Class Balance Changes Feedback

[Deaconik]

17 minutes ago, Char_Ell said:

Considering most, not all, of the responses to Chris Durel I have to think this is where BioWare has to really consider the wisdom of providing any direct written response to players' concerns.  "You're not listening to the community at all" seems quite hyperbolic to me.  Many players seem to think that if they tell BioWare something then BioWare should do what they say.  What we have here is a classic disagreement.  BioWare explains their reasoning and some players make their argument for why they think BioWare is wrong.  Listening is not the same as doing what one is told.  Someone can tell me to go jump off a cliff and I can read and understand what they said so I "listened" to them.  I just chose to not do what they told me to do.

Everybody posting here is a paying customer. And considering the history of BioWare and feedback...

 

Edit> explains their reasoning. To me they didn't explain their DPS target metrics. Just sayin.

Edited November 15, 2022 by Deaconik

[Aethyriel]

34 minutes ago, Deaconik said:

Edit> explains their reasoning. To me they didn't explain their DPS target metrics. Just sayin.

They also fail to explain what any target for any class is. They give vague responses like 'ranged burst does too much' and nerf Ling for example. Now nobody plays Ling because ranged burst combo isn't some sort of super important factor that warrants crappy DPS. And we have the stats to back up those claims while the devs simply do not want to disclose their precise reasoning because they have to know they'd be eaten alive as it's obvious to anyone playing nim content that they have no idea how to properly balance classes or encounters. Balance for example is played twice as often as Ling now and before, Ling was one of the most played classes.

And we have other stats like Anni maro being the worst melee dot spec purely going by DPS across all 8 man nim operations. Those are the stats across hundreds of parses. So, how can the DPS be too high? The DPS with all the utility and the defensive stuff and especially the obviously broken as all hell healing is the problem. But why nerf the DPS? Maros are played for healing and 7% debuff for the top DPS Pyros. What are the devs looking at? The few parses where some anni maro gets carried by their grp to a top parse doing 4k+ more than anyone playing normally? Are they running simulations instead? Would that not be very counterproductive given all the mechanics you simply can't simulate?

And the other question has to be: Why nerf something again? the issue isn't mara being way too good (except for the healing which was repeatedly stated needed to be toned down a lot), it's other classes being not good enough in PVE content due to a lack of proper defences / dmg mitigation or lack of utility. And again - we have the stats - across all nim ops - next to nobody plays concealment, deception, marksman or APT. And why would they? The classes offer nothing while the few top classes that are actually played do everything better. the pool for playable classes just keeps decreasing while the content actually asks you to play those top classes to stand a chance (especially true for the non top level nim raiders that might even still struggle in Asastion or something).

You made Lethality a little bit more viable with the AE reduce and immediately the class sees some play now. You nerfed Lightning and the player base on that spec plummeted. Why can't you make all classes more viable? And don't tell me you also consider Vet or SM difficulty relevant because those (outside of R4 HC I guess) can be cleared by mediocre players on ANY class setup you could make up.

So far, for every nerf done by the devs, the player base called it out and predicted the outcome of seeing massive drops in the class being further engaged in difficult content and so far, the player base was always right and the devs always wrong - unless their goal was that players stop enjoying the game, stop playing certain classes and all just stack Pyro PTs and eventually even more people leave for other mmorpgs given how awfully dead the servers have become the last month or so again. Whatever the devs are measuring, they're measuring the wrong things.

You need to nerf the group heal capability and buff the group healing of healers accordingly. It should not be a DPS job (especially when you stack it) to provide 1/3rd of a healer. This is absurd. It'd be less absurd if more classes were able to do it and it was thus intentional but only anni can do it and there is zero reason it should be able to do it.

[ArchingBeast]

5 hours ago, ArchingBeast said:

I understand that you wanted to even out the choices a little more, but theres still a few issues with the current state, apart from the obviously still bugged/unupdated draining center mod:

a) Annis power is not bound to it's DPS. Anni has such a universal utility arsenal that it outperforms many specs on this point alone. One of these is the massive healing, which with the projected DPS output of the Draining/Bleeding center combo will increase to even more mad levels (In fights where constant Healing is needed, 2 Anni Marauders heal about the same amount that a poor healer does, without sacrificing any DPS or GCDs, and thats on live). Therefore, Anni, if anything, needed less heals than before, or the class needs to be severely punished DPS-wise for the extra survivability.

b) The original feedback was aimed at the supposed "smoothing" these changes archieved. In my eyes, the opposite effect has rung true, with the class playing super weirdly if played on top DPS (Drain/Bleed), having much more Rage than necessary (Juyo/Bleeding), or just about not managing a stable rotation for barely more DPS that the "safer choice" (Juyo/Blood Fury, compared to Juyo/Bleeding). It is easily fixed though

My suggestion would be to move the extra rage Bleeding Center gives to Blood Fury.

This would archieve the following:

- Juyo/Bleeding Center combo would not drown in much rage that the Debuff from Battering Assault runs out, yet still be a safe and easy option, basically as before.

- Juyo/Blood Fury combo would archieve a stable, if more difficult rotation with actual DPS reward for the risk

- Draining/Bleeding Center combo would be punished DPS wise for the increased healing, since with less Rage, Berserk would be up less due to less Slashes producing Fury stacks.

 

Please, continue to closely monitor our feedback. As the community probably spending the most time out of everyone with these classes and mechanics, we want them to be the most polished, balanced and fun they can, and much of our feedback, including this post, intends to archieve exactly that. Thank You

Neophyte

An Addendum: After some testing on the dummy with different scenarios and setups, the rage gain on bleeding center renders blood fury useless, even with the buff to its damage. the extra rage from bleeding center is worth a lot more, giving you more slashes and rupture ticks than the Blood Fury DPS is worth. Again, a likely solution would be to move the Rage Gain to Blood Fury. Bloody Fury is an inherently more risky playstyle, and it should be rewarded.

Neophyte

Edited November 16, 2022 by ArchingBeast
Synthax

[Keetsune]

7 hours ago, ChrisDurel said:

outperforming our DPS targets

Looks like your gold standart is Marksman and Arsenal, but then you fail, you need to nerf anni by 15% not by 7%.

 

7 hours ago, ChrisDurel said:

offer competitive DPS

With what? With nerfed Ligthining that you nerfed to the ground recently?

 

7 hours ago, ChrisDurel said:

any choice on Force Rend that makes it into a burst damage ability should not be the optimal DPS choice

This is the only statement with common sense that i've heard from devs in the last half year since i've returned to game. And i totatlly agree with that. But you still have Pyro and Virulence (dot specs by the way) that have insane burst window.

Dot specs = sustained single target DPS, which means those specs should have higher DPS than burst specs on the long run. But in your game top singletarget specs is the burst ones. Nice balance. The fact that Marksman and Arsenal is garbage for almost a year is the representation of your incompetence in balancing things. And you keep ruining fun for people with your incompetence while there is so much stuf in this game that require devs attention and can be improved and i not talking about stuf which are almost imposible to fix like garbage engine and it's flaws.

Edited November 16, 2022 by Keetsune

[Sikssix]

After testing Force Fracture alone with a few other things, here is what I can say about it:

 

It is bursty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wasted space for lols.  After testing between Cauterize + Spiteful Saber as well as with Force Fracture + Overwhelming Offense, there is only a 2K DPS difference, looking at graphs while testing Force Fracture and reviewing a typical pull, it is apparent what needs to be taken into place:

 

Live server:

23: Melting Center for obvious reasons

27:  Debilitating Slashes for focus regen (if possible, or go Trans depending fights)

39: Force Fracture for the test

43:  Could have made more DPS burst with Force Clarity but the centering regen (or lack of) was brutal, opted for Burning Center to work with it

Rest doesn't matter.

 

The rotation rarely visits Slash as compared to Cauterize + Spiteful Saber.  The opening is almost similar, however, instead of applying Force Fracture once (like you would with cauterize), you start spamming Force Fracture about four times, then use TST or Blade Barrage, then rebuild centering until 30, which with the choices above, should be quick, by then, get your stacks and DoTs on and use Merciless Slash, then spam Force Fracture again.  Further testing is obviously required, this is something I wanted to report for the time being, I will test this again on the PTS soon.

[Exly]

3 hours ago, Deaconik said:

Everybody posting here is a paying customer. And considering the history of BioWare and feedback...

 

Edit> explains their reasoning. To me they didn't explain their DPS target metrics. Just sayin.

Do they even have any target dps numbers, or do they just say that they do to try to justify changes?  

If they do have them, they they should publish them.

If not, then they should stop saying that they do.

Until then, I don't believe them when they say that they do.

[Aethyriel]

7 hours ago, ChrisDurel said:

Draining Center was giving great burst in addition to adding stacks of Centering.

basically the only burst we reliably had outside of Annihilate while every other dot spec has much higher 1 gcd bursts than this more often like Death Field, Leeching Strike and Assassinate or Corrosive Assault or Vengeance with virtually every skill. But omg, we can hit for a big number every 10 sec with 30 stacks that we don't reliably gain with downtime, that one we gotta nerf.

 

7 hours ago, ChrisDurel said:

As far as Force Fracture, this was never intended to wholesale replace Cauterize in operations, it is simply a more burst option if you like it. It has been improved to be more competitive, but it is not supposed to be equal to the others in terms of damage output.

This is one of those things were you show your utter incompetence. What do you mean 'like more burst?' What burst? it needs 2 dots applied before it can 'burst' and even then its damage is not any higher than VS with a rupture tick. Not only is it not equal to anything, it's just strictly worse all the time in all scenarios. So what is the point of having it? Shouldn't 'all choices be more equal' - then why does this suck? Why does the root on Ravage suck and Predation is always taken? there is no class that mixes up what they use for max dps - there's just things that are clearly better all the time. Your pulling this crap about wanting to diversify choices out your behind. 

You're literally creating a class with mostly 4 meter range that suffers a hefty DPS loss with minimal lost uptime on a target doing 2k+ less DPS than other specs that aren't marksman or Lightning without burst capacities and the thing it still has is healing. what garbage design is this supposed to be?

[Sikssix]

12 minutes ago, Aethyriel said:

This is one of those things were you show your utter incompetence. What do you mean 'like more burst?' What burst? it needs 2 dots applied before it can 'burst' and even then its damage is not any higher than VS with a rupture tick. Not only is it not equal to anything, it's just strictly worse all the time in all scenarios. So what is the point of having it? Shouldn't 'all choices be more equal' - then why does this suck? Why does the root on Ravage suck and Predation is always taken? there is no class that mixes up what they use for max dps - there's just things that are clearly better all the time. Your pulling this crap about wanting to diversify choices out your behind. 

You're literally creating a class with mostly 4 meter range that suffers a hefty DPS loss with minimal lost uptime on a target doing 2k+ less DPS than other specs that aren't marksman or Lightning without burst capacities and the thing it still has is healing. what garbage design is this supposed to be?

Currently testing FF on Live server, as of this writing, I am 2K DPS below than my typical Cauterize+ Spiteful Saber parse.  Force Fracture works best with Overwhelming Offense tactical.  Further testing is requited still, from the data I have been collecting, the DPS between Force Melt with Melting Center and Force Fracture is decent. give or take 12% difference.  The graph I have been seeing shows the burst points than compared to the steady line.  I am going to be testing this on IPCPT in R4 HM tonight just to see what is wrong with it as well as what can be improved.  This response is not to defend what ChrisDurel stated, I am collecting data at this point.  I have been following your posts and so far I haven't disagreed.

[Aethyriel]

6 minutes ago, Sikssix said:

Force Fracture works best with Overwhelming Offense tactical.

It shouldn't. Nobody should have to use some generic +x % dmg tactical. it's simply not fun. I mean, I don't even understand why the skill exists in the first place while you could've just given the effect to Force Scream instead. What do we do with it now? use it when >4 m from an enemy and no VT / DST / FR ready as to not waste a gcd? Then, FF could've had a cooldown and do a lot more burst dmg - making it an actual burst option instead of a joke. And shouldn't it provide more ST dps as you give up aoe dps? You just lose both? Who makes that crap up?

Testing the new 'rotation' on the PTS is just a dumpster fire fueled by lunacy. You play Draining and Bleeding and then end up with 28 Fury as FR becomes available because you had crappy luck with dot crits or you just happen to fall into a slump with rage generation via bleeds / implant due to lack of crits again and you're short even more Fury as you're forced to use BA which you should not be doing as you can't use any non rage spender outside of Berserk or you'll very likely lack Fury. That is supposed to be fun now? Having to rely on pure luck of whether or not you're gonna get enough Fury or Rage? Completely taking the control away from the player and just making it an RNG fest. because that's what players totally love, right? Having no tight control over their own performance, just having to rely on dumb luck like you're some sort of Deception Assassin.

I mean, ofc you can play Juyo and Blood Fury and have all the excitement and managing power of the old Draining + BF spec but without any of its DPS or being rewarded properly for doing something comparatively difficult (at least to other faceroll specs out dpsing us after this moronic patch). I mean, it's 800 DPS that vanish as soon as you spread dots that quickly eat your berserk. what garbage.

[Sikssix]

2 hours ago, Aethyriel said:

It shouldn't. Nobody should have to use some generic +x % dmg tactical. it's simply not fun. I mean, I don't even understand why the skill exists in the first place while you could've just given the effect to Force Scream instead. What do we do with it now? use it when >4 m from an enemy and no VT / DST / FR ready as to not waste a gcd? Then, FF could've had a cooldown and do a lot more burst dmg - making it an actual burst option instead of a joke. And shouldn't it provide more ST dps as you give up aoe dps? You just lose both? Who makes that crap up?

Testing the new 'rotation' on the PTS is just a dumpster fire fueled by lunacy. You play Draining and Bleeding and then end up with 28 Fury as FR becomes available because you had crappy luck with dot crits or you just happen to fall into a slump with rage generation via bleeds / implant due to lack of crits again and you're short even more Fury as you're forced to use BA which you should not be doing as you can't use any non rage spender outside of Berserk or you'll very likely lack Fury. That is supposed to be fun now? Having to rely on pure luck of whether or not you're gonna get enough Fury or Rage? Completely taking the control away from the player and just making it an RNG fest. because that's what players totally love, right? Having no tight control over their own performance, just having to rely on dumb luck like you're some sort of Deception Assassin.

I mean, ofc you can play Juyo and Blood Fury and have all the excitement and managing power of the old Draining + BF spec but without any of its DPS or being rewarded properly for doing something comparatively difficult (at least to other faceroll specs out dpsing us after this moronic patch). I mean, it's 800 DPS that vanish as soon as you spread dots that quickly eat your berserk. what garbage.

It shouldn't, I agree with you, but the numbers didn't lie, I just got done with our run tonight, it was real rough and the burst isn't enough with this set up, the DPS was there, but at the same time, we had some alternative changes, I will retest this tomorrow night and see if I can get better numbers as I am not fully set on a rotation on IPCPT yet.  I also still need to test this on the PTS.

[ThatRonin]

Look devs, if you need to mitigate Anni's dps numbers fine. But killing our rotations not just to do it, but in addition to it is crossing a lot of lines. Having run some intensive testing, I can tell you right now you need to change the fury generation on bleeding center. Remove the need for the bleeds to crit for fury to generate. If you do that there's guaranteed fury being built instead of random fury being built. Bleeding Center was made with Draining Center having the 10 fury generation in mind. That's why its ok to use now. If you make this change, while we won't be happy about the dps nerf, at least we can play Anni how we want. Which apparently is what you want. I tested juyo rend + blood fury. Its not as good as draining center + bleeding center in the PTS. But its not the worst alternative if you want to use it. But it does significantly less dps. But as things are right now, players are going to see that 2x damage generation, continue to pick draining center and hate how bleeding center doesn't help them get that last 2-6 fury they need and stop using Anni. Or the worst situation is picking draining center + blood fury where there's 10 fury missing and need 3-4 gcds. And really stop using Anni.

Give Anni more fury generation somewhere not in line 23 or line 43. It doesn't need to be much. Like I said we just need 2-6 more fury so we can actually choose whatever we want. Will the best players continue to pick draining center? Yes. It does the most damage. That's what we want. Because it makes us competitive and worth taking into NiM raids. But having to choose RNG resources with dps numbers or all the resources but no dps is not a choice. IMO line 39 needs something better than what it has. It's honestly a waste of a line. Put some more fury building in there or rage building even for the rupture bleed ticking. If we didn't need to juggle our resources so much all you are doing would simply just suck but be livable with. The real crux of the problem is fury generation. Solve that and a lot of the critique you're getting is gone. It'll still be there, but it'll lessen. The fact that Fury/Concentration doesn't need to use assault or battering assault period is something that should be changed. It has perfect fury and rage generation. Offer that to Anni. Carnage is close to perfect, but if you screw up rotation you're done. But it has better fury and rage generation than Anni in 7.2. Even in live in fact. 

Just fix the fury generation problem. The damage nerf is enough. I used my current rotation to get a 32k parse on pts. But I hated every second of it because I had to fight for it. I shouldn't be fighting for it. And I hated the 30k parse I got for juyo rend + blood fury because that doesn't look good for raid teams to bring into NiM. And I especially hated the super easy resource generation 29k parse I got with juyo rend + bleeding center. I hope its obvious why. 

This change you're aiming to implement is driving a wedge between you and your players every time you make these awful changes. Stop driving us away. Just stop. Come up with better solutions.  

[Deaconik]

7 hours ago, Exly said:

Do they even have any target dps numbers, or do they just say that they do to try to justify changes?  

If they do have them, they they should publish them.

If not, then they should stop saying that they do.

Until then, I don't believe them when they say that they do.

They posted something bakc in 5.x or 6.x where they ranked multiple DPS specs and showed their target DPS, it shouldn't be hard to post this for the current version. As they seems to have this and follow this.

[Sikssix]

4 hours ago, Deaconik said:

They posted something bakc in 5.x or 6.x where they ranked multiple DPS specs and showed their target DPS, it shouldn't be hard to post this for the current version. As they seems to have this and follow this.

I hope they do share that information with the current patch.  They have always talked about that but haven't shared since then.

[wonderingjedi]

On 11/10/2022 at 1:53 PM, Shabir_Dhillon said:

Balance Changes Coming to Game Update 7.2

Hey everyone, Shabir here with another round of balance changes. On this pass, we took a look at Tanks across all 3 disciplines and made adjustments to bring up their Threat generation as well as  damage in line with our targets for tanks. There are also adjustments made to Marauder/Sentinel and Mercenary/Commando. We look forward to seeing your feedback on these balance changes and will post updates on any changes that may occur in this thread. Be sure to check out these changes on the PTS and leave feedback here. Thanks and take it easy. 

General

• Threat generation has been increased for all tank combat styles.

 

Assassin/Shadow

Darkness/Kinetic Combat

• Depredating Volts/Cascading Debris damage has been increased by 5%

• Mounting Darkness/Pulsating Force now increases Discharge/Force Breach and Wither's/Slow Time’s damage by 30%, up from 20%. 

• Energize/Particle Acceleration now additionally reduces the Force cost of Shock/Project by 15 while in effect. 

• Assassinate/Spinning Strike now has a 100% chance to trigger Energize/Particle Acceleration.

• Spike's/Spinning Kick’s stun duration is increased by 1 second. 

• Spike/Spinning Kick now applies 10% damage reduction to the user whenever it deals damage for 6 seconds.

• The Dark Forces/Light Forces ability mod now heals for 2% of max health whenever damage is dealt to a taunted target, up from 1%. 

• Increased the damage reduction given by the Dark Charge/Combat Technique passive ability from 2% to 5%. (15)

• Severing Slash/Cleaving Cut has been redesigned for Darkness/Kinetic Combat. It now does the following:

  • Strikes targets in a cone, dealing weapon damage, immobilizing targets for 2 seconds, then slowing them for an additional 6 seconds once the immobilize effect wears off. (68)

• The Ward of the Continuum tactical has been redesigned. It now does the following:

  • Dark Ward/Kinetic Ward now has 10 charges and Dark Bulwark/Kinetic Bulwark can no longer restore charges. Consuming a charge of Dark Ward/Kinetic Ward increases defense chance by 1%. This effect stacks up to 10 times and lasts for 20 seconds or until Dark Ward/Kinetic Ward is reactivated. (43)

• Fixed an issue where Reckless Defense/Potent Defense was incorrectly adding multiple stacks with Depredating Volts/Cascading Debris.

• Gloom Ward now does 50% more damage upon Dark Ward/Kinetic Ward breaking from damage.

• Increased the duration of Reckless Defense/Potent Defense from 6 seconds to 10 seconds. 

 

 

So I just ran a bunch of open world to try these darkness changes out.

In my opinion tanks need way more than this to spice them up to get more people interested in playing them.  Finding tanks for pugs is a pain and i think lots of that has to do with fun factor.

All of the damage output increases are a nice improvement.  I feel tanks in this game hit like a wet noodle and take lots of the fun out.

Can we just make spike a default skill for darkness please like it was in 6.0 and earlier.  Picking between super high threat/spike damage and a very tiny 10% damage reduction for 6 seconds is not really a choice. People will take the damage almost every time unless you have to or you will die.

Severing slash/cleaving cut is a horrible skill and you should just remove it from the game.  Might be nice for pvp or something.

So i messed around quite a bit with that continuum tactical..........It still feels like blaaaaahhhhh.  The other choices that tactical has to compete with for ops is far more superior than this one.  Open world the tactical will be ok.  I will say i got the stacks to fall off more often which is good, but giving us defense rating is just garbage.  I would recommend giving us shield rating increase over defense.  This will help amplify what you are trying to do with the tactical.  Also since you can't get random stacks of dark bulwark you need to give us something else like dark ward has no cooldown or give us 2% more shield absorb from dark bulwark stacks instead of 1%.  Or you could do something with the defense stacks like when you activate dark ward when you have 5-10 stacks of defense increase, you get 5-10% more shield chance for the entire next dark ward.  You should really make tank tacticals so good that the player really has to think which one is best for a fight or best for there strat.  Do I want a extra stealth for the force shroud cheese or is the damage mitigation from continuum way more important?

All the other changes i can't say anything on because i would need to test them out in ops.

Edited November 16, 2022 by wonderingjedi

[sithBracer]

20 hours ago, RikuvonDrake said:

reasonable, now nerf deception cause its too good honestly

Deception was nerfed without giving people a chance to test it, or even make their voice heard about it. It is trash in warzones, trash in tank/healer games, meh in PvE.

The only game mode that it was actually good in, 4dps vs 4dps, is being removed. If you are angry because you were ganked by 4 assassins, ask yourself where the other 7 people on your team were and why you all couldn't take care of 4 people while the sins were in stealth doing nothing.

[Sikssix]

13 hours ago, Sikssix said:

After testing Force Fracture alone with a few other things, here is what I can say about it:

 

It is bursty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wasted space for lols.  After testing between Cauterize + Spiteful Saber as well as with Force Fracture + Overwhelming Offense, there is only a 2K DPS difference, looking at graphs while testing Force Fracture and reviewing a typical pull, it is apparent what needs to be taken into place:

 

Live server:

23: Melting Center for obvious reasons

27:  Debilitating Slashes for focus regen (if possible, or go Trans depending fights)

39: Force Fracture for the test

43:  Could have made more DPS burst with Force Clarity but the centering regen (or lack of) was brutal, opted for Burning Center to work with it

Rest doesn't matter.

 

The rotation rarely visits Slash as compared to Cauterize + Spiteful Saber.  The opening is almost similar, however, instead of applying Force Fracture once (like you would with cauterize), you start spamming Force Fracture about four times, then use TST or Blade Barrage, then rebuild centering until 30, which with the choices above, should be quick, by then, get your stacks and DoTs on and use Merciless Slash, then spam Force Fracture again.  Further testing is obviously required, this is something I wanted to report for the time being, I will test this again on the PTS soon.

I have just did my first few pulls with Force Fracture with this set up but on PTS, I can easily say, with the changes for 7.2 PTS, Force Fracture just became useless, even after buffing it.  I have only managed 28K DPS, without any debuffs on the dummy.  The rotation is completely skewed now because of the changes here.  I didn't stop there, I also decided to go back to the traditional way, and since the PTS has been updated, I can't even break 27K DPS on a debuffed dummy.  After trying with multiple combinations to boot. 

 

As of this post, they have implemented the nerfs to Melting Center and it is completely useless, even with Burning Center, Burning Center isn't proccing the centering as it claims too.  I have to use Force Clarity to bring my DPS up, and the most I parsed was 25.9K DPS.  With Force Fracture + Overwhelming Offense I did 28K Flat.  I am very confused as to why this spec is becoming burst over DoT.  These changes, the nerfs and deceiving information the developers have provide, and their confirmation of the nerf without knowledge how a DoT spec should be played shows they have no future for this class at all.

 

Chris, Jackie, anybody really, What is going on?  Why are you changing up the spec so much that it skews everything?  You claim the Watchman/Annihilation spec isn't meant to be bursty and DoT specific, yet you place Force Fracture as a burst ability instead of a replacement for Slash, you change the class completely to where any of the abilities chosen don't work well with any combination provided.  You nerf this class to the ground, just as bad as any Ranged DPS, but Juggernaut/Guardian DPS as well as Shadow/Assassin remains untouched, exploiting their DPS through the ceiling, forcing players to abandon their favorite classes just to clear content, especially with R4 Anomaly.

 

I can clearly say this with confidence, the BioWare development team has no clear sign and has lied to their players/subscribers.  I call a vote of no confidence in the development team of BioWare.  They have shown signs that coincide with EA's thirst for power and wealth instead of quality for their fanbase, and has tarnished the name of Star Wars.  Call me toxic about this, I am aware of this, my biggest fear and concern was if this game will get past the ignorance and arrogance of the team, because I honestly enjoyed this game, to every last detail.  I often enjoyed helping others through their quests and endeavors, I know 7.2 isn't the last patch of this game as no one knows the end to this game, but I feel it may come sooner than we anticipate if they keep this kind of work up.

 

I will condemn them though for the amount of work that has been done to the recent planets, and attempt to story write, however, I feel these are becoming rushed and lackluster.  I am unsure of what is going on behind the scenes, I do believe if the developers are requesting for help, hence the PTS, they should take in criticism and suggestions, instead of ignoring them and claiming they are listening to their players.  So I have to ask this once again, Chris, Jackie, anyone in BioWare, what is going on?  Some of us are scared, concerned, angry, and worried.

[vanluina]

21 hours ago, ChrisDurel said:

Hi, thanks for your reply. I will try to answer a few of these as best as I can.

When picking Draining Center, their DPS was too high. The other choices did not bring their DPS nearly to what it was with Draining Center. PTS evens this out a bit more.

And you can still build Centering / Fury stacks with Force Melt / Rend, when choosing the Juyo Melt / Rend mod choice instead. The functionality is simply now spread across multiple mod choices to not make one a clear winner in all situations. Draining Center was giving great burst in addition to adding stacks of Centering. Rotationally, if you choose Juyo Melt on PTS, you can still play the exact same way you could previously (Zen right before Force Melt), you just won't get the 4x damage on Force Melt anymore, but you will build stacks at exactly the same rate.

As far as Force Fracture, this was never intended to wholesale replace Cauterize in operations, it is simply a more burst option if you like it. It has been improved to be more competitive, but it is not supposed to be equal to the others in terms of damage output.

I think the three main issues I have with these changes are:

1. Annihilation heals are out of control as it is, a DPS should not be able to do nearly the raid wide healing it is capable of currently, and the changes do nothing to address this. Quite the opposite, adding a 50% healing buff to Draining Center just makes the healing from Annihilation even more out of control because now you'll be taking a 100K heal roughly every 10 seconds, umn... what??? Add into that, if you take Thirst for Rage, you have even more healing, I predict that some Anni Mara's will be close to 15K healing on some fights with large amounts of adds, that's nonsensical. 

2. The DPS just cannot compare to Fury in any way, in any fight. On the PTS, I can do nearly 3K more DPS using Fury than Annihilation, as a dot spec, it should not be that much lower than a burst spec, and let's be honest, Fury is a burst spec. If you want to have a medium DPS/high heals class, say so, don't send mixed signals by justifying Annihilation DPS nerfs with nonsense about how it performs better than the other Mara classes. 

3. Saying Annihilation has too much burst, but then putting half hearted attempts at making Force Fracture relevant make no sense to me. Force Fracture is the least used ability in the game, there is no rotation, no build, nothing you can do to make FF worth it, zero. So instead of putting your efforts into actually balancing the class, you spend time and money changing the way a useless ability works, so that it can continue to be useless. 

Please, please don't go forward with these changes, they are objectively bad for the class and will lead to a mass exodus of Annihilation players. 

[Aethyriel]

7 hours ago, Deaconik said:

They posted something bakc in 5.x or 6.x where they ranked multiple DPS specs and showed their target DPS, it shouldn't be hard to post this for the current version. As they seems to have this and follow this.

just fyi, melee dot specs were supposed to be +5% above target DPS according to the devs and the current changes to a melee dot spec make it perform one step below target DPS - which is obvious as it's about a 7% nerf overall. Ofc they also wanted melee burst to not be top dps but fury will obviously be top DPS after the patch, so I guess they just don't care anymore or don't know what they're doing - and I really believe it's both.

[Sikssix]

1 hour ago, Aethyriel said:

just fyi, melee dot specs were supposed to be +5% above target DPS according to the devs and the current changes to a melee dot spec make it perform one step below target DPS - which is obvious as it's about a 7% nerf overall. Ofc they also wanted melee burst to not be top dps but fury will obviously be top DPS after the patch, so I guess they just don't care anymore or don't know what they're doing - and I really believe it's both.

Here is what I feel, and I hope this makes sense for everyone and I will do my best to make it coincide to your statement.

 

1.  Any DoT spec should be more or less heavily focused onto bosses and SHOULD do +2 - 5% above target DPS.  If the boss is down most of the time, this spec should shine over Burst or AOE specs.

2.  Direct (burst) DPS specs should prioritize on heavy and fast hits, in bursts.  If the fight has quick mechanics and/or the boss/mobs phase in and out quickly, this spec should shine over DoT or AOE specs.

3. AOE DPS is sort of self explanitory.  Their DPS shouldn't be high end for prolonged fights or quick mechanics, instead, when it comes to mob heavy fights, their DPS should shine over DoT or Burst.

 

This hasn't been like so in awhile if I recall.  

[Crystal_Mind]

14 minutes ago, Sikssix said:

3. AOE DPS is sort of self explanitory.  Their DPS shouldn't be high end for prolonged fights or quick mechanics, instead, when it comes to mob heavy fights, their DPS should shine over DoT or Burst.

Question: what would you define as an "AoE Spec"?

Many specs have some level of passive cleave or dotspread, with Engineering perhaps being the baseline example of a spec that sacrifices none of its ST dps to gain that cleave, but even engineering is grossly outperformed in a proper AoE situation by Vengeance and Hatred, which are indisputably melee dot specs. Can you expand a bit on your thought process?

(I have no dispute on the first two points).

[Aethyriel]

10 minutes ago, Sikssix said:

This hasn't been like so in awhile if I recall.  

I mean, just look at Veng jugg compared to other classes and the absurdity of the balancing becomes apparent where you gain ST dmg due to doing more aoe dmg. But it also has not been true for many other classes and specs. the bigger issue also being a lack of utility or survivability of certain classes when faced with generic mechanics. If these were minor then we could overlook those but some classes like operatives just offer so little compared to what you have to compensate one has to wonder why this has not been addressed at all. DPS targets are fine and all but Concealment used to be top ST DPS and still nobody played it due to how squishy and inflexible it was (nvm they nerfed the ST DPS for no reason making the spec even less useful).

Imo the goal of balancing a game should be to allow players to play what they want and not have significant drop-offs in group performance on almost any boss. Rn though, you're massively handicapped the fewer Pyro PTs you can bring like you were previously handicapped if you couldn't bring an operative for kolto burst healing pre-nerf. Like what they did to lightning - just no reason to play it over a sniper except maybe self cleanse. But if that was somehow super important and you needed range, you'd still always go with IO or even Balance over Ling. The spec offers nothing. Similar situations arise for operative specs, Deception, APT, MM, Arsenal - heck, even Hatred, Rage/Fury due to leaps are just strictly worse than alternatives.

The pool of useful classes is so limited and some classes are absurdly niche in their usefulness like Hatred being great for Dominique and virtually nothing else. And the Anni DPS argument is simply refuted by the statistics of operations we have at our disposal. 6th in overall DPS, 7th in boss DPS across MM operations and never the best in any challenge statistic (burn phases and such) outside of Nahut where it's top 2 - but then again, almost only 3 specs were ever played there.

So, if a 4m melee without any burst is overperforming so drastically DPS wise, what's up with the rest then? What is the goal? This is nonsensical and misguided by the devs. 

[Sikssix]

17 minutes ago, Crystal_Mind said:

Question: what would you define as an "AoE Spec"?

Many specs have some level of passive cleave or dotspread, with Engineering perhaps being the baseline example of a spec that sacrifices none of its ST dps to gain that cleave, but even engineering is grossly outperformed in a proper AoE situation by Vengeance and Hatred, which are indisputably melee dot specs. Can you expand a bit on your thought process?

(I have no dispute on the first two points).

I should have clarified this is what I believe what it should be, my apologies for the miscommunication here.  My thought process is difficult due to my mental disability, I even have a hard time understanding it at times.

[Sikssix]

14 minutes ago, Aethyriel said:

I mean, just look at Veng jugg compared to other classes and the absurdity of the balancing becomes apparent where you gain ST dmg due to doing more aoe dmg. But it also has not been true for many other classes and specs. the bigger issue also being a lack of utility or survivability of certain classes when faced with generic mechanics. If these were minor then we could overlook those but some classes like operatives just offer so little compared to what you have to compensate one has to wonder why this has not been addressed at all. DPS targets are fine and all but Concealment used to be top ST DPS and still nobody played it due to how squishy and inflexible it was (nvm they nerfed the ST DPS for no reason making the spec even less useful).

Imo the goal of balancing a game should be to allow players to play what they want and not have significant drop-offs in group performance on almost any boss. Rn though, you're massively handicapped the fewer Pyro PTs you can bring like you were previously handicapped if you couldn't bring an operative for kolto burst healing pre-nerf. Like what they did to lightning - just no reason to play it over a sniper except maybe self cleanse. But if that was somehow super important and you needed range, you'd still always go with IO or even Balance over Ling. The spec offers nothing. Similar situations arise for operative specs, Deception, APT, MM, Arsenal - heck, even Hatred, Rage/Fury due to leaps are just strictly worse than alternatives.

The pool of useful classes is so limited and some classes are absurdly niche in their usefulness like Hatred being great for Dominique and virtually nothing else. And the Anni DPS argument is simply refuted by the statistics of operations we have at our disposal. 6th in overall DPS, 7th in boss DPS across MM operations and never the best in any challenge statistic (burn phases and such) outside of Nahut where it's top 2 - but then again, almost only 3 specs were ever played there.

So, if a 4m melee without any burst is overperforming so drastically DPS wise, what's up with the rest then? What is the goal? This is nonsensical and misguided by the devs. 

I have people telling me to swap to juggy to obtain said better DPS and viability, or become buff bot since some groups don't want me to play as Watchman in R4 HM because some believe it makes the fight that much harder.  As I said, I fail to find any reason to disagree with you at all here. 

[alexroof]

16 hours ago, Aethyriel said:

It shouldn't. Nobody should have to use some generic +x % dmg tactical. it's simply not fun. I mean, I don't even understand why the skill exists in the first place while you could've just given the effect to Force Scream instead. What do we do with it now? use it when >4 m from an enemy and no VT / DST / FR ready as to not waste a gcd? Then, FF could've had a cooldown and do a lot more burst dmg - making it an actual burst option instead of a joke. And shouldn't it provide more ST dps as you give up aoe dps? You just lose both? Who makes that crap up?

Testing the new 'rotation' on the PTS is just a dumpster fire fueled by lunacy. You play Draining and Bleeding and then end up with 28 Fury as FR becomes available because you had crappy luck with dot crits or you just happen to fall into a slump with rage generation via bleeds / implant due to lack of crits again and you're short even more Fury as you're forced to use BA which you should not be doing as you can't use any non rage spender outside of Berserk or you'll very likely lack Fury. That is supposed to be fun now? Having to rely on pure luck of whether or not you're gonna get enough Fury or Rage? Completely taking the control away from the player and just making it an RNG fest. because that's what players totally love, right? Having no tight control over their own performance, just having to rely on dumb luck like you're some sort of Deception Assassin.

I mean, ofc you can play Juyo and Blood Fury and have all the excitement and managing power of the old Draining + BF spec but without any of its DPS or being rewarded properly for doing something comparatively difficult (at least to other faceroll specs out dpsing us after this moronic patch). I mean, it's 800 DPS that vanish as soon as you spread dots that quickly eat your berserk. what garbage.

Totally agree with that carnage has to use that garbage "tactical overwhelmed offense" since god fang tactical was removed only after reintroducing god fang 2.0 carnage got at least decent back in the game with dps. just sayin

[Sikssix]

7 minutes ago, alexroof said:

Totally agree with that carnage has to use that garbage "tactical overwhelmed offense" since god fang tactical was removed only after reintroducing god fang 2.0 carnage got at least decent back in the game with dps. just sayin

I agree, a basic tactical is straight up booty, however, when I was testing it with Force Fracture, it worked.  It shouldn't, but it did.  I also tested this a bit in IPCPT, there were some hiccups in the run last night, so I will be testing further to see how useful this combo really is.  Even though it's 2K DPS difference between traditional and this, I believe this may work.  Will report soon.