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stringcat

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  1. Let's not be disingenuous. It was a huge buff. In arenas, PT Protos are on par with marauders for DPS roles,and both classes noticeably outperform other DPS. Not to the extent that other classes are non-viable, but enough that PTs and maras are optimal.
  2. What? No. Don't mix PVP/PVE mods on the same piece of gear. Having black hole pieces and partisan pieces is fine.
  3. Operatives don't go heal spec for duels because (1) duels as a healer are a tedious pain-in-the-butt affair and people play games to have fun, and (2) the operative has to kill the opponent to win a duel, not just survive indefinitely.
  4. stringcat

    PvP Gearing?

    Do you have any gear with expertise? The war hero stuff was converted to PVE gear (expertise was removed and mainstat/endurance added), so it bolsters normally. Make sure you take out war hero crystals until you have partisan weapon/offhand. And yeah, I would replace relics first -- I think those are your only old pieces that have expertise. New gear set is dropping soon, and conqueror prices will go down to a fraction of what they are now, so you might just want to max your comms and buy medpacks until it drops. Having a piece of pure PVE gear is fine. PVP gear is better, but not hugely better. (In fact, some top operative healers use a few pieces of PVE gear for set bonus) Just don't mix PVE/PVP mods on same piece of gear. Recruit gear still has expertise, so get rid of any that you have.
  5. stringcat

    PvP Gearing?

    If every piece of gear you wear is PVP gear, you will have 2018 expertise. All the PVP sets give exactly 2018 expertise. Expertise no longer has diminishing returns and boosts dmg vs players 60%, dmg reduction 37.5% at the 2018 max. The bolster system works by checking you gear to see if it is PVP or PVE, and then bolstering "PVE" items -- adding stats and expertise to get them up to snuff. If a piece of gear has any expertise on any of its mods, it's counted as a PVP item and is not bolstered. Mixing PVE and PVP mods on one piece of gear is the worst thing you can do. Damage rating on hilts/barrels doesn't matter in warzones, because it will be bolstered to max (Kell Dragon). If a PVE item has better stats (more mainstat, etc.) than PVP items (66+ gear, I think), the PVE item is still bolstered to add expertise, but it is granted less expertise. The idea is that 72 Dread Guard gear will be better than bolstered 50 gear, but still inferior to Conquerer or Partisan. Augments are not bolstered, though you still get the benefit. Your war hero gear should be fine -- it's 61 rating, so it will be bolstered to max expertise. You should replace piece by piece as you can though...maybe wait until 2.4, when new gear hits and Conquerer becomes much cheaper. Yup. Most of the gear gap in warzones now is the difference between having augments or not. PVE --> Partisan, and Partisan --> Conqueror differences are not big.
  6. The 35% PVP "trauma" doesn't matter at all for adjusting healing balance in PVP. It's taken into account already. Healing in PVE is just a different subsystem, one that is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Healers put out much more HPS than deeps do DPS. Buffing trauma is one idea to make it a little easier to kill people. But the original suggestions are way too much, even individually. I'm not convinced a buff is necessary. The only healer that strikes me as extremely turtley is op/scoundrels... and the best fix for one powerful healing class is a nerf to that one class. Arenas are fun currently and people are killable in fights of satisfying duration. If ops are nerfed significantly, arenas will be less fun because the fights will be less challenging and be shorter. ...One more thought. Maybe trauma should be buffed slightly (say, to 30%), and maybe it should be taken away from marauders and given to a spec that is less well-represented in arenas to give teams a reason to take them. Marauders have their survival cooldowns; juggs, PTs, and assassins have taunts. (Yeah, assassins aren't great, but it seems to wrong to give assassins both a taunt and trauma). Maybe trauma could be an effect added to Acid Blade in Operative Concealment and to...whatever the top of the tree is for Merc Pyros. Or maybe a baseline ability for Mercs. IDK. Because there are still people playing merc healers in PVP. As long as a single one remains, Bioware will have failed in its master plan to kill the spec.
  7. Totally with you dood. Fruitii is by far the best opertative. However, I think Melyn is a better operative than Fruitii.
  8. It's really not "a matter of skill" in pre-30 PVP for a sniper. A sniper will completely dominate that bracket, unless the sniper is terrible / new to MMOs. Lowbie snipers are incredibly overpowered in 11-29 (honestly, I think that's one reason people are always harping on snipers at 55, where they're much more balanced -- traumatized first impressions stick). Snipers start out with their hardest-hitting attack, a 35m ranged root, a hard stun, and a 35m AOE mezz. They get a single-target knockback early if they spec for it and a powerful defensive ability in ballistic dampers. By the early 20s, a sniper has all of the classes' most important defensive and utility abilities (entrench, knockback, root, flashbang, even evasion). The sniper even has a 30m execute at what, level 20? Other classes will get tools to deal with these things...eventually. In the 30+ brackets. Other classes don't get their executes until the 40s. Warriors don't get their AOE mezz until level 42. Snipers have all the tools they need to stay out of reach of melee, and do decent DPS. Meanwhile, none of the healers are able to heal worth a damn. Etc. It's a bit stupid, really. I wonder what Bioware was thinking. The only thing snipers are really missing from their main ability list is Series of Shots, and really, you don't miss the DPS that much. (The Big Bubble and Orbital Strike are nice, sure, but they're not central abilities the way Undying Rage and Force Camo are central to marauders.)
  9. 8-v-8 is going away in 2.4. Only MM is really viable for 4-v-4s. Lethality is just too squishy. Engineering is an AOE spec -- but not a bursty one. Its utility is great in 8-v-8, but kinda useless in 4-v-4. It only has decent burst every 25.5 seconds.
  10. Healers have to use their channeled heals in arenas. Even op healers. I'm not concerned about healer survivability; I'm concerned about their ability to keep anyone up against two coordinated DPS (much less two-and-a-half DPS for some arena comps), even freecasting. Buff trauma too much ,and it would be far too easy to just ignore the healer and pile burst on a DPS target. If that's optimal, healers are pointless.
  11. Ruh roh. BW, you gotta shut this thing down. Melyn's a healer OP. If he starts thinking he's any good at DPS, there'll be no putting up with him. Plus, he barely heals certain RDPS classes as it is. Off-heals? Forget it.
  12. Any of one those changes would be far too powerful alone. If a healer has no chance keeping someone up under focus fire.....well, there's little point in bringing a healer against effective teams. Trauma should continue to be rare. A slight increase in trauma (to 30%?) would be okay. 40% would be okay only if the duration of trauma were drastically reduced -- it'd make it a big burst cooldown, but a survivable one. Currently, trauma lasts 15s or 9s. Cut duration to 6s, increase trauma ability cooldowns to 20-30s.
  13. Console yourself. Smashmonkeys will hardly be FOTM, if the PTS is anything to go by. FOTM is probably AP pyro in ion cylinder, maybe just AP pyros generally (I don't think op healers count as "FOTM" at this point; they've made the transition to "the PVP healer class" by virtue of longevity). AP pyros have strong survivability (particularly vs. smash), the ability to taunt, and very powerful AOE on the PTS right now. I've seen more double-AP teams than double-smash teams.
  14. Any spec can be played well in regs in the hands of the right player. It's only in competitive play (ranked) that balance issues really become apparent. Certain specs are absolutely not wanted, or are wanted only in very limited circumstances. For example, Operative healers are the norm. Sorcerer healers are not desirable, and mercenary healers are wanted even less (the ability to heal on Voidstar defense is desired, but you bring Mercenaries for DPS/switch healing, not as primary healers). Jugg DPS is not desirable, because juggs are so much squishier than marauders. Etc. As for regs-- All classes have specs that are less popular. But some specs are much worse off than others. For example, I wouldn't call Engineering "subpar" in regs. It's way more fun than Lethality or MM, and you can still readily top killing blows/damage if you're comfortable with it. It's also the best dueling spec. It's unusual because it plays a bit differently than the other sniper specs, but it's not a weak spec. Similarly, Vengeance is less popular than Rage, because it doesn't have the sheer damage/burst potential. But Vengeance is still perfectly viable in regular warzones. In contrast, Merc Pyro and PT Pyro just suck.
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