Sin Tank Changes in 2.5: What was Bioware thinking?

[Kaos_KidSWTOR]

Ok, so i just read the Sin Tank changes for 2.5 and my brain is hurting really badly... We didnt want all of our self heals removed (or atleast I didnt, i like the self heals mechanic) We just wanted better armor rating... Cant we have atleast our Dark Charge self heal? Im not too mad about the HD self heal removal. but let us keep our signature self heals... Sin tanks as of now are the only tank that actually have a unique mechanic, Self Heals to stay somewhat alive. Sure PT tanks have Shoulder Cannon, but that isnt a core mechanic. Juggernauts have no self-heals, and Sins rely on them. So why cant we come to some sort of middle ground... Maybe a talent that increases Dark Charge's Armor Rating but we keep the self heal. that way, people who like the unique Self-Heals of Sins can still have them, but with less squishyness.

 

Just my 0.02$ on Sin 2.5 Changes.

[DarthMaulUK]

Hell knows what it all means really. Before 1.4 Dark Maul had a higher armour rating, then they messed with it. Then Biofail discover that the Sin class is quite creative and along came the hybrid - all of which they have now removed.

 

They just do not understand this class and how it should be played in a PvP scenario.

[nlashbrook]

The reason, is that making them have the best mitigation without being spiky and self heals is a little too much. Even now without the self heals it's a little much.

[LadyDarkkitten]

I would rather have been given more health to deal with the spikeness issue, to have focused around the selfhealing and what it does. A mechanic perhaps that said if the sin was reduced below 0% health they had 5 secs to get back above it or they died and if they went below -10% splat effect only occuring every 90 secs. It would have solved the issue THAT MANIFESTS IN NIGHTMARE RAIDS IN CURRENT CONTENT without SCREWING OVER EVERY SIN WHO DOESNT TANK NM OPS.

[Justcae]

Simple.

 

Shadows complained. Bioware listened. Bioware addressed the spikey factor and balanced that by removing your self heals.

 

Now you'll be the same as the other two tanks and probably very even damage due to high DR and high shield/abs. PvE tanking improved, PvP power nerfed.

 

/end

[Berronaxftw]

If this change goes live I will quit my tankassin and just reroll DPS..

 

The self healing made me feel like I was playing my Blood DK from WoW.. and that was the only reason I played tankassin =/

 

Oh well, 1 less tank for the entire server can't hurt, right?

[Elyx]

not to offend, but this is what you get for wanting mitigations like the other tanks.

 

in early game, sin/shadow was quite the OP tank. the combo of decent mitigations and the self heals made them OP. they were the tank of choice in mosy situations. Bio needed to cut back a bit, but at first they didn't want to kill your uniqueness either (believe it or not), so they cut back on your armor and passive mits.

 

the end result was sensitivity to spikes. shadows and sins across the game whined. but Bio couldn't move you back to being a broke Overpowered class...so it was either mitigations with no self heals, or self heals with reduced mitigations. trust me...they've tried 2-3 different levels of each to try and balance the two out, and this is the end result.

 

But Bio has also clearly noted (for a purpose) that they also like the idea discussed in the forums about giving some of those self heals back as a defensive cooldown, so the shadow/assn still has a "flavor" to them that the others don't. I think this is important to remember....they don't want to kill the uniqueness of the shadow, but balancing out the self heals and mitigations wasn't working.

[Kawabonga]

What BW had was an overpowered tank class and 2 other still perfectly viable tank classes. What they did was nerf the overpowered class to the ground (115% armor rating down from 150%, 50% cut to all self heals, that's a HUGE nerf). making it not viable for all content AND buff the other classes, which were already viable for all content (viable =/= optimal). This isn't balancing, this is tilting the tides back and forth. Edited October 21, 2013 by Kawabonga

[Vember]

If this change goes live I will quit my tankassin and just reroll DPS..

 

The self healing made me feel like I was playing my Blood DK from WoW.. and that was the only reason I played tankassin =/

 

Oh well, 1 less tank for the entire server can't hurt, right?

 

I already did. Completely turned off by these changes. They've already nerfed the armor boost from Dark Charge AND the self heals from Harnessed Darkness in previous patches, so I really can't follow their logic at this point. As I said before, if i wanted to play an Immortal Jug I would have made one...I really hate that they're turning the Assassin tank into just that.

[Kaos_KidSWTOR]

I already did. Completely turned off by these changes. They've already nerfed the armor boost from Dark Charge AND the self heals from Harnessed Darkness in previous patches, so I really can't follow their logic at this point. As I said before, if i wanted to play an Immortal Jug I would have made one...I really hate that they're turning the Assassin tank into just that.

 

Im fixing to do the same, Tank sin is just not worth the trouble now. Maybe when Bioware sees the drop in Sin tanks, they will rethink their changes.

[Berronaxftw]

Maybe when Bioware sees the drop in Sin tanks, they will rethink their changes.

 

One can only hope...

 

Personally, i'd prefer it If they went in the direction of giving assassins more powerful self-heals to handle damage intake, rather than just making us sponge it up like every other tank class out there.

 

Then again i'm probably biased towards this idea because I play a blood dk on wow.

[kennethdale]

One can only hope...

 

Personally, i'd prefer it If they went in the direction of giving assassins more powerful self-heals to handle damage intake, rather than just making us sponge it up like every other tank class out there.

 

Then again i'm probably biased towards this idea because I play a blood dk on wow.

 

First off, let me say that the changes coming in 2.5 are a terrible idea. Not only does it remove an interesting mechanic in favor of homogenization but it makes Assassin takes MASSIVELY op in PvE. That said, the issue with self heals is two fold: 1) they do not prevent one shots which is the problem that was facing sin tanks at the moment in PvE. They were simply getting hit too hard. 2) Self heals when not in proportion can cause a huge imbalance in PvP. You take a class that is putting out good damage or protection and add to them the ability to heal themselves and it starts to become difficult to justify other classes.

 

The main issue I have with these changes is that they are all as a result of BW messing up. Sin tanks were too powerful in 1.0 and so to fix this in 2.0 they did 4 specific things: 1) they buffed the other tanks 2) they nerfed sins further 3) they altered how attacks from bosses were hitting tanks to make the hits more spikey and 4) they did not test these changes. There's an old philosophy when trying to fix something that's broken and that is that you only change one variable at a time so that you can see how each change directly affects the outcome and Bioware did not follow that. Worse still is that they eventually did change how some of the bosses were hitting and the changes worked spectacularly but rather than seeing that simply making large single hits less frequent in favor of lots of smaller hits simultaneously they chose a completely different route. Its silly and it only further proves how bad they are at their jobs.

[Grumpftard]

Im fixing to do the same, Tank sin is just not worth the trouble now. Maybe when Bioware sees the drop in Sin tanks, they will rethink their changes.

 

the bad part is, with all the changes, Sins are going to become OP again and will wind up being the FotM. So you will prolly see a large increase in the number of Sins.

 

As far as comparing to Blood DKs. The self heal as mitgation mechanic failed there too, which is why they switched it to the blood shield with a just minor heal. (also a possibility they could have considered trying...but then everyone would be mad cuz then it's '"too much like a DK"....people are never happy)

 

Me personally, I look forward to the changes. They changed it in a manner that isn't going to require to relearn a rotation/priority. I don't think losing the heal kills the 'uniqueness' of the class because it's still going to be an actively controlled mitigation system. Something that the other two tanks don't really have. You'll play it just the same as always...the only real difference is that the numbers that fly across your screen won't be green anymore.

[Berronaxftw]

First off, let me say that the changes coming in 2.5 are a terrible idea. Not only does it remove an interesting mechanic in favor of homogenization but it makes Assassin takes MASSIVELY op in PvE. That said, the issue with self heals is two fold: 1) they do not prevent one shots which is the problem that was facing sin tanks at the moment in PvE. They were simply getting hit too hard. 2) Self heals when not in proportion can cause a huge imbalance in PvP. You take a class that is putting out good damage or protection and add to them the ability to heal themselves and it starts to become difficult to justify other classes.

 

The main issue I have with these changes is that they are all as a result of BW messing up. Sin tanks were too powerful in 1.0 and so to fix this in 2.0 they did 4 specific things: 1) they buffed the other tanks 2) they nerfed sins further 3) they altered how attacks from bosses were hitting tanks to make the hits more spikey and 4) they did not test these changes. There's an old philosophy when trying to fix something that's broken and that is that you only change one variable at a time so that you can see how each change directly affects the outcome and Bioware did not follow that. Worse still is that they eventually did change how some of the bosses were hitting and the changes worked spectacularly but rather than seeing that simply making large single hits less frequent in favor of lots of smaller hits simultaneously they chose a completely different route. Its silly and it only further proves how bad they are at their jobs.

 

Yeah, I agree with you man and the points you raised were excellent, and my wish to have assassin tanks become more self-heal orientated is just because i'm used to that play style from playing my Blood DK on WoW.

 

I know it probably wouldn't work out well for this game, and would possibly cause major balancing issues in PvE to PvP, but it's still something i'd want because I love my blood dk xD

[Berronaxftw]

 

As far as comparing to Blood DKs. The self heal as mitgation mechanic failed there too, which is why they switched it to the blood shield with a just minor heal. (also a possibility they could have considered trying...but then everyone would be mad cuz then it's '"too much like a DK"....people are never happy)

.

 

Yep, very true.

 

And my suggestion to this could be that we gain damage absorption shields for a % of the healing we do, not just on a specific attack, but all the healing.

 

Like I say, I know this is probably a bad idea, im just biased because I love my blood DK .

 

And please don't post a narcissistic comment like "go back to wow then" because I love both these games, and I love both the classes, I just would love to see the assassin end up like a blood dk, focused more on self heals & shields, rather than defences & armour mitigation.

[Griad]

To be honest i loved the self heal in PVP in PVE and particularly ops it was more of a hassle, because it grounded you for 3 seconds and to gain maximum heal and survivability you needed to finish cast in many cases, this caused our healing to be a pain in high movement fights. in tank and spank sure it was fine and all.

 

Then there is the thing about damage taken and when to heal to reach optimal use of heals you needed to use it when u had lost health, but at times when you had full health the stack would be wasted then. Overall the self healing was awesome in pvp and minor pve like flashpoints and sm ops, but rest of the time it was more a burden.

 

I am just glad that they dont change our playstyle so we have to relearn the class.

[Mistress_Ivi]

Last major changes nerfed our resists AND our self heals.

 

Now they want to remove our self heals completely and boost our resists, NOT EVEN to their previous numbers.

 

Thanks.

 

Really. THANK YOU. I really wanted to lose my self-heals, of which I apparently did not want.

 

Urgh.

 

You want to boost anything? Boost the self-heals. Our squishy nature in NiM runs offsets the fact we can tank certain parts of those instances the Jugg and Powertech cannot. I liked the old heals, but our resists were too high... EA reduced both like an idiot only would instead of experimenting on one.

 

Not good EA, we like our heals... poll the community and see for yourself. Tanksin Community like their heals.

 

If we wanted resists, we'd have rolled a heavy using class.

[Rebel_Guy]

I've never felt that the self heals were a saving grace to an assassin tank..... More like the bane of my existence(it's the whole reason for the spikiness) increasing self heals wouldn't have helped because that was the issue in the first place. The rotation is the same. It proved too hard to balance so they settled with high damage reduction... Honestly the changes are welcome in my book. Edited October 22, 2013 by Rebel_Guy

[Esproc]

Sith Assassin 2.5

 

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%.

 

 

 

6/26/2012, after ea took over with the death (April 2012 and the throes May 2012) of BioWare ia when we got hit with the "OP" changes. Much was due to using the Darkness "Hybrids" in pvp with dps gear and "Balance".

Balance is a lie and doesn't work with both PvE and pvp, check wow (if it's still as bad as it was a couple of years ago).

 

 

1.3 "Allies" saw the Darkness suffer the -50% healing, armor went from 150% to 110%, Harnessed Darkness (3 stacks) / Force Lightning healing from 12% to 8%.

But they did "increase" the threat! Which was not even needed, but they "gave" Darkness something.

 

ea claimed in 2 sentences that it had nothing to do with pvp, but then went on for 4 / 5 paragraphs about the sins in pvp.

 

 

Still, I have pointed out:

 

Thrashing Blades: passive; Darkness Tree,

Increases damage dealt by Thrash, Lacerate, And Volcanic Slash (tier 8 of the Deception Tree, duh) by 3%.

 

Insulation: passive, Deception,

Increases your armor rating by 15% / 30% while Surging Charge Or Lightning Charge is active.

 

The benefit of Thrash using Deception Tier 8's Volcanic Slash makes it more a Deception Tree ability.

 

The lack or the extra armor rating from Insulation for anyone using Dark Charge (Tanks) is pathetic as a Tank normally needs that armor rating more than dps to help keep from being so "squishy".

 

ea is sports minded and has more of a pvp mentality, I believe.

ea is also used to working on 10 - 15 year old sports games, that they only change the looks (re-skinning) and sideline "moves" (fluff), with minimum coding needed. We got 'new" looks (dark ward [yuk] and Overpower was cut on radius (and supposedly added distance which I have not noticed, but supposed to be "great" for pvp).

 

Whether or not they actually fix the abilities in the trees remains to be seen. Preferably without breaking everything.

 

If it remains broken, as stated previously, there will be another missing tank from the game. I shelved her before, helping to increase que times, I will shelve her agin. I will, occasionally, dust her of for companion missions only, again.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Esproc

[Jaigen]

Im fixing to do the same, Tank sin is just not worth the trouble now. Maybe when Bioware sees the drop in Sin tanks, they will rethink their changes.

 

Do your homework next time because after this patch the sin tank will be the best tank in the game and will likely see an increase not to mention that the sin tank is easiest to play without any resource management.

[Ryvirath]

Correct me if I'm wrong. Instead of sitting at 33% damage reduction as a full tank sins will be sporting around 48% damage reduction post patch (with the loss of heals). That's a pretty massive buff anyway you slice it. I kind of agree that they are simply creating the 1.0 situation all over again. Too tanky in pve, too much damage/tankiness in pvp. Regardless, they are clearly listening which is a positive thing.

[VitalityPrime]

More pure damage reduction is always a good thing...and I can't really comment too much on the changes...because I have yet to hit max level on my Assassin...nor have I even cared to go into pvp.

 

However, I will say that I did/do love that the Assassin tank has a unique mechanic with the self healing through damage dealing.

 

It made it fun to play a tank type that was not the usual...wear heavy armor with no self healing types.

 

I fully admit that more number crunchers will understand the changes better than myself...but I simply loved the unique mechanic assassins have/had.

[Nethershadow]

I agree with many that getting rid of self heals is a really bad class move.

 

Why are they drastically changing the class to when it is simple fixes?

The whole tankassin issue is with Ops spike damage death spiking you from full health.

 

Two talents in second tier that no one takes because they are useless is all they need to adjust.

Swelling Shadows: just make it a temp hp buff cd. 10%? health boost for x seconds?

There no bosses aren't death spiking you, problem solved. This would also lend the tankassin being a skill based tank.

 

Shroud of Darkness: increase the stamina bonus from this talent to make it worth taking.

 

These two talents tweaked is all that would be needed to prevent the death spikes from bosses which is the main reason people are complaining about Tankassins right?

 

/fixed

[Grumpftard]

I agree with many that getting rid of self heals is a really bad class move.

 

Why are they drastically changing the class to when it is simple fixes?

The whole tankassin issue is with Ops spike damage death spiking you from full health.

 

Two talents in second tier that no one takes because they are useless is all they need to adjust.

Swelling Shadows: just make it a temp hp buff cd. 10%? health boost for x seconds?

There no bosses aren't death spiking you, problem solved. This would also lend the tankassin being a skill based tank.

 

Shroud of Darkness: increase the stamina bonus from this talent to make it worth taking.

 

These two talents tweaked is all that would be needed to prevent the death spikes from bosses which is the main reason people are complaining about Tankassins right?

 

/fixed

 

So if I'm reading this right, then what you are suggesting is to pad the health bar to keep the spikes from killing you and give the healers more time to heal you up. I'm not sure that would actually fix it though. You would still be spiky...you would just take an extra hit maybe two before you die. I would think this would also increase the burden on the healers as well.

Hands down, I do believe we needed the buff to DR and armor. I agree it would have been nice to keep the self healing, but I understand it "might not have been feasible" from a programming or a balancing stand point, and try to keep some optimistic glimmer in the back of my mind that BW didn't just take the easy way out.

Regardless, however, I think the *way* they chose to fix it is acceptable since the amount of mitigation you get is dependent upon the players actions and not just how you stack the stats. It's still "active mitigation" and therefor keeps the uniqueness of the class.

Edited October 25, 2013 by Grumpftard

[Vhyle]

I'll withhold judgement until I can actually mess with it when the patch is out. I liked my immortal jugg a lot, and to play it as a sin would be cool, because I don't have to relearn too much in order to do well. I do worry about class diversity now, because playing the same tank class over 2 different classes would get old.

 

I do think that having self heals while also having DR of the other tanks would be way too OP, so I can understand that nerf. I also like the idea of having the self heals as a defensive cool down, because that would alleviate the nerf, still allowing us to use the cool down when we know we need it. It's just not a confirmed deal. I hope they do meet in the middle and do it though, I think that would be a good thing.

 

Anyway, I want to try it out before I really say anything positive or negative about it.