Hey, so i Posted this on the PTS forums, but wanted to drop it here to see what you guys not over testing think. They made some pretty big changes to the skill trees, and only deception has access to duplicity, and calculated mind was removed as well as unearthed knowledge so now there is no point in using shock. They did increase deathmarks to 15 per DF, and DF now hits 5 people. They also gave us the same buff that madness sorcs get to Crushing Darkness, with a two second duration increase.

 

Little background on me, High end raider as a Shieldtech PT, but thats out of necessity, In PVE, by far my favorite and the spec i play best on live is 7/3/31 Madness sin. Parses on ops dummy usually parse between 1850 to right around 2k on really good parses. The thing I enjoy about it is the versatility it brings to the table. There is a little of everything to love on live, Burst with Deathfield/Duplicity and really solid sustained damage through DoT's and the extra force regen.

 

Been playing on the PTS for a couple days now and just have to say I dont know how they seem to think this is a buff, and if they are intentionally nerfing the spec, they either don't listen to player feedback because of madness sin is the class they most think needs a nerf, they are more lost than we originally though. Currently on live we have two tools that help us with energy regen. Duplicity gives us a hardhitting and very cheap maul proc which when also proccing raze it makes force management easy. The other nerf that some people seem to be missing is the fact that they took out calculating mind, which is the main tool we have to keep our rotation flowing. Every time I try to parse on the PTS its almost unbearable the amount I have to saber strike for force. Making duplicity unreachable by madness/balance is a nerf, but calculating mind is what really hurts. Keeping that and losing duplicity would have been manageable I think, but without both the class is pretty close to destroyed, in playstyle and numbetrs.

 

I have 2 other dps toons on the PTS, and I'm not nearly as proficient at either on Live. I have a vengeance jugg and a lightning sorc. I have parsed alll 3 and I know that both of the other two specs got some pretty significant buff, but the gap I am seeing is pretty ridiculous.

 

Lightning Sorc: 2400

Vengeance Jugg: between 2250-2350 depending on ravage procing

Madness Sin: Last one i did was 2075

 

It seems pretty ridiculous that I can do pretty much the same thing on Live that I can on test, while other classes are way ahead. I'm pretty sure they are gonna have to buff the force regen on madness, or it will be useless. Just Giving us calculating mind back would be a huge step, but not sure Bioware is competent enough to help. Here's hoping I guess

 

Beels

I've been very concerned about this issue (calc mind especially); however, I'm kinda wondering about that additional 15% from bloodletting after you knock an enemy down to 30%.

 

If you dps on a dummy is 2075, and we increase that dps by 15% (I know, the hard increase is inappropriate) you would theoretically get 2386. Which should bring overall fight dps to 2168.

 

Now, lets look at overall (OPS Gen, OPS Boss, PVP)

 

OPS Gen (and PVP) if you took lambaste and were able to apply it to adds (or grouped players) with DF, you will do major dps. If you have Cal Mind, you would never run out of force. On top of everything else, you wouldn't need to use lightning charge and would be able to have raze proc on every 8.

 

OPS Boss - this is kinda a kick in the teeth as you will not be able to really do damage until the last 30% of the fight. This is an issue as ops groups are picky about teammates. Madness may be seen in the same light as Deception (why I speced out of it a while ago.)

 

I would love it if bioware could FIX my char transfer to field test the changes on champions and OPS bosses.

Posted this in the other thread also, but just clarifying. Lacerate with lambaste does not apply the discharge DoT, all it does is do a tiny amount more damage from the actuall lightning charge you have on your saber. Does not make lacerate any more worth it, think it's barely usable on trash, and wont help ST damage Edited February 23, 2013 by bbrooks

I think a few skills needs to changed.

 

Lightning burns : It prics 100% whenever your lighting charge deals damage from melee, and it uses up your death marks. You still come out ahead with the skill, but it's somewhat annoying.

 

Lambaste : Proc lightning charge on lacerate, I believe the idea is for people to take this talent with lightning burn, so you get Death field -> lacerate-> lightning charge proc -> lightning burn on all targets. while it looks good on paper, lacerate cost 40 force cost and hits like a wet noodle..

 

They need to swap the 2 around : Lambaste should be in the darkness tree, while the 'spike from front' is move to the lightning tree. So lacerate in darkness becomes a 'AoE self heal', while Madness gets to use maul from anywhere during the proc.

 

Going 0/18/28 (Mad Maul) is still viable, and I get better numbers on it compared to a 8/2/36 build. Not mauling just feels.. wrong..

I think a few skills needs to changed.

 

Lightning burns : It prics 100% whenever your lighting charge deals damage from melee, and it uses up your death marks. You still come out ahead with the skill, but it's somewhat annoying.

 

Lambaste : Proc lightning charge on lacerate, I believe the idea is for people to take this talent with lightning burn, so you get Death field -> lacerate-> lightning charge proc -> lightning burn on all targets. while it looks good on paper, lacerate cost 40 force cost and hits like a wet noodle..

 

They need to swap the 2 around : Lambaste should be in the darkness tree, while the 'spike from front' is move to the lightning tree. So lacerate in darkness becomes a 'AoE self heal', while Madness gets to use maul from anywhere during the proc.

 

Going 0/18/28 (Mad Maul) is still viable, and I get better numbers on it compared to a 8/2/36 build. Not mauling just feels.. wrong..

 

While I like the idea of getting the front facing maul, that wouldn't even get close to solving the problem that is currently on PTS. The big problem isn't that we dont get maul (that does suck) but that our force regen is what is really hurting. The face to face maul does not have the 75% cost reduction on it that duplicity does, i believe its a 25% force cost. While missing duplicity does suck, giving us the front maul wouldn't make a huge difference IMO

The only hope is bioware is reading this feedback and moves madness back to where it was.

 

I love how they chose to tone down madness and deception while tune up the Mara's. Makes absolutely NO sense.

Good post and I do really hope Bioware reads threads like these and sees our concerns. Just feels like balance/madness shadows/assassins are getting ****ed over just because bioware wanted to tone down the tanking tree getting low resource costing back stabs since the tank tree gets that new type of front stab. If double strike is my only real melee option then balance spec as a shadow will become redundant and boring fast. I loved the art of getting behind someone and backstabbing them and quickly moving back to kiting distance.

Right now theres nothing a madness sin can do that a lethality operative can't do better. Corrosive grenade (aoe dot!) has no cooldown anymore, and corrosive dart never did. Dots do internal damage. Roll makes the operative quicker in getting in and out of combat, and even to places on the map.

 

Flashbang is still instant while madness lost insta whirlwind. Energy management is stupidly easy now for the operative. And the operative can do a crazy burst with backstab- shiv - cull - cull - cull, or even hidden strike + the above and 4 culls.

This (de)evolution of assassins talent trees is worrying .. hope BW will take note and look it over before the changes go live.

I don't know what the devs were thinking with the entire assassin spec.

 

They've dumbed down madness (and lowered it's dps)

 

They've brought deception back to pre 1.4 (dropped its burst without giving more sustained dps)

 

At this point, might as well roll mara's and just completely trash the non tanking assassin specs.

 

Mara's have always done more dps and been less difficult to play.

 

I just don't get what the developers are trying to do.

 

This honestly, may end up the walking away point for me...... I don't know.....

I'll wait until it hits live to consider going positive or negative on this spec.

First of all, what always annoyed me on live is that Madness specs got rid of their energy so slow without being able to do bursts (Kephess the Undying after a pillar hit, TFB anomalies, Operator between shields, Walker on Kephess) this was both good and bad, good that we had a solid force management and bad that there were few options to do burst dps (Shock would be a loss of dps unless combined with a Force Cloak and Dark Embrace).

 

Anyway, in 2.0 our only tool for energy management is the 2 set PvE bonus on Saber Strike which is well.. not great.

Although it seems like we'll do lower dps I'd like to raise some points.

 

First of all the DR curves have been reworked for accuracy/crit/surge, we've recieved a 3% accuracy buff and we will need 110% or close to on Force attacks since ops bosses seem to have a Force/Tech resist chance.

 

Now then, our dps abilities benefit a lot of from increased crit and crit damage chances.

Thrash has an increased 24% to crit and if it does crit it does 50% more damage.

All dots benefit from 30% crit damage and the lightning charge dot (not discharge!) benefits from a 45% crit bonus.

More deathmarks although with an extra dot on each lightning charge tick (every 1.5s) it won't be consumed solely by Discharge/Crushing Darkness.

 

It could be these percentage increases will make up for our lack of damage as we get optimized 72 gear, that's my hope at least since base damage has been increased by a lot which will further increase the surge bonus on certain skills.

Also I don't really like the timing of Crushing Darkness, it allows more wiggle room to use priority abilities first (Main 2 dots and Deathfield) but I can't say that it's that great.

 

Anyway, all of this means nothing if we cannot get a meaningful way to track our dots through the UI, without using obscure add-ons, overriding your discharge/ creeping terror is a good way to lose a lot of dps and force.

I don't know what the devs were thinking with the entire assassin spec.

 

They've dumbed down madness (and lowered it's dps)

 

They've brought deception back to pre 1.4 (dropped its burst without giving more sustained dps)

 

At this point, might as well roll mara's and just completely trash the non tanking assassin specs.

 

Mara's have always done more dps and been less difficult to play.

 

I just don't get what the developers are trying to do.

 

This honestly, may end up the walking away point for me...... I don't know.....

 

I know I'll get flamed as a noob for asking, but how did they nerf deception burst exactly? Yeah, Duplicity got moved up (not earth shattering), but Induction went from +30% crit dmg on Maul to +100% crit dmg on Maul, and not to mention Assassin's Mark with +6% Maul dmg increase.

 

I'm not a seasoned veteran with my Shadow, but its amazing how much more survivability a Decep Sin has over a Concealment Op and you guys are crying out that this is the end of the road.

 

Idk if this is PvE or PvP directed mostly, but you still have way more tools at your disposal than a dps Op of any spec in PvP. Again, I'm not a seasoned vet as I'm a recent 50 on my Shadow, although I have had a Sin for a year. But even still, I see a ton of horribly played Sins/Shadows that don't play to even 50% of the class's potential, and I have a feeling some of the negativity is from them.

 

It could be just me though, since I've moved up from playing a gimped class (Scrapper) for the past year.

I know I'll get flamed as a noob for asking, but how did they nerf deception burst exactly? Yeah, Duplicity got moved up (not earth shattering), but Induction went from +30% crit dmg on Maul to +100% crit dmg on Maul, and not to mention Assassin's Mark with +6% Maul dmg increase.

 

I'm not a seasoned veteran with my Shadow, but its amazing how much more survivability a Decep Sin has over a Concealment Op and you guys are crying out that this is the end of the road.

 

Idk if this is PvE or PvP directed mostly, but you still have way more tools at your disposal than a dps Op of any spec in PvP. Again, I'm not a seasoned vet as I'm a recent 50 on my Shadow, although I have had a Sin for a year. But even still, I see a ton of horribly played Sins/Shadows that don't play to even 50% of the class's potential, and I have a feeling some of the negativity is from them.

 

It could be just me though, since I've moved up from playing a gimped class (Scrapper) for the past year.

The surge bonus on Maul is 30%, the Swtor-Spy tree had some errors in it previously.

 

The real nerf is taking the additional base damage added to project from VS/CS and turning it into internal damage. Great considering the shield changes, except when you crit...

can you post a parse of your lightning spec fight on the dummy?

So, I did a little "field" testing today. (finally got my character to transfer).

 

Couple of things I noticed while fighting section x heroic 2 boss.

 

First, force does regenerate faster (unassisted by deathmark) overall; however, deathmark force regen allowed me to keep my force up and out of saber strike for almost the whole fight when running shockless.

 

Second, that 15% damage buff does show in the parce(sp) numbers and in the last part of the fight.

 

Now, how this compares to other dps classes I have yet to test. The removal of duplicity (by skill tree effect) had hurt. If you could get duplicity at a decent cost, that may solve many of the madness force issues; as it would be a low cost skill to add to the rotation.

 

But this does not address my main concern with the assassin spec period. Are assassins on pare with other (Mara's in particular) in raids. This is my biggest issue as it appears that this may not be the case. I have more work to do with level 55's.

I know I'll get flamed as a noob for asking, but how did they nerf deception burst exactly? Yeah, Duplicity got moved up (not earth shattering), but Induction went from +30% crit dmg on Maul to +100% crit dmg on Maul, and not to mention Assassin's Mark with +6% Maul dmg increase.

 

I'm not a seasoned veteran with my Shadow, but its amazing how much more survivability a Decep Sin has over a Concealment Op and you guys are crying out that this is the end of the road.

 

Idk if this is PvE or PvP directed mostly, but you still have way more tools at your disposal than a dps Op of any spec in PvP. Again, I'm not a seasoned vet as I'm a recent 50 on my Shadow, although I have had a Sin for a year. But even still, I see a ton of horribly played Sins/Shadows that don't play to even 50% of the class's potential, and I have a feeling some of the negativity is from them.

 

It could be just me though, since I've moved up from playing a gimped class (Scrapper) for the past year.

 

Have to agree my operative have been rendered useless for along time as i dont like healing, and when i started the toon i had hoped to DPS with it, but no its simply not viable.

I know I'll get flamed as a noob for asking, but how did they nerf deception burst exactly? Yeah, Duplicity got moved up (not earth shattering), but Induction went from +30% crit dmg on Maul to +100% crit dmg on Maul, and not to mention Assassin's Mark with +6% Maul dmg increase.

 

I'm not a seasoned veteran with my Shadow, but its amazing how much more survivability a Decep Sin has over a Concealment Op and you guys are crying out that this is the end of the road.

 

Idk if this is PvE or PvP directed mostly, but you still have way more tools at your disposal than a dps Op of any spec in PvP. Again, I'm not a seasoned vet as I'm a recent 50 on my Shadow, although I have had a Sin for a year. But even still, I see a ton of horribly played Sins/Shadows that don't play to even 50% of the class's potential, and I have a feeling some of the negativity is from them.

 

It could be just me though, since I've moved up from playing a gimped class (Scrapper) for the past year.

Have to agree my operative have been rendered useless for along time as i dont like healing, and when i started the toon i had hoped to DPS with it, but no its simply not viable.

Guys this thread is for the madness tree, what you are talking about is the deception tree two very different trees in how they operate. in my opinon deception in 2.0 is a very good tree however madness is almost completly changed from the way it is now.

Well, pts adjustments have come out and nothing to help Madness DPS.

 

Uggggh:mad:

Im just leveling my operative to 50 atm after seeing madness on pts. How I'd ever kill a healer now is beyond me.

I think a few skills needs to changed.

They need to swap the 2 around : Lambaste should be in the darkness tree, while the 'spike from front' is move to the lightning tree. So lacerate in darkness becomes a 'AoE self heal', while Madness gets to use maul from anywhere during the proc.

 

I disagree with that, the only spec that should be able to use a any dirrection maul would be the tank. Duplicity does need to be moved down to the bottem though again so its useable by all specs. Its crazy that you hardly parse higher then what you do on live server, I don't know why bioware feels the need to nerf stealth classes so much. I understand that having someone pop out of stealth in pvp and beating you up is annoying but nerfing the stealthers not only ruins pvp but pve too. Bioware should really have different skill sets for pvp and pve, clearly pvp balance and complaints dictate class balance more then the class vaibility overal.

The only hope is bioware is reading this feedback and moves madness back to where it was.

 

I love how they chose to tone down madness and deception while tune up the Mara's. Makes absolutely NO sense.

 

I dont get it ...i just don't get it. Something is seriously wrong here. It feels like it's a tank that never played sin that made all three trees im losing my marbles over this. i don't think i want to play either deception or madness as it stands now. and if i have to PvE tank, i'd rather be sleeping. almost the same

I've been thinking about simple fixes to Madness I believe one of the following would go a long way to fixing the class issue.

 

Option 1) place duplicity back in it's original location and crate a condition that you need to have Lightning charge or Surging Charge to proc it.

 

Option 2) (and the option I believe should be tried first) Change lambaste to proc lighting burns on Thrash. If that gives madness too much dps.... re-balance to proc on saber strike.

 

Both options would return the martial aspect to the class. The duplicity option would be my favored option because it forces players to be more skilled; however, with the way 2.0 is supposed to change things, option two should satisfy players while allowing devs to feel like they made significant changes.