Sanchpanza Posted April 3, 2012 Share Posted April 3, 2012 (edited) So, I've been away from the game for a couple of months. I had been playing through with a friend of mine but we eventually got fed up of the crafting and the stunfest that is PvP, but we knew the big 1.2 patch is coming up so we stayed subbed and played a few other games in the mean time. Now, the big 1.2 patch was being called "The march update" for AGES before we took a break. I've been checking in on the forums on a regular basis just to see if the date of it had been announced. It is now april and we don't have a patch. I am one who advocates giving them time to get things sorted out, this is the reason I stayed subbed - I think this is great game that has some nice elements to it that I really like and I wanted to keep supporting them even if I currently am getting frustrated with it. But I think that having a list on the forums for now over 2 weeks of the stuff they're going to implement and not having done any of it is pushing it a little too far. There are some updates to this game that are really needed. I can understand them having to take time with certain things and game balancing issues, but seriously making us wait ever longer while that needed coding is just sitting there is just plain stupid in my opinion. They have shown that they have the resources to quickly fix minor imbalances, I know of atleast 2 occasions where they did two patches in a row because there was a minor alteration that needed fixing. So why the hell do we not have that needed stuff in the game yet? I'm referring to things here that seriously break elements of game; If we look at crafting alone we have the ability to craft augments, the ability to critical cybertech items, the ability to critical orange items, increasing the rate of success for reverse engineering. That's just off the top of my head and in the patch notes!. They have the coding for these things, and many more. Surely they could implement them slowly while they're getting the stats from the test server on the game-breaking stuff? And while I'm on the subject of game breaking stuff, lets bring up all the PvP notes. I see warzone fixes, I see Ilum fixes, I see a new warzone. Do I see anything addressing the BIGGEST issue of PvP that has caused almost all of my PvP friends to either unsub or take a break from the game - Stun Resistance - No I bloody well don't. Despite the fact that I love this game I have to start to wonder if Bioware can tell their ars- *coughs* bottom from their elbow. Because it really seems like they have their priorities arse about face on the PvP front. I will happily withdraw that statement if someone can point out anything in the patch notes addressing this, but I've read over them twice and looked over every patch since I took a break (and earlier just incase), and I see nada, zilch, zero, nuffin. Anyway, all of this got me annoyed, but I'd just have let it pass without making a fuss if I hadn't then scrolled down the page and seen all of the changes they're making to classes. I'll admit that I haven't looked at every class, but what I DID look at was sorcerer's and Mercenaries healing changes. I look at the sorcerer's and I see some much needed changes to the class (I play both), because there were some bugs that allowed people to abuse them, and I see one or two skills just lowered a small amount, but the general change to the healing spec is not all that drastic. And then I see this for Mercenaries: Bodyguard Critical Efficiency now reduces the cost of Rapid Scan by 8 (down from 16). Cure Mind no longer reduces the cost of Cure. It now causes Cure to heal the target for a small amount. Hired Muscle now increases critical chance by 1% per point. Kolto Missile 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%). Kolto Shell now builds 16 Heat when activated. Supercharged Gas now vents 8 Heat (down from 16) when used and increases all damage and healing dealt by 5% (down from 10%). The shield applied by Kolto Missile now reduces damage taken by 5% (down from 10%). Critical Efficiency's buff description now properly refers to Rapid Scan. *UPDATED 3/29* Right, so lets break this down. Firstly, heat: Anyone that plays a mercenary will tell you that when the crap hits the fan we can use up all our heat VERY quickly. Most of our healing is based upon a lot of healing over a large period of time, burst healing is not our speciality. One of the things that allows us to do that and still throw the occasional bit of burst healing in is Supercharged Gas. Many a time I've popped that and been able to fire off my small heal, which reduces the heat on my big heal, so I can get both in. That is no longer possible, because rather than this effectively giving us 16% of our resources back, it gives 8%. Bear in mind that is takes 10 casts of our no-cost (15 seconds) or 5 of our standard heal (About 15s depending on skill setup, but 160% resources used) for us to even be able to use this ability. On top of that, they have reduced a heat reduction we got from criticals by 16% to 8%, so effectively another 8% of our resources added. And then they've made our shield (which, by the way, offers no protection at all and only heals when they get hit) cost 16% more. In total, this is 32% more resources being used. But - it is even better than that! Our shield can be gone in about 15 seconds, so we can be casting that 4 times a minute. We can be using our critical activated ability atleast several times a minute. And our Supercharged Gas can be used every 30 seconds. That, in total, is more than 90% of our resources MORE, per minute, that are being used. Then, on top of that, they've reduced our bonus healing by 5% that we get from supercharged gas. So, our buff to healing, that we need to cast an average of 8 times to be able to use, gives us 5% extra healing for 20 seconds, maximum, per minute, wheras before we'd get 10%. The other buff that we could use now is reduced from 5% to 3%, although we are able to cast this on one extra person. So, effectively, we've swapped being able to heal one extra person for 3% more for losing 7% to all our healing under these buffs. Oh yes, and the shield we can put on 3 people now only reduces damage by 5%, but we can put it on four people. So, hey, only a net loss of 10% to all the protection we can do. But! Don't dispair, there's good news! We get a whopping 1% critical chance increase! I'm sorry for going on a rant here, but What....The....Hell? Do bioware even look at their stats for healing? Sorcerers are out healing mercs by like 1.5x to 2x in every warzone I'm in - where the hell is their nerf? I can be having an absolute stunner of a match, sitting on the most fought over point, not let a single person die, be the main healer for everyone around but the sorcerer who keeps suiciding but throwing in the occasional heal here and there STILL gets a higher healing rating than me. Or any other merc on my team for that matter. How on gods earth can this be balancing the game? Just as an example to point this out; I jumped on my level 35 merc on another server the other day, just to see the changes that had happened between 1.1.2 to 1.1.5. I played Alderraan and went on the middle point with four other people. We were under constant assault. And I mean constant. I don't think that for more than 25 seconds at a time were we not fighting atleast 3-4 enemies. Sometimes the entire team. During this time I don't think a single person died on the actual flag/point/station/thingymajiggy, and I was the only healer there. I won't say that no one got low on health, but I managed to keep people alive long enough that they could get out of combat and heal up. There was one other person capable of healing there, a sorcerer. And when I say "There", I mean; Dies, respawns, runs to middle point, spams lightning, throws out some heals when the fighting is over, gets bored halfway through this and runs off to get killed again. End of the match, who had the higher healing? Him. By 50k points. And they're going to nerf mercs.... Once again, I refer to the title of the post; Seriously, what the hell? Note: TL;DR - Bioware bad, mercs dead for sure, what the hell? Edited April 3, 2012 by Sanchpanza Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Isaiahsdad Posted April 3, 2012 Share Posted April 3, 2012 The game is bleeding to death! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sibonk Posted April 3, 2012 Share Posted April 3, 2012 Hello! As we already have several threads for discussion of the various aspects of this topic, we're closing this thread in the interest of consolidating discussions. We encourage you to join the existing discussions about this topic in the following threads: 1.2 release date?bioware please do something about the pvp stunfest Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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