A Letter to BW, re: the destruction of sage/sorc, the beginning of the end for SWTOR

[Palissandre]

To pertinent employees of Bioware,

 

I write this message in hopes it reaches the correct ears.

 

I voice not only my opinion, but the opinion of my guild. We're a casual guild, and represent the majority demographic of SWTOR players. Not too hard-core, not too casual, a close group brought together by the game.

 

Our concern is that of the changes to sage and sorc are the beginning of the end of the game. Moreover, there's been heavy implications that further negative alterations will happen to the other ranged classes as the months pass. It is understandable that sage had a small boost over other classes if the player knew the correct rotation and had correct timing. In our opinion, a 25%-50% damage reduction is not the answer. It renders sage unplayable in more difficult content unless they're specced as a healer. On a technical note, the rotation doesn't even work anymore. There are gaps of whole seconds where everything is on cooldown, the sage can do nothing but stare and wait.

 

Basically, you crushed a fly with a wrecking ball.

 

The endgame material is already difficult. It's challenging mechanics-wise, and dps-wise. All fights aren't simply puzzles, they are also dps races. Already, on average, we beat bosses about half the time, and if we do, it's closer to the enrage time than not. Removing sage as a viable dps damages our already average chances of beating raids.

 

More concerning over the destruction of sage DPS is the heavy implication that more changes are in the future.

 

It wasn't hard to miss that melee-range classes got the short end of the stick in the Revan expansion. Underlurker, for example, is impossible with melee. The fight becomes an unwinnable healing check. But the answer to this problem is not to destroy ranged dps, forcing the player to be melee, but to change the operations themselves.

 

So once again, the changes to sage are negative, discouraging, and disheartening.

 

Already my guild has plans to leave SWTOR and move on to other games. The key to a good game is playability and fun. By removing those seemingly simple elements, you force the average player - the subscriber, the cartel coin buyer, the providers of bioware paychecks - to seek other video games. It's been one day and the exodus has already begun, friends have quit, uninstalled, subs have been cancelled.

 

As I said, I hope this message reaches the right ears.

 

I enjoy SWTOR and am very attached to the friends I've made in the game. Losing the game, losing them, is something I'd rather avoid. We feel, as players, a lot of things are out of our hands. Please listen in this case: consider revoking the changes to sage and staunching further plans to weaken ranged dps.

 

I will close with some wisedom I found on the dulfy archives: Never balance classes down. No one likes abilities to be taken away. Always balance up.

Edited April 10, 2015 by Palissandre

[zZeroAgent]

Since when does Lightning Bolt have a cooldown

 

They've already explained why they balance overpowered classes down and it makes complete sense. Otherwise it will get to the point where everyone has 3.0 PT burst and it becomes a race on who globals who first

 

All they need to do is balance PVE content properly, which clearly isn't the intention of this topic so why be surprised when it falls on deaf ears?

[Hichitsuki-hime]

always balance up = power creep. never a good thing in an MMO.

also, you keep saying sage was overperforming, do at least say TK sage, because it's completely opposite situation for balance sages you know.

[Snean]

BW focus on hardcore players.

They no need semi-hardcore or casual players.

[dlcman]

Hello 911. We need a whinebulance at the swtor forums. And could someone notify Chicken Little that the sky is falling....again.

[judgeender]

There are a number of problems with Sorcs/Sages right now in engame PvE. But there is a lot in this post that just doesn't seem to make sense:

 

. In our opinion, a 25%-50% damage reduction is not the answer. It renders sage unplayable in more difficult content unless they're specced as a healer.

 

What? The only thing that received even a 25% nerf was Force Storm/Force Quake. While that may have been a little harsher than needed, it certainly doesn't render the class unplayable.

 

On a technical note, the rotation doesn't even work anymore. There are gaps of whole seconds where everything is on cooldown, the sage can do nothing but stare and wait.

The lightning/tk rotation did become a bit clunky and probably needs a Quality of Life Improvement. Madness/Balance needs a number of improvements, including with the rotation. But neither spec has "gaps of whole seconds" where everything is on cooldown. If you are finding that to be the case, you are not playing the class properly because both specs have core abilities that can be spammed.

 

Posts full of these types of errors are unlikely to help the class get changes it needs.

Edited April 10, 2015 by judgeender

[kmanao]

What really annoys me is the fact that they nerfed sages/sorcs because sentinels/marauders were under performing in pvp. I'm curious how nerfing a class can help sentinels/marauders perform better in ops; will they do more damage now to underlurker or not be pushed out of the circle every time they leap on the Machine Core during the last boss of Temple of Sacrifice?

Rather than nerfing classes why doesn't Bioware focus on giving sentinels/maras more defensive abilities or power-up the current one?

[Halorinn]

It pleases me to see complaining of this magnitude from people who can't roll their face on their keyboard to win anymore.

[Katendal]

It pleases me to see complaining of this magnitude from people who can't roll their face on their keyboard to win anymore.

 

Stupid replys like this don't help, while overall the original post here wasn't particularly accurate and didn't help the sage case, he does have a point. For average players, sages are not good enough for the 8/10 bosses in HM mode that most teams can do, cos the are simply too average to get the most out of the class, and for the better more hardcore players, while you can still just about manage to do revan and corratanni with a sage dps in your group, it becomes infinatly harder to do so, and as most hardcore players have a couple of classes they can bring to this content, why would they bother? Basically what 3.1.2 has done is make even more HM content trooper teams.

 

I totally understand what BW are saying about teli spec and why they have made the changes, but it should not have been done before fixing balance. You take away the abilty of a lot of teams to do content unless they switch to troopers for possibly months just cos a spec is supposidly "overperforming". If teli was over performing, then commando is god mode, and they basically did nothing to curb that.

[Citruzz]

No one forces a sorc player to reroll their class because of this little adjustment. Most of the sorceres will save their raidspot or reroll by own choice.

[sloasdaylight]

Jesus this AC is melodramatic. I thought the Sent/Mara forum was bad, but this is impressive.