Why the proposed 1.2 Pyrotech changes are poorly thought out

This post aims to clear up a lot of the misinformation surrounding the proposed 1.2 changes to the Bounty Hunter Pyrotech specialization (and Trooper Assault Specialist). I believe the proposed changes are poorly designed, and in the following paragraphs I will do my best to explain why I have come to this conclusion. I’ve posted this in the PvP forums because the Pyrotech changes are largely due to PvP concerns.

Firstly, for non-Pyrotechs, I will describe the abilities these patch notes affect so that you can understand what is going on:

Rail Shot:

Prototype Particle Accelerator:

Pyrotech Rotation:

PPA makes for an interesting relationship between a Pyrotech’s damage output and heat management; a relationship that is the inverse of what most other classes have. What I mean is that PPA procs both substantially increases a Pyrotech’s damage output as well as substantially helping heat ventilation. Meaning a Pyrotech either deals high damage and has great heat management, or deals low damage and has major heat problems (depending on the amount of PPA procs during the fight). This is the opposite of other classes, where a player can either be efficient and deal less damage, or burn through their resources to deal high damage. Frankly, this is not a good design. It leads to large disparities in damage from one fight to the next.

Bioware is attempting to fix this problem in 1.2 through the following change: The chance to trigger Prototype Particle Accelerator has been increased significantly but cannot trigger more than once every 6 seconds. When Bioware says “the chance to trigger this effect has been increased significantly”, it has been found that they mean PPA now has a 45% chance to proc from Flame Burst (+15%) and a 60% chance to proc from Rocket Punch (+15%).

This change is aimed to reduce the amount of burst damage a Pyrotech can output (which makes sense). For example, currently “if the stars align” a Pyrotech can get three PPA procs in a row, which can do around 10k damage from Rail Shot damage alone. Coupled with other damage sources, such as Thermal Detonator (4k if crit) plus the damage abilities that proc PPA, Pyrotechs can deal massive amounts of damage in a short amount of time.

Currently, the actual chance of three PPA procs in a row is, assuming 1 Rocket Punch and 2 Flame Bursts, 0.45 * 0.30 * 0.30 = 0.04 or a 4% chance. Although this is a rare case, it still occurs and so it makes sense for Bioware to want to change PPA to make this burst not possible.

Bioware’s change to PPA is a step in the right direction, because it attempts to normalize the damage and heat ventilation by adding an internal cooldown to PPA. I say it is only a step in the right direction because Bioware for some reason left the RNG proc chance on PPA after adding on the internal cooldown. Bioware is basically making it so there is NO CHANCE to get the “good”/”stars align” RNG, and yet merely REDUCING the chance to get the “bad” RNG. Bioware, if you make it so there is NO CHANCE to get the good RNG, you have to make it so there is NO CHANCE to get the bad RNG.

The proposed 1.2 change to PPA will also have a large negative impact Pyrotech heat management (as will be shown further down). From what I gather from the patch notes, I believe Bioware intends to nerf Pyrotech burst (which is justifiable), but also keep Pyrotech overall DPS the same (or perhaps a slight nerf). I honestly believe Bioware does not realize just how much this 1.2 change will nerf Pyrotech heat management, and thus they do not realize how much 1.2 will nerf Pyrotech overall DPS.

In order to prove my point the following damage numbers will be used:

Rail Shot average damage: 2450

Flame Burst average damage: 1120

Rocket Punch average damage: 1120

Note:

By dividing the damage of Flame Burst and Rocket Punch by their respective heat costs (16 heat each) we can calculate the damage per heat (DPH) of each move:
Flame Burst DPH = 1120 / 16 = 70
Rocket Punch DPH = 1120 / 16 = 70

However, PPA changes these values because a PPA proc adds Rail Shot damage to the ability for free (in fact, even better than free because it refunds heat). Therefore PPA procs both increase the damage and reduce the heat cost of each move when PPA procs. Because a Flame Burst has a 30% chance to proc a free Rail Shot, by adding 0.3*Rail-Shot-damage to our Flame Burst we can calculate the “effective damage” of Flame Burst:
Flame Burst effective damage = 1120 + 0.3 * 2450 = 1855
Rocket Punch effective damage = 1120 + 0.45 * 2450 = 2223

This can also be applied to calculate the “effective heat cost” of both attacks:
Flame Burst effective heat cost = 16 – 0.3 * 8 = 13.6 effective heat
Rocket Punch effective heat cost = 16 – 0.45 * 8 = 12.4 effective heat

Therefore, the PPA talent changes the damage per heat of each ability to:
Flame Burst effective DPH = 1855/13.6 = 136
Rocket Punch effective DPH = 2223/12.4 = 179

In summation, without the PPA talent the damage per heat of Flame Burst and Rocket Punch are both 70. With PPA the damage per heat of Flame Burst rises to 136 and the damage per heat of Rocket Punch rises to 179.

As you can see, PPA doubles the efficiency of Flame Burst and multiplies the efficiency of Rocket Punch by 2.5. The important thing to take from this is that, after the 1.2 changes, any Flame Burst or Rocket Punch while the 6 second internal cooldown is occurring will be using the efficiency of the ability as if the PPA talent was not taken. In other words the efficiency of each ability while the internal cooldown is active is greatly decreased.

Bioware is “offsetting” this nerf by increasing the PPA chance by 15%. This increases the effective DPH of a Flame Burst/Rocket Punch (while PPA is off cooldown) to:
Flame Burst effective DPH = 2223/12.4 = 179
Rocket Punch effective DPH = 2590/11.2 = 231

What this means is that, in 1.2, a Rocket Punch that can proc PPA is 231/70 = 3.3 TIMES more efficient than a Rocket Punch that cannot proc it. A Flame Burst is 179/70 = 2.55 TIMES more efficient than a Flame Burst that cannot proc PPA. Thus any Rocket Punch or Flame Burst used while the 6 second PPA internal cooldown is active will be horribly inefficient. This will force Pyrotechs to do a LOT more auto-attacking (Rapid Shots) during the internal cooldown. Rapid Shots deals about 400 damage. I think it is pretty clear that going from a rotation that comprised of 1855 effective damage Flame Blasts and 2223 effective damage Rocket Punches, to a rotation that will contain multiple 6-second lapses of mostly auto-attacks is a severe DPS decrease. Nerfing the burst Pyrotechs could deal is perfectly all right with me, but in addition to that severely nerfing the overall DPS of the Pyrotechs is simply overboard.


This proposed 1.2 change also brings about many “smaller” issues, such as the problem of: How are we the players going to track the internal cooldown? As shown previously, Flame Bursts and Rocket Punches made while the internal cooldown is occuring are incredibly inefficient, and so knowing exactly when the cooldown is up is going to be very important if one wishes to maximize damage output. I hope Bioware doesn’t expect us to count in our heads to exactly 6 seconds every time we get the proc.

Another issue is that any Flame Burst / Rocket Punch made while Rail Shot is off cooldown (for example opening the fight with Flame Burst, or using Flame Burst for the slow) has a good chance of triggering PPA, thus wasting the Rail Shot reset and incurring the 6 second cooldown. As said earlier, Rail Shot requires a damage-over-time on the target in order to be used, and so currently many Pyrotechs favored opening the fight with Flame Burst (for the 100% chance to proc a 6 second DoT) rather than using the costly 25 heat Incendiary Missile DoT. Post-1.2 this will no longer be an option because it is too risky to open a fight with Flame Burst and start the internal cooldown.


Here are some proposed changes to the 1.2 patch notes that will hopefully help to fix the problems the current patch notes will bring to the Pyrotech spec.

1) Make Rocket Punch / Flame Burst have a 100% chance to proc PPA outside of the global cooldown. This solves the issue brought up earlier, where with the 1.2 change you are essentially making it so we have no chance for “good RNG”, and yet leaving the chance for “bad RNG”. RNG procs with internal cooldowns are bad.

-and/or-

2) Greatly increase auto-attack (Rapid Shots) damage. If you want to force us to use auto attacks a lot more, in order to offset this large DPS decrease you will need to greatly increase the damage of the auto-attack. This also helps to offset the problem Pyrotechs currently have, where if you get high on heat you literally have to use auto-attack for 20 seconds to get back to low heat levels (because the higher heat you are the worse heat ventilation you get).

-or-

3) Completely change PPA to reduce the cooldown of Rail Shot to 6 seconds and make Rail Shot free all the time. This solves the issue of tracking the internal cooldown (there will be no internal cooldown). This also makes it so that our damage output as well as heat management is very stable.

-or-

4) Change the PPA internal cooldown to 4.5 seconds. See this post (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=370674) for more details.

-and-

5) Edit: You an ignore this suggestion. After further discussion in this thread with other people, they've brought up the point that because Bioware hasn't done this for any other classes' internal cooldowns they probably won't start here.

Feel free to propose alternative changes, discuss the changes I have here, and discuss the 1.2 Pyrotech changes in general.

Very well thought out post. At first I thought for sure us Pyrotechs were getting off light as far as being nerfed is concerned... Now I realize that's not quite the case... Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I hope Bio makes some changes to stop this from being such a negative change.

Yea, I feel like Bioware doesn't realize just how much this will affect Pyrotech damage. From my understanding of the patch notes Bioware intends to reduce our burst damage but try to keep our overall DPS the same (known as "spreading out" burst damage). However, their proposed change will simply remove our burst in addition to greatly reducing our overall DPS.

Bioware fully realize this already but you are not playing a popular spec/class therefor they balance it accordingly to not frustrate the majority of people playing jedi/sith. The nerf is working as intend and i feel sorry you spent time to explain what BW already know.

Hopefully Bioware doesn't balance the game that way. And even if there is just a small percent chance someone from Bioware reads this and thinks about it, then I think the time I spent writing this was well worth it.

More predictable damage is preferred by good players, and this is what PT Pyro is getting with these changes. You will only have 3 GCDs (4.5 seconds as the other 1.5 will be the Rail Shot you use on proc) in which PPA will not benefit you, and you should be able to track 3 GCDs. Good PTs will utilize other abilities during the PPA ICD to manage heat and maximize dps.

These changes are thought out to keep some fluidity in the rotation to make things interesting without too much random feast/famine scenarios. The changes are good because it actually raises the skillcap on PT Pyro.

The nerf is way too big...It's ridiculous. gonna leave this game if it goes live. That's it.

you will not be able to use AIon gas cylinder anymore with APP ( wont proc with aion cylinde only combustible cylinder)which makes yu choose between full tanking tree or pyro full dps with some ap THROWN THERE for both build.
dunno id yu mentioned that I didnt see it .

yu will not be anle to run SHtec along with pyro anymore that imo is the real nerf.
nicely presented however I am doubtfull they even care what you think they busy giving away stuff and nerfbating randomly to keep subs..

I agree, more predictable damage is preferred.

What if right after PPA procs you get stunned? In order to know how many globals you have before the internal cooldown wears off you will need to subtract the exact duration of the stun from 6, subtract an additional 1.5 seconds for the Rail Shot you are about to cast, then divide this number by 1.5 and round down to determine how many globals you can't cast Flame Burst/Rocket Punch. This is if you want to maximize damage.

What if you get line-of-sighted for x amount of seconds, and so you can't judge the time passed by how many globals you've used? In order to maximize damage we will need to know exactly when the cooldown is up.

Other abilities? If Thermal Detonator is on cooldown the only other damage ability left is auto-attack, which hits for pathetic damage. This is obviously a large DPS decrease.

I'm all for making the rotation fluid and raising the skillcap on PT Pyro, I just don't think the current fix is the best way to accomplish this.

I agree I will definitely miss the Jet Charge / Pyrotech hybrid spec. However this post is aimed specifically at how the 1.2 patch is affecting deep Pyrotech builds.