Now that 4.0 has been out for a while, I'd like to address a few concerns I've noticed.

It seems that the community has taken the time to experience the new update, and a few things have become apparent: Class Balance is a mess.

AP PTs are getting more and more and MORE powerful, in PVP and PVE, and while we don't have metrics yet for PVP due to the ranked season not starting yet, we can only examine the facts: Super crit is very strong for PTs with Explosive Fuel, and they do very high damage, especially for a single target burst spec.

In general, the PVP TTK is too short and a total mess, due to the return to a prevalence of burst due to the singular fact that AP PTs are becoming more FOTM than they already were. It's a well known fact that Sorcerer heals are strong, as well as their damage cousins, but why aren't we hearing about Sorc DPS anymore? Only healers? Because currently, PTs can match or at least get extremely close to Sorcerer Damage, but with pure single target and burst. This is broken. When the overpowered AOE sustained spec gets matched in pure damage by the Single Target Burst spec, we have a massive balance problem.

For PVE, the problems are a little more manifold. From what I understand, there are a few classes that took under the table coefficient nerfs, that were never mentioned in the patch notes, but even a cursory examination of logs evidently shows. Pyrotech Powertechs, Vengeance Juggernauts, Concealment Operatives, Fury Mara / Rage Jugg, and Innovative Ordinance Mercenaries have literally been gutpunched and castrated in damage. All of these specializations, were nerfed significantly and brutally with talent nerfs, direct ability nerfs, and critical chance nerfs, while AP PT, the current PVE AND PVP top dog, has not seen any nerfs, only the new talent, and they were already strong to begin with in 3.0.

So my question is:

Bioware. What were you thinking? Outside of PVP sorc, realistically the class balance in 3.0 was FINE. You had some outliers, but the outliers made sense. IO was more difficult to learn, so it yielded higher damage. Was it PVE FOTM? Heck yeah, but it was not the end all be all, because it had weaknesses. AP PT has literally no weakness that matters. It does high dummy numbers, can translate perfectly to bosses, has 0 mobility weaknesses, and has good passive damage reduction and passable cooldowns, AND GAINS DAMAGE on several bosses. The only real weakness is a lack of AOE, but who cares how much AOE you do when you can global 2 targets in succession?

SO: I'd like to discuss solutions.

We know that even with the current state of PT, the Damage Checks in Nightmare are very competitive. We also know that PVP TTK is too short.

Solution: Make the PVP healing trauma debuff a tad stronger, part of the current PVP TTK problem is an overreliance on healers for increasing or decreasing the TTK, which is important, but moving a tad away from that can't hurt.

Increase the damage reduction that expertise affords significantly. This is to continue the emphasis shift slightly from healing into mitigation.

Then, undo several, if not all of the coefficient nerfs that were done underhandedly in 4.0, or have theorycrafters gain access to the coefficients, and be allowed to extrapolate potential damage numbers based on the raw data we have now.

Petitions are against forum rules!

/signed nevertheless. I am annoyed with the state of Guardians and being pve underdogs for years and giving love to same classes over and over the years!

Unnerf Guardians =[

Well said

/signed

Unnerf Vengeance Juggs

as was said to me, Pve content for jugg is closed

/signed

unnerf scrapper/concealment

FIX AOE!!!

/signed

Just like it says, we need more balance, the nim dps checks in some ops are incredibly ridiculous and if you don't bring a class like PT or Sniper you barely have a chance of beating the checks

A gap of 900-1k dps between the highest parsers (engineering) and lowest (jugg/guards) is pathetic

/signed

I miss having my veng jugg be good

/signed

Solution: Just tune numbers, don't *********** try to balance classes by changing abilities. To cut 2% damage output you don't have to revamp the whole ability tree, all you need is... Tadaaa! Multiply every single number on ability by 0.98.

To refine it bit better take some parses on dummy and a boss, find the split between abilities shared by many specs and spec-specific ones, solve some simple system of linear (!) equations and obtain the same. Not a rocket science, exactly.

Oh, and revert my mara movement to pre-4.0 state pleeeease.

/signed.

P.s. A friend of mine raided at top lvl on vengeance jugg the whole 3.0 and still rolling it now, says it feels good. If to take AP PT out of the picture it becomes way less ridiculous but it may be just a matter of contrast/dynamic range.

Solution: Just tune numbers, don't *********** try to balance classes by changing abilities. To cut 2% damage output you don't have to revamp the whole ability tree, all you need is... Tadaaa! Multiply every single number on ability by 0.98.

 

To refine it bit better take some parses on dummy and a boss, find the split between abilities shared by many specs and spec-specific ones, solve some simple system of linear (!) equations and obtain the same. Not a rocket science, exactly.

 

Oh, and revert my mara movement to pre-4.0 state pleeeease.

 

/signed.

 

P.s. A friend of mine raided at top lvl on vengeance jugg the whole 3.0 and still rolling it now, says it feels good. If to take AP PT out of the picture it becomes way less ridiculous but it may be just a matter of contrast/dynamic range.

I don't know any of the Jugg Revanchists that are satisfied with the current status quo, if they exist, please tell them to PM me.

I don't know any of the Jugg Revanchists that are satisfied with the current status quo, if they exist, please tell them to PM me.

I'll tell Alvas to

Just like it says, we need more balance, the nim dps checks in some ops are incredibly ridiculous and if you don't bring a class like PT or Sniper you barely have a chance of beating the checks

 

A gap of 900-1k dps between the highest parsers (engineering) and lowest (jugg/guards) is pathetic

 

/signed

Just pointing this out the current lowest parsing spec in the world is Plasmatech with a 6.3

I'll tell Alvas to

Hey if he's satisfied with jugg DPS as it currently stands then he can raid with it as his only main

Just pointing this out the current lowest parsing spec in the world is Plasmatech with a 6.3

You have AP. Guardians don't have a single raid viable spec. Concealment is literally the most played spec for the class and has no AOE and is absolutely useless right now. Pyro is a problem, just as Vig and Conc are, and if Bioware wasn't stupid and just kept the coefficients same as they were in 3.0, we wouldn't be having problems.

/signed

Lightening sorcs/TK sages also took a huge ninja nerf (-20% crit damage to the baseline skills) and they were already nerfed to hell even before that. Before 4.0 was released the dps balance was in the best state it had ever been. The patch notes for 4.0 said that the only dps changes for all classes would be a slight passive dps increase in the range of a few percent. If that was indeed the case, then the classes would still be well balanced, like before the expansion. Instead we see inexplicable ninja nerfs that made the dps balance the worst it's been in years. It's like all the hard balancing work that was done in the last year was thrown out for no obvious reason. My main (Scrapper Scoundrel) feels almost useless right now.

TBH I'd be happy if BW just removes all the ninja nerfs that came with the expansion but were not mentioned in the patch notes. While I don't think that would fix everything, it would be a great start and would undo most of the damage that KOTFE did to balance for no apparent reason.

Y Concealment is literally the most played spec for the class and has no AOE and is absolutely useless right now.

Concealment has never had good AOE, but at least pre-4.0 it was a strong single target spec.

I've had a raid leader tell me to take the 25% damage utility for Carbine Burst in fights like Torque. I hope that one day, Concealment AOE might be such that this might actually be a viable suggestion and not completely ridiculous.

Always loved my Juggernaut/Guardian but never got to play it in 3.0 since my Vanguard was required for Revan kill, had to pull 800k on a Core since my team was slacking and I could never do that as a Guardian . After couple of Revan kills on VG I've switched to my Guardian and I loved it. It was obvious from the start it was weaker then VG but I still loved it.

Since 4.0 started I decided to switch to my Guardian and I am not a bad Guardian, currently hold #1 parse in the world and my VG is also amazing . Anyway felt Guardians are pretty mediocre/weak in HMs and HMs are super easy. Tried only 1 boss in NiM and that was SnVs 1st boss, did really fine on him with pulling 6.6k dps but thats mostly cuz of the adds and we have probably the best AoE in the game. Then we decided to drop NiMs since there was no point in them, they don't drop 224 gear but 2x220, awesome isn't it, thx Bioware.

Then I started to gear my VG in 220 as a 2nd toon and even with bad gear I was pulling a lot higher DPS then my Guardian. Then it hit me, wow Guardians are not mediocre they are just bad. Our single target DPS is laughable and we have low burst only good thing about Guardians is their AoE damage to kill trash faster and wipe more on bosses . On bosses with lots of Adds we can pull respectable numbers but on single target bosses we are just a laughing stock. I can see us failing on a lot of NiM bosses like Operatives ( and thats my 3rd class ).

Vg Tactics is just broken atm, insane on demand burst + high sustained dmg and good AoE.

Need to see other NIM bosses on Guardian and Operative to see how they play but you can't deny we are miles behind other classes.

/signed

/signed, signed and signed

The class balance is the worst i have seen, since i play this game. I can't believe that this mess has gone live.

Always loved my Juggernaut/Guardian but never got to play it in 3.0 since my Vanguard was required for Revan kill, had to pull 800k on a Core since my team was slacking and I could never do that as a Guardian . After couple of Revan kills on VG I've switched to my Guardian and I loved it. It was obvious from the start it was weaker then VG but I still loved it.

 

Since 4.0 started I decided to switch to my Guardian and I am not a bad Guardian, currently hold #1 parse in the world and my VG is also amazing . Anyway felt Guardians are pretty mediocre/weak in HMs and HMs are super easy. Tried only 1 boss in NiM and that was SnVs 1st boss, did really fine on him with pulling 6.6k dps but thats mostly cuz of the adds and we have probably the best AoE in the game. Then we decided to drop NiMs since there was no point in them, they don't drop 224 gear but 2x220, awesome isn't it, thx Bioware.

 

Then I started to gear my VG in 220 as a 2nd toon and even with bad gear I was pulling a lot higher DPS then my Guardian. Then it hit me, wow Guardians are not mediocre they are just bad. Our single target DPS is laughable and we have low burst only good thing about Guardians is their AoE damage to kill trash faster and wipe more on bosses . On bosses with lots of Adds we can pull respectable numbers but on single target bosses we are just a laughing stock. I can see us failing on a lot of NiM bosses like Operatives ( and thats my 3rd class ).

 

Vg Tactics is just broken atm, insane on demand burst + high sustained dmg and good AoE.

 

Need to see other NIM bosses on Guardian and Operative to see how they play but you can't deny we are miles behind other classes.

 

/signed

I'll be back to top eventually once I get time to parse, but nice to see someone else competing

And yeah, your thought process was basically mine, there's no reason to bring a guardian if they are literally what focus sentinels were in the earlier tiers, only we have no burst aoe.

Before 4.0 was released the dps balance was in the best state it had ever been.

Last I've heard it was in the best state pre-3.0.

Are you going to claim it was JUST PERFECT before BW made a lot of changes?

But you have a point. Any major changes implemented are a huge wth for the "balance".

And about juggs/guardians - well, it doesn't exactly render you completely unviable, it's just bringing any melee but AP PT is pointless number-wise. Moreover, AP PT beat ranged on most fights anyway and if not for hard on melees mechanics and lack of AOE people would just stack 4x PT or even 5x PT, all dps, and bring stuff so fast they can rotate defensives and play tanks.

Jugg isn't that weak if you compare it to mara. Sure, now anni has very decent numbers but you get more burst, intrinsic aoe and whatnot. I won't say juggs are weak. Sorcs are, with reduced mobility and low survivability (don't start that stuff about good sorcs and bad sorcs, sniper simply can survive more ESPECIALLY if holding aggro when tank is dead or something like that). Operatives are. Assassins seem to still be worse than juggs. So, like you said, juggs are mediocre. I've met "no mara" attitude a lot in 3.* cycle, while juggs were considered superior to them. Now it's the opposite i guess, but still FOTMers will be like "y u no bring pt/sniper/arsenal merc?".

If you're not going for hardcore raiding, which doesn't seem to be a case now for there are no new bosses, you can still bring even a conceal oper and hae fun, but no one says you're going to be any effective.

A friend of mine said conceal opers are like dogs humping your leg now, they won't hurt you but are very annoying. Can't deny that

Jugg isn't that weak if you compare it to mara. Sure, now anni has very decent numbers but you get more burst, intrinsic aoe and whatnot. I won't say juggs are weak.

I actually disagree with this statement. A carnage mara can put out both more single target and, to a somewhat lesser degree, aoe burst than juggs. Also anni is the best melee single target sustained class in the game, and is only inferior to an AP PT due to a lack of burst. In both cases still better than a juggernaut.

Assassins seem to still be worse than juggs.

I also have to disagree with this, as deception is capable of extremely high burst due to phantom stride and recklessness procs on discharge, and, once again, is capable of single target damage higher than a jugg, although aoe is less than a jugg.

Concealment has never had good AOE, but at least pre-4.0 it was a strong single target spec.

 

I've had a raid leader tell me to take the 25% damage utility for Carbine Burst in fights like Torque. I hope that one day, Concealment AOE might be such that this might actually be a viable suggestion and not completely ridiculous.

<slap>

<slap>

He's not wrong you know.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=847112

This thread's damage calculations were done with my logs. Projections definitively show Jugg DPS is worse. (Fun fact, Deception is actually as good as AP PT, there's just not a single good player in the world that has made it work quite yet, cause it's been bottom of the barrel for so long).