Commando 1.3 Buffs: What do you think?

[Essence_of_Light]

After looking over the patch notes, I'm glad to see them buffing commandos slightly but I still think they need to make us a little more "beefy". For example buff us so -Commandos now take 5% less damage from AoE attacks, or something like that. But I'd like to hear your opinion.

 

Here are the Commando patch notes:

Commando

Gunnery

 

Cell Charger has been redesigned. While Armor-Piercing Cell is active, there is a 50% chance per point to generate 1 Energy Cell every 6 seconds.

Charged Barrel and Gravity Surge have swapped positions in the Skill Tree. Charged Barrel now requires Grav Round and Gravity Surge now requires Charged Barrel.

Gravity Surge now additionally grants an extra stack of Charged Barrel and Charged Barrier, if applicable, with each Grav Round fired.

Heavy Trooper now increases healing received by 1% per point (down from 3%).

 

 

Assault Specialist (Commando)

 

Target Lock has been redesigned and now gives Full Auto and High Impact Bolt 10% of armor penetration per point.

 

Here's the link to the whole thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=463539#ClassesTP

[Ganrax]

After looking over the patch notes, I'm glad to see them buffing commandos slightly but I still think they need to make us a little more "beefy". For example buff us so -Commandos now take 5% less damage from AoE attacks, or something like that. But I'd like to hear your opinion.

 

Here are the Commando patch notes:

Commando

Gunnery

 

Cell Charger has been redesigned. While Armor-Piercing Cell is active, there is a 50% chance per point to generate 1 Energy Cell every 6 seconds.

Buff to under geared Commandos, nerf to Commandos with good gear.

Charged Barrel and Gravity Surge have swapped positions in the Skill Tree. Charged Barrel now requires Grav Round and Gravity Surge now requires Charged Barrel.

Not buff or nerf, just moving things around in our talent tree.

Gravity Surge now additionally grants an extra stack of Charged Barrel and Charged Barrier, if applicable, with each Grav Round fired.

Buff

Heavy Trooper now increases healing received by 1% per point (down from 3%).

Nerf

 

 

Assault Specialist (Commando)

 

Target Lock has been redesigned and now gives Full Auto and High Impact Bolt 10% of armor penetration per point.

Buff

 

Here's the link to the whole thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=463539#ClassesTP

 

My thoughts.

[SeloDaoC]

Assault will now hit even harder with HiB

[Yurie]

I've now done some testing on pts with gunnery commando and heres my toughts:

 

I never had any problems with ammo management while playing gunnery so that buff dosnt mean anything for me, 2 stacks of charged barrier/barrel + 3 points in assault tree give a small ingrease in dps but is nowhere near the heavy dps classes (sentinel/vanguard) and even a smaller buff for defense.

 

Assault gets a small buff for dps

 

Medics get nerfed again.

 

So we will still get stomped by any another dps class and we cant kill any tanking class nor a healer but we will be a bit more usefull for pve.

[Essence_of_Light]

After re-reading the patch notes I noticed, yes, that some of these were nerfs. ***? Why do the commandos need MORE nerfs. We barely get any buffs and the ones we get don't make that much of a difference. Bioware needs to make a either one big buff or less nerfs and more little buffs!

[oaceen]

i really hope they do more with assault than just target lock. it's a buff to assault and gunnery, not just assault.

[Chaoskyx]

Commando

Gunnery

 

Cell Charger has been redesigned. While Armor-Piercing Cell is active, there is a 50% chance per point to generate 1 Energy Cell every 6 seconds.

Meh.

Charged Barrel and Gravity Surge have swapped positions in the Skill Tree. Charged Barrel now requires Grav Round and Gravity Surge now requires Charged Barrel.

Don't even see the point.

Gravity Surge now additionally grants an extra stack of Charged Barrel and Charged Barrier, if applicable, with each Grav Round fired.

Loving this.

Heavy Trooper now increases healing received by 1% per point (down from 3%).

Once again, I don't see the point, and I don't like it.

 

Assault Specialist (Commando)

 

Target Lock has been redesigned and now gives Full Auto and High Impact Bolt 10% of armor penetration per point.

Good. The increased range, survivability, and sustained damage of AS Commandos (compared to AS Vanguards) makes up for the rest.

Edited June 7, 2012 by Chaoskyx

[Echouza]

yay, no i'll have more ammo which means i can shoot out more abilities to get interupted, thanks for breif immune-to-interupt ability bioware, stuck it out to find out i should have just quit months ago

[Cormacus]

Utter rubbish. They haven't addressed any of the real problems and managed to leave the most overpowered classes alone. Fed up with this so called balance that only favors a few melee classes. Honestly my commando gets killed in 2secs flat by Pyro's / Vanguards, all i can do is run and even then I won't survive.

 

It's clear to me that their own developers never played the game.

[HTPRO]

well 65% armor pen on full auto and HiB in gunnery - can't say that is a bad thing However the fundamental issues with (gunnery) commandos are still present: Reliance on one skill and being extremely prone to interrupts

[Smashbrother]

well 65% armor pen on full auto and HiB in gunnery - can't say that is a bad thing However the fundamental issues with (gunnery) commandos are still present: Reliance on one skill and being extremely prone to interrupts

 

Don't forget the inability to kite anything or dps effectively while moving.

 

Dunno why they nerfed combat medics more, damn BW.

 

The buffs are pretty pointless overall. I was hoping they would give commandos an interrupt, or a snare/root (through talents even).

Edited June 7, 2012 by Smashbrother

[Gyronamics]

Additionally in Game Update 1.3, we’ve made changes to improve the gameplay and quality of life of Commando/Mercenary damage-dealing specs. We’ve spent a lot of time playtesting and investigating the concerns of the community, and while Commando/Mercenary damage is largely on target, prior to Game Update 1.3, resource management made performance streaky and a little too unreliable.

 

We’ve made the following changes to the Commando/Mercenary for Game Update 1.3 to improve resource management and simplify stack upkeep for Gunnery/Arsenal specs:

 

• Cell Charger/Terminal Velocity has been redesigned to passively restore 1 energy cell/vent 8 heat every 6 seconds.

 

So Gunnery/Arsenal no longer has to fish for their ammo regen by using Crits...

 

But it's ok to leave Assault/Pyro fishing for their ammo regen with a fixed 45% proc or a 75% 15s CD proc?

 

Having to rely on chance for your regen is streaky and unreliable.

 

So why only remove it from one tree?

 

Remove the chance from Ionic Accelerator/Prototype Particle Accelerator.

 

It's already on an internal 6s CD, why screw us twice by having it on a cooldown AND THEN having to fish for it with a 45% chance or 75% chance which costs us 2 ammo/16 heat each time.

 

Guarantee the proc as a 100% chance so there's no faffing about spamming default attack* when it fails to happen multiple times in a row.

 

*Assault/Pyro uses default attack within a rotation to generate a DoT but I'm talking about having to use it because the ammo regen failed thus screwing the rotation.

Edited June 7, 2012 by Gyronamics

[Mossesman]

I did a few tests with Gunnery on the training dummies. Im not sure how you post combat logs up without posting a massive wall of text, but i managed to do just under 430k damage in under 6mins, and averaged around 1220dps. Most of my damage came from full auto, followed by grav round, demo round, HiB, Hammershot, then a few other abilities.

 

Still round out of ammo quite quickly sometimes but the new 1 round per 6 seconds buff is quite handy and allowed me to DPS a bit more. I havent had the chance to test it in PvP just yet but i will try some later.

[Vagran]

Just finished a round of testing the changes on my gunnery trooper. Ammo is easy to keep up which is nice, but a potential problem is if you want to keep your grav round stacks on a target for both your demolition round, and 5 stacks of charged barrel before you use High Impact Bolt, your pretty much going to be firing grav rounds non stop.

 

People complained a lot about grav round spam before, and I think it's going to get much worse. Its possible it's just that my rotation needs work as I've been playing a Vanguard lately and I'm out of practice on Gunnery, but it seems likely that people will fire off Grav rounds non stop unless Curtain of Fire is triggered to keep the buffs up.

 

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

[Jherad]

Buff to under geared Commandos, nerf to Commandos with good gear.

 

This may be the case in PvE (although I'm doubtful), but is absolutely not the case in PvP, and it makes me wonder how many people are just parroting this line without testing.

 

I have full war hero gear, and the ammo change is a decent improvement for me. PvP is too fluid to be rooted to one spot chaincasting grav round and full auto for long enough for this to be a nerf.

 

 

Edit: To Vagran - I can't see how the patch will make you need to spam Grav Round more. The extra stacks of charged barrel mean fewer grav round casts required, and the ammo changes mean you're not limited to grav rounds and full auto for optimum regen.

Edited June 7, 2012 by Jherad

[Freeborne]

This may be the case in PvE (although I'm doubtful), but is absolutely not the case in PvP, and it makes me wonder how many people are just parroting this line without testing.

 

I haven't parroted that line, but I have said that's one change in particular, the energy regen once every six seconds vs on crit every seconds is buff to undergeared and a nerf to well geared Gunnery players in PvE.

 

There's no PvE scenario that has your character in motion for six seconds and unable to proc a crit for regen. My odds to crit on grav round is over 50%. That's four chances over 6 seconds to crit and regenerate 1 ammo, (though no more than once in three seconds) The odds are heavily stacked in my favor that on average meet or exceed 1 energy regen every six seconds from crits.

 

 

 

 

Edit: To Vagran - I can't see how the patch will make you need to spam Grav Round more. The extra stacks of charged barrel mean fewer grav round casts required, and the ammo changes mean you're not limited to grav rounds and full auto for optimum regen.

 

 

I think I understand what he means. In current rotation on gunnery the charged barrel stacks are a perk. Because of its no ammo cost (between talent points and set bonus), we use HiB on cool down regardless of the number charged barrel stacks. We typically have between 2-4 stacks, it seems, but comitting to those extra 1-3 grav rounds to make our our charged bolt stack takes too long.

 

Now our Charged Bolt stacks are going to be at most two Grav rounds a way, probably. Since its easier to get the stacks (which is a good thing to imo), grav round will have a higher priority than HiB for us, so we can maximized its damage.

 

Rotation wise, I think we'll use grav round slightly more. But gameplay wise, it'll feel like more spam--we already looking for 5 stacks on a target before demo rounding--now we'll be looking for 5 stacks on our self before HiBing too.

Edited June 7, 2012 by Freeborne

[Jherad]

Yeah, I can see how it might be possible in PvE, as per my post - not in PvP, as you aren't getting a 50% crit rate on grav round there, and need more mobility.

 

Still, even in PvE the circumstances would need to be completely optimal for the duration of combat. Latency, moving, weaving in HiB or (heavens forbid) hammer shot, or any other ability all reduce the old cell charger effect. The new one just keeps ticking away.

 

...

 

I don't understand your point about HiB - with the patch you need 3 grav rounds for a full stack of charged barrel, which means you'll still be using HiB every time its available (but with the advantage of a full stack). Nothing has changed with regards frequency. Assuming we're still talking about gunnery spec, and I'm not missing something here?

[Essence_of_Light]

I did a few tests with Gunnery on the training dummies. Im not sure how you post combat logs up without posting a massive wall of text, but i managed to do just under 430k damage in under 6mins, and averaged around 1220dps. Most of my damage came from full auto, followed by grav round, demo round, HiB, Hammershot, then a few other abilities.

 

Still round out of ammo quite quickly sometimes but the new 1 round per 6 seconds buff is quite handy and allowed me to DPS a bit more. I havent had the chance to test it in PvP just yet but i will try some later.

 

That might be true but try doing that with Maras chasing you and tons of interrupts and stuns! Almost impossible. Since the made kiting in this game really bad there's almost no chance to get 430k out in the whole game unless if they somehow not notice you attacking them.

[Freeborne]

 

I don't understand your point about HiB - with the patch you need 3 grav rounds for a full stack of charged barrel, which means you'll still be using HiB every time its available (but with the advantage of a full stack). Nothing has changed with regards frequency. Assuming we're still talking about gunnery spec, and I'm not missing something here?

 

Needing 5 grav round shots for 5 charged barrel stacks means we didn't care how many charged barrel stacks we had for HiB.

 

Needing 3 grav round shots for 5 charged barrel stacks means we're always going to take the time to make sure we have the 5 stacks before we fire.

 

You point out that we might lose a chance at Crit based regen due to mobility, lag, hammer shot, etc. Well, the same applies for Charged Barrrel Buffs. They are short lived buff that will disappear if we fire another shot to refresh the buff.

 

But that's not the point I was trying to make. The point is: We suddenly have to care about Charged Barrel Stacks, so it's going to feel like we're firing grav round more because we're paying it that much more attention. (That is to say, I think that's what the original guy was trying to say.

[BroadStreetBully]

Needing 5 grav round shots for 5 charged barrel stacks means we didn't care how many charged barrel stacks we had for HiB.

 

Needing 3 grav round shots for 5 charged barrel stacks means we're always going to take the time to make sure we have the 5 stacks before we fire.

 

You point out that we might lose a chance at Crit based regen due to mobility, lag, hammer shot, etc. Well, the same applies for Charged Barrrel Buffs. They are short lived buff that will disappear if we fire another shot to refresh the buff.

 

But that's not the point I was trying to make. The point is: We suddenly have to care about Charged Barrel Stacks, so it's going to feel like we're firing grav round more because we're paying it that much more attention. (That is to say, I think that's what the original guy was trying to say.

 

You don't have to worry about the number of charged barrel stacks. If you play your rotation the same way you did in 1.2, you will do more damage in 1.3 now simply because by doing what you already do, you will have more charged barrel stacks. For instance, if you use your 3 grav rounds to get 5 gavity vortices for your demo round, you currently will have 3 charged barrel stacks. In 1.3, you will have a full 5 stacks at this point. So you can fire off HiB like normal and get 12% additional damage. Following your opening when you are simply maintaining gravity vortices, you likely won't have a full stack of charged barrel. However, everytime you refresh gravity vortices, you will get 2 charged barrel stacks. For gunnery, this really shouldn't affect your rotation much, instead it should just be a mechanism that is likely giving you an extra 6% to 12% damage on HiB every time you use it.

[Ganrax]

Yeah, I can see how it might be possible in PvE, as per my post - not in PvP, as you aren't getting a 50% crit rate on grav round there, and need more mobility.

 

Still, even in PvE the circumstances would need to be completely optimal for the duration of combat. Latency, moving, weaving in HiB or (heavens forbid) hammer shot, or any other ability all reduce the old cell charger effect. The new one just keeps ticking away.

 

In PvE it is definitely a nerf to our regen if you were decently geared. I have 40% crit and 55% crit on grav round in a raid, I am pretty much guaranteed a cell charger proc at least once in 6 seconds and more times than not I get 2 procs in a 6 second period because the current internal cooldown on it is 3 seconds. So basically I am trading a potential 2 procs over a 6 second period that happens the majority of times for a fixed 1 proc every 6 seconds, I would call that a nerf. As for moving, I am never moving around for long enough for it to be an issue, and if I am moving around a lot consuming ammo takes a nose dive anyway since I can't use full auto or grav round.

 

Gunnery Commando is designed to be played as a stationary turret, making a change like this that favors under geared players, players leveling, and players that choose to play it differently while hurting players that are properly geared and playing the intended way seems like a stupid move to me.

[Fhrosty]

You don't have to worry about the number of charged barrel stacks. If you play your rotation the same way you did in 1.2, you will do more damage in 1.3 now simply because by doing what you already do, you will have more charged barrel stacks. (etc etc)

 

This is how I play (PVE). I usually aim for 3 grav rounds before my first HiB anyway, so this is just a little bonus dmg. But like the logs typically show, HiB falls what, 5th or 6th in the list of sources of our damage? So it's a nominal change, but one I won't gripe about.

 

I have to agree that PVE did get just slightly screwed in favor of PVP by the change of 1 ammo / 6 sec versus the crit-based 3-second version. It's simple math. A 70% crit chance with most of your attacks taking under a second will almost always generate 1 ammo every 3-5 seconds. But in PVP, like others have pointed out, you don't get to just sit there and spam attacks like us PVE yahoos, so PVPrs probably get a slight benefit from this change. Probably.

 

Now I love the Target Lock change in Assault Spec since it's included in my Gunnery spec already. PVE end-game gear is already proving accuracy-heavy, and accuracy over 100% is pretty pointless in PVE.

[Vagran]

I'm happy to read some of the replies, good food for thought. But just in case I wasn't clear enough, I'll try to elaborate on what I meant. Since it's now easier to get 5 stacks of charged barrel, some people might want to keep the five stacks up before they use High Impact Bolt. If that is the case then I think people will be using a lot more grav rounds to maintain 5 stacks of charged barrel.

If they ignore that and treat it as a bonus by sticking to a 1.2 style rotation then I agree, it won't matter.

 

It was just something I noticed as when I was firing off on the training dummy, since I thought it would try to maximise my DPS. I tried to save the impact bolt for the 5 stacks of charged barrel, however in a warzone when a melee guy is all over me, it's very unlikely I'll be keeping track of stacks of anything at all.

[Vagran]

Now I love the Target Lock change in Assault Spec since it's included in my Gunnery spec already. PVE end-game gear is already proving accuracy-heavy, and accuracy over 100% is pretty pointless in PVE.

 

I agree, the new Target lock setup is very nice. Having armor penetration on Full Auto joined with curtain of fire is great, and easier charged barrel stacks beefing up your high impact bolts is a very nice addition.

[DarkSideTOR]

The change to Target Lock is nice, Full Auto is one of our biggest DPS sources.

The change to Cell Charger is gonna hamper our ammo regen period. This is our best source of ammo regen aside from Recharge Cells, so what now? weave more Hammer Shots in to keep up regen? effectively nerfing our dps even more? I thought we were getting a dps increase in 1.3 lol, I should have known better.