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Omophorus

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  1. That's exciting to me, and I should've done a better job of clarifying. Not demeaning the content, more thinking about level cap increase (+ early access) and a very unequal distribution of raiders who've seen content on closed PTS and raiders who haven't.
  2. We'll see. I'm back, which is step 1, and we're dealing with a couple things tactically at the moment. HM progression race is a joke, so I'm more interested in making sure PV is NiM-ready if/when we go back to full active status. It's going to depend heavily on our ability to field a strong enough team. We're not going to be 40-year-old-Brett-Favre coming out of retirement for one last shot at glory, only to be fat, lame, and useless. The goal of PV has always been to be a server-first capable NiM raiding guild, and it will be that or nothing. Between the holidays and the fact that HM doesn't matter, we haven't really been racing to hit 60 and put a team together, the only real consideration is making sure that we have enough time to min/max in the 3.0 HM gear before NiM drops.
  3. Everyone wants one, no one wants to pay a reasonable price for one. Or, more accurately, no one wants to pay enough to rent ~15 peoples' time to make that **** irritating fight worthwhile.
  4. Then it just shows your ignorance and propensity for projection of your own flaws onto others, I guess. Have fun with that.
  5. Damnit Luddott, where were you when we *did* want to sell Wings?
  6. That was a pretty bad troll, tbh.
  7. No, I cry because the core members of the guild quit out of boredom. The only original comment was to bemoan a major change that was for the worse (completely neutering a mechanic, far more than was necessary). It turned into a more general complaint about the way BioWare chose to go about converting Nightmare Mode into more accessible content. I don't mind that it's more accessible, but I just don't agree with the method. And yeah, you're bang on with your latter point. At least for DP. The only non-Ebon Hawk native in our DF clear was Levium, who came to the guild right at the beginning of the progression tier. He came without knowing how good or bad we'd wind up being, but it aligned with his schedule and progression goals. Both healers, myself, and all 4 DPS were EH natives. For DP, a bit of a different story, and that had more to do with deciding to switch to 16m instead of doing 8m, as we had a number of very solid DPS sitting on the sidelines unable to participate. Then we were faced with the brutal reality that 16m Council was not tuned at all, required 5 healers for most of the fight (except one had to respec to DPS for the 2nd phase, then spec back to healer for the 3rd phase and final burn), and that we simply didn't have 5 healers that could get it done. Given the time crunch we were under, we absolutely pieced together the best 8 we could field to make sure we got Council down with Nightmare Power. All of the members that were in that kill team had been a part of the 16m progression team, and ultimately 6 of the 8 members who got the server first Brontes kill were able to get the DP title. But you're right - we did pick up a handful of people from other servers who wanted to raid more, and our schedule didn't conflict with most other world progression teams (we typically started up right after they all called it a night). Those people were instrumental in getting Council down with Nightmare Power. It likely would not have happened with all Ebon Hawk native talent unless we'd never done 16m and had just spent as much time on 8m Council as we did on Brontes. I like the idea. I don't like the implementation. The raid damage was reduced by too much, some mechanics were toned down too much, and it was very odd that the DPS checks were made easier only because bored healers can now DPS like 50%+ of the time and more mechanics can basically be ignored. They should've scaled down enemy HP slightly to ease the DPS check a tad, and scaled down raid damage some, but not as much as they did. They also should have implemented a method of turning Nightmare Power back on voluntarily, perhaps with a new title that indicates that you were able to clear the instance at full strength, but not during the initial "progression" window. The people that want the challenge could have it, with a reward to show for it, and the people that aren't there yet could take it on in its current form, then give it a try at full power if they like. There really isn't anywhere else to talk about it, so conversation is bound to happen here from time to time. Sometimes it'll sound a little elitist. Frankly, I don't care. I'm happy for them, but they have the same basic goal that we did - challenge themselves on the hardest PVE content available. I *do* think our accomplishment is better because we did the same content when the difficulty level was higher. I *don't* care if anyone thinks less of me because of that. I don't really do much in SWTOR these days, so the likelihood of anyone having to suffer my presence or attitude is negligible in any case. I'm happy to see more guilds trying out Nightmare content and having success. I genuinely hope they find it to their liking and decide they want to take it seriously the next time real progression content comes along. I don't know if PV will be there or not, but I do know that if it is, I'll relish the competition and I'm excited by the idea of having a real scrap for progression milestones. Nothing is more motivating to me than a real threat of being second, or third, or fourth. So good luck to all the new guilds setting foot in NiM DF and DP, and hope to see you pushing for server firsts next time out.
  8. Single target pure DPS? Assassinate if available. Shock to CD. Maul with Conspirator's Cloak proc. Thrash for CC/Energize procs. Saber Strike if low on energy. FL and Wither are both DPS losses on a single target if all you care about is max DPS and nothing else. The biggest problem with both is that they do less DPGCD than Shock and consume GCDs that could be spent on Shock or proc'ing more Shocks. Edit: Realistically, your DPS rotation is your tanking rotation, which means you just need to go look at KBN's "Pain Free Tank Rotation" thread. In a nutshell... Shock > Wither > Filler > Filler> Shock > Filler > Force Lightning Repeat until blue in the face. Adjust as required thanks to Energize procs, but make sure there is 1 GCD between getting your 3rd stack of Harnessed Darkness and casting Force Lightning unless doing so will cause you to lose Dark Protection stacks. Filler priority is: Discharge (if needed for Acc debuff) Assassinate Maul (CC proc) Thrash Saber Strike (if empty on Force)
  9. If a healer cast a heal that topped you off in such a way that at least 1 tick of your channel didn't actually heal you, they invalidated the mechanic. The balance between tanks prior to Harnessed Darkness/Shadows changes was functioning on certain assumptions about the value of self-healing versus mitigation. If the assumptions were wrong (because of outside influences like healers topping you off), then the entire model for game balance was wrong. It may not have been *badly* wrong, but it was still wrong enough to help breed the idea among players that Shadow/Sin tanks were "squishy" (because, relatively speaking, they were between about 1.3 and the changes to HD after 2.0 thanks to the healing not working out like it was supposed to). So yeah, in a nutshell, BioWare designed the Sin/Shadow self-healing mechanic in a bubble which didn't look anything like how people actually play the game. It was either mad OP (in easier PVE content and PVP when not interrupted) or really weak (in harder PVE content or when players were smart enough to deny your heals in PVP). And it was all down to that pesky detail that they couldn't balance/scale it and they didn't anticipate its real value accurately.
  10. No. It was a *********** terrible mechanic. Good riddance. I am glad it was gone, I hope it never returns. What makes Shadow/Assassin different from the others is a higher dependence on active mitigation and CDs which must be used against the right sorts of attacks to be strong (but are very good in terms of effect and CD in exchange for their less-broad applicability). Self-healing is a nightmare to balance and scale versus content, it's awful to try to balance in PVP vs PVE, and it's just a bad game design choice in general. It puts additional burden on your healers to avoid the risk of invalidating self-healing as a mechanic (they need to intentionally not top you off), it is wasted if you ever have to interrupt a channel (whereas DP stacks on itself, so it's much easier to keep up and gain the full benefit whether or not the channel completes), and it's utterly worthless if you haven't taken damage in alignment with your "rotation". No one who begs for self-healing back can justify why it would be a good decision to do so. They can't discuss game design or game balance and put forth a scenario where it makes sense or can be balanced and scale. Unless you can do that, **** and ****.
  11. I do like, in the abstract, that BioWare is making Nightmare content more approachable before you overgear it by multiple tiers. I don't like how they did it. They nerfed outgoing damage like crazy, meaning that tank and healer gear is essentially meaningless and the only things anyone really has to worry about is meeting DPS checks, not failing raid-wipe mechanics, and not having too many people die in hilarious and humiliating ways. So yes, I expect people to take time to learn to execute fights, but the individual excellence that was required with Nightmare Power is long gone. To be blunt - if healers and tanks can't cut the mustard in DF and DP right now, they will be on the express lane to the bench the next time real progression content is released (aka sometime after 3.0). The current state of DF and DP is only really a litmus test for DPS, as the DPS checks have only changed insofar as spending less time worrying about mechanics and execution means more ability to dummy parse on raid bosses. For example, it used to be important that people paid attention to positioning so that large groups didn't get hit with the Corrosive Grenade. And it was imperative that people were cleansed right away, as the damage the DOT dealt was very high. Now, the DOT does utterly pissant damage and there's no incentive to pay attention to positioning or rush to cleanse it. The healers have much less need to be on the ball and the DPS can pretty much chuck raid awareness out the window except on phase changes.
  12. It's hilarious how piss-easy the healing is in "Nightmare" mode without the buff. There's like no reason to even worry about stuff like those grenades anymore, it's really sad. At this point, the only thing that's remotely close to a challenge is being able to meet certain DPS checks (Council 2nd phase, primarily).
  13. For the other CDs, I'd agree, but with Blackout, most of the time it gets used near to CD because: a) It doesn't actually mitigate that much damage, so while it takes the edge off a burst, it doesn't have anything like as much impact as our other CDs. b) Hybrid is hilariously Force-negative even with the tank tree talents to help Force recovery, so it's beneficial for recovering Force as often as possible. As such, it's not too much of a stretch to just consider its average contribution. There are a few times I get cute with using it (e.g. aligning with a Thundering Blast on Tyrans to reduce the spike *and* recover Force), but it only really sits up off CD if I'm not actively tanking, and even then it often gets used just for the Force recovery (e.g. Raptus when just poking his tookus with a double saber).
  14. The only real argument for 12s being too short is in the (relatively rare) situation where you have to Shock for a 3rd stack, channel immediately to refresh stacks, and then break channel after the initial tick. You'll be left with 3.5s of Shock CD to contend with and 11s of DP duration left. If you manage to use every GCD with no gaps and get zero Energize procs, you'll Shock @ 8.5s of DP duration and 2.5s of DP duration meaning you have a 1s gap to start your channel to keep stacks. That may not always be possible, but that's literally a worst-case scenario. 4% flat DR would be a horrible change. It would be OP from a mitigation perspective and would have a negative impact on Assassin's rotation. I'll talk about that latter one below. But yeah, Assassin's DTPS is already inline with Juggy and PT (lower on a lot of current fights thanks to hybrid). We don't need more steady-state mitigation and a reduced skill floor. Might as well just play PT at that point. There's nothing wrong with the mechanic seeing as the stacks fully refresh off even 1 tick. It's rare to not be able to get off even 1 tick, although doing so intentionally does increase the amount of forethought and needed to ensure you rebuild stacks again in time and don't Force-starve yourself. You should be so lucky that someone in PVP will waste a hard stun on you to interrupt Force Lightning. Seeing as how the first tick is instant, you still get your stacks refreshed and you get resolve to boot. Plus, it's tight but 100% feasible to always have HD stacks in time even if you get no Energize procs so long as you're within 10m at all times. Considering you only ever need 1 tick to keep stacks up so long as you got them up to 4 at some point, you can be substantially mobile and keep your stacks so long as you're sufficiently skilled and attentive. Assassin is the "skill" tank and it does actually provide measurably superior performance (especially in PVE) with sufficiently skillful play. It's still very much in line with Juggy an PT even if stacks do fall off occasionally, and its overall performance is directly proportional to your ability to get the most out of your CDs and manage your active mitigation. Maybe it could be more user-friendly, but quite honestly it's very balanced at an average level of play and perhaps slightly too good (to offset the difficulty of execution) when played near-optimally. *shrug*
  15. Hump de bump. Recruitment needs are current on the guild website. tl;dr version: WTB ranged DPS, and all other classes/roles are open for consideration.
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