Anyone notice the tooltip change on Raze?

[Nethershadow]

Actually yeah, they do. Some of the most fun builds ever come from hybrid builds. In WoW, a hybrid Affliction/Demonologist warlock was very fun to play. In Age of Conan, a hybrid Herald of Xotli was really awesome too. Etc, etc.

 

It's never bad to give people variety and choice. Instead of lack of variety and lack of choice. It also keeps opponents guessing. If they kill off hybrids, all the enemy has to do is look at what stance you're in, and they know what spec you are. Yeah, yeah, you can change stances in combat. But if they see you fighting, odds are you'll be in your preferred stance, and bingo, they have your build down to a T. And now they know precisely how to fight you. Now compare that to the present scenario. See a Sin with Dark Charge? What are the odds he's FULL Darkness? Actually, pretty low. Nobody expects it. And when I start nailing them with uninterruptible lightning thy go WHAAA?! But if these changes go live, they see Dark Charge, they know what's coming.

 

Anyway, my view is that forcing a specific stance for a specific spec is kinda dumb. As a warrior in WoW, stance dancing was basically required. Your interrupt only worked in Beserker stance, your Overpower only worked in Battle stance, etc., etc. If you were being focused, you popped Defensive stance and defensive cooldowns, etc., etc. Instead, Bioware decided to tie a stance to a tree, and for the most part you will be in that tree because it's usually not time-efficient to switch stances in combat. Makes the game more primitive than it has to be, and limits choices.

 

Well i actually do agree with you that i enjoy the hybrid alot more so myself, but i also find that there is no place for hybrid in pve and is situational for pvp. I works fine for lvling/questing.

 

But on the flipside in this game, i hate the idea of all the sin dps running around in DC so they can get the main benefits of a tank and still have great damage.

 

Even if they doubled the benefit of lightning/surging charge they still would not be used.

 

I can understand that you want it very unpredictable to what your fighting but i think that is taking it to far so as to not give players the ability to acurately identify what they are fighting and counter. I dont want dps having the benefit of a tank stance just for the sake of pulling one over on opponents, as it causes serious imbalance issues just to do so. If you want your dps to be more survivable then hybrid spec to get survival talents in darkness, but if you want the stance you have to sacrifice alot of damage. Vice versa if it makes sense.

 

Dont get me wrong, i want a certain versatility and i dont want 20 warriors at end game to all look and spec the same or one or two specs, but there is too much too where it becomes to much to identify and counter.

[jkcheng]

According to Sithwarrior.com, the 0/13/28 hybrid is the 2nd most highest dps, only slightly behind full Madness but still the more recommended one due to its flexibility. So saying Hybrids are not for PvE doesn't really apply here.

 

As for BW's stance on Hybrids, my guess is they right now want to steer everyone toward specific cookie cutter builds, leaving people with pretty much 3 builds to choose from, to make balancing easier. It'd be a lot easier to balance if they only have to deal with 3 possible builds rather than 6 if not more. They can tune a certain talent with effecting one build in mind rather than several builds.

[Sabbathius]

But on the flipside in this game, i hate the idea of all the sin dps running around in DC so they can get the main benefits of a tank and still have great damage.

 

You mean like most warriors are running Rage, and most Operatives are running Concealment and most Mercs are running Arsenal?

 

Every class has a strong spec. A spec that is most effective, with fewest shortcomings, and usually easier to handle, less prone to mistakes. People VERY quickly figure out what those builds are, and pretty soon you have 90% of a given class running around with a very specific spec.

 

This is called the "cookie cutter" spec. And this problem exists in EVERY MMO that has stupidly narrow talent trees with a lot of junk talents. Like WoW, AoC, SWTOR, etc. Where you don't see this problem is in games like EVE, where you are given an almost total flexibility and freedom of choice.

 

Only for now, we have quite a few choices. Quite a few hybrids. If the tooltips match the spells, most of the choices will be gone.

 

Instead of trying to FORCE people into 31-point builds, they should be cleaning up trees of junk talents. I bet you a half-eaten cookie that if the Devs right now took a snapshot of every Assassin's talent tree, 90% of people will have skipped the SAME talents. Those are JUNK talents. You know it, I know it, they know it. Everyone knows it. So why put them there, and then force us into a 31 pointer with stances?

 

Much better way would be to make ALL talents worthwhile. I want to have to gnaw my fingernails making excruciatingly difficult decisions on where to put talent points. I want viable hybrids. I want most people running around with unique specs, that they tailored for themselves to match their individual playstyle.

 

But I guess this kind of nonsense can't be allowed. It's 31 pointers or bust. Or so it seems.

 

As for BW's stance on Hybrids, my guess is they right now want to steer everyone toward specific cookie cutter builds, leaving people with pretty much 3 builds to choose from, to make balancing easier.

 

Before they look at talent trees, they need to take a long hard look at classes themselves. Take a Sorcerer, for example. The only class in the game with ZERO resource management. Imagine playing your Sin, but instead of 100 energy having 600 energy. Pretty OP, right? Well, that's what it's like for a Sorcerer any given day.

 

If they're worried about talent trees and balancing, they're WAY ahead of themselves. There's core issues that need fixing long before tweaking talents.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Sabbathius

[Angina]

According to Sithwarrior.com, the 0/13/28 hybrid is the 2nd most highest dps, only slightly behind full Madness but still the more recommended one due to its flexibility. So saying Hybrids are not for PvE doesn't really apply here.

 

Total conjecture without combat logs. There is no accurate way to prove any spec has better DPS than another.

[Bamzamma]

Yeeeeah...about that... http://auditorydepredation.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/1326231905169.jpg

 

Wow didn't invent those abilities, or the group/raid scenarios. Those were around way before wow. I'm talking about the dynamics behind the game. Comparing tooltips you could go back to some of the first rpgs long before wow was invented...

[Bamzamma]

Total conjecture without combat logs. There is no accurate way to prove any spec has better DPS than another.

 

Yes there is...

 

That's why they invented calculus.

[Skitlz]

Total conjecture without combat logs. There is no accurate way to prove any spec has better DPS than another.

 

Actually you can. Fraps the video compilate the numbers you see flying. Dmg/time = dps. Time the section of damage on a stand still target (duel) then do the math yourself. Tada you have DPS.

[Birks]

At least they should refund our skill points when they do thees changes.

The Raze Nerf almost killed my soloing, if it wasn't for my biochem medpacks id have a lot of trouble killing my class quest mobs when they are on the same level as me.

And no i don´t want to use khem val, he is ugly...

[Sabbathius]

At least they should refund our skill points when they do thees changes.

The Raze Nerf almost killed my soloing, if it wasn't for my biochem medpacks id have a lot of trouble killing my class quest mobs when they are on the same level as me.

And no i don´t want to use khem val, he is ugly...

 

They want you to respec Darkness and use Talos. You won't drop below 80% soloing anything.

 

And by the way, training costs reset after a week. Or rather, once it has been a week since your last free respec. The NPC might say "the price is 49983", but if it has been a week since your last free respec, when you actually do it it'll say the cost has been reset and it'll cost you 0 credits.

[Birks]

They want you to respec Darkness and use Talos. You won't drop below 80% soloing anything.

 

And by the way, training costs reset after a week. Or rather, once it has been a week since your last free respec. The NPC might say "the price is 49983", but if it has been a week since your last free respec, when you actually do it it'll say the cost has been reset and it'll cost you 0 credits.

 

I want to use Ashara!

well true but still, how hard can it be to reset the trees for us when do do big changes?

[Sabbathius]

I want to use Ashara!

well true but still, how hard can it be to reset the trees for us when do do big changes?

 

No point. Like I said, your costs reset to 0 once it's been a week since your last free respec.

 

I respecced to Madness last night (Thursday). On Feb 16th (next Thursday) it'll reset to 0 again. That is already WAY better than just about any MMO I've ever played. In WoW you got a dual spec, which by itself cost 1000g, but if you wanted to respec one of those, it cost you 50 gold every damn time.

 

This game can't get any easier, short of making everything free. Even battlemaster in this game is NOT about skill, but about how many WZs you did, even if 100% of them were losses.

Edited February 10, 2012 by Sabbathius

[kripl]

I don't even know where to start...

 

I've been playing a 23/0/18 build tank since the very beginning and loved every second of it, it offered more flexibility through DF, i never had problems losing adds, and whilst slightly sacrificing survivabilty, it raised my damage output significantly, plus it didn't force me into using harnessed darkness which basically bound me to the spot for 3 seconds every 5-10 seconds. So all in all, it was the perfect off tank build, at least for me.

 

Now i don't know why the tooltips changed, and i sincerely hope the changes will not go live, because my damage was far from extraordinary, hell, the only thing the hybrid build really offered over the full darkness one, was flexibilty, and a bit of a surprise factor regarding the CrD proccs.

 

The way things are going now, we don't even need the stances, as every tree will be bound to one and only one if they want to achieve anything, why not just get rid of them all together???

 

I really hope this was just a bad mistake, and i'll be able to use my fun, mediocre build, because the problem isn't in the Darkness tree using Madness talents, it's in the Madness tree using Dark Charge, so just leave the skills as they are and get rid of the stances, putting there benefits in the higher ranking talents of the effected tree, would not only solve the problem of trees being filled with **** talents that are absolutely worthless, but also let people play what they already enjoy, with which they don't hurt anyone!

 

P.S. Before you go fixing stuff like this, that really isn't inbalanced how about nerfing some classes that really need it. (Merc and Operative i'm looking at you guys!)

[Kjarista]

A general comment here:

 

I'm a casual player. I don't understand most of the technical discussion here, but I do understand that if we are going to be limited to filling trees, that's boring. I like building hybrids, and I WANT to be able to do that.

 

It's hard to see how limiting choices makes a better game.

[Ekemeister]

You've gotta be kidding me...forget about the hybrid nerf, this nerfs pure Madness too. Raze is great for soloing and silver elites/adds in raids because you just DF, shock and then thrash to get procs, nobody wastes a discharge on stuff like that and now you will have to. Because you know, Madness burst was too high. This is just plain stupid.

 

Wake the hell up Bioware, my rotation is already 7 keys not counting situational ones and with a positional melee requirement and BH is 1 and you are nerfing *me*? Well ok, technically BH rotation is 2 keys, they do occasionally cast heatseeker, sorry.

 

Edit: Oh and they added an ICD! So there goes the good crit scaling! Which is a boss dps nerf too. Because you know, Assassins were known to be the best boss dps around. Wow, just ----ing peachy.

 

3 if you're darkness sin. Tracer > Heatseeker > railshot.