Commando Changes Brainstorming

[cashogy_reborn]

Allowing ACs to wield other weapons will require additional animations, so that should be pretty low on the priority list.

[ArchangelLBC]

Allowing ACs to wield other weapons will require additional animations, so that should be pretty low on the priority list.

 

Not really. The animations are already there, and aren't, I believe, tied to class at all (you notice that if you preview a lightsaber or a sniper rifle on your commando it doesn't have a problem animating it). If the particle effects aren't tied to the animation it literally wouldn't take any thing but giving us the ability to use the weapons which is as simple as checking a box in a dev tool.

 

That being said, I agree that doing so would be pretty pointless.

[Goshik]

Here's a cool idea, how about Supercharged Cells (SCC) can be used anytime with the following consequences: for every charge missing to a stack of thirty, one ammo is spent. So if you don't have ANY charges, you'll lose 30 ammo going in to SSC, a big sacrifice but one any combat medic is ready to make when he/she is being focused and has their medical probe interrupted. Needless to say there is no ammo return when it's activated. Attaching a couple more buffs to it would be nice also; a couple people mentioned alacrity; maybe make the user free to interrupts during the duration; maybe even grant Reactive Shield the first 3 seconds or so.

 

A couple other little quality of life things as others have mentioned would be...

 

-Revamping the Combat Medic tree (almost completely) there are a couple useless talents as well as couple talents that are hardly useful (frontline medic).

-Making Adrenaline Rush not go on CD when it doesn't proc.

-Something that lowered Reactive Shield's CD as the combat medic used certain skills.

-Lower Concussive Round's cast time or even eliminate it.

-Root on Concussive Charge or knockback on Stockstrike?

 

Solves a couple problems, at least for the combat medic. I don't know anything about gunnery so I won't even touch that.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Goshik
grammar

[Goshik]

Had a crazy idea to make Bacta Infusion better:

Remove its cooldown and instead make it consume 6 charge or something. It'll add a new aspect of emergency healing but at the same time require more micromanagement from the player, balancing SCC and BI.

 

Perhaps not a 0 cooldown, but something along those lines to make the pinnacle skill good in comparison to salvation and kolto cloud.

 

I also REALLY like this. I've always felt like Bacta Infusion should have had some special dynamic to it. Solely serving as a instant heal and not even a great one at that is hardly deserving as a top tier skill...

 

EDIT: to go along with your idea of micromanaging SSC charges and using them to benefit the combat medic: what if we changed SSC all together and made it a skill that drained SSC charges to give perks to successive skills and make it a secondary resource in a sense? Like this:

 

Using SSC (new version, same name) deducts 6 charges from the stack and makes the next...

 

...Medical Probe have 30% less ammo.

...Advanced Medical Probe 50% less cast time.

...Bacta Infusion can be used even if on CD

 

Additionally you can deduct a further 6 charges to enhance the perks above. So 12 charges...

 

...Medical Probe have 60% less ammo.

...Advanced Medical Probe 100% less cast time.

...Bacta Infusion can be used even if on CD and with 30% healing bonus

 

These charges would be no longer built by MP but by Hammer Shot and whenever Trauma Probe procs. This isn't the exact formula I would use but something along these lines would be an interesting dynamic. I just really like the idea of SSC charges being used as an additional resource.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Goshik
Additional Statement

[TylerAcalan]

....Supercharged Cells (SCC) can be used anytime with the following consequences: for every charge missing to a stack of thirty, one ammo is spent. So if you don't have ANY charges, you'll lose 30 ammo going in to SSC, a big sacrifice but one any combat medic is ready to make when he/she is being focused and has their medical probe interrupted.....

 

Honestly if my understanding is correct, that would REALLY screw up ammo management big time. That's more then a quarter of your cells gone and remember the more ammo cells you spend, the longer it takes to regenerate. I don't see this being popular due to such a high ammo cost since it doesn't make anything instapop to overcome lost cells.

 

You pop it that's 30 cells gone. Then an addtional 25 cells gone if you try to activate Medical Probe and get interrupted. You're now down 55 cells and well into the red on energy management and will be using hammershot for a long time trying to regen cells or popping Reserve Powercell which is a 2 min cooldown so ether way if you misfire, you're pretty much boned.

 

Crazy yes but there's no benefit I can see here from wasting THAT many powercells with no interrupt protection.

[Goshik]

Honestly if my understanding is correct, that would REALLY screw up ammo management big time. That's more then a quarter of your cells gone and remember the more ammo cells you spend, the longer it takes to regenerate. I don't see this being popular due to such a high ammo cost since it doesn't make anything instapop to overcome lost cells.

 

You pop it that's 30 cells gone. Then an addtional 25 cells gone if you try to activate Medical Probe and get interrupted. You're now down 55 cells and well into the red on energy management and will be using hammershot for a long time trying to regen cells or popping Reserve Powercell which is a 2 min cooldown so ether way if you misfire, you're pretty much boned.

 

Crazy yes but there's no benefit I can see here from wasting THAT many powercells with no interrupt protection.

 

Still, even with 30 ammo gone you still have 70 left and as long as you have at least 60 ammo your regeneration will still be at its fastest (5 ammo/sec). Again, as I described, it only deducts ammo if you don't have stacks of SSC. So if you had 15 SCC charges you'd only lose 15 ammo. I imagined that this would be useful in situations where BI is on CD and MP has been interrupted making you are effectively locked down. So with my idea and hopefully some form of interrupt immunity plus HtL you'd be able to AMP probe yourself till your MP comes back and hopefully save yourself from a sticky situation.

 

Basically I wanted to brainstorm for something that always gave the Combat Medic a fighting chance in their locked down moments.

[kenmc]

Still, even with 30 ammo gone you still have 70 left and as long as you have at least 60 ammo your regeneration will still be at its fastest (5 ammo/sec). Again, as I described, it only deducts ammo if you don't have stacks of SSC. So if you had 15 SCC charges you'd only lose 15 ammo. I imagined that this would be useful in situations where BI is on CD and MP has been interrupted making you are effectively locked down. So with my idea and hopefully some form of interrupt immunity plus HtL you'd be able to AMP probe yourself till your MP comes back and hopefully save yourself from a sticky situation.

 

Basically I wanted to brainstorm for something that always gave the Combat Medic a fighting chance in their locked down moments.

 

You would need an interrupt immunity with this because even with this you would still get shut down pretty easily. If they were to add interrupt immunity to scc that would be too op. even if you made it so that it popped reactive shield at the same time or a form of it for a few seconds at the beginning would still be too powerful. If we just wanted to free up scc to be used when you don't have the stacks for it, could possibly go the route of valorous call for sentinels where there is an ability you can do on a specific cd that will give you full stacks without hurting energy management, while since it has a cd wouldnt let you be able to use it over and over again till you are out of energy.

 

Maybe something that might help is redesigning frontline medic so that your healing received from kolto bomb is increased, possibly even increase it for trama probe, or making it so that adrenaline rush can be used at higher than 30% (so it can be used a little more proactively instead of waiting for most DoT classes execute % where it will make little to no difference). This would give some instant/reactive heals to use while shutdown without hurting energy management much if at all, and wouldn't effect PvE healing too much. Wouldn't bring combat medic up to scoundrel level, but it would be hard to do that without breaking the class.

[TylerAcalan]

SSC is not supposed to be your OHSHI- button. It's supposed to be your HULKSMASH! for healers. It doesn't actually do anything in the first place to help you if you're shut down. If you're really having trouble gaining SSC charges then it sounds like you need to Hammershot more.

 

Otherwise it sounds like you're having the same problems as Gunnery is having and you need one or two of your healing abilities to be no longer cast. Or you need the two abilities you DO have that are freecast to have their healing severely ramped up or cooldown reduced.

 

I would also agree that the giant green beam has got to go if you're getting focused. It's a giant neon sign that no other healer has. Even their counterparts the Mercenary on the other side. The bursts from the Kolto bomb is often sign enough.

 

Let's say you do get this off at 15 Cells. SSC doesn't regain any cells lost and while SSC is active, AMP has no cool down but understand that it still costs cells to fire. That's an additional 16 cells per cast and AMP still has a cast timer of 1.5 seconds which is still interruptable leaving you vulnerable anyway. Not to mention from what I've seen on the Mercenary side it only lasts long enough to get about 4 or 5 off. Taking Murphy's law into account that's 5 times cast times 16 cells wasted so you're down 80 cells ON TOP of our 15 meaning you're down 95 cells.

 

No way in hell you're coming back from that without reserve powercell. If Murphy REALLY wanted knock our socks off with that that's an additional 15 cells from our total for 30 lost meaning we're down 110 cells.

 

Even with regen through the whole process we'll say we managed to get those 10 cells back meaning you just ate through your entire 100 cells with no heals fired. If you somehow some way managed to survive getting focused through that you're dead meat anyway if Bacta Infusion is on cooldown.

Edited November 30, 2013 by TylerAcalan

[Rambeezy]

I'm not on board with reducing our available heat for any benefit. This change is not necessary for pve and would only add an unnecessary obstacle for maxing out heals. Now then, if bioware wants to give us an extra heat, with max regen, for each stack then I'm down. If we use our stacks then we go back to 100 heat, but if we don't use the stacks then we stay at 130 heat. If I knew the mando terms I would write this with more detail, but I trust y'all can figure out what I'm saying. Nothing like a buff nerf-buff buff lol.

[sensiblepoast]

I had a 70+ valor non ilum farmed gunnery commando back in 1.2 (or ilke that). It got too nerfed for my taste. So I gave the gunslinger and the tk sage a try (since they are sort of similar to the gunnery commando). It was night and day.

 

There is absolutely no reason to play a gunnery commando above those two. The sage may be made of cardboard, but the tradeoff of on demand buffer+controls+mobility vs commando's heavy armor+dcds is just awful. Not only your damage mitigation does not compare with the sage's "not being there" and slipperiness (which mitigates infinite opponents and dps), you are as vulnerable to melee and ranged. Hold the line just is not enough.

 

The gunslinger. Well. I couldn't believe Flourish Shot. They nerfed grav round and in the gunslinger I find a 20% armor reduction for 45 seconds? Spammable? And heal debuff? Seriously? Wait... they can't be charged? So the juggernaut jumping to me and being immune to concussion charge or two leaps is not an issue anymore? What do you mean it's not a sitting duck for stealth openers like the commando? What do you mean immune to controls?

 

As much as I like it, the gunnery commando is _disgustingly_ bad to play compared with either the sage or gunslinger. The grass on the other side of the fence looked greener. So I jumped. It was indeed greener.

[HaoZhao]

Something has to be done about Medical Probe and interrupts in war zones. If MP gets interrupted and your other heals are on cooldown (highly likely if you're using MP, because AMP always comes first), you've basically been shut down for 4 seconds for each enemy trying to stop you from healing. No other healer suffers as much from having one heal disabled. Operatives have surgical probe which is instant and can't be interrupted. Even sorcerers have innervate which will still result in some healing even if it's interrupted half way through.

 

My suggestion: Add an effect to Supercharged Cells so the 4 second delay is removed from interrupts. Interrupts will still stop you while casting, but you'll be able to try again right away. The interrupt immunity you get from having reactive shield up isn't good enough because you can only activate your shield once every 2 minutes. That's an eternity in a war zone. I don't like turning on SCC and having MP and AMP interrupted basically leaving me with hammershot for 4 seconds. Alternatively, change SCC so AMP is immune to interrupts altogether.

Edited December 2, 2013 by HaoZhao

[Ravenxox]

Multi-purpose charge (Multi-purpose dart) 16 ammo - 2 min

Throws a charge that latches to the target. Effect varies on ammo cell.

 

Combat support

Detonates a kolto-infused charge on damage taken, healing the target for 5000 and healing an additional 5000 over 18 seconds. Increases damage reduction by 5% for 7 seconds. (Friendly target only)

 

Armor piercing

Detonates a concussive charge on damage taken, dealing 5000 damage and decreasing accuracy of target by 5% for 18 seconds. (Enemy target only)

Skill Tree addition to CoF, has a 100% change to grant CoF if MPC deals damage.

 

Plasma

Detonates a plasma-infused charge on damage taken, dealing 3500 damage and burning the target for 5000 damage over 15 seconds. Shares a cooldown with Assault Plastique to prevent Opness.

 

This gives the commando a unique instant affected by stance. An interesting aspect to explore is manual detonation (counter stealth classes in PvP, scamper kills stealth scan nowadays) and allowing more controlled burst healing. No range on the detonator, this gives the commando something unique.

 

Looking forward to feedback.

 

 

Uxenn - Manticore - endgame Pve healer

DF DP hm 5/5

Tfbnim 4/5

[SpaniardInfinity]

Multi-purpose charge (Multi-purpose dart) 16 ammo - 2 min

Throws a charge that latches to the target. Effect varies on ammo cell.

 

Combat support

Detonates a kolto-infused charge on damage taken, healing the target for 5000 and healing an additional 5000 over 18 seconds. Increases damage reduction by 5% for 7 seconds. (Friendly target only)

 

Armor piercing

Detonates a concussive charge on damage taken, dealing 5000 damage and decreasing accuracy of target by 5% for 18 seconds. (Enemy target only)

Skill Tree addition to CoF, has a 100% change to grant CoF if MPC deals damage.

 

Plasma

Detonates a plasma-infused charge on damage taken, dealing 3500 damage and burning the target for 5000 damage over 15 seconds. Shares a cooldown with Assault Plastique to prevent Opness.

 

This gives the commando a unique instant affected by stance. An interesting aspect to explore is manual detonation (counter stealth classes in PvP, scamper kills stealth scan nowadays) and allowing more controlled burst healing. No range on the detonator, this gives the commando something unique.

 

Considering its a two minute cooldown, I don't think it could be overpowered. It just means don't get into a battle with a Commando after the cooldown ends In all seriousness though I really like the controlled detonation aspect of it if that does get implemented because it grants some much needed freedom in your choices.

 

The only thing that comes to mind as possibly complicating this is what happens if you change stance? Like it may be worth it as a healer to swap over to Armor Piercing just to throw this -- it'll drop their accuracy, deal something like 20-25% of their HP in damage, and that's not to mention that Armor Piercing Cell has a passive boost to alacrity that is welcome in a pinch. Obviously this would high risk since Troopers can be interrupted while changing stance, but it is definitely something to think about. Personally as a healer, the two minute cooldown on it would make it only effective in an emergency, but it would inherent the same problem as Tech Override/Reserve Powercell -- the long cooldown makes you wait for the perfect situation to use it even if it never comes. In other words, you probably won't have it when you need it, and if you do, there's probably going to be a situation down the road where you'll need it more.

Edited December 5, 2013 by SpaniardInfinity

[Marisblood]

Comando is not so good designed and we can see that in PVE or PVP. After 2 years they deserve something cool. So here are my toughs:

1. The need to be able to self heal with Hammer Shot. As animation you can make one where comando inject himself. Also Hammer shot should run up to 5 targets, from target to target, in 20 m range, choosing the lowest HP target as prio and healing them for 50% of the primary target, ticking for 3 times per target.

2. Increase healing received from Kolto Bomb direct healing and also his hot and make hot tick 6 times not 3 times as it does now.

3. Field Aid must remove force and tech. Comando lack in removing force dots.

4. Increase Hold the Line time to 10 sec.

5.Increase the healing of trauma probe and give it a protective shield wich absorb moderate amount of dmg and make trauma probe efect to occur once a second not once a 3 seconds.

6. Medical probe and advance medical probe shoul have 1 second cast time max and less energy spent, also they should have a 30% proc to return back fully the enrgy spent.

7. Increase the healing of Bacta Infusion over 4k and reduce his Cd to 9 sec max. Also make it free to cast 3 times in a row if comando get HP under 30% and uninteruptable.

 

You have all my cheers. Comando need big love because they are so broken for too long.

[Vodrin]

Mobile casting & channeling has already been raised innumerable times. They'll never do it. Conversely, we've also discussed buffs and utilities that proc after remaining stationary (so that there's at least some upside to all the self-rooting the class has to do). I'd be happy with just some proc'd immunities and a few more defensive cool downs. For starters, how about commandos can't be immediately leapt onto again by a flying smash monkey who they've just knocked back. It's not funny how often the kb just sets up a fresh leap.

 

Maybe not universally, but one of the ways they fixed Smuggler/OP healing back in the day was to introduce abilities tied to upper hand that allowed for instant cast heals. They could definitely do something similar with Commando healers allowing then to have procs off of instant casts like the AoE heal that would allow some of the heavier heals to be instant on occasion.

[TylerAcalan]

....They could definitely do something similar with Commando healers allowing then to have procs off of instant casts like the AoE heal that would allow some of the heavier heals to be instant on occasion.

 

The Gunnery Tree has something along those lines. Charged barrel which is gained from Grav Round (provided you have the talent) can also be used to reduce the activation time on AMP. At 5 stacks the cast is instant.

 

However that doesn't do Combat Medic a lick of good unless they hybridize.

[Llama-Eight]

The Gunnery Tree has something along those lines. Charged barrel which is gained from Grav Round (provided you have the talent) can also be used to reduce the activation time on AMP. At 5 stacks the cast is instant.

 

However that doesn't do Combat Medic a lick of good unless they hybridize.

 

And cast 3-5 Grav Rounds rather than healing...

[HaoZhao]

What do you guys think of changing Bacta Infusion to be more like the Operative's Surgical Probe? Remove the cooldown on Bacta Infusion and have it consume 10 support cell charges on use. Like the operative's tactical advantage, there should be more ways of generating support cell charges. Critical heals from Kolto Bomb could generate some charges, for example. Having a reliable instant heal would go a long way to getting around the problem we face from interrupts, yes? Edited December 6, 2013 by HaoZhao

[cashogy_reborn]

What do you guys think of changing Bacta Infusion to be more like the Operative's Surgical Probe? Remove the cooldown on Bacta Infusion and have it consume 10 support cell charges on use. Like the operative's tactical advantage, there should be more ways of generating support cell charges. Critical heals from Kolto Bomb could generate some charges, for example. Having a reliable instant heal would go a long way to getting around the problem we face from interrupts, yes?

 

Yes, and I think what you suggest is actually a very good idea. You would be making a trade-off between waiting for 30 stacks to pump out a crap-load of single target healing, or you could use your stacks in order to maintain healing output while mobile/under pressure.

 

As far as how to generate more stacks, I think that a talent that made all critical heals give 3 charges w/ a 3s internal cooldown. And I still think that Hammer Shot heals should be made to refund 2 ammo per crit. A hopefully we can see a fix to the crit DR curve, since a lot of these suggestions are tied to crit procs.

[akabane_k]

trauma probe on 2 targets

heals from trauma probe have a 30% chance to make the next AMP instant and cost 8 less heat. Cannot occur more than once every 6-12? seconds

let all specs access combat and reflexive shield(at least the cd reducing part)

kolto wave reduces cd of concussive charge by 10 sec

[SWEtree]

Hots would give us healing while we are shutdown/stunned. Just as other healers. This would increase our survivalbility. A cheap hot just as other healers. Now when we get shutdown we just try to glare our enemy to death but it doesnt scare him/her. A hot would be a small buff with good survivalbility boost.

 

I would be happy even if the hot even can only be used on ourselves.

Edited December 7, 2013 by SWEtree

[HaoZhao]

trauma probe on 2 targets

 

This is often requested but I think the execution would be really awkward. You have TP on two targets and you want to put it on someone else. Who loses TP so you can give it to the 3rd person? Target A, the first person you cast it on? But what if you want TP on Target A and C? You'd have to cast it once to move it from A to C and then cast it again to move it from B to A. This sounds like a really, really good way to waste a lot of precious cells and general healing time. Trauma Probe is expensive and I really wouldn't want to have to waste resources passing it around like that.

 

A better compromise would be to have TP automatically apply to you as well when it's on someone else. You'd still get TP on someone else, but that other person has to be you.

[LtBombshell]

Making Full Auto uninterruptable would be awesome.

[Rambeezy]

Reduce ammo cost of TP by 4, make it only have 6 charges but double the healing per charge. Edited December 7, 2013 by Rambeezy

[DerrakFlak]

A nice change would be to add an execute to Commandos that had a High % chance to proc Curtain of Fire for gunnery and to reapply Plasma cell/50+% to trigger Ionic Accelerator.

 

If no execute were added I would say alter Curtain of Fire to have an increase chance to activate depending on the number of Charged Barrels you have. This would still let us have our turret syndrome but make it more consistent and not rely on RNG to deal good damage

Possibly make Gunnery have a similar talent as Burnout but restrict it to Demolition Round and Full Auto.

 

For assault i feel that Charged Bolts should work like the vanguards Ionic Pulse, auto activating the Plasma cell