Hi, thanks for your reply. I will try to answer a few of these as best as I can. When picking Draining Center, their DPS was too high. The other choices did not bring their DPS nearly to what it was with Draining Center. PTS evens this out a bit more. And you can still build Centering / Fury stacks with Force Melt / Rend, when choosing the Juyo Melt / Rend mod choice instead. The functionality is simply now spread across multiple mod choices to not make one a clear winner in all situations. Draining Center was giving great burst in addition to adding stacks of Centering. Rotationally, if you choose Juyo Melt on PTS, you can still play the exact same way you could previously (Zen right before Force Melt), you just won't get the 4x damage on Force Melt anymore, but you will build stacks at exactly the same rate. As far as Force Fracture, this was never intended to wholesale replace Cauterize in operations, it is simply a more burst option if you like it. It has been improved to be more competitive, but it is not supposed to be equal to the others in terms of damage output.

Hello all, I wanted to respond to some of the things brought up in this thread. First of all, I want to thank everyone for their feedback on these changes. There has been a lot of discussion around Marauder changes, particularly Annihilation. I would like to give a little reasoning as to why these changes are being made, so as we continue feedback y'all can have the context of what the goal here is. Annihilation / Watchmen (from here out I'll just call them Annihilation) were consistently outperforming our DPS targets slightly and we noticed their level 23 mod choices were very unbalanced. While we enjoyed the gameplay this offered, unfortunately it made their optimal DPS require a strict rotation that was only usable if they selected the Draining Center mod choice. The redesign for these choices was to make all mods at level 23 competitive with one another. On PTS, any choice Annihilation makes at level 23 is a now a good one. While some are slightly better at others in some circumstances, there is no "wrong" choice. We understand this removes a particular rotation people enjoyed in 7.0, but we believe it opens the door for more playstyle choices as multiple mod choice paths offer competitive DPS. We are exploring ways to give a semblance of this back without making it the best-in-slot. To be perfectly clear, any choice on Force Rend that makes it into a burst damage ability should not be the optimal DPS choice, so it cannot outperform the rest in all cases, but can be close. Annihilation has never been intended to be a burst class, and while we seek it give some burst options with mod choices, we do not want these choices to be out-and-out above the rest. I hope that clears up the reasoning behind why we've done some things we've done. As we continue to gather feedback, please keep these in mind. But I would like to request that you try some of the other Annihilation mods and see how you feel about the rotation and damage output.

Hi all! First of all, I wanted to thank you again for all your feedback. We're reading all of it and we really appreciated the well thought out posts. I also wanted to share a few changes we've decided upon after doing some additional internal balance and taking your feedback into consideration. The first note is we are changing the new Madness Sorc tactical from the design in the OP to: "Demolish hits all nearby targets affected by your Deathmark." We are also giving Darkness back their DR on Severing Slash. The originally intended design is still something we want to do, but not without moving that DR somewhere else. You can expect future Darkness changes in upcoming patches to address or re-allocate where their DR bonuses come from. Although we felt the proposed changes to Hatred were fair, we understand some concern regarding force management based off of the feedback we are reading. As such, we're also making a few additional changes to Hatred. We are slightly improving the Two Time Trouble Tactical in that it will have a proc chance of 60% for non-basic melee attacks instead of 50%. While this won't completely make up for the fact that Saber Strike is no longer part of it, this, along with other changes to Force management we are making in 7.1.1 (listed in my original post) should give Hatred a smoother rotation while requiring less Saber Strikes. Another change we are making to Hatred concerns changes to another passive mod choice: Hungering Force. It now reads: "The critical hit chance, critical hit damage, and life stolen of your periodic damage effects is increased by 10% Whenever you are healed by a Hatred discipline effect, you generate 2 Force." It's worth noting that Hungering Force has always generated 2 Force, it's tooltip has however been incorrect since 7.0 launch. However, the life steal component is new. Finally, a small change for Concealment Operative, increasing the duration of their Tactical Critical passive from 6 seconds to 8 seconds. This will allow players easier uptime. We continue to read your feedback and work on these balance changes, please don't take this post as final. Thanks, -Chris

Hi all! Just wanted to let you all know I've been reading all this feedback and I really appreciate all the well thought out posts! I wanted to give a couple quick notes to ease some concerns. We are going to look into making some changes or redesigning the Sorcerer's AOE Tactical, as we understand some people have some concerns with the usefulness of slow and also introducing more slows into into the game. I also wanted to take a moment to address some Assassin tank concerns as well. The intention of removing the DR from Severing Slash was simply to not force that choice on all tanks. But seeing as some players are feeling that is too much right now, we have decided to roll back that change for 7.1.1. In a future tank balance pass (more on that later), we may circle back to this and address is another way. If we do end up changing the functionality of Severing Slash, it's important for us to give that mitigation back somewhere else. So, for now, we're going to leave it as it currently stands with the understanding that it probably will be the most popular choice for Assassin Tanks. We will do a pass on that whole choice row in a future balance pass. As for the DPS nerfs, we realize these come off as very major, but I can assure you we are constantly re-assessing these classes and all of this is subject to change. While I can't give any specific details, know that we continue to tune these classes. A good suggestion I saw on the forums was increasing Concealment's Tactical Critical from further from 6s to 8s. Quality of life changes like this that make the class easier to play well are improvements we can augment the changes we are making to their DPS output. Finally, we continue to look at Operation difficulty. The team continues to tweak and adjust R4 and other Operations to ensure a fair balance. We realize any class changes affect that and we are trying to account for them as best we can. As we iterate on these changes I will update this thread. Thanks again, -Chris

Hi everyone! We really appreciate all your feedback and have been reading all of it. I just wanted to make a post to clarify somethings accidentally missed in the OP. One is that we missed some Sorcerer / Sage changes, which will be added to the OP in the changes section. The second is the new AP/Tactics Tactical. I accidentally wrote an older design description to that, which has since been changed. The cooldown reset that would have occurred to reset Thermal Detonator now affects Rocket Punch instead. That part of the tactical now reads: "Energy Burst: The cooldown of Rocket Punch is reset your next Rocket Punch costs no heat." As a final point, the "Reactive Substance" mod change does not have values since we can't communicate that very well on the forums. But power-wise a single stack of Reactive Substance would be similar to one Kolto Waves tick. You can stack it twice on a single target and get 2x the effect whenever damage is dealt to them. Again, we really appreciate all your feedback! The OP will be updated shortly. Thanks, -Chris

Hello everyone, Chris here again, Gameplay Designer on SWTOR. I wanted to share with you some upcoming balance changes planned for 7.1.1 (Jackie mentioned it in this thread). I’ve spoken of our post 7.0 balance plan in the past, and if you are curious about that and our philosophy going forward with regards to balance, you can find that here. With 7.1.1, we are mostly focused on healer balance and various QoL (quality of life) improvements across the classes. We’ve taken a lot of your feedback and applied that to the changes we are making in 7.1.1. This includes changes to every healer with Operatives / Scoundrel, Mercenaries / Commandos, and Sorcerers / Sages in the form of balance adjustments, passive mod redesigns, and QoL improvements. In many cases, we’ve adjusted their HPS (heal per second) output to be higher, as we noticed they weren’t reaching our internal targets. Operatives, while their healing is being brought down in some cases, are being brought up in others. Our goal with this change is to equalize healer HPS across all combat styles while retaining their individual class identity. In addition to balance changes across healers, we’ve also improved some survivability in a few classes. While these may seem to be small adjustments, we feel these changes will bring them more in line with other classes. Finally, we have continued to adjust our DPS (damage per second) balance across multiple combat styles for 7.1.1, with the intention to narrow the gap between the top and bottom DPS classes. We continue to strive for making every combat style viable while retaining what makes it unique. We are also introducing two new Tacticals for 7.1.1 to replace old Tactical items that were removed with 7.0. One is for Advanced Prototype / Tactics Powertechs and the other is for Madness / Balance Sorcerers / Sages. 7.1.1 will not be available on PTS, but you can see a list of tentative changes below. We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on our direction, as we appreciated all your contributions to 7.1. Here are some of the balance changes you can expect from 7.1.1. Note that all of this is subject to change. We’re looking forward to your feedback! As Jackie mentioned, we’ll have more details to share about 7.1.1 in general soon! -Chris

Hey everyone, Just wanted to say thank you for all your feedback. We're keeping an eye on everything that's being posted here and on the PTS forums. Making new threads can be helpful too if you have something specific to talk about regarding the balance changes on PTS, but please do this in the PTS forum, though so we can track discussions. Additionally, if you do see a topic already being discussed in a thread, continue the conversation there. That said, the recent Merc DPS and Marauder AOE DR threads in the PTS forums, for example, were very useful feedback, and I appreciate the effort that went into them. Thanks!

Hi all, I'm Chris Durel and I’m a Gameplay Designer on the SWTOR team! I wanted to take a moment to speak about some upcoming changes we’re going to be making to class balance in 7.1 and future patches. The plan is to focus on those combat styles most in need of adjustment for 7.1 and then branch out from there to the remaining combat styles in future patches such as 7.2 and 7.3. Balance is, and always will be, an ongoing process, and we want to take our time to do our due diligence before making any changes. With 7.1 comes changes to Marauders, Juggernauts, Snipers, and Mercenaries, in the form of balance adjustments, passive mod redesigns and quality of life improvements. The goal here is to bring these combat styles closer to their intended experiences and make disciplines more competitive with one another. Of special note, and after listening to lots of feedback and gathering data, are the changes to Fury and Carnage Marauders (Concentration and Combat Sentinels) and Arsenal and Innovative Ordnance Mercenaries (Gunnery and Assault Specialist Commandos). It is important to note that these changes will be available for testing in an upcoming phase of PTS! What some of these changes look like: In addition to class balance for 7.1, some disciplines are also receiving new Tacticals. With 7.0 we removed a handful of Tacticals from specific disciplines, and in many cases, rolled their functionality into the discipline’s ability tree. This created a bit of an imbalance between combat styles’ access to Tactical items, as some disciplines simply had more Tacticals to choose from than others. In 7.1, we are filling these gaps by introducing a few new Tacticals into the game for certain disciplines. Carnage Marauders are receiving a new Tactical to replace Fanged God Form Shard of Mortis - Using Massacre / Blade Rush adds Hyper stacks to you, increasing your critical chance by 25% per stack and increasing the cost of your next Massacre / Blade Rush by 1 rage / focus per stack, up to 3. When you deal damage with another ability, Hyper is removed. Arsenal Mercenaries will receive a new Tactical to replace Thermonuclear Fusion Unstable Fusion - Activating Supercharged Gas / Cell accelerates heat out from you, dealing elemental damage to up to 8 enemies within 8 meters and applying Heat Signature to them. Targets with Heat Signature are vulnerable to Rail Shot / High Impact Bolt and take additional damage from Heatseeker Missiles / Demolition Round. Innovative Ordnance Mercenaries will received a new Tactical to replace Magnetized Shrapnel Magnetic Resonance - Exploding Thermal Detonator / Assault Plastique early with Mag Shot / Mag Bolt causes your next Power Shot / Charged Bolts to deal additional Elemental damage. Bodyguard Mercenaries will receive a new Tactical based on their old Rocket Fuel Vapors item Kolto Vapors - The Kolto Pods left by Kolto Missile / Kolto Bomb last a second longer and heal for an additional 5%. Another important note, our intention isn’t to introduce new Tactical items at a steady cadence into the future; instead, we are looking to balance access to Tactical items. You can expect a few more discipline-specific Tacticals in the next patch to further balance what is available for each discipline, but moving forward from that, there are no immediate plans of introducing more. To reiterate, all of you will have a chance to try out the above changes on PTS soon! The PTS forums will have an updated Changelog, so you can see everything that’s been updated since the last phase of PTS was live. We’d love to get your feedback on everything. Please play around with the class changes and new Tactical items and give us your thoughts. Thanks!

Hi all, I wanted to communicate some changes we are making to guard for 6.1.4 that are going to be live on PTS soon. We’ve heard your feedback about Guarding in PVP and we are hoping to address some of those concerns with this change. We’ve added a 50% damage penalty to DPS disciplines while they are guarding allies. The full text of the new DPS guard is: All this means is that while you guard allies as a DPS discipline, you do less damage while you are guarding that ally. It’s worth noting that this only applies to the DPS disciplines, Tank disciplines do not suffer this penalty and can freely guard as usual with no penalty. The purpose of this change is to discourage the use of guard in every situation in PVP. While we feel like guarding is a useful skill and important to the advanced classes that have access to it, it has become clear that it is being abused in PVP by guarding and guard switching with no penalty. This makes PVP unbalanced towards the disciplines that have access to guard. With this change, we are hoping that guard is used more thoughtfully in PVP while still retaining its usefulness in certain situations. We’d love to hear your feedback on this change, specifically if you think it helps the PVP experience overall, if the penalty feels fair, and after you get your hands on it if there’s any noticeable difference to guarding and team composition in PVP. Thanks!