any info on 2.6?

[Zenmar]

Great. We're starting to get our companions 78 geared and not even a hint on new PVE content.

[skomerko]

What about NIM modes, Eric

[Raansu]

Most of the balance decisions have historically centered around PvE, often times to the severe detriment of PvP, so please don't complain when this upcoming patch's balance changes are PvP-centric.

 

And this is why I feel that developers should NEVER balance anything around pve. PvP balance should always take priority because of one simple fact. You can scale NPC's and pve mechanics around class balance. You can't scale pvp balance in the same manner. Logically speaking it would be way easier to balance pve and pvp if balance focused primarily around pvp.

[Hornakkan]

First off, Happy New Year everyone! I am back in the office now from the holidays so we are right back to some yellow posts

 

Game Update 2.6 first and foremost will mark the launch of Galactic Starfighter! That will mean the introduction of:

• The Gunship unlock available for F2P players.
  
• A new Gunship variant.
  
• Two Bomber variants!
  
• ...and more! We will talk more about this next week.
  

Also, Game Update 2.6 will come with a few class changes, here is just an overview of some of what you will see:

• A fairly significant DPS boost for Operatives/Scoundrels.
  
• Mercenaries/Commandos will now have a skill to eliminate pushback on Tracer Missile/Grav Round and Power Shot/Charged Bolts.
  
• Sorcerers/Sages will now have a skill to eliminate pushback on Lightning Strike and Force Lightning/Disturbance and Telekinetic Throw.
  
• Mercenaries/Commandos can now cast Kolto Shell/Trauma Probe on more than one target at a time.
  
• Mercenaries/Commandos can now use Rapid Shots/Hammer Shot on themselves while Combat Support Cylinder/Combat Support Cell are active.
  

As always, look for the 2.6 patch notes for a full list of all changes that are coming! That is just a preview of what is to come.

 

-eric

 

 

Still nothing to fix Guardian's RNG ...

[darrenthepirate]

First off, Happy New Year everyone! I am back in the office now from the holidays so we are right back to some yellow posts

 

Game Update 2.6 first and foremost will mark the launch of Galactic Starfighter! That will mean the introduction of:

• The Gunship unlock available for F2P players.
  
• A new Gunship variant.
  
• Two Bomber variants!
  
• ...and more! We will talk more about this next week.
  

Also, Game Update 2.6 will come with a few class changes, here is just an overview of some of what you will see:

• A fairly significant DPS boost for Operatives/Scoundrels.
  
• Mercenaries/Commandos will now have a skill to eliminate pushback on Tracer Missile/Grav Round and Power Shot/Charged Bolts.
  
• Sorcerers/Sages will now have a skill to eliminate pushback on Lightning Strike and Force Lightning/Disturbance and Telekinetic Throw.
  
• Mercenaries/Commandos can now cast Kolto Shell/Trauma Probe on more than one target at a time.
  
• Mercenaries/Commandos can now use Rapid Shots/Hammer Shot on themselves while Combat Support Cylinder/Combat Support Cell are active.
  

As always, look for the 2.6 patch notes for a full list of all changes that are coming! That is just a preview of what is to come.

 

-eric

 

So for Ops/Scounds....Fairly significant as in a nice boost right? 10k hidden strikes for concealment please. lol

[darrenthepirate]

How would you like it if they removed 16 man NiM ops (8v8 ranked) because allegedly not enough people did them (because BW didn't do anything whatsoever to support them)? How would you like it if they made pve bolster for ops? PvErs don't have it great, but they sure have it better than PvPers. Most of the balance decisions have historically centered around PvE, often times to the severe detriment of PvP, so please don't complain when this upcoming patch's balance changes are PvP-centric.

 

^This all day.

[Raansu]

So for Ops/Scounds....Fairly significant as in a nice boost right? 10k hidden strikes for concealment please. lol

 

I play scrapper and even I think that's a bit too much for a stealth class. I dunno what they plan to do, but all I really want is consistency with my burst. I wouldn't mind hitting a little harder, but I would love to have the old armor pen rating from flechette round and to have something similar to recklessness for deception assassins.

 

At least on my assassin I know when I come out of stealth at the very least I'll get burst from discharge and shock. Duplicity+maul may or may not crit though but thats fine. More often then not I open with shoot first>backblast and its 3k hits back to back (doesn't help that crit was nerfed in 2.0 so its more common than it used to be. I wish they would fix crit. That nerf was stupid.)

 

I'd also like to be able to use shoot first out of stealth...or at the very least let us use it as a finisher move at 30% hp. Or for those that remember the pve only abilities, give us back headshot and make it the 30% finisher attack.

[discbox]

 

• 
   
  
• Mercenaries/Commandos will now have a skill to eliminate pushback on Tracer Missile/Grav Round and Power Shot/Charged Bolts.
  
• Sorcerers/Sages will now have a skill to eliminate pushback on Lightning Strike and Force Lightning/Disturbance and Telekinetic Throw.
   
  

 

So you give them the same advantage of cover (Sniper, Gunslinger) but they don't have to use something like cover. So this is again a Agent/Smuggler nerf!

 

"You still have to use cover with all it's disadvantages, and other classes don't. Haha! We hate you Agents and Smugglers!"

BioWare

 

Now, this may be the most stupid idea from the 'balancing' team.

Edited January 3, 2014 by discbox

[JediMasterSLC]

So you give them the same advantage of cover (Sniper, Gunslinger) but they don't have to use something like cover. So this is again a Agent/Smuggler nerf!

 

"You still have to use cover with all it's disadvantages, and other classes don't. Haha! We hate you Agents and Smugglers!"

BioWare

 

Now, this may be the most stupid idea from the 'balancing' team.

 

fail troll? sniper cover gives interrupt immunity, much stronger than pushback immunity...

 

I play scrapper and even I think that's a bit too much for a stealth class. I dunno what they plan to do, but all I really want is consistency with my burst. I wouldn't mind hitting a little harder, but I would love to have the old armor pen rating from flechette round and to have something similar to recklessness for deception assassins.

 

At least on my assassin I know when I come out of stealth at the very least I'll get burst from discharge and shock. Duplicity+maul may or may not crit though but thats fine. More often then not I open with shoot first>backblast and its 3k hits back to back (doesn't help that crit was nerfed in 2.0 so its more common than it used to be. I wish they would fix crit. That nerf was stupid.)

 

I'd also like to be able to use shoot first out of stealth...or at the very least let us use it as a finisher move at 30% hp. Or for those that remember the pve only abilities, give us back headshot and make it the 30% finisher attack.

 

Don't backblast right after shoot first, it wastes flechette round

Edited January 3, 2014 by JediMasterSLC

[Raansu]

Don't backblast right after shoot first, it wastes flechette round

 

*rolls eyes* No it doesn't.

 

Ya sure lemme give up burst and save backblast for the....oh wait I'm dead. I would agree with you if it was pve but in pvp not using backblast would just be ignorant in a fight where you need to burst someone down quickly. I only ever save backblast if I'm in the main fight for when I know I'll be fighting longer than a typical burst cycle, and I'm rarely in the main fight. Generally I'm either stuck guarding or I'm harassing the off node.

[malcher]

Since Starfighter release is tiered into three levels (subs already out, preferred on 14.01 and F2P on 04.02), should we also expect 2.7 to be about Galactic Starfighter launch?

[AnshaeNomodi]

First off, Happy New Year everyone! I am back in the office now from the holidays so we are right back to some yellow posts

 

Game Update 2.6 first and foremost will mark the launch of Galactic Starfighter! That will mean the introduction of:

• The Gunship unlock available for F2P players.
  
• A new Gunship variant.
  
• Two Bomber variants!
  
• ...and more! We will talk more about this next week.
  

Also, Game Update 2.6 will come with a few class changes, here is just an overview of some of what you will see:

• A fairly significant DPS boost for Operatives/Scoundrels.
  
• Mercenaries/Commandos will now have a skill to eliminate pushback on Tracer Missile/Grav Round and Power Shot/Charged Bolts.
  
• Sorcerers/Sages will now have a skill to eliminate pushback on Lightning Strike and Force Lightning/Disturbance and Telekinetic Throw.
  
• Mercenaries/Commandos can now cast Kolto Shell/Trauma Probe on more than one target at a time.
  
• Mercenaries/Commandos can now use Rapid Shots/Hammer Shot on themselves while Combat Support Cylinder/Combat Support Cell are active.
  

As always, look for the 2.6 patch notes for a full list of all changes that are coming! That is just a preview of what is to come.

 

-eric

 

And... ONCE AGAIN, there is ZERO improvement on the Recuperative Nanites/Kolto Cloud of Operative/Scoundrels. EVERY OTHER healer class has an AOE heal for the ENTIRE raid group. Ours STILL only affects 4 friggin' people! >.<

[Raansu]

And... ONCE AGAIN, there is ZERO improvement on the Recuperative Nanites/Kolto Cloud of Operative/Scoundrels. EVERY OTHER healer class has an AOE heal for the ENTIRE raid group. Ours STILL only affects 4 friggin' people! >.<

 

Uh....Only sage/sorcs have an 8 player aoe heal. Kolto Missile is 4 players just like kolto cloud, and kolto cloud is perfectly fine the way it is. And are you seriously complaining about the best heal class in the game not getting some kind of buff?

Edited January 3, 2014 by Raansu

[Llama-Eight]

And this is why I feel that developers should NEVER balance anything around pve. PvP balance should always take priority because of one simple fact. You can scale NPC's and pve mechanics around class balance. You can't scale pvp balance in the same manner. Logically speaking it would be way easier to balance pve and pvp if balance focused primarily around pvp.

 

PvP & PvE balance should be separate like it was in Guild Wars, say what you like about GW, at least a PvPer wouldn't be able to get their panties in a twist because some skills were balanced/nerfed due to PvE (& vice versa). Why devs insist on bundling PvE & PvP together I don't know, it makes their job much harder. Hell, if they were separate, you might not even need bolster (as much *shrugs*, since you don't want really badly geared players to be annihilated/one-shot by BiS-geared players).

 

Uh....Only sage/sorcs have an 8 player aoe heal. Kolto Missile is 4 players just like kolto cloud, and kolto cloud is perfectly fine the way it is. And are you seriously complaining about the best heal class in the game not getting some kind of buff?

 

IIRC, the AoE HoT that Kolto Missile leaves behind will affect anyone standing in it, not just the original 4, which is likely what the other poster was referring to, though that would require everyone in the raid to stand in a small-ish circle (& get slaugtered by all the AoE/cleaves/etc from the boss).

Edited January 3, 2014 by Llama-Eight

[ConCube]

Am I completely overseeing something or are there no Assassin/Shadow changes to come? Why would you do that Bioware? You're making the class worthless in PvE-DPS!

[SenatorPalpaTANG]

Since there are more balance changes in the pipeline, is crit rating going to be revisited anytime soon? You guys mentioned that it wasn't scaling quite as well as intended several months ago, but nothing since.

[Aries_cz]

So you give them the same advantage of cover (Sniper, Gunslinger) but they don't have to use something like cover. So this is again a Agent/Smuggler nerf!

 

"You still have to use cover with all it's disadvantages, and other classes don't. Haha! We hate you Agents and Smugglers!"

BioWare

 

Now, this may be the most stupid idea from the 'balancing' team.

 

Cover grants immunity to interrupts, snares, jumps and occasional immunity to ranged attack as well. So yeah, pushback immunity on two abilities is really the same thing

Edited January 3, 2014 by Aries_cz

[Alec_Fortescue]

Since Starfighter release is tiered into three levels (subs already out, preferred on 14.01 and F2P on 04.02), should we also expect 2.7 to be about Galactic Starfighter launch?

 

Yeah... We already had one gsf launch content update...

[Manweth]

I got one VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION.

 

Where.

 

IS.

 

THE.

 

DAMNED.

 

VIGILANCE.

 

BUFF.

 

Mr. Musco, look, I know you have company policies and such tying down your capacity to comment, and this is actually the work of class designers....

 

But dude, "significant" boost to Ops scoundrels?

 

I mean, can you go into the class lead designers office and ask if they want us to actively DELETE all Vigilance Guardians?

 

Coz believe me, if I go Combat Sentinel, I'll make so many current sentinel leaders cry out in pain that the said lead designer ( whose name I couldn't find within LinkedIn) will next shatter the Sentinels. After that, I'll target Slingers. And I won't stop until there is a single spec within game that is unbroken.

 

I will do it. And I won't be the only one. We Vigilance players, as you may have seen over this last year, are a tough, unyielding and absolutely unforgiving bunch.

 

Sincerely,

 

A disgruntled Guardian DPSer.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Manweth

[Viraxis]

REALLY dejected at the lack of mention of ANY class changes to the lowest parsing DPS classes ingame. Shadows and Guardians need some love, and lots of it in PVE. The DPS spread is NOWHERE near the expected 5 percent, and its showing.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=685275

 

Eric, are there ANY OTHER class changes planned AT ALL? We at the Guardian community have been asking for buffs for the last bajillion months since 2.0 dropped, and I know the Shadow/sin DPsers are frustrated enough. Even a whisper of a date, a "Soon" would be better than hearing nothing at all and knowing that no matter what we do, we have to roll into a FOTM class to be slightly competitive when the Nightmare Dread Operations drop. There are only 4 dps spots, having a class shunned due to perceived flaws is annoying and unfair to loyal players and subscribers.

 

Although the Scoundrel and pushback changes are nice. Hopefully those scoundrel changes are for scrapper, as dirty fighting is doing incredibly well and ATM they are imho quite satisfied with their PVE dps status compared to the bottom of the barrel they once were.

 

You can forget about either of those classes getting a buff because they are both OP in PvP and they still haven't figured out how to buff for PvE without making it even more OP in PvP.

[Manweth]

You can forget about either of those classes getting a buff because they are both OP in PvP and they still haven't figured out how to buff for PvE without making it even more OP in PvP.

 

Then they can do what they promised and NERF slingers into ground so hard that their grandmothers taste dirt.

 

Same goes for all smash monkeys, lolrocket spammers, and all those specs that should have been balanced a long time ago.

[Alec_Fortescue]

I got one VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION.

 

Where.

 

IS.

 

THE.

 

DAMNED.

 

VIGILANCE.

 

BUFF.

 

Mr. Musco, look, I know you have company policies and such tying down your capacity to comment, and this is actually the work of class designers....

 

But dude, "significant" boost to Ops scoundrels?

 

I mean, can you go into the class lead designers office and ask if they want us to actively DELETE all Vigilance Guardians?

 

Coz believe me, if I go Combat Sentinel, I'll make so many current sentinel leaders cry out in pain that the said lead designer ( whose name I couldn't find within LinkedIn) will next shatter the Sentinels. After that, I'll target Slingers. And I won't stop until there is a single spec within game that is unbroken.

 

I will do it. And I won't be the only one. We Vigilance players, as you may have seen over this last year, are a tough, unyielding and absolutely unforgiving bunch.

 

Sincerely,

 

A disgruntled Guardian DPSer.

 

I am worried, too.

 

But wait for the full patch notes. :]

[harkain]

Can all the jug/guardian (and in some degree sent/maras) stop asking for buffs, vigilance/vengance wont get touched (unfortunatly) before the utter retardness of smash specs are nerfed into the abyss where it belong, bigger noskill braindead lolspec cannot be found in the game.

 

Yes i do play a marauder and a guardian, yes i play it as vigilance and vengance and yes yes i want it buffed because they mediocer at best or atleast require far more than most spec out of the player to even be mediocer but i am also fully aware that before the 4 button faceroll uber aoe spec is crushed to useleness it wont happend.

 

Aoe specs should always suck, the point of them is that hitting enough targets should make up for it not have aoe alpha strike damage.

[Manweth]

Can all the jug/guardian (and in some degree sent/maras) stop asking for buffs, vigilance/vengance wont get touched (unfortunatly) before the utter retardness of smash specs are nerfed into the abyss where it belong, bigger noskill braindead lolspec cannot be found in the game.

 

Yes i do play a marauder and a guardian, yes i play it as vigilance and vengance and yes yes i want it buffed because they mediocer at best or atleast require far more than most spec out of the player to even be mediocer but i am also fully aware that before the 4 button faceroll uber aoe spec is crushed to useleness it wont happend.

 

Aoe specs should always suck, the point of them is that hitting enough targets should make up for it not have aoe alpha strike damage.

 

 

You DO realize, Vigilance players have ALWAYS asked for a smashmonkey nerf. Also, most buffs asked in our threads was tied to Shien talents and form itself, in form of burn increases or RNG fixes.

 

No one ever asks for anything that is remotely usable by other specs or even Sentinels, we learnt that lesson well with 2.0.

 

Also, know that we will NEVER stop. NEVER shut up. NEVER give up.

 

We are Guardians, the most celebrated and famous Archetype of SW lore, and asking us to stop is the equivalent of asking a timeframe from Bioware. At best, you'll get a "Soon TM", and at worst, amused condosendence.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Manweth

[TUXs]

Reading all of the replies here, it's more clear than ever that BALANCE is something Bioware NEEDS to focus on.

 

If 2.7 were nothing but a BALANCE patch, I'd be fine with it...not the normal one guy (Austin) pretending he can balance classes, but a TEAM effort on bringing balance to the...err...game.

 

Balance can't happen once every 4 months to just a couple classes...balance needs to be an EVERY PATCH type of thing...not a once every year thing.