Whilst the tactical and set bonus changes to Sorc/Sage heal are very welcome, feels like the base heal spec changes are classic overcompensating. Spec isn't underperforming that much is it? In Pvp at least.

Sorc healer is unplayable in group ranked at the moment because it's so weak compared to merc and operative. Hopefully the dev team sees that the raw hps output of sorc is too low right now and raise it.

 

[*]The Empowered Restorer set bonus has been redesigned:

• 4 piece - Static Barrier / Force Armor leaves a heal over time on the target for 12 seconds after being applied
  
• 6 piece - Static Barrier / Force Armor immediately heals the target when applied
  

 

[*]The Revitalized Mystic set bonus has been rebalanced:

• 4 piece - Refreshing Resurgence / Rejuvenate on a target refunds 5 Force
  
• 6 piece - Healing a target with another healing ability while your Resurgence / Rejuvenate is active on them has a 15% chance to cause your Resurgence / Rejuvenate to provide an additional, unscheduled tick of healing
  

 

[*]Tactical Item: Metaphysical Mender - now each charge of Empowered reduces the Force Volt Rush consumes by 30%, and the healing component is a smart heal with a 20-meter range from the target with roughly 56% more healing

 

 

[*]Tactical Item: One for All has been redesigned - now gives Roaming Mend / Wandering Mend one extra healing charge

 

[*]Tactical Item: All for One has been redesigned - now Revivification's / Salvation's pool concludes with a burst of dark / light Force energy, healing up to 8 allies within it

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

Now we have 3 usefull tacticals instead of one. I think Metaphysical Mender will be my favourite in Flashpoints

Empowered Restore Set seems to be the best healer set now (depending on the numbers). I will miss the Mystic Set Bonus though.

There so many changes (buffs and nerfs) but overall it seems good.

Can´t wait to resub and go to the PTS.

OMG thank you so very much for the changes. Sorc/Sage healing is my class, I am happy to see buffs to the spec. Here is why:

A good dps player in pvp are achieving 8k plus dps, this happens in nearly all pvp matches it is not an isolated occurrence, I also see regularly over 12k dps for some classes again this happens a lot. While healers are getting between 8k and 12k hps, sometimes more granted. For me onslaught and healing in pvp feels terrible, relatively speaking, I am a healing less and dying more often than ever before because of energy pool/ resource management, and the stupid amount of stuns there are now. I miss the good ole days where I could keep up over four team mates and myself while not being energy starved in under 10s. As it stands I can barely manage keeping up myself vs two good dps, it is a nightmare. Energy starvation is to blame, not so much the amount healed by x ability. I am playing on my healers less and less because it is no longer fun, even though I want to main a healer I just can't cause of how frustrating it is. Even when I am guarded, team mates die like flies vs a pre-made.

Once again, great changes, im off to log my sage!

Sorc healer is unplayable in group ranked at the moment because it's so weak compared to merc and operative. Hopefully the dev team sees that the raw hps output of sorc is too low right now and raise it.

I have not sorc healed for that exact reason. But as an expierenced ranked player, and a frequent sorc healer in 5.0 I can say, unless there are some significant number increases in the background it will still not be enough.

Lots of promising changes for sorc heals.

But dang, assuming it won't be added back: RIP 1.5 second cooldown reduction on Innervate/Healing Trance. You served us well.

DECEPTION gonna be filthy now in PVE as well thx. - clear winner here

Madness change looks fine, at least what you are doing in terms of keeping its sustain while nerfing the gathering storm set.

Lightning might not be compensated enough for the nerf to the set though - sort of concerning there given the big buff Deception is getting as pointed above.

Please give us 5SEC after hitting force speed on sorc sage to get buff on polarity shift - otherwise it is a bit unfounded and ridiculous - maybe the current 10 sec leeway is too long, but activating it during that 1.5sec will be a pita and mess up some timings in the dps rotation. I don't understand why we have to be under affects of force speed to trigger the extended polarity shift.

Don't play healer in a long time now, but looks like a generous buff there.

Sin DPS getting nerfed to the ground again, just like in every expac, nice.

Deception = Burst traded against, at best, less mediocre sustain than now.

• In PVP: Going from op in arenas to useless. You are not tanky enough for your sustain to be of any use. PT AP perma burst lolololololololol
  
• In PVE: It was ok, it will come back to utterly useless as the increase of sustain DPS will not make it better than any other melee DPS.
  

Hatred = Way too weak over 30%, the dot spread on Severing Slash is a joke, just like the ability itself. Still sooooooooo squishy, both in PVE and PVP. it's good in AOE. Not so much anymore in 6.X compared to the rest. The self heals are anecdotic at best

To sum up you just make it the worst melee DPS both in PVE and in PVP. In a raid any other melee is better. It doesn't reflect damage or rebounder like PT, it doesn't have a raid buff like Operative or Mara, it doesn't have a raid wide speed boost/snare cleanse like Mara again and even a Jugg does more dps.

So most of these classes, except Jugg is much more useful to a raid and dish out way much more DPS than Sin.

In late 5.X you said regarding DPS output you wanted : Melee DOT > Melee Burst > Range DOT > Range Burst.

Even Burst Sorc and DOT Sniper hit harder than a Sin DPS.

As for the Maul spam in PVP, there is a solution without changing the set bonus.; just make Maul only usable from behind again and only usable under duplicity buff. I think the spec would remain bursty as it's intended to be without being OP like it is now, and it wouldn't kill the spec in PVE.

Another nerf after the loss of Phase Walk, the loss of 30% damage reduction while stunned, DPS nerf in 5.X, Phantom Stride not out of GCD anymore, a new nerf now, whereas it has never been top tier DPS in PVE , just for a few months in PVP in this expac with only one spec... Why do you hate this class so much as DPS ?

Hello everyone!

 

 

 

4 piece: The cooldown of Recklessness / Force Potency is reduced by 15 seconds. Whenever you activate Recklessness / Force Potency you gain Reckless Critical, making your next Maul / Shadow Strike or Leeching Strike / Serenity Strike critically hit

 

Let us know what your thoughts! Please tell us if you think certain changes make a class overpowered or underpowered. Throughout the next week or so, a thread for Troopers/Bounty Hunters will be created with their respective changes too.

 

Hate the change. Basically no point in playing assassin anymore, and its not like we were top dps to begin with. Huge hit to dps. I should get something in return, i.e. high damage, for wearing tissue paper armor. Thanks for making us a joke. Why do assassins keep getting screwed with their pants on? its really annoying.

Hate the change. Basically no point in playing assassin anymore, and its not like we were top dps to begin with. Huge hit to dps. I should get something in return, i.e. high damage, for wearing tissue paper armor. Thanks for making us a joke. Why do assassins keep getting screwed with their pants on? its really annoying.

We keep getting nerfed even though we're never top tier DPS, go figure

so I ran some quick parses on sorc

changes on sorc will make each of those sorc specs parse about 22k on average +/- 500 on crit fyi, sure if you get lucky on crit you maybe you hit 23k on like 1/1000 parses on 6.5mil; yeah and force speed to alacrity change is dumb and clunky, basically unduly penalized to make a mechanic more clunky

this changes don't really affect madness it is the same, lightning gets a noticeable nerf to damage.

[iNC Wall of Text warning]

Can we at least get the spelling of the 6 piece on Gathering Storm through a spell check please? [EDIT: Spellcheck has been run, thank you!]

On a more serious note, I'm very concerned about these changes. I'm downloading the PTS now to do some personal testing, but as a lightning sorc, I'm fearful that the 50% nerf to the PS proc will be more harm than good. Granted, for the last, Lord knows however long, we've done a lot more with a lot less, but 6.0 finally put sorc dps on the map as a solid choice for DPS. I'm not going to continue further, as I haven't tested it for myself, but I'm concerned that this will drop sorcs back into the middle tier of "Why bring a sorc when you can bring xx".

Which leads into my second point of concern: Sorc/Sage healers. I've had the privilege to speak privately to some of the best sorc healers in the game and there is a general consensus that these changes, while in a decent direction, have some serious issues.

I'm going to quote something sent to me in a conversation by one of those sorc healers, who now mains a merc:

Since the inception of Sorc healer, they've always been the direct middle ground. Operatives could raid heal with some minor burst here and there, mercs could burst heal with some minor raid heals here and there. Sorcs could do both things very well but not as good. And that was perfectly okay, that was a niche that really needed filling as it allowed you be to flexible depending upon the skill level of the group and the way the fight was designed.

 

As of this latest major game update, mercs are the kings of burst and have exceptionally great raid healing between prog scan, hot gas, and kolto missile with honorable mentions to their kolto shell. Operatives raid healing is just about as better as its ever been, but with the same great potential to do mini-bursts as needed.

 

Where this places sorc is still in that middle ground, except the issue is their burst is not as good nor is their raid wide healing. Meaning a merc will single target/burst/raid heal better than a sorc in every situation, and an operative will put out more consistently higher numbers over a longer stretch assuming each class is played at an equivalent skill level.

 

With this, it begs the question: Why bring a sorc? These changes further push that into the light as they have had their Heal Over Time effects increased, which was never something that Sorc focused on, while increasing their single target slightly, while drastically hampering their raid healing. This places them still drastically under a merc for both burst AND raid, and drastically under an Operative for raid while only slightly bridging the gap for single target/burst. Reducing the force cost was nice, but force management was never really an issue for a sorc that learned how to manage stacks and use Consume correctly.

So, the TLDR for both roles for sorc with these changes is: Will these changes once more have the community asking the question "Why bring a sorc?"

Also, it's imperative to note that it's not a direct call to nerf merc/op healers. I know sorc healers out shined literally everyone for a while in 5.x and it's good to let mercs/ops have their time in the sun. However, we (and I mostly mean the NiM community and I think the Ranked PVP community, but please correct me if I'm wrong) already don't bring a sorc healer into a group if we can or if their co-healer isn't strong enough to fill in the gaps, and with these changes, sorc healers will be hurting even more. I think the percentile changes are too drastic and the change of the 4p of Revitalized Mystics hurts too much. But again, this is all speculation and personal opinion. Hopefully when I manage to get on the PTS I will be able to either change or reiterate these concerns.

I would love to know what the intent is with the buffs to DPS vs the nerf to set bonuses. Do you want to redistribute damage from the set bonus or do you want damage output to be nerfed? Right now it seems like both specs for sorc will be nerfed a bit, especially Madness. For Assassin, it's harder to tell and are the Hatred changes to Languishing Lashes and Severing Slash supposed to be in addition to how those specs currently work or are they replacing those passives?

I am very excited about these healer changes.

Tactical Items

These items seem much better than what sorc had before, though it will really depend on how well they're balanced. Storm's Succor + Endless Offensive set bonus could definitely turn sorc healing into easy mode with so many strong smart heals.

The roaming mend tactical is a welcome addition, though I imagine the overall healing output with that tactical equipped won't end up being much higher than it is right now since the base healing amount is getting reduced so much. I do think it's for the better that you're moving some of the healing output away from Roaming Mend though, it's too good in single target situations and with an extra charge, it would be even stronger. I still think this tactical will likely be the default choice.

The Revivification tactical is an interesting idea, though you can't rely on players deliberately standing in it until the end on a lot of fights and that's the very reason that Revivification was changed to provide HoTs in the first place. I think I would only use it on fights where everyone remains stacked in the same spot for most of the fight or only moves at very predictable times, like Styrak, Corruptor Zero, or Tyrans. The healing done will have to be pretty high to get sorc healers to use it too, it should be way stronger than the old All for One and One for All tacticals.

Set Bonuses

I'm really happy you're changing Empowered Restorer, in order to properly utilize that set, you needed to heal in the exact opposite way that you're supposed to heal. I am a bit confused about how the new 6 piece works though. Does Sustaining Darkness just activate immediately, or is it a separate heal? If it's the latter, make sure that it gets applied before Sustaining Darkness does. Also, how large are each of these heals? I'm also a bit concerned since the heals on the bubble go against how the bubble is supposed to be used. If you're bubbling someone, you can't guarantee that they'll benefit from the heal. Perhaps the 6 piece would be better if it just increased the number of Sustaining Darkness stacks you get instead.

The Revitalized Mystic set seems worse than how it works now, though it's a bit unclear how much it was doing before since the set bonus wasn't/isn't very specific about numbers. Full ticks of Resurgence instead of half is much worse than a significant cooldown reduction on Innervate. It's clear that this set is focused on healing tanks, and that's fine, but it's just not strong enough given how specialized it is.

Right now, I'd probably pick either the Empowered Restorer or Endless Offensive set.

Healing Changes

I LOVE that Force Surge no longer affects Revivification, it was super annoying having to consume before using Revivification, but I really don't think that an instant Revivification is very useful in raiding. An AoE HoT is the exact opposite of single target burst. Revivification is ultimately for maintaining health, not saving someone's life, so there shouldn't be any situations where you can't just wait to use it until you stop moving. Perhaps it's more helpful in PvP, but as is, I won't be using Force Bending on Revivification ever. You could make things a bit more interesting though if you made it so that the new Revivification tactical item makes it so that if you use Force Bending with Revivification, the healing explosion happens at the beginning instead of the end. It would also be really nice if you could make the circle accurately represent the actual size of the AoE, it's currently like half the size.

It seems like you guys want Dark Heal to be stronger, which is fine. I like the idea of it being a more viable emergency heal. The Penetrating Darkness change to increase the critical chance of Dark Heal is counterproductive though since you won't get to benefit from that passive at all if you choose to use Force Bending or Recklessness with Dark Heal. As I'm sure you know, supercrits only work if the ability is an autocrit and both of those things only increase critical chance by 60%, so that extra 10% critical chance from Penetrating Darkness won't help in those instances. All you'd need to do to fix it would be to change it so that Penetrating Darkness increases critical healing dealt instead of critical chance.

While it is an improvement, Dark Infusion is still going to be a worse choice for Force Bending than Innervate, Roaming Mend, and probably Dark Heal as well after the buffs it's getting. Since you can't reduce the cast time any further since you're limited by the GCD, I think you'd need to buff Dark Infusion in some other way as well. Maybe it applies some sort of HoT as well.

Other things I would like to see

Volt Rush is still terrible for DPS. The Rushdown tactical for Madness makes your DPS lower than what it would be if you didn't use a tactical at all (haven't tried it with the Endless Offensive Set bonus yet, though it still isn't enough for it to compete).

Buff the other sorc taticals. The Endless Barrier tactical item should be buffed so Unnatural Preservation removes the Deionized effect from everyone you've applied it to (or maybe also just whoever you're targeting), instead of just yourself. An Explosive Return should deal a lot more damage. A Healing Hand should just be reworked. Resurgence is already pretty cheap and Extrication is so rarely used that no one in their right mind would choose that tactical.

Electric Induction is a pointless sorc passive now. I noticed when I was reading through the Force cost changes and I noticed that they didn't line up with the in-game tooltips. It's just needlessly confusing now when trying to read patch notes. The only shared abilities it affects are Death Field, Creeping Terror, Shock, Force Slow, Whirlwind, and Electrocute. It only reduces the force cost of the latter 3 abilities by 1 over their Assassin counterparts! All you'd need to do is permanently reduce the Force costs of all sorc abilities by 10% and then Death Field and Creeping Terror exist both in Hatred and Madness, which you could fix it by adding "Reduces the Force cost of Death Field and Creeping Terror by 10%" on the Force Horrors discipline passive in Madness and make it so that Convulsing Currents in Lightning also reduces the Force cost of Shock by 10%.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Assassin is already the worst DPS in the game in PVE, MAYBE Arsenal has them beat but Arsenal is ranged with tons of DCDs/heals so they're still useful. Lightning once again, isn't even in the top 5 of specs.

Time after time again Bioware proves why they don't deserve to have a successful MMO and why their game is in the dead state it's in.

They listen to the minority of the playerbase which is PVP to nerf things. The funny thing is that all the kids crying about "Op/Broken" classes in PVP aren't even the actual good pvp players doing ranked; it's the garbage kids who click all their abilities and these changes will do NOTHING, they'll still be on here crying the next day about a diff class being OP cause they're just terrible regardless who or what you nerf.

So grats bioware, you have no idea what you're doing.... but we already knew that didn't we?

Also, it's imperative to note that it's not a direct call to nerf merc/op healers. I know sorc healers out shined literally everyone for a while in 5.x and it's good to let mercs/ops have their time in the sun. However, we (and I mostly mean the NiM community and I think the Ranked PVP community, but please correct me if I'm wrong) already don't bring a sorc healer into a group if we can or if their co-healer isn't strong enough to fill in the gaps, and with these changes, sorc healers will be hurting even more.

Thank you for mentioning the ranked pvp community because for the most part, these changes are all pve focused. With the exception to the death knell set bonus, the changes to damage dealing classes and set bonuses primarily effect pve, and if they effect pvp in a positive way then that is just an added bonus.

With that said however, pvp healing (especially ranked) is much lower to pve healing than most people like to imagine. To make a very complex and long story short, healing in pvp mimics the "parsing" that occurs in pve healing. So these healing changes are the closest to pvp changes that we get. I'm not complaining. In my personal opinion, healing changes were the most important changes pvp needed. I'm merely noting that in this field, adequate healing changes are desired by both sides of the community.

Thank you for mentioning the ranked pvp community because for the most part, these changes are all pve focused. With the exception to the death knell set bonus, the changes to damage dealing classes and set bonuses primarily effect pve, and if they effect pvp in a positive way then that is just an added bonus.

 

With that said however, pvp healing (especially ranked) is much lower to pve healing than most people like to imagine. To make a very complex and long story short, healing in pvp mimics the "parsing" that occurs in pve healing. So these healing changes are the closest to pvp changes that we get. I'm not complaining. In my personal opinion, healing changes were the most important changes pvp needed. I'm merely noting that in this field, adequate healing changes are desired by both sides of the community.

I don't ranked PVP myself but I really couldn't have said this any better. Both sides of the field in endgame should be looked at for this issue. Balancing is delicate process and often it's either to one side or the other.

Why are you splitting the bad six piece Revitalized Mystic set bonus in two and using half of it to replace the good 4 piece bonus? That's a terrible change.

Guess I'll go deconstruct my Revitalized Mystic set now.

so I ran some quick parses on sorc

 

changes on sorc will make each of those sorc specs parse about 22k on average +/- 500 on crit fyi, sure if you get lucky on crit you maybe you hit 23k on like 1/1000 parses on 6.5mil; yeah and force speed to alacrity change is dumb and clunky, basically unduly penalized to make a mechanic more clunky

 

this changes don't really affect madness it is the same, lightning gets a noticeable nerf to damage.

Just finished a round of parsing myself. Can confirm the changes to Gathering Storm have a noticeable nerf and makes the rotation feel completely clunky and awkward. Several rotational blocks had GCDs of "well my PS isn't off CD for another 8 seconds and force speed is up but that means I'm 3 seconds behind and welp rip there goes that parse". BUT I did notice some weirdness with Force Speed and Polarity Shift - mainly that when I used FS it didn't seem like the proc to PS actually was showing up. But that could just be PTS weirdness.

I'm not happy.

For the love of god DO NOT LET THE DEATH KNELL NERF GO THROUGH.

It's bad enough that shadow tanks have such underwhelming tank tacticals and set bonus options already. A large portion of us have switched to Death Knell just to boost our DPS and be of use in groups. Now not only do you remove a large portion of our damage by only giving us ONE autocrit per use of force potency, but you also felt the need to take away Spinning Strike's ability to autocrit too? Just why?

This has to be an out of season april fool's joke, right?

6 piece - Using Force Speed now reduces the active cooldown of Polarity Shift / Mental Alacrity by 5 seconds (down from 10 seconds), and the duration of Polarity Shift / Mental Alacrity is now increased by 5 seconds (down from 10 seconds) and requires Polarity Shift / Mental Alacrity to be used while Force Speed is active

NO

Force Speed(1.5 sec) is just too short.

Madness / Balance

Disintegration / Critical Kinesis critical chance bonus increased from 5% to 15%

Fulminating Current / Psychokinetic Torrent critical chance bonus given per stack increased from 2% to 3%

Not enough. Look at parses, please - Madness is underperforming to IO/Viru

So my sage seer will still be a great healer after this.... if everyone can stay alive long enough for the heal-over-times to do their thing. Nerfing the bursty portion of heals means my guild ops groups will gravitate even more to the gun-toting healers that can knock out heals faster.

In those last few precious seconds before a wipe, it's not a long slow heal that'll save the day. It's the burst heal.

I'm already sitting on 3230+ alacrity on my main sage healer. I don't see how I'll be keeping up with the heals.