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Shadow/Assassin Tanks in 2.5 (attn Combat Team)


KeyboardNinja

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Update: Some of the earlier numbers used to build this post were flawed in that they slightly exaggerated the balance disparity. The numbers have been updated, as have the balance recommendations. The overall conclusion remains the same. tl;dr: buff guardians; nerf shadows (in 2.5).

 

I main a shadow tank, and I have done so since launch. I have stuck with the class in top-tier PvE through nerfs, buffs, rebalances, community scorn, community praise, and so on. Like many of you, I haven't exactly enjoyed being globalled by boss mechanics like Terminate (before the adjustment) or Voltaic Slash. And like nearly all of you, I'm looking forward to the changes in 2.5.

 

Here's the problem though: shadow/assassin tanks will be categorically overpowered in 2.5. If the changes proposed by Bioware go live, there will be absolutely no reason to bring any other tank to serious progression content. That's how significant the disparity will be. Observe, the power of the graph!

 

http:// http://i.imgur.com/bbaSSTi.png

 

What this graph is showing is relative tank balance in two instances: Dread Fortress (left) and Dread Palace (right). For each tank, an optimal stat allocation is chosen out of a budget of 2800 (roughly: full Dread Forged). Kell Dragon armorings are used because I didn't feel like computing the Dread Forged armor ratings (it doesn't make a noticeable difference). From there, I computed the average survivability percentages for each tank, taking into account all buffs, self-heals, procs and external hidden mechanics like basic attack accuracy debuffs (e.g. any boss attack which says "Ranged Attack" has only 90% accuracy). Then, for each instance, I used the tank with the best mitigation as a baseline and graphed all tanks as a percentage of the best.

 

In other words, this graph shows that in 2.5, shadows/assassins will be the best tanks by far in terms of least damage taken. There is simply no contest. The nearest contenders are vanguards/powertechs, which still take almost 3% more damage than shadows/assassins in Dread Fortress and almost 5% more in Dread Palace. Guardians/Juggernauts are in even worse shape, falling behind shadows/assassins by almost 10% in Dread Palace.

 

This is a very significant balance disparity. It can be justified to an extent in the current metagame, since shadows/assassins represent a significant liability due to spikiness. However, post-2.5 shadows/assassins will be no spikier than guardians/juggernauts, will have a suite of cooldowns that are almost as powerful, and will take dramatically less damage overall. Something needs to give!

 

Ideally, I think Guardians/Juggernauts should be buffed, and by quite a bit. Playing around with the numbers, I experimented with giving guardians a 5% bonus to shield and a 15% bonus to absorb. That was enough to bring them exactly even with vanguards (slightly behind on DF, and slightly ahead on DP). This should also give you an idea of just how far behind guardians/juggernauts are today.

 

Unfortunately, even this drastic change is not enough to balance things out. Guardians and Vanguards end up pretty even, but Shadows are still the clear victor (especially in DP). In order to bring things back within 3-5%, relatively speaking, we need to also nerf Shadows, and quite significantly. We have to be a bit careful about what we nerf though, to avoid setting up a situation where shadows are once again too spiky to be viable.

 

To that end, I think the reduction that is called for is in the proposed new Elusiveness/Swelling Shadows talent. As stated in the shadow answers, Bioware intends to make this a talent which increases the armor rating bonus from Combat Technique / Dark Charge by 20% per rank (40% overall). I would propose that this talent should increase armor rating by just 10% per rank, or 20% overall. This is a clear nerf to shadow/assassin survivability and a slight increase to spikiness. However, it brings tank survivability to within about 2% of each other. Shadows/Assassins are still slightly ahead in terms of overall survivability, but they are back to being the spikiest tanks by a slight margin, which I think is a fair margin for balance wiggle.

 

All in all, the changes would be as follows:

 

  • Talents high in the Defense/Immortal trees which increase shield chance by 5% and absorb percentage by 15% (up from 0% in both)
  • Elusiveness/Swelling Shadows increases armor rating by 10%/20% (down from the provisional 20%/40%)

 

These changes would bring the tanks to within a very narrow margin in terms of heals required, while still preserving the unique feel of each class both for the player and for the healers. It would also give Guardians/Juggernauts a much-needed buff in the area of force/tech survivability, which is currently their achilles heel (due to a significant focus on defense). For reference, here is what the tanks would look like if these changes were implemented:

 

http://i.imgur.com/lMitDkA.png

 

Overall, I'd really like to nip this situation in the bud. If the changes proposed by Bioware go live for 2.5 unmodified without any other adjustments to guardians/juggernauts, the tank classes will be even less balanced than they are today. I don't want shadows/assassins to be overpowered in every respect; I want top-tier raid groups to feel like they can bring any of the three tanks without disadvantaging themselves in any measurable way. Hopefully, Bioware will take a holistic look at tank balance, rather than simply fixing the issues currently faced by shadows/assassins and calling it a day.

 

All of the math to support this can be found on my tanking stats optimization post.

 

(note: shadows/assassins of today are still indisputably problematic due to spikiness; that problem is completely removed in 2.5, which is a fix that we don't want to destroy)

Edited by KeyboardNinja
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To balance the tanks properly I think BW first needs to decided what they want to do with damage profiles and mechanics. KBN mentioned this in some other post suggesting a single f/t ratio for all the bosses. They also need to decide on how high damage attacks are handled, lots of small hits or one big hit and to some extent what mechanics should be cheeseable and not(bigest possible problem here is the assassin/shadow stealth). For instance cheesing the adds on TWH is probably to much while being able to reset medpack is more reasonable.

 

I haven't gotten that far into the new HMs so far but they seem to have gone with that high dmgs attacks being around 6-7 hits like heavy slash and chest laser from Corruptor. Does anyone know if there are any single high dmg attacks in the new ops?

 

Without defining the content more it's hard to create good balance. For instance there are very good arguments to keep all bosses near a single damage ratio. The tanks differences also needs to be defined but the community as well as the developers seems to be reasonably close to each other here, even if the numbers are quantified.

 

I think it might be a good idea to think more about how the content works, how much damage a spike possibly should deal depending on circumstances, mechanics behind high damage attacks and so on and not only about the mechanics around the tanks. But also what the numbers should between for the differences in healing, spikiness and so on. What do you think are acceptable numbers? 6-8% healing difference between Shadow / Assasin and Guardian / Juggernaut for 10% higher spikes?

 

Big predictable attacks seems to be handled well atm, BW seems to have started more again with splitting them and it's easy to use cooldowns for all of them unless you run out due to emergency like a dead healer. The problem that makes we want shelve my Assassin sometimes is that either all or some of the bosses standard attacks from high damages bosses can deal as much damage as their predictable attacks. The predictable attacks have higher possible maximum damage but since they are split in several hits the probability is fairly low, especially with a cooldown. The standard attacks however hit their max much more often, usually 3-5 times per fight depending on length of the fight. This forces Shadows / Assassins to constantly be much higher on health because if you get one of those spikes at the wrong place you are dead. It's very frustrating to dip low for a while after a heavy predictable attack and then get killed by even bigger hit from a standard attack. My point here is that if the standard attacks would have a smaller possible damage or reduced probability the spikiness of Shadows / Assasins might be fine as it is.

 

KBNs suggestions are interesting but they need to more refined more because they bring the tanks even closer to each other in terms of spikiness and uniqueness. Partially there is also the problem of m/r versus f/t. Shield / absorb is easier to boost than defense because it's value is more universal than defense. Also it might be dangerous to lower all tanks healing to much since the content is balanced around it. I do agree with 10%/20% armor on the talent instead of 20%/40%.

 

Here are some thoughts and suggestions. I haven't played my juggernaut that much yet haven't played VG/PT at all so it's mostly focused on Shadow / Assassin.

 

Shadow / Assassin

-Don't nerf Kinetic Ward / Dark Ward more than maybe 5%. The gain from it should be quiet high to maintain the playstyle and importance of keeping it up.

-Change to the new 3 stack force lightning so it works the same way as Kinetic Ward / Dark Ward, if you refresh it you loose all current stacks. So if you don't get all 4 ticks of you will lose damage reduction. Lower the duration of the stacks from 18 seconds to 15. Add a talent at the bottom of the tank tree gives 4 stacks when exiting stealth, the same way as Shadow Respite / Dark Embrace works.

-Allow phase walk to be remotely place with 10-15 meter range but with disabled teleport as a talent so you can skip it if you want. Alternatively allow teleport but remove the remote placing in PvP. Instead of a talent it could be added as a four set PvE tank bonus. If phase walk was easier to place it would have a higher uptime and therefore easier to included i calculations and overall utility.

 

Guardian / Juggernaut

-Talent that makes Saber Throw apply armor debuff and makes it high threat. This allows the application of the armor debuff even if the tank is not on the target. Making it high threat is to counter the fact that it's hard to start most fights with it because it delays your threat. Most dps will start after X seconds and saber throw delays your big threat generation by 1 gcd, there is a high risk that you will lose threat before your force charge has landed.

-Change warding call and Force Scream / Blade Storm so that it scales with incoming damage.

 

Vanguard / Powertech

-Add a new cooldown against f/t. For instance 100% shield for 5 sec, 1 min cd or similar. Stable and different from the other ones but a bit less powerful.

-Change shoulder cannon heal to something that scales with incoming damage.

 

I expect that BW won't change much though and that in the end there is a really big risk of them breaking things even more.

Edited by Berjiz
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To balance the tanks properly I think BW first needs to decided what they want to do with damage profiles and mechanics. KBN mentioned this in some other post suggesting a single f/t ratio for all the bosses. They also need to decide on how high damage attacks are handled, lots of small hits or one big hit and to some extent what mechanics should be cheeseable and not(bigest possible problem here is the assassin/shadow stealth). For instance cheesing the adds on TWH is probably to much while being able to reset medpack is more reasonable.

 

I haven't gotten that far into the new HMs so far but they seem to have gone with that high dmgs attacks being around 6-7 hits like heavy slash and chest laser from Corruptor. Does anyone know if there are any single high dmg attacks in the new ops?

 

Without defining the content more it's hard to create good balance. For instance there are very good arguments to keep all bosses near a single damage ratio. The tanks differences also needs to be defined but the community as well as the developers seems to be reasonably close to each other here, even if the numbers are quantified.

 

I think it might be a good idea to think more about how the content works, how much damage a spike possibly should deal depending on circumstances, mechanics behind high damage attacks and so on and not only about the mechanics around the tanks. But also what the numbers should between for the differences in healing, spikiness and so on. What do you think are acceptable numbers? 6-8% healing difference between Shadow / Assasin and Guardian / Juggernaut for 10% higher spikes?

 

Big predictable attacks seems to be handled well atm, BW seems to have started more again with splitting them and it's easy to use cooldowns for all of them unless you run out due to emergency like a dead healer. The problem that makes we want shelve my Assassin sometimes is that either all or some of the bosses standard attacks from high damages bosses can deal as much damage as their predictable attacks. The predictable attacks have higher possible maximum damage but since they are split in several hits the probability is fairly low, especially with a cooldown. The standard attacks however hit their max much more often, usually 3-5 times per fight depending on length of the fight. This forces Shadows / Assassins to constantly be much higher on health because if you get one of those spikes at the wrong place you are dead. It's very frustrating to dip low for a while after a heavy predictable attack and then get killed by even bigger hit from a standard attack. My point here is that if the standard attacks would have a smaller possible damage or reduced probability the spikiness of Shadows / Assasins might be fine as it is.

 

KBNs suggestions are interesting but they need to more refined more because they bring the tanks even closer to each other in terms of spikiness and uniqueness. Partially there is also the problem of m/r versus f/t. Shield / absorb is easier to boost than defense because it's value is more universal than defense. Also it might be dangerous to lower all tanks healing to much since the content is balanced around it. I do agree with 10%/20% armor on the talent instead of 20%/40%.

 

Here are some thoughts and suggestions. I haven't played my juggernaut that much yet haven't played VG/PT at all so it's mostly focused on Shadow / Assassin.

 

Shadow / Assassin

-Don't nerf Kinetic Ward / Dark Ward more than maybe 5%. The gain from it should be quiet high to maintain the playstyle and importance of keeping it up.

-Change to the new 3 stack force lightning so it works the same way as Kinetic Ward / Dark Ward, if you refresh it you loose all current stacks. So if you don't get all 4 ticks of you will lose damage reduction. Lower the duration of the stacks from 18 seconds to 15. Add a talent at the bottom of the tank tree gives 4 stacks when exiting stealth, the same way as Shadow Respite / Dark Embrace works.

-Allow phase walk to be remotely place with 10-15 meter range but with disabled teleport as a talent so you can skip it if you want. Alternatively allow teleport but remove the remote placing in PvP. Instead of a talent it could be added as a four set PvE tank bonus. If phase walk was easier to place it would have a higher uptime and therefore easier to included i calculations and overall utility.

 

Guardian / Juggernaut

-Talent that makes Saber Throw apply armor debuff and makes it high threat. This allows the application of the armor debuff even if the tank is not on the target. Making it high threat is to counter the fact that it's hard to start most fights with it because it delays your threat. Most dps will start after X seconds and saber throw delays your big threat generation by 1 gcd, there is a high risk that you will lose threat before your force charge has landed.

-Change warding call and Force Scream / Blade Storm so that it scales with incoming damage.

 

Vanguard / Powertech

-Add a new cooldown against f/t. For instance 100% shield for 5 sec, 1 min cd or similar. Stable and different from the other ones but a bit less powerful.

-Change shoulder cannon heal to something that scales with incoming damage.

 

I expect that BW won't change much though and that in the end there is a really big risk of them breaking things even more.

 

I agree with you entirely but specifically want to deal with the changes to Juggernauts. I think the biggest issue facing Juggernauts is purely threat generation. Its a joke on my Assassin to get threat and even to an extent get it back without a taunt but in terms of building initial aggro my Juggernaut is extremely difficult to start with unless I taunt fluff. We have one high threat ability that hits for ~2.7k versus a Sin that has two high threat abilities one of which hits for 3-4k with a chance of a second hit and the other which hits for ~2k on top of Pull which is an immediate 8500 threat.

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I agree with you entirely but specifically want to deal with the changes to Juggernauts. I think the biggest issue facing Juggernauts is purely threat generation. Its a joke on my Assassin to get threat and even to an extent get it back without a taunt but in terms of building initial aggro my Juggernaut is extremely difficult to start with unless I taunt fluff. We have one high threat ability that hits for ~2.7k versus a Sin that has two high threat abilities one of which hits for 3-4k with a chance of a second hit and the other which hits for ~2k on top of Pull which is an immediate 8500 threat.

Yeah they have to do something about the threat, it's good that not all tanks have the same threat but juggernauts have to low threat, especially aoe. Single target threat aren't that much of a problem except sometimes for the initial threat. The initial threat will probably be more of a problem when everyone got optimized 78s.

 

Tanking trash with a juggernaut compared to an Assassin is so much worse. Aoe taunt+saber reflect works great but having to relay on them for each trash pull is not good enough and it's not fun at all either. The problem I had is that as I mentioned before that you can't start with saber throw+force charge because you won't get much initial aggro because of the dps will start before you get smash of. Saber throw+force charge+smash is 3 gcds while an Assassin starts of with wither+force speed or just wither. In 3 gcds and an Assassin gets off wither + force pull + discharge/shock which is much more threat.

 

Knockbacks and stuns are much more annoying to, it is annoying on Assassins due to interrupted force lightnings but beyond that it affects very little since all the important stuff is 10 meters. So many of the trash pulls in flashpoints with my jugg ends up with me jumping in and getting stunned straight away or knockbacked while pressing smash so it hits nothing but air. Most knokbacks in fps are just to short for a force charge straight away to. Sometimes dpses that have started off with heavy aoe have gotten killed because I just lost aggro of everything and they got oneshotted. I usually have to focus on a few strong and elite mobs and let the rest run free while on my assassin I can pick up all of them without much trouble. Assasins are frustrating because of rng deaths while juggernaut trash tanking is either boring(aoe taunt+saber reflect) or frustrating because so little stays on you.

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This is a rare sight indeed, some who ask nerf for his main class in regard to preserv class balance. I applaud you for this, and while I don't know much about this numerical tanking balance I'm with you on this to make every class/spec viable for all content (exeption is mara pvp smash which i want to see to nerf into the ground so I won't see any for at least a year:p). One thing I should add to this is while we (and the devs) should try to reach as much balance as it can be made we shouldn't forget about class uniqueness either (as much as I want to see shadows balanced, I don't want them to became another guardian or vanguard).

My healer perspective suggestion is to make them the best mitigation tank but the most spiky as well, not as ridiculous extent as it is now obviously(while vanguards remain as the smoothes tanks with worst/least dcds and guardians as the worst mitigation and best cooldowns tanks). That would give shadow tanks a challanging gameplay but also make them viable for all content

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to your graph, shadows are currently the best tank to have in both fortress and palace?

 

Why not buff both VG and JG and not touch shadows anymore? BW isn't exactly good at subtlety and if they nerf, they will over nerf because they are dumb.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to your graph, shadows are currently the best tank to have in both fortress and palace?

 

Why not buff both VG and JG and not touch shadows anymore? BW isn't exactly good at subtlety and if they nerf, they will over nerf because they are dumb.

 

The difference now is that Shadows make up for that high average survivability by having a high variance in spikiness.

 

After 2.5, that spikiness is being leveled off but they still have the best average survivability, which is where it becomes a problem.

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So, Razzberry kindly pointed out an error in my math which led to a slight accentuation of the imbalance issues. The issues are still there, though they are slightly less severe than the current post makes them out to be. I'm rewriting some of the specific points; the general thrust remains the same. Shadows in 2.5 will be overpowered unless Bioware reduces the magnitude of some of the changes they're implementing, while Guardians will be woefully behind.

 

The good news is that we no longer need to neuter Kinetic Ward. :-)

 

Regarding Archangel's point: Razzberry hit it on the head. Shadows take the least external healing right now in both DP and DF and that's not unbalanced because we also have extremely severe spikiness. In fact, the spikiness issues are significant enough that efficiency never even enters into the equation. Healers just run themselves ragged trying to keep us alive. Guardians are underpowered, even today. What I'm lobbying for is to nerf shadows back a bit in 2.5 and to buff guardians enough that they won't (once again) become the red-headed stepchild of the tanking classes.

 

This is a rare sight indeed, some who ask nerf for his main class in regard to preserv class balance. I applaud you for this, and while I don't know much about this numerical tanking balance I'm with you on this to make every class/spec viable for all content (exeption is mara pvp smash which i want to see to nerf into the ground so I won't see any for at least a year:p).

 

That's part of why I'm hoping people will listen. It's my main spec, and while part of me feels very warm at the thought of being utterly, crushingly OP (like shadows were pre-1.3), I don't think it's good for the game.

 

My healer perspective suggestion is to make them the best mitigation tank but the most spiky as well, not as ridiculous extent as it is now obviously(while vanguards remain as the smoothes tanks with worst/least dcds and guardians as the worst mitigation and best cooldowns tanks). That would give shadow tanks a challanging gameplay but also make them viable for all content

 

I tend to agree. The problem I have is that shadows aren't really going to be any spikier than guardians. Part of my proposed fix reduces the armor scalar, which increases the spikiness and decreases the mean survivability by a bit. At least, close enough that I think things might be more balanced.

 

I think it might be a good idea to think more about how the content works, how much damage a spike possibly should deal depending on circumstances, mechanics behind high damage attacks and so on and not only about the mechanics around the tanks. But also what the numbers should between for the differences in healing, spikiness and so on. What do you think are acceptable numbers? 6-8% healing difference between Shadow / Assasin and Guardian / Juggernaut for 10% higher spikes?

 

Those numbers seem too high. Right now, we're sitting at a death risk of 20-50% higher than other tanks with 5% less healing. Clearly that's too much. I think it would be fair to be closer to 8-10% more likely to die for 3-5% less healing. It's really hard to say though. It varies from content piece to content piece, and some of the new content really emphasizes spike damage (most notably: Raptus).

Edited by KeyboardNinja
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Incidentally, I really, really love the idea of granting 4 stacks of Shadow Protection / Dark Protection upon exiting stealth. This would be a really nice QoL fix for two very annoying issues. First, you don't have your stacks until you can proc your first TkT/FL and channel (minimum: 12 seconds after pulling). Additionally, shadow/assassin tanks don't really have any reason to use stealth aside from rezing, cheesing and mezzing. Adding this change would push shadows/assassins to open from stealth every time, which is an awesome adjustment to the class mechanics. Just the thought of it makes me very excited. :-)

 

Additionally, granting 4 stacks upon exiting stealth gives a very nice tactical tool to shadow/assassin tanks in PvP. One of the problems with the Harnessed Shadows / Harnessed Darkness mechanic in any form is that you are rarely able to channel all four ticks, simply because the mobility requirements in PvP are too high. This change would allow shadows/assassins to refresh their stacks in combat simply by hitting Force Cloak. It would be a tactical decision though, since burning the combat stealth just to refresh stacks might be a waste, depending on the situation.

 

Overall, I think it's a fantastic idea, and if there's a forum where I can lobby for it, believe me, I will! Someone should really mention this back on the shadow answers thread, to make sure Eric sees it.

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Those numbers seem too high. Right now, we're sitting at a death risk of 20-50% higher than other tanks with 5% less healing. Clearly that's too much. I think it would be fair to be closer to 8-10% more likely to die for 3-5% less healing. It's really hard to say though. It varies from content piece to content piece, and some of the new content really emphasizes spike damage (most notably: Raptus).

Thought it was a bigger difference than in healing currently. But sticking around 5% is probably good then, the current spikiness is clearly not worth the lesser healing atm.

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The changes are not out yet and we are already asking for nerfs. We haven't played the class or saw the damage income profile of future game content but we are already the good guys and calling ourselves OP. You ran the modelling, it was game breaking, you had a mistake, you corrected something, it still stays game breaking.

 

 

I appreciate your work and time you put in your class but sometimes you need to take a back seat and let the developers do their jobs.

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For high damage attacks, Raptus is the perfect example. Haven't seen such attacks in tfb nim or sv nim (not after they nerfed terminate and huge grenade).

 

I resisted the first Force Execution (Force Shroud :) ), the next one did hit me for 35k (we should've tank swaped and not me instant retaunting the Boss but meh), the next one got resisted again with Force Shroud and so on.

 

His tank swap dash'roode hit (rising slash) can hit assassin tanks for 25k (atleast when the dps fail their challenges ^^).

 

Well things like Force Execution and Deadly Slash are (in my opinion) not that problematic, but Rising Slash is instant and not on a timer (he casts it about every 20-30 sec.).

 

On the other hand, bosses like Tyrans just melt juggernaut tanks away. To kill it i was simply tanking the boss the whole time and instant retaunting Tyrans after simplification, before tyrans was killing our juggernaut tank. I was resisting/shielding 72% of all incoming Thundering Blasts. I don't think thats achievable with a jugg tank.

 

All in all most of the new bosses are steady damage, raptus is like the exception (and just because of his Rising Slash).

Probably a lot of sin tanks find it very good that almost every boss has now either a clearly visible force/tech attack (Grob's Roar, Corrutor's Chest Laser, Tyrans Thundering Blast, Raptus Force Execution) or a dot you can instant-cleanse (Nefra, Draxus, Corrutor, Dread Counsil) with your Force Shroud.

Edited by THoK-Zeus
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I suggest to wait till the content is out. Theory crafting is just that... Theory. There is a reason you have practical test when doing your drivers license and not just a theoretical.

 

And when i am looking at that graph all i am seeing is Guardians needing a buff. I don't see a reason for a nerf. It looks like Shadows and Vanguards are close enough to be left alone. There is no reason to neutre a class just because it performs a little 'different' from the others, giving it an edge in one situation over another. Thats what you play another class for.

 

As long as they are really close to each other, and Shadows and Vanguards seem to be, there is no reason for a Nerf or any change. What would need to be done is bringing Guardians up to snuff.

 

But really, lets just wait for the changes, and then talk about it once we saw the effects. Seeing things on paper is always different from how they play out in praxis.

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I suggest to wait till the content is out. Theory crafting is just that... Theory. There is a reason you have practical test when doing your drivers license and not just a theoretical.

 

And when i am looking at that graph all i am seeing is Guardians needing a buff. I don't see a reason for a nerf. It looks like Shadows and Vanguards are close enough to be left alone. There is no reason to neutre a class just because it performs a little 'different' from the others, giving it an edge in one situation over another. Thats what you play another class for.

 

As long as they are really close to each other, and Shadows and Vanguards seem to be, there is no reason for a Nerf or any change. What would need to be done is bringing Guardians up to snuff.

 

But really, lets just wait for the changes, and then talk about it once we saw the effects. Seeing things on paper is always different from how they play out in praxis.

 

The main reason for the difference between Guardians and Vanguards is the difference in defensive cooldowns. Guardians have way stronger cooldowns then Vanguards and they're not really accounted in the graphs (correct me if i am wrong there), as they are just about average migation.

 

Shadows have similar cooldowns to Guardians (slightly worse, but they have a better cd).

Edited by THoK-Zeus
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Wouldnt it be better to propose something else then the armor-nerf from 20/40 to 10/20?

Yes, shadows will receive more damage, but they also get spikier again.

 

I was more thinking in the line of doing something with the absorbrating or possibly shieldchance. Alltough the spikeness won't increase that badly with 20%-point less armor I assume.

 

Just my 2 noobycents.

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The changes are not out yet and we are already asking for nerfs. We haven't played the class or saw the damage income profile of future game content but we are already the good guys and calling ourselves OP. You ran the modelling, it was game breaking, you had a mistake, you corrected something, it still stays game breaking.

I appreciate your work and time you put in your class but sometimes you need to take a back seat and let the developers do their jobs.

 

There are a couple issues with this: First and foremost, "we" is not the right term. You are not asking for nerfs. KBN is. Thok is. What you want is specifically what this thread is trying to avoid: these changes going live and being game-breaking in favor of Shadows/Sins to make up for being broken for so long. That's not equality.

 

I suggest to wait till the content is out. Theory crafting is just that... Theory. There is a reason you have practical test when doing your drivers license and not just a theoretical.

 

And when i am looking at that graph all i am seeing is Guardians needing a buff. I don't see a reason for a nerf. It looks like Shadows and Vanguards are close enough to be left alone. There is no reason to neutre a class just because it performs a little 'different' from the others, giving it an edge in one situation over another. Thats what you play another class for.

 

As long as they are really close to each other, and Shadows and Vanguards seem to be, there is no reason for a Nerf or any change. What would need to be done is bringing Guardians up to snuff.

 

But really, lets just wait for the changes, and then talk about it once we saw the effects. Seeing things on paper is always different from how they play out in praxis.

 

Your comparison is very different. We're talking about how numbers will play out in reality and while its true that they will not play out perfectly you cannot compare a knowledge test to a skill test. The issue here is that it took them from March until present to come up with a fix for the spikiness and now we still don't have those changes. How long will Shadows/Sins be completely OP before they get nerfed? The overarching issue, at least in my opinion, is that it is EXTREMELY clear the devs do not test. They may run a couple of metrics, but they never put the classes out there and see the actual results. They never say "hmm we have this boss that hits really freakin' hard, I wonder how it would hit the squishiest tank". They just run a few models that don't accurately reflect the damage (as is clearly indicated by the fact that the devs had no clue that shadows/sins were taking so much spike damage) and call it good. That is what this thread proves to me.

 

Wouldnt it be better to propose something else then the armor-nerf from 20/40 to 10/20?

Yes, shadows will receive more damage, but they also get spikier again.

 

I was more thinking in the line of doing something with the absorbrating or possibly shieldchance. Alltough the spikeness won't increase that badly with 20%-point less armor I assume.

 

Just my 2 noobycents.

 

The issue with your fix is that it puts Shadows/Sins back in the same boat they are now: if you shield a big hit you'll be fine but if you don't you'll still die. The point of these changes was to, theoretically, decrease that spike damage and level Shadows/Sins out in terms of how much burst healing is needed. I tried to calculate armor to damage reduction a while back but either the formulas I used were out-dated or I did it incorrectly because the figures were way higher than they should have been but suffice to say the difference between 20% and 40% are big but not big enough to make a difference. Off the top of my head, my sin is at about 7000 armor (69 armorings) so upping that by 40% is (7000*1.4) 9800 armor. Thats gosh darn close to my full 72/75/78 Jugg. Add to that the massively higher shield and absorb values and thats just an insane amount of damage mitigation. 20% on the other hand brings it up to (7000*1.4) 8400 armor which is still decently high but is about 1600 less than a Jugg or PT.

 

All of that aside, I'm going to get on a soapbox for a minute:

 

There are two issues that caused the current situation with Shadows/Sins:

1) The Devs re-balanced Shadow/Sins based on old-content which on average had fewer single large attacks, but then proceeded to design 2.0 encounters around single large attacks.

2) The Devs did not test Shadow/Sins in new content or at the very least did not test them to an acceptable level.

 

No matter what changes go through for Shadows/Sins, without fixing these two underlying issues there will continue to be broken classes. Then to top it all off, we get people on the forums who like to go crazy with the DPS on-dummy parses or on single reports of issues without taking the grand scheme into effect. You end up with Mercs and Sorcs complaining that their DPS is subpar while Jugg DPS is sitting hundreds of DPS below them and getting no attention. The entire design philosophy for this game is defunct at its core and needs to be over-hauled. QoL buffs or minor nerfs won't fix this problem.

 

/endrant

Edited by kennethdale
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I suggest to wait till the content is out. Theory crafting is just that... Theory. There is a reason you have practical test when doing your drivers license and not just a theoretical.

 

And when i am looking at that graph all i am seeing is Guardians needing a buff. I don't see a reason for a nerf. It looks like Shadows and Vanguards are close enough to be left alone. There is no reason to neutre a class just because it performs a little 'different' from the others, giving it an edge in one situation over another. Thats what you play another class for.

 

As long as they are really close to each other, and Shadows and Vanguards seem to be, there is no reason for a Nerf or any change. What would need to be done is bringing Guardians up to snuff.

 

But really, lets just wait for the changes, and then talk about it once we saw the effects. Seeing things on paper is always different from how they play out in praxis.

 

Do you know how long it takes for BW to balance classes? If we sit around and wait to see how changes will play out in reality we won't see any rebalance for around 4-6 month. That's what you want?

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There are a couple issues with this: First and foremost, "we" is not the right term. You are not asking for nerfs. KBN is. Thok is. What you want is specifically what this thread is trying to avoid: these changes going live and being game-breaking in favor of Shadows/Sins to make up for being broken for so long. That's not equality.

 

 

Let me make one thing clear: I am not asking for nerfs, nor do i not want the changes :). I am just pointing out mathematical facts and sometimes my opinion i get when tanking with my sin (my jugg and pt are just dps anymore).

 

Originally i was in favour of BW just changing the content, mainly splitting up all the hits into smaller hits. While BW did do that for some content (their Terminate and Huge Grenade changes), they did not do it for all the bosses in the new operations (mainly raptus comes to my mind), so i think they will never do that and spike will always be something you have to account for in hm/nim operations (don't have a problem with that).

 

So it's then just straight forward that they changed the armor/dmg reduction of assassins. This change was needed to make sins viable in 16 man nim content. In 8 man nim content, in all honest it was not really recognizable.

 

If i count together all the times in nim were my sin died instantly because of a number of unshielded attacks in a row i will not get a single dozen of occasions together (2-3 times on kephess, 1 time on op9 and a few times on thrasher/olok) and i did raid a lot in current nim.

 

Math clearly shows that sins will have advantages (average migation> jugg ; cooldowns > powertech) over pts/juggs in the current content if these changes come.

 

The change in tank balance for the current opses will be slightly over a 5% range (when i account defense cooldowns + other stuff) but when 2.5 comes there will likely be new content (dp/df nim i guess) and we don't really know the maths for that.

 

I'd say let the changes and new content come and we will see how the changes work out.

Edited by THoK-Zeus
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Let me make one thing clear: I am not asking for nerfs, nor do i not want the changes :). I am just pointing out mathematical facts and sometimes my opinion i get when tanking with my sin (my jugg and pt are just dps anymore).

 

Originally i was in favour of BW just changing the content, mainly splitting up all the hits into smaller hits. While BW did do that for some content (their Terminate and Huge Grenade changes), they did not do it for all the bosses in the new operations (mainly raptus comes to my mind), so i think they will never do that and spike will always be something you have to account for in hm/nim operations (don't have a problem with that).

 

So it's then just straight forward that they changed the armor/dmg reduction of assassins. This change was needed to make sins viable in 16 man nim content. In 8 man nim content, in all honest it was not really recognizable.

 

If i count together all the times in nim were my sin died instantly because of a number of unshielded attacks in a row i will not get a single dozen of occasions together (2-3 times on kephess, 1 time on op9 and a few times on thrasher/olok) and i did raid a lot in current nim.

 

Math clearly shows that sins will have advantages (average migation> jugg ; cooldowns > powertech) over pts/juggs in the current content if these changes come.

 

The change in tank balance for the current opses will be slightly over a 5% range (when i account defense cooldowns + other stuff) but when 2.5 comes there will likely be new content (dp/df nim i guess) and we don't really know the maths for that.

 

I'd say let the changes and new content come and we will see how the changes work out.

 

Ah, it seems I misunderstood you. My apologies. I would rather they fix the content than "fix" the classes because whats going to happen is that people like Leafy_bug (but those which play Juggernauts) are going to come into the forums and whine up a storm for 5 months until Bioware finally relents and either buffs the hell out of Juggernauts or nerfs the crap out of Sins and we're right back where we started. Now, since that is apparently what is going to happen regardless, hopefully Wildstar has come out by then so I at least won't have to deal with it.

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The difference now is that Shadows make up for that high average survivability by having a high variance in spikiness.

 

After 2.5, that spikiness is being leveled off but they still have the best average survivability, which is where it becomes a problem.

 

Again correct me if I'm wrong but haven't we been WANTING BW to level off our spikiness while still having the best mean mitigation precisely because the spikiness was totally out of balance for the advantage in mean mitigation we had?

 

No, the problem is that this will reduce our spikiness to that of juggs which makes it imbalanced in the other direction. I understand the problem. I was asking for a clarification on the graph, because according to the graph, shadows are the best tanks right now in both operations, and in Dread Palace, the current iteration would be better than the proposed 2.5 iteration.

 

Yet apparently shadow spikiness is still a significant problem.

 

Those two statements are contradictory, so KBN you need to clarify what you think your graphs mean. Does average survivability not already take into account spikiness? If it does then the graphs show that Shadow tanks are right now the best in DP, and still better than the other two in DF while accounting for these spikiness issues. If they do not then the graphs are very misleading, if not downright incorrect, when they purport to be a graphical representation of tank balance since spikiness has a lot to do with tank balance or we wouldn't have spent the past 6 months on the forums whining about it.

 

KBN, you are too well respected a theory crafter, and are currently the class rep for two separate ACs. While I understand wanting people to check your math, and a very good thing you want that too, you can't make a "nerf us" post on incorrect data. You've already had to go back and correct once. What if the devs only saw the first bit, and skipped over all the math?

 

Three things I can agree with:

1) Shadow tank spikiness IS a problem and needs to be fixed.

2) The proposed changes in 2.5 will fix our spikiness

3) The proposed changes might fix us TOO much bringing our spikiness to even with other tanking classes without any offsetting penalties, and if so that would be a bad thing.

 

Still and all, I think the best thing to do is to allow the changes to go through without alteration, but ALSO buff Juggs significantly, and VGs slightly. They just aren't good at subtlety. At all.

Edited by ArchangelLBC
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The issue with your fix is that it puts Shadows/Sins back in the same boat they are now: if you shield a big hit you'll be fine but if you don't you'll still die. The point of these changes was to, theoretically, decrease that spike damage and level Shadows/Sins out in terms of how much burst healing is needed.

 

I think you misunderstood me since I agree with you.

KBN asked for less armor for shadows which equals to getting more spikey again.

 

If you would decrease absorb it won't decrease spikedamage but rather the amount of damage taken when the shield procs.

 

I mentioned shieldchance too which is a bit of a middle road. It will increase spikedamage since if you dont shield stuff you will receive the full hit. However, with the new higher armor this spikedamage won't be as bad as it used to be.

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Those two statements are contradictory, so KBN you need to clarify what you think your graphs mean. Does average survivability not already take into account spikiness? If it does then the graphs show that Shadow tanks are right now the best in DP, and still better than the other two in DF while accounting for these spikiness issues. If they do not then the graphs are very misleading, if not downright incorrect, when they purport to be a graphical representation of tank balance since spikiness has a lot to do with tank balance or we wouldn't have spent the past 6 months on the forums whining about it.

 

So, the graphs do not represent spikiness in any form. Specifically, they're looking just at healing efficiency. How much healing is required to keep a tank HP-neutral. Shadows are currently the kings of that race, but the subjective argument is that this is a fair design construct since shadows are also the spikiest tanks. Now, the spikiness is way out of proportion, and that's why things are unbalanced today, but if you just look at mean mitigation, shadows do extremely well even now.

 

Where things get problematic is when the spikiness is completely fixed (good!) without decreasing the shadow's lead in overall efficiency (bad!). In terms of spikiness, shadows and guardians will be neck-and-neck post 2.5, but shadows will take dramatically less damage overall. Under those terms, why would a serious raid group ever consider taking a guardian? To make matters worse, shadows will still be far enough ahead of vanguards to be noticeable, AND will bring a much better suite of cooldowns. Why would you take a vanguard over a shadow? Vanguards will be slightly less spiky than post-2.5 shadows, but not by a perceptible margin. Again, shadows will simply reign supreme.

 

We could fix this by buffing vanguards and guardians up to level, and guardians do need a buff to at last reach the mean, but buffing everything is generally very bad game design. We don't want to create unsustainable inflation in the tank class balance. A better solution is to balance all of the tanks to a mean, which is why guardians need a significant buff and shadows will need a moderate nerf.

 

I still think that nerfing the armor rating boost is he best approach. For starters, reducing armor rating has a more significant effect on healing efficiency than an absorb reduction, so the nerf can be more measured. Second, nerfing absorb bonuses forces shadows to take a much higher amount of defense rating, pushing them more toward how guardians are balanced today and carrying all of the same issues on F/T heavy fights. Third, nerfing armor rating slightly restores a very small measure of spikiness, allowing shadows to remain slightly more efficient than vanguards without causing imbalance. Taking a shadow would remain a sort of trade off: most efficient but also spikiest (by a small margin). Note that the spikiness restored would be very, very minimal. We are arguing over hundredths of a percent here. It wouldn't be the problem that it is today; not by a long shot.

 

Three things I can agree with:

1) Shadow tank spikiness IS a problem and needs to be fixed.

2) The proposed changes in 2.5 will fix our spikiness

3) The proposed changes might fix us TOO much bringing our spikiness to even with other tanking classes without any offsetting penalties, and if so that would be a bad thing.

 

Still and all, I think the best thing to do is to allow the changes to go through without alteration, but ALSO buff Juggs significantly, and VGs slightly. They just aren't good at subtlety. At all.

 

I think that buffing both non-shadow tank classes is a viable approach. I'm just concerned with the long-term balance consequences. The question we need to answer is the following: are vanguards performing to the intended mean, or do they need to be buffed in and of themselves? We don't want to end up in a situation where all of the tanks are over performing, since that unbalances healing and forces content to be redesigned to remain challenging.

 

Basically, my impulse whenever I see a number of classes out of balance is to buff/nerf them all down to their mean, rather than buffing them all up to the highest performer. Believe me, I don't want to see the shadow changes nerfed. They look so gosh darn yummy. I just don't want shadows to completely out perform the other tanks, and I also don't want overall game balance to be disrupted by inflationary buffs across the board.

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