Planned Balance Changes for 7.1.1

[xxSHOONYxx]

In other words, if something is not meta, it's not really viable for endgame. Just as I said.

 

Do you need aoe damage? Bring a slam spam juggernaut and the fight becomes a sm/hm and it makes all the other classes with dot cleave irrelevant like pyro (worst dot spread of the dot classes), hatred, annihilation, lethality, virulence, io, madness or engineering.

 

Do you need burst damage in a short window? Bring a pt, 100% crit chance on a dot spec (worst tactical since it makes no sense for the identity of a dot class, pyro needs a reworked tactical not a damage nerf with the same broken 100% critical) or 75ish percent on a class with thermal det and double energy burst is too much vs other classes

 

Your healers need help? Bring annihilation for the offheals

 

You need constant damage with target swapping on fairly high hp adds? Bring fury/rage

 

Your healers still need more help? Bring a sniper or marauder if tanks are taking white damage

 

You need movement on demand? Or debuffs that are cleansed by movement abilities? Bring a marauder for predation

 

Some mechanics can be skiped by a reflect or ability that negates damage? Bring juggernaut, pt, merc, assasin. Some mechanics allow a lot of damage by reflecting? Bring juggernaut, pt, merc, operative.

 

You need to kill a boss fast under 30% hp? Bring a hatred assassin

 

You need a knockback? Bring a assassin or sorc

 

Need to survive a lot of damage in a short time like izax omnicanon? Bring a sorc

 

Meta and viablity are two different things. There will always be a meta in every single game, the best possible composition to beat a game/boss/operation. For new nim teams learning operations like this game or in competitive play (other games) you would want to use meta characters even if the diffference between meta and none meta is just like 0.01% because it still gives you an edge.

 

Even bosses have meta specs/classes, and the next boss after the previous one has a different meta spec/class, which on this case the loadouts and second class help a lot with that.

 

The introduction to tacticals or change of utilities brought less diversity for the brust classes because now dot spec also have burst for some reason, before you would need burst classes in fights with lot of target swapping like as example on brontes.

 

Deception, lethality and concealment are in a weird place when it comes to meta classes for some bosses because their main utility and difference they have is stealth which is good in pvp but in pve is useless and if you give them more utility or damage they might become unstoppable in pvp is my guess (i dont pvp so my guess might be wrong).

Operatives have a great raid buff but with how overpower op heals are right now there is always one in a group and lethality has still a very good aoe damage and reflect but juggernaut just does it way better so it becomes irrelevant as a meta spec.

 

Every class in pve is still viable with exception of marskamn and arsenal in nim (unless you and/or your team are very good at the game), in hm everything is viable.

[ZUHFB]

Deception, lethality and concealment are in a weird place when it comes to meta classes for some bosses because their main utility and difference they have is stealth which is good in pvp but in pve is useless and if you give them more utility or damage they might become unstoppable in pvp is my guess (i dont pvp so my guess might be wrong).

Operatives have a great raid buff but with how overpower op heals are right now there is always one in a group and lethality has still a very good aoe damage and reflect but juggernaut just does it way better so it becomes irrelevant as a meta spec.

 

Every class in pve is still viable with exception of marskamn and arsenal in nim (unless you and/or your team are very good at the game), in hm everything is viable.

 

You would be correct in the statement that deception, concealment and lethality are all really good in PvP. Deception is the spec, you have a working shadowcraft many vanishes good mobility and cc AND good damage because shadowcraft. Buffing it is the wrong move, but as really good pvpers said: "Removing two cloaks would fix deception for PvP", so then you could buff it a little for PvE and that would work I guess. Arsenal is quite good in ranked, it's not for everybody and there are combs that just destroy you. Marksman is just bad - like for all content and always.

[Bullyabass]

6k steam players, let's GENEROUSLY say 4k normal client players. We have 10k players.

I know at least 250 people who regularly do NiM raids, +200 for NA - I do not play on NA (numbers are taken from NiM raiding ONLY discords). So that leaves us with 450 people raiding nightmare and being in teams. Now let's say 20% of the raiding scene actually does nightmare, there are A BUNCH of hardmode fun teams out there - every conquest guild has one as an example, and many more sm teams. That would mean already around 20% of the population raid on a regular basis. The # of people raiding NiM is only from DM+SF discords by the way, I could start counting the ones from Tulak too and when factoring out the people that are on both we get another +50 easily.

 

The 6k is concurrent players, people actually logged in and playing, your 450, besides being based on an unrepresentative subset of "people you know", are players who NIM if and when they're logged in.

 

Right now there are 15 r4 instances on DM so 120 people out of ~2500 (your 10000 guess divided by 4 as a rough estimate of DMs share of server population) concurrent users. Even if half of those raiders are NIM raider training up on R-4 (and they're not) then at any given moment in time that's 2.4% of the population doing "high end raiding"

 

And that's despite Bioware doing everything in its power to force people into that content.

 

Catering to that small and declining part of the player base is bad business.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Bullyabass

[Bullyabass]

There's no "playing your way" outside of story and heroics, in all other content you either have the correct stats/rotation or you get carried. Subjective enjoyment is out of the window when there's cold hard math involved

 

(i added an emoji to not seem confrontational i hope it helps)

 

Yeah not this

 

SWTOR is a class based game so all classes should be viable to the extent that skill becomes the deciding factor.

[xxSHOONYxx]

The 6k is concurrent players, people actually logged in and playing, your 450, besides being based on an unrepresentative subset of "people you know", are players who NIM if and when they're logged in.

 

Right now there are 15 r4 instances on DM so 120 people out of ~2500 (your 10000 guess divided by 4 as a rough estimate of DMs share of server population) concurrent users. Even if half of those raiders are NIM raider training up on R-4 (and they're not) then at any given moment in time that's 2.4% of the population doing "high end raiding"

 

And that's despite Bioware doing everything in its power to force people into that content.

 

Catering to that small and declining part of the player base is bad business.

 

Your numbers are wrong and not taking into consideration that raiders do other things when they are logged in, no one does ops 100% of their time. Several of those online at that time probably have raid groups in different days or different hours. Plus nim raiders that have already geared up and are doing other ops. Every game get boring over time, but what keeps you invested and logging is the people that play the game with you, and operations and pvp have a lot of that.

 

Besides if you don't want to balance the classes to their highest possible potential then what you want to balance it around?

 

The current balance gets thrown out of the window in every sm op, open world/heroics and a lot of hm ops where burst classes are the best and dot classes suck because you watch something and it's dead already.

 

Yeah not this

 

SWTOR is a class based game so all classes should be viable to the extent that skill becomes the deciding factor.

 

The only classes that are not viable in the higehst difficulty of content in pve are marskman and arsenal, and by your previous conment doesn't sound like you do high end content so no amount of bad changes will ever get in the way of any class being not viable or not having fun with what you play

Edited September 5, 2022 by xxSHOONYxx

[sithBracer]

You would be correct in the statement that deception, concealment and lethality are all really good in PvP. Deception is the spec, you have a working shadowcraft many vanishes good mobility and cc AND good damage because shadowcraft. Buffing it is the wrong move, but as really good pvpers said: "Removing two cloaks would fix deception for PvP", so then you could buff it a little for PvE and that would work I guess. Arsenal is quite good in ranked, it's not for everybody and there are combs that just destroy you. Marksman is just bad - like for all content and always.

 

A few people have tried solo ranked without the double cloak and the consensus is pretty clear, it is throwing without it.

 

Deception is too over reliant on its opener and not having a second cloak puts you in a bad position of using cloak offensively to get the kill, and not surviving for more than 5 seconds afterwards. Sins have their opener, and after that they are just a taunt/low slash bot. Their toolkit outside their opener is pretty horrible. They don't really have good damage, they don't have good defenses, their mobility is pretty meh considering you have to take the shroud on cloak and waste a phantom stride on opener. Overall they are a one trick pony. It's for that reason deception is close to the bottom in tank/healer games. Sin is really only strong in 4dps arenas. Outside that it's either average or below.

[ZUHFB]

The 6k is concurrent players, people actually logged in and playing, your 450, besides being based on an unrepresentative subset of "people you know", are players who NIM if and when they're logged in.

 

Right now there are 15 r4 instances on DM so 120 people out of ~2500 (your 10000 guess divided by 4 as a rough estimate of DMs share of server population) concurrent users. Even if half of those raiders are NIM raider training up on R-4 (and they're not) then at any given moment in time that's 2.4% of the population doing "high end raiding"

 

And that's despite Bioware doing everything in its power to force people into that content.

 

Catering to that small and declining part of the player base is bad business.

 

but not all teams are raiding R-4 and or at the weekday you checked...

[dylanfailbh]

I can't help but notice all the speculation on this thread and a vast majority of it being PVE speculation on Hatred.

I do strongly believe the nerfs to saber strike not ticking TTT is an improvement, it adds back an element of skill to DPSing, however I hope the Devs work to incorporate all classes to be viable in end game content PVP Please. Hatred seriously needs a buff to its defensives, a version of Critical Defense must be added to Hatred and an increase in the self heals passively. Please give Hatred some use instead of a squishy glass cannon in Ranked that gets globaled if caught in stuns

[Aethyriel]

I can't help but notice all the speculation on this thread and a vast majority of it being PVE speculation on Hatred.

I do strongly believe the nerfs to saber strike not ticking TTT is an improvement, it adds back an element of skill to DPSing, however I hope the Devs work to incorporate all classes to be viable in end game content PVP Please. Hatred seriously needs a buff to its defensives, a version of Critical Defense must be added to Hatred and an increase in the self heals passively. Please give Hatred some use instead of a squishy glass cannon in Ranked that gets globaled if caught in stuns

 

if the changes go through as is, Hatred will lose too much DPS to make sense to bring to anything that would be considered hard content. Losing uptime on eradicate since you can't reset reck on time + the dmg nerf to the tactical will just put the spec out of any usage. I wish they would just increase the dot and cooldown of eradicate to match the proc rate of Raze so you can have 100% uptime and maybe tie the proc to leeching strike /assassinate instead of any melee attack. It's just not a smooth experience to hope for enough crits to keep your rotation up. Or add 2 charges to reck and make it only give 1 critical charge instead of 2 as currently is the case when you activate it. so you can use it for the reset more often but still don't get more guaranteed crits. I just don't want to be even further limited in regards to specs I can actually play in challenging operations and not being dead weight for the group while I have simply superior classes I could play instead.

[DemonicNarwhal]

if the changes go through as is, Hatred will lose too much DPS to make sense to bring to anything that would be considered hard content. Losing uptime on eradicate since you can't reset reck on time + the dmg nerf to the tactical will just put the spec out of any usage. I wish they would just increase the dot and cooldown of eradicate to match the proc rate of Raze so you can have 100% uptime and maybe tie the proc to leeching strike /assassinate instead of any melee attack. It's just not a smooth experience to hope for enough crits to keep your rotation up. Or add 2 charges to reck and make it only give 1 critical charge instead of 2 as currently is the case when you activate it. so you can use it for the reset more often but still don't get more guaranteed crits. I just don't want to be even further limited in regards to specs I can actually play in challenging operations and not being dead weight for the group while I have simply superior classes I could play instead.

 

People have continued to give constructive feedback on how NOT to ruin Hatred and the response from Bioware?

Almost total silence. The same can be said for several people concerned about other specs who have offered alternatives to the proposed changes. I just wish Bioware would take the time to tell us what their baseline is for DPS. Hatred has been nerfed time and time again while other similar specs receive re-designs and things that at least make them more viable in PvP even if they can't raid. Hatred is so glass outside of PvE that once the damage change goes through it's only going to reduce the already dismal amount of leech Hatred has compared to similar specs. I wish Bioware would find another way or at least give us something in return for having to use Thrash all the time again like I suggested in my first post.

[xxSHOONYxx]

People have continued to give constructive feedback on how NOT to ruin Hatred and the response from Bioware?

Almost total silence. The same can be said for several people concerned about other specs who have offered alternatives to the proposed changes. I just wish Bioware would take the time to tell us what their baseline is for DPS. Hatred has been nerfed time and time again while other similar specs receive re-designs and things that at least make them more viable in PvP even if they can't raid. Hatred is so glass outside of PvE that once the damage change goes through it's only going to reduce the already dismal amount of leech Hatred has compared to similar specs. I wish Bioware would find another way or at least give us something in return for having to use Thrash all the time again like I suggested in my first post.

 

More likely than not they have no idea what the baseline is either or what the actual changes are that are needed. They get complaints about X class because that class killed them in pvp and its not fair, or about Y class because it does more damage than them in a fight and its not fair, or about Z class because it doesnt snap its fingers and complets every daily and heroic on a 100 ft radius while killing every npc and its not fair. They try to make compromises with classes to keep every player of the game happy but the changes end up making no sense.

[sithBracer]

People have continued to give constructive feedback on how NOT to ruin Hatred and the response from Bioware?

Almost total silence. The same can be said for several people concerned about other specs who have offered alternatives to the proposed changes. I just wish Bioware would take the time to tell us what their baseline is for DPS. Hatred has been nerfed time and time again while other similar specs receive re-designs and things that at least make them more viable in PvP even if they can't raid. Hatred is so glass outside of PvE that once the damage change goes through it's only going to reduce the already dismal amount of leech Hatred has compared to similar specs. I wish Bioware would find another way or at least give us something in return for having to use Thrash all the time again like I suggested in my first post.

 

You just need to use severing slash, the greatest ability ever created. BW worked so hard thinking up this brilliant ability during their 5 minute coffee break, so why aren't you just using it and winning everything?

Edited September 6, 2022 by sithBracer

[MuskyBoy]

You just need to use severing slash, the greatest ability ever created. BW worked so hard thinking up this brilliant ability during their 5 minute coffee break, so why aren't you just using it and winning everything?

 

Dude they're still trying to force translocate onto PT tanks. Nothing but a casted troll ability.

[AdjeYo]

Dude they're still trying to force translocate onto PT tanks. Nothing but a casted troll ability.

 

Just pick up one of the other two choices, those are pretty alright. Ally grapple is a much better troll ability, and two stacks of grapple is pretty nice.

[dylanfailbh]

More likely than not they have no idea what the baseline is either or what the actual changes are that are needed. They get complaints about X class because that class killed them in pvp and its not fair, or about Y class because it does more damage than them in a fight and its not fair, or about Z class because it doesnt snap its fingers and complets every daily and heroic on a 100 ft radius while killing every npc and its not fair. They try to make compromises with classes to keep every player of the game happy but the changes end up making no sense.

 

They just keep nerfing Hatred into the ground. If there is a DPS nerf, it would be incredibly reasonable of them to Add survivability to the class in PVP it lacks the burst and control Deception does. If they added a longer shroud for only Hatred or increase in lifesteal to one of the death field choices like a mini death brand or added Corrupted Defense that Madness sorcs have to Hungering Force that would seal the deal, that would help the class so much in the Ranked scene. Honest to god they need to stop destroying this class. They need to make it more viable.

[AdjeYo]

I'm happy they're doing something with Hatred, but not too happy with what they're doing. 100% uptime on Eradicate was never intended, nor was Saber Strikes beating out Trash, and it makes Hatred braindead to play.

 

Imo Maliciousness should be focused on solo play, where the kill aspect comes up a lot. For endgame pve and pvp I'd like the other options to be buffed a bit. Or Maliciousness being made unusable unless you get reliable kills, and general dps buffed to make up for it, bringing back the 6.x style rotation.

Edited September 7, 2022 by AdjeYo

[sithBracer]

Dude they're still trying to force translocate onto PT tanks. Nothing but a casted troll ability.

 

Ok, first, are you are not seriously complaining about PT tanks?

 

And second, at least it is something original. At least you can have some fun with it. At least there are SOME uses for it. Severing slash is such trash people didn't even put it on their bars when it was free.

 

I don't mind a failed ability if it looks like there was some thought put into it (and clearly there was some thought put into translocate). If there are some fun things you can do with it. If there is some niche use for it. Severing slash is none of these things. I would rather they bring back force lightning as it was. At least there were some niche uses for it.

 

And besides, how can you resist translocating a bubble sorc into the fire? It happened to me and I wasn't even angry it was so funny.

Edited September 7, 2022 by sithBracer

[MuskyBoy]

Ok, first, are you are not seriously complaining about PT tanks?

 

And second, at least it is something original. At least you can have some fun with it. At least there are SOME uses for it. Severing slash is such trash people didn't even put it on their bars when it was free.

 

I don't mind a failed ability if it looks like there was some thought put into it (and clearly there was some thought put into translocate). If there are some fun things you can do with it. If there is some niche use for it. Severing slash is none of these things. I would rather they bring back force lightning as it was. At least there were some niche uses for it.

 

And besides, how can you resist translocating a bubble sorc into the fire? It happened to me and I wasn't even angry it was so funny.

 

I was simply saying that severing slash isn't the first time the devs have given us a useless ability.

[sithBracer]

I was simply saying that severing slash isn't the first time the devs have given us a useless ability.

 

You poor things. All you got was a leap that actually works, a powerful 10m elemental damage ability, an actually useful DCD. Sins got phantom stride (your leaps/holotraverses younger slow brother who trips over himself half of the time) and had their burst tied to it making its original purpose of being a gap closer a joke (remember they nerfed force speed to 30s CD when they first introduced it), reaping strike, yet another 4m melee ability (because we REALLY didn't have enough of those), and severing slash. And all we had to give up was phase walk at its best, crushing darkness (which we actually useful in PvP and for tanks in PvE) and force lightning (which had some niche uses). But, you know, they let us keep 10m force slow. Everyone knows how much we love and use the 10m force slow.

[xxSHOONYxx]

They just keep nerfing Hatred into the ground. If there is a DPS nerf, it would be incredibly reasonable of them to Add survivability to the class in PVP it lacks the burst and control Deception does. If they added a longer shroud for only Hatred or increase in lifesteal to one of the death field choices like a mini death brand or added Corrupted Defense that Madness sorcs have to Hungering Force that would seal the deal, that would help the class so much in the Ranked scene. Honest to god they need to stop destroying this class. They need to make it more viable.

 

I don't play pvp so no idea about the state of hatred there but my guess is it's being nerfed for pve. Their avarage parse counting people that dont know how to play the class is higher than some other classes max parses, same as concealment, and their sub 30% reaches the 43-44k dps.

 

The same way ap is probably getting nerfed because of pvp, or the nerf pyro is getting that misses my understanding, outside of fuel window pyro substained dps and crit is sub par for what is supposed to be, a substained dot class, pyro doens't need a damage nerf, needs a dot tactical like annihialation making its fuel window damage lower but increasing the substained dps. Superheated fuel should be deleted from the game or only usable by tanks, a dot class has no reason to have 100% critical and huge burst, that is for burst classes.

 

Some classes are overperforming and deserve a nerf, but then at the same time seems they are completely obvlivious as to why some classes are overeprsented or what makes them stronger, or they go overboard with the nerfes lowering dps 1-2k and maybe even more while creating a bigger gap on dps with the classes that are not being touched and leaving the biggest balance issue untouched, juggernaut (in pve).

 

This are the top operation parses on nim and hm those that only have hm as highest difficulty

 

juggernaut = zorn and toth, firebrand and stormcaller, kephess (ec), writhing horror, dread guads, kephess (tfb), tfb, dashroode, titan 6, olok, warlords, styrak, draxus, grob'thok, corruptor zero, bestia, calphayus, sparky, bulo, torque, cortanni, malaphar, commanders, revan, aivela and esne, izax, dxun encounter 1, dxun encouther 2, huntmaster, dominique, geo queen, bonethrasher, karagga

sniper = col vorgar, sword squadron, trandos,

pt = operator ix, nefra, brontes, council, underlurker, tyth, red, ip-cpt

marauder = thrasher, operation chief, tyrans, raptus, nahut, apex, xeno, colossal monolith, fabricator,

sorc = watchdog, eyeless, soa

merc = annahilation droid, gharj

operative = kanoth, infernal council

assassin = golden fury, jarg and sorno, foreman crusher,

 

Juggernaut has top parses on 33 bosses

Marauder has top parses on 9 bosses

Pt has top parses on 8 bosses

Sniper has top parses on 3 bosses

Sorc has top parses on 3 bosses

Assassin has top parse on 3 bosses

Operative has top parses on 2 bosses

Merc has top parses on 2 bosses

 

 

Juggernaut has top parses on 33 of the 61 bosses (35 out of 63 if you count hateful and dreadful), yet they are not being touched... :D:D:D

And it will be stronger after all the other classes being nerfed, it's time boys and girls, time for everyone to reroll to juggernaut or marauder if you feel spicy

Edited September 7, 2022 by xxSHOONYxx

[sithBracer]

merc = annahilation droid, gharj

assassin = golden fury, jarg and sorno, foreman crusher,

 

... (no merc for some reason)

Assassin has top parse on 3 bosses

 

When you wrote those out, did you do it with a straight face? Honestly?

[Akushii]

I don't understand why TTT tactical is being touched for Hatred Assassin. I see a lot of comments about 'degenerate' gameplay of using Saber Strike for maximizing dps. This is just simply not true. Hatred rotation is a 12 GCD rotation and only 2-3 of that is Saber Strike. 2 if you can get a Phantom Stride + Assassinate in, 3 otherwise. This is very similar to other classes. Lightning sorc casts 3x Lightning bolt in a row, Madness sorc casts 3xForce Lightning. Both Arsenal and Pyro PT have to use basic attack to keep their heat in check.

 

This change will introduce more force management as well as throw the timing of Recklessness off. That will in turn allow our buffs to fall of, causing the damage to severely drop. Hatred mostly catches up in dps in sub 30%. Prior to that, we are barely keeping up with the rest of the specs and are somewhere in the middle at best. It's a melee dot class with the least amount of utility, and definitely feels paper thin.

[xxSHOONYxx]

When you wrote those out, did you do it with a straight face? Honestly?

 

You could argue that is not very representitiveby the people that run ev and kp, but they are the top parse, whether the boss is easy or hard. If it was just by difficulty i would have only listed gods since the rest are fairly easy in comparison

Edited September 7, 2022 by xxSHOONYxx

[sithBracer]

You could argue that is not very representitiveby the people that run ev and kp, but they are the top parse, whether the boss is easy or hard. If it was just by difficulty i would have only listed gods since the rest are fairly easy in comparison

 

Are you seriously writing this with a straight face? Please tell me you are trolling now? Why not mention who parses the highest in heroics? Or hammer station while you are at it. Missing some serious representation there.

Edited September 7, 2022 by sithBracer

[xxSHOONYxx]

Are you seriously writing this with a straight face? Please tell me you are trolling now? Why not mention who parses the highest in heroics? Or hammer station while you are at it. Missing some serious representation there.

 

Nitpicking for whatever reason and completely missing the point of the post of how one class is overepresented by far and not being touched. You don't want to respresent some op bosses in their highest diffuclty? Cool, don't count them