Reason Smash/Sweep will not be nerfed

[SomeJagoff]

There is a difference. Stun bubbles are..

1. applying the incorrect amount of resolve

2. able to be activated by right clicking them in the buff bar

this is broken.

 

Smash is not broken, it may need an adjustment. As with all other damage/healing abilities it is being reviewed for for a major re-balance. I can understand if you're unhappy they didn't make that a priority over more cartel market additions. No reason to get defensive toward other players about it.

 

Let me clarify, I wasn't complaining about the lack of action on fixing stunbubbles, I was contrasting the response to them by developers with the utter lack of a response by developers on lolsmash. The fact that they even mentioned they were going to adjust stunbubbles is good enough for me. Even if it's 3 months from now, I'm fine with that, since it's more or less, have your fun blinding people/selectively breaking the bubble for now, because we're going to fix it.

 

Not to go off on a tangent, but I think I read a developer's update on the stunbubbles clarifying that they weren't going to "nerf" them, just rework them. Take that however you like, if they just give them the same resolve value as a hard stun, I'll be satisfied, since then teammates will be blaming each other for maxing out the ball carrier's resolve in huttball.

 

In any case, again, my mentioning of stunbubbles was only to point out that the developers are going to do something so it's not so overpowered, whereas they have not said a word about doing something about smash so that it's not so overpowered. That's the problem, since it implies that they think smash is fine as it is.

 

Didn't say anything about cartel market additions, but it is pretty stupid that they're adding new gimmicky props to the game instead of balancing pvp. I'm not saying I don't understand it, because I obviously do (they've made a ton of profit from the cartel market and now they can give their shareholders a larger quarterly payout), I'm saying it's a stupid move from a pvper's perspective, which are by and large subscribers. Of course, wouldn't doubt that free to play players are spending more than ~$15 a month now on cartel stuff, so subscribers are probably not particularly important anymore.

[L-RANDLE]

I interrupt it all the time... not because it's effective.... but just to be annoying.

 

*lightning spam... lightning spam.... light... wait... w t f... does it have a cool down?*

 

You would....

 

sucha baddie....

 

 

(actually as soon as I see something on their cast bar I interrupt. I really don't care what it is, lol...)

[L-RANDLE]

That's the problem, since it implies that they think smash is fine as it is.

 

You ever think it actually is fine? I have said it a lot, I know, but given the time constraints of a WZ, Smash damage is actually about where it needs to be considering that leap/smash has CDs and most people ignore the other CD's where the spec is VERY limited.

 

On top of that, if you know how to counter the class in general between Smashes, the "strength" of the spec disappears. I am fine when enemies allow me to fly around, and debuff their armor, and hit some sweet Smash numbers, but when they don't?

 

.........................................

 

I am headed for the respawn. This is almost a universal fact for almost any class in this game (and directly led to the Sage/Sorc nerf).

[PloGreen]

Tangent: for each class/roll, how many viable PvP specs are there? I guess you could refine (complicate) the question further by discussing viable specs for each {class, role, warzone} combination.

 

I know that for healers, a bubblestun hybrid is considered far superior to a 31pt healer. How about DPS?

 

 

 

Why not? the set of viable PvP specs is going to be smaller than the set of possible specs. What is the ideal number of viable specs per class/role?

 

TANGENT: what sage specs do the top rated WZ teams run?

 

The point is our 31 point trees are so crap in a rated environment you are pretty much forced into hybrid.

[CharterMonkKent]

Let me clarify, I wasn't complaining about the lack of action on fixing stunbubbles, I was contrasting the response to them by developers with the utter lack of a response by developers on lolsmash. The fact that they even mentioned they were going to adjust stunbubbles is good enough for me. Even if it's 3 months from now, I'm fine with that, since it's more or less, have your fun blinding people/selectively breaking the bubble for now, because we're going to fix it.

 

Not to go off on a tangent, but I think I read a developer's update on the stunbubbles clarifying that they weren't going to "nerf" them, just rework them. Take that however you like, if they just give them the same resolve value as a hard stun, I'll be satisfied, since then teammates will be blaming each other for maxing out the ball carrier's resolve in huttball.

 

In any case, again, my mentioning of stunbubbles was only to point out that the developers are going to do something so it's not so overpowered, whereas they have not said a word about doing something about smash so that it's not so overpowered. That's the problem, since it implies that they think smash is fine as it is.

 

Didn't say anything about cartel market additions, but it is pretty stupid that they're adding new gimmicky props to the game instead of balancing pvp. I'm not saying I don't understand it, because I obviously do (they've made a ton of profit from the cartel market and now they can give their shareholders a larger quarterly payout), I'm saying it's a stupid move from a pvper's perspective, which are by and large subscribers. Of course, wouldn't doubt that free to play players are spending more than ~$15 a month now on cartel stuff, so subscribers are probably not particularly important anymore.

 

I know. I threw in the Cartel Market but most people (including myself) have at one point or another thought... really more crap on the market? How about fixing bugs that are a year old, some obvious balance changes or making it so my double bladed saber stops looking like a single bladed saber....

 

So I'll go sort of off tangent here. haha. It's Friday and I'm in the office for 2 more hours so why not. Below is why I rightly or wrongly get annoyed by all of the nerf threads (regardless of what the nerf is about).

 

I've come to the realization that this game will never be what I want it to be, not even close, never ever. I'm one AC away from completely grinding this entire game, he is at lvl 19(mara/sent). I've played all of the end game PvE content, I still do with my guild (because you do the same 2 every time to get better gear). So my hope now is that they make a crazy amount of money from the market and some drastic content changes happen. That or I'll just be too bored with the game to stay.

 

Part of that realization (that I'll never get close to what I want out of this game) is that I'll adjust to anything that's overpowered/unbalanced/simple/lack of variety (class population imbalance, bad players, skills, WZs, etc). I've learned to adjust to smash and the dirty bubble. I rarely pop a bubble anymore (when I'm in range of the stun), even when I'm on melee, my rotation and ability priority simply changes for the rest of the WZ. I've also never had a problem with smash (probably because I've had one for so long I know how they think/play).

 

To end my off topic rant. I'm hoping for a ton of new content, much more so than any current balance changes. I can adjust to lack of balance. But without the new glut of content I'll be, like I said, moving on.

Edited January 18, 2013 by CharterMonkKent

[SomeJagoff]

Did this somehow become a civil conversation?

 

IDK... I find bubbles to be the bigger problem here... no one was ever asking for more CC.

 

And the smash buff came in on the Dec 5th patch if I'm not mistaken. Hardly 4 months.

 

If you think your sorc is getting focused a lot now... wait until 50. Which is why I run that spec... need all the defense you can get at 50 and with that spec you can still put up some nice DPS.

 

Patch notes from december 4th:

 

http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.5.2/1242012

 

Nothing mentioning rage/focus.

 

Patch notes from december 6th:

 

http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.5.2a/1262012

 

Nothing mentioning rage/focus.

 

The buff to rage/focus And the stunbubbles And the screwed up new resolve system all came in patch 1.4

 

http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.4.0/terror-beyond

 

Main buffs to rage/focus:

 

•Force Sweep's timing has been adjusted; the ability now executes faster.

•Shii-Cho Mastery: Armor penetration has been increased to 15% per point.

•Singularity: Stacks of Singularity now additionally reduce the Focus cost of Force Sweep by 12.5% per point per stack.

•Saber Strength now additionally affects Dispatch.

•Swift Slash now additionally affects Dispatch.

•Zephyrean Slash has been redesigned. It now gives Strike, Zealous Strike, Slash, Blade Storm, and Dispatch a 50% chance per point to reduce the active cooldown of Force Sweep and Zealous Leap by .5 seconds per point.

 

So basically, more armor penetration, faster smash animation, other attacks lowering the cooldown on smash, stacks of shockwave lowering the cost of smash, and buffs to the execute ability.

 

And, in that same patch, stunbubbles:

•Kinetic Collapse: The Incapacitation effect caused by this skill no longer breaks on damage.

 

So yeah, that was all in 1.4, September 26th, 2012, exactly 4 months next week. That was the buff that broke pvp. All the December 11th patch (which I think is what you were referring to) did was make war hero gear more easily available and thus a lot easier/faster to min/max gear. Like I said, my jugg is fully min/maxed with power/surge in every piece and all fully augmented and it only took a couple of weeks. So the December patch was more of a side effect of the gear being more readily available than a "buff" per se to rage/focus. The buff to rage/focus was the september patch, close to 4 months ago.

[L-RANDLE]

Patch notes from december 4th:

 

http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.5.2/1242012

 

Nothing mentioning rage/focus.

 

Patch notes from december 6th:

 

http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.5.2a/1262012

 

Nothing mentioning rage/focus.

 

The buff to rage/focus And the stunbubbles And the screwed up new resolve system all came in patch 1.4

 

http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.4.0/terror-beyond

 

Main buffs to rage/focus:

 

•Force Sweep's timing has been adjusted; the ability now executes faster.

•Shii-Cho Mastery: Armor penetration has been increased to 15% per point.

•Singularity: Stacks of Singularity now additionally reduce the Focus cost of Force Sweep by 12.5% per point per stack.

•Saber Strength now additionally affects Dispatch.

•Swift Slash now additionally affects Dispatch.

•Zephyrean Slash has been redesigned. It now gives Strike, Zealous Strike, Slash, Blade Storm, and Dispatch a 50% chance per point to reduce the active cooldown of Force Sweep and Zealous Leap by .5 seconds per point.

 

So basically, more armor penetration, faster smash animation, other attacks lowering the cooldown on smash, stacks of shockwave lowering the cost of smash, and buffs to the execute ability.

 

And, in that same patch, stunbubbles:

•Kinetic Collapse: The Incapacitation effect caused by this skill no longer breaks on damage.

 

So yeah, that was all in 1.4, September 26th, 2012, exactly 4 months next week. That was the buff that broke pvp. All the December 11th patch (which I think is what you were referring to) did was make war hero gear more easily available and thus a lot easier/faster to min/max gear. Like I said, my jugg is fully min/maxed with power/surge in every piece and all fully augmented and it only took a couple of weeks. So the December patch was more of a side effect of the gear being more readily available than a "buff" per se to rage/focus. The buff to rage/focus was the september patch, close to 4 months ago.

 

It wasn't in the patch notes. It was a response in the PvP forum by Devs via the Mods to a "Nerf Smash" thread.

[UGLYMRJ]

How time flies.... I can't believe it's been that long already.

 

Either way... I appreciate the effort into finding the links, pasting them, etc but it doesn't change my opinion that smash is not the biggest problem right now.

 

I could continue playing another 4 months with smash as is on any of my characters and it wouldn't bother me.

 

Like I said... while it can put up big numbers in over all damage it can not put up the same single target damage of many DPS specs. The reason smashers are putting up such big numbers is people haven't learned how to not fight like a school of fish.

 

There is no reason that multiple people need to be bunched up in an 8m radius. I'm not saying it won't happen... but my biggest smash games are from this exact thing. I swear people stack so tightly sometimes I'm waiting for them to form into Voltron.

[UGLYMRJ]

It wasn't in the patch notes. It was a response in the PvP forum by Devs via the Mods to a "Nerf Smash" thread.

 

Oh yeah... And this...

Edited January 18, 2013 by UGLYMRJ

[SomeJagoff]

I don't know of any DPS class that should not be stacking power. If you are not, you are doing it wrong. Most specs have built in secondary stat allocation or skills to increase crit ratings. I carry 0 Crit on my DPS Sage. Why? Spec/FP

 

You can equate Smash Autocrit to Force Potency(albeit FP requires NO setup, and 1 additional autocrit). That is 100% balanced.

 

Sing/Shoc- Sure, I'll conceed no other spec can generate 100% bonus on an attack, but that is the "real" problem... Fix other Specs

 

 

Unless you want boring, no-objective achieving, warzones...

 

Yeah, I have power stacked on my darkness spec'd sin too, just power surge. However, when I toy around with deception or the deception-madness hybrid from time to time, it is really hard to get big mauls with 0 crit. So when I run those specs, I throw in at least 80-150 crit, then I get fairly frequent big mauls of 5k+. Also, good deal of crit on my sniper usually makes for harder hitting ambushes.

 

I have a lot of willpower on my sin (close to 1900), so that gives me a big chunk of crit right there and makes stacking more actual crit less necessary, but you do need at least some for most specs. I'm not saying that people should have Only crit in 6/9 moddable pieces to get 40%+ crit, but having Some crit is necessary for a lot of specs. With that said, if you're stacking Only power/surge and nothing else for classes other than lolsmash, then yeah, you are doing it wrong.

 

You don't need 100% ranged/melee accuracy/40% crit for every class, but if you have 90% accuracy and ~22% crit as a marksman sniper, you're nerfing yourself.

[L-RANDLE]

Oh yeah... And this...

 

Found it!!

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5296159#post5296159

[SomeJagoff]

It wasn't in the patch notes. It was a response in the PvP forum by Devs via the Mods to a "Nerf Smash" thread.

 

No, the links were in response to what he said about the december patch being a buff rage/focus, when it was actually in the september patch.

[UGLYMRJ]

No, the links were in response to what he said about the december patch being a buff rage/focus, when it was actually in the september patch.

 

One link would have been enough to convince me... I'm not known for my attention to detail when it comes to things like that.

 

I really can't believe it's been that long tho. Doesn't feel like it at all.

 

Found it!!

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5296159#post5296159

 

And this is why I love you... I do not have the patience to look for crap like this. I know I saw it tho. Gracias senior.

[L-RANDLE]

You don't need 100% ranged/melee accuracy/40% crit for every class, but if you have 90% accuracy and ~22% crit as a marksman sniper, you're nerfing yourself.

 

I have a Sniper too..

 

You spec 4% more crit on three rotational attacks, 3% more crit from the Leth tree, and you get a Snipe AutoCrit on a short CD. Fully buffed range crit is hovering around 25%-30%

 

You can also spec 3% more Acc and have a +30% Acc CD. Since Acc rolls against Defense, and hardly anyone carries Defense except for Tanks (which could be considered your "rock")....................

 

In short, without even acknowledging the "True Crit chance(RNG)" argument, you don't need to carry crit/acc on most DPS specs.

[SomeJagoff]

You ever think it actually is fine? I have said it a lot, I know, but given the time constraints of a WZ, Smash damage is actually about where it needs to be considering that leap/smash has CDs and most people ignore the other CD's where the spec is VERY limited.

 

On top of that, if you know how to counter the class in general between Smashes, the "strength" of the spec disappears. I am fine when enemies allow me to fly around, and debuff their armor, and hit some sweet Smash numbers, but when they don't?

 

.........................................

 

I am headed for the respawn. This is almost a universal fact for almost any class in this game (and directly led to the Sage/Sorc nerf).

 

The problem is that if you spec into unstoppable, there is No counter to the class. Let me explain.

 

A lot of people in this thread have mentioned that unstoppable is a worthless tradeoff for crush and nerfs your damage ouput. If you're being pockethealed in either ranked or normal wzs, they're probably right. If you queue solo mostly (like I do), unstoppable is what's going to allow you to top the charts on dps.

 

Consider this, you're a fully min-maxed smash jugg, using full rage spec, with crush, and you see a group of 5 people (let's make them all sorcs to make it even more epeen stroke worthy). Your immediate thought is to leap and smash them all for 6k-7k. Now let's look at this situation plays out with unstoppable vs no unstoppable.

 

With Unstoppable: You enrage, leap to the group, 2-3 of them use their stuns, which do nothing, 2-3 of them use their attacks on you, which now do 20% less damage, and you smash anyway, push one of the 5 away, leap again, which again makes you immune to stuns and increases your damage reduction by 20%, choke, get your 4 stacks of singularity/shockwave, then calmly walk back to the group, obliterate, then smash again. Then assumingly die.

 

"Cool story bro!" right? Yes, it is, because you just did about 12k damage to 5 people each, or about 60k damage total. Even better, if this is a voidstar map, as an attacker, you just wasted more than half of their hps, made them waste their stuns, and now you're respawned and going back to do the same thing, except now the group has fewer defensive cooldowns, few if any stuns (which won't matter anyway), and you enrage, leap, smash again.

 

Without Unstoppable: You enrage, leap to the group, 2-3 of them use their stuns, all 5 focus fire on you, you don't get ANY smash off, you do 0 damage, and you die.

 

"Cool Story Bro" indeed. In conclusion, unstoppable smash spec has 0 counters (if they're bubbled/stun or otherwise, I just use force scream/obliterate/whatever to break the bubble, then smash the second it does, Again, immune to the stunbubble effects due to unstoppable lasting 5 secs), and can yield overall bigger numbers at the end of a game than a full rage spec'd jugg, because your smashes always go off without a hitch and you don't need to rely on pocketheals to heal you through stuns/focus fire after leaps.

 

Like I said earlier, I've broken 500k with this spec, which usually places me either at the top or close to the top damage at the end of a round, usually only being outdps'd by a pt at like 50k higher than me (which means 1 more group smash would have topped him). For all the people who want the most theoretical damage using lolsmash, by all means, keep playing it, it makes it easier for me to shut you down and pretty much permanently keeps my cc breaker off cd.

 

Moreover, this spec is invaluable while solo guarding a node in AH. I can't count how many times I've been stealth CC'd, broke CC, leaped to them while capping, they threw a flashbang/whirlwind at me, which did nothing, then I smash them, then push them, then leap again, then choke, then scream/smash again, then dispatch.

 

Unstoppable makes this a great dueling spec, since it not only renders enemy stuns useless, but it creates a psychological shock, since when a guy leaps you, what are you going to do? Probably a knockback/stun, and when those don't work? "oh crap, what do I do now?" All you need is that 1-2 second delay in their thinking/rotation to get the upper hand.

 

Trust me, I've played both specs, full rage, and hybird with unstoppable, the latter is far superior, especially when solo queuing. Probably useful in ranked, but haven't done ranked on that toon, so dunno. In regular wzs though, for me it becomes more of a "do you want the biggest dps output or do you want to win?" I want to win and often I not only win, but get max damage too.

 

For all the hardcore full rage lolsmasher juggs, try unstoppable for a week in regular wzs, then switch back to full rage and see if you don't feel inclined to sacrifice a bit of extra potential dps for more guaranteed dps.

[SomeJagoff]

One link would have been enough to convince me... I'm not known for my attention to detail when it comes to things like that.

 

I really can't believe it's been that long tho. Doesn't feel like it at all.

 

no worries, I actually wasn't sure which specific patch buffed rage or how until maybe a month or so ago. I remember playing on my sin in NC, went west to try to either stealth cap or kill the guard and quickly cap, saw a mara, engaged him, before I got my 3 stacks of harnessed darkness, suddenly half of my hp was gone, got him to 20%, then he popped his lolcanthurtme! cd, so I went to stun him, then smashed me again and boom, I'm dead and he's standing there twitching stunned at like 10% hp. That's when I first noticed something was up, since I went from being able to 1v1 maras to not being able to. Then I saw that it wasn't just the jugg rage spec that was buffed, but the mara one too, both in the 1.4 patch. So yeah, the specific patch was fresh in my mind because of that.

 

I tend to spec into like 23/17/1 on my sin now if there's more than 1 smasher in the match or if there's 1 mara smasher solo guarding a node, gives me enough survivability and big mauls to usually win the 1v1. Pretty terrible spec for overall numbers though, but best survivability (if they don't nerf smash, really hope I get my self-heals and armor rating back) for a sin. The old darkness and even the deception-madness hybrids are pretty useless against smashers now in terms of survability.

 

Found it!!

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5296159#post5296159

 

I asked Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer) about Rage and Focus builds and how they're fitting into PvP overall right now, and here was his comment:

 

Rage and Focus have always been high burst specs, but they haven't been very popular due to some usability and quality of life issues in the past. Our goal for Focus and Rage was to address those issues without significantly affecting their burst. In large part, I think we've done that, but the result is that many people are playing them now, which means there's a lot of AOE burst happening in warzones that wasn't happening before. We're willing to wait and see if their popularity is a result of being viewed as "flavor of the month" (i.e. Rage/Focus populations will naturally subside as people realize the spec doesn't suit their playstyle) or if they are truly too good and were just too unusable before. In short, we're going to keep a close eye on it.

 

Okay, so what I said earlier, they have no plans on doing anything and his wording seemed pretty defensive of the spec, "it has always been high burst." Except it's even higher burst now with the buffed armor penetration and the buffed dispatch.

 

So in terms of what you said earlier,

 

And you're incorrect... they have made several statements regarding rage/focus spec, monitoring it and coming up with ways to possibly balance it.

 

It doesn't appear that they have any intention of balancing it at all. They just said that they're going to wait and see, so in other words, back to what I said earlier.

 

I can predict the results:

 

"hmm, no. Working As Intended. Thank You For Playing Star Wars™: The Old Republic™"

[UGLYMRJ]

Okay, so what I said earlier, they have no plans on doing anything and his wording seemed pretty defensive of the spec, "it has always been high burst." Except it's even higher burst now with the buffed armor penetration and the buffed dispatch.

.

 

I honestly think that at some point it will be toned down... probably with the "upcoming class balance" in 1.7.

 

I don't think it's game breaking, but if they toned it down slightly like a 10/20% armor reduction, or something minor of the sort it could still be viable. I honestly don't think it should be toned down much if at all because of the lack of single target burst. Rage is only good because it makes a healers life tough if people are grouped up. But for a map like CW I would much rather have 2 PT's vs 2 smashers.

 

In the end... it's things like this and the annihilation nerf that bring me back to my idea of separate trees for PvE and PvP. basically the same tree BUT.... let's take smash and annihilation again for example. They got buffed and nerfed because of PvE...

 

Rage/Focus in PvE tree.

 

5th tier Shii-cho mastery: Increase armor penetration by 15/30%

 

Rage/Focus in PvP tree.

 

5th tier Shii-cho mastery: Increase armor penetration by 10/20%

 

 

Annihilation/Watchmen in PvE tree.

 

2nd tier Hungering: Critical hits with bleed effect heal you for 0.5/1% of your maximum health.

 

Annihilation/Watchmen in PvP tree.

 

2nd tier Hungering: Critical hits with bleed effect heal you for 1/2% of your maximum health.

 

I've been a fan of this idea for quite a while now... and not just because it's mine. I really think something like this could make the devs job of class balancing a lot easier.

Edited January 18, 2013 by UGLYMRJ

[SomeJagoff]

I have a Sniper too..

 

You spec 4% more crit on three rotational attacks, 3% more crit from the Leth tree, and you get a Snipe AutoCrit on a short CD. Fully buffed range crit is hovering around 25%-30%

 

You can also spec 3% more Acc and have a +30% Acc CD. Since Acc rolls against Defense, and hardly anyone carries Defense except for Tanks (which could be considered your "rock")....................

 

In short, without even acknowledging the "True Crit chance(RNG)" argument, you don't need to carry crit/acc on most DPS specs.

 

I usually forgo the lethality talent for crit chance in favor of explosive engineering, which buffs my orbital strike and frag grenades by 15%.

 

It's true that sorcs don't need accuracy at all, since their only 2 melee attacks are rarely ever used and everything else is a 100% hit, but it's still a good idea to have Some crit as a sorc. One of my guildies had like 40% crit, so I told him to lower it to at least ~30% and replace the extra mods with power. He saw huge increases in damage output and little change to the frequency of crits, but I wouldn't recommend going lower than say 24%.

 

When you have only power/surge in every moddable piece/implant/etc. you'll have bigger damage for all your attacks, except you'll almost never see a crit. Since you can spec into extra crit as a tree talent as a sniper/sorc/etc., that helps, but there are several classes (like sins, for example) which do not have those tree talents. So if you run around as a deception sin with 0 crit, you're basically never going to hit big 5k+ mauls and even the stacks of buffed discharge are going to be a lot smaller.

 

And as a sniper (marksman), when I run accuracy at only the base 91% (with the companion buff), I pretty regularly see my snipes and ambushes deflected/dodged/etc by juggs/sins and even a couple of times sages, who after checking their gear, apparently were using sin tank gear with a ton of defense. So the point is, I'd rather not enter a wz trying to pull an extra 50 bonus damage at the cost of a guaranteed hit on the hope that nobody has their defense chance above 5%/a shield instead of a focus.

 

On my sin, I run with a shield with dps mods inside. So I always have a 20% shield chance (might be higher haven't played it in a while) and I think defense is also around 20%, which means ~1/5 snipes is going to be shielded or dodged. I also know several other sins who do the same thing, either run with a shield with dps mods inside or just a pure shield with a ton of defense/shield stat. Juggs and PTs can do the same. So I'd prefer to keep my accuracy high and crit high to make sure that I can hit my targets, regardless of whether or not they have "high enough" defense chance or a shield with or without defensive mods.

[SomeJagoff]

I honestly think that at some point it will be toned down... probably with the "upcoming class balance" in 1.7.

 

I don't think it's game breaking, but if they toned it down slightly like a 10/20% armor reduction, or something minor of the sort it could still be viable. I honestly don't think it should be toned down much if at all because of the lack of single target burst. Rage is only good because it makes a healers life tough if people are grouped up. But for a map like CW I would much rather have 2 PT's vs 2 smashers.

 

In the end... it's things like this and the annihilation nerf that bring me back to my idea of separate trees for PvE and PvP. basically the same tree BUT.... let's take smash and annihilation again for example. They got buffed and nerfed because of PvE...

 

Rage/Focus in PvE tree.

 

5th tier Shii-cho mastery: Increase armor penetration by 15/30%

 

Rage/Focus in PvP tree.

 

5th tier Shii-cho mastery: Increase armor penetration by 10/20%

 

 

Annihilation/Watchmen in PvE tree.

 

2nd tier Hungering: Critical hits with bleed effect heal you for 0.5/1% of your maximum health.

 

Annihilation/Watchmen in PvP tree.

 

2nd tier Hungering: Critical hits with bleed effect heal you for 1/2% of your maximum health.

 

I've been a fan of this idea for quite a while now... and not just because it's mine. I really think something like this could make the devs job of class balancing a lot easier.

 

This would actually be a fantastic idea/change for pvp. Something like that would also allow sins to have their armor rating back in line with pts/juggs for pve, but where it is now for pvp. I've posted about similar ideas before, like specific "anti-bolster" debuffs for each class that would say, nerf smash by 50%, nerf sin armor by 35%, nerf operative heals by 20%, buff merc dps by 20%, etc.

 

A change like that would go far to make this game actually balanced for pvp, without breaking pve, like they've been doing for the past year with almost every class.

[UGLYMRJ]

Yeah... I really don't see how it could hurt. The only difficult part would be for open world PvP but I hardly see that as a problem right now with the current state of open world PvP.

 

All of that aside... I think balancing PvP and PvE is far more important than open world and if that was what will take the hit. I'd be more than happy to deal with it.

[SomeJagoff]

I know. I threw in the Cartel Market but most people (including myself) have at one point or another thought... really more crap on the market? How about fixing bugs that are a year old, some obvious balance changes or making it so my double bladed saber stops looking like a single bladed saber....

 

So I'll go sort of off tangent here. haha. It's Friday and I'm in the office for 2 more hours so why not. Below is why I rightly or wrongly get annoyed by all of the nerf threads (regardless of what the nerf is about).

 

I've come to the realization that this game will never be what I want it to be, not even close, never ever. I'm one AC away from completely grinding this entire game, he is at lvl 19(mara/sent). I've played all of the end game PvE content, I still do with my guild (because you do the same 2 every time to get better gear). So my hope now is that they make a crazy amount of money from the market and some drastic content changes happen. That or I'll just be too bored with the game to stay.

 

Part of that realization (that I'll never get close to what I want out of this game) is that I'll adjust to anything that's overpowered/unbalanced/simple/lack of variety (class population imbalance, bad players, skills, WZs, etc). I've learned to adjust to smash and the dirty bubble. I rarely pop a bubble anymore (when I'm in range of the stun), even when I'm on melee, my rotation and ability priority simply changes for the rest of the WZ. I've also never had a problem with smash (probably because I've had one for so long I know how they think/play).

 

To end my off topic rant. I'm hoping for a ton of new content, much more so than any current balance changes. I can adjust to lack of balance. But without the new glut of content I'll be, like I said, moving on.

 

Yeah, I agree with the wth aspect of adding more cartel stuff, while basically ignoring pvp balance/not adding new content/etc. Especially with the bug fixes, having inspect broken and crashes every x amount of hours.

 

And yeah, I agree "drastic content changes" are what this game need Badly. When I say content, I specifically mean more in depth storylines for each of the 8 classes, a reason to keep grinding each toon up to say lvl 55 or 65 or whatever.

 

In terms of pvp, Some new pvp maps would be cool, as long as they're more like voidstar/civil war and less like hypergates. Tweaking to the medals system, maybe class specific medals, i.e. "stunlocker" medal if you solo somebody as an operative in less than 20 seconds or "unlimited power" if you kill somebody as a sorc using Only lightning attacks, something cheesy like most of the call of duty medals that have ridiculous names, but are fun to get/aim for. Bioware could learn a lot from that franchise, since its single player "pve" is almost always rated poorly, but millions of people play the multiplayer and keep playing it for months on end and then buy the next game in the series the following year even though it's basically the same game with a few different maps. If bioware could give us 10 more multiplayer maps in the next year (and balance the classes, obviously), I think pvp would be fixed and more people would become permanent subscribers, in addition to continuing to drop cash in the cartel market.

 

In terms of ops, I've cleared everything and have gotten bored of raiding, have bis on one toon, close to bis on another, close to full bh on others. I do like ops, and I like clearing them with my guild, but after clearing them 5-10 times, I get pretty burned out and at that point I'm only running them to help guildies gear up/teach them the mechanics, not because I need anything from the op or even the comms. So if bioware plans on adding 1 new op in 4 months, then adding a nightmare version of tfb 4 months after that, then a nightmare version of the new op 4 months after that, that's going to be unbelievably unoriginal/stupid.

 

And lastly, yeah, I, too, have gotten A lot more bored of this game in the past month. The cartel fluff is mildly interesting since I can, say, put doc into an imp agent uniform, but it's still ultimately just fluff. More and more I've found more interest in reading the forums/posting than playing the game. I usually (like today) just have a toon crafting in the background as I read comments and post responses. In a little bit, I'll probably run an op with my guild or go smash some smashers in pvp.

 

But yeah, here's hoping for new meaningful story content (not extra dailies, I hate the section x dailies and have done them like twice) and pvp balance, because if it doesn't come, I'll just play less and less, stay subscribed, then eventually just cancel my sub and not play at all. =/

[SomeJagoff]

Yeah... I really don't see how it could hurt. The only difficult part would be for open world PvP but I hardly see that as a problem right now with the current state of open world PvP.

 

All of that aside... I think balancing PvP and PvE is far more important than open world and if that was what will take the hit. I'd be more than happy to deal with it.

 

Agreed, if I could deal/take 4k smashes in warzones, but deal/take 9k smashes on tatooine, then I'd be fine with that. After all, adrenals/relics/etc. can still be used on planets outside of wzs and those aren't a prob.

 

With all the cartel market profits, I really hope that they spend some time redesigning specific pve/pvp trees or specific wz class debuffs and implement actual dual spec. Free respec is great, don't get me wrong, but still is a pain switching from say dps to tank in a voidstar match after each round and then switching gear too. I'd still ideally like to click a spec button to switch between 2 specs, then just equip my gear of choice.

[Ismal]

When we get the new level cap Bioware will be changeing skill trees as well, I am sure that all of you that complain will have a new complaint about something else that makes you suck at PVP. So if you read this please chill out and wait for the expansion.

 

Food for thought.... a hybrid spec shadow and alot of other build/classes can put up alot higher damage numbers than focus spec guardians and juggs. You can balance the classes but you cant balance the people playing them

 

 

The damage each class can put is a bit of the issue. It is the fact that these kids see victory with a strong class and group up with 6 smashers in one WZ. Which I think ruins the fun of the game. They are not trying to be skilled at something their just stacking a powerful class with a easy two button combo that can sometimes hit for 7k but on a min 5k. Hell I have seen WZ' with a stack of 6 Op's running around stunning everyone and ganging up on people.

 

If you really want to balance this crap out, put a limit on how many classes per WZ. , also healers 4 in one WZ is too many. 2 per wz should be good enough.

 

And no Shadows do not need a nerf. And if we are putting out higher numbers it's because we are skilled. We haft to build for that kind of damage and also that kind of damage comes from multiple rotations not just two buttons. Huge diff there in classes.

[SomeJagoff]

Hell I have seen WZ' with a stack of 6 Op's running around stunning everyone and ganging up on people.

 

>.>

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n2mV2oukDU

[Chemic_al]

They've shown no interest in nerfing marauders properly.

 

Now you've got 2 sentinels tanking Operations taking down EC with a scoundrel healer in a 3 man team and apparently that isn't enough to make them think... "Hmmm, maybe their defences are strong for a "pure" dps class."

 

They are "monitoring" smash, except everyone apart from them could see they turned it into a low skill face roll spec, with insanely high burst AoE on short cooldown, but in 1.2 they considered chain lightning procs off wrath to be too good, even though that would take 2 GCDs and setup to do the AoE damage and it still wasn't as high as Smash is hitting for.

 

95% of changes have made PvP worse (like resolve), they haven't learned the lesson of 1.2, and the only sensible conclusion to draw is that they are now clueless about what constitutes class balance.