Suggestions to improve commando DPS

[Helmholtzz]

There have been lot of rantings in the forums to buff and/or nerf every class out there. My purpose here is not to rant. I have been playing a commando both in PvP and PvE for a while (Valor 71 and 5/5 HM TFB). I feel the dps commando needs couple of changes. I just want to see how the community feels about these issues.

PvP:

1. Concussion charge should put a jump immunity on the casting commando for 3-4 seconds to prevent the JK/Mirror class from immediately jumping back to the commando.

Justification: Except for Hutt ball, concussion charge is a defensive move for the commando. (We don't need concussion charge to break any capping. We have enough aoe for that) So it should give us at least 2 GCDs to create some distance between the JK/mirror class when we use concussion charge. I am not asking for an aoe root (which is very annoying) I am only asking for a jump immunity for couple of GCDs.

2. For PvP there should be an option to reduce the duration of reactive shield while increasing the damage mitigation. Instead of 12 seconds of 25% (I can never survive that long without a healer with an attacker on my back) let's say 6 seconds for 50% protection.

PvE:

I have been having this debate with a guildie for a while now. Commando dps lags about 150 DPS behind a sentinel and gunslinger (ok my goal is not to stir up controversy here. this is the feel i get from Average dps numbers posted on different parsing websites). Commando does have a lot of utilities: cleanse, off heal and killer aoe but with NiM Denova in mind you don't want your character to lag in DPS. So here is my proposal:

1. Curtain of fire will auto-crit full auto and make full auto 100% accurate.

Justification: We keep our accuracy up near 100% to make sure that full auto ticks do not miss. With this buff we can sacrifice some accuracy and push crit a little bit higher to increase over all damage by may be 50-60. That will result in a dps lag of 50-100 which is acceptable considering all the utilities commando brings in the group.

 

What do you guys think?

[Jherad]

I'd say we need a heck of a lot more of that to be competitive at the high end of PvP (have you run RWZs yet?).

 

I'll leave PvE to the PvE experts, but my understanding is that we're in a pretty good place there already.

 

There are multiple posts already discussing this - and offering up much more detailed analysis/ideas.

Edited January 7, 2013 by Jherad

[oaceen]

1. Curtain of fire will auto-crit full auto and make full auto 100% accurate.

Justification: We keep our accuracy up near 100% to make sure that full auto ticks do not miss. With this buff we can sacrifice some accuracy and push crit a little bit higher to increase over all damage by may be 50-60. That will result in a dps lag of 50-100 which is acceptable considering all the utilities commando brings in the group.

 

even if it didn't push our dps past that of other classes, auto-crit would make curtain of fire a hilariously broken skill considering nearly every single full auto in a normal dps rotation is a proc

 

also it would remove some of the benefit of full accuracy anyway since crits take priority over shielded attacks

 

 

but dropping accuracy for more surge would give very few gains (even with full auto critting 100% of the time) because of the diminishing return curve added with 1.2

my scrapper has 80.12% (or so) crit multiplier and 0% accuracy because the only ranged attack i use is flurry of bolts, and it doesn't really make any appreciable difference in my dps to have capped surge

Edited January 7, 2013 by oaceen

[Helmholtzz]

I understand that to make a commando dps viable for 1v1 or even 2v2 a lot need to be changed, but this game is not designed for 1v1 or even 2v2. In team PvP commandos can pull their weight. I stay within top 2 damage in almost every WZ i go in (exceptions are there such as when the team is facerolling the opponent and I get stuck with guarding duty or you end up with multiple smash gurdians in group but there are exceptions to everything). So I think a jump immunity after the push back will improve quality of life of a commando significantly. For all those posts discussing this, could you please post some links.

Time for math.... with my current build if I aim for 100% accuracy I end up with 27% crit unbuffed. If I can give up some accuracy i can get 31% crit unbuffed. Now Full auto crits about 35% (current build) and full auto is about 35% of my full damage. My surge is 76%. if curtain of fire auto crits i get a 65% more crit (assuming all full auto is proc'ed) on Full auto which will give 75% more damage on that 65% more crit. So it will increase the over all damage by 0.35*0.65*0.75=0.17. So you are right. that will probably make a commando op. Thanks for pointing that out. May be a crit buff of 20% will be more appropriate giving a dps boost of 3.2% which will result in overall increase of 50 dps.

 

Lets see how the 100% accuracy helps out with dps. With full auto always hitting a build with 97% accuracy is good enough. With that we can increase crit by 4% while keeping surge at 75%. that should result into an more ammo regen from crit and slight increase in damage may be 2% = 30-35. so an over all increase of 85 damage. That seems reasonable. What do you think?

[DariusCalera]

Time for math.... with my current build if I aim for 100% accuracy I end up with 27% crit unbuffed. If I can give up some accuracy i can get 31% crit unbuffed. Now Full auto crits about 35% (current build) and full auto is about 35% of my full damage. My surge is 76%. if curtain of fire auto crits i get a 65% more crit (assuming all full auto is proc'ed) on Full auto which will give 75% more damage on that 65% more crit. So it will increase the over all damage by 0.35*0.65*0.75=0.17. So you are right. that will probably make a commando op. Thanks for pointing that out. May be a crit buff of 20% will be more appropriate giving a dps boost of 3.2% which will result in overall increase of 50 dps.

 

Lets see how the 100% accuracy helps out with dps. With full auto always hitting a build with 97% accuracy is good enough. With that we can increase crit by 4% while keeping surge at 75%. that should result into an more ammo regen from crit and slight increase in damage may be 2% = 30-35. so an over all increase of 85 damage. That seems reasonable. What do you think?

 

What spec and gear are you using and have you augmented said gear yet because that crit seems pretty low for any of the commando specs.

[badou]

hi i am just got my full buffs and war and elite war hero items and i can say that in pvp gunnery commandos do tons of dmg the problem is that the rest of the playes know we got only 1 skill to knock them back and has a bit long cd so we get jumped so much we cant do the dmg we are supposed to do.i done a lot of pvps and rwz to know that with a good healer and some good skill you can do real dmg.i never go under 300k on my server and that means 2 or 3 at least in every wz, but when i got a healer?then it goes up to 500 maybe more.so the point is yes we need a buff and yes gunnery commando is hard to play but if you learn it you can be really good.if they give us back the pre 1.4 dmg or at least another stun or root or even a block to stop those lolsmashers from getting to us then we will be back

[nbayer]

.... with my current build if I aim for 100% accuracy I end up with 27% crit unbuffed. If I can give up some accuracy i can get 31% crit unbuffed...

 

You don't trade accuracy for crit, accuracy can only be traded for alacrity and surge.

[Kitru]

Time for math.... with my current build if I aim for 100% accuracy I end up with 27% crit unbuffed. If I can give up some accuracy i can get 31% crit unbuffed. Now Full auto crits about 35% (current build) and full auto is about 35% of my full damage. My surge is 76%. if curtain of fire auto crits i get a 65% more crit (assuming all full auto is proc'ed) on Full auto which will give 75% more damage on that 65% more crit. So it will increase the over all damage by 0.35*0.65*0.75=0.17. So you are right. that will probably make a commando op. Thanks for pointing that out. May be a crit buff of 20% will be more appropriate giving a dps boost of 3.2% which will result in overall increase of 50 dps.

 

That's not how that math works at all. 100% crit rate compared to 35% crit rate is an improvement of 285%, not 65%, not to mention that straight multiplication is completely useless for what you're trying to accomplish. As it stands, your formula simply states that, if you reduced the damage on Full Auto to 65% of what it currently deals and further reduce that to 75%, it would deal ~50% of the damage it currently does (which makes sense because .65 * .75 = .4875). The formula should *actually* be .35 * (1 + 1 / .35 * .75) = 1.1. The first .35 is the percentage of total damage dealt by Full Auto, the first 1 represents the baseline, non-crit damage of Full Auto, the second .35 represents the baseline 35% crit rate, and the .75 represents the surge rating to modify the additional damage generated by the higher crit rate. The solution itself doesn't state that you would only deal 10% more damage than normal; it states that, with your change, Full Auto *on its own* would deal 110% of the damage that you currently deal. Bump that up by the 65% of the damage that wasn't factored in, and, with your changes, said buffed Commando would end up dealing 175% of the damage that a current Commando would deal. It's not just overpowered and poorly thought out; it's "***-were-you-thinking" overpowered and poorly thought out.

 

And, keep in mind, this is ignoring the contributions of 100% accuracy to Full Auto. Since the only other accuracy using attacks that Gunn Commandos use are Hammer Shot (~5% of total damage) and HiB (~10% of total damage), you could simply abandon stacking all accuracy entirely and make out better because, although you would miss with the occasional HiB, you're getting more surge for *absolutely everything else*, *especially* Full Auto which couldn't miss and would be autocritting.

[ArchangelLBC]

Auto Crit Full Auto is a bit much. Also I'd rather have it uninterruptable rather than 100% accuracy.

 

With that I'd go full power build. Drop Crit Rating to 25% buffed and just stack power like it's going out of style. We have a set bonus to take care of crit rating for Grav Round, and while DR crits would suffer they would hit harder when they do crit and who cares because Full Auto accounts for way more of our damage already. As Kitru said, it would swing us too far the other way, and by a large LARGE margin. Add 100% accuracy to it and I'd consider stacking alacrity.

 

Make it uninterruptable and the idea has some merit in PVP, but we still lack any kind of good utility which is where our problem is, and the PVE overbalance isn't worth it because it would draw another nerf bat.

 

I'd like to see Grav Round grant stacks of Curtain of fire. Each stack would lower the cooldown by 2-3 seconds and increase the damage by 10% per stack(maybe more). Max of 3 stacks. I mostly want this so I don't have to fuss with the RNG nature of the proc and can nail down a hard line rotation though.

Edited January 7, 2013 by ArchangelLBC

[Kitru]

I'd like to see Grav Round grant stacks of Curtain of fire. Each stack would lower the cooldown by 2-3 seconds and increase the damage by 10% per stack(maybe more). Max of 3 stacks. I mostly want this so I don't have to fuss with the RNG nature of the proc and can nail down a hard line rotation though.

 

The devs seem to have done their damned best to *avoid* hard line rotations, whether by making resource generation/costs variable (which is how they do it with tanks primarily), making the CDs on important abilities themselves variable, and/or by providing buffs with random proc chances (mixing the last 2 is really popular in fact), and I actually support that. If your rotation is entirely predictable, it's just a matter of memorizing the order in which you push buttons rather than having to actually pay attention; it removes most of the skill.

 

I could actually see Curtain of Fire making Full Auto immune to interrupts and pushback: it would make Gunnery a lot more dangerous in PvP considering how hard it hits, not to mention providing a tangible but not overpowerful improvement to performance in PvE (it's not going to make you hit harder than you would if you're not being attacked, but it will make you hit harder than you would if you are). Of course, some degree of immunity to interrupts and pushbacks is really what Commandos are missing on the whole (either that or a lot more mobility which doesn't really make all that much sense imo).

 

Personally, I'm waiting for RotHC to hit the PTS so that we can actually see what balance changes the developers have in mind: supposedly, the developers have come up with changes that address all of the current balance issues between the classes which probably means they've already got them designed and ready for implementation/playtesting. Talking about it now only really serves to act as a creative/cathartic release.

[deadandburied]

Except it's a 2 roll system. Accuracy will always be important for Commandos. And our dps seems to be fine. Some bosses are just melee friendly. If you can't beat this old, slow and lazy grampa here in dps i'd suggest more dummy testing. I'm already at the top of the charts for a raid nite. So no we don't need a buff for PvE. Edited January 8, 2013 by deadandburied

[ArchangelLBC]

The devs seem to have done their damned best to *avoid* hard line rotations, whether by making resource generation/costs variable (which is how they do it with tanks primarily), making the CDs on important abilities themselves variable, and/or by providing buffs with random proc chances (mixing the last 2 is really popular in fact), and I actually support that. If your rotation is entirely predictable, it's just a matter of memorizing the order in which you push buttons rather than having to actually pay attention; it removes most of the skill.

 

I could actually see Curtain of Fire making Full Auto immune to interrupts and pushback: it would make Gunnery a lot more dangerous in PvP considering how hard it hits, not to mention providing a tangible but not overpowerful improvement to performance in PvE (it's not going to make you hit harder than you would if you're not being attacked, but it will make you hit harder than you would if you are). Of course, some degree of immunity to interrupts and pushbacks is really what Commandos are missing on the whole (either that or a lot more mobility which doesn't really make all that much sense imo).

 

Personally, I'm waiting for RotHC to hit the PTS so that we can actually see what balance changes the developers have in mind: supposedly, the developers have come up with changes that address all of the current balance issues between the classes which probably means they've already got them designed and ready for implementation/playtesting. Talking about it now only really serves to act as a creative/cathartic release.

 

Yeah I agree. I would just like to be a bit more predictable about my DPS. Long draughts where it doesn't proc is just the worst. I agree with completely about the main changes coming in RotHC, and that for now this is all a slightly more conducive form of catharsis lol.