3.0 Combat changes comments - Overall & specifics

[vantgarde]

Disclaimer:

• My point of view is PVP based.

• Those are all my opinion.

• I’m not use of claims on forum, but I hope that Bioware would read this and at least explain their decision if they decide to maintain their changes.

 

Key points summary:

1. The cleanse changes are wrong.

2. Tanking stats needs to be buffed.

3. Do not come back to the old focus spec.

4. Redesign “guarded by the Force/undying rage”.

5. The scoundrel’s DPS survivability still needs to be buffed, since 1. something.

 

Reasoning:

 

1. The DOT spec has always been the one that deals the most overall damage! Just look at the overall DPS of Madness Sorcerer and Lethality sniper (even though the DOTS of a Sniper can still be cleansed!). The cleanse should limit the ability of those spec to do sustained damage. This kind of spec is supposed to be a support DPS class that weakens the enemy team in order for the bursty class to make the kill.

We are kind of used to the fact that Bioware is making all the DOT’s uncleansable, even though a lot of the people I know just don’t understand the concept. However making cleanse working against hard stuns is a nonsense to me.

Skillful player tend to use team effort and coordination of CCs to create the necessary time frame of burst to overwhelm an enemy team. This is making for a dynamic and skillful game play in PVP, which I personally love. With those changes about cleanses, DOTS and CCs you actively encourage player to boringly sits at 30 meter range and Dot’s everyone to death, especially the Tank.

This is where I translate to the second key point, the failing of defensive stats.

 

2. Now, Tanks are already suffering of tank tunneling strategies, which you are going to encourage with the 3.0 changes to cleanse. All those uncleansable dot’s are internal or elemental damage that simply goes through all the protections (defense and absorbption) of the tanks.

Since day one, Tanks needs to gear toward the highest possible amount of Endurance because of the failing of secondary stats.

Since you are powering up the dot’s (uncleansable, dots tics faster through alacrity, no pushback, maybe critical rating potency increases and the like that goes thought shield as well) and at the same time weakening the skillful method of hard switching, you are effectively making the Tank the primary target in arena and 8-men. The Tank has never be the undying wall that he should be, and is effectively becoming the easiest target to kill in PVP!!!

This is much easier to just focus the Tank to death with damage that he and his team just can’t mitigate rather than team working to control and properly hard switching the opponent. Right now the Tank is only collapsing a little less quickly than a DPS. The Tank basically has just 10k more health on average, with close to useless secondary stats.

 

3. The Focus spec was the only spec that was completely unbalanced before his nerf. It was the only spec that could hurt a whole teams for 10k on a roughly 10 second basis. Focus spec was the spec that can do sustain and burst not on one target but everyone at the same time. People will complain that a lot of other spec do a lot of damage, but those are singled target which can be handle by a healer. The Smasher as it was before was overwhelming and healer could not handle there damaged on the whole teams. Furthermore since the spec was OP, everyone was playing it making the teams with the more smasher wining every time.

As it is now, the focus spec is still very potent and does still have an amazing output; but this is manageable for good healer. In short the spec is balanced. As a last argument I would like to point out that the juggernaut smasher is the most represented class in solo-queue arena at the moment, which does say something; They are hard to kill and overwhelming without the proper support of your team.

 

4. The “guarded by the Force/Undying Rage” defensive cooldown has gone to a lovely panic button, life saver CD, to the “Oh crap I guess I have to use the screwed by the Force CD”.

“Guarded by the Force” is the only CD in the game that backstabs his user, this is the only CD that has this feeling while using of “I’m screwed anyway!”

While we are using it we must constantly look at the timer to use the medpack right when the CD ends, in order to get full benefits of it. This means that during the whole CD we are not or at least less DPSing. And this is a perfect time to CC & kill us since we get 50% of life riped off by the “defensive” cooldown. You might argue that this is the same with endure pain of the Juggernaut, but no they can be healed to full while they using their cooldown. Why should healer bother healing a sentinel up knowing that he is going to lose 50% of his health at the end of the cooldown? A sentinel that is using “guarded by the Force” is now basically doomed, unless he flies away or receive massive team support.

 

5. Scoundrel DPS despite the fact of being a melee class has the weakest set of defensive cooldown in the game. The changes on CCs are going to weaken further more his position. The only team oriented skills of a scoundrel DPS is his Flash grenade and the 30sec cooldown hardstun, which will be cleansable. There was simply no valid argument to explain the takedown removal on the opening. We are supposed to be a dueling class, but assassin/shadow simply do everything we do only better. They do equal damage, have much more survivability, much more team utilities (taunt, bump, low slash). They even easily beat us on the run away move with the phase walk and a more secure resilience/vanish combo. On the top of that when a scoundrel is dueling an assassin he can only open from behind while the assassin can open from the front…

But this is when we are caught in big scales combat that we prove our complete uselessness. Everyone knows the scoundrel DPS is the ultimate glass canon so we get focused and destroyed in seconds after we opened. Shield probe and dodge being near useless. In short our DPS is good, but we desperately need survivability buffs. As proof of our flaws, I think Bioware should just count how many Scoundrel/agent DPS they see by playing 2 hour a day for a whole week of BGs.

 

My opinion in short:

• Going back to the day one cleanse, which was much better balanced.

• In any case, the cleanse should never be able to free a Hardstun target.

• Shield should work on any kind of damage. Internal and Elemental included.

• % of Defense should be bump easily at the same % than the critical of DPS, to really make any difference.

• Focus spec should remain as it is.

• Guarded by the Force should go back to health sacrifice at the beginning, or at least keep memory of your health at the activation of the cooldown and ripe 50% of that at the end of the cooldown.

• Making shield prob reduce damage taken for the whole duration, rather than disappear after taking 5K damage. Make Dodge similar to Resilience. Allow scoundrel to open from the front somehow, or buff your stealth in comparison to shadows. Give us back our takedown. Make the stealth buff (hide) to also break roots and give immunity against them. Maybe adding an unique teamwork ability like a AOE mezz on our vanish, or kind of a smoke screen defensive cooldown to actually makes the scrapper/dirty fighting more appealing as a DPS buddy in PVP.

[Cretinus]

Okay. Let me try to summarize your post:

 

1. You play a tanking jugg

2. You play a mara.

3. You play a DPS scoundrel.

4. You don't play a madness specc.

 

Have I forgotten something?

[FourPawnBenoni]

Disclaimer:

• In any case, the cleanse should never be able to free a Hardstun target.

• Shield should work on any kind of damage. Internal and Elemental included.

• % of Defense should be bump easily at the same % than the critical of DPS, to really make any difference.

• Guarded by the Force should go back to health sacrifice at the beginning, or at least keep memory of your health at the activation of the cooldown and ripe 50% of that at the end of the cooldown.

• Making shield prob reduce damage taken for the whole duration, rather than disappear after taking 5K damage. Make Dodge similar to Resilience. Allow scoundrel to open from the front somehow, or buff your stealth in comparison to shadows. Give us back our takedown. Make the stealth buff (hide) to also break roots and give immunity against them. Maybe adding an unique teamwork ability like a AOE mezz on our vanish, or kind of a smoke screen defensive cooldown to actually makes the scrapper/dirty fighting more appealing as a DPS buddy in PVP.

 

1.) While I agree that a stun should not be able to be cleansed; I really doubt this will have much impact unless non-healers can cleanse a stunned healer in an arena. Even then, except for coordinated team play using voice chat; the odds of a dps noticing a stunned healer and spending a GCD to cleanse them in time for it to be meaningful is unlikely. What's more likely is you will see the same defensive peeling to push/counter-stun. In 8v8 a healer will just keep healing. In short; there's a lot more concerning balance issues in this patch than this.

 

2.) For internal damage, do you mean the incoming attack or that it should have a % chance to shield each tick? Agree with former, disagree with latter.

 

3.) Chance to shield should have different factors than chance to crit.

 

4.) I agree that sents need some help defensively right now. Not sure if this is the best idea but something needs to be done.

 

5.) Operatives have a ton of issues no doubt. Unfortunately, the devs have made it clear they want this class to die off due to all the complaints by PVE quitters.

Edited November 7, 2014 by FourPawnBenoni

[Master-Nala]

I find it really interesting that the classes that rely on hard stuns don't want them to be cleansable, but seemingly have no problem with DoTs being cleansed. That this causes no cognitive dissonance for anyone is amazing.

[Milchmann]

3.0 is a chance to divide skills and abilities into PvP-skills and PvE-skills.

[Technohic]

I find it really interesting that the classes that rely on hard stuns don't want them to be cleansable, but seemingly have no problem with DoTs being cleansed. That this causes no cognitive dissonance for anyone is amazing.

 

It would be a mistake for a DPS operative to not want DoTs to be uncleansable. That is going to be a buff to them, really.

 

I wonder if the OP has played the new 3.0 version or read the leaked stuff. I have a different impression of what it will look like, but cannot be sure until I get to actually play with it.

[vantgarde]

Okay. Let me try to summarize your post:

 

1. You play a tanking jugg

2. You play a mara.

3. You play a DPS scoundrel.

4. You don't play a madness specc.

 

Have I forgotten something?

 

Yes you forgot that I play every other class and specs, including madness. You do forget that while I play lethality, madness, Assault or Surveillance; I just don’t understand why people asking more buffs.

 

1.) While I agree that a stun should not be able to be cleansed; I really doubt this will have much impact unless non-healers can cleanse a stunned healer in an arena. Even then, except for coordinated team play using voice chat; the odds of a dps noticing a stunned healer and spending a GCD to cleanse them in time for it to be meaningful is unlikely. What's more likely is you will see the same defensive peeling to push/counter-stun. In 8v8 a healer will just keep healing. In short; there's a lot more concerning balance issues in this patch than this.

 

2.) For internal damage, do you mean the incoming attack or that it should have a % chance to shield each tick? Agree with former, disagree with latter.

 

3.) Chance to shield should have different factors than chance to crit.

 

4.) I agree that sents need some help defensively right now. Not sure if this is the best idea but something needs to be done.

 

5.) Operatives have a ton of issues no doubt. Unfortunately, the devs have made it clear they want this class to die off due to all the complaints by PVE quitters.

 

First, thanks for your argued answer. Now down to the subject.

1) I’m pretty sure they meant that the dispel of non healer will work on CC as well. And even if I agree about your argument on 8vs8, good team will make use of this in arena and this will break the hard switch tactic unless you do it so perfectly that no one has a chance to react.

2) What I meant is that from day one, Tanks can’t rely on their defensive stats. They are more and more a target of choice in arena and 8 men and simply do not have the tools to defend themselves. For internal/elemental damage I did not make any math to precisely know what should be shieldable or not. But let’s take a few exemples: Powertech does pretty much only elemental damage, same for all the Dots, the smash, Blade storm, Force in Balance all this goes right through everything (and much more). Am I the only one to find this weird?

3) Same idea.

4) I think sentinel should not be as resilient as guardian/juggernaut. But using a Cd should give you only edge in battle, no backslach.

5) I would love to think this is not the way it is done…

 

I find it really interesting that the classes that rely on hard stuns don't want them to be cleansable, but seemingly have no problem with DoTs being cleansed. That this causes no cognitive dissonance for anyone is amazing.

 

To be honest I don’t mind that Dots are uncleansable. Sniper & Powertech that already does amazing damage will do a little more. My main concern is about the hardstun.

If I follow you reasoning you want to buff the spec that already does the most damage: the dot spec. And at the same time weakening the other that already does less overall damage. That is called unbalance.

 

It would be a mistake for a DPS operative to not want DoTs to be uncleansable. That is going to be a buff to them, really.

 

I wonder if the OP has played the new 3.0 version or read the leaked stuff. I have a different impression of what it will look like, but cannot be sure until I get to actually play with it

 

Scoundrel doesn't need a damage buff. Furthermore this would be a buff to dirty figting and Sniper just does that 100 times better than scoundrel.

[Master-Nala]

To be honest I don’t mind that Dots are uncleansable. Sniper & Powertech that already does amazing damage will do a little more. My main concern is about the hardstun.

If I follow you reasoning you want to buff the spec that already does the most damage: the dot spec. And at the same time weakening the other that already does less overall damage. That is called unbalance.

 

Actually, you really didn't follow my reasoning. I don't want cleanse to work in PvP at all.

[Hei_Atzfel]

I find it really interesting that the classes that rely on hard stuns don't want them to be cleansable, but seemingly have no problem with DoTs being cleansed. That this causes no cognitive dissonance for anyone is amazing.

 

They're completely different. Those dots not only can do a hell of a lot of damage, but they can also be used many many times over in the time that it takes a hardstun to come off of cooldown a single time. When My sin can spam elecrocute every 9s like creeping terror, we'll talk.

[Master-Nala]

They're completely different. Those dots not only can do a hell of a lot of damage, but they can also be used many many times over in the time that it takes a hardstun to come off of cooldown a single time. When My sin can spam elecrocute every 9s like creeping terror, we'll talk.

 

As I said, it's interesting.

[Tonev]

Actually, you really didn't follow my reasoning. I don't want cleanse to work in PvP at all.

 

As a Sniper player, I do.

 

99% of the deaths I receive in PvP is from either a Shadow/Sin or a Scoundrel/Operative stun and pecking me to death. I welcome the 3.0 changes, although I am very worried about what they will do to my Sniper (from a PvP perspective).

 

In my book they should give everyone "1" hard stun in PvP (over the cleanse, but people whined and ***** about this when they announced the idea ) and put it on the same exact timer as the CC break, this would fix a lot of the CC, damage zerg calls, while not affecting 1 on 1 encounters. In this game 12-15 seconds of being pecked (by Scoundrel Operative) and Dotted to death is damn rediculous, hell as a Sniper I have had to forgo my damage stats to stack the ***** out of endurance for my primary defense in PvP.

 

Also, lethality Snipers are not better than Operatives when tossing dots around, due to how our mechanic works (if we are constantly running around dotting we aren't doing true damage (just inflated numbers in PvP). Snipers pick Leathality because every other spec without strong healing/guarding support is cannon fodder and basically a free kill.

 

In short, I'm glad they are implementing cleansing of CC states, and look on the bright side though, 95% of the people that PvP (especially pugs) are too damn stupid to actually use the new CC cleanse on their team mates.

Edited November 11, 2014 by Tonev

[TezMoney]

With a 12 sec cool down, I don't see how cleansing hard stuns is so revolutionary to the meta of pvp. You'll still be able to hard stun and blow up a player, unless the other three players on their team all have cleanses and don't overlap them. Even if they do succeed, your cc will be up before their cleanses.

[JouerTue]

i'd make cleance work if made by a healer who selected a utility, but it's not going to happen.

let's see..can always reroll madness.

 

about tanks, they are viable enough in my opinion, the DR is consistent if they get heals, while you can melt a dps and go thorugh a coulpe of healers' efforts.

 

if you buff the tanks, you need to reduce guard effectiveness or stunning the healer and killing a tank or a dps who's going to have guard switched on will be really hard.

 

edit: i'll be happy if they give back to smash his total power, at least there will be a counter to all those dotspammers who will stand in the back (hopefully crowded lol)

Edited November 11, 2014 by JouerTue

[IcyxHot]

I'm a Concealment Operative (Mostly, I do play the other 2 often still). It is really the only class I play as well for a long time now and only 55 up until the 12x boost came out.

 

While I can agree with most on this I see both sides of how Operatives and Scoundrels are glass cannons and can burst a lot of DPS in a short amount of time but like the OP states we need to be behind the target to do a good chunk of our damage. Our class is all about timing and controlling our target, a lot of people think that we are too overpowered because of the DPS we put out but I personally think they are balanced right now (besides heal spec... I think it heals way too much and needs some tweaking but we are talking about DPS). The OP brought up the topic on defensive cooldowns and I have to disagree, from neutral standpoint adding anymore defenses to our class without messing with damage or mechanics would be too much. Yes we have Shield Probe and Evasion but you forget that shield probe protects from moderate damage incoming for 10 seconds (Moderate damage tho I have never calculated how much it protects I have seen some bursty people do hardly anything while I have it active) and as far as evasion goes it cleanses all your debuffs on you and protects you for 100% of melee and ranged for 3 seconds which can easily be the difference of a 12k hit and maybe another 8k if placed correctly.

 

On the topic of cleanseable CC's I think this is stupid in general, unless you want to remove Resolve and have WZ's play out like BG's in WoW this is a stupid move. For reference to those who have not played, the Rouge class in WoW is a melee stealth class regarded as 'similar' to an operative in swtor. They have a skill called Sap which is like sleep dart and stuns the target for 8 seconds unless damaged. Since they have no resolves rogues can simply Sap you for a long time unless you break it. With swtor's resolve it limits your 'sap' to 2 before resolve is popped and you can break one of those as is. Adding cleanse to this further reduces the effectiveness of a stun. Plus the fact that not everyone has the ability to cleanse stacks the odds in other peoples favor. I see this being affected most in arenas. Say you have a side theoretically: Commando (healer), Guardian (Tank), Gunslinger and Shadow (DPS) VS Mercenary (Healer) Juggernaut (Tank), Operative and Sorcerer (DPS) The Imp team clearly has more CC ability due to the fact that 3/4 of the team has a cleanse that can block a stun making the pub team useless in stunning the opposite team. If you think about it, there's is a clear advantage to one side in a match that should be 'equal' (Take out the fact that the queue always messes with teams and puts trolls all over).

 

If you disagree with me then that is perfectly fine, but if you do let me know what part you disagree with maybe I am missing something maybe not. Would love to hear others opinion on this.

 

-Leiyla

[KrackShotz]

Quite frankly the debate on these things are over. Mobas have already figured out what works for matchmaking. If you want to queue with a friend, you will be queued with other grps. It's that damned simple. Nobody queues with grps to play casually, that crap doesn't fly. No, you want to face fresh faced noobs in pve gear instead of people equal comparatively to your skill and gear lvl. You reward a virtuous cycle, that gets more people playing and then you can begin to separate skills and gear by tiers, it's a proven format used by LoL and Dota 2.

[Savej]

Quite frankly the debate on these things are over. Mobas have already figured out what works for matchmaking. If you want to queue with a friend, you will be queued with other grps. It's that damned simple. Nobody queues with grps to play casually, that crap doesn't fly. No, you want to face fresh faced noobs in pve gear instead of people equal comparatively to your skill and gear lvl. You reward a virtuous cycle, that gets more people playing and then you can begin to separate skills and gear by tiers, it's a proven format used by LoL and Dota 2.

 

There isn't anything in there that i can disagree with. The fact that BW pvp devs didn't already know this on day #1 is something I wonder about.

[Zoom_VI]

Nobody queues with grps to play casually, that crap doesn't fly.

 

Really now? I frequently duo queue with a friend, we don't run specific comps and we don't run around using leet voicechat coordination either.

[Racter]

Some of what you said is accurate. What you said about concealment's defenses is way off point. You can't balance around regs, and our survivability is not quite there for arena. The only change we need IMO is move the DR from Revitalizers to Sneak and extend the duration of Sneak to 12-20s. This would be greatly beneficial as we are and will remain reliant on our opener, and getting knocked out of stealth before you can land it is pretty devastating. 12s would put it on par with Assassin's Dark Embrace (minus the energy regen buff) and would allow up to 22.5s of 20-25% DR if you blow Sneak right before you exit stealth, then use it again immediately as it falls off. This would, however, prevent us from using it as a mini-gap closer/snare counter. Honestly, that's a trade I would make. Even if they left it at 6s, that would still leave it roughly on par with the new DCD Sorcs are getting. Cutting the CD on shield probe was a nice step but I still don't think we're there. I've run concealment a few times in team queue and against good players you still die in the blink of an eye. I had my own KI, my healer's KI, two KPs, Recuperative Nanotech, guard and intercede's DR up and was killed by 2 taunted DPS in under 10s. The utility system may change this but we'll need to play it to know for sure. Without a doubt the change to CC cleansing and our purge make us much stronger relative to current.

 

 

What the OP said about tank tunnel is spot on, between guard's DR being far too high for classes with defensive cooldowns (Warriors BHs Sins) and tank stats not really doing anything against common DPS stuff (Armor Pen, dots, crits) they are usually the easiest kill target for non-hardswap comps.

 

Increasing the interrupt cd in a vacuum is a good change, but the other changes coming to ranged may cumulatively be too strong. (I know you didn't touch on this but important to consider) Lightning is getting 2-3 instants, plus shock, on top of TB on the move, on top of the interrupt nerf. Arsenal will be able to PS TM Power Surge TM TM HSM and if anything at all gets kicked their Unload/Blazing Bolts is uninterruptable, on top of BB on the move, on top of the interrupt nerf. Again, we'll just have to see how it plays out.

 

Making madness dots uncleansable was a nerf to Sorcs and only Sorcs... Not sure why that went through at all honestly. Making all dots uncleansable just dumbs the game down, they should have added alternate means of cleanse protection like UA from Aff Locks (silences and deals a sizable amount of direct damage to the cleanser) instead of making them outright unstoppable. On top of that, increasing the CD on cleanses and allowing them to cleanse hard stuns on top of removing dots would have created a choice, and most people would have opted to save the cleanse to get their healer/tank out of cc 9/10 times.

 

I disagree in regards to the Focus Rage nerf. MDPS should all have 30% AOE DR, no ranged, healers or tanks should have access to it. IMO the original point of the spec was to prevent and punish stacking ranged/healers on top of each other and keeping melee off them indefinitely. It no longer has the power to do this and there is nothing you can do to counter this. It was also not at all a problem in arena and was nerfed after arena was introduced so I don't really understand the thought process behind nerfing it when they did or as hard as they did when they did it.

 

GBTF/UR in it's current state is beyond useless and I don't really see a point keeping it in the game as is. They basically removed it entirely as an option in competitive PVP as you will get stunned and destroyed without also popping camo... If you need to use a second DCD to use the first one effectively, the first one is worthless. That is the current state of UR.

 

The increase in health without a comparative increase in damage will lead to higher TTK, which naturally favors sustained specs over burst specs. The interrupt nerfs on top of the turret specs getting more mobility favors ranged, as does the new utility system allowing full madness to get bubble mes and overload root. The changes to cleanse offer significant additional utility to classes that can use it, and if all cc becomes the same type (IE, currently a DPS Merc can't cleanse warrior fear, but can cleanse FB; a DPS sorc faces the opposite scenario. In 3.0 both may be able to cleanse both) in addition to the decrease in relative strength of burst specs, cleanse will become far stronger than taunt. Keeping your healer and tank from sitting 16s CC chains is massively stronger vs pressure comps than reducing their damage by 30% for 6s, while reducing spike damage vs burst comps is relatively stronger than having your healer/tank available in between their burst phases. Given that all signs point to pressure comps being BiS in 3.0, cleanse will likely far outstrip taunt in terms of arena utility.

 

Personally I'm expecting Jugg Tank Double Madness Sorc to be the most common/strongest comp in S4 and a lot of matches will go to the acid.

Edited November 11, 2014 by Racter

[Aetideus]

From the 3.0 changes so far, there is no opponent to tank + healer. Damage and burst are nerfed, single internal/elemental is nerfed. Dunno how a tank may go down BW. AOE splash is for PvE mobs Edited November 11, 2014 by Aetideus

[Zoom_VI]

From the 3.0 changes so far, there is no opponent to tank + healer. Damage and burst are nerfed, single internal/elemental is nerfed. Dunno how a tank may go down BW. AOE splash is for PvE mobs

 

New tactics aka Plasmatech is probably going to make tank tunneling hilariously easy.

[Savej]

Really now? I frequently duo queue with a friend, we don't run specific comps and we don't run around using leet voicechat coordination either.

 

equal skill, equal gear you will beat 2 random players all day - it's a big advantage

[Zoom_VI]

equal skill, equal gear you will beat 2 random players all day - it's a big advantage

 

Exactly we are winning because we are better players, unless you are seriously going to argue that lesser players deserve to win?

[Aetideus]

New tactics aka Plasmatech is probably going to make tank tunneling hilariously easy.

 

Plasmatech has no burst and almost 0 dcds. The railshot autocrit may be defed and the flamethrower intpt/avoided. What is the optimism for?

Edited November 11, 2014 by Aetideus

[Aetideus]

. . Edited November 11, 2014 by Aetideus

[Zoom_VI]

Plasmatech has no burst and almost 0 dcds. What is the optimism for?

 

I don't think you understand how tank tunneling works.