Yet another ability slot stolen from Powertechs.

[Jaedelyia]

I have to agree with Optimus, here.

 

If an active skill is useless, either rework it (or design encounter when it can prove useful/situational), but trashing it is not always the good solution. Trashing stuff is fine when you have tons of useless skill that clutters your hotbars, but it's not the case here. Powertech Shield Tech is brainless rotation with very few active skills.

 

It's also one of the least interesting discipline to play solo/for the story, cause plenty of skill are made either for PVP or grouping with other humans. Which is fine in a MMO, but since SWTOR focus a lot on story / solo content, it's a bit lame. Abilities like Translocate are useless if you don't play in group, and that's another skill that goes down the drain and that thin your rotation.

 

"But, just change your discipline, then, and take Pyrotech or whatever" Well, considering my character have tank gear and everything have been optimized for shield tech, that's not really a solution. You cannoit really tell the players "don't play the class or discipline you want, play another instead". I know tank are often a bit tedious to play solo in mmo (cause the usually super low damage output and the fight dragging forever), but that doesn't excuse the boring rotation. My shield tech is/was my main cause it was fun to play in group. Now that I want to hop back for the story, it's a pain to play cause a big part of the content is clearly aimed toward solo player. Which, again, could be fine if the gameplay was fun, engaging and challenging.

 

Also, Deadly Onslaught looks ridiculous. I'm now a hunchback that pop a huge rocket-launching fridge out of nowhere from his back and the animation is clipping a lot with many armor. Mercenaries are the cool boys that get to conserve the awesome animations of Death From Above. Unfair, and unnecessary change.

[ExeErdna]

I get the reason why yet it's lazy because PT/VG got robbed they got worse not better in a way. I like most of the new and the reworked utilities I'm glad they gave us 8 points to work with. Yet with that this overall class is too weak to really use it without support. It feels like force users are the real tanks and we're just brick walls. I like we have the best pull in the game and some great supportive skills. Yet they honestly only really work for the tank spec. Like Battering Blitz / Ram only synergies here and the time to use it is quite tight because it's not a true 6 seconds it's more like 5.5 because I still have to proc up and try to do it and it just goes into CD. Shatter Slug / Flak Shell should be 15m since how it's just for the aoe and the slow if you want it yet its too weak to even be a threat. Pressure Overrides / Aim extensions had the most potential to be great yet is seems like a slap in the fact because rail shot / high-impact bolt aren't effected so it defeats the purpose of the utility 15 sec the class should be able to kite with each one of it's ranged abilities. Also it seems to not work very well with the searing wave and pulse cannon where it'll miss you'll have the animation yet nothing happens where other skills hit perfectly fine. Guard / Shield Cannon is still pointless due to the small amount of life it gives and the long CD. Translocate is still weak since it cannot be used while moving. It's better off giving the class a new grapple/harpoon that effects allies.

[Ragbarber]

I do miss Explosive Round, not much, not in every fight, but it was a nice tool to throw normal mobs off a cliff for a change.

Also another empty place on my vanguard toolbar... and she already had the least ammount of buttons to push of all my chars (wish she had more buttons to push again ;-p)

Edited December 12, 2016 by Ragbarber

[Vanji]

I've played as a PT since launch and I miss some of these abilities. I honestly preferred flamethrower to the new one and shatter slug just feels underwhelming to me. Yes, missile blast wasn't an ability I used often, but it had it's uses now and again.

[CobaltCannon]

@ Frenesi

 

I'm sorry, but we are all playing WoW-clone MMO. In PVE, that automatically makes us "drones just going through the repetitive tasks". You argument could have been better places in 2.0 era, when there WERE different playstyles outside of pre-determined disciplines. However, you are 3 cycles late by now. Saying that utterly useless skill that barely does any damage and eats ******** of energy somehow forms "variety of playstiles" is simply stupid.

 

Not every MMO is a WoW clone and neither is Star Wars The Old Republic. That claim is baseless if you bother to look up some simple facts that there are other MMORPGs that have created the genre.

World of Warcraft release date: November 23, 2004

City of Heroes release date: April 27, 2004 (Incidentally Blizzard stole most all of their ideas for World of Warcraft from other games including City of Heroes which I played. Every time City of Heroes would innovate, within 6 months Blizzard had copied the idea and put it into WoW)

Guild Wars release date: April 26, 2005

Everquest release date: March 16, 1999

Star Wars Galaxies: June 25, 2003

 

Clearly World of Warcraft is a clone of what preceded it. Frenesi you don't know as much as you think you do. You also come across as a major jerk. I've read many of your other posts in other threads, and adjusting your attitude to something more understanding of others and less egocentric will do you a lot of good and be more beneficial to the community. If you want to be a drone and play as a drone go ahead, that's your decision, but don't push that yoke off on everyone else. Other people play the game for reasons other than your reasons. We aren't all power gamers that min-max damage or even care if a power does a lot of damage or not. If you read my post precisely, you would have noticed that I said that I used powers because they were fun, not because they had great damage. I enjoy a more cinematic experience to the way I play. Others do too. The more powers that Bioware takes from the classes, the fewer choices we have to select a way to play them. That's simple logic.

 

No, the issue is exactly that they took Missile Blast away from Powertechs - spec that had 0 use for it. Not some other ability. Missile Blast. Who cares? You? Why? What drastic changes in your life removal of that skill caused? Or is it about principle? About noble cause to stop evil Bioware from removing skills nobody in their sane mind needs?

 

I care. I found the power to be both fun and useful. I used it. I cared. Friends that I have in the game also care. They used it too. It's not about any noble crusade. It's about a customer knowing what they want out of a product or service and demanding it. That's a customer's right. If Bioware chooses to ignore the complaint then it is to their own peril, as players will quit the game if they are unhappy with it. Maybe you'll still play. I am starting to think that if Bioware removed all of the classes and just gave you a character that sat with his thumb up his butt and all you could do is choose which direction that character would spin it's body around on that thumb, you would still play.

 

@ Equeliber

 

Powertech is a melee class.

 

That is simply incorrect. The Powertech and Vanguard use ranged weapons : Blasters, flamer throwers, grenades.

They don't use them far enough anymore, but they are still ranged (short range). If these classes used their blasters as clubs smacking enemies with them and used hand to hand combat with their bodies ( and not shooting), then it would be a melee class. You (general you; including Bioware) cannot call a class melee, just to call it melee, or because it's abilities are short ranged. Melee has a precise definition and the Vanguard/Powertech do not fall into that definition.

 

@ Jaedelyia: Great post! You called the point of all of this exactly.

The lightsaber power that bioware took away from Sorcerers/Sages simply needed to be reworked into something more spectacular/fun with higher damage, not removed. Removing options from the player is never the right choice.

Bioware seems to not know or understand what the correct direction is for development of this game. They seem to have forgotten that an MMO requires multiplayer content. Story is great, but our class stories for instance could be played with friends in a group. KOTFE, KOTET cannot. Oh you have that monotonous star fortress, and this command business that they added in, but it takes much more than a carrot held before the jack *** to continue the life of any MMORPG. Further development of the original planets with expanded zones and new planetary, exploration, and story missions is needed. More free range zones for players to wander around with groups, like in the vanilla content. Players need to be able to explore areas, find secrets, hunt datacrons and rare enemies.

[AndoEyrune]

I forgot missile blast existed on PTs because it's such trash. The tears of the triggered PTs are so delicious... I'm glad they got rid of such a useless ability.

[OptimusPrinceps]

I forgot missile blast existed on PTs because it's such trash. The tears of the triggered PTs are so delicious... I'm glad they got rid of such a useless ability.

I'm curious - Does the trolling help you fill the emptiness inside, or does it just make you feel more empty?

[Elyxin]

Personally I think they either need to give back ranged skills, or get rid of the Gun in a PT's hands. It simply looks stupid to carry a gun that can't shoot at range. replace it with a vibro blade or something like that, or better yet, nothing. have all the PT's abilites Come from their power suits and punches.

 

I Too am not happy with the direction they went. It doesn't behoove the Dev's to kill the same uniqueness and creativeness that made SWtOR stand out in the first place. I too never played this game because it was a Clone. I played because it had things interesting and different. And the SW universe was hard to beat. But I loved the variances in the classes. they don't vary now. it's stupid.

 

Part of it's the Dev's ignorant Egotism that makes them believe that they can balance PvP and PvE in the same mold (even WoW understands now that it's impossible). PvE continues to get changes that further homogenize the classes into grey-ish lumps of things with skills that perform like other things with skills that look like slightly different lumps of grey. they need to decide to stick with one or the other, and realize that the offshoot will simply be a side game.

 

The other parts a large Coorp that simply doesn't want to spend the money any more, so they cut team sizes and project budgets, and Developers who used to have unlimited budgets and people now have to make hard choices. So they make things simpler to reduce bandwidth for the remaining crew.

 

I still am not happy with it. I just got back after a long stint, and honestly, there are just some classes that I won't play again...and it looks like PT unfortunately became part of that.

[AndoEyrune]

I'm curious - Does the trolling help you fill the emptiness inside, or does it just make you feel more empty?

 

It's not trolling if I'm telling the truth. It amuses me that players get so butthurt about the removal of abilities that shouldn't have existed for a class in the first place.

[CrazyOldMystic]

I warned you guys this removal of full auot/unload was not going to end well months ago. Everyone was just lining up to say I was stupid.

 

Now abilities ,for stat monkeys that should jump off a cliff, are not just stats. Abilities are a extension of the immersion of the game. Every time you remove something like full auto, and then have the vanguard use a blaster, while being melee. It does not make a player feel immersed in the star wars universe instead it makes them feel like what the hell? This has been going on for years now with the vanguard. As I have said in another thread vanguards are not really ranged tanks, they arnt really melee tanks, and they arnt really troopers either. My word for the current status of vanguards purgatory.

[OptimusPrinceps]

It's not trolling if I'm telling the truth. It amuses me that players get so butthurt about the removal of abilities that shouldn't have existed for a class in the first place.

No, it's trolling, because you clearly didn't even bother to read the thread. If you had, you would have known that the issue isn't even about missile blast.