Snipers/Slingers need some Reworks done to them

[SentinalMasterWW]

Since the launch of 7.0 Snipers/Slingers have largely been ignored in terms of buffs and major changes, in 7.3 Commando's/Mercs got a buff in mobility, and not too long ago Lightning/TK sorcs got a buff. Snipers/slingers really have not had anything major, Marksman/Sharpshooter especially are in a really bad spot right now for PVP and PVE. 

These are suggestions and keep in mind this is my own Opinion, if you have thoughts feel free to share them. 

General Changes 

-Buff Energy Regulators to two energy per sec while in cover 

-Evasion should be reverted back to its own ability, and be a mainline ability for all sniper specs.

-Debalitate should also be a mainline CC for sniper specs. 

-Evasive Maneuvers no longer grants evasion, it now just resets the cooldown of Covered Escape. I thought about adding the 15% roll heal back but that might be too much right now. 

-In the Combat Style Trees, Flash Bang would replace Debilitate as an option for an additional AOE CC.

Marksman 

-I think the simplest way to buff marksman is to change Zeroing Shots to do the following 

Snipe zeroes in your sights, reducing the activating time of your next Ambush by 0.25 seconds. Stacks up to 2 times. At two Stacks your Next Ambush Critically hits. 

I feel the biggest issue with Marksman is that it's burst windows are not consistent compared to say Gunnery, Concentrated Fire package makes it so that whenever you pop your cell window, your Mag Bolt or High Impact bolt are always going to crit. Having Zeroing shots at two stacks make it so your next Ambush always critically hits, would help the spec in its burst windows without buffing abilities DMG.

Virulence 

I think Virulence is fine where its at and does not really need any changes. 

Engineering 

-Nerf the Crit Bonus passives mods from the new 20% down to 10%. 

-Remove the 50% DMG Bonus on Ionic Discharge. 

Engi is to strong right now, Ionic is still way to broken of a tactical. Engi already has a lot of control compared to other specs, and it's tree just has all the Crit bonus passives. Keep in Mind I love engi, I play only Ruthless Interrogation though as I hate the No skill tactical Ionic. Engi is even more broken on a PVP map like Quesh huttball where Ranged is literally untouchable on that map. The nerfs to engi would not break it, it would still be a top tier DPS Spec, but it tones it down a bit. 

[Zunayson]

The autocrit on ambush seems a bit heavy handed since we already have lazy target. I'd like to see something that makes Takedown hit harder though. 

Making the stuns baseline would probably be overpowered, given what other classes have.

Evasive Meanuvres tree choice is a bit unbalanced because it's a clear winner for how powerful it is in Pvp. id like to see part of that tree choice become baseline. IMO the roll reset should become baseline but not the evasion. But I'm open to either way.

The real problem is sniper is not a well designed class, it's very hard to play but not bad. 

[Crazykidddd]

Sniper is all but incredible in pvp rn. The amount of control all 3 specs have, especially over melee is actually pretty ruthless and the damage is there.
The problem with sniper is it takes skill to play, it's almost without a doubt the class with the highest skill ceiling in the game, so you usually either get wrecked or you wreck, as snipers can quite literally be untouchable for the most part if played right.

Having said that, while most of the suggestions you made to buff snipers would make it op, I do think marksman needs a general damage buff. You can play around and add some utility to it (especially the roll buff, which is op for the other 2 but miserable for MM) but imo its abilities just need a flat dmg buff. 

The one thing I think MM RLY needs imo is for the snipe utility that makes it auto cast when entering or exiting cover to be mainline for the spec, bcs it has too much casting and 1.4 seconds in pvp to do anything if you dont have pen blast up is too much. 

Edited November 6, 2023 by Crazykidddd

[wepeel]

On 11/6/2023 at 7:52 PM, Crazykidddd said:

as snipers can quite literally be untouchable for the most part if played right.

They can when facing a single melee opponent, e.g. they handle juggs and marauders well, and PTs better than some classes. Put 2+ opponents on them though, or even one ranged, and their ability to keep themselves alive drops very quickly. Under any kind of serious focus they really struggle to do more than slightly delay their demise. On top of that, since they need to be stationary for such a big part of their damage output they're very vulnerable to being los:ed.

[Luciferior]

Ill agree with the sentiment that marksman/sharpshooter could use some love but any buffs should be limited to those specs they should not be something engi/sabo vir/dirty can benefit from 

Otherwise we risk making those other 2 specs that much better widening the distance between those 2 vs marks/sharp

I dont think its an exaggeration for me to say in terms of PvP you encounter a good or even decent engi sniper their a pain to deal with especially if they have a team thats paying attention to them peeling guarding or even healing them...

Tossing in 2 decent engi/sabos duoing together on the same team in coms focusing firing on someone its downright miserable for any class...

Now to be fair a decent sniper/slinger shouldnt be punished for understanding their spec and being mechanically proficient at it but there is a fine line of being good at a spec that requires understanding to be ok at it and playing something that might be from a different players perspective broken as hell then said spec turns into something obnoxious especially when you start factoring in people stacking multiples of the same spec on a team and piling on one target

While on the notion of buffing marksman/sharp I do think broadsword should be wary of trying to bring up marksman/sharpshooter to engi/sabos level or even attempting to get it in the same ball park as then PvP ques could potentially end up being Star wars gone call of duty where its nothing but snipers/slingers

The idea of a match of mostly snipers/slingers blasting each other from across the map might seem fun as hell unless I were a lone melee spec in that match then maybe not so fun

 

Of course all the ideas of class balance throughout the forums are truly fascinating yet they all hinge on the same reality and that is... 

Who ever is in charge of class balance needs to open their damn eyeballs and actually go thru the classes and look at some of this buffoonery and adjust it

As I am sure most people are aware when you encounter specs in PvP regardless of the class your going to find people running the same perk choices alot of the time whether be because some perks are so good Or the other choices are literally worthless

Case and point would be a perk in the commando/merc dps lines I forget the name of the skill but basically it makes explosive round immobilize a target ...yet if that target takes damage with in that duration said target is able to move again ... If i recall correctly that duration is 2 seconds

Now I wouldnt take that literal dog crap perk roleplaying on Tython and I highly doubt anyone in PvP playing gunnery/arsenal io/as would take that perk over making reactive shield healing you at 10 stacks the fact that explosive round perk is in the last line that can be chosen is asinine *Period*

Not every perk needs to be so good you just cant live without but every perk that can be manually picked should be worth something I wager every single class and discipline in this game has perks like that which seem to completely worthless and fill no role no matter where you try to utilize it

Some perks are a trade off like on jugg mad dash vs the reflect and for players like me on my commando I slot one man army instead of adrenalin surge...

I can build into glass stats like that a good amount of accuracy high mastery decent crit then I can pop electro net to get that alacrity boost at the same time If I get someone off guard I can melt them seconds or Ill melt in seconds but the perk serves a purpose 

This last bit is going to be brutal and its going to be directed right at you broadsword your company claims to read the forums regarding these issues of class balance as the same devs did while they were bioware..

Yet every class and discipline I wager has these perks that can be picked which are utterly worthless in every aspect of the game this is unacceptable if the person or persons in charge of rectifying these *oversights* in terms of class balance cannot come up with alternatives that serve some applicable use to least 1 aspect of the game then they should be placed in job more suited to their talents *If they have any to begin with*

Because personally it is not that hard to log on a class pick a discipline and start looking at some of the perks and try to think of where it might be useable and if I cant think of any even in the most outlandish and extreme situations then why is it still there why hasnt it been changed?

Why not move those worthless perks make them passives or outright delete them to make room for some of the perks that are actually useful and desired but cannot be picked because of the lines there in vs something that is just flat out better

If I were in charge of balancing the classes and I with my own eyes saw these perks that seemed to be worthless in any aspect of the game and the player base refused to use them *IN ANY ASPECT OF THE GAME* while I refused to change them to serve some kind of purpose of any aspect of the game ... I would be completely incompetent and should be fired from my position and replaced with someone who maybe has a bit of an imagination...

 

Edited March 22 by Luciferior

[Ajalkaar]

On 11/6/2023 at 7:08 AM, SentinalMasterWW said:

-Evasive Maneuvers no longer grants evasion, it now just resets the cooldown of Covered Escape. I thought about adding the 15% roll heal back but that might be too much right now. 

I would keep the roll reset on evasion. Also roll was 10% not 15% and if you want to bring back roll heal you should nerf cover heal wich as been buffed in 7.0. It used to be 2% every 3s now its 3% every 2s.

so 0.66%/s before    1.5%/s after is a huge buff.


 

 

On 11/6/2023 at 7:08 AM, SentinalMasterWW said:

-I think the simplest way to buff marksman is to change Zeroing Shots to do the following 

Snipe zeroes in your sights, reducing the activating time of your next Ambush by 0.25 seconds. Stacks up to 2 times. At two Stacks your Next Ambush Critically hits. 

This wouldn't work you forgot about supercrit. For those who don't know what a super crit is I'll explain:

When your crit chance for an ability are above 100% any percentage above 100% are converted into crit multiplier. That's why autocrits hit harder.
So if you add another autocrit on ambush ppl would be able to spam 200K instant ambushes in PvP.

[Zunayson]

5 hours ago, Ajalkaar said:

I would keep the roll reset on evasion. Also roll was 10% not 15% and if you want to bring back roll heal you should nerf cover heal wich as been buffed in 7.0. It used to be 2% every 3s now its 3% every 2s.

so 0.66%/s before    1.5%/s after is a huge buff.


 

 

This wouldn't work you forgot about supercrit. For those who don't know what a super crit is I'll explain:

When your crit chance for an ability are above 100% any percentage above 100% are converted into crit multiplier. That's why autocrits hit harder.
So if you add another autocrit on ambush ppl would be able to spam 200K instant ambushes in PvP.

I think the reason he didn't keep the roll reset on evasion was because that would be getting rid of Evasive maneuvers altogether. The purpose is to nerf Evasive maneuvers (to free up other ability tree choices) without taking away sniper capabilities. This has the added benefit of separating Countermeasures speedboost from Evasion survivability, which reverts the brainless/pruning introduced in 7.0.

I like the new vital regulators, it gives some much needed sustained survivability, and I would prefer to keep that way since snipers already have powerful burst survivability (roll and countermeasures)

I also agree with the general thrust of increasing Marksman's damage (I only play MM), but double critical damage on Ambush feels lame, and the crying over that + B-0 tactical would be way, way worse than the crying we hear now about engy bomb. I think any significant DPS increases would just unbalanced Pve though. White damage has pvp disadvantages that don't apply to pve:

• Players have more White defense chance than Yellow defense chance; pve bosses have the same. Accuracy on gear is a small cost.
• White defense chance abilities like predation really really hurt marksman -- in large group fights that's an additional average 10% dmg penalty, if enemy maras can rotate the uptime.

It's unfortunately not solvable, since removing accuracy from game mechanics is too big of a change, and properly compensating white damage specs with a much-deserved damage increase would unbalance PVE. Edit: The easiest solution is to remove yellow defense chance from pve bosses, so that only white damage specs will gear for accuracy; then white damage base damage can be buffed across the board to compensate.

Edited June 27 by Zunayson

[AdjeYo]

6 hours ago, Zunayson said:

I think the reason he didn't keep the roll reset on evasion was because that would be getting rid of Evasive maneuvers altogether. The purpose is to nerf Evasive maneuvers (to free up other ability tree choices) without taking away sniper capabilities. This has the added benefit of separating Countermeasures speedboost from Evasion survivability, which reverts the brainless/pruning introduced in 7.0.

I like the new vital regulators, it gives some much needed sustained survivability, and I would prefer to keep that way since snipers already have powerful burst survivability (roll and countermeasures)

I also agree with the general thrust of increasing Marksman's damage (I only play MM), but double critical damage on Ambush feels lame, and the crying over that + B-0 tactical would be way, way worse than the crying we hear now about engy bomb. I think any significant DPS increases would just unbalanced Pve though. White damage has pvp disadvantages that don't apply to pve:

• Players have more White defense chance than Yellow defense chance; pve bosses have the same. Accuracy on gear is a small cost.
• White defense chance abilities like predation really really hurt marksman -- in large group fights that's an additional average 10% dmg penalty, if enemy maras can rotate the uptime.

It's unfortunately not solvable, since removing accuracy from game mechanics is too big of a change, and properly compensating white damage specs with a much-deserved damage increase would unbalance PVE. Edit: The easiest solution is to remove yellow defense chance from pve bosses, so that only white damage specs will gear for accuracy; then white damage base damage can be buffed across the board to compensate.

That would just make gearing even more annoying, keeping different sets for how much white damage your class deals. Easier to just make the base defense chance everyone gets apply to both white and yellow damage. That would completely equalise white and yellow damage before defensives.

As for white defense chance abilities, there are also abilities that specifically target yellow damage (like a Sin tank's Deflection), something like a shroud and abilities that specifically target dots (like Sin and Operative purges and some dot damage reduction passives), which tend to be yellow damage.

 

But overall I don't think the current system even needs changing. Marksmanship is bad in both PvE and PvP, so it surely can stand to gain a bit without breaking PvE. Mostly some burst really, since that is what it should do well. I'd propose something like this:

Using Ambush while under the effects of Sniper Volley grants Insert cool name here, resetting the cooldown on Ambush and making your next Ambush activate instantly. Can only occur once every 10 seconds (effectively only once every Sniper Volley).

It makes Sniper Volley grant you some actually great burst, without making Marksmanship completely crazy.

[Ajalkaar]

7 hours ago, Zunayson said:

I think the reason he didn't keep the roll reset on evasion was because that would be getting rid of Evasive maneuvers altogether. The purpose is to nerf Evasive maneuvers (to free up other ability tree choices) without taking away sniper capabilities. This has the added benefit of separating Countermeasures speedboost from Evasion survivability, which reverts the brainless/pruning introduced in 7.0.

Yes I know but I would still keep the roll reset on evasion like it was on 6.0 with the repositioning set it makes more sense than being on countermeasures.

 

 

7 hours ago, Zunayson said:

I like the new vital regulators, it gives some much needed sustained survivability, and I would prefer to keep that way since snipers already have powerful burst survivability (roll and countermeasures)

I've already discussed this in multiple threads. The problem with vital regulators is that they are only good for healing when you're standing still in cover. It's useful for recovering HP after a burst, but when you're actually focused, it's pretty much useless because you need to move a lot, roll, kite, reposition, etc. Since the first tick of healing only happens 2 seconds after crouching, most of the time you will have 0% uptime on the vital regulator when playing defensively, which is paradoxical.

That's why I prefer roll healing more. It provides small bursts of healing while you're focused and playing defensively, allowing better distribution of your off-heals between moments when you don't need it and moments when you actually do.

Let's look at the math:

The old regulator heals at 0.66% per second. With roll and evasion on cooldown, you get about 3 rolls every 45 seconds, so 30/45 = 0.66% per second.

In total, we have 1.33% per second compared to 1.5% per second (at 100% uptime, which will never happen), but roll healing offers better healing distribution than the current vital regulators.

Additionally, vital regulators are nerfed more quickly due to uptime depending on your match. For all these reasons, I believe roll healing is better.

[Ajalkaar]

7 hours ago, Zunayson said:

It's unfortunately not solvable, since removing accuracy from game mechanics is too big of a change, and properly compensating white damage specs with a much-deserved damage increase would unbalance PVE. Edit: The easiest solution is to remove yellow defense chance from pve bosses, so that only white damage specs will gear for accuracy; then white damage base damage can be buffed across the board to compensate.

Not really they could just remove accuracy as a stat given by gear and remove all passive defense chances on players and bosses it's easy to do. Or they can have 2 seperate system were in PvP all white dmg abilities has their accuracy passively increased or something like that.

A spec shouldn't be less efficient on everyone only because of it's type of damage, it's just unfair fo no reason.