A serious look at the Smug/Op nerf - a better solution for 1.11? [long read]

[CriseDX]

Great topic, granted I don't play Op, but I have every intention to do so sometime in the future. That said I would actually play it experience the story, so PVP is not really a major concern for me (I still do it but only to the point that it does not make me go too far past the recommended levels), however, replaying all the side quests that are shared between IA and SI again, that I'd rather avoid except with a few exceptions... hence at that point PVP becomes likely more common thing for me to do, with the gaps between quests. Edited January 24, 2012 by CriseDX

[Raice]

That's not a nerf. If your pulling math out saying that our burst is so high because you can instant cast, the solution isn't to nerf the crit damage of 3 attacks while buffing your lacerate and shiv critical damage. You did say all of "our" attacks in your post. The class lose nothing from your proposed fix, the fact that lacerate can double proc and shiv can be buffed to compete with backstab. It would only gap the people stacking surge and crit further from everyone else. I understand your frustration but I'm certain the dev's have a better grasp of the numbers of the game.

 

This is more than likely a clarity issue. I wrote a lot and I tried to be as straight forward as possible, but I'm certain I missed a few beats somewhere. I meant all of our Burst Attacks are Instant casts. They are Burst, because they are Instant, not because of the damage it produces. Burst is a measure quantitative of time - not amount. Changing the time it takes for us to perform these attacks, changes the nature of our design - which is to Burst. At any rate, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'll revise that to be more specific as to what I am referring to.

 

It would indeed gap these players. This entire nerf is going to hap the players - in a way that is not condusive to good Class Balance.

 

With 1.11 - what will happen is... well... nothing. We're going to get boned out of the top tier skills in the tree, everyone will lose 2s of Stun Immunity, we'll lose the functionality of 2 Stuns while providing everyone with a free Escape, and our damage, for the most part, will stay roughly the same, except on Heavy Armor.

 

Should Heavy armor be effective against our barrage? Absolutely. But breaking 3-5 of our Skills to make that work isn't the right way to do it. You might as well redesign the whole thing. Reducing Crit is a much cleaner, less work intensive fix to the problem.

[akunamatata]

 

 

To your point Akuna. Please re-read your sentence :

 

 

 

You don't see anything wrong with that? So I should sit here and fight your every single time in a "1v1" situation and you be at full health and me at 30%? Are you kidding me? Guess what happens then? Vanish + repeat + death. I mean seriously. Is this what the game really needs?

 

 

ye i know the burst needs a look at but ye thats the problem , i think its not normal , and i think its not fair , but its all i got , give me some utility and i ll accept that my burst get toned down (is stupid , cause that gonna drive all classes to be the same) but remove the burst and give nothing is too much class KILL.

[Raice]

Great topic, granted I don't play Op, but I have every intention to do so sometime in the future. That said I would actually play it experience the story, so PVP is not really a major concern for me (I still do it but only to the point that it does not make me go too far past the recommended levels), however, replaying all the side quests that are shared between IA and SI again, that I'd rather avoid except with a few exceptions... hence at that point PVP becomes likely more common thing for me to do, with the gaps between quests.

 

 

The sad part is... this post doesn't even get into the PvE aspects - which is probably even more messed up than the PvP aspects. Someone else is going to have to cover that, though. Someone far more experienced in PvE will have to do it.

 

At any rate, the Smuggler Story is pretty righteous. I won't spoil anything, but suffice it to say that it picks up at the second Act!

[Steww]

Great! I'm glad we agree. You sir win the Reason and Logic Award! Congratulations! I'm being sincere when I say this....

 

Unfortunately nerfing my class in any shape or form isn't going to change those Surge Adrenals. And if you nerf my class based on the power of these Adrenals... it's not going to change how the Adrenals make other classes perform.

 

Did you really think that the Adrenals ONLY do weird, crazy, absurd things to Smuggler/Op? They produce the very same results on just about all other PvP spec Classes - WORSE even. Have you ever seen a Geared 50 Jugg who's hopped up on Adrenals and Relics perform an AoE 9k attack? No? Then you don't know what you're missing! It's AWESOME lol.

 

I'm not even kidding... it's pretty spectacular lol.

 

Your main burst also has talents and buffs from your class alone that can increase the crit chance 27%. The buff stacking is certainly an issue that needs to be addressed but BW has flat out stated they are seeing faster then anticipated kills with those 3 skills so this is the action they've taken. Sorry but I trust BW's mathematical breakdown more than I do your desperate number game to save your spec.

[Miokie]

Great post Raice and so true. And the fact that we have to be in stealth to use Shoot First/Hidden Strike in the first place and have to spec into the KD for those abilities. So, if they keep us from stealth then we can't use it.

 

Scrapper/Concealment are tactical trees. You have to be tactical when using these trees you can't just run into a group and expect to take out the group. It won't happen. You'll be stun locked (even if you use escape) and then dead.

 

And of course the dev's won't read it and take a better look at things (just like they did with ilum). And of course the dev's are only looking the PvP side of things and not the PvE.

 

Dev's please read the OP and really rethink what you are doing to this class and it's tree.

[CriseDX]

The sad part is... this post doesn't even get into the PvE aspects - which is probably even more messed up than the PvP aspects. Someone else is going to have to cover that, though. Someone far more experienced in PvE will have to do it.

 

At any rate, the Smuggler Story is pretty righteous. I won't spoil anything, but suffice it to say that it picks up at the second Act!

 

All I am concerned about is that classes will be "nerfed" because of PVP to the point that they are no longer viable in PVE... and yes I don't group much, but anyone can pull the argument that if you party with class X or Y you will be fine, although BioWare did promise us that the game could be mostly solo'ed (and played kind of like KoTOR 3) in regards to PVE.

 

Things like PVP are nice bonus for me at this point, but I hope they don't render PVE content frustrating because of it. Because unlike other MMO's PVE story is actually well executed and presented here, and I'd actually want to experience more than one of the stories before I commit to "end game", however, the more there are lvl50 end game players the more likely "nerfs" or buffs will be centric to them and PVE will be forgotten until the next PVE expansion.

Edited January 24, 2012 by CriseDX

[Zaranok]

Well deserved nerf

 

keep them coming for all of you

[BreakfastKing]

I really like your idea for swapping underdog to be a 15% crit chance across the board, rather than 30% to our main skills. Scrappers already have a hard time closing a kill after our initial burst, so if now you're telling me my initial burst won't make anywhere close to the same dent, I'm not a happy camper.

 

Now, I haven't gotten on the test server to play with the 1.1.1 changes at all, so it's merely speculation on my part. I haven't done any number crunching of my own. But! I did read the entire thread. Looks like some solid math there. It's pretty early in this game's life, so I don't know much about how prone the devs are to change things based on community feedback and with what speed, but I do hope somebody looks into this.

[Raice]

Your main burst also has talents and buffs from your class alone that can increase the crit chance 27%. The buff stacking is certainly an issue that needs to be addressed but BW has flat out stated they are seeing faster then anticipated kills with those 3 skills so this is the action they've taken. Sorry but I trust BW's mathematical breakdown more than I do your desperate number game to save your spec.

 

Did you miss the part where if you reduce the Critical Damage of those three attacks, then you inadvertently reduce the time in which they produce kills? My proposed solution works too - only better, because it isn't breaking my class.

 

Crit Chance is irrelevant. Why? Because the problem that exists, exists solely within our Burst Rotation. We have a skill: Underdog - that targets 3 of the most important attacks in our Burst Rotation (to be fair, one of them isn't even an attack... it just applies bonuses to the other 2, but whatever.) The nerf notes specifically said, "... faster than intended." Well... they don't kill JACK SQUAT if they don't Crit.

 

Plus, we have attacks that are not primarily part of our Burst Rotation, that require Critical Hits to do any sort of damage at all. On top of this, Sucker Punch (which is part of our rotation) is also our most important OUT of Burst Rotation attack. If it doesn't Crit... You think we have bad sustained damage now... wait til you start messing with IT.

[Raice]

I really like your idea for swapping underdog to be a 15% crit chance across the board, rather than 30% to our main skills. Scrappers already have a hard time closing a kill after our initial burst, so if now you're telling me my initial burst won't make anywhere close to the same dent, I'm not a happy camper.

 

Now, I haven't gotten on the test server to play with the 1.1.1 changes at all, so it's merely speculation on my part. I haven't done any number crunching of my own. But! I did read the entire thread. Looks like some solid math there. It's pretty early in this game's life, so I don't know much about how prone the devs are to change things based on community feedback and with what speed, but I do hope somebody looks into this.

 

Well... let me put this into perspective for you.

 

People have cried nerf on this class from day 1. The game has been live for 24 days, and they're already nerfing us to a critically broken degree. That's not just fast... that's "They're freaking out that they are about to lose the bulk of their customers because of this one class so they better do something ANYTHING right now" fast.

 

This means that the design team is emotionally compromised. Why? Because they are stressed out. They are stressed out that if they don't fix this, then they are going to be fired, which means they can't support their families. And I assure you, their jobs are riding on this, because this game MUST NOT FAIL!

 

I understand that when you are emotionally compromised... you are not thinking clearly. That's why half the people responding to this thread are going nuts that I would even remotely propose that nothing was wrong with the class. They are emotionally compromised and they cannot reason. This is pure physiological science in how your brain functions.

 

Notice - I've been pretty cool and collected this whole time. I'm the only one making sense. See how it works?

 

I understand the designers position. I'm trying to help. These people shutting this post down and the message it bears... are not helping. They can't. They are emotionally compromised.

[veridiis]

Really interesting post. I share your point of view.

 

+1 for sticky.

[BreakfastKing]

Well... let me put this into perspective for you.

 

People have cried nerf on this class from day 1. The game has been live for 24 days, and they're already nerfing us to a critically broken degree. That's not just fast... that's "They're freaking out that they are about to lose the bulk of their customers because of this one class so they better do something ANYTHING right now" fast.

 

This means that the design team is emotionally compromised. Why? Because they are stressed out. They are stressed out that if they don't fix this, then they are going to be fired, which means they can't support their families. And I assure you, their jobs are riding on this, because this game MUST NOT FAIL!

 

I understand that when you are emotionally compromised... you are not thinking clearly. That's why half the people responding to this thread are going nuts that I would even remotely propose that nothing was wrong with the class. They are emotionally compromised and they cannot reason. This is pure physiological science in how your brain functions.

 

Notice - I've been pretty cool and collected this whole time. I'm the only one making sense. See how it works?

 

I understand the designers position. I'm trying to help. These people shutting this post down and the message it bears... are not helping. They can't. They are emotionally compromised.

 

Yeah I've been thinking about that too. Though it obviously isn't ideal, I imagine we'll see these changes get pushed to live asap, but I bet we'll see them bounce back to something more along your suggestions sometime down the road as everyone realizes that it didn't fix us the way people wanted us to be fixed.

[Skemo]

Extremely well thought out and researched. Clearly written and objective, the single best post I've read on this issue. As a 50 Operative I hope Bioware reads this post and evaluates what you said seriously. Cheers!

[Raice]

Yeah I've been thinking about that too. Though it obviously isn't ideal, I imagine we'll see these changes get pushed to live asap, but I bet we'll see them bounce back to something more along your suggestions sometime down the road as everyone realizes that it didn't fix us the way people wanted us to be fixed.

 

I hope so too. Again... I never said that what I proposed was the best solution.

 

It was the better solution.

 

Someone out there (probably the devs) have a better idea about how this stuff works. I'm mostly doing this for the community. Smugglers and Ops need a voice of reason, and this thread is a place to help them gather their thoughts. I'm trying very hard to run the stupid out of here, though. It's actually... fun... but I can't do this all day. I have class in an hour and a half, and I need to clean up - all that jazz. Someone has to take over whilst daddy goes to work!

 

Anyway, I have no delusions that this thread will change anything. But... you know..... it just might. So far, no one has been able to refute what I've said (validly and legitimately), and only a few people have really made me think. Which is why I have so many additions at the end of the post.

 

The point is not that my proposition is that great. In the first place, it's not addressing the real issue. The point is - the real nerf is the wrong solution. I think what I wrote pretty much points that out in plain English.

 

Thank you for your input, sir!

[Putriss]

Raice,

I fully support your view of reducing the amount of critical damage we produce. It was too high, string 3-5 crits in a row and it was game over. The only thing I would add is to buff the base damage some of our oos abilities do. It's very frustrating to know that you are only effective coming out of stealth and 12 seconds after that (using the concealment spec).

 

I for one have found that not speccing into the knock down from hidden strike allows for people to not really notice you that often versus "oh snap I can't press forked lightning, what happened?"

[ManOSteal]

Well... let me put this into perspective for you.

 

People have cried nerf on this class from day 1. The game has been live for 24 days, and they're already nerfing us to a critically broken degree. That's not just fast... that's "They're freaking out that they are about to lose the bulk of their customers because of this one class so they better do something ANYTHING right now" fast.

 

This means that the design team is emotionally compromised. Why? Because they are stressed out. They are stressed out that if they don't fix this, then they are going to be fired, which means they can't support their families. And I assure you, their jobs are riding on this, because this game MUST NOT FAIL!

 

I understand that when you are emotionally compromised... you are not thinking clearly. That's why half the people responding to this thread are going nuts that I would even remotely propose that nothing was wrong with the class. They are emotionally compromised and they cannot reason. This is pure physiological science in how your brain functions.

 

Notice - I've been pretty cool and collected this whole time. I'm the only one making sense. See how it works?

 

I understand the designers position. I'm trying to help. These people shutting this post down and the message it bears... are not helping. They can't. They are emotionally compromised.

 

dude...you are not an objective third party to this discussion your facing the reality of a change to your class and it frightens you. Not even going to lie I didn't read your post almost at all except for the portions where it used red text. However you regularly refer to it as your own class, this points to an emotional investment with the class. Like another poster has said I will trust the designers of the game with decisions on how they want their world to run. Like they say they never intended for your class to do what it is doing so they changed it as they saw fit to fall in line with the numbers they were looking for. If I could say anything with a change this large you should get a free respec at least but other than that I'm going to say that I trust the devs to make the call this early on in the games life.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Sireene
rude/uninviting

[Lagmonster]

Did you miss the part where if you reduce the Critical Damage of those three attacks, then you inadvertently reduce the time in which they produce kills? My proposed solution works too - only better, because it isn't breaking my class.

 

Crit Chance is irrelevant. Why? Because the problem that exists, exists solely within our Burst Rotation. We have a skill: Underdog - that targets 3 of the most important attacks in our Burst Rotation (to be fair, one of them isn't even an attack... it just applies bonuses to the other 2, but whatever.) The nerf notes specifically said, "... faster than intended." Well... they don't kill JACK SQUAT if they don't Crit.

 

Plus, we have attacks that are not primarily part of our Burst Rotation, that require Critical Hits to do any sort of damage at all. On top of this, Sucker Punch (which is part of our rotation) is also our most important OUT of Burst Rotation attack. If it doesn't Crit... You think we have bad sustained damage now... wait til you start messing with IT.

 

I think your blanket nerf approach to MKB is worse then biowares planned nerfs for pve, which is saying something...lol...

 

Here I'll just copy and paste from the Main thread on this issue

 

"They don't give a crap

 

If they really cared about achieving some sort of balance.

 

They would untie the knockdown from hidden strike so its not an all in one ability. Turn it into an on use ability or something so its more skill based. Hidden strike shouldn't be the one trick pony it currently is.

 

Removing hidden strike off from "Meticulously Kept Blades" and raising hidden strikes base damage. (Meaning the ability will be more controlled in its scaling and hitting consistently. Rather then the out of control damage it can receive from the Crit damage bonus from MKB+surge rating+warzone buff etc)

 

"edit-and I use "out of control damage" lightly as it can no longer truely achieve the levels it was able to pre 1.1"

 

And then not touching acid blades armor pen buff so not killing our out of stealth damage. Maybe even raise all damaging abilities base damage that requires no stealth. To make up for the lower opening damage, allowing the more prolonged fights they desire."

 

But you see I'm coming at this from wanting to keep this spec in tacked for Pve, where you said yourself you don't care how it does in Pve. (Lethality is currently garbage for pve, I'm sorry if you think its a decent spec)

 

Anyways just throwing out ideas other then blanket nerfing just to appease the masses

Edited January 24, 2012 by Lagmonster

[BreakfastKing]

The point is not that my proposition is that great. In the first place, it's not addressing the real issue. The point is - the real nerf is the wrong solution. I think what I wrote pretty much points that out in plain English.

 

 

Yep. As a Scoundrels, we are the last people on the planet who you would expect to be happy about Scoundrels getting nerfed. That being said, I agree that they are going about it the wrong way.

 

In my opinion, ideally you don't touch the damage numbers but you put a cooldown on shoot first. We'll call it 30 seconds. That's where a lot of the crazy numbers come from. We can shoot first, vanish, and shoot first again with a back blast thrown in for good measure and crit like a champ. If you limit the opening salvo to just one round of shoot first, it gives the at least gives the enemy the chance to stand up and either run away or pop some cooldowns and try to fight you. Hell, even if it's 15 seconds, you'd be able to get another shot off later in the fight if you really wanted to pop your vanish, but it would be after the enemy gets a chance to respond.

 

THAT sounds like the way Scoundrels should be designed. It's a class about burst damage and players are going to do everything they can to increase their crit chance and value. Those numbers are sexy and exciting. People still want to see those really high crits, even people on the other end so the story of their success can be that much more interesting. But no class should be able to demolish another player before they get a chance to do anything. That's simply not fun.

[Raice]

I think your blanket nerf approach to MKB is worse then biowares planned nerfs for pve, which is saying something...lol...

 

Here I'll just copy and paste from the Main thread on this issue

 

"They don't give a crap

 

If they really cared about achieving some sort of balance.

 

They would untie the knockdown from hidden strike so its not an all in one ability. Turn it into an on use ability or something so its more skill based. Hidden strike shouldn't be the one trick pony it currently is.

 

Removing hidden strike off from "Meticulously Kept Blades" and raising hidden strikes base damage. (Meaning the ability will be more controlled in its scaling and hitting consistently. Rather then the out of control damage it can receive from the Crit damage bonus from MKB+surge rating+warzone buff etc)

 

"edit-and I use "out of control damage" lightly as it can no longer truely achieve the levels it was able to pre 1.1"

 

And then not touching acid blades armor pen buff so not killing our out of stealth damage. Maybe even raise all damaging abilities base damage that requires no stealth. To make up for the lower opening damage, allowing the more prolonged fights they desire."

 

But you see I'm coming at this from wanting to keep this spec in tacked for Pve, where you said yourself you don't care how it does in Pve. (Lethality is currently garbage for pve, I'm sorry if you think its a decent spec)

 

Anyways just throwing out ideas other then blanket nerfing just to appease the masses

 

Him too....

[BreakfastKing]

dude...you are not an objective third party to this discussion your facing the reality of a change to your class and it frightens you. Not even going to lie I didn't read your post almost at all except for the portions where it used red text. However you regularly refer to it as your own class, this points to an emotional investment with the class. Like another poster has said I will trust the designers of the game with decisions on how they want their world to run. Like they say they never intended for your class to do what it is doing so they changed it as they saw fit to fall in line with the numbers they were looking for. If I could say anything with a change this large you should get a free respec at least but other than that I'm going to say that I trust the devs to make the call this early on in the games life.

 

I don't think anyone is claiming to be objective here. Quite the opposite, it's our close connection to the changes proposed in 1.1.1 that make Scoundrel / Operative players the perfect people to be brainstorming here.

 

The point is, by posting calmly written, researched thoughts, it keeps the conversation civil enough to understand each other's points.

 

Maybe you should take a look through the OP. If you're looking for objectivity, you won't find it, but there's plenty of sound arguments.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Sireene
reply to edited post

[KidMcClaren]

I'm pretty amused as I recall all the threads of scoundrels/ops being OP and the most common response by said classes being of the L2P variety. So yeah... ... ... nah I won't say it.

 

(the flechette round acid blade nerf is probably going a bit far, but you guys will still have the best opening dmg in the game and without logs who really knows how your sustained dmg in pve will be, and I fully expect to still see scoundrel/ops atop the charts in wz's...unless you were all secretly baddies )

[MrZoot]

What this nerf will do to KO, is effectively allow the Scrapper/Concealer to spend 2 Skill Points on a Skill that gives their Target a free Mechanical Passive Escape, and a full Resolve - locking us out of using another Stun. If they Reduce the Resolve, it's even worse for us, since they will have an available, unused Escape for our second stun, and we are locked out of a third stun. Re-read this: 2 Stuns, 5.5s worth of Stun, produces a full Resolve - and there is nothing we can do about it - neither of these Stuns will work - which renders yet another Skill of ours useless. I don't care how mad you are about the Scapper/Concealer... you cannot agree that this is functional class balance.

IIRC, isn't resolve based off the number of seconds for a stun? If so, lowering the stun duration should lower this. At which point the argument about people escaping a 2nd or 3rd stun is no different than what any other class has to deal with.

 

If a Shadow knocks someone down, then stuns them, that's a full resolve bar. I'm not saying this is the best or worst nerf they could give smugglers/agents, but I don't understand the argument. You really feel you should be able to CC someone the entire duration of a fight?

[Cephim]

First of all, QQ.

 

If your broken amount of DPS and unreasonable stun/knockdown are being nerfed, they're being nerfed.

 

I still will have fun stabbing people with my (currently level 22) Operative. I can't currently 2-3-4 shot someone in a Warzone, but I can still kill them. Managing my mezz, my stun, and the opponents resolve I can always do a lot of damage. I can also run circles around any class, melee or ranged when they are not stunned. When they run away, OH LOOK I HAVE AN ASSAULT RIFLE TO USE TOO.

 

Killing someone in a few seconds is OP nonsense for a class that isn't even 100% melee.

 

Free advice: be less of an independent ops weapon and learn to help your team who probably hates you for whining about your solo kills and impending lack thereof.

[Lagmonster]

Him too....

 

First lets look at this logically

 

You want to nerf MKB into the ground, without buffing base damage of the abilities.

 

What does this accomplish? You’ll certainly nerf the burst damage, goal achieved.

But you’ll also gut the out of stealth damage and be applying no pressure. Can tell you right now healers would just laugh at you, and that’s what you care about is pvp right? Cause every healer I talk to that’s even half way decent agrees, if you survive the opening burst, the Op will never kill me unless he gets back in stealth to reopen.

 

Not to mention you'd destroy the spec even worse then the proposed 20% armor pen loss in Pve that bioware wants to put in.

 

It’s called finesse, you should learn about it.

 

We can agree that MKB is an issue with the crit damage bonus. But how about using said finesse, and nerfing the ability that’s currently on MKB that is the real issue. Without destroying pve viability by blanket nerfing all of MKB’s affected skills.

 

Anyways have fun at school, was an interesting read, don't get me wrong. I just don't agree with you and your logic behind the ideas.