Shadow Top Three Answers

[Ancaglon]

While the tanking changes appear to be in the right direction, I'll reserve final judgement till they actually appear on PTS and I get to see what it does.

 

The removal of self-heals will also mean Shadow's Shelter is actually worth much less -- only the "increase in healing received" part directly helps (5% increase on the 15% self-heal from Battle Readiness is barely worth mentioning). So much for a "signature ability"....

[Kawabonga]

Not a fan of self healing removal

Lore-wise consulars and inquisitors are masters of the force.

 

 

Part of the consular storyline revolves around healing people. Part of the inquisitor storyline revolves around healing yourself, not to mention "absorb" other people's power

 

It might just be me but i've always seen Assassin self healing more as a life drain. Through the lightning my foe's life force would flow right into my veins. It only makes sense that one would be able to use the force to recover in combat

 

Getting a bit more into gameplay, self heals for solo play are simply great. As a tank i never needed my healing companion (actually i never used a healing comp on any of my toons but i never had to waste time to recover)

As for endgame, i'll reserve judgment until i get to try it out, but we've all had that moment when healers are dead and the boss is at 1% thinking: Damn! if only we had a tank alive that could heal to full...

 

Back in the day Kitru posted a thread on how to fix shadow tank spikiness. If i remember correctly it was something like "force breach grants x% Damage reduction (You know, like what guardians and juggs) instead of putting an accuracy debuff". Considering saber reflect does all resilience/force shroud does and more, i think it would be fair enough if discharge/breach did something more than crushing blow/guardian slash.

 

No need to remove self heals, a little DR bonus will do just fine

[Helig]

<Removed, found my answer>

 

Overall, I totally approve of the mitigation buffs. As for the rest, remains to be seen.

[AAAAzrael]

Removed - answer to removed post

[SalvorHardin]

R we playing the same class???

Battle readiness already is a 25% DMg reduction ability

 

Yes, I'm aware of that but it also adds 35% chance to trigger Technique's effects and +15% with Rapid Recovery. Now that Rapid Recovery is passive mean mitigation and that self healing from Combat Technique is gone, I'm asking: "shouldn't Battle Readiness add some more mean mitigation because of the loss of self healing it used to give ?", because with these changes Battle Readiness is *somewhat* buffed because it adds DR to an already buffed DR but it loses all self healing increases. The added 35% on Combat Technique's procs is trivial as it will only result in very small DPS increase and a bit of extra threat (which Shadows don't really need anyway).

 

It could give an extra 5% damage reduction for instance, for a total of 30% with Impact Control, making it a CD as worthwhile as it was.

[Grumpftard]

1. We were only tanks that could actually do solo content pretty efficiently. If I have to do any solo stuff like story question my guardian I'm sick.

I'll agree it will potentially have an effect on solo'ing stuff....I don't think it will be as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

 

2. We handled all kinds of situations when there was no heals incoming for extended period of time in operations best eg. healer down, healer busy with some other crisis.

Again, I feel that we will still be fine in these situations, because we won't be taking as much damage in the first place that would normally require us to be healed.

 

3. Didn't really need healing after tank swaps - when of tanking could heal ourselves. Eg. on TWH after Jelous male was dead healers could heal me to like 70-80% and leave it as I would heal myself.

Again, the healers would still be able to leave you at 80% and come back to you later because there will no longer be the concern of getting one-shot.

 

4. The whole theme that Jedi consulars are healers (we heal others in storyline a few times even though we can't in-game) was preserved by tank and one of DPS trees having self-heals.

While I understand this being a concern for some...unfortunately I can't say to much about this one because it's lore crap and lore crap does not pertain to me and my interests. But as I said, I can understand that being a concern for some.

 

5. I don't agree on the skill requirement. As we function now it's extremely vital to time TkT very carefully not to get interrupted, sometimes it's super tricky. One of the things I was most proud off was when I managed to time TkT and force potency on NiM Dreadguards in such a way that I can get whole channel during lightning field on Heirad. Such things won't matter that much as it won't matter any more if you are full health or not when you channel it only if you manage to do it within the time window.

And TkT timing will STILL be vital. Not having the 4% DR will be an important thing. and will still require it to be managed properly. There is an assumption that if you have the 4% and you channel the second time that it's just gonna refresh the time on the 4% and not have to restack. That's not what the dev notes say and I don't think tha's how they have it intended. You say it won't matter any more if you are full health or not when you channel it only if you manage to do it within the time window. If you aren't at full health and you don't get your full 4% then you are looking at some issues.

 

6. Someone mentioned extreme solo-ing like Titan-6 ad this was one the most 'heroic' things I have done in a computer game. Me and my co-tank (also a shadow then) DPSing HM Titan-6 for over 1 minute after everyone else died was incredible....

I wholeheartedly agree with you on this one and I will miss the rush. But...it is what it is.

 

7. They increase the gap by which old L50 adrenal is better for shadow tanks. It already gives far more benefit to shadows but it will be even more. There is no justification for such imbalance.

Which mean we will be taking even less damage and therefor require even less self healing.

 

I will agree....it's gonna change SOME of the dynamics. But I don't see it as being the catastrophe that people are making it out to be. It also has not been implemented and tested and will undoubtedly get tweeked along the way to 2.5.

The other caveat to the whole conversation being.... a lot of people are going on about they should have done this versus doing that, etc. Has anyone bothered to thing about how POSSIBLE some of the other changes would have been? Now I am not a computer coding genius/guru. But like with the issue with Resiliency only really being 95% chance to negate damage vs the listed 100%. The issue is not Resiliency it'self as much as it is that all baddies in the entire game have a baked in 5% chance to hit (which I assume would be a nightmare to try and correct) The changes as everyone WANTED them (yes...I too would have LIKED to keep self heals) might not necessarily have been feasible from a coding stand point unless they srsly broke something in the process.

[Berjiz]

Where do I start...

 

1. We were only tanks that could actually do solo content pretty efficiently. If I have to do any solo stuff like story question my guardian I'm sick.

Which is stated as a reson for the removal, self healing is maybe to good for that stuff.

 

2. We handled all kinds of situations when there was no heals incoming for extended period of time in operations best eg. healer down, healer busy with some other crisis.

Is actually more the otherway around, because of the possible spike damage assasins require constant healing to keep them above the potenial spike damage. The numbers might not be so high but the attention is there and possibly higher since there might be a spike. That is more about having cooldowns ready than anything.

 

3. Didn't really need healing after tank swaps - when of tanking could heal ourselves. Eg. on TWH after Jelous male was dead healers could heal me to like 70-80% and leave it as I would heal myself.

Is it sm? Doesn't sound like nim, and the spike problems on that bosses are pretty big compared to any gains from the selfhealing. I noticed that sometimes assasins need a pretty big amount of heals at tankswaps if get spiked at the same time, happens a lot during DG nim second phase.

 

4. The whole theme that Jedi consulars are healers (we heal others in storyline a few times even though we can't in-game) was preserved by tank and one of DPS trees having self-heals.

Bit boring that tanks are turning more simialar but no the end of the world in a theme/logical sense. Why can sages pull friendlies but not enemies, while shadows pull enemies but not friendlies.

 

5. I don't agree on the skill requirement. As we function now it's extremely vital to time TkT very carefully not to get interrupted, sometimes it's super tricky. One of the things I was most proud off was when I managed to time TkT and force potency on NiM Dreadguards in such a way that I can get whole channel during lightning field on Heirad. Such things won't matter that much as it won't matter any more if you are full health or not when you channel it only if you manage to do it within the time window.

Probably going to be pretty much the same, if the incoming damage is high enough holding the new stacks will be more imporant that the healing ever was. The channel is still a lot of damage so doing it during lignting field is still helping the dps. Delaying the heal for 3-4 seconds isn't going to affect much. I would disagree that it is super tricky to do either, save force potency for it and avoid the knocback. It's easy beacause the surging chains and ligtning fields are completly predictable. Other knocbacks/interupts are much worse, like twh boss and add.

 

6. Someone mentioned extreme solo-ing like Titan-6 ad this was one the most 'heroic' things I have done in a computer game. Me and my co-tank (also a shadow then) DPSing HM Titan-6 for over 1 minute after everyone else died was incredible....

With a dr reduction equal to selfhealing(varies based on incoming dps though) it would have turned out the same way except that active migation is better than reactive migation. Depedning on the dps selfhealing might better or worse than 4% dr. The dps from titan is probably not high enough for the dr to be better tough but might be on other bosses.

 

7. They increase the gap by which old L50 adrenal is better for shadow tanks. It already gives far more benefit to shadows but it will be even more. There is no justification for such imbalance.

It's a lot better for all tanks, nothing new.

 

This is yet another case of heavy-handed complete change instead of small incremental balancing. I think in all the 'shadow spikiness' threads almost everyone accepted the fact that shadows should be spikier then other tanks, because of the efficiency and utility they brought the issue was only to eliminate some insta-death situations that couldn't be helped by both tank-player and healers. Instead of fix we got our class's philosophy destroyed and now our robes for some reason provide incredible amounts of armour???

I am also suprised to see how big the changes are but removal of selfhealing was probably the only long time way to go unless they redesigned the whole thing even more and make selfhealing scale with incoming damage somehow.

[AAAAzrael]

I'll agree it will potentially have an effect on solo'ing stuff....I don't think it will be as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

 

Well solo play for all other tanks is terrible. At least for my guardian it is and they are now in almost equal gear. I have to use healer comp and killing anything takes a year. Respeccing and switching gear for solo-play is a hassle, especially that there is no support for off-spec abilities placements on quick bars and you have to do 41 clicks every time you respec.

There aren't enough tanks in the game as it is, tanks are screwed over by the commendations gear which is substantially more useless for tanks then for DPS and healers (healers can even get some good quick savant enhancements for comms), off-spec gear is completely different and not just swapping out a few pieces and there comes this. If I didn't like operations tanking I don't know what would be the incentive to play like this.

 

 

Again, I feel that we will still be fine in these situations, because we won't be taking as much damage in the first place that would normally require us to be healed.

 

A see a lot of situations when it's going to be quite substantially different. Examples I can think of quickly: healer is running away from you to rez another healer (commonplace thing for me in TFB HM/NiM last boss), you pop a cooldown (probably battle readiness for boost to healing), resilience for the big attack from tentacle and channel TkT and see you health going up - when healer is back you are at higher health then before. With new set-up you'll be at same/lower burned same cooldowns and only managed to keep you stacks of DR up.

Similar case is Titan 6 during launch - I usually pick up 1-2 of the small adds that spawn during huge grenade and kill them while he's launching. Even though healer has no LOS I am more healthy when jumping back on boss. It's the same in any situation when you off-tank anything that doesn't do much damage. Huge difference in FP's for sure. As there are many cases there that shadows simply don't need healing.

 

 

Again, the healers would still be able to leave you at 80% and come back to you later because there will no longer be the concern of getting one-shot.

 

I haven't done many NiM bosses unfortunately as my group never was that strong, but while being scary at times on TWH/DG's/Dash I only can remeber maybe 2 cases when I just died and within 1 GCD. While the spikiness was scary and I can imagine 16-man NiM wasn't simply possible this required slight rebalancing not wholesale throwing whole class concept down the bin. There is a lot of room for slightly reduced spikiness as well as scaling of heals with bonus healing or some such thing. I do not call for making shadows OPed tanks that are able to solo everything, need no healers and have supersmooth damage profile, I call for keeping the thematic and gameplay feel that made the class have appeal and stick to it even when everyone laughed at shadow tanks..

 

While I understand this being a concern for some...unfortunately I can't say to much about this one because it's lore crap and lore crap does not pertain to me and my interests. But as I said, I can understand that being a concern for some.

 

Fair enough. I don't come from MMO background but rather RPG background I play this game because it's Star Wars game not because it's an MMO. I just happen to like operations most out of the content in it because they are something that pushes me to get better. I can't accept something that doesn't make sense. That's why I don't accept vanguards as they are guys with rifles standing at melee range which makes no sense at all.

 

And TkT timing will STILL be vital. Not having the 4% DR will be an important thing. and will still require it to be managed properly. There is an assumption that if you have the 4% and you channel the second time that it's just gonna refresh the time on the 4% and not have to restack. That's not what the dev notes say and I don't think tha's how they have it intended. You say it won't matter any more if you are full health or not when you channel it only if you manage to do it within the time window. If you aren't at full health and you don't get your full 4% then you are looking at some issues.

 

Of course it depends how it will work, if it will require re-stacking every 18 seconds it will be challenging of course and there will be kind of 'spikiness-on-a-timer' which won't solve anyone's issues with it.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with you on this one and I will miss the rush. But...it is what it is.

 

Well if they take my rush away I might as well go do something else.

 

I will agree....it's gonna change SOME of the dynamics. But I don't see it as being the catastrophe that people are making it out to be. It also has not been implemented and tested and will undoubtedly get tweeked along the way to 2.5.

 

Well of course, that's why I even bother to write and I hope for KBN or someone to come up with more ordered reasoning then mine that will obliterate their way of thinking and influence this idea. If I didn't think this can change I'd not waste time on writing here.

 

The other caveat to the whole conversation being.... a lot of people are going on about they should have done this versus doing that, etc. Has anyone bothered to thing about how POSSIBLE some of the other changes would have been? Now I am not a computer coding genius/guru. But like with the issue with Resiliency only really being 95% chance to negate damage vs the listed 100%. The issue is not Resiliency it'self as much as it is that all baddies in the entire game have a baked in 5% chance to hit (which I assume would be a nightmare to try and correct) The changes as everyone WANTED them (yes...I too would have LIKED to keep self heals) might not necessarily have been feasible from a coding stand point unless they srsly broke something in the process.

 

There are limitation to what can be done of course, but they had a working model for shadow tanks in the past - they nerfed them time and again with every patch so apparently it was possible to make this balanced.

For me this is as if in sage questions instead of infamous H2F answer they said - OK in 2.5 we're removing your self-healf and adding defensive cooldown. I bet all the sages would be superhappy. (Commandos don't have dedicated self heal so this would be almost identical to the thing now being done to shadow tanks).

[AAAAzrael]

Which is stated as a reson for the removal, self healing is maybe to good for that stuff.

 

It's like you said - tanks are not intended to play solo so we have to handicap all of them that way not only 2 of the 3. It doesn't make solo-content CHALLENGING, it just makes it go incredibly slow! There are no solo challenges in this game in intended solo-content it's there just for story and gear/cash grind.

 

Is actually more the otherway around, because of the possible spike damage assasins require constant healing to keep them above the potenial spike damage. The numbers might not be so high but the attention is there and possibly higher since there might be a spike. That is more about having cooldowns ready than anything.

 

They require attention, they require knowing the class, they can't be healed do 100% to avoid overheals and have to be kept high - that is all true. That's why they are not for all players. They have been like that for long long time and some of us played them because of that. Now they just turn us into guardians with weaker cooldowns.

 

Is it sm? Doesn't sound like nim, and the spike problems on that bosses are pretty big compared to any gains from the selfhealing. I noticed that sometimes assasins need a pretty big amount of heals at tankswaps if get spiked at the same time, happens a lot during DG nim second phase.

In NiM after Jelous male is dead I can go on boss and heal myself from maybe 60-70% to full with no attention of a healer. Happened a lot over last couple of weeks. It's not game-breaking difference, just makes us unique.

 

 

Bit boring that tanks are turning more simialar but no the end of the world in a theme/logical sense. Why can sages pull friendlies but not enemies, while shadows pull enemies but not friendlies.

 

This is another issue I always had with this game that there are mirror classes and stuff is identical, but I guess that was unavoidable for balance reasons without huge additional level of complexity. But if all tanks are similar there is even more reason fro BW to test stuff with shadows, guardians will keep to receive all attention. And there will be even less reason to take shadows into ops. Saber reflect FTW.

 

Probably going to be pretty much the same, if the incoming damage is high enough holding the new stacks will be more imporant that the healing ever was. The channel is still a lot of damage so doing it during lignting field is still helping the dps. Delaying the heal for 3-4 seconds isn't going to affect much. I would disagree that it is super tricky to do either, save force potency for it and avoid the knocback. It's easy beacause the surging chains and ligtning fields are completly predictable. Other knocbacks/interupts are much worse, like twh boss and add.

For me NiM DG's are challenging, keeping track of things, stacks on both tanks, and trying to maximise DPS on Heirad while pointing Kel'sara or Ciphas away from the mDPS on Heirad is enough to do. I was very happy to find out I can do that. Of course I am not the best shadow tank around and I bet there are people who do it much better and it's easy for them now. If you treat this classes as GUI for huge excel spreadsheet that lets you get new vales for spreadsheet (loot from bosses) and don't care about the feeling/theme and whole emotional aspect of the game then I guess this isn't much of a change, from my viewpoint this is right on the edge of game-braking especially when it came with patch that removed any value from all the hard earned 75 bits and pieces and made months of beating our heads at NiM bosses irrelevant..

 

With a dr reduction equal to selfhealing(varies based on incoming dps though) it would have turned out the same way except that active migation is better than reactive migation. Depedning on the dps selfhealing might better or worse than 4% dr. The dps from titan is probably not high enough for the dr to be better tough but might be on other bosses.

I do understand the difference in scaling and non-scaling natures of both the way they are implemented.

 

It's a lot better for all tanks, nothing new.

 

But in new incarnation of shadows it will be much better for them then other tanks which is strange.

 

I am also suprised to see how big the changes are but removal of selfhealing was probably the only long time way to go unless they redesigned the whole thing even more and make selfhealing scale with incoming damage somehow.

 

With the gear creep the way it is it was probably unavoidable to revise the way self-healing works. And I expected that. Didn't expect what happened - ie. instead of self-healing tank tank in some sort of heavy armour substitute.

[Berjiz]

A question/thought to the combat team, do you have any plans to change phase walk? With the new changes for tanks the phase walk is even more useless to place for the tank itself. The healing buff is nice and useful but it's often hard to replace the phase walk on any boss that requires you to stay with it at all times, for instance trasher and nefra. One idea is to let tanks remote place it with an aoe marker with the downside of no teleport. This could be implemented as a 1 pont talent so tanks can have the normal phase walk if they choose to.

[DarthSylar]

A question/thought to the combat team, do you have any plans to change phase walk? With the new changes for tanks the phase walk is even more useless to place for the tank itself. The healing buff is nice and useful but it's often hard to replace the phase walk on any boss that requires you to stay with it at all times, for instance trasher and nefra. One idea is to let tanks remote place it with an aoe marker with the downside of no teleport. This could be implemented as a 1 pont talent so tanks can have the normal phase walk if they choose to.

 

You m not be able to stay in the place, but as of 2.4, you can deactivate phase walk w/o it going on cooldown, and simply place it where you are after you move. During high mobility fights, yes it may have very little use, but anything short of that and it will be very useful.

[Berjiz]

You m not be able to stay in the place, but as of 2.4, you can deactivate phase walk w/o it going on cooldown, and simply place it where you are after you move. During high mobility fights, yes it may have very little use, but anything short of that and it will be very useful.

Yeah I know, those are nice changes and makes so you atleast you use it some during fights with more movment. The problem is when you can't leave/move the boss to reapply it. The Nafra for instance, impossible to leave boss and not that much movment.

[Darth_Dreselus]

Yeah I know, those are nice changes and makes so you atleast you use it some during fights with more movment. The problem is when you can't leave/move the boss to reapply it. The Nafra for instance, impossible to leave boss and not that much movment.

 

Nefra is a bad example, she dies before PW even times out =D.

[Dink]

Not happy with the removal of the self heal at all.

 

As someone who does not do nightmare raids (which is what this all seems to be targeted for since it's used as the comparison activity apparently...and I have main tanked in them with my Shadow, I just don't do them any more), all this is going to do is cause frustration for my normal daily play. I run solo often, but I also team up with others when needed for heroics, the occasional flashpoint, when someone needs help...and (as has been pointed out several times) the self heal is one of the primary things that provides uniqueness to the class - it's one of the foundation moves in our rotation, and will severely upset the balance I, and many others absolutely LOVE about Shadows ("balance" defined simply as the fun we have of keeping ourselves alive through careful use of skills and rotations).

 

I'm know there's some won't agree (quite a few already in this thread alone), could dig out their trusty spreadsheet and prove I'm wrong based on the math, say that the loss of the self heal will be offset by the extra damage reduction...and that may actually be true, but I'm more concerned with the loss of "fun" rather than the numbers used to validate changes like this, the enjoyment of the class I've been playing since early beta compared to the small population of players who actually even try nightmare content, the one character I've enjoyed more than any other simply because of the uniqueness it's always had.

 

Justify it however you want, but this is removing a huge portion of what makes this class what it is, and I'm not happy with that decision one bit.

[bdatt]

Just want to thank the devs for acknowledging the issues and working towards a fix. Also want to thank KBN et al. again for pushing the issues and forming questions that deserved a thoughtful response.

 

Unlike those about to quit the game for having to stop and heal for 2 seconds after a solo fight, I'll continue on and look forward to trying out the changes.

 

Don think it was mentioned yet, but guess this makes the heal relic useless.

[Alexjkls]

So if the shadow will not heal himself after 2.5 what's the meaning of Shadow's shelter buff after that? (in solo play)

Imho will be better if rapid recovery will grant an healing buff..

Shadows will be distort from the original class peculiarity: self heal..

I have 3 characters and they are all tanks (shadow, vanguard and guardian) i really love the shadow gameplay but i will go for a guardian if the class lose his trait

[KeyboardNinja]

We agree that Shadow/Assassin tanks require less healing from outside sources over the entire course of an encounter and that they also take the most spike damage from certain high-damage attacks. We have verified both of these points mathematically and in practice, and we will be making changes to Shadow/Assassin tanks. These changes are currently slated to come in the 2.5 update and are, of course, subject to change. But we will walk you through the changes as they currently stand and explain the reasoning behind the changes.

 

Shadow

General

• 
  
• Combat Technique no longer heals the Shadow, but now increases armor rating by 130% (up from 115%) and deals additional threat when it damages an enemy target.
  

 

Kinetic Combat

• 3 stacks of Harnessed Shadows no longer cause the Shadow to be healed when Telekinetic Throw deals damage. Instead, it grants Shadow Protection, which increases damage reduction by 1%. Shadow Protection stacks up to 4 times and lasts 18 seconds.
  
• What was formerly Rapid Recovery has been renamed Elusiveness and has been redesigned: It now increases the armor rating Combat Technique grants by an additional 20/40%.
  
• What was formerly Elusiveness has been renamed Rapid Recovery (this was just a name change - the skill's effects remain the same).
  

 

Assassin

General

• Dark Charge no longer heals the Assassin, but now increases armor rating by 130% (up from 115%) and deals additional threat when it damages an enemy target.
  

 

Darkness

• 3 stacks of Harnessed Darkness no longer cause the Assassin to be healed when Force Lightning deals damage. Instead, it grants Dark Protection, which increases damage reduction by 1%. Dark Protection stacks up to 4 times and lasts 18 seconds.
  
• Swelling Shadows has been redesigned: It now increases the armor rating Dark Charge grants by an additional 20/40%.
  

 

As you can see, we have removed a large portion of the Shadow/Assassin tank’s ability to self-heal and replaced it with damage mitigation – this is on purpose. We did this because a self-healing tank diminishes the role of actual healing classes in group situations. Ideally, all three different tanking specializations would require the same amount of healing, assuming they are equipped with appropriate items of the same level. Now, we may not be all the way there yet, but that is the goal – and we will continue to take steps which move the game closer toward this goal.

 

As a rule, tanks should take less damage than non-tanks, and while that was true for the Shadow/Assassin tank, it was not true to the extent that it should have been. If it were true to the extent that it should have been, then Shadow/Assassin tanks would not have taken an unreasonable amount of spike damage. A large portion of a Shadow/Assassin tank’s survivability came from their ability to self-heal. This actually made them considerably better than other tanks when spike damage was not present, and considerably worse when it was. If we had simply increased their ability to mitigate spike damage without reducing their overall survivability, they would have been light-years ahead of the other two tanks in the game, so in the end, their self-healing needed to go.

 

Overall, I think these are really good changes. Self-healing simply cannot be balanced against static mitigation measures because of its non-scaling nature. Without some sort of really complex buff/proc system based on incoming damage, it's just never going to work. Self-healing tanks will always be over-powered on low level content and under-powered on high level content, which is part of what we have seen here. So, converting the self-heals into straight DR is a good change, I think.

 

With that said, I think there are a couple complications to this change that the Combat Team may or may not have foreseen. Off the top of my head:

 

• Sustained threat per second will be reduced by almost 300 TPS on average with the removal of all self-healing. This is a significant nerf to AoE threat and needs to be corrected in other areas (suggestion: increase the threat dealt by Force Breach by ~10-15%)
  
• Burst threat is nerfed significantly with the removal of the heal from TkT/FL. An auto-crit channel used to do 20k threat over 3 seconds. Removing the heal drops this to 16k, a burst threat nerf of 20%. This is of absolutely vital importance in the opener and will definitely be noticed. (suggestion: increase threat dealt by TkT/FL by 7% per stack of HS/HD; this leaves the threat lower than currently, but much closer)
  
• Sustained damage (and thus threat) is being nerfed slightly with the removal of Rapid Recovery's effect on technique procs. I'm too lazy to math this out right now, but it's probably only about 10 DPS in current gear. (suggestion: ignore this nerf; shadows/assassins are doing too much damage in tank spec anyway relative to the other tanks)
  
• Battle Readiness / Overcharge Saber is being indirectly nerfed since Combat Technique / Dark Charge no longer heals. The CT proc rate increase was not a significant component of the cooldown, but it was noticeable. Either the up-front heal needs to be buffed slightly or the DR needs to be buffed (e.g. 26%).
  
• Currently, we activate TkT/FL every 12 seconds (on average). Any delay on this ability is a significant survivability hit. Post-2.5, we can use TkT/FL *half* as frequently (since both the first and last tick will refresh the stacks) and it's only a damage/threat loss. This is a significant nerf to the skill floor of the class. (suggestion: the stacks should only last for 12 seconds; this leaves a 3 second margin window, but still forces near-optimal TkT/FL)
  

 

Regarding the changes themselves… From a mathematical perspective, this brings this much closer to how the tanks should be balanced. Relative to the state we're in currently, these changes would be a nerf to shadows on low-level content, but a significant buff for high-level. The exact break point appears to be 4531 pre-mitigation DtPS. For any bosses which have lower damage than this (most of the old HM bosses), the pre-2.5 shadow is going to require less healing than the post-2.5 shadow. However, for any bosses which are higher damage than this threshold (most nightmare mode bosses, and the new HMs), post-2.5 shadow comes out taking less damage than before.

 

The concern I have is actually guardians/juggernauts. They're still reliant on a significant self-heal (Blade Barrier / Sonic Barrier), and this coupled with their weaker mitigation buffs leaves them in a rather unpleasant place with respect to mitigation. Any pre-mitigation DtPS over 2480 (so, anything that's not a flashpoint) is going to significantly favor post-2.5 shadows over guardians. This is a serious balance problem, and it needs to be addressed. Buff guardians/juggernauts.

 

With respect to vanguards, these changes actually leave shadows noticeably ahead of even the straight mitigation tanks. Without considering the vanguard self-heal (which is fairly marginal, though not quite as marginal as I make it out to be), vanguards have 55.33% mitigation in perfectly itemized 72 gear, pre-2.5 shadows have 50.93% (remember, self-heal), and post-2.5 shadows have 57.55%. Which is to say, post-2.5 shadows will require 4% less external healing than vanguards on every fight.

 

I actually think that's fair. 4% is not a huge amount. Shadows are still going to be spikier and require more skill to play than vanguards; I think it's fair that they take a bit less damage. I know this answer specifically states that all tanks should be even in this respect, but I don't agree with that design intent. If you want to have differences in the damage profile between your tanks (which is a good thing!), you need to have some compensation for that in other areas.

 

Overall, these are fantastic changes. <3 AustinP

 

Oh, and to answer some of the questions that others had, these changes have absolutely no effect on the ideal stat balances between defense/shield/absorb at the same damage ratios. It's a change to flat DR, which plays no role in stat balance.

 

We are very excited about all of the data we will be collecting when Season 1 begins. Unfortunately, the sample size which we were able to gather data from on the PTS was too small to give an accurate picture of the Warzone Arena landscape from a purely data results point of view. For example, the few Mercenary healers that braved the arenas came away with a higher win percentage than any other class & role combo, followed closely by Sith Assassin damage dealers. We will be keeping a close eye on this data when our sample size can give us a more accurate picture, and we intend to make measured changes to ensure that every class is able to compete.

 

Our current plans for the 2.5 update include some improvements for Infiltration/Deception and Balance/Madness Shadows/Assassins. Double Strike/Thrash, Shadow Strike/Maul, Whirling Blow/Lacerate, and Clairvoyant Strike/Voltaic Slash will all see slight damage increases (as always, this glimpse of information is subject to change before being released). Effectively, this will increase damage across the board for Shadows/Assassins, especially Infiltration/Deception.

 

For Balance/Madness, we also plan to try out a new form of damage over time protection. Through an addition to Psychic Absorption/Devour in the Balance/Madness skill tree, their damage over time abilities will become “uncleansable” – which means that abilities like Triage/Toxin Scan and Field Aid/Cure will no longer be able to remove Balance/Madness damage over time effects. However, certain abilities with long cooldowns like Dodge/Evasion and Resilience/Force Shroud and abilities that grant immunity like Force Barrier will still be able to purge these improved damage over time effects.

 

This is a new system where some abilities cleanse, others purge, and still others grant immunity. We are trying it on Balance/Madness first (Sages/Sorcerers will also gain this benefit) because it is probably the most damage over time dependent specialization in the game. If it is successful, we might eventually expand it to other specializations that rely heavily on damage over time abilities.

 

I'm going to reserve judgment on this one. Basically this answer says "good stuff is coming" and leaves it at that. The best part about this is the developers pointing out that small sample size == deceptive metrics. It doesn't really surprise me that the only merc healers who queued on the PTS had fantastic win ratios, since the only merc healers brave enough to queue would be the absolute creme of the crop. Bioware essentially said as much in this answer, which I think is really encouraging.

 

We feel that, with Potent Shadows/Electric Ambush, Infiltration/Deception already has pretty good control over its burst. So we would prefer to give Infiltration/Deception more reliable sustain, rather than even more control over its burst. The damage increases for Shadow Strike/Maul and Clairvoyant Strike/Voltaic Slash mentioned in the answer to the previous question are already a step in this direction.

 

For the most part, the Low Slash -> Shadow Strike/Maul combo is not meant to be used rotationally in PvE – especially when a companion or another player is tanking for the Shadow/Assassin. We may consider increasing the chance to trigger Infiltration Tactics/Duplicity, but it might come at the cost of increasing the rate limit a bit. After the damage increases arrive in 2.5, we will keep our eye on Shadow/Assassin damage dealers to see if they need additional help to make them desirable group members for top-tier PvE content. If so, we will continue to improve them until they become viable contributors.

 

Potent Shadows / Electric Ambush is the 90 second cooldown. As I said in the question, this is really insufficient. Let's look at some other burst-oriented specs:

 

• Combat/Carnage - double-Gore window once every 20 seconds; single-Gore guaranteed once every 16s
  
• Focus/Rage - Sweep/Smash + buff every 10 seconds (slightly longer if a fail player, but still reliable)
  
• Dirty Fighting/Lethality - Wounding Shots/Cull every 9 seconds (or every 6 seconds if scoundrel/op)
  
• Scrapper/Concealment - Backblast/Backstab every 12 seconds; Sucker Punch/Lacerate every 6 seconds
  
• Telekinetics/Lightning - Turbulence/Thundering Blast every 11 seconds
  
• Gunnery/Arsenal - High Impact Bolt / Rail Shot and Demo Round / Heat Seeker Missile every 15 seconds
  

 

This really leaves out only one spec: Infiltration/Deception. The key thing to notice is that Infil/Decep has no guaranteed burst window. Everything is based on RNG, in contrast to every other burst spec which is based on hard cooldowns. Project/Shock will come up frequently, but it doesn't hit hard enough to be called a burst window in and of itself. Force Breach / Discharge and Shadow Strike / Maul are extremely RNG dependent and tend to drift around a lot. You can't really control when they come up (outside of that 90 second cooldown), and delaying them (especially Force Breach) is a real problem due to procs. This means that Infil/Decep doesn't have a significant burst window that they can time to boss mechanics, and they lack the sustained DPS of a "pressure" spec. So, they're essentially screwed from both ends.

 

With that said, if you intend to increase the sustained damage done by Infil/Decep, I think most people would be pretty satisfied. As I have been saying, the DPS are balanced along a spectrum between burst and sustain, and Infil/Decep needs more of either one or the other (but not both).

 

Overall, good answers and worth waiting for. I do hope the Combat Team saw the list of honorable mention issues that I put on the original post, because those are all significant problems. I think everyone in the community would be content not receiving answers to those points so long as we know the Combat Team is aware of their significance in the eyes of the community.

[Trollokdamus]

Not a fan of tanking changes at all. To me it sounds like "let's go the easiest way, make sins/shadows same as other tanks, who cares if we get rid of their uniqueness along the way". If they would be willing to put some effort, they would've come up with a solution which does not involve removing self healing.

 

If the problem is "This actually made them considerably better than other tanks when spike damage was not present, and considerably worse when it was.", then they could've just scaled healing down a bit to put sins/shadows in line with other tanks for non-spike situations, and for spikes just implement an ability that instantly heals you and puts an absorbing shield, something like Death Knights have in WoW.

 

It just annoys me how they say that it's impossible to balance a self healing tank, while other games do it successfully.

[Malaka_Blue]

I don't know where to start. First awall damage taken numbers from your image are completely wrong (i don't know where you got them the average damage in tfb nim is about 500 dps lower, the previous value comparisions are 100% incorrect (just compare your values to dipstik, kbn...)...

 

Then 55% Armor + 4% dmg reduction (not 4% defense...) is 14,08 % dmg reduction (10,8% from additional 1709 armor (using dipstiks armor calculations) and 4% from 4% dmg reduction) and not your number. This (atleast with my calculations) is about/ a little less the number of self-healing a shadow is getting.

 

All in all this change shouldn't change much for 8 man content and its a very huge (and needed) buff for 16 man Content. But in the end it will (if my calculations aren't wrong) make sin tanks op.

 

With these changes sin tanks will have the lowest damage on average, (no spike damage), 5% healing buff.... and it completly changes the difference between all the tank classes. The exclusiveness of good self-healing was an integral part of playing a shadow and i will miss it.

 

On the other hand my tank will then be by far the best tank for 16 man operations (lowest damage and a 5% healing buff to atleast 4 healers!!).

 

The numbers I have for TFB are correct for Full Underworld gear in NiM. My numbers came straight from the legendary KBN's work but corrected by Inovisible who in my opinion was the best theorycrafter in the game before he left Star Wars back in August. When more people were taking top rankings on TORPARSE using Ino's rotations and stat builds than KBN's I knew who to trust more.

[Malaka_Blue]

I don't play a tank, and I'm an Inquisitor, so unless I have the skill tree in front of me, I get mixed up translating sith -> republic sometimes.

 

Even with that being said, the original question was regarding battle readiness the ability, not with the skill. For tanks, battle readiness use to give 15% healing and add a 35% proc chance with double the healing. With the proc being gone, the ability isn't as usefull

 

It was a small increase to the self healing from combat technique. The biggest hps increase was from the 15% self heal which will still be there in 2.5. On average BR only added 1 extra tick on CT during the duration.

[KeyboardNinja]

The numbers I have for TFB are correct for Full Underworld gear in NiM. My numbers came straight from the legendary KBN's work but corrected by Inovisible who in my opinion was the best theorycrafter in the game before he left Star Wars back in August. When more people were taking top rankings on TORPARSE using Ino's rotations and stat builds than KBN's I knew who to trust more.

 

I don't mind at all being recognized as not the best theorycrafter in the game. I certainly wouldn't consider myself such. However, I think that "trusting by authority" where hard numbers are concerned is absolutely silly. Who cares if Ino or I is the best theorycrafter? If one of us is coming up with better predictions than the other, trust that person! All this arguing about "the legendary KBN" is just distracting people from actual facts.

 

It's worth noting that my stat budget work is based on SV numbers and is optimal in so far as it goes. Dipstik and Thok have done other work with TfB and came up with a different set of optima which are ideal for that operation. It's just a difference of damage ratios. Hopefully the new ops are closer together in terms of damage ratios (I'll know soon) and we'll be in a better place to make universal gear recommendations.

 

With all that said, your TfB post-mitigation damage numbers are simply wrong. I don't take anywhere near that much damage on TfB NiM bosses (as a shadow!), and that's even before I subtract the self-heal. I generally take around 1300 DPS post-mitigation on the Dread Guard when I'm caring enough about it to use my CDs optimally. When I'm lazily tanking, it'll be closer to 1500. Subtract the self-heal and you've got a flat 1k eHPS required, or 1200 in the lazy case. That's no-where near what you're quoting. Dread Guard is one of the lower damage bosses in the instance, but it's not that far off the mean. I don't take 2k DPS on any boss in the instance. Even main-tanking Kephess doesn't push me up that high.

 

I've generally been sticking with 5200 pre-mitigation DtPS as the mean for TfB and SV. There are some bosses that are much higher (Thrasher and Styrak come to mind), but I think that's about right. It's about 25% more pre-mitigation DPS than we see in HM of the same ops, which lines up with what I see in my combat logs. Thok probably has a more definitive number, at least for TfB NiM, but I don't remember what it is.

 

I don't yet have pre-mitigation numbers for the new HMs, but they feel like they don't *quite* hit as hard as NiM TfB and SV, which puts them right around 5k as a very rough estimate. I'll try to get more precise numbers as soon as I can.

[Grumpftard]

Post-2.5, we can use TkT/FL *half* as frequently (since both the first and last tick will refresh the stacks) and it's only a damage/threat loss. This is a significant nerf to the skill floor of the class. (suggestion: the stacks should only last for 12 seconds; this leaves a 3 second margin window, but still forces near-optimal TkT/FL).

 

This has me questioning how the actual mechanic will work. You say "since both first and last will refresh".

Are you saying that if I have a 4 stack and cast TkT, that it is just going to refresh the 18 seconds? Because that's not how it reads to me. I see it being more like bulwark, that once I start casting, the original 4 stacks start over. If that's the case, then that would still keep it more challenging.

[Gemin]

My only real problem with the changes is that I have to ask myself, why play a Shadow Tank when a Guardian has Leap, Throw and Reflect on top of a similar armor rating?

[Chiltonium]

The propsed changes to madness are an amazing start. However you still really need to work shock or maul back into the spec. Preferably maul, as we are NOT SORCERERS. Shock would be acceptable just for the little burst that it gives.

 

Other options are giving our Raze proc the same damage buff as sorcs (they get +30% damage on crushing darkness when it procs, we get jack crap) or just flat out increasing dot damage, that 9% talent should be higher up the tree and be 15% ish.

 

Also, this is just a wild card I thought would be amazing. If you death field someone with dots on them, those dots spread to people around them.

 

edit*

 

OH, one of the main things REALLY REALLY bugging me bout madness.

 

Other dot specs, lethality sniper/op and annihilation marauder for instance, even veng jugg can get it....have +crit chance to their dots!!

 

Madness relies on crit for not only the surge bonus BUT SURVIVAL. Parasitism! We NEED a +crit chance to force attack or periodic atacks somewhere. Bad.

[KeyboardNinja]

This has me questioning how the actual mechanic will work. You say "since both first and last will refresh".

Are you saying that if I have a 4 stack and cast TkT, that it is just going to refresh the 18 seconds? Because that's not how it reads to me. I see it being more like bulwark, that once I start casting, the original 4 stacks start over. If that's the case, then that would still keep it more challenging.

 

If that's the case, then you're right, it would be more challenging. That would make it a very unique stacking buff though, since everything else in the game is refreshed rather than re-stacked. A good example of this is the Overload Saber DoT as a Watchman Sentinel.