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Balance of tactical flashpoints


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Its either over 1 million hp on bosses (everything except vanilla flashpoints) or over 40k damage hits. (everything except expansions flashpoints)

 

Dear Bioware Austin, could you somehow balance that? First thing makes fights too long, second thing makes fights too painful.

 

Tacticals are very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very unfriendly to everyone below 60 lvl because of that. DvL event just allows to see it more often.

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I swear I remember SM (non-tacticals) back in the day and even HM's being way easier than tacticals are now. Part of it is the groups... maybe, but things are just hitting hard and fights take way too long. I don't understand why you would leave in 1 and 2 shot mechanics when it's 4 DPS, all new players and all around level 20. They don't know how to do anything or avoid stuff, nor do they have the means (they can walk slowly out of stuff with no mobility abilities yet, but that means they have to react faster which indicates muscle memory due to knowledge and experience of the fights.

 

Some of the most painful ones are Maelstrom Prison (2nd and last fight), Manaan (1-2 fights, mainly the other one, though with the puddle spam), Blood Hunt (bro and sis), etc.

 

Hell, even struggled with stuff like Assault on Tython which I remember being faceroll, but that was from max level perspective with only other max levels. Trying to do that with a bunch of low toons who are new to the game is a nightmare. I have aggro the whole time and have to run to the health stations non-stop. I'm a 'Slinger so I'm doing little dmg this whole time while everyone else is doing even less because they are new and have few abilities. Eventually he enrages and we die.

 

Maelstrom is ridiculous. Had two separate groups of utter wipefests in there. It's always lowbies and new players. I ended up having to solo the second boss because everyone kept dying and that is freaking hard considering he hits like a truck if you're in LoS for even a second. It's extremely unforgiving. Solo, you have to keep running around the pillar and pop out for a split second to toss a DoT on him and heal up every time it's up. Sometimes he even bugs out and jumps over the pillar and one-shots you. C'mon now. Pillarhumping is not newb friendly.

 

Kilran is also absurd. First group I wiped on him and eventually quit because they just wouldn't learn the fight. He kept enraging. We had a bad comp anyway. We were all ranged so no one got in melee range to turn off his 1-shot. I repeatedly tried to Blaster Whip him but had to keep running out of LoS before he got off his Snipe. Even if you get past that part, he would hit like a mac truck with Series of Shots and obliterate you from behind a pillar sometimes killing. I don't understand why bosses have to hit so hard in tacticals. Maybe I was a lot better than I am now or played with a lot better players but I remember all of these being far easier on even HM back in the day.

 

To be honest, I wish they'd just bring back normal SM FP's again and remove tactical or have them only for the stuff they had them for at first like Kuat Drive Yards. I feel like I'd rather just wait in a long queue when I queue into 4 DPS lowbie new players and literally have to tank + heal every fight because I"m doing the most DPS and no one else knows what to do. If I wanted to tank/heal, I'd play that like I have in the past. It defeats the purpose of tacticals when you still make people tank/heal anyway. Give us that solo Jesus droid healer or something at least.

 

Don't even get me started on Manaan. Those AoE circles should be a different color. They are almost the same color as the floor. Why can't they just be red or something? Would be very easy to see. Fights shouldn't be hard because of the visual display, they should be hard because of the mechanics and timing, etc. Even still, I don't see why tacticals need to be hard anyway. Kind of defeats the purpose of Hard Modes when tacticals are the ones that are hard.

 

Mandalorian Raiders first boss is pretty dumb, too. Should I just not accept queue if lowbies are in there? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having lowbies queue with high levels in the first place? All that's going to happen is I'm going to have to tank and heal again running around across the room. Not fun at all. I'd rather something be fun than difficult, especially something that's not supposed to be difficult anyway.

 

Fights take too long, bosses hit too hard. Pretty simple. Lower HP and lessen big hits. I don't care about elitism. I'm probably better than anyone who plays this game having solo'd the last phase of Kephess in TFB back when it first came out in a grueling long exchange of slowly wilting away a health bar and easily being able to die in the blink of an eye. So when I say things should be scaled down, there's some merit to it. Look, I'm not asking that the game be 'watered down' or 'made easy for casuals.' I'm saying new players to the game at low levels have too steep of a learning curve TOO EARLY on for their own good. Let them grow a bit slower. Either change it back to how it was where new players would slowly unlock new FP's with slowly increasing difficulty or make them 'more accessible' for them to complete. Simple. You will still have your HM's, Ops, HM Ops, NiM Ops, etc. Not every FP can be done solo and they are supposed to be able to be done with as many as 4 DPS. If that is the case, they are a bit overtuned (at least some of them/some fights/bosses/abilities).

Edited by Eyesmindassassin
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Its either over 1 million hp on bosses (everything except vanilla flashpoints) or over 40k damage hits. (everything except expansions flashpoints)

 

Dear Bioware Austin, could you somehow balance that? First thing makes fights too long, second thing makes fights too painful.

 

Tacticals are very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very unfriendly to everyone below 60 lvl because of that. DvL event just allows to see it more often.

 

Tacticals are easy as it is, sorry the bosses arent 1 hit kills like story mobs. But myself and a guildy jusg easily 2 manned a tactical FE, in our mid 20s, with trash gear and 2 comps. 1 affection lvl 1 and the other affection 8.

 

So no I disagree, tacticals are fine as they are.

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Granted, it is a new level of pain to run some of these with 4 ~level 20 DPS.

I imagine that this is exacerbated with all of the new toons being rolled for the event.

 

During most of the 4.0 cycle, whenever I ran a tactical it would usually be a mix of low-level and high-level players and I never really ran into a group that couldn't finish it.

 

I did notice that the last time I ran a tac on a leveling toon, I had a parser open and I was peaking at about 2000 dps while scaled from level 20. I credited this to not having heat management abilities unlocked and spent far too much time doing the free attack.

 

So a group of 4 lowbie toons is going to have a pretty poor dps showing, simply due to not having enough abilities unlocked. Luckily tacs have super generous dps requirements and (mostly) infinite healing with the stations.

Edited by Khevar
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But the key word is tactical, they just require different skills, and a bit more time.

 

You've hit the nail on the head. The biggest issue with TFPs is that everyone thinks - incorrectly - that they are a cake walk no matter the group configuration; everyone just charges right in, using AOEs and whatnot, when they should be considering kill order and CC.

 

What's more time consuming: taking the extra 5 minutes to think things through; or taking 15 extra minutes because of either multiple wipes with run backs, or rage quitting and having to start all over again?

 

Even on boss fights, in TFPs the group should abide the mechanics...because they can kill you if you are not careful.

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But myself and a guildy jusg easily 2 manned a tactical FE, in our mid 20s, with trash gear and 2 comps. 1 affection lvl 1 and the other affection 8.

 

So no I disagree, tacticals are fine as they are.

 

Tho - just worth pointing out that 4 dps is much more difficult than using companions. General rule is with 4 dps if you lose a player do not requeue. A level 1 comp is far better than a 4th DPS

 

Especially during this event - where most tac players are low level, and nearly all are DPS (seeing as a speed leveling event is going to heavily skew towards DPS)

 

Just saying - "we did it with comps" is not a good barometer of tac ease as they are easier with comps. If BW gave us the option to queue for tacticals with 1 spot reserved for a comp I know I would never queue any other way during this event.

 

/shrug

 

just throwing it out there. :rolleyes:

 

BTW I appreciated your post the other day - highly cool of you to word it as you did. :cool:

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LOL with this new event the rage has turned to tactical flashpoints, people actally started doing them :D

 

Its much better to do it solo for the achievment than go in with a group. The SoR era flahspoints are IMPOSSIBLE TO DO if you get a group with avg lvl of 17!! Which is now often the case. I did Blood Hunt yesterday, after many wipes as 4 dps i swapped heals and the other guy to tank and still we didnt manage the out going damage was so big that in the last phase the tank died from being full HP before i finished casting medical probe! The healing points were used up and u didnt get to them in time anyway due to boss mechanics, pulls and pushes.

 

Simply put, tacticals were a BAD idea and also the removal of the lvl caps for specific fps. Before it was great that the fps slowly became available, no its impossible to do some fps and the story is messed up for new players when they que at lvl 15 and get the False Emperor for example, makes no sence.

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My best adive - SPAM HEROICS they are suer easy and give 3x more xp than a fp, i went 23 31 just doing nar shaddaa ones, oh and i quited a maelstrom too lvl 23 constantly aggroing 3rd death was enough for me.

 

Is it enough to run the heroics alone? Or did you run in a group?

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Totally agree with Eyesmindassassin long post. The problem is the high imbalance between all the bosses. Some fights are a cakewalk with barely any healing required, other bosses hit so hard that a healer needs to click the Kolto stations in addition to full-on healing to keep a tank (not a DPS!) up.

 

When I ran a few TFPs with my guild this week at level 20ish, I was really surprised by the difficulty. These classes are our mains, so we know the rotations etc., and of course we know all the boss mechanics, but we did wipe on a few bosses with our low-level alts.

 

Specifically:

  • Maelstrom 2nd boss: Puts out a lot of damage to the tank, more than can be healed. This was outside of his laser eye phase.
  • Manaan 2nd boss: Needed to use Kolto stations in addition to burst healing the tank, and I still ran out of energy.
  • KDY, droid boss: Wiped once, killed it on second try.

 

Not sure if the bosses got harder with 4.0, if we forgot how to play because of the lack of challenge, or if our expectations are too high (back then we sometimes wiped as well, but we tend to forget that). Probably a mix of all three. But I don't want to imagine what new players must go through (or not go through because they've learned to avoid TFPs).

The fact is, TFPs are not meant to be frustrating, they are meant to help leveling. As much as I loath writing this, some of the bosses are overtuned and need to be brought down. The target group are the story mode heroes who don't know their rotation, and for them the bosses are overtuned.

Edited by Jerba
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I imagine that this is exacerbated with all of the new toons being rolled for the event.

 

During most of the 4.0 cycle, whenever I ran a tactical it would usually be a mix of low-level and high-level players and I never really ran into a group that couldn't finish it.

 

I did notice that the last time I ran a tac on a leveling toon, I had a parser open and I was peaking at about 2000 dps while scaled from level 20. I credited this to not having heat management abilities unlocked and spent far too much time doing the free attack.

 

So a group of 4 lowbie toons is going to have a pretty poor dps showing, simply due to not having enough abilities unlocked. Luckily tacs have super generous dps requirements and (mostly) infinite healing with the stations.

 

You might be able to 2-man Maelstrom Prison, but I would tell you that Kilran snipes with 1 shots. At 20 I doubt you have the healing skills and DCD's on the tank.

 

Either tacticals can be completed without the triad or they require the triad. Everytime I que tacticals currently they all require at least 1 healer. However, the que seems to indicate that they are suppose to be completed with any team composition and mixed levels.

 

These are scaled poorly right now. Across the board I find them to be broken. You also indicated a point of contention I have with your statement. You had healer companions. If you get 4 DPS grouped it is not possible to do these. Many times you basically boot the lowest level player to pickup the companion healer.

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You also indicated a point of contention I have with your statement. You had healer companions. If you get 4 DPS grouped it is not possible to do these. Many times you basically boot the lowest level player to pickup the companion healer.

Did you mean to quote lightSaberAddiCt instead of me?

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Hmm,

 

interesting thread, I can agree that some tacticals can be harder than others, however, the last few times I've run bloodhunt it's been relatively easy. the one thursday afternoon (uk time) was 3 dps and a tank 3 x lvl 65 (inc tank (me)) and a lvl 55, no one off healing, and we did it easily apart from Jos/Valk fight where 1 got knocked off platform while both were down and the other died about the same time as Jos with valk on about 50% health. Kudos to the dps that helped me kill her by juduicious use of the kolto's when appropriate by both of us.

 

These flashpoints are meant to be levelling fp's but part of levelling is getting to know what your character can do and how to do it ... i.e. learning the mechanics of things and using the skills you have to the best advantage of all not just yourself.

 

With the event I'm currently doing them as a lowbie and can understand the frustrations, however, that's why you can select which fp's you get into in the GF joining screen, if there are ones you don't like or don''t think your toon can cope with, deselect them problem solved.

 

Just my 2 pennies worth.

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Tacticals weren't really intended to be challenging content like HMs. Unfortunately, they have become anti-group content. It used to be that you queued for tacticals to gain XP, social points and comms (crystals). They didn't require balanced teams (tank - heals - 2dps) and they would allow people to group with group finder for relatively quick group content.

 

The problem now is that bolster has the NPCs hitting way harder than they used to while most PUGs have at least 1 or 2 low level characters that while bolstered, have a lack of survivability if holding aggro. Now, PUGs wipe repeatedly to trash mobs (especially if the group has a weak link or some inexperienced players). Boss fights are tedious wipe fests as well. This results in group members quitting and sometimes waits for replacements.

 

I agree that 2 people with comps can handle most tacticals, but that's because the comps are usually filling a need role (tank/heal) and actually sometimes they are just smarter than some players. Clearly there is a problem when it's faster and smoother to have 2 players than 4.

 

IMO, the solution is to use level sync instead of bolster and stop having lowbies do missions they are not in the appropriate range for. It's bad enough that there always seems to be one player that "has never done this one yet" and won't use a spacebar to speed through conversations/cut scenes, but now they take way longer than necessary to get through with a full group for everything else.

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Is it enough to run the heroics alone? Or did you run in a group?

 

Group up for the bonus and its a looot faster, the downside is that they have weekly lockout.

I went from 23 to 31 doing tatooine for example, last night done taris+foundry and BP and am 39 and i wasnt using xp boost all the time.

 

Soloing heroics is not a good idea you will be beter grouping

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Maelstrom and Blood Hunt are definitely two of the harder ones. Maelstrom because Kilram has this amazingly broken ability to snipe and SoS you through pillars and boxes; and Blood Hunt because the difference between Tactical Joss and Valk and the Hard Mode version are almost indiscernible.

 

Tacticals were meant to be easier. People are still learning their classes, plus many of the important abilities of their class may not even be unlocked yet.

 

As it stands, those 2 FPs in particular are too difficult for most sub-65 groups, even with veterans behind the keyboards.

Edited by Aaramis
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I hold the suspicion for some time now that Tacticals are actually balanced for level 65.

Not for anything below that.

I cannot prove it, of course, but I came to this thought after seeing low level characters / players struggle so much meanwhile level 65s getting through them almost like in a speedrun. [ This disparity is ] Especially visible in fights against end bosses, or against bonus bosses.

Edited by AlrikFassbauer
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I hold the suspicion for some time now that Tacticals are actually balanced for level 65.

Not for anything below that.

I cannot prove it, of course, but I came to this thought after seeing low level characters / players struggle so much meanwhile level 65s getting through them almost like in a speedrun. [ This disparity is ] Especially visible in fights against end bosses, or against bonus bosses.

 

The problem also is that new players, and some existing players are 2 button wonders. They dont want to actually look up how to play their class. For example I was in a group with this sniper that just kept using snipe, when I tried to let him know a decent rotation (I was on my sniper) he screamed about being able to play it his way. Honestly, I see this alot on RP servers.

 

It isnt the boss, it is people not knowing their class, or to LoS the attack, or god forbid interupt. Then they yell about how the FP is to hard.

Edited by lightSaberAddiCt
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It's funny ... we expect people to be appropriately geared and know fights for HMs and OPs ... content that is expected to be challenging for groups and requires a full group of the appropriate roles.

 

But when people complain about how certain factors have been overlooked in these bolstered tacticals, we just write them off and say they don't know how to play their class.

 

Tacticals were designed to be "role-neutral" --- that means a group of 4 DPS toons should have no problem surviving. Originally, this was true. Now, however, the NPCs hit harder than they should (even trash mobs) and the person that that draws aggro, sometimes dies within seconds of starting the encounter, which leads to an unnecessary wipe.

 

We're talking about pick up groups here, folks --- not premade guild Ops teams with voice chat and top gear. Just average players of varying experience that waited in a group finder queue to do a mission (sometimes random) to progress their character in some way. People shouldn't be wanting to quit --- they didn't used to (before 4.0). People shouldn't be staying away and queuing less because what used to be a 20-30 minute mission can turn into 3 times that because of wiping and quitting.

 

Story mode (flashpoints) are gone. HM offers a good challenge for traditional groups. Tacticals are supposed to be role-neutral and have been put in Story mode's place with the idea that more people would be grouped quicker. But as I stated earlier, Tacticals have become anti-group due to player frustration. This is not the desired outcome.

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It's funny ... we expect people to be appropriately geared and know fights for HMs and OPs ... content that is expected to be challenging for groups and requires a full group of the appropriate roles.

 

But when people complain about how certain factors have been overlooked in these bolstered tacticals, we just write them off and say they don't know how to play their class.

 

Tacticals were designed to be "role-neutral" --- that means a group of 4 DPS toons should have no problem surviving. Originally, this was true. Now, however, the NPCs hit harder than they should (even trash mobs) and the person that that draws aggro, sometimes dies within seconds of starting the encounter, which leads to an unnecessary wipe.

 

We're talking about pick up groups here, folks --- not premade guild Ops teams with voice chat and top gear. Just average players of varying experience that waited in a group finder queue to do a mission (sometimes random) to progress their character in some way. People shouldn't be wanting to quit --- they didn't used to (before 4.0). People shouldn't be staying away and queuing less because what used to be a 20-30 minute mission can turn into 3 times that because of wiping and quitting.

 

Story mode (flashpoints) are gone. HM offers a good challenge for traditional groups. Tacticals are supposed to be role-neutral and have been put in Story mode's place with the idea that more people would be grouped quicker. But as I stated earlier, Tacticals have become anti-group due to player frustration. This is not the desired outcome.

 

Sorry but tactical =/= nerfed to the possible lowest common denominator. I have been running group finder tacticals since the start of this event, which is a pretty unpredictable pool of players, and for the most part there is no real issues. Sometimes you get in a group with someone that thinks all they need to do is spam FS, but that is a given. You don't further lower the tactical because people just think they should hit 1 button.

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Tacticals are easy as it is, sorry the bosses arent 1 hit kills like story mobs. But myself and a guildy jusg easily 2 manned a tactical FE, in our mid 20s, with trash gear and 2 comps. 1 affection lvl 1 and the other affection 8.

 

So no I disagree, tacticals are fine as they are.

 

To be fair FE is one of the easier flashpoints with plenty of skippable mobs and a manageable bonus with the bosses only requiring positioning and a few interrupts.

 

The real problem with tacticals imo is the trash, its easy to smack a kolto wave on someone during a boss, but some of the trash pulls are insane with large damage outputs, loads of health, and a lot of mobs.

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Sorry but tactical =/= nerfed to the possible lowest common denominator. I have been running group finder tacticals since the start of this event, which is a pretty unpredictable pool of players, and for the most part there is no real issues. Sometimes you get in a group with someone that thinks all they need to do is spam FS, but that is a given. You don't further lower the tactical because people just think they should hit 1 button.

You see, we aren't asking to "further lower" anything, but to bring them to the challenge level they were intended to be ... like they used to be.

 

Again, it shouldn't be more desirable to have 2 comps out than to have 2 more group members. Being bolstered to the NPC's level makes a boss encounter take longer because, While having a bolstered hilt/barrel raises your damage rating to the appropriate tier, only having a rank 5 attack (compared to a rank 18 or 19 you would have at level 65) lowers the DPS significantly. The same thing happens with survivability passives and CDs. Now, in a boss fight, you can try to manage the kolto stations to keep people alive. It should work, if done correctly, but it does draw out the length of the fight. But there are no Kolto stations near trash mobs in most FPs.

 

Personally, I don't even want the enemies "nerfed." I want to use level sync instead of bolster and put back the minimum level restriction on the end game FPs. That's where we need to find the "balance." But it simply isn't good to have people quitting and/or not queuing for group content.

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To be fair FE is one of the easier flashpoints with plenty of skippable mobs and a manageable bonus with the bosses only requiring positioning and a few interrupts.

 

The real problem with tacticals imo is the trash, its easy to smack a kolto wave on someone during a boss, but some of the trash pulls are insane with large damage outputs, loads of health, and a lot of mobs.

 

There are a couple tacticals where the trash is a pain in the ***. But that is when you cc, and have everyone spam aoes. Like I said, I have been using them alot during the event to level. On EH, which is a RP server, which generally means more likely of running into people that dont do any type of rotation. Overall, the issue isnt letting lower lvls scale up, or the health of boss fights, it is the fact that, especially on a RP server, there is a good number of people that dont have the faintest clue how to put out damage. And this includes 65s.

 

it has nothing to do with scaling or anything like that, it is straight up player ability. Sometimes you get in groups of all low 20s that know their business, and burn stuff down. Sometime you dont. It is just easy to blame it on scaling, or letting lower levels in, but that is not the issue.

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There are a couple tacticals where the trash is a pain in the ***. But that is when you cc, and have everyone spam aoes. Like I said, I have been using them alot during the event to level. On EH, which is a RP server, which generally means more likely of running into people that dont do any type of rotation. Overall, the issue isnt letting lower lvls scale up, or the health of boss fights, it is the fact that, especially on a RP server, there is a good number of people that dont have the faintest clue how to put out damage. And this includes 65s.

 

it has nothing to do with scaling or anything like that, it is straight up player ability. Sometimes you get in groups of all low 20s that know their business, and burn stuff down. Sometime you dont. It is just easy to blame it on scaling, or letting lower levels in, but that is not the issue.

But since Group Finder can't match people up with equally skilled group members, why should people even waste their time with tacticals?

 

You can say, "Nobody says you have to queue or even do FPs," which is true, but less people queuing = longer queue times. The purpose of Tacticals ... the intent ... is to get more players to do something as a group, to get people familiar with the content, to help them become better players. The purpose is not to frustrate players and deter them from participating in group content.

 

Balance ...

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