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Shields now work against enegy/kinetic


mrpayday

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"Personal shield generators are now effective against all attacks that deal Energy and Kinetic Damage, rather than just direct weapon attacks."

 

Sounds like some sort of buff for PvP tanks.

 

 

Good, now snipers won't be the only people who cry when they go up against tanks in pvp LOL.

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Incoming: Tank classes actually wearing tank gear and being very tough to kill.

 

Also incoming: DPS specs favoring internal/elemental damage if possible.

 

Very nice change, only took them a year to do it.

 

The segregation between specs will be much more greater. Specs like carnage, even if they ignore armor, they will have to deal with the shields, and since crit rating has received a nerf across the board, you will not be able to override shielding with your own crit chance that often.

 

Overall i see a more specialized, and important role for tank buster specs. Carnage will be weaker against tanks, Smash will be weaker against tanks, sorc DPS will be weaker against tanks, Concealment will be terrible against tanks (kinetic damage mostly).

 

Snipers don't really care about this nerf apart from lower crit chances which will make MM mitigated more often. The only spec that will have slighly worse performance is engineering because it will be no longer able to bypass shields with frag grenades, explosive probe and interrogation probe.

 

Lethality will now be LETHALITY, a spec in its own league, extremely valued for being capable to actually bring Tanks down. What other spec can do that? Probably Pyrotech and that's about it. Madness has crushing darkness doing kinetic damage. AP must see how the tree has been reworked. cannot judge. And Pyrotech has Railshots vulnerable to shielding and defense. In the end, Lethality may end up as the most reliably tank buster in the game.

 

So yeah boys and girls, time to protect your lethality snipers and support them if you want thse budies to help you with your tank problem.

Edited by NoTomorrow
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One thing I don't understand and maybe someone can break this down for me. When we say "energy / kinetic" do, force users fall in that area? To me, that seems more like tech users.

 

most force abilities are kinetic/energy. For example for the sorc class

 

Force lightning, chain lightning, shock, lightning strike and crushing darkness all deal kinetic/energy damage so their damage is mitigated by armor and soon to be shield rating. It is a general misconception that force abilities bypass armor as most do not.

 

This change worries me as when I play as sorc dps I can't do any real damage on a tank as is, so this may make it a lot worse. I have yet to play on the pts so the other changes my cancel it out. Worst comes to worst ill hop on my sniper and roll lethality.

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One thing I don't understand and maybe someone can break this down for me. When we say "energy / kinetic" do, force users fall in that area? To me, that seems more like tech users.

 

You confuse damage types with attack types.

 

Attack types: Melee, Ranged, Force, Tech.

 

Melee and Ranged can be defended against by the defense and shield stat (i.e. you can dodge/shield them), force and tech cannot. (i.e. they ignore your +defense/+shield stat completely)

 

Damage types: Weapon damage (=damage type done by your weapon = energy), Energy damage, Kinetic damage, Internal damage, Elemental damage.

 

Formerly only direct melee and ranged attacks that do Energy or Kinetic damage could be shielded, now all Kinetic and Energy damage will be shield-able. This means for example that Force Lightning (Force attack that does Kinetic damage) can be shielded. Smash can be shielded (Force attack that does Kinetic damage). But Flame Burst (Tech attack that does Elemental damage) or Corrosive Grenade (Tech attack that does Internal damage) cannot be shielded.

Edited by LordExozone
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Damage types: Weapon damage, Kinetic damage, Energy damage, Internal damage, Elemental damage.

 

Formerly only Weapon damage could be shielded, now Kinetic and Energy damage will be shield-able also. This means for example that Force Lightning (kinetic damage) can be shielded. Smash can be shielded (kinetic damage). Vicious Throw can be shielded (energy damage). But Flame Burst (elemental damage) or Corrosive Grenade (internal damage) cannot be shielded.

 

You are confusing things. Weapon attacks are either Melee or Ranged.

The damage types are only Kinetic, Energy, Internal and Elemental.

 

For example Sniper MM does smotly ranged energy damage. Engineering: has tech kinetic (Explosive probe, frag grenades), tech energy (interrogation probe), tech elemental (plasma probe, orbital strike). Lethality does mostly tech internal (poisons, Cull, although cull has a ranged energy component as well)

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You are confusing things. Weapon attacks are either Melee or Ranged.

The damage types are only Kinetic, Energy, Internal and Elemental.

 

For example Sniper MM does smotly ranged energy damage. Engineering: has tech kinetic (Explosive probe, frag grenades), tech energy (interrogation probe), tech elemental (plasma probe, orbital strike). Lethality does mostly tech internal (poisons, Cull, although cull has a ranged energy component as well)

 

Weapon damage refers to the damage type done by your weapon, which is indeed energy in most (all) cases. It is indeed unnecessary to list it as a seperate damage type, but doesn't harm either. I've edited my post to be more precise.

Edited by LordExozone
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the frequency that deception sins/infiltrations shadows can pull off discharge/force breach will make them reliable tank busters. discharge/breach does internal damage, and hits like a truck. now if only they didn't nerf everything else to the ground with that spec.
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the frequency that deception sins/infiltrations shadows can pull off discharge/force breach will make them reliable tank busters. discharge/breach does internal damage, and hits like a truck. now if only they didn't nerf everything else to the ground with that spec.

 

can you summarize what has been done to the spec actually?

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Incoming: Tank classes actually wearing tank gear and being very tough to kill.

 

Also incoming: DPS specs favoring internal/elemental damage if possible.

 

Very nice change, only took them a year to do it.

 

massive buff to vanguard/pt as their sustaineted dps relies completly on elemental dmg.

the smash prblematic isnt touched either as it is a guaranteed crit wich bypasses the shieldmechanic entirely.

 

but overall a massiv boost for the 1vs1 ability of shadow/assasin tank-hybrids...

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Smash can be shielded (Force attack that does Kinetic damage).

Smash can only be shielded coming from a non-Rage/Focus spec. Already read a couple of posts like "finally Smash can be shielded, yay!" while it still can't be shielded at all, for obvious reasons.

 

 

BTT: I really like this change, was about time. This will most definitely bring more variety into WZs.

Edited by jupezz
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Smash can only be shielded coming from a non-Rage/Focus spec. Already read a couple of posts like "finally Smash can be shielded, yay!" while it still can't be shielded at all, for obvious reasons.

 

 

BTT: I really like this change, was about time. This will most definitely bring more variety into WZs.

 

For those who aren't aware: chance-to-crit pushes chance-to-shield off the table of possible results. So if an ability crits, it can't be shielded.

 

So 100% crit chance = 0% shield chance.

 

Therefore: Rage/Focus smash, with the auto-crit from leap = no shield.

 

...unless mechanics have changed further, or there's something else I'm not aware of.

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For those who aren't aware: chance-to-crit pushes chance-to-shield off the table of possible results. So if an ability crits, it can't be shielded.

 

So 100% crit chance = 0% shield chance.

 

Therefore: Rage/Focus smash, with the auto-crit from leap = no shield.

This.

I should have further clarified it in my post as it's true that many aren't aware of this. So thanks (;

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The segregation between specs will be much more greater. Specs like carnage, even if they ignore armor, they will have to deal with the shields, and since crit rating has received a nerf across the board, you will not be able to override shielding with your own crit chance that often.

 

Overall i see a more specialized, and important role for tank buster specs. Carnage will be weaker against tanks, Smash will be weaker against tanks, sorc DPS will be weaker against tanks, Concealment will be terrible against tanks (kinetic damage mostly).

 

Snipers don't really care about this nerf apart from lower crit chances which will make MM mitigated more often. The only spec that will have slighly worse performance is engineering because it will be no longer able to bypass shields with frag grenades, explosive probe and interrogation probe.

 

Lethality will now be LETHALITY, a spec in its own league, extremely valued for being capable to actually bring Tanks down. What other spec can do that? Probably Pyrotech and that's about it. Madness has crushing darkness doing kinetic damage. AP must see how the tree has been reworked. cannot judge. And Pyrotech has Railshots vulnerable to shielding and defense. In the end, Lethality may end up as the most reliably tank buster in the game.

 

So yeah boys and girls, time to protect your lethality snipers and support them if you want thse budies to help you with your tank problem.

 

Just an fyi,

 

Lethality operative will (continue to) outshine it's brother class DPS wise. It was already easy to cull twice in row pre 2.0. It will be easy to do 3 culls in a row when this goes live. It will be possible to push that to 4 culls in 5 globals in certain situations (like using stim boost for free TA, or 2 proc fatality with shiv).

 

-New talent "fatality" 60% change to make next cull cost no energy and re-grant TA. If the oper has 1 TA that means 2 culls in a row, if the oper has 2 TAs than means 3 culls in a row. If the oper wants to use stim boost add another cull on to those figures.

 

For PvE leth opers will be great 100% mobile dps in 2.0. in PvP they may be the first class to get nerfed if all of the changes go live.

 

Edit: it should go without saying but oper culls are instant and have no cooldown

Edited by CharterMonkKent
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the smash prblematic isnt touched either

 

They did nerf Smash, but buffed everything else... The crit multiplier was cut in half...

 

 

[Edit] And they took away one of the stacks and requires Shii-Cho active before Combat Focus/Enrage will generate stacks. Stasis no longer produces stacks either...

Edited by L-RANDLE
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This is the final nail in Telecinetics Sages coffin.

 

The only competitive build for DPS Sages is the Balance tree; with this changes Telecinetics will be more useless.

 

They did quite a bit for the tele/lightning trees. They buffed the damage of many attacks and added a double proc to turbulence. I was hitting the combat dummy for over 5k with thundering blast, near 7k with the double proc. I was hitting 4.5-6k with chain lightning. The new buffs to alacrity + the alacrity procs in the tree have you casting faster than the standard global cooldown (without stacking alacrity). The skill points that go into polarity shift are amazing, it adds auto-double procs to forked lightning.

 

Thundering blast followed by shock is huge damage if they both double proc.

 

Crit chance has been reduced quite a bit. If that goes live any auto-crit abilities are going to be important because they are the only guaranteed burst in pvp.

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This is the final nail in Telecinetics Sages coffin.

The only competitive build for DPS Sages is the Balance tree; with this changes Telecinetics will be more useless.

 

They did quite a bit for the tele/lightning trees. They buffed the damage of many attacks and added a double proc to turbulence. I was hitting the combat dummy ...

 

I find posts like Merras frustrating when reading the forums. He and so many others read something, think about it for 30 seconds and then make some ex cathedra proclaimation. As Charter points out, they've made big changes to all the trees so it will take some testing to understand the interaction of changes...

 

I know that free speech guarantees the right to say stupid things but it would be nice if a higher percentage of the population would keep an open mind until they've tested a set of changes (holistic view) in WZ for a few days.

Edited by funkiestj
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The segregation between specs will be much more greater. Specs like carnage, even if they ignore armor, they will have to deal with the shields, and since crit rating has received a nerf across the board, you will not be able to override shielding with your own crit chance that often.

 

Overall i see a more specialized, and important role for tank buster specs. Carnage will be weaker against tanks, Smash will be weaker against tanks, sorc DPS will be weaker against tanks, Concealment will be terrible against tanks (kinetic damage mostly).

 

Snipers don't really care about this nerf apart from lower crit chances which will make MM mitigated more often. The only spec that will have slighly worse performance is engineering because it will be no longer able to bypass shields with frag grenades, explosive probe and interrogation probe.

 

Lethality will now be LETHALITY, a spec in its own league, extremely valued for being capable to actually bring Tanks down. What other spec can do that? Probably Pyrotech and that's about it. Madness has crushing darkness doing kinetic damage. AP must see how the tree has been reworked. cannot judge. And Pyrotech has Railshots vulnerable to shielding and defense. In the end, Lethality may end up as the most reliably tank buster in the game.

 

So yeah boys and girls, time to protect your lethality snipers and support them if you want thse budies to help you with your tank problem.

 

 

Carnage/Combat will only be weaker in so far as Tanks actually gear for shield/abosrb. The only force ability that was part of a PS > Kill something rotation was Blade Storm, which Auto Crits in the spec (though if I'm reading the skill tree right atm that looks to have been massively nerfed depending on a 30% chance to get opportune strike off of an Ataru Form proc (which you'll just use Blade Rush to get the proc, but now must also get the crit proc).

 

For the rest of it though, MS and BR spam were already shieldable attacks so nothing has changed for them in that regard.

 

They did nerf Smash, but buffed everything else... The crit multiplier was cut in half...

 

 

[Edit] And they took away one of the stacks.

 

They nerfed the force crit multiplier by 15% but the talent now increases ALL critical damage by 15% so their dispatches, slashes, etc are now hitting harder.

 

In addition after using force sweep they have a 9% damage increase across the board for 18 seconds, which means after the first smash they'll basically have a constant 9% damage boost.

 

The big nerf was losing singularity stacks on stasis, but honestly as a sentinel I rarely needed to use stasis for stacks. Between gaining super fast centering and low cooldown on force exhaustion it was rarely necessary.

 

But the fact that they took away a stack is irrelevent since the stacks now deal 33.34% increased damage per stack so they've essentially allowed full damage to go out a second sooner

 

Focus is a lot more dangerous overall now in my opinion, at least for sentinels, but hey with the bubble stun nerf maybe combat will see a resurgence. It's a brand new day, hard to say.

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