Wrong.

 

The buff is up all the time, not a temporary burst like Berserker. With 6% cut from GCD, in the same period of time you will do (100 / 94) -1 = 6.4% more damage because you can fit more attacks in.

 

This is over a sustained fight. That is why losing the Rolling Punches alacrity is a DPS nerf. DPS = damage per second, i.e. sustained damage.

 

A 6% increase in crit chance only equates to an equal replacement of DPS if you are getting an average 100% bonus damage. You aren't. Therefore switching from alacrity to crit chance on Rolling Punches is a DPS drop.

 

In the short term, higher alacrity means you get your attack in first (assuming you're both hitting your GCDs), which is pretty good in a short fight.

 

Someone else posted later about Alacrity only helping regen. That is also wrong, because as noted above it cuts your GCD, which is my whole point.

damage is limited mostly by cooldowns of abilities, not gcds. Getting another gcd in a rotation means you will be using rifle shot or overload shot, since everything is on cd or out of TA, because you have finished your rotation.

damage is limited mostly by cooldowns of abilities, not gcds. Getting another gcd in a rotation means you will be using rifle shot or overload shot, since everything is on cd or out of TA, because you have finished your rotation.

Now that's a legitimate point. Though I think it's overstating it that your only choice for another attack is Rifle Shot so an extra attack is useless.

TBF, we're talking PvP so rotations aren't really practical anyway, but having stuff on CD is a limiting factor. Like I said, I don't actually think losing the alacrity will be as big a minus as simply counting GCDs would say. I am mildly saddened and completely unsurprised that people don't understand the benefit of a shorter GCD.

Now that's a legitimate point. Though I think it's overstating it that your only choice for another attack is Rifle Shot so an extra attack is useless.

 

TBF, we're talking PvP so rotations aren't really practical anyway, but having stuff on CD is a limiting factor. Like I said, I don't actually think losing the alacrity will be as big a minus as simply counting GCDs would say. I am mildly saddened and completely unsurprised that people don't understand the benefit of a shorter GCD.

I for one appreciate shorter GCD , especially at initial burst (3 lacerations , 2 shivs, backstab, hidden strike and explosive probe , all as fast as possible) but I actually welcome this change (alacrity to crit chance) since the I believe we all can agree that formula changes in 2.0 (especially one for crit) hit us harder than any other class in game, and I still believe that THAT is the reason why we preform so bad these days.

Wow, I can't believe you think 6% alacrity is better than 6% crit. But the changes are pretty much all buffs and the 30% surge (chance to apply the extra hit, not a surge bonus) on laceration is going to be huge. Just take a look at his parse and tell me you'd prefer the alacrity over bonus damage and crit overall. I'm almost 99% we'll see a 4k+ parse here soon. Not to mention all the other increases to damage overall, even a percentage or two does something, especially while piled on top of other huge buffs. I feel like we might see a slight change in the numbers but we'll see.

Green text is mine.

It's both, from two traits.

Meticulously Kept Blades will now increase the critical damage of Laceration by 30%.

Collateral Strike will proc on Laceration 100% of the time.

Now that's a legitimate point. Though I think it's overstating it that your only choice for another attack is Rifle Shot so an extra attack is useless.

 

TBF, we're talking PvP so rotations aren't really practical anyway, but having stuff on CD is a limiting factor. Like I said, I don't actually think losing the alacrity will be as big a minus as simply counting GCDs would say. I am mildly saddened and completely unsurprised that people don't understand the benefit of a shorter GCD.

Actually PVP rotations are very practical if you know what you are doing. But to be fair, yes 1/2 the time people fly by the seat of their pants given a changing situation that is PVP.

Alacrity never was, is or will be a buff for concealments. I have to disagree with people who think so.

I will agree that it does help. However I will not agree that it reduces GCD's because WHEN it first came out it did NOT do this. BW fixed it.

That being said, Alacrity is a nerf to our damage if taken from the opposite point of view. My point is: IF this class was meant to stack alacrity, we have to sacrifice something for it... and that sacrifice is burst damage, crit chance, or surge rating, and even possibly set bonus all for the sake of a marginally if not negligable difference in sustained dps.

So no Alacrity serves no purpose for the concealment DPS spec of this class, with exception to Lethality & Medicine as it effects the rate at which hots & dots proc, and of course casting/channeling time on some skills.

overall the idea is true about Crit > alacrity, however we are talking concealment operative here, you guys are far overestimating an useless 6% crit buff and underestimating a great nerf from alacrity, that alacrity was the small regen / GCD buff that made the difference,

I stopped reading here.

One question: At what cost?

If it's a passive alacrity bonus then so be it. But, we never had alacrity before, and we STILL got raped for being overpowered.

Alacrity isn't the answer, and to people who think it is: Stack your alacrity, by all means, but when I kill you in 5-8 hits.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

For those of us who don't know what a CD Wall is: By definition it means the following:

CD Wall - occurs when you fire every skill you have and put your entire toolbar on CD with no skills to use. That is what alacrity will do for you. So while you wait for 5-10 seconds on CD's I'll continue to 5-8 shot you to death before ever hitting a CD wall. As you will NEED to wait for your CD's to equal the burst damage I do with less skills.

This class didn't have a CD wall until they nerfed the Backstab CD. Meanwhile you can compare almost every class in the game with that single nerf, and learn that no other class in the game hits a CD wall more often if at all than this class does. That's the difference 12 second backstab CD made vs a 9 second backstab CD.

My message to Bioware; Don't insult our intelligence... remove the 1% damage increase from backstab and give us our *********** 9 second CD back on backstab.

There were 5 HUGE nerfs to concealments/scrappers that destroyed our damage.

1. Acid blade nerf - 50% armor pen to 30% armor pen

2. Hidden Strike nerf - HS does 20% less damage (which I believe they fixed if I remember right)

3. Auto crit on HS stealth nerf - Yes there was actually an autocrit in the past, and BW nerf'd it without telling anyone. Obviously people aren't stupid and noticed it right away.

4. Crit Chance stealth nerf - Again, BW stealth nerfed this specs crit chance a retroactive nerf that effected EVERYTHING we do as a DPS class. And this nerf was done multiple times.

5. Backstab CD Nerf - This nerf is probably the most devistating nerf this spec received. As it introduced a CD wall issue... that never existed before. This forced people to use skills that this class shouldn't need to use. i.e. Explosive probe. Not to mention the energy fix for this spec was weetoddid at best, because we STILL had a CD wall issue we never had before, so what good is better energy when you have no skills to use that energy? The same question can be asked about Alacrity. What good is lowering the GCD when you have no skills you can use anyways? Even in my DPS parses I hit a CD wall at least 2-3 times in 46 seconds before I ran out of energy. Which forced me to use overload shot as a filler. If I had to resort to rifle shot in PVP at point blank range something seriously went wrong, because no other class in the game is that closed off from a CD wall.

Just like Lethality/snipers are not a melee class like we are. Give them their dam ranged TA generation and prohibit their melee skills use entirely. That is to say with exception to debilitate, they should not be able to use shiv/etc no more than we should be allowed to use explosive probe/sniper shot.

Here's a question to BW: Why not remove ALL ranged ability from concealment/scrappers and give us a melee filler like rifle shot, remove overload shot entirely, and decrease another CD other than backstab, or give a % damage increase to an already usable melee skill as compensation? Meanwhile do the same for lethality/snipers, remove ALL melee abilities with exception to deblitate where applicable, and give them everything they need from melee such as more efficient ranged TA generation on dot crit, or w/e?

That is to say change Sniper/Lethality skills such as debilitate to a 10m ranged skill using a pistol in the offhand instead of a virborknife. Meanwhile give concealments/scrappers the dual wield melee option thus 2 virbroknives 1 in each hand. Create a new melee animation for scrapper/concealments...

1. Concealment dual wield virbroknives - melee filler that regens a small amount of energy when used such as 1.5 energy per GCD

2. Scrapper I'm sure they like their pistol shotgun main and offhand weapons.. so just create a melee animation for them, such as pistol whip followed by a right/left hook with the shotgun.... make this their melee filler like rifle shot equivalent that generates 1.5 energy per GCD when used.

3 Snipers/gunslingers - Pistol animaton for deblitate effect that has a 10m range, unlike our debilitate which requires melee range... we don't need that 10m because we have exfiltrate.

I stopped reading here.

 

One question: At what cost?

 

If it's a passive alacrity bonus then so be it. But, we never had alacrity before, and we STILL got raped for being overpowered.

 

Alacrity isn't the answer, and to people who think it is: Stack your alacrity, by all means, but when I kill you in 5-8 hits.

 

Don't say I didn't warn you.

 

For those of us who don't know what a CD Wall is: By definition it means the following:

 

CD Wall - occurs when you fire every skill you have and put your entire toolbar on CD with no skills to use. That is what alacrity will do for you. So while you wait for 5-10 seconds on CD's I'll continue to 5-8 shot you to death before ever hitting a CD wall. As you will NEED to wait for your CD's to equal the burst damage I do with less skills.

 

This class didn't have a CD wall until they nerfed the Backstab CD. Meanwhile you can compare almost every class in the game with that single nerf, and learn that no other class in the game hits a CD wall more often if at all than this class does. That's the difference 12 second backstab CD made vs a 9 second backstab CD.

 

My message to Bioware; Don't insult our intelligence... remove the 1% damage increase from backstab and give us our *********** 9 second CD back on backstab.

i am guessing you play PvP, so i wont even bother commenting on if you are talking about pvp. if you are talking about PvE. unfortunately i am the only person capable of doign concealment good dps pre 2.6, and seems like one of the few that was able to do quick nice parses at 2.6 too, and yeah i was also the only concealment op competent enough to play in nim EC title runs and have top ranked torpars back in the day too, so i know about the nerfs (before that) and probably know way more of what i am talking about here than anyone else.

there is no wall CD in concealment, there is no RNG required proc, therefor it doesnt matter delaying the GCD, because at most it is delayed 0.1-0.2 of a backstab for example, which in this case was a dps increase considering you got an extra ability out before the Regular window, just compare any of my parses with other conceal parses, usually i have higher APM which makes the difference.... same for pvp actually, you dont need a CD wall like for example pyro spec PPA, you just need quick hits, if you are hitting your GCD 0.15 secs earlier, you are doing more and faster dmg.

there are two ways of understanding alacrity: one is saying your faster GCD will waste or delay your abilities, and thats false if you have (example, not real rotation) " backstab + X + X + X + X + Backstab" in your usual rotatation its 7.5 second CD, delivered each attack on 1.5... if you have alacrity then it is " Backstab + X + X + X + X + X (optional) + Backstab" you have two choices, either the optional X is a shiv/ laceration/overload shot = higher dmg and you delay backstab by like 0.5 seconds at most... it is 8.4 second Wait with 1+ attack delivered faster WITH higher energy regeneration... if you DIDNT want to delay backstab for whatever reason, you just avoid the X optional and wait for the GCD, this will mean EXACTLY the same 7.5 second window for backstab, with Faster GCD abilities before AND higher energy regeneration.... so unfortunately even if it was a CD wall, it is never a dps lost, delaying X Seconds your Ability that is "CD wall" will never be a dps lost, just by the fact that it will happen in second 7.5 in both rotation, the only difference is that alacrity build delivered Faster dmg and has faster energy regeneration, so at some point of the fight, instad of getting a 0.5 second difference until backstab, yo uwill have 1.5 secon (1 GCD) so you will be able to add that optional ability before backstab window = more dps, not counting the base X+ energy regen each second.... bottom line alacrity will always give you more resource + faster hits + MORE APM, the thing is you need to be smart enough to know when and when not to delay/use an optional ability with the alacrity buff, if you have an extra GCD thanks to alacrity, even if its Rifle shot, its a Dps gain, instead of being 50 GCD it was 51 GCD in the fight, 1 extra attack = + dmg in equally done rotations.

the defensive CD is another topic, no one is talking about that, we talking the improvements they did, not the ones they didnt, arguing about something that didnt happen is pointless, they know the issue they have said it, and they should/might fix it soon, so there is no point in keep pushing that topic, right now we have THIS, lets argue THIS, not waste our time on what "should have been" .

3. Auto crit on HS stealth nerf - Yes there was actually an autocrit in the past, and BW nerf'd it without telling anyone. Obviously people aren't stupid and noticed it right away.

Not sure what you are talking about.. My main has been an operative since launch and I've never had an auto crit on hidden strike. With the old pve set bonus, before the crit nerfs in 2.0, and the earlier nerf to our got 6% crit from talents, we could get our backstab crit up quite high.. If you went beyond the dr on crit back then, you might have 73% crit on backstab, and 58% on hs - neither autocrit, and at the cost of bonus damage. That said, we have been hit with a lot of nerfs.

Not sure what you are talking about.. My main has been an operative since launch and I've never had an auto crit on hidden strike. With the old pve set bonus, before the crit nerfs in 2.0, and the earlier nerf to our got 6% crit from talents, we could get our backstab crit up quite high.. If you went beyond the dr on crit back then, you might have 73% crit on backstab, and 58% on hs - neither autocrit, and at the cost of bonus damage. That said, we have been hit with a lot of nerfs.

I'm talking prior to 1.2.

FINALLY broke 4k, just barely...but it's a nice number to see haha

http://www.torparse.com/a/560143/time/1390251826/1390252075/0/Overview

FINALLY broke 4k, just barely...but it's a nice number to see haha

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/560143/time/1390251826/1390252075/0/Overview

Grats on 4k. How is your crit percent so high though? Luck? Or did the 6% really help that much? Wondering if others will be able to replicate these parses. I can't, because I'm only in 69s/72s, but want to play Conc at a competitive level.

Grats on 4k. How is your crit percent so high though? Luck? Or did the 6% really help that much? Wondering if others will be able to replicate these parses. I can't, because I'm only in 69s/72s, but want to play Conc at a competitive level.

I'm running 220 crit atm, so that...in addition to luck. My rotation isn't as clean as Carl's, so he will be able to beat this easily once he gets some good RNG. Just got lucky, but that's what happens when you put time behind it.

Hey everyone!

As you can see, there is quite a bit happening to increase Concealment damage in 2.6. Now, I know one of the things that came out of the brainstorming threads and the Class Reps was that you need survivability. I want to tell you that we don't disagree with that sentiment at all! The issue that stands currently is that most of the survivability of the Operative is tied into the base class. That means that if we increase Concealment survivability, we are also going to increase how hard it is to kill a Medicine Operative. That isn't ideal.

Is that really true in practice? The base abilities might all be there, but without significant buffs from the Medicine tree, they are insufficient - in the time you heal yourself you take more damage then you heal, and could deal a lot more damage to the enemy if you were on the offensive - and if you take the Medicine Tree buffs, you won't have the damage buffs, and are overall ineffective ,unless you go all the way in and are now a real healer.

Do you see an area of mixing two specializations where the net benefit is truely better than a fully specialized build would be? Or are you just not sure yet and try to identify such builds and this find the abilities that would need tweaking to compensate?