Stun on sorc bubble break must be changed

You are yet again oversimplifying things. I play a shadow, 31 0 10, spec and when the regular sorcs show up on the imp side, the whole match becomes a stun fest. Everywhere you move to attack you are stunned because the bubble breaks. Today's Novare coast, i held my head most of the time. 3 sorcs, using this spec, becoming invincible. There was a poster while back talking about marauders saying that if the team-mates know what to do you have no chance. I whole heartedly agree because in two bubble stuns or 1 bubble stun and aoe root through resilience I am long dead. I see sorcs on purpose force speeding in groups of people and using overload. While this is smart play and I congratulate them for tanking us, the bubble mechanic needs to be addressed.


I guess I have to start streaming again to show how PVP has become for us melee people. Maybe that will help in addressing this issue because at the moment the stunfest is unbearable.



PS: Good idea with the ranged guy. I will tell him to focus on bursting all the bubbles so we can actually hit someone Oh wait, the bubbles will be back ... scratch that idea


PPS: I just finished a wz with my sentinel and for the first time in months I played focus spec. Never used it since the buff and I have to say, fully buffed smash, cloak, wait for the sorc bubble to burst, bang 6k smash. I am rooted,sorc panics, runs away and heals himself, i giggle and dont care if I die. Somehow the satisfaction of hitting these pesky sorcs for 6k overcomes the bubble issue

So far for 1 person you've used your 1 min cd for a 3 sec immunity unless tank then 5 sec, force cloak which is 2 minutes, 1 1/2 if middle tree, and you've still yet to deal with the other 7 people on his team that have bubbles. Bravo, your strongest cd's are now popped and you can't do it again for at the very least 1 minute. They have 17 secs inbetween their bubbles, overload which will root you for 5 secs, speed that can't be slowed/rooted, and not to mention they still have their own hard stun. Have fun chasing them around for minutes on end trying to kill one person while they stun/kite you to death.

And for point two, hey ranged person, burst all 7 of those bubbles before melee engage... yeah, practical. You've still yet to prove anybody wrong except that indeed, in order to even have a SLIGHT chance every single possible cd to kill them must be popped if you are within 10 meters of them. No other AC can even come close to saying that just because of CC alone.

I feel really bad for those sents and shadows. They are in such a rough place right now. Maybe if they gave them more dps like Mercs have. They should also give them invicibilty too.

I go to work. I come back, this thread is 3 pages longer with some baddie information floating about.

Clearly you have pretty bad people on your server. Nobody including sorcerers and sages are saying this except baddies. The only legitamite critique about this being broken is the resolve values don't reflect it being a stun. But of course none of you guys complain when whirlwind white-bars people.

Learn to play.


Yes I am. The sooner you failures accept this the sooner you'll become better PvPer's. Marauders who know how to play their class knows they have to be 10 meters away when they pop a backlash bubble. If you refuse to accept this fact which hasn't changed from the inception of this game, then you will be forever terrible, bad, and a non-factor.

Carnage marauders do this best with a root on their deadly throw. Most of the baddies just want to get up in peoples faces completely oblivious to counters they may have. I face marauders all the time on all my other classes. I beat 8 out of 10 marauders on any class I play. I beat them because I know the suddle differences between someone who is competent at all 3 pillars of PvP and one who only knows one:

1. Mechanics
2. Strategy
3. Situational Awareness

Learn to play.


It's been this way ever since the inception of the game. It was a mez before. If nobody touched you it lasted forever. The baddies would break your mez by touching you. The people who were decent left you alone to mez.


I have all 8 AC's. 6 of them full war-hero, 4 of them near optimized. The last two being battlemaster. The last two so happen to be a sniper and a Mecenary. And before you claim that its not really possible, I'll tell you that I've inherited accounts from players who have quit. 4 of 6 AC's I didn't even have to gear up.

I've played nearly all the specializations. I've done this so I know the counters to each and every class I face in warzones. You are facing a learn to play issue.

The top part of your post could apply equally to any classes' AOE stun (e.g. the Jugg) and is a complaint against stunning itself, not the sorc bubbles.

The latter part of your post correctly sets your opinion forth about bubble-stuns. However you are wrong; because it is not 'freely abusable', the sorc would have to spec the bubble so that the stun doesn't break on damage, and this is a tier4 ability in the dps tree.

This is incorrect. I regularly top the healing numbers with my hybrid build, and still do over 100k damage in addition (usually the combined total of healing and dps comes to a little over 500k per match, when it goes well). Ops and scoundrels can pvp heal for 900k; I've never done that and am not interested in doing so because experience has shown me that my uitlity build saves more lives and secures more objectives than spamming healing does (depending on the WZ of course; and in general). Besides, I can't produce 900k healing. Possibly cos I went alacrity.
As to it being 1v1; yes it is a good duelling build (still tough to beat a shadow though). When I'm paired with a good tank the two of us can beat off 4 or 5 enemies at a time.

I can be a cornerstone in my pvp teams; and the build is certianly viable in WZ's, imho.

This doesn't all mean that the bubble-stun is overpowered; it means that the hybrid build can be effective when paired with a tank...

Nonsense; provide proof of this 'changing dynamic' if its there.

As for tankassins, they're the most dangerous 1v1 class and always have been. No FOTM there... your argument is invalid.

Make your mind up, hypocrite.

Well all I can say is you are trying to tell someone who plays a sage in bis gear and has alot of experience in rateds how to play balance/madness (your not even close to how to play it effectively btw, its effectiveness comes from dots and 10 ticks of fob not just proccing mindcrush, and spamming tele throw) because you have a lower level sorc and can top the dps charts. Forgive me in saying this but you have a very limited perspective, sages are at 50 end game are a different ball game completley. You are confusing healing specced sages with dps ones for starters. Dps sages do not get immunity from roots, that is called egress and sits high up in the healing tree.. Similarly hybrid sages do not get a benefit from a 20 second force speed, because they already had this pre 1.4, which is one of the main reasons you didnt spec balance/madness and you went hybrid..

I have played since early access, I have seen what has become of this class dps wise. Dps is what im discussing here not heals, I think the changes to heals are mostly positive. Prior to 1.4 sages were speccing dps hybrid balance/tele for a number of reasons:-

Balance/tele hybrid (typical)

Pros

-better survivability - bubble mezz
- Support for team mates in with shielding, stronger shield supported by the next point.
- Increased force resources
-root on an aoe knockback
-reduced cooldown on forcespeed
- Some sages would forgo a little crit in the healing tree for a proc on telewave from disturbance but this is situational and not always the case

Cons

Lower dps output overall, loss of criticals on periodic damage, loss of single target root.

Balance/madness - was the weaker spec (though it had higher dps output) comparted to hybrid.

Pros

Better damage from dots, and stronger criticals from fob
A decent single target root
Instant lift, though most hybrids specced for this anyway.
Decent damage mitigation from periodic damage ( I would spec this over project), project is too costly on force resources.

Cons

-Crap survivability - easily focused/shutdown
- terrible force resource issues i.e you run out quickly
-30 seconds on force speed

The changes made to sages and how they directly affect the dps specs are as follows:-

We lost 180 degrees on a knockback though it is now instant (very buggy thought i gather alot of classes have bug issues) and has a little range and frontal cone(better tool in one sense, loss of survival on the other), reduced to 10m our range on hard stun, gained a self instant heal which is useful but not 6-8k in dps spec, never have i seen those numbers, more like 2-4k in bis gear. Bubble mezz is no longer a mezz, its a stun, but then we have lost 180 degrees of protection from the knockback and we need some way of dealing with melee focus trains, which we are often a target of. Balance also gets 10 seconds knocked off of force speed, which was needed.

So how does that play out for Sages dps/wise?

Hybrid/balance/tele

Bubble mezz is now a stun - better change for survivability, though the fact it can be appliled on other classes has called for a nerf which will hit the sage survivability hard if it does happen.
Knockback is still talented to root though its changed into a 180 cone (no rear protection as such but cant really call it a flat out nerf since it can be used in positive ways to create distance with slight range, thought it does compound the issue with lack of range on the hard stun)
20 seconds force speed no longer needs to be specced into but its irrelevant because it shared that with better force resources
Still has better force resources than full balance
Bubbling team mates is not a prob because of decent force resources
now has an instant self heal, for moderate amount (the closest we get to a defensive cooldown, but its a heal)
reduced range on hard stun (nerf)

Balance

10 second reduction on force speed was a much needed change (buff).
Force resources still poor.
Better dps output than hybriid on dots, though you soon run out of force.
Still collapses under focus fire more quickly than hybrid.
Shielding team mates a waste of force resources
Lack of range on hard stun (nerf).
Single target root - a big plus for the spec.
Self-heal - useful for regaining a little force when needd as well as a top up when needed

Full tele?

Im not even going there, suffice to say its absolute garbarge for pvp and can be shutdown easily imo, its just a great big beacon that screams nuke me. It lacks any meaningful tools to kite, and hybrid trumps it because you can dip in both trees and get decent utility that it offers and procs from balance but there is a lack of overall dps. Still you will live longer in hybrid than in tele, any day of the week. .

Conclusion

I've played rateds as a dps sage, since their inception, I have watched this class be hit with the nerf bat while other classes are gifted strong defences, powerful burst, utility and seemingly left alone or further buffed. I see no reason why balance is a more beneficial spec since the recent changes to sage than hybrid in that environment. I still see no reason to bring a balance sage or even a hybrid dps sage when you can just stack fotm comps and players that can bring better utility and burst to the team because they scale better with bis gear, and have better defensive cooldowns. Dps still needs work on sage/sorc - and the loss of bubble stun will not help us, it will hinder us and give those fotm classes their free kills once more, and I feel most of the qq about bubble stun stems from this.

Dps sages are one of the weaker ac's, a loss of bubble stun or moving it up higher in the tele tree will make it even weaker. Therefore if we lose it, then we need something in return, either a buff to dps, a hard defensive cooldown, a single bursty proc (aoe or single target damage) that is decent, an in combat force regen skill such as evocate (wow mages) on a long cooldown, a drain energy/force mechanic, or force deflect skill that pushes back missiles sabers back at their attackers. Any one of those skills would be useful for us. The only alternative you would not like if we take another hit to survivabilty - maras, jugs, shadows, pts need to be be hit with the nerf bat like we were. Its that simple, so be careful what you ask for - you might not like what you get instead.

Umm, the two most powerful AoE CCs (Flashbang/Flash Grenade and Awe/Intimidating Roar) both break on damage so no, my complaint against opening a burst phase with a stun doesn't apply to them.

Yes, I know you have to spec into the bubble. What's your point? Rage Juggernauts have to spec 31 points into the Rage tree to get the overpowered Smashes, doesn't mean it's not overpowered.