Update on Sentinel and Marauder

[Dyvim]

I'm honestly tired of this negligence and carelessness from the devs. 17 pages in 1 day and not a single response from Eric or any of the devs. They *********** to care. Cartel Market makes money and that's what they are gonna put resources in. not pvp or pve. THEY DONT CARE. ****'em they are not gonna get my money anymore. I'm unsubbing. GG BW in 1 day with 1 ****** post you lost at least 5 paying customers.

 

All you can do is vote with your wallet and feet and they still don't care. I've played this game since early beta and have left it at least 5 times. After this craptasm, #6 is right around the corner. I get my star wars fix within a couple months, then the blatant poor design in a ridiculously on the rails themepark just overwhelms me...again.

 

It helps if you take nothing here seriously and don't care about the game much...that seems to go hand in hand with the dev "interaction" the community receives, as the last month or so with sent/mara has showcased so well. These guys are completely, COMPLETELY clueless about how to sustain a community and build and maintain faith, trust, and goodwill with their product. It is as epic bad as the product itself, when you consider the money spent on it and the cascade of terrible design decisions made that resulted in the mass exodus of players from the game within the first 6-12 months and the current state of things.

 

As a customer, JarJarWare leaves me with the unmistakable feeling that this product is not worth my money.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Dyvim

[ped_i]

All you can do is vote with your wallet and feet and they still don't care. I've played this game since early beta and have left it at least 5 times. After this craptasm, #6 is right around the corner. I get my star wars fix within a couple months, then the blatant poor design in a ridiculously on the rails themepark just overwhelms me...again.

 

It helps if you take nothing here seriously and don't care about the game much...that seems to go hand in hand with the dev "interaction" the community receives, as the last month or so with sent/mara has showcased so well.

 

You know what the most interesting thing is ? not even a single tweet from musco .. the community manager that is suppose to relay information from players to the devs and from the devs to players. he stated that he checks his twitter everyday, even in meetings. yet nothing when i twitted that they lost 3 players just in this forum. They all said they unsubbed .. or nothing at all saying oh we see that you are concerned with how things went we will work on it. that pissed me off the most.

[Atlanis]

You know what the most interesting thing is ? not even a single tweet from musco .. the community manager that is suppose to relay information from players to the devs and from the devs to players. he stated that he checks his twitter everyday, even in meetings. yet nothing when i twitted that they lost 3 players just in this forum. They all said they unsubbed .. or nothing at all saying oh we see that you are concerned with how things went we will work on it. that pissed me off the most.

 

Lets give him time you know it takes him an average of 2hours and 75 reposts to answer a single Sent question in a Chat....it takes him 4months to facepunsh Sent throw fake numbers in the forums (post '56 in this thread has real numbers). So we can expect a respond anywere in that time frame.

 

Anyone interested in leveling a Guardian DPS? Want some facerolling on my homeserver too^^

[Ardarell_Solo]

Sorcs/Sages and Mercs/Mandos are both getting 250-300DPS nerfs. Also, This is the top Sent/Mara parse:

http://swtor-parser.elasticbeanstalk.com/parser/view/8129/0

 

5254 DPS. Which means post 3.2, Sents/Maras will have the best Dummy DPS spec in the game again (need the scatter bombs nerf as well)

 

Not after today with the double proc on Resurrected Relic of Focused Retribution gone. It was massive for Watchman/Anni.

[Gyronamics]

Um they said a while ago that they were buffing Merc survivability.

 

Uhhh...

 

Kolto Overloads 8s of healing now stops at 40% not 35%

 

Aggro drop in DPS specs changed from 25% chance to "make anything miss" to 35% for 6s (Innovative Ordinance)

 

OR 1 charge of "absorb tech/force hit not AOE or DoT" to 5 charges for 10s (Arsenal)

 

Not really feeling the love of the survivability buff.

[TACeMossie]

Not after today with the double proc on Resurrected Relic of Focused Retribution gone. It was massive for Watchman/Anni.

 

I forgot about that, but then again, every spec on the first page of the parsely leaderboards either uses the double relic proc, is getting nerfed, or both.

 

Also, isn't the loss of the Resurrected Relics double proc only like 100DPS, because it means that Watchman will be upgrading to the revanite one?

Edited April 7, 2015 by TACeMossie

[Projawa]

Not after today with the double proc on Resurrected Relic of Focused Retribution gone. It was massive for Watchman/Anni.

 

That bug resurfaced again? Isn't this like the 4th time they've "fixed" it?

 

Bioware, learn to source control

Edited April 7, 2015 by Projawa

[ped_i]

That bug resurfaced again? Isn't this like the 4th time they've "fixed" it?

 

Bioware, learn to source control

 

Hah, Biofail needs to learn a lot of things.

[CameoCream]

You think the Watchman rotation is acceptable? Really? This is it. You are basing your facts off a few outliers in PvP? Well what about PvE? Sentinels are still going to be the worse class for PvE content, and they are performing at expected levels... you're just clueless.

[jillun]

/unsub

 

I can't take it anymore.

[Nightkin]

Um they said a while ago that they were buffing Merc survivability.

The 5% buff to Kolto Overload will surely fix this class....The "buff" was mostly for arsenal and no one wants it in its current form, not mercs/mandos and no one who mains other classes either. The uproar about the 5 stack chaff flare was legendary

[Vertol]

Marauder/Sentinel PvP Viability:

As it presently stands, Carnage/Combat and Annihilation/Watchman are performing well in Solo Ranked and Group Ranked PvP, respectively. We target a 50% win rate for each Discipline in PvP, and Carnage/Combat and Annihilation/Watchman are slightly above this ideal win rate. Carnage/Combat is the seventh most effective Discipline (out of 24 Imperial/Republic total Disciplines) with a win rate that is right on target. Annihilation/Watchman is ranked seventh in Solo Ranked PvP (out of 24 Imperial/Republic total Disciplines) with a win rate that is equally on target. Additionally, Carnage/Combat is currently in one of the top 5 Group Ranked PvP class compositions, and this composition has an 82.6% win rate. While win rates are not the sole variable that we balance PvP performance from, these numbers provide evidence of Carnage/Combat and Annihilation/Watchman viability in broad PvP scenarios.

 

Fury/Concentration is in the lower half of the PvP spectrum. Like other classes that are underperforming, this is, and shall continue to be, addressed in upcoming class balance updates.

 

Honestly do you really believe those numbers reflects how are mara/sents performing in pvp Eric? Only good players are pushing rating with mara/sent for seasonal rewards. Casuals wants to enjoy this game and are playing mostly FOTMs, so they are actually lowering win/loss ratio of better classes.

No offense meant, but devs should spent more time playing game instead of looking into leaderboards. Even cook tastes his food. Anyone who tried solo ranked with a marauder/sentinel will tell you how poorly performing they are no matter spec they used. Anyone who tried any sort of pvp with a marauder/sentinel will tell you how unfun it is to stay constantly in CCs/roots.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Vertol

[Morrolan]

TL;DR SUMMARY OF OP. READ THIS INSTEAD OF OP BEFORE GETTING MAD

 

1. Bioware determines class balance by win rates. Meaning, if you rerolled in the pre-season because you thought sents sucked, then your lack of skill won't bring the win rates down. Meaning, since only good players are playing sents, its inflating its win rate. The devs not bothering with fixing sents is because You skewed the data in Sentinels/Marauders favour by rerolling, reducing the chance of the devs bothering to fix it

 

Yes but the metric flawed and the devs should be able to see that by looking at other metrics.

[Ruskaeth]

When will you get it EA?! We Watchmans, for the most part, don't take issue with the damage output. What we take issue with is how the class plays. You took a fun discipline's playstyle/rotation that no one had ever complained about and threw it to the wolves for NO GOOD REASON.

This. 100 times this. I used to like Watchman/Annihilation flow. After 3.0 it's tedious at best. I tried giving it a chance but it's just mind-numbing.

[The_X]

Yes but the metric flawed and the devs should be able to see that by looking at other metrics.

 

That implies they have some sort of reading comprehension skills, which they obviously do not as they think we're mad about dps.

 

Marauder Community: Hey, BW, we're unhappy with our Utilities, mobility, and general survivability.

 

BW: Your DPS is fine. Also, only a handful of marauders are participating in Ranked and they win more than 50% of the time so suck it.

[Ruskaeth]

I am curious about one thing really. If developers could answer this question I would be extremely happy. Now that you have started tweaking a class, why not actually finish tweaking that class instead of doing it in phases about "checking the dps", then the next cycle we'll tune utilities, then maybe include survivability and "playability"? It just .. feels amazingly weird because a lot of the feedback given when the class is on the table includes information about everything. Thus cutting the tuning to phases like you are now doing might cause more damage than good because some of the information provided by active players on these forums might go unnoticed and discourage them from giving it in future, again and again and again. Edited April 7, 2015 by Ruskaeth

[Ardarell_Solo]

I am curious about one thing really. If developers could answer this question I would be extremely happy. Now that you have started tweaking a class, why not actually finish tweaking that class instead of doing it in phases about "checking the dps", then the next cycle we'll tune utilities, then maybe include survivability and "playability"? It just .. feels amazingly weird because a lot of the feedback given when the class is on the table includes information about everything. Thus cutting the tuning to phases like you are now doing might cause more damage than good because some of the information provided by active players on these forums might go unnoticed and discourage them from giving it in future, again and again and again.

 

Very good point, I agree.

[Nightkin]

I am curious about one thing really. If developers could answer this question I would be extremely happy. Now that you have started tweaking a class, why not actually finish tweaking that class instead of doing it in phases about "checking the dps", then the next cycle we'll tune utilities, then maybe include survivability and "playability"? It just .. feels amazingly weird because a lot of the feedback given when the class is on the table includes information about everything. Thus cutting the tuning to phases like you are now doing might cause more damage than good because some of the information provided by active players on these forums might go unnoticed and discourage them from giving it in future, again and again and again.

Because out of thousands of ideas they MIGHT consider one of them, something obscure, then they will change that so that it doesnt really resemble anything the community proposed in the first place. Final product is yet again, something no one understands, no one wants and no one can really use in an effective manner.

[Ardarell_Solo]

You took a fun discipline's playstyle/rotation that no one had ever complained about and threw it to the wolves for NO GOOD REASON.

 

I'm afraid the "good reason" from Devs perspective is what I tried to guess in another thread:

 

I've been thinking about why Watchman was changed this way. Here's my strange theory:

 

Before 2.0. each Sentinel spec had its distinct identity:

 

 

• Combat: Burst
  
• Smash: AoE
  
• Watchman: Sustained/Hybrid*
  

 

(simplifying a bit here of course)

 

*Watchman had never really been a Dot spec, though it had good sustained damage. It just had its direct damage enhanced by short (6 secs at max!!!) dots. Thus it was still rather good at target switching and had some nice burst, especially when Zen, Adrenal and relic were utilized (not to forget the really hard hitting Master Strike you could save for that).

 

Then Devs announced a general design change: No more specific AoE spec in advanced classes, but good AoE for every spec of the ACs.

 

-> Smash had always been the "pure AoE" spec of the AC. Its redesign conseqeuently started past 2.0 and was finalized with 3.0: "Ex-Smash" is now Concentration and first and foremost a burst specc (excellent single target burst and good AoE burst).

 

But the three specs still needed their own identity, so how give each of them their specific traits?

 

 

So that's what I think happened in 3.0:

 

 

• Concentration: Burst
  
• Watchman: True sustained = real Dot spec
  
• Combat: Hybrid (some Burst & ok sustained - I think Combat's sustained DPS was meant to be higher than it is atm)
  

 

So with Smash moving from AoE to burst and Watchman getting more AoE like all spec in all classes, Watchman lost its burst and target switching capability: It was pushed much farther to the dot end of the spectrum, in order to have a clear distinction from Concentration. For the same reason Combat couldn't stay as bursty. But since Combat had no other specific trait, it thus became the new hybrid.

 

Results when playing Sent atm are as you'd expect:

 

 

• Concentration got a huge QoL improvement, it plays much better in PvE and PvP and is the specc that profited most from what I described.
   
   
  
• Watchman ended up being a pure Dot spec very similar to Balance Shadow, Balance Sage, Dirty Fighting Slinger: Two long Dots (18sec and 12secs - one of the big problems is the difference in their length that you don't see on any of the other Dot specs mentioned and resulting in Watchmen becoming the "Boss' Debuff bar babysitting" class), very good sustained DPS, hardly any burst, bad target switching. That causes the exact problem I listed in the OP for people who are not used to playing Dot speccs.
   
   
  
• Combat is a jack of all trades and master of none. Which is a huge letdown for players who took pride in being one of the burstiest classes in the game with a high level of mastery required to pull that off.
  

 

Primarily speaking for Watchmen players here, you could say: Spec got altered completely for a general redesign of spec philosophy.

 

Though I can see the idea behind the AoE topic, I doubt that the gain from it (AoE for everyone) justifys the loss: The majority of Sentinel players alienated by the complete altering of "their" spec.

 

Of course change is always difficult and always accompanied by QQ and whining, especially in MMOs ;-) But if changes are good, you will see people adapting after a while and you normally get some new players attracted to the changes.

 

Atm I doubt that we will see veteran Sentinel players love the new spec design and that we will see a lot of new Sent players who always wanted a melee dot class (cause those are probably playing Balance Shadows already).

 

I have to say I really liked the original identities of the specs and don't think that the new design of Concentration necessarily meant you can't keep Combat and Watchman philosophy the way it was around 2.x.

 

 

As for the last point Devs obviously don't agree. Imo that's setting wrong priorites, though.

 

On a somewhat personal side note: Whenever my guildies were complaining about how it takes too long until new operations content arrives, about persistent bugs, lack of German forum support, "EAWare" or whatever everybody was criticizing, I always said: Hey, I don't care, and I'm sure Devs are doing the best they can and besides - even if everybody elses leaves this game and new stuff comes a lot less frequently, you will find me on my Sentinel, doing all the stuff everyone doesn't care about for the ten thousandth time: Makeb weekly, Section X Weekly, all the old dailys and Flashpoints. Why: Firstly because this is being a Star Wars character in the universe I dreamt about since I saw my first movie at the age of six which was Episode IV. And then cause I could play Watchman rotation forever, I just loved that playstyle so much, I could attack random mobs forever and again and still enjoy it. Now that the latter is gone, I find that the former is not quite enough to keep the game enjoyable for me...

 

Sad Sentinel...

[WheresMyWhisky]

I forgot about that, but then again, every spec on the first page of the parsely leaderboards either uses the double relic proc, is getting nerfed, or both.

 

Also, isn't the loss of the Resurrected Relics double proc only like 100DPS, because it means that Watchman will be upgrading to the revanite one?

 

Tace from when I tested the difference between the relics I always found it to be somewhere in the region of ~150-175 dps difference between the revanite and resurrected relic.

 

I really do not get the devs reply to us, pretty much all annihilation marauders said we hate the new rotation and that was the main complaint and I do not understand how they can be surprised as when they put cauterise on PTS on 2.8 with no proc everyone hated it so much they removed it and just upped the proc chance so how they can be surprised at the outcry in 3.0 I really do not know. Basically we hate what you did to our advanced class please fix it

 

As far as annihilations damage output I think we all knew it was probably on target what upset people was the fact that rdps were beating us even on the dummy when they clearly stated that sustained melee would have a higher damage output on the dev streams but the fact that they have not brought them in line yet means if you are trying to find a new raid team as a marauder good luck i.e. all raid teams recruiting basically want no melee dps. This isn't just the combat teams fault but also the operations designers fault, however bringing everything in line with the expected damage output would start to help.

 

As everyone has stated time and again melee's issue at the moment in operations is time on the boss, especially if you are a 4 metre only melee class (I don't count rend as it up for 18 secs yawn). This is the same for all 4 metre only melee not just marauders.

 

In PVP I just do not know where you get your stats the ranked leaderboard gives a much more accurate picture we suck. Annihilation's damage in pvp is a joke I play it for a laugh as its that bad, against a decent team you are rooted, slowed stunned knocked back and killed.

 

Carnage basically gives me RSI on my massacre finger, and is so boring to play I would rather chop my arms and legs off you can do well against crap teams on it in pvp apart form that pretty much forget it.

 

To sum up I don't believe most marauder's / sentinels think we have a dps output problem we have a QOL problem in that you made our advanced classes suck to play. No one likes annihilation in its current form just read the posts, pretty much no one like carnage in its current form. Oh and annihilation is NOT hard to play well unless it puts you to sleep.

 

I hope you do eventually offer some decent utilities to us as the current one's suck and the mobility improvements as that is what we need and that is the one positive from your post

[Nomaad]

Ever get the feeling that the devs can't control their own game? It's like its left hand has no idea what its right hand is doing. I love this game, 10 times better than Warcraft, blizzard can afford to loose a few thousand, hey, even a couple of million subs and not even bat an eye. But at least they appear to give a **** about player feedback, these guys, come up with some post like this and troll the community.

 

BW should have a little more respect for the community, they really can't afford to loose more and more subs due to the lack of oversight in their own game, we all know about all the bugs and issues that plague this game, maybe they should pay a little more attention to detail, its the small things that make this game great.

 

We know you guys ain't perfect, and mistakes will always be made...especially anni/watchman, since new expac came out I played it like a couple of times and hated it, I mean , really hated it, the feel and love for the spec was gone. After all, we are all here to have fun, amiright?

[CameoCream]

To the Combat Team:

 

April fools was almost week ago.

 

Agreed.

[davidp_newton]

The devs typically only post from 2AM - 8AM my time. Its currently 2:40pm my time, which means you shouldn't expect any more dev posts until the servers are taken down for maintenance tonight. Of course, if it weren't maintenance day, it would be about 12 hours until the dev posts start. Still, don't expect a response for at least 12 hours.

 

The devs typically post nothing at all. Most days see nothing of consequence from anyone at Bioware. Announcements about maintenance do not count as something of consequence and they are by far the most frequent Bioware posts. Even those show incompetence in many cases as they get maintenance times wrong on occasion or fail to take account of timezone changes. Does the EU want to know when the maintenance will be according to GMT or CET? NO, NO, NO!!! We are on summer time now and that should be taken account of. If they can't get that right and they post so infrequently about things of consequence can you expect anything useful in reply to this thread?

[Xenphon]

Thanks for giving us the current state of affairs.

 

I don't think Watchman rotation is difficult. It's scripted, 36 secs long and that's why it's boring to play, which is my main issue with the spec: The only decisions to be made is two spots of "Do I strike or slash" rest is the same scripted sequence over and over again. A difficult rotation would mean that a good player can make a difference in its course imo. That's not the case at all.

 

What may be considered difficult is tracking dots on targets, especially if there are more than one. But again, that's not so much a problem of difficulty. It's just not something people enjoy doing.

 

Also "Low Burst Damage" is a major design change of the whole spec. Watchman used to have medium burst and good sustained pre 3.0. and was a hybrid kind of spec at that. And people chose to play it for that. You guys always said 3.0 was not completely changing any specs. I'm confused with this contradiction.

 

DPS is fine in PvE, but we have uptime issues like all melee classes. I hope you will collaborate with the content designers for that. It's necessary.

 

All in all it's really not a matter of difficulty but a matter of having fun playing a class. The way you put it sounds as if you feel that fulfilling your class design philosophy has priority over creating specs that people actually enjoy playing.

 

That attitude shows in the reactions you are getting here...

 

This. Annihilation is not hard. I am quite certain you'd struggle to find a going sentiment that the annihilation rotation is hard. The only way it would be considered hard would be because people tire of tracking the dots. As Ardarell said, we have two choices; do I use assault or vicious slash? That is the only choice in the rotation. Sure, if the choice made turns out to mess with your rage, you'll have to improvise. The improvising will reduce your dps, but it is not hard. It baffles that annihilation is supposed to be a hard spec. It clearly isn't. It is boring. It is static. You managed to make an enjoyable and highly popular spec into something most people want fixed. That should be reason enough for you to take a good look at the spec. The cry for change has only increased SoR's release is further and further behind us. We want QoL changes. It is clear that the spec does good damage given uptime, but it's extremely boring to play.

 

What they should've done at 3.0 launch is properly introduce a ranged dps tax that goes beyond what they talked about in the November stream.

 

(a) In that stream they said their goal was: dot melee = dot ranged > burst melee > burst ranged

 

(b) Due to the mechanics and uptime challenges that melee must deal with, it should have been more like: dot melee > burst melee = dot ranged > burst ranged

 

So far they have failed at (a), much less even consider (b).

 

As someone answered earlier, dot ranged is supposed to be on par with burst melee. The current reality is very different, especially given mechanics.

 

I am curious about one thing really. If developers could answer this question I would be extremely happy. Now that you have started tweaking a class, why not actually finish tweaking that class instead of doing it in phases about "checking the dps", then the next cycle we'll tune utilities, then maybe include survivability and "playability"? It just .. feels amazingly weird because a lot of the feedback given when the class is on the table includes information about everything. Thus cutting the tuning to phases like you are now doing might cause more damage than good because some of the information provided by active players on these forums might go unnoticed and discourage them from giving it in future, again and again and again.

 

I find this very odd, as well. You have an incredibly amount of feedback about what changes marauders should get to fix our current predicaments. Why do you not test these ideas and tweak them (if necessary), so the class gets fixed. You'll see that the vast majority of the constructive feedback revolves around mobility issues, not buffs to raw damage. Our damage is good, but the problem is to be able to actually dish out that damage. This has been said numerous times already, but you still do not grasp it. We need mobility buffs against the plethora of cc you have introduced to the game. Marauders are supposed to be a class that's in the midst of the fight dishing out damage. That is our sole purpose. We're a pure dps class with no permanent stealth. We have no way of doing this at the moment. We're ping pong balls when we are facing skilled opponents.

 

While we plan to adjust Marauders/Sentinels in future updates, we do not expect to see any Marauder/Sentinel Disciplines receiving significant damage output increases. Each of the Disciplines is presently performing at our desired DPS markers, and we plan to focus on Utility in the future. Specifically, mobility and self-healing improvements are currently being tested. We’ll keep you up to date on changes in the coming weeks.

 

Why do you need to do this in future updates? You should be plenty aware of the current struggles the class has. We have continuously given you feedback since the release of SoR. It would not surprise me if people told you about this during the beta of SoR. Despite this feedback you tell us that these changes will not come yet, but in the future? When? Surely your metrics will show you an exodus of overall playtime on marauders|sentinels. The reason is what we have told you. Fix these problems and you'll probably see that the popularity of the class rises again. I may be asking a lot, though, as it seems you have problems using your raw data properly. It has already been pointed out the flaws in your metrics.

 

I am also interested in hearing from the combat team regarding PvE. This post did not really address PvE at all. Given John's statement that the content team was at fault for the performance of the class in PvE, should we ask them about the mechanics that punish melee far more than ranged in PvE? Relative to melee, there is no ranged tax whatsoever. Are you planning on releasing NiM of Ravagers and ToS? If so, will this be addressed? In your future operations will you actually try and implement the ranged tax you talked about before SoR released?

[Firolas]

Alot of Sentinels/Marauders on this thread have nailed some really good points,

Just going to throw some extra wood into this fire.

 

Played Annihilation from day 1 of Swtor and I (like most) hate 3.0 anni...its lost its beauty.

Could log in everyday and rehash the same ops/fps and dailies with no problems because the spec was fun and a joy to play. Now it just a drag...finding harder and harder every week in ops to justify bringing my mara especially when ops are anti-melee then add the fact that its less fun to play..any wonder so many switch to some random ranged mobile turret spec.

 

Sad state of affairs.

 

As for PVP....I would never go into PVP on a sent/mara...I've been in groups on alts and the second a sent/mara appears in the team, people let out a groan. No one wants to see that melee spec pop in a random warzone or ranked.

And its nothing to do with the numbers they can dish out, its what all the experience PVPers are saying on here, pushbacks/roots/cc's from ranged specs (and some melee) just eat sent/maras alive.

Play alot of different class's in PVP and have yet to come up against a mara 1v1 and thought 'oh oh this could be tough' and thats not me bragging.

Its more about every other class is set up in a way that sents/maras struggle alot to stay close too for more than 3 seconds.

 

Anycase hopefully the forums will get read and changes will be made in the right places for once.