Shadows, we aren't looking too hot...

[Xinika]

OP Updated with new ideas / suggestions.

[thejollygreenone]

OP Updated with new ideas / suggestions.

 

add a change for surging charges discharge, so if it discharge procs surging charge it properly gains stacks. this is essential to infiltration/deception dps.

Edited August 12, 2013 by thejollygreenone

[Rilok_Singz]

Main reason why i'm going to Wildstar when it comes out is simply because the dev's seem to actually listen and take into account what players say. Weed out what is just bads crying nerf and what are serious issues that need to be looked at not just feeding the community "working as intended", adding random sh*t to the game that doesn't fix anything, or just flat out not even acknowledging the issues altogether. This applies for the game as a whole and all classes, not just shadows.

[Avicii]

Main reason why i'm going to Wildstar when it comes out is simply because the dev's seem to actually listen and take into account what players say. Weed out what is just bads crying nerf and what are serious issues that need to be looked at not just feeding the community "working as intended", adding random sh*t to the game that doesn't fix anything, or just flat out not even acknowledging the issues altogether. This applies for the game as a whole and all classes, not just shadows.

 

Hard to make a judgement on a game prior to release BW listened to beta testers at 1 time too. But no Dev team takes all the input from players and makes change based on that it would make balance a nightmare. Comparing games that are released vs unreleased is really fools gold as we should all know by now. Look at all the former WoW killers

 

That said good luck in your future endeavors.

[Missandei]

OMG are you kidding me assassins are the best in 1v1 fight just need a bit brain to use them and quite good in team too. shroud just resist tech and force attack and it always does. my force tech attacks could never make damage to an assassin under the effect of shroud. a well used shroud can resist a stun or a smash your brothers, operative dps are so much weaker.

 

What would you say if someone will told you that Shroud/Resilience is not resisting Force/Tech attacks? (well, not always. and that is the case)

Edited August 12, 2013 by Missandei

[Majspuffen]

Commenting on your updates.

Madness

• Force Horrors periodic damage benefit has been increased to 5/10/15% per rank.

 

Personally I think they should increase the crit chance of the DoTs, rather than just flat out increase its damage, seeing as DoTs critting is tied into our survivability and we did get nerfed indirectly with the change to crit.

 

• Crackling Charge's damage benefit has been increased to 12/24% per rank.

• Haunted Dreams reverted to make Whirlwind instant on rank 2/2.

 

Personal preference, but I'd rather see us get stronger in melee again, instead of buffing our DoTs. Agree with the Whirlwind change.

 

• Corrupted Flesh redesigned to increase the benefit of Alacrity by 30/60%.

 

Sounds interesting, but the 15% damage reduction from DoTs wasn't that bad in my opinion.

 

• Raze now benefits from Creeping Terror. In addition, Crushing Darkness can no longer be cleansed whenever Raze is active.

 

Having raze proc from creeping terror makes our spec more flexible, so I approve. As for the dispel protection... There is a lot of time for a Sorc to dispel our DoTs before we can even get a raze proc. [edit] That said, it is better than nothing so I approve, but would prefer to see a better form of dispel protection.

 

• Deathmark now benefits all periodic damaging abilities for the entire raid.

 

I disagree. I think Bioware should fix Deathmark (and Weakening Blast for leth operatives) to only increase the damage of our own DoTs. Personally I would love to see Calculating Mind back as well, rather than Lightning Burns since Force starvation is an issue right now.

 

• Lingering Nightmares has been redesigned. This talent now increases the damage of Crushing Darkness by 10/20%.

 

Again, I'd rather see our melee damage buffed. Instead of Lingering Nightmares I would love to see Unearthed Knowledge back. Perhaps it needs a boost, Project having a lower force cost or the effect simply being stronger.

 

• Devour has been redesigned to increase all healing effects on the raid by 10% for 30 seconds whenever Death Field is used. In addition, it now causes Death Field to reduce all damage and healing dealt by the effected target(s) by 7.5/15% for 15 seconds.

 

This sounds ridiculously overpowered. Personally I see the logic why snipers and marauders are the only classes to get healing debuffs; they don't have taunt or heals.

• Lambaste has been redesigned. This talent now gives a 100% chance for Assassinate to be used at any health % and reduces its force cost by 100% after landing a force critical hit if used within 15 seconds. In addition, the damage of this ability is increased by 5% for each active periodic damaging effect. Cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds.

 

This sounds bad. Sounds like getting a proc under the 30% HP limit is detrimental to us, taking away our execute from us. 30s CD is far too long, it won't make the gameplay any more fun. Compare it to Infiltration Tactics which could proc every 6s.

 

• Shapeless Spirit has been redesigned. This talent now increases the chance to resist control effects by 25/50%. In addition, whilst Phase Walk is active, you heal for 3% of your maximum health every 3 seconds if your current health drops below 33%.

 

This sounds ridiculously powerful as well. I like Shapeless Spirit in its current form. Perhaps it could use a secondary effect, but the 30% damage reduction when stunned is neat.

• Creeping Terror's force cost reduced by 10 and its base damage has been increased by 10%.

 

Again, I'd rather see our melee damage buffed over our DoTs.

Edited August 12, 2013 by Majspuffen

[Rilok_Singz]

Hard to make a judgement on a game prior to release BW listened to beta testers at 1 time too. But no Dev team takes all the input from players and makes change based on that it would make balance a nightmare. Comparing games that are released vs unreleased is really fools gold as we should all know by now. Look at all the former WoW killers

 

That said good luck in your future endeavors.

 

very good point

[Kitru]

very good point

 

I'm not touching Wildstar because it's being developed by Cryptic Studios. That's all I needed to hear to know to keep *well* away from it.

[IronmanSS]

I personally think 2.4 is going to make or break the game for a lot of long time players. They've shown that they continue to fine tune the game using a "wrecking ball" (bye, bye ranked WZs & FU to the players who enjoyed them) rather than a scalpel. Will they drop NiM OPs in an upcoming patch because only a small percentage of the player base is enjoying those and it takes more development time than its worth to support them?

 

As arenas bring a brighter spotlight to class imbalance under an even finer microscope, assuming that they don't get everything "exactly right", are people willing to wait another 6 months until the next "adjustment" is made?

 

 

Here's a recent quote from combat team member, Alex Modny:

 

Q: If the test server finds that certain builds or classes are unwanted for Arenas, do you plan to address that?

 

A: Of course! We are going to pay close attention to what builds and classes players are leaning towards and away from on PTS. If something comes up we will take appropriate action.

 

 

Sound familiar somehow? Lets look at this March 2013 Quote from Austin Peckenpaugh

 

"...I must mention that when we do our internal playtests against real enemies with real group conditions, Assassins are in fact hitting our DPS targets. Our tests aren’t perfect, however, and we don’t test every fight or scenario with every spec, so we will be looking forward to seeing the results players provide for us. If things really aren’t looking good for Assassins, we won’t hesitate to make the necessary adjustments."

 

 

If the current Assassin/Shadow situation serves us as a guide, in 2.4 people are going to be waiting quite some time for the "appropriate actions" to occur, if ever.

 

 

(PS - If interested see This post - for a discussion on more timely balance patches)

Edited August 16, 2013 by IronmanSS

[DaftVaduhhh]

The original Assassin builds on the 2.0 PTS were changed... they were significant DPS adjustments from what was originally presented.

[IronmanSS]

The original Assassin builds on the 2.0 PTS were changed... they were significant DPS adjustments from what was originally presented.

 

Been about 4 months from 2.0 official release. In PvE, played to skill cap, Assassin DPS still comes up short compared to just about every other DPS option available. Tank is still the worst of the three. ZERO balancing adjustments for 4 months despite plenty of real combat data and parses for every boss fight. Is there some reason you find this acceptable, because I would like to hold the devs to their word to strive towards the goal of "all DPS specs within 5% of each other" as they previously stated was their target for class balance.

 

All PvE DPS within 5% is a very do-able goal, if you had ANY regular balancing adjustments based on the data coming back from real life raids - or if the devs actually play-tested all the specs at high-level play instead of assuming RL performance off of sims. Every class should be for all intents and purposes equally viable as DPS in PvE - heck pure DPS could be the +5% vs the "standard value" that everyone else represents. Even if we were on the very bottom of the 5%, that would be acceptable compared to the 15%+ discrepancy that exists now. And NO, we're not falling for that "but, we have no armor pen and execute on the dummy" crap, we've seen the real numbers for real boss fights and they still don't measure up.

 

The hold-up seems to be that while adjusting for balance in PvE or even PvP individually might be easy, adjusting both simultaneously has so many variables especially when you consider intangibles like DPS taunts. For example: Stealth, while a significant advantage in PvP, is pretty much useless when fighting PvE Ops bosses. If giving a class parity in PvE DPS would put them over the top in PvP - then they should consider giving each class a separate Expertise multiplier that would affect them in PvP situations only. Ex. 1.0 modifiers for mid-tier, 1.1 for lower tier, 0.9 for upper-tier - adjust further as needed.

Edited August 16, 2013 by IronmanSS

[IronmanSS]

ROFL - GG, Bioware... You Win.

 

Even I did not believe that you could look at 5 months of hard data demonstrating Shadow/Sin deficiencies in PvE (Tanking/DPS) without taking ANY corrective action. I figured, a major rebalance is coming with 2.4's new arena focus, they gotta be cramming all the painstaking class balance work into that patch. The summation of about 6 months of "hard" work behind closed doors for the class balance guy, I mean "team". It'll all be worth it someday, I told myself, as I plugged away on my BiS 72/75s DPS Sin, while my "Spare-Parts" 69/72 Marauder pulls the same PvE DPS numbers with half the effort.

 

THIS folks is the fruit of 6 months of Shadow Class Balance labor:

 

Jedi Consular

Shadow•Phase Walk now only teleports the player when the ability is deactivated manually. All other methods of removing the effect (such as clicking to remove the buff from the effect bar) will simply end the ability without a teleportation.

•Phase Walk now only goes on cooldown when the character successfully teleports.

 

Absolutely Speechless...

Edited August 17, 2013 by IronmanSS

[Vaerah]

Absolutely Speechless...

 

It could be worse.

 

It could be like for Warhammer, where EA stopped selling game time codes for the USA and Curse.com deleted the Warhammer Alliance forums and removed the add ons repository on their website.

 

I am so lucky to play both games.

[nagatamen]

ROFL - GG, Bioware... You Win.

 

Even I did not believe that you could look at 5 months of hard data demonstrating Shadow/Sin deficiencies in PvE (Tanking/DPS) without taking ANY corrective action. I figured, a major rebalance is coming with 2.4's new arena focus, they gotta be cramming all the painstaking class balance work into that patch. The summation of about 6 months of "hard" work behind closed doors for the class balance guy, I mean "team". It'll all be worth it someday, I told myself, as I plugged away on my BiS 72/75s DPS Sin, while my "Spare-Parts" 69/72 Marauder pulls the same PvE DPS numbers with half the effort.

 

THIS folks is the fruit of 6 months of Shadow Class Balance labor:

 

Jedi Consular

Shadow•Phase Walk now only teleports the player when the ability is deactivated manually. All other methods of removing the effect (such as clicking to remove the buff from the effect bar) will simply end the ability without a teleportation.

•Phase Walk now only goes on cooldown when the character successfully teleports.

 

Absolutely Speechless...

 

Not trying to be jerkish with this, but have the other classes provided as much information about issues (perceived and/or real)? A quick glance at the other AC forums didn't leap out at me that they had as much (if any) data to support their claims, although I could be ignoring/missing it.

[Kitru]

Not trying to be jerkish with this, but have the other classes provided as much information about issues (perceived and/or real)? A quick glance at the other AC forums didn't leap out at me that they had as much (if any) data to support their claims, although I could be ignoring/missing it.

 

A lot of it depends upon what the issue is. If it's a single issue, like the Watchman buff stacks fading during interruptions in a fight, you don't really need much information since it's readily apparent. For things like DPS and spikiness, on the other hand, where there are a *lot* of variables to account for and a healthy bit of randomness baked into it, it gets harder, especially when there is a lot of conflicting information. There was a VG on their forums saying that VG DPS was the worst in the entire game when *everything* that I have seen (and I've dug through a *crapton* of parses as well as done some raw theory work) says that Shadow DPS is the worst, hands down, by a *very* substantial margin (~50-100 worse than the next closest). Of course, his information wasn't really shared since it information he'd gathered on his own rather than through public sources so I have no ability to determine its credibility, though the fact that it's not public info doesn't reflect well on it.

 

The main reasons why we've provided more information than pretty much *any* other AC are because our problems are either intangible (Infiltration and Balance DPS not living up to their full potential thanks to *ridiculous* levels of precision required to play) or random (tank spikiness). To actually pin down the problems and determine whether they *are* problems, we've had to bring out a lot more information just to confirm it for ourselves. It's probably the same reason why the devs don't even know they exist: they're ignorant of anything that isn't blatantly obvious based upon their own metrics for any AC that *they* don't play religiously; since they don't play Shadows, they've got no clue what's going on outside of the most abstract conceptualization (hell, consider that they thought they were fixing the level of precision required to play Balance by *removing Infiltration Tactics* which readily demonstrates that they had no idea what made Balance hard to play in the first place; they believe that fewer buttons made the class simpler so removing that button *obviously* solved the problem /sarc).

[IronmanSS]

After reading the Vanguard/Sorc Dev responses, my lack of perception was revealed. As I did with my fellow Sins, I will now enlighten you to the true design of what the Combat Team envisions for all "Hybrid" ACs:

 

PvE DPS Shadows who aren't quite cutting it with the DPS - L2P, you aren't utilizing your abilities to the fullest. If your Ops boss is about to enrage due to your lackluster DPS, USE YOUR TAUNTS. You're leaving half of your utility on the table if you aren't taunting the boss and giving the MT a break now and then.

 

Hybrids have Utility, make sure you're using it all: DPS in Combat Technique. In TANK STANCE you can GUARD The Sentinel. This will enable The Sentinel to DPS "all out" without having to hold themselves back like they normally do. Also, if there are any adds that would train on The Sentinel - you are meant to TAUNT them so that The Sentinel will not be interrupted and can concentrate on doing the DPS that you could never come up with anyhow. And if for any reason The Sentinel were to somehow die despite Guarded by the Force, Saber Ward, Rebuke, and Force Camo - then you can STEALTH REZ The Sentinel - so they can finish off the boss for the group.

 

We have been doing it all wrong... How did we miss this.

Edited August 25, 2013 by IronmanSS

[AshlaBoga]

After reading the Vanguard/Sorc Dev responses, my lack of perception was revealed. As I did with my fellow Sins, I will now enlighten you to the true design of what the Combat Team envisions for all "Hybrid" ACs:

 

PvE DPS Shadows who aren't quite cutting it with the DPS - L2P, you aren't utilizing your abilities to the fullest. If your Ops boss is about to enrage due to your lackluster DPS, USE YOUR TAUNTS. You're leaving half of your utility on the table if you aren't taunting the boss and giving the MT a break now and then.

 

Hybrids have Utility, make sure you're using it all: DPS in Combat Technique. In TANK STANCE you can GUARD The Sentinel. This will enable The Sentinel to DPS "all out" without having to hold themselves back like they normally do. Also, if there are any adds that would train on The Sentinel - you are meant to TAUNT them so that The Sentinel will not be interrupted and can concentrate on doing the DPS that you could never come up with anyhow. And if for any reason The Sentinel were to somehow die despite Guarded by the Force, Saber Ward, Rebuke, and Force Camo - then you can STEALTH REZ The Sentinel - so they can finish off the boss for the group.

 

We have been doing it all wrong... How did we miss this.

 

I can guarantee that the dev who gave Courtney those responses HAS NEVER beaten level 55 NiM boss (unless they were being SERIOUSLY carried). These people need to play the game before commenting on it.

[mmerry]

I can guarantee that the dev who gave Courtney those responses HAS NEVER beaten level 55 NiM boss (unless they were being SERIOUSLY carried). These people need to play the game before commenting on it.

 

Welcome to 99% of the forums.