Alacrity Viability

[Arius_Drax]

One major suggestion that I have is to increase the viability of alacrity within the game. I know that developers had attempted this with 2.0 updates to alacrity, but in my opinion did the total opposite. The advantages of alacrity are far outweighed by its lackluster performance when compared to comparable stats such as surg, acc, etc. Below are some ideas that I believe would help to fix the alacrity problem. I do not necessarily want all of these changes implemented, they are just a conglomeration of ideas I had.

 

1. Make the effects that alacrity has on the global cool-down MUCH more noticeable than those of castable abilities. This would make alacrity a stat that every class could use, epically for classes that use a multitude of instant abilities. This would speed up combat for certain situations, and even make certain classes more viable. You could have a hard cap at, say, 0.5 seconds, or something along those lines.

 

2. Make alacrity have a ranging effect on longer cast times. Although a percentage effect DOES have a bigger effect on longer castable times, it is still not worth while. 6% off of a cast time of 2.5 seconds is much less effective than 4 or 6% crit multiplier. There should be a different scaling system that makes alacrity much more viable for castable abilities, longer ones more specifically.

 

3. Make the resource regeneration of alacrity actually viable. Stacking alacrity on my Sorcerer healer ended up giving me roughly 8.4 willpower regeneration, compared to the zero alacrity build of 8 willpower. Reallocating the points into surge and power yielded a far superior build. The stat lacks the results when compared to all others. Increasing the regeneration factor, (or degen for classes like mercs, etc.) would make it, again, a universally wanted stat.

 

These were some of my ideas to improve the system. I believe if any or all of these were implemented, in a good fashion, that it would make gameplay and gear optimization much more interesting, fun, and varied.

[DarkAngelRiku]

All honesty if they up alacrity then they need to increase the cooldown for some moves to balance it out. I've already seen some broken Sage builds where they pretty much make Disturbance and instant cooldown because of so many alacrity mods on top of a Sage's Mental Alacrity ability. So while I do agree they need to make it noticeable, I think a few moves need to get an increase in cooldown time to compensate.

[Quoll]

ITA w/ OP. As it is alacrity is useless and much of the readily available comm gear forces you to take it or spend extra comms to replace it w/ mods that are lower than what you need because they have stats that are far more useful.

[Nempo]

Alacrity is fine, stop crying because it isn't super useful when you only have some of it.

It is a stat you either go all or nothing on. If you truly stack it, you get huge benefits for it.

Stacking in this case is not the DPSers idea of "I stack acc and crit", That is not stacking, stacking is one stat, you ignore all else for that singular stat. When we say to stack alacrity...this means you quite literally just place alacrity on every mod and unmodable peice of gear. Literally ignore everything for that one stat and you can do some amazing things in PvP.

 

That's it's purpose, to give small benefits unless you focus upon it entirely (to which only PvPers should ever consider this option viable).

 

It works fine as small benefit boosts on gear.

[Xoza]

There are a lot of stats I'd like to see in a nice organized list... Even a better way to calculate 'gear level' would be nice... Like adding all the stats together...

[Arius_Drax]

Alacrity is useless in pve, as stated above, so I'm not "crying" about it, I am suggesting ideas about how to make it viable in pve. No stat should have to be "stacked" in order to see benefits from it. If you are in the 400-500 range of any stat you should see glaring results from it. Lastly, I have yet to see any "huge" benefits from it on the pve perspective. Alacrity should have similar level benefits with surge and accuracy since they are all in the same tree of stats.

[Kuronan]

Alacrity is useless in pve, as stated above, so I'm not "crying" about it, I am suggesting ideas about how to make it viable in pve. No stat should have to be "stacked" in order to see benefits from it. If you are in the 400-500 range of any stat you should see glaring results from it. Lastly, I have yet to see any "huge" benefits from it on the pve perspective. Alacrity should have similar level benefits with surge and accuracy since they are all in the same tree of stats.

That's cute, why do you sound like you have only neglected to stack it, but you've never played a casting-dependant class like Sorcerer or Sniper?

 

I am a Sorcerer Healer, I'm still in 66-69 gear, and I've only stacked Alacrity. Let me tell you right now: Alacrity is actually preferable to Crit as a healer, so I can keep people alive in the particularly rough parts of boss fights, especially placing Revivification during the bonus boss of Hammer Station. I mean sure, I like Crit when I can get it, but Alacrity is actually my best stat.

 

I will get 2.1-2.3 channel time on my Innervation (not in game, will edit with actual channel time later) and much faster Dark Infusions, in addition to (almost) 10 Force regeneration per second.. Trust me, Alacrity is much more helpful to casters than it is to everyone else.

[Arius_Drax]

I heal on a sorc and have cleared TFB HM and SaV HM. I know what is required for healing. Also, you should be using instant cast revivifications, but you might not know about that since you don't have any crit. We probably have a difference in game play style, but I don't believe that negates the facts that alacrity is not what it should be. Instead of attacking me as a player, stay focused on the topic of alacrity and its usefulness when compared to surge/acc. .

[dscount]

I 100% agree!

 

1) The REGEN rate with a ton of stacked Alacrity is a JOKE for Sorc/Sage. While I enjoy the extra 0.6 boost it's not worth the trade off of losing other stat points.

 

2) Decreased CD Time is MINOR / almost nothing. I can notice a minor change, but after the DR curve its crap. If I stack 550 Alacrity I should see a dramatic decrease in CD times across the board. Innervate by nature has 1.5 seconds off the 9 seconds CD with set bonus, but if I have 550 Alacrity I should be getting another 2-3 seconds whacked off that CD. (Not seeing it happen).

 

3) Would love to see some of the REGEN Rate beefed up in the 69+ 4 PC set bonus gear or 5%-10% Alacrity boost.

 

NOTE: I'm also a SORC Heals using 0 CRIT, 525 Alacrity (9.02%) and do clear HM's today with that spec. While I do enjoy some of the benefits, it does seem like a minor improvement over what its like with LOW Alacrity.

 

The bottom line is we (Sorc/Sage Healers) need a boost on the REGEN the most IMHO and maybe a slight adjustment to DR.

Edited May 30, 2013 by dscount

[Kuronan]

The problem is you people aren't stacking enough Alacrity to understand it's actual value...

1) The REGEN rate with a ton of stacked Alacrity is a JOKE for Sorc/Sage. While I enjoy the extra 0.6 boost it's not worth the trade off of losing other stat points.

Yes, that .6 points seems miniscule, but that's the nature of it, it's not meant to have a lot unless you really devote yourself to the stat. I have 8.9 force regen per second and I notice having more resources available to me than I do with the default 8.0, and I currently have 770 alacrity rating (10.88% alacrity percentage with the +2.00% alacrity bonus from the talent tree)

 

2) Decreased CD Time is MINOR / almost nothing. I can notice a minor change, but after the DR curve its crap. If I stack 550 Alacrity I should see a dramatic decrease in CD times across the board. Innervate by nature has 1.5 seconds off the 9 seconds CD with set bonus, but if I have 550 Alacrity I should be getting another 2-3 seconds whacked off that CD. (Not seeing it happen).

No, you aren't going to see 2-3 seconds knocked off of your Innervate, I practically regen all of the cost of the ability during a normal casting of it, and alacrity reducing all cooldowns would be overpowered... My Force barrier would have a cooldown of 2 minutes at the rate you are suggesting, and ten seconds of complete damage immunity while I (for healing) heal, lose all stacks of Consumption, and get a Force Speed right out of the Force barrier, or (for corruption) sit there for ten seconds, having complete immunity to EVERYTHING, while my target ticks down to die and frustratingly sits there trying to break my immune bubble. I don't know about you, but I see a lot of PVP implications with that...

 

Also, Bioware already stated if the alacrity makes the ability instant cast, it will reduce the global cooldown and animation time. I recommend leveling a Sentinel or a Marauder to 20, then getting Ataru Form and attacking a training dummy, you'll notice a massive boost in DPS for when you proc Zen or Berserk because the abilities are instant and have no cooldown, but are still under the effects of 30% Alacrity.

 

3) Would love to see some of the REGEN Rate beefed up in the 69+ 4 PC set bonus gear or 5%-10% Alacrity boost.

I get 8.88% alacrity out of Black Market and two Pristine items, Do you want me to cut down my spell casting time to 1/5 with this? Well actually, I'd like that, a lot, but I don't think Bioware would agree with us there...

 

The bottom line is we (Sorc/Sage Healers) need a boost on the REGEN the most IMHO and maybe a slight adjustment to DR.

Okay, I can kind of agree with this one, We should probably be sitting around a default 20% DR with pristine gear and move on from there, I shouldn't have to take points out of Lightning Barrier to make sure I don't die in three hits.

 

Also, you should be using instant cast revivifications, but you might not know about that since you don't have any crit.

Current Crit Rating is 30.67 with 599 crit rating (would go higher if I spent more time grinding for comms to get crit mods for my belt and wrists.) I know that, but I also have to channel innervation for that, and for a faster critical rate, I need Alacrity, which takes away from my Crit. However, if I stack too much Crit, my heals won't go fast enough and the tank might die because I can't heal fast enough...

 

See where it's going? Now, let me tell you my cast times...

 

Dark Heal: 1.35 Seconds

Dark Infusion: 2.25 Seconds

Innervate: 2.22 Seconds

Revivification (without 3 stacks of Force Surge, because situations like that actually happen.): 1.9 seconds.

 

Now, as much as it looks like I'm actually trying to make a case against you, I'm actually not. I would like to see Alacrity given more power than it does hold right now, but I think you people are saying it's useless without stacking enough of it. I have a good amount of it, and I wouldn't trade my alacrity bonuses for Surge, Power, or even Crit because I find what little boost I get from Alacrity extremely helpful.

 

However, if Bioware did improve it's use further, maybe even making it proc my HoT and DoT effects as well as improve it's current benefits, that'd be kind of cool, or maybe make it stronger for casting classes like Sniper and Sorcerer.

[Arius_Drax]

770 Alacrity and 599 crit. Can honestly say I've never heard that one before. You are missing out on MASSIVE returns from surge stats with a build so high in crit., and you are far past any point of diminishing returns. Power should be high on your priority list on any class, specifically healing classes. We obviously differ, a lot, on our builds, but as you stated, we agree that there should be a change to alacrity. I believe that it should have more profound effects for stat dedication.

[Terradoss]

The problem is you people aren't stacking enough Alacrity to understand it's actual value...

 

The issue I have with this is that even if it's true, Its an undesirable way to attempt to balance stats in general.

 

Let me first make clear that there's nothing wrong with various stats having breakpoints for an increase in usefulness inherently, whats important is how they're structured and when they occur.

 

If we operate on the assumption that alacrity is as you say, really, really good beyond a certain amount of EXCLUSIVE stacking, but drastically less so before this point, then you end up with a situation in which alacrity is so much less useful before whatever the arbitrary point is, that nobody uses it prior to then and so much MORE useful afterwards, that nobody uses anything ELSE from that point on.

 

This is completely binary in nature (it is either completely awesome or completely terrible) and has no middle ground. There's is no sliding balance scale here that allows alacrity to become viable as a CHOICE in any stat priority considerations. I'm not suggesting that stat stacking shouldn't be able to produce some effective results, but to require EXCLUSIVE stat stacking to very high levels before achieving *any* reliable amount of use from a stat, is poor design.

 

Crit, surge and accuracy all have some pretty well defined breakpoints for various classes (although this differs, sometimes drastically, based on different synergies of these stats with specs/talents and whatnot), but none of these breakpoints are such that they require you to ignore all other stats in order to reach them. They're designed to be achievable (to various incremental levels) whilst investing in other stats at the same time.

 

You encounter further complications with this particular design when considering the aforementioned synergies. There are cases in games I've seen where upon reaching a certain exclusive breakpoint for a stat that makes it the clear better choice than everything else, talents and abilities designed to synergise with those other now strictly inferior stats, fall into disuse because the player is no longer geared to support them. This is also not good stat design/balance.

 

All told, I think alacrity is, relative to the power scale of the other secondary stats, insufficiently useful at present. I've never stacked it exclusively to ridiculously high levels to see what it can achieve, but nor do i feel i should have to. Alacrity should be comparable to other secondary stats in terms of being a gearing choice, Incrementally improved in much smaller subsects for a player to decide how much they want of. Not completely ignored or exclusively focused on.

 

For as long as the game continues to impress the relevance of multiple stats on us through skills and talents, encouraging or requiring people to exclusively stack a single stat is never going to be anything but poor design.

[XXcaesar]

iv always used alacrity ago's on my pvp sorc healer before 2.0 i only had 5.6 reduced cast time and now I'm at 9.3 when i fill out in the top aog'si expect this to be around 11.6

so id say they have made a big change already

[AlrikFassbauer]

I don't quite understand why middle-tier PvE gear (I thing it is the one which can be bought from the "basic" commendations vendor - which sounds as if green gear wasn't "basic gear" at all, by the way) has so much alacrity instead of power and precision built-in ?

[Origin_One]

The issue I have with this is that even if it's true, Its an undesirable way to attempt to balance stats in general.

 

Let me first make clear that there's nothing wrong with various stats having breakpoints for an increase in usefulness inherently, whats important is how they're structured and when they occur.

 

If we operate on the assumption that alacrity is as you say, really, really good beyond a certain amount of EXCLUSIVE stacking, but drastically less so before this point, then you end up with a situation in which alacrity is so much less useful before whatever the arbitrary point is, that nobody uses it prior to then and so much MORE useful afterwards, that nobody uses anything ELSE from that point on.

 

This is completely binary in nature (it is either completely awesome or completely terrible) and has no middle ground. There's is no sliding balance scale here that allows alacrity to become viable as a CHOICE in any stat priority considerations. I'm not suggesting that stat stacking shouldn't be able to produce some effective results, but to require EXCLUSIVE stat stacking to very high levels before achieving *any* reliable amount of use from a stat, is poor design.

 

Crit, surge and accuracy all have some pretty well defined breakpoints for various classes (although this differs, sometimes drastically, based on different synergies of these stats with specs/talents and whatnot), but none of these breakpoints are such that they require you to ignore all other stats in order to reach them. They're designed to be achievable (to various incremental levels) whilst investing in other stats at the same time.

 

You encounter further complications with this particular design when considering the aforementioned synergies. There are cases in games I've seen where upon reaching a certain exclusive breakpoint for a stat that makes it the clear better choice than everything else, talents and abilities designed to synergise with those other now strictly inferior stats, fall into disuse because the player is no longer geared to support them. This is also not good stat design/balance.

 

All told, I think alacrity is, relative to the power scale of the other secondary stats, insufficiently useful at present. I've never stacked it exclusively to ridiculously high levels to see what it can achieve, but nor do i feel i should have to. Alacrity should be comparable to other secondary stats in terms of being a gearing choice, Incrementally improved in much smaller subsects for a player to decide how much they want of. Not completely ignored or exclusively focused on.

 

For as long as the game continues to impress the relevance of multiple stats on us through skills and talents, encouraging or requiring people to exclusively stack a single stat is never going to be anything but poor design.

 

I think this points out the problem. I totally agree.