Verain Posted October 15, 2014 Share Posted October 15, 2014 Stasie brought up a solid point yesterday, and that is that Wingman mostly nullifies a distortion shield. The plethora of distortion shields around is probably a big part of why there are a plethora of Wingman users- I don't think this is too much of a surprise. Is this good design? I'm really not even sure. I certainly enjoy the wingman/distortion counterplay, what if there was more of it? What if, as Drako suggests, we had an "ignores armor" copilot ability (which means that it would greatly reduce the value of a charged plating build- even if it just added +25% armor ignore, that would make a bomber go from 1% damage taken to 26% damage taken)? What if we had a copilot ability that was a couple seconds of defense against railguns, or a copilot ability that was actually able to grant a turning advantage (servo jammer is intended to be this, but suffers from close range and a debuff that is only powerful if combined with another snare)? Would the game be better if several of the cooldowns had partial or possible counters in the form of copilot abilities? I think that would make for a lively meta, at least. Or would it be better if the cooldowns sort of just had more generic effects, such as "increases damage by X%"? After that conversation, I'd like to see more Wingman style copilot abilities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuciwalker Posted October 15, 2014 Share Posted October 15, 2014 What if we had a copilot ability that was a couple seconds of defense against railguns It's called Running Interference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nyghtrunner Posted October 15, 2014 Share Posted October 15, 2014 Stasie brought up a solid point yesterday, and that is that Wingman mostly nullifies a distortion shield. The plethora of distortion shields around is probably a big part of why there are a plethora of Wingman users- I don't think this is too much of a surprise. Is this good design? I'm really not even sure. I certainly enjoy the wingman/distortion counterplay, what if there was more of it? What if, as Drako suggests, we had an "ignores armor" copilot ability (which means that it would greatly reduce the value of a charged plating build- even if it just added +25% armor ignore, that would make a bomber go from 1% damage taken to 26% damage taken)? What if we had a copilot ability that was a couple seconds of defense against railguns, or a copilot ability that was actually able to grant a turning advantage (servo jammer is intended to be this, but suffers from close range and a debuff that is only powerful if combined with another snare)? Would the game be better if several of the cooldowns had partial or possible counters in the form of copilot abilities? I think that would make for a lively meta, at least. Or would it be better if the cooldowns sort of just had more generic effects, such as "increases damage by X%"? After that conversation, I'd like to see more Wingman style copilot abilities. I like the idea of expanding useful co-pilot abilities, but what about the passive effects? Were you thinking of tinkering with those too? Because I know I've seen some QQ on the forums concerning the differences between Imp v Pub companions and how you can't get some combinations on either or, which makes one or the other side slightly better. It's certainly an interesting idea. That said, the cynic in me thinks that this would be the sort of thing that wouldn't come about until 9.0, when we finally get a Denon TDM... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drakkolich Posted October 15, 2014 Share Posted October 15, 2014 That said, the cynic in me thinks that this would be the sort of thing that wouldn't come about until 9.0, when we finally get a Denon TDM... Denon TDM is in 9.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verain Posted October 15, 2014 Author Share Posted October 15, 2014 It's called Running Interference. No, it isn't. Running Interference is a nice buff, but it's far too long to be what I'm talking about. Additionally, it has utility against blasters, which is also contrary to what I said. Finally, it is not actually protection- only a certain build can meaningfully assume that its railgun damage taken will be reduced (notably, an evasion scout with lightweight armor and distortion field active). It does not protect a bomber against a railgun, nor any other build of scout, nor a strike fighter, nor a gunship. Pretend it was 3 seconds long, and just railguns only, and full protection against them. I like the idea of expanding useful co-pilot abilities, but what about the passive effects? Were you thinking of tinkering with those too? Please get that out of this thread. Passive abilities are entirely unrelated. I will suggest any of: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=736226 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=7338365 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=752949 which makes one or the other side slightly better I'm a huge fan of differences between the sides, and would like to see more. Also for another thread. Denon TDM is in 9.1 No, look at the roadmap- that's Kuat Mesas Domination (With Denon Sky). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nyghtrunner Posted October 15, 2014 Share Posted October 15, 2014 Please get that out of this thread. Okay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MiaowZedong Posted October 15, 2014 Share Posted October 15, 2014 (edited) Wingman is the nearest thing we have to a counter to DF. But its much longer duration and CD, and considerably weaker effect, point to it being fundamentally something else. DF is a big part of why we use wingman, but so is passive evasion; and so are tracking penalties, and range. In a gunship, you'd ideally want actual wingmen cycling the ability with you, because it enables you to hit scouts (despite their passive evasion) 90% of the time or more, compared to maybe 70% of the time without it (hit chance is more favourable if you are perfectly centered at less than 10 000m, these numbers are more common). In a scout, it allows you to hit reliably with your rocket pods, which have frankly awful accuracy out of the box, it allows your BLC to hit that finishing blow on someone boosting away at the edge of your arcs, and even quads can benefit. Fundamentally, we use Wingman because hitting is always better than not hitting, even if the missed shot would have done more damage; and because evasion is ubiquitous, in small ammounts at least, and because weapons have less than perfect accuracy in real use cases (e.g. a few degrees off-centre, three-quarters of the way to max range—very few weapons have 100% accuracy then, before evasion even). Wingman saves you from that awful moment where you curse the RNG while waiting for a respawn. Edited October 15, 2014 by MiaowZedong Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wvwraith Posted October 16, 2014 Share Posted October 16, 2014 (edited) Seems to me since last few updates/patches that wingman is not as effective as it once was. You can pop it and miss several shots on gunships and even bombers. I remember one match I'd popped it and missed 4 straight shots on a bomber which didn't make much sense to me, but it is what it is. I've been thinking of actually using running interference instead now. If you have scouts popping evasion buffs especially running interference with it stacking it'll nearly render wingman useless. These are my observations of course, but that's what I see on my end anyways. Edited October 16, 2014 by wvwraith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verain Posted October 16, 2014 Author Share Posted October 16, 2014 Oh man, if they start breaking the statistics buffs behind the scenes, I will be so cross. It's impossible to test these things in most situations, but most especially in GSF. I believe that Wingman and Running Interference are unchanged, and you are just having confirmation bias. I believe that most strongly, and have noticed no differences. However, Running Interference is a good ability too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MiaowZedong Posted October 16, 2014 Share Posted October 16, 2014 (edited) Seems to me since last few updates/patches that wingman is not as effective as it once was. You can pop it and miss several shots on gunships and even bombers. I remember one match I'd popped it and missed 4 straight shots on a bomber which didn't make much sense to me, but it is what it is. I've been thinking of actually using running interference instead now. If you have scouts popping evasion buffs especially running interference with it stacking it'll nearly render wingman useless. These are my observations of course, but that's what I see on my end anyways. It's probably just luck. Since you're a gunship usually, you've got huge tracking penalties when you take your shots off-centre, Wingman only compensates for 4 degrees off centre. Once you're below 100% accuracy, you're in the wonderful land of random chance where, given enough time, even the most implausible results will eventually occur. The odds of missing 4 shots at 90% accuracy in a row are only one in ten thousand—but sooner or later the one in ten thousand will happen. Basically it's what I was trying to say earlier: if you don't have 100% accuracy, you want more accuracy. And 100% accuracy isn't so easy to achieve. Also, don't forget, even a bomber can have 14% passive evasion. That doesn't sound like much—but when your base accuracy is not much above 100%, and you're a few degrees off-centre, that turns into a real chance to miss. GSF is a skill based game, but it's not a game of skill alone. Luck does play its part. Edited October 16, 2014 by MiaowZedong Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wvwraith Posted October 17, 2014 Share Posted October 17, 2014 Guess I'm going to have to hang some golden horseshoes and some four leaf clovers in my gunship now. When it comes to rng I usually don't have the best of luck with that. LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verain Posted October 17, 2014 Author Share Posted October 17, 2014 Just get your mouse blessed by a witch or something, right? Everyone does that. Right? Right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tommmsunb Posted October 17, 2014 Share Posted October 17, 2014 i think a crew skill that ignored armor would be bad for balance as it would make quads unstoppable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verain Posted October 17, 2014 Author Share Posted October 17, 2014 I think lights as well. But, you could still balance it. First, you could make it have a short duration if you needed to. Second, you could make it pierce less than 100% armor if it needed to. For instance, if it pierced 50% armor, etc. And, I mean, it would be a whole crew skill slot. I think that would be an exciting and good crew skill, and the ability to drill with quads for a few seconds every minutes is not fundamentally divorced from being able to (mostly) hit through distortion, or land super crits with TT+pods... I just think it could easily be in that group. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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