Notes on BioChem and Cybertech in Game Update 1.1

[KrackenOne]

Can anyone who was in Alpha or Beta actually post how much time was spent Testing this game?

 

Who tested this game and thought is was Release worthy?

 

This, OMG this.

[BlackMink]

At endgame, it is my understanding from those I know (secondhand info I admit, since my highest-level character is 40) that commendation modifications and items dropped from hard mode dungeons are superior to those which are crafted. Again, biochem has a marked advantage since its items are the only ones that are actually superior to those which are easier and cheaper to obtain. I won't go on about this because as I said, I have no personal experience, but is it any wonder people don't care to be armormechs or armstechs if the gear they produce is inferior to gear that's more easily obtained?

 

While I understand where you are coming from, and I am willing to agree that other crafts could be better, I just dont agree with biochem being this all perfect craft.

 

As I described in my previous post, Biochem is essentially a one trick pony. Every other craft, to the best of my knowledge gets a wide variety of marketable products to craft. In terms of armor alone, you are talking about what, 7 different equipment slots, over different armor types. Sure, end game armor may be better, but that stuff takes some serious work and grinding with skilled players to obtain.

 

For Biochem, I have exactly 4 things, all with virtually no market value.

 

-Medpacks

 

-Stims

 

-Adrenals

 

-Implants

 

 

 

Medpacks: So I can craft the best medpacks in the game. But the material cost is too high to just make stacks and stacks of these to give or 'sell' to other players. Making medpacks for my own limitless use, is the primary function of biochem. For everyone else, you will conveniantly find a medical droid every 100 feet in the game, ready to sell you all the stacks of decent medpacks you could want. That's right, in terms of marketability, I have to compete with the most common NPC merchant in the game.

 

Stims: Same deal as with medpacks. It's nice to have a stat buff all the time, but in terms of materials, it's not realistic to think I am going to supply other people with these, especially considering that wiping on end-game bosses will eat stims like popcorn. And again, I have to compete directly with the most common NPC merchant in the game.

 

Adrenals: Here is a crafted consumable, that is blue minimum. Every one of them I craft will eat up my precious blue materials. These are a stat buff that lasts only a few seconds and has a long cooldown. It's nice to have a reusable one on hand for your own purposes, but it's a rediculous product in terms of marketability.

 

Implants: Theoretically, my one marketable item. This is the ONLY lasting product I can sell to other players that isn't a consumable. But even if every player can equip two of these, this is a very limited product line. I can't cater to a wide variety of products like all the other crafters can. And I can barely sell these things. I currently have 8 purple (49) implant recepies, and I can barely sell these things at fairly low price.

 

You think other crafts need to compete with end-game gear? Rakata implants (and earpieces) are by far the easiest Rakata items to get, and simply require a little time invested. Stats wise my crafted implants don't even come close in value.

 

 

And so in the end, Biochem is simply a one trick pony (supplying yourself with good consumables), and it cannot afford to lose that one trick.

 

As I said before. I am a tank, and my HP currently gets up to 22k with buffs. My Rakata Medpack heals for 5k - 6k plus 2k over 16 seconds (which is bonus more than anything). Look at the numbers! My Rakata medpack realistically only heals 1/4 of my health bar, and that will be even less as I continue to increase my health. It's only a suppliment to all the healing my healer is giving me. It's my backup plan for when an enemy suddenly spikes me with more damage than my healer can manage.

 

 

Suggestion: What about this idea? Go ahead and nerf the healing done by medpacks (all of them if you must), but add a big "medpack" bonus to the tanking stances. So tanks will gain a much bigger heal from medpacks than everyone else normally would.

[Terin]

Well, I'm fine with them nerfing the reusable medkits, so long as they're not *inferior* to equal-level kits.

 

Rather than nerfing skills, though, how about buffing the rest? Them problem isn't that Biochem or Cybertech are "too powerful", it's that they're the only ones that offer absolutely any use.

 

Artificers, for example, should be able to make slightly more-powerful Color-Crystals that are BoP, and should have totally exclusive Colors for themselves (ie. Magenta and Teal should've been Artifice-only, I think).

 

The same for all of them, really. Don't nerf the only *good* Crew Skills, but the others so that *have* a use. It didn't take Biochem because it's so powerful, I took it because, having taken Artifice on my first character, I saw how useless the latter skill was, and decided Biochem would have *some* use.

 

 

 

Having every Crew Skill made useless isn't going to make players want to level others. It's just going to make us want to skip them entirely.

[Lexster]

1) Commendations give rewards that are far too good. Both from daily reward vendors and as people progress leveling up. Rewards from these merchants should not be equal to prototype player made. If the same gear is to be used on these vendors, it should be the green quality gear. The cost of missions in time/credits to craft green, RE for blue, and then to craft a blue is grossly out of line with the cheap cost and insane ease of obtaining commendation items.

 

2) Infinite use clickies for any crafter should not be. Infinite use items that are ONLY for a given crafter are even worse. Crafting perks should be along the lines of a 10-15% boost in item crafted, or 2x the amount of use. Making an item that lasts forever, does not remove credits from the system once a crafter has it. That is what consumables are supposed to do.

 

3) Weapon/Armor making classes need to be revamped. All crafted gear should be orange. Orange gear should then have the option to have 1/2/3 augments on top of the mod slots. Augs/mods will likely need to be adjusted to prevent players being vastly stronger than mobs at a given level. Cooler looking armor should of course, be higher level requirement(can also increase the chance of RE success as it goes higher and is more expensive). This allows armor to have mod slots, aug slots, and be tailored for individual appearance desire. Then should raid gear be required to be best in game, it could offer further slots, or simply make raid rewards awesome mods/augs to fill into orange gear.

 

4) Crafting consumables should not require raid drops. Crafted consumables should come in decent sized batches. These are for use, not for rare/lucky events. In the case of biochem, raid drop requirement makes more sense in the implant line.

 

5) All crafting classes should have a desirable consumable that only they can craft. This item should be useful for pvp/raids. This item should be useable by others. Biochem, by its nature, should produce more variety and have more unlinked CDs on these than other crafting classes. If any one class has a BOP item, it should not be BIS. This is the real issue with everyone having BOP. Should an armorer be the only person capable of having the best armor in game? Should a weaponmaker only have the best weapons? Most people will cry foul here, and nerfs will happen. Making all items tradeable, and adding a crafting perk that gives what you determined before as an insignificant boost, 5ish%) to self crafted items or increased charges for something that will eventually need replacing.

[DOOMOCTAGON]

Wow more nerfing and less fixing of actual problems. NICELY DONE BIOWARE! You are on the right road to loosing accounts.

[SaltAU]

@GerogZoeller. Was this game Beta tested? Did you take notice of anything? Less excuses and more getting some 'simple' design choices right in the first place thank you.

[SaltAU]

Wow more nerfing and less fixing of actual problems. NICELY DONE BIOWARE! You are on the right road to loosing accounts.

 

losing has one o.

 

think of loss. lost and lose there is no reason to add another o. LOSING!

 

The basic definition of LOOSE is not tight.

 

You're welcome.

[Delnoir]

So the medpacs are getting nerfed? Yeah I can live with that.

 

Just stay away from my stims!

[LaVolpex]

In other words, Bioware are letting a small number of hardcore dictate the game's design.

 

kthxbai.

 

 

wow..just ....wow...

 

either you are really , really dumb

or a very good troll...hmmm

[Proto]

Hello all,

 

Quick addendum to Georg's post.

 

PvP overcharge consumable was meant to share a cooldown with adrenals and not stack with the power ups you can run over to pick up in Warzone maps. So players stacking all three were reaching combat numbers higher than intended, which is why we will be changing that in 1.1.

 

Additionally, we will continue to monitor and tune crafting professions to ensure they are in line with combat targets and toward the goal of keeping them viable in end game but not mandatory for participation. Currently there are several Armormech, Armstech, Synthweaving and Artifice recipes that can be found in end game content. We will be adding more in future updates.

 

-Gabe

 

Hey there Gabe buddy! Did you know that your Defense/Shield stats don't work in PVP? Might wanna discuss that over at the Bioware water cooler!

[ManuNegra]

In other words, Bioware are letting a small number of hardcore dictate the game's design.

 

kthxbai.

 

Um, you have to be kidding if you think biochem and cyber didn't need changes. Any sized group of whatever type of players you can imagine has the potential to dictate the game's design, if they expose a flaw in it like this.

 

kthxbai

[drosalion]

Suggestion: What about this idea? Go ahead and nerf the healing done by medpacks (all of them if you must), but add a big "medpack" bonus to the tanking stances. So tanks will gain a much bigger heal from medpacks than everyone else normally would.

 

Whether or not thats a good decision for PVE i have no idea, but its definitely a horrible decision in regards to PVP.

[Varrith]

Not sure if I read this right but wouldn't simply increasing the amount of given crew skill for using a item make it more mandatory to have that given crew skill ?

 

I would have thought a better fix would have been to either reduce the mandatory skill to 0 aka anyone of the appropriate level could use given items thereby removing the need for everyone to spec a certain way would be a better fix or reducing the bonuses of said items would work as well. The fix allowing anyone to use the item would seem like a better fix as it would allow said profession not only a item to make some cash off of but would better put it inline with other professions that are capable of crafting higher end game items to sell or use.

[Luxora]

The reality is that many people plan for endgame content. There are two choices, PvP or PvE (or both). The traditional gear grind for either route you take will provide epics better than anything that can be currently crafted, whether it's bought from a vendor or an Operation drop.

 

Therefore, you have people who see all the armor/weapon-crafting professions as relatively useless, except perhaps as moneymakers for the fools who actually buy that stuff.

 

So much like in WoW where you had people picking Engineering for the gadgets, Blacksmithing for its sockets and Jewelcrafting for the epic gems to go in those, people are going to look for professions that can continue to offer some benefits post-50. The best professions are those which keep offering something other than gear, which (as I said, though vendor/commendations or Op drops) you will continually replace.

 

Or, once Bioware implements the awesome system (that they had in beta and people loved) which lets us pull the Armorings out of raid gear/PvP gear, people will be able to look how they want to look instead of being stuck in something like the godawful Inquisitor PvP outfit with the feather hat.

 

In short, people will do the grinds not to get the actual gear (unless it looks cool), but to get the mods out of them. Which I personally think is a better system, but it will make even more apparent the already existing problem that crafters are not able to produce any mods above grade 22 right now (unless Operations drop schematics, but I haven't seen any yet.) Whereas even the Belsavis Daily Commendation vendor lets you buy the grade 23 Armoring/Hilts. The other crafting professions are simply not "keeping up." The solution was to buff them appropriately and realize that you didn't make them competitive in the first place, not to kneejerk nerf.

 

Either way, being that I play a class with no self-heals, I'm sticking with Biochem unless Bioware decides to actually make the other professions have a useful gadget in some way. And it's ridiculous that they nerfed Cybertech too; the grenades were already on a 5 minute cooldown, compared to Biochem's 90-second medpac.

Edited January 14, 2012 by Luxora

[Faulimir]

I think this is a good step forward. A baby step, but a safe one.

 

What I'm still concerned about is Armstech and Armormech. At Lvl50, the Purple mastercrafts still don't come close to beating the Lvl50 PvP gear. I think the Lvl50 PvP gear shouldn't change but perhaps more powerful Armstech and Armormech possibilities would be nice so that a player that puts in the time and work to hit 400 for Arms/Armor can really benefit instead of hitting the mark and then eventually having to sucomb to ditching those crafts altogether because they just aren't well matched versus the PvP gear and further crafting will yield little compared to what a Lvl50 player that has full suits of PvP gear can get out of it. There are a lot of players that just have gathering skills, no crafting at all, and since they are Lvl50 they can just get the PvP gear. It basically renders the Arms/Armor crafts almost useless once they can start getting the Lvl20 PvP gear.

[Terko_Koslah]

This balancing everything cause it's a competitive game is not good in the long run in my opinion. A player should be able to complement his play style with the choices he makes in the game. Now it seems they are making it so that no choice matters. What a bummer.

 

Each craft should have something unique only to that craft to improve a characters combat proves. Well...

[Gwarfan]

If you are so concerned about advantages then balance out the unfair advantages that you already have ig. Such as being killed in under 5 seconds by different classes on the Empire side. Yes you know what I am talking about here.

 

Don't insult us by acting as if you are concerned with balance when the deck has been stacked against the Republic!

[Ryxxi]

Is Greg zoeller are u a real person or an automated droid? Edited January 14, 2012 by Ryxxi

[Psykhe]

As usual, its cheaper to Nerf 1 or 2 things then Buff 5 or 6 others.

 

What the Devs have never understood, spending the money to Buff instead of Nerf would actually make them more money in the long run...

 

What you have never understood is that it is not about cheapness, but about practicality.

 

*Buff all crew skills to Biochem level*

2 weeks later - oh, Armormech became too strong now

*Buff all crew skills to Armormech level*

2 weeks later - oh, Artifice became too strong now

*Buff all crew skills to Artifice level*

 

And so on... Until you by (rather low) random chance get the balance perfect you will be in a buffing up spiral if you only buff stuff. It does not work practically.

 

Both buffing and nerfing are needed.

Biochem is (still) too strong, mainly because of the adrenals.

The other crew skills have still little point in the endgame. With maybe the exception of cybertech, but only in a specialized field where it is currently overshadowed by biochem.

[spacepuppy]

Here's the thing, people don't flock to Cybertech and Biochem because they're overpowered; they flock to Cybertech and Biochem because all the other crafting skills are worthless.

 

 

That basically sums it up. My boyfriend and I decided to take Armstech and Artificing to compliment each other. He makes the weapons and barrels, I make the mods and gems. Now I'm starting to regret it. It's apparent commendation weapons are superior, not to mention do not take much effort to obtain. That goes for anything bought by commendation badges, really. My mods are mildly useful but artificing feels like a pointless credit sink right now too. All crafted items need to be better then commendation stuff. Encourage people to socialize and seek out crafted items.

Edited January 14, 2012 by spacepuppy

[Karzak]

STOP STOP STOP balancing the game around pvp when its a pve game FFS

 

This is where mmo's fail! the balance the game around pvp and then pve becomes ****

 

If people want a pvp mmo then send them playing warhammer online

Edited January 14, 2012 by Karzak

[ArmoredJuneBug]

Thanks for the update.

 

Unfortunately I have to agree with many posters here, the problem isn't really Biochem (or Cybertech, who would have thought?!) being too strong but rather other skills not offering enough.

 

My 2c on this then.

 

Biochem.

• Removing the stacking of consumables for high damage in PvP: Great. Damage numbers in WZ's still seem a lot higher than they should reasonable be however, considering how long it takes to down mobs with just ~5k health.
  
• If Biotech reusable medpac cooldowns are being increased I'd assume this applies to all medpacs in the game? If not people will merely use the non-reusable ones instead, causing an entirely different problem instead. This is a MMO, 'whatever gives the most pluses' applies.
  

 

Cybertech.

• Grenades being nerfed: I can see the damage of some of them being too good in some situations, though I didn't imagine PvP being such a situation. The 5 minute shared cooldown is simply too much, however. If the cooldown has to be shared, and I suspect is has to be or you'd just stack 5 different grenades after another, then a 90-180 second cooldown seems more reasonable. The same as the medpac cooldown perhaps?
  
• I'm already considering dropping Cybertech from two characters because all it really provides is novelty items. By going with Synthweaving or Armormech, which are by no means great crew skills, I can simply outfit more slots on both my characters and companions for less and with better stats than I can with Cybertech.
  
• My highest level Cybertech is a tank, when will we see tank mods added to the profession? The lack of diversity of armoring and mods is a big concern.
  

 

In general.

• As others have noted the lackluster quality of craftable item modifications needs to be addressed, as a Cybertech crafter on two characters I'm painfully aware of this fact.
  
• Lower-level item modifications from vendors are too cheap, require no investement and are BoE to boot. As a crafter I can't compete with that. Heck, on one unlucky streak it cost me 170 titanium (and as much in less expensive materials) just to learn a single artifact armoring schematic. Had I settled for the prototype version I could have farmed it on a higher level character by soloing a heroic or two. Or with mods, far less than that.
  
• Higher-level item modifications from vendors are too good, and too easy to get. As a Cybertech tank I can't even make items for myself that I want, let alone any that can compete with the quest items!
  
• Crafted item modifications requires vastly more materials to make than crafted static pieces, since you need a moddable piece and three different mods. Each requiring roughly the same amount of materials as an entire static piece. This is especially bad once you start needing Hardmore/Operation drops.
  
• High-level questing/farming/dailies give out way too much credits. The GTN inflation is already out of control. We need either more/larger money sinks at the endgame or significantly reduced credit returns on these activities. Preferably both.
  
• Every profession needs a reason to keep it around, BoP items requiring certain skill levels work but the items have to be better. I'd suggest looking at the Armormech and Synthweaving pieces and making sure these are competitive with top-tier gear. For mod-crafters this could take the form of being able to make a limited set (3 perhaps) of top-tier mods that are BoP for themselves that are BiS. You get the idea, make each crew skill offer something unique and valuable without allowing it to fill every slot, thus precluding the desire to run Operations.
  
• Other skills outside of Cybertech could do with more novelty items. I realize Cybertech is the 'Engineering' equivalent from WoW and will probably have more such stuff but that doesn't mean the other crew skills should have to do with nothing.
  
• There needs to be craftable PvP gear, of at least prototype quality.
  

 

More stuff to be added, some food for thought at least I hope.

[ArmoredJuneBug]

STOP STOP STOP balancing the game around pvp when its a pve game FFS

The game always has to be balanced around PvP, first and foremost.

 

Not because PvP is more important, but because PvE is trivial to re-balance accordingly rather than the other way around.

 

You wont find Operation bosses logging onto the forums to scream bloody murder about having their damage output or defenses nerfed and subsequently /ragequitting their subscriptions. Players will, however.

Edited January 14, 2012 by ArmoredJuneBug

[Bnol]

You can nerf biochem/cybertech (really? cybertech was OP? Those 5 minute CD grenades, honestly?) to the ground and they will still be better than the other professions because the other professions are absolute garbage. You are not fixing the problem, unless there is more to this change than a nerf. Edited January 15, 2012 by Bnol

[OfflineSys]

Hello. I feel i may have some valuable insight on the general crew skill situation.

I have been level 50 for quite some time now, and leveling all those crew skills one after another to get their goodies was the only time/money sink i have found so far that proved effective.

 

Some background info:

 

Had 400 Biochem, crafted all the rakata items.

(very useful in all aspects of the game)

 

Had 400 Cybertech, crafted all the grenades.

(virtually useless, a waste of the hard mode materials if you ask me.) They have a 5 minutes cooldown, they trigger global cooldown, their damage is worse then anything else i could do with that gcd and if that wasn't enough of a slap in the face to cybertechs they also have a 5 or 6 meters range, for them being grenades i did not know they were so heavy to be thrown any further..

 

Currently have 400 Artifice untill i ''crit'' a rakata power relic, on my 3rd attempt.

(Decent relic if you can get it to come with an augment slot = +28 of the primary stat, but nothing to /clap about)

 

WAS planning on getting armormech after i critted my relic to finally start have fun with crafting.

(Mostly to craft the 2 BOP armor pieces, bracers and belt, and then have some fun re'ing various armors as a time sink or a ''woot, re'd something nice for my lvl 20 alt!''

 

 

Essencially, by putting requierements on the biochem rakata consumables, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

 

The fact that those items had no requierements other then being BOP is the only reason people would have another crafting crew skill. (smart people anyways)

 

When this change goes through, you may aswell remove every other crew skill trainer or replace them all with a biochem one, that's how bad it is.

 

I know for a fact i will go back to 400 biochem for the patch as simply put, everything else is worthless. Successfuly crushing my hopes of having fun with crafting by leveling armormech next.

 

That's alright, i'm not too bothered seeing as armormech only makes 2 worthwile end game items and they are BOP aswell, hell i might level it just to crit those as there are no requierments, and then, go back to biochem anyways.

 

But consider what this change will do, everyone will be a biochemist wich was bad enough as it is. It doesn't fix anything, it further enforces the ''thou shall be a biochemist'' idea.

 

My 2 cents.