When can we expect to see a nerf of the Hybrid Sin/Shadow?

[QuiJonPed]

You can't just nerf the only viable shadow spec and leave us with failfinil and lolbalance. How am I suppose to pvp with those terrible specs? lol

 

Why not? They have done this twice to the Concealment Operative (I'm healer spec so it never realyl impacted me!).

[Smerte]

Tank shadows and/or hybrid shadows are perfectly fine. Sure, they do have a lot of utility and shine in group play (while still being unbeatable in 1 on 1 matches usually), but that does not make them OP.

 

I wonder though, why are people talking about tracer / gravround builds being able to kill shadows / assassins in a 1 on 1? That's just impossible unless the shadow / assassin started playing a warzone after drinking 20 beers, or is completely incompetent.

 

PS: I am a 27 / 2 / 12 shadow currently, and yes, I do run DPS mods in my gear.

Edited March 26, 2012 by Smerte

[Smashbrother]

Shadow survivability outside of the tank spec is an absolute joke. So there would have to be some massive buffs to justify the class if kinetic was nerfed.

 

I am not interested in playing someone elses punching bag.

 

It's still far better than dps spec guardians. All we have is saber ward which is on a 3 min cd. The diff between heavy armor and light armor is not that big a deal. Plus almost every class has either good amounts of armor penetration, has skills that reduce armor, or have abilities that just plain ignore armor.

 

Dps shadows are harder to kill than dps guardians.

[QuiJonPed]

And when can we expect the other trees to be balanced to be better for group play.

 

 

I, for one, want more Oak in the game.

 

Damn Pines, coming over here. Nicking our forests etc.

[Dianaid]

Dps shadows are harder to kill than dps guardians.

 

I'm sorry, but that's brutal ********. You probably rarely come across a pure dps sin, and therefore it may be hard to really grasp the direness of their situation. Any Shadow/sin outside of Tank stance has 20% damage reduction from armor, no more. Compare that to your 40+% as guardian in no matter what spec, and all your def cds hardly matter. that's a flat 20% more dmg the sin would take, which is an enormous difference.

Edited March 26, 2012 by Dianaid

[Darth_Acherus]

Why not? They have done this twice to the Concealment Operative (I'm healer spec so it never realyl impacted me!).

 

The first nerf was justified, the 2nd no.

[Smashbrother]

Now I know you don't know what you're talking about.

Vanguards are the ****in bomb dude. Vanguard tanks in DPS gear, running a proper pvp shield spec, do INSANE amount of damage with consistant on demand burst that's easy to set up. Not to mention crazy good utility: Stun, aoe stun, charge, snare, pull w/ root, 6 second interrupt. A well played Vanguard wrecks house, period.

 

Maybe I just haven't fought or played against any good ones, but I have never seen tank powertechs doing "INSANE" damage. The ones that do tons of damage are pyro spec. Even if you're right that tank vanguards do "INSANE" damage, that does not somehow make tank shadows any less OP. It just means both of them needs the nerfbat.

 

It's not ok for tank spec anything to do "INSANE" damage.

 

Guardians when spec'd right have one of the highest burst potential setups in the game with aoe crits for 4k on 4 targets, along with crazy good utility as well. Stun, charge, intervene, spammable aoe snare, push. Probably not as well rounded as vanguards, but still damn sexy when played right.

 

That is a focus guardian only. Focus is not tank, and focus guardians are one of the most easily killed classes. I know because my main is a focus guardian in full BM gear. We're talking about tank specs though, and guardian tanks in dps gear are super lols.

 

I R Tank. I have been tank in every MMO I've played. I eat, sleep, breathe and **** tanking. Swtor, for any of it's other faults, actually has some of the best tank mechanics in an MMO period.

 

No argument from me on that, but tank specs shouldn't do almost as much dps as dps specs.

Edited March 26, 2012 by Smashbrother

[sonarghost]

 

Dps shadows are harder to kill than dps guardians.

 

You have either only played against world class Dps Shadows or the worst Dps Guardians if you truly believe that.

[Smashbrother]

I'm sorry, but that's brutal ********. You probably rarely come across a pure dps sin, and therefore it may be hard to really grasp the direness of their situation. Any Shadow/sin outside of Tank stance has 20% damage reduction from armor, no more. Compare that to your 40+% as guardian in no matter what spec, and all your def cds hardly matter. that's a flat 20% more dmg the sin would take, which is an enormous difference.

 

Light armor gives about 23%, and heavy armor only gives around 33%. 10% is not a big diff when classes have stuff that ignore armor completely or has armor penetration.

 

Dps guardians have saber ward which is on a 3 min CD. That's it.

 

All shadows have force cloak (3 min), deflection (2 min), and resilience (1 min). Seeing as how WZs are not arena styles where it ends after 1 death, a dps shadow has higher uptime than a dps guardian over the course of a 15 min game.

 

Oh I forgot about stealth. Being in stealth means you'll rarely if ever be the first thing enemies see and thus open up on.

[Smashbrother]

You have either only played against world class Dps Shadows or the worst Dps Guardians if you truly believe that.

 

Go read above post.

[Kriesha]

Typical hybrid sorc damaging attacks are:

 

force lighning - fully mitigated by armor, chain lighning - fully mitigated by armor, death field - not mitigated by armor.

 

Typical hybrid sorc has no armor penetration.

 

Typical armor of tank assasin in DPS items - like 45 %. Bad? Do not think so.

 

Typical tracer bot damaging attacks are:

 

tracer missile - "partially" mitigated by armor (due to stacks from tracers and armor ignore cylinder), unload fully dodgeable/shieldable, partially mitigated by armor (see above), railshot fully dodgeable/shieldable, partially mitigated by armor, heatseeker missiles - partially mitigated by armor.

 

So it appears that from 4 attacks only 2 are less susceptible to avoidance/mitigation. Not bad, really.

 

Top end assassin in Dark Charge will have 41% armor mitigation. Top end jugg in dps gear with dps stance will have about 30% and in tank stance 47%. Juggs can still stance dance, assassins cannot.

 

Shielding sucks in pvp - when one needs it the most, it does not work. Due to fubar mechanics, critical rating pushes shield rating off the table. Hence, critical hits do not get shielded and always deal maximum potential damage. So one can safely remove mods with absorb/shield and replace them with dps mods and get a different kind of survivability - dead targets don't damage you.

 

Avoidance works, sort of. So defense rating makes sense to keep. Unfortunately, for BM armor/implant/ear, it's paired with Accuracy. We do not need all that accuracy, hence it makes more sense to wear something with more meaningful stats for us - thats power, crit and surge.

 

Now, IF shielding worked in PvP, we would be faced with a choice - more survivability from shield or more damage from power/crit/surge. Right now, trading shielding for dps is stupidity - dps gives more survivability than shielding (For the record, I am stupid and use a shield).

[Dianaid]

Light armor gives about 23%, and heavy armor only gives around 33%. 10% is not a big diff when classes have stuff that ignore armor completely or has armor penetration.

 

Dps guardians have saber ward which is on a 3 min CD. That's it.

 

All shadows have force cloak (3 min), deflection (2 min), and resilience (1 min). Seeing as how WZs are not arena styles where it ends after 1 death, a dps shadow has higher uptime than a dps guardian over the course of a 15 min game.

 

Oh I forgot about stealth. Being in stealth means you'll rarely if ever be the first thing enemies see and thus open up on.

 

I could go on about how you have the most potent (aoe) CC in the game, more mobility than anyone and so on, in exchange for what you consider our advantages. It's a pointless debate. At least pointless, as long as so many people keep quoting numbers and warzone end statistics and make their world depend on them. Rated warzones are not about them. Having a high uptime where you make a difference in a rated warzone is very important I agree with you there, but a dps shadow certainly won't be at the top there. Because a sin wandering about in stealth waiting for his teammates "to get opened on" is about the most useless person in an entire warzone. GG there.

 

Dps in the midst of fights, doing actual damage. That's uptime, that's what matters (If you're talking from a dps perspective anyway). Focus Guardian may have a shorter life span there even, if what you're saying applies, but hell, he only needs 5 secs to dish out twice the damage a shadow does in 15 seconds anyway. Fair trade off.

Edited March 26, 2012 by Dianaid

[AKfourtyseven]

I recently started playing my Assassin tank after putting it to one side for a couple of months and playing my Immortal Jugg- which is now almost full BM.

 

Darkness Assassin is simply OP when it comes to the amount of damage it can kick out while retaining all of its functions and utility as a tank. The gap between Assassin and Jugg in this regard is borderline game-breaking.

 

Also, i dont know why people talk about 31pt darkness in DPS gear as a hybrid, its not. 31pts anything is full spec. The sad thing is my Assassin isnt 50 yet, but can kick out more DPS than my lvl 50 Jugg, in BM gear + saber.

 

If the devs had sense they would nerf the DPS output, but they dont have sense as evidenced by what they choose to nerf and when.

[AetherMcLoud]

Also, i dont know why people talk about 31pt darkness in DPS gear as a hybrid, its not. 31pts anything is full spec. The sad thing is my Assassin isnt 50 yet, but can kick out more DPS than my lvl 50 Jugg, in BM gear + saber.

 

LOL. No.

[aeterno]

Guess these are the problems that come with fully moddable gear.

 

Some people will take advantages that brings and tweak their setup to great effect.

 

But you probably cant balance aroudn them as they're the minority. Most people don't fully remod their sets but use stock champ/BM gear. It's likely balanced around that.

 

Short of taking out the modding system (and nobody wants that do we) there's not much BW can do.

 

Well they could work on itemization to bring the vanilla versions more in line with the optimal solutions, but that would kinda require them to do 6 sets for each class, one for each skill tree.

 

This is most evident with some DPS gear that's just filled with bad compromises to accomodate 2 very different ways to do damage... For instance jedi knight focus tree guarantees crits - yet JK dps set comes with quite a bit of crit rating cos the other dps trees need it.

 

People who go out of their way to "fix" the gear sets (with the above JK/SW example swap out all crit mods for power and str ones) immediatly skyrocket in performance and notoriety and the qqs are subsequently sure to follw fast.

Edited March 26, 2012 by aeterno

[Dianaid]

Guess these are the problems that come with fully moddable gear.

 

Some people will take advantages that brings and tweak their setup to great effect.

 

But you probably cant balance aroudn them as they're the minority. Most people don't fully remod their sets but use stock champ/BM gear. It's likely balanced around that.

 

Short of taking out the modding system (and nobody wants that do we) there's not much BW can do.

 

Well they could work on itemization to bring the vanilla versions more in line with the optimal solutions, but that would kinda require them to do 6 sets for each class, one for each skill tree.

 

This is most evident with some DPS gear that's just filled with bad compromises to accomodate 2 very different ways to do damage... For instance jedi knight focus tree guarantees crits - yet JK dps set comes with quite a bit of crit rating cos the other dps trees need it.

 

People who go out of their way to "fix" the gear sets immediatly skyrocket in performance and notoriety and the qqs are subsequently sure to follw fast.

 

This is most true, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Both gear and additional mods are very easy to obtain in 1.2, there's no excuse for people who don't take that opportunity, and even less excuse for idiots crying about this awesome customization system.

Edited March 26, 2012 by Dianaid

[AetherMcLoud]

This is most true, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Both gear and additional mods are very easy to attain in 1.2, there's no excuse for people who don't take that opportunity, and even less excuse for idiots crying about this awesome customization system.

 

But people in ~200 expertise gear getting destroyed by people in fully modded battlemaster gear crying for class nerfs is ok?

[BambulaGTS]

 

Shielding sucks in pvp - when one needs it the most, it does not work. Due to fubar mechanics, critical rating pushes shield rating off the table. Hence, critical hits do not get shielded and always deal maximum potential damage. So one can safely remove mods with absorb/shield and replace them with dps mods and get a different kind of survivability - dead targets don't damage you.

 

 

You do not get it.

 

There are 3 possible situations for attack that hit someone: normal hit, crit, shielded hit (aka glance).

 

Higher you have the crit (and higher shield target has) > lower the outcome of normal hit. If your target's shield + your crit is 100 % you will have only crit or shield outcomes. If your crit is 100 % you will have only crit outcome.

 

And what abilities have 100 % crit chance?

 

Sniper's laze targeted snipe ability, advanced prototype powertech rail shot with proc, rage jugg smash after charge (can not be shielded anyway), darkness assasin shock with proc (can not be shielded anyway), sorc thundering blast on affliction (can not be shielded anyway), may be few more.

 

That's all.

 

Max u can get with consumables is 60 % crit for like 15 sec - it means that tank will always keep at least 40 % shield chance.

 

Probably inq/consular can have more with crit chance buff for next few attacks, but still it will be not 100 % crit.

 

So, as you see, there are only few (lazed snipe and procced rail shot) attacks that can be potentially shielded but will be not due to "crit pushes bla bla bla". In other cases it either does not count due to nature of attack (can not be shielded at all) or tank still have chance to shield an attack.

 

One can not passively have such big crit to push another player's shield chance out of table.

Edited March 26, 2012 by BambulaGTS

[Dianaid]

But people in ~200 expertise gear getting destroyed by people in fully modded battlemaster gear crying for class nerfs is ok?

 

Gear progression is gear progression, and belongs into one of the quadrillion threads covering that discussion. I don't say it's the fairest of all systems. However, yours is kind of a moot point, because in 1.2 every fresh 50 will have full battlemaster gear in 3 days, and the expertise bonus difference between war hero gear and battlemaster gear will be a whopping 1.73%. ONE POINT SEVENTY THREE. Get over yourselves.

[sonarghost]

Light armor gives about 23%, and heavy armor only gives around 33%. 10% is not a big diff when classes have stuff that ignore armor completely or has armor penetration.

 

Dps guardians have saber ward which is on a 3 min CD. That's it.

 

All shadows have force cloak (3 min), deflection (2 min), and resilience (1 min). Seeing as how WZs are not arena styles where it ends after 1 death, a dps shadow has higher uptime than a dps guardian over the course of a 15 min game.

 

Oh I forgot about stealth. Being in stealth means you'll rarely if ever be the first thing enemies see and thus open up on.

 

As defensive cds a shadow does have deflection, and resiliance. The force cloak is more of a "oh ****" I'm going to die and have to escape button. Where as a non stealther will have defensive cds that will actually mitigate damage to some degree. Thus making their defensive buffs more viable in "uptime". I do disagree that the force cloak is a real defensive buff since we aren't going to use it unless in dire need (I'm speaking in terms of WZ use). In other words imo we don't really have much as far as active defensive abilities.

 

As far as the stealth goes...yes the stealth is good if you are INF spec but sucks bad if you are not specced for lower detection. As far as being the ones enemies won't see and open up on first you can make that argument for any kind of stealth in the game. If this was such a game changer most of us would just use full dps infiltration and get the lower detection with a nice force regen buff, which unfortunately, is not viable as a shadow tank. spec.

[Kriesha]

You do not get it.

 

There are 3 possible situations for attack that hit someone: normal hit, crit, shielded hit (aka glance).

 

Higher you have the crit (and higher shield target has) > lower the outcome of normal hit. If your target's shield + your crit is 100 % you will have only crit or shield outcomes. If your crit is 100 % you will have only crit outcome.

 

And what abilities has 100 % crit chance?

 

Sniper's laze targeted snipe ability, advanced prototype powertech rail shot with proc, rage jugg smash after charge (can not be shielded anyway), darkness assasin shock with proc (can not be shielded anyway), sorc thundering blast on affliction (can not be shielded anyway), may be few more.

 

That's all.

 

Max u can get with consumables is 60 % crit for like 15 sec - it means that tank will always keep at least 40 % shield chance.

 

Probably inq/consular can have more with crit chance buff for next few attacks, but still it will be not 100 % crit.

 

So, as you see, there are only few (lazed snipe and procced rail shot) attacks that can be potentially shielded but will be not due to "crit pushes bla bla bla". In other cases it either does not count due to nature of attack (can not be shielded at all) or tank still have chance to shield an attack.

 

One can not passively have such big crit to push another player's shield chance out of table.

 

So you agree, that shielding is crap?

[HyperThomas]

So much rubbish being made up.

[HyperThomas]

This "hybrid shadow" spec everyone is talking about, the 31/0/10 is perfectly balanced, sustained dps and some survivability, nothing too special, it is perfectly in the middle. No need to change it. If it is nerfed, all other "hybrids" need to be nerfed down too, they are all as 'bad' as each other, if you could call it that.

 

Definition clarification:

People think that hybrid means a spec with the 'opposite' type of gear. For example people say that shadows are hybrid when they use DPS gear with a tank spec. The true meaning of hybrid is where a class is specced into all 3 trees, and not focused on one particular tree.

[HyperThomas]

If you nerf shadow "hybrids" then you have nerf every other class, every class is a hybrid if it comes under the OPs definition of hybrid.

True hybrid shadows (the ones that changed techniques during combat were nerfed a while back)

 

If people mean hybrid by tank with DPS armor, take a look at other classes:

-Vanguard (tank with dps gear)

-Guardian (mainly tank class that can spec into DPS)

-Operative healers (using dps gear)

 

You forget the fact that shadows (light armor) can only be tanks with damage reduction when they spec into the tank tree and activate the technique, unlike classes with heavy armor that can spec full DPS/heals yet still have massive defense. (Guardian DPS and Commando healers come into mind) Heck even the pure DPS class Sentinel has more defensive abilities than a shadow tank "hybrid".

[Otaking_SW]

I'm a 75 valor rank assassin and let me tell you, the weakness of tank in dps gear assassin is that they don't stack well at all. You have a class with medium-strong damage and a ton of CC. CC is only good till the resolve bar turns white. Teams with three assassin (common on my server because Empire pugs too much) don't do very well against teams of say, three maras (except in Huttball of course, even then mara/jugg can replicate or surpass most anything in huttball running) Why? Well when it comes to putting targets on the ground, tankasins are both force starved to be able to only deliver a light burst and have back loaded damage where our biggest hits come from assassinate for which the target must be under 30 percent.

 

Three maras can leap in and take 15k off the life of multiple targets right up front, hence they 'stack' better than assassins, as do a lot of 'pure dps classes'. Three assassins can still only turn that resolve bar white once but three mara can turn that resolve bar into a corpse much sooner. There should not be more than 1-2 tanks on a side in any pro team tbh.