Developer Update: Class Changes and Balance in Game Update 1.4

[Talimar]

Wow, way to completely not get it.

[oredith]

And honestly I don't see why people keep saying mercs/commandos are "terrible DPS" I see plenty of guilds running DPS mercs/commandos and my own guild I run as a DPS merc, we've cleared all content on nightmare mode and we have the first two bosses in HM denova down with me as a DPS merc.

people are referring to merc dps in pvp.

[Rynis]

Since force speed is being reduced to 20 seconds and Darkness assassins spec into a 10 second decrease to force speed...is our speed going to be a 10 second cooldown?

[JamieM]

I was hoping for some love for PVE Juggernauts. Oh well, we are cool anyway, despite what math tells us.

 

Same here mate - really thought we were due some tweaks but I guess BW think they did enough in 1.3 (hint: they didn't, we need a damage buff to both DPS and Tank Juggs).

[scionofhorus]

Since force speed is being reduced to 20 seconds and Darkness assassins spec into a 10 second decrease to force speed...is our speed going to be a 10 second cooldown?

I'm just wondering if you could combine it with the new 5 second reduction in Inf/Dec for a 5 second cooldown total. Whee, 60% average increased speed.

[WobblyBits_X]

i am somewhat disappointed about the change to rocket punch, i found that knockback quite handy for pve...

force wave did however receive a lot of hate from me about having an effective cast time. some people could see you activating it and react before it took effect which was highly frustrating...

the changes to CC are definitely a good thing and hopefully shadows and operatives will be more desirable for raid content after this.

[Broden]

This "LACK OF CONTENT" Update will get delayed to next month, time to unsub!!!

[Ghost_Spectre]

"The way control abilities were designed encouraged this behavior, and the resulting gameplay could be frustrating." How do you not understand that making Resolve build slower is only going to increase the frequency of the already frustrating and rage-quit inducing stun-locking in PvP?

 

And you're doing it because it'll benefit unorganized PuGs? How do you not realize that anything that makes things easier for unorganized PuGs will benefit organized pre-made teams even more? This will only further increase the performance gap between PuGs and pre-mades. Which means more frustration and rage-quitting on PuGs, which means the organized PvPers have even less opposition to fight against.

 

I truly don't mean to sound rude Mr. Peckenpaugh, but do you actually PvP in this game? I don't mean against your fellow developers but against real organized players? I ask because I do and while I'm far from being one of the best PvPers in this game (not even close), even I can see how these changes will only makes things worse.

 

^^This!

 

Now, my any one of my melee specialist will spend an eternity in stun while 4 or 5 pound the snail snot out of them reducing their survivabiity by half. Forget using their "get out of stun card." The system sucks and BW just made it worse. No immunity to stun whatsoever with this change. What's there doesn't last long enough to provide a melee specialist long enough time to actually produce for their team. Now that Agents and their ilk can abuse a melee specialist more at range, one cannot close on them and do anything in response. Great job in making a melee specialist useless with these changes. BW, you really know how to screw things up. Thank you so very much.

[WobblyBits_X]

Same here mate - really thought we were due some tweaks but I guess BW think they did enough in 1.3 (hint: they didn't, we need a damage buff to both DPS and Tank Juggs).

 

tbh i would actually say jugg dps is above assassin or operative at the moment for both pve and pvp...

although for pvp it can vary wildly.

[Russkiier]

I don't understand what the big deal is about the stun-range nerfs. The only reason a ranged class needs a stun is to prevent a melee player from getting up in their face. At 10 meters, the ranged class is still out of melee range (except for ravage...), and can still stun/run away.

 

Additionally, with sorcs, the overload change isn't that big a deal. Back up, overload, turn around and run away. Besides as a sorc, you shouldn't be in the middle of a melee anyways, as an assassion, you have a lot more mobility (plus reduced force speed CD).

 

Lastly, can someone explain to me how these changes mess up PvE?

To me, they don't seem to be changing DPS or HPS or mitigation, but just CCing and running away.

[Robovski]

Ergh. A massive PvP boost to the detriment of the PvE player. Gee thanks. I was thinking it was time to cancel my sub anyhow.

[Mavery]

I have actually used the method of lagrange multiplier to find the optimized point fo defense, shield and absorb to determine min squishiness (expected fraction of incoming damage) for vangaurds and shadow tanks. I understand sins has better internal/elemental, but that does not make up for the fact that we have no armoring, which was only made worse by 1.3.

 

I think you are the one that does niot understand the maths... let me help u:

 

Juggernaut

Squishiness 0.271094018987452

SigmaSquish 0.226892305330718

Spikey-ness 1.58824613731503

 

PT

Squishiness 0.257624324194631

SigmaSquish 0.192340212356521

Spikey-ness 1.34638148649564

 

Assassin

Squishiness 0.296295104913598

SigmaSquish 0.26137994914345

Spikey-ness 1.82965964400415

 

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-615-page-22.html

 

do u see how assassins have the more squishy, most unreliable and most spikey of all tanks?

 

that was rhetorical.

 

 

not only that, but the PT with their 20% accuracy debuff is the same as giving them 20% defense 1/3 of the time, which is like a 7% defense buff averaged over time, compared to sins 5%. they get 23% buff to shield out of the gate, where as sins need to use a cooldown every 8 seconds (oh what fun that is) to maintain our 20% buff.

 

It actually does make up for it. There are bosses who are exclusively internal/elemental (Zorn & Stormcaller for example). This coupled with the fact that Shield/Absorb is a much better tank stat than Defense (which Shadows and Vanguards have the highest in the game) makes us far from the "worst" tanks. This isn't even taking into consideration our strong cooldowns (resilience makes life so much easier), the fact that we are the #1 threat generator (single-target and AOE) and [in tank specs] we parse higher than the other two by far.

 

Our sole, sole weakness is when a boss is nothing but energy/kinetic. But even then, you'd be surprised how comparable the parses are.

 

The problem with your "numbers" is that they do not reflect specific fights. I mean, you throw a Shadow on Toth and of COURSE they will spike harder than a GUardian or Vanguard. We're not kinetic/energy tanks. We are internal/elemental tanks. Each fight needs to be parsed separately and then evaluated in a larger picture.

 

The fact is... the low armor doesn't really matter if you organize your Ops properly. Play to your tanks strengths. Not to their weakness.

[Skullbash]

I think you're very out of touch with your playerbase on the resolve issue, people were complaining about being stunned too often/consecutively, you're making this even worse.

 

Now you need to take a look at the amount of Survivability cooldowns Marauders/Sentinels have in combination with the highest damage per second in the game.

 

Also, are you removing the armor penetration on duplicity?

Edited September 4, 2012 by Skullbash

[Jurgen-Ferik]

reading comprehension fail.

 

mercs are not "loosing" (the word you're looking for is losing) a knockback, they said that it didn't affect merc/commandos as much, so they didn't change it.

 

No, your reading is fail.

 

They are removing the KNOCKBACK from ROCKETPUNCH.

[WobblyBits_X]

No, your reading is fail.

 

They are removing the KNOCKBACK from ROCKETPUNCH.

 

losing the knockback on rocketpunch is only a minor inconvenience... and only really for pve use.

in pvp the extra stun is actually an improvement.

[Twin]

Well...i unsubbed a few days ago, should have about 2 weeks left...and i told myself i'd resub if an game update delivered some good changes to pvp (And more WZ's + at least a halfwitted attempt to incentive world pvp)

 

This update lol...isn't it.

 

Seriously...making ppl more available to CC? Really? Haha...have fun with those white bars folks, better luck in 1.5?

[JaerunSaway]

I actually think this will help sorc and sage survivability immensely, we're given a escape ability which removes all roots and snares and grant immunity from them, we're given a instant self heal, and lastly our alacrity modifier grants now immunity to interrupts, finally I can lay down my heavy fire without getting interrupted halfway

 

What you miss is that it says roots and snares, but nothing about stuns & knockdowns. So , no you won't be getting away quite as much as you think you will be.

 

I understand the changes, and the desire for them. Playing both my sage and other classes, the root off of force wave is one of the largest sources of rage for me (much like the same effect on snipers/slingers, who get to keep it as far as I read, and who can actually kill someone during the root~...) It can't be cleansed and leaves you sitting there for 3 seconds doing nothing, unless you are a ranged dps that laughs, and keeps shooting all 3 seconds). Nevertheless, I think it's pretty impressive to see how they are simultaneously breaking us in opposite directions for PVE and PVP.

 

You will recall that the initial nerf to Resplendence was to preclude our never ending force pool obtained from free Noble Sacrifices every 15 seconds. Now they introduce a no-cost self heal for a "moderate amount", which I am guessing puts it somewhere between Benevolence & Deliverance. In PVE that's the 2k-4k range + bonus healing, 30% talents, and 80% crit (virtually guaranteed every third use, because what else does a pve healer use force potency for?) and you've got a free noble sacrifice double tap every 30 seconds. (AKA no more oop sages). They could manage this by reducing the strength of the self-heal a little more, but then it would be useless in pvp.

 

Now turn to pvp -- The change to 20seconds on Force sprint is great for dps pvp sages. more mobility to move from point to point is always great. It's use as a getaway tool? great 1v1 (which aside from ops & shadows isn't a problem) and useless where we are really hurting -- the focused healer. How often do we really get away from a snaring/stunning/rooting/knockdown/mezzing assist train using force sprint? If this is supposed to replace Force Wave as our survivability ability, it needs to ignore/break the root component of mez, stun & knockdowns as well (i.e. leave us stunned/mezzed/whatever but able to move).

On to Force Wave -- the change to insta-effect is nice, but not a big deal -- we've adjusted and timed our casts now as is, insta effect makes it a little easier to aim people, I guess. With the change to resolve, making it harder for them to fill our resolve bar when spamming cc, it's even harder to actually get away with force sprint assuming that. we aren't dead before the cc wears off. The change to 120% frontal screws us. How often do people who leap to us land next to us rather than in front of us? how often does client/server lag not show where some one actually is? This has become an offensive ability, to be used in void stars and civil wars to protect cap as people leave the gate/land off the speeder rather than as the defensive ability it appears to be intended to be. A lesser version of force push with an ae component. On the bright side, dps sages can use it to peel the crowd off the healing scoundrel next to them.

 

/sigh

[Arkerus]

Healers and range got some help. No knee jerk reactions to the other classes.

 

Overall good changes. I am a little concerned about healers being able to constantly distance themselves and continue healing but as long as DPS is somewhat coordinated it should be a fair fight.

 

The CC changes are good. People will adapt.

[Henu]

losing the knockback on rocketpunch is only a minor inconvenience... and only really for pve use.

in pvp the extra stun is actually an improvement.

 

Um no your wrong... its a HUGE part of our gameplay... and dont say its not coz i know for a fact your dont play Merc

[Cakellene]

I'd rather see 1.4 killed off than these nerfs applied. Edited September 4, 2012 by Cakellene

[Woetoo]

I'd need to see this stuff in action in PvE content....

 

... but at the moment, this looks like a whole load of PvP driven changes. In fact the blog makes numerous references to PvP and none to how these changes will impact people levelling through flashpoints or endgame operations. Like others here, I dislike when PvP balance issues change something that isn't broke in PvE.

 

I'm less concerned about the individual changes (which I'll have long forgotten in a few months) than I am about the trend of a one size fits all solution to single issue problems.

 

As a mercenary DPS who does purely PvE content, I'm just seeing classes becoming more and more generic. Ability upon ability being repeated across multiple AC's. Are we headed down the "every DPS is a mage" route?

 

Electro Dart just became more or less useless to me. Since the NPC's don't need me to overextend or broadcast my intentions that I'm about to cast it. I'm rarely using regularly anyway - but it's the one ability I really liked when levelling and future mercs will be denied it.

 

As an aside... Why do classes have to be BALANCED anyway? This isn't 1-on-1 arena. Every class doesn't have to be viable and equal to every other class surely? Isn't the point of PvP to function as a team? To give give one class a distinct advantage over another, so that each player covers the vulnerabilities in their team-mates ? (as I say, I don't PvP - but I'm thinking of stuff like Starcraft, where one unit is both powerful and weak to two other units at the same time, making for a "oh he did that, I need to counter with that" style of evolving gameplay.

 

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Edited September 4, 2012 by Woetoo

[iamthehoyden]

Thanks for the insight into what's coming in terms of class changes. We'll have to see how it plays out, but merc/com interupt is VERY welcome.

[Sippix]

losing the knockback on rocketpunch is only a minor inconvenience... and only really for pve use.

in pvp the extra stun is actually an improvement.

 

Read the following very, very carefully:

Afterburners/Concussive Force: Rocket Punch/Stockstrike now immobilizes the target for 4 seconds instead of knocking it back. Damage caused after 2 seconds ends the effect.

Rocket Punch is not going to stun the target, it's going to root it. "Immobilize" is Bioware's term for a Root, which is where you can perform actions but not move your character. You're thinking of "Incapacitate," which is Bioware's term for Stun.

[Imhotep]

Um no your wrong... its a HUGE part of our gameplay... and dont say its not coz i know for a fact your dont play Merc

 

I play Merc and youre being a bit dramatic. Its a minor nerf.

[WobblyBits_X]

Um no your wrong... its a HUGE part of our gameplay... and dont say its not coz i know for a fact your dont play Merc

 

LOL

i have a 50 merc with almost optimal gear...

i also have a 50 shadow and operative and 50 legacy.

the knockback from rocket punch is useless for raid content (jet boost is far superior) and a stun beats a *small* knockback in pvp easily.

it takes how long for a melee attacker to run back to you from 5m or so?