Set Bonus and Tactical Effect Feedback - Spoils of War

[EricMusco]

Hey folks,

 

As we talked about on the Spoils of War stream, set bonuses and tactical items will have new, playstyle changing effects. Let us know your thoughts!

 

-eric

[Estelindis]

Example Effects that could be found on these items for....

• Inquisitor - The cooldown of Whirlwind is reduced, also, killing an enemy before Whirlwind ends resets the cooldown of Whirlwind
  
• Sorcerer - Activating Unnatural Preservation removes Static Barrier's Deionize effect from you
  
• Assassin - Force Shroud also applies to any ally you are guarding
  
• Lightning Sorc - Crushing Darkness’s damage over time is increased and the chance that Forked Darkness causes Crushing Darkness to double-tick is improved
  
• Madness Sorc - Death Field does more damage to all targets and spreads Force Slows effects
  
• Corruption Sorc - Revivification heals more for each ally it affects
  

My main's a consular, a healer specifically. That spec's the only one where I felt sufficiently expert to comment in the class forum thread asking for suggestions. One of the suggestions made there is that we could (via two different items) choose between making the AoE heal affect more targets or do more healing to each target - this is a way to achieve both! I really like the idea of the AoE heal being better the more people gather in it. It incentivizes people paying attention to what's around them (get in the healing circle if you see it!) and coordinating around timed drops of circles, but also it asks us to think about the dangers of everyone bunching up in an area (taking into account the particular enemy / environment). It could end up punishing some players in some situations, adding an element of challenge. Kudos for some creative thought.

Edited May 30, 2019 by Estelindis

[Lakemine]

My main's a consular, a healer specifically. That spec's the only one where I felt sufficiently expert to comment in the class forum thread asking for suggestions. One of the suggestions made there is that we could (via two different items) choose between making the AoE heal affect more targets or do more healing to each target - this is a way to achieve both! I really like the idea of the AoE heal being better the more people gather in it. It incentivizes people paying attention to what's around them (get in the healing circle if you see it!) and coordinating around timed drops of circles, but also it asks us to think about the dangers of everyone bunching up in an area (taking into account the particular enemy / environment). It could end up punishing some players in some situations, adding an element of challenge. Kudos for some creative thought.

 

So like Alex's heal in Heroes of the Storm? sounds cool!

[Lakemine]

One thing I will ask is how will other classes be effected by this? Because the stim boost idea in the Uprisings may have been a "cool" idea, but its kinda lame because it throws off the rotation you do as a dps. So hopefully these bonuses and tac items don't do that, but just supercharge, make more effective or cause a double hit of something, instead of just "Spam your fav ability!".

 

Btw, that shadow/assassin tank idea is AWESOME (yes I know it will throw balance out the window, still fun), will the other 2 tanks have something similar to compete? Like the guardian/jug selfheal while taking hits can be passed to the guarded player? Or saber reflect is passed along? (then again if they are guarding a tech user, how would that work? ) Or VG/PT sharing......I don't know? They don't really have a lot of DCDs, so maybe adrenaline rush?

[sharkfishman]

Just 1 quick request, based on previous test server experience during a major class-balance change such as this one in another MMO (OUCD):

 

Can we maybe do a quick overview of all classes on PTS, rather than 2 Week Sorc, 2 Week PT, etc.?

 

I know you think September is really far away, but trust me, you're not ready for how much work balancing this is going to be.

 

It's just really sad when certain classes get 4 months of fine-tuning and the last 2 or 3 are just thrown together the best you can.

 

If you insist on doing it the other way, please start with classes in need of love in PVP, such as PT and Sin. (I main a sniper, but even I feel bad for those guys). I don't say Jugg, because that's more a defensive thing than anything else.

[sharkfishman]

One last thing about all of this ...

 

 

Do you remember when healers were OP in PVP?

 

 

So... how are you planning on making certain moves EVEN MORE POWERFUL, without making us one-shot each other or turn into unkillable Gods?

 

Are you going to nerf the dps/heals/health we already have to compensate?

[TrixxieTriss]

Example Effects that could be found on these items for....

• Inquisitor - The cooldown of Whirlwind is reduced, also, killing an enemy before Whirlwind ends resets the cooldown of Whirlwind
  
• Sorcerer - Activating Unnatural Preservation removes Static Barrier's Deionize effect from you
  
• Assassin - Force Shroud also applies to any ally you are guarding
  
• Lightning Sorc - Crushing Darkness’s damage over time is increased and the chance that Forked Darkness causes Crushing Darkness to double-tick is improved
  
• Madness Sorc - Death Field does more damage to all targets and spreads Force Slows effects
  
• Corruption Sorc - Revivification heals more for each ally it affects
  

-eric

 

Edit : Disregard some of this post. The notes didn’t do the stream justice and it’s easy to misunderstand without listening to it.

 

The only thing I still think is still relevant is point 4 and point 3.

But it seems point 4 is supposed to have the effect I’m concerned about so it will be a very interesting time post launch with all the nerf calls.

 

End edit.

 

I know you said these are examples, but I feel I need to chime in, in case you are serious about some of these.

 

1. Whirlwind usually breaks on damage. So it would be impossible under the current system to kill someone before it ends. So this example is nonsensical unless you are making changes to how WW works?

2. Why would anyone want unnatural preservation to remove static barriers deionising effect? That would mean you would need to reapply it straight away?? Another nonsensical suggestion.

3. As much as it’s appreciated that you are looking at lightning Sorcs, crushing darkness is the least usable in pvp because it takes too long to cast if you have to continuously LoS. Adding more damage onto it is pointless for pvpers.

So I hope you have better ideas. AKA, the one you mentioned last month of making chain lightning only hit one target, but with higher burst.

Or if you want a crushing darkness one, make it activate instantly.

4. Madness Sorc. This is a great idea (if you are a madness Sorc), but I can already hear the nerf calls because of the “slow” affect being spammed on people when there are more than 1 madness Sorc in pvp. I think an ability like this will be similar to the force storm slow spam problem from a few years ago. It will make madness Sorcs a little OP for pvp.

 

Anyway. It’s great that you’ve given all this info to us, I just hope you guys are serious on taking our feed back on some things that might not be good.

Edited May 31, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

[DHTarez]

One thing I want to ask after watching the stream is why lock the set bonus to the shell?

That pretty much makes all existing legacy gear in the game worthless other than use an appearance.

 

Why not make the set bonus another type of slot in the gear that could then be moved to the whatever legacy gear you want to use as your "set" gear.? This would really help in identifying your gear sets the legacy bay when swapping or using gear on multiple characters.

[Toraak]

I agree with the poster above this. I use specific Legacy sets for each spec (different for each one), by putting Set bonuses into Shells all of those sets (All 14 sets) become Obsolete except for appearance. You should make an extra slot in the gear solely for the set bonus (this slot adds 0 stats, just the set bonus)

 

Many of us spent Months/years getting all of these Legacy sets for all of our classes.

Edited May 31, 2019 by Toraak

[TrixxieTriss]

I agree with the poster above this. I use specific Legacy sets for each spec (different for each one), by putting Set bonuses into Shells all of those sets (All 14 sets) become Obsolete except for appearance. You should make an extra slot in the gear solely for the set bonus (this slot adds 0 stats, just the set bonus)

 

Many of us spent Months/years getting all of these Legacy sets for all of our classes.

 

Valid point!! I’ve one and half cargo hold tabs of legacy gear, plus 150 collection outfits

 

Also what about CM gear? Do you really want us to stop buying it in favour of using in game shells?

 

Remember, not everyone opens outfit slots or plays space barbies. You will be alienating all those Cartel Market buyers and nerf your own income from the CM. Which I’m sure you don’t want to do

[QuiveringPotato]

please hidden strike returned ok thanks

[Delani]

During the livestream I heard you mention death from above while on the move. Thats good but only if we are able to fly (ten meters in the air) while doing it. Also if you are able to use death from above while on the move, we should be able to use other abilities while in the air as well. Being 10 meters in the air does not offer any advantages other than aesthetics which will draw players to feel they have more of a connection with their beloved toon and make them feel like they are actually a bounty hunter. This allows mercs and pts to have class defining abilities that seperate them from every other class in the game. It also makes sense because bounty hunters have jetpacks for a reason.

[Darthanimus]

I think that it would be a good idea to make a tank's stats somehow translate to the guarded friendly player, for example. A tank in full tank gear would be able to guard a team mate better than a skank tank in dps gear, this would further incentivize full tanks in PvP.

 

It seems strange that a dps can guard a friendly player with out a shield generator, or that they can guard a friendly player as well as a full tank. Admittedly a damage class suffers more damage than a tank, but it still feels out of place. Making guard a function of a tank's stats would enable a more personalized tanking experience, as some tanks could pick stats that were more meaningful in various interactions.

[Syal]

Don't get the tactical effect ?

it's a slot into each pieces of gear that give specific effect ?

[Phazonfreak]

Don't get the tactical effect ?

it's a slot into each pieces of gear that give specific effect ?

 

It's a completely new gear type like relics, not a gear mod like a weapon tuning. You can equip a tactical item into that new character slot and it will alter one of your class' abilities.

Edited May 31, 2019 by Phazonfreak

[PugX]

Will there be weapon appearance customization?

 

I *HATE* the idea of finding a great stat'd weapon, but have it clash with my look.

[Phazonfreak]

Will there be weapon appearance customization?

 

I *HATE* the idea of finding a great stat'd weapon, but have it clash with my look.

 

Unfortunately it looks like weapon appearance will not be part of outfitter when the expansion arrives:

 

Sure thing, I can hit both of those! Weapon shells will NOT have amplifiers while they are not available in Outfitter.

 

I don't want to get too specific yet but the % value of amplifiers is very small. Obviously if you get a very small bonus on multiple mods it can add up but the overall impact is not a substantial one in anyway. It is mostly about tweaking and customizing.

 

-eric

Edited May 31, 2019 by Phazonfreak

[FlameYOL]

I think specific set bonuses can be a good way to further customize playstyle, as well as tacticals, I can't say much until we got into PTS and see how useful those things can be.

[Costello]

Can you (the devs) take one step back and remember that you removed base classes and seriously dumbed down the class progression system to a pick one very basic template and a few utilities because you could not balance the system. Now we retain the very dumbed down progression of what was at the term and still valid called, cookie cutter templates but you now are going to offer far more variety in options and what appear far more extreme powers as part of a gear grind.

 

And your plan to balance it is, to rely on the PTS? Yet in a live environment with lots of feedback on the old style of progression you couldn't balance it, how is a few calls for nerf this or buff that or this is an fing joke going to allow you to balance it.

 

And if you have suddenly found a new and better way to balance all these changes to powers and abilities, why not bring back the old progression system and allow for people to truly play their way crafting from the ground up how they want to play their class and what skills they want to invest in. Or are you only interested in choice and options to skills and abilities if it can some how be tied to a gear grind?

Edited May 31, 2019 by Costello

[Syal]

Will there be weapon appearance customization?

 

I *HATE* the idea of finding a great stat'd weapon, but have it clash with my look.

 

oki thank's

[BowtieJones]

I'm curious about how different from our current set bonuses the 6.0 bonuses will be because the current is in the armorings and 6.0 is shells. Will it be beneficial to play my way, and sacrifice 6 amps from armorings, and give myself a 6 piece set bonus on top of the shell bonuses?

[jambalayabungee]

Hi ! thank you for asking feedback from players, we do appreciate that !

I want to say, I'm pretty glad about these gear changes, overall, if it does bring more customization to the classes I like.

 

I've been playing swtor since 2014, I almost dropped the game after the changes to the skill-trees because I felt that the Utilities choices were not able by themselves to build an unique toon like picking skills in a skill-tree could, it all felt "dumbed-down", restrictive and rigid to me. I still play it because even if its not perfect it's better than other games out there overall, but I always felt the lack of customization, as building an unique character is the funniest / more interesting thing I want in mmorpg.

 

Im not so crazy about the grinding the new gear will bring, as Im still gearing my main toons through Ossus (and I'm so sick of it, I'm never stepping a foot in there again as soon as 6.0 drops lol !), but Id be MUCH happier to grind for a piece that I would really choose because it will bring something special to my toon that for a piece of BIS gear with fixed stats (why !! ) Im a bit worried of all the unbalance it could possibly bring tho, but we will see when we will get there

 

i look forward to see the new healing bonuses and tactical will look like :3 Oh and ... legacy LEFT side , legacy crafting bank, YES !

 

#############################################################

 

In term of suggestions, if we are to have all these different kits , possibly a single toon will have different sets for different circumstances, what I REALLY would like to see would be a way to quickly save a loadout or combinations of gear / utilities / even the way abilities are placed on the quickbars so it would be easier to swap between them ??

 

At the moment, each time one want to field-respec (healers/dps or tank/dps do that all the time! ) or even just swap between PVE and PVP content, they have to swap their gear, their utilities, the position of the skills on the quickbars, and possibly the UI loadout, its a bit of a pain in the *** most ppl don't want to bother with it.

I'm sure I'm not alone to be bugged by this so that why I bring it up

 

Another thing id like to see, purely cosmetic, would be an outfit design-ish slot for weapons as well ? I keep my mods in legacy weapons, and a lot of them don't look *so* great tbh honest lol , again, Im sure im not alone in this

 

Overall, good job, thank you for the nice stream, looking forward to see what will happens in the next few months with the PST and all :3

-L

[matthaxian]

Thank you for the stream and for being so open to feedback before you implement these new systems.

 

I think you are making a mistake tying the set bonus to the shell.

 

It is true that you only need to get the set bonus once, instead of on every tier of gear that you get,

And that is a nice feature.

 

However, If you keep set bonuses locked to slot, with so many new sets introduced,

it is going to be a nightmare trying to obtain and keep track of gear sets.

 

My proposal is this:

Leave the set bonus on the armoring, but make the armorings not bound to slot, allowing us to move the set bonus to whichever slot (head, chest, gloves etc) we want.

 

this will serve 3 purposes:

1. RNG protection.

No more frustration for rolling for one piece (say boots) over and over (like those uber frustrating 252 loot boxes).

I want boots and get pants instead? No big deal, just move the armoring to the boots.

This is going to be even more important now that we have an extra layer of rng, as we are not only rolling the slot, we are also rolling the type of bonus.

 

2. Less Loot/Gear waste.

Say I get a new pair of gloves with A sorceror specific set bonus. But I have already gotten a pair of gloves with a different set bonus that I like. I would like to use them together, but cannot because I can't move the set bonus.

So I am faced with deconstructing the gear and returning a fraction of its worth.

 

3. Organizing and keeping track of your gear sets.

Let's say that I have a base class 2 pc, dps specific 2 pc, and discipline specific 2 pc bonus that I want to keep track of, and wear at the same time as that is my preferred meta .

I want to put my base-class specific 2 pc set bonus on bracers and belt.

dps specific bonus on chest and glove, and discipline specific bonuses on legs and boots.

 

If I want to change from sorc to assassin, I change everything but bracers and belt.

If I want to change from sorc heal to sorc dps, I change chest , gloves, legs and boots.

If I want to change from lightning to madness dps, I change legs and boots.

 

If you tie set bonus to armoring, and make armorings not bound to slot (so we can move the bonuses around),

I will be able to organize all of my gear sets exactly how I want them, without an unfathomable amount of extra farming.

It will also allow me to have to move less gear around because I can arrange the pieces that I need to swap out and take only those with me, and to create a system that works for me across all of my different characters.

 

I think any fallout from this possibly speeding up your intended rate of gearing will be mitigated by the fact that people will have to grind for higher tier set bonuses instead of getting a low level shell and filling it with crafted armorings (which is probably how I'd play it to be honest). It will also be a further incentive for people to try harder content for better gear.

 

I think if you had done this in Ossus it would have been much better received and people would have been less frustrated. I don't want to fathom how many 252 pieces I disintegrated for 1/6 of their value.

If I didn't have at least 4 of each mirrored advance class to power through the RNG I probably would have given up within the first month.

 

If you did this, I would also change generators/shields/focuses from using armorings to using hilts/barrels (which is probably a pretty good idea anyway).

Edited June 1, 2019 by matthaxian

[matthaxian]

One thing I want to ask after watching the stream is why lock the set bonus to the shell?

That pretty much makes all existing legacy gear in the game worthless other than use an appearance.

 

Why not make the set bonus another type of slot in the gear that could then be moved to the whatever legacy gear you want to use as your "set" gear.? This would really help in identifying your gear sets the legacy bay when swapping or using gear on multiple characters.

 

I agree, I don't like stats/set bonuses attached to the shell.

I think its good to make all gear legacy so that casuals can still move it around.

And it will be nice to be able to consolidate all of your old visual shells on a storage toon.

 

But I've developed a system of sets that allows me to move stuff around quickly because of the visual look of the sets. (example: battleborn set for guardian/jugg dps, hydra on powertech/vanguard dps).

I use some of the alliance crate sets for just the top tier of the gear, then retire the old set.

 

With so many new sets coming in, I would like to still have this option.

Edited May 31, 2019 by matthaxian

[tolaez]

My biggest concern is that this is done right the first time. No doubt this will be iterated upon as time goes to improve it but there's one thing I think absolutely needs to be well thought out for the initial implementation - no inventory space taken!

 

Please we don't need actual items taking up space in our inventories for this. Please make a tab that we can access them all from or even just attach it to an already existing tab like our utilities screen. Absolute worst case make them items that are consumed so they can be eliminated from our inventories quickly and added to this tab.

 

Or just make them function like actual abilities, accessed through our ability interface. Just swap them in and out there.