Warzone balance

[ZenX]

Hello, I have played Warzones constantly since beta and for the last few years it is my opinion, and many others I have spoken to, and even Customer Service Reps that there is Factional Imbalance.

When you have all classes on Imp and Pub side you can easily see that in many warzones your Pub character is less effective than your Imp character. This has been happening for years.

Then you have Class Imbalance, and even Blind Freddy can see the currently Merc and Sniper are way out of balance.

It shouldn't be possible that a Merc can kill other players in 3 or 4 seconds, at times, and yet that other player cant kill the Merc in 30 to 60 seconds.

It is also way out of whack that 4 or 5 Pubs have difficulty killing a Merc or Sniper, yet 5 Imps would kill one Pub in seconds.

I appreciate there are always exeptions to any rule, I am referring to 'in general'.

Then you add in the occasional speed hacks, and for anyone that says they don't exist its just buffs, check oyut YouTube, and also you can leave this forum and have bought one within 10 minutes, so please don't say hacks don't exist,lol.

What has Bioware done for WZ balance and parity in the last few years, NOTHING, they make new armor, they make pretty armor, they make new Uprisings, they figure out more ways to extract Cartel Coins, but they do bugger all for Warzone balance and fairness.

I have been in guilds which have had 50 active players on a day that don't now exist and it would be difficult to find a small handful of the guild mates because I have always been in PvP guilds, and eventually people get sick and tired of the inequity in classes and factions.

Hacks are annoying, but eventually get sorted for awhile, but imbalance is super annoying and frustrating, and get frustrated enough and people quit, its that simple.

Bioware should be able to notice server numbers drop to zero nearly, but don't seem to know why people leave.

 

I would suggest stop making pretty sparkly things in SWTOR for awhile, and fix the game mechanics and Class and Factional balance, it would be appreciated, and some of the ex players might come back if they know its a 'fair fight'

 

Customer Service has acknowledged some of these problems and have said some are bugs and that they will be fixed in future patch, but when is that?

Someone said the other night when we were WZing why don't we go over Imp side, you win and its easier to kill and survive, and I said whats the point, you're not really winning from skill, it doesn't even feel like a challenge, if its not a fair and balanced fight what are we doing there?

 

I am not looking for an argument from anyone, I am writing this for the Devs to see, because they say the Devs read this forum.

[stoopicus]

wat?

 

My pub side JKs and Smuggler seem fine. Not sure why you think they are faction-gimped.

[Markark]

I agree with this post.

 

Until the recent addition of assembled components required for gear that can only be attained through WZ's, I almost never PvP, I dislike PvP.

 

Queue's pop with no heals, all DPS, and it's almost a guaranteed loss in both unranked and ranked.

 

In some cases entire groups take little or no damage, in other cases the game completely freezes as soon as the opponent engages, among other problems.

 

The Dev's really should be playing the game to understand these problems.

Edited February 8, 2017 by Markark

[kmol]

Hello, I have played Warzones constantly since beta and for the last few years it is my opinion, and many others I have spoken to, and even Customer Service Reps that there is Factional Imbalance.

When you have all classes on Imp and Pub side you can easily see that in many warzones your Pub character is less effective than your Imp character. This has been happening for years.

Then you have Class Imbalance, and even Blind Freddy can see the currently Merc and Sniper are way out of balance.

It shouldn't be possible that a Merc can kill other players in 3 or 4 seconds, at times, and yet that other player cant kill the Merc in 30 to 60 seconds.

It is also way out of whack that 4 or 5 Pubs have difficulty killing a Merc or Sniper, yet 5 Imps would kill one Pub in seconds.

I appreciate there are always exeptions to any rule, I am referring to 'in general'.

Then you add in the occasional speed hacks, and for anyone that says they don't exist its just buffs, check oyut YouTube, and also you can leave this forum and have bought one within 10 minutes, so please don't say hacks don't exist,lol.

What has Bioware done for WZ balance and parity in the last few years, NOTHING, they make new armor, they make pretty armor, they make new Uprisings, they figure out more ways to extract Cartel Coins, but they do bugger all for Warzone balance and fairness.

I have been in guilds which have had 50 active players on a day that don't now exist and it would be difficult to find a small handful of the guild mates because I have always been in PvP guilds, and eventually people get sick and tired of the inequity in classes and factions.

Hacks are annoying, but eventually get sorted for awhile, but imbalance is super annoying and frustrating, and get frustrated enough and people quit, its that simple.

Bioware should be able to notice server numbers drop to zero nearly, but don't seem to know why people leave.

 

I would suggest stop making pretty sparkly things in SWTOR for awhile, and fix the game mechanics and Class and Factional balance, it would be appreciated, and some of the ex players might come back if they know its a 'fair fight'

 

Customer Service has acknowledged some of these problems and have said some are bugs and that they will be fixed in future patch, but when is that?

Someone said the other night when we were WZing why don't we go over Imp side, you win and its easier to kill and survive, and I said whats the point, you're not really winning from skill, it doesn't even feel like a challenge, if its not a fair and balanced fight what are we doing there?

 

I am not looking for an argument from anyone, I am writing this for the Devs to see, because they say the Devs read this forum.

 

... what?

 

There's 4 "classes" each with two base classes in the game and a mirror class with the same abilities on both factions. Though animations for these abilities may differ, they are the same.

 

As to the faction imbalance, there really isn't one. On some servers one faction tends to dominate PvP and for your server that appears to be imperial side. On my server (The Ebon Hawk) it happens to be the pubs.

 

As I mentioned earlier, there is no imbalance as the mirrored classes are writen in the same code.

 

There's actually no advantage to queuing imperial side in your case other than there being more of a PvP player base who know what they are doing.

 

Commando/Merc happens to be one of the most broken classes in PvP right now, as they were heavily buffed this update.

 

Sniper/gunslinger got a healing buff to some of their utilities to improve survivability but they aren't as difficult to kill as mercs/commandos typically.

 

The classes are far from balanced but faction has nothing to do with it.

Edited February 8, 2017 by kmol

[stoopicus]

Yeah not sure what he was getting at about the pub versions of the classes being weaker.

[Sith-Viscera]

The Balancing of WZ, will never happen. If months of beta testing couldnt find the sweet spot of balance. Now 5 years later, still there is no Balance in WZ. There will be Balance in the FORCE, b4 it will ever be BALANCE, in WZ. As soon as people realize this, the better we all are. Just play it, lick your wounds, then come back for more, and for get about Balance or dont play at all. Like i did for 2 years, now playing again, it is a tad better, but thinking of quitting again.

 

 

Take Care and Be Well...

[ZenX]

Hi, yeah I agree, after 5 years it is unlikely they will get it right, they have had plenty of time to do so if they were serious about it, and your advice is also good, play or don't play, and I have done that since beta but I think i'm a bit worn down now.

 

For the guys that cant understand the class difference between Imp and Pub, the mirror aspect, that is the Factional imbalance.

If you don't see it in play, that's fair enough, its quite discrete, but effective.

It could work either way, and I haven't played Ebon Hawk so I cant comment.

I work with software and its faults for a living, and in my opinion the code is faulty, if you don't see that or agree with that, that's fine, as I mentioned, not looking for an argument.

[stoopicus]

For the guys that cant understand the class difference between Imp and Pub, the mirror aspect, that is the Factional imbalance.

 

Yeah so that doesn't exist in my experience. There is no difference, at least for JK, Smuggler, and Commando. Sage feels gimpier but that's just because lightning is more fun.

 

It's also not what people are talking about when they say "factional imbalance". When people say that they are talking about the sheer numerical advantage of the imp side on most servers. More people simply play as imp.

 

But the classes themselves are identical.

Edited February 9, 2017 by stoopicus

[ZenX]

Yeah so that doesn't exist in my experience. There is no difference, at least for JK, Smuggler, and Commando. Sage feels gimpier but that's just because lightning is more fun.

 

It's also not what people are talking about when they say "factional imbalance". When people say that they are talking about the sheer numerical advantage of the imp side on most servers. More people simply play as imp.

 

But the classes themselves are identical.

 

Sorry Stoopicus, I don't agree with anything you said,(and with the factional imbalance you are on the wrong page) but we are all entitled to our own opinions.

[stoopicus]

No seriously - go read other posts on faction imbalance. Literally everyone else is talking about the sheer numbers of imp players versus pubs.

 

You are the first person I have ever heard suggest that the pub-side *classes* are weaker.

 

And sorry, it's just not true in my experience, at least for sentinel, slinger and sage.

[ZenX]

Mate, i'm not trying to convince you of anything, I have been communicating with Customer Service, they know about it, they know what I am talking about, they have told me there are bugs, they have told me they will be fixed in a patch or patches.

Because you don't understand something or aren't aware of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

 

We don't need to discuss this any more mate.

[Citrienne]

In general, I think there's just an overall lack of skilled individuals queuing for PvP. I play the squishiest class using the lowest parsing dps spec, and still do surprisingly better than everyone else on both dps and survival, win or lose, about 95% of the time when solo queued. In fact, my best match so far has been on a Sage I'd just gotten to 70 with garbage on his left side and 224s/234s on his right, which is decidedly mediocre gear.

 

Pub side on Shadowlands (my server) is 1) sparsely populated and, 2) almost entirely terrible at PvP. When I queue pub side, I adjust my expectations accordingly, and simply work on survivability while maintaining dps. I haven't noticed any lack in my pub toons vs my imp toons of the same class and spec. In fact, I tend to have my best matches pub side because I am able to continue dpsing while the enemy loafs around waiting for the rest of my team to come out of spawn while one brave soul tries to come down the hill to finish me off (or whatever). Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. But I think practicing in disadvantagous situations while solo queued helps you improve. Maybe I'm a masochist. But I'd rather be better today than I was yesterday.

 

And even in saying all that, I'd rather have bads in pvp than no queue pops at all.

 

 

Since this is posted in the suggestions box, and the subject line is generic enough, I'll list my suggested changes to help PvP balance some without hopefully affecting PvE.

 

General:

• Implement minimal matchmaking that prioritizes fast queue pops over ideal matchmaking (if someone groups a premade of 4 healers and queues, there is little that can be done about that - pop anyway)
  
• Bump bolster to 240 (split the difference - I agree that skill should matter more than gear in PvP, but people who have grinded out the ranks should also have a bit of an edge as well, and I say this with a highest command rank of 60 across all my toons)
  
• DPS guards (ability) should go away, Skank Tanking should be discouraged somehow, and Mitigation Tanks should be viable/sensible again in PvP. I have no clue how to make this happen, though.
  
• Ideally, I would tune the healing classes in this way to give each the following best scenario to shine in: Merc = highest single target heals, Sorcerer = highest 2-3 targets heals, Operative = highest 4-8 targets heals.
  
• DPS spec parsing gap would be reduced from 1.3k (highest parsing to lowest) to something more like 0.5k so that no one class or spec feels completely unviable.
  
• Obviously cross-server queues or server merges would help queue times on less populated servers, but we've been assured numerous times there's little chance of this happening. Still, worth throwing out there yet again.
  

 

Full disclosure: Sorcerer has been my main since launch and I play all of its specs in PvP and Operations; I acknowledge that this class is in a tenuous state right now and thus I have lots of opinions about what can be done to help it (dps) or debuff it (heals) without going overboard, but I will do my best to remain fair to all classes.

 

Classes (Imp classes used, apply to both factions):

• Sorc/Sin (all): Current Emersion utility becomes part of Force Speed by default. Utility now provides immunity to pulls/knocks/throws (but not stuns) while Force Speeding.
  
• Sorc (all): Drop energy cost and healing of Dark Heal, Resurgence, and Static Barrier back to the ratios they were in 4.0 but up to 5.0 inflation levels (this nerf in 4.5 possibly unintentionally hamstringed dps sorc survivability)
  
• Sorc (Corruption): Increase energy cost of Roaming Mend, Reviv, and Innervate. Reduce healing of Roaming Mend (sorc healing broke with the introduction of Roaming Mend IMO, and thus this is the ability that needs to be reined in the most, also IMO).
  
• Sorc (Madness): Increase the damage of Demolish and Force Leech by a little. Increase energy regen from Force Lightning by a little. Bring up Parasitism heals a little (4.0 was 25%, 4.5 was 10%, make it 18% now).
  
• Sorc (Lightning): Increase damage dealt by Thundering Blast and Chain Lightning by a little to bring up overall dps and provide more actual burst to the diet coke of burst specs for PvP.
  
• Merc (all): Remove Trauma Regulators utility from Merc and give to Powertech.
  
• Merc (all): The debuff effects (only! damage remains) of Electronet now places a bastion on affected players, preventing further Electronet debuffs (only!) for 3 minutes (similar to how grenades work).
  
• Merc (Bodyguard): Increase heals to spec-specific healing abilities just a tad. Buff Kolto Missile a little.
  
• PT (all): Add an AoE damage reduction utility somewhere. Receive Trauma Regulators utility from Merc tree now available in Legendary tier.
  
• Jugg (all): Bring Enraged Defense and Endure Pain back in line with current damage capabilities and typical health of players.
  
• Operative (Medicine): Stim boost now provides non-interruption and reduces the energy cost of the spammable casted heal (I forget the name of this ability) while active.
  
• Operative (dps specs): Increase cooldown on roll by 3 seconds (healers, who had no buff to roll before, now gain the roll benefit of a shortened cooldown).
  
• Marauder (Annihilation): Provide this spec in its tree a little more ability to wrangle targets - snares, slows, roots, brief stun immunity; 1-2 things from this list, whatever.
  
• Snipers (just a comment): They are a little bit overly-tanky at the moment, but are generally harder for people to learn to play well in PvP such that I'm not sure it matters. Honestly I'm not sure how I would debuff this tankiness without crippling the class. I think mainly Entrench's stun immunity overlaid with cover's leap immunity is a bit too much when combined. That would indicate that Entrench's cooldown should be increased and none of the spec trees should get a cooldown reduction or duration increase to Entrench. No comment on utility buffs to Entrench.
  

 

I think these changes would encourage more class variety in PvP, and help the casuals perform better overall. The only change I really want for my own personal needs/wants/benefit would be the bastion for Electronet in PvP. It's less about the Merc cooldowns (for me) than the overabundance of Electronets that I have to wear in every match because there are so many Mercs in queue. *cough*

[stoopicus]

[*] Jugg (all): Bring Enraged Defense and Endure Pain back in line with current damage capabilities and typical health of players.

 

This would be awesome and should not be OP. I'd also suggest considering a 5% DR boost for Vengeance and Rage. Immortal is fine, maybe up its set bonus DR increase to 3-5% (from 2%).

 

Considering the overall fulltime DR advantages of 'Sin tank, I don't think those suggestions are OP.

[Yezzan]

Telekinetic Sage doesn't feel as powerful as a lightening Sor, dunno why, but it just don't. And, except for IMP side having better animations (prefer bolt-storm to blazing bolts though / no idea why PUB version of massacre doesn't have the same hand flourishes ), i don't find any other advanced class to "feel" less powerful than its IMP counterpart. The IMP animations just look better.