End game raid groups especially the progression groups are heavily biased towards snipers. At least 1 sniper is guaranteed in every raid group while 2 snipers are also very common. This shows a huge bias of raid groups towards snipers. The principal reason is the the prevalent raid wide AoE damage and the sniper's unique ability to mitigate that.

 

Under these circumstances what are the dev's plans to give the other ranged classes a fighting chance to get picked in a progression raid group?

 

An easy solution is to put a 3 min raid wide lockout on the sniper shield as it has been done for bloodthirst.

Not sure if this is really the case but I wouldn't mind a debuff on our dome of love a la inspiration. Stacking classes shouldn't be the goal, like others said, its the player behind it who makes it good.

About raidcomposition I can say 1 thing. The guild of my Shadow tank doesn't force anyone to take certain classes and has open signups. This meant that a few days ago we had a group with 1 slinger and 3 sentinels whoom are ALL new at the dreadpalace council fight in HM. For some it was their 2nd time.

We cleared it up to the end of the 2nd phase and only because dps was to low at brontes/styrak we wiped at the 3rd phase.

I don't think I need to explain why bringing 3 melee to the Council is not the most elegant way. It makes my point clear however.

Sidenote: It was hilarious to see the sents chase raptus around almost a slapstick.

In Theory, you should only need 1 sniper, and that sniper would need to be the Engineering Spec, because EMP Discharge is able to reset the CD of the AOE Shield, and EMP Discharge is only on a 1 min 15 second CD ( i think). So ideal 8 Man Raid Group would be.

 

1 Merc Healer

1 Sorc Healer

 

1 PT Tank (Main)

1 Sin Tank (Off/Adds)

 

1 Engi Sniper

1 Pyro Merc

1 Mara

1 DPS of your choice

 

PT Tank has the most midigation of the 3 tanks, and benefits from being the main tank because they can shield attacks more often. Sin Tanks have the most AOE of the 3 tanks, and make for great adds tanks. Merc Healers have Kolto Shell and Kolto Missile, and make great Tank healers. Sorc Healers have great AOE Healing, and make for decent Tank healers. Engi Sniper for easy 2 use on AOE Shield. Pyro Merc for the immense DPS. Mara for Bloodthirst and Predation. DPS of your choice, Preferably a Conc Op or Deception Sin, or even a Lightning Sorc for killing adds faster because tons of AOE.

We truly never know whether KaosKidSWTOR is trolling or 100% serious.

In Theory, you should only need 1 sniper, and that sniper would need to be the Engineering Spec, because EMP Discharge is able to reset the CD of the AOE Shield, and EMP Discharge is only on a 1 min 15 second CD ( i think). So ideal 8 Man Raid Group would be.

 

1 Merc Healer

1 Sorc Healer

 

1 PT Tank (Main)

1 Sin Tank (Off/Adds)

 

1 Engi Sniper

1 Pyro Merc

1 Mara

1 DPS of your choice

 

PT Tank has the most midigation of the 3 tanks, and benefits from being the main tank because they can shield attacks more often. Sin Tanks have the most AOE of the 3 tanks, and make for great adds tanks. Merc Healers have Kolto Shell and Kolto Missile, and make great Tank healers. Sorc Healers have great AOE Healing, and make for decent Tank healers. Engi Sniper for easy 2 use on AOE Shield. Pyro Merc for the immense DPS. Mara for Bloodthirst and Predation. DPS of your choice, Preferably a Conc Op or Deception Sin, or even a Lightning Sorc for killing adds faster because tons of AOE.

L2R EMP Discharge Tooltip?

Immediately finishes the cooldown on Adrenaline Probe, Shield Probe, Entrench, and Covered Escape. This ability does not respect the global cooldown.

Would like to see more sorc dps emerge though.

Already on it

If you're an integral part of your NIM raid group, then you're not looking for groups as a non-sniper DPS. I don't see what your problem is, or why you could say that other people have one, when in fact they don't. If it's 16 man you're talking about, there's no way you're only going to have one of each DPS, something has to be repeated at least once in the group, and maybe snipers are just what you happen to have more than one of? Maybe the reason you need 2-3 sniper shields is because you don't have enough healers?

 

Btw, as a side note, if you want people to know the third character in your sig is a gunslinger, put another gun on the other side or next to the first one.

I may be very wrong, but doesn't 16 man raid group contain 4 tanks, 4 healers and 8 DPS?

You said there has to be at least 2 DPS playing same class, but won't Shadow, Sage, Scoundrel, Gunslinger, Vanguard, Commando, Sentinel and Guardian make 8? ofc there is no need to have one on one class but in thery that should be possible O_o

I may be very wrong, but doesn't 16 man raid group contain 4 tanks, 4 healers and 8 DPS?

You said there has to be at least 2 DPS playing same class, but won't Shadow, Sage, Scoundrel, Gunslinger, Vanguard, Commando, Sentinel and Guardian make 8? ofc there is no need to have one on one class but in thery that should be possible O_o

16 man normally runs 2 Tanks, 10 DPS, and 4 Healers. You don't need 4 Tanks. Sometimes you may take a third Tank or Fifth Healer at the expense of DPS, but not normally.

Sorry I have been gone for a couple days.

Wait wait wait. So 3 snipers and 3 mercs is considered "stacking" snipers, but 1 sniper and 5-6 mercs is totally balanced?

Its considered stacking because given the option (or taking away the option of stacking the shield) you decided to take 5 mercs instead of 3. Which means the choice of 3 snipers was forced by the stacking potential of ballistic shield.

Is stacking operatives for stealth rez? Is stacking vengeance juggs to taunt + saber reflect brontes's lightning balls? Is stacking marauders with undying rage and arsenal mercs with chaff flare talented okay for the same reason?

You are forming your question based on 1 single fight, Brontes. Stealth res is useful but you dont have to stack operatives for that. 1 is enough unless people are dying left and right in that case you have other problems. And UR is a single defensive cooldown and not a raid utility.

There's nothing particularly wrong with stacking multiple classes, unless it's due to something broken.

As long as you are stacking just because those are the available people at a given time. But if stacking a specific class gives a distinct advantage over a diverse group then that is not acceptable.

So the classes are all equal in the hands of the right players. Right. Players. You're assuming that each Guild/Run has a large pool of players all performing within that 2-3% range. For a larger guild that may be possible, but for a smaller one, unlikely. I never claimed that the sniper lacks DPS, only that DPS were chosen for their ability to perform in the raids, and that ability comes from their players. They're not an AI, as much as we may wish they were sometimes

Moot point. As I mentioned earlier, when talking about balance you HAVE to assume equal skill.

The 7% is based on an assumption that players playing ranked PVP are equal to those looking for harder content raids, so the conclusion should be "So, NO it is not true that more people are playing snipers IN RANKED PVP".

Read that post again please. I said it gives a qualitative picture if you assume the percentile of total population that participates in solo ranked is within the same ballpark for all advanced classes. This is not an unreasonable assumption.

Honestly I would rather see them give another raid wide defensive to another class if this was a balance issue (like giving sorcs a throughput raid cooldown or something) before they take away the only real one in the game.

I support you on this, but it will take a too much effort. So I don't think that is a realistic expectation from BW.

Note that this spec brings the armor debuff, and has as the aoe dr from Entrench (not raid-wide, but 60% dr with 38% uptime is nothing to shake a stick at)

The uptime in MM is not 38%. If you are using roll the uptime can be as high as 57.78%. Without roll the uptime is 51.11%.

So, "sniper shield should get a lockout like bloodthirst" ... aside from the lockout, what else ?

You can increase the radius of the shield to 20m instead of current 10m to easily cover the whole raid and give space for some movement inside the shield.

(and all this is moot anyway since the devs will never see this thread anyway and its not a change they are seriously considering lol)

That is the reason of posting here so that they take it into consideration. This will help balance the ranged classes from raid utility point of view in my opinion.

I think you're overreacting a bit bud...the top guilds will look at dps composition really only to the point that they try to have a thirst, definitely an armor debuff (which is widely abundant) , and avoid more than 2 melee...it's just about having solid players when going through progression, Haven't seen an operation since NiM TFB that really tested top notch dps, we'll see if NiM DF will bring any fights that do when it hits live, so far not seeing it from PTS.

As I said before discussion about balance have to assume equal player skill

It's obvious though that BW likes snipers and want to see them in raid groups, the sniper shield does come in handy but you can get by without them if you're other rdps do their jobs right. We've ran 3 mercs and a mara on some nights these past couple weeks, just depends who's on.

There has to be a reason you think BW prefers snipers. In my opinion the ballistic shield is one of those reasons. We ran with 2 sorc DPS for HM dread council. My point was not raids are impossible to do without snipers. My point was its easier to do with sniper specially if the fight has a high AoE damage burn phase.

I think you see snipers in a lot of groups more-so because there's a lot of good players that like to play sniper and historically it's been OP, not as much now. Would like to see more sorc dps emerge though.

I find it a little hard to believe that a lot of the good players just picked snipers and ignored merc and sorc.

They already have the nightmare power. It's that buff with the skull on it.

Yes but they will buff both boss and add hp and damage before it goes live. They have done this for S&V and TFB. The PTS version is just to iron out the mechanics.

I have to say though, I am surprised that people don't think that 20 sec of 20% damage reduction through a phase of high AoE damage does not give that class an edge specially when you can stack two MM snipers to get up to 40 seconds of 20% damage reduction for the entire raid. It seems a huge advantage to me specially if you are in entry level gear.

You're over-thinking... Master the class you like and you won't be left out of a raid group

Hey man, great respect for what you can do with a merc . I have said this couple times in this thread, my position is not under any threat. I am just making this proposal to balance the ranged classes according to raid utility.

Hey man, great respect for what you can do with a merc . I have said this couple times in this thread, my position is not under any threat. I am just making this proposal to balance the ranged classes according to raid utility.

Yeah I'm with ya on that they still need to do some balancing, I think BW has made some good strides, I've already seen a lot of snipers start to migrate to other classes now that they aren't crushing everyone in raid viability like they used to.

Didn't mean to sound harsh if that's the way it came off! While I think some more balancing is due I also don't want to see the shield go away! I like settling under that thing myself

Edit : I think someone mentioned a raid wide cd similar to BT, I could get down with that

Edit : I think someone mentioned a raid wide cd similar to BT, I could get down with that

Yeah, That was the proposal. A lockout similar to that of BT.

I want to say one thing here. I dont have anything against the sniper class. I play a gunslinger and love the class. My gunslinger has both From Beyond and Dragonslayer title. My commando on the other hand has the Warstalker title. I switched to gunslinger after 2.0 as I was bored with gunnery. I just want the raid utility balanced among the ranged classes so that the choice of class becomes a question of which class the player likes to play, not which class brings the most utility.

Its considered stacking because given the option (or taking away the option of stacking the shield) you decided to take 5 mercs instead of 3. Which means the choice of 3 snipers was forced by the stacking potential of ballistic shield.

That definition of stacking doesn't really make sense to me. There's something making you take those 2 extra mercs and sitting those 2 snipers other than their skill as a player, why does that not matter to you? Why is one reason to load up on a class better or worse than any other that's what I don't understand in your argument. If you have to choose between two equally good players, you have to make the decision based on what that specific class beings to that specific fight. There will never be a way to change that. And were discussing something that applies to probably one single fight in the entire upcoming nightmare tier, maybe two. Obviously I have no idea whats coming in nightmare DP, but really the only fight i see chaining shields as a legitimate advantage is the final phase of the council in DP, and even that dies quickly enough that you don't really need more than 3, which is a typical number of snipers to bring to a raid anyway. Of the 5 nightmare fights I have actually seen in this tier, none of them rely on shields heavily, you make use of the ones you have, but certainly nothing really depends on them to the point that you would bring a lesser player simply because they have a sniper as opposed to another ranged class, which is what you seem to be implying happens frequently.

You are forming your question based on 1 single fight, Brontes. Stealth res is useful but you dont have to stack operatives for that. 1 is enough unless people are dying left and right in that case you have other problems. And UR is a single defensive cooldown and not a raid utility.

It was an example, certainly not the only possible one I was just showing that other classes get stacked for things. And yes, you do have to stack operatives for that, stealth has a cooldown. I've seen like 10-11 stealth rezzes executed in a single fight before, and it was many operatives doing it. Its the exact same thing as shields, not 100% necessary to the fight but it helps, and its usefulness increases in the number of people who can do it. And so your argument is it is okay to stack classes for personal abilities but not for raid-wide abilities? I don't understand where you draw the line on what abilities and classes it is okay to stack and which is not. And I'd like I've said, stacking happens so rarely, it something that matters for the first few kills of the hardest nightmare bosses when you are effectively undergeared, and only in cases where one class has an unintentional ability to negate or mitigate a key or difficult mechanic of the fight. and like I said before, all the instances of sniper stacking that I could think of before had nothing to do with ballistic shield.

As long as you are stacking just because those are the available people at a given time. But if stacking a specific class gives a distinct advantage over a diverse group then that is not acceptable.

You cannot achieve this without sacrificing the uniqueness of classes. There will always be reasons to stack certain classes on certain fights. Even if you just nerf snipers to the point they are totally unplayable there will still be some occasions where groups will stack other things, its unavoidable.

I support you on this, but it will take a too much effort. So I don't think that is a realistic expectation from BW.

I still think you are drastically underestimating the development it would require to make this change. But aside from that I just think it is better to balance by buffing other classes that lack something instead of just removing utility from another class. Honestly i think the biggest effect of this change is not even trading a sniper or two out for a merc or sorc, but in many cases it will lead to bringing a 5th healer instead of a DPS in general. Right now I think most guilds will 5 heal less than 10% of fights, but without shield I think that number would go up by a bit. Either way I would prefer they make a meaningful well thought out change such as adding other raid CDs instead of just the simplest fix possible...

You can increase the radius of the shield to 20m instead of current 10m to easily cover the whole raid and give space for some movement inside the shield.

If you want to put a lockout in to shield, I think it has to cover the whole raid regardless of positioning, just make it the same as bloodthirst, but instead of increasing damage just reduce the damage taken. As i've said before, the shield mechanic does not lend itself to the addition of this debuff. Just as they expanded the effectiveness of bloodthirst before adding the debuff (increasing its range by 10m and making it affect 12 more targets than it did before), the same thing would need to be done to the shield, you cannot add the debuff mechanic without also making it so those who do not benefit from the effect do not get the debuff. Maybe this is easier to implement than I think it is, but I really think it is very bug prone.

There has to be a reason you think BW prefers snipers. In my opinion the ballistic shield is one of those reasons. We ran with 2 sorc DPS for HM dread council. My point was not raids are impossible to do without snipers. My point was its easier to do with sniper specially if the fight has a high AoE damage burn phase.

There is. Snipers and marauders have the raid utility because they are the only pure dps classes. If sorc dps becomes inviable, you can become a healer, if Jugg dps is bad you can tank, if sniper dps is bad, you get benched. Thats why they have these abilities. Even if they are putting out low numbers there is still a reason to bring them to a raid.

I find it a little hard to believe that a lot of the good players just picked snipers and ignored merc and sorc.

They re rolled snipers when snipers were absurdly overpowered (my main was a marauder until Nightmare Dread Guards, at which point it was just better to have a sniper). They are not any more, now theyre kind of average, but if you spent all that time working at and gearing up a sniper, there is a switching cost associated with going back (and despite this, many have still re rolled sorc or merc). No one is playing a sniper because of the shield, I really don't understand where this notion is coming from.

I have to say though, I am surprised that people don't think that 20 sec of 20% damage reduction through a phase of high AoE damage does not give that class an edge specially when you can stack two MM snipers to get up to 40 seconds of 20% damage reduction for the entire raid. It seems a huge advantage to me specially if you are in entry level gear.

Obviously when you are considering balance of abilities you aren't considering entry level gear. PvE should be balanced for groups going into Nightmare content in BiS gear from the previous tier. How many phases of high AoE damage are there in the game right now where your raid can be stacked within a single sniper shield? In all of TfB/SV/DF/DP I can think of one or two in 22 fights...

That definition of stacking doesn't really make sense to me. There's something making you take those 2 extra mercs and sitting those 2 snipers other than their skill as a player, why does that not matter to you?

Why would you take 5 merc? Because their DPS is higher? Pyro is broken. If fixed, the DPS will be close to sniper DPS. Then it blows down to personal preference. Right now its: have to take 3 snipers because we need 3 shields. Also if sniper DPS is lacking that needs to be made apparent. In my opinion sniper DPS is fine, MM could use a 3% buff but the rest is doing fine (engi is broken so not considering engi)

You cannot achieve this without sacrificing the uniqueness of classes. There will always be reasons to stack certain classes on certain fights. Even if you just nerf snipers to the point they are totally unplayable there will still be some occasions where groups will stack other things, its unavoidable.

The uniqueness stays there. I am not saying that get rid of the ballistic shield. I am saying just put a lockout on it so that only one shield can be used every 3 minutes. The class does not lose any of its unique features.

I still think you are drastically underestimating the development it would require to make this change.

Not really. Increase the radius of the shield by whatever number seems reasonable. Then put a debuff or buff (buff might be preferable from a healer point of view) on everyone so that any other sniper in group can't activate the shield. Exactly as it was done for BT.

There is. Snipers and marauders have the raid utility because they are the only pure dps classes. If sorc dps becomes inviable, you can become a healer, if Jugg dps is bad you can tank, if sniper dps is bad, you get benched. Thats why they have these abilities. Even if they are putting out low numbers there is still a reason to bring them to a raid.

There, you highlighted the problem. So you want to give snipers some ability so that even if their DPS becomes useless through some BS nerf in future, they still get to go on raids because of their utility? I dont agree with that. If the DPS is poor then the class should not be picked for a DPS role. The nerf was bad? Let the class get benched. It will force the devs to fix whatever issue forced people to bench that class.

Obviously when you are considering balance of abilities you aren't considering entry level gear.

When I said entry level gear I meant entry level for that raid. Sorry for the misunderstanding. For example 78 is the entry level gear for NiM DF.

There, you highlighted the problem. So you want to give snipers some ability so that even if their DPS becomes useless through some BS nerf in future, they still get to go on raids because of their utility? I dont agree with that. If the DPS is poor then the class should not be picked for a DPS role. The nerf was bad? Let the class get benched. It will force the devs to fix whatever issue forced people to bench that class.

DPS do not get picked for raids strictly for their class utility, they get picked for their DPS numbers and ability to keep these numbers up while not dying and doing mechanics correctly. Class utility is just icing on the cake. I highly doubt legitimate NiM progression guilds look for people for their actual group and think, "Hmm, this person is putting out crappy numbers and they die a lot in story mode raids...but they have a sniper shield so we can let them slide by 500-700 DPS!! :eek:" You can't not hit enrage by allowing the tanks to take a little less damage overall while having **** DPS, and if you're using the shield for major raid-wide damage(aside from phases like the end of council...the healers should be able to keep up anyway without the need of the shields though), then you're probably doing something wrong by having the raid take all that unnecessary damage. The only instance where I can see someone letting DPS slide in exchange for class utility is if a group wanted a marauder for Bloodthrist/Predation, but the marauder was consistently 100 DPS below everyone else in the group.

There, you highlighted the problem. So you want to give snipers some ability so that even if their DPS becomes useless through some BS nerf in future, they still get to go on raids because of their utility? I dont agree with that. If the DPS is poor then the class should not be picked for a DPS role. The nerf was bad? Let the class get benched. It will force the devs to fix whatever issue forced people to bench that class.

If you're saying that dps shouldnt have defensive utility at all and raid survivability should rest entirely in the hands of healers, thats a different argument (not sure I agree with it entirely, but it has some valid points). Until here i was under the impression that you were saying more skilled players were being passed up for raid spots so a raid could have more sniper shields, which I dont think ever happens. But as it is now, everyone has utility, and I think it would be nearly impossible to reach a state where raid utility does not factor into group composition at all. DPS is fairly balanced, even including pyro and concealment really when you bring them off a dummy and into a live fight, but other classes bring different things to the raid. Snipers really have sub par defensive/survivability right now in the personal sense, which i feel is largely made up for with shield. Generally I am so opposed to this because I feel there are many more important things in the game that are in actual need of fixing and dev time is very limited, even within the sniper class itself. More skilled players are never being passed up to include an extra shield into a raid, so i just do not see this as a problem.

If you're saying that dps shouldnt have defensive utility at all and raid survivability should rest entirely in the hands of healers, thats a different argument (not sure I agree with it entirely, but it has some valid points). Until here i was under the impression that you were saying more skilled players were being passed up for raid spots so a raid could have more sniper shields, which I dont think ever happens. But as it is now, everyone has utility, and I think it would be nearly impossible to reach a state where raid utility does not factor into group composition at all. DPS is fairly balanced, even including pyro and concealment really when you bring them off a dummy and into a live fight, but other classes bring different things to the raid. Snipers really have sub par defensive/survivability right now in the personal sense, which i feel is largely made up for with shield. Generally I am so opposed to this because I feel there are many more important things in the game that are in actual need of fixing and dev time is very limited, even within the sniper class itself. More skilled players are never being passed up to include an extra shield into a raid, so i just do not see this as a problem.

I emphasized this many times, you have to assume equal skill for balance discussion. I never said, classes should not have defensive cooldowns. That will just dumb the game down. But raid wide defensive cool down that can be chained is a little too much in my opinion.

I understand the devs have a lot on their plate. And I am not even sure they are reading this thread at all. I am just putting my thoughts in the forum for the off chance they devs stumble on it and might spend a few minutes considering the disparity among the three ranged classes when raid utility is considered.