In other instances while Force Shroud is active and you know that you are being hit by a tech or Force attack, the issue is most likely that players and NPCs always have at least a 5% chance to hit with any ability, regardless of how high your defense is to that type of ability. So while Force Shroud is active, there is always at least a 5% chance that you could be hit by any tech or Force attack..

 

Wait what? What's the point of 200% resistance if there's still a 5% chance the ability will go through? That's just silly imho.

OMG! An official response on this issue!

 

It's only been broken since 1.4...

In the following particular instances, it is not a bug:

 

In Nightmare Mode, Huge Grenade does in fact deal weapon damage (rather than the spell damage it deals in Story and Hard Modes). This was an intentional change for Nightmare Mode, done to make the encounter more challenging.

 

As for Terminate, it has always been a weapon damage attack in any difficulty mode that it appears, and it would have never worked to Force Shroud it - any such luck to the contrary is a mere coincidence (though probably not uncommon).

 

In other instances while Force Shroud is active and you know that you are being hit by a tech or Force attack, the issue is most likely that players and NPCs always have at least a 5% chance to hit with any ability, regardless of how high your defense is to that type of ability. So while Force Shroud is active, there is always at least a 5% chance that you could be hit by any tech or Force attack.

 

I don't like this anymore than you do. I know it's extremely frustrating to be hit by an ability that, for all intents and purposes, should not have hit you. Unfortunately, fixing this issue is not as simple as it seems, but I'll take a deeper look to see if there is anything we can do about it.

 

 

So basically the ability is not infallible no matter what it says? and any ability force or tech can hit no matter what accuracy they have. That's a bit ridiculous to be honest.

In the following particular instances, it is not a bug:

 

In Nightmare Mode, Huge Grenade does in fact deal weapon damage (rather than the spell damage it deals in Story and Hard Modes). This was an intentional change for Nightmare Mode, done to make the encounter more challenging.

 

As for Terminate, it has always been a weapon damage attack in any difficulty mode that it appears, and it would have never worked to Force Shroud it - any such luck to the contrary is a mere coincidence (though probably not uncommon).

 

In other instances while Force Shroud is active and you know that you are being hit by a tech or Force attack, the issue is most likely that players and NPCs always have at least a 5% chance to hit with any ability, regardless of how high your defense is to that type of ability. So while Force Shroud is active, there is always at least a 5% chance that you could be hit by any tech or Force attack.

 

I don't like this anymore than you do. I know it's extremely frustrating to be hit by an ability that, for all intents and purposes, should not have hit you. Unfortunately, fixing this issue is not as simple as it seems, but I'll take a deeper look to see if there is anything we can do about it.

 

Sorry, but this is just farcical.

 

Right now, thanks to the obscene spikiness of Shadow/Assassin, there are basically 2 reasons to even consider one as a tank for a progression raiding group: Force Shroud and stealth (for sapping targets, combat stealth + rezz in combat, etc.). Stealth is a mediocre justification for bringing a Shadow/Assassin, as Scoundrels/Operatives are very potent healers and can do all of the same things. So basically, that list gets cut down to Force Shroud.

 

Now you're telling us that the supposedly-virtually-100%-reliable CD which is currently the ONLY differentiating advantage of the class isn't actually 100% reliable, and there's a gamble each time it's used that basically nothing happens.

 

Wonder-***********-ful.

 

Oh, and thanks to the inclusion of Saber Reflect (which has its own limitations but, quite honestly, is FAR stronger overall than Force Shroud), the only times that Shadow/Assassin even have an advantage with their most differentiating ability is on AoE F/T attacks.

 

Oh, and thanks to changing what is by far the most noteworthy AoE F/T attack in the game to M/R in NiM, you've completely cut that advantage away.

 

By all accounts, you've completely written the class out of PVE.

 

Both DPS specs are near the back of the pack in terms of outright DPS potential, and are limited by being melees that have very little additional benefit to the group.

 

The tanking spec is the hardest to heal (even if it theoretically requires the least healing), it has the most mechanical disadvantages (heavy reliance on active mitigation mechanisms, situational-type CDs, and a frankly broken self-heal mechanic that cannot possibly scale in a balanced way), and now new content is being designed to bypass any advantages the class actually had.

 

Just go ahead and say it David... the development team just wants everyone to roll Juggernauts and Guardians and get it over with. The changes to all 3 tanking ACs in 2.0, the design of content in S&V, and now the design of content in both TFB and S&V NiM say that quite clearly.

 

VGs/PTs don't have the CDs to be as useful in the hands of a skilled player (anyone doing NiM content) as a Juggy/Guardian. They have no other differentiating advantages to bring to the table besides simplicity and smooth damage-taken profile. Only problem? Juggy/Guardian is now simple, with basically an equally smooth damage-taken profile, but also have fantastic CDs on top of that.

 

Shadows/Sins are spiky and are heavily dependent on hard-to-balance active mitigation mechanisms. They are the "skill" tanks by BioWare's own admission, but the ability to leverage the skillful elements of the class to gain commensurate benefits have been slammed into the ground by a combination of changes to core mechanics, content design, and rebalancing efforts in the other tanking ACs.

 

I hate to be crass, but this situation is straight-up ******** and it's completely unacceptable that BioWare sees no problem with it. You have rendered 2 out of 8 ACs basically moot in PVE endgame now, as neither Assassin/Shadow nor PT/VG are desirable as DPS classes, neither is on equal footing as tank classes, and now content is being designed in ways that further reduce any advantages they might have retained.

 

Outstanding individuals can certainly make any class *viable*, but those same outstanding individuals, if so able, would be congregating on a handful out of the available options (Sniper/Gunslinger + Trooper/Commando DPS, with the occasional Sentinel/Marauder for their raid buffs, Juggy/Guardian tanks, and some combination of a Sage/Sorc healer + any other healing AC). This is NOT okay.

Unfortunately, fixing this issue is not as simple as it seems, but I'll take a deeper look to see if there is anything we can do about it.

 

How is it not as simple as it seems? Go into the attack function and remove the floor(.05). It's not like there is *any* other condition that provides a complete inability to miss (barring fighting enemies *absurdly* lower level than you who will deal next to no damage on the 5% chance they hit anyways).

Edited June 24, 2013 by Kitru

Math Gurus rejoice!!!

 

Force Shroud 's inner workings can now be summed up in this equation:

 

[(Your current resistance) + (200%)] - (whatever gets back you to 95%) = 95%

 

"TY 4 teh good maths BW!"

 

Yay, Tank Sins depending (even more) on RNG for survival. Time 2 reroll guys. I'd tell you to respec DPS, but...

 

Sins/Shadows = 3 sub-par NiM PvE specs.

In Nightmare Mode, Huge Grenade does in fact deal weapon damage (rather than the spell damage it deals in Story and Hard Modes). This was an intentional change for Nightmare Mode, done to make the encounter more challenging.

 

So you want to make that mechanic more challenging by giving Jugg/Guardian tanks a 100% chance to cause the weapon damage attack to miss by popping Saber Ward at the right time to gain Blade Turning? Looking at someone's kill video it appears that Huge Grenade is every 1 minute 25 seconds. So yea, with 2 Jugg tanks alternating their 2 minute 30 second Saber Ward timer you'll never take a Huge Grenade.

 

Not like any of that matters anyways since Jugg/PT heavy armor can take that hit with ease.

 

Anyways. APEX: now recruiting 1 Jugg or PT tank for immediate NIM TFB/S&V progression on The Harbinger.

So you want to make that mechanic more challenging by giving Jugg/Guardian tanks a 100% chance to cause the weapon damage attack to miss by popping Saber Ward at the right time to gain Blade Turning? Looking at someone's kill video it appears that Huge Grenade is every 1 minute 25 seconds. So yea, with 2 Jugg tanks alternating their 2 minute 30 second Saber Ward timer you'll never take a Huge Grenade.

 

Not like any of that matters anyways since Jugg/PT heavy armor can take that hit with ease.

 

Anyways. APEX: now recruiting 1 Jugg or PT tank for immediate NIM TFB/S&V progression on The Harbinger.

 

This thread is about shadows/sins not juggernauts or PTS

This thread is about shadows/sins not juggernauts or PTS

 

I'm pointing out how the NIM Titan 6 design is a slap in the face of Sin tanks while becoming a mechanic that'll be bypassed by the Juggs. If Sin's can't Force Shroud those damage spikes, or take the unmitigated hit without dying, then there isn't a place for Sins in NIM S&V progression. That's not something I want to see.

I'm pointing out how the NIM Titan 6 design is a slap in the face of Sin tanks while becoming a mechanic that'll be bypassed by the Juggs. If Sin's can't Force Shroud those damage spikes, or take the unmitigated hit without dying, then there isn't a place for Sins in NIM S&V progression. That's not something I want to see.

 

This is the most important part.

 

It's not going to do ANYTHING to make the fight harder.

 

It's just going to change who can cheese the mechanic from the tank that is struggling to justify a place in a group to the tank that already does everything better than everyone else.

So you want to make that mechanic more challenging by giving Jugg/Guardian tanks a 100% chance to cause the weapon damage attack to miss by popping Saber Ward at the right time to gain Blade Turning?

 

Wait a sec! Remember: 100% Defense chance doesn't actually provide anyone with 100% avoidance. There's a 5% chance that Guardians will actually *take* the Huge Grenade damage and take so much damage that they're inconvenienced a mite... This is no problem whatsoever since Shadows will have a 23% chance to take damage from it and a 10% chance to get completely wiped out by it. Yup, that's *completely appropriate*.

 

Way to go content designer devs, you're *awesome* at math, design, and balance! It must be those Art History degrees working for ya.

Force Shroud 's inner workings can now be summed up in this equation:

 

It's substantially more likely that there is simply a floor function that limits how low hit chances can get. All they need to do is *remove* the floor function that was apparently ninja-added a year ago and was somehow completely left out of the patch notes and, bam, it'll be working like it *should*.

It's substantially more likely that there is simply a floor function that limits how low hit chances can get. All they need to do is *remove* the floor function that was apparently ninja-added a year ago and was somehow completely left out of the patch notes and, bam, it'll be working like it *should*.

 

You do understand that my very well thought out equation was a bad joke, similar to BWs current state of pve game balance for Sins?

Edited June 24, 2013 by IronmanSS

When is 100% not 100%? When it's an ability in swtor.

 

So in PVP, getting knocked back, stunned, mezzed, smashed, etc. while force shroud is active, is working as intended. And same in PVE. Gotcha.

 

Bioware, please bring back the original designer of Assassins/Shadows to fix this mess. The entire subclass seriously needs to be resdesigned.

You do understand that my very well thought out equation was a bad joke, similar to BWs current state of pve game balance for Sins?

 

I was kind of playing on David's statement that fixing it isn't as simple as it seems. Unless there is something *ridiculously weird* about the way they implemented it, it's just a simple removal of a floor function. Plus, the fact that they ninja-added a nerf to Resilience by changing how the attack formula worked (since it wouldn't affect *anything else in the game except for Blade Turning, which is up for less time on a longer CD) and only *just now* figured out that they did it. If we'd have *known* that's what they had done, it wouldn't have been a bug so much as a mechanism that needs to be fixed.

 

I'm not even sure BW is paying attention to all of the *incredibly in depth* balance calcs, math, etc. that's been flung at them over the last month, not to mention that they seem to be kind of ignorant of what *balanced* content design actually *is* (rather than "everything is perfect for Guardians and the other tanks suck!").

Math Gurus rejoice!!!

 

Force Shroud 's inner workings can now be summed up in this equation:

 

[(Your current resistance) + (200%)] - (whatever gets back you to 95%) = 95%

 

"TY 4 teh good maths BW!"

 

Yay, Tank Sins depending (even more) on RNG for survival. Time 2 reroll guys. I'd tell you to respec DPS, but...

 

Sins/Shadows = 3 sub-par NiM PvE specs.

 

Don't worry! My Jugg just hit level 20 today. Double XP weekends are secretly their tactic to keep Sin tanks happy by letting them reroll a JK AC in time for Nightmare S&V!

A look into a typical BW Sin Balance session:

 

Group: Top DPS Assassins seem to be coming up about 300 DPS short of what's required for these upcoming NiMs that we have on deck, what should we do boss?

 

AP: Well, more people play L50 FPs than Ops anyway, so we always balance around those. The metrics seem to show that in L50 FPs that these Sins are firing off their Discharge before it hits 3 stacks... maybe we'll make them glow at 3 stacks or something, those n00bs should pick up about 300 DPS right there - L2P.

 

 

Group: What about Madness?

 

AP: Who wants to play a gimped melee Sorc? Metrics show that no one plays Madness anymore. Next.

 

 

Group: Ok, well the Top Tank Assassins are saying that they're too spikey, that they have less DR than the other Tanks, and just want to be brought in line with the other tanks overall.

 

AP: Again, the metrics clearly show that in L50 FPs these Sin Tanks are dying because they let Dark Ward fall off or don't even use it. Heck, half of em just turned on Dark Charge and didn't even respec. L2P issue as usual. Maybe we could recycle that glowy idea from before, it would save us some time so we can raid more tonight. Maybe we can try that NiM Withering Horror fight that we... I mean the internal testing team is having so much trouble with.

 

 

Group: Well we still haven't beaten HM S&V, our tanks keep dying and we can't come up with the DPS to down Styrak.

 

AP: I'll see if I can sneak Jesse and myself, I mean Jugg & Snipers some more buffs in the next patch.

Edited June 25, 2013 by IronmanSS

This thread has been truly eye-opening and explains what I've been seeing with my tank-specced Assassin as well as the tank Shadows I raid with pub side. Maybe I could go stack Endurance gear in the hopes of surviving some of these 30k+ hits... but that just makes my mitigation worse.

 

I honestly don't see the point of having bosses that inflict one-shots on one specific tank class. How does that constitute enjoyable gameplay? I just don't see it. Maybe BW can check their metrics of tank Sins/Shadows who quit or reroll after being one-shot in raids a certain number of times.

 

My server is short of tanks for raid content in general, now I understand why: the Sins and Shadows quit.

All the complaining about sins/shadows since 2.0 it's no wonder the devs are making our roles harder than other classes. I bet they're all secretly laughing their ***** off as you all whine and complain. Hilarious really

Well, props to him for actually responding, but minus several billion to the whole dev team that thinks the way to make these events more challenging is to dump even more on the tanks that have already been made the weakest by your changes in 2.0.

 

Make Jesse Sky reroll a Shadow and let him see the "fun" for himself...

RIP Shadow tanks. Mine will retire today and I wish I could say cancelling my sub would make a difference but the cartel market suckers give them tenfold the money back. I let my playtime run out and adieux.

In the following particular instances, it is not a bug:

 

In Nightmare Mode, Huge Grenade does in fact deal weapon damage (rather than the spell damage it deals in Story and Hard Modes). This was an intentional change for Nightmare Mode, done to make the encounter more challenging.

 

What you have done is guarantee that no guild will take a shadow tank to that encounter. When Huge Grenade hits for enough to evaporate 95% of a shadow's health and only 60-70% of a guardian, that demonstrates an unacceptable liability in a progression situation. Resilience made this encounter doable as a shadow. Even Sky has referenced Resilience as the justification for spike damage and shadow tanks.

 

As for Terminate, it has always been a weapon damage attack in any difficulty mode that it appears, and it would have never worked to Force Shroud it - any such luck to the contrary is a mere coincidence (though probably not uncommon).

 

This is correct, and I verified this a few weeks ago in my logs. The fact that Sky claimed Resilience was the reason he felt shadows were fine wrt Terminate wasn't exactly illuminating.

 

In other instances while Force Shroud is active and you know that you are being hit by a tech or Force attack, the issue is most likely that players and NPCs always have at least a 5% chance to hit with any ability, regardless of how high your defense is to that type of ability. So while Force Shroud is active, there is always at least a 5% chance that you could be hit by any tech or Force attack.

 

Shadow case: 4% base resist + 200% resilience - 5% hit chance = 199% resist chance.

 

Math much?

 

I'm sorry if that sounds curt, but seriously. The two roll system in TOR has been well understood for over a year now. We know how dodge is rolled against accuracy. You cannot tell me that NPCs are simply hitting through the resilience resist chance. Something else is going on. I'll admit that I assumed it was hit chance when I first saw the bug, but the math just doesn't line up. You have a bug in the combat roll routine. It's as simple as that.

 

The other option is that force accuracy is rolled against resist in a different fashion from weapon accuracy. If that were true though, then all force/tech heavy classes with 110% force/tech accuracy would be seeing a *lot* of misses in their logs. That just doesn't happen.

 

I don't like this anymore than you do. I know it's extremely frustrating to be hit by an ability that, for all intents and purposes, should not have hit you. Unfortunately, fixing this issue is not as simple as it seems, but I'll take a deeper look to see if there is anything we can do about it.

 

It's a very serious balance problem. Shadows are already handicapped by well-documented and provable spikiness issues. What you're saying is that their only guaranteed defensive CD isn't guaranteed *by design*. This is about the point where I have to throw up my hands in disbelief. I don't know what model you're using to balance tanks, but it is apparently not a very comprehensive one.

Edited June 25, 2013 by KeyboardNinja

Well said.

Keeping me 6h and 45 mins on hold to fix my account after you cancelled it, got me really pissed, but what I see about the shadow tank makes me even more pissed. The community has done the work for you while you keep allocating resources to buff guardians we have done the work you are supposedly paid for to bring class balancing. Open your eyes, read the forums, KBN, dipstik, Kitru, are doing your jobs for you. Wake the F UP!

Keeping me 6h and 45 mins on hold to fix my account after you cancelled it, got me really pissed, but what I see about the shadow tank makes me even more pissed. The community has done the work for you while you keep allocating resources to buff guardians we have done the work you are supposedly paid for to bring class balancing. Open your eyes, read the forums, KBN, dipstik, Kitru, are doing your jobs for you. Wake the F UP!

 

lol now now cranky pants