Help Bioware, My Trooper Is No Longer Fun To Play

[ironwolff]

As a healing trooper, i might be able to say that the nerf on us was hard =/

Maybe my opinion is biased since i'm not a high lvl player (32 right now)

I went to cademimu for example, around 4 times before 1.2 since lvl 26 and i was able to heal it, sometimes with problems and some really smooth.

I went today as a 32 player with other trooper a shadow tank and a sentinel tank, all of them 30+ well geared for our lvl.

I wouldn't have made it w/o the other commando and tbh, we had a hard time there...

Ammo regen slowed + supercharge cells giving us just 1 of ammo more and less pros for us + trauma probe costing alot + kolto bomb increasing healing 2% less and less shield (from 10% to 5%) = a hell for us..

As i heard, commandos aren't able to heal well the newer ops since it's a hell due low ammo regen (which was our pro as healers tbh)

on a side now..AP/MP combo now cost 4 instead of 3..so it's even harder for us to be viable as healers, we just run out of ammo too fast =/

 

The thing is all the level 50 commandos I talk to are happy, at least on my server.

 

Anyone under 50 is raging mad though. They broke our class basically.

 

Personally as gunny spec I have no problem on balmorra at level 37. But the nagain everything I fight is 5 levels below me. Elara healing me, and me burning the bad guys down we do fine.

 

Healing on the other hand? They totally ruined us. I healed maelstrom prison before the patch, and it was tough! Then after patch I tried it again as a full on CM at 36. We wiped multiple times and it was nigh impossible to heal the entire group. I could solo heal the main tank, but when splash damage came it took forever for us to get back up and going.

 

As ive said in other posts, I just dont want to login anymore. With these nerfs pvp is boring (specifically the fact the rewards were so lessened) but also the unbalancing of making us even MORE squishy then before.

 

I dunno, I just dont want to play anymore. IM sitting in my room right now, with nothing to do till 2:30 am when I fly to the states. And I have no want whatsoever to load up SWTOR.

[Ratahpla]

Yes the above advice was OK before 1.2. I don't think it applies now. Healing is so bad you just can't keep up, so healing is not really IMO the best option. Killing fast is pretty much it.... but the lower levels have been nerfed.

 

Honestly they're trying to balance for PvP and IMO you can't balance PvP. Trying to balance for PvP is like trying to hit a constantly moving target that randomly moves about in all directions. PvP'rs will complain about everything even if they're the most powerful class in a game. It never stops. If it's in the game somebody will complain about it being over powered even if it's underpowered. PvP'rs are NEVER happy. (I'm not talking about individuals I'm talking about the general community of PvP).

 

So smart developers balance the game for PvE and give every class something that's fun and unique, and leave the PvP'rs to figure out how to win at PvP with what's been given them.

 

Unfortunately BW has screwed over the PvE community to chase the never ending bouncing ball of PvP balance...which as other games have found chases off PvE players.

 

Like so many other games in the past, the devs have chosen to appease the pvp crowd at the expense of everything else in the game. It's too bad they screwed it up like this, but no surprise, either. Just like those other games, they end up with empty servers. My guess is there won't be any real enhancements to the game from here out. Free-to-play is not very far off now, I think.

[Raeln]

but that IS the issue which I have addressed.

It's been a fundamental thing of balancing that if someone were to go RDPS, they have to stay at a distance or risk getting chewed up and spat out...horribly.

I'm not saying it's fun. I'm saying you know have to think about your own placement and squad composition. RDPS have horrible defense against melee: FACT.

 

With 1.2 it's simply MORE apparent than before. My Commando has always been squishy even before 1.2

 

Glass cannons typically have some sort of mechanism to kite. Even Sages have Force Slow, troopers only have a talented snare on full auto, which requires them to stand still and channel to snare the enemy.

 

It's fine if Bioware wants to make Commandos into glass cannons, but they have to give some abilities to offset that change. If we are to be glass cannons, then we need to be able to kite.

[Raeln]

The thing is all the level 50 commandos I talk to are happy, at least on my server.

 

Anyone under 50 is raging mad though. They broke our class basically.

 

Personally as gunny spec I have no problem on balmorra at level 37. But the nagain everything I fight is 5 levels below me. Elara healing me, and me burning the bad guys down we do fine.

 

Healing on the other hand? They totally ruined us. I healed maelstrom prison before the patch, and it was tough! Then after patch I tried it again as a full on CM at 36. We wiped multiple times and it was nigh impossible to heal the entire group. I could solo heal the main tank, but when splash damage came it took forever for us to get back up and going.

 

As ive said in other posts, I just dont want to login anymore. With these nerfs pvp is boring (specifically the fact the rewards were so lessened) but also the unbalancing of making us even MORE squishy then before.

 

I dunno, I just dont want to play anymore. IM sitting in my room right now, with nothing to do till 2:30 am when I fly to the states. And I have no want whatsoever to load up SWTOR.

 

I'm in mostly Rakata (T3) gear, so I'm barely affected by the ammo regen issue. At level 50, you have all the talents for regen and our regen is heavily based on crit (which is a bad idea, IMO).

 

Stands to reason that before a Gunnery Commando can pick up all those necessary talents and get the necessary crit rating / 2 piece raid set bonus, I imagine they do suck pretty hardcore.

 

It's pretty obvious to me that Gunnery has been balanced around end game right now.

[Star-ranger]

Like so many other games in the past, the devs have chosen to appease the pvp crowd at the expense of everything else in the game. It's too bad they screwed it up like this, but no surprise, either. Just like those other games, they end up with empty servers. My guess is there won't be any real enhancements to the game from here out. Free-to-play is not very far off now, I think.

 

I don't think they're to the point where they're going to go F2P. Anyway I'm sure that some people are not bothered by the changes. But, My trooper is on the shelf until this gets fixed. I'm sad because this was one of my characters that was really fun to play. It's just not fun any more.

 

I already erased a Guardian that I'd leveled to 36 simply because he was just too weak in PvE. He had all the usual armor for his level but always seemed like a wimp. His glow stick wasn't doing enough damage to make him pay his way, and that was with the best crafted version I could make for his level. But he died a lot vs. MOBs his level and that's not fun. That's an issue for the Guardian Forums of course, but...

 

Point is the Guardian is gimpy, the Trooper is now broken, the Sage can't heal anymore... ladies and gentlemen, we're running out of options fast on the Republic side.

 

...So...My wife and I went back last night and played some COH again. It was fun. We had a good time. Makes a person say Hmm.

 

I like the story telling in SWTOR and the environments, but I can think of a lot of things I'd rather they'd done with choices, features, and mechanics than what they have.

Edited April 16, 2012 by Star-ranger

[Rhapsodyred]

Just shime in my support here.

 

I started a trooper prior to 1.2

 

after 1.2 she is nearly unplayable.

 

 

Not the damage nerf, thats not the problem, the problem is damage mitigation.

 

Her health bar just melts in no time against even level PVE mobs. She has good armor, prior to 1.2 she did not have those issues. Now everyfight is a near death experience, its like she has no armor at all.

 

If she had massive damage, I could see the paperbag mitigation, but she does not.

 

A trooper wears heavey armor for goodness sake, she should be able to take a hit or two.

 

maybe they are putting us in line with the movies...Storm trooper gets shot once with a hand blaster and dies....

 

If I did not regualarly play with a friend who can off heal, Id never play her anymore.

 

As it is, he is carrying me. I am in no way pulling my weght.

[salamanderx]

You have to run ion cell now, at least ive found. Thats the only option. I do fine as long as my build allows for this. Edited April 16, 2012 by salamanderx

[rigormortua]

Yes I have noticed a severe drop in the survivability rate of the commando. ION cell is a must. taking jorgan is almost a joke now. I am having a beast of a time with Justice I am level 35 and getting my head handed handed to me by the bot of all things!! what gives??

[azhrione]

I hesitate to get involved here, but I do not understand the problem.

 

I see lots of complaining about the state of the class, but it is all just "What used to be easy is now hard." That doesn't help identify the problem because you do not tell us what exactly you are doing. Anecdotal evidence is nothing to build a case on, and my observations have been exactly the opposite. I don't feel buffed, but we certainly didn't catch the nerf some other classes did, at least as it applies to Gunnery.

 

Survival has never really been an issue, yes we have issues if some mobs close in, but we have a ton of CC and crowd control abilities. Now I am going to assume that the "low level" game being discussed here is 30-50, as below level 30 the content is entirely trivial outside of FP and Heroic 2/4s. At level 30 as Gunnery your spec should look something like this:

 

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/skills/commando#0-6d28c7l2-0

 

If it does not, fix it.

 

At this level you have a ton of CC and crowd control abilities. Let's take a look:

 

Cryo Grenade - 4sec Stun

Stockstrike - DPS/Knockback

Sticky Grenade - Stun/Knockdown (Weak/Standard)

Full Auto - Stun (Weak/Standard)

Concussion Charge - AE Knock Back/Snare/Interrupt

Plasma Grenade - AE DPS/Stun (Weak/Standard)

Concussive Round - Long Duration Stun (Breaks on damage.)

 

We also have a fair number of survival skills:

 

Tenacity - Breaks Stun/Knockdown/Snare

Reactive Shield - 25% Damage Reduction for 12 sec.

Heroic Moment: No Retreat - Long Cooldown Heal

Field Aid - Removes two debuffs, USE THIS!

Diversion - Detaunt, almost a guarantee to send aggro to your companion.

 

So let us look at a typical spawns of trash, and this is really easy.

 

3-4 Standard/Weak mobs - Opening with Mortar Volley would be awesome, but it isn't always available. Plasma Grenade is a better opening, in spite of its costs due to it's 8Y range and CC abilities. Most of the mobs will be significantly wounded and can be cleaned up in 3-4 GCDs. If it is only three, can lead with sticky Grenade, Full Auto a second, then clean up the trash in a couple of GCDs.

 

1-2 Standard/Weak and a Strong - Send your companion to attack one of the standard mobs, then Concussive Round the strong, and finally use Full Auto on the last. Once the standards are done, let your ammo regen a moment, then lead with Sticky Grenade the strong into Full Auto and it will die fast.

 

1-2 Elites - A little tougher, but again not too bad. Send your companion to attack one, while you Concussive Round any secondary mob. Pop your relic, you can hotkey them, and lead in with Full Auto into Grav Round. My rotation at level 30 looked something like this: Full Auto, Grav Round, Hammer Shot, High Impact Bolt, Hammer Shot Grav Round, Grav Round. Repeat once the first elite is dead. Kiting is possible with melee mobs as well, use a CC or Knockback right before you are due to use Hammer Shot in your rotation, then move away while the Hammer Shot is firing. Also you can use Diversion to send the mob to your companion while you're waiting for abilities to come off of cooldown.

 

Champion Mobs - Get some friends to help unless you seriously overgear/level the mob, and even then they're tough solos requiring a lot cooldowns and ammo management.

 

This is not rocket science people, the class took a slight DPS nerf and a small survival nerf, but nothing that makes the class unplayable.

 

--------------------------------

 

TLDR - L2P

Edited April 16, 2012 by azhrione

[Raeln]

The class is certainly still playable, but compared to other ranged DPS classes - like a Sage - a Commando's toolbox is seriously small.

 

I'm fine with saying that our heavy armor offsets a Sage's bubble, but what about:

 

Force speed? One of the most missed abilities when I play something other than my Sage.

 

Their ranged interrupt (name escapes me atm)? I would kill for a ranged interrupt on my Commando.

 

Force slow? Absolutely required to kite. Paired with Force speed and it's very useful.

 

.. and in group support situations, what about Rescue?

Edited April 16, 2012 by Raeln

[azhrione]

The class is certainly still playable, but compared to other ranged DPS classes - like a Sage - a Commando's toolbox is seriously small.

 

I'm fine with saying that our heavy armor offsets a Sage's bubble, but what about:

 

Force speed? One of the most missed abilities when I play something other than my Sage.

 

Their ranged interrupt (name escapes me atm)? I would kill for a ranged interrupt on my Commando.

 

Force slow? Absolutely required to kite. Paired with Force speed and it's very useful.

 

.. and in group support situations, what about Rescue?

 

Sounds like you should just play your sage.

[Raeln]

Sounds like you should just play your sage.

 

The sage was my first pick until at level 50 I started to examine end game gear and seen the most dreadfully ugly abominations that I have ever seen in an MMO to date. I was already disturbed by the sheer number of Sages and Shadows (Jedi in general) that I seen while leveling during early access. I thought many would drop out and switch as the weeks passed but even at 50 there were 3 times as many Consulars online in my guild as any other class.

 

So I became one of those that "dropped out" and switched to Trooper. I feel in love with how my Commando plays; however, having played a Sage I cannot fathom how the dev team can overlook that utility disparity between the two advanced classes. I was happy to see them acknowledge that Commandos should be battle rez though - that was nice. We still need kiting tools though.

 

I have logged back on my Sage to finish all his story quests but I just cannot enjoy his DPS rotation at all anymore. I just don't like watching these tiny buffs for procs - I guess I miss my PowaAuras addon from WoW too much.

Edited April 16, 2012 by Raeln

[IIIDCManIII]

You really didn't get nerfed very hard, mostly you were rebalanced to where you shouldn't be spamming grav round like you were before. If you are still spamming grav round, thats probably why you are struggling.

 

If we were not supposed to use grav round over and over, why was one tree tied so closely into using it over and over?

[Nytak]

You really didn't get nerfed very hard, mostly you were rebalanced to where you shouldn't be spamming grav round like you were before. If you are still spamming grav round, thats probably why you are struggling.

 

Thanks for adding nothing to the conversation..

 

Sadly, it's posts like this with the title "OMG NERF GRAV ROUND" that got us into this fiasco.

[Raeln]

Thanks for adding nothing to the conversation..

 

Sadly, it's posts like this with the title "OMG NERF GRAV ROUND" that got us into this fiasco.

 

I know. The changes did nothing to us that already used the correct rotation. I still have to weave grav round in to keep my stacks up. It's still the base filler.

 

I'm not sure what other outcome there could be - it, hammer shot and charged rounds are our spammable abilities.

[Nytak]

I know. The changes did nothing to us that already used the correct rotation. I still have to weave grav round in to keep my stacks up. It's still the base filler.

 

I'm not sure what other outcome there could be - it, hammer shot and charged rounds are our spammable abilities.

 

Exactly... So I get some more FA procs, nice..

 

I still have to hit someone with no less than 5GR however for two reasons.. Charged Barrier and Charged Bolts. There is no getting around this, especially now since you really need to keep Charged Barrier fully stacked to have any chance of surviving anything. And to be honest, the extra CoF procs actually make it more difficult to max out these GR dependant buffs.

[Raeln]

Exactly... So I get some more FA procs, nice..

 

I still have to hit someone with no less than 5GR however for two reasons.. Charged Barrier and Charged Bolts. There is no getting around this, especially now since you really need to keep Charged Barrier fully stacked to have any chance of surviving anything. And to be honest, the extra CoF procs actually make it more difficult to max out these GR dependant buffs.

 

Yeah, I haven't figured that one out. I would have thought full auto would interact with charged barrier/bolts.

 

If they didn't want us spamming grav round - it's easy enough to put a longer duration on the grav well debuff and a cooldown on grav round. We'd just end up spamming charged rounds though.

 

Have to spam something. If nothing else, it'd just be hammer shot.

[Okolo]

I re-rolled to a more populated server just after 1.2 hit and decided to change things up a bit this time around (already have a 50 sith jugg) so I went with a trooper - vanguard. Granted, I'm only level 19 so far, but holy **** if this is how the class plays after being "nerfed to being unplayable," I'm an idiot for playing a jugg all these months.

 

Using my jugg leveling experience as a comparison, I tear through mobs/ people in a quarter of the time and have been in the top 3 damage in the 15-20 warzones I've done where as I gave up on pvp with my jugg as it wasn't much fun in this level range. The only class that I have troubles with are mara/sents, they drop me before I can get them much below 50% most of the time.

 

So, for some perspective, a player new to the class post 1.2, coming from a Jugg, thinks troopers are a lot of fun so far.

[Star-ranger]

I re-rolled to a more populated server just after 1.2 hit and decided to change things up a bit this time around (already have a 50 sith jugg) so I went with a trooper - vanguard. Granted, I'm only level 19 so far, but holy **** if this is how the class plays after being "nerfed to being unplayable," I'm an idiot for playing a jugg all these months.

 

Using my jugg leveling experience as a comparison, I tear through mobs/ people in a quarter of the time and have been in the top 3 damage in the 15-20 warzones I've done where as I gave up on pvp with my jugg as it wasn't much fun in this level range. The only class that I have troubles with are mara/sents, they drop me before I can get them much below 50% most of the time.

 

So, for some perspective, a player new to the class post 1.2, coming from a Jugg, thinks troopers are a lot of fun so far.

 

Any damage with a glow stick is substandard. That means that Jedi knights especially guardians and I would assume the corresponding sith classes have damage issues.

 

I don't find myself having damage issues as much as damage mitigation issues with my Commando. I don't know if the Vanguard is different than the Commando in terms of the tools they have available. I would assume since a Vanguard is more 'in your face' style of combat they're going to be set up for better damage mitigation. In general we've been talking about the Commando problems with survival.

 

Go roll a commando, play it to 30 and come back and tell us how well you survive.

[DarthPunitor]

i play a merc and it doesnt even feel like a nerf. Im still in cent gear, critting for just under 5k, which is a lot more than i used to crit pre nerf.

[Jay_Stocker]

With ya, but don't hold your breath on a fix. The commando is working as BW intends.

 

funny how this sentence is funny, true and depressing all in one.

[Pwnyride]

i play a merc and it doesnt even feel like a nerf. Im still in cent gear, critting for just under 5k, which is a lot more than i used to crit pre nerf.

 

Well Heatseeker demo round got buffed. If your baseing the entirety of the class based of one 15 sec cd then you have no buisness in this conversation, because the tracer nerf certaintly does not make up for the dmg gained to HS. Although I think that overall the merc/commando came out on top with buffs to barrage and HS.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Pwnyride

[PanzerJagdhund]

Players who cry about "Grav Round Spamming", need to grow up and do a little research before saying that. But back to the actual topic of the thread...

 

I will agree that Commandos do take a lot more damage than in 1.1. However, I can't say I am having too much problems (even though at times it gets pretty scary), as my healing companion is in full Rakata. But for players that are leveling, this is a pretty big issue.

[Rhyys]

I read this thread the other day and kinda worried about it until I took my trooper out to Belsavis and ran a few dailies, which I have always done solo. Honestly, I felt, if anything things died a little quicker. I've always tried to use a proper rotation, stack my grav rounds and drop into the rotation, weaving a few grav shots in to keep up the buff.

 

I did the same thing the other night and things died as fast, if not faster. I didn't really notice a difference. <shrugs>

[Jetflair]

I played Trooper Vanguard when game started and I found it bit challenging to be honest.

When I rolled commando before 1.2 I was amazed how easily it slized down all opponents on lower levels. And that even as healer.

 

Now I rolled Guardian and far as I can tell its easiest choice of them all. I don't see much chance of dying with it.

 

I think problem with Trooper AC's is that they are basically ranged classes. They should kill fast enough so they dont need close contact but again they should not kill everything from range. Since they have good armor it takes away abilities that would help to bounce back like with Force users or smugglers/IA.

 

Basically Troopers are Paladinds with a bow but without sword & protective spells. Troopers should kill and CC enough mobs before they reach Trooper or Troopers get tso trouble easily. With Jedis it opposite. They actually run to mobs and get most of damage middle of them.

 

What I am trying to say is that having heavily armoured ranged class is contradiction. You can't buff them much or such class is very OP. If you take too much out of them they are too vulnerable in melee other hand.

 

I think this contradiction is very clear been with Vanguard. Try to play assault specialist from day one. It may work but you have to wiggle a lot I bet. Class is bit broken altough with excellent gear is very pleasant to play.

 

To me it seems trooper works very well or then not at all.