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Developer Update: Sith Warrior and Jedi Knight Class Changes


CourtneyWoods

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Alacrity increases resource regeneration by the same rate, helping you to recuperate resources more quickly as you spend them more quickly. For Knights and Warriors specifically, attacking faster means generating resources faster. Now more Alacrity is strictly a good thing.

 

This is true but only if we want to generate Focus through Strike/Assault. Personally that's my least favorite way to generate Focus. Alacrity needs to affect Focus generation in some additional form. Either cooldown reductions on major focus generating abilities or something...

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Alacrity increases resource regeneration by the same rate, helping you to recuperate resources more quickly as you spend them more quickly. For Knights and Warriors specifically, attacking faster means generating resources faster. Now more Alacrity is strictly a good thing.
This is true but only if we want to generate Focus through Strike/Assault. Personally that's my least favorite way to generate Focus. Alacrity needs to affect Focus generation in some additional form. Either cooldown reductions on major focus generating abilities or something...

 

Exactly. Increasing the speed with which you can spam moves would only be worth it if the speed increase was enough to increase your DPS despite the loss of other DPS-increasing stats, and it's not. Alacrity is an inferior choice for Knights/Warriors in all cases, and this blog post is misleading.

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These Dev Updates are a good read. :) Couple of questions:

 

Does Saber Reflect (a great ability btw) reflect all single-target ranged, tech and force attacks, or only the ones that would have scored a hit? In other words, is the attack rolled against defense chance and not reflected if it's a miss? If so, is this behavior intended?

 

Unremitting: ...We understand some players will be unhappy with this change

 

That is something of an understatement, but I think it has more to do with the overwhelming amount of trash cc in the game, and the Defense guardian's lack of mobility/cc protection (especially when compared to Hold the Line and Resilience and root-breaking force speed). To really tank a trash group properly, Guardians should chuck their saber, leap in, and quickly Sweep, Area Taunt, and Saber Reflect. Then Guardian Slash / Riposte, and finally a Blade Storm to get Blade Barrier up (either working in a Sunder or Combat Focus for the resources).

 

The problem is that if we are stunned or knocked back and slowed/rooted, it completely ruins our opening, and now a bunch of trash mobs are rampaging through the rest of our group, making us look dumb. With Unremitting, we had enough time to establish some control over trash packs, now we can be potentially screwed.

 

So I guess my questions are: are you aware of this issue, and are you taking steps to correct it, either by reducing trash cc or by finding a way to give defense guardians more cc protection, or both?

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I realy like the new Immortal spec tree ,all new skills are very usefull and I have a way more fun as a Jugger tank right now ,but as Lord_Karsk said, in game it says that Saber Reflect reflects only SINGLE targets attacks ...That's the only problem :/
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Best advice from BW, play sniper or warrior... that's why they're always featured first. ;)

 

Lol Sorcerer QQ still continues to be a never-ending source of amusement. Most played class in game and has the most utility of any class but EAware hates you right?

Edited by Twolightsabers
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Why improve shields and remove defense stacking in the tree?! Jedi Knight's don't use shields they have a LIGHTSABERS which they use as both sword and shield. It was always a terrible idea to give Jedi shields.

 

The new armor and lightsabers look terrible as does virtually every set in the game. This game is getting further and further away from star wars.

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"Combat has been criticized for being a little too simple to play. While they have lots of fun utility, their core rotation was a little boring. "

 

Uhh since when? :confused: I despise when the devs flat out LIE to us like we haven't a clue. Combat rotation isn't as complex as watchman but is sure as hell more complex than any other dps spec in game (no 4-5 button wonders here, you classes know who you are), especially in terms of being punishingly unforgiving (and I've played every class in game so I do know what I'm talking about). While HOJ is really fun and can lead to super burst, it's still clunky and has a better-than-not chance to proc at decidedly inopportune times and be wasted.

 

Twin saber throw is incredibly fun and a nice boost to aoe, looks amazing too, but there's a lot of poor choices the devs made including the alacrity thing and the nerfing of zen focus reducers that hurt, big time. It's been said 100,000 times, but alacrity is poor for knights/warriors. Period. No amount of dev spin will change that. Not counting zen, the amount of alacrity you have to have to make any noticeable difference is laughable and since it doesn't affect master strike (our best move) why on earth would we take it over accuracy or surge? We're the only classes that have to generate our own resources and we have to do it through very inefficient means. Speeding up those inefficient means with alacrity is neither fun nor optimal.

 

Just as an aside, you really borked up opportune attack too guys. Makes an already complex rotation more so; get to risk standing in fire now just to watch and see if it procced. All in all, the changes aren't as crippling as they looked on paper, and the spec is still fun, but please don't bull**** us and say the rotation was too simple or boring. You nerfed us because we were the top dps and people QQd. The kicker is in order to top the meters with any spec of sentinel, you have to be above average and use a complex rotation. We've all seen a ton of terribad sents/maras out there. Now the new FOTM is ez mode gs/sniper; my gs guildees even say it's ludicrously simple and does huge #s.

Edited by Twolightsabers
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Exactly. Increasing the speed with which you can spam moves would only be worth it if the speed increase was enough to increase your DPS despite the loss of other DPS-increasing stats, and it's not. Alacrity is an inferior choice for Knights/Warriors in all cases, and this blog post is misleading.

 

It probably depends on how geared you are. If you're already hitting the diminishing returns cap on things like crit, surge and accuracy, then some alacrity could help. Being able to sneak an extra high damage attack into an encounter could be more beneficial than a very slight increase in damage per attack during the encounter. But, I agree, it's a low priority stat for gearing and not something I'd dabble in unless I was hitting DR points in the other, more important stat areas. However, being able to use Zen to speed up attacks and go into "dps on crack" mode was a pretty useful and very fun addition, lol.

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"Hello everyone. My name is Austin Peckenpaugh, and I’m a Senior Designer on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, responsible for class design and combat Systems"

 

Ceased to read. To read in a sentence "Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, responsible for class design and combat Systems".....as nonsense just have to come.

Only the name of the "designer" who has the responsibility crap, you know now.

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Last paragraph is money here. I didn't think pre2.0 was simple. It wasn't hard, but it was alot harder than vanguard, commando, focus, marksman, or the sage trees.

 

The focus zen changes and HOJ make this a very tough spec to play well now. Having said that, I love the HOJ and am putting up strong numbers in raids. Would love the focus gain brought back to Bladerush, but am doing fine without it, just have to change a bit in the rotation.

 

Agree on alacrity. I'm not exactly sure what end game stats will look like and how to play to surge or accuracy beyond the cap.

 

"Combat has been criticized for being a little too simple to play. While they have lots of fun utility, their core rotation was a little boring. "

 

Uhh since when? :confused: I despise when the devs flat out LIE to us like we haven't a clue. Combat rotation isn't as complex as watchman but is sure as hell more complex than any other dps spec in game (no 4-5 button wonders here, you classes know who you are), especially in terms of being punishingly unforgiving (and I've played every class in game so I do know what I'm talking about). While HOJ is really fun and can lead to super burst, it's still clunky and has a better-than-not chance to proc at decidedly inopportune times and be wasted.

 

Twin saber through is incredibly fun and a nice boost to aoe, looks amazing too, but there's a lot of poor choices the devs made including the alacrity thing and the nerfing of zen focus reducers that hurt, big time. It's been said 100,000 times, but alacrity is poor for knights/warriors. Period. No amount of dev spin will change that. Not counting zen, the amount of alacrity you have to have to make any noticeable difference is laughable and since it doesn't affect master strike (our best move) why on earth would we take it over accuracy or surge? We're the only classes that have to generate our own resources and we have to do it through very inefficient means. Speeding up those inefficient means with alacrity is neither fun nor optimal.

 

Just as an aside, you really borked up opportune attack too guys. Makes an already complex rotation more so; get to risk standing in fire now just to watch and see if it procced. All in all, the changes aren't as crippling as they looked on paper, and the spec is still fun, but please don't bull**** us and say the rotation was too simple or boring. You nerfed us because we were the top dps and people QQd. The kicker is in order to top the meters with any spec of sentinel, you have to be above average and use a complex rotation. We've all seen a ton of terribad sents/maras out there. Now the new FOTM is ez mode gs/sniper; my gs guildees even say it's ludicrously simple and does huge #s.

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For Knights and Warriors specifically, attacking faster means generating resources faster. Now more Alacrity is strictly a good thing.

Mr. Peckenpaugh. Could you please kindly present us any scenario using obtainable values of alacrity, accuracy and surge where alacrity actually provides any benefit?

 

Way it looks to me, it'll be hard to even get 10% alacrity, and that would hurt both accuracy and surge. With this 10%, we can use one more strike/slash per 15 seconds, assuming we didn't use Master Strike as it's not affected by alacrity at all. So overall, we might gain one damaging attack and one resource gnetraro in each ~40 seconds, and pay for this by pushing back slighlty all our skills that we use on CD.

 

Only use I can see would be for Focus, to use Strikes/Slashes fast enough to reduce CD of leap and Sweep and use it while 9% damage bonus is still active.

 

Moving on.

Twin Saber Throw (New ability): This ability throws both sabers forward, dealing high damage to everything in their path. Upon striking a target, that target is additionally slowed by 50% for 6 seconds. 18-second cooldown.
This is ability with amazing feel and utility, altough every time I use it I feel like it should also deal damage when sabers are coming back.

 

Hand of Justice: When your Ataru Form triggers, you have a chance to gain Hand of Justice, which finishes the cooldown on Precision Slash and Dispatch and makes your next Dispatch free and usable on any target at any health level.

This is extremely badly designed proc, at least assuming that gameplay with it is supposed to be fun.

I'm not talking about free Dispatch part, that is entirely fine, but reseting CD of Precision Slash is something that should not be done this way.

Reacting for average cool proc should be "yay, it procced, now I can do cool thing". And that cool thing should be doable always, and always provide (almost) full benefit. Guardian has proc reseting CD on Master Strike, and it's very fine proc. Master Strike is "THE" hard hitter and when it procs you just use it, no questions asked. Vanguard has reset of HIB cooldown, and it's same deal, hart hitter, use whenever possible. Shield Specialist got proc reseting Pulse Cannon, it's fine because it makes it free and fast, where it wouldn't be used on single target otherwise. Heck, reseting Stockstrike, reseting Full Auto for Commando, all those things are skills that provide nice benefit by themselves, and only 'penalty' from suing them at bad time is loss of resources.

And here we have Precision Slash, that unlike all others doesn't hit hard at all, and whole benefit depends on skills out use after it. Meaning you should only use it if you haveability to pack 3 damaging skills directly after it..

In other words, it's only random proc that requires proper setup before procing(randomly, so proper setup at almost all times) to use it fully.

But it's not its only sin, oh now. There is also it's internal cooldown set at 20 sec, where normal CD on skill is 15 seconds. Meaning if you use Precision Slash always instantly, you might have 9 seconds of armor penetration in each 20 seconds window. Might, because it's random proc from random proc(!). And only if you use it instantly, meaning without bothering if you're able to pump out damaging attacks or not, and not bothering to keep it for Master Strike on CD(30 sec cooldown and 20 sec CD doesn't go along very well). And in case you mess up, or wait for proper setup, it'll proc again at same time it comes off cd naturally. Or won't proc at all, random proc on random proc is randomly random.

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What a joke of a post. Just shows how clueless Austin is.

Combat sent pre 2.0 was neither boring or simple compared to other classes.

Alacrity has ZERO benefit for JK/SW. If you really think being able to spam strike .1 second faster is a benefit, you are clueless. It's hilariously sad that they even try to spin it as a benefit. I'd love to hear a dev response as to why combat trance and zen had their focus benefits removed. So we could stack alacrity and spam strike more? Do they have any clue how combat sent DPS works? I do enjoy HoJ at times and twin saber throw, but I often miss opportune strike and pommel strike when dealing with the trash heavy planet of makeb. We still put up good numbers, but there is no doubt that the combat spec feels more clunky and less fluid now.

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What a joke of a post. Just shows how clueless Austin is.

Combat sent pre 2.0 was neither boring or simple compared to other classes.

Alacrity has ZERO benefit for JK/SW. If you really think being able to spam strike .1 second faster is a benefit, you are clueless. It's hilariously sad that they even try to spin it as a benefit. I'd love to hear a dev response as to why combat trance and zen had their focus benefits removed. So we could stack alacrity and spam strike more? Do they have any clue how combat sent DPS works? I do enjoy HoJ at times and twin saber throw, but I often miss opportune strike and pommel strike when dealing with the trash heavy planet of makeb. We still put up good numbers, but there is no doubt that the combat spec feels more clunky and less fluid now.

 

Hey. Who cares if alacrity is any good in terms of dps? It makes your moves look and sound cool!

Edited by Alec_Fortescue
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This post states that smash has been significantly reduced.

 

I crit a sage today for 8k and a Merc for 7.2k . I guess I could only imagine what those numbers would've been had they not "nerfed smash significantly".

 

I do like these posts in general, but there are some gems of untruth. (For the Medicine operative, it was something about their healing being limited. The best healer in the game....had limited healing.)

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That was a very disappointing post with a lot of information that was simply wrong.

 

Alacrity is not good for the Juggernaut at all, I don't believe it is good for the Marauder either but I don't have enough experience with that AC to say for sure. It does not reduce the channel time of Ravage or increase rage generation except by allowing us to spam our weakest attack more often. Switching out any DPS stat for alacrity will result in a loss of damage (with the one exception of accuracy over the hit cap).

 

Also while the Immortal tree is vastly improved it still has no answer to the vast amount of CC most of the trash mobs have in this game. It can be unbelievably frustrating to play now.

 

He also fails to mention that Saber Reflect scales negatively for tanks; meaning it gets worse as your gear, specifically your defense rating, improves. I find this a mindbogglingly bad design choice that I hope is reversed soon.

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You still should consider to raise the timer on the Merciless debuff by at least 5 seconds. More and more boss encounters in this game makes it nearly impossible to keep your stacks and if you lose them, your sustained damage goes down like crazy.

 

I already suggested that @ the PTS forums. Prior to 2.0, Merciless could stack up to 3 times with a 15s refresh timer, now in 2.0 it can stack up to 4 times with the same timer. For example on Titan 6, a combat sentinel will always outperform a watchman sentinel cause you are losing your stacks.

 

Hope some Dev will read this and may change this in an upcoming patch.

 

And btw, alacrity does nothing on a sentinel. I mean, I used now 2 alacrity enhancements and the result is the same dps. Every skilled sentinel/marauder player will always prioritize Surge/Accuracy over Alacrity. In addition, Masterstrike seems not be affected by alacrity at all...

Edited by tman_ac
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Despite my initial prejudice toward any change, I have been enjoying my carnage marauder a lot. Thank you for this update.

 

Doublesaber throw seems like a very good aoe power where previously I only had the smash, and I think the DST is a very good improvement. Particularly when fighting weak mobs which are in abundance in Makeb..

 

I am not sure about alacrity yet, but I have certainly seen and approve the effect. Funny to activate berserk and then force charge animating much faster etc.. I would say the alacrity changes are good

 

Carnage has been criticized for being a little too simple to play. While they have lots of fun utility, their core rotation was a little boring. However, some players like a more relaxed playstyle, so it’s important to us that we don’t change things too much.

This I however can't wrap my mind around, since my carnage marauder remains my most complex character to play, particularly in pvp; But no matter, the changes are good regardless. I feel that my marauder got better.

 

ps. the rotation didn't actually change much at all..

Edited by Karkais
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I am very happy with the changes to Defense Guardians overall, however I will echo what others have said. The amount of CC that trash mobs currently have is just out of control. I charge in and before I can even aggro the group, I am knocked across the room, stunned, then knocked to the other side of the room, meanwhile the melee DPS pulled aggro on everything that I was unable to hit yet and dies. Then I am CCed again while the mobs go after the ranged DPS.
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I am very happy with the changes to Defense Guardians overall, however I will echo what others have said. The amount of CC that trash mobs currently have is just out of control. I charge in and before I can even aggro the group, I am knocked across the room, stunned, then knocked to the other side of the room, meanwhile the melee DPS pulled aggro on everything that I was unable to hit yet and dies. Then I am CCed again while the mobs go after the ranged DPS.

 

Yeah the knockbacks are totally out of control. There are some mobs who actually knock you back and then grapple you back. So when there's more than one you are being ping ponged all the time. It's impossible to do anything. I really just can't understand why would so many mobs use those annoying knockbacks. It's just so annoying.

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