September Question Drafts

[Panzerfire]

LOL I *so* wish I could ask this…

 

It's his favorite ability because it screws over shadows/assassins and it promotes the warrior train.

 

Anyway back to business.

 

Question 1:

(as well as crit heals)

 

This might be interpreted as heals having to crit (ours cannot) or it might not be understood. Do you reckon that it would work out better to change it into something along this line: "Self healing helps the shadow need the least amount of healing in a fight but it does nothing to alleviate the problem of burst damage, could you make it more on demand with less frequent usages but the same hps?"

 

Could you elaborate on the mathematical models used to relatively balance the tanks with respect to efficiency and spike damage?

 

I do not think that they will and the latest we know it's that they use time to kill as a measurement tool. It's clear that they thought and still do think that shadows are fine. The representative questions are about player feedback and I do not think that this part will accomplish anything. Perhaps it would be better to point out the disrepancy of their internal testing and player experience. A mention that they should actually test content with shadows instead of only guardians would be nice but they are people and will feel like that's questioning their capabilities to balance things properly.

 

shadows/assassins more viable for bosses with high-burst abilities?

 

High-burst abilities might be responded to as *L2P and keep your cooldowns for those abilities*. Perhaps a rephrasing is necessary to indicate that we're fine on rare high spike damage phases but we're very bad against frequent spike damage from bosses which do that spike damage throughout the entire fight. Remember that no developer has ever set foot into S&V NiM with a shadow/assassin tank for an extended amount of time on each boss or they would have noticed the spikyness issue.

 

Question 2 is fine.

 

Question 3:

DPS specialization is respected as competitive with classes like gunslingers/snipers, sentinels/marauders or scoundrels/operatives.

 

I wonder if the intention of shadows is to be on par with those classes, I don't think so. Our best comparison is operatives since they both have stealth and a secondary role. Maybe add in a phrase saying that we should be on par as dps specs since they nerfed the stance dancing and because we're in melee range and have less and worse defensive cooldowns compared to both marauder and snipers.

 

Personal note:

 

Do you plan on following up to any of their possible responses through Xinika's questions?

We will probably get L2P as answer to our dps problems and the tanking part might get "our internal tests show that shadows are best", both of those responses which do not continue a discussion.

I hope that they'll read through the responses to their responses as long as we kick up enough dust and they said that they'll be more careful after the sorcerer/vanguard fiasco but it's unlikely.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Panzerfire

[DarrelK]

We will probably get L2P as answer to our dps problems and the tanking part might get "our internal tests show that shadows are best", both of those responses which do not continue a discussion.

I hope that they'll read through the responses to their responses as long as we kick up enough dust and they said that they'll be more careful after the sorcerer/vanguard fiasco but it's unlikely.

 

"Turn into Wolverine and self-heal to full!" Yay!

[Panzerfire]

"Turn into Wolverine and self-heal to full!" Yay!

 

I wonder.. should we prepare a song? Something into which we can incorporate any of the following: stealthress, stealth + heal, switching stances and tanking in pvp, catch your opponents offguard as a stealther, stealth on tanks makes their tanking better, make them pay for trying to kill you and use your stealth to escape, on demand high burst damage, force shroud works as intented etc...

[LoRdTyRANTz]

Would it just be easier to ask for a math response? I'd think they'd ignore the math posted in the question anyway, as they'd only look at their own.

 

Why would we want a math response? Is it not obvious from playing that whatever math they used to configure our class was wrong or did not meet the standards?

[LoRdTyRANTz]

Question 1:

 

 

This might be interpreted as heals having to crit (ours cannot) or it might not be understood. Do you reckon that it would work out better to change it into something along this line: "Self healing helps the shadow need the least amount of healing in a fight but it does nothing to alleviate the problem of burst damage, could you make it more on demand with less frequent usages but the same hps?"

 

 

 

I do not think that they will and the latest we know it's that they use time to kill as a measurement tool. It's clear that they thought and still do think that shadows are fine. The representative questions are about player feedback and I do not think that this part will accomplish anything. Perhaps it would be better to point out the disrepancy of their internal testing and player experience.A mention that they should actually test content with shadows instead of only guardians would be nice but they are people and will feel like that's questioning their capabilities to balance things properly.

 

 

 

High-burst abilities might be responded to as *L2P and keep your cooldowns for those abilities*. Perhaps a rephrasing is necessary to indicate that we're fine on rare high spike damage phases but we're very bad against frequent spike damage from bosses which do that spike damage throughout the entire fight. Remember that no developer has ever set foot into S&V NiM with a shadow/assassin tank for an extended amount of time on each boss or they would have noticed the spikyness issue.

 

Question 2 is fine.

 

Question 3:

 

 

I wonder if the intention of shadows is to be on par with those classes, I don't think so. Our best comparison is operatives since they both have stealth and a secondary role. Maybe add in a phrase saying that we should be on par as dps specs since they nerfed the stance dancing and because we're in melee range and have less and worse defensive cooldowns compared to both marauder and snipers.

 

BINGO! Some very good points. Well said!

[XORDYH]

Why would we want a math response? Is it not obvious from playing that whatever math they used to configure our class was wrong or did not meet the standards?

 

Quantitative answers are black and white. Either our mathematical model is wrong/incomplete or theirs is. Finding out which allows us to move forward towards consensus. Qualitative answers are harder to support or refute. Reference Wild-Berry's strong parses/performance, and the debate regarding whether similar performance is reasonably attainable by the average player.

[MasterFeign]

Why would we want a math response? Is it not obvious from playing that whatever math they used to configure our class was wrong or did not meet the standards?

 

It was in response to another math related question. Plus while the players have their own numbers, the devs will never just outright say "Oh, yes you're right."

[Doulo]

I edited KBN's questions to shorten them and maybe clarify them somewhat. I removed most of the direct math, but still put in references to everything that has been done on the forums. I think these are the right questions, I am just not completely satisfied with their form yet. I think they can still go simpler and achieve the same goal (detailed, pin-down answers) but I don't have that yet. I also removed all references to the imp side, as the devs will do that for us as they have already shown, so I don't think we need to muddy up the questions with both references. I also cleaned up grammar, punctuation, etc.

 

Question 1: Tank Spikiness

Shadow tanks appear to be balanced around the following design philosophy: least healing required over time but the most healing required in short intervals. The community agrees that this is, in principle, a fair tradeoff and should be preserved. Unfortunately, the numbers also show that the spike damage tradeoff is grossly out of proportion: Shadows are between 20% and 50% more likely to die on fights than Vanguards due to sudden spikes of unmitigated damage as we have shown with copious math in the forums. This issue is especially pronounced in 16 man content, where Shadow tanks have been shunned by the raiding community. The unreliability of Resilience only exacerbates this issue. These issues extend themselves into PvP, particularly in the new arenas, where Shadows are unable to compete as viable tanks in comparison to Guardians and Vanguards, who naturally mitigate incoming burst damage reliably.

 

You have previously acknowledged that you're looking into this issue, but we haven't heard any further news on this matter. Could you elaborate on the mathematical models used to balance the tanks with respect to efficiency and spike damage, particularly in relation to the large volume of statistical analysis and simulation done by the community on this subject in our forums? What sort of changes can we expect to see to make Shadows more viable for bosses with high-burst abilities and in PVP? The changes to Terminate and Huge Grenade are excellent and generally regarded as a step in the right direction, but we would rather see the class balanced for the content rather than vice versa.

 

Question 2: Balance spec in PvP

 

One of the largest class changes in 2.0 was a significant redesign of the Balance specialization. This redesign removed two core abilities from the rotation and changed the force management mechanic from an active control to a passive, random proc. These changes had the (perhaps unintended) effect of significantly nerfing the burst ability of the spec. As things presently stand, Balance is an entirely repudiated spec in PvP due to its long setup time, trivial counters (any DoT cleanse) and non-existent burst. The lack of reliable defensive CDs and escapes is effectively the nail in the coffin, since a Balance shadow is often focused and killed before they finish their setup on a target.

 

What is the design philosophy for this specialization, particularly in ranked Arenas? Are there any plans to improve the burst in the spec (making it a more serious threat to a group with a competent healer) or the survivability and control (allowing it to at least function in a sustained pressure role)?

 

 

Question 3: PvE DPS

 

In the present PvE metagame, there is no class more universally reviled than the Shadow. Neither DPS specialization is respected as competitive with classes like Gunslingers, Sentinels or Scoundrels. We feel as a community that there are several factors here. First, due to the execute talents and ability, as well as the lack of armor debuff, Shadows of both specs parse depressingly far behind other classes on a combat dummy. This feeds into a significant perceived issue which pushes some of the most competitive and skilled players away from the class. Second, our sustained DPS spec, Balance, has been reduced to what is likely the simplest and least-involved rotation in the game. This drives away people who enjoy class depth and a high skill ceiling. Third, our burst DPS spec, Infiltration, has essentially no control over its burst outside of its two 90 second cooldowns (Force Potency and Force Cloak). This prevents Infiltration from functioning as a reliable burst spec, while still leaving their sustained DPS as low as one would expect from a reliable high-burst spec like Focus or Scrapper.

 

Thus in summary, Balance suffers from lack of variation in the rotation (simply put: it's boring), while Infiltration suffers from unreliability and lack of control over its burst relative to the sustained DPS penalty it incurs. Will we see some changes to Balance to make the rotation more rewarding and geared towards force/melee balance? Perhaps a proc that allows us to use our signature ability (Shadow Strike), or a proc that activates an above-30% Spinning Strike? As for Infiltration, more reliability in the burst windows is needed, analogous to Precision Slash or Backblast in other high-burst, low-sustain specs. Without more reliable burst, we feel that Iinfiltration would need higher sustained DPS to be attractive in PvE, since at present it brings nothing to the table aside from quality-of-life in setup relative to Balance spec.

Edited September 5, 2013 by Doulo

[leto_cleon]

Ok. So your point is I suck. I will even agree for the sake of argument. Not to highjack this thread further than I already have, but I disagree that madness dps is ok. At all.

 

...

 

One last thing. Since we all agree that I suck now, and the class is just fine, and that is behind us- lets see your DPS parse, in madness, with no set bonus. Just so we are all in understanding that you are in a position to even make such a claim, and with your expertise you should have no trouble at all topping my 2260.

 

Again, I am agreeing with you that I suck. Let's see your numbers now.

 

Not to hijack the thread, but to help a fellow Balance Shadow out...

 

Don't mind ThoK really, he's just being himself.

 

I was cross-checking your parse 2260 parse (http://www.torparse.com/a/378262/time/1376160816/1376161116/0/Damage+Dealt) with my own 2560 one (http://www.torparse.com/a/405196/time/1377877639/1377878043/0/Overview). Just some recommendations to help bump it up. Drop Shock/Project from your rotation. Shock/Project is not really very damage-resource efficient. Personally, I use Shock/Project when I get unlucky with Force in Balance (Death Field) and Mind Crush (Crushing Darkness) not consuming my second Force Potency (Recklessness) stack.

 

I'm not sure if there's a typo in the description that you gave for your gear, but you definitely want to use willpower augments instead of power ones.

 

[Edit: Seems that I was actually looking at the 2473 parse instead] An APM of 38 is decent really. My parse has my APM at 38.82. The 2473 parse on the Harbinger Board has an APM of 39.72. Unfortunately the 2538 and 2672 parses are down at the moment, so I'm not able to make a comparison. I play with ~200ms lag, I'm a clicker and I do not use adrenals. I'm also using a damage-proc relic instead of the power click one. (And yes I had a mis-click with that silly Whirling Blow hehe)

 

(And yeah once the Harbinger DPS board is updated, I've unfortunately bumped you off )

Edited September 5, 2013 by leto_cleon

[randiesel]

Very well written KBN, and good rewrite above ^.

[Sarenne]

 

... Question 3: PvE DPS

 

In the present PvE metagame, there is no class more universally reviled than the Shadow. Neither DPS specialization is respected as competitive with classes like Gunslingers, Sentinels or Scoundrels. We feel as a community that there are several factors here. First, due to the execute talents and ability, as well as the lack of armor debuff, Shadows of both specs parse depressingly far behind other classes on a combat dummy. This feeds into a significant perceived issue which pushes some of the most competitive and skilled players away from the class....

 

Well written, I'm not comfortable with the bold-text part. Speaking as Infiltration/Deception I suspect (no way to prove it afaik) that my parses would still be depressingly low even if I could use my execute ability on the dummy. I believe that it's more than the two "due to" reasons stated (armor pen/execute ability) - we just really, truly suck on any prolonged encounter, it's baked into the tree atm.

 

I think you have a valid point that it discourages competitive, skilled individuals from playing the spec, but in practical gameplay there's simply no reward for doing so. It's a "lone-wolf" spec that relies on other players' buffs for marginal, non-competitive DPS in Ops and provides next to nothing in return (battle-rez is the only "utility" I have in Ops; it's iffy and Force Cloak has to off CD).

 

I guess my point is that they already know it parses lower and have already stated it's because of the two reasons you mentioned. I believe that that answer is utter BS so I really don't want to give them the chance to regurgitate that crap in response to one of our questions... to put it bluntly lol

[XORDYH]

I'm not sure if there's a typo in the description that you gave for your gear, but you definitely want to use willpower augments instead of power ones.

 

I'm not sure this is as clear-cut for Assassin/Shadow as other classes, since we have no +mainstat% talent in our trees. It does give you a marginal amount of "free" crit, at the cost of slightly less bonus damage.

 

Speaking of crit, it might be an interesting thought experiment to calculate the change to an Assassin/Shadow parse given a potential crit rebalance, as was eluded to in the Sorcerer answers. Given current gearing but using the pre-2.0 crit formula, what would a, for instance, Wild-Berry dummy parse look like? I have a feeling that going back to the old crit formula would still leave us wanting, especially since every other class would also benefit.

[DaftVaduhhh]

Again I ask: KBN, can AoE damage be incorporated into question 3, or is something being reserved for the Sin questions?

 

I'm not sure this is as clear-cut for Assassin/Shadow as other classes, since we have no +mainstat% talent in our trees. It does give you a marginal amount of "free" crit, at the cost of slightly less bonus damage.

It's not as clear cut, but it's a win to willpower.

Edited September 5, 2013 by DaftVaduhhh

[leto_cleon]

I'm not sure this is as clear-cut for Assassin/Shadow as other classes, since we have no +mainstat% talent in our trees. It does give you a marginal amount of "free" crit, at the cost of slightly less bonus damage.

 

You might want to refer to the math done by MGNMTTRN on this (http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6336743&postcount=21). So its not as simple as "0.23 from power > 0.2 + crit from main stat ".

 

In terms of Balance, the two top parsers Wild-Berry (http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/b17b1b77-4ec8-4d9e-866d-16e02394559e) and M-knightrider (http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/6505b4eb-5236-4299-bcc7-c98ef2f12ee6) use mainstat augments. If power augments were better they would have used power instead.

[THoK-Zeus]

Not to hijack the thread, but to help a fellow Balance Shadow out...

 

Don't mind ThoK really, he's just being himself.

 

I was cross-checking your parse 2260 parse (http://www.torparse.com/a/378262/time/1376160816/1376161116/0/Damage+Dealt) with my own 2560 one (http://www.torparse.com/a/405196/time/1377877639/1377878043/0/Overview). Just some recommendations to help bump it up. Drop Shock/Project from your rotation. Shock/Project is not really very damage-resource efficient. Personally, I use Shock/Project when I get unlucky with Force in Balance (Death Field) and Mind Crush (Crushing Darkness) not consuming my second Force Potency (Recklessness) stack.

 

I'm not sure if there's a typo in the description that you gave for your gear, but you definitely want to use willpower augments instead of power ones.

 

[Edit: Seems that I was actually looking at the 2473 parse instead] An APM of 38 is decent really. My parse has my APM at 38.82. The 2473 parse on the Harbinger Board has an APM of 39.72. Unfortunately the 2538 and 2672 parses are down at the moment, so I'm not able to make a comparison. I play with ~200ms lag, I'm a clicker and I do not use adrenals. I'm also using a damage-proc relic instead of the power click one. (And yes I had a mis-click with that silly Whirling Blow hehe)

 

(And yeah once the Harbinger DPS board is updated, I've unfortunately bumped you off )

 

I am being hinself? I told him 100% excactly what he does wrong. He's just getting 15 Force in Balances on the dummy within 300 seconds (Force in Balance has 15 seconds cooldown 15*15=225, Force in Balance is your most important ability you should use it on cooldown) and other abilitys are not going on the dummy in the frequency it would be expected for them.

He's not using shock, what are you telling here? "Shocked" comes from the Discharge ability.

Your "help" is nonexistant, while i did tell him excactly what he did wrong (tbh i don't know a solution for this other then use your FiB on cooldown and use your global cooldowns.) and you want to comment me? Atleast i provide value in my comments, other then your self-centric presentation "my gear is ..., i am a clicker,....i don't use adrenals".

 

@KBN: For the tank question i would also add the different hit sizes of bosses in nim content, (Op9 adds 18k single hits, Op9 3 5,5k hits, etc....) change the survivability of sin tanks by a large amount. Cause BW seemed to split hits for bosses just in a random mode without any logic.

[leto_cleon]

I am being hinself? I told him 100% excactly what he does wrong. He's just getting 15 Force in Balances on the dummy within 300 seconds (Force in Balance has 15 seconds cooldown 15*15=225, Force in Balance is your most important ability you should use it on cooldown) and other abilitys are not going on the dummy in the frequency it would be expected for them.

He's not using shock, what are you telling here? "Shocked" comes from the Discharge ability.

Your "help" is nonexistant, while i did tell him excactly what he did wrong (tbh i don't know a solution for this other then use your FiB on cooldown and use your global cooldowns.) and you want to comment me? Atleast i provide value in my comments, other then your self-centric presentation "my gear is ..., i am a clicker,....i don't use adrenals".

 

Yes you are pretty much being yourself And I don't mean this negatively. Its more like a THoK authenticator/fingerprint. It just how your posts are and I don't think kwestone took very well to them.

 

My bad on "Shocked (Force)" I was assuming that I was the normal Shock/Project.

 

Aside from Force In Balance / Creeping Terror, the strange thing about Saber Strike is that its possible to parse at close to 2.6k (http://www.torparse.com/a/400520/time/1377624418/1377624723/0/Overview) with less, and at 2.5 with more. Mind Crush off cooldown would mean at most 40 in a trimmed parse, but that usually means a DPS loss due to DoT clipping. The maximum number of mind crush procs would be 37, but due to the nature of the proc its usually much less. Kwestone actually only has 1 less Mind Crush hit that M-Knight, and it can happen due to force strike simply refusing to proc. In terms of Sever Force / Creeping Terror, its not exactly a direct comparison. Each Sever Force should consist of 6 ticks (1 tick every 3s), and being used ever 18s, means that there are normally 96 ticks. If for all 16 activations of Sever Force there is a 7th tick, this goes up to 112.

[THoK-Zeus]

Yes you are pretty much being yourself And I don't mean this negatively. Its more like a THoK authenticator/fingerprint. It just how your posts are and I don't think kwestone took very well to them.

 

My bad on "Shocked (Force)" I was assuming that I was the normal Shock/Project.

 

Aside from Force In Balance / Creeping Terror, the strange thing about Saber Strike is that its possible to parse at close to 2.6k (http://www.torparse.com/a/400520/time/1377624418/1377624723/0/Overview) with less, and at 2.5 with more. Mind Crush off cooldown would mean at most 40 in a trimmed parse, but that usually means a DPS loss due to DoT clipping. The maximum number of mind crush procs would be 37, but due to the nature of the proc its usually much less. Kwestone actually only has 1 less Mind Crush hit that M-Knight, and it can happen due to force strike simply refusing to proc. In terms of Sever Force / Creeping Terror, its not exactly a direct comparison. Each Sever Force should consist of 6 ticks (1 tick every 3s), and being used ever 18s, means that there are normally 96 ticks. If for all 16 activations of Sever Force there is a 7th tick, this goes up to 112.

 

I would assume one would simply need more saber strikes then double strikes if you don't have the set bonus. But for having less saber strikes and less double strikes i don't really have any explaination. This posted parse was using overload as a filler instead (i doubt it's useful but wouldn't mind if you could explain me).

Edited September 5, 2013 by THoK-Zeus

[leto_cleon]

I would assume one would simply need more saber strikes then double strikes if you don't have the set bonus. But for having less saber strikes and less double strikes i don't really have any explaination. This posted parse was using overload as a filler instead (i doubt it's useful but wouldn't mind if you could explain me).

The number of saber strikes is also dependent on the Rippling Force / Lightning Burn procs as well, I need to re-check the logs again to check on that.

 

And yeah that parse by Toblin is interesting, but with Force Wave / Overload as an extra filler its only 80 hits.

 

 

[updated again]: If I'm not wrong as both return 2 force, 1 Rippling Force = 1 set bonus Saber Strike

 

In terms of extra force gen,

M-Knight had 116 procs and 116 saber strikes, so having 464 extra force gen (118 force technique procs for a rate of 2.54s)

Wild-Berry had 113 proc and 103 saber strikes, so having 432 extra force gen (114 force technique procs for a rate of 2.63s)

Toblin has 101 procs and 69 saber strikes, so having 356 extra force gen (101 lightning charge/ft procs for a rate of 3.02s)

Kwestone (Viktorvaughn) 98 procs but no set bonus 93 saber strikes, so having 196 extra force gen (99 lightning charge/ft procs for a rate of 3.03s)

 

In terms of hits,

M-Knight had 987

Wild-Berry had 988

Toblin had 908 (in 305s, so ~893 in 300s)

Kwestone (Viktorvaughn) had 888

 

In terms of force used,

M-Knight had 72 double strike activations, 16 Server Force activations, 16 Force Breach activations, 20 Force in Balance activations (300s parse)

Wild-Berry had 71 double strike activations, 16 Sever Force activations, 16 Force Breach activations, 20 Force in Balance activations (300s parse)

Toblin had 71 DS/thrash activations, 17 SF/Creeping Terror activations, 17 FB/Discharge activations, 19 Death Field activations (305s parse, might have had a DoT clip)

Kwestone (Viktorvaughn) had 70 DS/thrash activations, 17 SF/Creeping Terror activations, 17 FB/Discharge activations, 15 Death Field activations (300s parse, so probably DoT clipping happened)

 

In terms of fillers,

M-Knight has 116 in saber strike

Wild-Berry had 103 in saber strike

Toblin had 69 in saber strike and 11 in overload/force wave, 80

Kwestone (Viktorvaughn) had 93 saber strikes

 

So aside from getting more hits and using FiB/Death Field off CD, and not clipping DoTs... there's not much to add. The double strike use is just 1 off, so I wouldn't be so harsh towards Kwestone.

Edited September 6, 2013 by leto_cleon

[oaceen]

if you guys want to argue about rotations and how to play the class correctly, this isn't really the thread for that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

anyway, for KBN, here my suggestion for question 3

 

current

Thus in summary, balance/madness suffers from lack of variation and a very low skill ceiling in the rotation, while infiltration/deception suffers from unreliability and lack of control over its burst relative to the sustained DPS penalty it incurs. Could we see some changes to balance/madness to make the rotation less…mindless? Perhaps a proc that allows us to use our signature ability (Shadow Strike/Maul), or a proc that activates an above-30% Spinning Strike/Assassinate? As for infiltration/deception, more reliability in the burst windows is needed, analogous to Precision Slash/Gore or Backblast/Backstab in other high-burst, low-sustain specs. Without more reliable burst, we feel that infiltration/deception would need higher sustained DPS to be attractive in PvE, since at present it brings nothing to the table aside from quality-of-life in setup relative to balance/madness.

 

change

Balance/madness suffers from lack of variation and a very low skill ceiling in the rotation, while infiltration/deception suffers from unreliability and lack of control over its burst relative to the sustained DPS penalty it incurs. Could we see some changes to balance/madness to make the rotation less…mindless? Perhaps a proc that allows us to use our signature ability (Shadow Strike/Maul), or a proc that activates an above-30% Spinning Strike/Assassinate? As for infiltration/deception, could we get more reliable burst windows, analogous to Precision Slash/Gore or Backblast/Backstab in other high-burst, low-sustain specs? Without more reliable burst, we feel that infiltration/deception would need higher sustained DPS to be attractive in PvE, since at present it brings nothing to the table aside from quality-of-life in setup relative to balance/madness.

 

took out the 'in summary' at the beginning as that's one of the cardinal sins of summations lol

reworded the infiltration part into a question (as opposed to a statement of need)

 

i also feel like the balance question is perhaps missing the mark. i think we should focus on the implications of what the boring rotation does. maybe instead ask

 

Before 2.0, the balance/madness rotation was very much 'quick to learn, difficult to master', with Twin Disciplines, Infiltration Tactics, and a more player-controlled force return mechanic, and many players loved the class for this reason. We understand that we might not get things exactly as they were before 2.0, but could we see some changes to balance/madness to make the rotation more engaging than it is now?

 

i worry about this being 'too wordy', but i feel like we need to stress the point that the class being boring and the 'perception problem' of the class doing low dps are two strikes against it, driving a lot of players away. focusing on the fact that it's boring without analyzing the ramifications of that probably won't get the kind of answer we want.

[leto_cleon]

if you guys want to argue about rotations and how to play the class correctly, this isn't really the thread for that.

Yeah quite a bit of a side track. I just wanted to take a constructive approach toward Balance Shadow concerns that were raised than l2p. This is so as to support KBN's "Balance/Madness is not framed as a 'low-DPS spec.'"

[MasterFeign]

Oaceen appears to be my 2nd voice, so whatever Oaceen says, I'd certainly agree with!

[DarthSpekulatius]

i worry about this being 'too wordy', but i feel like we need to stress the point that the class being boring and the 'perception problem' of the class doing low dps are two strikes against it, driving a lot of players away. focusing on the fact that it's boring without analyzing the ramifications of that probably won't get the kind of answer we want.

 

well it's how it is anyone who played full balance before 2.0 and liked it sees it,

and even the people who played full balance before 2.0 but didn't like it will have to agree 2.0 was no Improvement.

please correct me if I'm wrong with that assumption?

 

also please tell me (in another Threat) what you are the most excited about when you read the 2.0 shadow changes,

and your favorite Balance-Shadow changes.

I have not seen/heard one single pre 2.0 Balance Shadow who said 2.0 was a Step in the right direction.

[Berjiz]

Maybe there could be some kind of attacthment at the end with the math and some parses so it can be refrenced to in the questions themselves. I also think trasher and twh are two good bosses as examples for fights that doesn't have any clear high dmg attacks at long regular intervals like terminate but can still cause huge spikes due to RNG. It's especially a problem in 16 man, twh can do 40k dmg in about 1.4 sec. It's really hard to survive that.

[sainik]

well it's how it is anyone who played full balance before 2.0 and liked it sees it,

and even the people who played full balance before 2.0 but didn't like it will have to agree 2.0 was no Improvement.

please correct me if I'm wrong with that assumption?

 

I think that's what oaceen is saying. 2.0 was definitely a step (if not a thousand) back for us, and they probably are aware of it already. So it is important to point out exactly why the spec feels boring now as compared to earlier. Mentioning lack of infiltration tactics, twin disciplines and regen from force supression would be a step towards that direction.

[nagatamen]

Thank you for writing these up, I think they're pretty good.

 

I think we need to keep the references to the math and would suggest taking it a step further. Sorry to ask for more work out of you KBN but I think that after your first post we should have another "optional" post with links to the stuff you mention in the first post. To be more specific links to the threads with the math, the un-followed up spikiness thread, the dps leaderboards, etc... that way if we get a response of "it's just perceived" or something along that line we can break civility and follow up with a jerkish response of "nice to see you actually read what we wrote." The extra work might be going to waste if they're somehow aware of all we mention, but given their lack of interaction on the Tanking, Shadow and Assassin forums (don't read the DPS forum so can't comment on that one) we should assume they are ignorant of it all.