Jedi Guardian Feedback

[Sandrosw]

• In PvE, our intent is to take into account these changes, and adjust NPC encounters as needed to compensate.
  

 

Will the encounters be rebelanced to the point that *any* of given 3 defensives will work for given encounter, or will the MM Operations be tuned to require a specific one?

For example, TFB MM, Ciphas boss, any Jedi Guardian on live can currently use Blade Blitz to survive Doom mechanic if they skillfully time the Blade Blitz so it happens exactly when Doom is activating. Since every Guardian has the skill now, it is not an issue; however with the changes, not every Guardian will have Blade Blitz anymore, unless they decide to have it in their loadout.

My question is - will the Reflect and Enure also be able to remove Doom, or will every Guardian need to respec before fight to have loadout with Blade Blitz? If the latter, it will be so.. much... fun... when you start a pull on a no-death run and hear a "Whelp.. I forgot to respec to Blade Blitz loadout... let's pray I do not get Doom, or we have to restart again...".

 

I am also really afraid that it will go the way ESO is currently set up, that people have saved different loadout (including set items/weapons/skills) for each and every single boss encounter and also loadout(s) for trash pulls. While on the one hand the top 100 players will immensely enjoy this feature and min-max everything as much as possible, on the other hand it will create a huge entry barrier for anyone who might think about going into top PvE content, because they will need to google for external sources for loadouts for each boss, set up their bars and be very mindful of switching before each battle. Constant switching of skills on bar also makes one very vulnerable to mistakes where you press the button with your only defensive and instead of healing up and cleansing you suddenly dash 20m forward and fall from the cliff.

 

If there will be allowed cross - class switching in operations and flashpoints (like entering as a Marauder and switching to Sorcerer), will all the mobs gain stealth detection, or will it be intended that everyone changes to a stealth class and run from boss to boss without killing adds (thus making it even harder to get achievements in FPs to kill bonus bosses)? If cross - class switching in MM operations is allowed, I assume that again it will go ESO route with FOTM setups where tanks will be expected to change on demand between jugg and sin, healers between operative and merc and dpses will either stack 4 same setups, or 2 + 2 where melee and ranged is required to be present, optionally 3 + 1 utility dd (like Marauder for predation on certain fights)? It might be hard to justify sorc healer or pt tank due to lack of ability to change on demand in case the fights in the operation are tuned that certain dcd is required for the mechanic, or where aoe healing is neeeded.

 

I am not criticizing, just asking if this is the intended route. It is a big change of game design, it has it's positives and also negatives. While having more freedom sounds great, in ESO it also resulted in system where dps varies between 3k - 110k depending on what build a player chooses and how well they execute the rotation, everyone is free to make themselves strong - or pick all the bad choices. And balancing *that* is something that no developer can do. Strict system with less choices is just easier for balancing, because you need to tune it for much less possible combinations of what players can have chosen as skills and what they might not. Like the Ciphas example above - either you gut the current boss mechanic to enable any choice, or a specific loadout will be created that will be required to do the boss and no other will work, or the FOTM class for this fight might be a Sin dps and any balance for Jugg is irrelevant, as it will not be used.

[Saggitario]

This is one of the greatest posts I've ever read on the Developer Tracker. The words were like music to my ears. The SWTOR Devs could not be more right about the state of the game with DCDs, like how we rotate them instead of react with them, and I want them to stick to their guns here. Thank you Jackie, and the Dev team. Give this game the spring cleaning it needs.

[ArthurDDL]

I'm just wondering about this future changes in more general perspective.

At the moment, there are very few members on the servers which have 100% achievements on operations. The list of players who dominate in ranked pvp is also quite short.

Although changes might help balancing the mid content to be more challenging, wouldn't those changes make close to imposible to complete the hardest content of operations (Gods NiM, Apex NiM) and increasing the gap between ok and top pvp players?

[OlBuzzard]

All I can say from testing is “I’m depressed” with these changes.

 

My main Alts are Rage Jugg / Focus Guardian and it feels like you’ve gutted the class severely on the defensive abilities and the other missing abilities makes it not feel like a Guardian anymore.

 

If your aim is to dumb down the classes, then all you’ve succeeded is making it unexciting and weak. It’s certainly not fun.

 

I tested both Focus A and B load outs in veteran mode flash points (that I can usually solo on my focus guardian).

Before doing so, I spent time to get my gear to 306 and close to BiS as you can on the pts.

I also used gifts to get my companion up to lvl 20 (which is usually fine for veteran). It wasn’t possible to complete any of the flash points I tried.

I then tried Onderon and while I didn’t die, the specs felt weak and clunky.

 

(Missing 10 abilities on the pts compared to live server). Removing some of these had a negative impact on my enjoyment

 

No resolute - stun break (I really hope that’s a bug)

No Sabre throw (to build up focus or attack ranged targets)

No Awe (AOE stun)

No Guardian leap

No challenging call

No Enure

No combat focus (can’t build focus before a fight)

No freezing force

No force kick

No force clarity

 

Choosing between blade blitz (load A) and Sabre reflect (load B) is just dumb (sorry I have no other way to describe that)

 

If you really want to prune the spec, then look at what Focus could do without, ie guard and taunt. But you’ve given them to us while removing DCDs like Enure and making use choose to have reflect or blade blitz. It make zero sense.

 

There are abilities you could easily prune and not ruin the class as they aren’t as dependent to make the spec work smoothly in combat. Ie get rid of tanking abilities for focus.

If we need tanking, we can switch load outs to the tank spec. It makes less sense to keep tanking abilities on a burst dps. And dps off tanking is what causes issues in pvp.

 

Riposte (not a major part of the rotation)

Slash (is really only a filler)

Cyclone slash (completely worthless ability)

Guard

Taunt

Challenging call

Guardian leap

Force Clarity

Strike (it’s only a filler that is rarely used)

 

The perfect ability build for me would be with the following abilities (in no specific order).

Please keep these below abilities on the focus spec Guardian on the next build so we can test and report. And don’t make us choose between them and passives.

 

Sabre Throw

Force leap

Force exhaustion

Focused burst

Concentrated slice

Blade Barrage

Sundering strike

Blade storm

Dispatch

Zealous leap

Force sweep

Combat focus

Sabre reflect

Sabre ward

Focus defence

Enure

Force kick

Awe

Force stasis

Freezing force

Resolute

Blade blitz

 

I use everyone of these ability’s playing pvp and master mode pve content solo. Without all of those abilities, the play will be clunky and cookie cutter and won’t feel like a focus guardian.

 

I really hope you guys are taking peoples negative feedback as a sign that you’re on the wrong path if you think this is going to keep players in the game.

 

 

 

To be completely honest, I’m a little cranky that you guys thought this is what players wanted.

I’m so deeply disappointed and depressed after testing, that I’ve lost interest in playing the live game until we get some answers to our feedback.

I tried to stay emotionless writing this, but it feels like you’ve taken my favourite puppy out the back to be put down.

 

How about telling us what the actual intent of the pruning is so we can try and get our heads around that first. Then we can offer some feedback on what pruning would actually work vs what you guys guess.

 

Even though I'm not very proficient with the Guardian .. I can tell you that this is one of the better and more accurate posts with specific information. And ... consequently probably where most "discussions" will stem from.

 

It would be sound advise to pay closer attention to posts like this and avoid a disaster in the future.

 

Looks like I will be loading PTS this weekend to see what shakes out !

[LordCamTheGreat]

I'm just wondering about this future changes in more general perspective.

At the moment, there are very few members on the servers which have 100% achievements on operations. The list of players who dominate in ranked pvp is also quite short.

Although changes might help balancing the mid content to be more challenging, wouldn't those changes make close to imposible to complete the hardest content of operations (Gods NiM, Apex NiM) and increasing the gap between ok and top pvp players?

 

From what I understand, the hardest content will get easier since we the players will be getting weaker.

For PVP if anything it might make it easier for newbies and ok players to get into it. The best players will know every single dcd in the game, their duration, what utilities to take etc etc. By removing dcds, there's less that the ok players need to learn to play around.

[Sounders_Fan]

Hi everyone,

 

 

Lastly, for this phase of PTS, the Jedi Guardian was missing both their breaker (Resolute) and interrupt (Force Kick). We understand that players may be worried about what that means for 7.0. It was never our intention to completely remove these from the game. We realize this has caused confusion, so we are going to add these back for the next phase of PTS with the caveat that they may change form in the future. We are currently iterating on different ways of utilizing breaker functionality that doesn’t necessarily require an independent icon on your hotbar as well as considering where interrupts fit in with the overall class and encounter design of 7.0. Because of this, we didn’t include these in the testable ability sets on PTS.

 

Please keep in mind that breakers and Interrupts will remain in-game, they just might not appear in the same form as they are now.

 

.

 

I tend to interpret this as CC breakers and interrupt behaving more closely to critical hits. that the effect of breaking CC or interrupting your targets ability being up to chance. please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

 

however, I want to choose when I break CC. I may or may not want to break a specific CC effect; it is situational. I also want to choose which ability I am going to interrupt. If I am facing a scoundrel healer; I dont want my interrupt wasted on diagnostic scan because the RNG engine decided to use it.

 

as you tinker with reworking these skills; please do not take away the player choice as to when they are deployed.

Edited July 16, 2021 by Sounders_Fan

[DavidHugo]

Hi everyone,

 

Following up on the post I made a couple days ago. We wanted to bring clarity to some of the feedback we’ve been reading. First, we would like to share our philosophy on reducing the number of defensive cooldowns available.

 

Blablabla.

 

One of the reasons we wanted to share these class changes with our players so early is because we wanted to get your feedback as we are still in the design phase of several other classes. As stated previously, you are not playing a final product. While very rough around the edges, the earlier we can share impactful changes like this the more we can take into account your feedback as we continue building out the remaining classes and iterating on ones you’re able to try out on the PTS.

 

So you run PTS for our feedback huh? It's like asking question and answer it yourself anyway. My feedback is this is madness, I can't speak for others so I cant use we, I'll speak for myself, I don't want this. Just make good stories, fun new contents, beautiful new planet(s) and I'll (or we'll) be happy.

[DavidHugo]

Forgot to add, doesn't mean I didn't think dev's idea about combat styles isn't great, it sounded awesome at first.

Just let my juggernaut respec to shadow or sage, now that.. will be fun. Save yourself the trouble figuring out what to prune, what to mix.

[DjiiniTwo]

I will put this as delicately as I can.

 

However many players that you think simplifying the classes significantly will gain you, it will lose you just as many, and those players it will lose you were the ones more likely to stick with the game in the first place. There is such a thing as ability bloat, but SWTOR has not really reached that level. Combat styles are already enough to keep the game fresh; you don't need to do any of this. Nor do you need to insult our intelligence by really claiming you'll rebalance all of the PVE encounters to compensate; we all know you lack the time AND manpower to realistically make good on that, Bioware.

 

People can spare me the 'oh don't be overdramatic', 'there's no need for that' etc; this is EXACTLY the time to passionately expound such things, before it's too late for them to do anything about it. Thank you.

 

Also, if this is really how people are theorizing that you HAVE to cut down on abilities for moving to console, you should probably say that so people stop existing under the illusion that anything they say about how bad of an idea this is will have any effect whatsoever.

Edited July 16, 2021 by DjiiniTwo

[phalczen]

Will the encounters be rebelanced to the point that *any* of given 3 defensives will work for given encounter, or will the MM Operations be tuned to require a specific one?

For example, TFB MM, Ciphas boss, any Jedi Guardian on live can currently use Blade Blitz to survive Doom mechanic if they skillfully time the Blade Blitz so it happens exactly when Doom is activating. Since every Guardian has the skill now, it is not an issue; however with the changes, not every Guardian will have Blade Blitz anymore, unless they decide to have it in their loadout.

My question is - will the Reflect and Enure also be able to remove Doom, or will every Guardian need to respec before fight to have loadout with Blade Blitz? If the latter, it will be so.. much... fun... when you start a pull on a no-death run and hear a "Whelp.. I forgot to respec to Blade Blitz loadout... let's pray I do not get Doom, or we have to restart again...".

 

Devs need to make a distinction between using a DCD to cheese and ignore mechanics, and using a DCD to survive mechanics. In your example, you are supposed to run through green puddles to cleanse doom, not use an ability, so I could see the developers saying "you are out of luck, L2P" in response. I mean there is no reason to spawn the puddles or have them disappear when a non-Doomed player accidentally stands in them too long when they spawn otherwise. Using a DCD to survive mechanics would be like how Shadows/Assassins can cheese Xenoanalyst's Thermal Tolerance, or Ion Cutter from Master in Ravagers ... the intention in the former case is to tank swap and use line of sight, in the latter case its to share with a dps. But in both cases, there is no extra mechanic in the fight with the specific purpose of dealing with another mechanic, so using a DCD seems more reasonable.

 

However, a more interesting question is, do the developers intend to follow the paradigm of 6.1.2 and introduce new set bonuses in 7.0 whose sole purpose is to help with mechanics in specific fights ... the so-called horizontal progression? I mean, I guess with loadouts it might be easy enough to swap between builds for specific boss fights, but what if the intent is to solve this problem with more set bonuses, not player abilities, so that its easier to balance?

[DjiiniTwo]

In your example, you are supposed to run through green puddles to cleanse doom, not use an ability, so I could see the developers saying "you are out of luck, L2P" in response.

 

I feel I should point out that cheesing mechanics with DCDs is like, reasonably common in FFXIV, the currently most successful MMO on the planet. Yes, even in real content. Just putting it out there. Turns out players LIKE their abilities to DO things.

[Wolvel]

Happy to hear that, looking forward to the next patch readjusting for the crazy defensive cooldown ability bloat that we have at the moment when most players simply end up using the defensive cooldowns to totally ignore or fluff their dps. Reducing the number of defensive cooldowns, or simply reworking them to have a much lower effect is taking a step in the right direction for more fun gameplay.

 

Nobody likes pvp games where nobody dies

 

 

Also guardians: Takes Lifewarden because they are not expected to survive the 30 seconds after ED is popped. Balancing the game around casual 8v8 play is a joke.

[TheRandomWolf]

This all still sounds terrible. How can you be so out-of-touch with your own game and fanbase? What's the point of needlessly reworking things nobody asked for and place even more work on top of what is obviously a small dev team? Why shift resources away from what actually matters? Jesus.

 

 

I've been trying to keep a positive insight when it came to this game for over five years, but this will honestly end up killing the game for me.

Edited July 16, 2021 by TheRandomWolf

[DebentiLP]

Nobody ever asked for changes like that. And nobody want them.

It will kill the little bit of fun left in the game instead of anything else.

You will lose much more players with that garbage instead of getting new players.

Doing this changes is excactly the right way to kill the game. Good job.

[nkarapinha]

Thank you for playing PTS and giving us your constructive feedback.

 

NO. Thank you Jackie!

Very excited to test the next PTS update with all this improvements.

[TheRandomWolf]

NO. Thank you Jackie!

Very excited to test the next PTS update with all this improvements.

 

What improvements? You're bootlicking changes that will only alienate the fans even further. It's bad enough that the game will be directly competing with Final Fantasy XIV's Endwalker... And drastically changing how the classes work won't do it any good.

[winpersec]

All this DCD prune stuff and so on will just kill the game. At least for me.

I have to rely on random shield chance anyway, and if you want me to rely on that even more - even for scripted spikes, because I will not be able to take all of them on DCDs - I'd rather choose not to play this game.

 

That's sad enough, because I love this game, its graphic style and overall endgame PvE experience atm (even though it's not anywhere enjoyable to rely on shield chance too much). But, I guess, it's time to wait for more bad changes on PTS, dissappoint even further and unsub.

Edited July 16, 2021 by winpersec

[Nepthen]

I'm strictly PvE here so...

 

In 7.0, we want to reduce the quantity of defensive skills overall, across all classes, making for a more balanced and enjoyable experience in both PvE and PvP content, while at the same time making the defensives that remain more impactful and fun.

 

I can understand removing some defensives from DPS/Healers (I think most have 3) but be careful when removing from tanks as some of those defensives are extremely important in NiM mechanics.

 

If you remove Guarded by the Force from Sentinels, though... all bets are off.

 

In PvE, our intent is to take into account these changes, and adjust NPC encounters as needed to compensate.

 

Oof... that sounds like a huge lift... to accommodate all these changes across the entire 10 year span of operations and flashpoints, not to mention the bolstering that encompasses some of those tiers. I don't envy the devs whatsoever.

 

The intent of the new ability system, which will replace the current utility points system, is that players can make meaningful choices to accommodate their play style or situational needs. Players will be able to pick their own ability modifications and customize their skills in this manner, with all of those choices able to be saved to a Loadout. Loadouts will be able to be swapped with similar ease to the current Utility point system. While the ability choice interface and Loadout features are still in development, those experiences are core to the system and we are working hard to get them to a state where they can be shared on the PTS in a future update. We will share more details in the future on both of these features.

 

OK, so very similar to the talent system in WoW. That makes sense... and I can sort of get on board with it but it needs to be implemented carefully. The choices you have to give need to have a worthwhile use for encounters. Speaking from PvE end game and while I have no experience in the most recent ops, most encounters are strictly single target DPS, which would really limit your "choices" for these abilities if you're looking at the end game meta.

 

One of the reasons we wanted to share these class changes with our players so early is because we wanted to get your feedback as we are still in the design phase of several other classes. As stated previously, you are not playing a final product. While very rough around the edges, the earlier we can share impactful changes like this the more we can take into account your feedback as we continue building out the remaining classes and iterating on ones you’re able to try out on the PTS.

 

Lastly, for this phase of PTS, the Jedi Guardian was missing both their breaker (Resolute) and interrupt (Force Kick). We understand that players may be worried about what that means for 7.0. It was never our intention to completely remove these from the game. We realize this has caused confusion, so we are going to add these back for the next phase of PTS with the caveat that they may change form in the future. We are currently iterating on different ways of utilizing breaker functionality that doesn’t necessarily require an independent icon on your hotbar as well as considering where interrupts fit in with the overall class and encounter design of 7.0. Because of this, we didn’t include these in the testable ability sets on PTS.

 

I can appreciate this and thank you for clarifying, although what you're saying in this post should have been what was stated at the get go. We could have avoided the last couple weeks of people rightfully freaking out over these abrupt changes. Surely, someone over in the office noticed no interrupts and thought.. "I bet some people aren't going to like this."

 

I'm very much looking forward to the next iteration of the PTS and really can't wait to see the new UI associated with all of this... and I want to test Sentinels.

[Taurax]

Ok, wow...you put up only Guardian last week, and it has caused all this commotion.. You will probably have to tweak this over the next month.

 

I suggest you start putting up other disciplines soon as well for us to test. Reasons?

**If you are testing a subdiscipline every 2-3 weeks, you probably won't get 7.0 out this holiday season, as you stated earlier.

**We are going to want to test all our versions of the subdiciplines in real content...in flashpoints...in PVP (especially)...in NiM content...etc.

**We really need to test the progression of leveling as well with these abilities.

 

Honestly, you really need to do do a subdiscipline from each class, a LOT faster, and some from each faction...or you wont get this done by this holiday season. And, that is when we are supposed to get Galactic seasons 2 right? And new content right?

[Baletraeger]

I've been on the PTS and from my perspective I found it very difficult to feel like I was playing the same Jedi Guardian as live.

 

Part of it is the fact that there are skills missing from my bar that I expect to be there

 

Part of it is that there is no skill UI so I really don't have the visual aid ingame to understand the choices I am being asked to make.

 

Part of it is that I feel like I'm playing a whole new spec than doesn't exist in live, which could be good but it feels foreign.

 

To be honest, I had hoped that these changes would feel like the 'on rails' experience you can enable in ESO (and be an optional system like in ESO) but it really just feels like you're trying to dumb down the playstyle.

 

I can understand ability pruning is something that is needed sometimes, but I dont see it here. Just give us the combination abilities or have an abilityorph when another ability is used first.

 

For cutting defense ability that is really going to have to come down to what all the classes have available, but tanks should ne the last to get adjusted.

 

Once classes I am more familiar with are om PTS I can give more feedback on the experience. I'm actually really interested to see if you can improve the experience of IO merc which has been a long suffering spec and needs some love.

[mike_carton]

So, overall this is going to be much worse than I feared and much worse than what PTS indicates today.

First, we would like to share our philosophy on reducing the number of defensive cooldowns available.

 

This should have been done BEFORE you brought PTS online, not after a large hue and cry. Secondly, this should have formed the bulk of the recent LiveStream. Instead, that waste of time focused on Combat Styles and Loadouts. If you were not going to introduce meaningful Combat Styles and Loadouts (what you call Loadout on PTS is NOT what the Livestream described) at this time, you should not have focused on them during this Livestream.

Additionally, this was done without adjusting things like Operation boss mechanics which were designed around the class kits available at the time: mainly less defensive cooldowns.

 

This is not true. What we currently have as abilities are appropriate to deal with existing mobs including bosses. Removing these abilities will make it harder at the margins for people to complete Operations. Some people who are now able to complete Operations will not be able to. Those who can comfortably complete Operations today will have to struggle in the future and will also have fewer players to group with for Operations.

...and made the time-to-kill metric in PvP grow steadily to the point where we are approaching tedious levels.

 

Nothing wrong with TTK unless you sit only on a specific Discord channel and listen to people with warped perspective. If you want to know player experience with PvP, read the many recent long threads filled with the perspective of long-time PvP players of all skill levels and preferences. TTK shorter than now will just make objective-based PvP matches much less enjoyable.

In 7.0, we want to reduce the quantity of defensive skills overall, across all classes, making for a more balanced and enjoyable experience in both PvE and PvP content,..

 

Orwellian speak. This will just make it less enjoyable. You guys don't know your own game. You top the ignorance with a level of hubris that is astounding.

Loadouts will be able to be swapped with similar ease to the current Utility point system.

 

Again with Orwellian speak. It is not "ease" to have to reset all your utilities and set them again when you only want to swap one utility out for another. But that is what we have now. (*) What we have now is NOT "ease" when it comes to utilities. If that is your touchstone for "ease" of use of Loadouts then I suddenly lost a bunch of enthusiasm for Loadouts.

 

One last thing: This seems like business-as-usual for BW developers; they make changes without discussing first with the players and tell the players to effectively "like it or lump it." The tone of the post suggests that all the talk about feedback is an eyewash.

 

(*) "Ease" would be to be able to unselect a utility with a right-click (causing the Commit and Cancel buttons to become enabled), select another with left-click and to Commit through the button-click.

Edited July 17, 2021 by mike_carton

[xThunderstorm]

Hi everyone,

 

Following up on the post I made a couple days ago. We wanted to bring clarity to some of the feedback we’ve been reading. First, we would like to share our philosophy on reducing the number of defensive cooldowns available.

 

Over several years and updates, more and more defensive cooldowns and abilities have been added to the game. Often times this was for class balance purposes, to allow some classes to keep up with others in terms of their defensive kit. Additionally, this was done without adjusting things like Operation boss mechanics which were designed around the class kits available at the time: mainly less defensive cooldowns. The sheer quantity of defensive cooldowns in the game today makes things more difficult to balance for both PvE and PvP. It has made some PvE mechanics completely avoidable, and made the time-to-kill metric in PvP grow steadily to the point where we are approaching tedious levels.

 

In 7.0, we want to reduce the quantity of defensive skills overall, across all classes, making for a more balanced and enjoyable experience in both PvE and PvP content, while at the same time making the defensives that remain more impactful and fun.

 

Agreed. My Vengeance Sith Juggernaut has, in my opinion, too much defensive abilities for a non-tank discipline. However, I feel like you are focussing only on defensive abilities. My Lightning Sith Sorcerer has a total of 5 (!) buff abilities to cast within the opener (4 if doing content at level 75, as you would not have a clickable Alacrity relic): Relic, Polarity Shift, Recklessness, Adrenal and Unlimited Power. Please tone this down to a maximum of 3, preferably 2 buff abilities. It is easy to miss one of these or simply forget to execute.

 

What does this look like in both modes?

• In PvP, our intent is balanced, more dynamic player encounters that move away from rotating defensive cooldowns and move more towards utilizing a broader set of skills in each class’s kit.
  
• In PvE, our intent is to take into account these changes, and adjust NPC encounters as needed to compensate.
  

Getting a bit more specific, we also intend to give upgraded versions of abilities when being presented as a choice. Here’s one example using Blade Blitz from the current PTS:

• Blade Blitz in the Live game:
  
• 45 second cooldown
  
• Quickly rush forward 20 meters, dealing weapon damage to enemies in your path and increasing your defense chance by 100% while blitzing. Cannot be used while immobilized or hindered.
  

Blade Blitz on PTS:

• 35 second cooldown
  
• Quickly rush forward 20 meters, dealing weapon damage to enemies in your path and increasing your defense chance by 100% while blitzing. Can be used while immobilized and purges movement-impairing effects when activated.
  

Instead of spending utility points to upgrade abilities, as in the current system, you will be presented with an already upgraded version of several abilities to choose between leading to more interesting decision making, customization, and greater choice for your kit.

 

This is a good change, but do not remove iconic abilities from certain classes/disciplines that define their identity. (For clarification: in this case (Jedi Guardian) I am thinking of Saber Throw and Force Push for example, not necessarily Blade Blitz.)

 

In addition to defensive cooldowns, we want to streamline other abilities where it makes sense. For example, instead of dedicating an entirely separate ability and button press to a particular effect, we want to merge or combine them with others in an intuitive way. We can see this in action on the PTS with Freezing Force:

 

• Freezing Force is removed from Guardians on the PTS, but a modification to Blade Storm via the new ability choice tree upgrades Blade Storm into an AoE that also slows. This offers a similar effect to the old ability, but in a more efficient way.
  

The intent of the new ability system, which will replace the current utility points system, is that players can make meaningful choices to accommodate their play style or situational needs. Players will be able to pick their own ability modifications and customize their skills in this manner, with all of those choices able to be saved to a Loadout. Loadouts will be able to be swapped with similar ease to the current Utility point system. While the ability choice interface and Loadout features are still in development, those experiences are core to the system and we are working hard to get them to a state where they can be shared on the PTS in a future update. We will share more details in the future on both of these features.

 

I like the fact that you are moving away from the Utility point system. I have never particularly like it much, but also not hated it. I felt that these Utility points were more often than not just minor tweaks to abilities which would give extra damage, extra healing/shielding or extra utility (breaks immobilization, self-cleanse, extra movement speed, ...). While levelling, I generally did not pay attention to Utility points, simply because the effect was not noticeable. I welcome a more impactful choice.

 

One of the reasons we wanted to share these class changes with our players so early is because we wanted to get your feedback as we are still in the design phase of several other classes. As stated previously, you are not playing a final product. While very rough around the edges, the earlier we can share impactful changes like this the more we can take into account your feedback as we continue building out the remaining classes and iterating on ones you’re able to try out on the PTS.

 

Lastly, for this phase of PTS, the Jedi Guardian was missing both their breaker (Resolute) and interrupt (Force Kick). We understand that players may be worried about what that means for 7.0. It was never our intention to completely remove these from the game. We realize this has caused confusion, so we are going to add these back for the next phase of PTS with the caveat that they may change form in the future. We are currently iterating on different ways of utilizing breaker functionality that doesn’t necessarily require an independent icon on your hotbar as well as considering where interrupts fit in with the overall class and encounter design of 7.0. Because of this, we didn’t include these in the testable ability sets on PTS.

 

Please keep in mind that breakers and Interrupts will remain in-game, they just might not appear in the same form as they are now.

 

Thank you for playing PTS and giving us your constructive feedback.

 

I was going to say: "As long as they remain in the game," but that thought was clearly unnecessary. It remains to be seen what will happen with these two abilities. We cannot give feedback on changes we know nothing about.

 

Thank you for clarifying some of the changes for us.

[LJ_Gibbs]

The sheer quantity of defensive cooldowns in the game today makes things more difficult to balance for both PvE and PvP. It has made some PvE mechanics completely avoidable, and made the time-to-kill metric in PvP grow steadily to the point where we are approaching tedious levels.

 

In 7.0, we want to reduce the quantity of defensive skills overall, across all classes, making for a more balanced and enjoyable experience in both PvE and PvP content, while at the same time making the defensives that remain more impactful and fun.

 

I would like to invite anyone from the team that believes we don't need any and all DCDs in your "Hardmare" content to come to my team's raid night. Currently progressing A&E HM. When having correct colors in the last wiper phase passing through both sets of wipers, correct color with the "circle reticle" and using reactive shield, Energy Blast, AND Power yield (because the crap was hitting the fan) all used on my VG tank and I went from 96% health to under 10%.... those DCDs didn't seem to help me. So if we are getting rid of some... AND you "plan on redoing the content to make up for us losing abilities DCDs, you better test it a heck of a lot more than we will be doing. Testing all classes will take MONTHS... and you plan on putting this system out in December. There will not be nearly enough time to get all the classes/styles to where you want them AND fix the endgame content. Which says to me you don't plan on taking ANYTHING into consideration with all these changes. You are going to do whatever is easiest for you guys to "balance" and fix moving forward. It's ok... just say that.

Edited July 16, 2021 by LJ_Gibbs

[LJ_Gibbs]

I'm just wondering about this future changes in more general perspective.

At the moment, there are very few members on the servers which have 100% achievements on operations. The list of players who dominate in ranked pvp is also quite short.

Although changes might help balancing the mid content to be more challenging, wouldn't those changes make close to imposible to complete the hardest content of operations (Gods NiM, Apex NiM) and increasing the gap between ok and top pvp players?

 

They don't care.

[SukiiSama]

In 7.0, we want to reduce the quantity of defensive skills overall, across all classes, making for a more balanced and enjoyable experience in both PvE and PvP content, while at the same time making the defensives that remain more impactful and fun.

This is a really bad direction to go in and currently makes for a very unenjoyable experience on the PTS. Operations, in particular hm or nim, rely on careful dcd management and there are a number of fights where that's already a great challenge. Removing dcds is just going to make even more classes/specs unplayable in higher tier content. It's also going to make lower-level story play more challenging. At first, I understand why that sounds like a good idea, as I know some in the community want story content to be more difficult. However, the vast majority of story-only players are NOT looking for an increase in difficulty. Making story content harder is only going to frustrate them and encourage them to stop playing the game. SWTOR has a bad habit of trying to force players into content that they are not inclined towards - Galactic seasons heavily pushing PVP, GSF, ect is a prime example of this. It's also NOT working. People are simply not going to play content they don't want to play.

 

The intent of the new ability system, which will replace the current utility points system, is that players can make meaningful choices to accommodate their play style or situational needs. Players will be able to pick their own ability modifications and customize their skills in this manner, with all of those choices able to be saved to a Loadout. Loadouts will be able to be swapped with similar ease to the current Utility point system. While the ability choice interface and Loadout features are still in development, those experiences are core to the system and we are working hard to get them to a state where they can be shared on the PTS in a future update. We will share more details in the future on both of these features.

This is just a really bad idea. Having to respec between fights in operations is already a hassle, having to do so for every single fight is going to give everyone a massive headache, and the payoff here seems to be... nothing. There are abilities that many people only use once in a single fight but that are crucially important. Sacrificing a key part of your rotation for that isn't good but neither is just not having that one ability when you truly need it. As the game currently stands, if people find an ability superfluous or simply not to their liking, they simply don't put it on their ability bar. The devs are trying to fix something that isn't a problem, and to be completely honest, I do not know why they're even investing time into this.

 

I do understand that there are balancing issues in PVP but at the end of the day, while SWTOR has PVP, it's NOT a PVP game. It's an mmorpg with pvp added in. If the devs really want to balance out PVP, what they should do is have a separate playstyle for PVP zones and matches. Inflicting weird new changes on non-pvpers (the vast majority of the player base) is just going to make people leave.

 

I know that I'm probably talking to the void here because the devs have historically ignored the community in the past, but I truly hope that in this they do listen. I know so many raiders, so many people who show up every single day, who dump large amounts of real money into the game, seriously dedicated players. And almost all of them have said that these changes will either make them play the game far less often or outright quit the game altogether.

 

tldr: Dear devs, please do not implement this new system. It is a huge mistake.