Rambeezy Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 basically, the rotation is not very difficult. you can keep your heals rolling and even keep charged shield up at all time if you manage things well. the problem is that if you overextend and drop into low-tier regen, you're punished quite a lot if vent heat or TSO aren't available to help you get back to a manageable level or throw out a big heal while you have you heat to do so. you only have rapid shots (small heal) and emergency scan (long cooldown) while you slowly regenerate your energy, and no way to speed up the process. in comparison, ops can use diagnostic scan and its crits can restore energy, and sorcs can use consumption, and they also regenerate force at the same rate no matter their force level anyway. this is a problem because healing is a reactive thing. the amount of healing you need is based on the amount of damage that's going out, not trying to manage your resource to be the most effective cost-per-healing you can be. needing to overextend means that your ability to heal drops significantly and takes more time to get back up. it would be interesting to see what they say, because they might point out 'well you guys get TSO and ops only have one energy restore cooldown', but i'd still like to see the justification. i know the resource management was ridiculously easy before 1.2. i basically never even used hammershot and never ran out of ammo, so i can understand some of the changes necessary to the mechanics (critical efficiency lowering the cost of rapid scan by 8 instead of 16) and adding a cost to kolto shell, but in terms of resource management for healers, the focus should be on how we can get back up to optimum healing efficiency after we drop below that. Couldn't of explained it any better IMO. I think we should mention that "if mercs were intended to be as good as any class or the best class in the game but the most difficult to play, y'all fell seriously short. Though we are kinda hard to play, we aren't even tied for the best, we are dead last in some respects" But this is just me. Might not be a good idea to answer the question before they get a chance to. I don't know if this is asking too much but if possible, can we not leave an opening for them to say how good our single target heals are. As I've said many times, I believe we are inferior to ops and sorcs in both single target and aoe healing, respectively. There is not a single area we are superior in. Therefore IMO the only reason to take a merc to ops is personal reasons. Strategically it's stupid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phrase Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 basically, the rotation is not very difficult. you can keep your heals rolling and even keep charged shield up at all time if you manage things well. the problem is that if you overextend and drop into low-tier regen, you're punished quite a lot if vent heat or TSO aren't available to help you get back to a manageable level or throw out a big heal while you have you heat to do so. you only have rapid shots (small heal) and emergency scan (long cooldown) while you slowly regenerate your energy, and no way to speed up the process. in comparison, ops can use diagnostic scan and its crits can restore energy, and sorcs can use consumption, and they also regenerate force at the same rate no matter their force level anyway. this is a problem because healing is a reactive thing. the amount of healing you need is based on the amount of damage that's going out, not trying to manage your resource to be the most effective cost-per-healing you can be. needing to overextend means that your ability to heal drops significantly and takes more time to get back up. it would be interesting to see what they say, because they might point out 'well you guys get TSO and ops only have one energy restore cooldown', but i'd still like to see the justification. i know the resource management was ridiculously easy before 1.2. i basically never even used hammershot and never ran out of ammo, so i can understand some of the changes necessary to the mechanics (critical efficiency lowering the cost of rapid scan by 8 instead of 16) and adding a cost to kolto shell, but in terms of resource management for healers, the focus should be on how we can get back up to optimum healing efficiency after we drop below that. This. But also, Mercs rely completely upon staying heat neutral by following a rigid rotation that requires us to time our burst phases through tight regen windows. The problem is we can't do much to proactively manage our resource expenditure. Ops and Sorcs have decent enough hots that they can pre-heal if you will and better plan their resource budget in prep for burst healing, whereas Mercs have to react to needs for big burst heals, hope they can stay in their resource regen window, and that their long CD recovery tools aren't on CD should they need to "redline." Emergency Scan is the only real, "Oh Crap" button we consistently have to help with this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oaceen Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 (edited) Doesn't consumption drain their force regeneration by a harsh degree unless they get a proc for it? I haven't put my sage through any difficult flashpoints, so I wouldn't know for certain, but the rotation to keep that proc may cost as much force as they get back from it. yes, however healing sorcs have talents that mitigate the penalties of using consumption, reducing the health cost by 4% and can be used with a certain proc from innervate crits that remove the force regen penalty. i don't think it's a fair direct comparison, because they will always regenerate force at the same rate regardless and don't have a big 50% resource heal like ops/mercs do, but it's similar in practice to diagnostic scan crits as in, it's a way to give an immediate boost to resource right away to use it for a heal that has no cooldown and can be used at any time. currently the only thing we have that could be considered comparable is TSO, which is on a 2min cooldown. one of the things that's been suggested a lot is having heat dissipation added to rapid shot when used to heal an ally as it would work similar to diagnostic scan crits. it doesn't necessarily need to be a value of 2 or be tied to crits (just a flat % chance or something), because rapid shots is a heal that can be used on the move and is uninterruptable (unlike diagnostic scan), but it's a good starting point for giving us some better resource management. another suggestion i can think of is some proc that lowers the cooldown of TSO so that it can be used more often. Edited September 12, 2013 by oaceen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odawgg Posted September 12, 2013 Author Share Posted September 12, 2013 The addition could sound like this. "Feedback from the community indicates that a lot of arsenal mercs dont bring as much to a raid as a mara or sniper in terms of dps. Feedback indicates that this is because of our utility abilities and thats the trade off for that utility. A lot of the community would be happy to trade that utility to become more desirable in raids as the utilities we are given are not being utilized." I like this phrasing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
windogie Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 /highfive /clap Nice job developing these questions Odawgg, couldn't find any problems that stuck out to me with the questions you chose. Might want to add more specific declarative statements as what we might want to see changed in example form and how we want it changed such as not just mentioning the single target kolto shell problem but give them a optional way to fix it that we the players deem ok. Like multiple target kolto shell but decreased healing of it by 5%. Would be find by most of the community and the devs would more than likely do it if the players gave backing to it. I say this because the devs have responded positively to suggestions so far or gave their own options and said the players would not want it. Other than that you are the dude perfect of class questions. /worship Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macroeconomics Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 (edited) Honestly I think the "please comment on how Merc can do well" type questions are going to get the predictable answers from the devs. It's probably far too late in the process, but I think a more numerical and comparative (to other subclasses) approach would be more successful in highlighting game balance deficiencies. And I think you need to highlight these deficiencies otherwise nothing will be achieved. For all the criticism of the questions the VG/PT crowd had, they actually achieved something. They exposed bad philosophical approaches by the devs and forced them to make rules changes. It wasn't a painless process for anyone involved, but they actually moved the ball forward. I don't think the VG/PT questions were insulting to the devs, but they did get issues right up in the dev's faces which the devs were not able to parry with boilerplate responses. Edited September 12, 2013 by Macroeconomics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArchangelLBC Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 Just some side notes not in the OP of what I plan to add (so far): *Incorporate Pyro (specifically) viability more in the 1st question. IMO this spec should be pumping out higher dps if it's going to lack some of the utility and survivability of arsenal. Or add more utility/survivability. *Regardless of which pvp question i go with, will incorporate things from the other finalists *Comment on the high RNG for both damage output and heat management (since barrage procs affect both) *More detail on BG Heat mgmt from your feedback. Definitely like the addition of RNG from Barrage/CoF. Don't forget Commando Ammo display Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MVaglin Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 Feedback from the community indicates that a lot of arsenal mercs dont bring as much to a raid as a mara or sniper in terms of dps. Feedback indicates that this is because of our utility abilities and thats the trade off for that utility. A lot of the community would be happy to trade that utility to become more desirable in raids as the utilities we are given are not being utilized. I really like this phrasing as well. I'll just be a bit nitpicky and suggest some smaller changes in order to remove unneeded repetition: "Discussions within the community have revealed that a lot of arsenal mercenaries don't bring as much to a raid as a marauder or sniper in terms of dps. Feedback from the combat team indicates that this is because of our utility abilities and that's the trade off for that . A lot of the community would be happy to trade our utility to become more desirable in raids as the utilities we are given aren't being, well, utilized." Something like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phat_maban Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 I appreciate that edit MVaglin. I was at work on my phone when i wrote it and i wanted to get the basic idea out but didn't have a lot of time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigDumbViking Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 The heat management issue is pretty basic. If we use rapid scan more than 1 time inbetween each Healing scan, we are going to run out of resources too fast. That means in your first rotation you can have 1 healing and 2 rapids (TSO to reduce the heat on 1), If you time it right you can get off 2 Kolto missles and one emergency scan. Then until TSO is off CD you are basically filling 4.5-5.5 s out of every 12s with rapid shots or else you are running out of heat. We don't have enough filler heals that are a reasonable , and if we want to prevent going out of heat we spend close to half our time spamming our auto attack which does little more than build stacks of supercharged gas. The worst part is that I'm fine with this if my burst healing was stronger and less interrupt-able... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oaceen Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 (edited) i'm not sure if we should still be on the 'we'll trade some utility if you give us more dps' topic after the juggernaut answers. since they came out and said 'we know some specs aren't as desired as others, and we'll try to fix that along with adding more utility to other specs who don't have it' we should probably focus on that. ask them where arsenal and pyro lie within that idea. are they still lacking utility? are they lacking damage? i think i know that we would all argue we're lacking damage but not necessarily utility (except arsenal has more than pyro with the armor debuff), i'm not sure if we should be saying 'ok, let's trade some utility for damage' because i don't even think that's what they were saying with the sorc questions. it was basically 'your defensive cooldowns aren't as good because you can heal' i know H2F gets thrown around a lot, but what i mean is, if we bring up utility in that regard, it should be about defensive cooldowns and how it relates to our heals while specced for dps, not how much damage we do in relation to snipers/maras Edited September 12, 2013 by oaceen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommanderKeeva Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 I really like these questions, but is there a chance that the questions about heat/ammo management ("wild card") might be included in some shape or form? Perhaps as the third question? Dedicating an entire question to Pyro or Bodyguard isn't practical IMHO, when a question about Ammo/Heat management directly and fundamentally affects all 3 specs. I think this might be the underlying root issue of why Arsenal and Pyro DPS are lagging behind Snipers and one of the largest issues with Bodyguard. As long as you don't have to worry about your Heat/Ammo (1-2 minute fights like most flashpoint bosses), we can go toe-to-toe with Marksmanship Snipers, putting out roughly the same amount of damage. In fact, in FP boss encounters, I have parsed above MM Snipers because of Arsenal's very high initial burst. Arsenal's damage only starts to taper off, when we have to artificially halt our rotation to fire Rapid Shots between abilities to vent Heat. Gone are the days when TSO shared a cooldown with PS and when you were able to use Vent Heat as an offensive cooldown. As you have pointed out, in Pyro, abilities cost so much heat that it's hard to speak of any sustained DPS when you go full Pyro. For a DoT spec that should yield the best long-term damage, it's really hard to comprehend why its heat management system is so unforgiving. And in BG, we all know how Heat is a critical issue for all Healers, I cannot add anything else meaningful to that. I believe the main difference between Merc and Sniper DPS and Merc and Op/Sorc healer is that the Merc cannot always use the highest hitting abilities on cooldown, whereas Snipers/Maras/Ops/Sorcs can. We have the potential, we just lack the resources to achieve that potential. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cs_zoltan Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 For the PVE question, healers are good enough (with some minor changes i said before) so I don't think there is need to include them. As for the DPS part, isn't it too much like the answer given in the Jugger questions? They said they look into the tank/healer ACs dmg and raid utility. PVE could be about Arsenal RNG, low chance of barrage proc and the fact that Arsenal is the only one (or one of few?) DPS spec that has surge talent (unload and heatseeker) but doesn't have corresponding crit talent/mechanic/ability, it relies solely on our crit chance which sits around mid 20s since the nerf. But that's just my thoughts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArchangelLBC Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 I really like these questions, but is there a chance that the questions about heat/ammo management ("wild card") might be included in some shape or form? Perhaps as the third question? Dedicating an entire question to Pyro or Bodyguard isn't practical IMHO, when a question about Ammo/Heat management directly and fundamentally affects all 3 specs. I think this might be the underlying root issue of why Arsenal and Pyro DPS are lagging behind Snipers and one of the largest issues with Bodyguard. As long as you don't have to worry about your Heat/Ammo (1-2 minute fights like most flashpoint bosses), we can go toe-to-toe with Marksmanship Snipers, putting out roughly the same amount of damage. In fact, in FP boss encounters, I have parsed above MM Snipers because of Arsenal's very high initial burst. Arsenal's damage only starts to taper off, when we have to artificially halt our rotation to fire Rapid Shots between abilities to vent Heat. Gone are the days when TSO shared a cooldown with PS and when you were able to use Vent Heat as an offensive cooldown. As you have pointed out, in Pyro, abilities cost so much heat that it's hard to speak of any sustained DPS when you go full Pyro. For a DoT spec that should yield the best long-term damage, it's really hard to comprehend why its heat management system is so unforgiving. And in BG, we all know how Heat is a critical issue for all Healers, I cannot add anything else meaningful to that. I believe the main difference between Merc and Sniper DPS and Merc and Op/Sorc healer is that the Merc cannot always use the highest hitting abilities on cooldown, whereas Snipers/Maras/Ops/Sorcs can. We have the potential, we just lack the resources to achieve that potential. I believe the ammo management question is a lock. The question is between the BG specific question or the Utility Cooldowns question as the PVP related question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rambeezy Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 Considering the devs probably aren't gonna disagree with anything me, cash, ocean or you tell them, you could probably just lump the "afterthought" into the content portion of the question. They can't deny how easy we are to shutdown. If they did, h2f would look like child's play lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oaceen Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 just curious, since it doesn't seem that the format of the questions in the OP has changed, where are the current drafts with the questions? do you think we will need more time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odawgg Posted September 12, 2013 Author Share Posted September 12, 2013 just curious, since it doesn't seem that the format of the questions in the OP has changed, where are the current drafts with the questions? do you think we will need more time? I'm going to reformat and make some additions after raid tonight... I won't be getting started on it till late, like 9pm PST.... we should be fine on time, I'm considering bowing out of raid tonight altogether but there has to be a replacement for me and I'm not sure we will have one. We have till tomorrow though but I want a near completed draft done by tonight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oaceen Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 (edited) I'm going to reformat and make some additions after raid tonight... I won't be getting started on it till late, like 9pm PST.... we should be fine on time, I'm considering bowing out of raid tonight altogether but there has to be a replacement for me and I'm not sure we will have one. We have till tomorrow though but I want a near completed draft done by tonight cool, thanks for the update and gl on your raid (if you go) Edited September 12, 2013 by oaceen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cashogy_reborn Posted September 13, 2013 Share Posted September 13, 2013 Whats a raid? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phat_maban Posted September 13, 2013 Share Posted September 13, 2013 Whats a raid? That should be one of our questions since we don't get taken anymore Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odawgg Posted September 13, 2013 Author Share Posted September 13, 2013 LMAO! Raid went ok, figuring out new Cartel Warlord strategy, finally got them down but I think it was cuz of a bug...entrench seems to mitigate all damage from Vilus' stab in the final phase. Our raid leader said "ok next time we bring 4 snipers" /facepalm Snipers FTW! Anyway I think the questions are more or less finished now, please look for any errors since I know there has to be some. Thanks again everyone, I think we have some great feedback for them here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odawgg Posted September 13, 2013 Author Share Posted September 13, 2013 (edited) Might I add thank you again to Cash for the PVP question. I know that the Mandos favored the Bodyguard PVP question, however on this side of the force (This round is for the mercs afterall) utility was more in demand by my count over the past couple months. We can save the bodyguard one for the next round. I tried to fill in as much bodyguard feedback into the other questions/comments that I could. I'm off to bed, I'll read your feedback in the morning! Edited September 13, 2013 by odawgg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phat_maban Posted September 13, 2013 Share Posted September 13, 2013 Its looking really good odawgg Thanks for your hard work in putting this together, it is noticed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MVaglin Posted September 13, 2013 Share Posted September 13, 2013 I am very happy with these questions and think they are good both in content and formatting. Great job Odawwg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebucanezor Posted September 13, 2013 Share Posted September 13, 2013 (edited) What i totaly not see in any comment and i will expect that bioware will use this in their answer is: our "armor buff" Our healing scan( 9 sec cooldown) provide a Hot (pro-active med. 9 sec.) and armor buff( 10%), even our kolto missle when our SSG-cyclinder is on, gives a armor buf f(5% for 15 sec.) to 4 person's and after that everybody who stay in the aoe pool. It's a huge factor in our mechanic that a lot of people forget, is it enough to close the gap to the ather 2 healing classes : NO we are great in single target healing, no doubt about that, but the problem is that to get the maximum out of our abilty to armorbuff is that most of the time it's only 1 person. that's the person who gets the healing scan, and that's has to go to the TANK. As for the group-armor buff we have to have our cyclinder on, and their is our biggest problem. 5 rapidscan ( 20 sec wich will deplete our recourses) or 10 rapid shot ( 17 sec. with very low healing per second) or offcourse a combination wich i think with movement and casting time is about 25-30 seconds to have your cylinder on. I think that our superchargegas is our weakest mechanic in our healing system. to costly, not effective, unforgiving in recourses to get it, and timeconsuming as we have to use our rapid shot, in combination whit rapid scan. But my question to all of u is what do u use as ability's in those 9/12 seconds? kolto missle is in my opinion the most imported one after that healing scan, wy: no cooldown and in those 9/12 seconds to provide as much armorbuffs as possible on both tank.( maybe with a rapid scan after that.) a second kolto missle. and our time is up. we lost 9/12 seconds to get the stacks up and with the predicted 25/30 seconds in our normal rotation it's now almost 35/40 seconds to get a new SSG on. that's not enough, that's to slow Further it give's as 8 heat back ( debatable but i think it could be a little higher ) then the 2 damage abilty's, unload and power shot, who use them, hardly nobody, wy are they there in the first place, that's in my opinion a good question. I would like to have a very good explenation and in details what the SSG-cylinder means to us, and in detail wy every abilty is choosen to be in there. SSG isin my opinon our weakest abilty, wich should be the strongest one. it's not it gives us nothing in return when we activate it, but it should give us way beter tools then we have now. sugggestion's for SSG : every heal abilty(emergency, healing scan, jet boost should give a 5% armor debuff, and if activating cure give it a 10 meter radius Opal empire of tweakers the red eclips 2 year's proud merc healer Edited September 13, 2013 by nebucanezor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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