Update on Sentinel and Marauder

[Laurreth]

We do want to avoid just buffing other classes up, and instead need to focus on bringing down the over-performing classes. If we concentrated on buffing all other classes to the status of over-performing classes, we would create a power bloat that would make PvE decisively too easy and PvP time-to-kill too short.

 

Keep doing more of that

[TACeMossie]

This. Every word of it.

 

Sorry, but this is just PR BS talk. Even when ignoring forums and substracting the whining you typically get there: Just talk to any long time Anni/WM player and - this is not exaggerating - every single one I talked to just hates the new playstyle. I have talked to about 50 players on T3-M4 by now and NOT ONE OF THEM liked it. A lot of players who mained the AC in progression have rerolled. Those who haven't are having no fun using their toon on progression fights anymore and are anxiously waiting for changes and telling me so all the time. Those who played alts in Anni/WM are barely playing those alts anymore. The most frequent question I get in whispers, on Teamspeak and in real life conversations is: El'ethon, when is Watchman/Anni rotation fixed? I'm passing this on to you now to make of it what you will.

(Btw I used to answer "soon" and tried to calm people down. But that's getting harder every week and I've grown so tired of it...)

 

So. I know how PR talk works, but I doubt that it does you any good at this point. I think it's time your communication became more honest and to the point given the obvious dissatisfaction of a majority of players. Cause that's what we're talking about here.

 

It was as early as mid December that Watchman/Anni players told you the new design is awful to play and that you should reconsider the changes. I don't understand why HALF A YEAR LATER you are honestly still saying you're looking into it not now but in the unspecified future! With all due respect and acknowledging the complexity of Dev work, schedules and processes in such interdependent adjustments. THIS IS TAKING WAY TOO LONG. Me personally, I'm not willing to wait until 4.0 for these changes. I'm just not.

 

 

I admit, I sort-of like new watchman, but only cause it feels like pre 2.4 Assault Specialist for Vanguards with a few tweaks. Probably cause of the 18 second DoT + the 6 second CD hard-hitter + the applied-through-attacks DoT. Then again, when a spec feels more like an inferior version of a vanguard spec, you know something is wrong.

[Emperor-Norton]

This. Every word of it.

 

Sorry, but this is just PR BS talk. Even when ignoring forums and substracting the whining you typically get there: Just talk to any long time Anni/WM player and - this is not exaggerating - every single one I talked to just hates the new playstyle. I have talked to about 50 players on T3-M4 by now and NOT ONE OF THEM liked it. A lot of players who mained the AC in progression have rerolled. Those who haven't are having no fun using their toon on progression fights anymore and are anxiously waiting for changes and telling me so all the time. Those who played alts in Anni/WM are barely playing those alts anymore. The most frequent question I get in whispers, on Teamspeak and in real life conversations is: El'ethon, when is Watchman/Anni rotation fixed? I'm passing this on to you now to make of it what you will.

(Btw I used to answer "soon" and tried to calm people down. But that's getting harder every week and I've grown so tired of it...)

 

So. I know how PR talk works, but I doubt that it does you any good at this point. I think it's time your communication became more honest and to the point given the obvious dissatisfaction of a majority of players. Cause that's what we're talking about here.

 

It was as early as mid December that Watchman/Anni players told you the new design is awful to play and that you should reconsider the changes. I don't understand why HALF A YEAR LATER you are honestly still saying you're looking into it not now but in the unspecified future! With all due respect and acknowledging the complexity of Dev work, schedules and processes in such interdependent adjustments. THIS IS TAKING WAY TOO LONG. Me personally, I'm not willing to wait until 4.0 for these changes. I'm just not.

When El'ethon is getting angry you know you have gone too far.

[Ardarell_Solo]

I admit, I sort-of like new watchman, but only cause it feels like pre 2.4 Assault Specialist for Vanguards with a few tweaks. Probably cause of the 18 second DoT + the 6 second CD hard-hitter + the applied-through-attacks DoT. Then again, when a spec feels more like an inferior version of a vanguard spec, you know something is wrong.

 

As I said in another thread: I'm quite sure that those to whom new WM/Anni appeals will most likely be players that mained another AC with a similar spec -> Dot Sages and, like you added, old Vanguard. But I take it you will not be making your Sentinel your new main progression toon, will you?

And I doubt anyone else of those who recognize something familiar in new WM/Anni from their main specs will either.

 

And even if the specc had attracked loads of new players, I still don't see where WM/Anni regulars are supposed to be going then. Because other than the similarity to an old spec you pointed out there is no other current AC/spec that's similar to pre 3.0 Anni/WM.

 

Ok, there's Vigilance, but that one's got no proc mechanic on their Dots, their longest dot is 12 sec and they rely even more heavily on Master Strike which for some odd reason is still not possible on the move. Plus they lack raw DPS. Mind you though, that I'm having way more fun DPSing on my Guardian atm than on my Sent. It's just that his DPS is not enough for our group setup.

 

Then there's Scrapper Scoundrel with its somewhat similar 6s rotation. But again, no proc dynamics here, that rotation is totally static, difficulty comes with handling positioning. And I probably don't have to stress how in current melee dps unfriendly content you sure as hell don't want a class that not only has to be in 4m range but also behind its target...

[Jimmajamma]

Hey folks,

 

I wanted to share our thoughts regarding some of the questions and feedback that we have seen in the thread.

 

Playstyle of Annihilation / Watchman

As many of you know, there were changes made to the playstyle of Annihilation and Watchman in 3.0. This definitely seems to be a contentious change for some Marauder/Sentinel players. The last thing we want to do is to put a Discipline’s playstyle in a place that makes its players unhappy. We will keep an eye on this and look into possible playstyle changes in the future. We don’t want you to think that this is feedback that we are ignoring; it is just not something we will change in the short term.

 

PvP Data

Our intent behind exposing win rates for Carnage/Combat and Annihilation/Watchman was not to suggest that they are our only data point for decision making. The goal was to express that, by looking at average win rates and overall performance, those Disciplines can be viable. Understanding, however, that in some of those cases it reflects only the best players in that class. Still, it does show that they can play at the top levels.

 

Now, you all brought up a really interesting fact, which is how frequently you see Marauders/Sentinels in the top of all overall ratings. It is true, in looking at that data point, that Marauders/Sentinels are definitely under-represented, we agree! However, we think the most important part of that data is not who is missing from the top, but who makes up the top. Looking at the top spread of players, almost all of them are spread across only three Advanced Classes: Powertech/Vanguard, Sorcerer/Sage, and Assassin/Shadow. That is the real problem that we are working on addressing right now. With those three Advanced Classes over-performing, all other Advanced Classes (including Marauders/Sentinels) are being pushed into a bad place. This is why you will see that we are actively working on toning down those classes specifically (like we did yesterday in 3.1.2).

 

We do want to avoid just buffing other classes up, and instead need to focus on bringing down the over-performing classes. If we concentrated on buffing all other classes to the status of over-performing classes, we would create a power bloat that would make PvE decisively too easy and PvP time-to-kill too short.

 

To reiterate what we said in the last post: We do acknowledge that there are issues with Marauders/Sentinels, especially around Utility and mobility, and we will be working to address these issues in future patches.

 

I do hope that this gives a little bit of perspective into our thoughts around Marauder/Sentinel balance and how it relates to other classes.

 

Thanks!

 

-eric

 

This post was the reason I just cancelled my subscription. They clearly have no idea what they are doing.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Jimmajamma

[skomerko]

deleted Edited March 31, 2019 by skomerko

[Xenphon]

TBH you really shouldnt have any problems with melee in PVE unless u have more than 2 in whole raid. Yea, fights are more punishing for mdps but its not that bad. You just have to learn how to use ur cds + time things correctly. Sometimes it requires better tanks but well I main combat/anni sent(currently 9/10) and i dont feel like im being carried when i look at raid logs Obviously, numbers are slightly lower but its normal.

 

The problem is not that it is not doable. I have the same progression as you. The issue is that you have to work harder than any ranged for, if you're lucky and the ranged are slacking, the same result. There is no reward for melee uptime, no ranged taxation and most mechanics only affect melee. It scares me that you think it is normal that your numbers are lower. They should not be. According to BW they should be higher or at the very least equal to ranged. The fact that they are not means there's a balance issue they have yet to address and which they seem to happily ignore.

 

Although far from the hardest fight, I find Underlurker as the best example for how the operations favour ranged. The adds that spawn will do more damage if you're in melee range. Melee first have to get to them (charge helps here for marauders, unless you're annihilation and just used it), then you have to worry about the increased damage you take compared to any ranged in your group. Add another melee to the group and the healers will be pressed further. Ranged on the other need only move to hide behind a rock, otherwise they are good. It's beyond ridiculous that something like that found its way into the game. To repeat, I do not think it is hard, I think it is stupid. It highlights everything done wrong in the new operations mechanics-wise.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Xenphon

[WheresMyWhisky]

First for all thanks for being brave enough to come back and respond to the reaction to your original post Eric and I for one do appreciate that John and yourself are trying to communicate with us more over the last month even if we don't see eye to eye on certain aspects of the game

 

As others have said I can understand not just buffing everyone, but I do think you need to be careful with nerfs as its not as if everyone is walking through the new hard mode ops. I don't think this is a bad thing as they have been to easy in the past but I do think their is a legitimate concern depending on what your are nerfing and by how much.

 

I have to agree wholeheartedly with xenphon's and Ardarell's posts and as Emperor Norton said if Ardarell is getting upset you have a real problem as he has been the voice of reason on these forums since 3 came out.

 

With respect to looking into the rotation I will say again what I said in an earlier post. In 2.8 PTS you changed annihilations rotation, you took rupture off cooldown and everyone hated it, so why on earth did anyone think we would like this change in 3.0? It was very predictable it would be hated and then to top it off to give us an 18 secs dot, I am sure this feedback would have been given to you on PTS so I do not think looking into it is an acceptable answer to be honest. I think you need say we are going to fix in 3.3 and get it on PTS early so if there problems with what you come up with it can be tweaked.

 

Also you need to look at the carnage rotation, everyone that plays carnage must be getting RSI on their massacre finger by now, i thought tracer / grav round spam back in 1 was bad but this takes it to a whole new level.

 

There are a couple of people that seem to be saying we cannot do the current hard mode ops, we can but as another poster correctly states you have to be very aware of timings, when to use your defensives etc although that being said I had one pull on revan and that wasn't fun at all. The reality though is if its for progression and the choice is your sent / marauder or an RDPS that's doing at least the same dps you take the rdps why makes things more difficult? Although if you are lucky like me your guild doesn't have enough rdps

Edited April 9, 2015 by WheresMyWhisky

[Atlanis]

This. Every word of it.

 

 

 

Sorry, but this is just PR BS talk. Even when ignoring forums and substracting the whining you typically get there: Just talk to any long time Anni/WM player and - this is not exaggerating - every single one I talked to just hates the new playstyle. I have talked to about 50 players on T3-M4 by now and NOT ONE OF THEM liked it. A lot of players who mained the AC in progression have rerolled. Those who haven't are having no fun using their toon on progression fights anymore and are anxiously waiting for changes and telling me so all the time. Those who played alts in Anni/WM are barely playing those alts anymore. The most frequent question I get in whispers, on Teamspeak and in real life conversations is: El'ethon, when is Watchman/Anni rotation fixed? I'm passing this on to you now to make of it what you will.

(Btw I used to answer "soon" and tried to calm people down. But that's getting harder every week and I've grown so tired of it...)

 

So. I know how PR talk works, but I doubt that it does you any good at this point. I think it's time your communication became more honest and to the point given the obvious dissatisfaction of a majority of players. Cause that's what we're talking about here.

 

 

 

It was as early as mid December that Watchman/Anni players told you the new design is awful to play and that you should reconsider the changes. I don't understand why HALF A YEAR LATER you are honestly still saying you're looking into it not now but in the unspecified future! With all due respect and acknowledging the complexity of Dev work, schedules and processes in such interdependent adjustments. THIS IS TAKING WAY TOO LONG. Me personally, I'm not willing to wait until 4.0 for these changes. I'm just not.

 

I think I have never seen this guy angry at the Devs......Eric what have you done

[Wriwnas]

I do, I really do appreciate the answer though I feel that you are just bullSithing us... it's just damage control and a generic "we hear you and will do something in the "future" about it". Just buying some time trying to keep us subscribed as more as possible.. Thats what that answer is telling me after that initial post... damage control, PR, without a real plan behind it.

On top of that, instead of fixing our problems asap, your only idea is to nerf other classes so that they are equaly "bad".. or "at the same level" according to BW. Congratz on pissing other classes on top of marauders/sentinels. We get nothing and instead they loose something... IF ONE class was overperforming.. I would understand nerfing it.. but 3? ...

I would say you need to be careful nerfing classes too much and giving people the impression that they are losing something rather than finding ways to buff underperforming classes which is giving something to players.

And besides that^^ which in the end one could argue that the players will get over it if everything is smooth and equal etc... What about the melee unfriendly pve ops that we have atm that have a high dps requirement and even the fps that ppl have dared you to clear with the gear requirements that you have posted? And although I'm not for sure an amazingly skilled hardcore player, I am neither a SM casual. And I'm telling you..No, I am warning you.. keep nerfing classes and you will only make this Sithy ops even harder to the few guilds that are actually clearing 7-10/10 bosses atm... and just frustrate your pvers even more... I guess we should have used to it by now.. who cares abour actual pvp/pve players in this game, right?

so the real question is with all of theses nerfs to classes what is bioware gonna do about PVE content with very high DPS requirements.

[RiVaN_]

It's great that they are looking into a problem like this.

What sucks is that they will likely break all of these classes/advanced classes from a PvE stand point to "fix" them in PvP. It's sad how PvP gets so much focus from the combat team and how PvE get screwed in the name of PvP "balance"

Edited April 9, 2015 by RiVaN_

[oofalong]

I was never an opponent of the new Watchman/Annihilation as it technically works as a rotation. And, everyone has different perspectives on what fun is when it comes to playstyle. (I suppose I am more easily entertained than others.) Still, the overwhelming majority of Annihilation/Watchman players have stated that they do not enjoy the new playstyle. I am unaware of a single person who prefers the new playstyle; at best, people don't hate it.

 

Now is absolutely the time to reconsider this Discipline.

 

And...

 

When El'ethon is getting angry you know you have gone too far.

 

El'ethon has been one of the most level-headed and genuine members of the entire SWTOR community. For things to have gotten so bad for him to be outraged should tell you its time to make this a priority.

[MotorCityMan]

I appreciate the feedback from Eric. The plan of action forward sounds reasonable. However I disagree with the pvp dev team's apparent emphases on DPS. The main disparity in pvp is in defensive abilities, less in offensive ones. Some classes are able to heal to full, or enjoy a quarter min or more of immunities, as well as being able to purge DoTs, the list goes on, while other classes have only token defensive abilities.

 

Melee players already have multiple ranged attacks, snares, interrupts, AoE CCs, etc, as well as gap closers. The Mara/Sent whining and howling won't stop until they get back their free kills on any ranged and have every pvp opponent frozen into an NPC stance they can then beat down.

Edited April 9, 2015 by MotorCityMan

[Nepthen]

... I am unaware of a single person who prefers the new playstyle; at best, people don't hate it.

 

This.

 

I've stated multiple times on various threads that the new Watchman rotation doesn't infuriate me. I still enjoy my Sentinel although I only use him on sm 60 content. 50-55, he's a blast on all difficulty levels.

 

Reworking the spec to be the Watchman of old may not be feasible but I truly believe things can be tweaked so that the spec can be more enjoyable to the majority of the veteran Sentinels.

[KalElc]

The problem is not that it is not doable. I have the same progression as you. The issue is that you have to work harder than any ranged for, if you're lucky and the ranged are slacking, the same result. There is no reward for melee uptime, no ranged taxation and most mechanics only affect melee. It scares me that you think it is normal that your numbers are lower. They should not be. According to BW they should be higher or at the very least equal to ranged. The fact that they are not means there's a balance issue they have yet to address and which they seem to happily ignore.

 

Although far from the hardest fight, I find Underlurker as the best example for how the operations favour ranged. The adds that spawn will do more damage if you're in melee range. Melee first have to get to them (charge helps here for marauders, unless you're annihilation and just used it), then you have to worry about the increased damage you take compared to any ranged in your group. Add another melee to the group and the healers will be pressed further. Ranged on the other need only move to hide behind a rock, otherwise they are good. It's beyond ridiculous that something like that found its way into the game. To repeat, I do not think it is hard, I think it is stupid. It highlights everything done wrong in the new operations mechanics-wise.

 

 

Looks like to me the new operation is really unbalance and melee classes such as marauder are getting penalize by it. that to be said, what will happen if Bio ware going to fix the class for the problem they have now and what will happen on future content when they balancing the new encounters in the future. then they have to tweak the classes again. I think they posted something about it few months / week back of this delema.

 

the next Operation that they going to be release, they have to make sure the encounters are equally balance so this mess dosent happen again. Why shall they change class base on encounter that exists, It's clearly they made a mistake on the encounters to be Rdps friendly and i guess that was never intended. So i say hurry up and release a new Ops that is Balance for Range and melee so we dont have this delema of Up time on bosses and stuff.

 

But yeah, what do i know. I dont pve so i should stay out from this subject.

Edited April 9, 2015 by KalElc

[Costello]

I find it more than a little humorous when people say things are fine or damage is fine. How about tomorrow for a live stream special event the combat/community team take a couple of sents/marauders combat/carnage spec and run the new ops on HM with parsec and show us their dps for the fights compared to every other dps class and then say its fine.

 

Then take combat/carnage to ranked PvP with. As they have an 80%+ chance of winning we should see some easy wins.

 

Talking about mobility and utilities is completely missing the issue and its horrifying people paid to balance the combat can't see this. No amount of mobility will allow a mdps to attack bulo when his got 4 carts exploding on him or your having to spread out to avoid the blue circle of death. No amount of mobility will change the need to hide behind a rock more than 4 meters away from lurkers so you can't attack them.

 

Anybody that honestly doesn't think they are being carried needs to get their raid team to use parsec and then check their damage against all the other dps for each hm fight. Cause while you may think with the running and attacking and good use of rotation your more than pulling your weight it turns out your actually the lowest dps and have a much harder time just to contribute the least. And no amount of tweaking or mobility will change that.

[KalElc]

I find it more than a little humorous when people say things are fine or damage is fine. How about tomorrow for a live stream special event the combat/community team take a couple of sents/marauders combat/carnage spec and run the new ops on HM with parsec and show us their dps for the fights compared to every other dps class and then say its fine.

 

Then take combat/carnage to ranked PvP with. As they have an 80%+ chance of winning we should see some easy wins.

 

Talking about mobility and utilities is completely missing the issue and its horrifying people paid to balance the combat can't see this. No amount of mobility will allow a mdps to attack bulo when his got 4 carts exploding on him or your having to spread out to avoid the blue circle of death. No amount of mobility will change the need to hide behind a rock more than 4 meters away from lurkers so you can't attack them.

 

Anybody that honestly doesn't think they are being carried needs to get their raid team to use parsec and then check their damage against all the other dps for each hm fight. Cause while you may think with the running and attacking and good use of rotation your more than pulling your weight it turns out your actually the lowest dps and have a much harder time just to contribute the least. And no amount of tweaking or mobility will change that.

 

Simple, the encounters are not build for Melee / Marauder. U have to consider that as well. don't look only on the class.

[davidp_newton]

When El'ethon is getting angry you know you have gone too far.

 

As so many others have said I heartily agree with this. I have had less patience with the developers than Elethon, as evidenced by my skepticism about a reply even appearing in this thread. I was wrong about that, but I was not wrong about the content of the reply.

 

The developers have attempted to punt the watchman/annihilation issue into the long grass. "We don’t want you to think that this is feedback that we are ignoring; it is just not something we will change in the short term." We are now over 5 months into this expansion, over 6 months counting the closed PTS. I don't know what happened with that as I wasn't invited but I get the impression that the feedback was negative about the change there. 6 MONTHS is NOT short term. 6 months is medium term, verging into long term and it is more than enough time to take the feedback, digest the feedback and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

 

Also with respect to DPS you are being completely block-headed with respect to DPS levels in operations. If you carry on nerfing the "over-performing" disciplines in PVE you will end up with a situation where quite literally no one will be able to complete HM Temple of Sacrifice, not even Zorz. The target DPS level should be set by the combat team. The operations team should then design operations around that target DPS level. It is quite obvious that one of two situations exists:

 

1. The target DPS levels of the combat team and the operations team are not the same;

2. The operations team are too incompetent to design their instances around the agreed target DPS level

 

I'm not sure which situation is worse as situation one indicates a complete breakdown of communication within the company and situation two indicates a complete breakdown of competence within a very significant portion of the company: heaven forbid both being true!! If the second is true then the instanced world boss on Ziost will likely be horrendous as well and any new operations coming out later this year will also suffer from the same lack of design ability.

 

FYI we should have been testing that world boss by now, but we are artificially gated from doing so on the PTS by a silly block in the storyline. That was reasonable earlier in the testing process but all of the content on Ziost should now be available for testing. If this new world boss has any significant mechanics or loot table bugs then the reaction of the community will (rightly) not be favourable.

Edited April 9, 2015 by davidp_newton

[MorgenBlue]

Yeah they really should look at redoing Annihilation in the short term as it would go a long way to improving relations with a large part of the PvE Marauder / Sentinel community. Bioware you already know what you have to do, just look at 2.10 and balance the DPS to the intended levels.

[DuckimusPrime]

I appreciate the feedback from Eric. The plan of action forward sounds reasonable.

 

Really? What we've just read from Eric is really familiar, like in the lead up to 3.1.1 familiar. When they said they were going to be looking at the issues facing sentinels/marauders. And what we got was a couple of half arsed changes that didn't touch on any of the issues and a massive amount of feedback completely ignored.

 

The devs then told us that they'd continue looking at Sentinels in the future. And then we get 3.2. With a focus on Concentration for Sentinels. You know, the only Sentinel spec that the community feels is already in a decent place.

 

I'd call you naivete in your listening to the absolute rubbish that Eric is posting but then I read this.

The Mara/Sent whining and howling won't stop until they get back their free kills on any ranged and have every pvp opponent frozen into an NPC stance they can then beat down.

[WheresMyWhisky]

I find it more than a little humorous when people say things are fine or damage is fine. How about tomorrow for a live stream special event the combat/community team take a couple of sents/marauders combat/carnage spec and run the new ops on HM with parsec and show us their dps for the fights compared to every other dps class and then say its fine.

 

I for one don't think the current situation is fine, I just don't agree we are not viable at all which seemed to be the view put over by some. I think the following by xenphon is absolutely spot on

 

The problem is not that it is not doable. I have the same progression as you. The issue is that you have to work harder than any ranged for, if you're lucky and the ranged are slacking, the same result. There is no reward for melee uptime, no ranged taxation and most mechanics only affect melee. It scares me that you think it is normal that your numbers are lower. They should not be. According to BW they should be higher or at the very least equal to ranged. The fact that they are not means there's a balance issue they have yet to address and which they seem to happily ignore.

 

Although far from the hardest fight, I find Underlurker as the best example for how the operations favour ranged. The adds that spawn will do more damage if you're in melee range. Melee first have to get to them (charge helps here for marauders, unless you're annihilation and just used it), then you have to worry about the increased damage you take compared to any ranged in your group. Add another melee to the group and the healers will be pressed further. Ranged on the other need only move to hide behind a rock, otherwise they are good. It's beyond ridiculous that something like that found its way into the game. To repeat, I do not think it is hard, I think it is stupid. It highlights everything done wrong in the new operations mechanics-wise.

[AdmiralTran]

There is a well seasoned Marauder on my Ops progression team. He has played Marauder since launch and made many guides to all specs, mainly Annihilation. He considers the Marauder/Sentinel his main. Even for 3.0 he took the time to make an Annihilation compendium that actually works. Our Guild is 10/10 on Tos/Ravagers HM and he plays Merc... End of story.. Edited April 9, 2015 by AdmiralTran

[Xenphon]

I find it more than a little humorous when people say things are fine or damage is fine. How about tomorrow for a live stream special event the combat/community team take a couple of sents/marauders combat/carnage spec and run the new ops on HM with parsec and show us their dps for the fights compared to every other dps class and then say its fine.

 

Then take combat/carnage to ranked PvP with. As they have an 80%+ chance of winning we should see some easy wins.

 

Talking about mobility and utilities is completely missing the issue and its horrifying people paid to balance the combat can't see this. No amount of mobility will allow a mdps to attack bulo when his got 4 carts exploding on him or your having to spread out to avoid the blue circle of death. No amount of mobility will change the need to hide behind a rock more than 4 meters away from lurkers so you can't attack them.

 

Anybody that honestly doesn't think they are being carried needs to get their raid team to use parsec and then check their damage against all the other dps for each hm fight. Cause while you may think with the running and attacking and good use of rotation your more than pulling your weight it turns out your actually the lowest dps and have a much harder time just to contribute the least. And no amount of tweaking or mobility will change that.

 

We seem to be in the minority, unfortunately. I have voiced my opinion that there is no reward for uptime on bosses to warrant the excessive mechanics melee have to worry about. BW do not care. John clearly laid the blame at the content team. The content team has been mute. There has literally not been a single word from them about the concerns about the current operations and how they favour ranged. That is inexcusable. It shows a complete lack of respect for their customers, all of which paid for the expansion and a lot that pay a monthly subscription. Although I do agree with John that the content team's partially to blame, the combat team is by no means innocent here. They have clearly failed to balance the melee vs. ranged numbers. Until the last patch mercs were kings on dummy and in raids. Marauders may now surpass them on dummy, but in raids we stand no chance whatsoever. Raids, which matter most, exacerbate a massive balance flaw. You, and others (myself included), are correct that the utility changes we want will not fix this issue completely. There has to be actual damage modifications, too. Especially if they go through with the nerfing what they have called overperforming classes. Previous enrage timers will be impossible for progression kills and without 198 MHs. Revan may even be impossible in optimised 198.

 

So yeah, it would be nice to get some input on these concerns. Especially from the content team. We do not even know whether we will get NiM or not of the current HMs. If not, will you address these major flaws in the future operations? Will the new boss on Ziost be indicative of how new boss encounters will be? (I hope it is not a continuation of what Ravagers and ToS ended up as)

[AdmiralTran]

Face it BW, some people do not want to swtch to the FOTM, or use you double XP weekends to try to hurry up and lvl a new AC in preparation for future nerfs.. They really enjoy the Marauder/Sentinel in raids and really want to see it have a better place and be more desirable in progression guilds. I can't speak for PVP, but it sounds like they are a disservice to the group just as much as in PVE.

[ped_i]

People should stop thanking Eric for the response, or say it was brave of him to come and say this. It's his job to communicate. Why are you acting like he is doing you a favor ? It's **** like this that makes them lazy and not care. You guys putting them on a high pedestal and treating them like its a privilege that they post something. If you don't realize it, you pay them to do this. THEIR JOB. You have the right to *********** demand answers for their BS. Bunch of noobs here man. Enjoy wasting your money.