Vanguard changes in 2.8 discussion

[Keypek]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=738638

 

 

Vanguard

 

Shield Specialist

•Shield Cycler now also regenerates Energy Cells when an attack is defended against (such as being dodged or resisted).

•Static Shield now has a chance to finish the cooldown on Stockstrike when an attack is defended against.

Assault Specialist (Vanguard)

•Riot Augs now additionally increases the damage of periodic elemental damage by 35%.

•Rapid Recharge has been replaced by Critical Recharge. Critical Recharge increases critical hit chance by 1%/2%, and reduces the cooldown of Recharge Ammo and Reserve Powercell by 15/30 seconds.

 

 

 

Personally I'm a big fan of these changes.

 

Shield Specialist changes:

More chances of energy regen and SS reset is a very nice QoL change for the tank tree. Nothing huge but a minor buff. I still would have liked to see a spec'able decrease to Reactive Shield high in the tree. Such as maybe every time you use Energy Blast your cd on RS decreases 3 seconds. Or a straight 15/30 sec decrease some where along the way.

 

Tactics:

Surprised there was nothing for this tree. Yes it is an aoe tree and is useful in certain fights. But it woefully falls behind in single target situations or constant movement situations. At the very least I think they need to bring back the old damage of gut. And do something to Fire Pulse both graphically and use wise. Maybe decrease the active CD on shoulder cannon by 5 seconds every time Fire Pulse is used? This spec needs something though.

 

Assault:

Absolutely perfect buff imo. Will have to do testing of course but this was what I was expecting. 35% increase to DoT damage won't be a huge deal in pvp and should bring assault up close to current dps standards of other classes I'd think. And the replacement of the alacrity with crit was the perfect solution also to rapid recharge.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Keypek

[JMagee]

I really like the Assault changes.

 

That being said, It may give a perception (man I hate using that word) of being too much.

 

Looking at quick parse that I have handy (1Mill, Armor Debuff, ~5min TTK) my 3 burns (Plasma, AP, IR) did ~285k. Doing a really simple "if this is multiplied by 35% calculation", it's an additional 100k damage over the same amount of time, which is (~333DPS). I've added a few additional pieces of min/max since then so I'd say probably closer to 360-370 DPS at least in BiS 78s.

 

That coupled with the crit bonus addition freeing up crit rating gear for +power would probably be another 20dps or so.

 

I'm not saying the spec doesn't need it,...it does, but what seems like a 350-400dps boost is pretty staggering. The thought of my DoTs ticking for ~2200 under 30% is exciting, but also approaching that realm of "this doesn't really feel like traditional DoT damage.

 

Hope they do stay though.

Edited May 1, 2014 by JMagee

[xXDark_ShadowXx]

First couple parses yielded almost a 400 dps increase, these changes are phenomenal! Hit almost 3.6k in mostly UW gear (78 OH and a few other pieces; even still using UW BA relic) and I'm far from the most experienced VG dps. I hear Bioware going to the shed for the nerf bat now...

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/661773/time/1398971105/1398971384/0/Overview

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/01574dc1-a01a-425a-8210-3b2149480da2

[TACeMossie]

In this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=735756 - I calculated that in Dread Forged gear, a 15% increase to DoTs when combined with the 2% crit chance boost, would bring powertechs up to a decent level of DPS.

 

So they increased DoTs by 35%

 

HOLY...

 

THIS IS AMAZING!

 

Top Parse for Vanguard currently would be boosted by 453.544 DPS in dread forged gear, even without the crit rate boost!

THATS A DPS OF 4100DPS BEFORE THE CRIT BOOST

[Keypek]

Well that'd bring it up in line with the top parsing specs in the 4000-4200 range. And given that VGs aren't the most desirable class to bring on raids due to other classes having better utility and "oh crap!!" buttons I don't think its unreasonable to keep them in range of the top dps parsing classes out there. Already enough reasons to bring all gunslingers and a few sentinels and no VGs because those offer more utility and already top parsing damage. Raw damage is what assault used to have going for it so I don't think this buff is out of line.

 

Only thing I hate about it is we have to wait two months for it to hit live lol.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Keypek

[GrandLordMenace]

Can't lie, bit jelly!

 

But glad to see they are raising specs up a bit!

[TACeMossie]

OK I ran a simulation in order to determine the best Crit Rating to get a stable parse come 2.7. As such, the optimal crit rating (highest average) is obtained with:

 

2 Crit Mods

1 Crit Crystal

1 Crit Earpiece/Implant (personal preference, the earpiece)

 

when using dread forged gear. This will score an average DPS of about ~4.01k, outside of lucky crit parses. This crit rating is 309, though crit ratings between 268 and 351 on your gear will have a variation of < 0.4dps.

 

Remember - these simulations were capping out at 3.55k DPS for assault prior to patch 2.8 when in dread forged gear, while the top parse was a full 100dps higher, meaning that a lucky string of crits is going to push us over 4.1k dps in Dread Forged gear.

 

With a DPS increase of this much, you should never lose a raid spot due to insufficient DPS ever again. Until 3.0 comes out and ruins it for us again that is

 

I can also run a repeat of this, but with dread masters gear. Which I am doing now. Because I wanna see the cap of 'average' for the DPS of this class.

 

And I did it. Maximum Average Potential for dread masters gear is a bit ludicrous:

4562.56dps, obtained with 457 crit rating (2 crystals, 5 mods, 0 enhancements, 0 earpieces).

A threshold of 0.5 dps is between 413 and 502 crit as well.

 

EDIT - Just realised I was still going by Multiplicative buffs for the mainstat buff, which very slightly throw off the numbers. Which means the Dread Masters gear is probably more of a Maximum DPS potential. However... who cares! 4.5K DPS!

Edited May 2, 2014 by TACeMossie

[Gnimish]

First i just want to say i am happy vanguards are getting a buff. Much needed. Seems e like alot though. Specially considering vanguards assault. Is one of the most mobile dps specs in game no positions requirements. Lacking a gap closer like a leap but has a few 30m skills to use while closing gaps. Just my thoughts. But congratulations. Im happy for you

[Shevaresh]

Definately seems like good changes for the vanguard dps, will be nice to have a somewhat viable dps spec in addition to the tanking spec. While it would still need more utillity, in addition to dps on par with the other melee classes, to be a truely competitive melee-dps spec, it's definately a big step in the right direction for this AC (Still think there's a way to go to catch up with the (atm ridicously) cooldown's of the guardian, Inspiration from sentinels, stealth-rez/cleanse from scoundrels and resilence for shadows, too make it a truely viable class for those difficult melee spots in raids (In a "all other things considered equal" situation))

 

For the tank-spec, it's a nice minor buff to a pretty decent spec already. Will be nice to see how it performs on live. Would be nice to see this spec getting some major love down the road though, to make it more engaging and active to tank with, rather than just being a mostly passive "soak-tank" with a "FCFS"-rotation, but doubt we'll see such changes outside of an expansion (Since it is still a viable tank atm)

[Kuciwalker]

Shield Specialist

•Shield Cycler now also regenerates Energy Cells when an attack is defended against (such as being dodged or resisted).

•Static Shield now has a chance to finish the cooldown on Stockstrike when an attack is defended against.

Assault Specialist (Vanguard)

 

This will be glorious on Nefra.

[Kaos_KidSWTOR]

This will be glorious on Nefra.

 

This will be glorious in general... Now i can actually not worry about taking Defence because now Shield Cycler/Vents and the Stockstrike/RP proc will work on defences aswell as Shields.