Eldarion_Velator Posted April 7, 2016 Share Posted April 7, 2016 I put this in the suggestion box already, but I figure more people could look at this here and give their own tweaks/ideas for a more fully hashed-out concept. Before I start, I should identify myself. I fly primarily on the Shadowlands as Tae-gun, Jiinara, Dal-ben, and Nyo-jin on the Republic and as Itania, Vydan, Tal'narus, and Marevia for the Empire. As many Galactic Starfighter (GSF) regulars know, in the GSF meta the class balance more or less resembles rock-paper-scissors in that scouts eat up gunships which eat up bombers which eat up scouts. The strike fighter (with the exception of the Clarion/Imperium) generally has no stable place in this meta, since everything it does can be done better by one of the other classes. So I've come up with a little something that I think might be useful to make strike fighters (in particular the Star Guard/Rycer) have a place in the GSF ship meta. It would be a shield called Ion Hardening: base cooldown 30s base energy use 25 base duration 10s activation: reduce ion power drain/recharge effects and damage by 25%. Tier 1 upgrade: reduce ability cooldown by 15s (such that cooldown is now 15s). Tier 2 upgrade: reduce ability energy cost by 15 (such that energy use is down to 10). Tier 3 upgrade dichotomy: option A = reduce all AoE (i.e. indirect) ion effects to 0 (does not affect direct hits); option B = all ion effects charge shield for duration of effect (hull damage, energy drain, and energy recharge dampening effects are still reduced by 25%) and increase effect duration by 5s (such that effect duration is 15s). These cooldowns and energy costs can of course be tweaked; my basic line of thought regarding the Tier 3 upgrades in particular were to give the T1 strike fighter in particular a unique resistance to ion effects, which as many pilots know are used frequently in the form of AoE ion railgun. Option A would permit strike fighters to effectively LOS AoE ion gunships but would still render them susceptible to direct attacks from another pilot supporting that gunship, and Option B would permit strike fighters to, while still feeling the effects of ion attacks, resist supporting attacks more effectively. I envision this shield generator being available specifically for the StarGuard and Pike and their equivalents on the Imperial side; the Clarion/Imperium have a number of their own abilities that would disqualify them from being able to use this ability for reasons of balance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greezt Posted April 7, 2016 Share Posted April 7, 2016 (edited) Man... Open that discussion again, and it'll never end. Not that I'm against it, mind. But there's a thread with over 1000 posts on the matter, and that's done nothing to help (unless devs are working on it right now...). Devs don't come here. This is forums ghost town. Edited April 7, 2016 by Greezt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danalon Posted April 7, 2016 Share Posted April 7, 2016 Feel free to post your suggestion in the thread the devs made for balancing Strikes almost a year ago. It has over 1k replies and I'm sure you'll find any imagineable idea there. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=814938&page=101 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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