Did the TTK..... Just get shorter?

[BoushhDC]

Howdy folks,

 

Thanks for all the reports regarding shortened TTK! I just wanted to let you all know that we are looking into the issue, and we could use your help - if you feel so inclined....

 

So Dave, I was wondering why SWTOR developers would design a system of bolstering based upon *each* item's rating, for *each* player factoring in augments, accessories, relics, etc.; a system so complicated, where SO much can go wrong, and I can come up with only two possibilities:

 

A) The dev team actually believed they can control it and either can't believe that players who "test" the new system wouldn't posses the cunning superior to their ability to anticipate finding ways to do 9k and way more crits (hubris on devs part) or would not test in good faith to report exploits they'd discovered (scrub level naivete)

 

or

 

B) The devs promised an "even" playing field with a *nod, wink, wink* and knew exactly what would happen but would appease the masses with the appearance to "try."

 

If the devs truly wanted to make an even playing field, they could have based it closely on a GW2 SPvP model whereupon entering a staging area for the WZs everyone is leveled to cap, given access to all their abilities, and free access to all the top tier of gear and free reign to all the modifications, set bonuses etc. then let have at it. Done deal, no fuss, no muss and all you'd have to do is tinker with the class mechanics and balance. Instead, this unwieldy, unpredictable Frankenstein is what we have.

 

Giving the PvP dev team the benefit of the doubt, however that their intentions were earnest, then the best I can say for you is that your collective reach exceeded your grasp. Back to the drawing board. Sometimes the best answers to a problem are not the most complicated: S-I-M-P-L-I-F-Y.

Edited April 12, 2013 by BoushhDC

[DeadDogBarking]

I feel like I play call of duty now

 

Half the time I spend farming enemies at their spawn point

 

The other half I get farmed out of spawn point

 

The spawn kill is bad - it is the brown icing on the green cake.

I have stopped using stims except for the 2hour one from the gtn. The heal stim works if you run. But I can rack up more damage and still die 2x as fast. The math is not good. I look at my map and if the other team is better there is sometimes only 2-3 people on the field at once. This has always existed, but not at this level. I can not even run from spawn to safe zone to camp (maybe that is not a bad thing. but the rest is just rant.

[Seengularity]

These guys wouldn't be asking help from people like that if brown nosey ***s wouldn't actually agree to to help (they've clearly gotten free help like that many times before if they even ask in the 1st place). I'm tired of companies exploiting people into doing the chores that all of our monthly subscription money should cover. I know, these geeks will gladly bend over and do as told, just as long as there's a chance they'll get brownie points, or the unspoken promise of a job down the line (lolz, who knows it could happen to you!!).

 

Just to clarify, I'm not against the players helping the devs in a reasonable way, but are they helping themselves? NO/not a whole lot. We all know the prospect of this game is uncertain, and we know that it is so mostly thanks to companies like this (EA voted as worst company in america 2yrs straight, by consumerist mag). I'm just pissed this game wasn't developed & published by a more experienced, competent company.

 

Excuse me, I'm going to go back to 9k+ Takedowns(50 snipes) / Assassinates (lol38 sin) cause it's so much fun, but not before I PM the BW rep that asked for help here in the forums; "Hey brah, I'm diligently collecting the data you requested. I was wondering if your office needs cleaned as well? Any of the remaining devs need their ferrari polished? I'm a good tester and a fast learner i swears! I have also been playing games since I was 3 y/o... "

Edited April 13, 2013 by Seengularity

[DarthMaulUK]

I think you guys need to look at the armour reducing dots as well. I mean do we really need to have them stacking for 30 seconds each?

[shednik]

That doesn't explain what we're experiencing at all...

 

You should maybe take a look at wonky stats like this one

 

 

That crit multiplier is actually lower than is was pre-2.0, "Dark Resonance" used to add 30% critical strike damage to all force attacks. I think it's 15% now across the board both force and melee.

[Eillack]

For those of you who are critically hitting with certain abilities for over 9000 damage in bolstered PvP situations, please post the following information:

 

.......OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

[Veqq]

We are still actively investigating time to kill and I will give you more information as I have it. This is just one thing that we noticed we had mis-noted in our patch notes and it seemed like a logical place to point out the correction.

 

-eric

 

There was a topic about Time To Kill on PTS but you didn't bother. What exactly are you investigating? How some players, with some specific stats/gear are getting killed too fast? This is simply not the case and is beyond me why do you need that data, it's not just SOME players that are getting killed too fast. If you logged in and played couple of max level warzones you would know that pvp in your game is rez-pad fest.

 

As mentioned multiple times, the core of the problem comes down to 1v1 of 2 dps players. In Star Wars, this duel will finish from 5 seconds to maximum of 20 seconds which is ridiculous. Damage needs to be reduced across the board in some way so that duel between 2 dps players would last between 1-2 minutes. This way, you would not die in 2 GCDs in actual warzone. This is because MMOs by nature cannot be twitch kind of gameplay in PVP, to be any kind of good MMO pvp it needs to be somewhat tactical. Well, newsflash, if you will die in 3-10 seconds there is no tactic there.

 

I was actually making some videos showing DPS vs DPS duels in Star Wars, which were without exception always around 10-15 seconds, in comparison to a WoW DPS vs DPS duels which very often go beyond 1 minute for players in full pvp gear. I've decided not to public the material though, due to quite strong opinion most people have about WoW.

 

Bottom line, rez pad fast is not fun for anyone, it's actually quite annoying, and to fix, start from the bottom - 1v1.

[Monterone]

There was a topic about Time To Kill on PTS but you didn't bother. What exactly are you investigating? How some players, with some specific stats/gear are getting killed too fast? This is simply not the case and is beyond me why do you need that data, it's not just SOME players that are getting killed too fast. If you logged in and played couple of max level warzones you would know that pvp in your game is rez-pad fest.

 

As mentioned multiple times, the core of the problem comes down to 1v1 of 2 dps players. In Star Wars, this duel will finish from 5 seconds to maximum of 20 seconds which is ridiculous. Damage needs to be reduced across the board in some way so that duel between 2 dps players would last between 1-2 minutes. This way, you would not die in 2 GCDs in actual warzone. This is because MMOs by nature cannot be twitch kind of gameplay in PVP, to be any kind of good MMO pvp it needs to be somewhat tactical. Well, newsflash, if you will die in 3-10 seconds there is no tactic there.

 

I was actually making some videos showing DPS vs DPS duels in Star Wars, which were without exception always around 10-15 seconds, in comparison to a WoW DPS vs DPS duels which very often go beyond 1 minute for players in full pvp gear. I've decided not to public the material though, due to quite strong opinion most people have about WoW.

 

Bottom line, rez pad fast is not fun for anyone, it's actually quite annoying, and to fix, start from the bottom - 1v1.

 

Yeah I feel the same, I don't even feel like bothering getting this information on my stats and pasting it into this thread.

 

All of this has been covered and it was ignored on PTS, full threads with pertinent information were left without any yellow comments and they just dropped off to the back pages of the forum.

 

We understand you guys don't want to tackle diminishing returns on power, which is where the problem lies, but then you have to consider lowering damage via other means -- expertise, trauma, whatever.

 

And pay attention to the chart for the exception Smash makes. Certainly the odd one out on that chart; even a slow person could see there's something wrong with that.

Edited April 13, 2013 by Monterone

[Cretinus]

This is hilarious. The very same people that keep complaining that BW does not take their opinion into consideration suddenly find it outrageous that BW asks them for some feedback. Edited April 13, 2013 by Cretinus

[foxmob]

This is hilarious. The very same people that keep complaining that BW does not take their opinion into consideration suddenly find it outrageous that BW asks them for some feedback.

 

that's enough out of you, you...Cretinus! (yeah. lame endgame for a post, but heh)

[Slurmez]

I wanted to pop in and clarify as we actually had some things noted incorrectly in our patch notes. Here is the rundown:

 

TLDR - Expertise cap for healing is now 20%, up from 15% (was incorrectly listed as 35%). The Trauma healing effect is now 35%, up from 30%

 

Diminishing returns on Expertise was removed for healing, however the cap was supposed to be listed as 20%, not 35%. You will notice that this cap is UP 5% from what it was pre-2.0. On the other side of this, another change which was not noted is that the Trauma effect in PvP (the effect which reduces healing) was actually increased from 30% to 35%.

 

What this will mean in PvP is that players wearing Expertise gear would technically see no change in their effective healing. However, players who are wearing little or no expertise gear would see their effective healing lowered.

 

We have gone ahead and corrected those errors on the patch notes, we apologize for any confusion that caused. I hope that clears things up.

 

-eric

 

This is just sad, ignoring the main questions to drop something irrelevant in the thread

[-Alma-]

PVP damage is set far too high. Fights are over in milliseconds now.

[Technohic]

I thought maybe I should mention here that the low TTK actually improves CW IMO. Momentum actually shifts more often.

 

There still are times where some things really do damage at an extreme. I'm wondering if it doesn't have something to do with how high things spike when critting.

Edited April 14, 2013 by Technohic

[Leinadirak]

PVP damage is set far too high. Fights are over in milliseconds now.

 

I tried to make this point re. Sage seer healing, low time while alive = less kills and i was litterally told

 

L2P

 

....what a bunch of pros.

[NathanielStarr]

PVP damage is set far too high. Fights are over in milliseconds now.

 

Well this has made defensive cooldowns especially the really strong ones even more powerful. 99% is still 99% and if you would normally die in 4 seconds that means a lot!

 

So they still have autocrit and defenses that reduce attacks (doesn't matter how high they are) to almost nothing.

 

Just have the bolser system give us a decked out smasher when we log in for godsake.

[RodneyMcNeely]

On the other hand, what happened to their ability to gather metrics? Surely you can pull those stats up yourself and process the data much quicker in house than you could soliciting our information (which, if we aren't logged in right that second or haven't taken screenshots is guaranteed to be inaccurate), and then going through the information you get one post at a time.

It's almost like they built the game, then EA fired everyone except a skeleton crew.

 

Am I the only one who thinks the offices of the SWTOR team is probably empty most of the time?

[DroidDreamer]

Responses in bold and underline below.

 

 

Howdy folks,

 

Thanks for all the reports regarding shortened TTK! I just wanted to let you all know that we are looking into the issue, and we could use your help - if you feel so inclined.

 

For those of you who feel that you are quickly defeated in PvP, please post the following information:

 

1. What level is your character?

 

54 Sniper

2. While in a PvP zone and under the affects of bolster, what does your character sheet show for the following stat values?

 

A. Health (while bolstered) = ?

B. Endurance (while bolstered) = ?

C. Expertise (while bolstered) = ?

D. Armor Rating (while bolstered) = ?

 

Ranged and Tech with Bolster --WITH Bounty Hunter Buff

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/RangedandTechwithBolster_zps44cf3928.jpg.html?sort=3&o=3

 

Ranged and Defense with Bolster --WITH Bounty Hunter Buff

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/RangedandDefensewithBolster_zps2663cdea.jpg.html?sort=3&o=5

 

3. In that same set of equipment, while you are NOT in a PvP zone and NOT under the affects of bolster, what does your character sheet show for those same values?

A. Health = ?

B. Endurance = ?

C. Expertise = ?

D. Armor Rating = ?

 

Ranged and Tech without Bolster --WITHOUT Bounty Hunter Buff

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/RangedandTech_zps699abb73.jpg.html?sort=3&o=2

 

Ranged and Defense without Bolster --WITHOUT Bounty Hunter Buff

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/RangedandDefense_zpsf7a15a23.jpg.html?sort=3&o=4

 

4. What kind of equipment are you wearing? Please list any modifications you've made to your equipment (for example, please note if you have added any augments to it or switched out any of the armorings, mods, enhancements, color crystals, etc. - and note what type of augment/armoring/mod/etc. that you have swapped into each slot of each piece of equipment). The more detail you give here, the more likely we will be able to find the issue that is causing your character to be quickly defeated in PvP.

 

It's too hard to explain how I itemized. The pieces are all here. You can see the modifications and augments in the screenshots.

 

Ear piece

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/Earpiece_zps6c55822f.jpg.html?sort=3&o=13

Implant one

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/Implant1_zps73c7ba43.jpg.html?sort=3&o=10

Implant two

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/Implant2_zpsd42bad14.jpg.html?sort=3&o=9

Relic one

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/Relicone_zps8962a463.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0

Relic two

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/Relictwo_zps0e593227.jpg.html?sort=3&o=1

 

Headgear

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/Headgear_zps8510c4d7.jpg.html?sort=3&o=11

Chest

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/chest_zps6d7215ce.jpg.html?sort=3&o=14

Gloves

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/gloves_zpsb82b7338.jpg.html?sort=3&o=12

Belt

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/Belt_zps3e8200a1.jpg.html?sort=3&o=17

Leg slot

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/Legs_zps586cd682.jpg.html?sort=3&o=8

Boots

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/Boots_zpsea82563a.jpg.html?sort=3&o=16

 

Mainhand

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/Mainhand_zps03f2933d.jpg.html?sort=3&o=7

Offhand

http://s288.photobucket.com/user/darkelfo/media/Offhand_zps249d044d.jpg.html?sort=3&o=6

 

For those of you who are critically hitting with certain abilities for over 9000 damage in bolstered PvP situations, please post the following information:

I don't know if I am hitting abilities above 9,000. I just know that most classes, including tanks, don't last as long as they did before. TTK is shorter. I have a lot of burst. With others attacking the same target, I can only spam my quickest attacks because longer cast ones like Explosive Probe + Ambust take to long to cast and the enemy is usually long dead.

 

Conversely, when I am being targetted or focused, I also feel like I die a lot quicker. I have not been focused down this quickly since I was in Recruit gear at the height of the gear divide.

 

1. Which advanced class is your character that is able to critically hit for over 9000 damage in PvP situations?

 

2. What level is this same character?

 

3. Which ability or abilities are critically hitting for over 9000 damage in PvP situations?

 

4. About how often would you say the above ability or abilities critically hit for over 9000 damage in PvP situations?

 

5. While in a PvP zone and under the affects of bolster, what does your character sheet show for the following stat values?

A. Expertise (while bolstered) = ?

B. [Melee/Ranged] Bonus Damage (while bolstered) = ?

C. [Melee/Ranged] Critical Chance (while bolstered) = ?

D. [Melee/Ranged] Critical Multiplier (while bolstered) = ?

E. [Force/Tech] Bonus Damage (while bolstered) = ?

F. [Force/Tech] Critical Chance (while bolstered) = ?

G. [Force/Tech] Critical Multiplier (while bolstered) = ?

Character sheet is above

 

6. In that same set of equipment, how much expertise does your character have while NOT in a PvP area and NOT under the affects of bolster?

A. Expertise = ?

B. [Melee/Ranged] Bonus Damage = ?

C. [Melee/Ranged] Critical Chance = ?

D. [Melee/Ranged] Critical Multiplier = ?

E. [Force/Tech] Bonus Damage = ?

F. [Force/Tech] Critical Chance = ?

G. [Force/Tech] Critical Multiplier = ?

 

Character sheet is above

 

7. What kind of equipment are you wearing? Please list any modifications you've made to your equipment (for example, please note if you have added any augments to it or switched out any of the armorings, mods, enhancements, color crystals, etc. - and note what type of augment/armoring/mod/etc. that you have swapped into each slot of each piece of equipment).

Itemization presented above.

 

We know it can be frustrating when changes are made to statistical values that have become accepted and expected, and we thank you for your help and patience as we further diagnose this issue!

[Stanimir]

The responses to this thread are seriously laughable. "You just need a better team makeup!" Well, I'm not an admin, and bioware refuses to fix their PvP by adding team-matching tech to cross-server queuing. All they have managed to do in this patch was exaggerate the imbalances of pvp and make pre-made roflstomping simply faster, not more uncommon or less dominant.

[darpi]

PvP is unplayable under these conditions, the damage is too great, in seconds I am dead. The state when I have nothing on me is more than when I have armor. Pvp is totally unbalanced. This bolster system is a crap.Please change it.

[DroidDreamer]

Stuns matter a whole lot more now that you can be killed as quickly. Resolve loses its relevance if you're dead and no where near being whitebarred before it's too late.

[Monterone]

Stuns matter a whole lot more now that you can be killed as quickly. Resolve loses its relevance if you're dead and no where near being whitebarred before it's too late.

 

In most cases:

 

Stun = Death

[Aramyth]

I wanted to pop in and clarify as we actually had some things noted incorrectly in our patch notes. Here is the rundown:

 

TLDR - Expertise cap for healing is now 20%, up from 15% (was incorrectly listed as 35%). The Trauma healing effect is now 35%, up from 30%

 

Diminishing returns on Expertise was removed for healing, however the cap was supposed to be listed as 20%, not 35%. You will notice that this cap is UP 5% from what it was pre-2.0. On the other side of this, another change which was not noted is that the Trauma effect in PvP (the effect which reduces healing) was actually increased from 30% to 35%.

 

What this will mean in PvP is that players wearing Expertise gear would technically see no change in their effective healing. However, players who are wearing little or no expertise gear would see their effective healing lowered.

 

We have gone ahead and corrected those errors on the patch notes, we apologize for any confusion that caused. I hope that clears things up.

 

-eric

 

So damage gets their 30% increase with expertise in 2.0 and healers get nothing? A 5% increase with Expertise but -5% with Trauma. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

 

This also PROVES nobody reads tickets sent in game or posts on the PTS because I calculated that I was impossible for healers to get a 35% healing increase with Expertise, but I guess nobody cared.

 

Goodbye Star Wars. I'm tired of my Commando healer being the bottom of the barrel in healers and these developers being SO AFRAID to let healers heal.

[MidichIorian]

I just had a guy heal for 1900 dps in a lvl 55 warzone. I had the highest dps, 1700 dps. Both are too high and there's defintely nothing wrong with healing compared to damage.

[dcgregorya]

So damage gets their 30% increase with expertise in 2.0 and healers get nothing? A 5% increase with Expertise but -5% with Trauma. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

 

This also PROVES nobody reads tickets sent in game or posts on the PTS because I calculated that I was impossible for healers to get a 35% healing increase with Expertise, but I guess nobody cared.

 

Goodbye Star Wars. I'm tired of my Commando healer being the bottom of the barrel in healers and these developers being SO AFRAID to let healers heal.

 

The healers themselves got boosted. Rare is the game I don't break 600k in healing. If they were any more powerful then stacking healers would be unbreakable. Healing isn't the problem tbh, the pace of the game is just messed up now. I'm not even sure how they can fix it because a blanket buff to HP or damage reduction would just make healers even more powerful.

Edited April 14, 2013 by dcgregorya

[Technohic]

So damage gets their 30% increase with expertise in 2.0 and healers get nothing? A 5% increase with Expertise but -5% with Trauma. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

 

This also PROVES nobody reads tickets sent in game or posts on the PTS because I calculated that I was impossible for healers to get a 35% healing increase with Expertise, but I guess nobody cared.

 

Goodbye Star Wars. I'm tired of my Commando healer being the bottom of the barrel in healers and these developers being SO AFRAID to let healers heal.

 

Healing is in a VERY good place right now. Adding more to the cap that expertise gives it would not make commando any better compared to Sage/Scoundrel as they would benefit to and that would be catastrophic. There probably could be a little balancing done within healers, but adding expertise benefit would not accomplish that.