1.2 Commando changes explained

[Rigsta]

EDIT 27/03/2012: Updated Mortar Volley and Supercharge Cells comments.

 

First, the summary.

 

Commando changes amount to:

 

• Crit reduced by 3%.
  
• Mortar volley: AE nerfed from 8 meters to 5. Quite annoyed about this - the large area allowed for some creative uses. Sage's Forcequake still has an 8 meter range, btw. (Thanks to Hologramx for pointing this out).
  
• Mortar Volley animation improved, does damage sooner now.
  
• Charged Bolts/Grav Round (bread-and-butter nukes): Damage nerfed by 10%, much more without the muzzle fluting skill in the gunnery tree.
  
• Full Auto: Animation changed, now starts doing damage sooner.
  
• Field Aid ammo cost reduced from 2 to 1.
  

 

Combat Medic: Buffs nerfed, supercharge cells nerfed, ammo efficiency nerfed, AE healing now hits 4 targets instead of 3. It still isn't comparable to Sage/inquis heals.

 

Gunnery: Overall DPS buff thanks to more reliable Curtain of Fire procs and 10% demolition round damage buff, survivability nerfed.

 

Assault Specialist: Ammo efficiency and DPS nerfed (I'm trying to get some numbers on this).

 

Now, the summary summary:

 

Combat Medic: Still not a Sage.

Gunnery: The only viable PvE spec (borderline, depends on numbers).

Assault Specialist: Only viable in PvP (borderline, depends on numbers).

 

 

The mind boggles. I have no idea why BW think it's ok to pidgeonhole the skill trees like this. My one remaining hope is that Assault Specialist's DoTs somehow even the DPS of the two trees. We'll find out once 1.2 hits thanks to combat logs and practice dummies.

 

And now, a detailed breakdown of the changes.

 

Trooper

 

General

• Full Auto's attack animation now begins more quickly to improve reactiveness and faction balance. Late, but welcome nonetheless.
  
• Mortar Volley's animation has been updated. In addition, it now has a 5-meter radius to bring its range in line with other Trooper Area of Effect abilities and it now begins its damage sooner after activation. AE size reduction is unwelcome, the large area allowed for some nice group destrution and other tactics (eg. firing "around corners" when someone tries to LoS you) with a little creative targetting. Animation speed correction is welcome, although late. NOTE : Sage's Forcequake is still 8 metres. Lightsaber or fail, apparantly. Thanks Bioware.
  

Commando

• Concussion Charge now triggers snare visual effects on affected targets. No comment.
  
• Charged Bolts has been rebalanced. It now costs 2 Energy Cells, has a 2-second activation time, and deals approximately 10% less damage. This is a big nerf if you don't have the "muzzle fluting" skill from the gunnery tree, but only a 10% nerf if you do have it.
  
• Cure now costs 1 Energy Cell (down from 2). I'm assuming this is a typo and they meant Field Aid. This is actually a nice change, Field Aid can be a big help to all commandos regardless of spec.
  

Gunnery

• Charged Barrier now provides 1% damage reduction per stack. 50% nerf. The 2 points spent in this can now safely be spent somewhere else imo.
  
• Curtain of Fire: the chance to trigger this effect has been increased significantly. Straight-up buff. Nice.
  
• Demolition Round's damage output has been increased by approximately 10%. Straight-up buff. Nice.
  
• Grav Round has been rebalanced. It now costs 2 Energy Cells, has a 2-second activation time, and deals approximately 10% less damage. Same as Charged Bolts, effectively just a 10% damage nerf.
  
• Muzzle Fluting no longer reduces Energy Cell costs. It now reduces the activation time of Charged Bolts and Grav Round by .5 seconds. See above notes on charged Bolts and Grav Round.
  
• Tenacious Defense now reduces the cooldown of Concussion Charge by 2.5 seconds per point. Nerf. However the cooldown on this ability will still be quite low with the PvP gear set bonus.
  

Combat Medic

• Field Training now increases critical chance by 1% per point. 3% crit nerf to commandos of all specs.
  
• Field Triage now reduces the cost of Medical Probe by 1 (down from 2). Ammo efficiency nerf.
  
• Kolto Bomb now affects up to 4 targets (up from 3), improving reliability in group and Operation situations. Well I guess we should be grateful for small mercies. It's still not as good as Salvation by a long way.
  
• Kolto Residue now increases all healing received by 3% (down from 5%). Before: "just barely useful." Now: "almost useful."
  
• Psych Aid no longer reduces the cost of Field Aid. It now causes Field Aid to heal the target for a small amount. Actually a buff since Field Aid now costs 1 ammo by default.
  
• 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%). One ability, 3 nerfs. Wow. From a healing perspective, it's barely worth using now unless for some reason you want to spam AMP. Keep in mind that combat support cell provides a 3% damage & healing bonus when fully charged anyway. New name suggestion: Moderately Overclocked Cells.
  
• Trauma Probe now costs 2 Energy Cells to activate. Used to be free. WTH?
  

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. PvE nerf. This one will take some explaining:
  - In PvE, IO evens the playing field with Gunnery by providing ammo regeneration and extra DPS with one proc.
  - Gunnery is now much more ammo efficient in PvE as its ammo-recharge proc is only on a 3-second timer, while Assault Spec's is on a 6-second timer.
  - In practice the number of procs will probably not change too much as it tends to average out over a long fight. I'll have more to say on this after I've seen the new % chance to trigger IO. It had better be 100%.
  

 

Also, commando is still the only DPS/healer to lack both a combat res and an interrupt.

Edited March 27, 2012 by Rigsta

[RAAAAAAAAAAGE]

Thank you for this well laid out post, this will help quite a lot in respeccing my skill points i think when the patch comes

[Aaoogaa]

Thanks for putting the commando changes on the forum. This will not longer be my class when 1.2 hits. I really enjoyed playing the trooper all through beta and launch. I put a great deal of time and effort into getting him geared up and learning to play with all the different abilities. Trooper healing was fun and dynamic compared to sages and it took some learning to be able to keep up with easymode, or to stay alive with a combination of kiting, healing, and los in warzones since we had no escape mechanic. Now it just does not seem worth logging in.

[kinglanevothree]

So they finally fixed and buffed full auto, I loved full auto and now I can finally use it. They traded the 10% damage of charged bolts/grav round for a 10% increase for demo round. But what am I saying I am going to play Diablo 3 anyway

[dejavy]

Commando assault remains weak doting trash with more often HIB and weak channel. But yes, now we can kite melee and HIB em from time to time.

 

Gunnery has no changes actually, BW changed the talent giving us cast time reduction instead of cost reduction as it was. NO CHANGING. We still have 1.5sec cast time for gravs and 2 ammo cost. Don't see the reason of the changes.

 

It seems to me that BW wants us to pay one more month of staying to find out that nothing has been actually changed lol. When we realize it, TOR would get enough money from us to restore the spent finances on it.

[Hologramx]

Don't get fooled.

 

Full Auto were supposed to be instant as a channeled skill. It already took TOO LONG to get it fixed.

Mortar Volley is likewise. It was a 2 second cast AoE which has a 8 meter range equivalent to the sage's AoE which is almost instant and has no cool down at all. It merely got to a bit close, and now with 5 meter range, it is actually useless in most of the AoE situations, not to mention the 1 minute CD. You can hardly grab anything for a 5 meter range.

 

Why sage has AoE with 8 meter range and we only have 5 meter range for AoE?

There is no reasonable explanation for this except discrimination.

 

They use the word Keep In Line with Commando's useless ability, instead of Keep In Line with Sage's abilities ... sort of fraud to me.

Edited March 19, 2012 by Hologramx

[DNAstriker]

Well, this kinda puts the icing on the cake.

 

Commando WAS the best class for me. I'm played just about every class to about 25 or 30 and was going to concentrate all my efforts on the Commando because...well...I just loved the class.

 

NOW, with all the nerfs and changes, it'll be unplayable with my play style. And no, I didn't just spam Grav round. I have it nicely placed within my rotation. I barily used Full Auto at all.

 

So, the breakdown for me is:

 

-- My heaviest DPS skill got nerfed.

-- A skill I don't use was made better.

-- From what I read our buffs got nerfed.

-- Other skills I use takes longer to cast.

-- I really don't need to go on.

 

Oh, and they gave Demolition an increase. Thats at the TOP of the tree! So we can't even use that until our 40's. What do we do until then???? Absolutely nothing. Don't see how we can get there with this trash!

 

Anyway, I WAS excited about this class and was keeping me in the game. However, just like my wife, two sons, and several others at work who are Devastated by this class nerf, we hope to see our swtor friends on EQ2 or Rift when their subs run out also.

 

It was fun.

[uzairzaidi]

Love these changes! Will seperate the good Commando's from the bad!

[VincentWolf]

I don't want in any way to mean that those nerfs are terrible, undeserved and unneeded, they are really bad, but all those people saying "omg how would I level to 50 now QQ" don't deserve any rights to say anything at all. This is just pure crap, only endgame matters, not your leveling process...

And endgame is now ruined. Thanks. Rerolling.

[Akash]

Even though I've only got 3 levels to go before 50 on my commando, I've had real trouble closing the gap since 1.2 notes released.

[ArchangelLBC]

Well, this kinda puts the icing on the cake.

 

Commando WAS the best class for me. I'm played just about every class to about 25 or 30 and was going to concentrate all my efforts on the Commando because...well...I just loved the class.

 

NOW, with all the nerfs and changes, it'll be unplayable with my play style. And no, I didn't just spam Grav round. I have it nicely placed within my rotation. I barily used Full Auto at all.

 

So, the breakdown for me is:

 

-- My heaviest DPS skill got nerfed.

-- A skill I don't use was made better.

-- From what I read our buffs got nerfed.

-- Other skills I use takes longer to cast.

-- I really don't need to go on.

 

Oh, and they gave Demolition an increase. Thats at the TOP of the tree! So we can't even use that until our 40's. What do we do until then???? Absolutely nothing. Don't see how we can get there with this trash!

 

Anyway, I WAS excited about this class and was keeping me in the game. However, just like my wife, two sons, and several others at work who are Devastated by this class nerf, we hope to see our swtor friends on EQ2 or Rift when their subs run out also.

 

It was fun.

 

 

Umm the difference between Full Auto in the early levels and Full Auto after you've had it fully specced out are night and day, so complaining about not using it now is really immaterial.

 

As for leveling, uh dude its leveling. Leveling isn't hard, and I highly doubt these changes will have a large impact on the game to 50. As someone else said, its the endgame that really matters.

 

Also the buffs that were nerfed weren't really to gunnery commando except field training in the CM tree.

[Shakydvs]

I love full auto, except when you get LoS'd all the time. TBH the nerf is actually small and really shouldnt change anything in wz's etc. instead of doing 250k dmg you'll end up doing.... wait for it..... 250k dmg due to the buffs we get also. FA will proc more often and does awesome dmg plus regens ammo when it crits and demo charge will do 10% more dmg...

 

the people who should be upset should be the medic. the only real buff they had was kolto bomb from 3-4 people.... very ordinary. should of been 5 imo but thats me.

[Trajal]

Hmm.

 

Not sure that this is a good way to encourage commando healers... I understand some of it but a lot of this is far far too much.

 

Will stick with my combat medic and see how it looks, I admit that I am guilty of pvp damage reduction stacking, which inevitably is why they reduced one of those from 10% to 5%, but that alone won't kill the game.

 

Trauma probe should probably have cost 1 not 2, but I admit that it was OP to be free, especially in pvp where you could just put it without penalty on the ball handler in Huttball everytime someone passed lol.

 

Bomb doesn't heal enough but I tend to spam it as I run, now it'll help those around me a bit more, so no bad thing.

 

Supercharge cells will take a bit of adjustment, only restoring 1 and a general nerf isn't going to win any arguments.

 

I don't really see why they felt the need to lay down such a broad nerfbat, but whilst some of it isn't nice, it shouldn't take too much of an adaption of playstyle to compensate. Yes this will make us comparatively weaker than we were, but then I do think we were a little too unkillable before to be fair.

 

That said, most of this won't have a lot of an effect to those who play combat medic properly anyway - will still be a seriously annoying class to have to deal with, just slightly less so.

[UglyGreenTrog]

Hmm.

 

Not sure that this is a good way to encourage commando healers... I understand some of it but a lot of this is far far too much.

 

Will stick with my combat medic and see how it looks, I admit that I am guilty of pvp damage reduction stacking, which inevitably is why they reduced one of those from 10% to 5%, but that alone won't kill the game.

 

Trauma probe should probably have cost 1 not 2, but I admit that it was OP to be free, especially in pvp where you could just put it without penalty on the ball handler in Huttball everytime someone passed lol.

 

Bomb doesn't heal enough but I tend to spam it as I run, now it'll help those around me a bit more, so no bad thing.

 

Supercharge cells will take a bit of adjustment, only restoring 1 and a general nerf isn't going to win any arguments.

 

I don't really see why they felt the need to lay down such a broad nerfbat, but whilst some of it isn't nice, it shouldn't take too much of an adaption of playstyle to compensate. Yes this will make us comparatively weaker than we were, but then I do think we were a little too unkillable before to be fair.

 

That said, most of this won't have a lot of an effect to those who play combat medic properly anyway - will still be a seriously annoying class to have to deal with, just slightly less so.

 

 

Most of your reasons were PVP based which provides scant consolation for a mainly PVE medic, you have all the running round during fights and switching targets and the like which act as a natural amount of time for your ammo to regen, in PVE this is gonna hit combat medics pretty hard especially in even getting a group for HMs and Ops, we have no combat rez and our aoe healing is still a total joke and now we won't be able to sustain healing without dropping below 6 ammo and losing our regen.

[Trajal]

Most of your reasons were PVP based which provides scant consolation for a mainly PVE medic, you have all the running round during fights and switching targets and the like which act as a natural amount of time for your ammo to regen, in PVE this is gonna hit combat medics pretty hard especially in even getting a group for HMs and Ops, we have no combat rez and our aoe healing is still a total joke and now we won't be able to sustain healing without dropping below 6 ammo and losing our regen.

 

You're quite right, I really haven't gotten heavily into pve yet (although apparently my time will come soon as my guild are keen for me to join them in ops and HM eek).

 

Was discussing based on PVP only, I should have made that clear, sorry!

 

What is the sum result for PVE ? Extra hammershot heals mid fight to allow for the slower regen?

[Eillack]

I love how my mmain nad most favorite class is getting so nerfed...why wasn't this done before launch so that this wouldn't be so dissapointing...hell in the freaking walkthrough vids the past few years, when [they] talked about the Trooper class, [they] talked about the huge amount of firepower they were supposed to do....

[Rigsta]

Don't get fooled.

...

Why sage has AoE with 8 meter range and we only have 5 meter range for AoE?

There is no reasonable explanation for this except discrimination.

...

 

Thank you for pointing this out. Added to opening post.

 

I hate hyperbole, but I'll say this anyway: Why not just call the game Sorc vs. Sage and have done with it?

 

[stuff about full auto]

 

Gunnery will be fine, but that's my problem with Commando 1.2 - I don't like gunnery, I like assault spec. And assault spec's ability to trigger instant High Impact Bolts and regenerate ammo is being nerfed. If the new trigger rate for Ionic Accelerator is 100% then it might still be usable in PvE.

 

The only real buff they had was kolto bomb from 3-4 people.... very ordinary. should of been 5 imo but thats me.

 

Or unlimited. Like, you know, Salvation. Granted its instant nature is an advtantage but it's just so weak.

Edited March 27, 2012 by Rigsta

[LillyWhiteS]

Hmm.

 

Trauma probe should probably have cost 1 not 2, but I admit that it was OP to be free, especially in pvp where you could just put it without penalty on the ball handler in Huttball everytime someone passed lol.

 

Bomb doesn't heal enough but I tend to spam it as I run, now it'll help those around me a bit more, so no bad thing.

 

Supercharge cells will take a bit of adjustment, only restoring 1 and a general nerf isn't going to win any arguments.

 

I don't really see why they felt the need to lay down such a broad nerfbat, .

 

lol I can't believe you think Trauma Prob was op, the only reason it was worth using a skill point on and to actually move it around was that it was free, it's weak.

 

I moved it around depending upon who was in the thick of the battle and moved it to myself when needed, but now that it has a couple ammo cost it's useless as far as that goes, wouldn't even waste a skill point on it now being just a PvP player.

 

To justify the ammo cost, it needed the heal amount substantially increased and the amount of people you can cast it on, so you can at least cast it on others before the WZ starts and just on yourself later on as the ammo is better spent elsewhere.

 

The 'buff' to our aoe heal shows BW were reluctant to do so, it's the smallest and laziest buff they could have done, just adding the one and not making it smart and for that massive buff they nerfed other stuff linked to our aoe heal, those nerfs outweigh the 'buff' and I would rather it had been left as it was myself in that case.

 

As far as Supercharge goes, Supercharge lemon more like it now...

 

We were not even the strongest healer, now that gap is going to be even bigger and hardly op...

Edited March 27, 2012 by LillyWhiteS

[Keinhoran]

Love these changes! Will seperate the good Commando's from the bad!

 

 

Please explain how will that happen? Propably most of the people (even those that made creative posts about changes in commando) will go play sentinel/juggers or even worse stop becasue Bioware ignored the constructive ( and keeps ignoring) posts !

[Alecz]

I would like to add one note about the modification to GravRound and DemoRound. The nerf to one and buff to the other should add some much needed Burst Damage to the class.

 

At first, I thought this was a big nerf (as a hybrid it will be to me) but then I started looking at the numbers. With 5 grav vortex's on someone, we are actually getting about 12.5% increase to the damage of DemoRound.

[Ganrax]

Please explain how will that happen? Propably most of the people (even those that made creative posts about changes in commando) will go play sentinel/juggers or even worse stop becasue Bioware ignored the constructive ( and keeps ignoring) posts !

 

Speaking purely from a DPS standpoint, because a lot of people don't know how to play Commando at the moment to begin with and see a nerf to grav round damage as a major nerf to us while our 2 best attacks are actually getting buffs. Grav round has never been our best attack, it is just what we use when everything else is on cooldown, to keep our stack of gravity vortexes on our target, or to buff our good attacks.

 

I actually see it as a damage buff. First of all my heaviest hitting attack, demolition round, is getting a BUFF in damage. Mine already hit for 3-5k(as opposed to grav round hitting for 2-3k) with just my gravity vortexes on my target, adding another 10% damage will be very nice. Second, with more curtain of fire procs that means more full autos(damage buffed ones at that). This is perfect because full auto is great for ammo management and does more damage than grav round so being able to use less grav rounds and more full auto will be a nice buff for us. The better ammo management is also a dps increase because we'll have to use less hammer shots to keep our ammo up high enough to regen at a good rate.

 

The only nerfs for gunnery DPS in this(which is already the main PvE DPS spec anyway) would be the 10% damage nerf to grav round which sucks but the buffs definitely make up for it, and the radius decrease to mortar volley which I just can't understand the reasoning behind it if they want to keep it on a 1 minute cooldown.

[ImariKurumi]

Im utterly shocked with the huge amounts of nerfs. Commando class in general has the most amount of nerfs compared to other classes.

 

I can slightly accept the nerf to gunnery, but the most hard hitting is the medic spec. The nerfs are just, too huge. Really i rather not get that stupid 1 extra target healing in Kolto Bomb if it means my other talents are not nerfed. We already have the degenerating mechanic to our ammo system and this nerf will be a extreme hard hitter.

 

Is bioware trying to say Commandos are not meant to be main healers? Only sage and Scoundrels are? So we are only off-heals? Then why give us a Full dedicated Healing tree in our talent system? The way i see it in pvp and pve, offheals are not needed, rather more of a burden. Its better to have fully 1 dps 1 main heals than 2 offheals that do average dps. I really dont know what to make of this.

Edited March 29, 2012 by ImariKurumi

[Keinhoran]

Speaking purely from a DPS standpoint, because a lot of people don't know how to play Commando at the moment to begin with and see a nerf to grav round damage as a major nerf to us while our 2 best attacks are actually getting buffs. Grav round has never been our best attack, it is just what we use when everything else is on cooldown, to keep our stack of gravity vortexes on our target, or to buff our good attacks.

 

I actually see it as a damage buff. First of all my heaviest hitting attack, demolition round, is getting a BUFF in damage. Mine already hit for 3-5k(as opposed to grav round hitting for 2-3k) with just my gravity vortexes on my target, adding another 10% damage will be very nice. Second, with more curtain of fire procs that means more full autos(damage buffed ones at that). This is perfect because full auto is great for ammo management and does more damage than grav round so being able to use less grav rounds and more full auto will be a nice buff for us. The better ammo management is also a dps increase because we'll have to use less hammer shots to keep our ammo up high enough to regen at a good rate.

 

The only nerfs for gunnery DPS in this(which is already the main PvE DPS spec anyway) would be the 10% damage nerf to grav round which sucks but the buffs definitely make up for it, and the radius decrease to mortar volley which I just can't understand the reasoning behind it if they want to keep it on a 1 minute cooldown.

 

 

 

You are noticing the changes in Gunnery only. In a competitive PvP warzone due to our lack of escaping tools and no kiting ability in gunnery we might be a liability for our group.

So our asault tree might have been a good tree for not staying stationery. Unfortunately they are reducing the damage in Assault with the 10% damage reduction on CBs and the internal cooldown on HiB activation. And not only that but they are destroying our ammo management (for assault) with the change in muzzle.

The assault tree of vanguard is way more effective due to the buffs it can get for elemental damage from other trees and the synergy with vanguard abilities. And it is more efective due to the fact that vaguard has more insta cast skills to work with assault tree.

I think when they designed this class their intent was commando to be the dpser in PvE and vanguard the dpser in PvP.

Anyway I hope that are brave enough to rethink and talk with trooper community about any major changes before applying them.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Keinhoran

[redfield]

I knew we were getting nerfed but this is just stupid....thanks for explaining the changes in depth but, thanks for explaining them....

 

I know hate my main class (I'm a healer)

[Cempa]

If you look at the AC at best gear PvP wise they are beasts. Try a hybrid spec or at the very least invest some points into healing done/received and you will be as tough as a tank at best PvP gear level.