So What *Are* We Going To Ask? July

[Kitru]

I think there are only few people who really like it.

 

I'm pretty sure that all of those people are developers, none of which actually play a Shadow. Peckenpaugh was *really* proud of himself when he announced Phase Walk. I'm kind of hoping he's finally recognized that he should be feeling a lot of shame for creating such a terrible ability.

[Rahizm]

Well, I already posted my questions (which are the same as everyone's questions) but there's only 1 remaining which I probably know the answer to because devs play em':

 

Why in the world do Gunslingers/Snipers get 20% DEFENSE CHANCE (in cover) when they are not tanks, compared to, let's say, Shadow Tanks?

[Xinika]

I'm pretty sure that all of those people are developers, none of which actually play a Shadow. Peckenpaugh was *really* proud of himself when he announced Phase Walk. I'm kind of hoping he's finally recognized that he should be feeling a lot of shame for creating such a terrible ability.

Although I am aware of the hatred for P. Walk, I actually like the ability. In theory anyway. It is very useful for node guarding. However, the execution could be better. For one, I don't understand why this thing has a cast time, or why it goes on CD for 45 seconds if not used, or the range checker, or even the delay when you actually use the ability. So yes, there are thorns attached to it, but there also some positives. It can be utilized like an additional breaker, seen

. It can be used to frankly outplay opponents in PvP in various creative ways. Now as far as its PvE usage goes, it's utterly useless and yes, that is depressing. Edited August 5, 2013 by Xinika

[Altheran]

I'm pretty sure that all of those people are developers, none of which actually play a Shadow. Peckenpaugh was *really* proud of himself when he announced Phase Walk. I'm kind of hoping he's finally recognized that he should be feeling a lot of shame for creating such a terrible ability.

 

Sure, because I can't believe that anyone who actually tested it, can think the ability is fine when speaking about its mechanics.

 

In addition to developpers there are some players who did not test Phase Walk yet who are thinking that it's fine.

The other day, there was a Sorcerer player who was saying that his Force Barrier was crap comparing to "OP abilities" and listed Saber Reflect, Electronet and... Phase Walk !

[Kitru]

The other day, there was a Sorcerer player who was saying that his Force Barrier was crap comparing to "OP abilities" and listed Saber Reflect, Electronet and... Phase Walk !

 

Phase Walk, in its current implementation, would be pretty good for an rDPS class, though, compared to every other implementation of it that I've ever seen, it's the weakest. The reasons it sucks all stem from the fact that they gave an ability that has only *ever* been useful for ranged characters to melee characters. Of *course* an rDPS is going to think that Phase Walk is the shiz. If *they* had gotten it, it *would* be friggin' amazing. Phase Walk sucks because *Shadows* got it. We would be saying that Saber Reflect sucks as well if it were given to Sorcerors. The value of an ability is *heavily* contingent upon the class that gets it, which the devs are apparently completely ignorant of.

Edited August 4, 2013 by Kitru

[Solar_Breeze]

Just to add my input here.

 

I feel like we shouldn't have to ask about Sin/Shadow spike because of this post in that thread - but it seems they have forgotten for now:

 

Hey guys,

 

Apologies for the silence on this. I wanted to pass this back to the combat guys and make sure we had an in-depth conversation about Shadow/Assassin tanks before coming back to you guys. What I can say is that we are investigating the Shadow/Assassin tank’s performance against hard-hitting Operations bosses. I have no timeline on any potential changes right now but I at least wanted you guys to know that we are aware of your concerns.

 

-eric

 

Maybe we can just prompt them for an actual answer at the end of our 3 other questions?

 

Additionally rather than focusing on single abilities - it may be better to broaden out the questions so for example a tanking cooldowns general question rather than specifically shroud

Edited August 4, 2013 by Solar_Breeze

[Kitru]

I feel like we shouldn't have to ask about Sin/Shadow spike because of this post in that thread - but it seems they have forgotten for now:

 

We're fully cognizant of the single post the devs made in reference to it though they haven't said or done *anything* relative to it and it's been a month. It's also the single most pressing PvE concern so, even if the devs have acknowledged it, they haven't elaborated on it in the least. As such, if nothing has been done in the intervening 6 weeks, it would very relevant to actually ask about it.

 

Maybe we can just prompt them for an actual answer at the end of our 3 other questions?

 

The 3 questions limitation is likely to be *extremely* strict. It's likely pushing it with the depth and complexity of the questions I've already listed here. Specifically stated as a question, it demonstrates to the importance of the issue.

 

Additionally rather than focusing on single abilities - it may be better to broaden out the questions so for example a tanking cooldowns general question rather than specifically shroud

 

The Shadow tanking CDs are perfectly fine in general. Deflection and Battle Readiness are amazing. The issue is that Resilience specifically doesn't work as it's supposed to. It's another one of those cases where the devs have referenced it, but there's been no movement on it or further reference to it. Using it as a question demonstrates the importance of getting that fixed to the community.

 

As to the specific commentary to Phase Walk, it *needs* specific mention. Phase Walk's terrible design needs to be shoved right in the combat team's face so that they're forced to recognize how bad it is, which they'd know if they actually *played* Shadows.

[Berjiz]

I agree that phase walk should be one of the issues, it's something that affetcs all specs for both pve and pvp. It could be so much more and make shadows/assasins wanted a lot more if done correctly.

[DarthSpekulatius]

Secondary:

You have already stated that you have discovered the reason for the "Resilience bug". Since it is not an explicit flaw with Resilience and is instead a problem with the backend code that only affects Resilience and Blade Turning, will it be fixed any time soon and, if not, can we at least expect some temporary solution between now and when it is fixed, such as having it provide 100% F/T resistance for the duration in addition to the resist chance such that, at the very least, it provides immunity to the damage portions of abilities that succeed at the 5% chance?

 

am I wrong or does Hunker Down work 100% of the time?

if so then it shouldn't be hard to Fix Resilience.

 

and could you please reread your questions and make them less offensive?

it's unnecessary to piss people off and it won't do us any good.

[Kitru]

am I wrong or does Hunker Down work 100% of the time?

if so then it shouldn't be hard to Fix Resilience.

 

Hunker Down applies resistance to physics effects, not avoidance. Resilience and Blade Turning are unique insofar as they confer immunity through avoidance rather than through reduction in the given value to 0.

 

The only reason I could see insofar as the fix being difficult would be if they want to preserve the 5% floor for everything *except* for the Resilience and Blade Turning special cases. I'm not even sure *why* they would care about that 5% floor since the only times that you ever *get* hit chances below 5% are while affected by those abilities and attacking targets *way* above your own level. I can only imagine they're attempting to preserve the 5% minimum hit chance for grey attackers for whatever reason.

 

and could you please reread your questions and make them less offensive?

it's unnecessary to piss people off and it won't do us any good.

 

I've read them over several times before and think they're worded quite aptly. At worst, I think they're a bit too verbose. If anyone wants to posit alternate methods of posing the same questions, feel free. Personally, I think they're entirely appropriate. The devs dropped the ball and have done a really crappy job with Shadows in RotHC. Taking it easy on them isn't really going to get the point across when it pretty obvious that they're completely ignorant and *really* need to fix that as soon as possible.

Edited August 5, 2013 by Kitru

[DarthSpekulatius]

they could give resilience immunity to all CC like Hunker Down until they find a fix that allows non Force/tech CCs to get trough but keep the guaranteed CC&damage Immunity against F/T if they want to keep that 5% thing

 

about the language I don't know if they could have missed the point that we feel pissed,

we have a saying here treat others the way you want to be treated.

doesn't matter that they have started the Pissing-contest if we want them to stop we should first stop doing it ourself.

Edited August 5, 2013 by DarthSpekulatius

[Missandei]

I want for my Shadow:

 

1. as a Tank i need more survivability. Either give me back the armor rating buff (150%) or the TkT selfheal of 3%/stack. Nowadays most of the HM ops groups would take Shadow tank only if there is no other options. As a healer i would prefere 69 lvl geared Guardian to 72+ geared Shadow.

 

2. Resilience is not working sometimes that make it like a lottery.

 

3. Balance tree is no more as fun as it had been pre 2.0. The pre 2.0 rotation was routine but had some creative options. Now - just dull routine for imaginationless people.

 

4. Phase Walk. The most useless «new» ability among all the classes. Should be redisigned. At least the cast time should be removed.

 

5. Whirling blow is just useless ability for any tree. Either redisign/buff it or get rid of it completelly.

Edited August 5, 2013 by Missandei

[Xinika]

and could you please reread your questions and make them less offensive?

it's unnecessary to piss people off and it won't do us any good.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way Kitru has stated the questions, especially when our class is in such a deplorable state and the devs are seemingly not lending an ear.

Edited August 5, 2013 by Xinika

[Ayradyss]

Well, personally, I'd like to see your Secondary questions as the Primaries, but I know we all have differing priorities. I've played an Infiltration Shadow since the game launched, and feel it's really been left weak and unwanted as of 2.0. (IE -- generally not desirable in Ops groups, relative to other DPS classes).

 

I guess Shadow Tanks (and to a lesser extent, Balance) are all the rage right now, but I very much hope that no one spec will end up eclipsing the issues of the others.

[thejollygreenone]

Well, personally, I'd like to see your Secondary questions as the Primaries, but I know we all have differing priorities. I've played an Infiltration Shadow since the game launched, and feel it's really been left weak and unwanted as of 2.0. (IE -- generally not desirable in Ops groups, relative to other DPS classes).

 

I guess Shadow Tanks (and to a lesser extent, Balance) are all the rage right now, but I very much hope that no one spec will end up eclipsing the issues of the others.

i come from a similar perspective and agree entirely. +1

[Kitru]

I guess Shadow Tanks (and to a lesser extent, Balance) are all the rage right now, but I very much hope that no one spec will end up eclipsing the issues of the others.

 

It's less about what's "all the rage" and more about triage. Xinika and I have discussed this back and forth for a while, and we agree that there are issues with pretty much *every* aspect of Shadows at the moment:

 

In PvE, tanks have the well known spikiness problem that is annoying as hell because it's still *yet* to be commented on beyond the devs finally acknowledging, after 3 months of discussion, that they recognize it, and DPS both suffer from sub-par DPS, thanks to overinflated assumptions about improved performance during execute phases, and *massive* requirement for precision of play that create vast gulfs in performance difference between practice and theory.

 

In PvP, tanks have the problem of only really being useful as node guards, Balance has problems with everything, and Infiltration has issues with being *too* reliant upon burst DPS from stealth without enough real disengaging capability coupled with the screwiness and general worthlessness of Force Cloak.

 

For other stuff, Phase Walk is terrible for every spec out there; AoE damage is virtually nonexistent for the DPS specs; survivability for the DPS specs is the worst of every DPS out there thanks to lacking real mitigation talents and using light armor, especially Balance, which relies upon self healing which got gutted with the crit nerf in RotHC; and Resilience is unreliable.

 

That's 9 different problems that are all important enough to get mentioned as part of the class rep system and would require complex answers from the developers. We're having to resort to triage to get to what the *most* important questions are while simultaneously having to adhere to the PvP/PvE/Wildcard issue while also having to wonder whether we'll actually get any of these issues before we actually get to ask them since they've *responded* to them, but, whether they'll actually *do* anything about them in a timely manner is still in question.

 

People are all going to have different interpretations of what the most important questions are. I wanted to make sure that Xinika and I are in complete agreement about the triage that I have done here, and Xinika has already agreed with me on this. If someone else wants to propose some variation of said triage, feel free. If there are good enough reasons for it, I'll take those to heart and change which questions I ask.

[Yodawizard]

Kitru, maybe as a way of maximizing the use of 3 questions do you think we can ask them to get more information to us on the issues they already said they were looking into as "1" question? This would address resilience/shroud and tank spikiness in 1 question I think.

 

Something like;

You have already addresses a couple of our key issues saying you would look into them and get back to us. Can you please provide further information on where you are in this process and when we can expect effective change to address them would be? These issues would be regarding tank spikiness and force shroud / resilience not working as intended.

Edited August 5, 2013 by Yodawizard

[Kitru]

Kitru, maybe as a way of maximizing the use of 3 questions do you think we can ask them to get more information to us on the issues they already said they were looking into as "1" question? This would address resilience/shroud and tank spikiness in 1 question I think.

 

I actually like that, since it's a lot like tackling 2 issues at once, though I have a couple potential problems to point out: diluting the question is also going to dilute the answer, and, also, what kind of question does that qualify as?

 

If you look at the Shadow tank question, it's a *lot* more comprehensive than just asking about tank spikiness. I asked about the metrics they used and whether they've started to fix their terrible metrics to include the ones that the players have pioneered, how much they actually look at the community tools and suggestions or if they simply dismiss them, what *possible* solutions they're looking into and whether they'd even be *willing* to give us a timeline. A lot of that question revolves less around the actual spikiness issue and more in *how they explain their reaction to it*, which is an important concern to me, as well as a *lot* of other players, not just Shadows. That's one of the reasons why Xinika and I both agree that it's the PvE question that should be asked, even though it's a topic that has already been specifically mentioned as something that the devs are looking into. Focusing on this one issue as the *specific* and complex question drives home the importance of it and reduces the likeliness of the developers simply dismissing it.

 

The second issue is problematic because it gets *really* fuzzy. Of course, any of the Shadow issues can really be interpreted as PvP or PvE issues, so it's not like it matters much. Shadows are currently sub-par at everything so pretty much *every* issue could be asked in reference to PvP or PvE.

[Yodawizard]

I actually like that, since it's a lot like tackling 2 issues at once, though I have a couple potential problems to point out: diluting the question is also going to dilute the answer, and, also, what kind of question does that qualify as?

 

If you look at the Shadow tank question, it's a *lot* more comprehensive than just asking about tank spikiness. I asked about the metrics they used and whether they've started to fix their terrible metrics to include the ones that the players have pioneered, how much they actually look at the community tools and suggestions or if they simply dismiss them, what *possible* solutions they're looking into and whether they'd even be *willing* to give us a timeline. A lot of that question revolves less around the actual spikiness issue and more in *how they explain their reaction to it*, which is an important concern to me, as well as a *lot* of other players, not just Shadows. That's one of the reasons why Xinika and I both agree that it's the PvE question that should be asked, even though it's a topic that has already been specifically mentioned as something that the devs are looking into. Focusing on this one issue as the *specific* and complex question drives home the importance of it and reduces the likeliness of the developers simply dismissing it.

 

The second issue is problematic because it gets *really* fuzzy. Of course, any of the Shadow issues can really be interpreted as PvP or PvE issues, so it's not like it matters much. Shadows are currently sub-par at everything so pretty much *every* issue could be asked in reference to PvP or PvE.

 

Yeah, I realize the question is much more involved than what I stated but wasn't the post that originally provoked a response detailed enough? Again, I think they have already heard the question, we are just trying to get the information they told us they would get back to us with. I am just trying to help us get as many real answers as we can because all of these issues are equally important.

[Yodawizard]

Also we aren't even really mentioning low slash which I believe to be bugged right now as well. I have had it cause no dmg but not receive a resisted message (on stream) and obviously not apply the mez, I have also had it apply dmg but no mez etc. In game bug report was sent. I do need to work on pulling video from streams to show the bugs though.

[BARSAL]

Looks like you got pretty much everything covered, but to go along with question three you could get into more specific fixes with the dps specs such as balance having almost no burst anymore which could be addressed by increasing force regen allowing for project uses again or adding onto the mind crush talent possible making it all burst and no dot. As for infiltration, the problem being sustained dps, maybe you could ask if they have considered reducing the internal cooldown on breaching shadows which would make that have more overall damage and allow you to use force breach at three stacks more often.

[Yodawizard]

Also since we are leaning towards the pvp question being about balance/madness in pvp, Maybe we can just address it as "DPS role in pvp" which would include both specs and would also address dps issues in pve indirectly.

[ArchangelLBC]

One thing I keep stressing on the commando forums is making the question as broad as possible and then delving into specifics under that broad issue. This is mostly a way to try and cheat and get in more issues at once specifically because, as with shadows, each spec has serious issues in both PVE and PVP. I honestly can't say how the devs will react, but it should at least serve to point out how far ranging the issues are.

 

An example might be: In PVE all three specs seem to be underperforming compared to other classes which fill similar roles. In particular:

 

Kinetic Combat: Go into reasonable detail with KC spikiness and weakness to RNG unpreventable deaths outside of player control.

 

Balance: Talk about the near perfection required to be competitive and the huge drop off in practice in PVE.

 

Infiltration. Talk about the low sustainability of DPS in this spec in PVE.

 

In the case of DPS make sure to indicate the, on average, low performance of shadow DPS as a counterpoint to the "execution talents" argument used to justify the disparity in dummy parses.

 

Again this seems like cheating but the point is that all three specs are showing themselves to be inferior to other options in PVE.

 

For PVP it's probably possible to consolidate even further while still touching on the high lights of each spec's problems.

 

The wildcard issue is probably fine as is.

 

The biggest issue overall, at the end of the day, is the class just sucks. Not sucks at one thing, but sucks overall compared to other alternatives. Given a choice, free of considerations of the player in question, I'd always take a vanguard or guardian over a shadow tank, and I'd take almost any DPS in a raid setting over a shadow. Xinika has already outlined the PVP weaknesses better than I ever could.

 

This is mostly an alternative to simply trying to triage issues, and I can't say it's a good alternative, or even a better one. It's just how I would try to approach the problem, and wanted thoughts from both Kitru and Xinika.

[zImperium]

As a Shadow Tank with Aisthesis, I have one Question, and it goes along the lines of how Mitigation and cooldowns for us goes.

 

Currently, Shadow Tanks are suffering the highest problem of mitigation issues due to the fact that we have the lowest armor. Unfortunately, Percentage Based mitigation mechanics are causing a lot of progression teams to "roll a d20" to determine if a Shadow Tank will live or die. At the present moment or time, we are suffering from the fact that we are unable to accurately determine when we will live or die because we do not have any mechanic that allows us to lower damage 100% of the time, even on Cooldown. At the present, both Guardian/Juggernaut and Vanguard/Powertech tanks both have cooldowns that increase damage reduction (a 100% chance, % based damage ) cooldown, while we have to resort to two cooldowns which have only a percentage chance of working (Resilience fails 1-5% of the time, Deflection only increases our percentage chance of stopping an attack by 50%), and another cooldown which can only work if we do not die (Battle Readiness). Is there a plan to add in or replace one of these cooldowns with an ability that we can guarantee that Shadow Tanks will have reduced damage for a short amount of time?

[Ancaglon]

At the present moment or time, we are suffering from the fact that we are unable to accurately determine when we will live or die because we do not have any mechanic that allows us to lower damage 100% of the time, even on Cooldown. At the present, both Guardian/Juggernaut and Vanguard/Powertech tanks both have cooldowns that increase damage reduction (a 100% chance, % based damage ) cooldown, while we have to resort to two cooldowns which have only a percentage chance of working (Resilience fails 1-5% of the time, Deflection only increases our percentage chance of stopping an attack by 50%), and another cooldown which can only work if we do not die (Battle Readiness). Is there a plan to add in or replace one of these cooldowns with an ability that we can guarantee that Shadow Tanks will have reduced damage for a short amount of time?

This isn't correct: with the Impact Control skill (Tier 4, 2 ranks) we get 25% damage reduction when using Battle Readiness in Combat Technique. But the 2 minute reuse time on Battle Readiness doesn't allow us to have it available for every potential spike, or even a significant number of them.

 

And, of course, it doesn't help at all when it's "just" big hits that happen to get through our defenses when already at less than full health.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Ancaglon