Potential damage output far too high

[Wulfurkin]

Perhaps an uncommon view, but i feel like since version 7 the possible dps and total damage that can be done during a match is excessive. Most players dont know how to or simply cant generatie these numbers but there is a small elite clade running around that can and they are too decisive to a match because of it. I feel like at least halving the damage done by perfect rotations would make matches less lopsided. Thoughts?

Edited June 13 by Wulfurkin

[Zunayson]

Is the elite clade really that small?

I used to think something like this, but upon more detailed analysis, I now think the real discrepancy is defensive cooldown usage, and perhaps just general APM. No amount of rotation-tweaking can change those 2 things, because DCD management and APM require situational awareness and, well, some level of actual skill.

[Wulfurkin]

2 minutes ago, Zunayson said:

Is the elite clade really that small?

I used to think something like this, but upon more detailed analysis, I now think the real discrepancy is defensive cooldown usage, and perhaps just general APM. No amount of rotation-tweaking can change those 2 things, because DCD management and APM require situational awareness and, well, some level of actual skill.

Small to the point where most warzones ive seen there will be two or three players who had basically double the numbers everyone else did. Even if they arent playing objectives this kind of difference decides the match. I do agree that managing defensives helps but with such high damage it quickly loses its effectiveness.

[WaffleQwop]

7 minutes ago, Zunayson said:

Is the elite clade really that small?

I used to think something like this, but upon more detailed analysis, I now think the real discrepancy is defensive cooldown usage, and perhaps just general APM. No amount of rotation-tweaking can change those 2 things, because DCD management and APM require situational awareness and, well, some level of actual skill.

I second this. While I do 100% believe that some class balancing needs to take place, there is no doubt that APM and just general skill play a major factor here. Think about the average player. Now think about how many of those players do Warzones/Arenas. Now think about how many A) take time to truly learn their class and B) have above average game awareness and general skill. It's not that many. 

What you need to remember is that the population overall is quite low, so those that you run into in PvP are often veteran players who do nothing other than PvP and have been for years. Of course there are going to be some elite players who are always at the top of the DPS/HPS charts. With all that said, again yes there does need to be some legit class balancing in the future. I pray we get that, or anything.

[Zunayson]

So, every once in awhile I see a player auto-attacking like three times in a row (Mercenary - no heat generated, so this wasn't a case of poor heat management). I suspect this player is doing somewhere around 10% of the DPS of a player doing a modest rotation (to say nothing of "perfect rotations"). So that is a 10:1 difference in contribution.

What do your optimal numbers look like? Do you want this player to be doing 50% of the DPS of a "perfect rotation?" 75%? Are rotations supposed to be optional minigames that give someone a small advantage?

[Wulfurkin]

5 minutes ago, WaffleQwop said:

I second this. While I do 100% believe that some class balancing needs to take place, there is no doubt that APM and just general skill play a major factor here. Think about the average player. Now think about how many of those players do Warzones/Arenas. Now think about how many A) take time to truly learn their class and B) have above average game awareness and general skill. It's not that many. 

What you need to remember is that the population overall is quite low, so those that you run into in PvP are often veteran players who do nothing other than PvP and have been for years. Of course there are going to be some elite players who are always at the top of the DPS/HPS charts. With all that said, again yes there does need to be some legit class balancing in the future. I pray we get that, or anything.

They would still be on top,  wont argue that. The gap just wont be as big, giving others a chance to contribute more.

[Wulfurkin]

9 minutes ago, Zunayson said:

So, every once in awhile I see a player auto-attacking like three times in a row (Mercenary - no heat generated, so this wasn't a case of poor heat management). I suspect this player is doing somewhere around 10% of the DPS of a player doing a modest rotation (to say nothing of "perfect rotations"). So that is a 10:1 difference in contribution.

What do your optimal numbers look like? Do you want this player to be doing 50% of the DPS of a "perfect rotation?" 75%? Are rotations supposed to be optional minigames that give someone a small advantage?

As i said its the sheer damage done by the perfect rotation that needs to be halved.  It doesnt change much about single ability uses.

[Beyrahl]

The players with less input would be far more deadly if our gearing system was anywhere near friendly to them. You'd see even in the worst of matches people blowing up. 
The majority of these players are being brought up over APM, knowledge, etc. None of it matters when they're stat-wise several gear pieces worth of stats down on their peers. 

Older expansions outside of AoE, long-lasting multi-healer games most of the time for DPS you'd hit at max 75-80% of your DPS potential in PvE single target. It was extremely rare to exceed that and even more rare to hit that without any sort of aoe. You'd usually see 50-60%. 

When it comes to the current day we're on average probably seeing 70-80% from okay players and sometimes even great players. The largest issue with the current day is that you hit a wall where there isn't uptime, eventually, if you're constantly pumping well over 20k you're wiping the enemy team, that damage is lethal and only going to be livable with a tank & 2 really good healers. This flys off the rails when you throw in more than one good damage player, letting you hit that team-wide DPS mark of 70-80k overall counted up between allies that you hit an inevitable damage wall you can't really pass without intentionally fluffing and or number farming with the intent of not killing anyone on both sides. Most players will end up not returning after dying a few times leaving the damage potential even lower.

While I don't think the potential is out of wack but rather the durability, healing power, and potential health bars are far too weak for the current damage we output. An average damage player is going to be able to beat out an average healer's output 1:1 9/10 times. Letting that sink in is that, that healer which is a team healer, can maybe negate one player's damage at best. Healing is abysmal and has barely seen changes for two expansions, in fact, they've all only lost very useful and very strong things since. This further leads into how strong the tank role is and how impactful the guard is as healing output just isn't there when proper damage is done. While Juggernaut is over-tuned & stealth scan accuracy debuff shouldn't exist, they're only minor problems in the grand scheme. 

Sadly, it's just overly complicated and not as complex as it seems. I am by no means a developer nor do I think it requires a mind of one to see the blaring issues we face today. 

Here's a thread I made talking about the compounding factors affecting the casual playerbase as a whole and inevitably cannibalizing new players as they try out PvP & gating our potential to create new hardcore PvPers, let alone casual PvPers. 
Here's another one I did regarding the major mistakes of 7.0. Pruning and Complexity don't have to be mutually exclusive.

I hate to be a downer and I do think every bit of feedback and thread made talking about how much PvP needs changes is helping but. We've sadly seen almost no progress in over a year. One of the major issues that have quite literally turned max-level PVP into a turf war, where you're either with me or against me. It's not fun and the majority of the time it's not competitive. Groups larger than 4 have steadily killed the game in the past year+ and will continue to weed out anyone who is not hopelessly addicted as it's simply not fun anymore. Simply gating it back to 4 like it was before, would make it far more competitive and less toxic in general. But there's still much to be done even after undoing that massive mistake. 

 

Anyway, just my weekly contribution to the failing state of swtor pvp.
I miss it, but I refuse to torture myself. 

[Wulfurkin]

18 minutes ago, Beyrahl said:

The players with less input would be far more deadly if our gearing system was anywhere near friendly to them. You'd see even in the worst of matches people blowing up. 
The majority of these players are being brought up over APM, knowledge, etc. None of it matters when they're stat-wise several gear pieces worth of stats down on their peers. 

Older expansions outside of AoE, long-lasting multi-healer games most of the time for DPS you'd hit at max 75-80% of your DPS potential in PvE single target. It was extremely rare to exceed that and even more rare to hit that without any sort of aoe. You'd usually see 50-60%. 

When it comes to the current day we're on average probably seeing 70-80% from okay players and sometimes even great players. The largest issue with the current day is that you hit a wall where there isn't uptime, eventually, if you're constantly pumping well over 20k you're wiping the enemy team, that damage is lethal and only going to be livable with a tank & 2 really good healers. This flys off the rails when you throw in more than one good damage player, letting you hit that team-wide DPS mark of 70-80k overall counted up between allies that you hit an inevitable damage wall you can't really pass without intentionally fluffing and or number farming with the intent of not killing anyone on both sides. Most players will end up not returning after dying a few times leaving the damage potential even lower.

While I don't think the potential is out of wack but rather the durability, healing power, and potential health bars are far too weak for the current damage we output. An average damage player is going to be able to beat out an average healer's output 1:1 9/10 times. Letting that sink in is that, that healer which is a team healer, can maybe negate one player's damage at best. Healing is abysmal and has barely seen changes for two expansions, in fact, they've all only lost very useful and very strong things since. This further leads into how strong the tank role is and how impactful the guard is as healing output just isn't there when proper damage is done. While Juggernaut is over-tuned & stealth scan accuracy debuff shouldn't exist, they're only minor problems in the grand scheme. 

Sadly, it's just overly complicated and not as complex as it seems. I am by no means a developer nor do I think it requires a mind of one to see the blaring issues we face today. 

Here's a thread I made talking about the compounding factors affecting the casual playerbase as a whole and inevitably cannibalizing new players as they try out PvP & gating our potential to create new hardcore PvPers, let alone casual PvPers. 
Here's another one I did regarding the major mistakes of 7.0. Pruning and Complexity don't have to be mutually exclusive.

I hate to be a downer and I do think every bit of feedback and thread made talking about how much PvP needs changes is helping but. We've sadly seen almost no progress in over a year. One of the major issues that have quite literally turned max-level PVP into a turf war, where you're either with me or against me. It's not fun and the majority of the time it's not competitive. Groups larger than 4 have steadily killed the game in the past year+ and will continue to weed out anyone who is not hopelessly addicted as it's simply not fun anymore. Simply gating it back to 4 like it was before, would make it far more competitive and less toxic in general. But there's still much to be done even after undoing that massive mistake. 

 

Anyway, just my weekly contribution to the failing state of swtor pvp.
I miss it, but I refuse to torture myself. 

Ive actually read both those posts before, i thought they were good takes, far more detailed than id be able to go.  My thought is just based on what ive been seeing in warzones.

[supertimtaf]

Imo I wouldn't be against a general rebalance of time to kill, healing abilities and defensive cooldowns BUT

Before that happens we need to make sure that people are already all on an even playing field. This isn't the case at all right now.

- Tacticals and legendaries, have all too many options that are almost always trash and will confuse new players or bad players. People who argue that they bring "freedom of builds" into the game clearly don't understand that there is always *one* that will be far superior to the others in *every situations*. So why have multiples if mathematically you'd always want to take the same one over and over. Remove all the useless ones, keep two legendaries per class (or two sets of legendaries in the case of a healer/tank discipline). Same for tacticals. Only one per discipline. That way you eliminate half of the stupid choices that bad players will make *before* entering a warzone. The other half is utility choice. That one we should probably leave as is for now.

- Simplify gearing. There is no way that any actual proper competent system designer looked at the current gearing system and thought "yeah that's fine I did a good job <3". And if they did, they should either instruct themselves regarding other games or just probably start looking for a competent replacement. The numerous gearing iterations since 5.0 have been a joke, and as a game designer myself I find it shocking that they're still going on with this. Make gearing more accessible for PvP. Simply that. Make it so that you can get PvP BiS in a day. Revamp crafting to add actual crafted gear that can be made for cheap to ready people for PvP, either remove or make gold augments more accessible for everyone. Remove the need for a useless legendary upgrade system. The fact that I still see people in 324 over multiple warzones is insane, and no amount of Bolster is gonna change that they suck in part because of their gear.

 

- Make actual, competent class balance. Balance classes regarding their dps. Balance classes' defensive options too. There is no way for you to affirm that a burst melee dps should be dealing less damage than a dot melee dps and still have AP PT be at the top of the damage board. This is a bad joke, and the person in charge is clearly not aware of the actual damage numbers and defensive cooldown strength going on in the game. The community could put up a balancing spreadsheet faster than the dev team at this point and it'd be of better quality too.

Once all that is done, *then* you can start to look at the big picture and say "okay, global TTK is too short" or "Tanks team-wide options aren't that great". If you start applying broad strokes of general balance right now you'll only increase the gap between good classes and bad classes. That powertech will still kill people, because his burst went from 100k to 50k. But that assassin went from 50k to 25k so he can't kill anyone anymore.

Edited June 14 by supertimtaf

[supertimtaf]

41 minutes ago, AocaVII said:

The 4-minute void Stars. You would never see that like 5 years ago now they just run through it like a hammer station totally ridiculous.

This had me laughing so hard
It's true, 4min voidstars are a thing :')
Just like I see five people unable to kill a single tank in two minutes, or people accusing you of cheating because you can actually kite a little too well. Even some players who use stuns and bumps on a player fully white-barred. It's terrible. And they don't even compensate lack of skill with good tactical decisions because they can't even make proper callouts.

There *are* balance issues atm but they're overshadowed by the fact that most of the players are bad. So you can't even notice them most of the time because you'll kill them no matter if you're playing the OP class or the bad one.

[Wulfurkin]

5 hours ago, AocaVII said:

I play war zones how I've been playing them for the last 12 or so years no different than everybody else used to play them.

I do some war zones where I do more DMG than the whole team combined and tbh I'm not trying very hard. The game is not hard but the players are truly beyond belief BAD.

They made DPS stupid easy like 6 years ago like anyone can literally do it.

This is what see on scoreboard 

Me 15k DPS 0 deaths

Then 1-5k DPS and 3-10 deaths each, rest of team.

You can do 5K DPS on a healer with three buttons. 

Get the gas lighting out of your head I'm just stating facts and I'm no PVP god. There is no PVP god.

The player skill is far worse than anyone can even imagine. I don't know what they're doing do they have like one button on there bar and they just keep pressing the one button are they not pressing any buttons? Oh wait I know what they're doing they're clicking stuff instead of attacking things.

I'm just playing how every player used to play the game, no damage farming for me just trying to kill the other team. 

Few years ago every single player almost could do the same damage, more, or close to what I do it; now it's like 1/10 of the damage.

It's not that a classes are overpowered or any other of these reasons. There's reasons; the players are bad, don't care and or don't want to play better they just want rewards.

The damage output isn't way too high this is how it's always been it's just that the players can't do with the older players used to do who left the game so it looks like it's a lot more damage when an actuality it's not if you're actually pressing buttons.

Like what's the logic here let's q and do PVP war zones and not press any buttons or attack anybody let's just go in to get rewards basically so that's a discrepancy that you see.

The 4-minute void Stars. You would never see that like 5 years ago now they just run through it like a hammer station totally ridiculous.

 

Amusingly several 4 minute voidstar matches were my direct inspiration to make this post. I get your point though, im just thinking more can be done to make it harder to stomp these bad players. I was on both sides during these matches and there isnt much pvp if any at all. The times i was on the stomping side i felt like i was three hit killing mobs you find during vet fps and the times i was on the side being stomped i was constantly 1v3 or 1v4 and it felt like solo kiting a vm operation boss just trying to stay alive for as long as possible. These kinds of matches arent fun, they can barely be called matches at all. I just thought maybe if players simply wouldnt hit so hard such matches wouldnt be such a slaughter.

Edited June 14 by Wulfurkin

[Wulfurkin]

9 hours ago, AocaVII said:

Mark the people who are spam capping and just keep killing them over and over.

This is exactly what i do but its difficult when im by myself and they are supported by two or three teammates. Cant stop a zerg rush on my own.

[SentinalMasterWW]

Generally the problem is various reasons. 

1. is that almost every sweat nowadays in PVP plays in a premade comp and all focus targets one person to secure kills. The other is that a lot of said sweats love to main something broken like being an ionic engi or a rage jug, etc. You can survive a 1v1 if you play smart but going to two and past there is no chance you can survive. 

2. During the great pruning almost every spec lost defensives, utility, and CC's. These helped keep classes alive and in general gave PVP more skill as you had to counter other players and vice verse. Now its just literal dummy parsing. 

3. Regarding to #1 we have said broken classes and tacitcals. Engi is literally nuking players and getting evasion roll resets. Rage literally can constantly hit up to 100K crits no problem. Madness has all the self healing and survivability in the world. AP PT can literally shred you in their opener. Carnage has basically constant CC immunity and their DMG speed buffs are insanely overtuned. 

The most OP thing though imo is the Second wind implant, being able to heal yourself every 8 secs is insane. The cooldown needs to be upped to like 30-45 secs. 

PVP is just suffering from a major DPS meta, they buffed DPS wayyy too much and the TTK (Time to kill) is too short. Often times players literally have zero reaction time to pop a defensive or react accordingly. The one strat i see people abuse is just all spamming CC's on one person and literally they can do nothing but die. 

I've stated it before but TTK needs to be increased, it would make the experience less frustrating for new players and for casuals and would help limit premade DMG farmers. 

Either two things can be done; 

Lower the total amount of DPS output done by all classes 

or 

Increase the amount of survivability, health, etc for all classes (Except Tanks for obvious reasons).

 

 

[DeannaVoyager]

1 hour ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

The most OP thing though imo is the Second wind implant, being able to heal yourself every 8 secs is insane. The cooldown needs to be upped to like 30-45 secs. 

No. That would make it useless in pve. 

Besides every class in pvp can take second wind if they want to. If everyone can use it, nerfing it doesn't balance anything. It will just destroy it for pve. 

 

[supertimtaf]

4 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

No. That would make it useless in pve. 

Besides every class in pvp can take second wind if they want to. If everyone can use it, nerfing it doesn't balance anything. It will just destroy it for pve. 

 

Unpopular opinion but they shouldn't have made implants and tacticals in the first place. 4.X set bonuses were balanced and perfect. Ever since they tried to change that it didn't work. 

I miss the time were an expansion meant that we were getting new skills and new passives for our spec. Not another poor attempt at mimicking past set bonuses' greatness.

I'd rather have them working on improving classes and deleting implants and tacticals rather than have them disperse themselves like that. Like you said, any change impacts PvE and PvP together. Now multiply that by the number of tactical and legendary. 

Fairly easy to see why nothing is changing. Current class balance is just a massive jenga tower. And they're too afraid to move any brick because like you said. Too many stuff could break in an unintended way. So yeah the jenga tower has the shape of a slur and is insulting every player that approaches but at least it's stable... If you don't blow too hard on it.

[DeannaVoyager]

2 hours ago, supertimtaf said:

Unpopular opinion but they shouldn't have made implants and tacticals in the first place. 4.X set bonuses were balanced and perfect. Ever since they tried to change that it didn't work. 

I miss the time were an expansion meant that we were getting new skills and new passives for our spec. Not another poor attempt at mimicking past set bonuses' greatness.

I'd rather have them working on improving classes and deleting implants and tacticals rather than have them disperse themselves like that. Like you said, any change impacts PvE and PvP together. Now multiply that by the number of tactical and legendary. 

Fairly easy to see why nothing is changing. Current class balance is just a massive jenga tower. And they're too afraid to move any brick because like you said. Too many stuff could break in an unintended way. So yeah the jenga tower has the shape of a slur and is insulting every player that approaches but at least it's stable... If you don't blow too hard on it.

I share the same unpopular opinion. I liked 4.x and even 5.x era with the simplicity of it, and because the focus was on learning to play, not on memorizing all the variations. 

With the myriad different tacticals and set bonuses for every class the devs made class balancing much harder for themselves. For players it also means it will be more difficult to master their class because there are different tacticals for aoe and single target situations, and the different tacticals also require different rotations. And that's just for one class. Now add a few more classes you want to play, and there's a lot to learn before mastering anything. 

Some games have separated pvp and pve abilities. Not sure if it's even possible to do it with swtor, but that would definitely help with class balancing.

[SentinalMasterWW]

10 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

No. That would make it useless in pve. 

Besides every class in pvp can take second wind if they want to. If everyone can use it, nerfing it doesn't balance anything. It will just destroy it for pve. 

 

The general problem comes when you have a class with very fast TTK (Ionic Engi, UV blast Virulence, Rage jug) getting nigh constant uptime on self healing. This is even more exacerbated with Skank tank jugs, where they can basically be immortal through their defensives and constant healing. 

The easiest and best solution is one i've stated for a while, go back to the set based system. Sell the implants in boxes as and equipping them both gives you the full 6.0 set. In order to get the bonus though you need to wear both implants that are part of a set. It fixes Second wind without nerfing it as than you'd have to give up your class set to run it, and as an added bonus all classes get indirectly buffed again by having their old 6.0 set.

5 hours ago, supertimtaf said:

Unpopular opinion but they shouldn't have made implants and tacticals in the first place. 4.X set bonuses were balanced and perfect. Ever since they tried to change that it didn't work. 

I miss the time were an expansion meant that we were getting new skills and new passives for our spec. Not another poor attempt at mimicking past set bonuses' greatness.

I'd rather have them working on improving classes and deleting implants and tacticals rather than have them disperse themselves like that. Like you said, any change impacts PvE and PvP together. Now multiply that by the number of tactical and legendary. 

Fairly easy to see why nothing is changing. Current class balance is just a massive jenga tower. And they're too afraid to move any brick because like you said. Too many stuff could break in an unintended way. So yeah the jenga tower has the shape of a slur and is insulting every player that approaches but at least it's stable... If you don't blow too hard on it.

In general Tacticals are not a bad idea, the problem is that they were never properly balanced or designed well for a lot of them. In 7.0 they reworked classes to be so reliant on your tactical that 50% or more of your total DPS is locked behind a tactical. 

[DeannaVoyager]

2 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

The general problem comes when you have a class with very fast TTK (Ionic Engi, UV blast Virulence, Rage jug) getting nigh constant uptime on self healing. This is even more exacerbated with Skank tank jugs, where they can basically be immortal through their defensives and constant healing. 

The easiest and best solution is one i've stated for a while, go back to the set based system. Sell the implants in boxes as and equipping them both gives you the full 6.0 set. In order to get the bonus though you need to wear both implants that are part of a set. It fixes Second wind without nerfing it as than you'd have to give up your class set to run it, and as an added bonus all classes get indirectly buffed again by having their old 6.0 set.

You only get heals if the target dies. Just don't die before them, and use the implant yourself. If every class can use it, it's a fair game for everyone. 

Destroying the implant from pve users won't fix the biggest pvp issues: premades & matchmaking, ungeared players in group, skill differences. Balancing anything before those core issues have been dealt with changes nothing for pvp. If you'd remove every second wind implant from the game this instant pvp won't get any better, but pve just got a lot worse.

[Zunayson]

Agree that second wind is broken. If it needs to have high uptime in PVE for some reason, the other way to nerf it for pvp is instead base it off killing blows instead of assists. Then you can keep your insane heal and insane cooldown.

If we change role balance by nerfing DPS, won't we just return to healers being OP? Today 4DPS beats 3DPS + 1H in arena, but there's nothing inherently unbalanced about that. If you change role balance all you do is give the upper hand to different roles. What I like about having powerful DPS is that it reduces the need for teamwork and puts players lives in their own hands. Your survivability is primarily based on if you time your DCDs well, not if matchmaking blessed you with a trinity comp, and especially not if matchmaking blessed you with teammates that know how to support you.

7.0 is the xpac I've seen the most ridiculous games where ridiculous role comps come out on top, because individual player skill is way more important than your role. The problem of course is that it means bad players are going to have a consistently bad time.

[Wulfurkin]

2 hours ago, Zunayson said:

Agree that second wind is broken. If it needs to have high uptime in PVE for some reason, the other way to nerf it for pvp is instead base it off killing blows instead of assists. Then you can keep your insane heal and insane cooldown.

If we change role balance by nerfing DPS, won't we just return to healers being OP? Today 4DPS beats 3DPS + 1H in arena, but there's nothing inherently unbalanced about that. If you change role balance all you do is give the upper hand to different roles. What I like about having powerful DPS is that it reduces the need for teamwork and puts players lives in their own hands. Your survivability is primarily based on if you time your DCDs well, not if matchmaking blessed you with a trinity comp, and especially not if matchmaking blessed you with teammates that know how to support you.

7.0 is the xpac I've seen the most ridiculous games where ridiculous role comps come out on top, because individual player skill is way more important than your role. The problem of course is that it means bad players are going to have a consistently bad time.

One thing j hate about this is how it reduced the power of healers.  Full trinity arenas are basically won or lost by tank competence because guard is as overtuned as dps.

[supertimtaf]

6 hours ago, Zunayson said:

Agree that second wind is broken. If it needs to have high uptime in PVE for some reason, the other way to nerf it for pvp is instead base it off killing blows instead of assists.

or y'know, just remove all these tacticals and give only one per class. Get rid of second wind altogether. If you need it that much in PvE then chances are that something isn't working properly regarding class balance.

 

6 hours ago, Zunayson said:

If we change role balance by nerfing DPS, won't we just return to healers being OP?

Imo the issue isn't really "dps are dealing too much damage" but the *vast* disparity between DPS disciplines in both PvE and PvP. Once you get rid of that disparity then you can start to take a look at the dps role in general.
 

4 hours ago, Wulfurkin said:

Full trinity arenas are basically won or lost by tank competence

Has been the case since 5.X tbh. But on the other hand, having healers be too strong is way more frustrating than having tanks be too strong defensively.

 

6 hours ago, Zunayson said:

What I like about having powerful DPS is that it reduces the need for teamwork and puts players lives in their own hands.

On paper that's true. The issue however is that as soon as you start having an imbalance inside that predominant role, then it starts to get even less fun for everyone. Having a role be high impact is good. Having classes in this role be way more high impact than others is terrible though.

[Beyrahl]

9 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

In general Tacticals are not a bad idea

I talked about this somewhere, I think when I was talking about balance. I have lost track on how many threads I have made that I put hours into creating detailed feedback / information on issues. 
But basically, there's far too many tactical that were lazy by design. They simply buff the original parsing rotation to slightly increase their sustain damage, further increasing their reliance on the tactical to be relevant in the PvE meta. Those tactical are also hard reliant on uptime making them not good in PvP while also making the other tactical's useless and in general keeping the class weaker than it should be. 
The lack of innovation is apparent with many tactical's and setbonuses. That can be fine if they follow something simple like giving tactical only utility choices. Setbonus only damage or defensive options and that's it. Don't let PvE get screwed and PvP screwed by reliance on damage tactical to make an underperforming spec half playable. 

Problem tacticals.
Ignoring healers because honestly, they have 1-2 options at best.
Iconic discharge, Shards of Mortis, Ruthless Interrogation, Hemophilic Slash, Cauterized Coronary, Spiteful Saber, Stormwatch, Tempest of rho, Awakened flame, two time trouble, Primed ignition, Energized Charges? (kinda), Agitating energies, Exploited Weakness, Acid lash, Synox Shots, so on. 
I give up listing them there are far too many. Every single one of these either makes the spec reliant on the tactical for competitive damage in PvE or breaks it in PvP due to uptime issues. We're honestly better off with getting rid of every damage tactical and going for pure utility instead. There's no way we can get something incredible for every class and those "incredible" ones are Elemental convection & viral elements. I think these two really outdid every other tactical ingame by a large margin and should just be part of the class instead much like how powerlode is now a part of AP. 

Anyway, everyone can get the idea but balancing is made a plague because there are too many nuances with tactical input, talents, and gear scaling. Sure they can adjust things but it'd just be swapping what class is fotm, which honestly I am fine with. But I think they just see it as why bother when it's functionally not possible to balance it. 

[supertimtaf]

28 minutes ago, Beyrahl said:

I talked about this somewhere, I think when I was talking about balance. I have lost track on how many threads I have made that I put hours into creating detailed feedback / information on issues. 
But basically, there's far too many tactical that were lazy by design. They simply buff the original parsing rotation to slightly increase their sustain damage, further increasing their reliance on the tactical to be relevant in the PvE meta. Those tactical are also hard reliant on uptime making them not good in PvP while also making the other tactical's useless and in general keeping the class weaker than it should be. 
The lack of innovation is apparent with many tactical's and setbonuses. That can be fine if they follow something simple like giving tactical only utility choices. Setbonus only damage or defensive options and that's it. Don't let PvE get screwed and PvP screwed by reliance on damage tactical to make an underperforming spec half playable. 

Problem tacticals.
Ignoring healers because honestly, they have 1-2 options at best.
Iconic discharge, Shards of Mortis, Ruthless Interrogation, Hemophilic Slash, Cauterized Coronary, Spiteful Saber, Stormwatch, Tempest of rho, Awakened flame, two time trouble, Primed ignition, Energized Charges? (kinda), Agitating energies, Exploited Weakness, Acid lash, Synox Shots, so on. 
I give up listing them there are far too many. Every single one of these either makes the spec reliant on the tactical for competitive damage in PvE or breaks it in PvP due to uptime issues. We're honestly better off with getting rid of every damage tactical and going for pure utility instead. There's no way we can get something incredible for every class and those "incredible" ones are Elemental convection & viral elements. I think these two really outdid every other tactical ingame by a large margin and should just be part of the class instead much like how powerlode is now a part of AP. 

Anyway, everyone can get the idea but balancing is made a plague because there are too many nuances with tactical input, talents, and gear scaling. Sure they can adjust things but it'd just be swapping what class is fotm, which honestly I am fine with. But I think they just see it as why bother when it's functionally not possible to balance it. 

agreed on this 100% all the way through.

[Wulfurkin]

9 hours ago, supertimtaf said:

or y'know, just remove all these tacticals and give only one per class. Get rid of second wind altogether. If you need it that much in PvE then chances are that something isn't working properly regarding class balance.

 

Imo the issue isn't really "dps are dealing too much damage" but the *vast* disparity between DPS disciplines in both PvE and PvP. Once you get rid of that disparity then you can start to take a look at the dps role in general.
 

Has been the case since 5.X tbh. But on the other hand, having healers be too strong is way more frustrating than having tanks be too strong defensively.

 

On paper that's true. The issue however is that as soon as you start having an imbalance inside that predominant role, then it starts to get even less fun for everyone. Having a role be high impact is good. Having classes in this role be way more high impact than others is terrible though.

Its not just guard defenses that make a tank decisive in such a match, its their dps output as well. Jugg skank with grit teeth along with two competent dpsers are capable of punching through enemy guard because healers can no longer keep up. This makes the healer role useless because dps is so high.