Sage Lightsaber Attack Suggestions

[Ramon_Sevigni]

The short answer is that this was hashed and rehashed during beta, when they changed sages and inquisitors melee attacks to not be based on Willpower. It didn't change then, and it likely won't change now.

 

Your saber is a stat stick. Accept it, and just swing it at mobs that get too close if you really want to.

[Waphles]

I'm not sure why the basic Strike and Double Strike aren't buffed so that they actually do more damage? Buff Double Strike so that it does between 10% damage on a same leveled mob and 1% on a same level player.

 

There'd be no new animations or abilites, no rebalancing since no one will use it except for finishing off mobs and possibly bragging rights if you can get a kill with it in PVP.

 

As a Sage, the last thing I want added to the class in an ability that requires me in melee range. I'm surprised there's not more trolling from the other classes saying "Yes buff Sage Melee!" knowing they will own us in close combat.

[RockysRevenge]

A Jedi is a Jedi, they should still be able to use their lightsabers effectively. At least Yoda sure did.

 

shadows could you a cool saber toss with their double sided blades and sages need "something" to do with their lightsabers...

Shadows DO throw their sabers, it's the top ability in the infiltration tree, called "Clairvoyant Strike."

No reason Sages shouldn't be able to have a "lightsaber tree" in their skill, isn't Balance hardly ever used anyway? They could just re-adjust a few things to make it effective.

Anyone familiar with the "dancing" weapon property in D&D?

I think it would be a little cheesy, but it does have precedence. Darth Trayus (Kreia) in KOTOR2 used it at the end when you cut her other hand off.

 

How about a saber deflection that reflects damage back at the attacker?

What happened to this? Why can't any class of jedi deflect bolts back?

Edited January 27, 2012 by RockysRevenge

[SarinTabun]

It also makes total lore sense that a jedi wouldn't forgo one aspect of combat training over another. There would be some that focus their training equally between both saber and force abilities, because when one fails you, you'll have the other to rely on.

 

I never said it didn't make sense from a lore stand point that you couldn't be balanced in force abilities and saber prowess. I was just contradicting your statement of what you wrote below that I highlighted in bold and underlined. There have been many Jedi and Sith that choose to focus on using force abilities over saber abilities.

 

You have 5 options of being ranged on each faction, I don't exactly see your point here, and 4 of these 5 are supported in lore as being 90+% (rough estimate) ranged blaster usage. It doesn't even make sense from a lore stand point that a Jedi isn't capable of using his saber, especially one who has been training for so much of their life to become a Jedi.

 

Obviously if you have ANY of the Jedi shown as a playable class, you'd have absurdly powerful jedi who wouldn't fit into an mmo. Jedi in the movies were god-like, so making a class based on the actual abilities shown in the movies would be insanely overpowered, and not appropriate for this game, however, you can take the style. Dooku wasn't an amazing jedi. He was just a master who fell to the dark side, yet he was still competent in both force use and saber use. There is no reason that his style shouldn't be in the game, at least as a choice.

 

Dooku was a master of the saber first and foremost with only Mace and Yoda considered his equal and his force powers were secondary. So the style of using a saber first and force abilities second is covered by the shadow/assassin.

 

And if one of the two skill trees that we have was changed, we would still have a force using "caster" dps. Right now, we have two trees doing what one could effectively do, as shown by the predominance of hybrid builds of one form or another. Changing balance to be what it is advertised to be, and making sages who spec balance a force/melee hybrid (note the order there...) wouldn't remove the ability for sages who choose to be, to be purely ranged casters. There is no reason why a player should not be able to give up their long range ability to focus on shorter range and melee ability.

 

Yes, as it is now there is nothing that precludes a Sage from being in melee range and casting, but there is also no reason to be, since the melee abilities aren't worth triggering the GCD for, and is generally a loss of dps in running there in the first place. All we're asking for is a force/melee hybrid that is the opposite of the shadow. The shadow is about 75% melee to about 25% force, even balance only gets down to about 65% melee, there's no reason that sages, if they desire, shouldn't be allowed to get about 65% force to 35% melee. And that's the key argument that I don't understand why people aren't more accepting. If you don't want to play this play style, unless they add an indispensable buff/debuff which I truly hope they don't, you won't be forced to play it. And you could still keep playing your force-mage play style, but those that WANT to play this way, and was looking forward to having this play style in the game, can play how they want as well.

 

The only reason the hybrid spec is king right now is because it produces the best DPS. If they made the top tier abilities worth a dang then you wouldn't see hybrid specs. And I will bet my paycheck that if the top tier abilities do get buffed and a X/31/X or X/X/31 spec starts producing top DPS everyone will switch to it in a heartbeat.

 

Since when did they advertise Sage/Sorcerer as having any decent melee capability at all? I can never recall them ever saying that. It's always been touted as the "caster" DPS and heal role. Sounds like another case of people's desire skewing their perception of reality.

[Jarebear]

I never said it didn't make sense from a lore stand point that you couldn't be balanced in force abilities and saber prowess. I was just contradicting your statement of what you wrote below that I highlighted in bold and underlined. There have been many Jedi and Sith that choose to focus on using force abilities over saber abilities.

 

I apologize for making an incorrect interpretation of your statement. However, I still feel that the balance between the two extremes is lacking in the game. Even in the Shadow, which I'm spending half my time on while the other half is on my Sage. There's no reason why the balance Sage shouldn't be changed to perform this role.

 

The only reason the hybrid spec is king right now is because it produces the best DPS. If they made the top tier abilities worth a dang then you wouldn't see hybrid specs. And I will bet my paycheck that if the top tier abilities do get buffed and a X/31/X or X/X/31 spec starts producing top DPS everyone will switch to it in a heartbeat.

 

Since when did they advertise Sage/Sorcerer as having any decent melee capability at all? I can never recall them ever saying that. It's always been touted as the "caster" DPS and heal role. Sounds like another case of people's desire skewing their perception of reality.

 

Yes. The reason that the hybrid spec is king is that it produces the best DPS, and that was the root of my two trees doing what one could do comment. However, if they today made the top tier abilities desirable, one would become the top because it would offer 0.0001% more dps than the other, would get a reputation of that, and then propagate through the community, like it always does. Which would mean, save for a few fans of the tree that does "lower" dps, the majority of players would be the higher dps tree. And instead of having 1 tree for healing, and "one" tree for rdps spread out over two trees, we'd have one tree for healing, one tree for rdps, and one tree that's 90% unused, when we could have one tree for healing, one for rdps, and one that gives up the ability to be at range in order to be better at melee.

 

As for advertising Sage as having decent melee, the codex still states that you will use Balance to increase your lightsaber skills, class videos still show sages meleeing, and the progression guide emailed to you does nothing to dissuade this line of thinking. At best, it leaves you with the impression of a battle-mage or cleric. Since the signature of a jedi is lightsaber combat, and it's not an easy assumption to make that they would go from using melee for 10 levels, to using none.

 

The short answer is that this was hashed and rehashed during beta, when they changed sages and inquisitors melee attacks to not be based on Willpower. It didn't change then, and it likely won't change now.

 

Your saber is a stat stick. Accept it, and just swing it at mobs that get too close if you really want to.

 

You will excuse me if I don't simply take your, or others', word on this. Not everyone had the priviledge of having access to the game during beta, and were not privy to these conversations. While there had to be decisions made about this based on desire for class design while creating this game, the effecs of those decisions on gameplay were not communicated through the game or effectively through information provided both prior to release, and after release.

 

And just because it didn't change then, does not mean it won't change now, and that we shouldn't have discussions and debates over the validity and effects of these changes, should they be implemented.

[nilssen]

I wouldn't want an other ability at this point.

 

But I like the idea of having some of our existing abilities tweaked.

[Spillesmurf]

I like your post OP and i like that people like you come with ideas and suggestions. Im kind tired of the naysayers who proudly stand in the way of evolvement, bashing every written thought about improvement.

 

The dual attack ability sounds very interesting. When target is within 4 meters its a melee attack and when target is 4-30 from you its a sabre throw. Good idea! The willpower thing should also be in the game ofc.

 

I have some other ideas also when it comes to the talent trees. I dont like the idea how its built now with a whole tree only consentraded on healing. My idea is to merge the two offensive trees together and take some of the leftover talents and put them into the healing tree and into a new tree that would combine melee and offensive spells. Then it would be something like HEAL/OFFENSIVE SPELLS - OFFENSIVE SPELLS - MELEE/OFFENSIVE SPELLS instead of what we got now: HEAL - OFFENSIVE SPELLS - OFFENSIVE SPELLS. Im no dev or number cruncher and my ideas are pretty rough but i know that the devs could do right with it.

[Spillesmurf]

Obviously Jedi have to be balanced, otherwise you'd need a legion of stormtroopers to take down a single jedi, and even then it's a maybe. If you're looking at the movies, watch the Yoda/Dooku and Yoda/Palpatine fights. That is the play style that melee sages want. A jedi who is primary force user, secondary melee. That option is not in the game, and there really is no reason why it shouldn't be.

 

THIS! My thoughts exactly. I will now use my insane comparing skills and drag the dreaded Word of Warcraft into this thread (ONLY because o' so meny here have played it) Someone might say that the sage is like a warlock or priest or mage in Wow and think that "LOL LOCKS DONT USE DAGGERS ITS ONLY FOR STATZ". The thing is though that in the very same game there is a class that wields both melee skills and ranged spells at the same time in a combo. Its actually doable! Its been done!

 

Some of us that likes SWTOR might feel that we got cheated somehow when they split the jedi in half. Its rather silly actually because one would think they did it just because they wouldnt like the classes to stand out from prevous mmo classes. Hence the pure caster class.

[Ohoni]

Dooku was a master of the saber first and foremost with only Mace and Yoda considered his equal and his force powers were secondary. So the style of using a saber first and force abilities second is covered by the shadow/assassin.

 

Only if you want to use a suicide-stick. Your argument here will begin to make sense the instant they remove the "must use double saber" requirements from all Shadow/Assassin abilities, but not a moment before.

 

Clearly a Sage that specs into TK, or even into healing should be pure "casters", range-only Force-users, but there should be an option (likely via the Balance tree) that allows a player to:

 

1. Wield a single lightsaber effectively, not as well as a Guardian, certainly not as well as a Sentinel, but well enough that if someone enters saber range, you can use those abilities without them seeming a complete waste of time and effort. They should do a balanced amount of damage/efficiency relative to their basic ranged attacks like TK Throw and Project.

 

2. Use Consular Force abilities too, but clearly not as strongly as a TK-specced build.

 

The game really does need a true hybrid Jedi, like the KOTOR Sentinel. Both the Consular and the Knight are too far from center.

[iCanUseTheForce]

I like a lot of the ideas in this thread. Since Sorcs get the iconic purple lightening, maybe change project to a spinning saber throw. It's got a cast animation/delay as it is.

 

Another idea would be to make our 2 current saber attacks a little flashier, just for effect. As it is, I just swing the saber...oooh....Have double strike be a cool spinning strike like some of the Knight's skills. No change other than the animation.

[Jarebear]

I like a lot of the ideas in this thread. Since Sorcs get the iconic purple lightening, maybe change project to a spinning saber throw. It's got a cast animation/delay as it is.

 

Another idea would be to make our 2 current saber attacks a little flashier, just for effect. As it is, I just swing the saber...oooh....Have double strike be a cool spinning strike like some of the Knight's skills. No change other than the animation.

 

Except there would be no point to changing the animation if it weren't even used anymore. If they made the 2 current saber attacks we have, hands down the coolest animations in the game, they still would not be used no matter how cool they look, since they'd still not be worth activating the global cooldown.

[Kheldras]

Look, let's be clear here:

 

1. NOBODY is talking about making the Sage unbalancedly strong. That's not on the table. Any increase in the Sage's lightsaber abilities would have to leave them either no stronger than they currently are, or stronger in one way but weaker in another to balance it out.

 

2. There is room to do a flat increase to saber potential. As it stands now, even if you run up to a Sage it makes more sense for them to spam their 30m attacks than to use their saber strikes, because the ranged attacks do more damage. This can change, they can make the saber attacks at least as strong as the ranged ones, so that if "based" the saber is their best option.

 

3. There is room to convert the Balanced tree into more of a hybrid tree, sacrificing the ultimate levels of healing and TK strength in favor of having an additional saber strike, and additional overall saber damage. It would be balanced, a player that pursues that path would not be as strong at healing or range as other Sages, nor would he be as devastating in close as a Shadow/Knight, but he would be capable at all ranges, a bit like a DPS Powertech/Vanguard.

 

I like balanced classes, like the Sentinel in KOTOR. I really want that in TOR, a class that is equally at home with crazy TK abilities like Project as he is with acrobatic saber strikes. The current Knight options are all too much saber, too little TK, the Sage is too much TK, too little saber, and the Shadow is too much double-bladed suicide-stick. We need another option somewhere.

 

Good Thoughts in that post!

 

I mean, its a lightsaber... a weapon that can cut steel. i guess simply scaling the Weapon damage with Willpower or 2/3 Willpower would help.

 

I like a lot of the ideas in this thread. Since Sorcs get the iconic purple lightening, maybe change project to a spinning saber throw. It's got a cast animation/delay as it is.

 

Another idea would be to make our 2 current saber attacks a little flashier, just for effect. As it is, I just swing the saber...oooh....Have double strike be a cool spinning strike like some of the Knight's skills. No change other than the animation.

 

Would also solve the Pebbles Problem.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Kheldras