Darkness nerf in 1.2

[nToxiK]

I think 300k damage 100k protection 75k healing is nuts. We should be able to do the protection and healing but the damage i can put out is nuts. I can get FL with 3 stacks of HD do 6k damage followed by 4k chain shock with popping cool downs and trinkets.

 

Yes a change that would make sense is making our tanking stats worth wile in PVP. Right now it only makes sense to use dps gear.

 

High damage doesn't also mean effective damage, especially in regards to PvP. The player may have a lot of damage from AoE but a low number of kills as well.

[Anelyn]

Sin / shadow tank specs will see changes most likely, personally I'd opt for all defensive CDs reduce damage dealt by 50% for tank specs for duration, so you actually serve the role of a tank and not a nigh-unkillable killing machine. That's why you picked tank role, to survive more, not to melt faces even without support because you put out similar numbers with greater defenses and self healing on top of that.

 

Give tanks more utility, rework defensive CDs, rework shielding, but they need to lose some damage (especially burst sequences).

[darkenwolf]

High damage doesn't also mean effective damage, especially in regards to PvP. The player may have a lot of damage from AoE but a low number of kills as well.

 

I find kills to death blows, in relation to damage done, to be a fairly decent (but not great - none of them are great) indicator.

 

I've seen people with 300k-400k damage done, 51 kills, and 6 death blows. That, to me, is highly inefficient damage - and a big reason why looking at damage done alone is a measure of nothing.

 

The closer your Kills to Death Blows ratio gets to 2:1, the more impressed I am with your performance, especially if Damage Done is 250k or less. It is far more likely you focused down specific targets rather than spam damaging everywhere and diluting your effectiveness for big numbers.

[the_coaltrain]

It's not the guys fault that you have extremely bad , terrible, horrible gear apparently.

 

Because by the way, even with that horrendous gear you must posess, I must tell you that you are probably exagerating. Nevertheless, you should gear up.

 

I can vouch for better numbers than that. On my server one partially geared BM shadow "stank" spec could destroy me as pyro. I'd say you're looking at roughly 390 expertise vs upper 500's maybe. With his CD's up, I saw him take 2% dmg and he took me for 100% and I too used CDs. His projects were hitting for 4.5k followed by the instant around 1.5 to 2.5k. This happened more than once in duels and plenty in WZ's. I just avoid him. I slow him when I can if he's holding the ball.

 

But ... mostly your statement lashing out at the other person is not necessarily valid. I have seen those numbers pretty decent gear vs better yes, but he margin was not that wide to validate hitting so hard in a tank spec which btw is what the complaint is all about. Maybe you sir are the horrible player that's not geared for not being able to see the numbers that the previous person is coming up with.

Edited March 14, 2012 by the_coaltrain

[LordbishopX]

High damage doesn't also mean effective damage, especially in regards to PvP. The player may have a lot of damage from AoE but a low number of kills as well.

 

The way the game works is stay alive and the more peeps you touch your kill count and damage skyrockets so AOE and dot spammers top the wz boards for the most part.

Edited March 14, 2012 by LordbishopX

[Mrdiguinn]

I find kills to death blows, in relation to damage done, to be a fairly decent (but not great - none of them are great) indicator.

 

I've seen people with 300k-400k damage done, 51 kills, and 6 death blows. That, to me, is highly inefficient damage - and a big reason why looking at damage done alone is a measure of nothing.

 

The closer your Kills to Death Blows ratio gets to 2:1, the more impressed I am with your performance, especially if Damage Done is 250k or less. It is far more likely you focused down specific targets rather than spam damaging everywhere and diluting your effectiveness for big numbers.

 

Oh that's smart theory right there.

 

Let's think...Focusing on big crowds, which is almost always where you are most useful...Putting all the effects we as Darkness assassins can OR bringing down solo players doing **** whatever on some random part of the map? Let's analyze it : Killing a small fry alone or recuding damage done AND doing moderate amount of damage WHILE guarding players AND using single player taunts on healers or such as.

 

Now, based on your theory I guess you would say killing solo players is inevitably and always the best option. To that I say - ........................................

 

Or let's pin out the BIGGEST of the arguements used by full 1vs1 dps classes - "I can kill so many healers that I'm another level of awesomeness" and to that I say - Mate...you can kill perhaps 1 distracted healer on a team where no one is guarding them, IF the healer isn't well geared and IF the healer is not on the position where he can focus on himself. All the more, maybe you bring down a healer but we all know that the big damage classes are the ones that everyone tabs and kills down on the blink of an eye that is on a hurry.

 

Maybe I'm partial and too big defender of trees such as Darkness with DPS gear but...That's because the tree is so much unfairly better than for example, deception.

[Mrdiguinn]

I can vouch for better numbers than that. On my server one partially geared BM shadow "stank" spec could destroy me as pyro. I'd say you're looking at roughly 390 expertise vs upper 500's maybe. With his CD's up, I saw him take 2% dmg and he took me for 100% and I too used CDs. His projects were hitting for 4.5k followed by the instant around 1.5 to 2.5k. This happened more than once in duels and plenty in WZ's. I just avoid him. I slow him when I can if he's holding the ball.

 

But ... mostly your statement lashing out at the other person is not necessarily valid. I have seen those numbers pretty decent gear vs better yes, but he margin was not that wide to validate hitting so hard in a tank spec which btw is what the complaint is all about. Maybe you sir are the horrible player that's not geared for not being able to see the numbers that the previous person is coming up with.

 

I'm sorry but I have a very hard time believing he would do so much damage on you if you poped that shield you have as Pyro. Plus, the lack of your damage was most likely a combo or first his shield followed by his 5 seconds resist to all tech damage. Maybe I'm wrong, but you probably got outplayed on the right time to pop your CD's or to stun him on his CD's.

[darkenwolf]

What I said has absolutely nothing to do with solo killing people out in the middle of nowhere. That is a bias you assumed and then injected into what I said so you could respond to it.

 

I advocate efficient, effective play. Killing random joe out in the middle of nowhere is just as inefficient as spam-damaging to inflate your numbers.

 

An assassin of any spec should be in the thick of things, or at least adjacent to the thick of things, as often as possible in order to properly leverage our 30% damage debuff on cooldown.

[Dudious]

lol...

 

Can we get a REAL source for this supposed nerf?

 

 

 

Just my 2 cents - its not the Darkness spec'ed assassin's DPS ppl should fear, bc we DONT do a lot of DPS....

 

What ppl are really ************ and crying about is our survivability. Since they actually fixed Harness Darkness and Wither to actually proc the stack appropriately - yes, i can beat anyone 1 on 1.

 

I have mostly cent. armor, w some champ gear, and a BM staff.

 

I know how to play it well, use my force pull and fry a noob up in Huttball.

 

 

 

I actually think this thread is a troll, bc of the "source" link lol. And the FACT that Darkness assassins in DPS gear just do not put out the damage that ppl think we do....

 

 

The only class that gives me trouble 1 v 1 is an Operative. They seem to just dump the dps on ppls faces....

 

 

 

 

And another thing, if we did soooooo much dps that we need to be nerfed....why is it i cannot kill a healer when he just heals himself?

 

If he tries to dps me down, he will lose.

 

Otherwise, all im doing is just harassing him to the point that he wont heal others as much. We cannot effectively kill, at will, a healer.....

 

 

 

Go nerf yo self!

 

This is going right to the top of my list of Worst posts I've ever seen on this forum.

[Mrdiguinn]

What I said has absolutely nothing to do with solo killing people out in the middle of nowhere. That is a bias you assumed and then injected into what I said so you could respond to it.

 

I advocate efficient, effective play. Killing random joe out in the middle of nowhere is just as inefficient as spam-damaging to inflate your numbers.

 

An assassin of any spec should be in the thick of things, or at least adjacent to the thick of things, as often as possible in order to properly leverage our 30% damage debuff on cooldown.

 

No, what you said is basically that you need kill blows to be proven efficient. Now mate...While I can see where you would base yourself to say that, I must say it's very vague such a theory. Why? Because "spam damagin" is not something that Darkness does on purpose because Discharge and Wither are not for us like "Death from above" is for Mercs. Wither is essential and vital to your rotation and survivability whilst Discharge is essential to our DPS and force dump.

 

Darkness assassins have a rather consistent output of damage, but we don't have huge bursts nor main "damage skills" except for Assassinate which makes it harder to go for the killing blow but that does not exclude our DPS factor from a fight, crowd or not.

 

So what I tried to show you is not something I injected, it's simply a way of seeing what you said. As to pretty much quote "If you get big damages but not big kill blows, you were not playing effectively".

[darkenwolf]

No, what you said is basically that you need kill blows to be proven efficient. Now mate...While I can see where you would base yourself to say that, I must say it's very vague such a theory. Why? Because "spam damagin" is not something that Darkness does on purpose because Discharge and Wither are not for us like "Death from above" is for Mercs. Wither is essential and vital to your rotation and survivability whilst Discharge is essential to our DPS and force dump.

 

Darkness assassins have a rather consistent output of damage, but we don't have huge bursts nor main "damage skills" except for Assassinate which makes it harder to go for the killing blow but that does not exclude our DPS factor from a fight, crowd or not.

 

So what I tried to show you is not something I injected, it's simply a way of seeing what you said. As to pretty much quote "If you get big damages but not big kill blows, you were not playing effectively".

 

That's not actually what I said, or what I meant, but I can see how you could infer that from a quick reading.

 

I was also speaking more generally, and not specifically at Darkness. I should've made that more clear.

 

I also made it clear that for me, personally, I feel that it is a better indicator or guidepost in judging effectiveness. But without combat logs, none of the indicators are worth a damn really - it's just the one I've found that approximates the best. It is also not a hard indicator, but relative to other factors in the fight and other numbers on the scoreboard. I in no way implied "big damage = ineffective" as an absolute. It's not, all the indicators are relative.

 

You can have high damage done and still be effective, certainly. Darkness is a good example of that. Any of them, however, are a poor indicator when taken alone.

 

Anyway, this is kind of off topic, feel free to PM me if you want to continue the discussion.

[Xancath]

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

― George Carlin

[Maestrodomus]

What's BS is that those of us actually wearing tank gear are gonna get our dps fukt because of this. I tank in my Rakata gear for the 25-26K health for protection and ball carrying.

 

Going from 140K damage in a WZ to 80K is going to suck balls and possibly jack up single target PVE threat. They should just make a PVP willpower cap while running dark charge.

[rodgambit]

WZ damage doesn't mean much. I've played madness and done crazy damage but it's nothing but dots mostly. I find my darkness or burst deception spec to be much more useful even though the numbers may not be as high.

 

You also have to consider that if you survive longer you will do more damage. If you play deception and die more often or spend more time force shrouding away to live then you spend less time dpsing.

 

I just don't think overall WZ damage is the best thing to look at and say "oh they must be OP".

 

Having played this game since last summer's beta, I will say that I grow less interested in the game as Bioware and players try to push players into "roles". The whole you picked a tank class so you have to suck at damage mentality I think hurts the game and makes it less interesting. I could have 20k+ hps and a really high shield / defense but I choose to wear offensive gear and use willpower boosters. I do more damage and have easily 5k less hps. There is still a trade off for choosing how to play your class. I just know the more Bioware limits player options the less appealing it becomes to me.

[aZShiftyZa]

Right now the way pvp sits though it's limiting options. For you to constantly perform well, there's really only 1 spec assassins can use for pvp. Sure deception and madness have their place but when force shroud and cloak are on cool down you're just a sitting duck. Darkness "IS" the PVP spec for assassin. Fact of the matter is you can't make everyone happy, for ever change that makes 100 people happy another 100 qq and say they're going to quit. It's just how it is. Assassins need to be looked at. Right now madness and deception's survivability is laughable at best leading way to people to go darkness in dmg gear. No one is force to go that spec but I challenge any good deception or madness assassin to beat any good darkness assassin...it's just not going to happen. We're pigeon holed into 1 spec at this point.

[Dierdrea]

Right now the way pvp sits though it's limiting options. For you to constantly perform well, there's really only 1 spec assassins can use for pvp. Sure deception and madness have their place but when force shroud and cloak are on cool down you're just a sitting duck. Darkness "IS" the PVP spec for assassin. Fact of the matter is you can't make everyone happy, for ever change that makes 100 people happy another 100 qq and say they're going to quit. It's just how it is. Assassins need to be looked at. Right now madness and deception's survivability is laughable at best leading way to people to go darkness in dmg gear. No one is force to go that spec but I challenge any good deception or madness assassin to beat any good darkness assassin...it's just not going to happen. We're pigeon holed into 1 spec at this point.

 

This is crazy talk. Tank spec will win in pvp against dps spec 1v1. Balancing a game around 1v1 is dumb. That is not going to change. But that doesn't mean decep or madness is unplayable or not favored. I play deception/madness solely and they are very useful specs. I don't fight tanks in pvp unless I have to. I go after healers and their dps and then lastly the tanks.

 

Deception is easy to play in pvp, tanks are very easy to play in pvp (this is probably why it is FOTM), madness gets harder to play if you want to do well.

 

Deception is burst heavy and if played right puts good pressure on targeted enemy healers. You can also stalk and kill people 1v1. Obviously don't open up on a tank...find the smart target ... Madness is dot oriented and if played correctly really messes with the other team, if you dot everyone on their side their healers will scramble and you can pick people off one by one. If I see a tank coming, I will do everything I can to stop/slow him: dot him up, whirlwind, electrocute, mind trap, creeping terror and force slow and then STAY away from him. I know I can't kill him fast, but I can certainly mess with him and kill other people to ensure we win the battle.

 

With good healers backing you up, team with dps spec sins will always do more damage than tank spec and wins more warzones. When I try I easily outdamage sin tanks. Warzone is a group effort and frankly no class is really that much better than others.

 

I honestly don't think darkness needs a nerf. If the player is good, he can make any class shine, nerfing darkness will not change anything. Maybe then people will cry about madness dots or deception burst being OP...

Edited March 14, 2012 by Dierdrea

[LordbishopX]

With good healers backing you up, team with dps spec sins will always do more damage than tank spec and wins more warzones. When I try I easily outdamage sin tanks. Warzone is a group effort and frankly no class is really that much better than others.

 

 

Anyone can pretty much be op with good healer support actually since I almost never have one madness and darkness have become my new specs. I am enjoying madness a bit more if done correctly you can burn peeps down pretty fast. A death field hitting for 3k+ out of stealth is <3 I need to get full BM and see what that baby can do.

[toshman]

If you read further in the interviews you would have noticed that their attention isn't to just limiting tank damage but to making tanks more tank-like too. If you are playing a tank to dps down things you hold onto improper expectations.

 

I haven't heard confirmation of changes to tank design in general but one angle to make sure they wear tank gear is the emphasis on Accuracy and some re-itemization in 1.2. Pure dps classes will likely hit harder through mitigated damage skills where shielding will be needed. The game currently has too much non-mitigated damage scaling flying about and everyone simply gearing toward it.

 

I have no flipping idea if Bioware's tweaks will truly change things but it certainly sounds like tanks are to become more tanky and less spanky. This will only annoy the players playing a tank as a dps class.

 

i'll cry because i like the build and its viable. we are still killable, but in general people are idiots.

 

they rolled 100 assn that were deception so they say oh here is a little asn i'll roll him to. only to get their face melted.

 

FYI my perf in wz is never AMAZING i have hit the 350k-400k mark but that requires for start to align for our spec. normally i sit at the 200-250k range. however my kill blows go through the roof.

 

assassinate helps tremendously with this.

 

but bottom line if they become more of a tank, we will just play a hybrid of some sort and create the flavor of the month. i just hope bioware is smart enough to adjust other trees for us at the same time.

[outsidermatt]

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

― George Carlin

 

I wonder, OP, do you feel pride at what you've accomplished with this thread, or has your success shaken your belief in humanity to the point that your pride has turned to dissappointment?

[Anelyn]

The point is that yes you should win most fights vs a single enemy dps, but not with 80-100% hp? Because that means not even 2 dps can take down a SOLO tank to capture an objective in this scenario, not to mention some dps are disfavored by line of sight and cast times, which makes it easy to completely avoid most of their damage.

 

You should be tanky no doubt here, but not to the point to leave a tank guarding each side turrets on alderan and zerg middle with 6 peeps because the enemy team can't afford to send more than 1-2 dps to either sides in order to keep middle.

 

Think about it peeps 1 healer and 1 shadow / sin tank with dps gear can hold a group of 4 indefinetly, taunts, guard, pull, heals, loads of CC etc. Why do other peeps play dps in pvp then when all there is to it resumes to tanks and healers?

[Khairu]

Darkness if fine. The damage you see is AoE's. If you want to see anything change its the survivability of the madness and deception trees. I feel the Darkness Assassin that uses dps gear is a very BALANCED class. Help deception and madness but leave darkness alone. Do the right thing BioWare and look else where with that nerfbat.

[MrSteak]

What, exactly, is the problem with taking tanking talents and supporting them with DPS gear? You lose the survivability you'd get if you were a pure tank and you raise your damage output. It's a tradeoff, like any other.

 

This is coming from an assassin in full tank gear, btw. My 1v1 fights against Darkness DPSers take a while and I'm at about a 1:1 k/d on average, and that's even with the gear gap.

[darkenwolf]

I play deception/madness solely and they are very useful specs. I don't fight tanks in pvp unless I have to. I go after healers and their dps and then lastly the tanks.

 

Interestingly and amusingly this is almost the opposite for me as full Madness spec.

 

Warrior/Knight is typically my easiest victim (Anni Mara being the easiest of the lot due to Shroud). Assassins/Shadows are next and can be tricky depending on how well they use Shroud to counter my DOTS (I actually have the most trouble with Deception, especially if Deflection isn't up). DPS Sages/Sorcs next. Healers I have trouble with if they are geared enough to be over 500 Expertise since there's no counter to Expertise heal bonus. If I burn every offensive CD/Pot and catch them when they're paying attention to healing others I can usually manage to burn them out - otherwise I can pressure them hard enough which takes their healing and my DPS out of the overall fight - for this reason I tend to leave them til last unless their AoE healing becomes too much of a liability. Under 500 they're easier targets, obviously.

 

I tend to avoid Smugglers/Agents because even in medium armor (2/2 Insulation) their stunlock rotation demolishes way too much of my health - obviously Snipers/Gunslingers aren't as bad but can still be more of a pain than I want to deal with. Taunt and focus on a different target.

[Faeldawn]

Right now the way pvp sits though it's limiting options. For you to constantly perform well, there's really only 1 spec assassins can use for pvp. Sure deception and madness have their place but when force shroud and cloak are on cool down you're just a sitting duck. Darkness "IS" the PVP spec for assassin. Fact of the matter is you can't make everyone happy, for ever change that makes 100 people happy another 100 qq and say they're going to quit. It's just how it is. Assassins need to be looked at. Right now madness and deception's survivability is laughable at best leading way to people to go darkness in dmg gear. No one is force to go that spec but I challenge any good deception or madness assassin to beat any good darkness assassin...it's just not going to happen. We're pigeon holed into 1 spec at this point.

 

I actually enjoy being Deception (true deception, surging charge, none of this hybrid malarky ) partly because i love the traditional assassin style but mainly because everyone expects me to be Darkness.

 

I catch healers out quite a bit and can make it work. Yes i know it's not as versatile as Darkness, but playing a spec people say is broken/underpowered/crap (which ofc it's not, it works just fine) appeals to me and makes it all the sweeter when it works

[Spyrit]

PvP exploit ruins PvE tanking, news at 11. oh wai.... this isn't anything new. Wrecking pve tanking threat and damage because gearing exploits is ridiculous and ruins game experince for pve tanks. Edited March 15, 2012 by Spyrit