Ideas to reduce Juggernaut ability bloat

[Farabee]

Speaking from the viewpoint of an Immortal Jugg here.

 

Keep in mind, a lot of these buffs are pitched from the viewpoint that our overall damage is pretty bad, and thus our threat generation as well. We don't need to be competitive with DPS classes, but it would help to not take forever to kill a mob when I don't have Vette out.

 

First off, macros would really help reduce the ability bloat to a large degree. For instance, a macro to allow us to combine Intercede and Force Charge to be mapped to a single button, and simply use one or the other depending on whether the target is hostile. Also, you could macro Saber Throw and Force Charge together so that you can use ST when FC is on cooldown. Being able to macro in Retaliation with our core rotation would help as well.

 

Agreeing with others here, I think Sundering Assault should be our main attack and it should replace Assault when we get it. Having to put SA +normal assault on the 1 and 2 sucks. Improved Sundering Assault sucks, with Crushing Blow we get sunders stacked to max in a few globals anyways...so why not change the talent to simply remove the cooldown?

 

Give Immortal tree more of a talented buff to Sweeping Slash, to the point where it functions as a complete replacement to Vicious Slash with added AOE damage. This would also help our terrible AOE threat/damage. In fact, you could just push Heavy Handed further in the tree to make it only accessible to tanks, and buff the damage on all 3 abilities it increases to 15-20%. This would provide a much-needed buff to our damage and threat in one go, and reduce ability bloat overall.

 

Backhand needs to be on a shorter cooldown, this would help threat and make it more fluid to our rotation. Not sure why it's on a 1min CD to begin with other than the stun, for PVP purposes. I wouldn't even mind if you took away the stun entirely if it could be reduced to a more manageable CD.

 

Smash is great and a core Juggernaut move for AOE threat and mob debuffing, but having to use it for single target/debuff feels kind of wonky. There really isn't an elegant solution to this as it does great single-target damage as well, and the Heavy-Handed buff I listed above wouldn't help this fact either.

 

Anyways, it's great that the devs want us to have such a complex rotation, and my Razer Naga really gets a workout while I'm tanking...but it's a little ridiculous when the 15 available buttons on my mouse barely cover my entire rotation.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Farabee

[Uruare]

Plainsaying it, this class requires you to own a Razr Naga mouse to play it to its optimal spec.

 

If you're stuck with even a somewhat nice 8 button mouse, you're still gonna be digging deep into your q,e,r,f,1,2,3,4,5,6 keys, and probably your t,g,v keys as well for some of the heavily situationals.

 

Maybe I'm just messing up somewhere, but I tried playing my class with no special hotkeys and it was a disaster. Tested to see how it rolled if I were just...manually clicking stuff.

 

Disaster. Absolute disaster.

 

Staged it up to what several fellow gamer buddies of mine are used to; using their 5 button mouse and 1,2,3,4,5,6. Disaster. Even took the time to try to feel it out and see if it were even workable. Couldn't make it work worth spit compared to...

 

Razr Naga 17 button mouse. I've owned one for a while and naturally set to hotkeying things onto it on here. No biggie. Haven't had any of the trouble there some have claimed to have with assigning lots of its extra buttons to hotkey assignments.

 

They were all here in my home with their gaming laptops and mice when I was testing this, so the physical objects were right here being used, and...without an $80 mouse, this class is halfway unplayable.

 

I don't know how anyone -without- a razr naga mouse functions on a jugg at all. I assume many do, and itj just baffles me as to what kind of piano players they must have the talent to be for the crazydance their fingers must be doing to make it work.

 

I dunno. It just wasn't looking very intelligently designed when I tried playing it like a 'normal person' might.

 

And let's be honest; owning a razr naga is not the province of a normal MMO gamer, let alone a normal person.

 

On the unrelated upside, my little test got four of my buddies to order a razr naga right then and there after seeing the difference it made for me and coupling that to how much of a difference it could make on their own classes on here (one of which also being a jugg).

 

So I guess it's a win for Razr.

 

Not...so much...for TOR. This class will alienate, frustrate and confound pretty much anybody in a lot of not-good ways if they don't have some some specialized gaming equipment.

 

That should not be a class requirement. It's nice that I can see some real benefit to having one, sure, but...not like this.

 

This is not the sort of thing that will encourage some guy or gal with a 3 button mouse and some common, let's say 'casual' familiarity with MMO playing to go 'Hey, I need to step up my game and get a high end gaming mouse'.

 

It'll get them saying this class is garbage and they can't play it. And they'd be right to.

 

Bad design. Shouldn't need an eighty dollar mouse to play a class at its intended pacing and complexity.

 

The learning curve of a class should be more about knowing what to use and when to use it, I think. How to use your tools, in short.

 

Not whether or not you have the digital dexterity of a professional pianist -or- a swank mouse/keyboard.

 

Just my eighty six cents on that, since two cents doesn't seem to go very far with this class.

[DiLune]

Not just a gaming mouse (I have a Cyborg RAT 7, but a RAT 9 would be more optimal.) I have a gamepad. That's the key. I didn't do anything crazy on it, just made three of the buttons correspond to shift, ctrl and alt, then bound the number keys onto it. I have pretty much everything I need between the two of them.

 

I have no idea how people play this game (let alone this class) without one.

[Uruare]

Not just a gaming mouse (I have a Cyborg RAT 7, but a RAT 9 would be more optimal.) I have a gamepad. That's the key. I didn't do anything crazy on it, just made three of the buttons correspond to shift, ctrl and alt, then bound the number keys onto it. I have pretty much everything I need between the two of them.

 

I have no idea how people play this game (let alone this class) without one.

 

 

I personally find it difficult to use the third row of buttons on my razr naga when things are happening quickly, so I keep those tied to stuff like kick and pommel strike and stuff I wind up almost never using anyway.

 

Middle mouse button is tied to charge; smash, impale, sundering assault on the top row,

saber throw ,vicious throw, retaliation on the second row.

 

 

Bottom row's got my interrupt, chilling scream and intimidating roar on it.

 

I keep force scream on E, Assault on F and my taunts on R and T.

 

Intercede, I move to R for PVP, but otherwise it gets stuck on Q for solo content. FP's and Ops, it's back on R, though I move my taunts to the naga bottom row so I can manually target something and pop a taunt right now for the single target, or use the AoE taunt without hindering my WASD mobility.

 

It's an arcane matrix in the full flesh-out of how I arrange it, and it has to be. I've spent way too long configuring all this to exactly what works best for me, and the finished product...

 

...works as intended. Not superfluid like a mega-tweaked control pattern should be; just...WAI.

 

Scary to think how insane this stuff must seem to roughly 95% of the playerbase.

[JillAthena]

Use key bindings. Get creative.

 

Example: 2 for Force Charge and shift-2 for Obliterate. I want to be able to spec and have 2 different gap closers.

 

The better you are at utilizing your abilities properly, the more chance you have to win against people who aren't good at doing so. Every class has a bag of tricks to use, the best players know when to use the right ones. Warriors are no exception.

[Renesis]

I can manage 24 keybinds with keyboard.. cannot use extra mouse buttons even if i had something like naga (right hand isn't in prime condition). And 24 binds isnt nearly enough. Im already looking some other class that i can use correctly with less binds.

[DarthVindictus]

Jugg is no worse for bloat than most other classes. No worse off for bloat than other MMO's either.

 

I play a champion on LotRO, that's got tons of bloat and most of the skills do the exact same thing in varying amounts, just have different cooldowns, etc.

 

But you play MMO's long enough, and you realize, having near duplicate skills is to your advantage as you can do them back to back. Simply reducing the cooldown and combining them into 1 skill is effectively a nerf. There's no other way to look at it.

[Zellviren]

You see bloat, I see abilities that we can currently use back to back, these combinations would effectively nerf our capabilities in combat.

 

Neither the two of are objectively "right", as both opinions are perfectly valid; I'm glad you now appreciate this. But if being able to use Sundering Assault and Assault back-to-back is compelling for you, there's literally nothing you could say that would convince me of it.

 

However, combining certain situational skills doesn't automatically nerf combat capabilities. This type of assertion is based on a misunderstanding of class development, so I'd be happier if such misinformation wasn't peddled as fact.

[DarthVindictus]

Neither the two of are objectively "right", as both opinions are perfectly valid; I'm glad you now appreciate this. But if being able to use Sundering Assault and Assault back-to-back is compelling for you, there's literally nothing you could say that would convince me of it.

 

However, combining certain situational skills doesn't automatically nerf combat capabilities. This type of assertion is based on a misunderstanding of class development, so I'd be happier if such misinformation wasn't peddled as fact.

 

Sundering assault having no cooldown and replacing assault was the one change I somewhat agreed with but knew wouldn't happen as it's too powerful to not have a cooldown at all. It'd be nice, but they won't do it.

 

The rest.. I just can't see how you can really see combining the skills as a benefit.

 

You can right now, force charge, savage kick, smash, and pommel strike all in sequence back to back to back. That's a lot of burst damage you're capable of doing in that situation.

 

With a single 30s cooldown skill, that's not possible, you'd force charge, savage kick, smash... and then normal rotation, you're missing a free skill you could have combo'ed off of. Pommel strike has no cost, it's one of our hardest hitting skills, and you want to throw it away because you lack the manual dexterity to hit the button?

 

If you find the rotations and various skill combos too complicated for you, then this isn't the class for you, if you can't think of chaining these skills to exploit various conditions, you're not playing the class to its fullest.

 

In fact one of the reasons I really like playing this class is because there are some more intricate combos/rotations that can be done with it. This is comparing to deception assassin which is voltaic slash, saber strike, voltaic slash, shock, voltaic slash, saber strike, voltaic slash, shock, discharge ad infinum.

Edited January 19, 2012 by DarthVindictus

[Yfelsung]

I don't see much skill bloat, I'm 50 and have every ability keybound with keybinds to spare for consumables, stance changing, vehicles and all the other little things.

[Tzaz]

Regardless of whether the juggernaut is strong or not, I think we can all agree that the class has an overabundance of *useful* abilities. While I'm never one to turn down tools, some of these abilities are incredibly situational, but come up often enough that they must be left within easy reach. I'd like to propose some suggestions to simplify the juggernaut ability set without compromising the class' capabilities or power.

 

1. Merge Pommel Strike and Savage Kick into one ability. These two abilities are highly situational and only intended to swiftly dispatch weak mobs that've already been detrimentally affected in some way. The new combined ability would have a 30 second cooldown (averaged between the two abilities) and work on all stunned, slowed, or disabled targets, doing the damage of pommel strike (the higher ability).

 

2. Make shatter a passive upgrade to impale. It is silly to give vengeance two abilities that basically do the same thing. A large initial strike followed by a DoT that makes your next vicious throw/force scream crit. Getting both ranks of shatter would reduce impale's cooldown to 9 seconds (current shatter CD) and add the shatter DoT. This would be an upgrade to impale's damage, justifiable due to the loss of the ability to use one after the other, and something that the single-target offensive spec should have access to anyways.

 

3. Obliterate should be made a passive that improves force charge, again decreasing its cooldown and increasing its damage.

 

4. Remove the cooldown from Sundering Assault. This tiny change makes sundering assault the juggernaut's default attack by completely replacing the standard assault.

 

5. Make vicious throw a passive upgrade to saber throw. This one is a little tricky, and would require a way for the ability to have a different cooldown depending on whether the enemy was >20 % or <20 % HP. Ideally, if the enemy was <20 % then saber throw would be usable at a closer range, do roughly 120 % damage, and come back up in 6 seconds. Again, a little bit of capability would be lost in that juggernauts couldn't quickly use one after the other, but on the plus side "vicious throw" would now generate rage as saber throw does.

 

6. Make retaliation a self-buff that triggers when you have a successful defense (max once every 6 seconds). Simply, it'd make the next attack hit for extra damage. On the downside, no more dropping retaliation for bonus damage during GCD, on the other hand it'd be rage-free and have much greater ease of use.

 

I'd like to hear more ideas for reducing the massive amount of things we can use in any given situation down to a reasonable and malleable toolset.

 

Something that'd be really neat is if abilities could be dynamic depending on target, so for instance if I had Force Jump/Intercede set to Q, it would execute whichever ability applied to my target at the time. The same could be used for Pommel Strike/Savage Kick, as well as Saber/Vicious Throw.

 

 

1. You'd die on every high lvl champion mob with 2 or more adds.

 

2. It should be a passive for Vicious slash not impale. Here is my idea on it: Remove shatter as an ability and make it a passive that increases damage of Vicous Slash by 25% and puts a stacking(up to 3-5) bleed that does 200 dps every second for 12 seconds. This way we can utilize brutality from the rage tree.

 

3. N/A havent used that tree.

 

4.This would be nice but they'd have to nerf the damage a bit.

 

5. No. This would be a horrid nerf that I would never want to see. They are two completely different skills.

 

6. looks good on paper but would destroy the tank tree.

[NineInchNinja]

I think your idea for savage kick and pommel strike is good. I had the same idea, mainly because they serve the same purpose but follow completely different rules, including cooldown, making it, in hectic fights, nearly impossible to keep track of which one is available. Also, they're both not usable in PvP, which seems kind of dumb.

 

At the very least the tooltips should be corrected to clarify that they are only usable against standard and strongs, not against Elite, Champs, or players. Even if they just had set both with the same cooldown it would make a big difference for me.

 

Vicious throw is another good example. Combine it with saber throw, using saber throw's wonky range requirements, and have it scale damage based on the target's health. 20% is kind of ridiculous, as there's no way you can tell me you, as a player in the heat of battle, can tell whether a target has 1/5 health bar left or 1/4.

 

Not sure about the rest though. Some of it seems a little too much of a change. It's nice having some variety. I'd just like a little more consistency.

[NineInchNinja]

 

However, combining certain situational skills doesn't automatically nerf combat capabilities. This type of assertion is based on a misunderstanding of class development, so I'd be happier if such misinformation wasn't peddled as fact.

 

It would also be nice if people would stop comparing their characters in other games to this one. Other games have autoattack to fill in the spaces with damage when you hit the key for an ability that is still on cooldown or that can't be used on this type of opponent or at this range, making them a lot more forgiving.

 

Also, stating that ability bloat in another game poses you no problems doesn't mean much, as your definition of not having problems may, for all I know, mean that you are able to get through most fights without dying, or it may mean that you are comfortably relying on macros to string attacks together.

[Seyyal]

not sure why people complain about too many abilities. can never have enough in my opinion.

 

 

However we need macros bad. to combine certain ones that always get used together.

[NineInchNinja]

not sure why people complain about too many abilities. can never have enough in my opinion.

 

 

However we need macros bad. to combine certain ones that always get used together.

 

This means you need your computer to play the game for you. Doesn't that mean there are too many abilities?

 

Macros are common in other games, but that doesn't mean they should be. They are common in other games where the developers are more focused on giving a cinematic combat show than making combat an interactive experience. Using macros means letting go of control of your character, which to me means loss of immersion.

[Yfelsung]

This means you need your computer to play the game for you. Doesn't that mean there are too many abilities?

 

Macros are common in other games, but that doesn't mean they should be. They are common in other games where the developers are more focused on giving a cinematic combat show than making combat an interactive experience. Using macros means letting go of control of your character, which to me means loss of immersion.

 

Macros =/= Automation/Bots.

 

An example of a macro that would be useful in SWTOR:

 

/cast (target=harm, not dead) Charge; Intercede

 

All that would do is mean that if I targeted an enemy and pressed the button, I'd charge, if I target a friendly, I'll intercede instead.

 

No automation, just a nice reduction in keybinds.

 

I'm still pressing the same amount of keys as I would have before, it's just that one key is can do either of the abilities.

 

When we ask for macros, that's all we're asking for, not automated ability rotations tied to one key.

[joerumble]

It's really just about properly excluding abilities in a given spec.

 

The Sundering Assault/Assault thing is clunky but I can sort of understand it. However, if the appropriate talents in each tree (Shien Form itself and Endless Rage) gave you rage for just being in combat instead of being attacked, you could probably just drop Assault altogether. One down.

 

Pummel + Savage Kick? I've argued since beta stuff like this is a mistake. They're interesting while you level.. then you get to level 50 and take them off your bar because they cease to work on anything meaningful.

 

You could make the argument that Force Leap/Intercede should just be one button, that there must be a better way to make Enrage other than "heres more .. umm.. rage", but these are pretty big changes to mechanics.

 

I mean, why doesn't the Shatter Dot roll? Savagery should work on Ravage, not Force Scream. I feel like when I respec from Rage to Vengeance I just replace Oblit > Shatter and Force Crush > Impact and.. press all the same buttons. This is what causes the ability bloat .. the talent trees don't buff their respective abilities to make other ones unattractive.

 

Rage should be Oblit, Crush, Choke(needs a buff for rage imo) Smash and Scream.

Vengeance should be Shatter, Impact, Ravage, Vicious Strike and Vicious Throw.

 

Thats all you gotta do.. shave off a button or two and things get much cleaner.

Edited January 19, 2012 by joerumble

[andmer]

TLDR; Add fall-through macroes. It'll let us save maybe 3 or 4 slots by combining duplicate priority based bloat abilities such as the ones you've mentioned.

 

THIS. It made life so much easier in WoW before they took it away.

Edited January 19, 2012 by andmer

[JLeezy]

Regardless of whether the juggernaut is strong or not, I think we can all agree that the class has an overabundance of *useful* abilities. While I'm never one to turn down tools, some of these abilities are incredibly situational, but come up often enough that they must be left within easy reach. I'd like to propose some suggestions to simplify the juggernaut ability set without compromising the class' capabilities or power.

 

1. Merge Pommel Strike and Savage Kick into one ability. These two abilities are highly situational and only intended to swiftly dispatch weak mobs that've already been detrimentally affected in some way. The new combined ability would have a 30 second cooldown (averaged between the two abilities) and work on all stunned, slowed, or disabled targets, doing the damage of pommel strike (the higher ability).

 

2. Make shatter a passive upgrade to impale. It is silly to give vengeance two abilities that basically do the same thing. A large initial strike followed by a DoT that makes your next vicious throw/force scream crit. Getting both ranks of shatter would reduce impale's cooldown to 9 seconds (current shatter CD) and add the shatter DoT. This would be an upgrade to impale's damage, justifiable due to the loss of the ability to use one after the other, and something that the single-target offensive spec should have access to anyways.

 

3. Obliterate should be made a passive that improves force charge, again decreasing its cooldown and increasing its damage.

 

4. Remove the cooldown from Sundering Assault. This tiny change makes sundering assault the juggernaut's default attack by completely replacing the standard assault.

 

5. Make vicious throw a passive upgrade to saber throw. This one is a little tricky, and would require a way for the ability to have a different cooldown depending on whether the enemy was >20 % or <20 % HP. Ideally, if the enemy was <20 % then saber throw would be usable at a closer range, do roughly 120 % damage, and come back up in 6 seconds. Again, a little bit of capability would be lost in that juggernauts couldn't quickly use one after the other, but on the plus side "vicious throw" would now generate rage as saber throw does.

 

6. Make retaliation a self-buff that triggers when you have a successful defense (max once every 6 seconds). Simply, it'd make the next attack hit for extra damage. On the downside, no more dropping retaliation for bonus damage during GCD, on the other hand it'd be rage-free and have much greater ease of use.

 

I'd like to hear more ideas for reducing the massive amount of things we can use in any given situation down to a reasonable and malleable toolset.

 

Something that'd be really neat is if abilities could be dynamic depending on target, so for instance if I had Force Jump/Intercede set to Q, it would execute whichever ability applied to my target at the time. The same could be used for Pommel Strike/Savage Kick, as well as Saber/Vicious Throw.

 

 

I really like the OP's suggestions, this really would make tanks less clunky. Pommel Strike and Savage Kick combined into one spell would be ideal, and lets be honest it's really a pve thing.

 

Great call replacing our sundering assault for No CD either...that would REALLY help with threat and overall damage/rage build up not to mention stacking sunder armour on your target.

[Fan_Atic]

The only thing I care about is that they really really need to remove the cooldown on sundering assault. We have 2 first tier talents that effect it why in god's name doesn't one of them remove or atleast reduce the cooldown.

[mrarnold]

Macros =/= Automation/Bots.

 

An example of a macro that would be useful in SWTOR:

 

/cast (target=harm, not dead) Charge; Intercede

 

All that would do is mean that if I targeted an enemy and pressed the button, I'd charge, if I target a friendly, I'll intercede instead.

 

No automation, just a nice reduction in keybinds.

 

I'm still pressing the same amount of keys as I would have before, it's just that one key is can do either of the abilities.

 

When we ask for macros, that's all we're asking for, not automated ability rotations tied to one key.

 

I love macros in games but they shouldn't be required for the average gamer to excel. A macro takes away skill.

 

The macro you mentioned takes away my need to think and react to the situation. I can just spam a button. And I will always either use intercede or force charge. Without that macro I have to be mindful of cooldowns AND target type AND ability key bind location.

 

Once again I prefer macros but I understand that it is less "skillful". This game basically requires them. Or I should say desperately needs them.

[DarthVindictus]

The only thing I care about is that they really really need to remove the cooldown on sundering assault. We have 2 first tier talents that effect it why in god's name doesn't one of them remove or atleast reduce the cooldown.

 

 

I agree, but I doubt Bioware agrees. At higher levels I almost never use assault. The only times I can think of using it, is because everything else is on CD and I'm just waiting on Sundering's CD. It doesn't naturally squeeze into a rotation when you get higher level.

[salihe]

Well, on my WoW Warrior I have 50 key bindings for 54 skills and macros (including trinkets (relics) and potions (med kits)) so I have no problem with a large amount of skills.

 

The problem in SWToR is that you only have 2 (rather huge) bars with 12 slots at the bottom while my (custom build) WoW interface has has 4.5 ( ) bars with 12 slots.

 

 

 

I miss my WoW UI. It was so clean and streamlined, and I spent godknowshowmany hours getting it that way, lol. I really can't wait for addon development to be opened up here so I can spend hours creating and tweaking my own action bars and making them just so.

 

Someone touched on this, but one of the main problems I have is there not being any proc notifications. Since there are none, I spend the majority of every fight staring at my bars, just in case some proc pops up with a 1 and a 1/2 second window to use. That lowers overall situational awareness hugely, which has always been something I prided myself on.

 

Also, there are so many Only-Usable-When-Targets-Got-Rufied abilities that all light up simultaneously when a target gets stunned, but the target only stays stunned long enough to use one. By the time the GCD is over, all the remaining procs have gone dark again, like they're on the far side of the Moon. So, it becomes a matter of which one to use; take it for granted that there'll only be enough time to use one, so better pick the best one.

 

Of course, that's assuming you were looking at your action bars when it popped up and actually noticed that it proc'ed.

[Yfelsung]

I love macros in games but they shouldn't be required for the average gamer to excel. A macro takes away skill.

 

The macro you mentioned takes away my need to think and react to the situation. I can just spam a button. And I will always either use intercede or force charge. Without that macro I have to be mindful of cooldowns AND target type AND ability key bind location.

 

Once again I prefer macros but I understand that it is less "skillful". This game basically requires them. Or I should say desperately needs them.

 

But I can't spam the button, I only need to charge or intercede in very specific situations, and I need to ensure I'm using the right one at the right time.

 

Target enemy, press 1, charge.

 

Target friend, press 2, intercede.

 

Is no harder than

 

Target enemy, press 1, charge.

 

Target friend, press 1, intercede.

 

My brain is make the exact same number of processes, I'm pressing the exact same number of buttons and I can't just spam them because these abilities have decent cooldowns and if I use the wrong one at the wrong time, I'm boned.

 

Adding situational modifiers to keybinds does not make anything easier, it simply allows me to cut down on keybind bloat.

 

There's no reason, and no increase in skill, in having a damage ability and a heal ability tied to different keys when I can tie them to the same key and have it change what it does depending on my target.

 

Spamming one key is always bad, no matter how complex your macro is.

[tXHereticXt]

They are pretty good suggestions too, and will still leave plenty of abilities that need to be used.

 

They're terrible suggestions, what's the OP on?

 

The OP doesn't suggest what should replace what skills we lose. It's just more "convenient" for them. Skills are fine as they are. Some of them need to be changed in terms of individual descriptions and availability.

 

 

 

Impale should of had Master Strike's reverse stab animation. Would of cleared that problem right up. Jugg spins around, and twirls the blade, stabs the target with their back to them. Problem solved. Then you got Shatter which is a "I am a bird of prey!" graphic and Impale doesn't have to be "erased".

Edited January 20, 2012 by tXHereticXt