Planned Balance Changes for 7.1.1

[Chryptyk]

3 minutes ago, ThanderSnB said:

They haven't posted anything recently, but I think they are still following what Eric Musco posted in 2017. You can read it in the link below, but basically melee has a disadvantage in ops because often times they have to stop DPSing to avoid boss attacks while ranged can keep DPSing the whole time. To balance this, they give melee 2.5-5% more DPS than ranged. So if balance is perfect, melee should be doing more DPS, but it shouldn't be doing tons more DPS. For example, if the target is 26,000 DPS (average) for ranged sustained DPS, melee sustained DPS should be around 27,300 DPS (average).

Bioware categorizes every discipline into two categories: melee or ranged and DPS type: burst, hybrid, sustained. Then they add plus or minus 0 to 5% DPS depending on the categories. This gives the table below.

Melee Sustained DPS (up to +5% of target DPS)
Melee Hybrid DPS (up to +2.5% of target DPS) - only Marauder/Sentinel's third discipline is in this group
Melee Burst DPS and Ranged Sustained DPS (target DPS, no bonus or penalty)
Ranged Hybrid DPS (down to -2.5% of target DPS) - only Sniper/Gunslinger's third discipline is in this group
Ranged Burst DPS (down to -5% of target DPS)

See the quoted section in this link for more details: https://forums.swtor.com/topic/842212-how-class-balance-happens/#comment-9005558

The problem is that the average disparity of high and low is WAY out of bounds according to those targets.  The lowest performing specs should have gotten buffed instead of any of this nerfing.

Whoever is working on this needs to actually play the game in order to understand just how bad it is.  And we know they don't, because if they did, they'd understand how unbalanced things have been in 7, and how these nerfs are a mistake.

They might say they do, but i won't believe it.  Until we see whoever is working on these changes does a stream showing them doing something at a high level, I won't believe they actually play the game and really understand what they're doing.

[ThanderSnB]

12 minutes ago, Chryptyk said:

The problem is that the average disparity of high and low is WAY out of bounds according to those targets.  The lowest performing specs should have gotten buffed instead of any of this nerfing.

Whoever is working on this needs to actually play the game in order to understand just how bad it is.  And we know they don't, because if they did, they'd understand how unbalanced things have been in 7, and how these nerfs are a mistake.

They might say they do, but i won't believe it.  Until we see whoever is working on these changes does a stream showing them doing something at a high level, I won't believe they actually play the game and really understand what they're doing.

Yeah, I wish companies would go more into detail on these things. I don't think they need to necessarily play well -- DPS is just math and numbers -- but it would be nice if they went into those numbers, show their math, spreadsheets, etc. This sort of thing can take a lot of time, but it doesn't have to be done that much, just whenever they are doing balance changes. For SWTOR they usually only do this once a year lately, so I don't think it would be too tough. Even just giving their target numbers for all the disciplines would quell a lot of debate. Players would be able to see the parses and compare it with the targets and know right away whether a discipline is doing okay, too strong, or too weak.

[Sharion_Iliera]

I'm still trying to find the logic behind your actions.

What I understand: you probably don't want Ranged specs to be viable for some NiM and R-4 HM bosses.

But. We have Pyro PT, Concentration Sentinel and a few other melee classes/specs that are really overkill. So you nerf AP PT, instead of first buffing the classes which are underperforming for ages? Why?

Seriously: NiM raiders are getting burned out of constant R-4 (because nothing else drops 340 rating gear, and no incentive to do anything else - it's literally impossible to get a NiM pug together on Fleet, and minimal chance to get an HM pug team with experienced players if it's not EV/KP).
People who don't have teams for R-4 have *nothing* to do besides Tech Frag farm to get some money, because everyone interested has already farmed 330 from Nefra in 7.0. Now you intend to nerf the number of viable classes, too?
 

Spoiler

And the content you want us to do?

R-4 HM first boss is still going under the floor after you "repaired" it - so game mechanic 1: your whole team /stucks after the first pull to avoid this. But wait - now it can even go under the floor in burn phase.
Also, it is hard enough to be the third boss. It's *not* a first one. I know people who just gave up the whole thing, pointed a middle finger at it and went to play other MMORPGs.

Watchdog? If you want to use a lock, the console is broken. Joke's on the players. Ha-ha.

Kanoth? If a team doesn't bring the right kind of DPS classes, it's basically *game mechanics* for people to /stuck after clicking the third pair of buttons, then again after the gate is open, then literally Alt+F4, because the boss is bugged and you can't see the Horizontal/Vertical Growth if you don't do it. You *could* leave the phase, but then the game freezes 3 times out of 5.

Lady D? There are invisible lines preventing you to heal people standing right next to you. People and sometimes adds keep teleporting. Adds and sometimes the boss can turn invisible. People keep getting under the platforms, so we have to trick the game to bring them back onto them. *And* it has a high DPS check in burn, which means we need classes you haven't nerfed yet. So much for choices or "play your way".

You "repaired" every bug that actually helped players, and left everything that hinders us in the game untouched. There are more and more game-breaking bugs after every update you make. You even made random players beta-test the Launcher, and I still haven't heard of giving the lost game time back to the unfortunate ones involved.
The lag is getting unbearable in some places which wasn't the case on 6.0.
Isn't that more important than nerfing a few classes that are still viable? Also, these are not the most OP ones. Why these two?

Shouldn't your priority be to make the game enjoyable and full of players again, instead of giving nerfs to randomly chosen classes? Have you even checked how many players are playing with each classes/specs on anything HM+? Wait, I know the answer. No. Because if you had, your first priority would be to bring the underperforming ones up to be good enough so more players would pick them up (again), not to spoil the game for the ones playing Lightning and AP, too.

More and more Ranged players are re-rolling to Melee nowdays, because a good player *can* stay on the boss with them, and there is only so many bosses when you absolutely need a Ranged. It's just not worth playing them in most cases. Lightning is performing allright now, so it gets a nerf. Is that really balance?

After the cathastrophe called 7.0, when gamers started to flee the game because you scaled everything for 340 already (without the gear even being available) and the limbo of 7.1 (where there is only one thing incentivized), please make positive changes, not negative ones. Give us reasons to play more classes, not reasons to stop playing even more.

And please, *please*, repair the bugs and re-check the math on bosses before you touch the classes.

Edited October 14, 2022 by Sharion_Iliera

[Aethyriel]

You are just plain wrong. Neither spec is overperforming atm. Your idea of ranged burst <<<<<< melee dot makes no sense. Why would I bring a ranged burst to any fight? Where do I need burst explicitly at range which a melee dot cannot provide? What is the benefit of a ranged burst spec in PVE content? There really is none. Because most of the multi-target DPS is provided by dot specs. If you play Lightning right now, you deal good ST damage - not great! Just good. You sacrifice Chain Lightning for it meaning you have no more really viable AE without loosing ST damage. Thus the spec is SUPPOSED to be up there as a pure ST specs. If you play APT PT right now, you are just plain worse than a Pyro PT and with the patch even more so. There is an entire nim level community here trying to show you how far removed your idiotic theory is from actual gameplay and decisions players make when those decisions matter (which is exclusively nim level ops and competitive PVP).

Your set targets for what specs are supposed to do are just wrong. They make no sense. It's just not how your game is being played and here you are just blatantly ignoring what people AND stats are clearly telling you. Because it's also not all about DPS but also about utility and what utility does an e.g. Lightning Sorc have over a Madness Sorc (the later who should do more ST damage than the L Sorc)? There is none. They lack aoe and they lack the same amount of self heal while providing nothing else really. So why is Lightning supposed to be even worse on single target?

And in regards to hardcasting abilities like halted Offense: That is actually fun. Because managing to do that while having to position yourself and move and what not is the fun challenge DPS players are looking for. With your asinine changes changes to those specs, you are basically removing Lightning and APT from consideration for any good nim level setup. And there were next to no classes in that pool to begin with.

I mean, what is your thought process? How do you think players think about setups? Do you think they'll look at Lightning Sorcs and see they deal at least 3k DPS less than an alternatively viable spec while having zero AE capability and no utility and then come to the conclusion they should still bring it to the raid because it is supposed to be 3k behind the Virulence Sniper they can use instead? Why? Why would anyone use a Lightning Sorc. Assuming you'd for some reason need something only a Sorc can provide, why would you EVER make the decision to choose Lightning over Madness after your moronic nerf? You're just shooting yourself in the foot making that decision. So why are you forcing people away from decisions and forcing them into a tiny pool of viable specs you get to play?

[Failtima]

It's the same old same old when it comes to devs and this game. Whenever they invoke "balance" they aren't really talking about true balance but their version of balance that conforms to some warped internal guideline that never leads to any kind of real game balance. But rather tends to lead to some classes loosing viability at all in endgame.

When they say "balance" I start looking for the nerf bat to come out and be used in a massively overboard manner. And mebbe, just mebbe, months down the road they might...just might...roll back a wee bit of the nerfs while never actually admitting they screwed up.

[Loc_n_lol]

48 minutes ago, Aethyriel said:

What is the benefit of a ranged burst spec in PVE content? There really is none.

I see 2.

1) Burst

2) Range

Yeah. That was really hard to find.

You need ranged dps because if you just bring melee suddenly you find you have problems with stacking AoEs and other mechanics of that kind that make it much harder if you can't have at least one or 2 people who can stand in one spot and kill something in another spot.

And you need burst because sometimes how much dps you do over the entire fight doesn't matter as much as how much dps you do in a specific phase, or there's a lot of target swapping and interruptions, and "dot, dot, oh target should have been dead by now" just doesn't cut it

But you most likely already know all of that and are just pretending not to see.

[Exly]

2 hours ago, ThanderSnB said:

They haven't posted anything recently, but I think they are still following what Eric Musco posted in 2017. You can read it in the link below, but basically melee has a disadvantage in ops because often times they have to stop DPSing to avoid boss attacks while ranged can keep DPSing the whole time. To balance this, they give melee 2.5-5% more DPS than ranged. So if balance is perfect, melee should be doing more DPS, but it shouldn't be doing tons more DPS. For example, if the target is 26,000 DPS (average) for ranged sustained DPS, melee sustained DPS should be around 27,300 DPS (average).

Bioware categorizes every discipline into melee or ranged and DPS type: burst, hybrid, sustained. Then they add plus or minus 0 to 5% DPS depending on the categories. This gives the table below.

Melee Sustained DPS (up to +5% of target DPS)
Melee Hybrid DPS (up to +2.5% of target DPS) - only Marauder/Sentinel's third discipline is in this group
Melee Burst DPS and Ranged Sustained DPS (target DPS, no bonus or penalty)
Ranged Hybrid DPS (down to -2.5% of target DPS) - only Sniper/Gunslinger's third discipline is in this group
Ranged Burst DPS (down to -5% of target DPS)

See the quoted section in this link for more details: https://forums.swtor.com/topic/842212-how-class-balance-happens/#comment-9005558

This is also the logic used when the game launched in 2011, but since then gap closers have been added, and all melee abilities have been made instant or given the ability to channel while moving.  Because of that, melee time of target has improved, and with that improvement time on target issues have been reduced or eliminated (boss dependent).  

In addition, when this logic was first introduced dot spread was not a thing, so in fights with multi target dps it made sense to have some burst dps in an ops group to help with add management.  

As things currently stand, dot classes out dps burst specs in both single target and multi target fights by design.  This makes burst classes irrelevant and undesirable, and that is why I disagree with the continued use of these outdated developer guidelines.

[codydmaan]

6 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

They already did say that.

Regardless, I love everything about the changes! Lightning gets a deserved nerf, it is the best ranged spec and bioware already said that ranged burst specs have to have the biggest damage penalty due to losing nothing from the boss moving or downtime, on paper it's not bad.

Anyway, since everybody seems to have very hard feelings about a DPS nerf, I get that there is a favorite class but there also needs to be some... composition advantage gainable when playing the correct comps in very hard fights, the own class being nerfed is a risk every OTP willingly takes.

Yeah no sorry idk what content ur running engineering for example just sniper in general out performs sorcs hands down in pve.

Edited October 15, 2022 by codydmaan
Spelling

[ZUHFB]

7 hours ago, Wolvesgaar said:

You must only play super casual if you think this is a good nerf. 

Nothing to do with your fav spec getting nerfed. Lightning is barely holding in stable DPs just enough for HM and NiM OPS compared to other specs which make it now even more useless and redundant to play. 

The mindset of players like you is the reason Bioware gets away with stupid balancing/nerfs like this.

Its also why this game struggles to pull 15k active players daily.

I wish I would be a casual and I'm trying to be one, but it ain't working

[ZUHFB]

1 hour ago, codydmaan said:

Yeah no sorry idk what content ur running engineering for example just sniper in general out performs sorcs hands down in pve.

content hard enough so people don't bring engineering

[Nee-Elder]

20 minutes ago, ZUHFB said:

I wish I would be a casual and I'm trying to be one, but it ain't working

i'm happy to teach you!

(proud  "casual"  $ubbed everyday since 2011  )

4 hours ago, Exly said:

This is also the logic used when the game launched in 2011,

Sometimes i feel like  BioWare developers  had a really nice balance & evolution (of combat)  a few years ago....and then *bam*  all of a sudden the more recent 'teams'  have been  regression after regression, nerf after nerf, gear grind after gear grind, etc. 

*Then again , i'm just a HEALER so what do i know?

Edited October 15, 2022 by Nee-Elder
Reason: healers like me, no matter how skilled we are, always get accused of "being carried" lol

[DeannaVoyager]

14 hours ago, Shabir_Dhillon said:

Hello everyone, 

 

Shabir here and I am a Gameplay Designer on SWTOR. I wanted to start by saying we appreciate everyone for taking the time and effort to give feedback on the changes. I wanted to explain some of the changes we are making in the upcoming patch: 

 

 

With all the incoming nerfs, especially lightning/TK, are we also getting an option to reroll second combat style?

Because some of us rolled a sage/sorc as their secondary combat style when it was still a viable spec, and after 7.1.1 it won't be. 

[Aethyriel]

10 hours ago, Loc_n_lol said:

I see 2.

1) Burst

2) Range

Yeah. That was really hard to find.

You need ranged dps because if you just bring melee suddenly you find you have problems with stacking AoEs and other mechanics of that kind that make it much harder if you can't have at least one or 2 people who can stand in one spot and kill something in another spot.

And you need burst because sometimes how much dps you do over the entire fight doesn't matter as much as how much dps you do in a specific phase, or there's a lot of target swapping and interruptions, and "dot, dot, oh target should have been dead by now" just doesn't cut it

But you most likely already know all of that and are just pretending not to see.

1) compared to what? A Virulence Sniper with 2 dots and a cull? Madness Sorc with Shock skilled? Where do you need that 'burst' that apparently Lightning provides so much of and/or better than other specs? What's a specific mechanic where the combination of burst - which isn't even all that great to begin with on this spec compared to others - and ranged DPS is so viable even? What is one encounter where you'd take a L Sorc over other specs? And you conflate burst specs with the ability to do burst DPS in certain windows because you're not beating a Pyro PT in DPS in specific phases and lightning Sorc sure as hell isn't outdoing anyone or anything in specific phases either after the nerfs. And you're not outdoing a Virulence sniper with burst tactical either when something needs to die in 3 gcds, do you?

Sure, let's even simply concede the argument Lightning Sorc is far better at switching targets and bursting them down than other specs and thus loses a lot of DPS single and multi target. Where is that skillset so viable that I just have to have it? What encounter is in this game where this is so vastly worth more than sustained DPS that you'd be a fool to sacrifice a little less burst for much more sustained DPS? And keep in mind that we're not talking about what Ling does right now but what it will do after these nerfs w/o hardcast halted offense and further dmg nerfs. Where to do you bring it and it's more viable than some alternative?

2) Sure, sometimes that's neat but not really on many bosses, especially now that group healing revolves around standing near the operative spamming kolto inject. I don't manage to think of more than 4 bosses where range is specifically viable and makes the fight go easier - Huntmaster, Trandoshan Squad, Tyrans and Master&Blaster I guess? For really anything else a ranged DPS hits a significant diminishing return in value when you already have one.

So, a >10% falloff from a melee DPS is okay because you have range and you don't have a dot? Except that you do as a LS but that's not all that important, is it? But that's general for ranged burst specs - which outside of Lightning aren't played right now. More specifically, a LS losing all that DPS has what value over other ranged options?

Edited October 15, 2022 by Aethyriel
missing word

[timovdt]

3 hours ago, Aethyriel said:

 "Except that you do as a LS but" Actualy ling has more DOT effects then viru Afliction stormwatch and crushing darkness = 3 dots

[ZUHFB]

6 minutes ago, timovdt said:

3 hours ago, Aethyriel said:

 "Except that you do as a LS but" Actualy ling has more DOT effects then viru Afliction stormwatch and crushing darkness = 3 dots

But lightning just like annihilation doesn't have the problems a DoT sniper has which would make it lose damage in a real fight so DoT classes doing more singletarget is absolutely fair. They lose damage because their GCDs might not do the full damage since immunities target swaps whatever, burst specs - and annihilation- just don't have this problem.

[Loc_n_lol]

3 hours ago, Aethyriel said:

Where do you need that 'burst' that apparently Lightning provides so much of and/or better than other specs? What's a specific mechanic where the combination of burst - which isn't even all that great to begin with on this spec compared to others - and ranged DPS is so viable even? What is one encounter where you'd take a L Sorc over other specs?

Umm... like, every single fight in R-4 ?

IPCPT : small grenades

Watchdog : stacking circles

Kanoth : That purple arrow dot, and generally cleaning the far sides of the room.

Dominique : Watchdog round 2, Force Blast.

 

You don't think polarity shift is one of the best offensive cooldowns in the game ? It's no pyro explosive fuel, but that one's broken beyond all measure.

 

And I mean it's really simple : Snipers can't self-cleanse. Marksmanship is trash, Arsenal is trash, Madness is trash for a dot spec, IO is hard and unreliable, Engineering is hard and unreliable. If you want range and don't want to create complications for yourself or your group, you bring Lightning or Virulence, and Virulence has no burst, no cleanse, no mobility, and isn't exactly in a great spot either.

[Iceslasher]

21 hours ago, Shabir_Dhillon said:

Hello everyone, 

Shabir here and I am a Gameplay Designer on SWTOR. I wanted to start by saying we appreciate everyone for taking the time and effort to give feedback on the changes. I wanted to explain some of the changes we are making in the upcoming patch: 

Lightning/Telekinetics: error

Madness/ Balance: error

Advanced Prototype/Tactics: error

Arsenal/Commando: We are FIXING the "accidental damage" done so they are no longer the worst dps in game. 

Sniper/ Gunslinger: see above. *addendum second worst*

I just wanted to close by thanking everyone for their feedback and hope to keep seeing more of it in the future. I hope these notes added some additional transparency on the changes and that the feedback keeps on coming. And as always balance is an ongoing process and we will keep you all updated with class changes coming your way in the future.

Take it easy,
Shabir

 Soo yeah, Hoping you will listen to us. This Balance stuff seems to be a non starter. It's like chasing a rabbit down a hole and its so far gone you are now destroying classes. Remember the summer of pvp? Healers were trying to heal people with Duct tape and spit. No one could even do a hard mode Flashpoint. Range was destroyed, yeaaah that one. Feels like Mercs are back to shooting spitballs. Please stop the hate. I play both mercs and snipers, engineering and arso
(of course) both of which (of course) were hard hit . Why? Because Reasons? Thank you for hearing us.  

Edited October 15, 2022 by Iceslasher

[SpikeSaber]

Wow, did you guys not forget to put up clown make up? Oh wait you dont need it, because you are literally clowns. People gave you so much feedback and you just ignored everyone. Pathetic.

[codydmaan]

8 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

With all the incoming nerfs, especially lightning/TK, are we also getting an option to reroll second combat style?

Because some of us rolled a sage/sorc as their secondary combat style when it was still a viable spec, and after 7.1.1 it won't be. 

This is a good idea. Since your now going to make these specs unplayable, since now other classes will b played over these can you give peoppe the option to reroll all of their characters 

 

It's only fair 

 

[ZUHFB]

4 hours ago, SpikeSaber said:

Wow, did you guys not forget to put up clown make up? Oh wait you dont need it, because you are literally clowns. People gave you so much feedback and you just ignored everyone. Pathetic.

And getting that upset about class changes isn't?

[ZUHFB]

2 hours ago, codydmaan said:

This is a good idea. Since your now going to make these specs unplayable, since now other classes will b played over these can you give peoppe the option to reroll all of their characters 

 

It's only fair

Carzy Idea: Play the primary combat style?

[Beyrahl]

This still doesn't cover the topic of empowerment stacking, sure it's getting nerfed from 20% to 16% but the bigger issue is that you can stack it to 40% right now. Meaning after this nerf you'll get a max of 32% if you stack. 
Still going to be worth doing and still going to hit really hard. 

Why not just remove the ability of it stacking with each other instead of nerfing it? It would overall net more of sustained dps loss and a large burst window loss. I have hit 135k thermal for reference stacking empowerment. Granted this is in PvP and not PvE that's still quite consistent and or higher than energy bursts peak. 

[megawarz]

devs, instead of nerfing classes, buff those that are underwhelming. Arsenal is a meme, marksman ambush with laze target should not do less damage than explosive probe on engi, which i've seen hit 95k in HM R-4 with crit buff. Madness does not need a nerf, it needs to be buffed. Lightning is fine as it is IMO. Sure, hard casting halted isn't the most favorite thing in the world for this spec, but thats where all the burst comes. AP was perfectly fine. Madness is a B- spec, lightning is B and AP is B. Don't look at dummy parses to see which specs need to be nerfed, as all those top parses are people who sit in front of a dummy and parse till they get the 1 great parse (I've done this when waiting for raid to begin). If you want to balance classes, you devs need to actually play this game and do the content you make at the hardest difficulty to see the pure class imbalance. 

[KanuJulian]

Am 14.10.2022 um 23:06 schrieb Exocor:

I can understand the balancing decisions from a certain point of view.

 

AP, Lightning and Madness are very very very easy. I've recently rejoined my old raiding group (that I took a break from, as well as from the game) and we were going into the new raid for me to get clear XP and equipment. I just went in there with an AP PT. Not to get out the big numbers, but do do the mechanics right while not having to worry about my rotation. I can play AP without looking and so can probably everybody else who is or was active in the Nightmare community.

 

And that's the whole issue. The spec is very easy and still does decent damage. In my first few weeks I acquired 330 equipment and was able to out-DPS experienced players in full BiS in Brontes NiM and Revan Core challenges on Pyro and other classes without much effort. The spec is not doing too much damage overall. it does to much damage compared to how easy it is to play. That's also the reason Arsenal is at the bottom. It's just 12345 without much thinking.

 

Obviously, difficulty in play the spec is always open for everyone's own interpretation. But what's more important is, that this is not what the Developers are saying. If they would say: "AP, as a spec, enjoys great mobility and unnatural range as a melee DPS. It excels in important raid challenges and is comparatively easy to learn and to play. For this reason we nerf the DPS by x% (our estimates)". I would be more satisfied with the explanation. I would still disagree, because after this nerf, Pyrotech will be able to do everything AP can, but better. And that is the issue between nerfing a class and making it irrelevant.

 

Can agree with most stuff, but tbh if you out-dpsed a Pyro on anything but a 20second encounter when there is no damage incoming I think you were just the better player. Parsely data speaks for itself and is the same as what I experience playing AP. I also think the spec is harder to do damage with than Pyro is. The heat management without TSO is just worse on AP. Its still easy, just not significantly more if at all compared to Pyro.

[KanuJulian]

vor 11 Stunden schrieb Loc_n_lol:

Umm... like, every single fight in R-4 ?

IPCPT : small grenades

Watchdog : stacking circles

Kanoth : That purple arrow dot, and generally cleaning the far sides of the room.

Dominique : Watchdog round 2, Force Blast.

 

You don't think polarity shift is one of the best offensive cooldowns in the game ? It's no pyro explosive fuel, but that one's broken beyond all measure.

 

And I mean it's really simple : Snipers can't self-cleanse. Marksmanship is trash, Arsenal is trash, Madness is trash for a dot spec, IO is hard and unreliable, Engineering is hard and unreliable. If you want range and don't want to create complications for yourself or your group, you bring Lightning or Virulence, and Virulence has no burst, no cleanse, no mobility, and isn't exactly in a great spot either.

I don't mean to be rude or attack you, but I think you are overestimating how much of a sorcs "benefits" cannot be achieved equally as well by other classes or tactics. 
 

IP-CPT: As long as you have 1 or 2 PTs (Out of 6 dps, a really common number) you can play 6 melees without ever stacking small nades. Even if you only play 4meter classes, they still do more damage than ling even with having to forfeit 2 gcds to not stack nades. They are also in most cases way tankier and better suited to survive the Fight or Burst down the Droids.

Watchdog: The single best Fight for ling, as if it was made for the class. Can't argue there, but the Difference to other ranged classes is still just some more dps in a Fight that is not about the dps at all. It's lings best Fight and the only one where you'd want to bring the spec over more alternatives than just marksman/merc.

Kanoth: Healers and Tanks can do that easily, also again - Melee specs still out-dps ling there even with wasting a gcd or two to throw a nade on the other side. Whats worse is that this fight is purely a mechanic-check rather than requiring any amount of dps - the important things are avoiding dtps and keeping the floor clean. Guess who does the dtps part waaaaay better? Madness and Viru, while being only slightly worse if at all when comparing dps on that Fight. 

Dominique: For Dominique you can just keep a healer with the boss to stop her from doing her AoE. The important damage phases are also sub30% boss hp (As in IP-CPT and Kanoth as well) which means Viru and Madness out-dps you even on singletarget dummy - while loosing less with the required movement and way less from incoming dmg. Viru and Merc even have better utility for that Fight by being able to cheese recursives. IO also smokes you on Watchdog round 2 and Dominique Burn. You also contribute nothing to add control, a Diversion on the monstrosities can easily save your Pull in the Burn. 

If you think viru has no burst you didn't read the 7.0 class changes or haven't raided with one in a long time. Have a look at Walker phases of Kephess in EC. Viru basically has superheated fuel on a 40 to 80 second cooldown, depending on what utilities you take. The only times viru has less mobility even is when having to move for a longer duration without being able to stop as in playing Dash'roode the intended/old way. As long as you can stop for culls, Viru is very mobile. Viru is also insanely more tanky than ling while providing Ballistic Shield, i/e debuff and Diversion.