Makes Sense to Me

[Daize]

I see alot of heavy whining and "I quits" people (disapointed RuQu, c'mon you havn't even tested and you really did not take time to think things through) out in force due to healing nerfs.

 

I would like to remind people that everything is relative. Ops were too low, sages were OP and mercs were pretty good. BUT healing in raid at the moment is DAMN easy and even Operatives pre-1.2 have no problems healing content (at least to HM, I havn't seen NM).

 

Given the above, BW did the ONLY logical thing. If they did anything else it would have been not only stupid, but totally unprofessional.

 

Give the whining a break for a moment folks, and take some time to think things through. I mean what do you care about nerfs? The point is that healing should be reasonably challenging AND healers should not feel there is any one healer that is much better than another. period. Anything else? Would you like cheese with your whine?

 

I am far from being a BW fanboy, and I am not a troll, check my post history.

[Veriu]

I'd also point out that they said they were implementing some pretty big changes to stats/mechanics/diminishing returns/etc...

 

so just plugging the talent changes into a sim or spreadsheet =/= actual changes.

 

For all we know, Sorc healing was actually buffed because they increased the coefficient for dark infusion. Or power now grants .5 bonus healing per point instead of the...was it .17?

 

Until we get some actual testing results to find how how stats & stuff changed it is impossible to say anything got a buff or a nerf.

[Polimeris]

I think the next patcch is very good overall. But I can't say it too much, as I play a scoundrel.

 

 

HOWEVER

Please, don't take the giggle away from scoundrel

 

Until then, I shall call the 1.2 patch : the sad patch.

[Easpeak]

I see alot of heavy whining and "I quits" people (disapointed RuQu, c'mon you havn't even tested and you really did not take time to think things through) out in force due to healing nerfs.

 

I would like to remind people that everything is relative. Ops were too low, sages were OP and mercs were pretty good. BUT healing in raid at the moment is DAMN easy and even Operatives pre-1.2 have no problems healing content (at least to HM, I havn't seen NM).

 

Given the above, BW did the ONLY logical thing. If they did anything else it would have been not only stupid, but totally unprofessional.

 

Give the whining a break for a moment folks, and take some time to think things through. I mean what do you care about nerfs? The point is that healing should be reasonably challenging AND healers should not feel there is any one healer that is much better than another. period. Anything else? Would you like cheese with your whine?

 

I always find it funny when people not related to the problem give their expert advice to other people and judge their actions.

 

Highlighted lines are good, keep up the pep talk. From the poster's perspective it made sense to buff operatives because the OP found it already easy to heal content, even though he felt operative healing was too low. "Pretty" (I love it when people use that empty adjective) good combat medics got a nerf because it was the only logical thing.

Edited March 18, 2012 by Easpeak

[Daize]

I always find it funny when people not related to the problem give their expert advice to other people and judge their actions.

 

Highlighted lines are good, keep up the pep talk. From the poster's perspective it made sense to buff operatives because the OP found it already easy to heal content, even though he felt operative healing was too low. "Pretty" (I love it when people use that empty adjective) good combat medics got a nerf because it was the only logical thing.

 

Thanks for highlighting my main points for me

OP Med was too low RELATIVE to other classes NOT necessarily relative to the game.

Edited March 18, 2012 by Daize

[CaptainApop]

OP Med was too low RELATIVE to other classes NOT necessarily relative to the game.

 

A salient point but isn't the real concern that the nerfs just don't make sense.

By that I mean the BH nerfs seem to have come out of left field to me and the sorc is less a reduction in ability and more "this might actually shaft your whole resource system".

 

 

BW knew there was tons of anticipation to 1.2 (the jesus patch) so why didn't they have any commentary to elaborate on what seem like huge changes? I don't mean a play by play a-la ghost-crawler a few months back but just 2/3 lines on what they want to do with healing might have nipped alot of this pseudo outrage in the bud.

Edited March 18, 2012 by CaptainApop

[VelnikSP]

I think that they are planning a balance run to sages/sorcs that was too big to stuff into 1.2. I think they were dumptrucking in a bunch of stuff, that could be readily tested, and giving the sorc/sage adjustment it's own patch to test ramifications. remember, fixing 1 thing breaks 2 others. Edited March 18, 2012 by VelnikSP

[JLapp]

A salient point but isn't the real concern that the nerfs just don't make sense.

By that I mean the BH nerfs seem to have come out of left field to me and the sorc is less a reduction in ability and more "this might actually shaft your whole resource system".

 

+1.

 

If they hit any of the sage's healing skills I probably wouldn't have even thought twice about the change and understood that is was to bring the healers in line. This change really does not make sense to me.

 

It does not make healing any harder really. Sages can heal for the same amount. In operations it will just get to the point where they are OOM and if the boss isn't close to deal might as well exit area since there isn't much that they will be able to do.

 

 

I'm certainly going to give it a chance and see how it goes into the game...but have they ever really changed anything once it hits the PTS? I'm not holding my breath that anything will change.

[Padkhar]

I see alot of heavy whining and "I quits" people (disapointed RuQu, c'mon you havn't even tested and you really did not take time to think things through) out in force due to healing nerfs.

 

I would like to remind people that everything is relative. Ops were too low, sages were OP and mercs were pretty good. BUT healing in raid at the moment is DAMN easy and even Operatives pre-1.2 have no problems healing content (at least to HM, I havn't seen NM).

 

Given the above, BW did the ONLY logical thing. If they did anything else it would have been not only stupid, but totally unprofessional.

 

Give the whining a break for a moment folks, and take some time to think things through. I mean what do you care about nerfs? The point is that healing should be reasonably challenging AND healers should not feel there is any one healer that is much better than another. period. Anything else? Would you like cheese with your whine?

 

I am far from being a BW fanboy, and I am not a troll, check my post history.

 

Making healing more challenging for Sage/Sorc by making their resources matter does actually make sense to me, but I don't think it fixes the relative value problem. I wish games were designed so that one healing class did not outperform the others in every situation--but actually that's what people are used to seeing, with one class being "primary or main" and the others meant to be assist/support.

 

 

The other 2 have obvious shortfalls when it comes to healing area damage compared to Sage/Sorc, which is fine because that's for balance and creating roles, but no obvious niche or strength that matters for the way content is designed, which is not fine. It's not as if a Sage/Sorc cannot produce a big enough heal to keep a tank up, even if a CM/Merc is stronger at that. It's not as if you can't usually find a vantage point to heal from range, even on moving fights, even if an OPs/Scoundrel has more instant casts. So where is the synergy, even with the changes, why bring anything but Sage/Sorcs?

[atomjh]

As a raiding combat medic, I'd have to say it's not necessarily whining as much as once again, it's another reason to not take a combat medic to raids (as if we needed another reason). I mean is it not common knowledge that sages have a much easier time with healing than the other classes (especially AOE)? If so, why all the nerfs to combat medic? I'm going to assume that they are nerfs since they increased the cost or reduced the healing to a number of our abilities. Bioware is sending me a message about my class......am I OP'd? was healing too easy? are guilds salavating to add combat medic healers to their roster at the expense of other classes?

 

 

So I'll stop "whining" and respec DPS or go do something else.

[germil]

I see alot of heavy whining and "I quits" people (disapointed RuQu, c'mon you havn't even tested and you really did not take time to think things through) out in force due to healing nerfs.

 

I would like to remind people that everything is relative. Ops were too low, sages were OP and mercs were pretty good. BUT healing in raid at the moment is DAMN easy and even Operatives pre-1.2 have no problems healing content (at least to HM, I havn't seen NM).

 

Given the above, BW did the ONLY logical thing. If they did anything else it would have been not only stupid, but totally unprofessional.

 

Give the whining a break for a moment folks, and take some time to think things through. I mean what do you care about nerfs? The point is that healing should be reasonably challenging AND healers should not feel there is any one healer that is much better than another. period. Anything else? Would you like cheese with your whine?

 

I am far from being a BW fanboy, and I am not a troll, check my post history.

 

I have given some "think things through" on Commandos nerf in other posts. I can't comment on Sage modifications.

- I play both scoundrel and commando, simply scoundrel don't have 30+% signle target healing deficiency which would justify a commando nerf of this amplitude.

- Disparity bewteen Sage AOE heal and Smug/Commando has not been fixed.

[Daize]

re sage resource:

I have seen posts from people who actually tested it saying it was very manageable. Being able to spam heal reduces the fun of healing with no concern for resources. You need to pick and choose who to heal and also how much. If you have no triage, healing is just wack-a-mole of the most boring kind.

[Fgtsean]

Editted. This isn't a **** storm I want to be involved in. Edited March 18, 2012 by Fgtsean

[Aaoogaa]

You're right...all we know is that the patch will drastically change the class I currently enjoy. There are not enough players on test to effectively test these changes...they have proven that their internal team cannot match metrics to actual game play. Soooo why the hell would I support the changes.

[Daize]

@fgtsean: re making bosses harder, it is not as simple as all that. For example if sages have basically unlimited resources there is nothing you can do with boss encounters to change that. If healing is too easy but other aspects of the game are not, it is very difficult to balance this via the fight if not impossible. The simpler, and more aesthetic solution is what BW has taken.

[Xaearth]

Except you're forgetting one major fact:

No one had a problem with healer throughput with the exception of the sole outlier of the Sorc/Sage AoE heal.

 

The problems with Merc/Commando healing were centered around the AoE heal disparity and quality of life changes, alongside concerns about the lack of an interrupt, no combat rez, and less utility than Sorc/Sage.

 

The problems with Operative/Scoundrel healing were centered around the AoE heal disparity, the supposed 75% mobility tax on heals, rather wimpy and annoying to manage HoTs, a rather pointless and expensive heal that theoretically should've been used for burst heals but realistically ended up scaling worse, a lack of utility/buffs or group synergy, a lack of any semblance of survivability (in PvP), and a secondary resource mechanic that too often made itself an unnecessary aggravation.

 

We knew the AoE heals were getting rebalanced. That's great.

Operatives/Scoundrels got some quality of life improvements to their secondary resource. Fine.

 

But how in the hell does Zoeller and his lackies expect us to believe that "changes under the hood" would change any of those other issues?

[RuQu]

I see alot of heavy whining and "I quits" people (disapointed RuQu, c'mon you havn't even tested and you really did not take time to think things through) out in force due to healing nerfs.

 

I didn't quit. I unsubscribed. There is a difference. I will continue playing on the Live servers until my sub runs out (mid July), I will start working on a PTS character (absurd that I have to devote a month to what should have taken 10 minutes...), and I once more data is available I will continue to try and see what the implications are.

 

With the data I currently have available, which is mostly just the patch notes since BW doesn't have a mechanic in place to let the unwashed masses test on the PTS, these changes and the way they were communicated are out of line.

 

The rational course of action was to express my displeasure with BW by unsubscribing while working to mitigate the damage as best I can (testing and speaking out).

 

I would like to remind people that everything is relative. Ops were too low, sages were OP and mercs were pretty good. BUT healing in raid at the moment is DAMN easy and even Operatives pre-1.2 have no problems healing content (at least to HM, I havn't seen NM).

 

Given the above, BW did the ONLY logical thing. If they did anything else it would have been not only stupid, but totally unprofessional.

 

"Damn easy" for you. Some people struggle learning Combat Medic and Scoundrel healing, particularly due to the novel mechanics compared to WoW. I have had lots of feedback from people thanking me for advice or requesting it. Once you get the hang of it, this class is quite good, but when learning it can be a struggle. Making the resource system even more punishing will disproportionately increase the difficulty on those learning the class.

 

Even if, in the end, this proves to be a small shift for the most skilled and experienced of Combat Medics, it will make learning the class harder and decrease the number of people willing to stick with it through that learning curve.

 

More on the "logical" options below.

 

Give the whining a break for a moment folks, and take some time to think things through. I mean what do you care about nerfs? The point is that healing should be reasonably challenging AND healers should not feel there is any one healer that is much better than another. period. Anything else? Would you like cheese with your whine?

 

I am far from being a BW fanboy, and I am not a troll, check my post history.

 

I know your post history, and know you are not a BW fanboy. You know mine.

 

We both agree that Scoundrels needed a buff relative to Commandos and Sages.

 

You maintain, and apparently BW agrees, that the only logical choice was to hammer the other two down to the Scoundrel's level.

 

The argument, presumably, is that since Scoundrel's were able to complete the current content, that that was therefore the properly tuned level that everyone should be adjusted to.

 

This argument fails to stand up to scrutiny. It continues to make the false equation of viable==competitive. Yes, some Scoundrels were able to complete end-game content at all levels, but many others found that they were unable to do so, but were able to do so on Sage alts. Same player, better knowledge of Scoundrels, better results on Sage. By beating the Sage and Commando down to the Scoundrel's level, that player will now no longer be able to complete that level of content.

 

Perhaps that was intended. Perhaps their metrics showed 20% of raiders had completed NMM content, and they want that number to be 5%. If so, they absolutely should say something along the lines of "content was easier than we intended, so we nerfed healing into the ground because it was easier than re-tuning the content."

 

There are other reasons I am protesting these changes, and that caused me to unsubscribe to express my displeasure.

 

1) Lack of communication. GZ said he could not discuss class balance when we didn't have the full context of the patch notes. We have them now. What is the new excuse? There is no way that nerfs of this magnitude, and so unexpected for Combat Medics, should have been published without a Dev Blog explaining the reasoning behind them.

 

If you are gonna screw us, you damn well better buy us dinner first and cuddle a bit.

 

2) It fails to address any of the communities concerns. Sage AoE is still far superior to any other. If the reports from Sage testers show anything, it is that they still have little trouble managing their Force, they just took a hit to their ability to do any burst healing. So they still don't need to manage their resource, their AoE is still insane, you just decreased their single target throughput which is what the community said they were weakest at.

 

Perhaps the intention is to create real niche healers who only do well at one thing. If so, they should damn well come out and tell us that.

 

Quite simply, they were presented with a laundry list of suggestions to make Scoundrels more competitive. Some required abilities to be reworked, some new mechanics, some just needed tweaks to coefficients or max stack counts (easy number tweaking). They ignored almost all of the Operative/Scoundrel feedback. We were told there was a "sizable chunk" of changes coming. What were those changes? KC/RN was given a nice overhaul and they tweaked UH/TA and DS. Wow. Color me unimpressed.

 

UH/TA will help a bit with energy management if they try and keep one stack as SRMP procs will allow for extra instant cast usage to help maintain 6-+ Energy.

Kolto Pack/Infusion is still absolutely worthless.

HoT maintenance had no changes.

HoTs are still extremely weak.

DS still can't be cast while moving, so they just lowered the cast time. Slightly more usable, still unusable for the "mobile" healer when mobility is actually required.

AoE is still capped with no smart-healing.

Still no utility.

 

Instead of changing any of the above, they took out the nerf-bat and started beating the other classes down. Reports from testers show that Force maintenance may not be a problem in 1.2, but at the cost of decreased ST throughput. Commandos took a massive beating to all of their resource costs, ~30% increase in costs. Since resource management was our primary limitation, that can and will amount to a 30% decrease in our throughput. Since our ST throughput was comparable to Scoundrels before (a minority even claimed that Scoundrels were better ST healers than Commandos), it will now be FAR less. Even if they change the stat scaling, those changes will apply to all classes equally so will do nothing to offset this 30% hit relative to Scoundrels.

 

The only possible way I can see that a base mechanics change could offset that 30% hit to Commandos is if they changed Alacrity to increase Ammo regen / Heat dissipation, but not change Force or Energy regen. Seeing as the changes to Scoundrels were all of the fairly simply variety, I doubt they did so, and, if they did, it should have been in the patch notes.

 

 

3) Loss of respect. By ignoring the feedback of the community and taking the easy way out (see 2), the Devs lost a lot of my respect. They also lost my confidence that they would make decisions that were good for the overall balance and state of the game.

 

4) Blindness to other options.

 

If 20% of groups are completing NMM (made up number), and you want only 5% to do so (also a made up number), retune NMM. You made the mistake of making it too easy, you fix it. Don't fix it by putting the burden on healers, already the smallest trinity population in your game. Fix it by increasing the damage the bosses do (shared burden between tanks and healers, and DPS to avoid). Increase the life of bosses (burden on DPS, tanks somewhat, and healers to try and sneak in a shot).

 

If you wanted to make the three classes equal in healing ability, but not trivialize content, lift the Scoundrels up...and tune the Tier 2 content accordingly. Tier 1 is largely done. Many people are farming it and/or fully geared. Making it harder now does nothing for the progression guilds, it only punishes the casual guilds who were slower to start...possibly because they spent more time experiencing that story you tried so hard to sell as the primary difference of your game.

 

If you wanted to make Force management more demanding, tweak ability costs, make a Resplendence buffed NS restore only half the Force of a non-Resplendence NS (which makes the player choose between more now with a health hit and regen debuff or half as much now but no consequences).

 

5) Seriously out of the blue massive nerfs. No one saw the Combat Medic nerfs coming. There was no warning, no hint, no Dev statement that they were putting up higher numbers than expected. In fact, the only hint of any healer nerfs was when GZ said that Sages were putting up higher than intended numbers, and he explicitly said that that was due to the Conveyance bug.

 

Were we out-performing? Show us those metrics, because they do not reflect what the community felt and these changes were shockingly unexpected.

 

6) Ham-fisted changes. How do you expect to isolate the effect of changes of this scale? For Combat Medics, almost every ability got hit. It does not even require actual testing to accurately state that it went too far, even if you accept that a nerf was needed (and most people dont). It is plainly obvious. The only logical conclusion is that the plan is to make Combat Medics so unviable that people will start playing Scoundrels instead. Bobudo predicted this, and Georg Zoeller hinted at it at the Guild Summit. The only way to make people go back to Scoundrels after so much neglect was to make them OP. Bobudo was wrong, though, and GZ found another option: make everything else so weak that Scoundrels seem OP in comparison without actually improving them. Kudos for thinking outside the box.

 

7) Complete PTS Failure. Changes of this magnitude and Developer posts saying only PTS testers have opinions that matter (GZ again...why do they let him talk?) require a system that lets us test. Yet there is no character copy except for invited guilds. There are no pre-made 50s. There are no level-up vendors or system to rapidly get a PTS alt to max level.

 

There are absolutely no tools in place to allow us to do this testing.

 

Now, you know me, Daize, and I think many others around here do too.

 

I would be testing the crap out of this system if the mechanics were in place to allow me to do so. I would get a group together, and rerun the same content repeatedly on a 50 Sage, 50 Scoundrel, and 50 Combat Medic. I would run content on my Live server Combat Medic and then again on my PTS version. I would be parsing my PTS combat logs.

 

I would test the **** out of this patch...but I can't. Why? Because it will take me a month to level just one PTS character to level 50 (job, wife, dog, need to eat, shower, poop on occasion, not to mention playing my actual character on Live once in a while). I certainly can't level 3.

 

In light of the above, I have to respectfully disagree with you, Daize. We are not whining. We did not fail to think this through.

 

The thinking failure was on BW's part. So was the communication failure. We provided tons of feedback and asked for responses that never came.

 

Our outcry is rational, reasonable, and proportionate to the incompetence and disrespect shown by the Developers and GZ in particular in the content of these patch notes and the Dev posts about them.

[Riggz]

There taking away my operatives giggle which is unacceptable. But seriously I like it

 

Why

 

1.) let's me know when my TA is up

 

2.) I love it when my group types "who the hell is laughing?"

 

Please keep it lol

[RuQu]

There taking away my operatives giggle which is unacceptable. But seriously I like it

 

Why

 

1.) let's me know when my TA is up

 

2.) I love it when my group types "who the hell is laughing?"

 

Please keep it lol

 

Send an email to feedback@swtor.com and/or post on the PTS or submit a ticket from a PTS character.

 

I enjoy the laughing, though I rarely hear it since Scoundrels are so rare.

[Ocili]

I don't know if I can add anything that RuQu didn't say better. But I don't believe the OP knows where we are coming from (like most who think the changes were good; yes im looking at you PvP community).

[XtremJedi]

I think that when you see people suspending, unsubbing or even quitting - then it's rarely just about one thing. These proposed changes are going to be more like the straw that breaks the camel's back.

 

I did cancel my subscription and these changes were a part of that... not least because I really don't feel that the concerns of players have been well listened to. But there were a lot of reasons; Low populations on the severs that I play on, fewer and fewer people doing Heroics/Flashpoints in lower levels, basic functionality bugs still remaining unfixed though reported in beta (e.g. Focus Targeting for heaven's sakes, how can fixing targeting bugs not be a high priority in a game like this? Especially when targeting provision for healers is so restricted as it is...), repetitious class missions and a lack of real imagination in many missions and many more things really.

 

I liked the game well enough in beta to take a 6 month subscription. I thought it was fairly standard MMO fare but with a good story-line element and the benefit of being one of the few Sci-Fi MMOs around. But there have been a series of decisions along the line, that have left me more and more disillusioned and the game-play itself is lacking in many ways for me too. So this latest round of changes is the straw that broke my back.

 

I get that others may have different experiences... but to characterise those who have unsubscribed as whining is unfair and a little unthinking in itself. I'll keep track of what's going on and may return at some point. But for now, I've pretty much had enough.

 

X

[Diableus]

As with everything in life all actions have an equal or opposite reaction, an inconsiderate action will have an inconsiderate response. Posting patch notes without reasoning and explanation is inconsiderate and hence we returned the favour.

 

To say it is a simple case of crying...it is more a relaxed response to make a message regarding their inability to provide customer service and the whole issue can be resolved easily by explaining why they were done.

 

As a few of you have noticed we from the healing community are asking WHY, that is all we are asking and their response of internal changes should be explained to us and how they have been changed. At the end of the day all problems can be resolved in a simple manner but we shall see on Monday when they get back and then we as a community can get a response to our questions.

[Daize]

Sorry RuQu, but tldr.

 

I do not think you addressed my main point though which is that it really really doesn't matter whether one class or another got nerfed, its all relative. What matters is that the healing classes all be at about the same level WITHOUT Operations being a heal snoozefest and that they be fun but challenging to play in high level progression Operations. That not everyone can play at that level is for me a good sign, but I don't really think that is the case atm anyways.

 

Now I suspect based only on notes they got it right, obviously you don't, but we really cannot know especially with all the "under the hood" changes until we try it out.

[Daize]

As a few of you have noticed we from the healing community are asking WHY, .

 

BW are often unfortunately not at liberty. In this case in my OP and my post just before this one I tell you why. Whether they got it right, we shall see.

Edited March 19, 2012 by Daize

[RuQu]

Sorry RuQu, but tldr.

 

I do not think you addressed my main point though which is that it really really doesn't matter whether one class or another got nerfed, its all relative. What matters is that the healing classes all be at about the same level WITHOUT Operations being a heal snoozefest and that they be fun but challenging to play in high level progression Operations. That not everyone can play at that level is for me a good sign, but I don't really think that is the case atm anyways.

 

Now I suspect based only on notes they got it right, obviously you don't, but we really cannot know especially with all the "under the hood" changes until we try it out.

 

Short version answer to what you call your main point:

 

It's all relative...so choose a reference point and bring them all to it.

 

Choosing the lowest point angers 2/3 of your healer base. Raising up the lowest angers no one, makes that 1/3 happy. Which is better business sense?

 

Snoozefest healing of Ops is a separate issue. Retune the boss damage.

 

So let's see...no nerfs, healers happy, no outrage, community focus on your other new additions (Legacy, new Op, etc), and no snoozefest healing.

 

Is it harder to retune the Ops than to just nerf the hell out of everyone? Maybe. Maybe not. That doesn't mean its not the right answer, though.