Well, I'm happy to see that this Guild Wars 2 expansion is out now, it gives me a good reason to cancel my sub.

What I love is the overall lack of answer from BW.

Every changes they've brought so far has been like this :

-> Announce Nerf

-> Players complain and say why it isn't needed

-> Still nerf without any explanation or discussion as to why those nerf

This isn't communication, this is just lazy development. It is easier to stick with the current changes rather than listen to real players in order to do something good for this game.

As for those changes, I agree with Eudoxia, this wasn't needed in any way, and is way overkill for a class that, for once, was doing its job on operation and PvP.

The changes will completely remove its single target burst for PvP, making it almost useless (it was already hard to counter a mara, a skank-healer duo, a sniper or a merc, now it will be nearly impossible due to the lack of effective Burst).

As for PvE, many said that Deception only had its dps to bring in a raid, that is quite true. Assassin's Shelter isn't taken by most of the Deception players I know, due to the fact that there is already utilities that are way better than this one (allowing you to dps more, be more mobile), it only brings Damage Reduction and a heal that is almost non existant when compared to the interest of Sonic Rebounders, to quote the most usefull one. No raid buff like Predation, Blood Thirst, or anything else. We have Force Shroud, who last 3 seconds (5 with utility) in order to cheese Force/Tech damage applied to ourselves. No heal other than overcharged saber, who is used as an offensive cooldown. Our own dps is impacted by RNG, something that no other class have today, which can makes it even more useless if RN-Jesus isn't with you on a fight. Devs tried to argue that sin were too mobile and removed PhaseWalk from us, mobility and damage are our only advantage. Now that we don't have any damage potential, Deception's raid utility has become quite worthless. Merc suffered a nerf that is quite big too, but their overall raid utility still allow them to take part in raid... At least, give Deception some interest, because it doesn't have any future now. :/

Great, I hope you offer a free 65lvl token for all of us who took the time to grind a dps sin until CR 300, we'll need it... That is if peoples don't do like me and just go play a better game.

Hope you'll think about this BW, because until now you've clearly shown that you cannot balance a simple game that resolve around 8 class... The best thing could still be to admit that 4.0-5.0 killed the game and move onto something else

Anyway, I hope you'll have fun "balancing" this game -Tbh I would suggest you change the name of this and simply call it "lazy nerf", so peoples like me won't hold any hope of a work well done-, I'll cya all somewhere else where my money isn't wasted

What I love is the overall lack of answer from BW.

Every changes they've brought so far has been like this :

-> Announce Nerf

-> Players complain and say why it isn't needed

-> Still nerf without any explanation or discussion as to why those nerf

Sounds about right.

I'd say it's a lot, but that would just mean it'd get nerfed too.

 

But seriously I generally heal for 500-600k with it on a typical NIM fight. That's 165-200k healing each on the two tanks and the other melee dps (because it doesn't affect me and the ranged are outside the effect radius). Not game-breaking, but has definitely probably saved us from wiping more than once.

 

Also I did rough math on the nerf. I killed the 4M hp ship dummy five times (which took me more than 35 minutes) for better sampling, although by no means statistically rigorous. But I wasn't going to spend three and a half hours straight doing it for the minimally-statistically-relevant 30 trials.

 

Anyway, with rough numbers:

 

1. Three of our six abilities nerfed by 10% (or more, RIP Psychokinetic Blast), and another two nerfed by 5%

2. All abilities nerfed by an additional roughly 0.6% (2% loss of damage in execute range of 30% is roughly 2x0.3 = 0.6%)

3. This comes out to, given the variance in trials I attempted, a nerf of between 830 to 875 DPS, for my skill, gear, and latency.

 

Overally, while this isn't representative, a nerf of let's say absolute minimum 800 DPS is... well, time to start gearing an alt.

Yep. There goes this class. Again.

Carnage will always have top parses higher than intended until they either fix clipping or balance with clipping in mind. They do neither, so in their view Carnage is a lot lower than it is in reality.

What people been saying for a long time.

These changes in a nutshell:

"All Shadow DPS, you have to switch to Mara DPS or tank."

And that's how it always is. Shadow DPS is a useless spec because Bioware can't balance properly. Hatred is awful, Deception will now be even worse (for the first time in 2 years, actually), the only thing worthwhile to play is Tank. And they'll probably nerf that into the ground too.

This is what bioware needs to do:

EITHER: 1. Classes without raid utility should be in the top parsing specs. This means Shadows, Powertechs, and I think Juggs are the 3rd one.

OR: 2. These classes need to be given a raid buff. Shadows get the Sorc Buff. Juggs the Sentinel Buff. And Powertechs the Merc Buff. That will vastly improve their raid utility, although they will still need to be properly balanced to be viable DPS-wise.

And no matter what, the position requirement on Shadow needs to be completely eliminated, end of discussion.

Can we have Ben Irving back now? Haha

Guess he's not as bad after all... unless Keith has been hired to sabotage the game because EA wants it dead in time for Battlefront 2 release lol

This totally sucks though I've been spending all this time getting my Juggernaut and Assassin to 300.

I already got my Marauder to 300 earlier this year and my Juggernaut to 300 like two days before they released the nerf.

Now my Assassin is at 262 and bamboo it's getting nerfed...

Well I gotta check how long I got left on my sub and cancel the renewal as I've preordered Battlefront 2 and that'll give me my dose of Star Wars and new content which this game is struggling with.

I feel Dice has learned from their mistakes although we will have crates but to them idiots who will buy them thank you you're awesome you'll be paying for my free DLC haha

Something Bioware hasn't!

It's as if I'm a idiot and they think I pay a subscription for no content just nerfs and bad customer service....

Took me a month to get my last month sub coins answer was "because of the bad patch update."

I think the other thing people in this forum needs to stop agreeing with them saying "yeah I think it needed a nerf but not this much"

The other thing is people need to stop calling for nerfs maybe instead just ask for buffs of the particular class you feel needs a buff and maybe these things won't happen.

You need to stick together because it is actually us vs them plain and simple they obviously don't care about us nor probably what we think and they love to make us look like we don't hold the power because it is our beloved franchise.

How the devs can't see this cripples us is beyond me...and also...so let's just say we were "Overperforming"... You devs sure as heck let that go with the scoundrels and ops when it came to their OP healing because you saw that the other consequences of the nerf would be too severe... So why the heck don't you use common sense BW and see what this does to infiltration?

We were darn well not OP from a damage standpoint in PvP...we can't survive enough to be that. PvP on the shadow for more than a match or two and you'll quickly learn where your strengths and weakness lie. One thing we were not doing is so much damage that we needed to be nerfed.

So I'm guess your almighty metrics showed we were "overperforming" in raids a bit...who flipping cares? That's not against other people. I pvp a ton every day. I'm not the best. I'm not the worst, but I can tell you that these changes are too much. If you just want to kill the game, please save us all time and kill the flipping game. I'm tired of having my faith in you proven unjustified again and again. Frankly, I'm disgusted.

Oh, and maybe, just maybe you can address real issues like the 3 merc/commando lives and the still ridiculous eng sniper and the ring of fire.

Hey folks,

 

Below you will find the planned changes for Deception and Infiltration in Game Update 5.5:

 

 

-eric

Hey Eric . ...

Do you even care about the people who write their view about this nerf that you are doing to shadows /sins ..which was never needed in the first place as for the first time Infil Shadows / Decp Sins were viable in Operations . You basically are ******** on every fcking player ( who rolls a sin / shadow) and saying that we are balancing dps ... where in ur completely making a class literally useless .

this class never had a good defense utility and the only thing this class had was the damage that you think is to much . What a joke . You over powered the mer/ commando class with high level defensive and give no defesnes to shadow/sins ... is that your opinion of a balance ....heloooo ...balance means every class would have similar defensive and parses would be around each other and rest would depend on how good a player knows his / her class .

Balance : a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.

So where is the balance of shadows/ sins ...hey ..you even fcekd with powertechs and vngds who still have better raid utilities that shadows/sins even thou u fcked with their dps making them one of the lowest dps class they are still considered better to take than a sin / shadow .

IF Ur taking the dps ...give some good defensive abilities ... or dont fkc with class at all ... :mad:

:mad::mad::mad:

Hey Eric . ...

 

Do you even care about the people who write their view about this nerf that you are doing to shadows /sins ..which was never needed in the first place as for the first time Infil Shadows / Decp Sins were viable in Operations . You basically are ******** on every fcking player ( who rolls a sin / shadow) and saying that we are balancing dps ... where in ur completely making a class literally useless .

 

this class never had a good defense utility and the only thing this class had was the damage that you think is to much . What a joke . You over powered the mer/ commando class with high level defensive and give no defesnes to shadow/sins ... is that your opinion of a balance ....heloooo ...balance means every class would have similar defensive and parses would be around each other and rest would depend on how good a player knows his / her class .

 

Balance : a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.

 

So where is the balance of shadows/ sins ...hey ..you even fcekd with powertechs and vngds who still have better raid utilities that shadows/sins even thou u fcked with their dps making them one of the lowest dps class they are still considered better to take than a sin / shadow .

 

IF Ur taking the dps ...give some good defensive abilities ... or dont fkc with class at all ... :mad:

 

:mad::mad::mad:

+100 to you sir

Anyone actually test it yet? Just wondering

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=9422542&postcount=47

On page 5. I did a bunch of testing a few hours ago.

Very happy to see these changes, Deception have been heavily overperforming for a long time.

You are absolutely delusional. I can still do about the same DPS on an ops dummy with a Concealment Operative (after the recent nerf) as with a Deception Assassin. They were NOT heavily overperforming, ever since they fixed the duplicate stance bug.

Is it possible to slighty touch a class without buffing it like hell or making it unuseable? Is it?

No, not for BioWare it isnt. If the current set of Devs were the ones making the decisions when they were first developing the game, it would have never made it to launch.

I now regret that I made a huge mistake and payed another 2 months sub to you Bioware. The very last time definitely. You've already nerfed four classes which I've been playing and gearing up, and I'm not gonna invest any more minute of my time farming your crappy CXP and gearing up another class which you would think is imbalanced. F**k you. I gave you enough time. Do your damn job finally! Stop touching something that was not broken!

A **LOT** of us are feeling the exact same way. They are fully intent on digging a grave for this thing.

You are absolutely delusional. I can still do about the same DPS on an ops dummy with a Concealment Operative (after the recent nerf) as with a Deception Assassin. They were NOT heavily overperforming, ever since they fixed the duplicate stance bug.

I guess technically "anywhere other than dead last" is historically "overperforming" for Deception/Infiltration.

Hey Eric . ...

 

Do you even care about the people who write their view about this nerf that you are doing to shadows /sins

Obviously not.

I guess technically "anywhere other than dead last" is historically "overperforming" for Deception/Infiltration.

Not dead last, but yeah anything over 14th place is, evidently.

I'm getting roughly 5.5% DPS nerf so 600 DPS, not 800. Still pretty rough on a class that has basically a range, not an actual parse.

Can we have Ben Irving back now? Haha

Guess he's not as bad after all... unless Keith has been hired to sabotage the game because EA wants it dead in time for Battlefront 2 release lol

 

This totally sucks though I've been spending all this time getting my Juggernaut and Assassin to 300.

I already got my Marauder to 300 earlier this year and my Juggernaut to 300 like two days before they released the nerf.

Now my Assassin is at 262 and bamboo it's getting nerfed...

 

Well I gotta check how long I got left on my sub and cancel the renewal as I've preordered Battlefront 2 and that'll give me my dose of Star Wars and new content which this game is struggling with.

I feel Dice has learned from their mistakes although we will have crates but to them idiots who will buy them thank you you're awesome you'll be paying for my free DLC haha

Something Bioware hasn't!

 

It's as if I'm a idiot and they think I pay a subscription for no content just nerfs and bad customer service....

Took me a month to get my last month sub coins answer was "because of the bad patch update."

Erica and Chief Keith can you answer?

Very happy to see these changes, Deception have been heavily overperforming for a long time.

well i wonder wich class isn't over performing? Singer right riku?

You are absolutely delusional. I can still do about the same DPS on an ops dummy with a Concealment Operative (after the recent nerf) as with a Deception Assassin. They were NOT heavily overperforming, ever since they fixed the duplicate stance bug.

hes happy too see all classes/disciplines nerfed cause he play sniper so he can out dps everyone and thinking hes good cause of it its rikacha

You are absolutely delusional. I can still do about the same DPS on an ops dummy with a Concealment Operative (after the recent nerf) as with a Deception Assassin. They were NOT heavily overperforming, ever since they fixed the duplicate stance bug.

Maybe there are some shortcomings in your rotation that you should adjust, it's naturally difficult to play one class to its full potential, very few players can do multiple classes.

well i wonder wich class isn't over performing? Singer right riku?

In my mind, and I think most Nightmare players would agree, all classes were overperforming heavily and often not excelling at what they were supposed to be the best at, such as MM not having the best burst (with the Viru nerf this is now adjusted), Carnage having the best sustain (Annihilation is now superior), Arsenal being the best at both bursts and sustain (now only good burst) and Sorcerer being able to solo heal several Nightmare fights.

In my opinion, some nerf can be seen as a bit harsh, and I understand that you are emotionally invested in this class and thus unable to see the bigger picture, but these class changes do make sense based on their target DPS and category strategy. Now that does not mean this is the approach I would prefer, I would rather see an HP/Damage on bosses so the result would be the same but players would see the same numbers (people focus a lot on numbers and often forget the bigger picture).

Now, I realize most of these comments are wasted on a tunnel vision focused community such as the Assassin/Shadow, but I am sure that following these readjustments and as you realize that doing 9.3k instead of 9.8k still is more than enough for all content, you will know that I was right.

Maybe there are some shortcomings in your rotation that you should adjust, it's naturally difficult to play one class to its full potential, very few players can do multiple classes.

 

 

 

In my mind, and I think most Nightmare players would agree, all classes were overperforming heavily and often not excelling at what they were supposed to be the best at, such as MM not having the best burst (with the Viru nerf this is now adjusted), Carnage having the best sustain (Annihilation is now superior), Arsenal being the best at both bursts and sustain (now only good burst) and Sorcerer being able to solo heal several Nightmare fights.

 

In my opinion, some nerf can be seen as a bit harsh, and I understand that you are emotionally invested in this class and thus unable to see the bigger picture, but these class changes do make sense based on their target DPS and category strategy. Now that does not mean this is the approach I would prefer, I would rather see an HP/Damage on bosses so the result would be the same but players would see the same numbers (people focus a lot on numbers and often forget the bigger picture).

 

Now, I realize most of these comments are wasted on a tunnel vision focused community such as the Assassin/Shadow, but I am sure that following these readjustments and as you realize that doing 9.3k instead of 9.8k still is more than enough for all content, you will know that I was right.

It's not about the nerf as per say it's about how they achieve it.

Most sane players want new content first of all because that is what they're paying for and I honestly don't blame them. Some also wonder why they're doing these nerfs and how it has come to this?

So I'll just drop this here...

Classes are coming out untested and are "over performing ".

This leads to nerfing, which ends up with your customers being unhappy.

Instead you should be aiming towards classes "under performing" and then figure out how you need to buff them which makes the customers happy!

Two different approaches to the same problem but how you achieve it makes a world of difference.