From the patch notes (and skill description):

 

•Three stacks of Harnessed Shadows no longer cause the Shadow to be healed when Telekinetic Throw deals damage. Instead, the skill grants Shadow Protection, which increases damage reduction by 1%. Shadow Protection stacks up to four times and lasts 12 seconds.

 

It says it's increased damage reduction, not increased armor.

 

Also, the rotation has already been massively skewed by the incredibly short duration of the buff. I used to be able to run constantly and never use Project unless Particle Acceleration popped up, but that luxury has been denied to me (as relying on Particle Acceleration virtually guarantees that you won't have it up constantly). So I'm already having to completely shift how I've played my class, and I'm still noticeably squishier than I was pre-patch.

 

Oh, and it being "resisted" does matter, since if either the first or last tick of the buff isn't applied, it will reset before the next one pops up.

 

Also, part of where I noticed this being a nerf was in communication from my healers after the patch. So my healers aren't of the opinion that I've gotten a "100% buff".

 

I loathe the change to the rotation. I don't mind the change to the self-heals, as long as we're kept in balance to other tanks (which I haven't really noticed, my Vanguard still seems to have more survivability than I do), but I utterly loathe the change from the simple elegance of the old rotation. I thought it flowed more smoothly and kept the fights more fun. The new shift to "keep up Shadow Protection at all costs or you will die" massively skews the rotation and locks down how we can behave a lot more, which in turn makes the class a lot less fun to play.

When you look at your character sheet you can clearly see that it increases your armor/damage reduction by 4%. Armor and Damage Reduction is in that case the same. Most people don't understand that a 1% increase in damage reduction is far more valuable then 1% damage reduction (from some defensive cooldown or so). One of them is applying a new mitigation scalar, the other one increases a mitgiation scalar.

Simple example: If you armor is increased from 50% to 80% you are getting 20% damage instead of 50%.

That means the damage you now get is reduced by 60%.

Dark Protecion is about a 7% damage reduction, together with the 3,5% armor buff you will get about 12% reduced damage altogether.

When you were not casting Force Lighting every 12 seconds before you were simply not having your self healing up before aswell. Now you have a visible indicator for that.

Previously you should have casted Force Lightning every 9 seconds (and some tanks did actually do that) to get the most out of self healing.

Resisting doesn't matter as you can cast Force Lighting faster, before the buff actually runs out.

When you were not casting Force Lighting every 12 seconds before you were simply not having your self healing up before aswell. Now you have a visible indicator for that.

 

Previously you should have casted Force Lightning every 9 seconds (and some tanks did actually do that) to get the most out of self healing.

 

Resisting doesn't matter as you can cast Force Lighting faster, before the buff actually runs out.

Previously, it didn't cripple you to not have self-heals up constantly. You healed the same amount whether you cast it immediately, or waited two seconds for the foe to use another knockback (since a knockback would still interrupt you). Now, however, if you wait, you lose the buff, and have to build it back up. Until you reach four stacks (which, again, means that you can't be resisted or miss), you are weaker. This means that you can't afford to wait, and have to cast the ability, even when you know you're just going to get stunned and interrupted again. You have to stick to the extremely rigid rotation, or lose your buff.

Previously, it didn't cripple you to not have self-heals up constantly. You healed the same amount whether you cast it immediately, or waited two seconds for the foe to use another knockback (since a knockback would still interrupt you). Now, however, if you wait, you lose the buff, and have to build it back up. Until you reach four stacks (which, again, means that you can't be resisted or miss), you are weaker. This means that you can't afford to wait, and have to cast the ability, even when you know you're just going to get stunned and interrupted again. You have to stick to the extremely rigid rotation, or lose your buff.

No it crippled you because you just had Force Lightning every 14 seconds for example instead of every 12 seconds.

That means less Force Lightnings per second which means less self healing. Waiting for Force Lightning was always a bad idea. Force Lightning did way too much damage to not cast it. Especially when you were at 100% health. Previously your Force Lightning was worthless (survivability wise), now you have additional protection for the next seconds.

That is the same as if you would have Dark Protection downtime. Less Force Lightnings per second mean less armor ...

It's the same for self healing. Until you reach ticks of Force Lightning you had nothing from self-healing.

Previously the Rotation was way more tight, but no one was recognizing that. I am quite sure, if you wouldn't be able to see the Dark Protection buff, no one would complain about this ability at all.

You had to self heal yourself every 9 seconds and channel for a full 3 seconds to get the full value out of self healing. Now you have to get a single tick of Force Lighting up every 12 seconds for the optimal value. After the first channel you don't need to channel Force Lightning anymore. That's a clear buff for assassins.

And you believe them because ? before 1.3 shadow was at best during pvp, A Lot pvp cry about shadow tank, they could easily take 2 person and won.

Pve ? mehh, they're nothing better than others.

Of course I do believe them.

If smash affected PvE they would have fixed it long ago.

No it crippled you because you just had Force Lightning every 14 seconds for example instead of every 12 seconds.

That means less Force Lightnings per second which means less self healing. Waiting for Force Lightning was always a bad idea. Force Lightning did way too much damage to not cast it. Especially when you were at 100% health. Previously your Force Lightning was worthless (survivability wise), now you have additional protection for the next seconds.

 

That is the same as if you would have Dark Protection downtime. Less Force Lightnings per second mean less armor ...

 

It's the same for self healing. Until you reach ticks of Force Lightning you had nothing from self-healing.

 

Previously the Rotation was way more tight, but no one was recognizing that. I am quite sure, if you wouldn't be able to see the Dark Protection buff, no one would complain about this ability at all.

 

You had to self heal yourself every 9 seconds and channel for a full 3 seconds to get the full value out of self healing. Now you have to get a single tick of Force Lighting up every 12 seconds for the optimal value. After the first channel you don't need to channel Force Lightning anymore. That's a clear buff for assassins.

You're right, that's what you needed to do to get the "full value" of it. Now, however, you need to do that to get any value out of it. Delaying Telekinetic Throw may not have been the "ideal" way to play (though, again, it beat casting it and getting interrupted immediately), but it was a definite and clear option. It made the rotation more fluid, and gave you some actual options with how you approached the situation. Now, you have to hit a completely fixed rotation of Project, Slow Time, Project, Telekinetic Throw. Over and over and over with no variation what so ever. It has made the class far less fun to play, and far more rigid (and can be hurt by even the slightest bit of lag or player delay after the third rotation, when the cooldowns begin interfering with each other).

Yes, there used to be an "optimal" rotation, but it wasn't the only viable one, and now it is. Delaying Force Lightning, or delaying Project until Particle Acceleration triggered was completely viable and did not cut into your survivability much at all. It shifted up the rotation, kept you more engaged, and let you react to the situation at hand (such as, if you're facing an opponent like the Gree Pillar boss, who uses so many stuns and knockbacks that it is basically impossible to keep a fixed rotation of Telekinetic Throws). Now, I feel that there's no point to me even being there. I might as well just have a fixed time rotation programmed in, and let the game play itself.

The "huge buff" is useless if we can't keep it up, and without either the buff or the self healing, we're woefully weak compared to the other tanks.

You're right, that's what you needed to do to get the "full value" of it. Now, however, you need to do that to get any value out of it. Delaying Telekinetic Throw may not have been the "ideal" way to play (though, again, it beat casting it and getting interrupted immediately), but it was a definite and clear option. It made the rotation more fluid, and gave you some actual options with how you approached the situation. Now, you have to hit a completely fixed rotation of Project, Slow Time, Project, Telekinetic Throw. Over and over and over with no variation what so ever. It has made the class far less fun to play, and far more rigid (and can be hurt by even the slightest bit of lag or player delay after the third rotation, when the cooldowns begin interfering with each other).

 

Yes, there used to be an "optimal" rotation, but it wasn't the only viable one, and now it is. Delaying Force Lightning, or delaying Project until Particle Acceleration triggered was completely viable and did not cut into your survivability much at all. It shifted up the rotation, kept you more engaged, and let you react to the situation at hand (such as, if you're facing an opponent like the Gree Pillar boss, who uses so many stuns and knockbacks that it is basically impossible to keep a fixed rotation of Telekinetic Throws). Now, I feel that there's no point to me even being there. I might as well just have a fixed time rotation programmed in, and let the game play itself.

 

The "huge buff" is useless if we can't keep it up, and without either the buff or the self healing, we're woefully weak compared to the other tanks.

Basically no.

It was not a option to delay it. You were simply getting less self heals over time.

Excactly the same as if you delay your Force Lightning now. You are simply getting less damage reduction over time.

You never had the option to delay your Rotation in any way before. This fixed Rotation exists since day 1 of this game. Just almost no one was really caring about that. KBN is a very good Counter example. He was able to get a Force Lightning on Nefra every 9 seconds after another one on average. I admit that i personally could've done slighlty better before 2.5.

Most people didn't care how often they used Force Lightning before although it was strictly inferior before, but now they have a visible indicator...

If it was impossible to use Force Lighting before it was also impossible to get any self healing before. It did cut a lot into our surviveability if we were not able to self heal constantly.

The self healing is also useless if we don't use it.

A delay of one second on the self heals is precisely that, it delays your self-heals for one second.

A delay of one second on the buff actually delays your extra damage protection by four seconds, as you have to build the buff back up over the course of the three second duration of Telekinetic Throw.

Thus, it provides a much harsher penalty for missing the window than the self-heals did, and therefore encourages the fixed rotation much more.

Thus, it provides a much harsher penalty for missing the window than the self-heals did, and therefore encourages the fixed rotation much more.

Depends on how hard (or even if) you're hit during those four seconds. I can't deny that the new mechanic imposes a less gradient penalty on rotation delay, since there is a sharp cutoff after which all benefits are lost. However, the magnitude of that penalty still depends on the boss and where you are in its rotation. Translation: losing your stacks is not the end of the world.

With that said, don't lose your stacks! They're totally maintainable and they do make a noticeable difference. I was healing a pair of shadow tanks the other day in a Brontes HM 8 man run. One of them massively out-geared the other (nearly full 78s), but he was extremely hard to heal relative to his under-geared cotank. A bit of bar staring quickly revealed that he almost never had any stacks at all.

A delay of one second on the self heals is precisely that, it delays your self-heals for one second.

 

A delay of one second on the buff actually delays your extra damage protection by four seconds, as you have to build the buff back up over the course of the three second duration of Telekinetic Throw.

 

Thus, it provides a much harsher penalty for missing the window than the self-heals did, and therefore encourages the fixed rotation much more.

The conclusion is not true. A delay of 1 second excactly 15 seconds after you did start casting your previous Force Lightning will result in that 15% less value out of a 15 second Force Lightning (it's 15% less value and not 4/15 cause you build 1-4 stacks). You compare it to one excact Point in the Rotation, but you have to see the whole spectrum of possibilites.

For example a delay of 1 second excactly 14 seconds after you did start casting your previous Force Lightning result in 0% less value.

Basically the moment you lose 0,1 seconds in your global Rotation self heal gets less value. Without any energize procs you can cast a Force Lightning every 9 seconds, with typical energize procs you can reduce that by 2 gcd to 6 seconds (49% Chance) or by 1gcd (49% out of the 49%) to 7,5 seconds.

So if you count all that together... basically self heal gets already a 4,5 seconds delay while your Dark Protection still does have a 0 second delay.

Then comes the ramp-up-time and after that there comes the point were you get less and less self-heals/protection (which makes the ramp-up-time more and more unimportant) and the 5-6% additional damage reduction from the armor buffs with 2.5 are the only thing that matters.

Perhaps you should "look at the whole spectrum of possibilities". There's the Global Cooldown, which means that if you use another ability too close to Telekinetic Throw, you won't be able to throw up TK Throw immediately (unless you do nothing except the Project/Slow Time/Project/TK Throw rotation, and ignore every other ability you have). There's reaction times and server delays, which both add additional delays to the timing (reaction time is incredibly important, because it absolutely determines when you can use your next ability. If you cast a little early with self-heals, you lost a single tick. If you cast a little early with the buff, you lose a quarter of the buff and a lot of your timer towards when it expires). There's being stunned or knocked back (which happens a ton in PVE now), and either of which will delay a Project or Slow Time, ruining the rotation.

The new rotation IS more demanding, and far more fixed than the old one, and has a much harsher penalty for even a moment's delay. With everything going on in combat, it is not easy to keep up continuously, and it forces you to commit to a mind-numbingly boring rotation. The self-heals were a lot more forgiving about when you got them up, simply because they provided the exact same benefit no matter when you trigger them. Whereas the buff's benefits drop off significantly if you can't keep it up consistently.

Perhaps you should "look at the whole spectrum of possibilities". There's the Global Cooldown, which means that if you use another ability too close to Telekinetic Throw, you won't be able to throw up TK Throw immediately (unless you do nothing except the Project/Slow Time/Project/TK Throw rotation, and ignore every other ability you have). There's reaction times and server delays, which both add additional delays to the timing (reaction time is incredibly important, because it absolutely determines when you can use your next ability. If you cast a little early with self-heals, you lost a single tick. If you cast a little early with the buff, you lose a quarter of the buff and a lot of your timer towards when it expires). There's being stunned or knocked back (which happens a ton in PVE now), and either of which will delay a Project or Slow Time, ruining the rotation.

 

The new rotation IS more demanding, and far more fixed than the old one, and has a much harsher penalty for even a moment's delay. With everything going on in combat, it is not easy to keep up continuously, and it forces you to commit to a mind-numbingly boring rotation. The self-heals were a lot more forgiving about when you got them up, simply because they provided the exact same benefit no matter when you trigger them. Whereas the buff's benefits drop off significantly if you can't keep it up consistently.

I don't know why you quote that word, cause this whole post has nothing to do with what i wrote. The whole spectrum of possibilites goes from 6 seconds to early refreshed to 10000.... .seconds too late refreshed.

When there are stuns/knockbacks you lost a lot more with self healing because you needed to get off all 4 ticks. Nowadays you just have to refresh stacks you don't need to channel any Force Lightning anymore

Also Dark Protection provides the excact same benefit (a 12 second 1,75% damage reduction per tick) whenever you apply a tick as does self heal.

They removed a cool unique thing that a lot of people loved and was the reason they rolled the class for.... this was not needed and all it did was piss their subscribers off, especially the 95% that don`t visit the forum and did not care about 4% more mitigation, they only wanted their class to be unique and loved the self healing for what it did: make it feel like an unique tank, with different mechanics... not only in operations but in normal PVE.

And for what? To only give us half the buffs they initially promised...

I know of no other MMO`s where a UNIQUE and LOVED class mechanic was removed for some 5% min-maxing.

Something could have been worked out to keep the self healing while also doing these changes, but i guess they decided to take the easy way out, again.

I came back after 1 year and some hoping to see they changed and now care about what their customers want(this is the impression i got from their e-mails). I was a bit surprised to see them doing this, and if they keep it up the people that came back will surely leave when all the new MMO`s come out, some might even leave just because they really hate the changes/what is being done with a class. And odds are they will never come back as they were already fooled once.

So please stop changing the UNIQUE things every class has, making them all the same will make it easier to balance, but nobody wants to play that game.

I guess my issue is the fact that I don't want all the tanking trees to end up streamlined. Sure we get buffs, but that is very similar to the other tanks. Each class should be relatively unique in ability, rather than role.

But the other tanks don't have to get three stacks and a channel in to get the most out of their DEF. My proof is I play the class a lot in pvp I can take a good amount of damage for a bit then I get widdled down and eventually chunked down as compared to hanging in a fight till the end with self heals . You act as if you are the only one that plays this class . You have your experience and I have mine . Where the frustration comes in, is you are telling some one like me that we are basically lying or completely ignoring the experience we have in this game and yours is the only valid one. All they need to do is give us a second Tank stance that gives self heals instead of the dr buff it's brilliant no trees are affected and the player gets to have the choice DR lovers are happy self heals lovers are happy if their is any argument to this fix at all it's obvious you have a separate agenda or just want to be passive aggressive for some strange reason. I do not care about pve only pvp and wpvp . Self heals were here first (you wouldn't thinks so the way some people act) so there is no reason my Idea would not work and be emplimented easily it makes everyone happy in the end. But I have a feeling there are other agendas at play. If I didn't know this was a game forum I would think I am dealing with a bunch of politicians just for the fact some of you act as if you know what's better for us than we do and we should just agree because you say so. (shady) that would be fine if this was a class I had never played before. Sorry Jad I agree with you this was more for the nay sayers.

Second Tank stance that gives us back our self heals removes DR buff problem fixed everyone happy!

other tank stance (form) gives DR instead of self heals problem fixed everyone happy!

They both work Identically so what would the issue be ?

Second Tank stance that gives us back our self heals removes DR buff problem fixed everyone happy!

other tank stance (form) gives DR instead of self heals problem fixed everyone happy!

 

They both work Identically so what would the issue be ?

Balance. That's where the issue is.

Self-heals pose problems even above and beyond the spikiness issue. In fact, the most often cited issue with self-heals is not the spike issue but the problems with scaling. At low damage levels, self-heals are enormously more powerful than straight DR. This is why most 1v1 situations, dailies and some low-damage bosses have seemed harder on shadows after the DR change. We are quite literally worse in those situations than we used to be, because we used to be overpowered! Unfortunately, at high damage levels, self-heals lack of scaling becomes a bane rather than a boon, resulting in less survivability than straight DR.

Getting rid of self-heals allows bioware to balance the tanks in terms of relative survivability much more tightly than before, simply because they no longer have a tank where almost a quarter of their mitigation is radically underpowered on some content and overpowered on others. It wasn't just an "easy way out" or a bid to "appease the NiM raiding crowd", as is often claimed. As a change, it makes tremendous sense, and there's really no getting away from that.

The flaw in your suggestion lies in the assumption that the self-healing and the DR provided the same benefits, but in different ways. They didn't. They couldn't. And for those reasons, we can't just have a toggle which allows us to swap between the two modes of operation. I miss the self heals too on a subjective level, but there is simply no way that they can come back.

Balance. That's where the issue is.

 

Self-heals pose problems even above and beyond the spikiness issue. In fact, the most often cited issue with self-heals is not the spike issue but the problems with scaling. At low damage levels, self-heals are enormously more powerful than straight DR. This is why most 1v1 situations, dailies and some low-damage bosses have seemed harder on shadows after the DR change. We are quite literally worse in those situations than we used to be, because we used to be overpowered! Unfortunately, at high damage levels, self-heals lack of scaling becomes a bane rather than a boon, resulting in less survivability than straight DR.

 

Getting rid of self-heals allows bioware to balance the tanks in terms of relative survivability much more tightly than before, simply because they no longer have a tank where almost a quarter of their mitigation is radically underpowered on some content and overpowered on others. It wasn't just an "easy way out" or a bid to "appease the NiM raiding crowd", as is often claimed. As a change, it makes tremendous sense, and there's really no getting away from that.

 

The flaw in your suggestion lies in the assumption that the self-healing and the DR provided the same benefits, but in different ways. They didn't. They couldn't. And for those reasons, we can't just have a toggle which allows us to swap between the two modes of operation. I miss the self heals too on a subjective level, but there is simply no way that they can come back.

Um.

KBN.

That's kind of our major gripe?

Unique mechanic? Gutted?

The thing that made us able to stand where others fell? Sure, we fell where others stood too, but _still_. The majority of the gripes seems to be that we are now samey and boring, or at least that's what it boils down to.

It very much _was_ the easy way out.

The unique and useless advocates haven't cleared enough content to realize how bad those self heals were when it really mattered. Not everyone duels all day so those self heals actually make a difference. I don't run Athiss HM nor EV to be a superstar. Before 2.0, I did not come on the forums with logs of the sort 'Raptus has defeated Irisa with Driving thurst 34000 - 37000' because I did dailies on Ilum with Nadia Grell. In addition, black hole mobs, with or without Tharan Cedrax, would not kill me in 3 GCDs with an ability called 'Power Punch'.

Those who excel at this game know what I am talking about and how gimped shadows were with these ridiculous self heals. Good riddance they removed them because the stereotype that Shadows are a class with a tanking tree and not a class that can tank was getting out of hand. I don't give a poodle's bum about mean mitigation as the game has shifted away from this concept 1 year ago. I care about SPIKE damage and in 2.5 something happened : people went back to the shadow tank en masse. They did so not because it lost its 'uniqueness' but because it became viable in content some of us try to clear 4 times a week. Post 2.5 shadows have lost their 'uniqueness' but have gained a new fan group where low skill healers can join progression and actually clear content.

I am best in slot 78 with HP a bit shy over 43400. My dps output as a tank is often 1450 and micro managing my cool downs allows me to SURVIVE when these are not available compared to pre 2.5 where I was unique and dead at Raptus. Keep asking for self heals, I hope they never come back unless they scale as they should.

Regarding PVP, the developers have done an excellent job to push away capable players like me. I used to do 50-70 wz per day as a shadow tank (900k dmg and 700k protection, patch 1.2, 1.3) and clearly stopped when a powertech would melt me in RWZ in 4gcds in full tank gear/tank spec protecting my healer. The remaining shadow tanks who excel in pvp are not even playing full tanking but some weird hybrids which has yet to receive the nerf bat from BW. Claiming that self heals were better because you can do dailies and were winning duels in PVP is not good enough for me to join your band wagon. When you got something more tangible that corroborates with my logs, then I am open to bringing self heals back.

The unique and useless advocates haven't cleared enough content to realize how bad those self heals were when it really mattered. Not everyone duels all day so those self heals actually make a difference. I don't run Athiss HM nor EV to be a superstar. Before 2.0, I did not come on the forums with logs of the sort 'Raptus has defeated Irisa with Driving thurst 34000 - 37000' because I did dailies on Ilum with Nadia Grell. In addition, black hole mobs, with or without Tharan Cedrax, would not kill me in 3 GCDs with an ability called 'Power Punch'.

 

 

Those who excel at this game know what I am talking about and how gimped shadows were with these ridiculous self heals. Good riddance they removed them because the stereotype that Shadows are a class with a tanking tree and not a class that can tank was getting out of hand. I don't give a poodle's bum about mean mitigation as the game has shifted away from this concept 1 year ago. I care about SPIKE damage and in 2.5 something happened : people went back to the shadow tank en masse. They did so not because it lost its 'uniqueness' but because it became viable in content some of us try to clear 4 times a week. Post 2.5 shadows have lost their 'uniqueness' but have gained a new fan group where low skill healers can join progression and actually clear content.

 

 

 

I am best in slot 78 with HP a bit shy over 43400. My dps output as a tank is often 1450 and micro managing my cool downs allows me to SURVIVE when these are not available compared to pre 2.5 where I was unique and dead at Raptus. Keep asking for self heals, I hope they never come back unless they scale as they should.

 

 

Regarding PVP, the developers have done an excellent job to push away capable players like me. I used to do 50-70 wz per day as a shadow tank (900k dmg and 700k protection, patch 1.2, 1.3) and clearly stopped when a powertech would melt me in RWZ in 4gcds in full tank gear/tank spec protecting my healer. The remaining shadow tanks who excel in pvp are not even playing full tanking but some weird hybrids which has yet to receive the nerf bat from BW. Claiming that self heals were better because you can do dailies and were winning duels in PVP is not good enough for me to join your band wagon. When you got something more tangible that corroborates with my logs, then I am open to bringing self heals back.

Our self heals used to be great, then they were ok. Now we have none, and in exchange we got a minimal amount of DR that provides no survivability in pvp. These changes were made to appease a very small minority of raiders, which I have no interest in whatsoever. Shadow/assassin tanks definitely took a hit in pvp with this change, in every facet of game play outside of endgame raiding. As someone else pointed out, a core mechanic was changed to give the min/maxers a feel good bump.

Our self heals used to be great, then they were ok. Now we have none, and in exchange we got a minimal amount of DR that provides no survivability in pvp. These changes were made to appease a very small minority of raiders, which I have no interest in whatsoever. Shadow/assassin tanks definitely took a hit in pvp with this change, in every facet of game play outside of endgame raiding. As someone else pointed out, a core mechanic was changed to give the min/maxers a feel good bump.

12% Damage Reduction = minimal ? I don't think so.

Just wondering THoK-Zeus, where are you getting 12% damage reduction? I have a 55 Shadow tank main and was unsure in the beginning of how I felt about the changes of 2.5. I studied the new skill tree and even observed my defensive stats while fighting. I have only ever gotten a 4% DR increase when I build 4 stacks of Shadow Protection. With this being said, I liked the self heals and feel that they should return, but can't accurately say that they are better than SP because I increased my armor significantly after the patch.

4%+3,5% DR increase = 12% more Damagereduction

Example: increase your armor from 80% to 90%, now you would get 10% damage instead of 20%, that is 50% Damagereduction

4%+3,5% DR increase = 12% more Damagereduction

 

Example: increase your armor from 80% to 90%, now you would get 10% damage instead of 20%, that is 50% Damagereduction

So you're talking about the passive DR increase as a result of Combat Technique's increased armor rating in addition to the 4% added by SP?

Our self heals used to be great, then they were ok. Now we have none, and in exchange we got a minimal amount of DR that provides no survivability in pvp. These changes were made to appease a very small minority of raiders, which I have no interest in whatsoever. Shadow/assassin tanks definitely took a hit in pvp with this change, in every facet of game play outside of endgame raiding. As someone else pointed out, a core mechanic was changed to give the min/maxers a feel good bump.

First of all, it was not a feel good bump. The class was almost unplayable in some situations, full stop. Second of all, even if you're not using telekinetic throw AT ALL, the changes are still a net positive in most PvP situations because the passive damage reduction provides superior mitigation to the passive heal. It's a buff in PvP overall. I don't know how many ways to say that.

Finally, I'll say this. If you are complaining because the self-heals used to function differently in a way that was beneficial, STOP. You are essentially saying that you miss when your class was overpowered. Sure, that's great. We all miss when our class is overpowered. That doesn't mean those days can or should come back. Self-heals were massively overpowered in some situations, sort of balanced in a small minority of content, and very underpowered in other content. Some content showed these weaknesses to the extent that the class was barely playable and required extreme skill, precision, and occasionally just good luck. If you only remember the upside, that means that you never saw the content where self heals were underpowered. Ok, that's fair and I won't judge you for that, but what you're doing then is nothing short of whining that an overpowered mechanic was nerfed, because that's what self-heals were in such situations: overpowered. They provided an advantage that went above and beyond what any other tank could match.

You keep trying to cast this whole situation in the light of a few "min-maxers" who just needed to "feel good" and thus ruined the class's "only" unique mechanic for everyone. Nothing about that casting is true. It wasn't just the min-maxers complaining. A huge number of top tier raid groups were also very upset about the situation, and you still apparently haven't read the threads I pointed out with people complaining about shadow spikiness in PvP. We didn't just need to feel good, we wanted to play our class and be balanced with respect to the other tanks. That's not feeling good, that's just asking for fair treatment. And finally, the class is still plenty unique, and it still *feels* plenty unique. Just because you don't see green numbers anymore doesn't mean you're playing a guardian.

My biggest problem with the patch is that, in content I've participated in, spike damage has hit me worse since the patch than before. There are too many circumstances in PVE which prevent me from keeping the buff up consistently (and there would be far, far more in PVP, if I ever even thought about PVPing).

For example, I've been consistently running the Gree Pylons in order to obtain my Grey Secant components. The Pylon boss regularly spams Stuns, Knockbacks, and a heavy damaging ability. Keeping 4 stacks up throughout the entire fight is nearly impossible. The knockback will push me beyond the range of both Project and Slow Time, and getting back in range blows cooldown time that I can't afford to lose. Getting stunned has the same effect. I lose the buff consistently, and I find that I am reapplying it, from scratch, at least twice in every fight.

And without the buff, I get hit way, way harder by attacks. During that brief window before I can build it up to full, if I get hit by a heavy damage ability, I suffer a lot. My health suddenly spikes far lower than it was while I had the buff, and my healers have to suddenly rush to keep me up. And this repeats in other situations. The bosses for the Heroic on Oricon are the same way. The blaster toting bosses use knockbacks and stuns extremely commonly, and as a result, my buff drops and I receive far more damage. The lightsaber bosses, who don't use such abilities, have become significantly easier. But the result of this situation is that I'm taking far worse spike damage than I did even before the change.

I can't even imagine trying to keep the buff up consistently in PVP. It wouldn't even come close to being viable, stuns and snares run rampant in that play style.

Spike damage is a problem because it forces healers to react quickly and adjust heals to account for a sudden increase in the damage you are taking. Losing the buff makes you take far more spike damage, because your damage protection is less consistent, even if you do have more mitigation overall.

As for the "self heals are a problem because they don't properly scale", this is a complete non-issue to any game designer who actually bothers to think about the problem.

Solution: At 3 stacks, Harnessed Shadows now heals you based on a percentage of the enemy's health, rather than healing you for a percentage of yours.

Ta da. It now properly scales with enemy difficulty. It gives minimal returns on the situations where we were overpowered before, and considerably more significant heals in Operations, when fighting much more powerful foes.

 

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Solution: At 3 stacks, Harnessed Shadows now heals you based on a percentage of the enemy's health, rather than healing you for a percentage of yours.

 

Ta da. It now properly scales with enemy difficulty. It gives minimal returns on the situations where we were overpowered before, and considerably more significant heals in Operations, when fighting much more powerful foes.

You just broke balance between multi-boss fights and single-boss fights. In addition to that, how do you scale the healing when there are adds in the fight and you are tanking them ? Or when tanking just the boss? Or both adds and the boss ? It is based on aggro ? Or based on who you are attacking ?

Every one of them presents a problem, they would have to code in every possible contingency and permutation, we are talking about every NPC in the game.

I am just trying to show you the problems with that suggestion.

All of these can probably be solved, but you are providing a very complicated solution instead of a very simple one. Which one is probably more difficult to balance in your opinion, which one is more probably prone to bugging ?