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Consolidated Vanguard class issues


Guurzak

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Work in progress- please provide feedback.

 

1) Animation issues

 

1A) Mortar Volley does not do damage until over halfway through its cast bar, with a third of its damage landing well after the cast bar is complete. In contrast, Bounty Hunter's "Death From Above" mirror ability begins doing damage immediately.

1B) Full Auto also has a delay on its damage, and loses damage if pushed back unlike the Bounty Hunter equivalent.

1C) Energy Blast has a delay before applying damage although supposedly instant.

1D) The "dodge" animation seems to cancel ability activations. Players with high Defense values report as much as 50% failure rate on any ability activations while under heavy volume of fire.

1E) Storm animates oddly when storming from minimum range. It takes just as long to storming slowly from 10 meters as to storm in at full speed from 30m.

1F) Reserve Powercell does not apply its effect until after a significant delay, although described as instant.

 

Proposed: Especially in PVP and in challenging PVE encounters, activation delay greatly reduces the utility of these abilities. For full effectiveness they should begin doing damage immediately on activation. Dodge stunlock needs to be removed. Short storms need to be sped up.

 

2) Defenses ineffective in PVP

 

2A) Shields cannot trigger on Force or Tech attacks. Some player builds, notably Operatives and Sorcerers, can run their whole rotation without ever using a shieldable ability. This relegates any equipment or talents related to Shield Chance to PVE only which is contrary to stated game design philosophy that all abilities should give benefit in both PVE and PVP. Since most of the problem Tech/Force abilities do Elemental or Internal damage types they are also unmitigatable by armor; this contributes strongly to the perception that Ops/Sorcs are overpowered in PVP since neither shields nor armor are effective against them.

 

2B) Defense and Smoke Grenade are also ineffective against Force/Tech, further exacerbating the mitigation problem described above, as well as being worthless against high-accuracy opponents.

 

2C) When opponent's chance to crit plus my chance to shield add up to >100%, my shield chance is pushed down. This is imbalanced: if a player who has built and geared for offense opposes a player who has built and geared equally strongly into defense, those investments should counterbalance each other rather than one simnply overriding the other.

 

Proposed: Shields should work against all attack types in PVP, -or- classes with a large number of unshieldable abilities should have most of those abilities made shieldable. Smoke Grenade should be effective against all attacks and should be reworked from an accuracy debuff to a damage debuff if necessary. The 2-roll combat system should be modified so that if crit chance and shield chance overlap, the result of a roll in the overlap space is a normal hit or a shielded crit hit rather than a full crit.

 

3) Tactics tree is lacking overall

 

3A) Tactics tree raw DPS is notably inferior to that of other DPS trees

3B) Tactics tree lacks synergy among its abilities

3C) Tactics tree lacks synergy with High-Energy Cell

 

There are players who report success with a Tactics build for a kiting-based PVP playstyle; however, damage output lags badly compared to Assault and to other classes' DPS trees. Tactics abilities do not build on each other and there's little incentive to use the tree's intended stance; many heavy-Tactics builds rely on Ion or Plasma instead.

 

Proposed: No specific suggestions but the design of the tree needs review and redesign.

 

4) Issues with specific talents

 

4A) Ion Cell is doing about 25% of its tooltip damage as observed in the field. The actual damage done is laughable and this destroys the value of Supercharged Ion Cell as well as Blaster Augs for ion-specced builds.

 

4B) Rebraced Armor is mathematically inferior to other mitigation talents, returning less than 1% overall mitigation per talent point even against armor-mitigatable attacks except at extremely high base armor values.

 

4C) The root from Defensive Measures begins when the ability is activated, not when the target lands in front of you. This reduces the 3-second impact of this talent by the duration of the harpoon animation, making it much less desirable than it appears.

 

4D) There's widespread feeling that that Harpoon and Storm should be reversed: Storm shold be moved to the baseline as it is useful for all Vanguard specs (Just as Force Leap is for knights), while Harpoon is specifically of interest to tank specs. Note that the community is split on this point with a significant number of players preferring the current implementation.

 

4E) "Charge", the 4-second speed boost after activating Storm, is almost universally scorned except by Huttball fanatics. Duration should be extended, CC immunity should be added, or this ability should be entirely replaced.

 

4F) Energy Blast is sadly underwhelming as the 31-point ability in the shield tree. Aside from the animation issues, it's an ok ability in that it's useful to do free damage and help manage your ammo, but it is badly in need of more cowbell. There's a strong community consensus that a taunt effect should be added to this or that it should be replaced with a strong defensive cooldown.

 

4G) Battlefield Training stacks with neither Sprint nor Hold The Line. Consider allowing it to stack, perhaps at a reduced value, or at least clarifying the tooltip to make this information more obvious.

 

4H) Kolto Recharge is probably the worst waste of a skill point in any class's trees. A 7% heal, over time, once per 2 minutes. This needs to be completely rethought.

 

4I) Soldier's Endurance: 1% Endurance per skill point returns a trivial number of hit points. This needs to have a larger effect or a completely different type of bonus.

 

4J) Ionized Ignition/ Superheated Plasma/ Sweltering Heat: these abilities are fine separately but it is impossible to spec to Tier 3 of Assault without investing at least 3 points into abilities which do nothing but boost Plasma Cell effects (and another 3 points in Soldier's Endurance, see 4I above). No other DPS tree compels a complete waste of points when creating a hybrid spec.

 

4K) Burnout costs 3 talent points to get the same effect as 1 point in Blaster Augs, plus a very situational low-value bonus to DOT-only damage against low-health opponents. Doesn't offer value for its investment.

 

4L) Blitz is dropped from many players' bars altogether. Consider allowing this ability to have lesser effect on players and elite+ mobs; or, consider making this ability an instakill on strong or normal mobs; or both.

 

4M) Neural Surge becomes buggy and does not reliably take effect when the duration bonus from the PVP Combat Tech set is applied.

 

4N) Damage avoided by Static Field or Smoke Bomb does not count towards protection totals/medals in PVP.

 

Proposed: fix plz kthx.

 

5) Companions and Class Story

 

5A) Lack of customizations. No facial customization is offered for Aric when leaving the prologue, as is standard with other classes. His armor customization sets are mismatched. N companion facial customizations are anywhere to be found, except one item on the fleet SK vendor, until Balmora in Chapter II. Since these are purely cosmetic they should be made readily available much earlier in the game in order to promote player enjoyment/engagement with their companions.

 

5B) Elara's personal pistols all come with Cunning rather than Aim. Outfitting her with Aim pistols is challenging since no Aim classes use pistols on the Republic side. She should be changed to use rifles, or come with an orange pistol which can be updated with Aim mods. (Supposedly she is issued a modifiable pistol but it is coded green rather than orange, so this may be overlooked.)

 

5C) We want Jaxo as a companion.

 

5D) After defeating Tavus in the Act I finale aboard the Justice, many players get locked into [...] conversation mode but the conversation with Garza never actually begins. Players are forced to workaround to escape through repeated relogs, fleet escapes, or warzone queueing.

 

5E) In conversation on Tavus's ship, he accuses us of killing Needles and Gearbox, although Gearbox has not yet been encountered by that point in the storyline.

 

5F) Also on Tavus's ship, the "Stay Frosty" bonus mission becomes bugged and uncompletable / unabandonable in some players' quest logs. There are level 50 troopers with this quest still on the books.

 

5G) It takes 4'32" to run/bike from the Thunderclap to General Garza's office on Coruscant, and we have to make that trip 117 times over the course of the story line. (disclaimer: numbers are fabricated.) Please allow speeder use within the trooper dock and spaceport, or find some other way to make this repeated trip less pointlessly time-consuming. We have holocalls, you know.

 

6) Itemization

 

6A) PVE Supercommando sets have stacked Accuracy. This does nothing for us defensively and adds very little threat. Please change this bonus.

 

6B) Many graphic sets are missing one piece or another, or make it very difficult to find the complete set. We need to be able to assemble complete matching sets, or bring Color Match back. Many troopers look like someone threw a bowl of froot loops at them.

 

6C) All appearance armor sets are useless except to light armor classes (consulars and inquisitors). Please offer medium and heavy appearance sets or implement some mechanism to have appearance sets adjust weight to match the wearer's needs.

 

7) Class role performance

 

7A) Endgame tanks find it difficult to hold aggro against endgame DPS, since the endgame DPS gear greatly increases DPS while the endgame tank gear does not greatly increase threat. Consider increasing the threat multiplier in tank stance to 80% or 100% or adding additional threat multiplier to endgame tank gear.

 

7B) Endgame tanks also find it difficult to find operation slots since heroics and flashpoints demand a 1/4 tank population ratio, but operations allow for only a 1/8 or 1/16 tank population ratio. We need a much greater role for off tanks in operations, or we need dual spec so we can freely switch to a DPS role as needed.

 

7C) As mentioned above, the damage output from a Tactics DPS build is notably inferior to Assault and other classes' DPS specs in group PVE.

 

7D) Other than the mitigation issues mentioned above, all 3 trees are performing well in PVP.

Edited by Guurzak
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Ideas for tactics synergy.

 

A) Shock Absorbers: replace with "Tactical Strike"- per point, Stock Strike has a 25% chance to immediately apply all remaining damage on gut's bleed effect

 

B) Battle Training: replace with "Trauma Rounds"- per point, while high energy cell is active high impact bolt has a 15% chance to cause an additional XXX-XXX internal damage over 6 sec when used.

 

C) Add internal damage boost to HEC along with the elemental damage.

 

These are in order of prefered additions assuming all three would create imbalances. B&C both make HEC more useful. I think A is prefect for additional symmetry in the tree. In addition the skill that gives SS a chance to be free should also immediately end its cd imo.

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This is the first actually constructive post I've seen about Trooper issues. I'm glad someone actually sees the actual problems. I completely agree with all of your post except one point, Jaxo can remain dead, I do not want her as a companion.
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If you move out of elaras healing range she wont move to heal you if shes attacking something, its really annoying seeing how her main purpose is healing, also if you toggle her passive in combat shell just walk slowly to you Edited by Gildoania
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The bounty hunter version of Kolto Recharge recharges whenever they vent heat. (even with talents that vent heat.) making it pretty much a 1% heal forever, or more.

 

 

 

Vanguard:

 

Assault Specialist:

 

Parallactic Combat Stims:

Critical Hits with Burning Effects Heal you for 1% health. (1% Per Point.)

 

 

Nightvision Scope:

Additionally Increases Damage Reduction by 2% While Plasma Cell is Active (4% for both points.)

 

 

Incendiary Round:

Reduce Cost of Ammo from 3 to 2.

 

 

Rapid Recharge:

Additionally Increases the Recharge Rate of Ammo by 0.5 (1 for both points.)

 

 

 

Assault Plastique:

Sticky Grenade is better because it actually does AOE Damage, make it a Grenade that goes off When it hits and sets people on fire with a Long DOT.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tactics Tree:

 

Power Armor:

Additionally Reduces damage by another 1% per point if High Energy Cell is Active.

 

Frontline Offense:

Additionally Increases the damage of Fire Pulse also.

 

Gut:

Make the damage happen all at once, Assault is for DOTs, this is a melee attack.

 

Serrated Blades:

Increases the Internal Damage of Gut instead.

 

Battering Ram:

Gut Also Additionally has a chance to make stockstrike free.

 

Kolto Recharge:

Regenerates 2% of Health Every second.

 

Fire Pulse:

.....Change the Animation and add a Burning effect, also increase range.

Edited by Daecollo
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The bounty hunter version of Kolto Recharge recharges whenever they vent heat. (even with talents that vent heat.) making it pretty much a 1% heal forever, or more.

 

This is factually incorrect. The bounty hunter version triggers only off of the named Vent Heat ability; it does not trigger off of talent/proc heat venting. Their tooltip may be misleading but the abilities are identical (and identically pointless.)

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Well thought out post that hit the nail on the head i think. My top concern is the shielding and defensive stats in pvp(i like to pvp), but the rest is an issue as well. How defenses work in pvp is boggling to me and how it went live in that state.
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Excellent post.

 

Add me to the "not changing positions on storm and harpoon". It belongs where it is.

 

Add me to the list of people who see pvp shielding in its current incarnation to be extremely disappointing. "Being a Tank" in pvp should be much more than it is...i.e. not defined by whether or not you use an ability available to all trees (albeit by neglecting the weapon stance designed for their tree) on other players.

 

Also, add me to the list of people who find the 31pt def talent to be very lackluster...and major kudos to whoever came up with the idea of adding a taunt to it. That's a very minor change, but that small add would suddenly make going to 31 in that tree an important priority. As is for right now, PvP tanking consists of NOT going to the top of your defense tree...and that's wrong.

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Updated to note community division regarding storm/harpoon swap.

 

Thanks all for feedback- please keep posting, we want this doc to be as comprehensive as possible and reflect the consensus of the community, not just any one guy's beefs.

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4D) There's widespread feeling that that Harpoon and Storm should be reversed: Storm shold be moved to the baseline as it is useful for all Vanguard specs (Just as Force Leap is for knights), while Harpoon is specifically of interest to tank specs. Note that the community is split on this point with a significant number of players preferring the current implementation.

 

When they pushed storm higher up in the tree during beta, I was surprised. I was really getting used to using it because my most valuable skills were close range and melee. After they made the change, I felt rather convinced that Storm should just be baseline around level 20 for all Vanguards since we're very front-line. Just keep its talents in the shield tree.

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Thanks for putting this together, Guurzak.

 

One proposed fix for

6C) All appearance armor sets are useless except to light armor classes (consulars and inquisitors). Please offer medium and heavy appearance sets or implement some mechanism to have appearance sets adjust weight to match the wearer's needs.

 

Armor mod AC stats should be based off of the character's archetype and not the armor type it is slotted in. This would ensure that a character gets the maximum AC value available to them from their armor mod regardless of the modifiable gear's armor type.

Edited by Tatanka
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