Class Balance Issues

[MercMara]

There's a few class specs that are leaps and bounds ahead of the others. Mainly in PvP. 

Madness Sorc's are at the top of that list. Sorcerer's have 3 class heals, 2 instant one a cast. They're healed by their bubble. Massive heals from Force Leach & Death Brand. Heals from their DoTs. More damage reduction than any other class. Insane mobility. Phase Walk. hard Bubble. Lets not forget ridiculous burst. Lastly, 10% defensive chance. I main Innovative Ordinance and a semi decent player on madness can face tank all my dps solely through heals, DR and defensive chance.  

AP PT, the difficulty level for the best burst in the game is ridiculous. For a class with the least number of abilities in the rotation should not do the DPS they do. When you can hit 18-21k DPS in a Voidstar from all single target damage the spec is broken. 

Rage Jug VS Fury Mara. Rage jug's burst is still good, and they can do amazing DPS. Fury Mara on the other hand is pathetic in comparison. Mara's in general have the worst DCD's in the game currently. 

 

Cleave. There's only three specs that can do amazing cleave. Lighting Sorc, Vengeance Jug and Lethality OP. Anni mara for instance is a joke in comparison. The DoT spread is terrible. The smashes hit for less than a Jug tanks do. Its a joke. 

Im sure this game no longer has any actual devs but darn, can we at least get something close to class balance so its not just large groups of meta chasers every warzone? 

[Beyrahl]

The games Balance went out the door in 6.0, force bound was a band-aid to hide it, grit teeth healing removed from score board, etc. 

7.0 only made it worse due to pruning and low stat pools. Some specs need critical and have more value in scaling from stats while others get new free critical passives, free passive auto criticals and so on. Looking at rage/ap/hatred/deception putting them levels above the rest if augments were removed or not. Fundamentally I think we've gone too far and without a lot of changes across the board we won't see balance and that's fine. But a meta shift is way overdue. 

So many ways to do so, here's just a few ideas.

• Healing set bonuses are generally lacking and have no good AoE options, unnatural pres to everyone with resurge/reviv was amazing when it bugged out & was meant to be a dxun set. Operative seeing some DR once again like revitalizers back for medicine and or an interesting playstyle changing setbonus. Mercenary having a relatively interesting setbonus would be nice too, I think a way to change how trauma regs would work making it an aoe but weaker instead of the way it is now would be very cool. 
• Talent changes, more drastic ones would be interesting, removing the basic obvious choices and making them base line would go a long way to make things feel better. DR passives, Predation, undying, and so on. Pruning was not really a positive for the game but it can be if done right, sadly, I think it was done horrible making many classes way weaker than ever. 
• New tacticals - looking at spiteful saber, Primed ignition, stormwatch and a few others that only amplify rotational DPS which isn't very "meta" nor applicable for PvP. Something that could alternatively rival the damage these offer would be helpful or simply removing them because they functionally remove options for some of these specs to do competitive DPS. 
• Higher stat pool & HP, we're currently in a burst meta and damage being as high as it is, it's very easy to abuse that meta. More health will make it harder to burst and require more pinpoint play & open up more build options which helps playability of some of the suffering specs. As mentioned not every class has built in auto criticals nor do they have critical passives so higher stat pool helps them perform a lot more than the ones who get it free. 
• Undo pruning but keep setbonus changes and tactical changes. Just give utility and abilities back, like Pull DR and many more. My Sentinels hotbar has like 8 different empty slots now along with Combat still being classified as RANGED when it's a melee. Pls.

Tl;dr a new expansion is probably only way we see any combat changes & simply lowering premade group size would fix a lot of the issues. The games too casual with almost no population allowing for anyone who knows how to PvP to just group up and stomp everyone. If another larger group forms that knows even better, the latter usually disappears and the cycle just loops yet again. The only people truly suffering is the solo player and generally anyone whose not running a full group. 

allowing past 4 was a mistake, it can still be fixed. The damage done to the game however with bad decision after bad decision PvP wise. . Well, that's going to take a lot but thankfully most people who do PvP for the sake of it, are diehards for the game and would be satisfied with minimal changes. 

[NuSeC]

17 hours ago, MercMara said:

There's a few class specs that are leaps and bounds ahead of the others. Mainly in PvP. 

Madness Sorc's are at the top of that list. Sorcerer's have 3 class heals, 2 instant one a cast. They're healed by their bubble. Massive heals from Force Leach & Death Brand. Heals from their DoTs. More damage reduction than any other class. Insane mobility. Phase Walk. hard Bubble. Lets not forget ridiculous burst. Lastly, 10% defensive chance. I main Innovative Ordinance and a semi decent player on madness can face tank all my dps solely through heals, DR and defensive chance.  

AP PT, the difficulty level for the best burst in the game is ridiculous. For a class with the least number of abilities in the rotation should not do the DPS they do. When you can hit 18-21k DPS in a Voidstar from all single target damage the spec is broken. 

Rage Jug VS Fury Mara. Rage jug's burst is still good, and they can do amazing DPS. Fury Mara on the other hand is pathetic in comparison. Mara's in general have the worst DCD's in the game currently. 

 

Cleave. There's only three specs that can do amazing cleave. Lighting Sorc, Vengeance Jug and Lethality OP. Anni mara for instance is a joke in comparison. The DoT spread is terrible. The smashes hit for less than a Jug tanks do. Its a joke. 

Im sure this game no longer has any actual devs but darn, can we at least get something close to class balance so its not just large groups of meta chasers every warzone? 

LOL! Main a merc and complain about sorcs! Mercs can have godlike DCDs and survivability. Hard to join a WZ w/o 3 or 4 mercs/mandos.

Also, your name gives this away. MercMara I have saw good Maras top damage like many other classes and have saw mandos/mercs do it as well.

[RACATW]

4 hours ago, NuSeC said:

LOL! Main a merc and complain about sorcs! Mercs can have godlike DCDs and survivability. Hard to join a WZ w/o 3 or 4 mercs/mandos.

Also, your name gives this away. MercMara I have saw good Maras top damage like many other classes and have saw mandos/mercs do it as well.

Mara can do adequetely meh / ok-ish damage when not focused. Nothing special or super consistent though.

 

The biggest and most massive nerf that occurred in 7.0 was the mara obfuscate removal. It'd be like removing snipers stun and leap immunities by removing cover.

[wepeel]

No mention of deception assassins and operatives? They're both pretty much impossible for any other class to handle 1v1 given similar skill levels, and even with the game being as old as it is there's no effective counter for stealth and/or the ability to dip in and out of combat at will, which leads to a lot of consequences in what those classes are capable of doing. If any classes are in need of a rebalancing for PvP, those are the ones.

[sithBracer]

On 3/18/2024 at 8:31 PM, Beyrahl said:

The games Balance went out the door in 6.0, force bound was a band-aid to hide it, grit teeth healing removed from score board, etc.

Force bound and grit teeth destroyed warzones. Skanks would do incredible damage while living 5ever. Me on a op healer (worst healer in game) and skank friend defended a pylon from 7 average dps. It was made to help the darling juggs in garbage ranked, but destroyed everything else in the process.

[Dyne-]

Welp I'll go ahead and get this out of the way. 

Ability pruning was a horrendous idea and that person owes the playerbase an apology.
Tanks want to do more damage than DPS players while having the most uptime.
Ranged DPS players want to do more damage (and burst) than melee DPS who can't stealth out (and from 30 meters way no less).
Stealth classes want to keep their burst while negotiating for better sustained DPS.
AOE specs want more single target damage while retaining their AOE abilities.
Operatives, mercs, and sniper players miss the glory days of being invincible.
Everyone hates AP PTs.
Everyone hates engineering snipers.
Some Marauder players think that a 90% accuracy debuff that lasts 6 seconds would be anything other than an "I win" button with 7.0 TTK.
Round and round we go.

To the OP:
Just about every class has a spec that can put down some serious DPS. Some are more front-loaded than others based on the role they're supposed to fill. Players have an issue accepting this and they want their favorite specs to have all of the advantages without any disadvantages. This isn't realistic. Beyond that, focus on what you can control. Fully gear your character and min-max your stats w/ 300 augs. Afterwards, maximize your skill. Skill is going to be the largest determining factor in the outcome of your fights in this game.

And if you find that you can't outskill certain players just min-max an AP PT and get a tank/healer friend to carry you. Become one of them 😂.

Edited March 20 by Dyne-

[Samcuu]

Spot on post. Go through the different versions of the game and you've always had an overpowered class or two, in fact throughout the entire time mmos have been a thing classes are unbalanced and they always will be.

The way you combat that if ur a dev is balancing the classes more often. I've played dot operative since around 3.0 and it had always been one of the worst classes in the game. In 6.0 it became a monster and in true swtor fashion they didn't fix it for about 3 years. That's far too long, especially when u consider one of the reasons it was broken was because the Viral Elements tactical wasn't working as intended. Again took them 3 years plus to fix lol. 

[RACATW]

2 hours ago, Dyne- said:

Welp I'll go ahead and get this out of the way. 

Ability pruning was a horrendous idea and that person owes the playerbase an apology.
Tanks want to do more damage than DPS players while having the most uptime.
Ranged DPS players want to do more damage (and burst) than melee DPS who can't stealth out (and from 30 meters way no less).
Stealth classes want to keep their burst while negotiating for better sustained DPS.
AOE specs want more single target damage while retaining their AOE abilities.
Operatives, mercs, and sniper players miss the glory days of being invincible.
Everyone hates AP PTs.
Everyone hates engineering snipers.
Some Marauder players think that a 90% accuracy debuff that lasts 6 seconds would be anything other than an "I win" button with 7.0 TTK.
Round and round we go.

To the OP:
Just about every class has a spec that can put down some serious DPS. Some are more front-loaded than others based on the role they're supposed to fill. Players have an issue accepting this and they want their favorite specs to have all of the advantages without any disadvantages. This isn't realistic. Beyond that, focus on what you can control. Fully gear your character and min-max your stats w/ 300 augs. Afterwards, maximize your skill. Skill is going to be the largest determining factor in the outcome of your fights in this game.

And if you find that you can't outskill certain players just min-max an AP PT and get a tank/healer friend to carry you. Become one of them 😂.

IMO obfuscate was ironically one of the higher skill ceiling abilities in the game, since it was a 90% single target white damage accuracy debuff. You could augment it for some extra burst from a vicious throw + yellow damage defensive utility, but knowing when to use it added a lot of fun "flow" to mara.

Taking that away makes it into a bot-like clown fiesta that bores me with its 3-4 damage abilities and lack of thought. Plus you gotta remember, for lore reasons marauder should have some force abilities -- obfuscate was one of its only ones (it has maybe 2 at most on each spec now that obfuscate is gone).

[Beyrahl]

The debuff could easily be changed, it's a silly reason to be against it other than wanting to see Marauder continue to be terrible defensively. 

Back in the day, Diversion was a single target ability - much like how obfuscate was. Today, diversion exists, and pacify doesn't. 
Most of the tools both pure DPS had were vital to their playstyle and ability to deal with and survive in the metas they were in. The original variant of Ruthless Aggressor was indeed overboard. But in general, without defel marauder right now is paper. It doesn't need to have pacify, but rather Ruthless Aggressor itself is a good solution if changing pacify was even on the table. The point, is having more defensive power doesn't suddenly make it broken, but rather more playable. 

If the class had Undying Rage (most iconic ability) or pacify baseline right now. It would not make me play it anymore than I already do, it would, however, allow me to play it into more compositions that usually make me instantly log off of it. Everything has issues but, marauder currently has no solution to its playstyle. It doesn't get passive 4-6k HPS healing, it can't afford to usually drop a set bonus for second wind and it doesn't have the same damage on Fury / Annihilation to consistently have kill pressure for how squishy it is. Every other class in-game, I mean every single one of its peers that does the same thing does it way better. Madness > Leth > Viru > Pyro > I/O > Veng > Hatred > Anni. AP > Rage > Engi?LOL > Deception > Carnage > Arsenal > Marksman > Fury > Concealment.
Fury being one step above concealment is only debatable due to concealments awful defensive capabilities nerfing it's uptime as disengaging is its only dcd. 

While carnage can do damage, it has the same issues of durability - It's also very reliant on maintaining stacks to keep up consistent damage and it's quite easy to prevent that with many different knockbacks with automatic roots still in-game. Shards of mortis should just be removed and we'd see how bad marauder is as a whole. It would leave zero outliers. 

[Dyne-]

37 minutes ago, Beyrahl said:

The debuff could easily be changed, it's a silly reason to be against it other than wanting to see Marauder continue to be terrible defensively. 

I agree with the majority of your post, but we can agree to disagree with respect to Obfuscate. I've routinely advocated for Marauder pre and post-pruning. I offered a considerable amount of feedback on the changes (and why they were terrible) and the devs went through with it anyway. Marauder is my second most played class in the game, and while I fundamentally disagree with their design decisions and vision for the class (if we can call it that), I will not shed a single tear for Obfuscate being removed from the game. Every other accuracy debuff should have gone with it. I'm all for actives and defensives that can be used at the appropriate time to give the user a competitive advantage (i.e. Mad Dash no-selling an incoming ability, rewarding a player with superior timing), but abilities that make an opponent flat out miss or remain stationary for a set amount of time are too low effort for my liking. Moreover, modifying Obfuscate would have introduced complexity and Bioware was terrified of that. I no longer see the point in engaging in solution-oriented discussions when the company isn't interested in feedback from the pvp community.

If Bioware had even the slightest inclination of creating a balanced ecosystem in pvp then they wouldn't have gone through with ability pruning in the first place. At the very least they would have modified the duration of all remaining CC as well as resolve. That hasn't happened yet, nor has any appreciable balancing changes outside of the most minute modifications. In the face of their intrepid, overwhelming, and steadfast dedication to class balance, you'll have to forgive a bit of skepticism on my part that they would actually change the duration of Obfuscate (or any other form of CC for that matter).

Now if there's nothing else, I'm off to get bubble stunned on repeat 😂.

[RACATW]

20 minutes ago, Dyne- said:

I agree with the majority of your post, but we can agree to disagree with respect to Obfuscate. I've routinely advocated for Marauder pre and post-pruning. I offered a considerable amount of feedback on the changes (and why they were terrible) and the devs went through with it anyway. Marauder is my second most played class in the game, and while I fundamentally disagree with their design decisions and vision for the class (if we can call it that), I will not shed a single tear for Obfuscate being removed from the game. Every other accuracy debuff should have gone with it. I'm all for actives and defensives that can be used at the appropriate time to give the user a competitive advantage (i.e. Mad Dash no-selling an incoming ability, rewarding a player with superior timing), but abilities that make an opponent flat out miss or remain stationary for a set amount of time are too low effort for my liking. Moreover, modifying Obfuscate would have introduced complexity and Bioware was terrified of that. I no longer see the point in engaging in solution-oriented discussions when the company isn't interested in feedback from the pvp community.

If Bioware had even the slightest inclination of creating a balanced ecosystem in pvp then they wouldn't have gone through with ability pruning in the first place. At the very least they would have modified the duration of all remaining CC as well as resolve. That hasn't happened yet, nor has any appreciable balancing changes outside of the most minute modifications. In the face of their intrepid, overwhelming, and steadfast dedication to class balance, you'll have to forgive a bit of skepticism on my part that they would actually change the duration of Obfuscate (or any other form of CC for that matter).

Now if there's nothing else, I'm off to get bubble stunned on repeat 😂.

Tbf, the counterplay was pretty straight forward. You simply hit them with yellow damage, dot them up, or let other people hit them with white damage instead of you.

[nzologic]

22 hours ago, RACATW said:

Tbf, the counterplay was pretty straight forward. You simply hit them with yellow damage, dot them up, or let other people hit them with white damage instead of you.

Well if we're being fair there was also a talent (if I'm remembering correctly) that reduced incoming force/tech damage by something like 75% for the duration, which is kinda hard to justify looking back on it.

That being said, I don't think bringing back the OG obfuscate would be a terrible thing but maras aren't exactly the only class in a less than stellar spot since 7.0.

Edited March 22 by nzologic

[RACATW]

3 hours ago, nzologic said:

Well if we're being fair there was also a talent (if I'm remembering correctly) that reduced incoming force/tech damage by something like 75% for the duration, which is kinda hard to justify looking back on it.

That being said, I don't think bringing back the OG obfuscate would be a terrible thing but maras aren't exactly the only class in a less than stellar spot since 7.0.

There was also a skill that reduced damage by 99% which Marauder had. Did any of that make Mara op? Nah. I never felt op while playing it, in fact, it was always difficult to 1v1 anybody on it even with the camo.

 

[nzologic]

19 minutes ago, RACATW said:

There was also a skill that reduced damage by 99% which Marauder had. Did any of that make Mara op? Nah. I never felt op while playing it, in fact, it was always difficult to 1v1 anybody on it even with the camo.

 

Right, I see the problem. Carry on 🙃

Edited March 22 by nzologic

[RACATW]

14 hours ago, nzologic said:

Right, I see the problem. Carry on 🙃

If this is as cringe a comment as I think it is, I play Mara maybe once every 3 months now.

There's other classes that are a legitimate threat when not playing in a premade. A solo Mara is pretty weak.

[Samcuu]

If ur in a full premade with hand holding from a tank/healer then yeah most specs can slap in the right hands. However if ur solo queue it can be rough without a full tool kit. To ppl who have played in previous expansions you really feel it. 8 man's with like 5 dps focusing kinda exasperated the issue as well.

[MercMara]

For those saying mercs are God Like, it just isn't the case. Its so easy to focus a merc down. An AP PT will destroy an equally skilled merc. A Rage Jugs can outlast a Merc. 

There is no more class balance. It's just premades qing nothing but Madness, AP PT, Sniper and Rage Jug. And Bioware wonders why this game is so dead. 

 

 

[nzologic]

9 hours ago, RACATW said:

If this is as cringe a comment as I think it is, I play Mara maybe once every 3 months now.

There's other classes that are a legitimate threat when not playing in a premade. A solo Mara is pretty weak.

Sorry I thought you were trolling when you mentioned 1v1's being difficult with double camo. I agree that mara's could use some help in 7.0 but if you were struggling in 6.0 there are other factors at play.

Edited March 23 by nzologic

[Luciferior]

Mercs and commandos imo id gladly toss some of these dcds for some extra damage or even a boost to crit chance

I like to play without the adrenalin surge perk on my commando and it truly widened my perspective on how handy adrenalin was when you take the perk for it

Without it I rarely live which is understandable granted I wish one man army was more useful considering the trade off 

I dont like madness sorcs in their current state I really dont

When I joined literally right before 7.0 my madness sorc was the first class I leveled all the way and took into PvP for my first fights and I got rofl stomped everytime damn near by everyone lol and I cant deny the notion I cried repeatedly in my customer support tickets to bioware that madness at that time felt horrible and I felt powerless against everyone...

Sure enough 7.0 drops madness got buffed I continued to play it for a while all of a sudden my self as a literal potato tier player *still am at that* was starting to win some 1v1s and progressed some and started to wonder why am I winning all of a sudden?

Because I went from getting rofl stomped by everyone and not winning a single 1v1 to anyone to egging people into 1v1s just to see how far I could go with my limited understanding

Granted idk if the people I beat were good or bad or if they were aware of what changed on madness sorc between that time frame 

I swapped to a commando as my first tech spec to try and I have not taken that sorc back into PvP a single time since 

It isnt a stretch to imagine there are countless people in this game that are better than my self with ease when it comes to PvP I can accept that reality but when a dumpster tier player like my self goes from getting roflstomped on pre 7.0 madness Sorc to killing people outright on post 7.0 madness sorc...

What did it do to the people who are actually decent/good at the game on post 7.0 madness sorc? They probably put Darth Sidious's "Unlimited Powa" Line On loop qued for PvP and blasted people and its been going since lol

[MercMara]

Am I the only one that also thinks all these premades running multiple AP PTs is getting old? Meta premades is killing pvp for me. 

[RACATW]

13 hours ago, nzologic said:

Sorry I thought you were trolling when you mentioned 1v1's being difficult with double camo. I agree that mara's could use some help in 7.0 but if you were struggling in 6.0 there are other factors at play.

In a wz? Who is going to wait 3 minutes for you to heal up after you camo out?

 

Also camo does nothing to truly help you win vs a good player. I fought a duel with the supposed best 1v1 Mara on my server in 6.0 and he couldn't kill me. I didn't feel like hunting him down in his tatooine stronghold though. So it just ended in a stalemate.

Edited March 23 by RACATW

[Ahwassa]

Soo anyone thinks that burst damage (not damage in general) is bit too high?

While I think healing is fine the burst damage of PTs, Juggs (most Melees in general) and Snipers is too high.

It´s better to bring one of these than a healer.

Otherwise give healers a higher burst heal please (againb not healing in general but burst :))

 

[meddani]

this sniper/gunslinger garbage needs to be gutted asap...where are the class balance changes? 

[Darkestmonty]

On 4/11/2024 at 3:14 PM, Ahwassa said:

Soo anyone thinks that burst damage (not damage in general) is bit too high?

While I think healing is fine the burst damage of PTs, Juggs (most Melees in general) and Snipers is too high.

It´s better to bring one of these than a healer.

Otherwise give healers a higher burst heal please (againb not healing in general but burst :))

 

Those classes are one trick ponies and I love reflecting 150% of their damage back at them.