Tweaking the numbers will improve things, but the more I run scaled group content the more I'm convinced it's a terrible way to go about this, and will seriously damage the game.

 

Every HM/NiM operation besides the newest will be scaled down. That means current gear/stats are largely pointless. Power and Mastery hardcap means no relic procs, no power adrenal, might as well toss all your mods and augs with power/mastery out because they will have NO effect at all, the only stats that will matter are tertiary.

 

Which inevitably will funnel us towards two sets of gear - one for new content, and one for everything else. One using stats the way we know them now, and the other stacking the only thing that matters, crit & alacrity, since power & mastery just don't matter.

 

And this will be the case for the overwhelming majority of content available to play for the forseeable future.

 

So unless Bioware changes the scaling methodology and ACTUALLY scales all stats (I'm not sure how hardcaps can be called scaling to begin with, but i'm no math wiz or coder)... well my personal prediction is people are going to lose interest very quickly if their gear progression has almost no effect in the majority of content, or to get that effect they'll need to keep two or more sets of gear/stats.

The idea is not bad at all. Having the same output, HP numbers etc. like back in the day when the ops was released and making gear have no impact is good too, that means it cannot be overgeared when new tiers of gear release and the difficulty can stay somewhat the same throughout patches/expansions.

 

However it is not working well just like the above post said. For older content people would be making a second set of gear that is more optimal, tanks stacking high defense mods because why not if endurance and power is capped anyway, everyone using crit relics and adrenals, even healers would use the yellow stims for that minimal crit coz everything else would be useless, that's pretty retarded.

 

So some of my ideas are:

Maybe disable the effect of relics completely. Or have them all scale, more work and not even needed i guess.

Make all stats have a predetermined value for tanks/dps/healer role but alacrity and accuracy, and also have alacrity cap at exactly 1,3s gcd.

For adrenals since we are scaled down to 55 anything with level requirement above that shouldn't be available for use; consumables from older expansions could be added to vendors with a proper price or they would be only available from crafting just like before. Or the adrenals from newer expansions would scale and ignore the stat cap just like medpac does atm.

Well scaling output down to the way it was meant to be goes without saying.

 

Scaling stuff up to 75 once again isn't bad either, that means the numbers will be similar to what the current tier raid (Dxun) has and that is fun too for pushind dps and it makes it less confusing as for what "good dps is"...

Also I don't think in swtor there are so many raids that it's too much work making them 75? If it were wow things could've been different.

Edited August 17, 2019 by Restoman

What's the difference really between scaling everyone down vs scaling the dps/hps/whatever up?

 

Or is the implication that the only Op that will drop gear for level 75 be the one new op? Or is sub level content dropping max level gear?

The idea is not bad at all. Having the same output, HP numbers etc. like back in the day when the ops was released and making gear have no impact is good too, that means it cannot be overgeared when new tiers of gear release and the difficulty can stay somewhat the same throughout patches/expansions.

 

This is the real problem with scaled down ops with hard caps. As you get better gear it won't matter for 95% of the raid content in the game.

 

So that means if you get the best nim gear the only raid you'll feel any difference in is Dxun. So it literally means you either gear for a single raid, or don't bother trying to improve gear at all really. And if gear will only matter for a single raid why even make gear and not just hard cap stats by level and class so everything is "tuned perfectly"

If it was actual scaling it would not be an issue. The way 'scaling' works in SWTOR is that Power & Mastery get hard-capped. Stat balance for current levels doesn't work well because the combo of power/master and tertiary stats that work at 75 will be completely different at lower levels, where higher tertiary stats are what matter. Right now all ops are scaled to current 70 (on live), so when you run them, your gear matters, even in EV.

 

With the new system you just get cieling capped in every operation except lvl 75, of which there will be only one.

 

So the issue isn't that it's fundamentally wrong, it's more of value. I think most players gear to feel stronger, get better results, etc...

 

Now, the only place you'll notice any benefit from min/max new gear is lvl 75. The entire rest of the swtor universe will require entirely different stats to get more benefit from gear, meaning ppl will want 2 full sets, the second would have tertiaries (alac, crit) max'd way higher since power/master cannot be increased, and instead of using the power/master relics we'd pick different ones, and different adrenals for dps also.

 

If there was a ton of 75 content, then ok. But with only one lvl 75 operation, this just seems foolish, and adding to the grind, which players have already spoken out about being an issue.

The problem with scaling tech right now on PTS is that you can basically 4 man HMs or even some NiMs from what I've seen, not to mention when <Failure> tested Dread Palace, they killed every boss in less than FOUR minutes! With an exception for Calphayus because of his Portal phases. If Bioware releases scaling tech on retail in it's current state all of the raiders who actually want to raid and do hard content can just say big bye bye to old raids and when they clear Dxun and farm it for a little bit, they'll simply quit. It's literally gonna be next incarnation of 3.0 when people were overleveled.

 

Eric mentioned before, I don't know if it was this thread or a different one, but he said that they learned from previous mistakes like 3.0(I hold you to your word Eric please don't fail us, raiders!). From what I'm seeing they didn't learn anything as of now, unless they actually manage to pull it off number-wise on next phase of PTS which is going to be a miracle.

 

TLDR; Either remove Scaling tech or make it so that every Raid and Flashpoints scales to 75.

Edited August 19, 2019 by chipequssmlgpro

I think Scaling Tech may not be working as intended. It is confusing and hard to tell what it should be.

 

How much does the stacking iRating Adjustment buff help? Is it supposed to improve Mastery, Endurance and Power hard caps in lower-level Planetary content, Flashpoints and Ops?

 

Experimenting:

 

Starting from iRating 306, level 75, fully geared:

 

Health: 270,178, Mastery: 11524, Endurance: 15372, Power: 9656, Bonus Damage: 6138, Crit: 2868 (35.5%), Alacrity: 3234 (15.48%). Mastery is buffed by 2% due to the gear shells. No other buffs.

 

If I strip all gear, stats are as follows at level 75: (iRating: 0)

Health: 65,554, Mastery: 1002, Endurance: 900, Bonus Damage: 200.4. All others are 0.

 

If I enter a level 70 master mode flash point at level 75 with ALL gear removed, I get a buff called Level Locked and have the following stats: (iRating: 0)

Health: 115,896, Mastery: 7390, Endurance: 7472, Power:3569, Bonus Damage: 3220. Power is set and capped at 3569. Force/Tech Power is set to 4438 and never changes. Everything else is 0.

 

Add 306 MH and OH: (iRating: 44) Endurance is now capped at 7472.

Health: 115,896, Mastery: 7390, Endurance: 7472, Power: 3569, Bonus Damage: 3220, Crit: 539, Alacrity: 539

 

Add 306 Chest and Legs: (iRating: 87) Bonus Damage/Healing drops!

Health: 115,896, Mastery: 4523, Endurance: 7472, Power: 3569, Bonus Damage: 2746, Critical: 1078, Alacrity: 1078

 

Add 306 Head and Gloves: (iRating: 131)

Health: 115,896, Mastery: 6273, Endurance: 7472, Power: 3569, Bonus Damage: 3096, Critical: 1617, Alacrity: 1617

 

Add 306 Belt and Bracer: (iRating: 175) Mastery is now capped at 7538, Bonus Damage caps at 3349.

Health: 115,896, Mastery: 7538, Endurance: 7472, Power: 3569, Bonus Damage: 3349, Critical: 1833, Alacrity: 1617

 

Add 306 Boots and Relics (iRating: 240)

Health: 115,896, Mastery: 7538, Endurance: 7472, Power: 3569, Bonus Damage: 3349, Critical: 2868, Alacrity: 1617

 

Add 306 Implants and Ear: (iRating 306)

Health: 115,896, Mastery: 7538, Endurance: 7472, Power: 3569, Bonus Damage: 3349, Critical: 2868, Alacrity: 3234

 

If I enter the level 70 master mode with all 306 gear, I get another buff called "iRating Adjustment" with 19 stacks, changing stats to:

Health: 126,798, Mastery: 7538, Endurance: 8182, Power: 3569, Critical: 2868, Alacrity: 3234, Bonus Damage: +4940

 

This is in the vicinity of 236-242 gear with full 228 augments, except for bonus damage, which was down at about 3600.

 

8182 - 7472 = +710 endurance buff.

4940 - 3349 = +1591 bonus damage or +1061 bonus healing

So, it would appear the iRating Adjustment buffs endurance by about 373 HP and bonus damage by about 83.7 (and healing by 56) per stack, while doing nothing for Power or Mastery.

 

Comparing with full 258 gear, with full 240 augments. full datacrons, full legacy, no buffs:

Health: 134,910, Mastery: 7197, Endurance: 9152, Power: 5014, Bonus Damage: 3853, Critical: 2106 (40%) Alacrity: 1859 (15.4%)

 

If this Scaling Tech is where it should be, in 306 gear with no other buffs, health is down in the level 70 master mode, but DPS and HPS output are up substantially. Crit, alacrity and/or accuracy have to be sacrificed as 306 gear won't get back to 258 levels at 70, even with a stim.

 

As a healer, if you go for 15.4%+ alacirty, crit will be about 35.5% at a 2868 rating, 5% worse than 258 gear. Health is down about 6%, but bonus damage/healing is up by 28%.

Edited August 19, 2019 by TerraStomper
didn't compare bonus damage with that of 258 gear level 70

Veteran FPs like Hammerstation, Athiss or Cademimu (didnt had time to test more, because i've tested them from highlvl char side + with toons that just met the level to list for the specific fp in vet mode via groupfinder) are a far too easy on current pts, even some heroric 2+ are more challenging than those now.

I've done all 3 with a jugger and sniper solo.

Going in with lvl 75 boosted chars I was asking me on each if there was really a boss during bossfights. At least a few trash mobs created some limited fun, rest was far to easy.

So at least on running with lowlevel char that matched the level for listing via groupfinder I was hoping for better action. While some trash mobs tried to be a challenge, the boss fights are as nearly the same as with fighting them with lvl 75 chars just taking a few seconds longer to kill and still disappionting.

On master mode I was only able to test Athiss with a friend (dd + heal) and we also not really had an issue to complete it.

 

To be clear. I'm a common swtor player using his days on live server helping member of his guild by supporting them on their daily groupfinder op and running vet mode operations.

I my opinion the idea of downscailng instead of upscaling to max level is the better choise as long as all stats (not only mastery, health and power) are capped to the iRating you normally have with artifactgear dropping on the level you downscaled in the flashpoint. Also fps need to have a difficulty your really neeed a 4 man party even on vet fp

Edited August 19, 2019 by LK-Draco

i'm sorry to say so,

but i'm not interested in the how;

more in the why!

 

i can understand, that introducing a scaling tech would help you to do adjustments very fast, even if you implement another new iRating, new levels or abilities. so at the end you are hard-capping dps, hps and threat for older content.

if something is not working right, just update some numbers; done. so you get rid of the bugs we can actually see with 258-groups, knowing their classes. once balanced, it could be copied to similar stuff.

 

but that also means, that just the uncut content is the one, you could use your full potential.

 

with nerfing storymode operations to death and adding the buff for lower geared players, you set a hugh difference between needed skill for story mode and veteran mode operations. so the majority of players can't pass harder veteran mode operations at the moment and stay in story mode. just compare the numbers with 4.0 times, when we got highlighted veteran mode operations.

with introducing 258s, we all could see more people doing veteran mode and even master mode operations,

because of the overgeared status. so introducing that plus in stats als opened harder content for a wider audience.

with scaling tech, you cut this. scaling tech means a hard-cap for dps/hps/tps and so you also hinder people doing the stuff with the later coming higher iRating.

also there will be a not balanceable difference between scaled und unscaled content. so similar to the actual difference between story mode and veteran mode, you add another hurdle vor scaled and unscaled content, what keeps more people away playing the new content.

 

i think you already know that. and that brings me to the sad opinion, that the only reason for a scaling tech is, to simplify the expansion work, not caring about players.

 

and so the important question for me is: WHY?

Back to Eric's original questions:

 

Too Easy: yes. I suspect this has to do with Bonus Damage/Healing being 25-30% higher than it was in 5.0 with this Scaling Tech.

 

Too hard: No. However, with reduced health pools, standing in stupid or pulling threat and getting nuked by the boss does get one dead faster. Tanks aren't holding aggro as effectively. But, these do not matter much when the team can just melt the boss in under 4 minutes on what was supposed to be an 8-10 minute fight.

 

Do I like this style of balance? No. Gear and preparation buffs should matter. But, I also don't like being nerfed to a sub-par baseline or wildly buffed to the point old content becomes trivial either. For example, the highest power one could obtain at level 70 is about 5100. But, for a level 75 in level 70 master modes, power doesn't matter, its just preset to a much lower base value and used as a factor to calculate Damage Bonus which is then generously buffed, by "iRating Adjustment" it looks like. Class buffs don't matter, except for the 5% crit. Versatile Stims don't matter. Attack Adrenals don't matter. Mastery/Power relics don't matter. Endurance buffs don't matter. Datacron buffs don't matter.

This is the real problem with scaled down ops with hard caps. As you get better gear it won't matter for 95% of the raid content in the game.

 

So that means if you get the best nim gear the only raid you'll feel any difference in is Dxun. So it literally means you either gear for a single raid, or don't bother trying to improve gear at all really. And if gear will only matter for a single raid why even make gear and not just hard cap stats by level and class so everything is "tuned perfectly"

 

I would rather they just skip the level cap increase to 75 and leave gear as it is now in the game. Gear grinds are not fun, and scaling down ops wouldn't be necessary if they would just keep the level cap at 70.

i would hope they do not do a hard cap of anything, just nerfs... if a typical group is outperforming by 30%, just reduce the base and bonus damage by that amount. i would prefer to leave crit, accuracy and alacrity where they are (unless those are still being tuned) but you should be able to do everything you need to do in terms of scaling by reducing the main and offhand base damage, and bring down he bonus damage coefficients.

 

the other option would be tuning the bosses armor reduction but that can get complicated...

 

i would prefer if hm and nim bosses were all tuned to lvl 75 so people could see their real dps... but if not we will still have parsley (which is problematic with all the different guild buffs).

I ran hammer station in vet and master mode last night.

Veteran is way to easy and while I like the master difficulty, I think it´s to hard for a beginners flashpoint.

Especially the bonusboss will be the end for many groups, if healer and tank don´t know what they are doing.

 

Hope you consider this feedback. Thank you.

The Scaling tech is not so great cause it makes almost every boss too easy to beat.

We did Terror from beyond Master mode with our 258 stuff or just the 270 stuff that we get from the odessen terminal and we pass every boss just like on the live server without so much difficulty.

 

But another things to consider which is even worse is the cap stats. Cause with it almost half of our stuff was useless cause we were hard cap in power mastery and else.

 

The adrenals do not Work, the stim neither just like our relics so what's the point of getting stuff ( moreover with the system that seem way random and need to be farm ) if it's for getting it and find that finally it's useless because of the hard cap

Edited August 31, 2019 by Flowwou

Just tested Master Mode Hammerstation.

Got synced to LVL 70 with around 110k health. comparted to 140k on live server at the moment.

the real suffer is the max dps of 5k to 5,5k in a bossfight. the figts took ages to complete. we were doing less damage compared to lvl 60 with full 224 gear...

I only tested the flashpoint and didn't test the ops.

My Char was copied to pts and started with 252 gear.

 

Is it too easy?

No

Is it too hard?

No

Do you like this style of balance?

Yes, i loved it. I tried to go to master FP right away and I struggled to finish it as a tank.

After finishing it i did some veteran and more master's and it eventually got easier.

I just think that the difficulty between veteran and master could increase just a bit and the system would be perfect.

Edited September 2, 2019 by nkarapinha

So just saying that EV HM can be done with four players. 3 DPS and a healer. Yeah EV HM was never super hard but the fact that 4 randoms can clear it is kinda upsetting. I am not sure what the goal is here Bioware Devs but the level sync down is not working so much sure things hit hard but you really need to consider either the values or numbers or data you are using when you do level lock or whatever the tech is. If this is the state of all old raids when you launch Onslaught then there is really only one raid worth doing which is Dxun. I fear that if you go down the path of scaling down and you miss the mark by a lot you will basically shoot yourself in the foot. I am sorry to sound so negative just being super honest.

Hey folks,

 

Let's talk about the next thing we are introducing to PTS that we would like some testing on, new scaling tech which we are applying to group content in SWTOR. To test this new scaling, we recommend that you test the Flashpoint Hammer Station or one of two Operations; Karagga's Palace or Eternity Vault.

 

The idea behind this scaling tech is that we are trying to avoid some of the pitfalls from previous expansions. By re-leveling them to max level, we effectively have to rebalance them all over again. This creates some obvious issues where FPs and Ops can quickly become too easy, or too hard. The goal of applying this scaling tech is that it will allow us to leverage the original balance that for this content.

 

Take a spin through this content and if you want to really see how it plays, compare it on PTS to other FPs and Ops. Let us know what you think.

• Is it too easy?
  
• Is it too hard?
  
• Do you like this style of balance?
  

Thanks all.

 

-eric

 

Well what can I say to this? First as a solo player this was not good news really to begin with, but did try as a solo player Hammer Station which was OK. For me the balance on vet mode was just right for solo play. Which may mean to easy for group play. But as long as there is a vet mode and master mode it should not be too much of an issue. Over all despite the initial dread this well at least for Hammer Station was one of the few positive things so far. As a solo player it has added something back into play for me. So that's good. hope vet mode stays how it is now on PTS. I will let group players comment on master mode version, which to me is really needs to be set for groups. I really hope that all the vet modes stay solo friendly and master mode stays group friendly. But please make drops for groups equal with no roll items. That may even get me into group play. Never going to do group play if there only ever going to be a 1 in 4 chance of getting the roll item.

 

 

Hammer Station on Vet mode./

10/10 Hope the other follow suit.

Edited September 2, 2019 by DreadtechSavant

Just tested Master Mode Hammerstation.

Got synced to LVL 70 with around 110k health. comparted to 140k on live server at the moment.

the real suffer is the max dps of 5k to 5,5k in a bossfight. the figts took ages to complete. we were doing less damage compared to lvl 60 with full 224 gear...

 

I ran it several now after getting gear to around "average" 278 (so not too high and not too low) - but I had set bonuses and tactical but no augments and the fights felt kind of like I remember them on live. I was on 'ling and could break over 9k on each fight in the above gear (278 set boni but no augments). So I think that is fine.

 

Now KP (ops) feel too easy because level sync to 50, but the level 70 sync is fine.

Is it too easy?

 

My guild did Hammer Station Veteran Mode and Karagga's Palace Story Mode.

 

Hammer Station was stupid easy, we got to the point of trying to drag as much of the trash with us to the bosses to make it even a bit challenging. Even doing this we wiped only one, and that is because I forgot to save a CD as the tank, and we neglected using the healing terminals.

 

KP SM felt about normal, maybe a bit easier than normal, or at least faster.

 

Is it too hard?

 

The content we tested was either too easy or about the same as it has been.

 

Do you like this style of balance?

 

Overall as long as labeling a mode, Story, Veteran, Master, means that all content at that level feels consistent, and that each version feels like a step up, I think it's fine. I do know that guild mates worry about Master Mode ops being made to feel like gear doesn't matter, and that they are too easy, and I can see this concern as being valid.

MM Hammer station feels about right. It seems to be close to what we have on live servers now.

 

Veteran Hammer is basically a story mode. I guess it’ll be good for solo players who want to see story in FPs that don’t have a proper story mode but it wasn’t fun for me to run it with a group. Bosses and trash were dying before I could even go from opener to rotation as a dps. Tanks and healers are not supposed to be there at all it seems, there’s nothing to heal, and dps players tank just fine.

 

It concerns me that Vet FPs and ops (based on other posters' feedback, I didn't have a chance to check it yet) seem to be easier than we got used to because of scaling tech. We can sleepwalk through story missions now, can we at least have some challenge in PvE group content?

...

However, I do understand your reasoning behind this scaling tech. Therefore, as a compromise, maybe the scaling tech could be applied to SM/HM, leaving the NIMs (+ TOS and Ravagers maybe?) scaled to level 75, in order to keep the truly difficult content difficult, yet still making most of the scaling easier for you guys as expansions keep coming on.

 

I like the idea of scaling all the nim operations to lvl 75, as well as hm rav/tos. maybe all of gods should be lvl 75.

Edited October 3, 2019 by dipstik