utility skills

[egriz]

So this is basically about 2 utilities:

 

Emergency Stims

Allows Adrenaline Rush to be activated while stunned and causes Adrenaline Rush to purge stun effects when activated. This will not work against other types of incapacitating effects or scripted stuns, which are often used by Flashpoint and Operation bosses or other special non-player characters.

 

Vanguards are "glass-cannons" as so many people say, meaning they have incredible burst, but can be easily killed, especially if focused. So I wanted to use this to counter the stuns and have a better chance at survival in rankeds, but I discovered that they do not always work.

It clearly states it will purge stun effects but not other incapacitating effects. What I thought that means is CC, which is fair in my opinion.. since CC breaks from damage, you can't break it with this. However there are skills which in my dictionary count as stuns, but could not use Adrenaline Rush during it, like Force Stasis and a stun of a shadow dps.

The sole purpose of the skill (or at least why I chose it) is to get me out of stun, or at least be able to use Adrenaline Rush, so it can heal a littlebit to longer my life. I am confused, if there are stuns that cannot be purged, than it's a Russian roulette choosing this before a ranked. You get the wrong opponents with the wrong stuns and that's that for the utility..

So can anyone confirm, is this working properly? Is this a bug? If it works correctly, what counts as stun and what as an "other incapacitating effect"?

 

Sonic Rebounder

Sonic Round protects all friendly targets in its area of impact, excluding you, granting Sonic Rebounder, which reflects the next direct, single-target attack back at the attacker.

 

A very nice skill in my opinion, especially in PVP. Tested it in PVE, it does reflect the next attack, however there is a little problem with it. When it reciprocates damage, it counts as damage that your friend did, not you, and it doesn't even reward you with protection in PVP.

2 problems:

 

PVE: the vanguard tank uses Sonic Rebounder and if his teammates reflect the damage, he can lose aggro because of this (happened in my ops group), while, if it counted as damage he did, this could be a much better tank skill, gaining that much aggro which is quite good, especially at the beginning of the fight.

 

PVP: sad, but true, most players only look at the numbers at the end of a match (how much damage/heal/protection someone did, maybe objectives too, but they do not exist in ranked for example).

In a normal wz, there is no issue here, everyone has high enough numbers in the appropriate fields that noone can tell if Sonic Rebounder even did anything.

What about ranked? Since You use your aoe taunt to apply Sonic Rebounder, for the allies you give this reflect buff, you lose protection, since the reflect itself counts as damage they dealt, not protection You did. Also, because it gives them more damage, it can widen the damage dealt between them and You, and in a ranked round, that damage compared to all the damages dealt matters.

 

An unreal example: you use Sonic Rebounder and luckily, all of your allies get the buff and all of them reflect 15k damage (again, unreal example, but could happen!). This means that:

1. You probably saved your team
   
2. You probably crippled your opponents
   

 

But what can your team see from this at the end? That they did more damage than You, You did not do any protection, so the conclusion: they've won the match, You were the one not being as useful as everyone else. Only because You used your ability perfectly and they were at the right place at the right time.

This is a very unreal example, but You might be able to see my point better hopefully.

 

And the only thing that would need to change is for the reflected damage to be calculated as either protection You did or damage You did (and to be honest, that is what happened, in the example, with Sonic Rebounder You did 45k damage to your opponents and not your teammates did).

And the utility would not be better or more OP or anything, it would do exactly the same thing as before, only You would be getting the recognition for it.

 

Tell me your opinions and thoughts!

Edited December 23, 2014 by egriz

[Zunayson]

1. There have been times where I have been stunned, and I was unable to use Adren rush. My situational awareness is never 100% (nobody's is), so I propose the following:

• I had recently used to pop a stun, and so Health Monitor was already on me - so the ability could not be used.
  
• Somebody applied a mezz on top of me. Technically, then, I am mezzed and stunned. Since it can be used only while stunned, andI am mezzed, I cannot use it. Just like, whereas you can use all abilities whenever not controlled, you cannot use them if a control effect is applied to you.
  

 

2. for pve, certainly that can be quite annoying. But think about the DPS who get that raid utility (that skill is, after all, the raid utility that BW wanted us to have) - it would have to vary by cylinder, or else the threat dump may not be a threat dump after all!

 

for pvp, since when has the scoreboard really have been any indication at all of how useful somebody has been? I don't see a problem with not being rewarded for it, and it's a problem with the mentality of players of those who advocate that much for it imo.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Zunayson

[Glower]

Sonic Rebounder

Sonic Round protects all friendly targets in its area of impact, excluding you, granting Sonic Rebounder, which reflects the next direct, single-target attack back at the attacker.

 

A very nice skill in my opinion, especially in PVP. Tested it in PVE, it does reflect the next attack, however there is a little problem with it. When it reciprocates damage, it counts as damage that your friend did, not you, and it doesn't even reward you with protection in PVP.

 

They should change it for PvP, it's just unfar to PT tanks, especially in unranked games with number race. I could be wrong, but when sniper pops the huge shield he gets additional healing numbers to scoretable. Not sure about jugg tanks Sonic Barrier.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Glower

[Zoom_VI]

They should change it for PvP, it's just unfar to PT tanks, especially in unranked games with number race. I could be wrong, but when sniper pops the huge shield he gets additional healing numbers to scoretable. Not sure about jugg tanks Sonic Barrier.

 

Sniper's don't get any numbers for Scrambling field. It's a mitigation DcD not a heal.

[Glower]

Sniper's don't get any numbers for Scrambling field. It's a mitigation DcD not a heal.

 

10sec of google and i found that... As i said i'm not sure. Maybe they changed it long time ago.

[GhOsTPrOz]

The adrenaline rush utility isn't all that good, so I reccomend using others.

 

As for the sonic rebounder:

 

 

PVE: Any good tank taunts waits for the reflects to happen and then uses his single taunt thus shooting his threat sky high! Incase you don't know a taunt grants 6 seconds of the boss staying on you unless someone else taunts over you....so no reason to lose aggro here.

 

PvP: It's not a numbers race at all. Your the tank your goal is to do as much damage and keep your group from taking damage, are you going to not stun the Jugg tunneling your healer because that's a protection loss? Why use ion storm...that's a 5% DR to the enemy...that means 5% less protection....Its about keeping your team alive and vanguards do this well.

 

However if you are set at thinking sonic rebounder is bad, you can always not spec into it.

 

Also if it directed all the damage back to you, that would only make VG dps way too OP in Operations....take Underlurker HM for example...good vanguards already do 4 or 5k easy and probably the best Dps for this fight....if rebounder gave them damage, they would easily be doing about 6 or 7k damage on that fight. Plus they would generate too much threat and make keeping aggro for tanks harder.

[Zoom_VI]

10sec of google and i found that... As i said i'm not sure. Maybe they changed it long time ago.

 

Ballistic shield didn't work like that back then either. Be mindful that in that early age of the game most of the finer points of how the game functioned where still a mystery to the wider playerbase. The amount of misinformation flying around was staggering.

[meisterjedi]

 

Also if it directed all the damage back to you, that would only make VG dps way too OP in Operations....take Underlurker HM for example...good vanguards already do 4 or 5k easy and probably the best Dps for this fight....if rebounder gave them damage, they would easily be doing about 6 or 7k damage on that fight. Plus they would generate too much threat and make keeping aggro for tanks harder.

 

It doesn't matter who gets awarded the dmg, it's still the PT/Vanguards that's responisble for it, so they are in fact doing more dmg than parsers show you.

Besides the DPS boost for the group sonic rebounders strength mostly comes from the great dmg mitigation it provides vs a lot of high dmg abilities in the game (mostly PVE but PVP as well). It counters specific burst phases that threaten deaths to your group (like the underlurker cross, revans heave, HK bombs, rugar charge, insert random high dmg hit on tanks and many more) even to an extend where you can trivialize mechanics for your raid, if you position yourself in range for it. It's hilarious to see poor xeno do 0 dmg in his sub20% burn phase just because of it.

 

With all theese benefits I could barely care less about parser/scoreboard numbers. Sonic rebounder is one of the best utilities we have, and as most tier 2 utilities suck, it can be picked up easily whenever you find a good use for it.

Edited May 24, 2015 by meisterjedi

[GhOsTPrOz]

It doesn't matter who gets awarded the dmg, it's still the PT/Vanguards that's responisble for it, so they are in fact doing more dmg than parsers show you.

Besides the DPS boost for the group sonic rebounders strength mostly comes from the great dmg mitigation it provides vs a lot of high dmg abilities in the game (mostly PVE but PVP as well). It counters specific burst phases that threaten deaths to your group (like the underlurker cross, revans heave, HK bombs, rugar charge, insert random high dmg hit on tanks and many more) even to an extend where you can trivialize mechanics for your raid, if you position yourself in range for it. It's hilarious to see poor xeno do 0 dmg in his sub20% burn phase just because of it.

 

With all theese benefits I could barely care less about parser/scoreboard numbers. Sonic rebounder is one of the best utilities we have, and as most tier 2 utilities suck, it can be picked up easily whenever you find a good use for it.

 

 

 

Can't tell if your agreeing with me or agreeing with me but telling me I am wrong because I basically just said the same thing you said...

[Zoom_VI]

Can't tell if your agreeing with me or agreeing with me but telling me I am wrong because I basically just said the same thing you said...

 

He is saying you're wrong because it's irrelevant who gets credit for the damage in the logs, the only thing that matters is that the damage was dealt and it was because of rebounder which happened because of the Vanguard.

Edited May 25, 2015 by Zoom_VI

[GhOsTPrOz]

He is saying you're wrong because it's irrelevant who gets credit for the damage in the logs, the only thing that matters is that the damage was dealt and it was because of rebounder which happened because of the Vanguard.

 

That's what I was saying too...