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Operative Feedback


JackieKo

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  • Dev Post

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

 

Please answer the following questions:

 

  • Does the current combat rotation make this experience feel like you are playing an Operative? 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
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Concealment Operative Feedback

 

Level 20 - Debilitate is a chosen ability? Not having a hard stun seems like a huge ability gap.

 

Level 35 - Advanced Stealth looks like a must have.

 

Level 50 - Having to choose between Infiltrator and Advanced Cloaking seems counter intuitive if you wanted to make a heavy stealth build.

 

Level 70, Rip Infiltrate, having to choose between Flashbang and Holo is really painful, mobility versus crowd control feels like a real step back.

 

Overall not a bad experience. I don't feel like I am 'missing' so much of my bag of tricks that I feel exposed. As a stealth class I never want to feel exposed.

 

Still having an interrupt is good to see, but the lack of a threat drop outside of cloaking screen is somewhat concerning. There is a lot of confusion over what you guys are doing with regards to threat, taunts, and drops.

Edited by Baletraeger
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Tested Concealment and Lethality so far, although I have more experience with Lethality in general. Rotation feels the same, but utility has clearly been gutted. I understand this is the point, but I'm really gonna miss both stealth CC and the optional knockdown on Backstab/Lethal Strike.

 

So to answer the question at hand, yes this still feels like the Operative. It feels a little barebones, but I could adjust. Some of the new tree options seem interesting, too. Still cautiously optimistic overall.

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tried to test but pressing the "K" key and going through the menus to access the disciplines screen just had a blank unuasble UI that seemed to be stuck on medicine operative but it was hard to tell since everything was unclickable.

 

but my big concern is things i've seen people show on twitter with just gutting utility.

 

i've already left one game (WoW) for just making classes cookie cutter and barebones and i'd be loathe to have to do it again.

 

i can understand baking in passives into certain abilties (like acid blade into backstab, they used to be separate buttons) but having to choose your hard stun is just a terrible idea

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the optional knockdown on Backstab/Lethal Strike.

 

Jarring Strike is still there. It has just been moved to level 80, along with some other stuff that's currently available earlier than that on live.

 

But I agree with you on the missing Sleep Dart. Its absence is the only major issue I have with this.

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  • Really grateful for the new UI. As a "casual" combat player its still a bit confusing because some abilities like Noxious Knives aren't on the tree, had a hard time figuring out why some abilities were on there and others were not (I think the concealment-only one shows up on the tree and anything you make a choice... but I'm not 100% sure) I would love if the "live" version is as easy to swap between choices and specs is as easy as it is now one-click no applying no confirming lol.
  • Is sleep Dart missing on purpose or on accident for stealthy operatives?
  • I don't really like Debilitate (4-second-stun) being a "choice". This is because many true casual story players struggle a lot with the "boss" fights in solo still. Teaching them debilitate (or rather, how to find and use your 4-second stun) is one of the few ways they can get a true tactical advantage without having to actually learn their rotation/ability skills etc.
  • I play concealment in harder solo content like Eternal Championship and casual story for fun operations. The "level 70" choice seems fine for that but really rough for pvp.
  • I got into a pvp match where I had not chosen my stun and i had not chosen my flashbang and it sucked lol. Second match sucked less once I had "picked" them. Both times I felt I died really fast.
  • Yes, I feel like I'm playing my operative. Unlike the Guardian choices especially the "level 70" choice I hated there, I did not mind it as much here.
  • Is there not a "text list" this time on the forums, now that we have a "visual list" in the game? I assumed there would be, so its easier to compare and contrast over rolling over everything. If I have to pick one I'd always pick the visual though LOL.
  • (Sniper) Orbital Strike being a choice is hilarious to me. I love it. Experienced players know to mostly avoid it. Casual story players rejoice because it is an easy choice for them to nuke enemies on Belsavis and they don't care about the other stuff.

Edited by LadyAdmiral
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Does it feel like operative?

Concealment:

Yeah sure. It's missing sleep dart. Toxic Haze seems larger than normal. Stim Boost has a faster cd. Screen bobbles up and down when you use Noxious Knives. Other than that, pretty much the same animations.

 

Is the ability tree easy to understand?

It's a little basic to be honest. No bells or whistles. The purple highlight is kind of hard to see on some selected abilities. The ability tab needs to be reset or you have to log out/in to get vehicle drop list to appear properly.

 

I know this is a high level look but nothing really impressed me at all about Operative nor the ability tree.

 

Side note, If a Republic class story uses Operative will Toxic Haze still have an Imperial symbol?

Edited by TonyTricicolo
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Initial thoughts on the looks (with "how it works practice" to follow) is that it doesn't look too bad. I'll echo the others bemoaning the lack of Sleep Dart. Also, at a glance, the purge being gone from Dodge, and the utility to stick that on Cloaking Screen is gone...that second one, I'll be frank, is a big part of the point of the skill use for me currently in Live. A drop-out isn't exactly a drop-out if I end up dropped immediately back in due to a long term DoT or slow or the like. Getting both of those things is a big part of my sneaky-sneak experience. But heck, I'd settle for one or the other.

 

Ummm...wait. Overload Shot is gone!? That's an oversight, right? That's got to be an oversight. What am I supposed to use to just clear regular standard enemies in story stuff and the like? And what about healers? Should they just not be attacking, ever, even when solo?

 

Okay, leaving that aside for now...

 

The Level 50 choice is also kind of rough, choosing between speed or damage resistance. It'll be doubly frustrating if the Cloaking Screen purge gets added there. The Level 35, 60, and 80 options all feel reasonable balanced against each other. A couple tiers have an easy "miss" but there's at least two in each of those that are appealing without being play-breaking if missed. The Level 20 and 70 splits all feel a little too "easy", though. In both of those, there's one skill that's clearly the more useful pick.

 

Lethality tree looks good. That's the one I have the most experience with live so the one I feel most suited to judge. The various upgrades to Corrosive Grenade and Corrosive Assault are, again, pretty well balanced against each other at a glance. They do cool things but it doesn't feel like any of them are going to be "the one you should obviously take". Medicine also looks okay. I don't feel qualified to judge Concealment just on looks.

 

I'll comment more as I play a bit. But the big, big, big one right now is Overload Shot!

Edited by JLazarillo
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I tested lethality, and looked at the healer tree.

 

Missing: Sleep dart. Being able to sap enemies has been part of the stealther playstyle for years, it just feels wrong to lose that ability.

 

Missing: Surrender. Having an option to turn evasion into a threat drop isn't a good replacement. In particular I will miss having the ability to drop 2 hots when using surrender as a healer.

 

Missing: purge (self cleanse) on evasion. This might not be too important, but it's one less tool to avoid taking damage and lessen the amount of self heals/cleanses needed in a fight.

 

Missing: overload shot. Not an issue on dps, but I am really going to miss it on my heal spec.

 

Not happy with: Hard stun and flash bang being optional abilities that you have to sacrifice dps/heals if you take.

 

Tanks will have to generate much more threat, especially on mobs, or 7.0 will lead to massive headaches when pugging PVE content.

 

... this is important. You are removing a lot of defenses from the heals/dps, and at the same time reducing their ability to do crowd control and deal with unanticipated aggro/damage.

 

Overall the operative still feels like an operative. I am just not looking forwards to losing the 'on demand' abilities of the class that lets you deal with unusual and unexpected situations. Currently you can swap between more dps/heals, or more defensive gameplay, midfight. This lets you adjust for when mistakes are made by you or your teamates (and mistakes will be made). The ability tree limits your tools for dealing with mishaps during combat.

 

From what I've seen on the PTS it looks like 7.0 will be very hard on PUGs for vet/master FP and SM ops. Players won't be able to compensate for subpar teamates as easily as they do now.

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*context, I play a lvl75 ruffian scoundrel, so I'm not super familiar with the imp side abilities*

 

this round of testing is better than the jedi knight phases. the ability tree helped greatly, even if I dont like having the number of abilities cut, I understand how it is happening now, which I think was what people were most frustrated by during jedi knight testing. First, I didn't have a second primary attack ability (2 key by default at lvl 1). this could be a glitch or something I didn't do right, but if this was on purpose I would reinstate it, since it is not a big thing and its very helpful in early game. Having to actively choose a long term stun is a pretty big blow, and could be problematic for many players. Having to choose between key mobility abilities at lvl 70 was also annoying.

 

now, to answer the questions:

1) to reiterate, I do play a ruffian scoundrel, but it did feel like the imp side ruffian. the abilities tree made everything much easier to pick and see, so if an ability was missing I could see why. (to make it clear, I still do not like that you are deciding to cut back on the number of abilities, as it makes the game more fun, versatile, and unique, but if it is going to happen continue to make it clear as to why they are missing and what you can do to get them back.) The upper hand (imp equivalent) and its surrounding abilities were intact as I selected, which is the most central part to the scoundrel/operative, which I think is very good. The mobility and stealth abilities were mostly intact, except for the infiltrate (imp side), and trick move (imp side). I personally don't use them a lot and was fine to make that choice, but some players might find that choice hard.

2) the ability tree was fantastic. It would be nice if it could be a bit more clear whether abilities are passive or active though. Also, I could not figure out how to use my speeder from the new menu, so I would add a vehicles tab or put speeders under general.

 

To reiterate, this update was an improvement from the last one, the ability tree makes understanding the cuts feasible, as opposed to essentially going in blind before. The choices didn't seem to unreasonable (although I play a scoundrel and am not 110% versed in the abilities and rotation). These clarifications are making me feel better about the coming update, as I was feeling very pessimistic and sad before. Keep on this track!

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Concealment:

 

Debilitate should be baseline as it's the Operative's only way, at least for the discipline I chose, to stun their enemies. Most people are obviously going to choose it over the other options because without it the crowd control element of the game diminishes, and you're left being incredibly vulnerable. Also, I'm not sure if I like Overload Shot being removed as I used the ability in my rotation while waiting for Veiled Strike to get off cooldown if I had any energy remaining, so I could use a Tactical Advantage on Laceration after using it. Since I'm not a healer, I decided to read through others' feedback and it appears Overload Shot was their primary DPS ability to use, and now they're stuck with a filler ability that doesn't do squat.

 

As a side note, why did you guys rush this one out so fast that not even a dropdown option was made to access the mounts panel? Now I can't test out the Level 3 Riding Skill you gave us, let alone riding any mount to begin with, to travel faster for testing the class. I just see it as a massive inconvenience that could've been prevented if this stage of the PTS was released a little later.

Edited by Mcboyo
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Lethality here.

 

No it desn't feel like an Operative. Don't see a point to explain why removing Countermeasures and Overload shot is bad. Not gonna whine on ST vs AoE CC choice. Removal of Sleep Dart alone shows that Dev team has absolutely no idea on what makes classes special and unique.

 

Reshuffling utilities is understandable and greeted. They provide additional depth, but don't define the spec itself. Purging abilities, on the other hand, simply destroys it's backbone. I like Operative for it's wide array of useful skills. No skill bloat for me at all. AP PT, on the other hand, feels dull and shallow to me. It's plain and simple, requires minimum control and interaction. And it's totally fine bc many ppl like that. I think it's very healthy for a game to have a different entry threshold and skill ceiling for different specs. It creates diversity for various mindsets.Trying to equalize it to some average value is just wrong. More so it is wrong bc nothing is broken to such an extent that it requires this purging therapy.

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So from a Lethality/Ruffian perspective, haven't played concealment since 3.0.

Generally, rotation feels the same, no surprises here,

 

 

Missing Abilities, and how their absence affects my gameplay:

 

  • Sleep Dart: Sending them to sleep from stealth is a defining ability of the stealther playstyle in PVE and PVP. Not being able to sap-cap, or stun a NPC so the rest of the group can pass by will remove a lot of the utility a Scouperative brings to the group.
     
  • Countermeasures: A threat drop should neither be optional, nor baked into a DCD. When you're facetanking in a Flashpoint, and use Evasion to take a bit less damage, you want it to last longer without making the mob switch targets. Mainly an issue for "Veteran" group content. No big deal when soloing it or when there is an actual tank, will miss the root-break utility, though.
     
  • Sever Tendon: Nice ability in PVP, nice TA generator in PVE, No big deal when its gone.
     
  • Overload shot: You tried so hard in the past to make us use it, and now it's gone? Yeah. whatever.
     
  • Tactical Superiority: Folks are no longer expecting me to spend precious TA for their raid buff? Nice.
     

 

Thoughts on the Discipline tree:

  • Level 20 Is a weird (non-)choice, hard stun vs. threat drop. vs. less puny aoe attack. At least for Concealment, Debilitate should be a baseline ability, because... Backstab.
     
  • Level 35 At low level the passives mean little to you. You see an ability, you take it. IMO It would be better to only get to chose between abilities early on, and have passives vs. abilities later. You could even swap level 35 and 70, to get them a more important ability early on.
     
  • Level 70: Between Flashbang and Holotraverse there is little reason to ever pick Infiltrate, especially since it will fail more often when you can't sap the closest mob anymore.
     
     
  • Suggestions:
     
    Bring back Sleep Dart. If neccessary, make us chose between Sleep Dart and Debilitate.
     
    Bring back Countermeasures as a separate ability, let us chose between Debilitate, Flashbang and Countermeasures at level 20 (all battlefield control options). Move Tactical Overdrive to level 70 and put the Evasion passive in the level 35 row. Just do a baseline buff to Noxious Knives.
     
    I'm a bit surprised that we get Shadow Operative Elite / Quickening automatically. As the main reason for "Nerf Operatives" threads, I would have thought those are the prime candidates for a hard ability vs. passive choice. I wouldn't mind getting Infiltrate instead and having to chose between Flashbang (or better Tactical Overdrive), Holotraverse and the Roll passive.
     

 

And on UI stuff:

  • The large tooltip window is a bit hard to read. Maybe a font with an outline, or less transparency?
     
  • Switching disciplines should restore our previous choices on that discipline.
  • When an ability is removed, remember on which quickslot it was, don't put it back on the next best free slot.
    On live we can preview the other disciplines without switching to them, that may be easier once loadouts are a thing, but right now it's annoying to have your quickbar scrambled just because you wanted to take a look at the other disciplines.

Edited by Mubrak
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Medicine Operative has been my secondary for nearly as long as I've been playing. Most of the changes, unlike other disciplines and combat styles, are actually fine. But I do have some issues.

 

The level 15 and 30 passives are what I was expecting for everything, and the type of changes I do want to see. It expands our options. That's always a good thing. Ability pruning goes against this. When I watched the live stream for the announcement, these are the types of choices I expected to be making in my ability tree. This is what I want!

 

Level 20 potentially has you lose your class stun, that's such an important ability. Not for bosses, but ads, normal single player content, and flashpoints with lots of trash mobs especially. The class stun should be available on every discipline.

 

Level 35, I'm honestly okay with having to give up Tactical Overdrive for a passive. That's perfectly fine. This ability always was more used for the passive boosts for me than the CD resets.

 

The level 50 passive choice are all 3 important utilities I always have on me on the live server. All 3 of these are extremely critical to survivability,

 

The level 60 passive is kinda in the same vain as 50, but I'm okay with having to pick between these. Still, I know I use at least 2 of these passives on Live right now. Giving up one, again, is a huge nerf.

 

Leading into level 70, which again, I use all 3 of these abilities frequently and regularly. And now we have to lose 2 of them? Ability pruning is once again nerfing every class to the ground.

 

Level 80 passive choices are fine. No complaints there. But where is my raid buff??? Even as a healing class the raid buff is super useful and removing it, once again, is a HUGE NERF.

 

So far, Medicine Operative is the least affected by the ability pruning but it's still hit quite substantially. As I have in every single PTS feedback for 7.0, I beg you to do a full reverse on ability pruning. Options are fantastic. And outside of 1 or 2 abilities per class (most meant for PVP), I use all of my actives. Taking away our options on how to react in a situation is not a good strategy. Many players have been comparing these changes to the NGE that helped nail the coffin in Star Wars Galaxies.

 

I get that you want people to understand the correlation between passives and actives and rotation easier. But honestly, I don't think many classes need this. There are disciplines out there that I am not fantastic with. But even with my limited understanding, I can still be effective in SM ops, and even HM ops. And by the time you are doing HM ops, you should be investigating and experimenting with these correlations and effects a ton and have a good understanding of your class. All this ability pruning will do is nerf everyone to the ground, and it doesn't feel fun. And if it isn't fun, why bother?

 

The passive choices at level 15 and 30 are far more in line with what I was expecting from 7.0 combat changes and I beg you to switch your focus to this style over the ability pruning that will kill the game.

Edited by NicoleMay
forgot to mention raid buff
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I haven't seen anyone make a feedback post from the point of view of a "not-so-casual" raider so I though I would pitch in. I have played a lot of concealment and this is only from that point of view. I stress that what I'm writing only applies to "harder" PvE content, such as NiM operations (or Master, whatever)

 

I like how concealment feels, although before it can be tested in actual operation, this is very feelycrafty. It is nice that there are options that are more useful depending on the encounter that you want to do.

 

My picks were from bottom to top:

lv15: 2 always

lv 20: 3 (but if encounter requires, 2 is also fine)

lv 30: 3 (I like that crippling slice gives autocrit like sorc's force speed, it gives that ability a use also in pve)

lv 35: 3 (but 1 could also be ok if math proves that its better in sustain - over longer time it probably gives more Stim Boosts but Tactical Overdrive allows better bursts with Volatile cd reset and better dcds with Shield Probe dcd reset. So having this option depending on the encounter [long ST fight vs priority adds that need burst] is nice.)

lv 50: 1 or 3. Movement speed vs 5% DR is a tough choice but on is probably better that the other depending on the movement and damage taken of the encounter so that's a choice here too.

lv 60: 2 is (or was) better for energy management. And since evasion does not have cleance on it, the cd reduction is not as useful. Furthermore, concealment can always Exfiltrate the scripted damage events so evasion's worth is not that high in PvE.

lv 70: 3 all the way. other 2 are PvP stuff and rarely useful in operations.

lv 80: Nothing is particularly good, I'd take 1 or maybe 3 if there's somehting to reflect. If there are lost of things to reflect, taking Blow for Blow + Evasive Imperative + Quick Countermeasures would make Evasion available every 20-30s or so. Nice for PvP I suppose.

 

Overall, there's lots of minor choices that players can do to optimize their play. Some rows could use more choices but while balancing PvE and PvP, there's going to be "PvP rows" where only one choice is valid for PvE. Still the core spec stays the same regardless of the choices you make (and I guess this is intended to make it easier to just pick up and play without thinking too much). The utility of concealment is still the same: cleance, stealh res (I assume), combat res. Now using them just requires few more gcds and better timing.

Edited by Elofyn
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I'm a Concealment main, and here's my feedback:

 

Do the abilities available make this experience feel like you are playing an Operative?Please explain why or why not.

 

Yes, basically an operative is stealth and backstabbing - that's their thing. Feel like I'm missing Sleep Dart though!

 

Is the ability tree easy to understand? Yes

 

If you have feedback on the different disciplines, please note your feedback accordingly so we can track it. Not really, just Concealment

 

Still a bunch of abilities that could be pruned or combined such as noxious knives, toxic haze, fragmentation grenade - I only really need one AoE attack as my primary DPS is elsewhere

 

Some choices seem like 'must have' picks which means they aren't choices at all, such as:

 

Level 15: will always be 'Roll Knife' because more DPS.

 

Level 20: will always be debilitate because it's so useful

 

Level 30: There's no need to have both Crippling Slice AND Crippling Throw. Both could be removed.

 

Level 35: will always be Tactical Overdrive because of backstab cooldown reset

 

Level 50: Actually a good choice here

 

Level 60: Ok options here, but most will go for the adrenaline probe extra energy

 

Level 70: This is a good one, forces you to choose between utility.

 

---

 

Personally what I'd do instead is make the AoE attacks a choice, you can either have Toxic Haze (PBAoE), Noxious Knives (Conal AoE) or Fragmentation Grenade (Ranged AoE)

Edited by EHKodiak
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Do the abilities available make this experience feel like you are playing an Operative? Please explain why or why not.

it still feels like an operative though SLEEP DART missing is more than irritating because it kind of is essential (go in stealthed and pick off targets one by one kind of requires to put some 'on hold' so to speak)

Is the ability tree easy to understand?

it sure is- and as it is still a WiP I won't go into too much detail (would be nice though to see at what level you get which ability- the basic operative ones).

If you have feedback on the different disciplines, please note your feedback accordingly so we can track it.

I only tested LETHALITY as that is the discipline I am most familiar with...

level 20: making DEBILITATE a choice actually is no choice because 10 out of 10 times I'd choose it. I need my hard stun. pity though because as a veteran-casual-normal/solo-content-player witth the occasional MM FP and PvP the 25% damage boost to knoxious knives was mandatory for me (using toxic haze on a group of mobs and then throw the knives just felt and sounded right ^^ ... someone suggested to make the 25% more damage baseline which is a good idea I think.

level 15/30: I like the different passive choices, they seem viable so the choice really is a choice and brings variety and diversity to the gameplay.

level 50: choosing between 5% damage reduction and the advanced cloaking: ouch! maybe the damage reduction could be baseline?!

level 60/70: those choices feel tricky as well- even though I mostly play the easier content I still thought 'hey, I want at least 2 out of the 3...

 

why don't we have counter measures and overload shot anymore?!- not as important for my lethality playstyle but at least my medicine operative would miss those

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Operative notes

 

Abilities removed / placed in ABC:

Removed countermeasures, sever tendon, tactical superiority, sleep dart, overload shot

 

ABC:

Debilitate, (holotraverse, infiltrate, flashbang), tactical overdrive

 

 

General first impressions:

  • Survivability hasn't been hit as hard as sniper, but nearly all group utility outside offheals and combat res are gone.
  • Losing sleep dart will push stealth classes even harder as the second combat style choice - with sleep dart, you could get away with one or two people in a group having a stealth combat style. Without it, everyone needs a stealth combat style to skip combat.
  • That being said, I will not miss sleep dart in pvp. I hate using it and hate having it be used against me. A potential 16 seconds of cc in pvp is incredibly annoying.
  • I don't think I'll ever take flashbang again with these changes, holotraverse is much more useful. I can see most people switching to infiltrate out of combat, then immediately back to holotraverse.
  • In group content, operatives will never take debilitate because evasion becomes the class threat drop. This does make a meanginful choice between a hard stun and more survivability in pvp.
  • I don't think I'll ever take tactical overdrive again, at least not for concealment due to it contending with a permanent +5% damage and heal boost. If it instead had a 2 minute cooldown or a way to reduce the cooldown, I'd consider it.
  • I won't miss tactical superiority.
  • Sever tendon was useful for granting a tactical advantage at range, but this has mostly been made redundant by corrosive return for lethality and concealment can gain tactical advantages in another way too.
  • AOE healing for medicine is insanely strong now as kolto injection can be made an aoe if targetting yourself.
  • I don't really miss overload shot as much as I thought I would.
  • I do really miss losing countermeasures as I always took the utility that heals you and makes your next kolto probe stack twice - this was invaluable during solo and pvp content.

 

 

Medicine impressions:

  • Medicine operatives already had the worst off damage as a healer and now do even less damage (though arguably that's not super important).
  • AOE healing has a much higher potential
  • Kolto stim seems like it won't be taken in most instances - you aren't going to be healing yourself apart from with aoe heals, you'll be healing the tank.
  • Nano mark appears far superior to the other choices - +20% healing on the initial target is huge for single target healing.
  • Less utility, more healing power overall.

 

Concealment impressions:

  • Roll knife. This passive is crazy good. Dropping the cooldown of stim boost by 10 seconds with your main filler allows you to almost chain them together - even more so when you take tactical critical.
  • 0 energy cost for laceration with relentless blade is pretty irrelevant. It sounds great in theory, but you don't run out of energy anyway, it still needs a tactical advantage and roll knife is far better. Instead, I would remove the tactical advantage requirement for lacerate with this passive, but allow it to consume tactical advantages for bonus crit chance and damage or something similar.
    This would allow you to choose between higher burst or more frequent burst windows.
  • The level 30 passives are very interesting and are the ones I spent the most time thinking about. As I mentioned before, I liked having sevor tendon for an extra tactical advantage, so merging it with crippling throw is nice.
  • Crippling wounds allows for some extremely high burst with volatile strike.
  • Meanwhile, best defense allows you to focus on surviving in 1v1 scenarios and further, will be extremely valuable if it works on operations bosses. Taking 20% less damage puts you into tank levels of durability, with a potential additional 14% through 2 other passives. Concealment off-tank meta?
  • Big thumbs up for concealment.

 

Lethality impressions:

  • First of all, lethality needs synox shots to stay energy neutral. This tactical needs to be one of the tacticals that gets baked into the discipline by default.
  • This is especially the case when taking corrosive return - which is made more necessary by the fact that overload shot no longer exists, thus you have one spare filler slot that corrosive return fills.
  • I still think corrosive grenade needs to go up to an 8 metre radius, especially as toxic haze spreads corrosive dart in an 8m radius, and corrosive refund relies on hitting multiple targets to be at all useful.
  • Critical grenade is the obvious choice at level 30, corrosive refund is borderline useless in single target scenarios and since corrosive grenade doesn't dot spread, you generally won't be spamming it into crowds when frag grenade does 4x the initial damage.
  • Lethality feels the most similar to live, apart from corrosive return taking the space of one of your fillers during rotations instead of overload shot.
  • It doesn't seem as immediately powerful as concealment and could benefit from a skill that reduces the cooldown of stim boost or adrenaline probe so that you don't need to rely on synox shots to stay energy neutral.
  • Again, I'd need parses to work to really tell the difference between concealment and lethality on higher hitpoint targets.

 

 

Closing thoughts:

Concealment and medicine feel more powerful while lethality feels more or less the same as on live. Target swapping as lethality is still very annoying due to corrosive grenade not dot spreading.

Personal survivability has stayed more or less the same from what I can tell and the main losses have been in group utility and stuns.

Choosing between a hard stun and a cooldown reduction on evasion is a meaningful choice, noxious knives are still terrible even with a 25% damage boost.

Tactical overdrive should be redesigned in the same way that target acquired should be. Neither choices can compete with the passives on their level because of their long cooldowns and minor overall impact outside of an opener.

I think the infiltrator passive (15% movement boost) is something that all melee classes should get baseline.

 

 

Overall the core operative experience remains for solo content. For group content, things fall apart a little due to the removal of sleep dart and the need to opt into group stealth and any form of cc.

Damage feels fine - more than fine for concealment. Lethality still struggles in open world content even with catalysed toxins - a burst tactical that requires 3 consecutive abilities to be used to do any damage.

Medicine cements itself as one of the strongest aoe healers with kolto burst.

Evasion should have the threat reduction passive baseline - essentially a reverse form of how the sniper can gain defence chance on countermeasures - otherwise there is no choice at level 20 during group content.

I am definitely happier with the operative and sniper than I was when the guardian and sentinel first arrived on the PTS.

 

Once again, the ABC ability tree is very well designed. Seeing permanent passives on the side is great and I love how easy it is to swap between disciplines and ABC skills.

My only complaint would be that swapping between disciplines and skills doesn't remember the location of your abilities on your hotbar when swapping disciplines - but this is something that will get fixed to an extent depending on the quantity of loadouts.

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Personally, I think what we all just want is a full 110% explination as to why of these changes, upon skill changes and feedback, for through the past changes on the PTS with the Jedi guardian and Sentinel, and now to the agent, you always seem to fail to answer one of our striaght forward questions, and that question is:

 

Why?

 

Like why? why all these changes, whats your plan here? Is it that you want to make the game console friendly? like how DC universe online and Elder scrolls online do it? Is it because you want to make the game more easier for newer players?

 

We just want to know why? It maybe rocket science to sort gaming programs onto a game, but it is not rocket science as to explain to the gaming community why? personally I feel that you guys need to listen to the players, then allow egos to take over, for sometimes it's best to listen then to ignore

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Personally, I think what we all just want is a full 110% explination as to why of these changes, upon skill changes and feedback, for through the past changes on the PTS with the Jedi guardian and Sentinel, and now to the agent, you always seem to fail to answer one of our striaght forward questions, and that question is:

 

Why?

 

Like why? why all these changes, whats your plan here? Is it that you want to make the game console friendly? like how DC universe online and Elder scrolls online do it? Is it because you want to make the game more easier for newer players?

 

We just want to know why? It maybe rocket science to sort gaming programs onto a game, but it is not rocket science as to explain to the gaming community why? personally I feel that you guys need to listen to the players, then allow egos to take over, for sometimes it's best to listen then to ignore

 

The best way to make the game Console Friendly is to use the FFXIV Method. It has a pretty wide array of abilities for each class, but the Console Controls are super intuitive, and even people who play on PC sometimes use Console Controls because they are super comfortable to use compared to Mouse and Keyboard.

 

Your Ability Bars are condensed into 2, 8 button chunks. You use the Left and Right Triggers (You can even configure if you want to Hold the Triggers, or Press and release to activate the hotbar) to get into one of the 2 chunks, and then the ABXY (Or Playstation buttons) and D-Pad to fire your abilities. And you can ALSO on top of that use a combination of Left Trigger then Right Trigger or Right Trigger then Left Trigger to get into another hotbar that is on a different numbered hotbar (You get... I think 12 total numbers for hotbars in FFXIV usually people use it for utility skills that you don't need often)

 

This is the ideal way to make a Tab Target MMO friendly to Console. And I'd totally play SW:ToR using FFXIV controls if they chose to implement them.

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  • Do the abilities available make this experience feel like you are playing an Operative? Please explain why or why not.

Yes for the most part, BUT this is a class I usually play on alts so I won't say I'm an expert. There were some key abilities missing from the basic spec, the most obvious one being SLEEP DART. What is the point of a stealth class with no sap ability?

 

  • Is the ability tree easy to understand?

  1. A big fat NO. I found it to be very confusing.
  2. It's visually a nightmare - the icons are too small and it's not clear that you will be picking abilities over others.
  3. Is the right hand column supposed to be selectable or are these static passive abilities that can't be selected? If so why are they clickable but do nothing?
  4. Flashbang should be in the basic spec not a "choosable over something else" ability
  5. The level 60 choices are a bit of a nightmare (Evasive Imperative, Endorphin Rush and Escape Plan). All three are required for the spec yet you can only choose 1? I'm sure I have all three abilities on my operatives.

 

Other things:

  1. No Fleet Return Droid on Onderon - the droid that's supposed to be by the Onderon Mission Board is missing so to get back to the fleet you have to run back the shuttle and select "your ship" which will return you to the fleet. It's a bit irritating.
  2. In order to get vehicles to appear in your abilities drop down list, you have to relog your character
  3. The abilities tab/tree as well as being visual nightmare (as mentioned above) I found it awkward to use. Having abilities, former utilities and perks all in the same small icon tab I found to be quite annoying.

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Operative Healer (I only play Healer on my operative-Have done so since launch)

 

There are a few abilities missing but the one that bothers me the most is my sleep dart. This is something an operative can use during group activities when you are with a group and want to put one person to sleep to deal with the other npc. I would suggest giving this ability back to the operatives as it is one that could be important during operation and flashpoints when you have quite a few NPC and you want to deal with the strong one or elite (not the boss as it doesn’t work on those) after you have dealt with the others to help in the fight.

 

Other than that, the Operative Healer seems to play like I am used to and as I said I have done this one since launch. I am pleasantly surprised with the way I can still heal even a level 1 companion in the wilds of Onderon and having 2 of the creatures on top of Vector. Not bad for that so really no complaints except please give me back my sleep dart, please.

 

Now to your questions:

 

Please answer the following questions:

Do the abilities available make this experience feel like you are playing an Operative? Please explain why or why not.

Yes except give me back my sleep dart please? I was able to keep a Rank 1 Vector alive while being attacked by two creatures so not bad at all for that.

 

Is the ability tree easy to understand?

Yes, even though it takes a little understanding on how you set it up. I would suggest explaining that in more detail for those that may have a problem. For me, it wasn't that hard to figure out.

Edited by casirabit
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