Why the proposed 1.2 Pyrotech changes are poorly thought out

considering that pyro was just gutted? it will be harder to justify playing pyro when AP may very well do around the same dps as 1.2 pyro, and have better defensive abilities, mobility, and utility.

perhaps gutted is not the right term....no longer a viable option. there, that is better.

if the AP changes dont pan out, pts will be forced into ironfist, a tank/dps hybrid that does pitiful damage but has more utility and survivability.

that, and the spec that i do play, carolina parakeet, will be gone in 1.2 (getting my fun in now while i can). although in hindsight, maybe it was not such a hot idea to name a spec after an extinct bird.

i procced back to back RS against a jedi sentinel and still lost

fact :-P

wheres his nerf i ask you

(its actually very sad, but very true), i did catch him at 30 stacks of centered but that is none the less oblivious to the point... i literally procced back to back in a fight i engaged with at full hp and left dead... :s

lol, im the one being nerfed thou, as glowsticks is the way to go clearly

(p.s in all seriousness, i understand this happened as most likely i was not concentrating or because he had his defensive cd's all up while i was proccing back to back what seemed to be "pointless" RS's on a 600 power (i had also popped relic and crit cd) only to watch my dmg hit for double figures


ah that is right, sentinels are being "buffed" in upcoming patch, silly me...

gg.

Yea this nerf is totally over the top.

Can you please explain how replacing FB with rapid shots still lets you proc PPA after every 3 skills on average?

RS FB FB AA RS would be a better rotation, but you have only 50% to proc PPA. If you think it is enough to call it average, than I will claim that in 1.2 you will proc PPA after every FB (similar 50% chance). Both claim are false.

im really getting tired of the complete lack of dev communication regarding this change. the change to PPA was totally unnecessary, the inclusion of a stance requirement was also unneceessary.

pyrotech is a dps spec. bioware is basically nerfing the class for doing dps. if you understand the class, you can do a lot of dps. that same logic applies to all other classes tho; good players will always perform exceptionally.

whod have thought, a dps class doing dps? inconceivable!

Like I said, you can either contemplate my conclusions or ignore it. Doesn't matter because while BW and 90% of the player base may be confused by the current state of ToR game (im)balance, the top players are not.

There's just so much about this game that conventional wisdom (as represented by this forum for example) is flat out wrong about. As one example I will cite your implication that high scoring Voidstar matches occur when one team stomps on another. That's exactly the opposite of reality. High scoring (dps) Voidstar matches occur when both sides are equally (or near equally) balanced AND each side is healer heavy (3 or more per team). In that environment the likely game score is 0-0 but the dps machines can spend the entirety of both rounds outputting and not moving. It IS effectively a dps meter.

Top players must be determined by who can aoe spam the most in void star now-a-days.

Excellent point, I don’t know why I forgot about that. I think I get what you’re saying now: that our overall sustainable DPS isn’t being affected because in theory we should be currently auto-attacking every rotation anyway. Makes sense.

I wanted to make sure everything we are theorizing is “right” so I threw it all into a spreadsheet, and I found something that I think you’ll find interesting.

Here’s the spreadsheet:
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/716/swtor12.png
Let me know if it doesn’t work

Like you said, when we are going through a sustainable rotation our DPS doesn’t change with this 1.2 patch. However, look at what happens when we decide to eliminate auto-attacks (let’s say we our in a 30 second “burn” phase in a PVE encounter). You’ll notice that currently if we don’t auto attack, we use 50 heat per 30 second rotation, and instead of the standard 24840 damage per 30 seconds, it increases to 29050 damage. That’s a 17% DPS increase for 50 heat, or 0.34% DPS increase per 1 heat.

Now look at what happens when we try to do a 30 second “burn” rotation in 1.2. We only see a 12% DPS increase and it costs us 74 heat, which is a 0.16% DPS increase per 1 heat. Thus, come 1.2 we will get less of a DPS increase should we choose to not auto-attack.

You might be thinking, “yea that’s the whole point of this patch, to reduce your burst.” But what I’m talking about here isn’t the “OMG 4 RAIL SHOTS IN A ROW” kind of burst that Bioware wants to get rid of this patch. I’m talking about the option to sacrifice some sustainability in order to increase damage.

Now, why am I bothering to bring this up? Well, in PvP anytime you are CC’d or otherwise unable to attack a target you are regaining heat. Many times when we are being attacked, due to Gyroscopic Alignment Jets, we get extra heat. Anytime we use Vent Heat or Thermal Sensor Override, we get extra heat. You can choose to use this “extra heat” you’ve gained in order to increase your DPS, by switching auto-attacks out with Flame Bursts. In 1.2 we won’t be able to use this “extra heat” as effectively, thus our overall DPS is still being nerfed.

I want to emphasize however that everything I just said is simply theorycrafting and I said it because I thought you’d be interested by it. For the most part, I agree with what you’ve proved. You’ve actually made me feel better about this patch, because you’ve shown how our sustained DPS isn’t really being nerfed all that hard.

My original post wasn’t just about Bioware nerfing our DPS however, it was also about how they eliminated our “feast” RNG but left the “famine” RNG. I still think this should be addressed. But I’ll be honest though, I’m tired of theorycrafting and I really didn’t expect 30 pages of replies. I think at this stage it’s really up to Bioware on how they want to change Pyrotechs. Whatever changes they put through, I guess we’ll just have to adapt. I appreciate the feedback you’ve given so far though.

Kudos for the math, i'm certainly not good enough at it to come up with stuff like this.


Though our sustainable DPS hasn't taken much of a hit it seems, there still remains alot of other valid concerns and problems that have been posted by various posters. All of which, I feel, would be resolved simply by just making PPA a talent that reduces RS cd to a flat 6 seconds.

I just felt like Voidstars where multiple people on your team are getting numbers close to 1 million damage aren't the best way to gauge class balance. I guess I can't argue with you though because you're a "top player" and I'm just a complete noob who's "flat out wrong".

And I don't think balancing the game around Void star damage is the right thing to do because so much damage is AoE. Do you think developers say "Oh look, this class does more damage than another class in this 15 minute long AoE fight with hundreds of variables such as deaths/OOC regen-time/stuns/cc/running away when you're at low health/number of healers/travel-time/time spent disarming or arming bombs/constant target switches, let's nerf their single-target DPS!"? No, because buffing/nerfing single-target DPS based on things like overall damage in a warzone is ridiculous based on the mere fact that classes with better AoE will do better damage in Void Star. Not to mention all the other variables listed above.

But you know what? Let's stop arguing because it's pointless and whatever Bioware decides to do, they're going to do. We may have strongly disagreed so far, but overall I still appreciate your input and I want to thank you for taking the time to respond to me so far.