Tank Assassin Armor Rating Nerfed Again?

[SomeJagoff]

I was just on the PTS checking out the new skill trees and I saw that the skill tree talent "Eye of The Storm" no longer increases armor rating by an extra 20%, it only allows spike to be used out of stealth.

 

I read the descriptions of every one of the talents in the Darkness tree, as well as the lower tier talents in the other 2 trees, but none of them increase the armor anywhere else. There's insulation in the Deception tree, but it only increases armor rating while in lightning charge/surging charge, so it's not going to do anything for dark charge.

 

So without that 20% boost, the previous full black hole/campaign armor rating of ~6000 while in tank spec is now going to be ~5000, around that of a typical heavy armor dps class.

 

The only change that I've seen that could possibly "offset" this is the new addition of 25% damage reduction and 5% more hp while Overcharge Saber is active.....an ability that is on a 2 minute cooldown. It seems like this is going to make tanking a lot harder and greatly reduce survivability, especially if spamming overcharge saber every 2 minutes is supposed to offset the lower armor.

 

So now Tank Assassins are basically going to have about 3000-4000 less armor than the other 2 tanks, no buff to self heals that I could see, and this is "balanced".....?

 

Uh, thoughts on this? Any responses from a developer would be greatly appreciated

[HighCounsil]

If you followed leaked changes it's been known for quite some time. Anyway, PTS exists for testing. Run through some content, submit detailed reports and you will be heard.

[SomeJagoff]

If you followed leaked changes it's been known for quite some time. Anyway, PTS exists for testing. Run through some content, submit detailed reports and you will be heard.

 

I read the initial posts on reddit, but I guess I missed this one. If they move Insulation to the bottom of the tank tree and allow it to increase armor rating by 20% for all 3 charges, then it will at least keep things where they are now in terms of armor rating, at least for tank dark charge.

 

Though, if this has been leaked for a while and it made it to the pts, I'm guessing that this was an intentional change and reports probably aren't going to change it.

 

So....Tank Assassins are going to have to rely even more on the already meager self-heals and just use overcharge saber as a defensive cooldown?... I really don't see how that's balanced though, it seems like Assassins are just going to be taking a ton more damage for 1min 45secs out of every 2mins, then a ton less for 15 seconds. But hey, at least we'll get a good 30-45secs of every boss fight on par with the other 2 tanks....provided we can stay up during the 1m45s in between each use of overcharge saber. <.<

 

[prodigyqnz]

You have to play on PTS dont read and start making blind calculations.. My Shadow on PTS is still in old 146 rating gear.. and I have 5618 Armoring Rating and 32.64 Damage reduction. So imagine what it will be once i actually put on some gear fit for a Level 55.. Calculation formulas have been altered due to the level increase. Please stop speculating and complaining without having tried it.. The PTS is there so they can get feedback and get it right..

[SOULCASTER]

I would imagine they are doing this because shield generators now actually are useful and will help mitigate a lot more damage. So I think losing the 20% armor rating doesn't sound that horrible tbh. I haven't tested it though.

[SomeJagoff]

You have to play on PTS dont read and start making blind calculations.. My Shadow on PTS is still in old 146 rating gear.. and I have 5618 Armoring Rating and 32.64 Damage reduction. So imagine what it will be once i actually put on some gear fit for a Level 55.. Calculation formulas have been altered due to the level increase. Please stop speculating and complaining without having tried it.. The PTS is there so they can get feedback and get it right..

 

been trying to get my main assassin copied over for a day, not working. I copied over my lowbie shadow and zerged to lvl 55, but I don't have any endgame gear on him, so hard to say what the rating is.

 

So to be clear, this isn't speculating and complaining, I'm simply pointing out that we just lost a skill tree talent that boosted armor by 20%.

 

So my point is, if you get the r33t new top tier gear and let's say you get your armor rating back to ~6100, Juggs and PTs are now likely going to have ~10,000-12,000 armor.

 

The new shield mechanics may help, yes, but if the other 2 tanks have 2-3 times more armor AND the same shield mechanics, then it's pretty clear which tank is going to be the least desirable/least survivable.

 

And if you now have ~32% damage reduction in black hole gear, where it was ~40% before, ouch, just ouch.

 

More Armor = more damage reduction. And again, spamming an ability with a 2min cooldown to get an extra 25% damage reduction to be where the other 2 tanks are still likely above probably isn't going to cut it for tanking new content.

Edited February 21, 2013 by SomeJagoff

[HighCounsil]

You have +15% shield chance tho with the ward + additional 5% with set bonus.

 

The only other tank (of three obviously) that gets somewhere close in shield chance here is a VG, but vgs have 0 defense whereas shadows innately have a ton. It's too soon to complain until it's been throughly tested. Shield mechanic change might play greatly with kinetic/dark wards.

Edited February 21, 2013 by HighCounsil

[SomeJagoff]

You have +15% shield chance tho with the ward + additional 5% with set bonus.

 

The only other tank (of three obviously) that gets somewhere close in shield chance here is a VG, but vgs have 0 defense whereas shadows innately have a ton. It's too soon to complain until it's been throughly tested. Shield mechanic change might play greatly with kinetic/dark wards.

 

The Shield changes are definitely a step in the right direction to help tanking, both in pve and pvp (guessing more people will play tanks now), but my concern is that the attacks that AREN'T shielded are now going to hit shadow/assassin tanks significantly harder.

 

And I mean really, for a "tank class" to have little more armor than a heavy armor dps class, that's more than a little odd. And if the argument from bioware is going to be, "well, it's a light armor class to begin with, compared to the other 2 tanks that are heavy armor classes," then why did they give a light armor class a tanking tree?

 

When people first rolled Assassins for tanking, their armor rating was equal to the other 2 tanks (with the exception of the vanguard armor buff on top of the stance buff), then they got nerfed because of dps tanksins in pvp, and now they're nerfed again? still because of dps tanksins in pvp? If so, then just nerf the freaking damage output, don't nerf the survivability!

 

Hell, depending on what gear level, it's entirely possible that a well geared commando healer is going to have More armor than a moderately geared shadow tank.

 

So yeah, if attacks that don't get shielded have the possibility hitting a shadow tank harder than a commando healer/dps, there seems to be little reason to keep playing the class in that role.

 

If the above is correct, then the best tank in terms of survivability is likely going to be vanguard/powertech, with a ton of armor and a ton of shielding skills.

Edited February 21, 2013 by SomeJagoff

[feelingtheblanks]

This must be a mistake tbh like the people with 600k hp in warzones.

[SomeJagoff]

okay, so it looks like this is an intentional armor nerf:

 

Even without this change, an increase of 5 levels warrants a re-evaluation of everything (survivability, single target damage, aoe damage, single target threat, aoe threat, single target healing, aoe healing, etc). Re-evaluations usually mean changes. In this case you're seeing a rebalance - not a nerf.

 

Literally every skill tree has been re-evaluated and rebalanced, not just yours.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5889865#post5889865

 

So I guess PVP wise, with 20% less armor, all you Assassins/Shadows can expect to get smashed for the same amount as Mercs/Commandos do.

 

Tank Class No More, it seems.

 

Further Clarification:

 

I understand that it's very natural to focus on individual details, but when we're balancing specs and roles, what really matters is the final result. That's not to say that the details don't matter, but they are overshadowed by the final result.

 

The final result, to be perfectly clear, is that all tank roles are achieving target TTD (time til death) in our internal tests. It's part of our daily routine to make sure that's the case. Now, I don't mean to suggest that bugs don't happen (they do), but this particular detail is not a bug and is part of the bigger picture.

 

As always, if it turns out that, in reality, any one spec is underperforming (in this case, you die too quickly or are too hard to heal), we will not hesitate to make the necessary adjustments. Right now, what we're getting are gut reactions to one change amongst a sea of changes. This doesn't help me or my team in identifying balance issues. If Shadow/Assassin tanks have survivability problems, we need to see the numbers. Even though we already have our own sets of numbers (a lot of them), we don't perform *every* test or test against *every* kind of enemy/boss/spec. That's where numbers from you guys can be instrumental in helping us identify an issue if an issue exists.

 

 

TLDR: This was an intended change, and by our measure, it gave us the intended result. To be direct, the intended result is that all tank roles hit the same survivability targets, which is what we are seeing internally. If that isn't the case in reality (because there are so many more variables in the real game than in our tests), then we will act as quickly as we can to fix it.

 

Thanks everyone. Keep the feedback coming.

Edited February 21, 2013 by SomeJagoff

[stephenalandavie]

Well i have end game shadow and Juggernaut there and i will say this the jugga far out rates the shadow in Tanking. Just bloody ridiculous SO the DPS gets Nerfed as does the Tanking Way to go Bw

[Philastra]

Didn't they change the way sheild generators work?

[Tankqull]

Didn't they change the way sheild generators work?

they work different for jugg/guard vang/pt too - so why is the only affected tank the assa/shadow?

[Philelectric]

You have to play on PTS dont read and start making blind calculations.. My Shadow on PTS is still in old 146 rating gear.. and I have 5618 Armoring Rating and 32.64 Damage reduction. So imagine what it will be once i actually put on some gear fit for a Level 55.. Calculation formulas have been altered due to the level increase. Please stop speculating and complaining without having tried it.. The PTS is there so they can get feedback and get it right..

 

I dont want to break your bubble but technicaly a 146 rating gear is a lvl 61 gear and rating 150 is lvl 63 (just look at the armoring,mob,enhencement in your gear) so dont expect a new gear for 2.0

Edited February 21, 2013 by Philelectric

[Altheran]

they work different for jugg/guard vang/pt too - so why is the only affected tank the assa/shadow?

 

+1 For this guy.

 

I dont want to break your bubble but technicaly a 146 rating gear is a lvl 61 gear and rating 150 is lvl 63 (just look at the armoring,mob,enhencement in your gear) so dont expect a new gear for 2.0

 

From what I've saw, lvl 55 gear has the same armor rate as current lvl 50 gear. They just have more stats on it (End, Will, Crit and such).

[Tankqull]

it gets even more redicoulus - jugger/guard gets an ability granting 15% more armor...

they are already at ~55% dmg-mitigation... nearly 20% above assa/shadow values and still get even more?

Edited February 23, 2013 by Tankqull

[Smashbrother]

How much does 20% more armor even increase your mitigation by anyways? Doesn't seem like that much.

[Tankqull]

How much does 20% more armor even increase your mitigation by anyways? Doesn't seem like that much.

 

8-10%, with EWH armoring my mitigation drops from 39.54 to 31.18 while my guildmates guardian without the new 15% armor incresaementskill is at 52.25 with WH armoring...

[Omnineechan]

Doesn't even seem right what they did to assassin tanks. In a 1v1 fight against ANY class/spec in PvP they will win against us (which unless they are a tank should be the case) but the SPEED at which I'm dying against ANY player is ridiculous. I can't come out of stealth and expect to survive more than 10 sec against 1 or more targets (without being ccd while I am ccing them) while a jugg in the same gear can survive against three ppl (what I USED to be able to do) for at least 20sec

[SomeJagoff]

yeah, I'm taking 7k smashes on my assassin now, I may as well be a sorc.

 

It's too bad bioware deleted the 40+ page thread on this from the PTS forums.

 

Apparently the end result was this:

 

Base inquisitor/consular class: Armor rating nerfed by 25%

 

Assassin/Shadow tank spec: Armor rating nerfed by 20%

 

So a whopping 45% armor nerf.

 

So now in naked pvp (with max possible armor), my armor rating is like 6400, on 1.7, it was 6300. Vanguards/Guardians now? 10k armor.

 

So yeah, Assassins/Shadows aren't tanks, at least that's what Bioware figures. Why else would they give us a front facing maul in our TANK tree that doesn't even fit into our priority rotation?

[Tankqull]

it is quite obvious that they have no clue what to do to sin/shade tanks, the former tank hybrid specs were highly viable in terms of dealing dmg. my shade was 31/2/8 specced as i quite often had to guard my guildmates and playing without force slow snare made peeling for them nearly impossible. but what did they do to this spec wich is quite frankly a true tank spec and not some kind of "bonky" hybrid?

they destroyed the dmg by gutting infiltration tactics, realised it will be to harsh of a nerf they implememted that bogus frontaal proc that no one ever needed - pve´ler dont fit that style into their rotation and pvp tanks lose 50+% of their backstab dmg.

force slow reuse time has been increased because pveler cried about force reg problems wich made this allready weak style even inferior in pvp - a 6 second snare on a 9sec reuse time only snareing for 30% is laughable compared to e.g. freezing force. and therfor makes muliple peeling impossible.

on top of all that they destroyed the tanking ability by reducing the armor values especially when faceing multiple attacker wich is allways the case when having decent enemys, even though kinetic ward stacks has been increased to 15charges - having them used by transferred guard dmg renders that buff quite useless as it is gone in 2-3 seconds...

 

so instead of nerfing hybrids dmg potential they guttet every possible role beside pure dds in pvp and in pve they are now by far the weakest tank - still playable but none the less the weakst and no one would ever take a dd-shade/sin for a raid.

(soerry for my bad english its 4o´clock in the morning and its not my mother language )

[Goldensolly]

so what about requesting an urgent change and remaking in assassin/shadow tanking tree? you wanna us to be armorless?

good, compensate with MORE self healing and evasion!

500 hp every 4,5 seconds (maybe) and around 3000hp from force lighting, IF the mob leaves you free to channel and do not interrupt you!

I honestly come to think about they never tried and play a random fp 55 with tons of mob swariming, and your health droppin like wall street on '29...

CHANGE NOW!!

[NoTomorrow]

NECRO NOW!!

 

fixed that for you!