Dot specs and uptime

[Zunayson]

It's no secret that BS balanced dot specs to do the most sustained damage. Should the balance be reversed though? Should "direct damage" (often mistakenly-called "burst" specs) like marksman, arsenal, carnage, and the like do more sustained damage than dot specs?

Dot specs are able to do considerable damage without having actual uptime on their targets, which means kiting and line of sight is a simple I-win button for dot specs. 

Take a duel between a lethality and marksman sniper. Since LOS hurts the Marksman more, shouldn't the two sniper's parsing in each other's faces result in the Marksman winning hands down? Otherwise, what's the point in playing "direct-damage" specs? The ability to target-switch quickly? Target switching is a meme; it's another way to say, "not killing the priority target."

[sithBracer]

2 hours ago, Zunayson said:

Take a duel between a lethality and marksman sniper. Since LOS hurts the Marksman more, shouldn't the two sniper's parsing in each other's faces result in the Marksman winning hands down? Otherwise, what's the point in playing "direct-damage" specs? The ability to target-switch quickly? Target switching is a meme; it's another way to say, "not killing the priority target."

Do you understand the difference between a ranged spec and a melee spec? If you are able to properly keep your range, you should easily out damage him. If he gets in on you and you can't re-establish range that is on you.

[Zunayson]

You quoted the wrong part of my post if you were going to bring up melee. Please try to make your point again and be more clear. 

[Wulfurkin]

Engineering sniper is probably a bad example here because that spec is so overpowered these days that it breaks every match it joins. If you get two of them on one team, which can happen in warzones, any melee on the other team may as well stop trying.

[Zunayson]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say since I think the only person who has mentioned engineering is you. 

[AocaVII]

They made the dot specs for lower ttk and to make more options available for players to play different specs. At One time, dot Specs were not very viable. With all that said, the dot specs were made at a time when there were better players and the dots could tick and you would get very good DPS but at the moment the players die so fast that you can't get full ticks on your dots so it's not as good as it was direct damages better in most war zones. Also the players don't fight in one area and run all over the map which makes it very hard to stack your dots when people are 200 m away.

For example sniper,sin,op and sorcerer dots or 18 and 21 seconds respectively but these players die in 10 seconds so you lose half your damage if you're in a war zone where players die fast. So the original intention was that or made under the assumption that players wouldn't die so fast so sometimes on dot classes you're uptime is less because the players die too fast.

So when other words you'll never get 15-18 k DPS if the players die in 10 seconds on a dot class nor will you get top DPS if there's a juggernaut vanguard or Marauder in the war zone or even assassin, non dot.

On the subject of snipers right now there's no legitimate kiting class it's very hard to get away from juggernauts and other melee on sorcerer on a Merc it's literally impossible. Sniper engineering is really the only spec/viable class for kiting so I think engineering is just fine to keep the melee in line. If the melee is running wild, they'll kill the whole team. It is a very strong utility versus melee so they don't run wild and slice up everything. People always want change and then when the change comes they cry about the other classes.

Trust me at one point the melee was so strong that they would kill you in 3 seconds when you had to cast in place and you had no movement, It was a disaster.

For example on a sorcerer or a mercenary it's literally impossible to kite a juggernaut or a vanguard or even most Marauders. The only spec in class that can do it is an engineering sniper so why would you want to do something to a class that is shutting down melee to a certain extent and keeping them in check.

Engineering supplies crowd control and burst and very good kiting for strong melee classes without them the war zones would be much more in balanced parabolically. It may seem that they are strong but it's quite the contrary. Mara juggernaut as well as vanguard even sin are much more bursty. And you can get more consistent DPS on those classes. Plus the skill cap is very high for a sniper so they deserve to have decent damage. 

The skill cap for Juggernaut and a vanguard is very low.

If you were talking a dots back class versus a direct damage class, there's many factors that go into that. Marksman sniper is not viable right now because you just dot them and run away. They are not as strong as they once were. 

A marksman of equal skill versus an operative with dots will lose probably. But most classes will lose to operative because they just have too many heals and ways out which the sniper doesn't have.

 

Edited July 11 by AocaVII

[meddani]

4 minutes ago, AocaVII said:

Plus the skill cap is very high for a sniper so they deserve to have decent damage. 

no and no.

this class is beyond busted for a while now, especially engi

[AocaVII]

7 minutes ago, meddani said:

no and no.

this class is beyond busted for a while now, especially engi

So Juggernaut, vanguard plus Mara is just fine right? 

Snipers can be annoying the best thing to do is just learn los them it's very easy. If you chase after them they will kill you if they're good. If they're not good you will kill them that's pretty much the bottom line. If I am on another class besides a sniper and I've been playing sniper for 12 years you just line of sight them and pretty much they don't bother you mark them so you know where they are. 

If you're trying to chase them around you're doing it wrong the range classes need to kill the sniper is not the melee the melee will not kill them.

PVP is already a disaster area if you remove a class that shuts down melee and keeps it in check the war zones will be even more of a disaster.

There's literally like less than five engineering snipers that are actually good on starforge. So you're complaining about five players that's ridiculous. Most of the engineering snipers I see have no clue what they're doing.

By the way the five players that are good two of them have many alt so it might look like there's a lot of great engineering snipers but it's pretty much just two or three players.

Snipers are only annoying for the people that are used to just jumping on people and destroying them in a few seconds. The game wasn't that easy there used to be a time when you weren't able to jump to people and just kill them in 3 seconds.

Sorcerers, mercenaries could also kite but right now there's just as good as a melee class pretty much because you can't get away from melee classes anymore. 

To me it sounds like you're used to just jumping into players and having no resistance. But that's not the way the game always was it's just that they nerfed mercenary to the ground to where you can't hide anymore and they may Juggernaut and vanguard very strong with staying on top of sorcerer so it's very hard to get away when you're on a sorcerer. On the other hand on a sniper they can't just jump to you like they do so it's harder.

Edited July 11 by AocaVII

[Wulfurkin]

3 hours ago, Zunayson said:

I'm not sure what you're trying to say since I think the only person who has mentioned engineering is you. 

Yeah i just saw you mentioned marskman, i didnt catch that earlier, apologies. Im just used to talks about pvp snipers being centered on engineering

[AocaVII]

4 minutes ago, Wulfurkin said:

Yeah i just saw you mentioned marskman, i didnt catch that earlier, apologies. Im just used to talks about pvp snipers being centered on engineering

I've been doing this a very long time and I can see the full picture here right now the only thing keeping the melee and line is the engineering snipers it's kind of a check for the melee classes to keep them from not destroying the whole war zone very quickly. And it's just besides the point, there's so many players that do not know how to play engineering sniper and if they do they are not good like I said there's like less than five players I can think of three players right now that are good at engineering sniper that's it that's probably two more I can't think of right now. 

You see so many more juggernauts and so many more sorcerers and vanguards rather than snipers because the classes are much more easier to play.

In comparison if you use a parse and you use an engineering sniper versus an annihilation Marauder, Rage Juggernaut, AP power tech those other three classes have far much more burst than an engineering sniper.

Edited July 11 by AocaVII

[Wulfurkin]

Just now, AocaVII said:

I've been doing this a very long time and I can see the full picture here right now the only thing keeping the melee and line is the engineering snipers it's kind of a check for the melee classes to keep them from not destroying the whole war zone very quickly. And it's just besides the point, there's so many players that do not know how to play engineering sniper and if they do they are not good like I said there's like less than five players I can think of three players right now that are good at engineering sniper that's it that's probably two more I can't think of right now. 

You see so many more juggernauts and so many more sorcerers and vanguards rather than snipers because the classes are much more easier to play.

Honestly it seems like you are arguing from a personal perspective. As in you main a sniper and wouldnt want to lose the obvious advantage you have over melee players. In arenas it just gets silly with a moderately competent engi sniper vs say a jugg, mara or pt. They just get nuked instantly, its barely a match even 1v4 when an engi sniper joins.

[AocaVII]

20 minutes ago, Wulfurkin said:

Honestly it seems like you are arguing from a personal perspective. As in you main a sniper and wouldnt want to lose the obvious advantage you have over melee players. In arenas it just gets silly with a moderately competent engi sniper vs say a jugg, mara or pt. They just get nuked instantly, its barely a match even 1v4 when an engi sniper joins.

Yeah but you're losing the big picture of things here I think because a large majority of players can barely do 4K DPS. So if I go into war zone and I can do excellent damage on a class that is able to kite I can compensate for the bad players and balance the war zone out. 

It's not a personal perspective or preference. I play the classes that balance the war zones out the best for the best types of war zones where people just don't get destroyed in one second. Sometimes I have to play classes that I don't particularly like to make the war zones more balanced so the PVP is not ridiculously unbalanced.

I don't particularly like engineering sniper. I was Markman for 11 years I just learned to play engineering because I can't kill anything with mm because sometimes it takes four players on my team to kill one player on the other team when the other team doesn't even have a healer. What do you expect me to do? Like literally one player is hiding behind a pillar and four people can't kill him and I'm going to Marksman sniper what the what am I supposed to do fly in the air to kill them hover over them? LoL 

If you see a marksman doing a lot of damage it's just because he's using suppressive fire which is not going to kill anything and just spamming at the whole time. The only way they kill players on a marksman sniper is if stand there and don't line of sight them. It's a turret.

I have to go into the war zone with the mindset that most of these players are not going to do 5K DPS and I'm going to have to play a class that can pump out 12K to 15K DPS without having every single player on top of me. 

I would honestly prefer to play Marksman sniper or something else but the only way to kill players with other players on my team that can't kill anything is on a class that can pump out ridiculously high numbers quickly.

Like literally I can't heal anymore because no one kills anything so take away the engineering sniper burst. I can't play that anymore so who kills anything? Nothing dies. Because when I heal nothing dies so I can't heal. This makes the game impossible to play.

I literally love to heal but you can't heal anymore for two reasons if you go with a pre-made there's no damage to heal  because the other team can't do damage and if you go on the team that can't do damage they die too fast and you die and you can't heal either. It's a lose lose for healer. And you want to take away legitimate burst and killing ability for what? LoL 

Edited July 11 by AocaVII

[meddani]

1 hour ago, AocaVII said:

So Juggernaut, vanguard plus Mara is just fine right? 

who talks about three classes attacking at once? won't even bother with the rest if you start like that lol.

[meddani]

1 hour ago, Wulfurkin said:

Honestly it seems like you are arguing from a personal perspective. As in you main a sniper and wouldnt want to lose the obvious advantage you have over melee players.

not like this travesty of a game gets class balanced anyway

[AocaVII]

This battle to improve the game by adjusting the classes and doing all these other sorts of things is a battle that cannot be won. The real battle is to have good players playing the game which we don't have.

First rule of war don't start a war that you can't win. To fix this PVP is impossible. It's not something that can be accomplished because we don't have the players to do it. 

I play a few hours. Most times I get disgusted I come back later try a few more games maybe I'll get a few good games in per day. I used to get 30 games a day that we're all great now I get three or zero.

And if you're thinking well if they fix it then the good players will come back. They don't really well in other words in other way of saying it they don't have the resources to fix what's wrong.

Edited July 11 by AocaVII

[Beyrahl]

19 hours ago, Zunayson said:

BS balanced dot specs to do the most sustained damage.

Only in hatred's case and when taken into account by PvE is this true. I'm not sure what you mean by BS, but I'm assuming what I think here. I'm afraid I have to disagree. Carnage easily takes the top spot for sustained next to AP. 
 

 

19 hours ago, Zunayson said:

Should the balance be reversed though? Should "direct damage" (often mistakenly-called "burst" specs) like marksman, arsenal, carnage, and the like do more sustained damage than dot specs?

For the most part, pressure comes into play, where dot damage is not in your favor and sustain/burst is. When played well majority dot specs won't if there's not aoe to be had.
Things like arsenal and marksmanship can do damage with uptime, but that's rather extremely dependent on uptime. They also don't perform as well in PvE and there are a magnitude of reasons for it I won't go into detail as it's not hard to objectively see it firsthand. 

 

19 hours ago, Zunayson said:

Dot specs are able to do considerable damage without having actual uptime on their targets, which means kiting and line of sight is a simple I-win button for dot specs.

Most dots are not that scary, it's mainly IO and lack of healing in general that they become impactful when played like this. It's not an I-win button and even more so this logic breaks down terribly when ranged is considered or something as simple as free auto criticals.

 

19 hours ago, Zunayson said:

Take a duel between a lethality and marksman sniper. Since LOS hurts the Marksman more, shouldn't the two sniper's parsing in each other's faces result in the Marksman winning hands down?

lethality is probably the worst pick for a marksman to face. It has an incredible amount of uptime on evasion and would stall till victory even in the worst tier levels (assuming they're both on same tier) and at best would only end quicker at higher tiers. Damage potential will never matter if you can't get it out and in this case, they never would.

 

19 hours ago, Zunayson said:

Otherwise, what's the point in playing "direct-damage" specs? The ability to target-switch quickly? Target switching is a meme; it's another way to say, "not killing the priority target."

Having the ability to pressure players directly? I fail to see how x amount of damage over 18 seconds would matter when you can directly kill them faster. Applying that pressure also just further lowers their damage output. 
As for swapping targets, hard chasing depending on the scenario isn't always great. If you can force a numbers advantage at any point it's usually the right move. More players in the current era of SWTOR PvP smashes any sort of skill, assuming we're not talking about the lowest tiers of players possible. There's direct and indirect pressure, it's like a micromanagement game. Think of playing 4v4 with tank and healer, do you think you just eventually win tunneling one player when everyone's good? unless you're playing dots and aiming to kill the tank through guard damage, it's not happening. Apply pressure more evenly, get cooldowns, and swap back, it'll be even easier than before once you've gotten something out of them. Pair that with a potential numbers advantage it's a snooze. Pressure is the name of the game and whenever you're not using abilities or directly contributing towards combat it becomes that much easier for their team to stomp yours. This is part of why 8v8's are such a slog nowadays because everyone gives up, letting the few who remain to fight get constantly outmanned and inevitably fight a losing battle over and over. 

Here's just an example of how pressure constantly being applied eventually leads to a kill even when everyone is exceptional at what they're doing. 

[SentinalMasterWW]

23 hours ago, Zunayson said:

It's no secret that BS balanced dot specs to do the most sustained damage. Should the balance be reversed though? Should "direct damage" (often mistakenly-called "burst" specs) like marksman, arsenal, carnage, and the like do more sustained damage than dot specs?

Nope, there is a reason for why Direct DMG is not that level of DMG. I'm going to quote musco himself on that topic 

Quote

There are really only four sub-categories we use in order to classify a damage dealer: Melee (meaning short-range), Ranged (meaning long-range), Burst (meaning immediate or quick damage), and Sustained (meaning damage over time or slow damage). We feel both Melee and Sustained damage types are inherently disadvantaged, and that is why Melee Sustained damage dealers (with their two inherent disadvantages) make up the top grouping. Melee damage is disadvantaged because it must stay close to its target (often within four meters) in order to maximize damage output, and Sustained damage is disadvantaged because it takes several seconds to ramp up to its full damage potential each time it acquires a new target (and in situations where rapid target switching is required, it will often never reach its full damage potential).

 

Due to these inherent disadvantages, those classified as Sustained damage dealers are given a damage output advantage over those classified as Burst damage dealers. Similarly, those classified as Melee damage dealers are given a damage output advantage over those classified as Ranged damage dealers. Melee Burst and Ranged Sustained damage dealers fall into the same grouping because they each have one inherent disadvantage, even though those disadvantages are different (one being Melee and the other being Sustained). And in the last grouping, we have Ranged Burst damage dealers, which have no inherent disadvantages. They can quickly change targets without needing to to close a gap, and they have little to no ramp up time before they start dealing high DPS on a newly acquired target.

 

8 hours ago, AocaVII said:

On the subject of snipers right now there's no legitimate kiting class it's very hard to get away from juggernauts and other melee on sorcerer on a Merc it's literally impossible. Sniper engineering is really the only spec/viable class for kiting so I think engineering is just fine to keep the melee in line. If the melee is running wild, they'll kill the whole team. It is a very strong utility versus melee so they don't run wild and slice up everything. People always want change and then when the change comes they cry about the other classes.

True, Play Carnage or Rage and you'll see just how easy it is to lockdown a target. 

8 hours ago, AocaVII said:

There's literally like less than five engineering snipers that are actually good on starforge. So you're complaining about five players that's ridiculous. Most of the engineering snipers I see have no clue what they're doing.

I play on Starforge and I agree, most players playing Engi run ionic for that big meme hit but when they fight a good player that cheeses it (Like playing merc and popping chaff flair). They have no idea what to do.

7 hours ago, AocaVII said:

I don't particularly like engineering sniper. I was Markman for 11 years I just learned to play engineering because I can't kill anything with mm because sometimes it takes four players on my team to kill one player on the other team when the other team doesn't even have a healer. What do you expect me to do? Like literally one player is hiding behind a pillar and four people can't kill him and I'm going to Marksman sniper what the what am I supposed to do fly in the air to kill them hover over them? LoL 

If you see a marksman doing a lot of damage it's just because he's using suppressive fire which is not going to kill anything and just spamming at the whole time. The only way they kill players on a marksman sniper is if stand there and don't line of sight them. It's a turret.

I have to go into the war zone with the mindset that most of these players are not going to do 5K DPS and I'm going to have to play a class that can pump out 12K to 15K DPS without having every single player on top of me. 

I would honestly prefer to play Marksman sniper or something else but the only way to kill players with other players on my team that can't kill anything is on a class that can pump out ridiculously high numbers quickly.

I feel like this right here is a good reason of why people play engi in PVP and why we see so many. Marksman just cannot put out the DPS required, Marksman just feels like a lot of fluff without any real killing power.

 

[AocaVII]

Well, this is the never ending cycle of players who don't pop DcDs and/or just don't understand how the class fighting them works. They die fast because they don't have any idea how to survive and then blame a class a spec or whatever, saying nerf it. 

This has destroyed previous versions of classes and made some classes and specs unplayable.

For example, VG wasn't playable for how many years? No one played it for years. Then once they nerfed vg everyone was complaining about mercs. They never stop complaining. They don't grasp the concept that it's them and it's not the other player or class that's the problem.

I see it everyday on a DPS I'm killing people I see them not using defensives and dying in a few seconds because they don't know what they're doing. When I heal, people get globaled because they don't press any buttons. They have no clue how to survive, impossible to heal.

I see people on range classes standing in melee range in the middle of everybody. If you are on a range class you should not be in melee range you need to be 30 m away from where the fight is. 

In fact range classes unless they're being super focused should take very little damage. However, I find myself having to over healing mercenaries standing 20 m away in the middle of everything like the whole war zone I can barely heal anybody else sometimes I just let them die because it's just ridiculous they take 8 million damage on ranged class because they're standing in the middle of everything.

So really in summary, it's just the same old thing players not knowing what they're doing and then blaming other classes or players.

Basically, you have to make it a serious effort and hassle for someone to kill you in order for them to stop chasing you around or focusing you or just keep killing them. Once you make it so that it takes them so long to kill you in such a hassle or you just keep killing them, they just don't bother anymore.

Granted that when people get it in their heads that you are the person has to die in the war zone and they're in a premade. It's very very difficult to get away from that. That's when it's time to hide or just avoid them in the first place like dodging or just log off lol because sometimes there's literally one or two war zones going on at any given time and it's impossible to avoid people.

This should be the attitude of players: "I'm going to make it the most miserable long tedious experience for you trying to kill me in a war zone or I'm just going to 1v1 you". 

 

Edited July 12 by AocaVII

[Zunayson]

2 hours ago, AocaVII said:

I see people on range classes standing in melee range in the middle of everybody. If you are on a range class you should not be in melee range you need to be 30 m away from where the fight is. 

This is getting a little closer to the topic at hand. This is also a great example case study.

A ranged class standing in melee range is of course stupid and deserves to die. The ranged player's win condition is to kite, and the melee player's win condition is to close the distance. So, we balance ranged like:

1. If ranged class kites, he wins
2. If ranged class does not kite, he loses

Likewise, anyone standing in front of a turret caster is of course stupid and deserves to die. Everyone's win condition is to LOS the turret, and the turret's win condition is to blast face. Shouldn't we balance turrets like:

1. If the turret blasts face, he wins
2. If the turret is line-of-sighted, he loses

14 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

Nope, there is a reason for why Direct DMG is not that level of DMG. I'm going to quote musco himself on that topic 

Yes, everyone has read this post, which is why my original post says, "It's no secret Broadsword balanced dot specs..." Musco's post focuses on range and target-switching ability, and ignores other considerations like mobility or line-of-sight. My original post is just saying that direct damage actually does have disadvantages: it requires uptime. Casters actually do have disadvantages: they are vulnerable to pillar-humping.

Musco's post is rather outdated, too, since dot specs all have dot explosion tacticals that bring their burst completely up to the level of direct-damage specs. That ramp-up time isn't really a ramp, it's more of a big wall. After 4 or so GCDs, the dot spec has caught up to direct-damage specs, and direct-damage specs can't actually kill someone in 4 GCDs.

Someone will mention something about skillfully using DCDs to avoid damage. That is an off-topic copout. DCDs also work against direct-damage casters, better in fact because they telegraph their damage more. Control for DCD-using ability, dot specs are just casting instants and dealing the same amount of damage to the target.

19 hours ago, Beyrahl said:

lethality is probably the worst pick for a marksman to face. It has an incredible amount of uptime on evasion and would stall till victory even in the worst tier levels (assuming they're both on same tier) and at best would only end quicker at higher tiers. Damage potential will never matter if you can't get it out and in this case, they never would.

As usual, this poster manages to hit all the nails on the head. I'm just salty because when I log in to play, it's just the same 4v4 DPS matches and Marksman feels incredibly punishing to play in that meta.

[Beyrahl]

2 hours ago, Zunayson said:

I'm just salty because when I log in to play, it's just the same 4v4 DPS matches and Marksman feels incredibly punishing to play in that meta.

Arena honestly isn't in good shape and has not been in a long time. I would probably just move away from it and try to find enjoyment in other areas. There are still a lot of useful things you can learn in 8v8s as you'll be in combat for longer and truly get to practice movement, kiting, fighting in spots that make it harder for you to be noticed, and so on. Obviously, defensive management still plays a large role here too, sometimes even more impactful as in some arenas it will not matter what you do, because you will not get the damage required out to carry. 

Besides that white damage dealers suffer their own issues which I have complained, showcased, and ranted about for years.
The tank debuff of -5% accuracy was not always a thing, some classes like Arsenal and Carnage had baseline accuracy buff from their forms like their alacrity gains. 
If anything, I recommended it many times in the past. If they're not willing to make defense chance more unified for the differences in damage types (which if they did everyone would be complaining about it tenfold) they should just add in a 10% accuracy bolster to everyone like they did for tanks. Removing accuracy would be the grand-scale move, but adding in this bolster would help white damage dealers a lot more. And no, it would not put them in a tier where they'll outperform meta specs, but rather lift them further from their graves. 
 

[AocaVII]

The issues I find right now with playing dot / AOE classes is that like I said before the players die too fast so if you get a Rage Juggernaut or a class that can dish out DPS quickly with direct damage and your goal is to get top DPS it will never happen because the players are going to die before you can tick all your dots or spam your aoe's basically.

Also the other factor is that if the other team has competent heals you're never going to kill the team. I heal. I've been healing a very long time when there's dots on the other team, they literally can't kill the team unless the team I'm on is really awful. Yeah they might get like 20K DPS but they'll kill like one person. And to me dPS that doesn't kill anything isn't real dps. It's not real DPS because you are relying on the other team healing and the other team lasting long for your damage. So basically your dependent on the composition of the other team and the competency of the other team. Whereas with direct damage classes you're not dependent on the other team for your dps. If people can understand that. You may as well just be doing a parse on a dummy because you're really not killing anything but I understand that because it can be fun at times.

I play dot classes but it's more for trolling and just having fun. If I really want to take down people and more consistently grab highest DPS,  I will play a more direct damage first class because it's more consistent.

Edited July 13 by AocaVII