A tactical item that reduces the cooldown of annihilate back to 2.x values of 6 seconds would be interesting. Especially with extra abilities we have now and the ability priorities, the rotation would feel very different while still keeping its core identity.

I have the idea of a ability that immediately finishes the duration of DoTs and does the remaining damage instantly.Kinda like Sage and their HoT.

Hey folks,

 

Following our Onslaught announcement at SW Celebration we want to start diving into feedback right away. I want to use this thread to talk about Tactical Item effects and Set Bonuses for Annihilation and Watchman Disciplines. Our goal for set bonuses is to introduce new bonuses, and potentially with even new sizes so you can mix and match. Tactical Items are a new item type that is meant to be build defining and most likely to directly impact how an ability works. For inspiration here are two completely made up Chain Lightning Examples:

1. Chain Lightning now does all of its total damage to only one target, and no longer jumps.
   
2. Chain Lightning now jumps even more and does additional damage to secondary targets.
   

 

That would allow you to take a standard ability and allow it to be modified to fit your playstyle. Please use this thread to brainstorm ideas and make as many recommendations as you would like! For context:

• Tactical Items: These should modify one of your Advanced Class/Discipline abilities to work differently. The goal is for you to use the ability in situations you previously wouldn’t (more often, against specific targets, etc)
  
• Set Bonuses: These should be focused on the broader “kind of tools” your class uses, but not specific abilities. Some examples are sets that center around bleeds, force damage, lightning, shields, cover, and so on.
  

Set bonuses, tacticals, both, let us know what you would like to see. I may not respond frequently in this thread but know that I am going to be compiling everything and sending it over to the team.

 

-eric

 

**Current set bonuses:

Weaponmaster

 

2-piece Battering Assault or Zealous Strike increases damage dealt by 2% for 15 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds.

 

4-piece Reduces the cooldown of Frenzy or Valorous Call by 15 seconds. Additionally, activating Berserk or Zen increases all damage dealt by 3% for 10 seconds.

 

6-piece Activating Ravage, Blade Dance, Duel Saber Throw, or Twin Saber Throw will grant Weaponmaster’s/Challenger’s Critical Bonus making your next Gore, Furious Strike and Annihilate or Lance, Concentrated Slice and Merciless Slash critically hit. This effect can’t occur more than once every minute.

 

**Some set bonus suggestions:

1. Reduces the cooldown of Frenzy or Valorous Call by 15 seconds. Additionally, activating Berserk or Zen increases all damage dealt by 5% for X seconds.

 

2. Battering Assault or Zealous Strike increases damage dealt by 5% for X seconds. Cannot occur more than once every X seconds.

 

3. Activating Gore, Furious Strike, and Annihilate or Lance, Concentrated Slice, and Merciless Slash will grant Weaponmaster’s/Challenger’s Critical Bonus making your next Ravage or Blade Dance critically hit and increase Critical Chance by 25% for the next 6 seconds. This effect cannot happen more than once every X seconds.

 

4. Activating Duel Saber Throw or Twin Saber Throw allows Vicious Throw or Dispatch to be used against a target at any health level.

 

5. Taking damage while Cloak of Pain or Rebuke is active deals constant damage to all enemies within melee range for the duration of Cloak of Pain or Rebuke. This effect can not happen more than once every X secs.

 

**Tactical Item ideas:

1. Force Scream or Devasting Blast and Blade Storm or Clashing Blast grant an additional 15% movement bonus for X seconds.

 

2. Dual Saber Throw and Twin Saber throw hits only the targeted enemy and deals 100% more damage.

I think the trick with these tactical options will be to have them all be viable choices, or at a least viable in a certain situations. Otherwise one optimal setup will emerge, and that’s how everyone will gear, defeating the purpose. So I there probably has to be some sort of tradeoff, probably centered around things like sustained damage vs burst, or PvE vs PvP utility, or group utility vs individual damage, etc. A few ideas bearing that I mind:

 

• Merciless Slash/Annihilate does X% more damage, but burns/bleeds do X% less
  
• Burns/Bleeds no longer heal, but do x% more damage if spread to one or more targets
  
• Burns/Bleeds cannot be cleansed, but do x% less damage
  
• Instead of increasing party-wide damage, Inspiration/Berserk does X healing to all party members instantly, or puts a HoT on all party members, or protects all party members from damage for X seconds
  
• Dispatch/Viscous Throw can be activated at any enemy health %, has longer range, but does less damage
  
• Twin Saber throw also spreads burns/bleeds, but at a reduced damage to the secondary targets
  

 

There are also perhaps ways they can change the way certain abilities work, without necessarily changing the overall damage output significantly, and that could be really fun. Some ideas I haven’t really thought through yet, but just spitballing:

• Make twin saber throw be like a damage version of wandering mend – it hits your current target, plus X more (maybe based on highest/lowest health?) – just like the idea of sabers flying around the whole room
  
• Have force stasis/force choke stun for a slightly shorter time, but then also throw the target
  
• Change force stasis/force choke to a pull
  
• Transcendence only affects you, but increases speed x% more (cue Bennie Hill music)
  

These would be applicable to any of the disciplines, so that might be a nice option too.

To organize them a bit more easily, I'll list my ideas on an ability-by-ability basis. I'll post again at a later point with ideas for set bonuses, but for now I'll focus on Tactical Items:

 

Force Melt

This ability already has an Area-of-Effect aspect thanks to the Burning Sweep passive allowing Force Sweep to spread it to other targets, so any such effects on a Tactical Item would be fairly redundant. I do see some other good possibilities, however.

• Conflagration: Force Melt deals all of its damage instantly instead of as a burn effect, causing the ability to always do either its minimum damage possible (no crit) or absolute maximum damage possible (crit), rather than somewhere between the two. Timing this with the use of Zen could have some fairly explosive results for the unfortunate target, as well as allowing the other 5 charges from the Zen buff to be expended on more ticks of Cauterize or Overload Saber. If the animation for this ability and the visual effect on the target could also be modified to reflect all this damage being done at once, even better.
  
• Searing Winds: If any target is struck by Force Sweep while the Force Melt burn effect is present, up to 8 enemies within 5 meters of the target will be hit by an Area-of-Effect Force attack which deals moderate elemental damage. This is triggered individually for every target with an active Force Melt burn effect from that specific character and is handled separately from the burn effect being spread by the Burning Sweep passive (avoiding conflict with that passive ability), enabling additional sustained Area-of-Effect support from the Watchman Discipline through this ability synergy.
  
• Walking Bomb: Force Melt no longer places a burn effect on the target, but instead "primes" them for detonation, with the "trigger" being Force Sweep. When triggered, any enemies within a 7 meter radius of the target are hit for a heavy amount of elemental damage, which also removes the "priming" effect from the target. Has anyone seen this sort of thing from the Dragon Age series? It's kind of like that. This essentially converts the spreading burn aspect of the Burning Sweep passive into an instant Area-of-Effect attack instead, while also enabling a certain degree of tactics in permitting the player to choose when the detonation effect is ultimately triggered (or not at all, if the "priming" effect is allowed to time out on the target).
  

 

Cauterize

This ability also already has an Area-of-Effect aspect due to the Burning Sweep passive, but I do see an opportunity:

• Searing Slash: Cauterize hits up to 3 targets in a frontal Area-of-Effect, dealing all its elemental damage instantly instead of as a burn effect, with the elemental damage reduced slightly to compensate. Any active charges of Zen are still consumed to allow the elemental portion of the damage done to each target to automatically crit. This provides an alternative to Cyclone Slash when faced with a lower number of enemies, dealing a greater total damage in those situations.
  

 

Merciless Slash

I do not see many ways to directly improve this ability through Tactical Items aside from lowering its cooldown somehow, but I do see potential through synergy with other abilities:

• Zealous Precision: Merciless Slash consumes all remaining Zen for additional damage, with each charge consumed allowing the ability to ignore a certain percentage of the target's armor. Consuming all six charges ignores 100% of the target's armor.
  
• No Mercy: Merciless Slash refreshes any Cauterize, Overload Saber, and Force Melt burn effects on a target on a successful hit, refunding 1 focus for each burn effect refreshed, and dealing additional moderate elemental damage for each burn effect currently present. Combined with the Focused Slash Sentinel passive, Merciless Slash refunds all 4 focus if all three burn effects are present on a target.
  

 

Overload Saber

This ability seems to have the most potential when used as a self buff, and I have some ideas in regards to this:

• Unstable Energy: Overload Saber no longer causes melee attacks to place a burn effect on the target, but instead allows the next 3 melee attacks to ignore 30% of the target's armor.
  
• Searing Ward: Overload Saber no longer causes melee attacks to place a burn effect on the target, but instead grants 3 charges of Searing Ward, which increases melee and ranged defense by 15% for 6 seconds. Every incoming attack successfully parried or deflected while this buff is active will consume a charge and place a moderate burn effect on the attacker, which can stack up to 3 times.
  

A Tactical Item to increase all DoT damage by X% (let's say 150% to make it feel like DoTs are really awesome again) and lowers all other damage by Y% (let's say 20%).

A tactical Item to increase the damage of Smash by 100% while increasing its radius to 8m and causes Smash to spread all 3 DoTs to all targets hit.

A Tactical Item to make Annihilate and Cauterize have a 6 second cooldown (Annihilate being 6 seconds when you have max stacks of Annihilator for obvious reasons) like they used to.

 

2pc set bonus: Battering Assault increases all DoT dealt by 5% for 18 seconds while increasing all healing from DoTs by 10% or 15% (not sure which honestly). Can occur once every 30 seconds.

4pc set bonus: increases the duration of Force Rend by 3 seconds (allows 100% uptime and make it so it ticks an additional time as a result)

6pc set bonus: All DoTs do X% (idk 75%) more damage while under the effects of your Berserk and grants an additional 3 stacks of Berserk

A Tactical Item to make Annihilate and Cauterize have a 6 second cooldown (Annihilate being 6 seconds when you have max stacks of Annihilator for obvious reasons) like they used to.

 

That would definitely make me return to the game.

 

If a combination of tactical items could bring the specc close to its 2.6 state, I'd be in heaven. Meaning additionally:

 

- Cauterize actually on 12 sec CD, with reset Proc by Merciless Slash, Slash and Dispatch - plus newly Twin Saber Throw, with propability like Merciless Slash

 

- Force Melt's damage is reduced and dealt instantly. Force Melt has a chance to reset Cauterize.

Edited April 24, 2019 by Ardarell_Solo

That would definitely make me return to the game.

 

If a combination of tactical items could bring the specc close to its 2.6 state, I'd be in heaven. Meaning additionally:

 

- Cauterize actually on 12 sec CD, with reset Proc by Merciless Slash, Slash and Dispatch - plus newly Twin Saber Throw, with propability like Merciless Slash

 

- Force Melt's damage is reduced and dealt instantly. Force Melt has a chance to reset Cauterize.

 

2.6 Anni Mara... oh the wonderful memories that brings back. Reminds me of pre-1.6, i believe it was, when we could use Obfuscate on operation bosses.

maybe something like a morph on overload saber that causes your blade storm to cost less and cleave(2-3 targets)

or an added leech on force melt for some added tankyness in solo play.

 

maybe something that gives you more alacrity for every target hit with cauterize.

one that turns all the dots into one button at reduced damage for people seeking less ability bloat.

and one that morphs rebuke into an offensive damage aura not reliant on getting hit and without the damage mitigation.

 

idk.

Edited April 28, 2019 by hallucigenocide

In the past whenever you asked for our feedback and the threads got hundreds of pages long, exactly 0 % of that feedback got taken into account. Sometimes we even got mocked by the devs in return, when they were trying to explain to the most invested players how to play their class. I hope you understand why I can't be arsed to put much effort into this.

 

There's one suggestion I wanna make, maybe something comes out of it, even though I doubt it. Watchman/Annihilation used to have a vastly different playstyle, especially in PvP. With 3.0 you stripped it of its identity and it got changed to a generic DoT class that feels like all the others. It used to be about short and hard hitting DoTs with a CD combined with a strong self heal and decent burst. Bring that playstyle back. The self-heal should be based on a percentage of our health again; Cauterize should have a CD again, have a shorter duration and hit harder; the DoT spread on Smash should be removed; Force Rend/Melt should be removed and the damage shifted into the remaining DoTs.

I'm sure you can figure out a way to accomplish this, if you are willing; be it through class changes, Set Bonuses, Tactical Items or a combination of all this.

Edited May 2, 2019 by DynamiCtagez

Link to Main Forum Post with Google Doc of Failure's Set Bonus and Tactical Item suggestions

 

ANNIHILATION/WATCHMAN

 

Tactical Suggestions:

• Damage dealt by Annihilate increases the duration of your active force rend on the target by 1s
  
• Vicious slash now increases the damage dealt from annihilate
  
  • Stacks 3 times (stacks consumed on use)
    
    • 5%, 15%, 30%

   

  [*]Sweeping slash now applies a (small) dot to all targets (ie Combustible gas cylinder)

  [*]Smash can now spread deadly saber (1 deadly saber stack)

  [*]Rupture now deals [the same] damage over 5 seconds but has more on hit damage

  • Now has a 8/9/10s cooldown???
    
  • Annihilate has a 25%/30%/40% chance to reset the cooldown of Rupture

 

 

Set Bonus:

• Set 1
  
  • 2 set - Activating Berserk increases all damage dealt by 3% for 10 seconds (current 4 set)
    
  • 4 set - Annihilate has a 25% chance of applying another stack of deadly saber
    
    • Deadly saber now has a maximum of 4 stacks

     

    [*]6 set - Vicious slash, Annihilate, Vicious Throw and Sweeping slash now deals X% (25%/30%) of their damage as a bleed over 3 seconds (bleed not affected by berserk)

   

  [*]Set 2

  • 2 set - Vicious Slash increases dot damage by 2% stacks up to 5 times.
    
  • 4 set - Rupture refunds 1 rage for every stack of deadly saber on the target.
    
  • 6 set - Annihilate extends the duration of deadly saber on the target by 2s

Edited May 2, 2019 by TheSpiceIsRIght

Tactical Item:

 

Medium Armor: Increases DR by 20% while stunned. Your Resolve bar Deteriorates 10% more slowly. Decreases the time slowed and immobilized by 1 second (maybe 2 seconds would be better). All high mobility abilities have their cooldown reduced by 10% (exfiltrate, leaps, Covered Escape, and so on. To be honest, I'm not sure if this is needed). Give this to all medium armor specs. Granted, Mara and Sniper are really strong currently so I'm not sure if they need it.

I've been playing Watchman since August 2012, it's my main and I can say that, right now, the rotation has the perfect combination of being a just little bit challenging to learn and execute, while still being difficult to master, and at the same time having a consistent core (as opposed to being priority based like "X ability procs, I use X, Y procs, I use Y"). It also has sort of like a barrier that is dividing good Watchmen and bad Watchmen, which is important for every class to have such a barrier (how you apply Overload Saber stacks, what abilities you use in the 4 GCD window between cycles, are you managing to squeeze in Zealous Strikes AND use the generated focus without wasting it, making sure Valorous Call is never off CD, having maximum uptime of Zen, etc.).

 

So, in my humble opinion, if the devs don't want to enter a cycle of nerfing, buffing and changing the Watchman every two weeks after 6.0, completely screwing everything up in the process, they should keep the core rotation as it is. Remember bois - if it ain't broke, don't fix it nor tinker with it. So that means no set bonuses that change cooldowns of the core abilites.

 

The set bonuses I would recommend for a Watchman would be ones that work this way: increasing damage by either by reducing the cooldown of big hitting filler abilities (like Blade Barrage), increasing damage of medium hitting filler abilities (Slash) or straight up increasing overall damage by a small percentage either in the burns/bleeds or direct damage. Here's an idea for a 6-piece set:

 

 

• (2) Set: Merciless Slash has a 25% chance of granting 2 charges of *insert epic buff name here*, making the next Slash deal 20% more damage. Each use of Slash consumes 1 charge. Lasts 10 seconds.
  
• (4) Set: Force Melt makes its targets *insert epic debuff name here*, increasing the chance of your next Twin Saber Throw to critically hit by 15%.
  
• (6) Set: Blade Barrage's cooldown is reduced by 4 seconds.
  

 

 

^ This essentially makes sure that Blade Barrage is available as a filler after every core cycle of the rotation which is a substantial and well deserved bonus for collecting almost all set pieces, provided that the player understands the basics of stat optimization and has reached the second Alacrity threshold (1.3s Global Cooldown), thus providing another separation between good and average players. For average players this is a good final bonus, providing them with the chance to use a hard hitting ability more often.

 

The first bonus provides a small damage boost on Slash which is fair and at the same time makes a small difference between players with and players without set bonus. The second set bonus is a definite upgrade over the previous set bonus and at the same time is useful to both singe and multi target scenarios (DoT spread, move sideways, Twin Saber Throw and boom).

 

Now, I understand that my example may not be perfect and most probably it isn't as I am not a game developer but at least you can see things from this point of view: the way this set bonus is structured right now provides significant bonuses that distinguish players with and without sets, while also being very easy to adjust and rebalance in case of imbalances. (For example let's say Set Bonus (4) provides too much damage for clearing thrash in ops and is making the Sentinels and Maras too AoE-burst oriented for their single target DoT spread nature. The solution is simple - reduce the numbers until they're just right.) And most importantly, we leave the cooldown reducing and rotation defining options to Tactical Items, which are items that every player can decide whether or not they want to equip and experiment with a new type of rotation.

 

For Tactical Items I just want to say that I love Avuras' ideas. Especially making Force Melt deal its damage instantly to targets but I see two problems with this:

 

 

• Your ability to DoT spread Force Melt is removed while being equipped with this Tactical Item (which is 50% off of Burning Sweep's bonus)
  
• I consider this a bit overpowered in terms of single target damage, as the nature of Damage over Time effects is that you get a bit more damage but the drawback is that it's spread out across longer periods of time. At least, when directly comparing it with an instant-damage counterpart. And if you make this "more damage" into a normal burst ability it makes Combat Sentinels cry a lot. After all we don't want them to cry so what I am suggesting is this:
  

 

 

• Force Melt now does 50% of its damage instantly and the other 50% as DoT. Now, I am not sure if those percentages are correct but it's late and I am trying to propose a different mechanism, expanding on Avuras' brilliant idea. Those percentages can be adjusted.
   
  
• Force Melt now does 10% less damage however the damage is applied instantly to the target. If this is an equippable item as is the idea behind Tactical Items, it would be perfect for boss encounters where we need to change targets often and a more bursty type of DPS is required. It would eliminate the need to respec to Combat or Concentration for a specific boss, thus making the "Play the way you want" goal easily achievable.

 

And at all other times other Tactical Items can be worn, providing different benefits. An idea that I have for another Watchman specific Tactical Item is this:

 

 

• The range of Dispatch is now increased to 30m. Activating *Insert long cooldown ability here, either Blade Barrage, Twin Saber Throw or Merciless Slash, devs can decide which one would be best* grants Merciless Dismantling which stacks up to 3 times. When at 3 stacks, Merciless Dismantling resets the cooldown of Dispatch and makes Dispatch usable on targets with any amount of health. I suppose this would spice things up a bit in multi-boss encounters that involve switching targets or boss encounters with adds that need to be dealt with immediately (Geonosian Queen, Brontes, etc.). I know it's not build defining, nor does it change the core gameplay of the class but honestly my imagination is zero and I am jealous of Guardians having a reset on their execute.
  

 

For now this is all I had to say about Watchman Tactical Items and Set Bonuses and I can't wait for the PTS version of Onslaught, so that we can give more feedback to you and make this expansion the greatest one SWTOR has seen. In the meantime I will try to come up with other Tactical Item ideas that are not complete garbage.

Faster regeneration speed. When you are out of combat, you heal twice as fast. Edited June 2, 2019 by Delani

they should keep the core rotation as it is. Remember bois - if it ain't broke, don't fix it nor tinker with it. So that means no set bonuses that change cooldowns of the core abilites.

 

That's pretty much what I and a lot of better players than me wrote at 2.10 stage. Turning a shot dot medium damage, medium burst, zero AoE class into the same two dot class that the game already had was a pretty substantial change to something that not only wasn't broken but totally unique and very elegant - and still was easy to learn and hard to master, probably a bit more than now. Imo after 3.x. there may still be a core rotation and a priority list, but core abilities are so similar in terms of damage per GCD now that it doesn't make that much of a difference which ability sequence you go for, especially if we're not talking tunneling your target for at least a minute or so... I was happy to see that a lot of posters here showed their interest for the core mechanic of vanilla Watchman to return, even though so many players who loved what that was have long left the game.

 

The funny thing about it was that the reason devs gave for the change was that introducing a new ability into 2.x. rotation was not possible because of Master Strike which at that point was a 2 GCD ability and did not leave room in a 4 GCD core rotation that already needed to incorporate Dual Saber Throw. (But in 3.0. every specc was supposed to get one new rotational ability.) The characeristics of 2.10. Watchman would now be fine with Blade Barrage as a single GCD ability having replaced it. If you turn Force Melt into a Cauterize resetting ability (dont really care if dot or instant damage really), you get a wonderful and engaging playstyle that's still not to hard to learn even for beginners.

 

provided that the player understands the basics of stat optimization and has reached the second Alacrity threshold (1.3s Global Cooldown), thus providing another separation between good and average players.

 

The Alacity bug, i.e. the effect ot the stat having breaking points instead of working by percent as intended, was hinted to be eliminated in the next expansion:

 

QuestionThird, will alacrity be "fixed" in Sow and round to the nearest hundredth, or are we stuck with the disparate alacrity breakpoints?

 

Answer

 

As Musco calls out we're intending to make improvements to Alacrity and we'll talk more about that in the near future.

I really see Tactical Items being more like things below. Yes some need to be tweaked but I just don't have that much hope they would alter the play-style entirely

 

Tactical Items

 

Weighted Boots:

For 10 seconds after leaping to a target you are immune to knock-backs

 

Unstable Blades:

Using zen causes all burning effects damage to be done instantly

 

Well Balanced:

Force Leap can be used at any range up to 30 Meters on any target.

 

Blessed Blades:

Using Zen not longer crits. Your are healed for the damage your burning effects do.

 

Weightless Boots:

Force Kick's cool down is reduced by 50 percent

 

 

Precise Blades:

Blade Blitz is now able to spread your dots to all targets it hits.

 

Force Cloak:

Force camo now lasts for 30 seconds