My main is at 160 Got a long way to go.

Huh? What do you mean it'd make things worse? Are you talking about the common "there's so much solo content in this game that every player sucks at group content!" complaint, or something else? If it's that complaint, the Shroud mission won't affect the state of that problem at all. The problem with the mission isn't that it's hard to do, it's that it's so old that no one does it anymore. All they'd have to do is either make the questline repeatable+rewarding, or soloable, because some people may be locked out of that quest's storyline ending because of it.

Snipers are annoying as hell, I'll admit, and I suck at 1v1ing them, but it's at least possible to hurt them. I do think it's extremely dumb to have a class that has both CC immunity AND infinitely spammable slows AND gap closer immunity AND interrupt immunity, but they're still possible to fight because they don't just heal2full every time you hurt them. Every time I attack a merc it feels less like I am forcing someone to fight me, and more like I am an annoying bug he's swatting away.

Use square brackets, not angle brackets, this is not HTML. Believe me, I really want to be wrong about this. It's just that I am cynical after seeing similar posts EVERY year sometime between February and June, since 2012. In the end though, I will throw a party if I am wrong, because I really do want to be.

But the premise of my post wasn't "balance around PvP and call it a day" it was "balance around PvP and then balance PvE content around these newly balanced classes". So what WoW developers did with regards to balancing WAS dumb and it WAS unfair. It wasn't unfair and dumb because they chose to balance around PvP, it was dumb and unfair because they never rebalanced their content around the new metagame. They should have modified bosses to require less cleansing, and that'd be that. Take a look at SWTOR in that regard, we have cooldowns on our cleanses, but it doesn't present a problem because cleansable, raid-killing debuffs are thrown around in an amount that 2 healers can handle in an Ops, and most classes possess self-cleansing utilities as a crutch. I am not saying PvP is the only game mode that needs balance, that's a laughable idea. I am saying PvE has one extra variable to modify that PvP doesn't, it has the bosses themselves. And because of that balance PvP -> balance content is an efficient strategy compared to what Bioware is doing (balance PvE -> hope PvP works out in the end). The difference is about playability and competitiveness. A lightning sorc in an arena is quite simply the single easiest thing to kill in this game. They're not a glass cannon, they're a wet tissue paper. There are some classes that can out-damage a Lightning Sorc's ENTIRE BURST WINDOW in a single attack. And they don't have the survivability to make up for it. In warzones Lightning behaves less like a dangerous opponent, and more like an annoyance, although admittedly a good player can still make great use of Lightning in 8v8 warzones. In PvE again, it's "playable" but not optimal for the hardest content in the game. And people don't like that because obviously, for cosmetic reasons, Lightning would be one of the most popular specs in game, especially for new players who want to feel like "UNLIMITED POWAH". And then Lightning takes an absurd amount of skill to be viable in the harder content in the game, and is simply not viable in PvP aside from being a support role. That's where the complaints come from.

Issue is, we've heard the "it's just the beginning of a balance pass" nonsense from the Devs several times before. Every time they say it, they choose to simply ignore balance for 6 months after that, before giving us yet another "this is just the beginning of a balance pass!" post. So if we go by past behaviour, what's gonna happen is: 1. They make the "initial balance changes" in 5.3 this July. 2. They do nothing after that 3. Everything stays the same because their initial balance changes didn't even address a lot of the most extreme problems If they do somehow behave differently, which I am very doubtful of, what'll happen is, they'll change utilities in 5.4. But that'd STILL mean that we had to endure an entire season's worth of Mercs overperforming and Sorcs having no DPS specs viable. And that's the optimistic scenario where they actually manage to make things better with 5.4, which I severely doubt will happen because the OP here literally says they never compare classes, choosing their damage dealer changes purely on their DPS, not on their TTK or CCs or mobilitiy or anything else. So yeah, as much as I would love for this to be the "beginning" of a balance pass, what I am seeing happening is them blindly making changes that just worsen the state of the balance, instead of actually using educated metrics that impact the balance.

Can you actually provide a reason about why that's bad instead of just saying it's bad? Logically, in PvE boss encounters can be balanced to suit a player. Hence it's far more sensible to balance around PvP first, and then tune the PvE content to work with the currently existing classes. If we go the other way, there's no way to account for how the classes interact with each other, which you can clearly see from their current balancing mantra. They balance around DPS for damage dealers, HPS for healers, and DTPS for tanks, and THEN tack on PvP balancing through utilities and DCDs, and what they have spawned is an honest-to-god clusterf*ck in place of "balance" because their balancing almost NEVER considers "how does this class interact with the other classes?" instead they consider "how does this class's damage/heal/protection output match up to our arbitrary metrics?" and keep screwing up balance. Ideally PvP should balanced with higher priority, and all PvE content is balanced around the existing player classes. Of course, at this point, it appears they have exactly one person balancing all the classes, and no actual testing team or anything, given how it took them the better part of a year to give us this sh*tshow of a balance patch that doesn't even target the most extreme over/under performing classes.

See, at this point I am going to hope that that one Bioware staffer who occasionally, once-a-year, goes and tries to enforce the rules, will have some basic sense in it. A macro that types out "inc snow" actually confers an in-game advantage. A macro that does a preset emote doesn't do so. So I would hope that whoever enforces these rules would have the sense to see the distinction here, and would enforce with the *reason* these rules are made, not about what's written in the rulebook. Of course, based on my experience, there isn't actually any Bioware staff that moderates anything at all ingame. so may as well have a free-for-all.

It's funny how many whiny threads I have seen whining about PvP whiners "killing" your class. Especially when you read their "How we Balance" post. It very, very clearly says they balance around target dummies. Not around PvP, not around Operations Bosses, they balance damage dealers around the pure DPS they output, and nothing else. This upcoming nerf is an entirely PvE based nerf. It isn't changing one thing in PvP, it's a pure DPS nerf to a class that apparently outperforms other classes in PvE DPS, and it's being nerfed for it's PvE DPS. None of the changes they make will even begin to affect PvP.

Aaaaand look one post after yours, it has begun. Alec, we believe in you! Come here and join!

Not gonna lie, this sounds incredible and I'll be disappointed if it turns out this isn't possible. Maybe this could be the cornerstone of this year's expansion! Or even a mini-expansion like Galactic Starfighter and Strongholds. (Psst. PSSST. I am sure a lot of "I hate using walkers" complaints will be alleviated if walker use was restricted to massive battle kinda maps. You could make PvE group battles on a similar basis too. Imagine reworking the Kuat Flashpoint to incorporate 2 players in starfighters and 2 in the shipyards themselves. Now THAT would be something.)

Never Forget. OT: They are trying to balance the game, that's why. It's a different design philosophy. Other games, such as SWG and Battlefront, made lightsaber-wielders equivalent to Gods on the battlefield, capable of reflecting most damage and cutting through swaths of bad@ss normals like it's nothing. This game chose to make 8 classes per faction and balance them (no comments on how successful that balancing is) which is why it feels that lightsabers are "weaker" than they should be. They can't change that because that's against the philosophy of the game, similar to how fantasy MMOs have dimension ripping wizards fighting normal humans who wield swords and shields on an even footing.

It may be based on "real" data, but it's based on incomplete data. DPS doesn't mean a thing in PvP without also accounting for TTK (time to kill) for each class. And say, Combat Sentinels may parse higher than Arsenal Mercs after their damage is nerfed, but Mercs will still vastly outperform us because they can take a full minute to kill when focused by 3 people, while a Sent can be killed within 25 seconds if even slightly focused. In that minute, Mercs get to spend a full 6 seconds reflecting damage AND healing from it, and they can heal to full health THREE times, while Sents have ONE 4 second ability that lets them mitigate anywhere near that much damage. So again, it doesn't matter whether it's "real data", because "real data" from a godd*mn target dummy has absolutely 0 meaning for any and all PvP balancing, and for the most part won't even have a bearing for PvE balancing without additional context (which is why Lightning didn't get a buff despite parsing 10-15% lower than most mid-top range specs. All this post has done is take all the players who have been saying "Bioware can't balance this game because they literally never play it" and proved them right.

@Eric and @Keith: The answer to "How Class Balance Happens" is beginning to look a lot like "we parse on combat dummies and look at DPS numbers". Please, if this is just a preliminary nerf and the intention is to try and get better balance BEFORE THIS PVP SEASON ENDS, drop into this thread and comment on it.

Well, they clearly did say that their DPS is above their target DPS, even if we may think it's fine. Once again, I'd be fine with this patch if and only if they had the sense to balance PvP in LESS THAN SIX MONTHS LATER. They don't. They have never done that. They don't even consider TTK in their metrics apparently? Or time spent CC'd. It does explain a lot though, that's for sure.

These changes are acceptable if and only if they do regular balance patches, not once-ever-six-month-lulz balancing. Given their track record, I am not holding my breath, but I do hope I am wrong.

Well, the Arsenal changes are up. I don't know enough to judge whether that will make a massive difference to PvP, but at the very least they have lost some of their damage potential. Hopefully it is enough...?

The main thing there is that the combat team actively made the decision to ignore utilities and DCDs for the very first balance patch they've had since they made Mercs OP. If we KNEW that they are guaranteed give us regular balance patches, I would be fine, but regular balancing has been promised to use about 3 times since patch 1.0 and they have ]never delivered. So to most players OP reads as "we're gonna tweak DPS and call it a day for 6 months". Which is just.... Not what we want. Hell even in the pure numbers department, they appear to be ignoring one of the poorest performing specs (such as Lightning Sorc). I'd be really happy to be wrong here. But from the looks of it, Mercs aren't gonna be fixed until after Season 8 ends anyways, and by then we'll probably have another Flavour of the Season class.

The post : 1. Lists which specs are underperforming or overperforming with regards to DPS, HPS and DTPS. 2. Literally says that they're ignoring utility balance because it's too hard 3. Literally says their major targets are based on pure target dummy numbers, not considering AoE, TTK, target switching, DoTspread, etc. People are pretty right about being pissed that some objectively overperforming classes won't be receiving utility/DCD nerfs and some underperforming ones won't receive buffs, based on the exact info Eric has give here.

Well he did say its SUPPOSED to be in the same group, and that it may very well not be. But then he also didn't acknowledge that Lightning underperforms. Even though parses show a roughly 15% DPS drop from the max DPS in the game. ...

I do like the idea of harsh punishments for griefing, but I see two small problems in there. 1. If you kill a player over and over, I do agree that its griefing in many cases. But there are a lot of cases where I have had prolonged duels between two groups, where respawned players came back in. This happened in the latest Gree event for me, where my group was attacked by a Guardian tank, Sage heals and Operative DPS, and they were able to turtle long enough that whoever died would respawn and attack us. In this case, there was no griefing involved at all, it was two groups going at it over and over again (we did eventually whittle down all of them long enough that 2 of them died, the third barriered, and I popped a speed boost to disengage with my group). Now I'd be mighty annoyed if the players I killed 7 times only dropped rewards the first time, so there should be a condition for that rule; if the respawned player attacks the person that killed them, then they will drop a reward because they engaged in willing combat. If the original attacker attacks the respawned player, no reward will be dropped, to discourage griefing. 2. Base attacking is fun though. I would rather they make the base guard NPC possible to defeat, so that fights can happen in base, and players who want to disengage can easily do so during the respawn stealth timer. However the guard NPCs should basically grow in numbers and strength over time, to the point that if the enemy has spent long enough in the base, they'll get instakilled and it'll act as a soft reset for the defenders.

Thing is, from a PvP standpoint, Balance/Madness doesn't appear overpowered, at least not in my experience (I have heard some players complain, but nowhere near as many complaints as Arsenal Merc, skank tanks or Corruption Sorcs). Raw DPS doesn't really matter so much in PvP, as DoTs are fairly easy to heal through most of the time, it's burst that kills people. That's the reason the classes that we complain about in PvP are almost always burst damage classes (look at a history of all complaints since launch: Lightning Sorcs, Concentration Sents, Concealment Ops, and now the latest, Arsenal Mercs). So if they're basing it off of DPS, HPS and DTPS like they said in the OP, that means they're not balancing around PvP. They're also not balancing around PvE mind you. They're balancing around combat dummies. @Eric/Keith: Hopefully you are seeing the complaints of players here and plan to take it up with the combat team. It'd be really nice if the balancing is based around the combat team PLAYING THE GAME instead of parsing the DPS, HPS and DTPS. A very quick addition to your metrics would be to queue up for warzones/arenas and add TTK (time-to-kill) as a metric for PvP balancing, to be able to actually balance survivability. For PvE, I'll leave it to more experienced PvErs to tell you what they think your balance is lacking.

How are you saying they balance solely on the PvP component? The only thing they have mentioned in the post is that they balance purely on DPS, HPS and DTPS for damage dealers, healers and tanks respectively. They aren't addressing survivability of dealers and healers, they aren't addressing the damage output of tanks, and they have left it up to grabs whether Arsenal Merc and Corruption Sorc (two of the most overpowered PvP classes) will encounter any nerf that isn't just a flat DPS/HPS reduction (which won't do anything at all for the former case and will hurt Sorc healers only a bit). I don't understand how people can look at a post that says "we balance solely for DPS, HPS and DTPS" and say that they're balancing purely for PvP, when PvP is far more adversely affected by CCs, utilities and defensive cooldowns. In any case I agree with the rest of your post. If they are in fact prioritizing PvP balance over PvE, they really aren't doing a good job at it. PvE requires the numbers fixes for quite a few classes (including Lightning Sorc which they didn't acknowledge) and PvP requires a DCD/utilities fix, not a damage numbers fix. I am beginning to agree with all the other posts insisting that the Bioware combat team clearly balances fights around combat dummies, especially with how much Eric emphasized that they don't compare classes directly... Like... they balance "player VERSUS player" without even comparing classes???? I guess that DOES explain how the PvP balance manages to be so terrible.

I think it's particularly funny that they only consider damage taken for tanks, not considering damage mitigation, heals and survivability for DPS and healers at all. Like.... why are DPS and HPS their only metrics for damage dealers and healers? At no point does someone stop to consider "hey maybe hearts SHOULDN'T facetank 3v1s" and "maybe no damage dealer should literally have 3 lives.

As much as I disagree with OP's pov here, simply using the words "snowflake" and "participation trophy" in the same point is a good way of telling everyone your panties are in a knot, and very much NOT "logical".