Vanguard DPS Seeing Eye to Eye with the Devs

[ChaoticDynamite]

Ok so here’s the thing about the devs and our situation. The developers in the eyes of the community seem to not understand what the problem is and we the community don't understand their goal/intentions for us. You see pre 1.4 we were basically a ranged DPS class with Incendiary Round and Assault Plastique in the Assault Specialist tree all at 30M range. Post 1.4 they nerfed our ranged and brought us into ten meters. No big deal we still had our burst, but the only problem within the community seemed to be our lack of defensive cooldowns and no gap closer to be fighting in melee range against other melee classes that have those.

 

In 2.0 they redesigned AP to where it did half of its damage on impact and the other half as a dot which helped destroy the idea of us being a burst class. Not only did they do that but they also took away Assault Specialists defensive tools/talents and gave it to Tactics which destroyed AS already terrible survivability. The changes also annihilated Plasma Cells dot. So we went from glass cannons to wet noodles. Now we're left with hybrid specs that outperform both 36 point dps trees.

 

So what does Bioware do in 2.4 they buff the damage of Fire Pulse and Assault Plastique to make putting 36 points in Dps trees more worthwhile and better. Which seems to have done the job for Tactics at least according to this -->http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=672176. But then they changed Ionized Ignition to where Stockstrike (4m) has a 100% chance to trigger it and Ion Pulse (10m) has a 60% chance to. Once again bringing us even closer to the action with no survivability.

 

I don’t really want to get too deep into the 3 Vanguard/Powertech Q&A but Ill dabble into it a little. First let me get this out of the way.

The road of comparison only leads to disappointment, and I believe many Guardians and Shadows are disappointed in their 30-meter range options, while Vanguards have many options when they are beyond melee range. Guardians and Shadows also can’t use Shoulder Cannon to damage enemies while they are stunned or to add a bit of extra burst when they aren’t stunned. Vanguards wear heavier armor than Shadows and have much better long-range capabilities than Guardians.

That’s disgusting to say the least. So what you’re saying is melee classes are disappointed that they can’t be ranged and that we should be satisfied with using Full Auto, Mortar Volley, sticky grenade, and explosive round to kill our targets. Do you even remember 1.4? Don’t even get me started on the heavy armor bs.

But in all honesty and IMHO the questions weren’t that great either. They were all over the place and were poorly worded. This is not to blame anyone because we all had a part in assembling the questions. This is not to say that even if they were better we would have received better answers. The Sorcs had great questions and you see what they got. I’m also not saying that I could have done any better.

 

At the end of the day the Community and Devs see differently on what this class needs. The community seems to want the burst back and more defensive cooldowns and things of that nature. The Devs seem to think we're doing fine and the reason were parsing so low is because we can’t get the dummy down to 30% and that the changes they brought about in 2.4 will help us dramatically.

 

If you're going to help this class at least start by agreeing on what the class needs and telling us what your plans are and stop telling us (the community) everythings fine when it clearly is not. When other classes are agreeing that we are subpar then it's no longer a perception problem.