grav round changes in 1.2?

[SweetOldBob]

Are the changes coming to grav round actually known, or is it just informed conjecture?

 

What will they be, or what are they anticipated to be?

 

I'm a noob, so maybe I've been blissfully ignorant, but as much as I enjoy playing my commando I don't feel like it's over-powered.

[Charlimit]

Seems like guesses at this point. It sounds more or less like they are trying to rework the Gunnery tree so that not everything is based around grav round and its procs/debuff/buff abilities

[Merc_Cmdr]

It seems to me that for them to not have everything revolve around grav round that the gunnery tree would have to be reworked pretty completely to stay viable. Or else it will just be ability A for proc, grav, grav, demo, FA, ability B for proc, etc.

 

I'd like to see Assault get some attention as well, right now it's completely outclassed by gunnery in every aspect of the game.

[greeblesnort]

except the ability to continue applying damage while mobile

[Gyronamics]

It seems to me that for them to not have everything revolve around grav round that the gunnery tree would have to be reworked pretty completely to stay viable. Or else it will just be ability A for proc, grav, grav, demo, FA, ability B for proc, etc.

 

I'd like to see Assault get some attention as well, right now it's completely outclassed by gunnery in every aspect of the game.

 

The only time Gunnery > Assault is when you have 8 commando Gunnery in one raid getting massive stacked buffs on their demo.

 

Fix that and we're back to Gunnery being just another DPS class.

[Turn-XGundam]

assault is 100times better on vanguard. but anyways the changes have me a lil worried, it could be a total nerf to make gunnery useless or buff to make us OP.

[Gyronamics]

Vanguard with anything has more utility and 1v1 pvp capability than a Commando and will do for the forseeable future.

 

I'm not going to gibber across a miriad of rumourmongering threads about what might be altered in anyones spec.

 

What's the point of spreading the ignorance?

[Mitt_Tailblazer]

Notes say they have increased activation time to 2 seconds and decreased damage by 10%.

[krossfade]

Commando

 

Concussion Charge now triggers snare visual effects on affected targets.

 

Charged Bolts has been rebalanced. It now costs 2 Energy Cells, has a 2-second activation time, and deals approximately 10% less damage.

 

Cure now costs 1 Energy Cell (down from 2).

 

Gunnery

 

Charged Barrier now provides 1% damage reduction per stack.

 

Curtain of Fire: the chance to trigger this effect has been increased significantly.

 

Demolition Round's damage output has been increased by approximately 10%.

 

Grav Round has been rebalanced. It now costs 2 Energy Cells, has a 2-second activation time, and deals approximately 10% less damage.

 

Muzzle Fluting no longer reduces Energy Cell costs. It now reduces the activation time of Charged Bolts and Grav Round by .5 seconds.

 

Tenacious Defense now reduces the cooldown of Concussion Charge by 2.5 seconds per point.

 

 

Combat Medic

 

Field Training now increases critical chance by 1% per point.

 

Field Triage now reduces the cost of Medical Probe by 1 (down from 2).

 

Kolto Bomb now affects up to 4 targets (up from 3), improving reliability in group and Operation situations.

 

Kolto Residue now increases all healing received by 3% (down from 5%).

 

Psych Aid no longer reduces the cost of Field Aid. It now causes Field Aid to heal the target for a small amount.

 

Supercharge Cells now restores 1 Energy Cell (down from 2) when used and increases all damage and healing dealt by 5% (down from 10%). The shield applied by Kolto Bomb now reduces damage taken by 5% (down from 10%).

 

Trauma Probe now costs 2 Energy Cells to activate.

 

 

Assault Specialist (Commando)

 

Ionic Accelerator now requires Plasma Cell to trigger. The chance to trigger this effect has been increased significantly but cannot trigger more than once every 6 seconds.

[HechulmeRadiant]

Isn't 10% like 300ish dmg, so not that big of a deal. I feel pretty bad for combat medics though, they got hit hard.

[Azdraik]

No it is more like 250 dmg non crit.

 

So gunnery is toast now, combat medic is done. Leaves assault it looks like.

[Lord_Karsk]

Have played gunnery to death, and i can say the AC is dead with 2.1.

Good luck anyone trying to survive against a good assassin that knows how to use interrupt.

[AzKnc]

I playe a medic/gunnery hybrid spec for pvp, with all those nerfs in both trees it will become absolutely worthless.

 

So.. what to do? Can't go full medic cause that's ALSO going to be worthless. Can't go full gunnery cause that's going to remain just as awful as it is now. Can't go full assault because that spec is just plain terrible for this ac.

 

Meanwhile, marauders/sentinels get utility and damage buffs they do NOT need.

 

Maybe i should roll one of those.

[Zekeiele]

I was hoping the "rebalancing" or whatever would help out level 50s and get rid of the low level 1 buttoners...no such luck VERY lazy fix from bioware now we get to "spam" FA another easily interrupted channeled ability...Not what I was hoping for at all. Edited March 17, 2012 by Zekeiele

[ArchangelLBC]

Since all I ever do is PVE, losing 300ish dmg for a crit grav round kinda sucks, but what really had me worried at first was the changes to Muzzle Fluting, till I realized that part of the rebalancing of grav round basically gave you the old effect for muzzle fluting, and now it just lowers the cast time back to what it always has been so at least there's not some super large cumulative effect on my ammo usage, and the increase in Curtain of Fire procs, and the increased damage from demo round should keep my damage about the same I suppose. Hard to say since we'll never have a combat log for things as they are now.

 

Charged barrier's nerf seems odd to me, but I'm kind of mad at the nerf to Field Training. I also find annoying unless the rebalance to diminishing returns on Crit gives me back my 3% >=O

 

 

I dunno, at first this seemed a massive nerf to all aspects of our game, but now not so much I guess. Just glad I don't PVP. If I did, then I think about now I'd start leveling another class =/

[Ganrax]

All this "nerf" is going to do is hurt the noobs that spam nothing but grav round. Demolition round, which is probably our heaviest hitting attack, is getting a 10% damage buff. Curtain of fire is getting a significant increase to procs meaning more full autos. The only downside to this patch is the 10% damage loss in Grav round which is more than made up for by the buffs to our other attacks. Grav round is just a filler to use when the good attacks are on cooldown or when we need to refresh gravity vortexes anyway.

[Zekeiele]

All this "nerf" is going to do is hurt the noobs that spam nothing but grav round. Demolition round, which is probably our heaviest hitting attack, is getting a 10% damage buff. Curtain of fire is getting a significant increase to procs meaning more full autos. The only downside to this patch is the 10% damage loss in Grav round which is more than made up for by the buffs to our other attacks. Grav round is just a filler to use when the good attacks are on cooldown or when we need to refresh gravity vortexes anyway.

 

True enough but on a competitive PVP server arsenal/gunnery are close to non existent since they have to be "protected" in a premade to be successful..I was hoping they would make some changes that reward better play but being proc reliant on a channeled skill does nothing for a soon to be very dead PVP tree...at least in rated warzones.

Edited March 17, 2012 by Zekeiele

[Tenryou]

Is it really a huge nerf to Gunnery? Grav Round and Charged Bolts now cost 3 cells with 1.5sec cast time. Muzzle Fluting reduces cost by 1, making it 2 cell cost. Grav Round/CB after 1.2 will cost 2 cells with 2sec cast time and 10% less dmg, with Muzzle Fluting reducing cast time by 0.5 secs. So after 1.2, Grav/CB will still be 2cells, 1.5 sec cast. Really, all they did was reduce Grav/CB dmg by 10%, which is what most people expected, and reduced barrier by 5%.

 

With the increased CoF proc and Full Auto fix, we get to use FA more. The only one I find disappointing is the Tenacious Defense fix. 5sec off of Concussive Charge means 5 more secs to wait until we can get those pesky melees off our carcasses.

 

Seems to me, Medics got the real nerfs here.

[AzKnc]

Who cares about grav round really, it's going to be roughly the same plus you'll get more full auto procs, probably you'll end up doing even more damage than before.. but that spec has always been **** regardless for pvp. The people who are really going to suffer are full medics and hybrid medics who actually played their chars using ALL their skills rather than just 2-3 buttons.

 

The ammo nerfs on healing spells are ATROCIOUS, pvping with it is going to be total garbage. Someone at bioware needs to learn his/her job, they've taken the class and nerfed every single aspect of it: healing valuse decreased on most spells, ammo costs increased, ammo regain mechanics nerfed. What. The ****. Why nerfing ALL those factors at the same time? It makes absolutely no sense.

 

Oh lol btw, trauma probe 2 ammo? That **** better be healing at the very least for 1k per tick WITH trauma in order to be taken seriously.

Edited March 17, 2012 by AzKnc

[DarkSideTOR]

The damage reduction to Grav Round doesn't worry me too much since FA will now fire faster, that stupid animation where you lower the cannon to fire it took way too long, and you will use FA more since Curtain of Fire will will supposedly proc more.

 

What worries me for PVE is how fast we'll run out of ammo, our overall dps will go down 'cause we'll be forced to weave in more hammer shots to keep ammo regen up, effectively lowering our dps.

 

That brings me to the biggest nerf hits to our class, PVP. We were too damn easy to kill already. Now Charged Barrier will provide 5% damage reduction instead of 10%. With 650+ expertise, 5x stacks of CB I am still getting hit pretty hard by any dps class, and that's just 1 on 1. Concussion Charge now has it's cd increased so we now have to wait longer for our only reliable "oh s**t" button.

 

 

We'll still be vulnerable to interrupts, which every class but troopers have, AND now we'll have ammo regen problems in PVP. THAT is the biggest nerf of all, our ammo regen. We NEED to spam Grav Round to proc CoF and build stacks of CB, only now the other classes will have an even easier time interrupting us and we'll either burn our ammo super fast trying to burst that healer down, or we'll die even faster by taking longer to build stacks of CB. Did we get anything in return to compensate for this disadvantage? nope. 10% damage increase to Demo Round is not enough to make up for the dps loss of Grav Round. Buffing an ability with a 15s cd does nothing to help us. We'll be long dead before the cd on DR resets.

 

It's as though they don't want the Gunnery tree to be a viable PVP spec at all. Ok fine, does that mean that the Assault tree is getting some buffs to make up for the Gunnery nerfs? nope. Now we'll have two mediocre trees to choose from yay?

The classes I most often see topping damage on the scoreboards in WZs are Sentinels, Slingers, dps Sages, then Troopers. Now we'll probably drop down even farther.

 

So to recap for Gunnery pvp, we have less survivability, worse ammo regen, longer cast times, less damage, still no interrupts, longer cd on knockbacks, BUT we have a 10% damage increase on our 15s cd ability, and the CHANCE to proc more CoF. Yay? better hope that RNG roll makes the ONE Demo Round you'll be able to fire in a fight crit or you'll get torn to shreds by Shadows/Marauders, or interrupted like crazy by just about any other class.

[Gyronamics]

No it is more like 250 dmg non crit.

 

So gunnery is toast now, combat medic is done. Leaves assault it looks like.

 

Talking garbage.

 

Charged Bolts losing 10% means that buffed on a burning target after this change... it's still worse than an unbuffed CB before the change.

 

CB is needed for heavy burst.

[Iram]

Between the changes to the core Grav Round ability (+0.5s cast, -1 ammo cost) and Barrel Fluting (-0.5s cast, +1 ammo cost), effectively it's a 10% damage nerf.

 

I want to see the exact change for Curtian of Fire, but more Full Auto sounds like a good thing.

 

On my commando (mixed Tier2 + Tier3 gear):

Full Audio

- costs 2 ammo over three seconds

- deals 1139.5 DPS

 

Grav Round

- cost 2 ammo over 1.5 seconds

- deals 1108.66 DPS (1663 dmg / 1.5 sec)

 

So these changes should make us more energy efficient (more Full Auto), have a marginal effect on damage if any. We'll be using less nerfed Grav Round, more Full Auto (which already does better DPS than un-nerfed Grav Round), and Heat Seeker got a buff.

 

The reduced cost of Field Aid is good; it's good to un-stun Huttball ball carriers, and no one likes stuns.

 

If I'm reading this right (please correct me), I don't like the effective increase on the Concussion Charge cooldown from 15 to 20 seconds in PvP gear, but I can see the need. Throws and pulls in Huttball were getting pretty crazy.

[Watcherzero]

It depends, if the damage is rebalanced around the new casting time without the 0.5s cast time reduction, i.e. the same dps then with the talent change its actually a minor increase in dps.

[Nitewolfe]

The way i see it is good commando's that have been using a correct rotation will notice little to no nerf.

The bad commando's that only spammed grav round will notice a large nerf.

 

I see it as a good thing!

[ArchangelLBC]

What worries me for PVE is how fast we'll run out of ammo, our overall dps will go down 'cause we'll be forced to weave in more hammer shots to keep ammo regen up, effectively lowering our dps.

 

I don't really see the big hit to our ammo regen. Full Auto was always better at actually giving back ammo, and now there's going to be more of it, and they reduced to cost of grav round to make up for the change to muzzle fluting. That change is actually more confusing to me since they effectively did nothing except give non gunnery commandos cheaper charged bolts with longer cast times.

 

 

I've been using a "proper" rotation since I was able to properly spec full auto to make it not suck, but lets not kid ourselves. Grav round has been, and will continue to be, our bread and butter and a 10% nerf to that is pretty major unless curtain of fire is going to proc reliably every 6 seconds, but remember we still need to be spamming grav round for charged barrel for the buff to HiB.