Vga

[mfourcustom]

Starting a support group called

 

Vanguard Anonymous.

 

For all of us with perception problems.

 

Hi My name is banksy and I have a perception problem.

[Tonev]

I'll bite on this one!

 

Hello my name is Major Avilus Yor and I have a perception problem. I perceive during warzones that Snipers have better defense than I do along with superior burst potential. I perceive that operatives have better survivability in PvP than I do, Again with perceiving their top tiered abilities hitting me in full tank spec for 7-9k damage (while perceiving my damage critting for 5-6k at most.

 

There are many things I have perceived while playing this game a good majority of them negative when compared to other classes with great burst and surviveability.

[Kormad]

Hi, I'm Courmac and I have a perception problem. I thought that Jugg tanks were simply better than Vanguard ones. But I was wrong. Their amount of cooldowns are perfectly balanced, and all the other utilities they have.

 

I just need to learn the wishing for balance is the road to disappointment.

[hallucigenocide]

Hi my name is Animosity and i have a perception problem.

[ChaoticDynamite]

Hi my name is Snapple and I have a perception problem.

 

I should have been using Mortar Volley and Full Auto to kill my targets all along. And every time a shadow/slinger kills me I should remember I have Heavy Armor they don't.

Edited August 24, 2013 by ChaoticDynamite

[Michalrajtar]

Hey! My name is Naddesh and some people said not long ago that I may have perception problem. Edited August 24, 2013 by Michalrajtar

[MGNMTTRN]

Hi, my name is Met. I really enjoyed playing as a Trooper. I leveled a Vanguard tank, Assault Vanguard (but switched it to tank as well), Commando medic (but switched it to Gunnery), and a pure Trooper all to level 55... I thought I had a good understanding of this game's mechanics, of the abilities of the Troopers. I thought of myself as a patient, knowledgeable guy.

 

I contributed a decent bit of knowledge to Vanguard theorycrafting, both for DPS and tanks.

• 
  
• I made the 'Acc vs surge' thread, which discussed how to optimize for acc vs surge, crit vs power, and mainstat vs power augs. I used an Assault Vanguard as my model class in this thread, though someone did bring Snipers into the discussion and I tried to make the results applicable to all classes.
  
• I made the 'Vanguard energy blast and quiet buffs' thread, where I collected a significant amount of information regarding Vanguard tank buffs and bugs.
  

 

Before 2.0, I thought that the Assault Specialist used to specialize in assault. It used to have good burst damage and even good sustained damage. It used to be a glass cannon, which was interesting to play. But when 2.0 came, I, feeble-minded as I was, couldn't understand what role Assault now played.

• Was it burst? No, the spec was far outclassed by Sentinels and Slingers, and doubly so when Battle Focus was down.
  
• Was it sustained damage? No, almost every AC beat this class in sustained DPS.
  
• Was it mobility? No; it was as mobile as any other tree shared between ranged and melee ACs (Balance, Dirty Fighting), though it did obviously have more ranged abilities than stealth trees (Deception, Scrapper) and Knight DPS trees (Watchman, Combat, Focus, Focus, Vigilance). But oh wait, each of these trees and/or classes is specifically granted some way of closing a gap, with things like Charge, Obliterate, rolls, Force Speed, or longer range (Sever Force, Force in Balance, Vital Shot). So that wasn't it.
  
• Was it a utility class? No, it had almost no utility.
  
• Was it a high-survivability class? No. Why heavy armor was cited as a survivability feature is beyond me, since 1) many attacks pierce armor, and Vanguards have some of the worst survivability against internal/elemental damage 2) every class that isn't a trooper gets significantly better defensive cooldowns anyway 3) there actually is a class with which we should have equitable survivability: the DPS Guardian. Good luck trying to demonstrate that Vanguards have equal or superior survivability to them
  

 

I perceive Guardian tanks/Sentinel DPS/Slinger DPS/Scoundrel healers to be overpowered. I perceive their treatment of Shadow DPS and Vanguard DPS and Commando healers and Shadow tanks as unfair. I perceive the 'balance' that is supposed to come in 2.4 as failing to address actual balance problems. But these numerous, urgent problems are only tangentially related to my grievance.

 

Maybe I do have a 'perception problem'. Maybe I'm stupid for not understanding how reducing the chance of Plasma Cell's proc (from 100% to 60% or whatever it is now) while increasing Assault Plastique's damage by an expected 350 damage/15 seconds (26 extra DPS) is going to fix Assault Vanguards. Again, this is only tangentially related to the reason I'll be unsubscribing.

 

Here was the really irritating part: the Vanguard class representative attempted to collate the questions and concerns of 20+ people for the indirect benefit of the community, but mostly for the benefit of Bioware. This poor guy still played a class that was nerfed so hard that it fell from near the front of the pack to the back (and of course, that's nothing you'd ever see for a Sentinel or a Slinger; they might get a tiny nerf, but it'll never be one that makes the class a legitimately bad one). This guy put in some decent work essentially for Bioware's PR; he aided them by setting up a platform upon which they could stand so that they could proclaim that yes, indeed they do care about Vanguard players. Instead he, a paying customer, was laughed at and insulted. He was told that he imagined his problems, he was fine in PVE and PVP, he just needed to learn to play his class's role. The sage representative was told a similar thing: learn to offheal, learn to play to minimize the inherent disadvantages that you get for not being a Guardian/Sentinel/Slinger/Scoundrel.

 

I considered that highly offensive, and with all the other problems this game has, I'm not going to tolerate my representative being spoken to in such a way. And let's not even get into how his representation distributes/broadcasts the insulting demeanor to the Vanguard community as a whole.

 

That being said, I am convinced that Vanguard DPS will be in a decent place for 2.4; certainly not as much as a Sentinel or Slinger, because god forbid another class do anything near Sent/Slinger output... but maybe Tactics can compete with Balance Sage or Assault Commando. The fact remains that Bioware essentially tricked m4custom into helping them and then smacked him down over the internets for being so naive, all the while blithely disregarding the actual state of class imbalance.

 

I'd be happy to admit that this was a histrionic post, if the people over at Bioware and/or Electronic Arts could admit they have a perception problem.

Edited August 25, 2013 by MGNMTTRN