Jump to content

Sniper Feedback


JackieKo

Recommended Posts

  • Dev Post

With PTS now live, you can help test the Sniper Combat Style.

 

Please answer the following questions:

 

  • Does the current combat rotation make this experience feel like you are playing a Sniper? Why or why not?
  • If you have feedback on the different discipline, please note your feedback accordingly so we can track it.
  • As you’re beginning from level 1, do you feel you have enough abilities that keep gameplay interesting?
  • Are you able to defeat enemies at a reasonable rate?
  • Do all your abilities feel like they’re working together?

 

Feel free to answer in as much detail as possible to help us understand your thought process and line of thinking.

 

Thank you!

 

EDIT: Added additional feedback questions.

Edited by JackieKo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 55
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

If I'm doing this right, we now have to choose between Orbital Strike, Ballistic Shield and Hololocate?

 

NGL, with earlier classes losing long-standing/iconic abilities, the fact that HOLOLOCATE isn't the first ability snipped off snipers (not a choice, full-on gone) is quite insulting... and I've not even seen what they plan for sins yet.

 

That and Merc reflect not disappearing will be just rubbing salt into other class wounds.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sniper first impressions:

 

Abilities removed / placed in ABC:

Removed flashbang, shatter snipe (honestly forgot it existed cus I never use it)

ABC (hololocate, orbital strike, ballistic shield all share an ABC slot), target acquired, maim

 

Honestly I'm surprised leg shot is still there.

 

General first impressions:

  • Survivability has been reduced, but not to the extent I was expecting.
  • Shield probe is still in as a base ability, so is diversion (was worried diversion would be removed so am happy it's here).
  • Evasion is completely gone unless you take a level 20 skill that bakes the old evasion into countermeasures and also resets covered escape.
  • Covered escape appears to be here on all classes which is great news.
  • A couple of the ability choices I honestly won't take. target acquired is a meh ability, used a couple times a fight for a small damage boost. I've written some thoughts about how I'd rework it further down.
  • Hololocate is useful in raids and pvp, but if you take that you lose damage in your opener by missing orbital strike, and you lose ballistic shield which is invaluable in harder content. Engineerign also suffers by losing orbital strike.

 

Orbital strike should be a baseline ability and target acquired needs a serious buff if it is to compete with the passives on its level which are all focused around energy regeneration.

 

 

Marksmanship impressions:

  • Oh lord the CRIT. Passives seem to be about either going all in on damage or gaining some survivability.
  • More crits or fewer but bigger crits for ambush through laze target reductions etc.
  • My absolute favourite addition is the relentless ambush skill which reduces the cooldown of ambush by 1.5 seconds (stacking 3 times).
  • This really shakes up the rotation and is a tonne of fun. Big thumbs up for marksmanship.

 

Virulence impressions:

  • Virulence appears to be capable of higher burst windows with the way laze target now works. I love that its effects have been changed between disciplines so that it's not just a 100% crit boost, but instead offers a meaningful impact on your rotations.
  • The base rotation seems the same as on live, but with an improved laze target (now viral targeting).
  • I'd need to parse all the specs to cement my feelings on whether virulent targetting should have more interactions with the rotation such as reducing the cooldown every takedown or something like that.

 

Engineering impressions:

  • This is where the lack of orbital bombardment is most notably felt. Engineering has a passive reducing the cooldown and activation time of orbital strike by a substantial amount. This all but forces you to take orbital bombardment over ballistic shield and hololocate - or else you lose a fairly powerful filler in your rotation.
  • I really like how you can pick skills to really tailor how you are currently playing the game - reseting the cooldown of explosive probe when you kill a target allows you to chain together kills on mobs in open world, while against bosses you can focus on increasing the duration on systems upgrade (engineering laze target variant) for more damage over time.
  • There also seems to be a bug where you cannot pick calculated measures without it selecting critical interrogation when you close the abilities window. But, if I kept the tab open it still worked which allowed me to test it - and it is very good when it works.
  • In general, the base rotation feels fine apart from the lack of orbital bombardment.

 

 

Overall closing thoughts:

 

While on live energy issues are negated by the best in slot set bonus and use of entrench, on the PTS there don't seem to be energy issues in general if you follow rotations well. There are even options to generate more energy through things like crits or dealing damage during burst windows which allows for more flexibility in how you play.

 

Though I am an advocate for keeping more skills, I admit I won't miss target acquired in its current state. It just doesn't do anywhere near enough to justify taking over any of the other passives across all 3 disciplines.

I dislike losing both stuns and orbital strike. Maim isn't worth taking in most content in my opinion, and choosing between raid survivability, mobility and orbital strike is a weird choice - especially for engineering.

 

Orbital strike absolutely should be a baseline skill since it is a rotational ability for engineering.

 

Since all 3 specs share energy regeneration passives in the same slot as target acquired, I would instead change target acquired to remove the energy cost of your next ability or something along those lines. This would allow you to choose whether to have a sustainable rotation with the passives, or go for the occasional extra few abilities with target acquired and negate the energy cost of say, series of shots to recover - much like mercenary does with unload or blazing bolts.

 

Overall I'm mostly happy with these changes (especially keeping diversion). The laze target changes are amazing, 7-8 second cooldown ambush and the focus on crits is a lot of fun. I just miss orbital strike on engineering and think target acquired needs a change to stay relevant.

 

 

As to the actual questions:

The core sniper experience remains apart from a couple missing things. You still want to stay immobile and shoot out of your hidey hole from range - even more so with the removal of a lot of survivability. To me, the sniper is a ranged class with weaker personal defensives, but strong raid utility and offensive power. Orbital strike is such a unique ability in the game and is needed in the engineering rotation as a high priority filler. Ballistic shield is extremely useful in raids and is one of the key reasons raiding teams would want a sniper, so there isn't really a choice between it and the other 2 abilities unless you play engineering.

 

The ABC ability tree is very well designed and I love that it also shows not only the passives that are linked to the previously gained ability, but also the list of base discipline passives you gain on the side - this is a really good design and is exactly what I was hoping for. Very easy to change on the fly.

Edited by LordCamTheGreat
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So immediately I see a problem with Shatter Snipe and marksmanship. We need to cast snipe x2 in a row to finish the CD of followthrough, meaning the trauma debuff that is now inbuilt with snipe with this selection, will just get refreshed on a target, this seems like its not fit for purpose and disadvantaged with marksmanship.

 

Please change this. Suggestions include, maybe increasing the debuff duration to 20 seconds while keeping trauma debuff at 20% for 2 snipes in a row for mm only, or increasing the % of trauma received to like 30% after 2 snipes for the 10 sec for mm only. Or change the rotation to just one snipe to finish the CD of follow through, I am not sure of a solution but it feels like marksmanship has got the bad end of the deal with this.

 

Snipers in general will lose ballistic shield heals, also lost heals on covered escape, and also lost flashbang and evasion. Feels like snipers and slingers are taking a big hit with the nerf hammer IMO. Snipers and slingers will be far less seen in pvp next expac, I certainly wont be maining one in the future as I have in the past.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

overall i really liked these changes to sniper particularly the changes to laze target for both engi and viru , it makes the cd feel better for both specs with a little specific flavor added to it. my one major gripe is that engi specifically cannot always take orbital strike which is an rather important part of the rotation especially given its has a passive that specifically enhances orbital. personally i think orbital should be baseline for engi if not all snipers or engi passive that upgrades orbital should affect something else.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I shall do a long textwall covering what I think of each section of it and why I chose what I chose, as well as suggestions on how to improve if I can come up with any.

 

Level 15 - Critical Grenade while not yet functional sounds like a great idea to make corrosive grenade even more important to your rotation, a 20% critical chance is HUGE.

Level 20- Evasive maneuvers, I like being mobile so having something that resets the CD of covered escape is nice. Maim I feel should still remain a base ability though, I'll miss that stun, maybe fragmentation grenade can be turned into a stun for all types of enemies, not AOE but rather "primary target is also stunned regardless of whether or not its a silver/gold/player".

Level 30- Corrosive targeting, more crit damage to cull is always nice, the other two passives don't really seem that useful to me for endgame PvE, perhaps in PvP they'd have a good use. Especially the slow passive (corrosive impair).

Level 35- Target acquired, I like the extra damage boost (in fact I'd say this ability should probably remain baseline) and the other two passives don't interest me that much, focused integration could be good trade-off much like the ultraviolet blast tactical item however in its current iteration I don't believe a 20 second integrated toxins is worth a +30 seconds cooldown. Unless of course we had a set bonus or something that increased our stacks of viral targeting, allowing us to make better usage of this.

Level 50- Snap shot, allows me to remain more mobile by instantly casting lethal shot. I like playing my snipers quite mobile.

Level 60- Reestablish range, again I like being mobile so having an extra root breaker is nice.

Level 70- My only criticism here is the choice between orbital strike, which is an aoe damage ability, and ballistic shield which is a defensive one... why is an aoe damage ability being picked over defensive cooldowns:rak_02: I got ballistic shield which is more useful IMO but I'd miss my orbital strike, its such an iconic ability. Hololocate though, I won't miss, don't think it should've ever been given to snipers in the first place.

Level 80- I'd pick calculated pursuit since it allows me to channel lethal shot while moving, again I like my virulence sniper to be mobile.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

*I play a currently lv 67 marksmanship sniper, and not familiar with all the abilities, and not really know the rotation tm*

 

I voiced my more general opinions in the operative post, so I'll stick to sniper things and questions here. First, the lvl 70 decision is very hard, and honestly a bit unreasonable - having to choose between ballistic shield and orbital strike (I am unfamiliar with the last ability, but it seems very useful). ballistic shield and orbital strike are two of the main abilities I associate with the sniper, and they are some of my most used abilities, and very useful in a group setting as well. I would spread these out.

 

Otherwise, this felt pretty authentic to the marksmanship sniper, and the ability tree was useful and understandable. I expanded on my general opinions on my operative post, but keep moving in this direction, no one likes that you are taking away abilities, but I'm guessing that you're set on it, so if you are going to do it continue to improve the clarity and customization.

Edited by amazingwhales
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So immediately I see a problem with Shatter Snipe and marksmanship. We need to cast snipe x2 in a row to finish the CD of followthrough, meaning the trauma debuff that is now inbuilt with snipe with this selection, will just get refreshed on a target, this seems like its not fit for purpose and disadvantaged with marksmanship.

 

Please change this. Suggestions include, maybe increasing the debuff duration to 20 seconds while keeping trauma debuff at 20% for 2 snipes in a row for mm only, or increasing the % of trauma received to like 30% after 2 snipes for the 10 sec for mm only. Or change the rotation to just one snipe to finish the CD of follow through, I am not sure of a solution but it feels like marksmanship has got the bad end of the deal with this.

 

Snipers in general will lose ballistic shield heals, also lost heals on covered escape, and also lost flashbang and evasion. Feels like snipers and slingers are taking a big hit with the nerf hammer IMO. Snipers and slingers will be far less seen in pvp next expac, I certainly wont be maining one in the future as I have in the past.

 

Well as a first step, it would be nice in case snipe/lethal shot would apply trauma to the target not to yourself...

 

So

 

BUG REPORT: Snipe/lethal shot applies trauma to the player not to the target

Edited by The_Hightower
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I normally play story content and (very) occasional operations. I tested the Marksmanship sniper. It generally did not feel too far different than normal, but I would not take that as a good thing.

 

As I noticed when testing the jedi classes, I am not a fan of the "choose one of three items" configuration. When I read about pruning, I was hoping it would be the plethora of items that give a 2 second boost on Tuesdays, but only if three other abilities are active. Yes, a bit of hyperbole, but I fail to see how making us choose between actually useful abilities that we automatically get now will make this a better experience. My testing experience with this class fell short of the enjoyment that I have come to expect when playing a sniper of this level. It mostly felt like the class I normally play, but not entirely and that does not lead me to in any way compliment this approach or endorse it. I noticed several things missing that I normally use in my style of play which detracted from the experience. I also noticed that things appear to not be where they were before, as it appears that you are not adding anything, just rearranging where they normally appear. I could be wrong, as your "WIP" interface is living up to it's acronym. A better idea for pruning but not detracting from the gameplay would be to take several of the non-attack items (the enhancers, it you will) and combine them into a single click that enhances several items while leaving my attack selections alone and where they have been in my level progression.

 

My actual suggestion is to drop this line of thinking entirely and move to testing the secondary class/combat style alternate selection, which as I saw it was what everyone was actually excited about. This current line of testing, as explained and shown, seems more like people justifying their jobs by making things "different", not "better".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tried virulence sniper.

To be honest, seen what happened with guardian and sentinel, my expectation were really low.

I am still disappointed about the line that you want to follow, cause i can't really see a connection between "pruning abilities" and "more customization". There will always be an ETA and you basicly taking away abilities that can be useful in different contents, without any specific reason, thing that people didn't ask.

 

 

For what concern what i tried, you made something that can be acceptable.

The ability choice at lvl 70 is between a movement improvement (useful but not so mandatory), a raid utility (mandatory in some fights) and an ability that in virulence is used only in the opener and in case of adds (i am talking about pve and raids), cause cast is long and in the rotation spamming a filler causes more damage. This is something that is ok in the line that you want to follow, instead let a tank choose between one of his best defensive, his emergency button or his cheese, and let the sentinels choose their way to die.

 

Still... people are asking to not do that, people are asking on 1) fixing bug there since launch 2) take away the stat cap 3) make raid interesting and not a faceroll. And ability pruning is not the answer.

Thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I looked over what you are purposing to do with Sniper in general. I am saddened that you are having someone pick between say Sniper Shield and Orbital Strike. Perhaps Orbital is not used so much however as someone who does PVE. I think forcing someone to choose between those two is very sad. I can understand say if you were to have them pick between " Snipers have Phase walk " and say " roll." I am not sure what your plan is here but truly the idea of losing either Sniper shield or Orbital is really silly. Can you explain why you chose those two abilities? Side note are you trying to kill off the raiding community, well what is left of it?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Or is your goal to dumb down raids to where they are face roll? I mean you want us to trust you to make the raids match or be in line with the "pruning" however given you have a very small Dev team and given the past I am not very hopeful that you can deliver on the changes you are putting forth. I am sorry but I do not have faith that you can do both of them and I am not trying to sound like a harsh player. I am just really dumbfounded here.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now that I've spent more time testing all the options alongside the most recent changes to engineering, I am ready to write my more in depth thoughts about each spec and all the ability tree options. Testing was done mainly against combat dummies on the fleet to test rotations (now level 75) and enemies on Onderon for open world content.

 

Generic choices:

 

 

Level 20:

  • Evasive manoeuvres - this is the only way to get back evasion for a strong dcd and also grants mobility. In marksman spec, this also provides extra burst due to the B-0 Differential Targeting System tactical.
  • Maim (marksman and virulence): hard stun, most useful in PvP
  • Shatter snipe - only way to inflict trauma with the removal of shatter shot. Also increases snipe's crit damage which provides a sizable damage increase for marksman which already buffs the crit chance of snipe.
  • Takedown (engineering) - In exchange for gaining orbital strike back, we lose our sub 30% hp rotational ability. I don't like this change for the exact same reason I wanted orbital strike as a baseline ability for engineering (and I am glad it's back).

 

For Marksmanship and Virulence, All three options are viable in PvP and provide a pretty difficult decision to make. In PvE, Evasive Manoeuvres becomes one if not your strongest dcds. In a way, these three options are actually all ability choices - one is an actual ability, the other two contain old abilities baked in. This does feel a bit unfair on the player. Shatter snipe is the obvious choice for group PvE content but the trauma aspect becomes irrelevant against bosses who don't heal.

 

For Engineering, the choice feels just weird. More crit damage on snipe is great, same as with the other two specs. Further, you use snipe more in a rotation or parse than takedown, so the extra crit results in more damage over a longer fight (would need to parse to be certain). In open world non heroic content, the margin in damage between takedown killing a target or snipe killing a target is so slim that it's not really noticeable. In heroic content, the extra snipe crit damage might make up for the lack of takedown anyway. I really don't know what else could be put into the ABC tree apart from leg shot to take takedown's place, every other ability feels necessary for the spec. Just as I argued in my previous post for orbital strike, Takedown should absolutely not be an opt in ability. I would much rather leg shot (or a merged form of leg shot and the old armour penetration shatter shot) be placed into ABC at the level 20 slot for all disciplines and have maim be the level 70 option for all disciplines.

 

To give a more clear idea of what this would look like: orbital strike and takedown would become baseline for all disciplines. Leg shot would be the level 20 choice for all disciplines and take the place of maim. Maim would take the place of orbital strike such that maim, hololocate and ballistic shield would be the level 70 choice for all disciplines.

 

Level 50:

  • Snap shot - insta cast snipe is always good
  • Ballistic dampeners - obvious choice in most content as it adds back much needed defensive power
  • Pillbox sniper - more frequent entrenches won't be as necessary for damage dealing due to the best in slot set bonus not working at level 80. Entrench also grants no aoe defence so is even less useful.

 

I take all of these passives on live. Ballistic dampeners allows for massive amounts of damage reduction in all content. Snap shot is useful for a quick shot where a cast time would allow the target to escape or frontloading a double snipe for more burst. Pillbox sniper has lost nearly all of its power with the multiple nerfs to entrench. Entrench should give aoe damage reduction baseline to make this more viable and to provide the class with periodic aoe defence.

 

Level 60:

  • Re-establish range - very nice speed boost and knockback in PvP, the knockback is less useful in PvE as it can push targets outside your aoe.
  • Imperial efficiency - more damage on an already very powerful aoe ability.
  • Over-prepared - imperial preparation has lost a lot of its usefulness due to the removal of evasion and the large entrench nerfs. using two shield probes in a row every 2 minutes 15 seconds allows you to shield a whopping 1/6th of your health...which is really not great. Can allow for rolling three times in a row if you take evasive manoeuvres at level 20, but otherwise a bad passive for a bad ability. Imperial preparation needs a rework, same as target acquired.

 

Level 70:

I mostly went over this in the level 20 feedback earlier. I'd rather choose between maim, hololocate and ballistic shield for all disciplines. Orbital strike should be baseline for all disciplines. Move leg shot into the level 20 slot to compensate. That or rework imperial preparation and move it into the level 20 or level 70 slot (in which case maim would go back to the level 20 slot). If any abilities should be moved into the ABC opt in system, it should be non rotational abilities that are commonly used abilities - such as imperial preparation and not takedown. Those abilities should then be reworked to provide a more interesting opt in choice where necessary.

 

 

 

 

Marksmanship specific choices:

 

Level 15

  • Shrap Shot - AOE ambush damage is fun but the radius feels a bit too small for it to be worth using over suppressive fire unless the targets are melee and standing on top of you.
  • Relentless Ambush - adds a decent amount of sustained damage that will make it more viable in longer fights.
  • Targeted Ambush - the crit damage increase combined with resetting the cooldown of ambush and laze target when killing the target with an ambush crit sounds fun in theory, but in practice I rarely was in a position where ambush provided the killing blow. This made it only affective on weak targets which were the only things I could chain one tap. (This is in theory as it currently also doesn't work and doesn't reset either cooldown, but my points remain.)

 

Ultimately the requirements for targeted ambush are far too niche - not only an ambush shot but a crit ambush shot needs to be the killing blow. This is far worse for chain killing targets than ambush dealing splash damage (against grouped targets), and as such the main reason you'd take it is for the 20% crit damage increase on ambush. This makes the passive most useful in PvP where you can fish for big crits, but, the chances of you getting the killing blow in PvP are even lower than in PvE making the second part of the passive even more useless imo. If you don't kill the target with an ambush hit, relentless ambush is far superior because the cooldown is reduced when target switching by up to 4.5 seconds. I'd instead reset the cooldown on ambush if a target dies within x seconds of being hit by ambush.

 

 

Level 30:

  • Penetrating rounds - immobilising the target and bypassing armour is useful in PvP and vs operations bosses in PvE for the armour penetration.
  • Energy barrel - the obvious choice in all content types for me, more crit chance and damage on your strongest ability.
  • Retargeting - doesn't currently work but in theory would bring laze target down to about a 30s cooldown. Could be a lot of fun in PvP if differential targeting tactical remains.

 

Energy Barrel feels much stronger than the other two options as laze target doesn't offer the same amount of additional power to the rotation that it now does for virulence or engineering. Penetrating rounds feels like it could get obnoxious in PvP when combined with sniper volley and leg shot for up to around 9 seconds of immobilisation.

 

Level 35:

Ballistic redistribution - practically negates all energy concerns for a crit based spec. My obvious choice.

Target acquired - accuracy increase is only useful in PvP, the 15% armour pen for 10 seconds and 15 energy regen still feels too small a boon for around a 2 minute cooldown ability. If all 5 penetrating blast shots crit, it regens the same amount of energy in 2 seconds every use - and it can be used near 10 times before target acquired would come off cooldown, making ballistic redistribution far far better for energy management.

Lazer focus - crit hitting reduces laze target cooldown by 2 seconds. Again, I don't particularly value laze target as strongly in marksmanship, though it could be fun in PvP with all the other burst focused skills.

 

I still dislike target acquired. Another interesting take could be to remove the cooldown of your next ability with an activation time or channel - this would allow 2 ambushes in a row, 2 series of shots for engineering, 2 culls for virulence. I just think it needs something else other than a big accuracy boost to be useful outside of hitting a guardian/sentinel who is using saber ward.

 

 

 

Virulence specific choices:

 

Level 15:

  • Corrosive Technologies - the damage reduction from targets against you sounds nice though 0.6 seconds means it doesn't last the full duration of each damage tick. I found that the part that is supposed to work - viral targetting extension - actually didn't. I wouldn't take this because the extension only occurs when you first apply corrosive grenade. If it extended it every time corrosive grenade did damage - it would be much better.
  • Critical Grenade - the obvious choice for me. 20% higher crit chance for all dots on the target is very very good, much better than a 1 second viral targeting duration increase and a 2 energy refund.
  • Corrosive refund - I don't think there's any situation I'd ever take this apart from stupid amounts of dot spreading and even then, I'd rather take the energy hit for a 20% crit boost.

 

Corrosive technologies and corrosive refund feel completely irrelevant in my opinion. A tiny duration increase once per viral targeting and a tiny energy refund once every rotation block have an extremely low impact on how you play. The 20% damage reduction is useful, but it only lasts for 0.6 seconds and thus won't do anything if your target attacks just before your dots re-tick. A 20% crit chance increase on the other hand is very strong. I would replace one of these skills with a skill that somehow incorporates frag grenade into the rotation by making it deal an extra amount of internal poison damage or something else that interacts with corrosive grenade. This would shake up the rotation just a little. Alternatively, buff the existing options. Corrosive grenade on its own is a mostly uninteresting ability and is hard to make options for, thus the more interesting option would be to incorporate other abilities into the rotation by having them interact with corrosive grenade. There was a time when series of shots was part of the rotation - it might be again if it ticked corrosive grenade every hit...

 

Level 30:

  • Corrosive impair - permanent 10% more weapon damage is nice, 50% slow is better than corrosive grenade now.
  • Winnow - killing a target during cull resets the cooldown of cull and deals poison damage to nearby targets. This currently doesn't work (edit: doesn't work on the first or final tick), but is pretty good in theory for open world. I would like if it also spread poison effects when it kills a target allowing you to chain culls more effectively without needing to potentially reapply dots.
  • Corrosive targeting - this feels strictly better than corrosive impair in theory for single target damage and if you want to slow a target, you can currently just use corrosive grenade, cover pulse, leg shot etc...there are enough options already.

 

Corrosive targeting would be my choice for single target, winnow for open world. Corrosive impair doesn't feel strong enough to contend with corrosive targeting. Again, there's the potential to buff series of shots after a use of cull to expand the rotation.

 

Level 35:

  • Focused integration - 10 more seconds of vital targeting for 30 seconds more cooldown is better in extended fights but worse in scenarios where you might want more cull crits.
  • Target acquired - I think I've said enough about target acquired by now haha
  • Critical compounds - allows for even more energy regen which opens up room to use other tacticals. But, as there currently aren't any new tacticals or rotation shakeups to test, it's mostly irrelevant when exploited weakness already covers all energy concerns.

 

 

 

 

Engineering specific choices:

 

 

Level 15:

  • Lazer targeting - flat 20% more explosive probe crit
  • System kick - when combined with another skill, it allows for a permanent systems upgrade
  • Explosive rest - doesn't currently work but very good when killing multiple weaker foes and target switching after killing something

 

Solid choices between burst, sustain and open world play.

 

Level 20:

I've already made my point about how Takedown should be a base ability because it becomes rotational once targets reach 30% health. It does suck to make a case for why orbital strike should be a baseline ability only for takedown to be put into the same position. If it really needs to stay in the ability tree instead of moving around leg shot or imperial preparation, the 30% health requirement needs to be completely removed or have its damage increased - but, this would break the other specs which get takedown baseline. Instead, orbital strike and takedown should stay as base abilities for all disciplines while leg shot or imperial preparation should move into the ability tree as opt in abilities.

 

Level 30:

  • Critical interrogation - 10% more crit vs targets affected by interrogation probe is huge for single target damage.
  • Calculated measures - allows you to permanently keep up the systems upgrade buff in single target scenarios
  • Shocking blast - EMP discharge dealing 20% more damage is ok but not as good as the other two even in burst scenarios.

 

Calculated measures is amazing if you can stay on one target, otherwise critical interrogation is the obvious choice for me. Shocking blast isn't good enough to compete with a flat 10% crit damage boost or a roughly 20% damage increase to interrogation probe and plasma probe with systems upgrade (numbers may be off as I can't see parse numbers).

 

Level 35:

  • Efficient systems - engineering struggles the most with energy and this really helps to keep a sustainable rotation.
  • Targeting beam - combined with critical interrogation you get +10% crit chance and damage while also resetting your auto crit on kills. This can allow for some mean target swapping by resetting the cooldown on explosive probe while also making it auto crit. Very nice for open world play.
  • Target acquired - still needs changes imo.

 

 

 

 

Overall there are some very fun skills that can be categorized into PvP, open world and group content scenarios.

There are still skills that don't compete with others on the same level as them, either because they don't do much or are overshadowed by a skill which performs the same role.

Target acquired still needs buffs in my opinion.

 

Takedown and orbital strike should be baseline for all disciplines. In exchange, either a buffed version of imperial preparation or leg shot should take their spot. Both are niche abilities that are used less than orbital strike and takedown. Either way, imperial preparation also needs a rework as evasion no longer exists to have a cooldown reset and entrench has been nerfed to the point where using it twice in a row is only really useful in PvP - where CC is also being reduced. A 3 minute cooldown to reset a 20k health shield, a knockback and cc immunity isn't useful in most content.

 

With a few changes here and there and some reworks to certain abilities, I think sniper will be in a good spot. The core experience is mostly there, it just needs polishing round the edges and some balance passes.

 

Thanks for reading!

Edited by LordCamTheGreat
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Question for the Marksman Snipers:

 

How many hotkeys do I free up with the changes? Are any rotational DPS abilities pruned

 

The only rotational abilities you lose are orbital strike and target acquired - and that is only really for your opener.

Everything else in the base rotation remains the same:

 

Snipe, followthrough, penetrating blasts, sniper volley, ambush, corrosive dart are all still there.

 

 

Overall if you don't take any of the opt in abilities, you lose maim, target acquired, 2 out of 3 of the level 70 options (hololocate, orbital strike and ballistic shield).

Abilities completely removed are evasion, shatter shot and flashbang (unless I'm missing one).

So, in total you free up between 5 and 7 hotkeys.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ability Tree:

I said it in my operative feedback. The icons are too small and there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t listed on the tree, but it serves its purpose for this test cycle. I knew what I was speccing into.

 

General Sniper Feedback:

--Imperial preparation… base functionality is to reset entrench (which is less useful than it was), shield probe (eh), and evasion (only exists with utility). With the right mod, we get 15s of 15% DR on a very long cooldown. That’s… eh. Okay, I guess.

--The Hold Position passive still references Evasion… which has been converted into the Evasive Maneuvers mod for Countermeasures, so it’s unclear if we’ve completely lost our F/T DCD or not. If it’s gone, that kind of stinks.

--Losing Entrench AoE DR hurts. Bad enough that it was converted from DCD to OCD in this expansion. Now it’s just kind of meh. No energy regen, no offense, no AoE Dr. It’s just anti-physics/cc. Not useless, but a lot weaker than it was.

--Roll-heal & revitalizers… okay. I get why you took these away. Roll-heal is useful in PvP and when I’m soloing vet flashpoints, but losing them is in-line with what I'm seeing across the board.

 

Overall… I can’t really gripe too much about the sniper rework. It still feels like sniper. I have my gripes, but most of them are minor. Most. More on that under Engineering Feedback.

 

Oh, and thank you for fixing Shatter Snipe. I laughed harder than you’d believe when it trauma’d me instead of my target.

 

ENGINEERING

Where do I start? I had a whole thing written up for why it was dumb to have to spec into orbital, and then you gave it back (yay!), only to make us spec into Takedown instead (...).

 

...alright. You gave us back one rotational filler, and made us spec into a different one. I am thoroughly disgruntled by the “logic” here. But getting my initial gut-response (seriously?!) out of the way, this is going to have a clear winner between TD and Shatter Snipe. You’ll take one always and the other never. False choice. My napkin-math seems to indicate that Shatter Snipe will come out ahead in sustained encounters, but of course we can’t say for certain at this stage.

 

It’s infinitely better than the original L70 choice. I can live with it, though I’m miffed at the carelessness with which this spec is being handled. There has to be a better option than just swapping which filler is “optional.”

 

Overall, I do like the mods for Engi. You have solid choices for burst vs. sustain, although if you’re going sustain you pretty much have to take energy regen mods. (Also of note: Explosive Reset does not appear to be functional at this time, but Laser Targeting is very nice.)

 

A lot will depend on how you do tacticals and set bonuses in 7.0, but overall I think there’s potential.

 

VIRULENCE

I don’t have much to say about this spec, mostly because even though I play it in operations, I don’t love it. The mods seem fine, for the most part. Nothing that makes me go “wow, that sounds like fun!” It’s just… Viru. My overall impression on the dummy and in the open world is that--at least on the PvE front--Virulence will come into 7.0 as a solid spec.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

MARKSMAN:

 

I absolutely hate that maim doesn't grant takedown anymore, and flashbang no longer exists to grant takedown either.

 

Perhaps could we have maim stun the target for longer since it doesn't grant takedown anymore?

Edited by Saurat
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Engineering Sniper.

 

Feels better to have less on the UI engineering always felt too crowded. Explosive reset did not work but good idea. energy management feels better with engineering while testing, glad to see resource starvation has been done away with, its never fun to play like this. Again snipers feel a bit shy on defensives now, they are essentially a turret and depend on many defensives to remain competitive, I feel that snipers will feel the heat far more in pvp when these changes release.

 

The general direction is good, just need to offer more defensives now IMO.

 

Final note, the tactical choices for engineering leave a lot to be desired, please release better tacticals, especially for pvp.

Edited by Darthanimus
update
Link to comment
Share on other sites

First feels of sniper are great, passive shatter shot is interesting but I dont mind it as an option, what I do mind is survivability for sniper, which has been reduced significantly, please please bring back healing in cover (Vital Regulators) or heal on roll (Tactical Retreat). As a sniper in PvE with your range you are often outside the group, so healer needs to focus only you, but with those passives you have ability to survive for sometime. In PvP is a different story, you need passive heals, as they are the only options for you to recover health. I really felt that difference while dueling friends.

As far as disciplines goes:

Marksman - great fun! reducing CD on Ambush firstly looked as too much, but its actually really fun

Engineer - glad you brought back the orbital strike, though I think that Takedown is as important, so maybe a little more thought into that. As in burn phase on boses you do get alot of value from takedown.

Virulance - fun spec, good job on passives

 

Overall, I dont like that sniper is now heavily dependet on healer. Passive heals which sniper has now on live servers are perfectly fine, you still need healer, but if they focus someone else, you can manage with some DcD rotation. Other than that, really like the desciplines.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since most people seem to be focusing on endgame builds, i thought I'd start from the floor and have a look at how the game might appear to a newcomer post-expansion. Haven't gotten all that far, yet, but I have a few quick impressions:

 

Does Marksman sniper still feel like a sniper? Yeah, I guess. At low levels, it especially feels like a 'real life' sniper, lots of 1-shot pew-pew.

 

The skill tree is nice and clean, IMO. Good job. For what it is and represents.

 

Is it *fun*? Eh. My first reaction was that it feels kind of like certain low-budget F2P Asian-style MMOs, where you grind away with the same couple of abilities roughly forever, rather than a Western (or Asian, for that matter) AAA game. It does up the challenge very slightly, I suppose, if you tackle elites as a newbie, and I get the appeal of streamlining the quickbars some.

 

I think my question, especially as someone with a lot of alts, is as so many others have asked: WHY? Why, so far along, are you forcing us to rebuild our stable of characters (in case constantly having to reset talents with every 'rebalance' wasn't enough) and change our playstyles? If this was year 2 or 3, and part of a grand revisiting of systems, it might make sense As it stands, in year 10, it strikes me as being an attempt to make the game seem 'fresh' without really doing anything new. You're just taking away options. Again.

 

Everyone was stoked for Combat Styles. No one, AFIK, asked for a complete teardown of the skills system. Another one.

 

A few extra-minor side issues: those trainer statues you gave out as 'rewards' or that in some cases folks paid CC for- are they now so much v-waste? Since trainers no longer seem to do anything.

 

If that's the case, and not simply an unfinished mechanic, there will also now be orphaned quests on the starter planets, all the 'go see your trainer' ones. While they weren't of major importance, they were a source of XP and early-game gear. Will anything replace them? If not, will you at least remember to REMOVE them, so they aren't just roads to nowhere?

Edited by Edabass
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A few extra-minor side issues: those trainer statues you gave out as 'rewards' or that in some cases folks paid CC for- are they now so much v-waste? Since trainers no longer seem to do anything.

 

If that's the case, and not simply an unfinished mechanic, there will also now be orphaned quests on the starter planets, all the 'go see your trainer' ones. While they weren't of major importance, they were a source of XP and early-game gear. Will anything replace them? If not, will you at least remember to REMOVE them, so they aren't just roads to nowhere?

 

It would be nice to get some confirmation from Jackie about this point as I've seen people complaining about the level 1-10 experience in many different threads.

 

I've posted this 2 or 3 times now but I'm pretty sure it's intentional that trainers currently don't work.

 

We are supposed to be talking to the droid outside the hutta cantina to travel to the fleet and boost to 75 as per the instructions left by Jackie in the "getting started on x" posts.

We are not supposed to be testing the 1-75 levelling experience. I'm sure at a later PTS stage we'll be able to, but for now the focus seems firmly placed on how classes feel end-game once they have all their unlocks. We're also supposed to be testing the new UI for the ability trees - something you can't do below level 10 because you don't have any abilities to choose between.

 

I'm not really worried about the levelling experience because we level so fast these days that it doesn't matter as much as getting the max level experience in the right spot. If trainers do go away, I honestly wouldn't miss them. I know a lot of new players don't even realise they have new abilities because there's no pop-up in game telling them that they have abilities missing (unless they open the ability window and see that they have new stuff).

 

It would be great if a new tutorial system was created with an on screen pop-up whenever you gain a new ability, detailing what it is and how you could use it in your rotation. The devs could even collaborate with community members who have written up guides for classes to create a better experience for new players.

Edited by LordCamTheGreat
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know people have probably been complaining about this, but freshly-made snipers are really poorly done in the new update. They've taken most of your abilities from you and failed to give you anything you actually need. My friend also tried out Operative, and only has access to his basic Rifle Shot ability until level 10.

 

I really hope you guys reconsider this approach. I'd much prefer the existing system - flaws and all - over the new one, especially with a lot of your core abilities being taken from you and locked behind choices. I was really optimistic about the new system, and there are plenty of abilities that I could see being pruned/combined to make the game easier to manage. But taking abilities we need without replacing them is objectively worse than the system we have now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know people have probably been complaining about this, but freshly-made snipers are really poorly done in the new update. They've taken most of your abilities from you and failed to give you anything you actually need. My friend also tried out Operative, and only has access to his basic Rifle Shot ability until level 10.

 

I really hope you guys reconsider this approach. I'd much prefer the existing system - flaws and all - over the new one, especially with a lot of your core abilities being taken from you and locked behind choices. I was really optimistic about the new system, and there are plenty of abilities that I could see being pruned/combined to make the game easier to manage. But taking abilities we need without replacing them is objectively worse than the system we have now.

 

It's clear that all classes get abilities at levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 (and probably more abilities before 10). However, trainers are disabled/not working properly. I dont know if BW will have a PTS testing round for leveling experience (maybe after the Inquisitor/Consular and BH/Trooper rounds), but the current round is *not* for testing the leveling experience, so it is borked right now for sure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...