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Majspuffen

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    Sweden
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    http://www.youtube.com/lostconnection89
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    Reading, writing, and wasting away infront of the computer.
  1. Nerfs are preferable over buffs. These days it feels like every class has a way to heal themselves and every class has a mobility ability. Abilities these days can have a multitude of different effects depending on your utility slots and the result is not good gameplay. It's rather messy. When you're in the thick of combat these days it feels like you can only really move when you have a mobility CD ready. You don't get good balance by constantly buffing classes. If one thing is misperforming in comparison to seven other things, the easiest solution ought to be to change the one thing rather than all the seven others.
  2. Learn to root? Operatives have a ton of ways to break roots. Evasion breaks roots, their dispel breaks tech roots and they can specialize so that countermeasures removes roots (which has a 30s CD if memory recalls). Holotraverse can break root if specialized. Maybe Operatives wouldn't have been buffed so much if "people learned how to" dispel in the first place, but alas. The design of 1.x was way more elegant than the hot mess we've got today. The gameplay of the classes were based around the aesthetics of their respective class fantasies. Why do Operatives have a reflect anyways? How does that mesh with the class fantasy? When asking these questions it's common to get answers such as "who cares about aesthetics" and "gameplay is king". I'd argue that the aesthetics are very important, though. If this game hadn't had the Star Wars IP I bet it would have a lot less players than it currently does. The game is at its best when the gameplay is good and cohesive with the class fantasies.
  3. My own list of changes I'd like to see to Serenity Shadows: - Like Sabatiel I wish to see DoT spreading removed, however I don't want to see self-healing from DoTs removed. I think by removing DoT spreading they can up the healing we receive from DoTs. Back in the earlier iterations of this spec the DoT healing actually made a difference and I miss that. - Increase the range of Force in Balance to 30m again. I don't mind nerfs, but nerfs that makes the gameplay feel worse are terrible. If Force in Balance was problematic they should've adjusted the numbers and not the functionality of the ability. If 8 targets is too much, do a rollback on that change and have it hit 5 or 3 targets again. - Give us the 30% damage reduction when stunned back. This was originally a Serenity talent and is given to Kinetic Combat these days. - Change Serenity Strike so its extra damage isn't dependent on the amount of DoTs on the target. This mechanic feels copied from Lethality Operatives, and the issue I have with it is that there's a pretty long preparation timer before you can deal any good damage with Serenity Strike. Maybe change it so that it synergizes with our Force Suppression stacks instead (the debuff applied by Force in Balance). Maybe it can eat up to 3 stacks which increases the damage of the ability or somesuch. - Replace our Force Technique with something else or remove it entirely. I know that our Force Regen is tied to our Force Technique procs but it's a really boring mechanic. It was far more fun back in the day when Force Suppression charges would regen a small amount of Force when consumed. This made the gameplay much smoother and when you had DoTs eating away Force Suppression charges on three separate targets you were in Force Regen heaven -- and that right there is excellent game feel. - Replace Battle Readiness with something else. This kinda goes hand-in-hand with the Force Technique stuff. Battle Readiness is a decent defensive cooldown but a really underwhelming offensive cooldown. It's just not fun to use for DPS purposes because you don't feel the effect of it at all. When you click a cooldown you should feel something. Although maybe it's primary purpose is to be a defensive CD, I don't know. This cooldown has always been underwhelming. ... I could probably list more Serenity is the spec that is most dear to me in this game and it makes me sad to see the treatment it has gotten!
  4. 100% agree. They've taken Serenity so far in one direction that it's become quite useless for single target damage. I recently returned to the game so I've not yet had time to gear up my characters and equip them with set bonuses and tacticals. However, when the stars align my Shadow can deal like 20-25k with a critical on Spinning Strike... my Vigilance Guardian, meanwhile, consistently pump out 40k+ crits. I love the playstyle of Serenity although it has gotten worse over time. It was at its peak in 1.x because back then it wasn't just an AoE spec. You had fairly strong AoE but you had single target damage as well. You didn't have burst like Pyrotech Powertechs or Rage Juggernauts, but you had high single target damage. A good crit could take 1/4th of an enemy's health. I miss that a lot. I much prefer to be versatile rather than a one-trick pony. The only reason I still play Serenity is... well, due to nostalgia, and because the gameplay is somewhat similar to how I remembered it in 1.x even if abilities do different numbers. DoT-spreading is a stupid concept and I think by removing that they could start fixing a lot of classes. It shouldn't be a matter of "this spec is a ST spec and this is an AoE spec"; every spec should have single target and AoE damage. Sure, Serenity could have somewhat higher AoE than Infiltration and Infiltration could have higher ST than Serenity, but Serenity shouldn't be neutered in the ST-damage department.
  5. Can confirm. Changing to a single-hilt saber fixes the run glitch but that's not really an option for a shadow/assassin.
  6. Definitely. More often than not, the objectives are just a pretext for people to go kill each other, which is a problem in many other "casually competitive" multiplayer games. It's no surprise that Blizzard decided not to include a scoreboard in Overwatch. I get the appeal of number-wh*ring, and if the opportunity presents itself I'll do it myself, but I always try to play for objectives first. Which is why I hate Civil War. I mainly play classes with stealth so I often feel obligated to sit on defense duty (since very few volunteer for that task). A stealther is the ideal defender as well, but how fun is it? Occasionally it can be fun, but more often than not it's just tedious. Nothing makes me wanna quit the game more than when I'm being confined to defense duty. That doesn't happen in Huttball. Unless it's an absolute steamroll, I never find myself short of things to do in Huttball, be it running ahead for passes or playing defensively to intercept the ball. Voidstar is okay as well. Occasionally you'll find yourself sitting on defense twiddling your thumbs but that's quite rare. I guess the design of the map encourages assaulting players to switch doors.
  7. I stand behind you, OP! It's not just that the gear is extremely long and tedious, but also this whole system with the lootboxes is aggravating as well. It's not fun to open them. It's a chore. Occasionally I stack up on like 10-15 boxes in my inventory and it takes literally minutes to open them all. Whatever "kick" one might get from the randomness is long, long gone. I miss the old WZ commendations and the vendors. It wasn't a perfect system but it was so much better.
  8. The problem is that there are so many gap closers these days that they kind of have to face tank. If I were to reimagine the classes I would remove a lot of gap closers (but I made a whole thread about that already that can be found here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=960225). I haven't really gotten into the arena since returning to the game last December, but I wonder how useful Force Push is these days. Force Push used to be a killer since it was the best tool to separate tanks from their guarded targets, but with so many gap closers these days how effective can it be? The game, in my opinion, is more reflex-based today whereas in the past it leaned more towards the tactical, and that is probably more appealing to some players but personally I preferred the slower pace. Especially considering the engine the game is using. It can barely keep up with the players' actions.
  9. I did this over an extended period of time back in 2012 because I felt like Huttball popped the least out of all the maps. My results were: Civil war: 77 Voidstar: 67 Novare Coast: 60 Huttball: 58 So if my numbers were correct, Huttball did indeed pop the least out of all WZs. I was a bit conspirational back then because Huttball received so much hate because it was the most common WZ the first couple of months during the game, so I thought BioWare actually weighed it so it would pop less than the others. That was probably not true. It's just sod's law. If I were to list them according to which I like the most that list would be upside down. I agree with Talinis; it's best if they don't do anything and keep it as it is. Yes, we will see Huttball more frequently because there are now more Huttball maps, but there are equally many capture point maps (or more, depending on how you want to define it). This weekend I experienced three Vandin Huttball maps in a row, which was then followed by Yavin, Yavin, Civil War and Yavin. It happens. I don't see the issue.
  10. Agreed. While it's an unpopular opinion, I don't like the dot-spreading. I especially don't like how it caused us to receive a nerf to our self-healing. If we want to get any relevant self-healing we pretty much have to dot the entire enemy team. I'm not immune to the charms of scoreboardwh*ring, but it feels cheap to do so as a Madness Assassin/Serenity Shadow. Spec had way more elegance in the original game.
  11. What was so special about Madness/Balance in 2.8? Looking at the patch notes I don't see anything remarkable. I get that somewhere around 3.0 Balance could spread dots via Force in Balance, which for a brief time made the class seem OP due to the insane numbers they could so easily pull. If you like pulling big numbers then that was a good change for you but personally I see it as the main catalyst of what ruined a lot of what made the spec fun. Balance was at its peak in 1.x, honestly. It wasn't super strong, but it wasn't weak either. It was, no pun intended, balanced. The changes in 2.0 were stupid and made the class a lot less enjoyable to play and they have repaired some of the damage caused since then. For instance, Serenity Strike was a nice addition, as was the proc for Spinning Strike (though I do miss using Shadow Strike). But because of how easy it is to DoT-spread, they've reduced the amount of healing we receive from our DoTs. So if you want to get any noticable self-heals you got to spread your DoTs. The whole gameplay revolves around spreading DoTs these days. AoE pressure can be useful but the spec really feels like a one-trick pony. Which sucks, because in the past it was fairly versatile (good mix of ranged and melee attacks and unique utility unavailable to Infiltration). That said, I still play Balance on my Shadow. I actually enjoy being squishy. It's a fun challenge. But the hit to self-healing*, particularly in 1v1 scenarios, and the removal of the 30% damage reduction when stunned (as Zhezvya pointed out above) makes it a frustrating experience sometimes. Mainly because it feels like I'm always at a disadvantage when I'm in a 1v1. Which is bad for a stealth class, since often we'll have to do 1v1s due to being on defense. Edit: Also, a tip to the OP: spec 60% damage reduction when you use Force Speed and spec it so that Force Speed lasts longer and has shorter CD. I often find myself using Force Speed as a defensive tool these days, particularly against Fury Marauders/Rage Juggernauts who have very predictable hard-hitting attacks. Deflection is garbage. Force Speed is where it's at. Edit 2: *I know we get healed by serenity strike but the tactic against other melee classes in 1.x was to kite them and only enter melee when they suffered a hard CC. We'd weave in and out of melee. Serenity strike forces us into melee, which puts us in danger. The damage taken by entering melee often outweighs the healing caused by serenity strike. I like it as an ability, but I preferred to have a steady stream of incoming heals when kiting.
  12. I had a game like that once, where I got my personal record at 7.5k. Started on defense in Voidstar. Then, on attack, I could just walk up to the door and plant the bomb because nobody really seemed to care about the objectives. Personally I dislike that. This culture of a "meta-game" inside WZs where what matters most is not winning the game but winning the scoreboard. High numbers are all good and well but if that's the reason you play pvp, you should probably try pve instead. Same. I usually play with friends so if I don't have a reason to vote for anyone I throw a vote on them, but if there is someone who's playing for objectives I typically give them the vote. They're pretty rare these days.
  13. Strange how everyone says this. I've experienced evenings where I've had no huttball pops at all. To me, it's not really a big issue. I mean, Civil War, Yavin and Novare Coast are basically the same WZs (except the latter has good capping mechanics and the two former have archaic systems taken from World of Warcraft). If we're going to group up all the HB maps under one category we should group up the capture point pvp under one category as well, like the above post already suggested. Ancient Hypergare and Odessen are also capture point pvp but their design vary enough to warrant their own category. Perhaps something akin to "weird experimental designs". The only WZ that is unique is Voidstar, so if we were to bunch up these in categories we'd probably see more of that WZ (unless you'd put them with Ancient Hypergate and Odessen which, in my opinion, wouldn't be fair as Voidstar isn't really capture point pvp in that sense). Maybe that could serve as an incentive to make more maps akin to Voidstar, which I think would be pretty cool. I always liked the design of Voidstar. Instanced, adventurous pvp. Very fitting for the IP, but I digress. If we categorize HB we should categorize capture point as well.
  14. Right you are, although Operatives lost their core abilities over a long span of time. Once Exfiltrate was added, the design-focus for the Operative completely changed. Those abilities that you mentioned -- Explosive Probe, Kneel, Roll to Cover, Snipe -- those were the ones that hooked me to the class in the first place. Might sound like a rosetinted overstatement, but it's true. Explosive Probe reminded me of the Engineer-class from Mass Effect 2, which was my favourite in that game, and I thought the cover-system was really interesting. It was something fresh and new to the MMO-genre. I would often experiment with it, see which attacks I could dodge or not. In Warzones I'd find good cover points to roll to if I were in need of a gap closer or an escape tool. Cover was an ability that could be used in so many creative ways. Exfiltrate is really bland in comparison. And since someone is going to ask: I must say that I do not really like the Sniper's cover it since it's so static. Snipers must pretty much always sit in cover whereas the Operative was more flexible and used Cover specifically for the benefits that Cover gave. I know that the designers said that they never intended for Operatives to use Cover after level 10, as their justification to remove it, but this was just talk. Check the early game development screenshots of the Operative and you'll see that Operatives were designed to be able to take cover against walls, as well as midsection cover points. Also, there is this quote from a thread that is now gone: Georg Zoeller is this guy: https://www.giantbomb.com/georg-zoeller/3040-104058/. Now, design may shift, but what BioWare said about Cover when it was removed was a fabricated lie. Exfiltrate was perhaps the easy solution, but not necessarily the one the original developers would have envisioned for the class. Today, Operatives plays much the same as Assassins. In the original version of the game they had a lot of similarities but where fundamentally different. And I say this as someone who's been maining an Operative imp side since day 1 and a Jedi Shadow rep side since ~patch 1.1-1.2. This is why I'm particularly bothered by Exfiltrate; it pretty much erased everything that made the Operative unique and made them generic, instead. As for your question: if not Exfiltrate, what else? I don't know. Considering that the pace of PvP has changed so much, in the current climate Operatives needs it. Which is why I'm advocating for an ability prune aimed to slow down the pace of PvP. The underlying reason for this argument is that the engine can't handle the current pace. I agree and I think most people can agree with this. I don't think the Utility trees have been all that great. It feels like they are short on ideas on what to put there. It has gotten to the point where the game suffers from a sort of CC/Anti-CC bloat. When I returned last december I couldn't figure out what it was that made Fury Marauders immune to stuns, but would realize they got the immunity after they use Force Crush. The thing is, I still don't know what the buffs looks like because the buff and debuff-tray is filled with all these obtuse minor effects that increases x damage type by y%. An ability pruning/re-design across the board should be in every player's interest. The state of the game right now is very chaotic. It's not completely un-fun, because if it was I wouldn't bother playing, but it is a lot less fun these days and much more frustrating than it was in the past. And as you and Lhancelot have already pointed out, BioWare is probably never going to do any sweeping changes. It's easier to maintain the product as is and milk it. Doesn't mean I'm not going to complain about it.
  15. Yes, removing exfiltrate would only work in the larger picture of an ability pruning across the board. In my opinion, BIoWare needs to revisit the classes and distribute various CCs, mobility abilities and immunities to the right classes. As it stands right now, it feels like everyone has access to roots and root breaks, everyone has access to a gap closer/escape tool, everyone has access to CC-immunity and everyone has access to reflect. This may not be true, but it's not far from it. It's gotten to the point where Exfiltrate is the best defensive tool for Operatives, and similarly, Force Speed is the best defensive tool for Shadows/Assassins if you spend your utility points buffing the ability (sure, force shroud is extremely strong but force speed has a shorter CD; I often use it to cushion big hits). Should a mobility cooldown really provide that much survivability? Distancing yourself from your opponent should be survivability enough, but Concealment Operatives and Snipers are encouraged to use their rolls, not for the distancing, but in order to avoid damage completely. I'll admit there is some skill involved in pulling this off, but why put so much of their survivability into one ability? I personally don't want to use Force Speed as a defensive cooldown, but that's where we are at.
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