Class changes and balance in Game Update 1.3

[toyfanatic]

I would love to talk with some one who thought up these changes for shadow and tell them why i think its not good idea.

[TSDx]

Now that I have a night to sleep on this, I'm more annoyed than I was yesterday.

 

What the heck is the reasoning behind lowering Immortal Juggernaut DPS? We already have the worst DPS out of the 3 tanks. The change to Single Saber Mastery is not needed. The massive nerf to Crushing Blow damage was not needed. I don't consider 25% to be a "slight reduction." Has anyone EVER complained about Juggernaut DPS in ANY spec? I've certainly never seen it. Its like you're daring me to try and go for a hybrid template since the extra rage generation in Soresu is going to make going all the way up the Immortal tree unnecessary.

 

My tanking partner for OPs is an assassin. Guess we won't be seeing many of those anymore either.

 

You're addressing issues that don't need to changed while STILL ignoring the ridiculous Marauder/Sentinel defensive cooldowns that grant them better survivability than a tank.

[KindBudhArsh]

OP still OP i see...

[TheRedNalroni]

 

OK someone failed basic math. If I tank one mob or 3 mobs my proportional increase in damage is the same. If it was 35% it would be 35% more damage. Each mob will do the same % increase. So 3 mobs hitting me at for 1000 = 3000 damage. If I took 35% more damage each mob would hit me for 1350 for a total of 4150. 4150 is 35% more than 3000, what do you know, the damage increase is the same %.

Now lets delve deeper into your misconception. The armor rating reduction is not 35% and the armor damage reduction modifier is most certainly not 35%, its .9% more damage taken. Yes 0.9% more damage.

Base Armor + Combat Tech + Stasis (20% talent)

Now 100+150+20=270

1.3 100+115=20=235

(270-235)/250=13% armor rating nerf

THIS IS NOT A 35% NERF!!!!

For my marginally geared (columi mainly) alt shadow tank

Current armor = 6746 AR = 38.45% DR

Current - 13% = 5869 AR ~= 5982 (an armor level i can reach) = 37.65% DR

Assume a bit more call it, what 37.55% DR to over value another 120 AR loss

So 38.45-37.55=0.9% mitigation loss... Oh no... less than 1% less mitigation... on a COLUMI geared tank, aka I am not far into diminishing returns.

Once again for the people who missed it the first time having Combat Stance move from +150% armor (aka 250% total armor) to 115% armor will cost me .9% mitigation.

 

I should have read that one sentance before posting. I failed English, not Maths. The reason I stated 35% armor reduction as opposed to specific number of damage reduction is everyone is going to be affected differently.

 

I have 7006 Armour currently With Dark Charge which gives me +43.33% Damage reduction on live.

on Test I have 6097 which Gives +38.09 Damage Reduction

43.33 - 38.09 = 5.24

Thats 5.24% not 0.9%

Thats a 5.24% extra damage from each mob attacking me.

i.e.: 3 Mobs x 5.24% more damage taken in a multi mob tanking situation than i do. The 5.24% Nerf is applied on every attacker. currently. Understand?

 

MY maths or is it Biowares tooltips?

 

 

First off Im ignoring Itemisation Beyond Armour. Anyone and Everyone with any clue replaces and customises their armour for optimisation and can therefore have identical items beyond base armouring. Therefore I see it as Irrelevant.

 

Lets Look at Rakata:

Heavy Armour = 4735 From Items +60% (Ion Gas Cylinder/Soresu Form) = 7576

Light Armour = 2508 From Items +170% (Current Dark Charge +Eye of the Storm) = 6771

post nerf:

Light Armour = 2508 From Items +135% (Current Dark Charge +Eye of the Storm) = 5893

 

Juggernauts add ontop of this damage reduction (already higher than Assassins Light armour pre nerf:

Soresu adds an Additional 6% damage Mitigation on top of their armour. As a raw stat and not under affects of diminished returns this in itself can be considered a very high boost from armour. It is in fact the equivalent of over 1800 more Armour rating. (ignoring Invincible 40% damage reduction for 10 seconds every 2 minutes and Sonic Barrier as an undetermined damage aborption; +20% damage reduction from 4pce bonus)

 

Powertechs add ontop 5% damage mitigation from ion gas cylinder an additional 2% damage reduction from Ion Screen, +2% from flame burst, +2% from 4cpe Set bonus, (effectively 2100 more armour rating) With an additional 16% More armour rating 7576+16% = 8788 Armour which works out to a close 3-4% increase in damage reduction, making them in armour alone the biggest damage mitigators from Armour alone. (Ignoring Oil slick 20% Accuracy debuff that counteracts 20% Crit chance against them)

 

Last but not least Assassins with the inclusion if wither no longer breaking CC post 1.3 we gain a 5% damage reduction bonus, +2% from 4pce armour bonus.

 

So to summarise:

Juggernauts -7576 Armour rating +6% Damage Mitigation

Powertechs - 8788 Armour rating +11% Damage Mitigation

Assassins - 5893 Armour rating +7% Damage Mitigation

 

Difference being from 7006 to 6097 is 5.24% damage mitigation (approx 100 difference for 5% At this Level of dininished returns means that the difference between 5893 to 7567 is going to be about 8% or more, or to 8788 11% or more

 

Um What?

Shadow - Def 27.27% Armor 6746 DR 42.45 S/A 62.66/50.85 Columi

Guardian Def 26.11% Armor 7494 DR 46.96 S/A 47.20/29.51 Columi/Rakata

Trooper- Def 19.41% Armor 8649 DR 52.95 S/A 50.31/38.21 Rakata/BH

All #s assume self buffs (20% SR for shadow and 8% SA for trooper) were up at max

I have literally NO idea where you pulled your ideas from.

Well even from your own example A shadow 800 armour less than Guardian has 4% difference, what were you smoking when you came out with 0.9% from a 900 loss??!

 

Defence - Avoidance of taking damage all together

Juggernauts Guard Stance+Blade barrier = 12% Defence Bonus (+smash 5% accuracy Debuff)

Powertechs Oil slick = ?% as its a 20% accuracy debuff and any boss with over100% accuracy counteracts Defence, this debuff varies from mob to mob and boss to boss and could mean as much as a straight 20% Defence bonus or as little as 0. Infact in most cases its going to be anywhere inbetween 5-10% on boss fights. Someone with greater knowledge might be able to help me with this one.

Assassin Lightening reflexes and premonition = 6% Defence bonus (ignoring deflection +50% defence for 12 seconds every 2 minutes; Discharge 5% Accuracy Debuff)

 

Im not taking into account buffs. in an Operation or just Alt levelling everyone can have the same buffs. If your a dedicated Tank you will have gone out of the way for all of them for even flashpoints. Therefore theyre irelevant in the grand scheme.

 

Clearer for you?

 

Ok Finally Shielding and Absorbtion

Juggernauts - Shield Specialisation = +4% ontop of itemisation

Powertechs - Shield Vents/Empowered tech = +8% ontop of itemisation / +2% Absorbtion (Heat Screen)

Assassins - Dark Ward + 2pce set bonus = +20% with 10 charges (greatly diminishes with multiple mobs)

Shielding/Absorbtion does not influence Criticals. Only Armour damage reduction affects Critical hits. Which is why Assassins are easier to heal through greater shield chance but become difficult to heal when critical hits are made.

 

These adjustments are based down to Our Self healing ability. Heal over times do not protect Assassins from Critical hits. A large portion of Self healing is over healing. When tanking it is important to keep the tank at 100% health or as close to all of the time. A single crit on an Assassin as Their damage mitigation from criticals is higher than the other tanks Significantly so (damage mitigation from armour difference between Assassins and there armoured counter parts is at 175% as Most bosses are calculated with +75 Surge).

 

You can say all you want about other utlities:

Force shroud is a very powerful utility for 5 seconds with a cooldown of 45 seconds (with disjunction and lightening recovery skills). This is also very situational. You cant discount the advantages that other tanks have...as clearly stated above.

Assassins Tanking stance is the only one that reduces their own DPS by 5%.

Edited June 8, 2012 by TheRedNalroni
Spellings and Grammar

[Suxx]

I understand that my lone opinion most probably will not be heard by Bioware, but anyway can't resist to express it here.

 

I think that rebalancing BW is doing is performed completely wrong (though the idea is not bad of course). Many players while considering which class/role to play seriously investigate all the pros and cons of the candidate classes, consider different skill tree builds, all advantages and drawbacks, as they will invest plenty of time into that character. They want to enjoy it, not curse the developers for spoiling the game experience. So cutting down some classes while adding some "arguable" benefits to them leads to many negative emotion among players, while everyone will agree the main aim of the game is to generate positive emotional feedback.

 

For instance, with 1.2 patch many Sith Sourcerers and Mercenaries did respec from healer builds to dps and even abandoned their characters in disappointment, on which they have spent many hours (i definitely saw many examples myself).

 

In 1.3 it seems like hitting blow reached Sith Assassin tanks. The serious armor reduction (which was always around 1k less than of all the other tanks) will definitely move them from main tank role to offtank class, which is not what many (including myself) were planning to have at the end.

 

Threat generation increase is quite good, but it is of no use with survivability cut down to dust. I think that if BW will not review their attitude toward player satisfaction and move some workforce from unsuccessful rebalancings to creation of more challenging encounter for example, they may loose another large portion of active subscribers as people eventually will get tired of this unpleasant "surprises".

 

Best Regards,

Eol

[TimVickey]

In 1.3 it seems like hitting blow reached Sith Assassin tanks. The serious armor reduction (which was always around 1k less than of all the other tanks) will definitely move them from main tank role to offtank class, which is not what many (including myself) were planning to have at the end.

 

Threat generation increase is quite good, but it is of no use with survivability cut down to dust. I think that if BW will not review their attitude toward player satisfaction and move some workforce from unsuccessful rebalancings to creation of more challenging encounter for example, they may loose another large portion of active subscribers as people eventually will get tired of this unpleasant "surprises".

 

Best Regards,

Eol

 

This ignores BioWare's stated purpose of "nerfing" Sith Assassin tanks -- they self-heal. No other tanking class does this.

 

 

Testing shows that the self-healing generated by Shadow/Assassin tanks is too powerful after the armor adjustment they receive via Combat Technique/Dark Charge. This armor adjustment should have brought Shadow/Assassin tanks to lower passive survivability levels than the heavy armor tanks, with the self-healing they provide making up for the difference. However, this armor adjustment was making them passively just as good as the heavy armor tanks, with the self-healing taking them a bit beyond our survivability targets. Rather than hit armor or self-healing too hard, we’ve opted to adjust both by a much smaller amount.

 

 

Source: http://www.swtor.com/blog/class-changes-and-balance-game-update-1.3

Edited June 8, 2012 by TimVickey
formatting sucks

[psi_overtake]

-lots of math-

 

Was a pleasure reading this

[Suxx]

Thank you for pointing to this mostly masterpiece of crap. I have read it do not agree with it as maybe someone smart enough has already noticed. I strongly doubt that the person making decision ever played one of these classes. Everything these is extremely stupid!

And any subscriber as soon as he/she is paying his money has right to express disagreement with anything BW does.

[syntxerr]

There are many disappointed players from the Sage/Sorc healing community staring at the patchnotes which remained completely empty for their AC.

 

Not even in terms of raw power or output but simply to bring back some of the interesting and meaningful choices that could be made before and to give us some fun and challenging force management mechanic. Both things that were hinted at and yet we see absolutely nothing. Not even a mention of our AC.

 

This is very disappointing, we are watching you.

[humanyt]

I have seen some very interesting posts especially about tank assassins

 

I have an other post at #271

 

I wanted to add, last night I went and tanked nightmare pilgrim, we were 3 tanks, 1 juggernaut, 1 powertech and 1 assassin, and guess what, I was the one taking more damge then the others, I was the one who died first when we wiped. We did manage to kill him, but everytime there was a critical hit or cleave or gore if my cds were not up I would almost get one shot if it were not for healers.

 

I also went and tanked hardmode denova, and then again the bosses hit really hard, my selfhealing ability does not help me much there and any armor reduction would simply be fatal to assassins for end content tanking.

 

Before 1.2 tanking was a pain for flashpoints and operations until I got my stats balanced and had to work hard on my assassin, then at 1.2 assassins became a good tanking class that is par with other tanks.

I have a powertech tank and I notice a difference in survivability concerning major cleaves and critical hits from bosses, we're not talking about tanking your trash during dailys because anyone can do their dailys.

 

Now that people enjoy the assassin you want to kill us?

I'd say leave the assassin as is, from what I've read the tanking classes are just fine the way they are, they each have their strenght and weaknesses that complement each other.

Why make threat a 100%, so now tanking will be so easy that you do not need to generate threat?, dps will just unload with no regard, we are going towards a basic tank and spank system, boring, boring, boring, the game had somewhat of a challenge now you are dumbing it down, I have no problems with threat as long as I get a few seconds on the boss to pull wither and my chock before anyone touches him, and all the other tanks I've been with don't have threat problems...so tell me again why all these changes...who have you been talking too?

I've been in beta tests pre-launch, I even had early access to the game and have been playing since.

I think you have to work on dps and healing classes from what I've seen, sorcerers, mercenaries, marauders.

 

I hope you take into consideration how people are going to be displeased with these changes and how these changes will affect the number of subscription lost to 1.3, as a good business man how can you justify losing customers?

Edited June 8, 2012 by humanyt

[Hellrazer]

I would like to see the cost in taking mods out reduced or taken away so we have have free range in customizing our gear without penalties

[MillionsKNives]

Thats a 5.24% extra damage from each mob attacking me.

i.e.: 3 Mobs x 5.24% more damage taken = 15.72% more damage taken in a multi mob tanking situation than i do currently. Understand?

 

No, because that's not correct. 5.24% damage from each mob attacking you means that you take 5.24% more damage. That's how percents work...

 

With your numbers, say a mob normally hits you for 1000 damage, with three of them hitting for 3000 total. Post-patch they now each hit you for 1052.4 damage, for 3157.2 total. That's...you guessed it (or not) 5.24% more damage. 15.72% more damage would mean you're taking 3471.6 damage, which you didn't.

[Y-Yorle]

If a dev could provide exact numbers and the reason(s) why Defense Guardian is getting nerfed in damage while it already was the lowest among tank classes I would be very happy, and perhaps a but more understanding towards the changes.

[psi_overtake]

If a dev could provide exact numbers and the reason(s) why Defense Guardian is getting nerfed in damage while it already was the lowest among tank classes I would be very happy, and perhaps a but more understanding towards the changes.

 

I don't think some people will ever be satisfied.

"If a dev could provide what changed to my class" ->

"if a dev could provide a reason why" ->

"if a dev could provide exact numbers" ->

"if a dev could provide the percentages of people making and not making the marks" ->

"if a dev could provide what servers these guys not making the marks are on because we're doing just fine / if a dev could provide what servers these guys making the marks are on because we're finding it impossible on our server."

 

That's a bit of an exaggeration, but I think that the core truth is some people will never be satisfied, and I think giving more and more minute information takes away from the game and puts it too much into meta-gaming, which isn't what I came here to do. I play the game to have fun while learning to play my character well, NOT to calculate needlessly.

 

I trust that the devs won't let an entire class become COMPLETELY unplayable (in b4 sorc healing, which IS playable), and if they realize that they screwed up, that they'll fix it (in b4 fanboi assumptions, because I'm not).

[Yokomohoyos]

I get wanting to bring self heals under control (that's an easy concept to grasp). However........reducing their armor by 35%. Why such a massive hit? Seldom as a guardian tank did a shadow tank EVER out survive me or pull aggro off me. Thier 150% armor bonus really didn't do that much for them.

 

Certainly agree that the extra 35% does not do much for Assassin Tanks anyways. My only guess is that in the top pure absolute highest tier of gear there may be some palpable differences, yet for those of us not at that absolute highest tier of gear, this change will hamper our ability to tank effectively.

 

Here is where guild will certainly shun Assassins trying to tank and prefer a Juggernaut or a Power Tech. The changes were not small by any means, 35% of something and 50% something are massive amounts... Just think about it--- 35% less of your body is pretty much loosing your head and part of your chest. Loosing 50% well then you are just left with one arm, one leg, part of your head and part of your torso...

 

Small? The developer that wrote the article needs an editor - you need to understand that perhaps a better word choice would have been to say the changes shall range from one-third to one-half and that would have been neutral enough to not seem misleading and flat out just not right.

 

Good to see buffs to other tanks and some dps... at least you are acknowledging that part of your fanbase is not all pro and are actually doing something about this... I can't help but ask... where is the healer love?

[laiboch]

My question is when will Bioware realize the biggest issue with class balance is giving tank classes access to DPS tree's and DPS gear. If you want a tank class make a tank class. Give them 3 trees that allow a player to pick something that fits their play style while not creating super classes that can take a beating and dish out tons of damage

 

When you have tank classes that can use DPS gear and access to DPS builds you end up with imbalance. It happens in every game I have played that allows this, yet instead if addressing the actual issue the Dev's always dance around it because it would be admitting poor design and shoddy mechanics.

 

The reason Powertech's are doing so much damage comes down to two basic things.

1)Access to Tank and DPS trees

2)Access to Tank and DPS gear in a single build.

 

What a group of SMART developers would do is change the Merc's to a Medium armor class and Balance gear for both. Thus allowing more control over Itemization and more control over damage.

 

More so what a group of REALLY SMART Dev's would do is break each base class into 3 advanced classes. For Example BH could have:

Merc - Medium armor Ranged DPS - Support

Powertech Heavy armor support class. Healer - Support

Bodyguard - Heavy armor. TANK (Ranged - Melee) - Support

 

Then Itemize gear to list each class (ie Trooperlookin Getup of Blahness Type: Heavy Class: Boduguard stats: yadda yadda Tank tank tank yadda yadda) to maintain balance.

 

Then you can base skill trees in a way that allows you to control Damage and survivability much better than having "Shared" trees which is always a recipe for disaster especially when on of the "Shared Tree's" is a DPS tree. Now if you make the "Support" tree the shared tree again you can more easily balance out damage, Itemization and create more balance as well as play style options.

 

When Implementing a class based system as opposed to a skill based system you have to make clear and direct distinction between those classes limiting and controlling access to skills and equipment to make it work. When you fail to do this as has been demonstrated clearly in ToR you end up with exactly what you have happening now. PT's going up in the tank tree and then over into a DPS tree creating imbalance in PVE and PVP. To be fair PT's are not the only ones that are doing this, but I am using the PT as an example. The exact same thing could be pointed out with Jugs/Guardians and Sin/Shadows. They all share the exact same flaw. Access to Tank and damage tree's and access to tank and DPS gear.

 

Its fine to make it so each class has options in how they play, but with a class based system you have to really think through what a class has access to, and Bioware has simply dropped the ball on this.

[Suxx]

Actually there was no necessity of such an actions in regard of class balance. If Bioware thinks that some class is overpowered relatively to other similar classes, they could boost these other classes instead of nerfing that single class. This step would probably make people happy instead of making so many subscribers upset making them disappointed and as a consequence loose another part of subscriber base. In addition to retain balance Bioware could make Boss mechanics more complex to compensate this boost. But of course this is much more complex and needs much more efforts, than just take class and randomly destroy its strong sides making it useless.

 

Wonderful! And good luck ruining game that people were waiting for so many years!

[ObscureKnight]

Wow this just made my Shadow Tank useless in a one on one fight. Survivabilty was the only thing I had going there at the level 50 pve and even pvp, I could not win in a one on one vs a healer let alone a DPS unless I have a healer keeping me up, unless I went all out with my cool downs and timed it properly, which is a rare thing to really do in pvp. This "fix" just flat out screws any chances for Shadows and I am assuming my Assassin is just as equally nerfed now.

[TheRedNalroni]

No, because that's not correct. 5.24% damage from each mob attacking you means that you take 5.24% more damage. That's how percents work...

 

With your numbers, say a mob normally hits you for 1000 damage, with three of them hitting for 3000 total. Post-patch they now each hit you for 1052.4 damage, for 3157.2 total. That's...you guessed it (or not) 5.24% more damage. 15.72% more damage would mean you're taking 3471.6 damage, which you didn't.

 

Yup your right, I knew you were right, Its my not explaining properly and using % in error.

Was only meaning that although its a 5% nerf to Damagae mitigation it has an exponential affect the more targets involved in a multi mob tanking situation.

5% more damag against one mob may not be a massive nerf, but when appllied multiple times as a multi-mob tanking situation means that the increased damage also makes the Assasssin the worst OFFtank and no more fit for that role than a main tanking role.

[paowee]

What a group of SMART developers would do is change the Merc's to a Medium armor class and Balance gear for both. Thus allowing more control over Itemization and more control over damage.

 

More so what a group of REALLY SMART Dev's would do is break each base class into 3 advanced classes. For Example BH could have:

Merc - Medium armor Ranged DPS - Support

Powertech Heavy armor support class. Healer - Support

Bodyguard - Heavy armor. TANK (Ranged - Melee) - Support

 

.

 

YOU seem to be a SMARTDEV. why don't you send a resume or better yet make your own game?

[Karl-Just-Karl]

No, because that's not correct. 5.24% damage from each mob attacking you means that you take 5.24% more damage. That's how percents work...

 

With your numbers, say a mob normally hits you for 1000 damage, with three of them hitting for 3000 total. Post-patch they now each hit you for 1052.4 damage, for 3157.2 total. That's...you guessed it (or not) 5.24% more damage. 15.72% more damage would mean you're taking 3471.6 damage, which you didn't.

 

It's still MORE damage. I've never thought of the Asstanks as OP in raiding and I'm not sure of anyone else that did either. They've already forced operatives to go healing to be viable in raiding groups and I'm not sure what asstanks have to fall back on...certainly not dps.

Edited June 8, 2012 by Karl-Just-Karl

[TheRedNalroni]

Ive ranted quite a bit.

And havent really touched on the healing mechanic.

Normally due to threat hindrance Ive not been maximising on the 3 Harnessed Darkness Force lightening. Now with the increased threat, I will have to maximise on the healing to Compensate the 'now' total 15% damage differential to the other two tanks and expect my nerfed self healing to be able to compensate and heal me that 15% extra damage taken everytime I take it.

 

ie If I get hit for 11500 in 20 seconds, my Self healing should generate 1500 healing to mitigate that every 20 seconds of Dark Charge and 1x harnessed Darkness[3] Force lightening In that period.

 

Multi Mob tanking wherre this 15% more damage from each mob, isnt going to be covered anywhere near the self healing however.

[lokivoid]

We are also striving to make all tanks hit the same survivability targets for Game Update 1.3. Testing shows that the self-healing generated by Shadow/Assassin tanks is too powerful after the armor adjustment they receive via Combat Technique/Dark Charge. This armor adjustment should have brought Shadow/Assassin tanks to lower passive survivability levels than the heavy armor tanks, with the self-healing they provide making up for the difference. However, this armor adjustment was making them passively just as good as the heavy armor tanks, with the self-healing taking them a bit beyond our survivability targets. Rather than hit armor or self-healing too hard, we’ve opted to adjust both by a much smaller amount.

 

The healing generated by Combat Technique/Dark Charge has been reduced by approximately 50%.

The healing generated by Harnessed Shadows/Harnessed Darkness has been reduced to 8% in total (down from 12% in total).

The armor provided by Combat Technique/Dark Charge has been reduced to +115% (down from 150%).

 

Sounds like someone failed at statistics and math.

 

Assassin/shadow armor in with dark charge was half that of heavy armor in tank stance. Also take into account that dark charge healing proc is only around 464 every 4.5 seconds (103 HPS)

 

Harness darkness can only be utilized about every 10 second's minimum (average for a extended fight is around 20 seconds). So with 25k health it would heal for 3000 for a full lightning channel, this amounts to 150 HPS. For a total of 203 HPS.

 

Now take tanking into account (sense mechanics behind absorb/shield chance is terrible) The armor difference is around 40% damage reduction between heavy and light armor tanks. Say you get hit for 10k every 3 seconds. The difference between 40% and 80% DR is 4000 / 3 = 1333 health per second.

 

Summery: 203 HPS (pre-change) does not make up for the drastic armor difference as it stands now. Making the logic behind nerfing the healing questionable.

[Gamstun]

Thank you! Can't wait to see how the changes to my Commando stack up.

 

As for the complaints about shadows, I'm PVE, and my guild's main healer says he loves shadow tanks. Call me crazy, but I trust Bioware to do the math to make sure a shadow can tank just as well as a guardian... and if they do go too far with the nerf bat, I trust them to acknowledge it (like they just did with Commandos).

 

My next character's either going to be a shadow or assassin tank. I'm eager to see for myself if it works.

 

I'll call you VERY crazy.

 

They couldn't balance it in over three years of development but they can now???

 

riiiiiggggghhhhhhtttttt

[JeramieCrowe]

I'll call you VERY crazy.

 

They couldn't balance it in over three years of development but they can now???

 

riiiiiggggghhhhhhtttttt

 

If you're looking for a balance of a perfect "0", then that will never happen. However, BioWare has been excellent at getting close and staying on top of it.