1.2.0c Demolition Round Stealth nerv?

[Dakia]

Twitter? Really? So is that the most effective means of getting issues addressed? Or is it facebook? I didn't realize I needed to monitor and post on social media sites vs. their forums to receive feedback when issues arise.

Trust me, I loathe the increasing popularity of sites like Twitter and Facebook. I refuse to use either. I've posted more than a few rants across various games as to their overuse of Twitter and ignoring their forums.

 

Fortunately, BW has actually been pretty good in their forum communication with the community. Granted, it isn't to the degree that it was in the older days.

[NDiggy]

Trust me, I loathe the increasing popularity of sites like Twitter and Facebook. I refuse to use either. I've posted more than a few rants across various games as to their overuse of Twitter and ignoring their forums.

 

Fortunately, BW has actually been pretty good in their forum communication with the community. Granted, it isn't to the degree that it was in the older days.

 

It is sad they pay more attention to social media than to their own forums. I guess they can't be bothered to pay attention to anything more than 140 characters in length. As for this ninja nerf (because if it wasn't announced, its a ninja nerf), this just puts the nail in the coffin that is my Commando unless they announce something spectacular. I had already given up on PvP and instead leveled a Sentinel to 50 that in only Recruit gear was infinitely better and more survivable than my Commando in PvP. And now I'll just be further bringing up the rear on the DPS charts in my raid behind the Sentinel, Gunslinger and Shadow. I wish they'd just take back the free 30 days and give me a refund on the last month of my subscription at this point.

[brutalor]

hey BW people don't joke with us...

 

you nerfed by 10% a shoot with activation time 1.5 and giving us a 10% on a shoot of 15sec cooldown, in mean of DPS was quite the same with the old demolition round damage. at the end i was quite like it.

 

now i've the SAME damage level from pre 1.2 with Demo Round every 15sec and a HUGE nerf on my Grav Round.

plus of it i've less critical chance so now my Demo Round is doing less damage cause of the base damage and because of less critical hits. Remembers that is an end tree skill with HUGE cost of ammo.

 

in term of DPS it's terrible! wake up....

[Arzoo]

Crazy high? You mean like 6k in PvE!!!! Yeah...I can see how those crazy numbers might make Commando seem like a viable class for DPS.

 

Yes Crazy High. Our 3 Commando dps team was hitting 10k per demolition round. I'd just assumed that this was meant to somehow balance against sentinels bringing similarly ridiculous stacking benefits in the form of their op-wide damage buff.

[RainerKon]

What i really don't get is that the trooper was supposed to be some super bad *** black ops trooper, able to take on sith blow for blow... and yet now we're slowly being reduced to the white armor cannon fodder of the movies.

[JLapp]

Yup, demo round is clearly nerfed 25% from this time yesterday.

 

Did a short test last night on the operation dummy.

 

Last Night's Demo Rounds: (numbers to the right are crits that I adjusted for: Base = Crit Damage / (1 + 0.7475 +0.3):

3,334

3,251

3,345

3,197 6539

3,374 6901

3,307 6765

3,301 6752

 

Today's Demo Rounds:

2674

2697

2696

2656 5433

2654

2668 5457

 

Last night Average: 3301

Today's Average: 2674

 

3301 / 2674 = 1.234 Slightly off due to variance.

[Erastos]

I could not aggree with that statistic more.. I have same warzone experience..

 

BUMP! BUMP!

[Rainsfords]

Big 'ol bump. Can't understand how tanky classes can keep their burst while we lose our sustained and our burst while being super, super squishy. Sigh.

[xpactor]

the reason why demo round is nerfed by 25% is because our debaps on target which is 5% per stack is also not working now. the icon appears on the target but the debaps is not working. Edited April 20, 2012 by xpactor

[Jherad]

If you compare demo round before and after stacking grav vortex, there is a clear difference (a quick test on my WZ dummy showed demo going from 1550 to 2000 which would be about right including the armor debuff).

 

That said, grav round is undoubtedly less powerful, even while solo. Something else is going on.

[Faleous]

Yup - had this today after the latest patch - my grav round is nerfed back down. I'm always apprehensive when Bioware does a patch, because god knows what else they break or 'forget to include'. Edited April 20, 2012 by Faleous

[Kushtaka]

I'm seeing the nerf with an average of about a 2k drop in damage on Demo Round crits to players, or at least what I'm seeing quite a bit, and these aren't fresh 50's, they're BM and above. Thank you Bioware for being really bad at this game dev stuff, as usual.

[blackadda]

They also fixed another bug I don't think anyone was aware of: Your own grav-round stacks counted TWICE for the demolition round buff. It had taken me a little while to figure out; I noticed that your own personal stack buffed demolition round's damage more than another Commando's did... by exactly 25%.

 

 

This would be because there is a talent which grants TWO stacks of heatsigs/grav vortex per tracer or grav round shot... that wasnt/isnt a bug...

Edited April 20, 2012 by blackadda

[Quantemoq]

Let me clear up what happened: they did indeed fix demolition round benefiting from other Commando's grav vortex's (I tested and it was indeed working that way. I'm not 100% clear why we shouldn't be allowed to piggy-back on other Commando's stacks, but whatever, they probably were just concerned that it escalated PvE damage too much if you stacked Commandos).

 

They also fixed another bug I don't think anyone was aware of: Your own grav-round stacks counted TWICE for the demolition round buff. It had taken me a little while to figure out; I noticed that your own personal stack buffed demolition round's damage more than another Commando's did... by exactly 25%.

 

I can even provide a very likely explanation for how it was bugged previously. Before it ran a check on ALL grav round debuffs. After the patch it ran a check for your own personal stack... but ALSO checked globally for all stacks of the debuff... including the one you applied and already received credit for.

 

In short: demolition round was hitting for crazy high numbers because it was bugged even in the case of 1 Commando. I don't know if this was a big enough difference to prop up the class after the grav round nerf and without it we'll suffer, but I guess we'll find out soon.

 

it seems you hit the nail, sadly. Demo/hsm round was hitting for too much if one did the math, but not for too much concerning the balance, since given the fact that not a lot of people were complanion about "overpowered arsenal mercs flooding the wzs" after 1.2 shows that a lot of the current nerfs (especially in survivability) were outshining this minor 'bug'.

i have 1 warhero, 2 rakata, rest bm arsenal merc and a 2 warhero, rest bm anni mara . and on the pvp dummy the mara did 1600dps and the merc 1350 (before the latest heat seeker nerf that was) over 2 min .

 

so i fear that now after they 'corrected' the maths, they lowered(destroyed?) the only thing a couple of arsenal mercs/gun commandos were useing to keep their hopes up after the very harsh survivability nerf.

 

let's hope things will improve in further patches..

[Gyronamics]

I REALLY hope your data is wrong. For Gods sake, Commando's weren't even top DPS as it was. These continual nerfs to everything from our DPS to our survivability are REALLY starting to take their toll.

 

Yes they were actually.

 

I was just reading a thread the other day on MMOChampion where a player was explaining how he was logging 1800dps in raids. Not on a dummy, in an actual raid.

 

He's had to edit it now because he can't do 10k crits with his heatseekers anymore.

[JLapp]

This would be because there is a talent which grants TWO stacks of heatsigs/grav vortex per tracer or grav round shot... that wasnt/isnt a bug...

 

He was saying that before, when you had 5 vortexes on a target...the game was calculating damage as if there were 10 vortexes on a target.

 

Possible...but if that issue existed (and was fixed), it was not stated in the patch notes.

[Arzoo]

 

Possible...but if that issue existed (and was fixed), it was not stated in the patch notes.

 

I'm positive the issue existed. Demolition round damage utilizing your own stack of vortexes resulted in 25% more damage than demolition round damage using another commando's stack.

 

They mentioned fixing the bug that caused it. By no longer accepting other player's stacks the game also no longer counts your own stack twice.

 

For all I know they didn't even realize that was happening. It certainly wouldn't surprise me that they had no clue the ability was being artificially propped up by a bug the entire time.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Arzoo

[JLapp]

Yup, demo round is clearly nerfed 25% from this time yesterday.

 

Did a short test last night on the operation dummy.

 

Last Night's Demo Rounds: (numbers to the right are crits that I adjusted for: Base = Crit Damage / (1 + 0.7475 +0.3):

3,334

3,251

3,345

3,197 6539

3,374 6901

3,307 6765

3,301 6752

 

Today's Demo Rounds:

2674

2697

2696

2656 5433

2654

2668 5457

 

Last night Average: 3301

Today's Average: 2674

 

3301 / 2674 = 1.234 Slightly off due to variance.

 

Thinking about this more, it does seem like the other poster is correct in that the the game was giving a 50% demo round bonus when 5 vortexes were on a boss.

 

My tool-tip damage was (can't remember exact numbers) but somewhere around 2100-2250 base demo round damage. With 25% damage bonus from vortexes, most demo rounds should land between 2625 and 2812 (assuming no armor mitigation...looking at the few numbers there is probably around 2% mitigation on the dummy I was using).

 

So I guess I would call this a ninja bug fix more than anything.

[Jherad]

Right - this 'two bug' scenario makes a lot more sense to me. Fixing the benefits from multiple commandos' vortex stacks makes a lot of sense, as 13k crits are ludicrous. The second bug though (50% bonus from own stack) - is, in my opinion what kept us afloat competitively after the other damage nerfs in 1.2.

 

Now that this second bug has been eliminated, demo round doesn't do nearly enough damage to compensate for the grav round reduction.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Jherad

[GroogOT]

How are we magically getting 10 stacks of vortex on a target when we only fire 3 times to build up our debuff? Or do you mean to say that a talent which is supposed to apply a debuff twice is actually applying it 3.3 times.

 

Also, has anyone tested this with something akin to shatter shot? Get a gunslinger buddy to debuff the target and see what the armor debuff alone provides. I must be missing something or none of these "quick checks" have considered it properly.

[Harridan]

I understand the issue about our own buffs counting twice (BH btw) but that was supposedly fixed with 1.2:

 

1.2 Patch Notes:

Demolition Round's damage output has been increased by approximately 10%. Bonus damage dealt by this ability now correctly takes the number of your Gravity Vortices on the target into account.

 

1.2c Patch Notes:

Demolition Round: This ability will now only gain extra damage from your additional stacks of Gravity Vortex and will not incorrectly detect debuffs from other players.

 

So, solo damage should not have been altered from prior to 1.2c and after it, unless 1.2 did not fix the double counting issue. That would be difficult to see since they changed the base damage of the ability at the same time.

[JLapp]

How are we magically getting 10 stacks of vortex on a target when we only fire 3 times to build up our debuff? Or do you mean to say that a talent which is supposed to apply a debuff twice is actually applying it 3.3 times.

 

Also, has anyone tested this with something akin to shatter shot? Get a gunslinger buddy to debuff the target and see what the armor debuff alone provides. I must be missing something or none of these "quick checks" have considered it properly.

 

You aren't getting 10 stacks. The game was double counting the 5 you had on.

 

Armor mitigates the damage of abilities. All reducing the armor is going to do is get your closer to the tool tip damage (adjusted for skills as necessary....25% higher in this case). And it appears the Combat Training Dummy on the gav daragon (not the MK-5 one) has very little mitigation.

[Arzoo]

Yeah armor reduction on the dummy does surprisingly little. Going from 0 to 3 Commandos stacking the armor reduction buff (it DOES stack) caused a surprisingly small increase in damage, though remember that we're already ignoring another 35% or so.

[Charlimit]

So since they balanced our damage around their metrics and the bug has been fixed, does that mean they need to rebuff our damage again? Since we're losing 25% on the 1.2 demo round.

[Harridan]

So since they balanced our damage around their metrics and the bug has been fixed, does that mean they need to rebuff our damage again? Since we're losing 25% on the 1.2 demo round.

 

It would be interesting to see if they were basing the 10% to Demo on the then bugged damage and did not have an accurate understanding of how removing the bugs would affect the damage metrics of both Commandos and Mercenaries. Perhaps they were saying "OMJeebus, that's too low!" while looking at that big screen after 1.2c. One can hope.