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So What *Are* We Going To Ask? July


Kitru

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Regardless of who actually gets voted as the class rep, that person needs to know what questions the community itself wants answered. Since most of the people that are being recommended are either PvP or PvE focused (or focused upon a specific role over another), it would behoove us, as a community, to actually figure out what questions people want answered/asked, especially for PvP players to figure out the PvE question(s) and PvEers to figure out the PvP question(s).

 

As such, I'm suggesting that (and beginning) that, every month, a thread be made that we can use to parse out what the most pressing questions in the Shadow/Assassin community are, both PvP and PvE.

 

Now, I'll readily admit that I have *no* clue what the most pressing concerns for PvP Shadows are. I know that Balance, right now, sucks balls because the utility got gutted and it has no reliable burst and that Shadow tanks are now only really useful for node guarding, but, beyond that, I've got no idea. As such, the questions *I'm* positing are going to be PvE focused. Xinika, waka, and the other that do PvP like nutters, feel free to weigh in on the other side.

 

My questions are...

 

(1) Is there any plan to fix the utterly *horrible* implementation of Phase Walk and/or make it useful for Infiltration/Balance? Right now, because it's got the cast, the limited duration, and the enforced downtime no matter what you do, Phase Walk is a mostly useless gimmick, even for KC which gets Shadow's Shelter out of it (the fact that you have to run over to healers to place it every 2.75 minutes means that it's pretty much impossible to use as a tank unless you've got some period of time where you're literally doing *nothing*). Its only purpose, right now, is some cheesy gimmicks in PvP: teleporting back to nodes and instant scoring in Huttball (which, for balance's sake, could be fixed to not be allowed to have you teleport while you've got the Huttball). Even if you *do* use it as an emergency teleport, it's got a 1-1.5 sec delay so you can't even get out of dangerous stuff without getting mauled.

 

(2) What is the state of analysis/investigation into Shadow tank spikiness and have you guys even *looked* at the prolific amounts of player math done and all of the tools provided? While I admit this is something of a non-question because it's just asking for the combat team to elaborate on what Musco mentioned vaguely, it's a major concern of a lot of players as to whether it will be addressed or if the developers even think it's a problem. At least with this, we could get *some* kind of answer rather than just sitting in the dark.

 

(3) Is there any plan to provide some improved DPS for Infil and Balance when played at a *reasonable* level of skill? As it stands, the *only* way for Infil or Balance to be played at a competitive level is if they are played *absolutely perfectly*, and, even then, the DPS still lags behind other DPS. When you start getting into levels of skill that can actually be described as a "reasonable assumption of average player capability", DPS *plummets* so that it's noticeably worse than the average performance of other DPS specs. The problem isn't the damage of the specs themselves, but the *absurd* level of precision required to play them to the level that raw theory assumes they play at (i.e. Balance is assumed to reDoT *perfectly* without *ever* clipping ticks and having *no* downtime between reapplications, which just doesn't happen in reality).

 

(4) Are DPS Shadows *ever* going to get some actually reasonable AoE? Force In Balance is about as close as we get and, even then, it only hits as hard as Force Sweep while on a longer CD. Infiltration has the outright *worst* AoE damage of any DPS spec in the game. Any fight where there is some degree of non-trivial AoE damage required, Shadows are worthless because the only thing we get is Whirling Blow and Whirling Blow is the outright *worst* of the player AoE attacks (based upon damage and comparative resource cost). Honestly, I'd rather have gotten something like Project Storm (put it on a 90 sec CD with a 6 sec channel and do maybe 1.5-2 times the damage of Mortar Volley) than Phase Walk because *that* would have actually shored up one of our biggest weaknesses rather than providing us with a useless gimmick that, even if it *were* implemented properly, would *still* just be a gimmick.

 

(5) Is the content team *ever* going to test content with Shadow tanks and is there *any* plan to get them to start testing content with more than just the tiny portion of classes/specs that they play as their main characters (re: Guardian tanks!)? Half of the problems with Shadows now can really be traced back to the fact that the developers just *don't* play Shadows and have no clue what the hell is actually going on *in practice*.

Edited by Kitru
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You've covered the PvE section all well and dandy, so if you will, allow me to add our PvP concerns. I'd like to comment that this round, our PvP concerns are not as awful as some think. As a matter of fact, we're doing decent right now and we're not in need of any exaggerated buffs. All we need is a few minor tune ups here and there but at the same time, we'll need a serious eye on that wonderful spec we call Balance or Madness.

 

 

Is there any plan to fix Balance / Madness PvP?

At the given moment, there is virtually no reason to carry this spec in warzones for nothing other than legitimately being useless to the team and spreading fluff damage (which can affect CC caps). At the current state, Balance has no form of actual killpower. In addition, it suffers from force issues just from even trying to get said kill power out.

 

Things I've noticed:

- The removal of Insta-FL has severely hurt this tree's PvP performance. Re-inserting this ability and perhaps moving such an ability higher up the tree to prevent hybrids is a recommendation.

- A proc that allows Spinning Strike or Shadow Strike to be used at any % of health. When this attack connects, it should either renew dots on said target, or cause X% more damage based upon the amount of dots on a target, or it can simply just restore X amount of force.

- Mental Defense should recover X amount of force in addition to its effect.

 

These are just a few ideas for the PvP section that hopefully can also bolster PvE without breaking it. I find it interesting how Balance at the moment has virtually no dependency on our signature ability: SS. So, having to put this back into the picture would be going a long and arguably easier route for fixing the tree. The spec itself needs to be able to actually, well, kill things! Right now it is unable to do that and its utility is non-existent.

 

 

Are there any plans to ever fix Resilience / Force Shroud?

This is an absolute red-zone at the moment.

 

Force Shroud / Resilience

Instant

Cooldown: 60s

Removes all hostile removable effects and increases your chance to resist Force and tech attacks by 100% for 3 seconds. Does not break Stealth.

 

According to the tooltip, it is guaranteeing the players that we have an absolute certainty, that when we pop this ability, we will CLEAR our hostile effects and resist them. When this is not the case, then there is something very, very, very wrong. It's going directly against its design mechanic. It is supposed to be a 100% chance to resist force and tech attacks. If this is not the case, then change the tooltip to what it truly is. Having attacks, mezzes or stuns bypass something based on its design was meant to counter said things, is nothing short of outrageous blind luck and furthermore, infuriating and absolutely gamebreaking. (IE: Node caps, Boss spikes) This either:

 

A) Needs to be fixed (to 100% ACTUAL resist)

B) Tooltip change to the true value

 

 

Are Shadows / Assassins the designated 'Node Guarders'?

A serious, an honest question. Will we ever be able to compete with the Guardian for MTing in mid fight? Or are we just purely designed to be an off-tank and node-staller. Why do I ask this? Well, it's becoming more and more evident as time goes by that Shadowsin survivability is decreasing, while the other tanks are incrasing. So what exactly is the deal here? Will we ever be able to fulfill actual tank roles, or are we meant to do what we've already been silently told?

 

/Reserved

Edited by Xinika
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On top of buffing the DPS trees as kitru has already mentioned, I would love to hear if they have anything in place to make balance/madness less monotonous like it was pre 2.0. All the fun is gone from the spec, would love to see it put back.
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Xinika, I think the Resilience question can be delayed a bit because, at the very least, they've discovered *why* it's bugging so asking about it would enlighten the players without actually providing any impetus to get it fixed. That said, which of the two other questions you posited is the biggest PvP concern, in your mind: Balance's performance or the question of and need to address the role of Shadow's in PvP?
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Xinika, I think the Resilience question can be delayed a bit because, at the very least, they've discovered *why* it's bugging so asking about it would enlighten the players without actually providing any impetus to get it fixed. That said, which of the two other questions you posited is the biggest PvP concern, in your mind: Balance's performance or the question of and need to address the role of Shadow's in PvP?

We have an idea of what we're doing in PvP, so if it were to only be one, then it would have to be Balance's performance.

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Excellent questions from both of you. I will tackle Xinika's last question as I do not think it will weigh much to a developer. Change it as you wish but as long as we have cloak and the current skills, shadows will always be the no. 1 pick to guard a node. It is the way the class was designed at the core that relegates us there. If you would remove cloak then the guarding nodes part will fall mostly to scoundrels and operatives. You know clearly well that stealth guarders provide and advantage. Xinika, I see your premise on which you ask this question and in my view, making shadows viable as smashers so to say will not put smashers to guard nodes. Again, the cloak factor comes into play.

 

 

Question 1 : From a PVE perspective, what are the criteria employed to measure shadow tank viability in top tier progression raids?

 

 

Question 2 : Given the new game direction where content promotes spike damage, what is being done in terms of class balance to allow roughly the same level of confidence when a guild chooses to take a Shadow tank?

 

 

 

Question 3 : As a PVP-er, I notice that DPS and survivability wise, I am behind most classes. Will the gap be addressed or this is a reshaping of the class that promotes the lone wolf attitude where Shadows need to be opportunists and engage weak targets for success?

Edited by Leafy_Bug
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Excellent questions from both of you. I will tackle Xinika's last question as I do not think it will weigh much to a developer. Change it as you wish but as long as we have cloak and the current skills, shadows will always be the no. 1 pick to guard a node. It is the way the class was designed at the core that relegates us there. If you would remove cloak then the guarding nodes part will fall mostly to scoundrels and operatives. You know clearly well that stealth guarders provide and advantage. Xinika, I see your premise on which you ask this question and in my view, making shadows viable as smashers so to say will not put smashers to guard nodes. Again, the cloak factor comes into play.[/color]

Main reason I ask this question is because of something that perhaps, can even extend past just Shadows / Assassins. What I'm fearing at this point is the stagnant, same-old-boring lock of PvP. Shadow just automatically designated to guard nodes, Guardian just automatically designated to MT. I'm wondering if it will ever be possible to reverse these roles, although, stealth generally does have a leg up on node guarding.

 

IMHO, it would be satisfying to see the day where a Shadow Tank can be equally as dominant as the Guardian Tank midfight and even visa versa with nodes. It's just this dynamism isn't here and it begins somewhere. Again, just one of many questions I'm sure we all have. Balance's performance is more of a priority over this for me.

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I'd say that since we only have 3 questions, we can elaborate and detail a bit. While E.Musco *probably* reads the forums, the development team *probably* doesn't.

 

A question like

Is there any plan to fix Balance / Madness PvP?
is not specific AT ALL. The *elected* rep should probably add the reasons why we think the spec is broken. Even though it's obvious stuff for those who read the forums, the devs *might* already have fixed it if they knew it was broken... :rolleyes:

 

 

(YES, I want walls of text for each question !!!)

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the questions should elicit wall of text answers. im thinking of 3 to five part questions.

 

what metrics are used to evaluate dps/tank/heal performance, how are they derived, and from what experimental design?

simulators? if so what rotations, spec variable, boss variables, covariants (tank/heal system)

testers? are the same testers? how many groups, what composition, what metrics are gathered and what is the process for response optimization.

 

things like that that woudl benifit not jst one class... but would be good to know for everyone

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Does getting one shot in 8 man NiM at Thrasher qualify in this? :D

 

There are a *number* of weaknesses associated with TTK, which is why most everyone else in the universe has abandoned it. The major ones are that TTK varies *greatly* when you starting including non-percentage based mitigation mechanisms like self healing in substantial quantities (i.e. what the dev team has done with Shadows) and it only accounts for mean mitigation constructs, meaning that, unless all of your tanks follow the same or virtually identical mitigation profiles, you'll see some *massive* variation in said real TTKs that completely contradict the theoretical ones. On top of that, TTK is only really a viable metric when you're actually using it as a continuous focus healing construct with low intended values (i.e. TTK only matters as a real value for valuable comparison when TTKs are *intended* to be below 7-10 seconds; anytime TTK regularly rises *above* that, TTK means nothing because you're just using a metric to figure out how long you can go between heals; if the time you can go without being heal is long enough that a healer has to be explicitly *ignoring* you for it to matter, it's no longer a viable metric of comparison).

 

If the devs are *honestly* using TTK, they have no idea what they're doing. TTK is outdated and completely wrong for TOR. Hell, it's been pretty well demonstrated that they don't even recognize that there are massive vacillations in said TTK based upon the drastically different mitigation profiles of the tanks. TTK doesn't even make sense when you're dealing with an incoming damage profile that *heavily* emphasizes massive spikes because that's not TTK; that's eHP (a bit *better* of a metric than TTK but still painfully bad when comparing highly variable damage profiles with highly *static* profiles). If TTK is their *only* metric (which, from what they've said, I have to seriously wonder why people that do this *professionally* have no idea that it's a bad metric, especially when you use it exclusively), they need to get their heads out of their asses and actually catch up to the rest of the world.

 

I honestly have to wonder if the combat team even *knows* how to calculate stuff for tanks. TTK balancing is bottom of the barrel, dregs-grade theorycrafting because it's completely ignorant of *so very many things*.

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the questions should elicit wall of text answers.

 

Considering how reluctant the combat team is to say anything about *anything*, I think we'll be lucky to get more than 1-2 sentences answering each question.

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A question like is not specific AT ALL. The *elected* rep should probably add the reasons why we think the spec is broken. Even though it's obvious stuff for those who read the forums, the devs *might* already have fixed it if they knew it was broken... :rolleyes:)

...? I went into detail about the question with 3 separate paragraphs and possible solutions.

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Yeah that's what I am saying.

The questions will be taken from this post, but the dev team will not read *the whole* post. The rep should *add* the rest of your post, and not *only* the question. That's what I was talking about when I said walls of text.

Edited by temarye
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AS for the spikiness factor of shadow tanks, a simple fix would be to increase the armor rating amount that combat technique gives us, because even with the 110% it already is, we still don't even come close to guardian/vanguard in terms of damage reduction, while they're in heavy armor, with an extra 60% armor rating for their "tank stance", plus they both get damage reduction buffs (what are apparently called CDs here), and on top of that, extra talents in their tank trees to provide even more armor rating, thus furthering their damage reduction. So all I'm saying is to maybe bump it up to I'm gonna guess 130-140%, rather than the 110% it is. It should help with spikiness, and still be fair. would still be less armor rating/damage reduction than guardian/vanguard, but we still have that extra 15% shield chance they can't get, so to me, that would balance it out nicely.
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Good questions - for my part I'd like to nominate:

 

PVE: Shadow Tank 'Spikiness'

 

PvP: The underperformance of Balance (as a supplemantary - do they know how many people play this spec now?).

 

'Wild card' question: Phase Walk concerns.

 

I'll come back with more thoughts on what we should ask later - the form of the question is as important as the content.

Edited by UltimateKrucible
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The three questions I would like to see answered are:

 

1. What avenues are you currently considering in order to fix the spikiness of Shadow Tanks? What methods of testing are you producing in order to know these avenues will be both successful and balanced?

(While the first question is the question I would like answered, going into depth with the second questions allows players that provide testing and numbers to the community to also be able to help provide additional information to the team.)

(2) What is the state of analysis/investigation into Shadow tank spikiness and have you guys even *looked* at the prolific amounts of player math done and all of the tools provided? While I admit this is something of a non-question because it's just asking for the combat team to elaborate on what Musco mentioned vaguely, it's a major concern of a lot of players as to whether it will be addressed or if the developers even think it's a problem. At least with this, we could get *some* kind of answer rather than just sitting in the dark.

 

(5) Is the content team *ever* going to test content with Shadow tanks and is there *any* plan to get them to start testing content with more than just the tiny portion of classes/specs that they play as their main characters (re: Guardian tanks!)? Half of the problems with Shadows now can really be traced back to the fact that the developers just *don't* play Shadows and have no clue what the hell is actually going on *in practice*.

 

 

2. In order to increase dps for the average-skilled player for Infli/Balance, has the team looked into increasing AoE DPS, updating Phase Walk, and/or increasing DoT durations/increasing base dmg? If not, what ideas is the team considering?

(3) Is there any plan to provide some improved DPS for Infil and Balance when played at a *reasonable* level of skill? As it stands, the *only* way for Infil or Balance to be played at a competitive level is if they are played *absolutely perfectly*, and, even then, the DPS still lags behind other DPS. When you start getting into levels of skill that can actually be described as a "reasonable assumption of average player capability", DPS *plummets* so that it's noticeably worse than the average performance of other DPS specs. The problem isn't the damage of the specs themselves, but the *absurd* level of precision required to play them to the level that raw theory assumes they play at (i.e. Balance is assumed to reDoT *perfectly* without *ever* clipping ticks and having *no* downtime between reapplications, which just doesn't happen in reality).

 

(4) Are DPS Shadows *ever* going to get some actually reasonable AoE? Force In Balance is about as close as we get and, even then, it only hits as hard as Force Sweep while on a longer CD. Infiltration has the outright *worst* AoE damage of any DPS spec in the game. Any fight where there is some degree of non-trivial AoE damage required, Shadows are worthless because the only thing we get is Whirling Blow and Whirling Blow is the outright *worst* of the player AoE attacks (based upon damage and comparative resource cost). Honestly, I'd rather have gotten something like Project Storm (put it on a 90 sec CD with a 6 sec channel and do maybe 1.5-2 times the damage of Mortar Volley) than Phase Walk because *that* would have actually shored up one of our biggest weaknesses rather than providing us with a useless gimmick that, even if it *were* implemented properly, would *still* just be a gimmick.

 

(1) Is there any plan to fix the utterly *horrible* implementation of Phase Walk and/or make it useful for Infiltration/Balance? Right now, because it's got the cast, the limited duration, and the enforced downtime no matter what you do, Phase Walk is a mostly useless gimmick, even for KC which gets Shadow's Shelter out of it (the fact that you have to run over to healers to place it every 2.75 minutes means that it's pretty much impossible to use as a tank unless you've got some period of time where you're literally doing *nothing*). Its only purpose, right now, is some cheesy gimmicks in PvP: teleporting back to nodes and instant scoring in Huttball (which, for balance's sake, could be fixed to not be allowed to have you teleport while you've got the Huttball). Even if you *do* use it as an emergency teleport, it's got a 1-1.5 sec delay so you can't even get out of dangerous stuff without getting mauled.

 

3. Due to lacking in almost every way (especially in PvP), what does the team consider the role for Balance to be? Will there be any upcoming changes in order to enhance the spec?

Is there any plan to fix Balance / Madness PvP?

At the given moment, there is virtually no reason to carry this spec in warzones for nothing other than legitimately being useless to the team and spreading fluff damage (which can affect CC caps). At the current state, Balance has no form of actual killpower. In addition, it suffers from force issues just from even trying to get said kill power out.

 

Things I've noticed:

- The removal of Insta-FL has severely hurt this tree's PvP performance. Re-inserting this ability and perhaps moving such an ability higher up the tree to prevent hybrids is a recommendation.

- A proc that allows Spinning Strike or Shadow Strike to be used at any % of health. When this attack connects, it should either renew dots on said target, or cause X% more damage based upon the amount of dots on a target, or it can simply just restore X amount of force.

- Mental Defense should recover X amount of force in addition to its effect.

 

These are just a few ideas for the PvP section that hopefully can also bolster PvE without breaking it. I find it interesting how Balance at the moment has virtually no dependency on our signature ability: SS. So, having to put this back into the picture would be going a long and arguably easier route for fixing the tree. The spec itself needs to be able to actually, well, kill things! Right now it is unable to do that and its utility is non-existent.

 

Edited by Liwilliams
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I apologize in advance if this post is one-sided: As a shadow who plays dps mainly in pve i will try to keep my comments under the perspective as such. What i've seen so far in this thread seems to have a lot of productive inquiries going around but an overall trend that i'm seeing is that people are (rightfully) concerned with our tanks shoddy mitigation which generally comes up in the highest levels of content, dps wise most of these comments tend to lean towards the concerns with balance. This is where i start to worry about what questions are going to be asked, correct me if i'm wrong but those who spec balance are consistently getting higher parses in most situations. Particularly look at our combat dummy parses, the top 3 or 4 players consisting of the top 2600-2700 dps are all balance specced. Now don't misunderstand me i quite understand balance is beyond in a sub-optimal state, but it seems to me that infiltration is in behind in damage. I suppose this somewhat makes sense as infiltration is a less consistent but more burst capable spec while balance is more consistent and slightly less burst capable. So i guess what i'm getting at with all this is that i don't want the whole of shadow dps to be neglected in favor of balance because that's what most people are asking about. I could probably post quite a few suggestions, however successful, that could be done to make infiltration more viable, and i know the same could be said just as much about balance. So i say if we are to address dps we need to refrain from being one sided about the discussion. Funny how being one sided is the warning i gave of myself in the beginning of this very post.
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The questions I have are already mentioned but heck..

 

1) Tanking. I think I need to say no more. But I can give examples! Yay!

- 19000+ hits on A STORY MODE THRASHER. I've never gotten these on my Guardian nor Vanguard. No really, this "Swipe" ability hits that much on an almost full 72s Shadow tank.

- Terminate - Operations ft. Chief. Even the ability mentioned below fails to block it, and Shadow tanks will end up almost if not dead if Resilience fails.

- Titan-6 and the Huge Grenade. Yeah, that one somehow magically bypasses Resilience too from time to time. I kid you not.

- Resilience not working as it should.

- Lack of use for Phase Walk. As mentioned, it's only really useful if you place it before you start an encounter and during break phases. Wooptedoo. Okay I found a small use for it by placing it on the spot I'm tanking on and my TKT profits only a small bit from it but, since you have made every boss a mobility fight, moving out of the PW pool is needed to survive. It also causes me to drop my rate at getting the HS stacks for 3 seconds every time I have to refresh it. Scratch that, PW is completely useless.

 

Question when will Shadow tanks get some love?

 

2) Infiltration / Balance (PVE). I like backstabbing stuff, and to see a scoundrel/operative (and especially the Dev-played Sniper) get so much love annoys the living censored out of me. They even outperform Shadows on a Boss fight! So my question is:

When do DPS Shadows get some love and affection? Even in the hands of the best player the Shadow underperformed by a large amount. You are supposed to bring balance to the Force!!

 

3) PVP Related. I don't really play PVP but I do have a few suggestions that will benefit PVP AND PVE Shadows a bit. My question that goes along with it is: What were you thinking? And have you thought about implementing this before?

- Make Spinning Kick available in combat by default. Really, having THAT talent in the tanking tree just doesn't make any sense.

- Put the Shadow Wrap talent in one of the DPS trees instead. Instead of survivability you gave us a DPS talent.

 

Overall question: When do Shadows get loved up?

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- Terminate - Operations ft. Chief. Even the ability mentioned below fails to block it, and Shadow tanks will end up almost if not dead if Resilience fails.

 

Terminate is an M/R attack. Resilience does nothing for it and never has. If you did avoid it when you had Resilience active, it was because it didn't get past your Defense.

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Are there any plans to ever fix Resilience / Force Shroud?

This is an absolute red-zone at the moment.

 

Force Shroud / Resilience

Instant

Cooldown: 60s

Removes all hostile removable effects and increases your chance to resist Force and tech attacks by 100% for 3 seconds. Does not break Stealth.

 

According to the tooltip, it is guaranteeing the players that we have an absolute certainty, that when we pop this ability, we will CLEAR our hostile effects and resist them. When this is not the case, then there is something very, very, very wrong. It's going directly against its design mechanic. It is supposed to be a 100% chance to resist force and tech attacks. If this is not the case, then change the tooltip to what it truly is. Having attacks, mezzes or stuns bypass something based on its design was meant to counter said things, is nothing short of outrageous blind luck and furthermore, infuriating and absolutely gamebreaking. (IE: Node caps, Boss spikes) This either:

 

A) Needs to be fixed (to 100% ACTUAL resist)

B) Tooltip change to the true value

 

 

Just wanted to point out Xinika if you pop resilience and check your characters stats it is actually 200% on there.

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(1) ... (which, for balance's sake, could be fixed to not be allowed to have you teleport while you've got the Huttball)...

 

Just a note, I didnt think I saw anyone else respond to this yet. If you use Phase Walk will carrying the HB it resets the ball. While handy to reset in those times when its the best option it doesnt really help to score in this regard. Unless something has changed in the past couple weeks since the last time I accidentally used it with the ball.

Edited by Avicii
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