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Developer Update: Sith Inquisitor and Jedi Consular Class Changes


CourtneyWoods

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Containment: The activation time reduction on Force Lift has been reduced in effectiveness. Previously, this skill gave Balance a lot of extra lockdown that we weren’t too pleased with, and after the introduction of Force Barrier, Balance’s ability to flee and avoid conflict exceeded acceptable levels. Now this skill reduces the activation time of Force Lift to 1.5 seconds. The stun effect when Force Lift ends prematurely due to damage has not been altered.

 

Dear developers please start playing with a Sage / Sorcerer. I know Sniper is your favouirte but you need some experience with other classes too.

 

Instant Force Lift is a must have in PvP against melee classes. Force Barrier is simply not enough: Sages has absolutely no damage mitigation because of light armor. I see your reasoning why Shadows should not have another 1 min instant CC - but for Sages it is essential. Force Lift now can be interrupted, suffers from pushback, etc. - when I have to flee casting Force Lift is a serious risk now.

 

Most of the Balance changes are welcomed: 15 ticks of Force Supression, Force in Balance affects 5 targets... these are good.

 

However the extra talents before Sever Force are bad jokes. Increased alacrity???? For a spec with instant cast dots???? With 4 stacks of Telekinetic Focal Point AND with Mental Alacrity I can channel Telekinetic Throw 0.4 seconds faster... OMG. My filler ability channels faster - in exchange I have to put 5 points into completely useless talents to reach Sever Force. With the right talents Mind Crush and Turbulence are instant skills (because of proccing Presence of Mind), so the ONLY effected spell is TK. These new alacrity based abilities would be much better for Telekinetics or Seer sages, but not for Balance.

 

I hope some day you will revamp Balance tree to meet the actual gameplay - not the theoretical one you have in your mind.

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You're right Merras, in my opinion Alacrity is less useful to this tree as well. (madness)

 

Sure, it will speed up the animations too so the extra 4% alacrity will speed up those wrath CDs and LSs, it will speed up the channel FL, but it really does nothing for what the main focus of this tree is -- DoTs. It does not speed up the application of dots, and therefore it is less useful. Madness in some situations is a 'cast and forget' spec, and with that in mind and with the crit multiplier on dots, it is far more valuable to stack surge than alacrity.

 

In fact, I plan on using more alacrity on my deception sin than I do on my sorc. Why on deception sin... because all attacks are instant and used in rapid succession. A 1% increase in animation speed should mean a flat 1% increase to my damage, more than 1% surge would boost the damage for.

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Madness (Assassin)

 

Prior to 2.0, Madness Assassins had a laundry list of ability priorities. For better or worse, playing Madness correctly as an Assassin was pretty daunting and exhausting. We wanted to take 2.0 as an opportunity to reevaluate Madness’s priorities one ability at a time. We are aware that some players will be disappointed to learn that Madness’s “rotation” has been simplified as a result, but their existing gameplay left little room for growth (on our side) and little room for error (on your side).

 

Disappointed is the understatement of the year inregards to many changes you Austin are solely responsible for. Speaking strictly from a PVE experience, Madness SIn was relatively easy to play, as long as you did not use Unearthed Knowledge; and only then because of force regen issues, not because of how many buttons there are.

 

Now in 2.0, Madness Assassins can get the same results with a smoother, less complex list of abilities and ability priorities. We like that we can make these kinds of gameplay adjustments with the time we have, but we’re also sensitive to what can be perceived as “fundamentally” changing a spec. We don’t believe we’ve fundamentally changed Madness Assassins as they are still very much drain skirmishers, but we will be keeping an eye on how Madness Assassins get played and on player feedback. We’re confident that the changes we’ve made will actually make Madness Assassins a more attractive option to players that were previously turned off by their complexity.

Madness Assassins dont do the same dmg anymore; they just flat out dont. And they werent anywhere near the top dps prior to 2.0, so you Austin dropped the ball incrediably.

 

•Shock, Chain Shock, and Unearthed Knowledge: Prior to 2.0, Shock served as little more than a way to apply Unearthed Knowledge. Worse, Chain Shock was actually in the Madness skill tree, which reinforced the idea that Shock was a good Madness ability. In 2.0, we’ve removed Unearthed Knowledge and moved Chain Shock into the Deception skill tree to try and paint a clearer picture. Madness Assassins no longer rely on Shock for sustained damage, but it’s still a perfectly viable ability for bursting a target down.

Incase you were completely unaware, there were two (2) camps of thinking (as opposed to the one (1) you're suggesting there Austin) in regards to Unearthed Knowledge/Shock; those who use it, and those who didnt. Personally I found it a dps loss due to Force cost. Seeing a picture appearing yet Austin?

 

•Calculating Mind and Lingering Nightmares: With the removal of Shock from a sustained damage priority list, Madness Assassins have a lot more Force available. With this in mind, Calculating Mind has been replaced with Lingering Nightmares, which increases the duration of Crushing Darkness.

How does having shock gone relate to Calculating Mind and Lingering Nightmares? Do you even know what you're talking about? Calculating Mind was the Force Regen device attached to Death Fields Deathmarks. Lingering Nightmares replaced Unearthed Knowledge, which brings me back to how the hell does Lingering Nightmares having anything do with Force availabiltiy? You never ever ever hardcast Crushing Darkness as an Assassin, well not unless you're really special...

 

•Duplicity: Duplicity is now located further up the Deception skill tree. Previously, Duplicity was available to a fully Madness-specialized Assassin, which is something we should have never done. In general, we don’t like making gameplay-altering skills available as “low hanging fruit” in other skill trees because they alter your established gameplay after-the-fact. This isn’t so much a balance concern as it is a usability and complexity concern. In this specific case, adding Duplicity on top of a full Madness spec felt clunky. Worse, it wasn’t necessary. We’re fully capable of providing the same damage boost to players without requiring them to master additional gameplay. This change aims to do exactly that.

Clunky? Are you effing kidding me? Clunky? Wow.

Discharge, Creeping Terror, Death Field, Thrash till proc, Crushing Darkness... Now what? I use Thrash/Saber Strike till I get a Crushing Darkness proc again or have to reapply the Discharge + Creeping Terror or click drop a Death Field? Youve basically made 8s of utter boredom and weak hits between procs. Also...

 

Click/drop Death Field; you have to physically place an intricate part of the spec, and you call using Maul clunky?

Maul + Duplicity was needed filler within the spec, and yet you killed it. You cant even thinking of using Maul now, it hits like a wet noodle, and has a ridiculously expensive Force cost. Operatives can get Backstab for 10 energy or for free, and yet Maul is 50 Force...

 

•Haunted Dreams: The activation time reduction on Whirlwind has been reduced in effectiveness. Previously, this skill gave Madness a lot of extra lockdown that we weren’t too pleased with, and after the introduction of Phase Walk, Madness’s ability to flee and avoid conflict exceeded acceptable levels. Now this skill reduces the activation time of Whirlwind to 1.5 seconds. The stun effect when Whirlwind ends prematurely due to damage has not been altered.

Austin are you even aware that Whirlwind as Assassin lasted about 4s on a target in pvp? Wooo so much avoidance time in that. Already the most fragile glass class in the game, and you remove one of the only decent abilities.

 

•Shapeless Spirit: This new utility skill reduces all damage taken by 30% while stunned. Madness has a good deal of self healing through effects like Parasitism and Death Field, but this healing isn’t on-demand and can’t counter burst at key moments. As a result, Madness is especially vulnerable to being bursted down while controlled, so we added Shapeless Spirit to help Madness’s survivability in that department.

30% percent wont help you ever. Burst specs will still cave your skull in because they've already reduced your health to about 30-40% of the original. Madness Sins then need to apply dots, drop Death Field, and then Thrash for proc. Meanwhile that Burst spec player is still attacking. There at 100% health, you're at 30-40%... hmm whose gonna win, the person who uses Dots to kill or the person who has insane Burst every few seconds?

 

 

 

Way to utterly ruin what was once one of the funnest specs to play Austin.

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How come you don't think sorcerers could use a sub 30% health execution talent, akin to Bloodletting? Op is a healer too and I see no issue with them having it in the dps tree?

 

?? Operatives have no sub 30% health execute talent.

Are you talking about this? http://www.torhead.com/ability/gqXUWcO/devouring-microbes

I wouldn't exactly call it an "execute talent". Dots are only the set up fluff damage for lethality. The real burst is from cull.

Edited by Wrthlessnoob
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I only have one complaint, and its about the gear for the entire consular class. It looks like **** guys, seriously the gear looks like a mix of a Mexican wrestler and a samurai its looks plain out stupid as hell. I do have to admit the black looking samurai gear for pvp looks pretty cool but other than that it looks terrible. For the next gear update ask the players what gear they would like to see for each class, it would seriously cut down on most of the complaining.
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As a shadow tank I have to say that I like my new Kinetec Combat tree... but I have to agree with those who already talked about Kinetic Bulwark, it seems too much trouble to track that and worry when the best time for Kinetic Ward refreshment might be, would prefer to actually enjoy the fight instead of just watching how this is going... so I didn't bothered and did not even take Kinetic Bulwark.
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Funny they didn't mention any removal of instant whirlwind which was a huge component of BOTH assassin and sorcerer madness specs.

 

Some have said the nerf occurred due to assassins being able to mind trap and then instant whirlwind someone guarding a node. Now I am not an assassin player, but this seems in line with the operative in which gets this capability regardless of spec. To me it seems fair that a full madness assassin could also have this capability making madness a more unique pvp choice over darkness and deception.

 

 

Regardless this does not explain the pointless nerf to Sorcerer Madness spec. The removal of instant whirlwind is a huge nerf to the utility full madness can bring in a warzone. The force/damage improvements are nice but the crit rating changes also harmed full madness survivability due parasitism having less chance to proc. Full madness lacks the burst still to compete, which would be fine if madness had enough utility to make up for it. Madness is now just a DOT spreading pressure builder, which is fine, but it needs it's original control to make it a competitive spec.......

 

 

 

Is it just me, or are sorcs the only class that doesn't have an option for an instant cast mez?

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Nothing to help sages and sorcerers use lightsabers, so I don't care.

 

This as well. Sorcs/Sages are the only class that's melee attack doesn't benefit from main stat. Both sniper/commando are ranged classes yet their melee attacks (shiv/rocket punch) not only benefit from mainstat but are also tech damage. The sorc/sage is a regular attack so it has less accuracy and is guarded against by both armor and other tank stats. It seems like it would be fair if the sorcerer melee abilities did at least moderate damage if not comparable to shiv/rocket punch.

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[quote=Happy_Puppy;6182438

Skills

The worthless: Force Barrier... Why oh why did you make this channeled? In effect you have made this totally worthless in pvp and very ineffective in pve. Unless you added a heal effect to it while channeled or alow the sorc to move its pretty much a waste, In pvp it just means we die a few sec later why the enemy heal them self's or wait for more to show up to kill me.

 

This skill needs a major rework or just removed and have a more effective skill in its place.

 

I laugh at this because in pvp if you have good healers you can be back at full health in 2 seconds. i think it is great because it give the healers ten seconds to get you back to full health so you can go back to dpsing.

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PT is useless?? PT is an awesome class to play in PvP and still tops the boards in damage. With a healer by their side, they just run around killing stuff!!! If you can't beat a sorc/sage in pvp its a L2P issue or they are just better than you.

 

Yeah, PT is useless (especially in PvP).

 

PT in PvP right now is not comparable with any other DD. And PT's top boards in damage? Haha.. yeah, pre 2.0 but right now they are just laughable. Please stop talking about something you don't know. Go for logs, go for the PT-forums, they nerfed PT to the point all classes have been before 2.0 and at the same time they buffed all classes to where the PT was before 2.0. That's a double loss for PT's right now.

 

Skills

The worthless: Force Barrier... Why oh why did you make this channeled? In effect you have made this totally worthless in pvp and very ineffective in pve. Unless you added a heal effect to it while channeled or alow the sorc to move its pretty much a waste, In pvp it just means we die a few sec later why the enemy heal them self's or wait for more to show up to kill me.

 

This skill needs a major rework or just removed and have a more effective skill in its place.

 

Are you joking? This skill is so overpowered unnecessary, that it hurts. You want to heal or move while using this op ability? God...

Edited by LovarBoy
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With all these changes, they STILL managed to leave Resilience and Force shroud BROKEN. It's only been SIX months.

 

And, personally I think the changes suck. Instead of having a class that could possibly use all 3 of it's skill trees, now the only viable tree is Infiltration. I don't know if that's because pvp combat in 2.0 is STILL broken (LOLbolster) and that will change if Bioware actually test stuff or if it's the developers long term goal only to have just one viable tree, which would be a shame.

 

Combat was fine before, despite being OTT on stuns(for ALL classes) but now it's simply awful with TTK so short, dots lasting far too long (25 seconds? Give me a break!) and of course LOL Bolster.

 

It's a pity as the Shadow/Sin class was probably one of the best to play and now its just yet another generic class in a generic MMO

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Well, first off sorcs and sages could have benefited from shroud/resilience. I am disappointed you didn't see fit to make this a baseline ability for consulars/inquisitors.

 

Haunted Dreams: The activation time reduction on Whirlwind has been reduced in effectiveness. Previously, this skill gave Madness a lot of extra lockdown that we weren’t too pleased with, and after the introduction of Force Barrier, Madness’s ability to flee and avoid conflict exceeded acceptable levels. Now this skill reduces the activation time of Whirlwind to 1.5 seconds. The stun effect when Whirlwind ends prematurely due to damage has not been altered.

 

I'm sorry but this is utter garbage. Whilst I can see how strong it was for sins/shadows, they often had the luxury of casting it from stealth.

 

Madness sorcs are the kiting class. The only thing they have going for them is the ability to try and lock people down. One slip and they were often dead. And Now you give focus/rage spec things like Obliterate breaking roots, and cc immunity on bounty hunters/troopers baseline so now creeping terror is an even less reliable tool.

 

And when we are still faced by knights/warriors, powertechs/vanguards and smugglers/agents INSTANT aoe mezzes, why do we have to suffer this joke, of having a TALENTED, not baseline instant mez removed?

 

And the last thing was that even having decided to chance a whirlwind cast, which is riksy, if you're trying to kite, and way too susceptible to interrupt (because polarity shift doesn't help again things like pushes, stuns, mezzes, knockbacks), you can't even let it affect more than one target in pvp with the talent.

 

And whilst you gave lethality ops dots not breaking their mez, how come you can't give it to madness sorcs?

 

Shapeless Spirit: This new utility skill reduces all damage taken by 30% while stunned. Madness has a good deal of self healing through effects like Parasitism and Death Field, but this healing isn’t on-demand and can’t counter burst at key moments. As a result, Madness is especially vulnerable to being bursted down while controlled, so we added Shapeless Spirit to help Madness’s survivability in that department.

 

As others have mentioned parasitism is an utter joke. 25% light armour reduce, means we can't survive burst even with this nonsense. Parasitism would have to be buffed an awful lot for this to be a reasonable argument.

 

Bloodletting: This new skill increases the damage dealt by Death Field and all periodic damaging effects by 15% (with max points) on targets below 30% of max health.

 

And just WHY OH WHY don't sorcs have this? Assassins have an execute already.......

 

Instead you give pointless alacrity talents that madness sorcs don't need.

 

I think the last point has to do with the ramp up time and susceptibility to cleanse for madness sorcs. There was no dot protection talent either. Long dots, and ramp up work in PVE, not in PVP.

 

And the sad thing is, that you won't reply and this will be ignore, just like none of you had the guts to comment in the sorc threads, but some jugg or mara qqs about anything, you were there straight away. Funny that.

Edited by Chemic_al
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It does not speed up the application of dots, and therefore it is less useful. Madness in some situations is a 'cast and forget' spec, and with that in mind and with the crit multiplier on dots, it is far more valuable to stack surge than alacrity.

 

Exactly. For example objective based PvP like Alderaan: quick DoTting enemy players so nobody could cap the turret. For single target DPS crit/surge is also far better stat then Alacrity: a higher crit rating combined with the 15 stack of Force Supression is better. And critted dots are also healing me.

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Phase walk plain S U C K S, is totally useless in pvp and even in pve is no worth the effort of place it.

Use your "metrics" and tell us how much is used beyond the few tanks who use it for extra heals compared with all the other classes new skills.

 

Give us a throw lightsaber like sith warriors, a cool barrier lik sorcerers or even a leap like ops...but not a stupid 2 mins useless go back to the bright spot in the floor thing.

 

Also as hybrid tank I felt the lost of 20% defense is a shame in pvp , your metrics are just accurate for pve dudes, but here, despite your total lack of respect for us , still remain some pvp'rs.

 

Asessins tanks are a joke at pvp beyond guard a node and call for help when 2 people come to take it.

 

Revise your broken TTKs.

Very dissapointed.

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Now that you've put up 4 days worth of fluff articles how about some actual in depth articles explaining in detail some of the changes and design choices instead of 2 sentences?

 

 

 

Also new 51 abilities on these two ACs are laughably awful.

Edited by PariahMessiah
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I just wanted to chime in and say that I do NOT approve of the changes made to the Balance Shadow. Balance in the past used to be either loved or hated. Now it's simply less interesting of a choice. I can do good hits with Force In Balance and it's cool to see it hit 5 enemies instead of 3, but I swear it seems to cost more Force to use? Is the cool-down longer too? I find myself just doing lots of double strike. Playing my balance shadow now just feels weird over all.

 

Oh and Phase Walk isnt cool unless you play in the Infiltrate category. Give us a double rock throw (one from left and one from right) or something cooler.

Edited by TW-Cool
added something I forgot
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This as well. Sorcs/Sages are the only class that's melee attack doesn't benefit from main stat. Both sniper/commando are ranged classes yet their melee attacks (shiv/rocket punch) not only benefit from mainstat but are also tech damage. The sorc/sage is a regular attack so it has less accuracy and is guarded against by both armor and other tank stats. It seems like it would be fair if the sorcerer melee abilities did at least moderate damage if not comparable to shiv/rocket punch.

 

They also get no free attack that uses their main stat. There should at the least be a free saber throw that uses Willpower, if them swinging the saber would be so unacceptable.

 

Allowing a class to have two abilities that are wrong to use in literally every situation is bad game design. Really just astonishingly, pants-on-head stupid. It doesn't matter if it's a side effect, a remnant of a decision made in beta. It's a problem.

 

Concerning that decision: How is it that someone says "Let's make a jedi class not use its lightsaber," and not only are they not mocked out of the room and reminded of it at performance review, but people actually nod their heads? :confused:

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Loving the changes for the most part. The only thing I would suggest is a tweak to force barrier to allow us to be mobile while reducing duration, and possibly giving us a new regen mechanic. Consumption is a little goofy imo. Other than that, I feel much more viable in pvp and pve since the changes. Keep up the good work!
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I laugh at this because in pvp if you have good healers you can be back at full health in 2 seconds. i think it is great because it give the healers ten seconds to get you back to full health so you can go back to dpsing.

 

If, maybe, could happen... who cares about maybe's. If the stars align it works is not a good ability.

 

Rather have it last for a shorter amount of time and move then being stuck there. Sorc/Sages are so fast to burn down why would a healer waste there time unless your a healer as well. For a dps spec is a bad skill.

 

We need a skill to get distance.. not stand there and die right after the ability is over.

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