Jedi Guardian on the PTS!

[Raansu]

I am not a fan of this streamlining whatsoever. One of the main reasons I've stuck with SWTOR over other MMO's is due to the wide variety of abilities every class has and all of their uses. Cutting the amount of abilities you can have down will make everything less fun and interesting to play in my opinion. Not to mention the balancing that would need to be done to every operation boss to account for the fact that a Guardian tank will now be losing two of their main DCD's (Blade Blitz a little more situational than the others, but still). We haven't even seen what sacrifices the other tanks will have to make.

 

They are basically pulling a WoW....which I'm not a fan of. WoW became boring after they "streamlined" and purged more than half their abilities.

 

Hey BW, if you wanna mimic an MMO, go look at FFXIV for examples, stop copying WoW, their ideas have been terrible for years now.

Edited July 9, 2021 by Raansu

[timovdt]

I thought combat styles meant a straight up swap for what we have already. So my Knight could say, swap to Telekinetic Sage and use all its abilities as is not... pick and choose from this weird streamlining. That sounds awful, and confusing, and feels like it would be difficult to 'learn' a rotation for it.

 

I get it altho that was never going to happen sadly even stuff like using dualbladed saber on a guardian will never be a thing :/ lets just hope they don't pull a wow and gut out specs because **** compexity.

 

I get it that Some skills can get pruned but thats like 1-3 max per spec and some need some added imo

Like on sorc you can remove volt rush.

I don't even know what they want to do with this people already play what they want most of the time some specs sadly can't be played in all forms of content but this is not how that gets fixed XD

[timovdt]

very wel said Nee-Elder ! Edited July 9, 2021 by timovdt
bug

[omaan]

I am not a fan of this streamlining whatsoever. One of the main reasons I've stuck with SWTOR over other MMO's is due to the wide variety of abilities every class has and all of their uses. Cutting the amount of abilities you can have down will make everything less fun and interesting to play in my opinion. Not to mention the balancing that would need to be done to every operation boss to account for the fact that a Guardian tank will now be losing two of their main DCD's (Blade Blitz a little more situational than the others, but still). We haven't even seen what sacrifices the other tanks will have to make.

 

Agreed, they must not cut the number of abilities since swtor has no new classes for ages, and variety of abilities/utilies brings variety to the whole game. If they take even 1-2 abilities away it will result in much easier gameplay which will definitely lead to more boredom and monotony. I fully disagree with need of removing abilities

[timovdt]

They are basically pulling a WoW....which I'm not a fan of. WoW became boring after they "streamlined" and purged more than half their abilities.

 

Hey BW, if you wanna mimic an MMO, go look at FFXIV for examples, stop copying WoW, their ideas have been terrible for years now.

 

if they copy wow's classes i will cry they butched every class so hard in legion it legit makes me sick having to play them can't stand that game for more then a week per year because of that change ...

[Labranth]

I am not a fan of this streamlining whatsoever. One of the main reasons I've stuck with SWTOR over other MMO's is due to the wide variety of abilities every class has and all of their uses. Cutting the amount of abilities you can have down will make everything less fun and interesting to play in my opinion. Not to mention the balancing that would need to be done to every operation boss to account for the fact that a Guardian tank will now be losing two of their main DCD's (Blade Blitz a little more situational than the others, but still). We haven't even seen what sacrifices the other tanks will have to make.

 

Yes!!! Making less abilities is a mistake. Especially for PvP where these abilities are life and death.

[Kurj]

This might be good for PVP. Classes are way too survivable and have been for a long time.

[aeterno]

We all know "choice" is an illusion.

 

Everyone seriously invested in the game metagames. Stat distributions, rotations. They'll do the same with "skill choices". It's not going to be "meaningful customization", it'll be the right and the wrong pick once the theory-crafters crunch out what is optimal.

 

But then again ability bloat is an actual thing...

 

and maybe psychologically it goes over better to give artificial choices for the few that'll be inclined to pick the inferior option for some reason than to prune a bunch of abilities and gut the rotations.

[LadyAdmiral]

Hello I have some important questions about the PTS and Guardian.

 

My big questions:

 

Some abilities seem missing from both my abilities ingame and the abilities in the developer post like my interrupt and my stunbreaker. Those are not important to me for testing my rotation, but Force Clarity seems to also be missing but I don't understand if it's on purpose, on accident, will be added later, etc. One of the questions the developers asked is "Is there anything that feels missing or out of place in the combat rotation?" but Force clarity used to be a part of the rotation, so I don't know if that can be well answered or not.

 

Do we really have to choose between Saber Reflect, Blade Blitz and Enure? That makes me so sad. I just started learning to play Guardian Tank yesterday and all three are so fun. It feels like they are taking away three abilities to give us the choice between one.

 

In the developer post, it says, "~Level 45 - New ability granted but there is no choice to be made and it is not discipline specific" - which is the big green question marks on my chart. Is that like.... an existing Guardian ability that just gets slotted in but wasn't named on the list, or something new?

 

I don't think "[A] Energy Barrage - Adds Energy Damage to Blade Barrage and it now immobilizes the target." is actually working. I tried using it on some Grefna and they didn't get stunned or rooted as far as I could tell. It'd partner, Blade Burst, seems to be working.

 

It's incredibly hard to test without having any UI or any indication of what you have or don't have.

 

I have posted them here and will add more questions as I see them here.

[Alssaran]

This might be good for PVP. Classes are way too survivable and have been for a long time.

 

I agree.

 

I actually went back to doing some PvP for POs, and I am honestly annoyed at how many levels of survivability some of the classes have. I think cutting 2/3 abilities might be overdoing it a little, but I wouldn't mind something along the lines of Enure being baseline, now choose between Blade Blitz and Saber Reflect.

 

This doesn't have to be a bad thing at all. I just hope they won't take a sledgehammer to the wall when a chisel can do the job.

[Raansu]

if they copy wow's classes i will cry they butched every class so hard in legion it legit makes me sick having to play them can't stand that game for more then a week per year because of that change ...

 

Ya they ruined ret pally for me. Turned it into a 1,2,3 overly simplified play. Its so boring now.

[Raansu]

This might be good for PVP. Classes are way too survivable and have been for a long time.

 

I'm all for removing the stacking passives on DCD's, but not the level of what they are doing here. Things like Mercs reflect for example should never have had a heal attached to it, just make it reflect, but straight up removing DCD's and making you have to choose between a series of DCD's is not good.

 

My issue with pvp atm is there are too many invulnerability skills, self healing skills, and in general too many cc breaker type passives attached to other skills.

[LordCamTheGreat]

My first impression is that this feels not great. It's not quite awful as there are some redeeming qualities, but in its current state (and this is apparently only a high level look so we can't really know for sure what our opinions are) it doesn't feel good.

 

I really dislike losing abilities as it removes choice from the game especially when the removed abilities aren't replaced with something else.

The reason SWTOR's combat has stood out so much for me over the years is that you have plenty of abilities to use and they all have a time and a place. Sure there are some abilities like trauma shot for a sniper that you don't use ever - but that's because they aren't properly balanced.

 

Removing abilities reduces the skill ceiling in pve and pvp, and for a game that's supposed to be about choice and building your character the way you want, this is a big step backwards.

 

In theory, being able to choose between certain abilities at certain levels sounds like a really good way to fine tune your character. But, when you start removing too many abilities in the long run it leaves you feeling like you're missing a part of your kit.

 

I chose Focus A for my first bit of testing and I am already sorely missing saber throw and dispatch.

I'm not too concerned with losing something like freezing force as even in pvp it is rarely used, but there are better ways to fix and direct playstyles than flat out removing these things.

Imagine if there was a passive that meant that damaging a target that has been hit by plasma brand causes a flash burn that triggers damage on all affected targets...but no, instead it's just being removed. What if for saber throw once you unlock it you could choose between it either giving an armour debuff or accuracy debuff (such as through the vigilance tree and tactical respectively) to represent an offensive and defensive option? But nope, I'm playing focus so it's gone.

 

At a total guess, I'm theorizing that by diluting choice even further, you will be forced to keep a varied party and will not be able to stack one single class - and going further than that won't be able to stack a single advanced class and A or B progression within that. But again, we're still just guessing. It's too early to make an educated response but my gut feeling is that this feels bad.

 

TLDR:

I like the idea of choosing between certain things, but dislike losing lots of abilities while receiving none in compensation. It would be more interesting if there was more of a focus on choosing between passives that generate effects which are offensive or defensive in nature.

[supercometl]

This might be good for PVP. Classes are way too survivable and have been for a long time.

 

But Guardian was not one of them...

[Omafo]

Okay so thoughts so far after trying it out:

==

Initital Impressions

*I dont think this is Ready for Prime Time

*The Droid doesnt seem to work right and your just missing abilities. (Yes I followed the recommended solutions but they dont work)

*If you want opinions on new system based around choice then lock people to broken choices it kind of defeats the purpose. We need the interface and choices opened up for feedback to be worthwhile

*With no interface or way to tell the specs apart from reading on the forums and looking at passives carefully its hard to tell the builds (AorB) apart.

 

Suggestions

*Add an interface to to choose the build that isnt so clunky and clearly lays out whats changed.

*Fix the droid. Some specs have passives that refer to abilities like Focused Defense that the build doesnt even have. Not sure if its intentional.

*Stuns and CC breakers missing. Is it intended for breakers and Awe to be removed from the class? If so thats horrible please change that.

*Focused Clarity is missing from all specs even though some passives refer to it.

 

The Good

*Since this is intdended as a broad over view, I will say all the specs still seam like themselves and have a definitive playstyle to them, if watered down a bit. If the crucial missing abilites and buggy droid get fixed it seems like the goal of killing some abilities but keeping the flavor of the specs was achieved.

*DCD reduction would overall be a good thing for the meta and it seems to be achieved here.

 

Bugs

*Droid see above

*No level Sync on

*Companions have low health

*Speeder bike is slower thatn walking( I assume thats a joke)

 

Also are utilities going away or still their in addition to these Changes?

[Voroschuk]

But Guardian was not one of them...

It was and it wasn't xD If we are talking about DPS Guardians, they are a bit more tanky than PT's. But Defence/Immortal is one of the best specs rn, and clearly is the best tank in pvp.

[bladech]

Game looks cheap now, not like mmorpg but a mobile game...less abilities - less variety, styles of playing, choices to perform etc. Literally taking abilities from us without providing any new class feels like robbery because we all try to find at least something new and interesting in a game which doesn't have any new classes since opening. my guardian looks like a weak monkey using 2-3 mooves with limited abilities which makes me bored and unsatisfied pretty fast. I don't want to play next expansion with less abilities i had before. Making game more "straightforward" is not what we asked

[Captain_Clone]

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE whatever you do don't force me to choose between abilities, or remove any. One of the reasons dps is so much fun right now is because of the variety I have with playing different classes, because all of them are somewhat different and bring other utilities to a team (rebounder, predation, reflect). There is literally no one complaining about there being too many abilities (other than pvpers who tried killing a mercenary). So like what would be the point of learning and mastering different classes if half the utility I can bring right now into a raid will be gone, or will cost me survivability?

[sohioe]

No, the A and B are indicating path A of Focus has Blade Blitz, while path B has Saber Reflect. You can only pick one of these three abilities, you cannot have more than one at once. I have just checked every path that is on pts, they all only have one of these three abilities. Same with the rest of the choices outlined in this thread.

 

Didn't they make it clear that these were just predefined loadouts and they weren't indicative of what we would experience in later sessions?

[khamseen_air]

I am not a fan of this streamlining whatsoever. One of the main reasons I've stuck with SWTOR over other MMO's is due to the wide variety of abilities every class has and all of their uses. Cutting the amount of abilities you can have down will make everything less fun and interesting to play in my opinion. Not to mention the balancing that would need to be done to every operation boss to account for the fact that a Guardian tank will now be losing two of their main DCD's (Blade Blitz a little more situational than the others, but still). We haven't even seen what sacrifices the other tanks will have to make.

 

Agreed. The way this was advertised is not at all what we seem to be getting. It seemed like we'd get to play any class story with another class/set of abilities (within the limits of force vs tech) but now it looks like the implementation of this is simply gutting the life out of every current class which is awful.

 

I mean this with the utmost respect, but frankly I'm not convinced in the current teams ability to undertake such a massive game changing overhaul in the time frame allotted to a point where it doesn't just remove all fun from the existing play styles. You just have to look at the number of bugs which get introduced with almost every patch and then stick around for months or years before being fixed, to seriously start to question how that same team is going to manage to 'balance' 16 classes (48 sub classes) whilst gutting them of their current abilities and rotations for all of the current end game content without it feeling like there's just no life left in the game.

 

I was looking forward to this new system but now we're getting our first glimpse of what it all means, unless there is a major turnaround on the direction they're going then 7.0 could be the final nail in the coffin for the 10 years SWTOR has taken up space on my PC.

Edited July 9, 2021 by khamseen_air

[casirabit]

Didn't they make it clear that these were just predefined loadouts and they weren't indicative of what we would experience in later sessions?

 

yes, they said this is just the first round.

[sohioe]

Alright so, maybe i'm just understanding things differently or I'm just dumb but whatever, this is what i gathered from the testing.

 

1. These 'loadouts' also known as the 'A&B thing' are predefined loadouts that in no way shape or form represents the actual amount of choice we'll receive at launch. It doesn't mean a large part of the ability system will be locked for you.

 

2. For those missing abilities, you can find some in other specs or make sure to press P and check your ability list in the guardian section, you would be surprised at the amount of people who miss this. Thats for the abilities that are in the PTS right now. For those that are entirely missing, I assume its a bug or this is how the combat style would be on other classes combined with said classes base abilities, which would fill the in the said missing abilities.

 

3. This doesnt feel like a streamline. This just feels like we've received half of the class which I'm thinking was the entire point. No point getting riled up over it until we get the final unlimited version.

[Elracor]

Didn't they make it clear that these were just predefined loadouts and they weren't indicative of what we would experience in later sessions?

 

Yes and no. These are predefined loadouts, but some skills will be exclusive. For a Focus Guardian, the choice at Level 70 is currently between Saber Reflect, Blade Blitz and Enure. The Loadouts reflect this somewhat as Focus Loadout B has Saber Reflect and Focus Loadout A has Blade Blitz.

Edited July 9, 2021 by Elracor

[sohioe]

Yes and no. These are predefined loadouts, but some skills will be exclusive. For a Focus Guardian, the choice at Level 70 is currently between Saber Reflect, Blade Blitz and Enure. The Loadouts reflect this somewhat as Focus Loadout B has Saber Reflect and Focus Loadout A has Blade Blitz.

 

I see. I'll wait till the deep dive and another PTS version before i come to a conclusion though, cause for all we know this could be poorly explained too.

[casirabit]

And for those missing some abilities, double check your abilities. I am doing Vengence and missed my saber throw. I found in my abilities so that makes me happy. I don't normally ever play a tank so not idea about that.