Me and my guild were experimenting last night in Karraga's Palace. For over a month we have been downing it all on HM without more than 1-2 player deaths and made a discovery. To be successful you MUST have a sentinel, you MUST have a vanguard tank (as they are ranged but shadows can substitute), and you MUST have a gunslinger.

 

Though many of the classes stated are fairly common it is still a serious issue. For example if instead of a gunslinger you have a sage dps, the dps is the same but you lose the scattering field. Having a sentinel's inspiration is required to effectively beat enrage timers, even for geared and experienced players. Ect.

 

Which brings me to the real point: DPSing with a hybrid class brings nothing useful to your operation. Guardian dps and gunnery commandos at least bring armor reduction but other than that you are not allowed variety into your player combination.

 

I propose simply giving spec-specific party buffs/enemy debuffs that will allow other combinations to be viable. For example giving balance councilors +% periodic damage, assault troopers +% elemental damage, combat sentinels -% defence chance(watchmen get the aoe group heal which is already powerful enough they don't need one), focus knights +% force damage, sharpshooters +% accuracy, sabatour +% tech, TK sages -%resistance, ect.

 

Things like that would help variety greatly. The buffs do not need to be large, just enough to counteract the current problem. I PvE only but this would also help the PvP in how it encourages organization (more so than already) just as an ops would. Having more than one of a class shouldn't allow that buff to stack of course, but if two specs have the same effect buff then by all means it should stack.

Edited April 4, 2012 by zachbuford

Umm...no.

 

I've done nightmare KP without a sniper, and without a marauder. And I've done HM KP with just a Jug tank.

 

But, you are somewhat right, there are classes/AC's/specs that can make fights easier. This is true in virtually all RPG's, and the dev's design those things specifically for that reason. That way, every class/spec has something special that they bring to the table.

I like how the OP is presenting his opinion as though it were fact.

 

No, none of that is required to down the content.

The real key to operations is not bringing too many melee. My guild has pretty much every server first op clear on our server, and one thing we found out a little too late is that bringing more than 1 melee DPS with your ops group makes things substantially more difficult for the group as a whole.

 

You dont 'need' a sniper/gunslinger or vanguard/powertech, but they do have nice perks to the group as a whole.

Like the previous poster said, the biggest problem are fight mechanics that are unduly punishing towards melee dps and forcing them into situations where they have to hamper their uptime for the sake of defensive cooldowns and avoiding mechanics altogether. This is more of an issue in KP than it is in EV, so it's a 'new' thing. Judging by the things I've seen about the first encounter in EC, the trend continues, and is worrying.

I am aware that yes you can do perfectly fine even without a slinger/sniper or a sent/maurader, and yes i know by default you need 2 melee and 2 ranged for most fights (I've been doing endgame content for many years so I know what I'm doing in that regard.) My point is that if maybe none of your sents are on and you need to bring in say your vanguard dps guy then even though they do the same damage you are losing raid utility by giving up inspiration. On the same note if you replaced your slinger/sniper with a tk sage they also do the same damage but you are still losing utility.

 

It is not impossible to overcome this, and yes every class has its own useful abilities to bring to the group, it is just that some class's abilities bring much more to the group than other. I know my proposition isn't perfect but I'm simply just trying to spark ideas for devs in the event they pass over this post.

Edited April 6, 2012 by zachbuford

I was hoping for a bit more publicity on this subject operations aren't very important to a majority of the player base I suppose.

I was hoping for a bit more publicity on this subject operations aren't very important to a majority of the player base I suppose.

its not that its the majority of guild that farm hard modes do not need a crutch provided by only one class. you can clear all content in the game with only troopers/BHs if you wanted to. There is no fight that is impossible because you lack a class. With a diverse make make thing easier, sure, but its not needed.

 

 

As far as people QQing about mechanics hurting melee, its crap, anyone who has played mmos knows melee have to be better players to equal ranged, its why many play them. The people who cry about mechanics "hurting" melee are people looking for an excuse.

I was hoping for a bit more publicity on this subject operations aren't very important to a majority of the player base I suppose.

 

You are posting about a subject that every raider already knows about....

 

Yes, some classes have utility that other classes do not have. This is completely expected, and has occurred in EVERY MMO for the past like 15 years. What's more, it has also been the case in virtually every RPG since DnD back in the 70s.

 

It is not new, it is not groundbreaking, it is not unexpected. For the past several years people have referred to it as called "raid comp" or "raid composition" and is part of creating a good raid group.

 

Google "raid comp" and SWTOR, or "raid comp" and WoW, or "raid comp" and EQ, or "raid comp" and AoC, or "raid comp" and <insert name of basically any MMO>...you will find many many pages of people talking about what are the best classes/specs/whatever to have in a raid.

 

You can even find raid comp calculators, where you check off what spec/class/etc you have in your raid & the tool will tell you what utility/buffs/debuffs the raid will have available. There's a SWTOR raid comp calculator on sithwarror.com that was created like 2 or 3 months before launch (so...during beta, which means it's kinda out-dated, but still somewhat useful).

Edited April 7, 2012 by Veriu