Charge dancing is a huge part of the skill of placing this class and I love it. It's fun to run around with a shield generator off-hand and be able to Dark Charge and take reduced damage. Or forsee a stun and go Dark Charge.

 

Charges costing 100 energy completely ruins this.

 

I see no reason to nerf sins that badly, are survivability is nowhere near on par with classes like Marauders or Juggs or any sort of BH (lol Heavy armor and Marauder CDs). We also don't have any sort of self heals outside of talented Dark Charge (untalented is not worth mentionning).

 

Now I don't have full BM gear but these are my thoughts, what are yours?

There's basically no good reason to 'charge dance' in the game as is anyway. The biggest draw would be to throw Dark Charge up from a DPS spec and most of the time you need the mitigation, you'd be better off anticipating your escape strategy. Edited February 2, 2012 by AstralFire

There's basically no good reason to 'charge dance' in the game as is anyway. The biggest draw would be to throw Dark Charge up from a DPS spec and most of the time you need the mitigation, you'd be better off anticipating your escape strategy.

 

I guess my problem with this is that the class is so heavily cd reliant (on fairly long cds, compared to the cd/passive defense of other classes), and so short on group based utility as dps spec as it is. This is a sad change that makes the class less fun to play. If it was imbalanced (which I don't think it was, as the Ptech and Jugg dps versions are not seeing a similar nerf), I feel that the dps versions of the class will eventually be viewed as needing more group utility.

 

 

Now I don't have full BM gear but these are my thoughts, what are yours?

 

I do, and here are mine.

 

In my opinion the change hits deception/madness too hard in an effort to nerf the hybrid specs (which may have been too balanced both defensively and offensively).

 

As it is I'm less inclined to play assassin with every change they make to they dynamic playstyle the class offered. Forcing it to stick to one charge is forcing yet another linearity in playstyle options onto this AC that I just find less fun. They are also continuously encouraging the sole viability of the tank spec in pvp settings due to amazing extra utility this tree already offered (hence it's hybrids they are trying to nerf) which is just not a spec I was interested in playing.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Lina_Inverse

I play a darkness spec and I survive just fine even against champs. Healing companion and go to town, manage your procs and CDs and you're fine.

OH noes! You dont get the best of both worlds now Hannah Montana!!

 

Quit crying, kids.

Charge dancing requires skill in the form of situational awareness and Force management, therefore it creates a gap between players while SWTOR obviously only allows for grind/gear gap. Nice.

 

Next move they should only allow for 1 fixed template per tree or even better suppress all variations and give same exact template to all so that only gear and expertise matter.

Not really. Charge dancing gave Assassins (mainly madness/decep) the ability to gain perks instantly and at no penalty. You were getting the best of both worlds.

 

Now you're forced to stick with the stance that youre tree is designated to. Dont like that stance? Switch trees. Very simple.

Not really. Charge dancing gave Assassins (mainly madness/decep) the ability to gain perks instantly and at no penalty.

You have to pay Force points to change your Charge, so not exactly free. It would have made more sense imho to punish bad choices through the introduction of a swap timer, so that you are trapped in the bad Charge to soak or inflict damage, for example.

 

Incidentaly I doubt there are a lot of Sins/Shads who are Charge dancing, as the perks you speak of can pretty much all be obtained through proper choice of template and sitting in one Charge forever.

 

Forcing charge dancing to gain perks would have made more sense imho.

Not really. Charge dancing gave Assassins (mainly madness/decep) the ability to gain perks instantly and at no penalty. You were getting the best of both worlds.

 

Now you're forced to stick with the stance that youre tree is designated to. Dont like that stance? Switch trees. Very simple.

 

You lost a large chunk of damage(the loss of discharge as a damage tool) and force regeneration(through talents like saber conduit) with both specs, not to mention the initial cost of switching to the stance. The other tank/dps classes incur the same penalty (and nothing else) when switching to their tank stances. Neither of them are getting adjusted with the patch and both have defense both passive and active superior to the assassin's defense while in dps stance. Similar to the assassin, they both lose dps in tank stance.

 

There are/were negatives associated with switching, and since they didn't carry over to those other two classes I'm assuming these changes weren't targeted at that utility or defense but rather the hybrid specs.

 

You aren't coming across as very intelligent I'm afraid. Just as a hater that's purposely trying to be contradictory and uninformative.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Lina_Inverse

It's just a waste of time to nerf something with so little impact, relatively speaking.

 

The game was pretty well balanced at release. None of the changes that have been made were necessary.

There's basically no good reason to 'charge dance' in the game as is anyway. The biggest draw would be to throw Dark Charge up from a DPS spec and most of the time you need the mitigation, you'd be better off anticipating your escape strategy.

 

How about helping your TEAM?!

 

Whenever I find myself suddenly next to a ball carrier, even in DPS spec, I immediately go defensive and guard. That's 55% damage mitigation for him right there, plus taunts for another 30%.

 

They're taking all of this away from US. While allowing Juggs and PTs to contunue. No fair.

Not really. Charge dancing gave Assassins (mainly madness/decep) the ability to gain perks instantly and at no penalty. You were getting the best of both worlds.

 

Now you're forced to stick with the stance that youre tree is designated to. Dont like that stance? Switch trees. Very simple.

 

Seems like someone was mad about 'Sins being able to go Dark Charge and get guard medals? That's the only reason I can think of for someone to post something to utterly rubbish.

 

I'd like to point out that to make the Dark Charge truly a mititgation tool you need to have a Shield Generator equipped, now let's look at the stat difference:

 

From Focus to Shield:

+49 End

- 20 WP

- 3 Acc

- 72 (SEVENTY TWO) crit

+ shield benefits

+ 34 defense

- 200 Force Power

 

That is already a HUGE hit to offense, not to mention all the energy regen and Damage perks that Surging offers. I'd really suggest you go back to your class forums instead of trying to offer un-insightful input on a topic you clearly have little to no knowledge of.

How about helping your TEAM?!

 

Whenever I find myself suddenly next to a ball carrier, even in DPS spec, I immediately go defensive and guard. That's 55% damage mitigation for him right there, plus taunts for another 30%.

 

They're taking all of this away from US. While allowing Juggs and PTs to contunue. No fair.

 

Uh, dunno about jugs, but it takes 1.5 secs to change cylinders for a BH, so he has to pick one and stick to it before he leaves the graveyard. Wanna talk more about fair?

Uh, dunno about jugs, but it takes 1.5 secs to change cylinders for a BH, so he has to pick one and stick to it before he leaves the graveyard. Wanna talk more about fair?

That's some bad BH if he can't find the time/opportunity to "waste" 1.5 seconds.

That's some bad BH if he can't find the time/opportunity to "waste" 1.5 seconds.

 

Oh, it's not there's no opportunity to change cylinders, it's the fact that you can't do it when you need it the most. PVE wise it's not the issue, but do try to change cylinders in a middle of hutball match, where ball carrier can be burned down in a second without of Guard, or when he passes the ball to you.

Edited February 2, 2012 by DervimNorth

Uh, dunno about jugs, but it takes 1.5 secs to change cylinders for a BH, so he has to pick one and stick to it before he leaves the graveyard. Wanna talk more about fair?

 

Most of the time in a combat situation, an assassin will need to wait more than 4 seconds to regain the energy required to switch into the tank stance (50 energy + 12 energy/s if you save an energy regen cd for it). 1.5 second casts seem pretty paltry in comparison, though the downside is that you can interrupt them if you focus the target that's trying to switch. For the assassin it's also an energy loss meaning that you can't use any abilities after you switch for another ~3 seconds or so if you switched from 50 energy (which you should if you aren't just sitting around waiting for people to take damage and are actually participating in the fight). This is hard to pull off when you need it and literally guts your offensive or cc abilities for a good 6-8 seconds, but it does pay off in longer fights. After the patch it will be impossible to go from your dps stance into your tank stance while in combat to react to situations in any sort of time. To go from 0-100 force takes at a bare minimum 9 seconds as deception (if you use blackout(a 45 second cd) for the 10 force + 6 seconds of energy regen time). This is simply unacceptable compared to the other classes and also removes an element of entertainment and skill from playing this class with a group.

 

It also takes away the viability of using this as a defensive option. Before I could make a disagreeing argument to claims of that nature, but now this class as dps spec will be the unequivocal squishiest class in the game. Someone has to be don't get me wrong, it's just odd for a melee dps to fill that slot. I fully expect that the defenses will be addressed in the future for the dps specs in some minor way when this change goes live as I already felt that this class was the most trainable class in the game, with dark charge being a way to mitigate at least some sustained damage (though armor alone is a weak defense in this game with all the penetration and skills that bypass it, it is still better than having only deflection to rely on for taking sustained damage, which is arguably the worst defensive cd in the game despite it's longer cd because of how terrible defense is).

 

1.5s cylinder switches don't take any of your ammo away or build heat, which is why I think there's a cast time, nor does it have any followup repurcussions other than the standard dps loss.

 

For juggs/guardians, it costs nothing to activate the stance (unlike assassins or powertechs) but it does remove all of their current resources.

 

Unfortunately the only way to remove the functionality from these two classes given the differences in class mechanics ans resources and balance it out across all three is to make guard a tank tree talent.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Lina_Inverse

Or they could just leave it as is because it is not a balance issue. Here's what those other classes have that deception (or any, for that matter) assassin don't:

 

Jugg - Charge (and refresh), Intercede, AoE CC, insane (completely) burst if speced, did I mention INTERCEDE? and heavy armor + insane defensives.

 

BH - No ressource cost at all (as you mentionned), heavt armor, ranged capability, grip, insane defensives.

 

Give me a break, assassin is already a mediocre class compared to every class out there that brings something unique to the table. Please tell me what unique abilities assassisn bring? None.

Bump, charge nerf is over the top and really is only a nerf to how fun it is to play the class and not the class itself.

Bump, charge nerf is over the top and really is only a nerf to how fun it is to play the class and not the class itself.