How do you feel about the upcoming class changes in 2.5?

[Master-Nala]

Like all MMO changes, this will cause a lot of gnashing of teeth and wailing, but in the end, the changes aren't that meaningful. It's a decent incremental change for a few specs that are hurting.

 

For example, the devs have said the Balance/Madness DoT protection is a test to see how it works out for the most DoT dependent spec in the game. If it works and isn't too overpowering, it can be deployed out to the tech users. Calling this a nerf is silly. All other force user detrimentals will still be cleansable by Sorcerers and Sages. Only this one spec is getting protection for 3 of its powers. People are complaining because they can no longer trivially shut down this spec and acting like this is a big problem for them.

 

A similar issue applies with Vengeance. A spec that cannot use one of its primary attacks is getting some protection from being shut down. People complain when they know that Rage/Focus is still going to be the primary go to spec. They can't just ignore Vengeance any longer.

 

The Operative/Scoundrel changes are very good on the defensive nerf. The improvement to Overload Shot is a waste of time.

 

The Shadow changes are awesome. It may cause some weird hybrids to come into existence, but it will be nice to not be so dependent on healing in a burst heavy environment like PvP.

Edited October 18, 2013 by Master-Nala

[ForsakenKing]

They still havent fixed my biggest problem with the game (smash being the best AoE spec and one of the best Single target specs). Sure, the change to undying is needed and great but still doesnt address my concerns.

 

and to those who want a Scoundrel/Operative healing nerf before a change to insane smash make me laugh.

 

lastly, Vengeance/Vigilance didnt really need a root added. Sure, the skill cap is high but for those who know how to play the spec, this change was unnecessary and is really going to make them feel like super jedi or something. cant wait for people to start threads saying "NERF VIG"

Edited October 18, 2013 by ForsakenKing

[PerinnAybara]

Mercenaries/Commandos deserve an apology from the developers.

 

1. Commando/Mercenary Treatment

When a group of developers ignore the complaints of a class in an mmo until the players of said class reroll, quit or just become too tired to complain. Thus solving the root cause of said complaints. This is followed up by the developers patting each other's backs and congratulating each other on a job well done.

1. Bioware is really putting powertechs through the commando/mercenary treatment. Each patch powertech's think their class can not get worse, when it does.

 

2. If the RNG gods align, we can be one shot by a Boss mechanic, and there is nothing we can do. Us assassin tanks are getting the Commando/Mercenary treatment.

 

3. Because of Bioware's consistent use of the commando/mercenary treatment one will find a lack of commandos and mercenaries queing for the 4 v 4 ranked arenas.

 

<Source http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Commando%2FMercenary%20Treatment>

[Vildiil]

Please give Sorcerer's Fadeout baseline, even more so now with another root added to the game do they need it.

[MeRRR]

The nerf to undying will unintentionally make snipers even more overpowered Pretty much making them the undeniable best PVP DPS class in the game.

 

Putting the health cost at the end of undying makes it almost completely necessary to pop force camo as undying runs out. Thus burning two of your DCDs back to back. Thus burning your only way to close the gap on a sniper in cover. Also one of the only ways to mitigate their damage if caught in the open.

 

Any decent team will be CCing the healer as soon as Undying expires, and then you have pretty much a free kill, unless they stealth out..

 

This is coming from someone that has been wanting nerfs to maras for a long time, but this very much the wrong way to go about it.

[Cretinus]

Any decent team will be CCing the healer as soon as Undying expires, and then you have pretty much a free kill, unless they stealth out..

 

Well, welcome back to earth, then. CCing the healer after the DPSer has burnt his major def CD and then focussing the DPSer will kill every other DPSer class too. Or is there a special reason why this should not apply to marauders?

Edited October 18, 2013 by Cretinus

[MeRRR]

Well, welcome back to earth, then. CCing the healer after the DPSer has burnt his major def CD and then focussing the DPSer will kill every other DPSer class too. Or is there a special reason why this should not apply to marauders?

 

It is easier to kill someone that just had half of their HP taken away, isn't it?

 

I strongly think their defensive tools need to be toned down, but this change is just so bad.

[L-RANDLE]

It is easier to kill someone that just had half of their HP taken away, isn't it?

 

I strongly think their defensive tools need to be toned down, but this change is just so bad.

 

What I dont get is why you would impact the base defenses of a class without changing each spec to somehwhat compensate? Carnage/Combat got the shaft. I guess they think depending on procs and rampup is good for arenas...

[Cryowolf]

As a Scrapper I feel like I began as a healthy powerful young man capable of dealing alarmingly accurate blows to the vital organs and tendons of my enemies. A cacophonous whirlwind of death slipping in and out of stealth, powerful shotgun blasts delivering pain and fear in copious amounts to all of the red around me.

 

But in just two short years I have been withered into old age prematurely by a merciless disease of the body (nerfs), which has decreased my vision and removed the use of all my limbs except my off hand, which can now barely grasp the handle of my beloved scattergun.

 

Gone is the fear in the eyes of my enemies as my once deadly shots now graze harmlessly off the sides of even the thinnest of cloth armor. It is replaced by laughter and mockery as I am forced to roll away in my wheelchair, my proverbial tail between my legs after tickling them fruitlessly, silently cursing the ammo salesman for giving me shuttlecocks instead of buck shot, while repeatedly jamming my finger on the button of my stealth belt, cursing the device for its intermittent outages.

 

Death will take me soon and I will likely not even be coherent enough to realize it...

[Technohic]

As a Scrapper I feel like I began as a healthy powerful young man capable of dealing alarmingly accurate blows to the vital organs and tendons of my enemies. A cacophonous whirlwind of death slipping in and out of stealth, powerful shotgun blasts delivering pain and fear in copious amounts to all of the red around me.

 

But in just two short years I have been withered into old age prematurely by a merciless disease of the body (nerfs), which has decreased my vision and removed the use of all my limbs except my off hand, which can now barely grasp the handle of my beloved scattergun.

 

Gone is the fear in the eyes of my enemies as my once deadly shots now graze harmlessly off the sides of even the thinnest of cloth armor. It is replaced by laughter and mockery as I am forced to roll away in my wheelchair, my proverbial tail between my legs after tickling them fruitlessly, silently cursing the ammo salesman for giving me shuttlecocks instead of buck shot, while repeatedly jamming my finger on the button of my stealth belt, cursing the device for its intermittent outages.

 

Death will take me soon and I will likely not even be coherent enough to realize it...

 

Nice. Very poetic.

[doodbro]

Does that include your opinions and QQ as well, or just everyone else's?

 

 

Maras hit too hard. What do they do? They nerf undying, completely missing the target.

 

What do the devs do? They buff maul... Just... So much stupid it makes my head hurt.

 

The problem isn't necessarily the players, the combat team started this stupidity. Given a choice of how to fix something, they always seem to pick the wrong thing.

 

I agree bro. tweaks continue to not make sense. They have to feel that THE core mechanic in pvp is the aoe damage from smash, because it's been this way for a year despite the absurdity of it.

[Zoom_VI]

The buff to maul is not going to end well

 

However the rest are a step in the right direction, and they are proof that the devs lived up to their promise that they made at the beginning of the class rep system.

Pretty much every change barring maul was asked for in the class rep questions. The mual and operative cover changes where the oddballs, but a lot of players feel that the cover nerf was justified

 

Oh and for the first time in swtor history, the devs actually explained the reasoning behind each and every one of their changes, instead of leaving us in the dark. This is ultimately a good thing, as it shows they are more willing to communicate.

[ZooMzy]

I personally love the changes made to the sin tank, considering we're actually going to become more viable at end game content now!

 

The self heals may have been effective in PvP, but against raid bosses, we were completely healer dependent to actually tank well.

[L-RANDLE]

I agree bro. tweaks continue to not make sense. They have to feel that THE core mechanic in pvp is the aoe damage from smash, because it's been this way for a year despite the absurdity of it.

 

The damge output isn't the issue though. The only people that have issues with that are healers because its "a challenge" to heal through AoE damage.

 

The two issues always have been:

1. Ease to which you can obtain this damage.

2. Defensive traits shared across the AC.

 

 

IMO they really should have moved UDR high in the focus tree and nerf Smash by 20%. Then increase talents for cloak of pain and camo in the Ani/Carn trees to makeup for removing UDR as a baseline for the class...

[EzioMessi]

I actually really love the nerf to Focus spec and the buff to Shadow tanks. I think they did a really good job trying to buff Shadows, and trying to bring down the Survivability of Focus spec without killing it like they did other specs in the past. Still wondering why they have a FIVE minute debuff on Inspiration, but I'll get over it I guess.

 

The buff to Balance Sages, I don't like it, but at least it's something. I personally don't like the idea of making DoTs uncleansable, but the demand for it was too much i guess. I can only hope the change will make it's way to the Watchman tree ASAP, and not "soon".

 

Have no clue how Vigilance Guardians play out, so won't comment on that.

 

Overall, a generally positive reaction from me, but I was hoping for at least nerfing Op healers and buffing the other two healers, and/or giving the "stand and cast" specs more of a buff.

 

EDIT: Also considering Musco's post, this is a sign that they will be doing frequent smaller updates. Meaning if they break a spec, it will be fixed soon, and FotMs will actually last a month, not a year. That's the happiest news I have ever read.

Edited October 18, 2013 by EzioMessi

[L-RANDLE]

The Inspiration debuff seems more like it would have a bigger impact on PvE. I have never been ok with giving this class group utility in the first place, but... I also don't get the Fury buff. That's a buff for Focus in my eyes, and not much to solve Rage starved (by comparison) Carnage and Ani.

 

 

I will give them credit though. I am glad that baby steps are being taken, but those baby steps are not starting off very well.. I have refused to play smash on two of my toons, I think I am going to get my Sniper to 55 cause no one is going to stop playing Smash with those changes...

[Monterone]

I feel that sorcs absolutely have to get Fadeout as base for Force Speed, especially with the addition of another root for Veng juggs (remember they're also immune to all cc while they root and rape you).

 

To not add this in will be the death of a class, especially in arenas where they are already not wanted and even avoided. I'll admit it, if I see a sorc on my team and I don't recognize the name, I'll drop the arena immediately. A sorc is just a liability and I don't feel like even wasting 5 minutes of my time.

Edited October 18, 2013 by Monterone

[midianlord]

Given their track-record, I'm perversely glad that they seem to have ignored Mercs.

[AdrianDmitruk]

I feel that sorcs absolutely have to get Fadeout as base for Force Speed, especially with the addition of another root for Veng juggs (remember they're also immune to all cc while they root and rape you).

 

To not add this in will be the death of a class, especially in arenas where they are already not wanted and even avoided. I'll admit it, if I see a sorc on my team and I don't recognize the name, I'll drop the arena immediately. A sorc is just a liability and I don't feel like even wasting 5 minutes of my time.

 

Yeah as a healer I'm used to having Fadeout to escape so even when I want to kill stuff, I stay heals because the lack of Fadeout is that huge of a deterrent to DPSing on my sorc.

 

And because I can't segregate arena queues from the reg 8v8 queues, and I can't dual spec or respec anymore, I can no longer play full corruption. Full corruption is a jury-rigged Frankenstein spec now anyway because ever since losing our instant Dark Infusion cast proc in 1.2 due to Bioware's inability to properly bugfix an exploit (DI was BALANCED around that proc, but when we lost the proc DI was not adjusted accordingly), we've required constant stopgap band-aid fixes, and while it works well enough in 8v8, in arena it's just pull/stun/1v3 instagank, and if we pop our Force Barrier, repeat in 45 seconds when the pull comes off cooldown.

 

So I HAVE to go back to the old bubblestun hybrid, because the bubblestun is the only way a healer (in solo queue) can hope to buy enough time to eat the stun and sprint away afterwards, when the other team tries to divide and conquer, and gank like that. Of course, because of the lack of separate queue, I have to run that in 8v8 as well.

 

Bioware refuses to fix it. Corruption can Heal to Full, but has no capacity to Make Them Pay whatsoever. I have to pick up Make Them Pay from the bubblestun hybrid that Bioware tried to nerf out of existence.

 

Yes that's really good class design, Bioware.

[TorvinAugeri]

I feel that sorcs absolutely have to get Fadeout as base for Force Speed, especially with the addition of another root for Veng juggs (remember they're also immune to all cc while they root and rape you).

 

Only after Charging, and only for four seconds.

 

The addition of a built-in root to Ravage does not suddenly mean that we are also immune to CC without using Force Charge.

 

Since a large number of people on this forum don't seem to understand or have even read up on how Unstoppable works, here it is:

Unstoppable

 

While in Shien Form, Force Charge has a [50 / 100]% chance to grant Unstoppable, reducing all damage taken by 20% and granting immunity to interrupts and all controlling effects for 4 seconds.

 

Veng Juggs still need to Charge to receive that immunity, and if they Charge, you're rooted for up to a talented three seconds ANYWAY. If some eager Veng Jugg decides to just walk up to you and channel Ravage, they won't have immunity against anything.

 

That won't be changing. All that's changing is that you'll see an extended root time from the Charge -> Unstoppable -> Ravage combination.

 

So dear sorcs, that post-2.5 Vengeance Juggernaut that didn't leap to you and yet still cast Ravage, thereby rooting you? Go ahead and interrupt his channel.

 

 

 

I'm not normally one to defend warrior classes. They're strong, likely unfairly so. That doesn't mean it's alright to spread misinformation.

Edited October 19, 2013 by TorvinAugeri

[EzioMessi]

The Inspiration debuff seems more like it would have a bigger impact on PvE. I have never been ok with giving this class group utility in the first place, but... I also don't get the Fury buff. That's a buff for Focus in my eyes, and not much to solve Rage starved (by comparison) Carnage and Ani.

 

 

I will give them credit though. I am glad that baby steps are being taken, but those baby steps are not starting off very well.. I have refused to play smash on two of my toons, I think I am going to get my Sniper to 55 cause no one is going to stop playing Smash with those changes...

 

Inspiration was sometimes useful for PvP, as that extra bit of damage can come in handy sometimes. Plus, Combat is the only spec that can (theoretically) leap into combat with both Zen and Inspiration (without Valorous Call), giving a huge damage boost if the stars are aligned. That increase is completely gone now, considering I'd much rather save my damage right for the end of an Arena, where a 15% boost can make or break the game, and even with multiple Sents, I can't increase my own damage without gimping future damage.

 

As for the buff to Centering building, it's less a buff, and more of a QoL thing. For all three specs, Centering > Zen precedes a high burst phase. Centering not building during the group buffs, only encouraged Sentinels to never use the group buffs so they can maintain their burst. It does technically buff Focus, because Focus relies on alternating Zen and Exhaustion for maintaining Singularity stacks, but the buff was a needed one. Not because Focus is underpowered in any way, but simply because we would have a group Offensive cooldown and a Group defensive cooldown just sitting there because no one would ever waste precious Singularity stacks on helping their group.

Edited October 18, 2013 by EzioMessi

[dscount]

My FEEDBACK is pretty straight forward.

 

 

• FIX Sage/Sorc Force Regen BUG (Yes.. they have known about it being missing for 2+ Months)
  
• Take the Abacus away from the blind Metrics guy that has no idea what an MMO looks like
  
• FIRE the Combat Dev Team (The whole one person I think doing that) and hire someone that has a clue (A trained Monkey comes to mind as a better chance to balance the game)
  

 

Edited October 19, 2013 by dscount

[NathanielStarr]

I feel that many classes had to fish for improvements (or problems) as part of their class representatives questions. Their questions to me when I read them seemed like they were saying "X would be nice to have so we will present this as a problem". These classes would be the sentinels, snipers and shadows. It was like they said "this is our chance to get something so lets ask for it!"

 

These classes for the most part got their wishes, with the exception of snipers who seemed to have dodged the (in my opinion necessary) nerf bullet. The classes with honest and severe gripes were ignored. I think this is why the notes for 2.5 seem like such a failure.

 

I guess it's easy to give the classes the small tweaks that they asked for while the real problems appear to remain unsolved or even worsened by those other classes getting the wishes they wanted. For many of us the idea of assassins having more damage is so bad because as it is they are already superior to us in PvP situations.

 

It does feel like it went from "lets balance" to "lets just give the people with the easy solutions what they want, they are the majority anyway"

Edited October 19, 2013 by NathanielStarr

[EzioMessi]

I feel that many classes had to fish for improvements (or problems) as part of their class representatives questions. Their questions to me when I read them seemed like they were saying "X would be nice to have so we will present this as a problem". These classes would be the sentinels, snipers and shadows. It was like they said "this is our chance to get something so lets ask for it!"

 

These classes for the most part got their wishes, with the exception of snipers who seemed to have dodged the (in my opinion necessary) nerf bullet. The classes with honest and severe gripes were ignored. I think this is why the notes for 2.5 seem like such a failure.

 

I guess it's easy to give the classes the small tweaks that they asked for while the real problems appear to remain unsolved or even worsened by those other classes getting the wishes they wanted. For many of us the idea of assassins having more damage is so bad because as it is they are already superior to us in PvP situations.

 

It does feel like it went from "lets balance" to "lets just give the people with the easy solutions what they want, they are the majority anyway"

 

Shadows? Really? They needed the extra tanking abilities more than anyone. They were by far the easiest tank to kill. The changes are absolutely necessary for the Shadows.

 

And Sentinels simply got QoL improvements and a survivability nerf. Something tells me the Sniper nerfs are the next balance patch. This patch was the "melee" patch, and the next should be Ranged classes.

[AdmiralParmesan]

So dear sorcs, that post-2.5 Vengeance Juggernaut that didn't leap to you and yet still cast Ravage, thereby rooting you? Go ahead and interrupt his channel.

 

 

 

I'm not normally one to defend warrior classes. They're strong, likely unfairly so. That doesn't mean it's alright to spread misinformation.

 

Well its easier said then done. Vengence already screws sorcs over as it is an anti CC spec and the only defense a sorc has is it's CC. We can interrupt ravage with what? bubble blind, electrocute and overload?

 

It's more than the ravage doing damage, its that it will further lock sors down to be focus fired and there isn't anything they can do about it unless they are heal speced (for the force speed root break)