Bring back self-heals

[Rahizm]

Been reading a bit here.

 

For example, I've been consistently running the Gree Pylons in order to obtain my Grey Secant components. The Pylon boss regularly spams Stuns, Knockbacks, and a heavy damaging ability. Keeping 4 stacks up throughout the entire fight is nearly impossible. The knockback will push me beyond the range of both Project and Slow Time, and getting back in range blows cooldown time that I can't afford to lose. Getting stunned has the same effect. I lose the buff consistently, and I find that I am reapplying it, from scratch, at least twice in every fight

 

You pretty much mention non-instanced PVE things in a lot of your previous posts. Those things can all be kited around a corner in a way to position yourself with your back against a wall, thus keeping you in range, thus, making sure you maintain your stacks. Kite, position, tank away.

 

Second, you've mentioned that you feel as if 2.5 makes you take more spike damage. Self-heals will not fix spike damage, it hasn't pre-2.5, it will not fix it now. The damage reduction that was given has actually reduced the damage we take as shadow tanks.

 

My health suddenly spikes far lower than it was while I had the buff, and my healers have to suddenly rush to keep me up

 

You do not want your healers to fall asleep.

 

The bosses for the Heroic on Oricon are the same way. The blaster toting bosses use knockbacks and stuns extremely commonly, and as a result, my buff drops and I receive far more damage.

 

But it can all be interrupted. In fact if you run with healers, they can interrupt as well. Keeps your stacks up.

 

From quote 1 and this one, I can't really tell if you or anyone in your group interrupts bosses/npcs at all. So far I think you don't.

 

I can't even imagine trying to keep the buff up consistently in PVP.

 

Hasn't it always been that way, well, not the buff. Just getting to the self heal part then finding yourself stunned/knocked back/pulled when you're getting the first tick?

 

Also who was it that mentioned something about only using project with the particle acceleration and not without it? Never should've done that, never should do that. Getting those stacks up was always priority number 1 for a shadow tank, because it made self heals possible. Now it's for extra damage reduction. There's no counter argument for it.

 

Take this from someone who used his shadow in HM/NIM Ops pre 2.5 and after. I miss the self-heals a bit, but I like my survivability better.

[Prototypemind]

Even with myself being the only one interrupting the Pylon Guardians in 90% of the runs I tanked I still kept my stacks up. I saved my interrupts for digital stasis, used Force Speed to get back if I wasn't positioned to get knocked into the pylon, and I burned Force Lightning when I knew I'd get the full benefit. Even if your group isn't eyes on and doing what needs to be done there are ways to still manage it.

 

The self-heals are great for questing and dailies, but not having to deal with spikes the same way we used to is a nice QoL and viability improvement.

[Master-Nala]

First of all, it was not a feel good bump. The class was almost unplayable in some situations, full stop.

 

Didn't you state that you were able to clear all content on your Shadow before this change?

 

Second of all, even if you're not using telekinetic throw AT ALL, the changes are still a net positive in most PvP situations because the passive damage reduction provides superior mitigation to the passive heal. It's a buff in PvP overall. I don't know how many ways to say that.

 

Interesting way to state it. Yes, the additional armor from Combat Technique is better than the healing from Combat Technique. But then that's not all that was lost. In PvP, you could episodically use the healing whereas now, you can't depend on Shadow Protection. I won't lie (or use your lawyer-like dissembling here) when I can get the stacks in place, I'm fine with it. It's just a pain to do that in PvP.

 

My beef with you and others is that you have steadfastly maintained that it's "easy" to keep up the stacks and there is no need for there to be a better or more user-friendly way to apply Shadow Protection. That's plain out wrong. Guardians Slash gets 3% DR that has 100% baseline. If Shadow Protection was similar, I would probably be on your side supporting you.

 

Finally, I'll say this. If you are complaining because the self-heals used to function differently in a way that was beneficial, STOP. You are essentially saying that you miss when your class was overpowered. Sure, that's great. We all miss when our class is overpowered.

 

That's just nonsense and revisionist history intended to bolster the fact that this change was simply unneeded for anything but progression raiding.

 

This class wasn't overpowered in 2.4 in any form of content. It was slightly underpowered against some raid targets. Those raid targets should have been fixed. That would have fixed the problem.

 

Self-heals were massively overpowered in some situations

 

Overpowered against what standard? Where were the posts from people stating that it was unfair that Shadows could self-heal?

 

Some content showed these weaknesses to the extent that the class was barely playable and required extreme skill, precision, and occasionally just good luck.

 

Isn't that what progression raiding SHOULD require?

 

If you only remember the upside, that means that you never saw the content where self heals were underpowered. Ok, that's fair and I won't judge you for that, but what you're doing then is nothing short of whining that an overpowered mechanic was nerfed, because that's what self-heals were in such situations: overpowered. They provided an advantage that went above and beyond what any other tank could match.

 

Right, and the other tanks had an advantage, not an insurmountable one, in progression raiding. Which you were whining had to be fixed to your satisfaction. Progression raiding isn't the end all, be all of the game. It's not unreasonable for the other tanks to be better there and Shadows better in other content. That's real balance, when different class have different strengths and weaknesses but shine in some areas.

 

You keep trying to cast this whole situation in the light of a few "min-maxers" who just needed to "feel good" and thus ruined the class's "only" unique mechanic for everyone. Nothing about that casting is true. It wasn't just the min-maxers complaining. A huge number of top tier raid groups were also very upset about the situation

 

Those are the same people.

 

, and you still apparently haven't read the threads I pointed out with people complaining about shadow spikiness in PvP.

 

Please link me some of these threads? All PvP is spiky. I looked for those posts when you stated it, and all I saw were posts where Guardians were thought of as better tanks because of more stable mitigation, and better tools to protect the team. A situation that hasn't changed at all in 2.5.

 

We didn't just need to feel good, we wanted to play our class and be balanced with respect to the other tanks. That's not feeling good, that's just asking for fair treatment. And finally, the class is still plenty unique, and it still *feels* plenty unique. Just because you don't see green numbers anymore doesn't mean you're playing a guardian.

 

You wanted to be able to keep your progression raid slot. That's cool, I won't judge you for that. But you threw everyone under the bus to do it and still are. If this was all you wanted, you would not have any objection to making Shadow Protection last longer and/or be easier to apply so that it is "balanced" with Guardian Slash and usable in PvP more frequently.

 

Can you please explain that part to me. What is your objection to making this buff (see I'll even use your terminology) work for everyone?

[Master-Nala]

Hasn't it always been that way, well, not the buff. Just getting to the self heal part then finding yourself stunned/knocked back/pulled when you're getting the first tick?

 

Not really, you waited for the opportunity to use it. Yes, sometime against multiple opponents it was hard to get off, but even if you didn't get all the stacks you could usually get back enough to keep you in the fight. I basically use it the same way now, I just use Blackout and Fade for my real protection and let Shadow Protection happen when it happens.

[THoK-Zeus]

Didn't you state that you were able to clear all content on your Shadow before this change?

 

 

 

Interesting way to state it. Yes, the additional armor from Combat Technique is better than the healing from Combat Technique. But then that's not all that was lost. In PvP, you could episodically use the healing whereas now, you can't depend on Shadow Protection. I won't lie (or use your lawyer-like dissembling here) when I can get the stacks in place, I'm fine with it. It's just a pain to do that in PvP.

If it's a pain to get Dark Protection stacks in pvp it was also a pain to get self heal in pvp. That is now lawyer-like Argumentation that's just a very simple fact.

 

My beef with you and others is that you have steadfastly maintained that it's "easy" to keep up the stacks and there is no need for there to be a better or more user-friendly way to apply Shadow Protection. That's plain out wrong. Guardians Slash gets 3% DR that has 100% baseline. If Shadow Protection was similar, I would probably be on your side supporting you.

 

 

 

That's just nonsense and revisionist history intended to bolster the fact that this change was simply unneeded for anything but progression raiding.

 

This class wasn't overpowered in 2.4 in any form of content. It was slightly underpowered against some raid targets. Those raid targets should have been fixed. That would have fixed the problem.

 

 

 

Overpowered against what standard? Where were the posts from people stating that it was unfair that Shadows could self-heal?

How can someone not see that a constant self heal does not depend on incoming damage.

 

I will get the same healing no matter if i have trasher nim 16 man who hits me for half of my health every 5 seconds or if i face some daily mobs who can hit me for half a year before i die.

 

But, truth is no one complains/caress about class balance for dailies ,, i don't see "nerf stealthers because they can stealth past Mobs", "buff dots specs because they don't kill weak Mobs fast enough".... threads.

 

Assassins were superior to all other tank classes while doing dailies, i mean you could regnerate health while killing thrash with a dps companion. Fine, no one was complaining about that, cause for 99,9% of the forum poster that doesn't really matter. But you can't complain when BW brings all tank classes to the same level of mitigation for doing dailies. Juggernauts and Powertechs tanks are not better for doing dailies in 2.5.

 

 

Isn't that what progression raiding SHOULD require?

KBN was leading the only Progression Group with 2 shadow/assassin tanks. He was the only shadow tank in the world maintanking kephess (every other one was taking blue circles orbs there). SV NiM and TFB NiM were overall fine to tank as an assassin, but there were some flaws in the attacks of bosses.

Mainly Bioware forgot to split up attacks for different bosses (Kephess, Operations Chief, Thrasher...), which concluded into significantly higher probablities of getting very large portions of damage (e.g. spikes). My Suggestion was to remove a large part of spikiness more or less from Operations (split every attack), in the end Bioware decided to change the tanks instead.

 

 

 

 

Right, and the other tanks had an advantage, not an insurmountable one, in progression raiding. Which you were whining had to be fixed to your satisfaction. Progression raiding isn't the end all, be all of the game. It's not unreasonable for the other tanks to be better there and Shadows better in other content. That's real balance, when different class have different strengths and weaknesses but shine in some areas.

So, for you it's real balance when some classes are not as viable as other classes. At this point i stop my post, cause it's senseless and i will stop feeding.

But yeah let's make Powertechs the nim operations tank, Juggernauts shall be the flashpoint tanks and Assassins are then the tanks for dailiys .

Edited December 31, 2013 by THoK-Zeus

[Vember]

First of all, it was not a feel good bump. The class was almost unplayable in some situations, full stop. Second of all, even if you're not using telekinetic throw AT ALL, the changes are still a net positive in most PvP situations because the passive damage reduction provides superior mitigation to the passive heal. It's a buff in PvP overall. I don't know how many ways to say that.

 

It's a buff when your'e unable to heal, such as being stunned. A very minimal buff, at that, but outside of that, in pvp, the healing was better.

 

Finally, I'll say this. If you are complaining because the self-heals used to function differently in a way that was beneficial, STOP. You are essentially saying that you miss when your class was overpowered. Sure, that's great. We all miss when our class is overpowered. That doesn't mean those days can or should come back. Self-heals were massively overpowered in some situations, sort of balanced in a small minority of content, and very underpowered in other content. Some content showed these weaknesses to the extent that the class was barely playable and required extreme skill, precision, and occasionally just good luck. If you only remember the upside, that means that you never saw the content where self heals were underpowered. Ok, that's fair and I won't judge you for that, but what you're doing then is nothing short of whining that an overpowered mechanic was nerfed, because that's what self-heals were in such situations: overpowered. They provided an advantage that went above and beyond what any other tank could match.

 

The point I'm trying to make here is that the devs were too lazy to find the middle ground. i'm not asking to be returned to the glory days of overpowered healing (not really overpowered, but whatever), and I've reiterated this point to you countless times now. What I have said, repeatedly, is that we went from OP heals to poor heals, and now none. That tells me that there could have been adjustments made with armor and healing, to make it work. Once again, there are several self healing tank classes in multiple MMO's that do just fine.

 

and you still apparently haven't read the threads I pointed out with people complaining about shadow spikiness in PvP.

 

Not only have I not seen them, I have never experienced it.

 

In the end, this change was only a large positive for end game raiders. Personally, I don't give a crap about end game raiding, but I understand the spikiness issue needed to be addressed. They should have found another way to do without A: gutting our core mechanic, and B: gimping us in solo content and pvp, which is the other 99% of the game.

You've made it clear you don't care about the majority content by your earlier comments. On the flipside, I couldn't give a crap less about raiding. This homogenizing change was terrible and poorly thought out, and yes, you are responsible for seeing it through. I'll tell you what threads i have seen: multiple posts spread across several forums where people asked for this not to be implemented for over a month prior to 2.5 dropping.

Edited December 31, 2013 by Vember

[THoK-Zeus]

It's a buff when your'e unable to heal, such as being stunned. A very minimal buff, at that, but outside of that, in pvp, the healing was better.

 

 

 

The point I'm trying to make here is that the devs were too lazy to find the middle ground. i'm not asking to be returned to the glory days of overpowered healing (not really overpowered, but whatever), and I've reiterated this point to you countless times now. What I have said, repeatedly, is that we went from OP heals to poor heals, and now none. That tells me that there could have been adjustments made with armor and healing, to make it work. Once again, there are several self healing tank classes in multiple MMO's that do just fine.

 

 

 

Not only have I not seen them, I have never experienced it.

 

In the end, this change was only a large positive for end game raiders. Personally, I don't give a crap about end game raiding, but I understand the spikiness issue needed to be addressed. They should have found another way to do without A: gutting our core mechanic, and B: gimping us in solo content and pvp, which is the other 99% of the game.

You've made it clear you don't care about the majority content by your earlier comments. On the flipside, I couldn't give a crap less about raiding. This homogenizing change was terrible and poorly thought out, and yes, you are responsible for seeing it through. I'll tell you what threads i have seen: multiple posts spread across several forums where people asked for this not to be implemented for over a month prior to 2.5 dropping.

 

It's beyond my understanding, why people still continue to post the same "arguments", that got already utterly destroyed multiple times in various threads (including this one). These changes were a buff for pvp, no matter wether you got self healing off or not. I did already prove that with logic and arguments. I never got a serious Response so far.

 

You and some other guys just post your misinformation, wait until it gets completely disproven, open the next thread and so on... I have not seen a single argument from you against anything i did post.

 

I did already prove that the new 12% damage reduction is better for pvp, feel free to answer my posts in multiple threads about that.

Edited December 31, 2013 by THoK-Zeus

[Vodrin]

 

Also who was it that mentioned something about only using project with the particle acceleration and not without it? Never should've done that, never should do that. Getting those stacks up was always priority number 1 for a shadow tank, because it made self heals possible. Now it's for extra damage reduction. There's no counter argument for it.

 

 

This is my one beef with the current setup and the class. In order to max DPS you need to wait on the particle acceleration buff, but to max damage reduction you can't. I'd love to see a slightly longer duration on Shadows (18 seconds should do) so that you have some more flexibility and don't have to use Slow Time and Project every time they are off cooldown.

[Kaos_KidSWTOR]

The only real issue with Shadow Protection is, you have to have a full cast on TKT if they changed it to give the 4 stacks on activation i would be fine with it.

[KeyboardNinja]

Didn't you state that you were able to clear all content on your Shadow before this change?

 

And I have numerous combat logs demonstrating full wipes which arose directly from shadow spikiness. These logs don't show anything as ridiculous as an instant one-shot, which really only happened on pre-nerf Terminate, but rather pulls that were going extremely smoothly and then, through no fault of my own in terms of active mitigation or cooldowns, I was brought down to 0% within a 5 second interval, which the healers were not able to catch (usually, both of them would land a heal on me during that descent). This happened on Dread Guard, Kephess, Thrasher, etc. That is an RNG spike situation that the other tanks simply didn't have to deal with.

 

This is what I mean by almost unplayable. You could make it work, if you had really skilled and patient healers, and were willing to sometimes throw a few extra pulls at something to avoid bad mitigation RNG. That's essentially what my group did. I'm very proud of the fact that we did work through it and we were successful, but most people simply gave up on the class. This is what I mean when I say that the present changes are not in any sense a "small" bump.

 

My beef with you and others is that you have steadfastly maintained that it's "easy" to keep up the stacks and there is no need for there to be a better or more user-friendly way to apply Shadow Protection. That's plain out wrong. Guardians Slash gets 3% DR that has 100% baseline. If Shadow Protection was similar, I would probably be on your side supporting you.

 

Was the healing from Telekinetic Throw 100% baseline pre-25? Of course not. It was part of the skill floor of a shadow tank to be able to achieve that healing as frequently as possible. Now, the benefits from that healing have been converted into proactive DR, why should it be any more "baseline" than the healing was?

 

Please link me some of these threads? All PvP is spiky. I looked for those posts when you stated it, and all I saw were posts where Guardians were thought of as better tanks because of more stable mitigation, and better tools to protect the team. A situation that hasn't changed at all in 2.5.

 

I listed the threads in another post, which I don't have handy. Off the top of my head, the shadow questions threads all had people discussing this point. "Stable mitigation" is another way of saying "less spiky", a situation which has improved immensely in 2.5.

 

You wanted to be able to keep your progression raid slot. That's cool, I won't judge you for that. But you threw everyone under the bus to do it and still are. If this was all you wanted, you would not have any objection to making Shadow Protection last longer and/or be easier to apply so that it is "balanced" with Guardian Slash and usable in PvP more frequently.

 

My raid slot is and was assured. I wasn't fighting to keep it. I was fighting for all the other people being dropped from raids and 8v8s because of poor class balance. You can call it throwing everyone under the bus if you would like, but that's a rather odd way to describe what I did.

 

My objection to making Shadow Protection last longer (eg 18 seconds) is it essentially removes a primary skill factor from the class. Shadows have *always* been required to channel once every twelve seconds. That's part of the class. The only thing that has changed is now we have a convenient buff on our bar telling us when we have done something wrong. If we increased the SP duration to 18 seconds, then there would be no meaningful difference in mitigation between a good shadow tank and a bad one, just as there is no meaningful mitigation difference between a good guardian tank and a bad one (use everything on CD = WIN). That would be a significant reduction in the depth of the class.

 

I want to feel like I can, by improving myself and honing my skill, make a meaningful impact on how easy or hard it is to heal and clear a fight. That is how it has always been as a shadow, and I don't want that taken away from us as a class. So to answer your question, I have no objection at all to the buff working for everyone. The point I'm trying to make is that the buff *does* work for everyone, if you play the class precisely and error-free. If you make mistakes, you will get less value from the changes than you could; just as before, where if you made a mistake, you got less value from the healing than you could.

 

You can call that "not working for everyone". I call it "requiring skill". You don't see many gunslingers complaining that not everyone can sit down and parse a 3850 every time. This is the same thing, except with tanking.

 

This is my one beef with the current setup and the class. In order to max DPS you need to wait on the particle acceleration buff, but to max damage reduction you can't. I'd love to see a slightly longer duration on Shadows (18 seconds should do) so that you have some more flexibility and don't have to use Slow Time and Project every time they are off cooldown.

 

Max DPS has never come through waiting on Particle Acceleration. Not even pre-2.0. Max DPS comes from using project on cooldown and building your stacks as fast as possible.

Edited December 31, 2013 by KeyboardNinja

[Master-Nala]

And I have numerous combat logs demonstrating full wipes which arose directly from shadow spikiness. These logs don't show anything as ridiculous as an instant one-shot, which really only happened on pre-nerf Terminate, but rather pulls that were going extremely smoothly and then, through no fault of my own in terms of active mitigation or cooldowns, I was brought down to 0% within a 5 second interval, which the healers were not able to catch (usually, both of them would land a heal on me during that descent). This happened on Dread Guard, Kephess, Thrasher, etc. That is an RNG spike situation that the other tanks simply didn't have to deal with.

 

So? You don't care about anyone else's playstyle. Why should anyone else care when once in awhile you lose? Not that you always lost, just once in awhile.

 

Was the healing from Telekinetic Throw 100% baseline pre-25? Of course not. It was part of the skill floor of a shadow tank to be able to achieve that healing as frequently as possible. Now, the benefits from that healing have been converted into proactive DR, why should it be any more "baseline" than the healing was?

 

Because it would make it work for more people. What's your objection other than feeding your ego about your supposed "skill" at pushing buttons in a predetermined order?

 

I listed the threads in another post, which I don't have handy. Off the top of my head, the shadow questions threads all had people discussing this point. "Stable mitigation" is another way of saying "less spiky", a situation which has improved immensely in 2.5.

 

No it hasn't. Immense buffs are easy to see and experience. PvP spikiness hasn't changed in any significant way. If you get focused, you're going to be defeated. Average protection has went up. I will always admit that. At the cost of situations where the heals were better. That's just a plain fact.

 

I've never said that the DR isn't useful. It's probably better in many, many situations. Just not all. If it worked like Guardian Slash it would work better in many more situations. But then, you couldn't feel better about yourself for being good at a video game.

 

On the other point: Can you link me one of these PvP threads you're talking about?

 

My objection to making Shadow Protection last longer (eg 18 seconds) is it essentially removes a primary skill factor from the class. Shadows have *always* been required to channel once every twelve seconds. That's part of the class. The only thing that has changed is now we have a convenient buff on our bar telling us when we have done something wrong. If we increased the SP duration to 18 seconds, then there would be no meaningful difference in mitigation between a good shadow tank and a bad one, just as there is no meaningful mitigation difference between a good guardian tank and a bad one (use everything on CD = WIN). That would be a significant reduction in the depth of the class.

 

Right, so it was OK to change Shadows to be closer to Guardians in ways that you want, but not in ways that you don't want. Got it.

 

I want to feel like I can, by improving myself and honing my skill, make a meaningful impact on how easy or hard it is to heal and clear a fight. That is how it has always been as a shadow, and I don't want that taken away from us as a class. So to answer your question, I have no objection at all to the buff working for everyone. The point I'm trying to make is that the buff *does* work for everyone, if you play the class precisely and error-free. If you make mistakes, you will get less value from the changes than you could; just as before, where if you made a mistake, you got less value from the healing than you could.

 

Right, but then just admit this is about your ego. You want to feel good about hitting your sack of Hit Points and executing a rotation against a stationary target. The devs originally planned for the buff to last 18 seconds, and you were one of the main proponents of changing that. And you find it odd when I say you threw others under the bus?

 

I give you credit for the very positive things you have done for the community. I see no reason to take that away from you. I don't think you're a troll like others championing this change. Just accept what you did. You were a willing participant in advocating for a change. Not everyone likes that change because it isn't always a buff. Where it is not a buff it is noticeable. It is significantly less noticeable where it is a buff.

 

You can call that "not working for everyone". I call it "requiring skill". You don't see many gunslingers complaining that not everyone can sit down and parse a 3850 every time. This is the same thing, except with tanking.

 

One of the many reason, I think the devs were wise to have launched the game without parsing was comments just like this. People used to be cool with killing hard targets, but then they had to find more ways to feed their egos and so started chasing numbers.

 

You pushed to have a class that some people were perfectly happy with changed to something different. You won.

 

As I have said elsewhere, the devs have just pushed me into the hybrid which, for PvP at least is better than Full tanks before or after. So whatever happens, I'm not likely to change back unless and until they nerf the hybrid. So this is more academic for me.

Edited December 31, 2013 by Master-Nala

[Leafy_Bug]

With 2014 on our doorstep, I really hope that the Shadow community will change. I have been in these parts of the forums since day one and 2 years later we still see the following :

 

 

The Shadow Community Bible

 

(BioWare makes a change to the class or content, Shadows start to have issues scenario)

 

a) Three weeks of L2Play scrub! You suck!

b) 4 weeks of your healers are bad and you are bad! Shadows are a skill tank, l2shadow.

c) 2 days of, hmm, indeed, I should really look into this but... back in the day you did not have shadow protection to show you how bad you were, now you do, so really everything is fine.

d) 3 weeks of l2play again scrub, you suck.

 

 

 

If you are new to the shadow forums, read above, and you will understand how things work. Regarding shadow protection, just yesterday I had 4 scenarios where I missed my refresh by 2 seconds due to a game mechanic and unexpected mistakes from the raid. Having said that, the solution is very simple.

 

 

 

We create a poll about shadow protection and ask our fellow tanks to vote in it. We gather the information, wait for the results and we pass this to our shadow tank representative KBN. He will put aside his personal preferences, because he is a professional, and ask the developers what we the majority want. On that bombshell, HAPPY 2014 and put shadow protection to 15s .

Edited December 31, 2013 by Leafy_Bug

[Master-Nala]

With 2014 on our doorstep, I really hope that the Shadow community will change. I have been in these parts of the forums since day one and 2 years later we still see the following :

 

 

The Shadow Community Bible

 

(BioWare makes a change to the class or content, Shadows start to have issues scenario)

 

a) Three weeks of L2Play scrub! You suck!

b) 4 weeks of your healers are bad and you are bad! Shadows are a skill tank, l2shadow.

c) 2 days of, hmm, indeed, I should really look into this but... back in the day you did not have shadow protection to show you how bad you were, now you do, so really everything is fine.

d) 3 weeks of l2play again scrub, you suck.

 

LMAO!! So true...sigh.

 

 

If you are new to the shadow forums, read above, and you will understand how things work. Regarding shadow protection, just yesterday I had 4 scenarios where I missed my refresh by 2 seconds due to a game mechanic and unexpected mistakes from the raid. Having said that, the solution is very simple.

 

 

 

We create a poll about shadow protection and ask our fellow tanks to vote in it. We gather the information, wait for the results and we pass this to our shadow tank representative KBN. He will put aside his personal preferences, because he is a professional, and ask the developers what we the majority want. On that bombshell, HAPPY 2014.

 

I disagree slightly here. There is no question that changes will occur in the future. That's just the nature of MMOs. But I think the devs should base it solely on data and feedback sent directly to the devs. It is not fair to KBN or any other player to put them in-between the community and the devs. The devs need to interact with the community directly.

[Leafy_Bug]

LMAO!! So true...sigh.

 

 

 

 

I disagree slightly here. There is no question that changes will occur in the future. That's just the nature of MMOs. But I think the devs should base it solely on data and feedback sent directly to the devs. It is not fair to KBN or any other player to put them in-between the community and the devs. The devs need to interact with the community directly.

 

 

DEVS in this game do not interact with the community so what are we supposed to do when things are broken? I myself have been banned many times for losing my patience after months and months of no dev stepping into the class / tanking sections. I am on their black list as well because as soon as I say something a bit more straight forward I am gagged. Its quite sad because I am actually amongst the top percentage of PVE tanks in this game. In any case, our class rep is the way to go if we want Shadow Protection changed.

Edited December 31, 2013 by Leafy_Bug

[Master-Nala]

DEVS in this game do not interact with the community so what are we supposed to do when things are broken? I myself have been banned many times for losing my patience after months and months of no dev stepping into the class / tanking sections. I am on their black list as well because as soon as I say something a bit more straight forward I am gagged. Its quite sad because I am actually amongst the top percentage of PVE tanks in this game. In any case, our class rep is the way to go if we want Shadow Protection changed.

 

It's true, devs involvement on these forums at least is abysmal. But, I think its unreasonable to expect a player to look out for anything but their own interests. While, I may appear harsh in my criticism of KBN, I generally think there is nothing wrong with advocating to have things the way you want.

 

But developers can't necessarily do that. They need to take into account everything that make a game work. Not to pick on KBN again, but his comment above about there being no distinction between a good and a bad Guardian is mostly true, I guess. But then that's a problem. Whether that should be fixed by making Guardians harder or Shadows easier is not for a player to say.

 

Players, especially forum posters, tend to be the most passionate and skilled members of a community. They are absolutely the WORST people you want to ask about how easy or difficult something is. Their skill level is generally too high for their opinion to be given much weight. The devs need to be balancing around the average player, not the best of the class or the worst either. And you will never get a good picture about that from forum posters.

 

On this Shadow Protection thing, KBN is exactly right that this buff is easy to maintain in most PvE situations. I won't speak for progression raiding, but I don't have in problems in FP or story mode content. But I can't presume to know how difficult it is for other people to do. Not everyone has been playing MMOs for 10-12 years. Not everyone takes time out their day to pour over their build or practice on dummies. Those people have just as much right to enjoy the game and get the benefits of ALL classes.

 

The devs can see from metrics how the average player performs. That should guide their decisionmaking more than the filtered feedback of one player.

[KeyboardNinja]

But developers can't necessarily do that. They need to take into account everything that make a game work. Not to pick on KBN again, but his comment above about there being no distinction between a good and a bad Guardian is mostly true, I guess. But then that's a problem. Whether that should be fixed by making Guardians harder or Shadows easier is not for a player to say.

 

Agreed on this point. Obviously, I would prefer that both classes be made harder, because I want this game to have a lot of depth and challenge to it, but ultimately it is the developer's decision. I can lobby for what I want, but that's all.

 

On this Shadow Protection thing, KBN is exactly right that this buff is easy to maintain in most PvE situations. I won't speak for progression raiding, but I don't have in problems in FP or story mode content. But I can't presume to know how difficult it is for other people to do. Not everyone has been playing MMOs for 10-12 years. Not everyone takes time out their day to pour over their build or practice on dummies. Those people have just as much right to enjoy the game and get the benefits of ALL classes.

 

Maybe this is just ego on my part, but my opinion is that all classes should be balanced such that the average player can achieve 95% of the maximum potential given a reasonable amount of effort, while the remaining 5% requires skill, dedication and long practice. I think all of the classes should have this sort of spread, not just shadows. What was the number 1 objection to powertech DPS pre-2.0? It wasn't the burst or the high sustain, it was the 4-button rotation (really more like 6, but "4 buttons" was the rallying cry).

 

In any case, I'd like to underscore what Leafy said regarding community opinion. Truly, if I were the representative again (and I'd like to underscore that I'm not technically a representative of anything now, since the questions have already been sent), I would absolutely listen to such a source of data. In fact, even without that source of data, the questions I would ask the developers now would probably be something along the following lines:

 

• Balance is boring
  
• Resilience!!!!!!!!!!
  
• At a 12 second duration, Shadow Protection requires very tight execution in PvE to maintain and is even harder in PvP
  

 

I'm not sure exactly how I would phrase the SP question or what I would suggest. I don't think that just going to a flat 18 second duration is a good idea, but I do think that something needs to be done. One idea would be to increase the duration of Shadow Protection when active and when the shadow is stunned or mezed, increasing the duration by precisely the duration of the controlling effect. This still preserves the skill factor in maintaining SP in PvP (which is a much tighter skill factor than in PvE), but avoids the situation where SP can drop even with absolutely perfect play (due to chain stunning with empty resolve).

[Master-Nala]

Agreed on this point. Obviously, I would prefer that both classes be made harder, because I want this game to have a lot of depth and challenge to it, but ultimately it is the developer's decision. I can lobby for what I want, but that's all.

 

And that's absolutely fair. But, and this doesn't just apply to this issue, theorycrafters tend to be far too good at the game to peg "hard" to their relative performance. What's going to be hard for you and other progression raiders might well be impossible for the vast majority.

 

Maybe this is just ego on my part, but my opinion is that all classes should be balanced such that the average player can achieve 95% of the maximum potential given a reasonable amount of effort, while the remaining 5% requires skill, dedication and long practice. I think all of the classes should have this sort of spread, not just shadows. What was the number 1 objection to powertech DPS pre-2.0? It wasn't the burst or the high sustain, it was the 4-button rotation (really more like 6, but "4 buttons" was the rallying cry).

 

I think it should be more gradual than that. I might break the playerbase into quintiles. The top and bottom quintiles should be completely ignored IMO for the purposes of balance. People who are truly bad at the game don't have enough skill to be relevant in balance and those at the top have too much skill to build difficulty around.

 

But those people in that second quintile (60-80%). That's where you get competence but not brilliance. That's a good place to peg difficulty IMO.

 

[*] Balance is boring

 

Please leave this alone. I have 21 of my 22 server slots filled and the only thing keeping me from building a Madness assassin is how boring the spec is.

 

I'm not sure exactly how I would phrase the SP question or what I would suggest. I don't think that just going to a flat 18 second duration is a good idea, but I do think that something needs to be done. One idea would be to increase the duration of Shadow Protection when active and when the shadow is stunned or mezed, increasing the duration by precisely the duration of the controlling effect. This still preserves the skill factor in maintaining SP in PvP (which is a much tighter skill factor than in PvE), but avoids the situation where SP can drop even with absolutely perfect play (due to chain stunning with empty resolve).

 

That may not be unreasonable, but it is still true that Vanguards and Guardians get similar benefits from one-button presses or even from passive things like shielding. The skill floor has to be relatively even or you still have a major imbalance. Look at the raging over the Rage spec. Like with Pyrotech, I think the main beef people have is how easy it is to generate obscene damage with that spec.

Edited December 31, 2013 by Master-Nala

[SkybladeDarkstar]

It's beyond my understanding, why people still continue to post the same "arguments", that got already utterly destroyed multiple times in various threads (including this one). These changes were a buff for pvp, no matter wether you got self healing off or not. I did already prove that with logic and arguments. I never got a serious Response so far.

 

You and some other guys just post your misinformation, wait until it gets completely disproven, open the next thread and so on... I have not seen a single argument from you against anything i did post.

 

I did already prove that the new 12% damage reduction is better for pvp, feel free to answer my posts in multiple threads about that.

 

Really? I missed those posts, I only saw made posts extolling the benefits of the extra damage reduction, under the incredibly flawed premise that you would always have the stacks up 100%, which rarely works in either PVP or PVE.

 

What's more, the drop off of waiting for Shadow Protection is far worse than the drop off of waiting on self heals. This has been explained and reiterated so many times, and you have only responded with a very poor, and incorrect, mathematical statement.

 

Every tick of Shadow Protection does not give 1% damage reduction. The first tick does. The second gives +2, the third gives +3, and the fourth gives +4. Every tick after that continues to give +4. This means, that if you lose the buff, you cannot get the full effect again until all four have ticked through, and you are considerably weaker until you do so (using your own argument for how powerful even minor buffs to mitigation can be).

 

Every tick of the self-heals always healed the same amount of your health. Every tick of the buff does NOT provide the same boost to damage mitigation. If you lose the buff, you will need at least the full three second channel to get it back up, and that is assuming that you aren't knocked back, stunned, or stopped from casting any of the setup abilities in any other form.

 

Shadow Tanks have never been "required" to keep self heals up every single time the cooldown cycled through. Shadow Tanks had to self-heal as often as possible, and how quickly they could do that was a result of player skill, and better tanks would perform better and get the self heals off faster. Now, Shadow Tanks ARE required to get the buff reapplied every time it cycles through, and the cost of failing to do so is much, much higher than the cost of missing the "ideal" window of the self heals. It is easily the most significant drop in character viability due to skill in the game, and renders the class essentially unplayable if you can't keep the buff up constantly (not to mention it has made playing the class way, way more boring).

[THoK-Zeus]

Really? I missed those posts, I only saw made posts extolling the benefits of the extra damage reduction, under the incredibly flawed premise that you would always have the stacks up 100%, which rarely works in either PVP or PVE.

 

What's more, the drop off of waiting for Shadow Protection is far worse than the drop off of waiting on self heals. This has been explained and reiterated so many times, and you have only responded with a very poor, and incorrect, mathematical statement.

 

Every tick of Shadow Protection does not give 1% damage reduction. The first tick does. The second gives +2, the third gives +3, and the fourth gives +4. Every tick after that continues to give +4. This means, that if you lose the buff, you cannot get the full effect again until all four have ticked through, and you are considerably weaker until you do so (using your own argument for how powerful even minor buffs to mitigation can be).

 

Every tick of the self-heals always healed the same amount of your health. Every tick of the buff does NOT provide the same boost to damage mitigation. If you lose the buff, you will need at least the full three second channel to get it back up, and that is assuming that you aren't knocked back, stunned, or stopped from casting any of the setup abilities in any other form.

 

Shadow Tanks have never been "required" to keep self heals up every single time the cooldown cycled through. Shadow Tanks had to self-heal as often as possible, and how quickly they could do that was a result of player skill, and better tanks would perform better and get the self heals off faster. Now, Shadow Tanks ARE required to get the buff reapplied every time it cycles through, and the cost of failing to do so is much, much higher than the cost of missing the "ideal" window of the self heals. It is easily the most significant drop in character viability due to skill in the game, and renders the class essentially unplayable if you can't keep the buff up constantly (not to mention it has made playing the class way, way more boring).

 

No i didn't respond with an incorrect Statement. I simply answered to your first post proved you wrong, but you never made a serious response. As far as i see you simply fail to understand me. Tell me what's wrong with my statement then. Your first "Argument" was flawed because you were making a lot of mistakes (a quarter of the buff is less then 1 tick of self healing and not more due to the passive bonuses), (not recognizing that self healing could be recasted a lot faster then 12 seconds.....).

 

And for the last time a tick of Shadow Protection gives 1,5-1,75% Damage Reduction and not 1% Damage Reduction. It increases Damage Reduction! That's a lot more then the actual Damage Reduction! Don't spread misinformation.

 

For the next part i just Quote my first post about this in this thread:

 

The conclusion is not true. A delay of 1 second excactly 15 seconds after you did start casting your previous Force Lightning will result in that 15% less value out of a 15 second Force Lightning (it's 15% less value and not 4/15 cause you build 1-4 stacks). You compare it to one excact Point in the Rotation, but you have to see the whole spectrum of possibilites.

 

For example a delay of 1 second excactly 14 seconds after you did start casting your previous Force Lightning result in 0% less value.

 

Basically the moment you lose 0,1 seconds in your global Rotation self heal gets less value. Without any energize procs you can cast a Force Lightning every 9 seconds, with typical energize procs you can reduce that by 2 gcd to 6 seconds (49% Chance) or by 1gcd (49% out of the 49%) to 7,5 seconds.

 

So if you count all that together... basically self heal gets already a 4,5 seconds delay while your Dark Protection still does have a 0 second delay.

Then comes the ramp-up-time and after that there comes the point were you get less and less self-heals/protection (which makes the ramp-up-time more and more unimportant) and the 5-6% additional damage reduction from the armor buffs with 2.5 are the only thing that matters.

 

If you can't keep up the buff, see Dark Protection as a 12 second 6-7 % Damage Reduction together with a 5-6% passive Damage Reduction with 100% uptime (the armor buff). For most of the content that's better then the self heal. Also what do you wanna tell us here?

 

 

And for that last statement... My rotation was and had to be a lot tighter when i had self heals. Mainly because i had to channel for a full 3 seconds atleast every 9 seconds during a nightmare Operation when i had damage. Mainly because self heals didn't forgive a single global cooldown the whole fight.

Self Heal was a lot more unforgiving then the Damage Reduction as now you just have to cast Force Lightning every 15 seconds now. With self Heal every single global cooldown of Shocks and wither had to fit to achieve the best possible mitigation.

Edited January 1, 2014 by THoK-Zeus

[KeyboardNinja]

And for that last statement... My rotation was and had to be a lot tighter when i had self heals. Mainly because i had to channel for a full 3 seconds atleast every 9 seconds during a nightmare Operation when i had damage. Mainly because self heals didn't forgive a single global cooldown the whole fight.

Self Heal was a lot more unforgiving then the Damage Reduction as now you just have to cast Force Lightning every 15 seconds now. With self Heal every single global cooldown of Shocks and wither had to fit to achieve the best possible mitigation.

 

This.

 

In many ways, the new rotation feels easier and more luxurious than the old one. There are exceptions, where it is difficult to keep up my stacks (eg Dread Masters first phase), but overall it feels like I have more margins. Before, any GCD where I delayed my channel was a loss in mitigation. Now, I have at least two (and sometimes more) GCDs where I can just slouch around and do whatever without losing any mitigation at all. That just feels so…spacious.

 

I stand by some of my points on PvP, but I really do agree with Thok in that the post-SP rotation is no where near as tight as what was required to be seriously viable in the pre-2.4 NiMs.

[Prototypemind]

This.

 

In many ways, the new rotation feels easier and more luxurious than the old one. There are exceptions, where it is difficult to keep up my stacks (eg Dread Masters first phase), but overall it feels like I have more margins. Before, any GCD where I delayed my channel was a loss in mitigation. Now, I have at least two (and sometimes more) GCDs where I can just slouch around and do whatever without losing any mitigation at all. That just feels so…spacious.

 

I stand by some of my points on PvP, but I really do agree with Thok in that the post-SP rotation is no where near as tight as what was required to be seriously viable in the pre-2.4 NiMs.

 

Is it such a bad thing to have a little space? =p I've used it to throw in Crushing Darkness here or there without any issue. A little more damage never hurt anyone.

[KeyboardNinja]

Is it such a bad thing to have a little space? =p I've used it to throw in Crushing Darkness here or there without any issue. A little more damage never hurt anyone.

 

Have ALL the pushback! Also all the force. :-)

 

Even when off tanking, CD is a DPS loss. It's too bad, really. I looked at it hopeful that we could pick up another filler with so much space in the rotation, but no. :-(

[Leafy_Bug]

This fight would not go as smooth with self heals. Even with the new buffs, when I have two new healers with me, I have to point out that my shadow needs to be above 27k at all times because, go figure, rising slash hits the hardest without a cd. I have taken force execution without resilience or driving thrust and never was in any danger of dying.

 

 

My guardian takes 21-22k rising slash whereas my shadow takes 26-27k post 2.5. Pre 2.5 my shadow would take 31-37k here at Raptus. We are using two shadows for giggles and with different sets of gear we sometimes have surprising results.

 

 

For example :

 

Irisa (my shadow) : 22.8 def, shield 57.88, abs 49.40 / HP 43400 BIS

Ixale (my co tank) : 21.4 def, shield 59.1, abs 49.x (can't remember his absorb value ) / HP 44100, he is not BIS

 

 

 

He takes 20-60k more damage than I do per fight and at Raptus got one shot a few times post 2.5. Rising slash is the culprit of course. It seems that shadows still need a cd for rising slash even after the buff. Self heals are useless against spike damage, good riddance for their removal.

Edited January 2, 2014 by Leafy_Bug

[Master-Nala]

This.

 

In many ways, the new rotation feels easier and more luxurious than the old one. There are exceptions, where it is difficult to keep up my stacks (eg Dread Masters first phase), but overall it feels like I have more margins. Before, any GCD where I delayed my channel was a loss in mitigation. Now, I have at least two (and sometimes more) GCDs where I can just slouch around and do whatever without losing any mitigation at all. That just feels so…spacious.

 

I stand by some of my points on PvP, but I really do agree with Thok in that the post-SP rotation is no where near as tight as what was required to be seriously viable in the pre-2.4 NiMs.

 

As many have said though, this change is good for raiders. But then, what you're saying is that the change made Harnessed Shadows better and more USER-FRIENDLY for your playstyle, while at the same time trying to deny that to others by maintaining that the 12 seconds is critical.

 

If that had been the standard we've seen, then fine. But, as stated, Guardians get their 3% for 20 seconds with one button press on a 12s cooldown. Juyo form saw its bonuses increase from 15 seconds to 24 seconds. The Juyo form change is really instructive because it's very similar to HS (but easier) there you build up stacks of a 1% buff and once you are a max stacks, new applications refresh the stack.

 

Well shoot, that's Harnessed Shadows in a nutshell. EXCEPT, Harnessed Shadows requires building a predicate buff before you even get to try and get off your TkT channel for the ultimate DR buff. And then you need to maintain the stacks by re-building the predicate buff AND channeling the TkT.

 

If there's any consistency, then, Shadow Protections should last something like 30 seconds since it's harder to maintain than Juyo Form but has a similar impact on the character using it. But instead, we have what we have with the only justification is that it makes the class have a higher "skill floor". That's not justified.

 

Nerf the warriors into the ground if that's where we're going. Then no one has an advantage. But an advantage in ease of use is a major imbalance. To use an example, I and many others used to remark that the 4-6 buttons of Pyrotech LORE allowed you to have much greater situational awareness because you really weren't needing to manage your class so much. Well the same is true here. Guardians and Sentinels can just blithely go about slapping things with their glow sticks while Shadows have to manage Harnessed Shadows.

Edited January 2, 2014 by Master-Nala

[THoK-Zeus]

It made Harnessed Shadows more user-friendly for pvp players and player doing dailies.

 

Since the start of the game Powertechs and Assassins mitigation did depend on using an efficient Rotation.

 

Also you can't compare a completely different Juggernaut ability, with a different Assassin ability. Juggernauts have a more difficult ressource system, Intercede, the use of Force Scream excactly on cooldown, a more difficult Standard rotation with more buttons...

 

You can't compare apples to oranges. The rotation of the sith assassin hasn't changed since 1.0. Why were you not complaining about that the last 2 years?

 

Why were you not asking to change Force Lightning previously, so that you will heal for tripple that amount (24%) when you just use it every 30 seconds?

 

If you find that the playstyle of an assassin is too difficult for you, it was too difficult for you since the start of the game.

 

If you say that maintaining self heals/Dark Protection is too difficult for the average assassin player and you want self heals back you have to buff self heals so that they heal for more when you wait longer to cast them.

 

So new changes (you propose):

After you cast a Force Lightning with 3 HD stacks you get a stacking buff (lets call it Dark Energy).

 

Every 1,2 seconds you will get another stack until you cast Force Lightning with 3 HD again. Dark Energy stacks cap at 24.

When you cast Force Lightning you will lose all stacks of Dark Energy and you will heal yourself for the amount of Dark Energy stacks in percent (so up to 24% that means 6% health per tick)

As the first Force Lighting won't heal anything you will then also get a buff that let's you start with 8 stacks of Dark Energy (they consequently have to increase aswell by 1 every 1,2 seconds).

 

That's a consequent conclusion out of your statements. Now we can get self heal back and we can slack with Force Lightning (like you said just cast it every 30 seconds). It won't matter then if you cast Force Lighning every 10 seconds or every 30 seconds.

 

Overpowered? Of course not (may include sarcasm).

 

My question: Why are you not proposing that change since 2 years?

Edited January 2, 2014 by THoK-Zeus