Developer Update: Sith Inquisitor and Jedi Consular Class Changes

[AshlaBoga]

Just saying who ever makes the helms should keep his day town.

 

Well, at least it's been fodder for some good jokes ("how ya doing Horn Head?").

[Pepre]

Please fix the pregnant armor I'm begging u!

[Sylvan]

Bioware do like to play up when they listen to feedback and make changes...it doesn't happen often but it does happen.

 

I can only hope they listen to some of the more seasoned ideas from this thread (like all of mine).

[AshlaBoga]

Too late, you're a Jedi and a mother now;)

[townsforever]

I'm just gonna say before update my assassin was a great tank post update I can barely tank anything at all.

[Uxorious]

Well towns, Assassin tanking seems to me to be the only way this class still work in PvE.

 

Imo the specc needs a dps increase. It mostly has. I am very disapointed. I think the specc has gotten harder to play (Not realy a bad thing) but the combination of harder to play combined with low output is demoralizing. With other classes i play i have a lot less to pay atention to and a lot easier to maintain the dps, coz you move a lot easier with the targets.

 

Also it was argued that the resaults from the dummies was not accurate because of Assassinate can be used at 30%, but the two classes that did best on the dummies (sniper and marauder) have Takedown and Vicious Throw. I realy dont get how BioWare can argue that Assassinate equales 4-500 dps total.

 

We need something to happen now. I am the ONLY dps Assassin in my guild right now, and we have about 30 raiders. We have other assassins but they are all tanks (ofc).

 

Plz help me so i can still play a class i realy like.

Edited April 22, 2013 by Uxorious

[sainik]

Posted this in the shadow forums, but reposting here just in case.

 

Some suggestions for the balance shadow:

 

First up, infiltration tactics (Inf T.) without the 30 % damage boost needs to be a baseline ability for all shadows. It could then be upgraded differently in each of the three trees. For kinetic combat, Inf T. would enable shadow strike from any direction, for infiltration it would give a 30 % damage boost to shadow strike (and some ideas below for what Inf T. could do for balance). This would make it uniform for all specs, as opposed to the way it is on live, when only combat and infil can use the true shadow abilities and balance can only dream of being a second rate shadow.

 

Here is what shadow strike could do for balance:

1. As people before me have suggested, the damage from shadow strike could be increased by x% per dot effect on target. This would make the mechanic very similar to cull though.

 

2. Inf T. could cause shadow strike could apply weakness to the target, causing your next two (or three) periodic abilities on the target to critically hit, and increase the healing done by Focused insight by 25 % (or less) for 3 seconds.

 

3. Inf T. could cause shadow strike to increase the range of the next project or TK throw by 5 (or 10 ) meters.

 

I personally prefer a mix of 2 and 3 (with durations, proc chances and magnitudes appropriately toned to not make it OP but still keep it interesting). Rotation wise it does not make it any more complicated than it is on live: the only ability added to the rotation is shadow strike. Project and TK throw wont do much DPS wise (so not a part of normal rotation), but the balance shadows can use it when out of the 10m range, and hence is a great tool for PVP (of course it requires a setup, so cannot be used right at start). Most importantly, it brings in uniformity into all the trees. For eg for project: KC gets auto crit on project, infil gets increased critical damage on project, and balance gets range on project. For shadow strike: KC can use shadow strike from the front, infil uses shadow strike for heavy burst, balance uses shadow strike to speed up the dot damage. Simple, and uniform.

 

For force regen they could bring back sharpened mind, but they could tie it to shadow strike if they dont want to add an additional mechanic. Just dont make it a behind-the-scenes-with-no-control mechanic (like its on live), but something the players can actively engage in.

 

I normally dont make such posts, partly because I feel its much easier to come up with ideas and much harder for them to properly test, evaluate and implement them, but I disagree with the changes to balance 2.0 so much that I had to say something.

 

What do fellow shadows think ?

[oakamp]

OMG, look at that mask and clothes designed

[johnhansen]

Us assasin's just got debuffed, alot. Tanking was easy before. Now i'm considering becoming a dps *sigh*....

[Starglitter]

Mmm...

 

I must confess that I am fairly new to the game, while very experienced at playing in MMORPGs. In the month that I had played this game I ahd managed to level my shadow inquisitor to level 52. and as a whole despit of using player guides to help me with spec trees, I fiind the class a bit disappointing.

 

I would have thought as the rederick about the class, that if stealthed and get off an attack, that the damage would be so incredible that it could excuse for the mediocre damage ability in the later part of the fight.

 

What I discovered was that the stealthed damage was pointless, and simply stopped caring to try to sneak on someone, why waste the time? The added damage is essentially negligeable.

 

Burst DPS, well you do have an initial semi-high burst of damage, which is good for 1/4th of a significant opponents life, and then you are out of energy, and have to use your slow builders to get a semblance of dps back on line.

 

While limited to wear light armor, my ability to avoid damage is frankly unexistent, I avoid attacks like a statue. Not much for survivability, I often play with a juggernaut who can take far more damage than me, and out dps me too. Sad for the Shadow class. After having made a juggernaut, oh boy, the difference is incredible, can mitigate or resist damage so far upto 27% and wearing heavy armor, and my dps is wonderful, who needs stealth when you have such sheer raw brute power.

 

Frankly the shadow inquisitor needs alot of work, and re-thinking to take advantage of the uniqueness of the class such as stealth, and the nimbleness of light armor. It also needs to be brought upto par with the other dps classes.

 

Incidentally the phase walk, is pretty much a worthless ability and I am yet to get a practical use of it.

 

Sue

[Kalispa]

Have the developers addressed the talent 2% alacrity issue yet? for Sages and Sorcerers the talent increase does not carry over to our force regeneration rate. WHY is this? I've checked on my smuggler and commando classes and their 2% talent increase amazingly enough carries over to the energy regeneration rate. Please fix this!

[HugoBendtsen]

Hello there,

 

I play a madness assassin from the beginning. I tried some other builds, but madness is something i felt good with. I play a full madness build and doing pvp most of the time.

 

Before 2.0 we weren't overpowered at all. I thought we would get some buff instead of nerfs! Why? Endless posts have been made about madness being screwed...

 

Well, it is!!!

 

So to repeat it again. You made our rotation boring as hell!!! Before 2.0 i could shock one to get a bonus or use maul... One of the few things we could do to get a little bit of that tiny amount of extra damage.

 

So when i read this in your article, you make me bit angry:

 

"Now in 2.0, Madness Assassins can get the same results with a smoother, less complex list of abilities and ability priorities." SIGH! It wasn't that hard at all....

AND

"We’re confident that the changes we’ve made will actually make Madness Assassins a more attractive option to players that were previously turned off by their complexity." OMG, are you for real? So what is your goal? Make all true madness assassins angry and try to make them turn away of the spec and then try to get a small bunch of new players filling up this gap? Or? hmmm

"Madness Assassins no longer rely on Shock for sustained damage, but it’s still a perfectly viable ability for bursting a target down." LOL, did you guyz ever played a madness build? + This is a contradiction what you said before about making it less complex. So, should i use it or not?

"With the removal of Shock from a sustained damage priority list, Madness Assassins have a lot more Force available. With this in mind, Calculating Mind has been replaced with Lingering Nightmares, which increases the duration of Crushing Darkness." Again, you replace an instant small buff, to an ability with a long activation cost. You are so wrong, don't mix things up... Try to play a madness spec please...

"Duplicity: ...This isn’t so much a balance concern as it is a usability and complexity concern. In this specific case, adding Duplicity on top of a full Madness spec felt clunky. Worse, it wasn’t necessary. We’re fully capable of providing the same damage boost to players without requiring them to master additional gameplay. This change aims to do exactly that." Please explain, so you realy believe that taking a melee buff away AGAIN, we can replace it with what? And it's realy simple, get behind a man and hit a button. So complex...

Well, to be honest. I've paid for this game from the beginning. Even when my ex-server went empty, i still payed for this game. For others before the trolling, yes i have other toons, but this one i realy liked!

 

I hope "developer" that you give us an answer

 

Greetings

Sus

 

1000 times this

 

austin never played madness and tried to fix the tank shortage by pushing us towards darkness

mega fail ...and no, our dps is far from comparable to marauders.

 

honestly, madness is much easier to play pve once u figure it out.

 

Just give us duplicity and energy regen back.

 

Play it, i dare u, see how broken it is.

 

This toon is the one i think had the most interesting mechanics

Edited April 23, 2013 by HugoBendtsen

[Kinudig]

I just leveled my Shadow from 50 to 55 on Makeb using the Balance tree to get more familiar with the spec in general. I've played Inf and KC hybrids; predominantly Inf. But the idea of the "balanced" shadow was intriguing.

 

I actually had a lot of fun playing it, but found it to be lacking in the end.

 

1. The DPS just isn't there (until enemy health is under 30%)

... by which time you've been focused and you're struggling to stay alive.

 

2. AOE dot is your middle name, so crowd control becomes an issue very quickly in PVE. Especially if you are in some ops or flashpoint with a boss mechanic that depends on periods of absolutely no AOE.

 

3. Survivability seems very poor. Even for a light armor class. What good are dots or damage increase when target is >30% when you are dead?

 

The Balance spec seems more like the gambler's choice now: will I proc before I die?

 

Definitely not Rambo's choice, but I still think balance shadows will be nasty in premade PVP groups (read: players that know how to call targets and focus fire).

[kwestone]

Senior Designer, Austin Peckenpaugh, shares details about the class changes to the Sith Inquisitor and Jedi Consular now live in Game Update 2.0. Discuss them here!

 

Bump.

 

http://www.madsithassassin.com/2013/03/assassin-developer-interview.html

 

Austin: Only the usual, which is to say that 2.0 is just the start of something new. We’re really looking forward to having everyone play the new classes and to get working on additional tweaks for the future based on that feedback.

 

Let's hope Austin is at least a man of his word (we know he was straight up wrong by simply reading that interview) but let's hope that his dev's are reading this. I won't be spending another dime on any cartel coins or anything else Bioware related until they do.

[MidichIorian]

Force management in PvP is still horrible if you go full madness/balance (sage/sorc) and if you choose to spec some form of hybrid for the sake of getting Effusion you'll end up with having a 1 min CD stun as your only form of crowd control. Both are bad but I chose the latter, that way I'm atleast able to deal some damage as I'm dying.

 

Hence, you really need to bring back instant WW. I thought the nerf to the electrocute range was bad (it didnt make any sense since it prevented us from stunning people in our preferred range. It's like giving a mara a stun that only works between 25-30m) but this is worse. Poorly skilled players have always used their CC breaker on stun just so that we could WW them right after but now there are no consequences for such behavior. The good players are doing it too now because they know that we'll never be able to channel WW. There is no way for us to put pressure on healers because they will simply break the stun and prance off while healing themselves to full again.

 

And reducing our armor by 25 % at the same time as you're making it impossible to spec electric bindings unless you go full Lightning and you get rid of bubble stun? You havent read a single word in the feedback threads, have you? The biggest complaint was survivability followed by survivability not correlating with the poor damage output. You just made it worse.

 

If your intention was to nerf shadows/assassins then you probably should have figured out how to program their abilties independently first so that their cousins , sages and sorcs, didnt have to suffer too.

Edited April 24, 2013 by MidichIorian

[Majspuffen]

Hello Bioware. I'm mainly a PvPer and I've played a Balance Shadow for the better part of the last 6-9 months. I do not appreciate the changes you did in 2.0. Balance Shadows were never really considered RWZ material, though on my server I actually played the spec competitively in RWZs and I did a fairly good job. But now in 2.0, I cannot even log in on my Jedi Shadow without feeling outright depressed. The changes hurts, a lot. You didn't just dumb down the class; you took the fun out of it and ruined its PvP potential. That is unacceptable.

 

I know you like to look at fancy graphs and such, and I've made one for you. This "graph" will show you a comparison of the fun between 1.7 balance and 2.0. http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/2107/balancepong.png *

 

Now, note that that picture only adresses the fun factor. If we were to talk about actual power, in terms of pvp and pve, the chart would be reversed.

 

I could write a wall of text but I dont really see the point. I echo what a lot of other people have said. More than anything else, I want to see a complete reversion of the balance tree. I get that you cannot move Infiltration Tactics back into tier 1, but introduce a new talent for Balance Shadows. Replace Lolbaste or something.

 

 

* To explain the "chart"... the chart represents gameplay and room for error. You've dumbed down the spec so much there's basically no room for error whatsoever. We cannot even overlap mind crush procs because of the internal CD. There's too much hand-holding. We have abilities on our toolbars because we want to use them. Balance Shadows pretty much had a reason to use every single ability on their toolbar... even Whirling Blow and Telekinetic Throw. The former was good for unstealthing enemy stealth classes when they vanish, and the latter is good for interrupting at range (very situational, but I've used it quite a lot in Civil War when stalling in mid, coupled with force potency).

Edited April 24, 2013 by Majspuffen

[Majspuffen]

Another valid complaint;

 

Prior to 2.0, the talent "Shadowy Veil" was in tier 1 and accessible for all Shadows. Balance Shadows typically specced this talent for PvP. Now in order to get it, we literally have to waste points. Shadow's Respite is a small bonus, and Upheaval has been made useless since project is no longer part of our toolbar.

[ReordaN]

I wish they'd said something about lambaste ( and to think that it's so high in the tier) just so i could laugh

lambaste makes me want to punch a kitten

[kwestone]

Austin: Yes and no. If your measure of Assassin DPS is parses on a training dummy, you WILL see lower numbers than most other DPS specs. But allow me to put this into context in terms of what Assassins are “missing” compared to all other specs. I’ve color-coded “what’s missing” when fighting a training dummy based on severity (green < light green < brown < red).

 

http://www.madsithassassin.com/2013/03/assassin-developer-interview.html

 

Bump. Austin, just admit you were flawed in your math. Fix your major mess up. Gonna keep bumping this thread every day.

[Devinia-Hex]

I felt I would give it time to gear up and see how well things had changed in the PTR my Sorc felt strong and now that I'm 55 I will feel weaker then I did at 50 on the PTR. Chainlighting even with the the 50% bonus crit damage is hitting for mid 5k on crits while other classes again are hitting for much more.

 

Our class feels like it does even less damage and feels softer then before, it appeared that ranged would finally get a buff to fend off the melee zergs but it feels even weaker than before. Very soft and no burst unless 5 people want to stand together and leave you alone to aoe them down which makes you about as usefull as someone in greens and blues.

 

Our damage type needs to be changed to something other then kinetic or energy as these take into effect armor Lightning should be Elemental and all dots/death field being Internal. Warrior types just spam abilities now against healing because htey know if you try to stand still and try to out heal there damage you will die or run out of force and die.

 

Force leap is still broken and needs to be fixed while under force speed with Fadeout up I'm still being rooted in place by the broken mechanic when will bioware fix this? It's only been broken since they decided to make the mechanic of keeping people in place until the force leap finished which causes the rubberband effect when you try and sprint away before the force leap finishes. Fade out makes you IMMUNE not kinda of not sometimes but IMMUNE to movement imparing effects if your want to have a tool tip that says you will be IMMUNE to movement imparing effects then correct the game so we are IMMUNE.

 

Example warrior force leaps to you, you sprint away another warrior force leaps to you .5 seconds after the sprint starts ....rooted. A root impaires my movement so I guess I'm not IMMUNE? go figure becuase Fade out says right on it IMMUNE to movement imparing effects.

 

Another example you have the hutball you sprint across the fire pit warrior force leaps and roots you on the fire pit. Again not IMMUNE. Fix the class and stop handcuffing it so it can't do damage and can't even use it's mechanics or you'll find players IMMUNE to subscriptions and that won't be broken.

[sainik]

I just don't understand this. They take a playstyle which I liked and paid for (for over 16 months), label it "clunky" and throw it out of the window. Not only that, there is no word on whether we can expect any changes in the short / long term. This consular/inquisitor blog is not enough. This blog is what made me come out and post in the forums for the first time, in about 16 months of playing this game !

 

Not allowing balance shadows to use shadow strike is so wrong. Balance shadows losing shadow strike is similar to watchman sentinels losing rebuke and centering, or pyro PT losing flame burst, or concealment operatives losing Kolto Injection. Those are the first abilities you learn when you train your advanced class, just like shadow strike is the first ability we learn when we train for the shadow class.

 

Its not just loss of shadow strike, there is loss of synergy with project (which is next thing we learn at lvl 10 btw, via the passive ability Shadow's training which increases base damage of project), and not to mention the change in force regen mechanics. Nothing new here, all this has been mentioned in so many posts in so many threads.

 

But what I don't understand is that all this was unnecessary. I don't PVE, but I never saw a team full of balance shadows running around dominating warzones and causing people to quit. Even if the reason for changes is the lack of balance shadows, did they even consider that complexity was probably not the reason ? The more plausible reason seems to me that most stealth DPSers want a rogue archetype, and they find that in Infiltration (Balance at first glance comes off as a dot spec). That should be OK, not a cause for concern and massive changes. More so because you have a group of players (albeit a minority) who really liked that spec.

 

To people who do these sorts of things often: Are there any other feedback channels they take more seriously ? Or is it futile and best to move on ?

 

In any case, a bump.

[kwestone]

To people who do these sorts of things often: Are there any other feedback channels they take more seriously ? Or is it futile and best to move on ?

 

I don't know, but as a madness assassin who lost my DPS slot in my raid group and was bottle-necked into tanking with this toon I am going to keep trying until I unsub or ESO drops. Bump.

 

Austin, you there?

[Ven-Zallow]

Well i have just reached level 55 and looked everywere for the ability that they showed of in earlyer videos called spinning strikes for my sith assasin but it isnt there only new ability i can see is phase shift. What has happed to this ability did they take it out if so why? if they were unsure if they were going to give this ability why show it in pre exspansion videos rather unfair for people that have been looking forward to it to reach 55 and it isnt there Rather upset tbh.

[kwestone]

Thursday Bump!

 

http://www.madsithassassin.com/2013/03/assassin-developer-interview.html

 

Still not the case. Still no word. Still taking our sub money. Another day, more cash from our pockets, and no word from the people with our bank account info on why they straight up lied to us, and continue to remain silent.

[Majspuffen]

Friday bump?

 

Bioware, you introduced a new playstyle in SWTOR. The "mid-range" fighter. Vanguards, Scoundrels and Shadows had the ability to specialize in this new role.

 

The mid-range fighter for Vanguards was the Assault Specialist. It was super easy for anyone to get into.

The mid-range fighter for Scoundrels was the Dirty Fighter. This was the most complex spec to get into.

The mid-range fighter for Shadows was Balance. This was the middle-ground.

 

I tried assault spec vanguard and got bored around level 43. I liked the playstyle, but the class was just too simple for my tastes. I also tried lethality operative before 2.0, and I liked it, but I found it lacking in pvp, and keeping up sustained damage was really difficult. Balance shadows were the perfect middle-ground. It required some dedication to become good at.

 

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease restore Balance Shadows to the way they were in 1.7. Remove Rippling Force and re-introduce Sharpened Mind. Give us a new talent that allows for Shadow Strike. Remove the internal CD on Mind Crush. Then Balance will be back to how it was.

Edited April 26, 2013 by Majspuffen