Yes, most of the survivability is currently tied into the base class, but that wouldn't be too difficult to change. Examples: how hard would be it be to increase the dodge/evasion roll proc chance from 50% to 100%? Or df/lethality's kolto pack/infusion roll proc chance from 30%?

Yeah or move chem laced inlays to tier 2 of the concealment tree by tieing it in with inclement conditioning or scouting.

• Collateral Strike now has a 50/100% chance to trigger when Laceration is used (up from 35/70%).
   
  
• Flying Fists now has a 50/100% chance to trigger when Sucker Punch is used (up from 35/70%).

I have a question regarding the quoted part.

Will Tactical Opportunity / Round two be changed as well, maybe reducing the chance that the Tactical Advantage/Upper Hand is given back ?

That would imply no need to Shiv/Blaster Whip. No TA/UH sink on poisoned/bleeding target seems too good to be true.

Did you intend to switch it to 35/70% in exchange (down from 50/100%) ?

That would remove the RNG in damage and energy, but keep the same number of TA/UH per fight.

This parse by Carl isn't 'proof' of anything. It's a stationary target with 100% uptime. Dummy parses aren't intended for proving anything. If that were true, roll-bang snipers would be considered far and away the best class in the game.

 

Concealment fails on add packs, has no real gap closer for a single target dps spec, and has major energy issues after RNG. This buff will help with some of that, but it was in no way viable in ops prior to this patch.

Fair enough. Sorry I failed to see the logic in that.

Here are the Lethality changes in 2.6.

 

• Corrosive Microbes is now a single-point skill (down from 2), but still increases the chance for Corrosive Dart to tick twice when it deals damage by 25%.
  
• Lethal Injectors is now a 2-point skill (up from 1), each point still increases the duration of Corrosive Dart by 3 seconds (so 2 points in the skill now increase the duration of Corrosive Dart by a total of 6 seconds, granting 2 additional ticks of damage).
  

Our current plan is to open PTS today or tomorrow. That is subject to change as always if we run into any issues, but you should be able to get your hands on the full patch notes and 2.6 soon!

 

-eric

 

PS for the Dirty Fighters:

 

• Mortal Wound is now a single-point skill (down from 2) but still increases the chance for Vital Shot to tick twice when it deals damage by 25%.
  
• Open Wound is now a 2-point skill (up from 1), but each point still increases the duration of Vital Shot by 3 seconds (so 2 points in the skill now increase the duration of Vital Shot by a total of 6 seconds, granting 2 additional ticks of damage).
  

 

Love the communication man...but is it at all possible for you to at least comment on WHY it's not feasible to simply move some talents around to improve dps survivability...for example my idea of taking evasive imperative OUT of the medicine tree and putting it into the concealment tree, along with a shield probe boost?

All I want to know is why the solution that APPEARS so stinking simple to us all...apparently has such mega problems for you guys? I'm prepared to be told I'm not perceiving things properly :)

And for the record...who on earth thought lethality operatives had a hard time getting damage numbers? ... they're the fluff kings after all. You (Bioware, not Musco...I know) gave them a bigger fluffball with those DOT adjustments.

Fastest update after a post ever? We had an issue with the Game Update and so it will not be going on PTS today, we are still aiming for tomorrow.

 

-eric

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Any chance for Patch Notes today?

Here are the Lethality changes in 2.6.

 

• Corrosive Microbes is now a single-point skill (down from 2), but still increases the chance for Corrosive Dart to tick twice when it deals damage by 25%.
  
• Lethal Injectors is now a 2-point skill (up from 1), each point still increases the duration of Corrosive Dart by 3 seconds (so 2 points in the skill now increase the duration of Corrosive Dart by a total of 6 seconds, granting 2 additional ticks of damage).
  

Our current plan is to open PTS today or tomorrow. That is subject to change as always if we run into any issues, but you should be able to get your hands on the full patch notes and 2.6 soon!

 

-eric

This makes me very happy in a "Quality of Life" sort of way. Dart and Grenede with the same 21 second duration is a good thing. Nice bonus for Concealment as well...I'll gladly take another tick.

You were quoted in the dev tracker. So they do read this stuff...

 

Seriously Eric - put evasive imperative high in the concealment tree and add to it a boost for shield probe's absorb amount.

 

Bang. Done.

I don't think you realize how OP operative would be with that and the massive damage buff they are getting.

This makes me very happy in a "Quality of Life" sort of way. Dart and Grenede with the same 21 second duration is a good thing. Nice bonus for Concealment as well...I'll gladly take another tick.

as far as pve you would always prefer taking 1/1 of the talents, this way they buffed our dot to do 12,5 more chance of double tick, not exactly increased the duration, as far as lethality, it is not a quality of life improvement, it will really mess up the rotation, the difference between numbers was fine as dart was usually perfectly usable in synergy with the CDs before WB + cull, now you will have to delay or clip your dot, and grenade was never an issue because clipping gernate=no dps lost as it ticks upon us, so using grenade instead of rifle shot was always dps increase, therefor you rarely had times where grenade was running out of time 3 sec after Dart, as a redot for dart before a cull should ALWAYS be corrosive grenade + Corrosive Dart + WB + Cull *2-3, anyways the increase on certain other talents for concealment will also buff lethality so we will see.

however this concealment buffs are perfect, they are exactly what i thought they neded, and what i thought they would add, having 100% time on collateral strike + critical dmg on laceration is such a big improve that people dont notice, this is a perfect balance between pvp / pve buff without listening to idiots wanting HS off stealth, free Acid blade or pretty much everything free / extremely powerful to rape in pvp .

In that parse there are 4 completed runs against the dummy. The damage number were:

3.6

3.5

3.4

3.2

 

Since there is a large disparity between each of the parses concealment could not put out reliable damage, which is being addressed in this patch. What raid leader is going to accept you when you can only do acceptable dps 1/4 pulls on the boss thanks to RNG? The answer: none.

that is true and its something they are fixing, that is in fact a really accurate way of analyze my parse, however under this perspective, i got 1 pyro merc parse at 3800, the vast majority of others are on 3500, this means pyro merc 4k were just 1 lucky parse and they usually do 3700? its RNG, reducing the RNG and all changes on concealment are being great and will be better than people think, making this class from RNG to useful in boss fights, as the RNG can be awful and energy cost of stuff as well in boss fights / adds fights, collateral strike 100% will add a plus on add fights too, and even when energy gain is less from it, it should be a spam fest, probably making this even too OP for PvP if changes look how they look, however they need to add some defensive CD somewhere for us, in pvp people need these changes, and in pve as well, since we are basically the class with worst Defensive CDs in the game.

anyways concealment itself its a better spec than most believe, and it has high potential, saying it is 100% time on dummy fight doesnt mean it would go lower on a boss fight, considering the amount of rifle shots needing to keep energy up, mechanics often help with this making me do less rifle shots and more real dmg, eventually at some fights, being even better than dummy would be, then again this changes are perfect for pve side, theyra re exactly what i was expecting, and pretty sure they would help in pvp, maybe not to survive, but the ganker operative ERA might be coming back to us after this patch, combine a HS + AB with explosive probe + shiv + Cstrike spam + AB Backstab, u pretty much either killed or forced a hard CD on a healer, Acid blade should add trauma on the target, this would probably be the best pvp dps improvement for ganking IMO.

These changes are welcomed but they are really lazy changes imo.

 

They didn't change anything to the mechanics. 1% dmg buff here and 2% dmg buff there won't make any change ( PvP wise ) and even in PvE they are pretty futile compared to the 25% dmg inc to overload shot ( We still don't use it ) .

 

Of all this, the 30% surge buff to laceration is the only worthwhile buff. The 100% chance on collateral strike chance is nice too, for the energy but then, i fear that in real combat, it won't make much of a difference.

 

6% crit.... yeah cool.... but then, if they wouldn't have nerfed Crit to Oblivion in 2.0, maybe ops wouldn't even need a buff.

 

What we really needed was shorter cooldowns, we'll still find ourselves with nothing to throw at our target for 3 sec every time. OH and no no! NO overload shot ! Stop trying to make it happen, k?

Overload shot has always been important in concealemtn, with the buff even more, the people underestimating it is the reason people dont play concealment good enough, being a good filler in between heavy hitting abilities is great, these changs will be better than expected, as i can parse 4k steady for 1-2 minutes just to suddenly drop down to 3.5 with couple of bad procs, reducing this proc would help me that the 4k would go down to 3.9k probably, since its not based on Luck. Sever tendon 30% crit chance was useless, removing it for your BEST ability, is an incredible buff, i somehow dont agree changing alacrity with crit, the crit is huge buff tbh, but i felt that alacrity helped in theenrgy regeneration more than u could notice, however having 100% collateral strikes and flying fist, you will for sure have more steady energy so the faster nergy and faster GCD from alacrity might not be useful. also increaseind 1% dmg on few talents on your most important abilities sound bad, but is a noticeable increase... even an increase from 15-40k dmg in general with all the abilities, would mean a great dps increase, notice how volatile a parse can change if u add 40k dmg on a 4 minute dummy fight.

I don't think you realize how ranked viable operative would be with that and the massive damage buff they are getting.

Fixed that for you.

Fixed that for you.

I'm glad people like you have no say in class dev.

The last thing that a class that's getting major DPS buffs needs is survivability.

Here are the Lethality changes in 2.6.

 

• Corrosive Microbes is now a single-point skill (down from 2), but still increases the chance for Corrosive Dart to tick twice when it deals damage by 25%.
  
• Lethal Injectors is now a 2-point skill (up from 1), each point still increases the duration of Corrosive Dart by 3 seconds (so 2 points in the skill now increase the duration of Corrosive Dart by a total of 6 seconds, granting 2 additional ticks of damage).
  

Our current plan is to open PTS today or tomorrow. That is subject to change as always if we run into any issues, but you should be able to get your hands on the full patch notes and 2.6 soon!

 

-eric

 

PS for the Dirty Fighters:

 

• Mortal Wound is now a single-point skill (down from 2) but still increases the chance for Vital Shot to tick twice when it deals damage by 25%.
  
• Open Wound is now a 2-point skill (up from 1), but each point still increases the duration of Vital Shot by 3 seconds (so 2 points in the skill now increase the duration of Vital Shot by a total of 6 seconds, granting 2 additional ticks of damage).
  

 

Do these changes to Lethality Operative affect Lethality Sniper as well? If they don't, they should.

I have a question regarding the quoted part.

Will Tactical Opportunity / Round two be changed as well, maybe reducing the chance that the Tactical Advantage/Upper Hand is given back ?

That would imply no need to Shiv/Blaster Whip. No TA/UH sink on poisoned/bleeding target seems too good to be true.

 

Did you intend to switch it to 35/70% in exchange (down from 50/100%) ?

 

That would remove the RNG in damage and energy, but keep the same number of TA/UH per fight.

Internal coodlown stops it from happening repeatedly.

I'm glad people like you have no say in class dev.

 

The last thing that a class that's getting major DPS buffs needs is survivability.

WHAT CHOO TALKIN' BOUT "PEOPLE LIKE YOU?!"

Ahem...anyway. Eric said survivability is being looked at, and will receive changes in the future. So it would appear that "people like me", who actually do have a say in class balance, are doing precisely what I and many other operatives asked for. Perhaps not in the same way, but it's still enough to say that your comments are null and void here.

I think a majority of the people in this game asking for survivability, fail to understand one important fact about a "Glass Cannon" class.

They hit like trucks, but crumble under pressure. It's specifically designed that way... in countless MMO's and the playstyles do not differ much.

Huge damage, weak defensively often associated with stealth capabilities.

It's not rocket science people; We do NOT NEED survivability when we get to blow our wad on a target with little to no time for them to react to the situation.

IF BW adds this survivability you want so much right now with the damage increase this class will be brokenly overpowered.

Enter the nerf bat.

If you want survivability play a tank.

DPS classes are not meant to survive a fight, they are meant to blow sh*t up before it kills them.

This is the soul purpose of a glass cannon DPS class. They specialize in 1v1 spike damage. They specialize in hunting down and neutralizing healers and tanks.

This is WHAT concealment/scrappers used to do, and this was the only class capable of locking down a healer and/or killing it before the nerf train rolled in.

Most of you wouldn't even know how weak assassins used to be. They got all the buffs they needed and I do not dispute that. Sins/Shadows couldn't compete with concealment/scrapper spike damage back in the day not even remotely close. Now sins/shadows have survivability and damage.

I think it's time to push concealments/scrappers back to the top of the DPS trees to give people something to fear about this class.... BUT SURVIVABILITY won't do it.

What good is defense with no offense to back it up?

Great so you survive a fight... but you cannot win one without damage.

Where as you CAN survive a fight when you kill your target faster than they can kill you.

Damage increase unto itself is a survivability increase. And people need to get off this survivability kick.

Learn to play the class the way it was originally designed to be played: A Glass Cannon

You need to learn not to jump into a fight 5v1 and expect to survive... that is NOT how this class was ever intended to be played.

I think a majority of the people in this game asking for survivability, fail to understand one important fact about a "Glass Cannon" class.

 

They hit like trucks, but crumble under pressure. It's specifically designed that way... in countless MMO's and the playstyles do not differ much.

 

Huge damage, weak defensively often associated with stealth capabilities.

 

It's not rocket science people; We do NOT NEED survivability when we get to blow our wad on a target with little to no time for them to react to the situation.

 

IF BW adds this survivability you want so much right now with the damage increase this class will be brokenly overpowered.

 

Enter the nerf bat.

 

If you want survivability play a tank.

 

DPS classes are not meant to survive a fight, they are meant to blow sh*t up before it kills them.

 

This is the soul purpose of a glass cannon DPS class. They specialize in 1v1 spike damage. They specialize in hunting down and neutralizing healers and tanks.

 

This is WHAT concealment/scrappers used to do before the nerf train left the station.

Problem is, Concealment dies if they get hit by a cooked wet noodle... Marauders, who are in the same armor tier, can survive 20% to 50% longer than a concealment operative! Sure marauders dont have a stealth mechanic or need to be behind their target to deal some DPS, but they are in the same armor tier as Operatives and Snipers, and Snipers are more survivable than Operatives! THIS is a problem, Snipers are supposed to be the glass cannons, Operatives are supposed to be a Stealth gank class, who comes in and messes with the enemy while other people come in and do more direct damage, E.G Marauders, and Powertechs. And most Stealth Gank classes E.G Sins, have decent defences, I think that Operatives need something like Entropic Field, BUT it only procs on crits from ATTACKS, So it can be a passive in the Operative skill set, BUT you have to deal damage to utilise it, so Healers are less able to use it.

Problem is, Concealment dies if they get hit by a cooked wet noodle... Marauders, who are in the same armor tier, can survive 20% to 50% longer than a concealment operative! Sure marauders dont have a stealth mechanic or need to be behind their target to deal some DPS, but they are in the same armor tier as Operatives and Snipers, and Snipers are more survivable than Operatives! THIS is a problem, Snipers are supposed to be the glass cannons, Operatives are supposed to be a Stealth gank class, who comes in and messes with the enemy while other people come in and do more direct damage, E.G Marauders, and Powertechs. And most Stealth Gank classes E.G Sins, have decent defences, I think that Operatives need something like Entropic Field, BUT it only procs on crits from ATTACKS, So it can be a passive in the Operative skill set, BUT you have to deal damage to utilise it, so Healers are less able to use it.

No sympathy from me what so ever.

We called for a nerf to marauders and BW ignored it. Even before 1/2 of the nerf's went through mars were destroying everything with annihilation spec. AND I MEAN everything was destroyed by them.

It became a battle of attrition between a scrapper/concealment. A scrapper had 2 choices against a marauder BEFORE the nerfs ever got this bad.

A. Blow the target up before he can react with spike damage.

or

B. Out last his CD's which we were MORE than capable of doing. Ever hear of sever tendon, and Dodge roll? We are a stealth class after all are we not?

Then BW decided to give Marauders stealth (WHICH STILL IRRITATES ME TO NO END)

Now, however post all the nerf's... a fight with a marauder goes like this: Assuming gear for gear skill for skill

Op opens up on said marauder; Drops his HP to 10%; Mar pops stealth, and right before coming out of stealth pops all his CD's... Then does 30k damage in less than 6 seconds (the duration of his godmode buff). Operative dies due to lack of damage from overpowered defensive skills on a class that shouldn't have them.

DPS parses have shown marauders to dish out 2 times or more of the DPS of any scrapper/concealment... they DO NOT need such strong defensive CD's.

The Marauder is representative of everything that will be broken on this class IF they give more survivability on top of damage at the same time.

And that's what you are asking BW to do.

OP healers being overpowered is just icing on the cake.

Op healers have been overpowered for a long *** time and people are just now complaining about it I find that laughable at best.

Don't get me wrong. I agree some of our defensive cd's are about as useful as teets on a bull.

But if BW increases our damage enough, I have no problem giving up ALL of our defensive CD's and Heals for the appropriate damage increase.

Problem is, Concealment dies if they get hit by a cooked wet noodle... Marauders, who are in the same armor tier, can survive 20% to 50% longer than a concealment operative! Sure marauders dont have a stealth mechanic or need to be behind their target to deal some DPS, but they are in the same armor tier as Operatives and Snipers, and Snipers are more survivable than Operatives! THIS is a problem, Snipers are supposed to be the glass cannons, Operatives are supposed to be a Stealth gank class, who comes in and messes with the enemy while other people come in and do more direct damage, E.G Marauders, and Powertechs. And most Stealth Gank classes E.G Sins, have decent defences, I think that Operatives need something like Entropic Field, BUT it only procs on crits from ATTACKS, So it can be a passive in the Operative skill set, BUT you have to deal damage to utilise it, so Healers are less able to use it.

You obviously haven't played many MMO's as a stealth class or a glass cannon class.

None of these classes EVER had a stupid amount of survivability, when thrown into a mosh pit with other DPS classes.

You might want to play other MMO's just to experience all the types of glass cannon classes and some don't even use stealth.