Since Nibbon has quit: Sage/Sorcerer Top issues discussion

[AdamLKvist]

Sorry, but where can I find the questions you put up?

 

1st page

 

 

DRAFT QUESTIONS FOR COMMENTS

 

This part of the post will be updated regularly with comments from the community

 

 

Survivability

 

The developers stated in the Sorcerer answers that healing is intended to make up a significant part of Sage survivability and the suggestion of providing defensive cooldowns besides Force Mend and Force Barrier were rejected outright. The community believes that Sage survivability suffers from a number of inherent problems with its defensive tools.

 

In order to use Force Armor or Force Mend on yourself, you need to use a global cooldown. And in the case of Force Armor use 5%-10% of your resources. That's simply an unacceptable trade off in most PvE situations. In Nightmare content (as we saw in TFB & S&V), there are very tight enrage timers which require maximum dps to meet. There is also a lot of "random" damage (where a raid member is targeted to take damage) and a lot of instances where there is significant AOE damage to the entire raid. In many of these cases, Sages take more damage than other classes simply because the damage is mitigated by armor and Sages have the worst armor.

 

The actual question

 

Are the developers satisfied with Sage/Sorcerer survivability in all play environments? Are there any plans to improve our current survival tools? For example, by perhaps by providing a means with which to move our tools (Force Armor, Force Mend, etc.) off the GCD when cast on yourself?

 

Seer Spec Issues

 

Currently, Sage healers have a number of issues that affect their play. First, Sages are nearly 100% reliant on casted healing abilities. Our only instant healing abilities is Force Armor and Rejuvenate. Force Armor has a long lockout and Rejuvenate is a small heal mostly used to proc Conveyance. Salvation can be cast instantly, but it requires using Healing Trance (and usually Rejuvenate) as a set-up.

 

In PvP, this causes great issues, because while Sage healers are capable of putting up great numbers because of Salvation spamming, under heavy pressure a static AoE heal might not be ideal in such a frenetic environment in actually supporting the team.

 

The Noble Sacrifice/Consumption mechanic is really unique, and the community agrees that in PvE at least it provides Seer/Corruption with a sensible mechanic for restoring Force. In PvP, this mechanic presents very serious problems. Sage healers are one of the priority targets for being focused and in that situation purposefully sacrificing your health to maintain force is not possible. This is exacerbated by the issue of Sage healers being reliant on casts. This puts the Sage in the unenviable situation of having to stay still to restore health and Force.

 

Also, while Benevolence has its uses in emergency situations and off healing as a DPS, for Seer Sages this ability is very underwhelming and rarely used. In your 2.0 blog you mentioned that the ability is to be used when Force efficiency is not a concern. Unfortunately, in most emergencies efficiency is a concern as wasteful rotations will only lead to a prolonged emergency.

 

Finally, certain set bonuses are imbalanced between PvE and PvP. For example, the sage healer is incentivized to get the PvE mystic 2 piece, which is non-ideal but doable in the presence of bolster.

 

The actual question

 

Are the developers considering any changes to Seer spec in light of these or any other issues?

 

Sage as Jedi

 

While the majority of these class representative questions, both Sages and other classes, have been about balance issues, the Sage community has a unique concern shared in some respects with our mirror class, the Sorcerer but in some ways unique to the Sage class. Put bluntly, the class has some visual and mechanical issues that make it feel more like a traditional mage class instead of a Jedi Knight. There are two main reasons for this: (1) We don’t use our lightsaber for anything; (2) Several animations lack the feeling of power. Discussing those in turn.

 

Sages and Sorcerers are force using classes and as such have the lightsaber as a weapon proficiency. In addition, our force free attack Saber Strike is a melee attack. The game mechanics, however, go out of their way to ensure that players have no incentive to use their lightsaber for any reason. Sages have only two weapon attacks and those attacks do not benefit from our main stat Willpower. This results in the unique situation of Sages (and Sorcerers) being the only class that does not use their main weapon for anything save a stat boost. This is directly LORE breaking as even the archetypal Sage and Sorcerer, Yoda and Palpatine were gifted melee combatants.

 

The second issue is with respect to certain animations of the Sage specifically. With the understanding that to mirror the consular and inquisitor classes, certain design choices had to be made, nevertheless many members of the Sage community question the appropriateness of two signature moves of the consular, Project and Telekinetic Throw. It is questionable whether Jedi should be using the force in this manner from a LORE perspective. Yoda tells us, “A Jedi uses the force for knowledge and defense, never to attack.” And the only force users in the movies to use telekinesis to throw items as an attack are the Sith: Darth Vader (in Ep.V) and Darth Sidious (In Ep.3) Also, some players simply consider TK Throw particularly to be a lackluster animation that lacks the coolness factor of lightning on the Sith side – and nowhere in six movies or a host of licensed games, has debris throwing been a signature jedi move.

 

The actual question

 

Will the developer do anything to ameliorate these issues? Examples include allowing Willpower to affect melee attacks; providing additional worthwhile lightsaber attacks; and offering alternate animations via the Cartel Market or otherwise (Marketing take note! ).

 

[judgeender]

This isn't a single fight, single spike damage issue. Nor is it an issue of only spike damage. As has been discussed on numerous threads/posts, almost every boss fight in Nightmare has either (i) significant damage to a randomly targeted OPs member or (ii) AOE/raid-wide damage to the entire raid. In many cases, fights have both. Particularly troublesome is that often the AOE/raid-wide damage is during burn phases. Sages/Sorcs have no way to minimize this damage (or even recover from without stopping dps). Every other class can reduce this damage thereby increasing their survivability. If need be, I can go find some of the older posts that lay out all of these situations in TFB/S&V and add in the DF (at least with current boss abilities), but one or both exist on pretty much every fight. In some cases, the issue is exacerbated by the fact that Sages/Sorcs have lower armor and therefore take more damage to begin with. In others its simply the fact that other classes can mitigate a portion of the damage with a DCD while a Sage/Sorc cannot without stopping dps.

 

The simple issue is that Sages/Sorcs take more damage on fights than other classes. In progression PvE settings, where enrage timers/survival are critical, that issue has not been addressed by Bioware (H2F is not a solution). If a sage/sorc takes more damage but doesn't offer more damage/utility to an OP, there is little reason to bring a sage/sorc over other classes. Why stress the OP/rely on RNG when going for world/server firsts when other classes can offer the same dps with higher survival. I'm fine with tweaking the question (my original draft was very focused on PvE, because that is where my prime concern on survivability lies and because I believe they responded previously, like it or not, on the PvP side). However, I believe the question as currently posed will force Bioware to at least respond to the concern in the PvE context because the question specifically discusses PvE b/c that is the part of the issue that Bioware has not yet addressed.

[MarsherMeow]

It's not really a class specific question but it would be great if the combat log specified however much an ability absorbed in its lifespan so we could assign that in parsers to see who actually caused how much damage to be absorbed.

 

It would make sage / sorcs look a lot better in the parser and attract more of the bottom half of the player base use the bubble. I know a lot of Sorc / Sages that don't use it because hurr my HPS.

[AdrianDmitruk]

From my perspective, I agree with you. BUT, this is without a doubt the most pressing unresolved issue for folks. I am very open for ways to modify this question so that it meets the goals of the community. As I see it there are a couple of goals for that question:

 

1) To try to understand the devs's philosophy towards Sage/Sorc survivability, i.e. how do they envision the class. Are we simply to be a D&D mage, standing in the back row finger-wiggling? Are we intended to be a Jedi?

 

If the devs envision us as mages or priests, then they need to actually give us the tools of mages or priests. Our bubbles can't actually reflect damage (if they did, they'd be worth being on the global for DPS, and give sorc healers a reason to be taken in PVP--the healers might be squishy, but they'd have the most ability to support a team offensive). Our CC is much worse (though I recognize CC isn't a big deal in PVE with boss immunities). They gave things like temporary invisibility to sentinels instead. We're missing a true blink, which they gave to sins instead. And if sorc healers need to LOS--which the devs specifically mentioned we should be doing in H2F/Make them Pay--for whatever reason, they can't H2F their team.

 

Trying to keep each class within 5% DPS/HPS of each other hamstrings Bioware's ability to compensate for squish by upping raw numbers. This is a bit complicated because I think lightning is closer to mage and heals/madness to priests (though these are secondhand comparisons as I've never played WoW), so obviously we can't combine everything both classes had into a single spec when discussing comparisons. But it's clear we need more utility if Bioware is unwilling to either reduce squish or up raw output to compensate for it.

 

Right now our class is missing a lot of tools.

 

2) Do they ever intend to address the community desire for an actual cooldown. While their intentions seem clear to me, they have softened on other issues since the H2F controversy.

 

The goal of this system is to give agency to the community's concerns. Even where there is a clear departure from the devs's ideas and the community's. I think the problem is that after the Sorcerer questions, everyone has been careful to over-lawyer their questions to rein in the developer responses. This is a shame, but inevitable. The good news is you guys have an actual lawyer to lawyer over your questions, so hopefully we'll be all good!

 

It's pretty clear the devs aren't giving us a new survivability based cooldown. Taking our existing H2F "cooldowns" off global so they actually work like real cooldowns, however, I feel is something they might consider.

 

Someone mentioned "OMG bubble, [off GCD Force Potency, Force Mend, Medpack], Benevolence way OP." I'm not so sure. Remember, we have nothing for actual mitigation (lolbarrier aside) so when balancing incoming damage vs. incoming healing, we effectively receive much less healing than other classes. The green numbers will seem really high, but since we have no mitigation and we continue to take damage, those green numbers disappear very quickly. 20-25k burst healing like that is barely offsetting one shot for certain PVE fights and will probably only last a couple seconds in PVP as we're that squishy. That same 20-25k healing applied to us is probably equivalent to 30-35k on other classes (when viewed through our mitigation).

 

Also Bioware must not view H2F as too OP because they are changing one of guardians' CDs (Focused Defense) to do exactly that LOLOL. Also they can do something similar to the OMGH2FoffGCD now with Enure+medpack (after 2.7 add Focused Defense for trolol) and it doesn't seem to be a big deal.

[Aerilas]

1st page

 

 

DRAFT QUESTIONS FOR COMMENTS

 

This part of the post will be updated regularly with comments from the community

 

 

Survivability

 

The developers stated in the Sorcerer answers that healing is intended to make up a significant part of Sage survivability and the suggestion of providing defensive cooldowns besides Force Mend and Force Barrier were rejected outright. The community believes that Sage survivability suffers from a number of inherent problems with its defensive tools.

 

In order to use Force Armor or Force Mend on yourself, you need to use a global cooldown. And in the case of Force Armor use 5%-10% of your resources. That's simply an unacceptable trade off in most PvE situations. In Nightmare content (as we saw in TFB & S&V), there are very tight enrage timers which require maximum dps to meet. There is also a lot of "random" damage (where a raid member is targeted to take damage) and a lot of instances where there is significant AOE damage to the entire raid. In many of these cases, Sages take more damage than other classes simply because the damage is mitigated by armor and Sages have the worst armor.

 

The actual question

 

Are the developers satisfied with Sage/Sorcerer survivability in all play environments? Are there any plans to improve our current survival tools? For example, by perhaps by providing a means with which to move our tools (Force Armor, Force Mend, etc.) off the GCD when cast on yourself?

 

Seer Spec Issues

 

Currently, Sage healers have a number of issues that affect their play. First, Sages are nearly 100% reliant on casted healing abilities. Our only instant healing abilities is Force Armor and Rejuvenate. Force Armor has a long lockout and Rejuvenate is a small heal mostly used to proc Conveyance. Salvation can be cast instantly, but it requires using Healing Trance (and usually Rejuvenate) as a set-up.

 

In PvP, this causes great issues, because while Sage healers are capable of putting up great numbers because of Salvation spamming, under heavy pressure a static AoE heal might not be ideal in such a frenetic environment in actually supporting the team.

 

The Noble Sacrifice/Consumption mechanic is really unique, and the community agrees that in PvE at least it provides Seer/Corruption with a sensible mechanic for restoring Force. In PvP, this mechanic presents very serious problems. Sage healers are one of the priority targets for being focused and in that situation purposefully sacrificing your health to maintain force is not possible. This is exacerbated by the issue of Sage healers being reliant on casts. This puts the Sage in the unenviable situation of having to stay still to restore health and Force.

 

Also, while Benevolence has its uses in emergency situations and off healing as a DPS, for Seer Sages this ability is very underwhelming and rarely used. In your 2.0 blog you mentioned that the ability is to be used when Force efficiency is not a concern. Unfortunately, in most emergencies efficiency is a concern as wasteful rotations will only lead to a prolonged emergency.

 

Finally, certain set bonuses are imbalanced between PvE and PvP. For example, the sage healer is incentivized to get the PvE mystic 2 piece, which is non-ideal but doable in the presence of bolster.

 

The actual question

 

Are the developers considering any changes to Seer spec in light of these or any other issues?

 

Sage as Jedi

 

While the majority of these class representative questions, both Sages and other classes, have been about balance issues, the Sage community has a unique concern shared in some respects with our mirror class, the Sorcerer but in some ways unique to the Sage class. Put bluntly, the class has some visual and mechanical issues that make it feel more like a traditional mage class instead of a Jedi Knight. There are two main reasons for this: (1) We don’t use our lightsaber for anything; (2) Several animations lack the feeling of power. Discussing those in turn.

 

Sages and Sorcerers are force using classes and as such have the lightsaber as a weapon proficiency. In addition, our force free attack Saber Strike is a melee attack. The game mechanics, however, go out of their way to ensure that players have no incentive to use their lightsaber for any reason. Sages have only two weapon attacks and those attacks do not benefit from our main stat Willpower. This results in the unique situation of Sages (and Sorcerers) being the only class that does not use their main weapon for anything save a stat boost. This is directly LORE breaking as even the archetypal Sage and Sorcerer, Yoda and Palpatine were gifted melee combatants.

 

The second issue is with respect to certain animations of the Sage specifically. With the understanding that to mirror the consular and inquisitor classes, certain design choices had to be made, nevertheless many members of the Sage community question the appropriateness of two signature moves of the consular, Project and Telekinetic Throw. It is questionable whether Jedi should be using the force in this manner from a LORE perspective. Yoda tells us, “A Jedi uses the force for knowledge and defense, never to attack.” And the only force users in the movies to use telekinesis to throw items as an attack are the Sith: Darth Vader (in Ep.V) and Darth Sidious (In Ep.3) Also, some players simply consider TK Throw particularly to be a lackluster animation that lacks the coolness factor of lightning on the Sith side – and nowhere in six movies or a host of licensed games, has debris throwing been a signature jedi move.

 

The actual question

 

Will the developer do anything to ameliorate these issues? Examples include allowing Willpower to affect melee attacks; providing additional worthwhile lightsaber attacks; and offering alternate animations via the Cartel Market or otherwise (Marketing take note! ).

 

Ah thanks mate I checked the top of the first page but when I didn't see it there I didn't look further down the page.

 

Having read this now, a few things at Mister-Alan:rak_04: :

 

-Are you going to give the build-up to the actual question to Bioware aswell? They are very well written and completely explain the question towards Bioware (Which they would not understand at all without the explanation)

 

-In the visual question, you mention Sages not being like a Jedi Knight. Don't you mean Jedi Consular?

 

-In visual question aswell you mention Willpower not affecting our Melee attacks (which we don't use). Isn't it the same for Shadows? I'm not sure about it myself. But afaik their melee attacks such as Double Strike, Spinning Strike and Shadow Strike are Strength affected themselves? I know I got Strength datacrons for that reason on my Shadow/Assassin.

[Master-Nala]

-Are you going to give the build-up to the actual question to Bioware aswell? They are very well written and completely explain the question towards Bioware (Which they would not understand at all without the explanation)

 

Yes, I took the format from Xinika's Assassin questions which I liked very much.

 

-In the visual question, you mention Sages not being like a Jedi Knight. Don't you mean Jedi Consular?

 

In the movies, there are only Jedi Knights. I wasn't referring to the class, but the LORE. Our Jedi are called "consulars" to distinguish them from the class with the same name, but in the Star Wars universe they are Jedi Knights (and later Masters).

 

-In visual question aswell you mention Willpower not affecting our Melee attacks (which we don't use). Isn't it the same for Shadows? I'm not sure about it myself. But afaik their melee attacks such as Double Strike, Spinning Strike and Shadow Strike are Strength affected themselves? I know I got Strength datacrons for that reason on my Shadow/Assassin.

 

When you start as a Consular, Willpower affects your melee attacks. Unlike EVERY other class, when you select Sage, that is TAKEN AWAY. Willpower always improves Shadow melee damage. For Sages, only Strength does.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

EDIT: Made some minor wordsmithing edits to the OP folks. Nothing substantive. I am working on the survivability question, stay tuned.

Edited March 30, 2014 by Master-Nala

[Ycoga]

Looking good Nala.

 

Is it worth adding in the silly situation of using NobleSac to get some Force power back, and then immediately spending some Force to heal up the NobleSac damage? Or, worse: use your emergency heal. Means that you end up health and balance neutral. Neither really benefits; you merely stay alive longer - a matter of seconds, usually.

Edited March 30, 2014 by Ycoga

[Aerilas]

Yes, I took the format from Xinika's Assassin questions which I liked very much.

 

 

 

In the movies, there are only Jedi Knights. I wasn't referring to the class, but the LORE. Our Jedi are called "consulars" to distinguish them from the class with the same name, but in the Star Wars universe they are Jedi Knights (and later Masters).

 

 

 

When you start as a Consular, Willpower affects your melee attacks. Unlike EVERY other class, when you select Sage, that is TAKEN AWAY. Willpower always improves Shadow melee damage. For Sages, only Strength does.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

EDIT: Made some minor wordsmithing edits to the OP folks. Nothing substantive. I am working on the survivability question, stay tuned.

 

Thanks for the answers

[Dyvim]

Couple of tiny points on the Appearance question...actually ALL the sith threw junk in the movies, more than they did any other ranged attack, including lightning....Vader of course...Dooku vs. Yoda, Maul threw junk to open a door on Naboo, and of course Sidious. Junk throwing is a hallmark of the sith. That is the problem...mirroring the classes is one thing, but then basing the jedi class, appearance wise, on junk throwing....on top of the mirrored functionally (direct damage) ...has always been a sticking point. Edited March 30, 2014 by Dyvim

[Master-Nala]

Couple of tiny points on the Appearance question...actually ALL the sith threw junk in the movies, more than they did any other ranged attack, including lightning....Vader of course...Dooku vs. Yoda, Maul threw junk to open a door on Naboo, and of course Sidious. Junk throwing is a hallmark of the sith. That is the problem...mirroring the classes is one thing, but then basing the jedi class, appearance wise, on junk throwing....on top of the mirrored functionally (direct damage) ...has always been a sticking point.

 

I'll give you Darth Tyranus, but Maul was just opening the door man!

[FrumpytheClown]

Couple of tiny points on the Appearance question...actually ALL the sith threw junk in the movies, more than they did any other ranged attack, including lightning....Vader of course...Dooku vs. Yoda, Maul threw junk to open a door on Naboo, and of course Sidious. Junk throwing is a hallmark of the sith. That is the problem...mirroring the classes is one thing, but then basing the jedi class, appearance wise, on junk throwing....on top of the mirrored functionally (direct damage) ...has always been a sticking point.

 

I have to agree. More than once we can see that the basis for class is very inaccurate. Darth Maul never throws lightning, yet he is the inspiration for Assassins. Why aren't Assassins an advanced class of the Warrior? Warriors are the melee class, just like Maul. Number of sabers or type should be something speced into on your skill tree, not class based.

Back to the topic. Let's talk about how Sorcerer abilities are the easiest to shut down, that our CCs are the weakest. Sages are different than Sorcerers, so how about talking about mirroring the two classes better also?

[AdrianDmitruk]

A slight modification to the Seer Spec question lead-up, perhaps?

 

Also, while Benevolence has its uses in emergency situations and off healing as a DPS, for Seer Sages this ability is very underwhelming and rarely used, usually as a last resort under multiple interrupt spam. In your 2.0 blog you mentioned that the ability is to be used when Force efficiency is not a concern. Unfortunately, in most emergencies efficiency is a concern as wasteful rotations will only lead to a prolonged emergency.

 

I would personally remind the devs that once upon of time we had the option to use a far more Force-efficient heal with the same cast time, and that gave us a chance to actually get the better heal off. Two competent DPS on you each with around 4-6 interrupts of various kinds completely locks us down, even when we are receiving peels.

[MusicRider]

This isn't a single fight, single spike damage issue. Nor is it an issue of only spike damage. As has been discussed on numerous threads/posts, almost every boss fight in Nightmare has either (i) significant damage to a randomly targeted OPs member or (ii) AOE/raid-wide damage to the entire raid. In many cases, fights have both. Particularly troublesome is that often the AOE/raid-wide damage is during burn phases. Sages/Sorcs have no way to minimize this damage (or even recover from without stopping dps). Every other class can reduce this damage thereby increasing their survivability. If need be, I can go find some of the older posts that lay out all of these situations in TFB/S&V and add in the DF (at least with current boss abilities), but one or both exist on pretty much every fight. In some cases, the issue is exacerbated by the fact that Sages/Sorcs have lower armor and therefore take more damage to begin with. In others its simply the fact that other classes can mitigate a portion of the damage with a DCD while a Sage/Sorc cannot without stopping dps.

 

The simple issue is that Sages/Sorcs take more damage on fights than other classes. In progression PvE settings, where enrage timers/survival are critical, that issue has not been addressed by Bioware (H2F is not a solution). If a sage/sorc takes more damage but doesn't offer more damage/utility to an OP, there is little reason to bring a sage/sorc over other classes. Why stress the OP/rely on RNG when going for world/server firsts when other classes can offer the same dps with higher survival. I'm fine with tweaking the question (my original draft was very focused on PvE, because that is where my prime concern on survivability lies and because I believe they responded previously, like it or not, on the PvP side). However, I believe the question as currently posed will force Bioware to at least respond to the concern in the PvE context because the question specifically discusses PvE b/c that is the part of the issue that Bioware has not yet addressed.

 

IMO this will be more difficult to change, if it will be changed at all, given that by design sages are meant to be the class that takes the most damage... Increasing their damage for "high risk-high gain", enhancing their utility, giving some mechanism to avoid one or two shot deaths seems a more viable angle, although I doubt something drastic would be made. Asking to be taking less damage overall is something that IMHO will never change as their design is exactlty that, glass cannons.

[MusicRider]

Someone mentioned "OMG bubble, [off GCD Force Potency, Force Mend, Medpack], Benevolence way OP." I'm not so sure. Remember, we have nothing for actual mitigation (lolbarrier aside) so when balancing incoming damage vs. incoming healing, we effectively receive much less healing than other classes. The green numbers will seem really high, but since we have no mitigation and we continue to take damage, those green numbers disappear very quickly. 20-25k burst healing like that is barely offsetting one shot for certain PVE fights and will probably only last a couple seconds in PVP as we're that squishy. That same 20-25k healing applied to us is probably equivalent to 30-35k on other classes (when viewed through our mitigation).

 

Firstly I didn't put any form of dramatic way, so "OMG" and "way OP" are your addons. I simply raised an issue in my eyes that occurs for pvp if everything is taken off-gcd (and didn't mention anything about pve); that of being able to literally h2f from zero health in a single gcd without being able to do anything to counter it. I am sorry but I disagree with you, I have never taken 25k damage in a gcd unless I am being focussed by 2-3 burst specs... but the same would apply for any other class that is being caught in such situation cause simply between dps classes when viewed through pure mitigation there is not a 30% difference... your numbers are over exaggerated.

 

As a last question, can you imagine team ranked with a tank, a dedicated healer (might not even be needed) and two sages that can get 3 lifes easily, while having 10k unpenalized healing on demand every 30s?

Edited March 31, 2014 by MusicRider

[Chemic_al]

Firstly I didn't put any form of dramatic way, so "OMG" and "way OP" are your addons. I simply raised an issue in my eyes that occurs for pvp if everything is taken off-gcd (and didn't mention anything about pve); that of being able to literally h2f from zero health in a single gcd without being able to do anything to counter it. I am sorry but I disagree with you, I have never taken 25k damage in a gcd unless I am being focussed by 2-3 burst specs... but the same would apply for any other class that is being caught in such situation cause simply between dps classes when viewed through pure mitigation there is not a 30% difference... your numbers are over exaggerated.

 

As a last question, can you imagine team ranked with a tank, a dedicated healer (might not even be needed) and two sages that can get 3 lifes easily, while having 10k unpenalized healing on demand every 30s?

 

Except vvery other class can do something about being focused by 3 dps - aoe mez (knight/warrior, powertech/vanguard, scoundrel/operative), stealth (assassin/shadow, operative, scoundrel), 360 knockback with snare/root (mercenary/commando, sniper,/gunslinger) except... sorc/sage - oh wait you can blow your 3 minute defensive for 10s of breathing room before you get blown up. That's before you even get into the realms of passive mitigation, DR talents etc, again which sorcs/sages sorely lack. Heck can't even speed away when dps specced, and I think we're still paying too high a price for it in 2.7, cf Hold the Line/Hydraulic Overrides, and how much free stuff snipers/slingers get.

 

Shroud should be given to sorcs/sages.... and yes they need self-heal off GCD at the very minimum.

 

Oh and with regards to PVE, there were plenty of bosses that could one shot sorcs with random stuff that classes like snipers lolled through.

Edited March 31, 2014 by Chemic_al

[AlrikFassbauer]

If the devs envision us as mages or priests, then they need to actually give us the tools of mages or priests.

 

This is why I semetimes tend to believe that the whole clkass design is somewhat broken.

 

Our bubbles can't actually reflect damage

 

Sages can deflect / reflect damage with their light sabre - but only occationally. When playing PvP with my low-level Sages I see that only once per 5 fights or so.

I still have no idea what causes it to be used, and when not.

I had once been able to show myself that this deflect / reflect mechanism does work when facing an big robot (one of those three-legged droids), but I don't remember anymore where this was, unfortunately.

But it exists, in principle.

 

Hm, buffing it would add quite a lot of their survivability, I think.

 

And if sorc healers need to LOS--which the devs specifically mentioned we should be doing in H2F/Make them Pay--for whatever reason, they can't H2F their team.

 

Which is especially bad because most OP end fights take place in something resembling an open Arena - no obstacles at all involved (Scum & Villany, for example, it even contains an actual Arena).

 

In these Arena-like boss fights, there just is no LOS. Period.

 

The only boss fight I know hagving LOS is the world boss on Coruscant, there, you can actually hige between some speeders. But apart from that, no bigger boss ever had obstacles for LOSsing around. Everything is an open Arena.

 

And that to a class which gains most of its survivability (due to the lack of armot) from LOS.

 

Edit : And for the KDY FP they even REMOVED the ability to hide from the end boss ... (PTS or Live Patch Notes, I forgot where I had been reading that ...)

 

 

In the movies, there are only Jedi Knights. I wasn't referring to the class, but the LORE. Our Jedi are called "consulars" to distinguish them from the class with the same name, but in the Star Wars universe they are Jedi Knights (and later Masters).

 

There is ONE Jedi which could truly be considered a Consular : There is a storsy in The Clone Wars in which Ahsoka meets an elderly, slow-.walking Jedi in an criminal investigation story.

 

Edit : It's that "Lightsabre Lost" story : http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lightsaber_Lost

 

Tera Sinube http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tera_Sinube

 

That's the only *true* Consular I could think of. Apart from Yocasta Nu.

Edited March 31, 2014 by AlrikFassbauer

[Darth_Dreselus]

Sages can deflect / reflect damage with their light sabre - but only occationally. When playing PvP with my low-level Sages I see that only once per 5 fights or so.

I still have no idea what causes it to be used, and when not.

 

Deflecting (and parrying) is based on Defense chance. Consulars get additional 5% for a base of 10% to make up for their low armour (IKR). It furthermore only applies to Ranged and Melee attacks and is in turn diminished by the opponents' accuracy. Essentially If you have 10% defense and the enemy has additional 5% accuracy over base, you essentially only have 5% defense. Furthermore, you will mostly see it in lowbie as many specs do not yet have accuracy boosts and use their base attack more than capped characters. Base attacks only have 90% innate accuracy (resulting in a 80% chance to hit you without any boosts).

 

It's a tanking stat though so only useful for tank Shadows, Sages are stuck at 10% without external boosts like Transcendence.

Edited March 31, 2014 by Darth_Dreselus

[MusicRider]

Except vvery other class can do something about being focused by 3 dps - aoe mez (knight/warrior, powertech/vanguard, scoundrel/operative), stealth (assassin/shadow, operative, scoundrel), 360 knockback with snare/root (mercenary/commando, sniper,/gunslinger) except... sorc/sage - oh wait you can blow your 3 minute defensive for 10s of breathing room before you get blown up. That's before you even get into the realms of passive mitigation, DR talents etc, again which sorcs/sages sorely lack. Heck can't even speed away when dps specced, and I think we're still paying too high a price for it in 2.7, cf Hold the Line/Hydraulic Overrides, and how much free stuff snipers/slingers get.

 

Shroud should be given to sorcs/sages.... and yes they need self-heal off GCD at the very minimum.

 

Oh and with regards to PVE, there were plenty of bosses that could one shot sorcs with random stuff that classes like snipers lolled through.

 

Well I am glad that from a pvp persspective you recognise that sages have barrier, which is valuable... in fact through it they can last much longer than slingers. After 2.7 you wil be able to speed away. And as balance the price is not really much to be honest, I have been playing a 7/3/full balance spec and it is not much significant difference in force management (tk actually pays more but then again balance in general is better for ranked).

 

But I am being misunderstood here I think. I think that one of the two (mend or bubble only when self-casted) should be taken off the gcd as they are self-heals, i.e. a dcd. I am just raising a potential concern from pvp point of view when both are taken off the gcd.... there will leave a fraction of a sec to finish off a sage before he comes back with a full health bar again. For improvements in pve, you got to think whether a proactive measure (bubble) is better against a reactive one (mend). Of course ideally from a pve point of view, both would be nice, but where does this leave pvp balance?

 

Regarding your last comment about one-shot deaths, I fail to see how a reactive mechanism such as mend even if off gcd will save you. Again, if bubble is able to save you from the one-shot death then IMO it is worth spending 1 gcd to apply it to yourself. Of course there are other ways to resolve one-shot deaths, like give to sages' armor a "magical" damage reduction on damage>20k, or add to the drop aggro ability damage reduction of the next 1-2 attacks, which can also be used in pvp without breaking things other than making opponents think with which ability to hit you with. This would be a weaker version of shroud or the equivalent mid-tree skill of mandos except it works with all damage types and is baseline.

[AlrikFassbauer]

Thank you. I didnt know the exact mechanics.

 

When you start as a Consular, Willpower affects your melee attacks. Unlike EVERY other class, when you select Sage, that is TAKEN AWAY. Willpower always improves Shadow melee damage. For Sages, only Strength does.

 

Is this true for Sorcs as well ? Because otherwise I'd bluntly believe this to be a bug.

 

... Which makes me wonder how a Sage with nothing but Strength would work ...

 

But anyway, if this unique to that class, then this is another reson for me to believe that the overall sheer design for this class is broken.

 

Looking good Nala.

 

Is it worth adding in the silly situation of using NobleSac to get some Force power back, and then immediately spending some Force to heal up the NobleSac damage? Or, worse: use your emergency heal. Means that you end up health and balance neutral. Neither really benefits; you merely stay alive longer - a matter of seconds, usually.

 

I noticed that, too. In principle, this is nothing but an vicious circle.

 

I have to agree. More than once we can see that the basis for class is very inaccurate. Darth Maul never throws lightning, yet he is the inspiration for Assassins. Why aren't Assassins an advanced class of the Warrior? Warriors are the melee class, just like Maul. Number of sabers or type should be something speced into on your skill tree, not class based.

 

I agree to that. Darth Maul is THE Warrior.

Edited March 31, 2014 by AlrikFassbauer

[MusicRider]

Thank you. I didnt know the exact mechanics.

Is this true for Sorcs as well ? Because otherwise I'd bluntly believe this to be a bug.

Of course it is. They are mirror classes of each other with just different animations and stories. WP does not affect melee attacks for sages cause they are ranged class. This was a bad decision IMO as they a) break the lore, b) leaves sages without an auto-attack, although the auto-attack should be ranged for them.

[Gyronamics]

Except vvery other class can do something about being focused by 3 dps - aoe mez (knight/warrior, powertech/vanguard, scoundrel/operative), stealth (assassin/shadow, operative, scoundrel), 360 knockback with snare/root (mercenary/commando, sniper,/gunslinger) except... sorc/sage - oh wait you can blow your 3 minute defensive for 10s of breathing room before you get blown up. That's before you even get into the realms of passive mitigation, DR talents etc, again which sorcs/sages sorely lack. Heck can't even speed away when dps specced, and I think we're still paying too high a price for it in 2.7, cf Hold the Line/Hydraulic Overrides, and how much free stuff snipers/slingers get.

 

Why don't you know about the knockback which roots in Lightning, a stun bubble again in Lightning and in 2.7 we get immunity to roots and slows when we force speed which is a definite boost to DPS kiting and escaping. If you've played a bounty hunter you'll know that resistance to roots means you can dodge leaps from knights when you see it coming. The only reason a leap lands is because it roots you first, with no root the melee lands behind you if you keep moving.

 

As for the 10s Bubble you need to keep up to date on old news, 2.7 gives us an absorb shield after it ends which is approximately 75% of your max health for 5-6 seconds. On top of that you become immune to interrupts for that time. In practice it needs a huge team focus to kill someone through that absorb shield before it ends.

 

Nothing is better than a sorc at kiting, self healing and when it comes to CC no other class can snare/root/stun as much.

 

The idea seems to be that sorcs get self healing, absorbing and kiting abilities as the defensive side instead of yet another cloned defence of another class which doesn't kite, self heal or absorb damage.

 

Should they be off the GCD? Debatable.

Edited March 31, 2014 by Gyronamics

[Gnimish]

My sorc is a lowbie so i my opinion might not count. But one thing i find annoying is sorc/sage is the only ranged class with a melee auto attack. Just find it annoying sometimes

[Vairden]

My sorc is a lowbie so i my opinion might not count. But one thing i find annoying is sorc/sage is the only ranged class with a melee auto attack. Just find it annoying sometimes

 

Hi Gnimish. By default, your auto-attack is whatever you have in the "1" slot of your action bar. If you leave the lightsaber attack in that slot, it will be your auto-attack. However, if you place disturbance, for example, in that "1" slot, then disturbance will become your auto-attack. I hope that helps.

[AdrianDmitruk]

Why don't you know about the knockback which roots in Lightning, a stun bubble again in Lightning and in 2.7 we get immunity to roots and slows when we force speed which is a definite boost to DPS kiting and escaping. If you've played a bounty hunter you'll know that resistance to roots means you can dodge leaps from knights when you see it coming. The only reason a leap lands is because it roots you first, with no root the melee lands behind you if you keep moving.

1g, self healing and when it comes to CC no other class can snare/root/stun as much.

 

I need to make a correction here. If you try to sprint away from an inbound leap, you WILL get rubberbanded back. It won't root you, but it will rubberband you. To avoid the rubberbanding, you have to wait until the leap actually lands before sprinting.

 

I've had Fadeout since I returned to the game around 1.7, I know of what I speak.

[Master-Nala]

A focused question IMO is clearer and will get an answer that is more descriptive regardless of whether it contains what we want to hear. It is true that if the dps/hps of a class is similar to another which has better survivability and possibly utility then why bring the inferior class?.

 

I have been wrestling with the Survivability question. In an earlier draft, I had a statement similar to the highlighted. The problem is this, that's a comparison. And that's what led to the H2F comment in the first place.

 

The question, as I see it, is that the community feels that Sage survival tools are lacking in all play environments. The PvE problem is specific to high level raiding, but that's not where all the complaints flow from. Ultimately, I get the impression that the Sage/Sorcerer community just isn't happy being a glass without enough cannon. I suppose I could state it like that, but I can imagine the answer I'll get.