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7.1 Mercenary DPS Changes On PTS


Gyronamics

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Hi all,

 

I'm Chris Durel and I’m a Gameplay Designer on the SWTOR team! I wanted to take a moment to speak about some upcoming changes we’re going to be making to class balance in 7.1 and future patches. The plan is to focus on those combat styles most in need of adjustment for 7.1 and then branch out from there to the remaining combat styles in future patches such as 7.2 and 7.3. Balance is, and always will be, an ongoing process, and we want to take our time to do our due diligence before making any changes.

 

With 7.1 comes changes to Marauders, Juggernauts, Snipers, and Mercenaries, in the form of balance adjustments, passive mod redesigns and quality of life improvements. The goal here is to bring these combat styles closer to their intended experiences and make disciplines more competitive with one another. Of special note, and after listening to lots of feedback and gathering data, are the changes to Fury and Carnage Marauders (Concentration and Combat Sentinels) and Arsenal and Innovative Ordnance Mercenaries (Gunnery and Assault Specialist Commandos).

 

It is important to note that these changes will be available for testing in an upcoming phase of PTS! What some of these changes look like:

 

Mercenary / Commando

Arsenal / Gunnery

  • Increased the critical damage bonus given by the Target Tracking / Deadly Cannon passive from 15% up to 30%
  • Increased the critical hit chance bonus from Riddle / Rotary Cannon form 5% up to 10%
  • Blazing Bolts / Boltstorm heat cost has been reduced from 20 down to 16
  • Priming Shot / Vortex Bolt heat cost has been reduced from 12 down to 10

 

Innovative Ordnance / Assault Specialist

  • Increased the periodic damage of Serrated Shot / Serrated Bolt by 16%
  • Changed the functionality of the "Incendiary Ignition" mod from giving more ticks of Combustible Gas Cylinder / Plasma Cell to increasing its damage on targets affected by Incendiary Missile / Incendiary Round

 

To reiterate, all of you will have a chance to try out the above changes on PTS soon! The PTS forums will have an updated Changelog, so you can see everything that’s been updated since the last phase of PTS was live. We’d love to get your feedback on everything. Please play around with the class changes and new Tactical items and give us your thoughts.

 

Thanks!

 

Hi,

 

While I can appreciate a buff is a buff I am very disappointed at the size of buff you felt appropriate and would like to demonstrate how short it falls.

 

After trying out these changes I estimate they give a 2-4% damage increase. Arsenal gets a small increase and Innovative Ordinance gets about half of that.

 

By comparison the top performers are doing ~30% more than either Mercenary DPS spec on one target.

 

Not dummy parse numbers, they are fraudulent if equated to real fight numbers, in actual fights with one target IO is about 1K better than Arsenal. This is primarily because IO uses an immobile rotation for best dummy parse numbers that revolves around ignoring Unload (which doesn't give supercharge stacks) in favour of Powershot and Rapid Shots (which do) to get more frequent Supercharged Burns buffed by Energized Charges tactical.

 

---------- Some Context ----------

Dummy Parse numbers: https://parsely.io/parser/stats

 

Mercenary DPS on Nefra, the MM fight with by far the most data on all specs:

https://parsely.io/parser/operations/nefra/8/MM/dps/commando/all/all/live/1/

http://ixparse.com/rating/?boss=5&mode=NiM&size=8M&type=DPS&class=Commando&order=rating&dir=d - 21,822dps required to be in the top 1% from sample of 13316 fights

 

In this fight we get real fight issues, we have movement interfering with casting, raidwide periodic damage causing pushback on casts and maybe but not always, the use of energy and GCD consuming cleanse to help the healers. All resulting in a damage penalty.

 

Meanwhile Powertech DPS on Nefra:

https://parsely.io/parser/operations/nefra/8/MM/dps/powertech/all/all/live/1/

http://ixparse.com/rating/?boss=5&mode=NiM&size=8M&type=DPS&class=Vanguard&order=rating&dir=d - 29,759dps required to be in the top 1% from sample of 14144 fights

 

In theory melee gets harassed by bomb zones, reality is raid organisation trivialises such mechanics. Close and Personal kicks in along with Pyro Shield to give a large damage increase that exceeds even nonsense done on a dummy parse.

 

Also Marauder DPS on Nefra:

https://parsely.io/parser/operations/nefra/8/MM/dps/marauder/all/all/live/1/

http://ixparse.com/rating/?boss=5&mode=NiM&size=8M&type=DPS&class=Sentinel&order=rating&dir=d - 29,252dps required to be in the top 1% from sample of 16391 fights

 

Not as big an increase as Powertech but that's Cloak of Pain harvesting a free damage increase from the raidwide damage, again no downsides.

 

This is what Mercenary DPS is looking at proving their value as DPS against in real fights. Classes that do better on a dummy and get easily rewarded with more damage for existing in a real fight while Mercenary starts off worse and typically gets penalised more.

------------------------------

 

A top performing spec can lose connection for 1/4 of a fight and still have done more damage than a Mercenary DPS.

 

What is the underlying agenda that means a diligent and urgent buff to improve Mercenary DPS is delivered as a small increase that is unlikely to change or challenge the status quo in which Mercenary DPS is invisible in challenging content due to poor performance.

 

In addition to class balance for 7.1, some disciplines are also receiving new Tacticals. With 7.0 we removed a handful of Tacticals from specific disciplines, and in many cases, rolled their functionality into the discipline’s ability tree. This created a bit of an imbalance between combat styles’ access to Tactical items, as some disciplines simply had more Tacticals to choose from than others. In 7.1, we are filling these gaps by introducing a few new Tacticals into the game for certain disciplines.

 

Arsenal Mercenaries will receive a new Tactical to replace Thermonuclear Fusion

  • Unstable Fusion - Activating Supercharged Gas / Cell accelerates heat out from you, dealing elemental damage to up to 8 enemies within 8 meters and applying Heat Signature to them. Targets with Heat Signature are vulnerable to Rail Shot / High Impact Bolt and take additional damage from Heatseeker Missiles / Demolition Round.

 

Innovative Ordnance Mercenaries will received a new Tactical to replace Magnetized Shrapnel

  • Magnetic Resonance - Exploding Thermal Detonator / Assault Plastique early with Mag Shot / Mag Bolt causes your next Power Shot / Charged Bolts to deal additional Elemental damage.

 

 

Magnetic Resonance doesn't do anything if you take the L39 perk of Impact Explosives that disables Thermal Detonator being detonated early so something is conflicting there.

 

------------------------------

 

Unstable Fusion mocks what we just had removed.

 

Thermonuclear Fusion was an aoe tactical that allowed cleave of +7x100% HSM.

7.0 crippled that to +7x25% damage and made it into a tree perk of Thermonuclear Plasma which could now be used with other tacticals.

7.1 will buff that perk with this new aoe tactical that in combination, is much weaker than having the old Thermonuclear Fusion tactical.

 

Further to that, Unstable Fusion is a melee range attack of 8m from your character while the class is both slow and fully 30m on every current attack it has. This is bad design.

 

Is it genuinely the case that the development team is blind to many specs going round doing obscene and very responsive aoe but has strict policy on restricting Arsenal Mercenary. I refer again to publicly available data:

Dashroode NiM:

 

https://parsely.io/parser/operations/dashroode/8/MM/dps/all/all/all/live/1/

http://ixparse.com/rating/?boss=21&mode=NiM&size=8M&type=DPS&class=&order=rating&dir=d

 

I will say there is a huge lack of Arsenal Mercenary data, but someone has uploaded a raid parse involving myself doing a non-cheesy Dashroode in a public group and I believe low 20k is about right for Arsenal while taking both AOE perks. It compares horrifically to competing specs.

Do I think 6-7k base elemental damage x 8 targets on every supercharge changes the game? No, and that's what this tactical does in exchange for losing the single target tactical of Primed Ignition.

 

I find it extraordinary that a class with 5 proper AOE abilities available to all specs is not good at AOE with them and 7.1 plans to grant another mediocre AOE to Arsenal.

 

Death from Above - an incredible 45s! cooldown on the smallest (5m) radius channelled AOE of any ranged class

Sweeping Blasters - functionally identical 30m ranged channel as the above but worse cost and damage and no cooldown

Fusion Missile - Expensive for Arsenal/Bodyguard, cheaper and rotational for IO

Sticky Dart - a mediocre delayed aoe that scatters mobs with a knockback to upset your team, also a clumsy way to apply a slow.

Missile Blast - usually an expensive ST attack, has a bonus of AOE vs standard/weak mobs but not players

 

All of that is inferior to just the larger and more damaging Suppressive Fire of Sniper and Force Storm of Sorcerer, neither of which have a cooldown.

 

1) Why is Unstable Fusion melee range

2) Why is Unstable Fusion still worse when combined with the perk of Thermonuclear Plasma than the original Thermonuclear Fusion tactical with the context that Arsenal AOE is poor.

3) Why is Unstable Fusion a new aoe button instead of enhancing one of the FIVE existing AOEs that the Mercenary class has.

I would rather see "Unstable Fusion" enhance Death From Above, being an iconic 30m ability and not further bloat the aoe buttons with another situational aoe.

 

-increase DFA radius from 5m to 8m

-add elemental tick to the channel of DFA

-mark all hit by the elemental tick with Heat Signature

 

And separate to that. Can we get the 45s cooldown of Death From Above reduced. A lot. For every Mercenary spec. It's the longest cooldown of any attack in the game matching the optional Orbital Strike (not the 30s Orbital Strike on Engineering) and it doesn't deserve it. When PT was split from Mercenary it was granted Deadly Onslaught to replace it with a 20s cd, 15s for Advanced Prototype and Mercenary was left with Death From Above at 45s.

 

Oh and lastly, the only thing I liked about Arsenal in 7.0 was the addition of Tracer Missile cleave. An AOE option built into rotation without having to screw with the lousy energy system of Mercenary by involving the high heat and/or high CD mess of mercenary AOEs. The damage is nothing special but I liked the idea of it. It's a bit like the rotational dotspread of IO but vastly worse damage.

 

But yes, disappointed that the development team believes Mercenary DPS needs nothing more than a small buff while players witness a vast deficit compared to other classes in the game and have done since before 7.0 launched.

Edited by Gyronamics
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From the looks of it mercs should be put on the endangered species list.

 

I just looked through some of the Parsely raid statistics and found that even in HM ops there are several fights where mercs are not even listed.

 

That confirms for me what I already knew. Nobody in their right mind would bring a merc to anything harder than the simplest content in the game.

 

It's really rather pathic what BioWare has done to the class.

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Thirded. All of this. Also, QFE, because these points perfectly sum up the issues:

 

A top performing spec can lose connection for 1/4 of a fight and still have done more damage than a Mercenary DPS.

&

I find it extraordinary that a class with 5 proper AOE abilities available to all specs is not good at AOE with them and 7.1 plans to grant another mediocre AOE to Arsenal.

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Fourthed.

 

While on the topic of balancing, merc (and also operative) struggle heavily with dcds. Mercenary's dcds are all on a very long cd, and they are comparatively weak when looking at other classes (cough-marauder-cough-pt-cough-sniper-cough), and even if their damage was on par there really wouldn't a good reason to bring them in harder content. Same thing with operative only its damage actually is on par, it just has next to zero dcds and brings nothing to the table compared to marauder.

Edited by joshrva
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Looks like pointing out all of the issues in a clear and consice manner is just too difficult for the devs to understand.

 

So how about this, can we buy buffs with cartel coins? Maybe extra revenue is what it would take to fix the class.

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Fourthed.

 

While on the topic of balancing, merc (and also operative) struggle heavily with dcds. Mercenary's dcds are all on a very long cd, and they are comparatively weak when looking at other classes (cough-marauder-cough-pt-cough-sniper-cough), and even if their damage was on par there really wouldn't a good reason to bring them in harder content. Same thing with operative only its damage actually is on par, it just has next to zero dcds and brings nothing to the table compared to marauder.

 

Merc DCDs are strong if being attacked by really dumb and low damage enemies like players and mobs up to flashpoint level. As long as it's direct damage the heals activate and lost health is replaced.

 

But merc lost any way to reduce AOE or DoT with 7.0.

 

DoT reduction when you used cleanse was removed as a perk.

AOE reduction of 30% was removed as a perk also.

 

AOE and DoT is what you often get hit by in operations when you're not the tank. The fight designer wants to put some health pressure on so BOOM, everyone takes high unavoidable damage.

 

That means merc is forced to take 42.857% more damage from every AOE hit and DoT tick in operations than before when they had options for 30% DR and at high enough difficulty it means something.

 

Mercs still have Energy Shield on a 120s CD for 25% DR to all for 12s and Kolto Overload on a 180s CD which can usually outheal damage but these are huge cooldowns.

 

Most of the melee in 7.0 have been given 60% AOE DR on 45 or 35s CD which is immense for operations. But AOE doesn't just hit melee so anyone without 60% AOE DR available is going to take 150% more damage vs someone who does have the option. Merc, sorc, operative and slightly Mara is not being allowed that AOE DR so the scene is set for horrific imbalance of taking damage.

 

I was posting about the doing damage part but yes, taking much more damage is also very important in organised PVE and unless my memory fails me I swear there was a promise that loss of defensives would be compensated in defensive improvements of another sort. Well it hasn't and I'm very sure about that. Damage is down along with damage reduction.

Edited by Gyronamics
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God PLEASE give Mercs a proper buff, its such a FUN spec but it does not perform nearly as well as the other classes. So much so that I am ONLY playing solo since DPS Mercs get kicked out of most group contents instantly due to garbage DPS
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God PLEASE give Mercs a proper buff, its such a FUN spec but it does not perform nearly as well as the other classes. So much so that I am ONLY playing solo since DPS Mercs get kicked out of most group contents instantly due to garbage DPS

 

Come on, mercs aren't in a good spot PvE DPS wise - but they don't get kicked just for being a merc...

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@ZUHFB

 

I can sadly say that I saw PUG groups forming on fleet with the little mention (LFM DPS except merc/mando). So I wouldn't actually be surprised some people do eject merc they have in their team.

 

Mercs are so bad right now that there is no way I would bring one to an op out of respect for other players, and when I have suggested that I might want to bring one to a group, I have been asked not to.

 

So even though they may not always get kicked, they are not wanted, and people are definitely being discouraged from playing them.

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The Arsenal AOE tactical on PTS has been altered.

 

From 8m burst from your char when you use Supercharge

To +25% on DFA if it hits tracer marked targets and DFA CD reduced from 45s to 25s.

 

The damage is now ranged which is more in line with everything merc being ranged.

 

But I've realised it plus the tree perk is a Frankensteins monster of the original Thermonuclear Fusion, costing more heat, costing more GCD and completely absent of burst damage. It does aoe damage but with very little authority and not enough integration with the spec.

 

Thermonuclear Fusion was this:

  • Tracer -> Fusion Missile -> HSM (hits 8 totalling 800% damage).
  • 1 non-rotational ability costing 1 GCD
  • 1 Tactical

 

Now we have this:

  • Tracer -> Fusion Missile -> HSM (hits 1 +7 for 25% for 275%) -> DFA @ 125% damage
  • 2 non-rotational abilities
  • 3 GCD
  • 1 Tactical
  • 2 Perks (technically one but you might as well full send it if you're going to spec for aoe)

 

1) The damage is limp for the investment, cost, and historical comparison or present comparisons, it's less than half the damage of old and spread out over 3x the GCD.

 

2) DFA at 25s CD and Fusion Missile at 20s CD is not cooperative with sustaining the base rotation of resetting Blazing Bolts every 8s (9s in real GCDs) for a rotation of 18s aka the CD of Priming Shot.

 

3) The non-rotational 50 heat between DFA and Fusion Missile is also unsustainable even if they were lower CD

 

 

I don't know. Maybe something radical like having the channel of DFA being able to optionally replace the channel of Blazing Bolts at the same 16 cost and go on CD & reset CD with it for a totally rotational AOE while wearing the tactical while leaving enough flexible GCD in the rotation to optionally take the tree perks of Tracer cleave and Fusion Missile spread/HSM cleave. The reason for pushing rotational viability is that abilities which are not simply don't get used or can only be used as a clumsy heat dump or niche purposes where heat doesn't matter.

 

I would have said Sweeping Blasters (which has long had a fixed L35 perk of more crit/surge) but snipers already spam blaster shots with Suppressive Fire for insane aoe and it's their iconic AOE since Orbital got nerfed into a niche. Maybe that perk could be moved to DFA too.

 

Or going back to the heart of the old Thermonuclear Fusion tactical and buffing one ability to have serious authority as the big aoe the spec can spec for. That would clearly be burst while the previous 2 paragraphs would be clearly a sustained output.

Edited by Gyronamics
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The change is a step in the right direction but not enough. It needs to feed back into the rotation

 

How about something like this:

 

Cooldown of death from above is reduced by 20 seconds.

Targets hit by death from above are "marked for death" (get it? cus death from above?).

Your next tracer missile is free and hits all marked targets around your primary target for 100% damage.

 

This gives the tactical a great deal of AoE power in it's own right, which Arsenal is lacking.

By making your next tracer missile free, it allows for a degree of resource management.

You can then choose to either go further into AoE specialization by taking the existing ability morph for heatseeking missiles or set up those targets for your single target rotational abilities which do more damage vs targets with a tracer missile's mark.

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  • 2 weeks later...

There are some unlisted changes to Mercenary DPS on the PTS as of right now.

 

Innovative Ordinance

Relentless Ordnance went from 3-5% bonus elemental damage on bleeding targets

Slow Burn went from 25-30% bonus damage on Thermal Detonator burn (0.1% dps increase)

 

Arsenal

Tracing Residue went from 5-10% bonus Tracer Missile damage

 

Hopefully more on the way.

 

~~~

 

I can't think of a better time to throw out basically every issue I know that isn't about poor damage performance and maybe they might also get changed for the better :rak_01:

 

~~~

 

Arsenal Perk Issue

 

It may have been mentioned in other threads that mercenary damage perks of 7.0 are lacking

 

Regarding the four ST damage perks of Arsenal:

 

L23: Signature Shot or Proficient Tracing

L39: Customised Warhead or Tracing Residue

 

If I take any of the 4 possible combos of these perks on live OR on PTS my sustained damage is indistinguishable. My rotation is indistinguishable. You have to study the combat log and know what you're looking for. These are the damage perks of the top five 6.5mhp dummy parses by Arsenal on live:

 

Proficient Tracing + Customised Warhead

Signature Shot + Tracing Residue

Proficient Tracing + Customised Warhead

Proficient Tracing + Customised Warhead

Signature Shot + Customised Warhead

 

Repeating the dummy parse over and over for good RNG matters more than these damage perks.

 

...but I do like Arsenals transform of Triple Trace. I'd like it even more if it also stole the mass Heat Signature spread from Thermonuclear Fusion thus making it a one stop shop for setting up the new AOE tactical Gyroscopic Stabilisers but also simplifying Thermonuclear Fusion as the perk which transforms HSM into an AOE while Fusion Missile can stop being forced onto the spec. The fun part in the past was doing 800% HSM damage, having to use Fusion Missile was not it. Let it be IO's thing to use Fusion Missile, it being the DoT spec and having multiple bonuses for Fusion Missile.

 

 

~~~

 

Innovative Ordinance Rotation Issue

 

Innovative Ordinance is distorted around Supercharge and Energised Charges

 

This is the reason core abilities and perks of this spec do not get used.

 

Energised Charges triples the damage from Supercharged Burn, making it the #2 damage source for Innovative Ordinance.

 

If an ability doesn't generate Supercharge stacks or dot spread or have a high damage/cost ratio on its own it is almost worthless.

 

For maximum damage this spec is about pressing Power Shot and Rapid Shots as much as possible because each will generate 1/10 of a Supercharge.

 

Each usage of the above pays back 1/10 of the ~92000 damage Supercharged Burn and 10 heat vented and 16s buff of 10% more periodic damage when the Supercharge is cashed in.

 

As a consequence the following has a greatly distorted use due to neither high damage/cost or Supercharge stack generation:

 

Unload is ideally used once at the start of a fight for convenience and then never again.

 

Missile Blast gains 75% damage and drops to 10 heat under 30% hp or with the perk Volatile Cinders, at any time, but it still has less value except in the scenario that there isn't time left to build and use another Supercharge, therefore it has the opposite use to Unload, being ideally used once at the end of a fight.

 

There we have it, the overpowered state of Innovative Ordinance Supercharge means a core ability and an execute are not welcome in their intended roles because they don't contribute to a Supercharge.

 

The quick and easy solution is to grant 2 Supercharge stacks to a use of Unload and 1 Supercharge stack to Missile Blast. The less easy solution is to not have Supercharge being what the spec orbits around.

 

 

~~~

 

QoL Issues

 

Missed attacks cripple movement windows and rotation for needless punishment

 

Arsenal

Priming Shot activates a buff for an instant Tracer Missile

 

Innovative Ordinance

Mag Shot through Speed to Burn activates a buff for an instant Power Shot, Serrated Shot or Rapid Scan

 

When any of those initial attacks miss/are dodged or are otherwise immuned, sometimes not even in a way you can avoid (target died, target had an RNG dodge) you are denied the buff to get an instant ability on top of losing the damage of the initial ability and it going on cooldown.

 

I would like both buff instances to change to be applied on ability use rather than on ability damage. This will grant the player more consistency with their ability use in varied scenarios. Arsenal already resets Blazing Bolts on use of Tracer Missile or Sweeping Blasters and Innovative Ordinance already resets Mag Shot on use of Power Shot or Sweeping Blasters. It is not out of place to have the above instances do the same.

 

In addition, Innovative Ordinance's Speed to Burn has the feature of a 15s cooldown, triggered by Mag Shot which is used 2x per 15s. This means a failed proc of Speed to Burn from one Mag Shot forces the position of Speed to Burn activating in the rotation from your planned Mag Shot to the other Mag Shot whether you like it or not, thereby disrupting your tracking and resetting of of the internal cooldown of Innovative Particle Accelerator (which resets Mag Shot) until you get a chance to stall out the mess of internal cooldowns and reset them to the position you wanted.

 

This mid rotation hazard can be eliminated by firstly the suggestion above and secondly, removing the 15s cooldown on Speed to Burn. Speed to Burn will then activate on every Mag Shot and again give the player more consistency with the IO rotation. An additional GCD of movement potential per rotation will be created by this also.

 

Alacrity surges cripple movement windows and rotation for needless punishment

 

Continuing, the other reason for Innovative Ordinance rotation failure besides a miss/dodge/immune of Mag Shot is the notorious effect of alacrity buffs shorting the players rotation while the internal cooldown of Innovative Particle Accelerator was set at a lower alacrity, this causes the players rotation to reach and attempt an activation of Innovative Particle Accelerator with Power Shot, Unload or Sweeping Blasters a fraction of a second before it unlocks for a frustrating failure. I said it before patch 3.0 and I still say that reducing the ICD of Innovative Particle Accelerator from 7.5s to 7.0s would give a safe margin for negative effects of temporary alacrity buffs with zero change to rotation or advantage gained by players besides consistency and the freedom to have the 10% alacrity buff from Supercharged Celerity or Vent Heat (with perk) at any time without being sabotaged.

 

This also handles the scenario where you use Power Surge on an ability to make it instant and for ??? reasons it shortens the resulting GCD to less than expected, shortening the rotation and thus causing the next Mag Shot reset to fail as the rotation ends up fractionally faster than the internal cooldown of Innovative Particle Accelerator.

 

This also handles the fact that instant abilties at certain alacrity levels have their GCD shortened more than 1GCD casts and longer CD such as Innovative Particle Accelerator resulting in a failed reset if you use "too many" instant abilities between resets as it shorts the rotation to be fractionally shorter than the Innovative Particle Accelerator cooldown.

 

This also applies to the ICD of Speed to Burn but as the previous suggestion is to delete the Speed to Burn CD it is already addressed. If that doesn't happen the second best would be to give Speed to Burn a 14s cd down from 15s.

 

So I would like the ICD of Innovative Particle Accelerator to be reduced from 7.5s to 7.0s thus giving a buffer of 0.5s per reset in the 15s rotation to accommodate alacrity surges. Arsenal already has such a buffer whether intentional or not. Arsenal has an 18s rotation due to the CD of Priming Shot while the ICD of Barrage to reset Blazing Bolts is 8s, this gives a large buffer of 1s per reset that an alacrity surge would have to overcome before it could break Arsenals rotation.

 

Alacrity deletes ticks from Supercharged Burn

 

For whatever reason if you have certain alacrity levels either from stats or buffs or perk buffs or relic buffs it chops off entire ticks from Innovative Ordinance's Supercharged Burn. The most basic demonstration is to wear no gear, waste your resources until you can use Vent Heat with 10% alacrity perk, activate it, activate Supercharged Burn and watch it do 7 ticks instead of 8. Repeat without the 10% alacrity and watch it do 8 ticks.

 

I have no idea the mechanics required to fix this but it happens and is highly repeatable. Are DoT not meant to tick faster rather than being cut short?

 

Hard casting isn't great for 0CD buff use

 

Finally, something primarily of note for Innovative Ordinance but it affects every spec. Maybe it exceeds the scope of Mercenary DPS but hey ho...

 

In this game Casters are prevented from activating any 0CD abilities during their casts or channels. This is greatly inferior ability use compared to full instant ability classes but mostly it can be worked around even if it means hammering ESC to break the current action and perform an interrupt.

 

Is it possible to allow Supercharged Gas to be activated during a hard cast or channel (without breaking either). Thus being able to take advantage of RNG stack generation mid cast and without having to awkwardly cram frequent (about every 20s) Supercharges between hard cast/channels.

Edited by Gyronamics
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There are some unlisted changes to Mercenary DPS on the PTS as of right now.

 

Innovative Ordinance

Relentless Ordnance went from 3-5% bonus elemental damage on bleeding targets

Slow Burn went from 25-30% bonus damage on Thermal Detonator burn (0.1% dps increase)

 

Arsenal

Tracing Residue went from 5-10% bonus Tracer Missile damage

 

Hopefully more on the way.

 

(etc)

 

This is very important feedback to the dev team, there are many things i did not touch on in my post, but that are certainly worth mentioning

 

Regarding the alacrity breaking the proc timing/rotation, its also worth mentioning that, although to a lesser degree, arsenal also suffers from this proccing issue of having a tracer be done casting about .1-.2 seconds before the proc is up again, needlessly punishing the already difficult task of keeping up with the proc timing, which is very important when optimizing ticks of "Primed Ignition", which gets most of its ticks by Blazing Bolts, is a vital part of the spec.

 

I also want to stress that most of these changes are easy to implement, needing only a small adjustment to a value or condition. This comparatively low effort would go to a great deal in making these classes significantly more pleasant to play, regardless of output.

Edited by ArchingBeast
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Most of the QoL issues have existed for the last 8 years.

 

They've been sabotaging the enjoyment and consistency of play the entire time and it counts as class experience to know when you did nothing wrong as a player yet be able to tell which mechanic failed on you this time.

 

Every one of these issues can be demonstrated.

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Most of the QoL issues have existed for the last 8 years.

 

They've been sabotaging the enjoyment and consistency of play the entire time and it counts as class experience to know when you did nothing wrong as a player yet be able to tell which mechanic failed on you this time.

 

Every one of these issues can be demonstrated.

 

If it can be deminstrated, Why not make a video of it, upload it to youtube and post the link here. After all in my experiance with devs, unless they see it and see how its done, its not really a high priority to them. Not saying SWTOR devs are like that just saying thats what devs like to see is phisical hard evedices in picture or video form the is 100% irifutable, after all a picture or most importantly a video says 1000+ words and needs nothing else.

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If it can be deminstrated, Why not make a video of it, upload it to youtube and post the link here. After all in my experiance with devs, unless they see it and see how its done, its not really a high priority to them. Not saying SWTOR devs are like that just saying thats what devs like to see is phisical hard evedices in picture or video form the is 100% irifutable, after all a picture or most importantly a video says 1000+ words and needs nothing else.

 

close your Eyes imagine hitting 4 Buttons and Hearing a *dingdingding*.

then imagine after you hit 2 of the Buttons a Commando hit the Raidbuff you hit the remaining two Buttons, no *dingdingding* [end of Video].

 

there's your Video, very informative.

 

a video says 1000+ words and needs nothing else

 

now that you have imagined that Video what do you change in the code to fix the 1000+ Issues you saw?

Issue 1: the player is a Mercenary but we know those are bad -> Solution: do a Search and Replace of the Gamecode to replace all Occurances of Mercenary with nothing.

Issue 2: their Hair is clipping with the Armor they are wearing -> Solution delete that hairstyle.

...

...

...

Issue 420: the *dingdingding* didn't happen -> the dev who watched the Video to look for Problems had the Video muted -> Solution there's no difference in the first Place.

 

how is a Video going to help when the Statement: "the internal CD of Proc "x" should have some leeway so that changing Alacrity doesn't cause you to delay a Trigger." isn't sufficient?

 

for something like Twilek Lekku are clipping with "this", sure make a Video.

 

but for a complex interaction like how having someone activate the Mando Raidbuff at the wrong time will cause you to become unable to execute your rotation unless you delay your Ability manually (by 0.3 Seconds. (the intended way to play the game appears to be pressing abilities slightly early -> that eliminates lag and creates a level Playing field.)

 

having to create a 4k slow Motion Video (required to be able to see and identify all the Buffs affecting the player at all times) with timestamps visible in the Video so you can see how one time the trigger GCD is at the ICD and the other time it's 0.3 Seconds early is such ********.)

 

at the same time whoever get's the Bug report likely would prefer text as well that saves them the 5 Days it would take to Picture match all the Buffs shown in the Video just figuring out that 95% of them are meaningless for the Issue.

 

I could see the usefulness of a Combat log but that's about it, a Video would be worse then useless.

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What DarthSpekulatius says is true.

 

There is no super easy way to explain mechanical issues in a video, you will see something not working but why and what is anyone meant to do about it?

 

The correct form is a presentation with multiple forms of information and that could be wrapped up as a video but being a video isn't the important part. Or the difficult part...

 

I'm working on it.

Edited by Gyronamics
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close your Eyes imagine hitting 4 Buttons and Hearing a *dingdingding*.

then imagine after you hit 2 of the Buttons a Commando hit the Raidbuff you hit the remaining two Buttons, no *dingdingding* [end of Video].

 

there's your Video, very informative.

 

Buuuuuuuut, you don't have your eyes closed? Why would you still powershot if you know it's not going to proc? Just do filler->powershot, yes it's DPS loss but the bigger DPS loss is to have a merc at all. Or why don't you just click raidbuff off? Seems to be the best solution, as you said you have 3s to do that. Should be easy enough.

 

Quite honestly nobody cares, it's not relevant for 99% of mercs only in "high tier content" in which you can't bring mercs anyway and if it would be relevant, but then you should know about it and it's just a matter of get gud. It's not like merc is the only class that has this problem too.

 

I do not want this to change because it would take resources away from important things. Generally it's the logic: Can you prevent it from happening? Yes, but you didn't so it's your fault.

Edited by ZUHFB
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That's fascinating, the whole list I posted isn't real?

 

Whether you care or not isn't a factor by the way.

 

Well it looked too funky, but I wasn't talking about the list but the solution to missing your procs due to alacrity from raidbuff is simply to get gud.

Edited by ZUHFB
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