"Target Acquired now increases Accuracy by 30% and Armor Penetration by 15% instead of increasing Alacrity."

For what possible reason did this change need to be made? A temporary buff to ACCURACY of all things? And 30% at that? A sniper needs a grand total of 10% accuracy to always hit, assuming they were to simply ignore the metric tonnage of accuracy all over their raid gear. With that accuracy, the entire 30% buff is wasted instead of simply 2/3 of the buff.

With all the armor debuffs already available, it's also not uncommon to find yourself already attacking a boss who has effectively no armor, which makes the additional 15% armor penetration just as worthless as the accuracy.

Sure, it's a wonderful change for PvPers, who can use that accuracy and armor pen to punch through enemy tanks more easily, but why would you completely eliminate the endgame PvE usefulness of an ability to get that?

There is a longer thread about this previously posted on the PTS, you must have missed it. Some snipers actually think this is a PvE buff, but I agree with you - it's totally a nerf. It helps PvP and loses the burst we used to get from TA. I used it in this combo: TA -> Cull -> SoS -> Ambush. Definitely hit harder with all three of those taking the alacrity benefit and no it did not kill my energy.

Sad about this change, as I just PvE with my Sniper.

its clearly a tank buster cooldown so your shot dont get parried.

And in raids, bosses don't have defensive cooldowns that you have to bust through. This change takes it from a useful PvE/PvP ability to a solely PvP ability with no place in endgame PvE.

If you also add the change to sniper volley (2SoS instead of 3, and only affect 2 SoS instead of random proc on several skill), it's quite a nerf for PvE.

And since it was one of the less viable spe for PvE it's quite extreme IMO. And for PvP, leth is still superior (more DPS, accuracy and enemy armor is less important, more mobility...)

Once I have the time I'll make some DPS meter on my IA between live and PTS.

i agree this is a horrible change. maybe 15% armor penetration and 15% alacrity instead of 30% alacrity...

everyone wines to nerf snipers... but none of those ppl were complaining about the in operations lol

If you also add the change to sniper volley (2SoS instead of 3, and only affect 2 SoS instead of random proc on several skill), it's quite a nerf for PvE.

And since it was one of the less viable spe for PvE it's quite extreme IMO. And for PvP, leth is still superior (more DPS, accuracy and enemy armor is less important, more mobility...)

Once I have the time I'll make some DPS meter on my IA between live and PTS.

The cooldown for Rapid Fire on live is 90 seconds, the cooldown for the PTS Sniper Volley is 45 seconds. You still get 2 free series of shots cooldown resets in the same amount of time, so calling that a nerf doesn't make a lot of sense.

Sniper volley on the PTS also increases alacrity by 10% in addition to resetting the cooldown on SoS (again, a 45 second cooldown). So even though we lose the alacrity buff on Target Acquired (120s cooldown) we gain 10% haste every 45 seconds. On top of all that, we get the 15% armor debuff on target acquired.

These changes do not look like nerfs at all, but rather spreading out our dps over a longer period of time.

The cooldown for Rapid Fire on live is 90 seconds, the cooldown for the PTS Sniper Volley is 45 seconds. You still get 2 free series of shots cooldown resets in the same amount of time, so calling that a nerf doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

Sniper volley on the PTS also increases alacrity by 10% in addition to resetting the cooldown on SoS (again, a 45 second cooldown). So even though we lose the alacrity buff on Target Acquired (120s cooldown) we gain 10% haste every 45 seconds. On top of all that, we get the 15% armor debuff on target acquired.

 

These changes do not look like nerfs at all, but rather spreading out our dps over a longer period of time.

What about Lethality?

What about Lethality?

Thought you would assume it was a Marksmanship focused change since it was the only tree changed?

Does it hurt Lethality? I really dont think so, it's a 2min cooldown skill you would use twice in a boss fight? But I have to say I run MM so I'm biased.

Do we actually know that debuffs are additive, and not the more rational multiplicative? I doubt all it takes is to apply 5 20% armor debuffs to make an operation boss have 0 armor.

most everything in swtor is additive. It's extremely unlikely that it is *.2 * .2 *.2

Player buffs vs target debuffs may be multiplicative.

The test is actually quite easy. Just get a sage to cast lightning on a dummy with different debuffs on it. Since it does the same damage each tick the exact armor values can be calculated.

Some have claimed to have tested this and say it's currently working additively and stacking with same classes buffs. But i haven't seen any test data myself. And the few times i've tried to get the right classes together to test it have failed.

What about Lethality?

The change on TA is not a good thing for Leth. Armor pen for a DoT focused build is not really helpful, same for accuracy. The alacrity buff was helpful for orbital bombardment and some burst with cull+SoS.

It's not a big nerf, just a bad change for leth.

What about Lethality?

as far as I can tell there is no change to the lethality talent tree. The only change lethality will see is the target aquired change and the change that you cannot use on use relics or adrenals in a warzone other than the new warzone adrenal that will only lower the amount of damage you will take and not provide any additional dps. However, the hybrids may be affected by the 2 changes they made to the MM and the eng trees.