KD i believe(only marginally worse than KD though, higher proc but lower static power, on average only ~6 power behind), although the double proccy-ness of some relics messes up the relative order for classes with a self heal built into their rotation. Do the obroan ones double proc currently? I've never used one. I would really hope they will be able to fix the relics bugs in 2.7 anyway :/ Also, both Dread Forged and Kell Dragon relics are easy to acquire with no RNG involved in them as well, its only Dread Forged Implants and Ears that are RNG based and can be a bit of a headache to get. I cant imagine the PvP relics even in their new form being better than Dread Forged ones if all relics are not bugged., although they may very well be close. However, I cant remember the last time there were no relic bugs so its entirely possible there will be an issue again. Hopefully the pts will actually come out this week and these things can be tested. Heard some rumors it will be Tuesday, but who really knows.
  15. To be fair to the OP, there is no non-server specific recruitment forum and most people are probably willing to transfer to find a good guild. That forum should probably exist in some form so you don't have to post the same message in like ten different places...
×
×
  • Create New...