IA Operative Issues - A compilation of issues with all three talent trees.

[Drayborn]

Strongly agree with item #5 on medicine tree. The viability of HOTs is a large part UI. I.E. there is not a good way to monitor the time left on party members KP stacks. Icon is super tiny and I use max sized raid frames.

 

Same can be said for the cleanse (toxin scan?). Not really a good way to quickly see has some sort for removable malaise. Luckily there aren't many.

[lepyr]

Hi All,

 

Lethality

 

Wow, where to begin. I feel like this tree was designed for snipers and not much thought was given to how this would synergize with operatives.

 

1. It is a ranged oriented spec that relies on TA generation to execute attacks, but has no mechanism to generate TA at range (other than speccing fairly high up the medicine tree at the expense of DPS).

 

2. Ranges are wonky. Some abilities are at 30, others at 10 and melee rang is required to prep long range attacks.

 

3. DPS in PvP is subpar compared to almost every other class. Difficult to tell if it is subpar for PvE due to lack of parsers.

 

 

You really couldn't be more wrong here. I do more damage as lethality in PVP than any concealment could hope to. And that is pre-nerf. I typically range between 450-550k at lvl 50 in really good matches against lots of champion/battlemaster opponents. It's an incredibly fun spec to play and the uniqueness is one of it's coolest qualities. Having some abilities ranged is awesome. You DOT everyone at max range, and then close on a target and burn them with a quickness. Commenting on something you have no idea about is pretty lame, and is the reason that this forum is full of awful advice that most people, unfortunately, blindly follow.

[Smokt]

Hit the nail on the head OP.

Operatives are the worst class to bring to a PVE Operation. We are a bad healer AND we are melee DPS. Really, this class is now the laughingstock of the game.

[Obbu]

Will comment on the medic points

 

Medicine

 

1. Certain healing talents are buggy and do not work:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=220909

 

Would also provide some love to RN if they fixed this.

 

 

2. Our group AOE heal (and the mercs) is far inferior JC/SI's, (although mercs/troopers have a pretty good case for them being bad as well). It costs to much, heals for too little over too long a period of time and is difficult to use except in very specific circumstances.

 

If they capped the healing at 4 on the inq heal, it would suck compared to ours - they need to walk the line between that and it being too strong.

 

2 sec cast and area target are two big downsides: would a cap of 8 make us less envious?

 

I think that the only thing RN needs is to cost less energy: the moment i got my 2pc pve bonus, i started using it a lot more.

 

25 energy base would be great.

 

3. We lack mobility and viable escape mechanisms in PvP. Eg: our vanish makes us entirely useless for 10 seconds, it makes more sense to just die and run back, while we do have "on the move heals" in the form of hots and SP, they are overall pretty weak, requiring us to sacrifice mobility and hardcast if we want to put out decent healing numbers. We have no knockback or sprint to help escape.

 

Very true, our stealth is meant to offset our lack of force user acrobatics, but the healing output/input debuff on vanish prevents us from using it.

 

Talents such as evasive imperative are of very little benefit: 20% move speed buff for 3 seconds as a tier4 talent is extremely lacking.

 

 

4. Some End game guilds are taking JC's/SI's over other healer's, especially IA's

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...=219491&page=5

 

 

Really a symptom of other problems, than a problem in and of itself.

 

 

5. Our hot's and diagnostic scan are overall very weak. Hot's are energy intensive for relatively mediocre healing over a long time frame unless kept rolling, which is very difficult to do with the current UI interface.

 

 

Green square on people i have hotted, purple square on people i can decurse - please!

 

DS is not a healing tool - it is a regen tool: though it could stand to benefit from a chance to proc TA each tick.

 

6. All our end game gear is itemized for aclarity, but really only have one heal ability where it is useful and even that is questionable due to our energy mechanic.

 

Useful on injection, infusion (meh) and diagnostic scan.

 

Very beneficial in pvp and encounters with movement - nowhere near as bad as people make out.

 

7. The Operative Healing tree is devoid of the synergy present in the other healers;

see Supercharged Gas and Force Bending as examples. Our heals do not generate any secondary benefits, only straight healing(other than TA generation from Kolto probe); see Proactive Armor and Resurgence talent. Nor is our healing output significantly stronger to balance their absence.

 

Cant argue that one - i think that there needs to be some kind of incentive/reward for continual hot rolling on a target.

 

 

8. The damage debuff talent (Sedatives) for Sleep Dart causes enemies to aggro and chase you down after the effect wears off irrespective of stealth This makes the sleep dart ineffective for stealthing rapidly through an area and in most situations not as good for PvE as the untalented ability.

 

 

Yes - irritating.

 

Sedatives DOES make solo grinding as healbot spec a lot easier, but the aggro thing is highly punitive, meaning spending the talent points is a sidegrade at best.

[sang]

Useful on injection, infusion (meh) and diagnostic scan.

 

Very beneficial in pvp and encounters with movement - nowhere near as bad as people make out.

 

While I agree with you, some alacrity is certainly good, how much do you have? Ideally, I would love to be able to sit at 40%crit, 80% surge, and 1.7s cast time for injection, but I'm not sure that is possible with our inability to get top tier (58 rating/25) crit/surge enhancements. (Yes, I know they can drop in HM/Nightmare operations, but that is kinda random.)

[Amiable]

You really couldn't be more wrong here. I do more damage as lethality in PVP than any concealment could hope to. And that is pre-nerf. I typically range between 450-550k at lvl 50 in really good matches against lots of champion/battlemaster opponents. It's an incredibly fun spec to play and the uniqueness is one of it's coolest qualities. Having some abilities ranged is awesome. You DOT everyone at max range, and then close on a target and burn them with a quickness. Commenting on something you have no idea about is pretty lame, and is the reason that this forum is full of awful advice that most people, unfortunately, blindly follow.

 

 

You are one of very few folks who make this argument. the general consensus is lethality is lackluster, i admit I am relying on other folks experiences mainly, as I was only lethality specced very briefly.

 

Could you expand a bit about how you do this? What is your gear priority, attack rotation etc? maybe put up a couple of SS of your matches as an example?

Edited January 27, 2012 by Amiable

[matthewcreech]

Some people were mentioning that the Evasive Imperative Talent (in the Medicine tree) does not always grant the listed speed bonus on activation. I am going to test this tonight when I respec out of Medical Therapy.

 

EDIT: I tested this talent over the weekend, and there was no discernible speed increase at 10% or 20%. I do not think it is working (or the speed bump is so minimal that it makes no difference).

Edited January 30, 2012 by matthewcreech

[matthewcreech]

Corrosive Microbes talent has no effect.

[Amiable]

Thanks Matt, added those 2 to the front page.

[lepyr]

You are one of very few folks who make this argument. the general consensus is lethality is lackluster, i admit I am relying on other folks experiences mainly, as I was only lethality specced very briefly.

 

Could you expand a bit about how you do this? What is your gear priority, attack rotation etc? maybe put up a couple of SS of your matches as an example?

 

The reason few people make that argument (or argue any truly different POV) is that most people prefer to parrot what everyone else is saying rather than think for themselves, which leads to a mob mentality where certain ideas (not necessarily the correct ones) rise to the top and stay there because no one wants to go against the herd. I, on the other hand, think people are for the most part incredibly stupid so I always do my own analysis and judge things based on whatever empirical evidence I can gather.

 

But I digress. Let me actually answer your questions. Gearing is pretty simple, accuracy to cap followed by a balance of crit/surge/power. I try to keep my crit between 35-40% self-buffed and surge around 70-75%. After that I maximize power. This may not be absolutely perfect, but it is close enough to what is best for me to feel like I am maximizing my itemization.

 

Attack rotation is based purely on DPCT of our abilities. So you cast Orb Strike if there is a cluster, then Corrosive Grenade on CD if you can hit > 1 person with it, otherwise you prioritize getting Corrosive Dart on everyone in sight. Once your DOTs are rolling you pick a target and cast weakening blast and cull. You shiv when needed for cull, but often times you will get "free" TA from DOTs getting killing blows and you can go right up to someone and double cull. The burst from cull cull shiv cull is pretty insane, and most people (even/especially tanks) will drop in a few seconds.

 

I am at work so I don't have any SS's of my warzones ATM, but if that's what it takes to prove that I'm not a scrub and get people to listen I will happily post a few. I'll do it in a brand new post, too - so watch for it. I am not exaggerating when I say this though, no one has *ever* beat my damage as a lethality spec'd operative. Not once. I am almost always double the next person's damage, except in rare circumstances where a really good sorcerer is playing too (they have a spec that is very comparable to lethality). In that case I am usually 15-25% higher than the sorcerer. For whatever reason I have never seen a sniper come close. They probably have energy issues because they have no cost reduction to Corr Dart. I cannot overemphasive how important it is to keep Corr Dart on every single person in range at all times. It has a massive DPCT, beaten only by multi-target Corr Grenades or well-placed Orbital Strikes.

[Wulffion]

Copy/Paste from the "corrosive microbes" thread:

 

Corrosive microbes definitely works for corrosive dart rank 9. Maybe its just bugged for the lower ranks?

 

Another issue might be the proc rate: had only 37 procs in 306 ticks (12,1%).

Edited January 30, 2012 by Wulffion

[AJCleaver]

For healing tree. The nanotech cloud uses way too much energy for its small output.

[lepyr]

For healing tree. The nanotech cloud uses way too much energy for its small output.

 

Nanotech is an Op healer's highest HPCT and HPE ability by a huge margin when kept running on multiple targets. This statement is absurd.

[BelphagorAD]

For Lethality & TA at range-

 

Would it be too little to have Corrosive Grenade grant TA on use? (every 13.5 sec)

 

Or something like 20% chance per target hit to grant TA- so you could get 0 or 2 per use.

 

A ranged TA builder (that is not several points in the healing tree) would be nice.

[Spatzimaus]

Very true, our stealth is meant to offset our lack of force user acrobatics, but the healing output/input debuff on vanish prevents us from using it.

 

Shadows/Assassins have, in the first tier of their stealth-centric talent trees, a talent that boosts their force regeneration by 25%/50% while in stealth AND for a few seconds after leaving stealth. So for them, it's actually useful to stealth before a fight starts, even when they're not using some stealth-based opener. Op healers, not so much; I was in an FP group last night as a Conceal Op, where one of my teammates was a Medicine Op. I'd stealth before every fight, of course, but he didn't ever stealth; there just wasn't a point to it as he'd gain nothing and he was better off spending his time stacking KPs.

 

So the real question is, if being able to stealth is one of the big advantages of being an Operative, then why isn't there a motivation for healing/lethality Ops to do so for more than just an emergency escape? How about this: add a talent, high up in the Medicine tree, that says that while in stealth and for 6 seconds after leaving stealth, your maximum Energy is 5/10 higher than normal. This'd let you effectively store up a little extra for the start of fights, making it harder to drop below 60% energy in burst healing.

 

(Each tree should have something like this, I think, something that modifies the base Stealth ability. Conceal folks could have a talent that makes their stealth not break on damage for the first 6 seconds after entering stealth, to help with Cloaking Screen uses after dealing their burst, while Lethality folks could have something like "leaving stealth gives you a point of Tactical Advantage" to help them start their attack rotations at range.)

 

Cant argue that one - i think that there needs to be some kind of incentive/reward for continual hot rolling on a target.

 

I've suggested this one before: make Patient Studies (the talent that gives DS energy on crits) do the same to Kolto Probe as well. So if your KP crits a pulse on a target (and only if it's actually healing damage when it does so), you'd get energy back. Depending on whether the enemy is using AoEs, you might actually gain more energy in the process of rolling your HoTs than you spent placing them, which'd free up a lot of energy to spam the more expensive heals.

 

--------------

As to the OP, I'd comment on the Conceal points, but those have been talked to death. I'd be perfectly okay with a nerf to our bursts if the devs gave us some sustained DPS to compensate, but we're a one-note class that's having that one note destroyed. If they just turned one of our knife attacks into a DoT effect, it'd reduce our burst while giving us better sustained damage; for instance, imagine if Shiv did 90% of its current damage, but the Lethality talent that currently adds 5/10% to Shiv damage now added a DoT effect for 10%/20% over ~6 seconds. (Not only would this be good for damage, but as a DoT it'd do all the things other DoTs do: Lacerate's TA refund, Culling, Cull, etc.)

[Lynchpin-Redux]

50 Op Medic here, I leveled up as full medic. I heal HMs and Valor 42 so far, no raids yet.

 

I struggle wanting to reroll Sorc, but am holding out for Love. This would make me happy:

 

1) Kolto Probe HoT should only stack once, and be the same amount of healing as a 2 stack currently.

 

2) Give us a reason to use Kolto Infusion. Example: Puts a 30 second armor buff on the target and adds an additonal 6-8 second HoT componant. Perhaps as a high level medic talent so that DPS specs don't abuse it.

 

3) Triple Diagnostic Scan healing and make crits restore 5 energy instead of 2 when talented

 

4) Increase the radius of Regen Nanotech to 30 yards and reduce it to 20 energy

 

5) Give us a true oh sh** button like: Imperial Superiority - Increases the maximum health of all party members by 15-20% for 15 seconds, 2 min cd

 

6) Make the evasion speed boost talent work and make it 100% speed increase. Still slower than sorc 150%

 

Unfortunately I feel like Bioware has far too much on its plate to make significant changes to classes right now. We might see love in 6 months.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Lynchpin-Redux

[NeoTaintedAngel]

Great posts, I just hope someone is reading.

 

... More to the point, I hope Operatives are the first class which actually gets an overhaul.

[Carthil]

Argh! After 45 levels of healing-specific talents I was ready to add some utility to my build with the last 5 points. I decided on Sedatives, which seemed like a nice way to assist in PvE when I'm one of the primary CCs. Little did I realize it would destroy my ability to solo content!

 

After 45 levels of sleep dart/stealth tactics, suddenly I'm chain pulling huge groups of mobs. It took me about four deaths before I realized it was the debuff that was causing mobs from miles away to come to me and bring all their buddies they saw on the way.

 

This absolutely must be fixed!! I know it's been brought up on this forum before but it's beyond horrible!!

[Dcayd]

My thoughts-

 

Mobility/Gap Closer:

It would be nice, but I rarely feel I really need one. If we do get one I'd rather see a slight increase in range on Sever Tendon. Make in equal to most knockbacks (20m iirc).

 

I honestly don't see how they could add one though. Sins and Warriors both have gap closers that make sense for their respective classes. Operatives aren't force users though. We don't have rocket packs or anything like that. If we really need something when we are stuck at range I would much rather see some sort of ranged ability aside from frag on a 6 sec cd. Something like giving overload shot a 20-30m range. It's not a hard hitting ability, so it's not like we can sit at range and just spam it and out dps or kill actual ranged classes, but it would give us some dmg while out of melee range. It's spammable, but it eats energy fast too. Just to make it clear: it would/should still be a low priority ability, but would give us something decent to use while frag is on cd and we still have distance to close on our targets after knockbacks, aoe out of stealth, etc.

 

 

Acid Blade:

This one bothers me for 2 reasons. Firstly, the nerf affects our dmg to high armor targets by quite a bit, but low armor targets still take a ton of dmg.

 

Secondly, and more importantly to me, it's completely pointless that it's an active ability. It only affects 2 abilities, why not just make it a passive affect for them instead of something we "have to apply." Save me 1 keybind that I have to spam constantly. It's current implementation just feels like a button to push for the sake of having another button to push. If the energy cost is a big deal then just add it two the abilities.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Dcayd

[Dulark]

About the acid blade:

 

its a clear sign of bad design. why? redundancy!

You have a talent in concealment that reduces Backstabs energy cost to 0, and another talent that increases its energy cost by 4... why is this not 1 talent? oh i know because the operatives trees are nothing but filler because Bioware CBA to actually make a class out of the smuggler/agent.

<Acid Blade> Reduces the cost of Backstab by 6 energy, additionally Backstab applies a small dot to the target when used and you gain 50% armorpenetration for 15 seconds.

 

I dont think a class/spec should be built around an opener, its not fun, its stupid.

 

 

 

Other issues:

 

no dps cooldowns.

no enemy repositioning abilities (EVERY other class except marauder has one and marauder make up for it with the highest mobility in the game, charge > most attacks increase movement speed > partysprint > vanishsprint) so good luck in Hutball and stopping that 20k hp Powertech thats just walking up to your goal line.

no mobility literally the smallest effective range of any class in the game (4m Shiv range).

No survivability literally the least survivable class in the game

 

 

 

 

Redesign/overhaul idea.

Scrap the idea of an operative being melee, its stupid. We carry an assault carbine and heavy weapons - grenades, orbital strike etc. were basically commander Shepard if he were a Nazi, our smuggler counterparts carry shotguns.

Build us around a 20m effective range with stealth and snares and a 35m pull ability.

The pull ability could be a Magnetic Lasso for smugglers and Garrote Wire Pull for operatives and have the force choke animation play as we pull our target.

 

Replace shiv with Overload shot, replace backstab with Barrage or something.

Remove positional requirements, maybe have abilities that currently havethese instead deal more damage from behind but not have it a prerequisite that you stand behind the target.

Then you dont have to give us mobility, with a 20m buffer to work with. (you can still have melee openers)

If you gave us more kiting tools then the class wouldnt even need survivability increases.

You would have a class that plays very similar to the current operative with the difference that its effective range is just big enough to kite melee using snares, roots etc and to keep in range of ranged classes, using snares and roots etc.

Add to this out of combat increased mobility (tied to stealth) and youd have a class that not only would be fun, it would be unique and im pretty sure people would flock to.

 

Also add more out of stealth utility openers like a stun or a defensive one.

 

EDIT: It would also play the way Bioware advertised the agent to play, approaching every encounter differently and having the right tools for different encounters.

 

 

EDIT2: As for Healers

 

Biggest issue i think Operative healers have is that

1.) no burst healing.

2.) no utility

3.) probably too low values on heals in general.

 

One way to fix this add a new ability, gained at like lvl 38 or so (similar to static shield for sorceres) have it be short duration 4 seconds or so instant cast with high energy cost, have it tick for more, the more hots a target has on them.

OR SOMETHING! Im no healer that was just off the top of my head.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Dulark

[Shroudveil]

 

 

EDIT2: As for Healers

 

Biggest issue i think Operative healers have is that

1.) no burst healing.

2.) no utility

3.) probably too low values on heals in general.

 

One way to fix this add a new ability, gained at like lvl 38 or so (similar to static shield for sorceres) have it be short duration 4 seconds or so instant cast with high energy cost, have it tick for more, the more hots a target has on them.

OR SOMETHING! Im no healer that was just off the top of my head.

 

this wont work afaik.

 

the problem of operative healers are the infusion, ds and rn. also our total lack of utility and healing cds.

 

a single high burst heal that we could not use either way since we dont have a way to get our energy up fast when low except a 2min cd wont save anyone, and even if it does save him it will cripple our healing due to low energy.

 

a buff to ds's energy regeneration through crits is needed. buffing up its hps to match the mercs free heal is also needed (theirs cost 1 gcd for heal=bonus healing, ours is a 3sec channel for heal=bonus healing)

a buff to infusion to make up for its huge cost (20energy+TA) is also needed. this could be in the form of a unique buff which will also add some much needed utility to the operative healer

rn needs straight up more hps and to not have a target limit, or at least make the taret limit 8 people instead of 4.

healing cds could be added to the healing tree in place of broken or worthless talents (med shield giving healing dealt instead of received, sap made out of stealth and in combat, infiltrator useable as a targeted vanish to save dpsers that over aggro and etc)

[Dulark]

As i said im not a healer, but i think that the issues Operatives are having atleast from a damage position cannot be fixed with simple bandaid numbers fixes.

 

As another post here described their experience as an operative healer where a sith sorc healer knocked him off his ledge, bursthealed the ballcarrier to full and then pulled him up to him while the operative could just watch in awe. or how Merc healers can push away and slow down all surrounding enemies if things get bad + have shields and self-heal they can chain to survive being focused.

 

What does the operative have? an aoe stealth that im pretty sure you can use on ball carrier, in pve, i guess you can use it with very good teamwork to sneak up on a cap point on alderaan but thats about it.

 

It feels like this class was seriously, seriously rushed and is in dire need of an overhaul similar to what happend to hunters back in vanilla wow.

 

Whats even maddening tho is the complete and utter contempt other classes seem to have for the operative/scoundrel aswell. The "show numbers or your trolling" is very much akin to "you mad bro?" because without an actual damage meter/healing meter which bioware has yet to allow us or provide us with there are no such numbers unless you take several hours to draw up a graph and do the math attached.

Frankly i even saw one of these graphs and even then people said "yea well you have to take into account...."

 

 

Anyway i rerolled because i still had 2 months of playtime. (had to buy a pre-paid card at launch)

Edited February 14, 2012 by Dulark

[Amiable]

Made a few updates on the fornt page to reflect how the patch played out.

 

On a side note, since the patch I have seen a precipitous decrease in Concealment Ops (and ops/scoundrels in general), I know at least 3 or 4 who have re-rolled or quit in frustration.

[Dulark]

Last sunday at about 22:00 i wrote "Operative 50" there were 4 people to my server.

then i wrote "Assassin 50" - 26

Then i wrote "Sorcerer 50" - 32

 

 

Edit: i just realized that operatives wont be getting any buffs to healing.

 

why? because the talents dont even work properly atm, not even BW can make gamechanges to a game where all the parts arent even in place.

 

feel bad for ops healers.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Dulark

[Dcayd]

Redesign/overhaul idea.

Scrap the idea of an operative being melee, its stupid. We carry an assault carbine and heavy weapons - grenades, orbital strike etc. were basically commander Shepard if he were a Nazi, our smuggler counterparts carry shotguns.

Build us around a 20m effective range with stealth and snares and a 35m pull ability.

The pull ability could be a Magnetic Lasso for smugglers and Garrote Wire Pull for operatives and have the force choke animation play as we pull our target.

 

Replace shiv with Overload shot, replace backstab with Barrage or something.

Remove positional requirements, maybe have abilities that currently havethese instead deal more damage from behind but not have it a prerequisite that you stand behind the target.

Then you dont have to give us mobility, with a 20m buffer to work with. (you can still have melee openers)

If you gave us more kiting tools then the class wouldnt even need survivability increases.

You would have a class that plays very similar to the current operative with the difference that its effective range is just big enough to kite melee using snares, roots etc and to keep in range of ranged classes, using snares and roots etc.

Add to this out of combat increased mobility (tied to stealth) and youd have a class that not only would be fun, it would be unique and im pretty sure people would flock to.

 

Also add more out of stealth utility openers like a stun or a defensive one.

 

 

I agree a lot with most of this. I love using my knife, but it does seem kind of strange that we are a melee oriented role in a universe filled with blasters and force users. If anything we should be like SEALs or Snake from MSG. Sneaky, skilled in cqb, but effective in short range combat as well.

 

Also, stealth shouldn't have a speed penalty. It's not like we're moving around sneakily, it's an actually cloaking field we use.