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5.3 DPS changes


Eloi_BG

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Now that 5.3 has been out for a couple of days, people have been able to test out new numbers. !st easy conclusion: arsenal nerf is too big. I understand wanting to bring it down to MM and lightning, but right now it is quite a few hundred DPS behing MM (hard to say with lightning cause of the bugged chain lightning). Not a fan of the IO nerf but I guess it's closer to the goal you had. Anyway, please get arsenal back to at least MM numbers.

 

This comes from a player that loves IO and uses it on most fights, but arsenal does come in handy, and right now it's just not worth it.

 

On another note, I get the whole "why nerf and not buff" thing, but you guys really gotta consider how frustrating it is for raid groups to wipe on stuff you had on farm cause you lost over 2k DPS across your group. Not everyone has the time to get full 248 gear, all stuff was clearable in 242s before 5.3, not as much anymore (yes I know it is still doable, but I kinda like the fact bosses get more accessible when new gear tiers are released, like what happened with 5.2). Anyway, I think you target DPS might be a bit too low.

Edited by Eloi_BG
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I switched to arsenal merc in 2.0 for my raid group (didn't want 3 melee in the group and wanted a burst dps for group balance) and I have been playing the merc as my main since then. I have him in full 248 BIS (according to Bant's charts). I was testing his dps against several of my other toons and its sad. Operative in 236 gear with 240 crafted left side does 300-400 more dps, ven jugg in 242 gear and crafted left side does 400-600 more dps. I am far from being a great merc but I do consider myself to be above average...I tend to parse primarily on 500 k dummies since I am a burst dps spec and prior to Tuesday's patch my best parse without adrenals was 10400 (my average dps over many parses was approximately 10100) and in 15 parses last night (again without adrenals) I averaged 8800 dps....When 5.4 comes out and you nerf our survivability my toon feels as if he will be totally useless...After opening over 1000 packs and playing a crap ton of pvp to gear my toon I dont see any future here....Thanks Bioware ...

 

2 Questions: Am I that bad? Are other mercs seeing similiar numbers?

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2 Questions: Am I that bad? Are other mercs seeing similiar numbers?

 

Well, you sure have some work to do, because averaging 8,8k on a 2,5m parse would be decent numbers, not on a 500k. It's almost a full 2k under best parse so far. But anyway, you should be doing at least 1,5m dummies to test your numbers. Also, Arsenal comes with more energy management than before with blazing bolt's increase heat cost. So better work on those longer dummies to get use to it.

 

But yeah, arsenal took a huge blow, haven't bother using it in fights so far.

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Seems to be working fine if Merc, a ranged class, is doing less damage then a melee class. They are suppose to because they don't have to stay within 0-10m to actually deal damage like a Jug or Operative has to. You are also forgetting you got a big boost in survivability so of course your DPS has to drop down to reflect that. Arsenal is no longer a 'glass cannon' type spec now that they have great self-healing.
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Seems to be working fine if Merc, a ranged class, is doing less damage then a melee class. They are suppose to because they don't have to stay within 0-10m to actually deal damage like a Jug or Operative has to. You are also forgetting you got a big boost in survivability so of course your DPS has to drop down to reflect that. Arsenal is no longer a 'glass cannon' type spec now that they have great self-healing.

 

I respectfully disagree. The damage might have been a bit overtuned, but the main problem was the DCD. Now, Arsenal is complete garbage in PvE (possibly worse than Lightning sorc and Marksman Sniper....) and still has overtuned DCD for PvP (cause those awesome DCD have limited impact in PvE).

 

So basically they took something that was broken, and broke it a little more, solving nothing in the way.

 

And for the uptime on boss melee vs ranged. I don't agree with you either. It might be the case in PvP (but the nerf wasn't for PvP, so they said) and pre 5.0 when melee didn't only have instant abilities. Good melee players will have nearly 100% of uptime on most ops boss. Ranged class have to cast abilities to deal damage. Cast can be broken and or delayed, and there's also travel time of some abilities (like Heatseeker). So, if I have to cast tracer missile when the boss comes up, it's at least 1,5 sec before damage comes in, the melee have plenty of time to run (jump, phantom stride, or whatever) and deal instant damage.

 

The nerf was too hard, no question about it.

Edited by Martin
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I respectfully disagree. The damage might have been a bit overtuned, but the main problem was the DCD. Now, Arsenal is complete garbage in PvE (possibly worse than Lightning sorc and Marksman Sniper....) and still has overtuned DCD for PvP (cause those awesome DCD have limited impact in PvE).

 

So basically they took something that was broken, and broke it a little more, solving nothing in the way.

 

And for the uptime on boss melee vs ranged. I don't agree with you either. It might be the case in PvP (but the nerf wasn't for PvP, so they said) and pre 5.0 when melee didn't only have instant abilities. Good melee players will have nearly 100% of uptime on most ops boss. Ranged class have to cast abilities to deal damage. Cast can be broken and or delayed, and there's also travel time of some abilities (like Heatseeker). So, if I have to cast tracer missile when the boss comes up, it's at least 1,5 sec before damage comes in, the melee have plenty of time to run (jump, phantom stride, or whatever) and deal instant damage.

 

The nerf was too hard, no question about it.

 

I agree with you that the DPS nerf was too severe and they went about balancing entirely bassackwards, but melee having 'nearly 100% uptime on most bosses in Ops is a crock of shyt.

 

How often do you have to run out of the red circle when you get too many stacks in the malaphar fight? How often when you were forced out of the red circle were you unable to still attack ?

 

Are you unable to attack bulo while you're running around during Barrage?

 

 

 

The following are quotes from the Torque HM fight guide on dulfy for this fight relating to the differences between melee and ranged dps danger wise.

 

 

"Note you can take less damage from the boss by kiting, but this will make it more difficult on any melee DPS."

 

"If you are a melee or tank, you need to be extra careful with the Floor Vents. "

 

"Find something you can do on the move instead for a GCD, or simply do nothing, just don’t die."

 

"Dangerous Fire Device. These are not as crucial as the other adds, but if left up too long, these will enrage and 1-shot anyone who touches them. This is very dangerous for the tanks and melee DPS"

 

"In some cases, it is very dangerous to leap back to the boss because you may leap into fire or another AoE. "

 

mDPS have to rely on the tanks positioning/kite of Torque so there can be a safer place for melee to attack. The tank gives them uptime, they don't have it on their own.

 

See how uneffected your DPS is when you get the firebug as a melee in the Thrasher fight in SnV and have to run around hugging the walls while it's in effect bringing you out of attack range at those times and you can get the firebug multiple times. There isn't anywhere you can go on the ground level that will take you out of attack range.

 

No one's saying that mercs should have been hit that hard in DPS, no one cared about that, it was about the DCDs mostly. Just don't act like you were in the same boat with melee, you weren't you aren't. Its the DCDs or the dps, having both to those levels at the same time isn't balanced especially when you consider that you have 26' more attack potential than they do. You can avoid mechanics and still attack on the move, melee will definitely have to leave attack range at times, that's not the case with ranged most times. More opportunities.

 

But yeah, the DPS nerf was too severe. No doubt.

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I said most fights, not all of them. I could go ahead a point a lot of fights where the uptime is nearly 100%. Then, again, I'll give you that, might have a been a bit of an overstatement. I should probably have said, lots of fight. Anyway. you get the point. Melee has it way easier now than what they used to in a lot of fights, especially good melee who knows the fights pretty well. Edited by Martin
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Seems to be working fine if Merc, a ranged class, is doing less damage then a melee class. They are suppose to because they don't have to stay within 0-10m to actually deal damage like a Jug or Operative has to. You are also forgetting you got a big boost in survivability so of course your DPS has to drop down to reflect that. Arsenal is no longer a 'glass cannon' type spec now that they have great self-healing.

 

I agree with you that melee should do more overall dps than a ranged to make up for the down time however most ranged depend on a channeled attack to set up their rotation and this attack is easily interrupted and secondly my operative is in 236 gear not 248 BIS and still has a higher dps...that smells fishy to me.

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@WayOfTheWarriorx: This is getting old, please keep the melee/range debate out of this thread. I explained in other threads with numbers to back it up why I didn't think 5% was a good difference, and we and other people shared our opinion on this line.

 

This thread is simply to say 2 things, and mostly about PVE (cause 3-4% DPS doesn't matter that much in PVP, it's all about those DCDs):

1. Arsenal nerf was too big, it is now performing well under MM and Lightning. With my understanding of the "How class balance happens" thread, I thought it would go down to MM/Lightning. It also annoys me the only range burst spec that need to worry about energy is Arsenal.

2. The "why nerf and not buff" debate. Easy access to 242 and over (rng 246 in MM ops is annoying) made MM ops more accessible to players with less time/skill, which I think is what you want to do as you move months into an update, allow more players to access content. Removing so much of the DPS makes groups struggle on content they cleared before, which is really frustrating. I understand small nerfs, but 10% DPS nerfs are way too much and really makes the difference between a kill and a wipe.

Edited by Eloi_BG
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@WayOfTheWarriorx: This is getting old, please keep the melee/range debate out of this thread. I explained in other threads with numbers to back it up why I didn't think 5% was a good difference, and we and other people shared our opinion on this line.

 

This thread is simply to say 2 things, and mostly about PVE (cause 3-4% DPS doesn't matter that much in PVP, it's all about those DCDs):

1. Arsenal nerf was too big, it is now performing well under MM and Lightning. With my understanding of the "How class balance happens" thread, I thought it would go down to MM/Lightning. It also annoys me the only range burst spec that need to worry about energy is Arsenal.

2. The "why nerf and not buff" debate. Easy access to 242 and over (rng 246 in MM ops is annoying) made MM ops more accessible to players with less time/skill, which I think is what you want to do as you move months into an update, allow more players to access content. Removing so much of the DPS makes groups struggle on content they cleared before, which is really frustrating. I understand small nerfs, but 10% DPS nerfs are way too much and really makes the difference between a kill and a wipe.

 

I'm not sure where your point of conflict is with regard to those two points.

 

I agree the DPS nerf was too large, in fact, I don't think they should have nerfed their damage at all other the targeting bonus to crit damage [ the 5% thingy isn't about just mercs thats about all ranged]. The issue was with the DCDs. Most people didn't have an issue with the damage [besides for the 40k HSs which I'm sure you yourself would agree is rediculous]. The DPS nerd to Mercs and Snipers took everyone by suprise. Again, the issue with snipers wasn't damage, it was the tank DCDs and the control over melee. I think snipers should have the highest DPS of all the rDPS classes because they are a pure DPS class. The issue was never with the damage, Even if they felt a DPS nerf was needed, the nerf to Arsenal was far too severe. As much as i'm a proponet for sorcs [ i dont play one tho], I think mercs should do more damage than sorcs do. - Snipers>Mercs>Sorcs. - I think most people feel similarly, mercs shouldn't be the lowest rDPS, they just didn't want to leave lighting their in perpetuity with all the uproar about sorc dps [justified as it may be].

 

As to you second point, there pros and cons to that train of thought. Would you really want Marauders, Assassins, and Juggs running around with 3 h2fs? For mercs and snipers the issue is with their God DCDs. If you go the route of buffing everyone to that level, PVP becomes untenable and Operations become not much more than going through the motions, the only fail that would remain with would failed mechanics that cause insta wipe in Nim, and even nim would become an everyman activity with people running around with those kinds of DCDs.

 

I personally tend more to the ideology you fix what's broken. When you start trying to fix things that aren't broken, you tend to break them! heh

 

This whole class balance thingy has taken on dimensions no one could have foreseen and it goes beyond all logic. Everyone is going to get nerfed. You guys are just getting it first. This in and of itself will make the "class balance" unsucessful.

 

If mercs and snipers and corruption sorcs were over performing, you bring them down the the levels that are in line with the other classes. That can bring balance. But when you not only nerf those who are overperforming and you begin nerfing classes that weren't you, all you have done is set the bar lower but you haven't fixed the area of the problem.

 

I am a merc hater, no question [but it's only about the DCDs] and even I think they went too far with nerfing Arsenal.

No one like's to get nerfed, even when it's necessary [ I didn't like it when they took the double stance bonus for Carnage away myself, but it was necessary and so I didn't complain, but I wasn't happy about it either heh] so I do understand why you feel slated. They should have just went to the DCDs, made a modest DPS nerf and done similarly to the OPers and than been done with it. Mercs wouldn't have had to loss hardly any DPS, you wouldn't have to kill them 3 times anymore, and I think most people would have been fine with that, I certainly would have].

 

There isn't going to be one happy player in this game by the time they are done with this 'class balancing'. They're going to lose a lot of players [and i may be one of them depending on how hard my class gets hit, I'm no re-roller tho so I'll just move on to a new game]. To those who may doubt that, ask this question, has anything they've done yet, made any player who's class has been effected happy? I don't think they'll change course with the rest of us.

 

We'll all be joining your shortly yo. Maybe set the table for the rest of us in the meantime =p

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I'm not sure where your point of conflict is with regard to those two points.

 

I was mostly trying to course correct the thread because the last few posts were about the disparity between melee/range. Also, my second point isn't about DCDs at all. This is only about DPS, pure numbers, how it changed and the target Bioware aim for.

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"I cannot even express how upset I am. My parse is ruined, the flow is destroyed.

 

It should be one thing or another, nerf damage OR mess with heat management.. not both!! And they aren't even finished!

 

This is not the first nerf I have seen on my class, I've been here since the launch of the game.. but this one is clearly broken.

 

This bs has effected both myself and another merc in our operation progression group. And by the looks of the forums threads and complaints out there we aren't the only ones. I have literally lost 1.1k off my parse and no matter how hard I try I just can't get decent numbers for the ops content we are doing and I am nearly in full 248's. When I heard about the nerf, at first I thought 'well damn this is going to suck but i'll manage" then the changes became reality and I saw it in my parses!..

 

Not cool Bioware!.. I have other toons but I don't have the 'no life' mentality or the time it takes to gear my alts to the capacity of my merc main just so I have a viable toon to play for pve ops. I'd post two inappropriate hand gesture's to the game developers right now if I thought the post wouldn't be removed for vulgarity." Seriously, I'm ready to tell bioware to shove their sub up their .... Why should I pay to play when I cannot enjoy my main in hardmode and NiM end game content? Hope they are reading!! :mad:

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Talking about mdps and rdps...now we have Op Lethality, Mara Ani/Carnage, Assassin Deception doing 11k, 10.6 and 10.5 respectively, and in the other side we have Merc arsenal/IO, Sniper Vir/Eng and Sorc Mad doing 9.1, 9.9, 9.9 and 9.6 respectively.

Considering that Carnage and Deception are supposed to be in the same category as IO (At target dps) and Lethality should be doing "only" 5% more than target dps but is doing 10% more, then you can have a pretty good idea of what's going on in game right now. Also, Sniper Virulance is supposed to be doing 2.5% LESS than IO, right now they are about the same.

And so far, no word from the Devs about nerfing those classes, which makes us believe they think everything is ok or acceptable with them.

And lastly, yes, numbers on Dummy is not the same as in a fight, sure, but who do you think will be doing more in a boss fight, Op Lethality with 11k on dummy or Arsenal with 9.1k? Yeah.

 

About numbers on parse, Arsenal got a pretty unfair nerf and I don't even play with it. I play IO always, but that was way too much. Considering they should be doing 5% less than IO, those numbers should be around 9.4k;

About IO, considering that Virulance numbers are "on point", then IO should be doing around 2.5% more, meaning around 10.150k. Engineering and Madness should also be doing the same. All this according to their "balancing philosophy."

So you see, everything is not where it is supposed to be, some things more than others.

I think this game has never been this unbalanced with classes/builds since launch. (I mean, 2k apart Arsenal from Lethality??).

I really hope they get their **** together and bring all the remaining classes to the same level again or at least closer to it, with patch 5.4 or else we gonna lose more players, and God knows this game can't afford it. People wanna have fun playing, so you pay to have fun, when its not fun anymore to play with your favorite class/build, no reason to keep paying, that's what I think anyway.

Edited by azamba
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Talking about mdps and rdps...now we have Op Lethality, Mara Ani/Carnage, Assassin Deception doing 11k, 10.6 and 10.5 respectively, and in the other side we have Merc arsenal/IO, Sniper Vir/Eng and Sorc Mad doing 9.1, 9.9, 9.9 and 9.6 respectively.

Considering that Carnage and Deception are supposed to be in the same category as IO (At target dps) and Lethality should be doing "only" 5% more than target dps but is doing 10% more, then you can have a pretty good idea of what's going on in game right now. Also, Sniper Virulance is supposed to be doing 2.5% LESS than IO, right now they are about the same.

And so far, no word from the Devs about nerfing those classes, which makes us believe they think everything is ok or acceptable with them.

And lastly, yes, numbers on Dummy is not the same as in a fight, sure, but who do you think will be doing more in a boss fight, Op Lethality with 11k on dummy or Arsenal with 9.1k? Yeah.

 

About numbers on parse, Arsenal got a pretty unfair nerf and I don't even play with it. I play IO always, but that was way too much. Considering they should be doing 5% less than IO, those numbers should be around 9.4k;

About IO, considering that Virulance numbers are "on point", then IO should be doing around 2.5% more, meaning around 10.150k. Engineering and Madness should also be doing the same. All this according to their "balancing philosophy."

So you see, everything is not where it is supposed to be, some things more than others.

I think this game has never been this unbalanced with classes/builds since launch. (I mean, 2k apart Arsenal from Lethality??).

I really hope they get their **** together and bring all the remaining classes to the same level again or at least closer to it, with patch 5.4 or else we gonna lose more players, and God knows this game can't afford it. People wanna have fun playing, so you pay to have fun, when its not fun anymore to play with your favorite class/build, no reason to keep paying, that's what I think anyway.

 

I totally agree with u. They need to do their job. They need to balance classes on the weekly basis.

 

Neft Operatives dps. Its OP OvER **** POWERED. They do OP damage on HM Revan. Please Devs do something. We are losing people in the guild just because of ur poor work. I also wanted to add that they need to buff Madness sorc cuz it's underperforming a little bit compare to IO and Snipers. So small 5% buff whould be enough. Idk even know what to say about arsenal merc doing only 9k. What do we pay u for Bioware? Do we pay u so u can play on ur over powered operatives?

 

#Nerf mDPS

#Buff Madness

#Buff Arsenal

#Stop lying to the community. Do something.

Edited by BraverDre
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Perhaps the only way for us to fix this is to cry a lot louder like the PvP Community does all the time...

But seriously, these Changes can't stay as they are... our strongest Raid group killed Tyth with one Sniper (just because AoE) two Assassins and one Juggernaut...

I know that Bioware cares much more about PvP Content and Community than about PvE, but this patch will destroy PvE! Especially some smaller raid groups, who run hc for fun, now will get severe Problems...

Think, Bioware, think, please, and create a Balance System which BALANCES the classes. Remove the dps nerfs of Merc (not Heat adjustments, i agree with that), a very little nerf on Virulence and Engi Sniper, a medium Buff to Marksman, a big Buff for both Sorc Specs, a little Buff for Maro, medium Buff for PT, little buff for Assassins and Juggernauts, and a very small nerf to the Operative...

I, as one of the best Mercs on T3, was able to do great damage in hc Content, but it was still challenging when we get to Styrack or the first in Asation. The Mercs dps fitted perfectly! Through Relation to this, i come to the suggestions above, i think many PvE players can agree with that. We only have to cry louder and must not let PvP Community push us around how they want it...

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All of you crying about arsenal, jesus try IO. Arsenal hits way harder and still has a better rotation. Flipped my merc from IO and doing way better with it. Both disciplines got whacked a bit too hard if you ask me. Took the wrong thing away.
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All of you crying about arsenal, jesus try IO. Arsenal hits way harder and still has a better rotation. Flipped my merc from IO and doing way better with it. Both disciplines got whacked a bit too hard if you ask me. Took the wrong thing away.

 

Read the original post and see it's not just a "swap to IO thing". I was playing IO and will continue to play IO on most fights. But for some fights or some specific roles in some fights, IO just doesn't really cut it. Arsenal is now the worst spec DPS wise, and a few hundred DPS under MM and un-bugged lightning (more than a few under bugged lightning).

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Yep, IO dps needs to be boosted by about 100 and arsenal 250. A decent parse for both specs should be around 9800 and 9350, respectively. This can probably be done by increasing the dot dmg for IO and reverting the heat cost on blazing bolts. Edited by Hoppinswtor
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Read the original post and see it's not just a "swap to IO thing". I was playing IO and will continue to play IO on most fights. But for some fights or some specific roles in some fights, IO just doesn't really cut it. Arsenal is now the worst spec DPS wise, and a few hundred DPS under MM and un-bugged lightning (more than a few under bugged lightning).

 

Wait is gunnery really worse than tk sages now? Er arsenal and lightning, same difference.

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madness buff is too small and broken with another sorc in raid group so no - its not even a buff - with the nerfs to survivability this "buff" is in fact a nerf.

 

all they achieved with this "class balance" is frustration all along and players stop playing or unsubbing again.

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Read the original post and see it's not just a "swap to IO thing". I was playing IO and will continue to play IO on most fights. But for some fights or some specific roles in some fights, IO just doesn't really cut it. Arsenal is now the worst spec DPS wise, and a few hundred DPS under MM and un-bugged lightning (more than a few under bugged lightning).

 

This. I'm fine with playing IO, and having to switch between spec depending the fight, but arsenal is complete garbage now. I don't care if I now have to mostly be dummy fighting, while the rest of the dps on my group take care of adds/target swapping. It just takes a lot of flexibility out of our group.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they remove casts from melee to compensate for them having to move more? Have you tried to interrupt a melee class lately?

 

Interrupts never were great vs melee even the few things you could.

 

Don't recall interrupting a Master Strike.

 

Interrupts are literally free defences vs sage/commando dps or vs a healer. Do absolutely nothing vs other classes except generic objective channels.

 

Some classes get considerably more interrupt capability than others. Lower cooldown on dedicated interrupt, bonus interrupt on gapcloser, extra CC to break casts, physics to again break casts, vanish to break casts (vs sage/commando dps only) or even targetless speed boosts to LOS break casts.

 

Of course I didn't mention slinger dps because they have 100% interrupt immunity and large quantities of CC immunity to boot.

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