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Arena Report


Xinika

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Arenas have been fun. Most fun I've had in SWTOR in over a year. It is surprisingly better executed than expected. Of course, it comes with its thorns and flowers which is what will be discussed in this thread. This is a thread solely dedicated to the feedback on Ranked Arena on the PTS. It has nothing to do with Ranked Warzones or its removal. That being said, let's move on.

Pros

- Easy to Setup

- Solo Queue option is an excellent addition

- Overall Class balance isn't that bad

- Solid Execution

 

Cons

- Deserter Bug

- Over reliance on Operative Medics

- Warrior Dominance

- Bolster Broken (Again)

 

I think the best part about this new game mode is that it will be very easy for people to get in the action. Setting up a group of 4 is not hard and to top it off, solo queue ranked will assure that pretty much anyone who has the desire to participate in arena, will do so. In addition, the way how the Arena performs is seemingly smooth. Skill will be bled out more evidently and top tier teams will be doing more than just spamming PvE rotations into a target.

 

The class balance isn't awful. There are multiple successful comps out there - but there is also a flaw. The Warrior dominance is starting to take its toll and this needs to be addressed. Most idealized setups currently consists of anywhere from 1-3 warriors per team. Jugg Tank is mandatory, although VG can substitute this spot with almost complete efficiency. Shadow tanks are absolutely horrible and their PvE issues are actually shining in Arena more than before. But this also brings up the other issue: How exactly would you tone down Juggernauts to make the other two tanks more applicable? Or should we just buff the other two? (Especially Assassin) By default, Juggernauts in their design are superior in tanking, so how would you make the others comparable?

 

Moving on to the DPS section. Marauder / Sentinel DPS (Mainly pointing the scope at Smash) needs a tone down. They have too many defensives cooldowns combined with consistent burst, respectable single target and an MS (Mortal Strike aka Healing Debuff). They are far too strong defensively for all that they can do. Comps have been stacking two of these classes at once with a great deal of success. This also extends into other 'cheese' comps such as 2xSorcs that will make a Deception Assassin hate their lives. The problem with this is that stacking 2 of any class should not be this efficient, which is why you should consider possibly having a 1-per-class option.

 

The next issue is probably the biggest one. Operative Healers. They are godly right now. Far too much of a payoff for the ease of the class. It's more survivable than a tank. It does just as much healing as a sage without the burden of having to cast. It's management flows much easier. As it stands, this and this only is the healer to have in Arena and I have a gigantic problem with that. This class | spec needs a serious tone down if we want to help break up some cookie cutters. There's no reason why Arena should only be limited to one healer.

 

As it stands, Sage Healers are easily shut down and Merc Healers are far too clunky to properly synergize with the small scale environment. I don't think Sorc / Merc heals need dramatic buffs. I believe Operatives need to be toned down so that the other two can shine. If anything, Operatives should receive a nerf whilst Mercs go up. Sages are a bit tricky because of their design for siege warfare / OPs content.

 

Now to some more technical aspects. Why doesn't this mode have Arena frames? We have Focus Target, so I'm sure setting up some kind of Arena Frames would not be that difficult. It would make the 'flow' of things a lot more smoother. I feel like as it is, it's missing some things. This is one of them and would help to make battle a little less clustered. There's also a heart-wrenching bug known as the Deserter-kick. Players are entering Arena only to be kicked from debuff at random. We generally have to wait at least 30 seconds before entering a game. I'm sure this isn't intentional, but this needs to be looked at.

 

And what about Bolster? Seems you've created a monster BW. Sooner or later you'll have to address this elephant in the room because from what I've seen on the PTS, you're only sweeping the dirt under the carpet. Thing is, this won't be an easy fix either. You've based a lot of PvP around it and to strip it away would not be an easy feat. However, this problem is growing and now you've added a new layer to the problem. Stop band-aiding this mess and clean it for good. Get rid of bolster.

 

This is 1 report of things thus far and I'm sure there will be others.

Thanks for the new mode.

Edited by Xinika
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Good write up.

 

Operatives and smashers just can't be said enough. Both are so easy to play and just plain outperform. Arena's will be a mess if these 2 classes don't get a severe "adjustment"

 

Couple things I'd like to add from playing and watching.

 

Sage healing is kind of a joke right now. Needs so much help in arena's i dont know where to begin. Too cast dependent and easy to shut down

 

Sage dps is pretty bad too. Good sages I know are struggling. When the 2 smashers or whoever looks at them its barrier is the only thing that stops insta gib. Adjusting smash may help but 2 other high dps could force the same issue. Sage lack of burst is a problem as well. Telekinetics suffers same casting shutdowns as Seer does.

 

Shadow full infiltration and the hybrid work decent enough. That's it though. Kinetic/Darkness is awful compared to the other 2 tanks.The continuing shadow issues crop up in arena tho. Why bring shadow dps when u can have 2 smashers or a merc though.

 

i agree class balance isn't too far off. I'd say start at the top. operatives and smashing has got to be changed or Arena's will be too stale and frustrating.

Edited by Pizzel
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I agree completely on your class balance points. If you bring a healer that is not an operative/scoundrel, it is almost a guaranteed loss. If Bioware wants arenas to succeed, they absolutely need to tone down this class. The advantage of warriors/knights are slightly less obvious then the op healer, but it is still there.

 

I think arenas are very close to being an excellent game mode, as long as Bioware cleans up the bugs and fixes up the balance a bit.

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Moving on to the DPS section. Marauder / Sentinel DPS (Mainly pointing the scope at Smash) needs a tone down. They have too many defensives cooldowns combined with consistent burst, respectable single target and an MS (Mortal Strike aka Healing Debuff). They are far too strong defensively for all that they can do. Comps have been stacking two of these classes at once with a great deal of success.

 

You know that marauders/sent has no 4sec stun right?

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Dont know how theyve survived without. I feel for them.

 

Aoe mezzing everyone else and double smashing healers is far inferior i guess.

Why there's a marauder on your healer? Your job is to not let he reach your heals.

Edited by NogueiraA
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Also, I think Lightning Sorcs may need slight rebalancing but it's not completely out of whack like OP Heals. The burst is slightly too strong atm.

 

I saw the triple sorc comp melted everything. I was like :eek:. Altho mumble they were having too much fun with it,

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As someone who has had very little time to invest on the PTS, I'd like to thank you for your well reasoned insight.

 

Regarding this statement:

 

Jugg Tank is mandatory, although VG can substitute this spot with almost complete efficiency.

 

Not quite sure what is inferred here.

Do you mean that, currently, a Juggernaut Tank is a necessity for a competitive team, but a Vanguard can push it close?

Or do you mean that a skilled team with either of these classes performing in their tank role can be equally competitive?

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What is an "Arena Frame" ?

 

If this term comes from wow : I never played wow, mind you.

 

Its like the focus frame we have ATM but with the arena participants.

 

So you can set shortcuts like /button cast arena target frame 1 instead of clicking the bugger.

 

Why this is good? Well it makes the game more customizable and frees your focus frame so you can watch something else.

 

For example: Keep the enemy healer on main focus to try to focus interrupt him and cast DAT CC on that pesky tank with /cast arena frame 1 cc skill.

 

Good writeup, pretty much sums up everything.

 

A note on sage design.

 

While i think that lightning can be super effective in 4v4 given the right playstile, im positive that the design of healing sage is too much PvE hampered to be as viable as operatives are in arenas.

 

To be as effective as operatives in arenas, sage devs would have to sit on the freudian couch and redesign the class top to bottom, which is something that they wont do at this point. They actually missed the opportunity to remake us with the whole bubble blind debate and the expansion.

 

My advice: rerrol lightning if you like the class or rerrol out of the class if you want to heal.

Edited by Laforet
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Here's what I took from my night of arenas. My buddy who was healing us on his sorc is dumping that toon for an op he almost has at 55. All the tanks feel useful, I think jugs are still the best but I don't think vangaurds/pt's are that far behind them, I had to spec into tank as having 3 deception sins seemed ok at first but when facing top tier teams you really need a guard. Madness assassins suck. Just about every team had a smash but I was surprised to see how well mercs played as electro net seems even better in ranked.

 

Though with all the bugs that were going on (no cooldown for phasewalk was actually messing me up more) and the DC's and getting flagged for afk it was hard to get a good read but those should be ironed out soon.

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I agree that operatives healers are far stronger than mercs and sorc healers, but I do not think nerfing then is the way to go. The hps they put out is needed to counter the dps the enemy deals. Last night I had several matches against teams with a 2 marauder 1 dps geared vanguard setup, together their dps put out about 2700 dps every game. If an operative wouldn't be able to put out 2500 hps to counter that, those offensive specs would rule the arenas. Therefore I think it is better to buff sages and merc rather than nerf operatives.
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Very good points OP, I agree with you. Mara's and Operatives need to be tweaked downward. I would say tone down healing, but we can't really do that till Smash gets toned down as well. Right now the reason ops are mandatory isn't just the lack of casting, it's the only healer strong enough to counter Mara damage. On top of that no one can try to affectively focus down a mara, they have several Defensive CD's on a short CD making them impossible to kill quickly. They are by far the best melee DPS, and no class can compare to them on DPS, Defense, and Utility.

 

Sadly, I don't think Bioware will change anything major. BTW, I agree, Sorc Lightning has some nasty burst and so does Merc Arsenal. The thing is, they cane be easily focused or interrupted. So there's a trade off. I really hope Bioware does some balancing. I'd love to be able to play a Merc/Sage heals over my Op in a Arena.

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I agree that operatives healers are far stronger than mercs and sorc healers, but I do not think nerfing then is the way to go. The hps they put out is needed to counter the dps the enemy deals. Last night I had several matches against teams with a 2 marauder 1 dps geared vanguard setup, together their dps put out about 2700 dps every game. If an operative wouldn't be able to put out 2500 hps to counter that, those offensive specs would rule the arenas. Therefore I think it is better to buff sages and merc rather than nerf operatives.

 

They put way too much heals way too easily without having any specific weakness.

 

If the other healers were brought to their level 4v4 would be a heal fest.

 

Just gut operative healers and see what happens. If sorcs / mercs need buffs after that, so be it.

 

A joint nerf on the whole warrior basic class and operative heal nerfs would put 4v4 very close to balance, just small tweaks from them on and we will have a gem of a game in our hands.

 

But yeah, i doubt its going to happen. Operative heals and smash are out of control since 1.2 and they have just received buffs in the last year, despite their "monkey" status.

Edited by Laforet
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Sadly, I don't think Bioware will change anything major. BTW, I agree, Sorc Lightning has some nasty burst and so does Merc Arsenal. The thing is, they cane be easily focused or interrupted. So there's a trade off. I really hope Bioware does some balancing. I'd love to be able to play a Merc/Sage heals over my Op in a Arena.

merc heals in the right setup are nasty - 3smasher+merc heal are two dead opponent dps if they try to focus the merchealer ...

as mercs are the only healer able to survive 15-30sec of concentrated dmg without support of teammates if you can translate that time into an enemy kill yout team won.

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merc heals in the right setup are nasty - 3smasher+merc heal are two dead opponent dps if they try to focus the merchealer ...

as mercs are the only healer able to survive 15-30sec of concentrated dmg without support of teammates if you can translate that time into an enemy kill yout team won.

 

A Op with 3 smashers would be worse. The op could sit in stealth and watch the mayhem till he needed to come out and heal. Which wouldn't be right away, since Mara's have the best DCD's in the game. On top of that, Mercs can still be countered and if they blow their shield to free cast, you just stun them through it. Good players will know to chain interrupt and force reactive shield. After that it's just stun/mezz and refocus once shield drops.

 

I do agree a merc could last that long, but a team with good AoE damage (which all competitive team will have) would neuter a merc healer. Kolto missile and cast heals can not and will not keep up with smash and pressure damage.

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4v4 TDM is a different enough format from 8v8 objectives that people shouldn't declare the "winning" classes are the same in both - or assume without a little playing that (say) 4xstealth > all. Give it a little while for people to try how different classes can be played.

 

Leaving aside whether ditching 8-man ranked is the right idea, and 4-man team arena, if 4-man solo ranked is combined with matchmaking it could make PvP a *lot* more accessible for everyone.

 

You don't get to choose your comp or associates in solo, so over time your solo ranking will tend to approximate how much your char themselves tends to help win solo matches. All the problems of balance, etc, will be ironed out and you'll end up playing people approximately as effective as you are (whether they're average because they're terrible players on an OP spec, or great players on an undergeared char in a gimped spec won't matter - they'll bring as much to the solo match and have similar rank) - so you'll win around half the time. Any increase in your ranking (aside from statistical noise due to random luck) will be because you got better.

 

This will give two good things: a number to compare individuals in a class/spec (epeen ahoy); and allow everyone to play roughly equal matches (no more roflstompings).

Edited by Wainamoinen
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Right, here we go.

 

The accessability is good. We don't really have to worry that too few people will be playing arenas as long as that matchmaking system will do it's job. And although I doubt I will ever use the solo queue feature myself it's nice that people can hump in whenever they want even if their friends/guildies aren't online.

 

 

And I would also incline to agree that the overall class balance is alright. And aside from the obvious class left and right that are blatantly OP in comparison to the others I don't think it should be a big problem fixing this around. Given that Bioware actually wants to do this.. because it's a bit late for balance changes. But only never, is too late.

 

 

I think a UI for arenas would be a nice option, but it's not really necessary either imo. The groups are small, the options for spells limited and predictable. It won't make nearly the amount of difference that it does in WoW for example.

 

 

Bolster for level 55 PvP is also complete bullshet. I don't even know why it was inplemented there, but it should go. And it should go now. Nobody should be using ANY PvE gear in PvP. Period. Use PvP gear or get facerolled. Perhaps if something was done about the effing useless setbonuses for certain classes, and stupid damage proc relics that interrupt caps (lol), we'd go a VERY long way in pleasing people bolster/gearwise.

 

 

Another thing that is really REALLY itching me is that poison cloud. I don't know exactly what you thought it would do, but it isn't doing what you intended it would do. If anything it promotes turtle comps because they are more likely to live through the poison because of their survivability.

 

And bisides that, if the timer %^@$ ends, the team with the most players alive should win. There should never be any poison pool if there is already a team with a disadvantage in player numbers.

 

It shouldn't be resistable. Resettable. Or any ANY way mitigateable by anything whatsoever.

Undying rage? Tough luck bro. Damage reduction talents/abilities/adrenals? Nope.

 

I think that's all I have to say for now, don't slack bioware, and things could be good (and even better if you wouldn't remove 8v8).

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It's kinda funny your defense of arenas and then your pointing at scoundrels being too OP to bring any other healer out there. We already said that before: 4v4 just brings imbalancing issues to the next level, not accompanied by a solid balance patch (which already was 2.0 so they won't remotely touch that as much anymore) makes a lot more classes unhappy and if you don't reroll you can't participate in high level competitive PvP anymore, whereas before every class had its place in 8v8. So yeah... that's one of the reasons why the dead of ranked is not a *********** good thing. Edited by TheHybris
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I agree that operatives healers are far stronger than mercs and sorc healers, but I do not think nerfing then is the way to go. The hps they put out is needed to counter the dps the enemy deals. Last night I had several matches against teams with a 2 marauder 1 dps geared vanguard setup, together their dps put out about 2700 dps every game. If an operative wouldn't be able to put out 2500 hps to counter that, those offensive specs would rule the arenas. Therefore I think it is better to buff sages and merc rather than nerf operatives.

 

One healer should not be out healing or even keeping up with 2-3 dps. That's godmode.

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Right, here we go.

<..........>

I think that's all I have to say for now, don't slack bioware, and things could be good (and even better if you wouldn't remove 8v8).

 

Agree with most that you wrote, but Bolster should stay for regular warzones. Gear or die really turns away a lot of new players who could potentially find PvP fun. For competitive matches, however, yeah, I think Bolster isn't really necessary. And bigger player pools are better for everyone - for newbies and dedicated players alike. Even if we totally ignore the fact that it's a game and fun shouldn't have a gear census.

Edited by Helig
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