The Assassin Questions

[DarthSpekulatius]

I really agree with you on the point of the questions, but you never get anywhere asking the soft questions. Right now, the devs can come back and say "1 - Infiltration works in PvP, use it (1 viable spec...)", "2 - 'On Average' we're fine" and "3 - Nope".

 

they already stated that we aren't fine and that we can expect to see improvements to get at least one competitive DPSspec also their Attitude when looking at recent buffs to other classes can only be interpreted that they want every specialization of every class to be Balanced closely enough that there's no room for prejudices.

 

I'm quite optimistic even though my snipes at the Devs past mistakes might not sound like it.

Edited April 17, 2014 by DarthSpekulatius

[a-n-i-k-i]

What you said.

 

Devs ignored everything since 2012 for PvE dps assassin, and we don't know why they acknowledged it two weeks ago.

Normally every top parser feel the same way, that's why they're at the top .

I understand what you say with outliers in bosses but these are game breaking issues, if you want to do the right analogy take the min parses (<3300dps), I can provide you with that '^^.

 

About you Torparse idea, it can be great but there is a problem, there is not enough shadow/assassin samples ;(.

Shadows/assassin parses showed on Torparse are not all outliers. (So not enough metrics < feeling LOL.)

I got a similar idea, but it was to do a "X parses in a row leaderboards" to see gap, min, max, avg of each class.

But as a pure single target class (even more with Deception), it's too obvious we got a problem when you see a 1M dummy parse.

 

About the Devs, I anticipate what they'll think about a complaint of Force Regen => QoL, so they'll just give us more Force. (Because they won't see your Maths in the question ^^, perhaps they'll even think it's a feeling complaint )

When you talk about 3 Saber Strike in a row, I think you mix with Madness, in Deception it doesn't happen.

 

About Madness/Balance, even if I like to play it, I don't care, they'll hardly do worse than 2.0 changes.

 

How do you imagine the "new" Deception rotation if they'd buff our dps in a Force Regen perspective ?

The result, that's what I fear.

[brainpsyk]

The problem with TorParse right now is we don't know where shadows stand, because we only see the top parses, and we can't tell if those are outliers for the class, or standards for a class. Are we lower? Yes, but we might be 1 DPS off the top 50, and have 90% of us there. (quite the exaggeration). But a series of box plots by spec by boss will show us exactly where we, and everyone else is. It will be dependent on who uploads, but every class will have that. And, as more people upload their parses, where each class stands will get more accurate.

 

What I'm hoping for with this is a differentiation of skill vs RNG. Right now, if a parse is low, did you miss a proc (e.g. skill because you delayed Mind Crush) or was it because you misses Force Regen proc (*zero* skill)? On my Commando, I knew that if I didn't get a CoF proc after a certain amount of time, I'd have to use Hammer Shot. I know on my Shadow that if I don't get a MC proc, I have to saber strike an extra time. But what we can't tell right now is that if I don't get a MC proc, why do I have to Saber strike twice, or 3 times? What if it happens more than once in a fight?

 

I'd like to see standard Force Regen and Thrash/Saber Strike proc more than just MC in Madness. (I have to wait on Deception while I rework my numbers). That will take the boring out of the rotation, and re-introduce skill, as watching 2 dots is rather boring, and doesn't inject much skill in the equation.

[sithBracer]

I'm willing to bet when they buff Assassins they wont even touch deception. They will buff madness in PvE and call that our PvE spec and Deception our PvP spec.

 

We're either going to get a nerf, or a super buff which will lead to a super duper nerf afterwards. I am honestly thinking the former rather than the latter. This is BWs pattern, always has been it seems. We should just accept it and move on. Hopefully the nerf won't be too much.

[ReiverBH]

I'd suggest instant cast for Crushing Darkness for Madness spec. Bump in dps without waiting for proc to add to a flow in rotation. Currently it contributes to the clunky feel as you hack for proc.

[Aelanis]

We're either going to get a nerf, or a super buff which will lead to a super duper nerf afterwards. I am honestly thinking the former rather than the latter. This is BWs pattern, always has been it seems. We should just accept it and move on. Hopefully the nerf won't be too much.

 

They've actually recently done pretty well (sans Operative buffs, but then again, maybe they intend to leave them up there in terms of DPS). In terms of mean mitigation before cooldowns, the tanks are amazingly well balanced, and they just nerfed Scoundrel healers a bit (or a lot, depending on how you look at it). The changes they have made since 2.5 have not been too heavy handed, and have worked out pretty well, for the most part.

[sithBracer]

They've actually recently done pretty well (sans Operative buffs, but then again, maybe they intend to leave them up there in terms of DPS). In terms of mean mitigation before cooldowns, the tanks are amazingly well balanced, and they just nerfed Scoundrel healers a bit (or a lot, depending on how you look at it). The changes they have made since 2.5 have not been too heavy handed, and have worked out pretty well, for the most part.

 

pretty well? They wrecked the smash spec, they destroyed the entire operative class, the new warzone is horrible, they gave juggs an ungodly OP move, they made a horrible new wz (especially for us), they made ranged overpowered and they gave us 14k mauls. This is a good job?

 

And for what was this all for? To try to balance ranked arenas (even though a very tiny percentage of people play them) at the cost of ruining regs. Well? Are arenas any different? Aside from juggs being the new FOTM, not really. Ranged are still "meh" in arenas (except madness sorc, but they were viable before) while everything else is the same.

 

Regs? Well, it hasn't been fun being an assassin in regs lately. The new huttball wz doesn't go with out play style at all, it is mostly a target practice zone for ranged classes. With ranged becoming stronger (and dps in general becoming stronger), we are worse than ever in mid. The only thing we had going for us is that we were good at picking off enemies and stealthing nodes. Well, that is gone too, thanks to the juggs new "I win" button. The only place that suits us now, is node guarding ... yay.

 

But guess what; None of this matters to BW, because they don't care about regs. They only care about ranked arenas and how well roudy's team is doing. And as bad as we are in warzones, we are actually pretty decent in arena's, while other classes (like snipers and tk/hybrid sorcs for example) are amazing in warzones, and just ok in arenas (if even viable).

 

So in short, yes we will probably get a nerf, and snipers will get another buff. Either the maul crit will be lowered, low slash will be changed from a mezz to something else, or they will increase the randomness of the duplicity proc or make managing force worse.

 

And as for PvE. For 7 iterations we have had problems with dps. We have no decent PvE dps spec and so far ... nothing. Many people talked about changes to madness and what did BW do? They buffed voltic slash a bit ... and they buffed snipers (as if they needed it) of course. I doubt they will do anything with this class this year and will probably ruin it more in the next expansion.

Edited April 18, 2014 by sithBracer

[Aelanis]

pretty well? They wrecked the smash spec, they destroyed the entire operative class, the new warzone is horrible, they gave juggs an ungodly OP move, they made a horrible new wz (especially for us), they made ranged overpowered and they gave us 14k mauls. This is a good job?

 

And for what was this all for? To try to balance ranked arenas (even though a very tiny percentage of people play them) at the cost of ruining regs. Well? Are arenas any different? Aside from juggs being the new FOTM, not really. Ranged are still "meh" in arenas (except madness sorc, but they were viable before) while everything else is the same.

 

Regs? Well, it hasn't been fun being an assassin in regs lately. The new huttball wz doesn't go with out play style at all, it is mostly a target practice zone for ranged classes. With ranged becoming stronger (and dps in general becoming stronger), we are worse than ever in mid. The only thing we had going for us is that we were good at picking off enemies and stealthing nodes. Well, that is gone too, thanks to the juggs new "I win" button. The only place that suits us now, is node guarding ... yay.

 

But guess what; None of this matters to BW, because they don't care about regs. They only care about ranked arenas and how well roudy's team is doing. And as bad as we are in warzones, we are actually pretty decent in arena's, while other classes (like snipers and tk/hybrid sorcs for example) are amazing in warzones, and just ok in arenas (if even viable).

 

So in short, yes we will probably get a nerf, and snipers will get another buff. Either the maul crit will be lowered, low slash will be changed from a mezz to something else, or they will increase the randomness of the duplicity proc or make managing force worse.

 

And as for PvE. For 7 iterations we have had problems with dps. We have no decent PvE dps spec and so far ... nothing. Many people talked about changes to madness and what did BW do? They buffed voltic slash a bit ... and they buffed snipers (as if they needed it) of course. I doubt they will do anything with this class this year and will probably ruin it more in the next expansion.

 

You're blatantly ignoring the PVE changes they've made to every other class. They've nerfed Snipers pretty hardcore (does R.I.P. Orbital Strike sound familiar?) which put them in line with most of the other classes, and even a bit behind on AOE damage, and nothing they've done yet as buffs have made up for that. They've moved Vengeance, Arsenal, Madness and Lightning further away from RNG issues, making them more competitive, and while they overdid it a bit on Operatives, they made Concealment very competitive in PVE. PVE tank balance is, like I said, phenomenal, minus the defensive cooldown discrepancy. Healer balance is hard to judge, but each spec is certainly viable in all PVE content. I'm not saying they did perfect, but saying they've totally screwed everything up for the last X patches is being over-dramatic.

 

Now yes, they messed Rage up pretty badly for PVP, but destroyed the entire Operative class? You're grossly over-exaggerating if you think the loss of the infinite Surgical Probe or endless rolling or the initial knockdown on Hidden Strike destroyed the class. Juggs now have an ability (on a 2 minute cooldown) that makes them hard to kill? Focus them down properly and they'll die like any other dps class, it's made them more competitive. You say they made a horrible new warzone, but aside from it favoring ranged classes, I've yet to hear anything that bad about it. You just sound like you don't like it, and don't like the advantage ranged classes have always had over melee classes. That, or you're running around outside of stealth. Now, nerfing Assassins? There's not a lot to nerf.

 

As for the 14k Maul, that's a bit of an anomaly, with very, very good circumstances in benefit of the attacking Assassin, and so good for them: the stars aligned for them and they took advantage of it. And with respect to ranked WZs, especially with wins/losses not counting right now, I've seen more ranked PVP going on on my server than ever before (and mine's a PVE server). It's not exactly a small amount of people who've been playing ranked warzones, and they've hardly ruined regular warzones.

 

P.S. If you were hanging out in mid as an Assassin, you weren't really doing your job in the first place, such as pressuring enemy healers and finishing off stragglers, the things we're best at.

[sithBracer]

You're blatantly ignoring the PVE changes they've made to every other class. They've nerfed Snipers pretty hardcore (does R.I.P. Orbital Strike sound familiar?) which put them in line with most of the other classes, and even a bit behind on AOE damage, and nothing they've done yet as buffs have made up for that. They've moved Vengeance, Arsenal, Madness and Lightning further away from RNG issues, making them more competitive, and while they overdid it a bit on Operatives, they made Concealment very competitive in PVE. PVE tank balance is, like I said, phenomenal, minus the defensive cooldown discrepancy. Healer balance is hard to judge, but each spec is certainly viable in all PVE content. I'm not saying they did perfect, but saying they've totally screwed everything up for the last X patches is being over-dramatic.

 

Vengeance had few issues in PvE, arsenal while not there yet was still better than any assassin dps spec. And forget arsenal, pyro does an insane amount of damage and has for a while. Concealment was made viable in 2.6, not 2.7. All of these specs were perfectly viable in 2.6 and did not need any buffing. And please tell me you aren't complaining about PvE sniper ... They parse as some of the highest dps in PvE.

 

Now yes, they messed Rage up pretty badly for PVP, but destroyed the entire Operative class? You're grossly over-exaggerating if you think the loss of the infinite Surgical Probe or endless rolling or the initial knockdown on Hidden Strike destroyed the class. Juggs now have an ability (on a 2 minute cooldown) that makes them hard to kill? Focus them down properly and they'll die like any other dps class, it's made them more competitive. You say they made a horrible new warzone, but aside from it favoring ranged classes, I've yet to hear anything that bad about it. You just sound like you don't like it, and don't like the advantage ranged classes have always had over melee classes. That, or you're running around outside of stealth. Now, nerfing Assassins? There's not a lot to nerf.

 

The loss of surgical precision is big because they lost one of their main survivability tools and it was never properly replaced (whether it was too much survivability or not is another story). Right now if we dps even a guarded op we can pretty quickly take them down. It shouldn't be that way. And yes, the loss of the knockdown is huge. Against derps it doesn't matter, but players with quick reflexes will easily counter before ops can do their big damaging opener. More competitive? That's putting it a little lightly don't you think? Fixing our shroud would make us a little more competitive (just got hit through it, and no it wasn't white damage), allowing them to either stay dps free for 30 seconds, or heal them for an average of 30k, passively and can be activated while stunned is a little more than "more competitive". It is an "I win" button against us when they node guard. As for that wz, do yourself a favor and play it sometimes as a melee. No place to LoS, 3 different levels that aren't even wide, skinny platforms and pipes that you can easily be knocked off of. I gave it a chance, I even defended it the first day, but it truly is a pain playing it as a melee, especially an assassin who has no gap closer.

 

As for the 14k Maul, that's a bit of an anomaly, with very, very good circumstances in benefit of the attacking Assassin, and so good for them: the stars aligned for them and they took advantage of it. And with respect to ranked WZs, especially with wins/losses not counting right now, I've seen more ranked PVP going on on my server than ever before (and mine's a PVE server). It's not exactly a small amount of people who've been playing ranked warzones, and they've hardly ruined regular warzones.

 

I get 13k's against sorcs lots of times. It is not an anomaly anymore. The only ranked on PvE servers these days is organized yolos. Those happened before as well and I have participated.

 

P.S. If you were hanging out in mid as an Assassin, you weren't really doing your job in the first place, such as pressuring enemy healers and finishing off stragglers, the things we're best at.

 

Yeah, that is all well and good in theory, but when you play against a good team it doesn't work. They have a tank guarding the healer, and have 3 ranged dps surrounding them. Yes it is easy to play against derps who ignore their healer, don't call incoming and leave a marauder to node guard. But good teams are very well prepared and don't fall for those little regstar tricks.

[Aelanis]

Vengeance had few issues in PvE, arsenal while not there yet was still better than any assassin dps spec. And forget arsenal, pyro does an insane amount of damage and has for a while. Concealment was made viable in 2.6, not 2.7. All of these specs were perfectly viable in 2.6 and did not need any buffing. And please tell me you aren't complaining about PvE sniper ... They parse as some of the highest dps in PvE.

 

Vengeance was sitting pretty close to even with Madness, if you don't remember. It had some issues, largely RNG based, and they got fixed, and they've become a lot more competitive than they were before. I never said all these changes were in 2.7, I'm looking back at how the devs have done since 2.5, like I said before. And yeah, pyro is a little messed up right now, but I certainly don't know what's causing it, and so I haven't looked into what would be necessary to fix it. And while I wasn't complaining about PVE Sniper, no, they do not parse in "some of the highest dps in PvE," they actually sit at the number 5 spot (discounting rollbang), so they're just below the average, in terms of absolute potential.

 

The loss of surgical precision is big because they lost one of their main survivability tools and it was never properly replaced (whether it was too much survivability or not is another story). Right now if we dps even a guarded op we can pretty quickly take them down. It shouldn't be that way. And yes, the loss of the knockdown is huge. Against derps it doesn't matter, but players with quick reflexes will easily counter before ops can do their big damaging opener. More competitive? That's putting it a little lightly don't you think? Fixing our shroud would make us a little more competitive (just got hit through it, and no it wasn't white damage), allowing them to either stay dps free for 30 seconds, or heal them for an average of 30k, passively and can be activated while stunned is a little more than "more competitive". It is an "I win" button against us when they node guard. As for that wz, do yourself a favor and play it sometimes as a melee. No place to LoS, 3 different levels that aren't even wide, skinny platforms and pipes that you can easily be knocked off of. I gave it a chance, I even defended it the first day, but it truly is a pain playing it as a melee, especially an assassin who has no gap closer.

 

Now, I don't play Concealment, so I wouldn't know just how valuable that was to them. But you seem to be going back and forth between balancing things for the average player and balancing things for the expert players. You're frustrated with changes to classes that affect the best players hardly at all, and also with things that affect only the best players.

 

So they can heal up once per fight, that's hardly a God Mode. And good for them, being able to finally node guard properly, considering they were the, hands down, worst class for it before. They can't even pull us out of stealth any more, they ought to at least be able to hold off until help arrives. And it's not like you can't force them to turn all that healing into ineffective healing with Saber Strike and Crushing Darkness. Yeah, it'll suck that they're back at full health, but Crushing Darkness will drain almost all the charges from it on its own, and a Saber Strike or two will eat up the rest, and if they weren't really low, you'll have wasted a ton of their heals while their health was full. Alternatively, if they're at low health, simply power through it. We have some pretty decent on demand burst, and our bursty moves hit more than hard enough to beat through their cooldown. It's really strong, but it's not an "I win" button.

 

As for Quesh Huttball, I guess I'll have to play it to find out.

 

I get 13k's against sorcs lots of times. It is not an anomaly anymore. The only ranked on PvE servers these days is organized yolos. Those happened before as well and I have participated.

 

The ranked going on on The Shadowlands is has a surprising amount of solo-queues, actually, with some premades going around, too. Don't presume to know things about a server you don't play on. Personally, I don't play ranked, but I talk to lots of people who do, and there has been a lot of poorly organized ranked play going on, much more than usual, most certainly caused by the lack of record-keeping right now.

 

Yeah, that is all well and good in theory, but when you play against a good team it doesn't work. They have a tank guarding the healer, and have 3 ranged dps surrounding them. Yes it is easy to play against derps who ignore their healer, don't call incoming and leave a marauder to node guard. But good teams are very well prepared and don't fall for those little regstar tricks.

 

Until your team, like a good team, forces them into unsustainable situations. Then yeah, you can pick off those you force away from the group. Yeah, it's a lot harder when the opposing team isn't full of bads, but it's just a different style of game. Our strength still lies in our pretty decent finishing power, and in our ability to surprise people and wreck them before they can seriously respond. Save your burst for when the healer is hard cc'd, the tank is stuck elsewhere, and it's suddenly as if they had walked off on their own, but they didn't choose to, your team forced it on them.

[sithBracer]

Vengeance was sitting pretty close to even with Madness, if you don't remember. It had some issues, largely RNG based, and they got fixed, and they've become a lot more competitive than they were before. I never said all these changes were in 2.7, I'm looking back at how the devs have done since 2.5, like I said before. And yeah, pyro is a little messed up right now, but I certainly don't know what's causing it, and so I haven't looked into what would be necessary to fix it. And while I wasn't complaining about PVE Sniper, no, they do not parse in "some of the highest dps in PvE," they actually sit at the number 5 spot (discounting rollbang), so they're just below the average, in terms of absolute potential.

 

I looked at torapse and sniper was number 1 and 2 for damage in overall and the NM/NiM dread ops. Much more important than the number is the amount of dps they actually do, which is very high. If they truly are only #5 then it might be because it is out of date, if it is, can you point me to a place that shows their current dps?

 

 

Now, I don't play Concealment, so I wouldn't know just how valuable that was to them. But you seem to be going back and forth between balancing things for the average player and balancing things for the expert players. You're frustrated with changes to classes that affect the best players hardly at all, and also with things that affect only the best players.

 

ummm what? It's not about the best or average, the nerfs affect everyone. Snave, the best concealment op that we know of even says that this nerf destroyed the class. And if it affects him, you can be sure it will affect everyone else.

 

So they can heal up once per fight, that's hardly a God Mode. And good for them, being able to finally node guard properly, considering they were the, hands down, worst class for it before. They can't even pull us out of stealth any more, they ought to at least be able to hold off until help arrives. And it's not like you can't force them to turn all that healing into ineffective healing with Saber Strike and Crushing Darkness. Yeah, it'll suck that they're back at full health, but Crushing Darkness will drain almost all the charges from it on its own, and a Saber Strike or two will eat up the rest, and if they weren't really low, you'll have wasted a ton of their heals while their health was full. Alternatively, if they're at low health, simply power through it. We have some pretty decent on demand burst, and our bursty moves hit more than hard enough to beat through their cooldown. It's really strong, but it's not an "I win" button.

 

I think you need to actually play against a vengeance jugg before writing nonsense like this. Vengeance juggs were always a strong counter to us and always a tough fight against deception (it was actually easier to beat them in madness). But if we played right and they made some mistakes, we would be able to win (so the match could go either way), now there is no way to win. We have to do at least another 30k damage in order to win. I don't know what you call that, but I call it an "I win" button, while they still have to do the exact same amount of damage to us. And no halfway decent vengeance jugg was EVER unable to stall an assassin on a node. They had all the DCDs they needed.

 

As for Quesh Huttball, I guess I'll have to play it to find out.

 

Play it multiple times.

 

The ranked going on on The Shadowlands is has a surprising amount of solo-queues, actually, with some premades going around, too. Don't presume to know things about a server you don't play on. Personally, I don't play ranked, but I talk to lots of people who do, and there has been a lot of poorly organized ranked play going on, much more than usual, most certainly caused by the lack of record-keeping right now.

 

I am on the shadowlands. We had one 2 nights ago, about 7 people, 4 from one guild. Not exactly "active". And the ranked that I have been part of on my op and sorc have also never been too active. The most we got was 12+ people and that died off into less than 8 very quickly. The only other times we got "active" ranked was when one douchy guild tried to trade wins; another stronger team went to their alts on the opposite faction and queued to stop them (my friend was on that team). Hopefully with the new seasons 2 adjustments, there will be more incentive to queue solo ranked. If it happens, I'll definitely do it as soon as my assassin is in full obroan at least (cause god knows, it will never happen on the republic). But as of now, you could wait hours in queue without having anything pop (I once waited 3 hours+, obviously I was in the middle of doing something else at the time).

 

 

Until your team, like a good team, forces them into unsustainable situations. Then yeah, you can pick off those you force away from the group. Yeah, it's a lot harder when the opposing team isn't full of bads, but it's just a different style of game. Our strength still lies in our pretty decent finishing power, and in our ability to surprise people and wreck them before they can seriously respond. Save your burst for when the healer is hard cc'd, the tank is stuck elsewhere, and it's suddenly as if they had walked off on their own, but they didn't choose to, your team forced it on them.

 

I am referring to good teams vs good teams obviously. If one team is bad, it just becomes a farm fest in which case I just run around killing things randomly. In a good team vs good team, you are usually at a stalemate type situation. I'm not gonna rewrite it, but what I wrote earlier applies.

 

EDIT-I really don't want to make this into an argument about what a good or horrible job BW is doing with balance because there are plenty of topics on that already and this is the assassin thread. You can have the final word if you want.

 

Back to what I said before, I feel that assassins will be nerfed because they are balancing around arenas, and ranged are still just "meh" in arenas while assassins are pretty decent.

Edited April 18, 2014 by sithBracer

[Aelanis]

I looked at torapse and sniper was number 1 and 2 for damage in overall and the NM/NiM dread ops. Much more important than the number is the amount of dps they actually do, which is very high. If they truly are only #5 then it might be because it is out of date, if it is, can you point me to a place that shows their current dps?

 

Just took a look at TORParse, and of the top 30 parses against Nefra HM (in 8 man), there are 7 Snipers/Gunslingers (~23%, more than what should be the optimal "average"). Of those 7, there are 2 Marksmanship, 1 Lethality and 4 Engineering (or hybrid, I didn't look carefully). They were rollbanging, which accounted for a huge portion of their damage. One of the Marksmanship Snipers had ~200 hits on the Assault Droids, which is useless dps (and they were from Orbital Strike, so it looks like they bugged the droids to pad their numbers), which was a large portion of their dps. That leaves 2 non-rollbang parses in 30 one of which was somehow pre 2.5, as their Orbital Strike averaged 6k damage per tick, and that was in 8 man. Oddly enough, there was no 16 man SM data for Nefra, and it does look like they did a recent wipe of their data, since there's only a small smattering of data for the fight. In 16 man HM, there were 11 in the top 30 (37%), but 4 of those bugged the fight and hit the droids and 3 of the remaining were from pre-nerf OS.

 

On other fights, a lot of the top Slingers and Snipers are in Saboteur/Engineering, and are putting rollbang to good use against groups of adds, which is really just an AOE spec taking advantage of the AOE fights. In other fights, they're represented much less well.

 

ummm what? It's not about the best or average, the nerfs affect everyone. Snave, the best concealment op that we know of even says that this nerf destroyed the class. And if it affects him, you can be sure it will affect everyone else.

 

 

 

I think you need to actually play against a vengeance jugg before writing nonsense like this. Vengeance juggs were always a strong counter to us and always a tough fight against deception (it was actually easier to beat them in madness). But if we played right and they made some mistakes, we would be able to win (so the match could go either way), now there is no way to win. We have to do at least another 30k damage in order to win. I don't know what you call that, but I call it an "I win" button, while they still have to do the exact same amount of damage to us. And no halfway decent vengeance jugg was EVER unable to stall an assassin on a node. They had all the DCDs they needed.

 

I'm probably wrong about Concealment, but it just didn't seem that bad to me. And maybe I've only played against bad Vengeance juggernauts, as I almost always ate them alive, at least in regs. This might be why I don't see Enraged Defense as quite the win button you do, because I've yet to see a Juggernaut use it to actually survive my attacks. Most of the time I don't even see them using it, but I know those are just bads.

 

Play it multiple times.

 

 

 

I am on the shadowlands. We had one 2 nights ago, about 7 people, 4 from one guild. Not exactly "active". And the ranked that I have been part of on my op and sorc have also never been too active. The most we got was 12+ people and that died off into less than 8 very quickly. The only other times we got "active" ranked was when one douchy guild tried to trade wins; another stronger team went to their alts on the opposite faction and queued to stop them (my friend was on that team). Hopefully with the new seasons 2 adjustments, there will be more incentive to queue solo ranked. If it happens, I'll definitely do it as soon as my assassin is in full obroan at least (cause god knows, it will never happen on the republic). But as of now, you could wait hours in queue without having anything pop (I once waited 3 hours+, obviously I was in the middle of doing something else at the time).

 

It certainly seems like Fare is always going on about ranked pvp, and I usually see a bunch of people (on either side) calling for people to queue as there are teams queueing on the other side.

 

I am referring to good teams vs good teams obviously. If one team is bad, it just becomes a farm fest in which case I just run around killing things randomly. In a good team vs good team, you are usually at a stalemate type situation. I'm not gonna rewrite it, but what I wrote earlier applies.

 

EDIT-I really don't want to make this into an argument about what a good or horrible job BW is doing with balance because there are plenty of topics on that already and this is the assassin thread. You can have the final word if you want.

 

Back to what I said before, I feel that assassins will be nerfed because they are balancing around arenas, and ranged are still just "meh" in arenas while assassins are pretty decent.

 

Yeah, I don't really wanna argue about it either :/ I know a lot more about PVE anyway, so people should really take anything I say about PVP with a grain of salt.

[brainpsyk]

...quote... .

 

You were right. Conduit only procs once, pretty much every 12 seconds, unless Shock is delayed, which makes our Force regen even worse than I thought. I thought VS made Shock proc Conduit on a separate rate limit. Now we have *nothing* that regenerates our force back to something that would allow us sustained DPS.

 

Looking at the "Above 30% HP, full ability rotation" on Dulfy's site (it's not the best, but it works as an example), after 18 seconds, we're at a net deficit of 64 force, assuming we started with Dark embrace, and a full force bar.

 

Now, in any 1.5 minute cycle, we can use Force Cloak once and Blackout twice, and assuming the tooltip on Darkswelll is correct (I'll get to that in a minute), we get an average of 1.13 Force/sec. That reduces our deficit from 64 to 47.1. For sustained DPS on a 5-minute fight, that deficit needs to be sub-6 Force (300 seconds, 100 force = .333 force/sec loss max, @18 seconds = 6 force).

 

Now, here's the interesting thing. Sometimes, Blackout only returns 14 force:

 

• [11:40:19.597] [blackout {1615599193030656}] [Event {836045448945472}: AbilityActivate {836045448945479}] ()
  
• [11:40:19.597] [Masked Assault {1776540207546368}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Shadow's Respite {1776540207546625}] ()
  
• [11:40:19.597] [] [Restore {836045448945476}: Force {836045448938502}] (14)
  

 

So we're not even getting what we're supposed to. Granted, it's only 1 force, and it doesn't happen often, but there's still a bug somewhere

 

So our Force regen is nowhere near where it needs to be to have any sort of sustained DPS.

 

I don't see many options here. We can't increase the damage of our abilities without affecting our burst, or jacking up the damage of VS so high (to avoid affecting our burst), or almost doubling the damage of Saber Strike.

 

Looking again at the top Infiltration parse, if we can (somehow...) drop the number of saber strikes we'd be in great shape. If we could drop it completely, our DPS would be too high (Ballpark of ~4K). That's how much our saber strikes cost us!

 

Another choice could be cutting the cost of Discharge when it has 3 stacks. Top parse had 20 Saber Strike uses and 30 FB uses, so cutting FB/Discharge cost by 100% would boost our DPS too much.

[MasterFeign]

Should check to see if that's faction specific as well.

[Evolixe]

I updated the dulfy guide 2 days ago, few things changed most importantly the shock priority.

[Xinika]

I updated the dulfy guide 2 days ago, few things changed most importantly the shock priority.

Thank you for that. I forgot to thank you for taking the time to do so, but here it is. Cheers:)

[brainpsyk]

I updated the dulfy guide 2 days ago, few things changed most importantly the shock priority.

 

Thank you for doing that.

 

I was looking at the Shadow guide, but even dropping the Low Slash/Maul out of the rotation, we're still ~50 force down for the rotation, and need to be in the ~6 deficit range.

 

Factoring in Blackout/Dark Embrace and Conduit, any rotation without Saber Strike runs us our of force in ~45 seconds. AQuick comparison of our damaging abilities to a couple other classes, we have less abilities, but ours hit right about where they need to, if anything, they are a little high.

 

So either we fix our Force regen, or we're screwed.

[Evolixe]

Thank you for doing that.

 

I was looking at the Shadow guide, but even dropping the Low Slash/Maul out of the rotation, we're still ~50 force down for the rotation, and need to be in the ~6 deficit range.

 

Factoring in Blackout/Dark Embrace and Conduit, any rotation without Saber Strike runs us our of force in ~45 seconds. AQuick comparison of our damaging abilities to a couple other classes, we have less abilities, but ours hit right about where they need to, if anything, they are a little high.

 

So either we fix our Force regen, or we're screwed.

 

Isn't it great that Blackout also has a cooldown of 45 seconds?

 

And you should be using Saber Strike.

[brainpsyk]

Isn't it great that Blackout also has a cooldown of 45 seconds?

 

And you should be using Saber Strike.

 

That deficit is assuming you start under Dark Embrace, and use Blackout twice in a 1.5 minute period. So another option would be to ~double the bonus (or duration) from Dark Embrace/Blackout.

 

And we shouldn't have to use Saber Strike. Here's the damage per GCD for the top Infiltration parse:

 

• Saber Strike - 1612.23
  
• Spinning Strike - 6049.55
  
• Shadow Strike - 7549.88
  
• Force Breach - 6317.8
  
• Project - 3403.41
  
• Clairvoyant Strike - 3817.22
  

 

Saber Strike hits like half a wet noodle. The only reason we use it is for Force regen. Again, that makes Force regen the base of our sustained DPS problem.

 

Here's the other interesting thing, The top parse has 56 hits from Project (Shock). According to his profile, he's got the 3 points in Upheaval (Chain Shock). So I would expect 38 uses of Project. In fact, counting out the double hits, he has 45 uses of Project, not 38. So he's only getting a 24% return instead of 45%. I did a quick look from the PvP I did the other day and got a 38% return. So I am doubtful there's a bug here, but it goes to show how bad RNG hurts us.

[Evolixe]

That deficit is assuming you start under Dark Embrace, and use Blackout twice in a 1.5 minute period. So another option would be to ~double the bonus (or duration) from Dark Embrace/Blackout.

 

Actually, you use it 3 times. Force Cloak reset.

 

Saber Strike hits like half a wet noodle. The only reason we use it is for Force regen. Again, that makes Force regen the base of our sustained DPS problem.

 

Which it should be, because that makes you have to manage it properly in order to be able to do good dps.

 

If we wouldn't ever have to saber strike, Infiltration would be a heck of a lot easier.

 

 

You're thinking in the wrong mindset. Don't think of Saber Strike as the devil. It's your friend. And you should use it whenever it won't cap your force for doing so. (while naturally maintaining priority list)

Edited April 20, 2014 by Evolixe

[brainpsyk]

Actually, you use it 3 times. Force Cloak reset.

 

Actually, you only use it twice. It has a 45 second cooldown, with Force Cloak having a 90 second cooldown. So 0-6 seconds is Dark Embrace, 6-12 seconds Blackout, 51-57 Blackout. You can't use Blackout again until 96 seconds, but Force Cloak is available at 90 seconds, which resets the clock. If we delay Force Cloak for an additional 6 seconds, our regen goes from 1.13333 to ~1.38. But that's at best. Using Blackout right as the Dark Embrace wears off will overcap our force. Delaying it means we have less regen.

 

Our VS-VS-S->Maul->CS-CS-S-Discharge rotation gives us ~30 seconds of force before we run out. If you use Blackout plus 3x Saber Strikes at that point, you're back to almost full. That's when we're screwed. We have ~30 seconds of force again, but Blackout is still on coolown for another 6-7 GCDs. The top gunslinger parse uses their auto-attack twice. Our top parse uses it 20 times, and it misses ~10% of it's hits. That's where out DPS goes to crap.

 

Which it should be, because that makes you have to manage it properly in order to be able to do good dps.

 

If we wouldn't ever have to saber strike, Infiltration would be a heck of a lot easier.

 

You're thinking in the wrong mindset. Don't think of Saber Strike as the devil. It's your friend. And you should use it whenever it won't cap your force for doing so. (while naturally maintaining priority list)

 

Saber Strike is a hackneyed band-aid for our force issues. Every single solitary time you use Saber Strike, your dps drops. Period, done, end of story. Our problem is sustained DPS. How do you boost it? Increase the damage on Shock? Maul? Discharge? Nope. That increases our burst, which is already bordering on OP. Voltaic Slash? Maybe, but they just did a boost on that ability not too long ago. What's left in our rotation? Yep, our wet noodle hackneyed band-aid.

 

I see several options:

1. Increase the damage from Saber Strike
   
2. increase the Force Regen from saber strike
   
3. eliminate it
   
4. Reduce the cooldown on Blackout
   

 

And I was wrong before. If we eliminate Saber Strike, and give average damage to Project/Shock on the top parse, our DPS won't be over 4K (I need to be better at labeling cells...). I put our DPS at ~3800. Right where we need to be. Then, we'd only have to use Saber Strike on a screw-up, which is exactly where, and only where, we should have use it. That's skill differentiation. Also, that puts our abilities exactly where they need to be. Good luck on getting a damage boost to any ability. They're right where they need to be.

 

So our only option for sustained DPS is our Force regen. Every time, it comes right back to this.

[Xinika]

So our only option for sustained DPS is our Force regen. Every time, it comes right back to this.

How would you apply this to Madness? Both our DPS specs need an increase in DPS output so I'm curious how this would also fix our right tree.

Edited April 20, 2014 by Xinika

[Evolixe]

/facepalm

 

I'm not going to reply anymore tonight, way too tired. But you're wrong.

[MasterFeign]

They'd probably need to decrease force consumption by 30% in the madness tree, just to make the rotation itself, viable.

 

But, I'd rather not have to spam thrashs. I really hope once we get our assassin answers back (after the 25th) that they'll look for a solution to make madness more enjoyable... and for that matter, viable...

 

It would seem though, that since assassins have 2 viable hybrid specs, that they'd have to rework all 3 trees so that a new hybrid doesn't come about. Or rather they'd have to look at the reasoning as to why a hybrid is being made to begin with...

[Evolixe]

Our VS-VS-S->Maul->CS-CS-S-Discharge rotation gives us ~30 seconds of force before we run out. If you use Blackout plus 3x Saber Strikes at that point, you're back to almost full. That's when we're screwed. We have ~30 seconds of force again, but Blackout is still on coolown for another 6-7 GCDs. The top gunslinger parse uses their auto-attack twice. Our top parse uses it 20 times, and it misses ~10% of it's hits. That's where out DPS goes to crap.

 

 

And if you Discharge > Shock > VS > VS > Maul > Shock you can use blackout almost as soon as dark embrace is gone. Without overcapping.

 

Saber Strike is a hackneyed band-aid for our force issues. Every single solitary time you use Saber Strike, your dps drops. Period, done, end of story. Our problem is sustained DPS. How do you boost it? Increase the damage on Shock? Maul? Discharge? Nope. That increases our burst, which is already bordering on OP. Voltaic Slash? Maybe, but they just did a boost on that ability not too long ago. What's left in our rotation? Yep, our wet noodle hackneyed band-aid.

 

So what? It adds complextion and thought. Who gives a **** that it costs you dps to use, it wouldn't be unbalanced if we got a flat out damage buff and still had to use Saber Strike. And that is by far the best option.

 

So our only option for sustained DPS is our Force regen. Every time, it comes right back to this.

I will not, under any circumstance, let bioware buff our force regen. If that happens, im out of this game.

 

 

They'd probably need to decrease force consumption by 30% in the madness tree, just to make the rotation itself, viable.

 

Are you using Shock in Madness?

 

Stop doing that. You'll have plentyful force.

Edited April 21, 2014 by Evolixe