Developer Update: Class Changes and Balance in Game Update 1.4

i see most of the people are too focused discussing how bad the overload/force wave change is, they forget to see the other changes that is to be made on their class. Yes, the 360 kb is good in a sage/sorc perspective, but now that its a 120 cone in front of you, its now instant, without animation delay, and healer sage/sorc has now immunity to roots and snares for the duration of force speed w/c makes leaps root effects to be of no use so they can't easily close the gap like they always do. Dps sages/sorcs now has their Backlash/Kinetic Collapse buffed up, the effect no longer break on damage so you have 3 secs to do dps or run away and Polarity Shift/Mental Alacrity other than increasing your alacrity now grants immunity to interrupts and all sage/sorcs now has an instant cast force free heal. What i see here is that the class actually gained more survivability, more heal, and more time to dish out dps

PLEASE read our actual concerns voiced by the people who play the affected class first before making such a statement - then you will understand why we dont care for or want the changes at all. The so ill-conceived band-aid "buffs" thrown are not any real compensation.

We dont want them.

Eh, speak for yourself - they sound pretty great to me.

Added immunity to stuns/roots from these marauders that attack me all the time? Yummy.

Crazy knockback offensive overload, instead of this silly little one we currently have? Yay!

Instant, free, 5k heal on a 30 second cooldown? Combine that with the medpacks we currently have access to, and this is potentially an enormous game changer. We'll see.

From a sorc heals perspective, the changes sound fantastic on paper. But again, we'll see how they play out.

Don't presume every sorcerer plays the same way you do. Or that we're all as resistant to change as you.

I dont presume every sorc is like me. But talking to the many full time sorcs on my server and reading this thread and the other one (changes for PvP affects PvE /sigh) im pretty sure a very large proportion of sorcs are against the changes.

the immunity to stuns/roots are only when you are using force speed. and as in the dev's own words they plan for you to use it to run away (not something i want to be doing)

and just how is the current overload "silly" whereas the new version a "crazy offensive" one? because 120 degrees is so much better than 360 degrees right? Dont tell me an extra 5m range suddenly makes it soooo much better....

You'll forgive me if i don't take your word for it with regards to the "yay"s that you mentioned....

Id much rather they didnt touch overload and electrocute and didnt give us the "moderate" insta-heal (like the "moderate" threat reduction maybe?) and other band-aid stuff.

Unfortunately the moderators seem to have deleted an excellent post giving a detailed analysis as to why the combined nerf of overload + electrocute makes it WORSE for you to defend against marauders and sentinels in PvP.

And it sounds like you are only looking at this from a PvP perspective. You forget that there is a whole half of PvE players that these changes affect negatively - worse still if you like to solo play (like myself)

Immunity to stuns/roots is only available with talent points. It is not baseline and is therefore not a class buff but a talent redesign.

Knockback is being nerfed. The extended range is a red herring since it grants NO BENEFIT to the sorcerer that our current range does not already offer. We already have a long enough range to move melee into their deadzone. Additionally, changing one of our very few defensive tools into a weak offensive tool doesn't help our survivability at all. Finally, the "instant cast" has already been nerfed to "reduced delay".

The heal may or may not be useful, depending on how much health it grants.

The only Sorc/Sage that even remotely would call these "benefits" would be healing sorc/sage players. The ability to avoid CC for 2 seconds during force speed are only available in the healing spec. So, DPS sorc/sage don't get it. Furthermore, DPS sage/sorc already spec'd for 20s force speed, which remains 20s post patch because lightning effusion is losing its trait to lower the cooldown of force speed.

The ability to knock someone back 15m instead of 8m is a nerf for 2 reasons. First, those without spec'ing for no minimum jump distance had to have 10m minimum distance...so the knockback now allows them an instant jump to you (15>10) whereas before they would have to run to you (after their 5s root wore off). Second, at 15m you will not be able to stun them afterwards to prevent the jump, since the stun range was nerfed to 10m (except for snipers, who keep their 30m stun range even though sorc/sage is also a range-based class). So, you actually knock them out of your stun range, so they can just jump back on you instantly. Of course, there's also the reality that in PvP players will now try to position themselves to your side/back, whereas before they didn't bother because it was 360-degree ability. So, with players actively trying to move out of your 120-degree cone, it's probably more than just a 66% nerf, probably more like 75%. The "instant" effect of the overload from the animation is a bug fix, not a buff to compensate, as other classes that still retain their 360-degree knockback has always been instant.

DPS sorc/sage got the ability if they spec high up a DPS tree nobody uses a brief uninterruptable ability to go along with the increased alacrity. Again, nobody goes this high up this tree except maybe in PvE, because the cast times are so long that a squishy class can't afford to do. Unlikely this changes anyone's spec for PvP. Moderately helpful for PvE.

Yes, we do get an instant self heal every 30 seconds for a "moderate" amount, which really helps justifying taking a sorc/sage over a Powertech/Vanguard for DPS in a RWZ??? Seriously? Might be a bit more helpful for a healing spec sorc/sage, but really unlikely since it doesn't help you heal your team, just yourself. Furthermore, even for heals it's better to take an operative/scoundrel healer (much higher survivability plus instant-heals without the power issues of a sorc) and/or a merc/commando healer for burst heals because they have heavy armor. Both of them have so much more survivability that they can spend time healing the team instead of themselves, which is the point in a RWZ.

I understand a lot of players focus on PvE or do casual PvP. But for competitive PvP players, these are big nerfs and pretty much removes sorcs/sages from competitive PvP RWZ teams.

It is apparent that BW refuses to answer the voiced concerns here. This discussion forum is a waste of time since they hardly ever get involved with the players who are not in their testing guilds (reread the announcement again you will see they mention the test guilds).

I think I will take to trolling tickets and other customer service venues.

Do people still try to take DPS-spec sorcs onto ranked teams? That must be awkward for their teammates. I know I personally generally dislike healing them, because it's largely a waste.

If that is the true case, then why do we have advance classes out side of their primary roles at all?