Vanguard & Sorc Dev Responses

[foxmob]

For those of you who might not frequent the forums in which the original posts appeared. This round was very...touchy (as opposed to last round dealing with snipers/sentinels):

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=674349

[Klintrin]

I guess they plan on leaving Sorc squishy as heck...at least crit is getting improved.

[GAMER_NOW]

I admit I don't have a sniper/gunslinger nor do I play my sentinel too often, but I was much more satisfied with their answers. They simply told Sorcs to L2P and heal themselves to full health.

 

Maybe they could buff mend/unnatural preservation to heal the user for 50% of their hp (or whatever %)? Maybe make force barrier heal you while you use it? If DPS could reliably heal themselves in pvp then maybe what they said would be better. Asking a DPS to channel a heal in pvp is just very.... out of touch. In ops, it's just going to cause a problem if the DPS have to do the healer's job as well.

[foxmob]

I admit I don't have a sniper/gunslinger nor do I play my sentinel too often, but I was much more satisfied with their answers. They simply told Sorcs to L2P and heal themselves to full health.

 

Maybe they could buff mend/unnatural preservation to heal the user for 50% of their hp (or whatever %)? Maybe make force barrier heal you while you use it? If DPS could reliably heal themselves in pvp then maybe what they said would be better. Asking a DPS to channel a heal in pvp is just very.... out of touch. In ops, it's just going to cause a problem if the DPS have to do the healer's job as well.

 

I agree and disagree here. many boss fights involve portions of the fight that are pure survival phases. self/off heals then are extremely valuable. in pvp, however, they are a joke. a total joke. if you spend more than one gcd on a 1.5-2.5s heal, then you are WASTING time and gimping your team.

[Klintrin]

I admit I don't have a sniper/gunslinger nor do I play my sentinel too often, but I was much more satisfied with their answers. They simply told Sorcs to L2P and heal themselves to full health.

 

Maybe they could buff mend/unnatural preservation to heal the user for 50% of their hp (or whatever %)? Maybe make force barrier heal you while you use it? If DPS could reliably heal themselves in pvp then maybe what they said would be better. Asking a DPS to channel a heal in pvp is just very.... out of touch. In ops, it's just going to cause a problem if the DPS have to do the healer's job as well.

 

You forgot; make them pay for trying to kill you.

[Carter_Mathis]

In all fairness, Sage dps healing is better than either Scoundrel or Commando. Sages have 2 good, instant heals as well as a 2.5-3 second heal and a 1.5 second heal. Since I shake my head at any dps spec that doesn't take Telekinetic Effusion, Sages are essentially walking pools of infinite energy, so the cost is a minor factor.

 

Commandos have a pretty good, instant aoe heal as well as a 2(.5? been a while) and 1.5 second heal. Commando healing is a bit rougher on the energy though and can drop you into lower regen brackets pretty quickly.

 

Scoundrels have the worst off healing. They have no instant heals, a 2.5-2 second heal that may give upperhand depending on if you spec into it or not, and a 1.5 second heal that requires and consumes an upperhand. The heals cost 20-25 energy and will drop your regen like a rock.

 

So, of all the healer AC's Sages do have the greatest potential for self-healing as a defensive mechanism.

[Carter_Mathis]

Also it's worth mentioning that a very bad measure of survivability for a class with a healer AC is just listing the innate defensive cooldowns that it possesses. If you want to avoid making a healer AC essentially a tank (kinda like Commandos were/are), survivability needs to be specced into relatively high in the dps tree (to prevent hybrids *cough* bubble stun).

 

TK:

- Stronger bubble + increased range (helpful)

- Cascading force - short root on TK wave and a 50% snare for 6 seconds

- Kinetic Collapse - Bubble stun

- Blockout - faster force lift (ehh)

- Force Wake - 2-5 second root applied by Force Wave that really made the old bubble stun spec shine

- Force Haste - Reduced cooldown on Force Speed, Force Slow, and Force Barrier

 

Balance:

- Jedi Resistance- flat damage reduction

- Pinning Resolve - Lower CD on Force Stun

- Focused Insight- DoT's provide heals

- Mind Ward - 15% reduction to periodic effects

- Containment - Additional duration on and decreased activation time of Force Lift

- Metaphysical Alacrity - 50% speed buff during Mental Alacrity

- Mental Defense - 30% damage reduction while stunned

- Sever Force - 2 second root

- Worth Mentioning- increased use of Telekinetic Throw provides for a greater uptime on snares

 

The bread and butter of Sage dps survivability, Commando dps survivability, and theoretically Scoundrel dps survivability comes from the trees themselves, which makes lists of the base defensive cooldowns of the class a poor measure of survivability.

Edited August 25, 2013 by Carter_Mathis

[johnnyreece]

Sorry, Vasyel, I couldn't read all that. I was busy healing myself to full.

[foxmob]

i think the issue/insult has to do with "heal to full" as if any dps spec could ever come close to healing to full in a fight. getting one cast heal (uninterrupted) would be lucky. to say they have that ability is utterly ridiculous.

 

it's been a while since I dps'd on the mando, but I believe there's just the one cast heal unless you spec into advanced probe droid. as you say, it would just about drain ammo to heal to full from around 20% (4-5 med droids?). I wouldn't even do that in medic spec.

 

likewise, the issue/insult to VGs was that they have a few 30m abilities that other similar hybrid ACs would like to have, thus offsetting their lack of base dcds. meanwhile, they nerfed the hell out of VG range in 1.4 (assault now useless outside of 10m; tactics is useless w/o gut + stockstike < 5m).

[Carter_Mathis]

It's been a while since I dps'd on the mando, but I believe there's just the one cast heal unless you spec into advanced probe droid. as you say, it would just about drain ammo to heal to full from around 20% (4-5 med droids?). I wouldn't even do that in medic spec.

 

You base heals for a commando are Advanced Med Probe (1.5sec), Med Probe (2.5 sec), and Kolto Bomb (instant aoe). For any Sage dps spec, I always recommend Telekinetic Effusion, where each critical attack causes the next 2 attacks to cost 75% less force. They can literally spam Forcequake and never run out of energy. So for a Sage dps, healing is more an issue of time rather than energy.

[foxmob]

hmm. I did not know that about advanced...kolto is an instant and a good team utility. you're playing a baaad melee if he lets you get off just one heal (between quick ints and all the stuns), let alone more. I mean...I was dicking around with breakdownz and he los'd me and healed. but it's utterly unrealistic to think that an opponent is going to let you cast a heal...with or w/o resources to spare. sage/sorc is the only AC I haven't rolled to 55 yet, so I'll take your word for the resources. doesn't really matter which dps toon I'm on, the sage/sorc is the easiest to drop (other than 1v1 balance/madness). iunno. I thought those dev answers were pretty insulting. as in...has this guy ever pvp'd on one of these things? or against one?