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RIP orbital strike


Murder_Toys

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Seems like they used a sledgehammer to do a hammer's job

 

Nope they used a sledge hammer to do a chisels job. OS did not need a damage nerf, it needed a ammo change to make it a dps loss to use in ST rotation. Now its useless to use against anything except for when you need an aoe hard stun against weak mob.

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I've been parsing full lethality lately because of these changes. The problem I'm having with it is reapplying the dots which sounds stupid I know but this is what happens. When my CG is transitioning into the weakened form if I hit the dummy with a CG at that exact split second it never makes it on there. So I have to throw another CG at it. The same thing happens with CD. I feel like I have to wait half a second after the weakening poisons have already started in order to reapply my dots and I feel this is hindering my parses. Does this happen with anyone else?
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I've been parsing full lethality lately because of these changes. The problem I'm having with it is reapplying the dots which sounds stupid I know but this is what happens. When my CG is transitioning into the weakened form if I hit the dummy with a CG at that exact split second it never makes it on there. So I have to throw another CG at it. The same thing happens with CD. I feel like I have to wait half a second after the weakening poisons have already started in order to reapply my dots and I feel this is hindering my parses. Does this happen with anyone else?

 

No.. maybe it's a bug? or a resist? I've always been able to reapply CG and CD with no issues

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I've been parsing full lethality lately because of these changes. The problem I'm having with it is reapplying the dots which sounds stupid I know but this is what happens. When my CG is transitioning into the weakened form if I hit the dummy with a CG at that exact split second it never makes it on there. So I have to throw another CG at it. The same thing happens with CD. I feel like I have to wait half a second after the weakening poisons have already started in order to reapply my dots and I feel this is hindering my parses. Does this happen with anyone else?

 

It's a known issue. Applying dots as they transfer to the weak version overwrites your new dot with the weak dot. I parse without the talent, and sometimes raid without it.

Edited by namesaretough
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For which spec? Full Lethality?

 

For Marksman. I'm thinking of the hole during SV.

 

I tried using EP instead of OS. Its still about 200 DPS lost.

 

 

Winner >_<

 

There just isn't anything we have that can approximate that damage for the time used. Hybrid and Lethality don't have this issue. Energy Management was one of the challenges (not necessarily hard, but it was something to think of) in those specs so it makes sense that this works for that. Marksmanship was all about finding other stuff to cram in since we had these GCD holes in our rotation and way more energy than we knew what to do with. That's pretty much how the Vital Shot talent came to be the standard.

Edited by ArchangelLBC
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I've been parsing full lethality lately because of these changes. The problem I'm having with it is reapplying the dots which sounds stupid I know but this is what happens. When my CG is transitioning into the weakened form if I hit the dummy with a CG at that exact split second it never makes it on there. So I have to throw another CG at it. The same thing happens with CD. I feel like I have to wait half a second after the weakening poisons have already started in order to reapply my dots and I feel this is hindering my parses. Does this happen with anyone else?

 

This is a known bug that has been plaguing lethality operatives since time began. They are aware of it and are supposedly 'fixing it' some time in the next 10 years. It overwrites itself too many times and doesn't get refreshed like it should. Welcome to Lingering Toxins.

Edited by Transmet
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It's not a bad change, in spirit. Orbital Strike was comically overpowered. Drop it on any stationary boss and you do gigantic damage with minimal effort. With that said, there needs to be a talent near the top of the engineering tree which gives most of that damage back to OS.
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It's not a bad change, in spirit. Orbital Strike was comically overpowered. Drop it on any stationary boss and you do gigantic damage with minimal effort. With that said, there needs to be a talent near the top of the engineering tree which gives most of that damage back to OS.

 

Yeah i feel we are getting 2.6 orbital to live. even tho you can still use is rotationally, its just not worth the time/gcd/effort to be so "min-maxy" about it. i don't think ill end up clipping speed shot to get like 30 -40 more dps with orbital in the rotation as full lethaltiy.

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Yeah i feel we are getting 2.6 orbital to live. even tho you can still use is rotationally, its just not worth the time/gcd/effort to be so "min-maxy" about it. i don't think ill end up clipping speed shot to get like 30 -40 more dps with orbital in the rotation as full lethaltiy.

 

I have the same feelings considering its performance in full Lethality. I'd probably just screw up the rotation reducing my DPS attempting to clip SoS for more DPS. :p

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Never. :) Cuz for snipers orbital strike is mostly defensive skill i.e. cast on himself! And now its pointless... :(

 

Try to 2x snipe and Ambush without an OS without an OS and still be usefull to your team in an arena if you are getting focused as an MM. It makes the loss of life more of a trade of for the attackers. Along with giving other ranged protection. Even if everybody was smart and stayed out of it I could still determine where the battle took place. In arenas you can also destroy a teams ability to focus. MM is one of the few casting classes in arenas that can loose damage because of LOS, but still provide noticeable support for their team. Lethality can still have good numbers, but are they as usefull and are still easier to take down without the CC immunity.

 

For MM in PVP and PVE this is basically removing a top level ability that had realistic issues nobody was complaining about. Corrosive dart ticks on 2 other people in an arena are not enough of a trade off for the MM spec, but they do help the Lethality spec that was said to be the reason for the nerf.

 

Hopefully this is all politcal so they can scale it back and people will be happy. That would at least show the use of logic in why the nerf is the way it is now.

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It's not a bad change, in spirit. Orbital Strike was comically overpowered. Drop it on any stationary boss and you do gigantic damage with minimal effort. With that said, there needs to be a talent near the top of the engineering tree which gives most of that damage back to OS.

 

It's a pretty awful change in spirit. The ability has been neutered in all respects. Not only it's usefulness, but its very feel.

 

Also I fail to see how that's particularly overpowered. There are a lot of classes that can drop gigantic damage on a boss with minimal effort.

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Just compare OS to Death from Above....

Death from Above deals about 10-15% less damage than OS.

Death from Above is about 3sec channel,

Orbital Strike is about 3 sec cast,

DfA deal about 8.5k dmg and channel ends. Damage is done in 3~ secs. (if nothing disrupted channel, otherwise DfA deal just a part of dmg.

OS deal about 10k dmg after 3 secs of cast and then in time of 9 secs. (if nothing disrupted cast, otherwise OS deals no dmg)

 

8,5k in 3 sec is about 2833 dps

10k dmg in 3 sec is about 3333 dps

 

and now its 3,6k dps in 2,5 sec of cast thats = 1440

with this change OS is not worth effort anymore

Edited by Posejdon
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Just compare OS to Death from Above....

Death from Above deals about 10-15% less damage than OS.

Death from Above is about 3sec channel,

Orbital Strike is about 3 sec cast,

DfA deal about 8.5k dmg and channel ends. Damage is done in 3~ secs. (if nothing disrupted channel, otherwise DfA deal just a part of dmg.

OS deal about 10k dmg after 3 secs of cast and then in time of 9 secs. (if nothing disrupted cast, otherwise OS deals no dmg)

 

8,5k in 3 sec is about 2833 dps

10k dmg in 3 sec is about 3333 dps

 

 

with this change OS is not worth effort anymore

 

and now its 3,6k dps in 2,5 sec of cast thats = 1440

 

You forgot that DFA is kinetic damage, so that 2833dps is actually 1982 dps AFTER the armor debuff, or when used by an Arsenal Merc its about a 2323dps

 

So its 2323/1982 dps (1982 is the number by the higher parsing spec) vs 1440/1656/2400 dps (lethality/engineering/marksman) - and after crits its about 2658/2424 vs 1699/2070/2832 dps

 

So a Marksman Sniper's Orbital damage is about 6.5% stronger than an Arsenal Merc's Death from Above.

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Why is the MM orbital hitting harder? There is no skill points buffing OS damage for MM. MM orbital should do 15% less damage than engineering OS. Remember the PvP set bonus is removed so you get only 3 ticks not 4. So you need to change your calculation. Edited by Helmholtzz
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Why is the MM orbital hitting harder? There is no skill points buffing OS damage for MM. MM orbital should do 15% less damage than engineering OS. Remember the PvP set bonus is removed so you get only 3 ticks not 4. So you need to change your calculation.

 

We were talking about damage per activation time. In the case of a marksman sniper, they get talents that reduce the activation time by 1 second. They also get 15 seconds off the cooldown (60-45 on live, 45-30 on PTS). So if its DPS when used on cooldown, marksman wins easily, and if its DPS per second of activation, Marksman wins.

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I'm sure no one cares, but this hurts medicine operatives (and the smuggler counterpart I imagine) harder than anyone else I think, in solo PVE. Fighting gold star mobs or higher are where this hurts hardest.

 

I'm somewhat new, but nevertheless I have a 55 kinetic (tank) shadow, and a 55 medicine operative. My operative was my first character, leveled up as medicine. I always knew it was a painful, tough time playing that character, but I never knew just how bad it was until my shadow started leveling. Everything seemed so much faster, not to mention I had actual defensive cooldowns. Even stuck with Theran as healer, I just killed everything so much faster on my shadow. I mean I get to backstab them in the face with a proc! Why can't my Op get that when backstab has a cooldown? I mean really, I can't use my medicine knowledge to do any kind of damage to someone?

 

And Oricon? Don't even get me started on how bad Oricon was for my operative compared to how easy it was for my shadow. Suffice it to say, my op has never done the dailies, my shadow does them regularly.

 

Think about the single target rotation of a medicine OP. If you are lucky you can open with hidden strike, but with the psychic stealth detection mobs have, that is maybe 50/50 at best, unless its all alone. Backstab doesn't work now because the operative has aggro. You're left with shiv, explosive probe, and corrosive dart with rifle shot as filler in all too many places, because of the cooldowns on those. You can hit debilitate and get a backstab there, and if your timing is incrediblely good, flashbang will get you another. Most of the time I try not to heal early so that my companion gets some aggro from any adds so I can backstab them. Thankfully I can toss in orbital strike to speed things along.

 

What about standard/weak adds and AOE? Well believe it or not, I rarely bother with orbital strike for those. Firstly, it takes far too long to activate and for the damage to come down on a weak pack of mobs. Thermal grenade and carbine burst are where its at. With Thermal grenade I can knock a standard down and backstab them while they are laying...on their back. And as medicine I can get 3 TA so 3 carbine bursts on a nice group of standards pretty much destroys them, with the grenade AOE adding a bit more damage on top.

 

Whats my companion doing? Less DPS. And not holding aggro. After suffering so long with Kaliyo during the leveling process, despite keeping her gear up to date, I was so happy to dump her for ensign Temple and have a noticeable DPS increase. Kaliyo never held aggro anyway. Maybe I'd get a random backstab when she taunted, but that was it. I was always forced to heal, tank, and do most of the DPS to kill anything. But I can't heal and do DPS at the same time (Kolto probe is rarely enough).

 

Orbital strike is a much needed single target DPS move for medicine because it has nothing else, and it sucks that it comes so late, but its so nice to have once you get it. Suddenly I could start fighting gold stars rather than avoiding them like a plague, even though it still takes a terribly long time.

 

I know, no one cares at all about solo PVE, and probably even less about medicine spec DPS, but the bottom line is, if some DPS spec is doing too much damage, then clearly the answer is not to massively nerf orbital strike and impact every spec in wildly disparate ways, but to carefully and responsibly lower DPS for that spec and that spec alone.

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Since no one else on this forum is saying it. There should never be a nerf based on how players choose to use their abilities. I find it absurd that the basis for their decision concerning the relevant ability/abilities, is because players got smart enough to utilize an ability that the developers did not think of it being used for. It's preposterous! With this logic, they should go ahead and consider nerfing explosive probe, as it is a cover ability, and operatives, an advanced class for the Agent, uses it instead of overload shot , despite it being cover dependant, which is not intended to be used as an operative.
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So let me get this straight. OS was changed because Lethality Snipers were using this in their single target rotations. So they made some changes and now the two specs that had talents to support OS can't seem to fit it into their rotations with out a dps loss, however Lethality Snipers are the only Snipers that can fit OS into their rotations and have a dps gain?

 

I am so confused

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So let me get this straight. OS was changed because Lethality Snipers were using this in their single target rotations. So they made some changes and now the two specs that had talents to support OS can't seem to fit it into their rotations with out a dps loss, however Lethality Snipers are the only Snipers that can fit OS into their rotations and have a dps gain?

 

I am so confused

 

Close.

 

--OS is used in Sniper single target rotations in all three trees.

 

--Devs dislike that, so they nerf OS

 

--Marksman and Engineering drop OS from their rotations, suffer a massive DPS loss and have their most iconic ability become barely better than Snipe (and arguably worse than Frag Grenade)

 

--Lethality Snipers continue to use OS in their rotation and actually get a DPS *buff* from it.

 

So, the Devs ****ed up royally. They failed to achieve their intended goal, instead actually giving Lethality snipers even more incentive to use OS in their single target rotation. Moral of the story, these devs are idiots with no foresight whatsoever.

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ok i still dont see what ea/biowares proble with marksman snipers using orbstrike was, i run marksman and honestly never used orb strike in pvp, the only time i did use it was running ops and i feel like it was only useful against ops bosses because it takes so long to cast and was static so it only worked on bosses that stand still, now i can hit the boss more with the shorter CD but WAY less damage, the whole nerf makes no sence to me, can someone explain what the point was? and why is it BIOWAREs biusmess how we use our abilities anyways?
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