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Why many of us really dislike our new AoE ability


Evolixe

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Hey, ya. Me again :rolleyes:

 

Todays I want to write about Severing Slash/Cleaving Cut and why I think many of my fellow class bothers/sisters don't like this ability one bit.

 

But first.. a bit of history. Because the history of "new" abilities has not been kind to Assassins and Shadows.

 

The first new ability we got with Rise of the Hutt Cartel was called Phase Walk. This ability would teleport you to a predesignated location. It required a small little setup but it was really cool in the sense that you could very quickly go from existing in one place to the next. It could be used while stunned and thus it was often used as a defensive ability to get out of danger quickly. That however wasn't the only way that it could be used in. Smart players could often use it to stall, stagger or otherwise stagnate a fight that they preferred not to end. In PvE it found various uses for saving time, or saving face in case of an unfortunate mishap.

 

This ability however was later removed in 4.0 and then to add salt to the wound.. given to Sages and Sorcerers.

 

Furthermore in 3.0 we got 1 completely new ability, and 2 substitutes for existing abilities. However we also lost an ability that had been with us since the start. The new ability was called Reaping Strike or Vaulting Slash. This ability is still being used today. Ball Lighting/Psychokinetic Blast came as a substitute for Shock/Project. It really just does the same thing, with a different animation and a bit more damage but ultimately its not really anything new. The same goes for Voltaic Slash/Clairvoyant Strike vs Double Strike. New animation.. but it fullfills the same purpose. The ability we lost was called Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw. Its an absolute icon for an Inquisitor/Consular ability and while it didn't fit in the regular uses for the Hatred/Deception, Serenity/Infiltration specs we know these days.. it still had niche uses for when things were out of range or people were running away from you. Especially in combination with Recklessness/Force Potency.

 

In 4.0 we did get Phantom Stride which was Phase walks "replacement" ability. The only problem with this ability is that its not reliable. It will often just not work, send you vertical, send you flying, put you somewhere halfway. Its not very well liked among many of us for this reason.

 

Crushing Darkness was another ability we used to have that was a DoT with some upfront damage. Myself and many of my PvP friends liked to use this ability to frontload a little extra damage. This ability however was removed somewhere between 4.0 and 6.0.

 

Lastly.. we got Severing Slash/Cleaving Cut. An ability that basically does nothing new. It's an AoE.. which we had. In a cone.. which is worse than we had. Doing only slightly more damage.

 

It has use in PvE.. but almost only on stacks of targets that really don't pose a big threat either way. You aren't going to fail your Master Flashpoint, Uprising or even Nightmare OPS timer because your Shadow/Assassin isn't using this ability. In PvP.. you run the risk of not hitting the target you meant to hit due to it being a cone. Players, unlike NPC's don't like to stand still. Even with DoTspread on it for Hatred/Serenity.. you run the risk of not hitting your intended target that you would hit with Lacerate/Whirling Blow. And what would you have gained if you did? A meager 2000 or maybe 3000 damage. If even.

 

 

So ultimately since level 50.. we've had 3 new abilities, 2 substitutes and 3 abilities removed.

For a net gain of 0 interesting and engaging abilities. And then I'm leaving out Blackout as a key. Having control over that gave us some identity and added to player skill. But its automated these days.

 

 

So why do people not like this new ability? Because we've been trading the good ones for mediocre ones for 7 years now and people are tired of it. You really have to do a better job coming up with creative solutions.

 

Operatives get a cooldown reset. Snipers get a Phase Walk of their own.. and us? We get an ability that does something that another ability already could. And it only does it better in a few very specific situations. So yeah, thats why I think people are not in the least very happy with this design "progression" of the class. Many of us see it as regression, rather.

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I started playing around 4.0 so I did not experience what it was like for an Assassin or Shadow to have Phase Walk, but I would imagine that it was a great cooldown to have. I could see myself using it way more than on Sage/Sorc.

But it might be too good to have back now alongside Phantom Stride.

 

Losing Force Lightning does feel like an overall blow for the class fantasy which I can sympathize with but I kind of wave it away similarly to the Warrior using Force Choke in the Academy before its anywhere near your hotbar - a mechanical overview by the devs in exchange for story flavor. I would imagine that the Inquisitor Assassin could use the ablity if they so desired but their preferred method of combat is Melee. :D

 

I actually have not had that many bad Phantom Strides in my time, but it definitely requires a closer look from the devs to iron out all the varying wrinkles in its code if that is feasible.

 

Don't recall Assassins and Shadows having Crushing DANKness or Mind Crush in 4.0 and it being included seems strange.

 

Regarding Cleaving Cut and Severing Slash - if there will be more interactivity with it in the future, like the DoT spreading buff we got in 6.1.1 then I won't mind it sticking. But it does feel much worse to use then the 'ole spinnie spin. It needs to justify its existence because a cone is a much more worse shape than a circle and it could do that by sending some kind of wave forward that gives it range. Might be a bit too anime for this setting though and it's kind of stepping on Jedi Knight's toes a bit.

In general I do feel that Inquisitors and Consulars got very little love in 6.0 when it comes to the new abilities but there is some potential in both, it remains to be seen if BW will decide to capitalize upon that potential or not. ;)

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Honestly, shadows/assassins are very lucky because they don't have ability creep. Most of the classes are so overloaded with abilities that the rotations are very annoying and there simply aren't enough top tier hotkeys for your fingers. Most other classes they don't get spells replaced and its so annoying getting 2 abilties doing about same into rotation to uptimize dps.

 

The new cooldown isn't so bad, it makes sense tho lacking duration on the slow, and it isn't forced into single target rotation.

 

Be careful what you wish for, more =/= better when it comes to class design.

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I came back to the game after like a year and was excited to get my Assassin to max level and see the new abilities/ changes to the class.

 

So my question is, what the hell were they thinking with that ability? Like what was the thought process behind the design? In which cases is it more useful than Lacerate?

 

It's a cone AoE that mildly inconveniences both trash mobs and people in PVP plus it's on a 10 sec CD, presumably to not overuse the nothingness it provides (?)

 

Honestly, it does nothing that Lacerate doesn't do better.

 

Like seriously, I'm not QQ that Assassins are in a bad state or anything, but what is the point of giving us an ability that has literally no actual use?

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I agree 100% with the OP.

 

Its sad to see how devs ruined shadow/assassin over last few years. By that i dont necessary mean class viability, rather playstyle and what made it so unique and fun to play. I enjoyed sin the most during 2.x era when it had phase walk, lighting and crushing darkness. Back then i would say class was not easy to play, yet very rewarding and satisfying. You had so many tools to utilize in diffrent scenarios and you could make very fun burst combos. Now sin playstyle is just a boring spam (like most of the classes tbh...). There is no uniqueness anymore imo.

 

New ability is so "useful" that i dont remeber its name ... yesterday i figured out that i dont even have it on ability bar on my shadow. This is how redundant it is.

Edited by LordMakis
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  • 2 weeks later...

A necro of a few days longer then I would have liked, just wanted to put a few words in here. I hope they listen to you guys, I really do. They did the same thing to the troopers. When vanguard lost full auto, explosive round, and 30 meter mortar volley, that hurt. It was so bad that you could not even level a vanguard at the time. Things have gotten better, but even the loss of stock strike for the commando hurt, and still does. You used to be able to combine stock strike with plasma grenade, sticky grenade, and a close range of full auto or pulse cannon for a close range kill.

 

This game at launch was a bucket of cold water in people's faces. What we saw in the trailers like deceieved and hope is what we thought we would be doing similar things in-game, Instead, it wasn't like that at all. Nor were any of the armors/weapons available in-game. Looking back now, knowing everything I know now, I would have been a lot more receptive to the game at launch.

 

My ultimate point is I hope they listen to you, because that would mean hope that they would restore the trooper abilities I mentioned above. I agree too much removed, and replaced by less effective/enjoyable abilities.

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The new aoe attack sucks. Lacerate does higher damage on dec. There is a delay between the attack and it landing, which makes the slow component useless in PvP. It’s only use is to proc May cause injury tactical.

 

Also, I never saw a point in removing phase walk or chain lightning. Overall devs made very stupid decisions in the end of 3.0 and in 4.0, where they removed most ranged attacks from PT, sin and ops. Then added leaps. While I think phantom stride works well with dec, it does not with hatred. It is much worse design wise for ops and PT. As previous PT main, nerfing HO, adding leap to dps and removing range on RS and aoe skill was the end of the class for me. Same as well for removing 30 meter range attacks from hatred.

 

I still think dec, and to a lesser extent hatred, have good combat flow, and do not suffer from bloat like some other classes/disciplines. But removing combat options, that were never issues to begin with, is bad, and limits game play.

Edited by Ottoattack
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I could NOT agree with the OP more.

 

For the longest time after this ability was added, I tried to figure out where to put it in my priority system. I ended up taking it off my bars completely, because - as a Kinetic Combat Shadow - I simply DON'T need it. In PvE or PvP.

 

While I think the addition of another melee ability was the right direction (since Assassins/Shadows have more than enough Force-based ranged options, in my opinion), we simply could not have needed another AoE less.

 

While I think we have more than enough snares/immobilizations as a class, I think the addition of an ability that keeps our opponent from turning (like Concealment's Crippling Slice) would be a nice quality of life improvement to our ability to position correctly, and avoid damage from an opponent's frontal arc.

 

I'm not advocating for that specifically (because I have no idea how it would synergize with the toolkit overall), but some sort of improvement to the Shadow/Assassin melee repertoire might be the way to go, I think.

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Whilst I do think it’s cool, I think (my opinion) was we needed an ability to replace the mobility taken away e.g. Phase Walk. However I’m not bothered by its return but I’d rather see a mobility ability like Darth Maul’s Dash ability from BF2.

 

I’d also like them to make Force Slow a Mage ability exclusive.

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I don't use it. Not even for the MCI tact because if I need/want AoE, I respec to Hatred. And if I need/want mobility and good defenses with my dots, I play Anni Mara.

 

I miss phasewalk the most and will never understand why they stole it from us (yes I'm being dramatic :D). They didn't even explain why. All we got was "we felt Assassins were too mobile". Compared to what? On Mara I can have two consecutive force charges, predation, mad dash and in a pinch there's also force camo. Granted, there's three utility points in there, but for PvE, at least, I'm not giving up anything essential for them.

 

As Deception there's really only force speed, because phantom stride is used rotationally for dps. It's not a terrible trade off currently to keep it in reserve on occasion to use it for mobility, as dps generally is quite OP compared to almost anything PvE can throw at us, but it's the principle of the thing that bugs me.

 

Same thing with the speed boost on ball lighting, either I count on being lucky that it'll trigger exactly when I need it or I'd have to delay it, which is a dps loss (and breaks the flow). And with all of that, I'm still less mobile than on my Mara. Who also has more dps potential, more and infinitely more reliable raid utility and it's not that behind on the cheesing either, between undying, mad dash and force camo.

 

I also miss the 30 mt range crushing darkness and death field that made Hatred so diverse to play. And blackout and actually having force management on Deception.

 

Deception is still my favorite spec above any other but it's only gotten worse in terms of fun and engagement over the years.

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  • 3 weeks later...
In 4.0 we did get Phantom Stride which was Phase walks "replacement" ability. The only problem with this ability is that its not reliable. It will often just not work, send you vertical, send you flying, put you somewhere halfway. Its not very well liked among many of us for this reason.

 

Hey Bioware, I hear pictures are worth a thousand words. A thousand is about how far in yards I was off the ground after using Shadow Stride yesterday in huttball:

 

https://i.imgur.com/g9fHJVG.jpg

 

I was flung so high that I had all the time in the world to take this screenshot while I was coming down. I was completely off the map and died after this.

 

Since 4.0, and latest occurrence as of SWTOR patch 6.1.1b

 

:rak_02: :rak_02: :rak_02: :rak_02: :rak_02: :rak_02: :rak_02: :rak_02: :rak_02: :rak_02: :rak_02: :rak_02:

Edited by undies
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[quote name=

 

This ability however was later removed in 4.0 and then to add salt to the wound.. given to Sages and Sorceror[/quote]

 

reason sins lost phasewalk..Eric Musco was playing his sorc..he got owned badly by a sin..so he whine about phasewalk being OP on sin..so what biowarre do take it from sins snd give it to sorcs..please verify the story for us Eric Musco..

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  • 2 months later...

So instead of making a new threat, I'll just post agreement with the OP here. I just hit 75 on my Assassin and to say I feel let down is an understatement. No shiney new ability at the trainer waiting for me when I dinged to 75. So, like, you mean to tell me the last thing I got was this? This friggin AOE that's not even as good as the one I've been using since like level 4!?!?

 

All that character development, all that buildup....and we get slapped in the face right at the finish line. Who thought this was a good idea?

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So instead of making a new threat, I'll just post agreement with the OP here. I just hit 75 on my Assassin and to say I feel let down is an understatement. No shiney new ability at the trainer waiting for me when I dinged to 75. So, like, you mean to tell me the last thing I got was this? This friggin AOE that's not even as good as the one I've been using since like level 4!?!?

 

All that character development, all that buildup....and we get slapped in the face right at the finish line. Who thought this was a good idea?

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So instead of making a new threat, I'll just post agreement with the OP here. I just hit 75 on my Assassin and to say I feel let down is an understatement. No shiney new ability at the trainer waiting for me when I dinged to 75. So, like, you mean to tell me the last thing I got was this? This friggin AOE that's not even as good as the one I've been using since like level 4!?!?

 

All that character development, all that buildup....and we get slapped in the face right at the finish line. Who thought this was a good idea?

 

9 years later deflection is still buggy. Utility points are not working as the tooltip says (e.g. motion control).

 

We should be happy we got an ability at all ^^

Edited by Sabatiel
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I would actually prefer it to be remade into retaliation-like ability juggernauts have. Would also help with lower damage on sin tanks compared to other two.

That could be neat... though I'd rather just get a buff or debuff like power... more likely to actually be usable than a cone type AoE, with a cool down no less, that only really is viable when one bothers to hunt down a specific set to support it, even then it's barely worth it as it requires specific circumstances to be worth the effort.

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