new sorc and assassin abilities are awful. Volt Rush is useless except with the aoe tactical or if you REALLY need an ability while moving. Giving an aoe tactical is useful for some fights but a new ability just to do that? Seems like a huge waste.

Assassin ability is just... why? it's a worse lacerate.

Neither of these classes needed these abilities and both should be reworked

Mercenary new ability seems useless. Something like the marauder new one, a passive spell that boost another one, would be far better.

Do any of the new abilities feel too weak?[

Volt Rush and Severing Slash are completely useless.

 

Is there a tactical that feels too weak?

An Explosive Return. Completely worthless

 

Does a particular class too weak?

Yes. Buff Madness and Deception single target DPS, Madness and Hatred survivability

Edited October 3, 2019 by EmperorRus

Do any of the new abilities feel particularly strong? Too weak?

 

Volt Rush / Telekinetic Blitz is a useless ability. Its charge system would be better suited for Shock / Project. The ability itself has no use, unless one has the appropriate Tactical equipped that allows it to trigger Lightning Storm / Tidal Force. Beyond that, I don't see any appliance for it. The ability really needs to be redone from scratch.

Edited October 3, 2019 by BenKatarn

Is there a set bonus that feels too strong? Too weak?

 

weak, yes, like half of them are underwhelming... but if im about to pick one in particular, its that Marauder one that gives autocrit on BladeBlitz/BladeRush when used during Force Camouflage... I dont know how that happened, but no vaguely sane Marauder/Sent player will ever do that.. Not for Dmg, not for surviveability.. Maybe as a weird flex... lazy writing

weak, yes, like half of them are underwhelming

Agreed

 

Don't worry though Madness/Balance has their own set bonuses to choose from as well.

Hey, there isn't a Madness/Balance specific set bonus. Why?

 

Dire Retaliation, Decelerator, Soulbender and Controller sets - nothing to do with Madness/Balance. Underwhelming, Sorcerer/Inquisitor generic.

Endless Offensive, Gathering Storm - favors Lightning/TK.

The renown consumables that are dropping from renown crates automatically open and give renown. Is there a way that can stop? I like to choose when and what character I use those on.

Definitely deception sin needs a buff..drastically nerfed compared to the rest of the classes. Also new useless skill (Severing Slash) require correction.

Hey all,

 

Phase 3 is now active on PTS. Please head there and test how balance is feeling in all forms of world content. Missions, heroics, Chapters, etc.

 

-eric

 

I posted this in another thread before you made this one. Once the pts comes back up I’ll run this chapter again if no one else does.

 

Chapter 1. Wrath and Ruin : Reach Shrine of Healing

 

The increase in difficulty to get the walker through this chapter is hard for someone who can play well and change strategy and tactics.

And even then, it’s nearly impossible to get past the last droid boss for me.

This is something I can usually do in my sleep, so yeah it was too easy for me in the live version.

But even the live version is hard for my wife. I often have to do it for her, so when she said this was harder I didn’t believe her at first till I tried it.

 

The level of difficulty in this chapter under story mode will be beyond a lot of players to do.

 

The increased amount of mobs and damage they do is hard. There also aren’t enough med bays to recharge if you are going to have each group do so much damage.

So even if you just get past a bunch, you know the next lot will kill you or you have to sit there for 5 minutes till your health goes up.

 

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I died 7 times on the way to the Walker boss at the end. And he killed me 3 times. In the end I gave up because it’s the PTS and it was wasting my time when I could have been doing other things.

 

I think you need to get some average / casual players testing the new difficulty increases across all the chapters. I’ve only tested that one. I’m sure most of the chapters will be fine, but you might find there are some anomalies like this chapter’s mechanics that are set too high.

Edited October 3, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

Is there a tactical that feels too strong? Too weak?

 

Shadows/Assassins have access to a tactical (don't remember the name, PTS is offline, can't check) that grants you two charges for force cloak. However, you can unequip and reequip yourself with this tactical when you're out of combat - so, you can use force cloak, drop the tactical, equip it again and then you again get two charges for force cloak. That results in you being able to cloak as often as you like, as long as you reequip the tactical in question every time you stealth. And since you can pull an equipment piece into your quickbar and can equip it by just pressing the keybind in the quickbar, it just takes two clicks to reset the force cloak cooldown.

 

So, either we need a lock for equipment changes when a boss fight is running or you're in a pvp match (similar to locking the skilltree) or the tactical needs to be reworked.

 

If you want to rework it, I think the best way to change it would be to have it grant two charges on resilience/shroud or battle readiness/overcharge saber instead of force cloak.

Shadows/Assassins have access to a tactical (don't remember the name, PTS is offline, can't check) that grants you two charges for force cloak. However, you can unequip and reequip yourself with this tactical when you're out of combat - so, you can use force cloak, drop the tactical, equip it again and then you again get two charges for force cloak. That results in you being able to cloak as often as you like, as long as you reequip the tactical in question every time you stealth. And since you can pull an equipment piece into your quickbar and can equip it by just pressing the keybind in the quickbar, it just takes two clicks to reset the force cloak cooldown.

 

So, either we need a lock for equipment changes when a boss fight is running or you're in a pvp match (similar to locking the skilltree) or the tactical needs to be reworked.

 

If you want to rework it, I think the best way to change it would be to have it grant two charges on resilience/shroud or battle readiness/overcharge saber instead of force cloak.

 

The pvp part should be relatively easy to fix. Just lock equipment changes once the match starts. The same as they stopped us from respecing in a match.

Edited October 3, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

The pvp part should be relatively easy to fix. Just lock equipment changes once the match starts. The same as they stopped us from respecing in a match.

 

I miss being able to respec in warzones =(

TrixxieTriss mentioned in another thread that it was important for solo/story players and people who are on the less-skilled side of the curve to test the story content. I'm definitely in that demographic, so I thought I'd help out.

 

I copied a Gunnery Commando who is still working on his class story to the PTS. I left him at L70 and didn't upgrade his gear, which is item rating 242 and (on the PTS) doesn't have set bonuses. He was level-synced to L48 on Voss.

 

I ran two heroics: Savage Connections (enemies L46) with an influence 50 healing companion and Trial of the First (enemies L45) with an influence 20 healing companion. Honestly, I didn't really notice much difference from live. My health bar might have twitched slightly a few times instead of staying solidly at 100%, and enemies might have taken slightly longer to kill, though I'm not sure about that. But overall, these heroics seemed just as easy as they are on live.

 

I also tried a planet mission (the fight with Lord Beldiss) and a class mission (Hostile Negotiations), both with an influence 50 healing companion. Again, I didn't notice much difference from live; everything was very easy, including the fight with Lord Beldiss.

 

TL,DR: If Voss is representative of the vanilla planets, solo/story players have nothing to worry about there.

 

ETA: I just re-checked, and the companion I was using for Savage Connections and the missions was influence 39, not 50. So the overall message is even more reassuring.

Edited October 4, 2019 by Hudlar
Add information

TrixxieTriss mentioned in another thread that it was important for solo/story players and people who are on the less-skilled side of the curve to test the story content. I'm definitely in that demographic, so I thought I'd help out.

 

I copied a Gunnery Commando who is still working on his class story to the PTS. I left him at L70 and didn't upgrade his gear, which is item rating 242 and (on the PTS) doesn't have set bonuses. He was level-synced to L48 on Voss.

 

I ran two heroics: Savage Connections (enemies L46) with an influence 50 healing companion and Trial of the First (enemies L45) with an influence 20 healing companion. Honestly, I didn't really notice much difference from live. My health bar might have twitched slightly a few times instead of staying solidly at 100%, and enemies might have taken slightly longer to kill, though I'm not sure about that. But overall, these heroics seemed just as easy as they are on live.

 

I also tried a planet mission (the fight with Lord Beldiss) and a class mission (Hostile Negotiations), both with an influence 50 healing companion. Again, I didn't notice much difference from live; everything was very easy, including the fight with Lord Beldiss.

 

TL,DR: If Voss is representative of the vanilla planets, solo/story players have nothing to worry about there.

 

Thanks for helping out and good feed back.

Volt Rush and Severing Slash are completely useless.

 

 

An Explosive Return. Completely worthless

 

 

Yes. Buff Madness and Deception single target DPS, Madness and Hatred survivability

 

Really I parsed 15271 on my deception single target death knell set Awakening flame tactical?

This whole "horizontal progression" system seems good in idea. Sure have different set bonuses and different tacticals adds great new styles of play and adds more variation to classes/specs. But having 20 different variants for each type of mod slot, where each slot may have multiple types (ie Mods have R, AR, BR and enhancements have 3 secondary stats but each then further has different variants nimble/savant/etc.) is just insane. I have had my subscription to have meaningful progression in Operations (which has currently been too easy with number fluff but that's nothing compared to the insult that is the variants) and with meaningful gear acquisition. If it entails me grinding/pounding my head against my keyboard not only for higher new 20 levels of higher gear, but also having to deal with hundreds of useless variants, I may just leave after Dxun. (edit mistype vertical should say horizontal) Edited October 4, 2019 by newegg

Okey doke, story player here. I started a new Shadow on the PTS and made my way through Tython. You're synced to a max level of 10 on the planet. I have no legacy, no datacron bonus.

 

I used a level 1 Shae Vizla for most of the content, including running the heroic twice. The heroic was no problem, including the bonus champion droid at the end. Most of the content was fine-- I had zero issues until the final quest in the Consular chain.

 

The dark beast you have to defeat after claiming your lightsaber crystal seriously needs to be toned down after the big healing companion and level sync nerf. A LOT. During that fight I was using a level 2 Qyzen, and I nearly died multiple times (4% health) due to the beast's constant fire attacks at melee range. I was level 15 at the time and had absolutely no skills to counter or damage mitigation. The constant knockbacks also nearly destroyed my companion. The final boss battle with Nalen was a snap by comparison, and so was the heroic.

 

Someone needs to do a fine tuning on level sync and do detailed professional testing before you let this go live.

 

And the passive conquest points are crazy low. After finishing almost every single quest on the planet, and hitting level 17 before I left, I only had 1035 points toward the 50K total. New players aren't going to have a prayer of hitting the personal weekly goal.

This whole "vertical progression" system seems good in idea. Sure have different set bonuses and different tacticals adds great new styles of play and adds more variation to classes/specs. But having 20 different variants for each type of mod slot, where each slot may have multiple types (ie Mods have R, AR, BR and enhancements have 3 secondary stats but each then further has different variants nimble/savant/etc.) is just insane. I have had my subscription to have meaningful progression in Operations (which has currently been too easy with number fluff but that's nothing compared to the insult that is the variants) and with meaningful gear acquisition. If it entails me grinding/pounding my head against my keyboard not only for higher new 20 levels of higher gear, but also having to deal with hundreds of useless variants, I may just leave after Dxun.

 

To clarify, what they are going for is horizontal progression. Vertical progression is what we currently have. Sadly the system in 6.0 is still very much vertical progression. The truest form of horizontal progression would be what FFXI did for years before the abyssea content. The level cap remained at 75 for nearly a decade and new gear was never better than old gear, just different. So like a level 30 pair of gloves that I can't remember what it did, +10 to power or something, but even at level 75 players would still be using those level 30 gloves because the stats were beneficial.

 

Swtor idea of "horizontal progression" is just giving us a bunch of different set bonuses and a billion different mod types at cap level, but ilvl still exists so its still a vertical progression.

Okey doke, story player here. I started a new Shadow on the PTS and made my way through Tython. You're synced to a max level of 10 on the planet. I have no legacy, no datacron bonus.

 

Interesting! Thanks for trying this. It really shows how tricky it is to set difficulty levels for story content that everyone needs to be able to complete. Not only is there a wide range of player skill, but someone who is just starting won't have access to the perks that a player who has been around for a while will have. My skill level isn't going to get me invited to any progression raiding teams, but I have all the class buffs, some datacrons, plenty of credits and companion gifts, etc. In an ideal world, we'd be able to choose a difficulty level for all story content, but I don't think the devs have the resources for that.

I posted this in another thread before you made this one. Once the pts comes back up I’ll run this chapter again if no one else does.

 

So I ran Chapter 1. Wrath and Ruin : Reach Shrine of Healing (Walker)

 

This is so unbalanced sorry just really

 

Feed back :

 

* Still a lot more mobs at the start than on live.

* Died after first two groups of mobs because there is no where to heal.

* Get to 3rd group and have less than a 1/4 health. So I waited 2 mins till I could attack the next lot with 75% health, but died right as I killed the last one.

* So died twice before the first health station due to the large amount of added mobs before it,

* Got through the pass with some good tactics on my part. But more than the usual number of mobs and I had to go back to the repair station to use it before proceeding (I had planned to leave it if I needed it).

* Died again just as I killed the last mob near the 2nd repair bay.

* Kill a few more groups and find I’ve no health and the repair bay is next to a group of mobs.

* Decide to suicide kill them because it’s faster than waiting to regain health. The problem with that is everytime you die, you have to go all the way back to the beginning and trudge your way back (what a waste of time)

* Get to the boss. At this point I’ve now died 5 times.

 

My Boss fight deaths trying to kill the last walker in this phase.

1st Got him to 1/2 health before his adds blew me up

2nd. Got him to 1/3 health till I died

3rd. Got him to 1/2 health

** at this point I start to realise it comes down to where his adds spawn (because they are different each encounter).

4th. Got him down to 1/3 health

5th. Got him down to 1/3 health

** realise that his adds will drop in a group if you stand in a some places, but only once. After that they are in an X formation, one on each corner.

6th. Got him down to 1/4 health because I stood in the right place to make them drop in a group

7th. Got him to 1/8 because I discover if you stand on the steps to the temple, his first add drops disappear after a minute.

8th. Nearly had him, got killed with him at 1/10 health.

** start thinking this will only happen if all the stars align. Ready to give up.

9th. Didn’t die and a I Kill him, JUST, as my walker explodes from his adds. They proceed to chase me into the temple

And I kill them with my light sabre in one hit. Makes me wish I could just do that the whole way

 

Total number of deaths to get through this phase (that I can breeze through on veteran in live) was 13 deaths. It also took a considerable amount of time because of all the walking back from the start area.

 

Conclusion : extra mobs on the way to the temple have been added that have more health and the collective group can do more damage.

The boss has higher health compare to before and his adds hit harder. If you aren’t lucky and tactical, you will never get past this boss. I know my wife couldn’t and she is mostly a Story only player. She has categorically stated she will be unsubbing if this isn’t fixed because she plays for fun and to relax, Not to be stressed and upset through no fault of her own (I don’t like seeing her upset, you meanies ) I told her it’s testing and to chill

 

Suggestions :

1. If you are going to add all these extra mobs, you need more repair stations to deal with it after you kill them and they need to respawn the repair stations if you die,. You’ve already added an ammo dump before the first repair area, why not add a repair bay there?

2. Either reduce the numbers of mobs, or reduce their health more.

3. That last Bosses health is too high and his adds basically one shot you.

 

Statement :

This is completely unbalanced and over the top for a Story mode section. The rest of the chapter, both before and after the walker phase is fine and balanced. It was even a bit too easy for me (which is why I usually do it on veteran).

But this was Story Mode, I cant even imagine how impossible it would be on veteran or master mode, LOL.

Thanks for the feedback Trixx. Whatever about level sync needing some work and I can understand why it would - cap is now 75 and a simple linear scaling probably won't cut it, what I don't get is why they saw the need to change this encounter by adding extra mobs. This is borderline for me as it is on live, I see no way past it if it goes live like this.

Interesting! Thanks for trying this. It really shows how tricky it is to set difficulty levels for story content that everyone needs to be able to complete. Not only is there a wide range of player skill, but someone who is just starting won't have access to the perks that a player who has been around for a while will have. My skill level isn't going to get me invited to any progression raiding teams, but I have all the class buffs, some datacrons, plenty of credits and companion gifts, etc. In an ideal world, we'd be able to choose a difficulty level for all story content, but I don't think the devs have the resources for that.

 

Glad I could do something different I had no clue how to roll a brand-new toon and get them to Odessen on the PTS, so I figured I might as well see if the content I enjoy is sort of manageable. I was way too lazy to log into the forums to transfer my max level stuff until yesterday. The leveling experience is both better and worse than I was expecting.

 

I've leveled a lot of consulars-- Shadows especially-- and I've never liked the dark beast. This is the first time, including 3.0, where it was so much of a problem that I almost threw my mouse through the monitor At least in the JK story, you can skip it. If this goes live, I bet the number of new Shadows is going to plummet A sage can attack from range, so you can at least kite a bit. Melee is unworkable.

 

It seems to me that the devs need to either pick strict level scaling *or* companion nerfs. And they need to really engage in professional testing. We can only do so much as users, especially as the clock ticks down. Relying on a very small segment of a very small player base to find major pain areas in the last couple of weeks before a radical game update goes live seems... inadvisable, to put it mildly. Scaling solo story to satisfy veteran players isn't the best approach either if you ever want your game to grow.

 

I really wish Bioware had put a little thought into their changes. It really feels like they just threw some wet spaghetti at the wall and then walked away without seeing if it stuck.

Got to the walker fight and wow 119k health and the one type can only be stomped. Must be spot on to kill them too. Died five times before giving up.

 

What does the walker have on live half a mil?

Other than that the mobs were easy if you kill them on the ground

Toon: Level 20-21 Jedi Shadow, Infiltration (?)

Planet: Coruscant, Level cap 17

Companion: Level 7 Qyzen

Datacron boost (about half of them) + full presence bonus from legacy now active

 

Ran all the heroics using dropped gear + heroic rewards. The weirdest thing was the most difficult was Republic's Most Wanted (level 11), aside from the Justicar (level 14? 15?) and two gold droids on top of that one pile of shipping containers in Luran Gonthor's shop. I was taking a LOT of damage and Qyzen was pretty useless in both the damage and healing departments. He'd heal himself before he'd heal me, even if we were fighting right next to each other, so he'd be slashing along in his merry way with a full health bar while mine plummeted.

 

Endurance caps now at around 2K, rather than 4K on live.

 

Heroics are manageable but excessively time consuming now. I don't think they will be for players without a datacron or presence boost. And considering heroics are pretty much THE solo money maker and the optimal way to gear leveling toons, I'm wondering where that's going to leave brand new players. Us far more relaxed and easygoing solo sorts aren't going to have fun, but we're not totally shut out of the early heroics. I'll see about Taris later