[2022] Planned Balance Changes for 7.1.1

Hello everyone,

Chris here again, Gameplay Designer on SWTOR. I wanted to share with you some upcoming balance changes planned for 7.1.1 (Jackie mentioned it in this thread). Ive spoken of our post 7.0 balance plan in the past, and if you are curious about that and our philosophy going forward with regards to balance, you can find that here.

With 7.1.1, we are mostly focused on healer balance and various QoL (quality of life) improvements across the classes. Weve taken a lot of your feedback and applied that to the changes we are making in 7.1.1. This includes changes to every healer with Operatives / Scoundrel, Mercenaries / Commandos, and Sorcerers / Sages in the form of balance adjustments, passive mod redesigns, and QoL improvements. In many cases, weve adjusted their HPS (heal per second) output to be higher, as we noticed they werent reaching our internal targets. Operatives, while their healing is being brought down in some cases, are being brought up in others. Our goal with this change is to equalize healer HPS across all combat styles while retaining their individual class identity.

In addition to balance changes across healers, weve also improved some survivability in a few classes. While these may seem to be small adjustments, we feel these changes will bring them more in line with other classes.

Finally, we have continued to adjust our DPS (damage per second) balance across multiple combat styles for 7.1.1, with the intention to narrow the gap between the top and bottom DPS classes. We continue to strive for making every combat style viable while retaining what makes it unique.

We are also introducing two new Tacticals for 7.1.1 to replace old Tactical items that were removed with 7.0. One is for Advanced Prototype / Tactics Powertechs and the other is for Madness / Balance Sorcerers / Sages.

7.1.1 will not be available on PTS, but you can see a list of tentative changes below. Wed love to hear your thoughts and feedback on our direction, as we appreciated all your contributions to 7.1.

Here are some of the balance changes you can expect from 7.1.1. Note that all of this is subject to change.

Spoiler
Operative / Scoundrel

• Evasion / Dodge now additionally lowers threat by a moderate amount and lasts one second longer.
• Quick Countermeasures and Sly Countermeasures now additionally grant 60% AOE damage reduction while Evasion is active.
• This now additionally works with the Evasive Screen / Skedaddle mod.

Medicine / Sawbones

• Reduced the Kolto Burst mods healing on secondary targets by 50%.
• The Kolto Stim mod now additionally grants 10% increased healing to Kolto Injection.
• Reduced the healing received bonus given by Nano Mark mod from 20% to 10%.
• Redesigned Defensive Injection mod, which is now called Reactive Substance, and does the following:
• Kolto Injection applies a reactive substance to the target for 10 seconds. If the target is dealt damage during this time, they are healed. Stacks up to 2 times.

Concealment / Scrapper

• Reduced the bonus critical hit damage while Stim Boost is active from 20% to 15%.
• The Tactical Acid Lash no longer improves the damage of Acid Blade.
• Increased the duration of the Advanced Stealth mod effect from 4 to 6 seconds.
• Increased the duration of the Tactical Critical / Upper Critical mod effect from 4 to 6 seconds.
• Increased the damage reduction per stack from the Defensive Stance mod from 3% to 5%.
• The Best Defense mod now adds a life steal component to Crippling Slice / Shank Shot.
• Increased the movement speed bonus granted by Quick Countermeasures from 50% to 100%.

Sniper / Gunslinger
Marksmanship / Sharpshooter

• Target Acquired / Illegal Mods now generates a charge of Laze Target / Smugglers Luck whenever it is activated.
• Lazer Focus / Lucky Thoughts no longer relies on critically hitting the target to lower the cooldown on Laze Target / Smugglers Luck but instead has a 50% chance to do so whenever dealing damage.

Mercenary / Commando

• Bodyguard / Combat Medic
• Increased the healing done by Rapid Scan, Emergency Scan, Progressive Scan, Kolto Missile and Kolto Pods by 2%.
• Increased the critical healing bonus given by Warden from 5% to 10%.
• Increased the healing bonus given by Integrated Scanning mod from 3% to 5%.
• Increased the critical chance bonus to Healing Scan from Critical Scanning mod from 5% to 10%.

Powertech / Advanced Prototype
Advanced Prototype

• Magnetic Blast / Tactical Surge damage reduced by 14%.
• Power Burst / High Yield Explosives mod stacks damage bonus reduced to 4% per stack down from 5% per stack. (total of 16% damage bonus to thermal det down from 20%).
• Serrated Blades damage reduced to 5% down from 15%. (combined into prototype rail)
• Blood Tracker / Triumph damage increase to bleeding targets is reduced to 3% down from 5%.
• Lingering Heat / Superheated Cells damage reduced by 50%.
• New Tactical: Powered Detonator (Burst)
  

  Thermal Detonator remains dormant on the target for 12 seconds, and can be detonated by Magnetic Blast, Energy Burst or Rail Shot. Depending on which is used, a different effect is applied.
  Magnetic Blast: Slows the target by 50% for 10 seconds.
  Energy Burst: The cooldown of Rocket Punch is reset and your next Rocket Punch costs no heat.
  Rail Shot: Your next Shoulder Cannon missile deals 20% more damage.

Pyrotech / Plasmatech

• Charged Gauntlet's / Hyper Assault Cells critical damage bonus for Searing Wave, Flaming Fist, Scorch, and Immolate is now 10% down from 15%.
• Reduced the damage bonus given from Burnout to Immolate / Plasma Flare from 40% to 30%.

Sorcerer / Sage
Corruption / Seer

• Increasing the healing given by Penetrating Darkness / Clairvoyance to Renewal and Resurgence / Rejuvenate from 10% to 15%.
• Dark Heal / Benevolence now gains a 60% healing increase up from 50% from Dark Concentration / Altruism.
• Each stack of Corrupted Bastion / Resurging Power increases the healing done by Dark Heal / Benevolence, Rally / Deliverance, Dark Infusion / Keeper of the Peace by 5% per stack up from 3% per stack.

Madness / Balance

• New Tactical: Killing Field (AOE)
• Death Field slows targets it affects by 50%. Force Storm deals 15% more damage to slowed targets.

• • Disintegration - Death Field and Death Brand grant Vitiate's Malice, giving Force Lightning 20% Lifesteal for 12 seconds.
  • Force Horrors - Increase periodic damage from 15% to 20%.
  • Lightning Barrage - Force Lightning reduced damage changed to -20% from -25%.
  • Tempest of Rho - Correctly applies 50% chance for Force Lightning to trigger periodic effects down from 75%

Lightning / Telekinesis

• Reverberating Force - Critical hit damage bonus has been reduced to 12% down from 15%.
• Thundering Blast - Second arc of damage deals 20% of Turbulence's damage down from 25%.
• Storm watch damage decreased by 4%
• Halted Offensive cast time increased from 2.5 seconds to 3.0 seconds. Alacrity still affects cast time.
• Decrease Halted Offensive damage by 15%.
• Convection - Thundering Blast grants Reserved Darkness, making Dark Heal an instant cast and increasing its healing by 30%. Stacks up to 2 times.

[/LIST]
Assassin/ Shadow
Deception / Infiltration

• The damage done by the Awakened Flame tactical has been increased by 10%.
• Changed Severing Slash to additionally grant damage reduction per target hit.
• Redesigned "May Cause Injury" Tactical to grant the AOE version of Discharge more often. It now reads: Gaining a stack of Voltage / Clairvoyance causes your next Discharge / Force Breach to arc to multiple targets.

Hatred / Serenity

• Changed the Two Time Trouble tactical so that it can no longer tick from Saber Strike damage.
• Fulguration / Rebounding Force now restores 5 Force when Lightning Charge / Force Technique deals damage, up from 3.
• Increased the damage bonus given by Pervasive Death / Pervasive Balance to Death Field / Force in Balance from 10% to 15%.
• Hungering Force / Longing Force now additionally grants a critical hit damage bonus of 5%.
• Increased lifesteal amount from Severing Slash from 25% to 50%

Darkness / Kinetic Combat

• Changed the Severing Slash effect for Darkness to root its target for 2 seconds, followed by a 3 second slow. Severing Slash no longer grants damage reduction.

Were looking forward to your feedback! As Jackie mentioned, well have more details to share about 7.1.1 in general soon!

-Chris

Hi everyone,

As Chris wrote in his post, these changes are tentative and we're looking for feedback. I understand that you all may have strong feelings about these, but we are asking if you can explain why you feel a certain way and in addition to that explain what a preferred solution or change would be.

Please keep your posts constructive as they help us understand your line of thinking and provides opportunity for your feedback to be reflected in any changes that could be made.

Thanks!
Jackie

Hi everyone!

We really appreciate all your feedback and have been reading all of it. I just wanted to make a post to clarify somethings accidentally missed in the OP. One is that we missed some Sorcerer / Sage changes, which will be added to the OP in the changes section.

The second is the new AP/Tactics Tactical. I accidentally wrote an older design description to that, which has since been changed. The cooldown reset that would have occurred to reset Thermal Detonator now affects Rocket Punch instead. That part of the tactical now reads:
"Energy Burst: The cooldown of Rocket Punch is reset your next Rocket Punch costs no heat."

As a final point, the "Reactive Substance" mod change does not have values since we can't communicate that very well on the forums. But power-wise a single stack of Reactive Substance would be similar to one Kolto Waves tick. You can stack it twice on a single target and get 2x the effect whenever damage is dealt to them.

Again, we really appreciate all your feedback! The OP will be updated shortly.

Thanks,
-Chris

Hi all!

Just wanted to let you all know I've been reading all this feedback and I really appreciate all the well thought out posts! I wanted to give a couple quick notes to ease some concerns.

We are going to look into making some changes or redesigning the Sorcerer's AOE Tactical, as we understand some people have some concerns with the usefulness of slow and also introducing more slows into into the game.

I also wanted to take a moment to address some Assassin tank concerns as well. The intention of removing the DR from Severing Slash was simply to not force that choice on all tanks. But seeing as some players are feeling that is too much right now, we have decided to roll back that change for 7.1.1. In a future tank balance pass (more on that later), we may circle back to this and address is another way. If we do end up changing the functionality of Severing Slash, it's important for us to give that mitigation back somewhere else. So, for now, we're going to leave it as it currently stands with the understanding that it probably will be the most popular choice for Assassin Tanks. We will do a pass on that whole choice row in a future balance pass.

As for the DPS nerfs, we realize these come off as very major, but I can assure you we are constantly re-assessing these classes and all of this is subject to change. While I can't give any specific details, know that we continue to tune these classes. A good suggestion I saw on the forums was increasing Concealment's Tactical Critical from further from 6s to 8s. Quality of life changes like this that make the class easier to play well are improvements we can augment the changes we are making to their DPS output.

Finally, we continue to look at Operation difficulty. The team continues to tweak and adjust R4 and other Operations to ensure a fair balance. We realize any class changes affect that and we are trying to account for them as best we can.

As we iterate on these changes I will update this thread.

Thanks again,
-Chris

Hi all!

First of all, I wanted to thank you again for all your feedback. We're reading all of it and we really appreciated the well thought out posts.

I also wanted to share a few changes we've decided upon after doing some additional internal balance and taking your feedback into consideration.

The first note is we are changing the new Madness Sorc tactical from the design in the OP to:
"Demolish hits all nearby targets affected by your Deathmark."

We are also giving Darkness back their DR on Severing Slash. The originally intended design is still something we want to do, but not without moving that DR somewhere else. You can expect future Darkness changes in upcoming patches to address or re-allocate where their DR bonuses come from.

Although we felt the proposed changes to Hatred were fair, we understand some concern regarding force management based off of the feedback we are reading. As such, we're also making a few additional changes to Hatred. We are slightly improving the Two Time Trouble Tactical in that it will have a proc chance of 60% for non-basic melee attacks instead of 50%. While this won't completely make up for the fact that Saber Strike is no longer part of it, this, along with other changes to Force management we are making in 7.1.1 (listed in my original post) should give Hatred a smoother rotation while requiring less Saber Strikes.

Another change we are making to Hatred concerns changes to another passive mod choice: Hungering Force. It now reads:
"The critical hit chance, critical hit damage, and life stolen of your periodic damage effects is increased by 10% Whenever you are healed by a Hatred discipline effect, you generate 2 Force."
It's worth noting that Hungering Force has always generated 2 Force, it's tooltip has however been incorrect since 7.0 launch. However, the life steal component is new.

Finally, a small change for Concealment Operative, increasing the duration of their Tactical Critical passive from 6 seconds to 8 seconds. This will allow players easier uptime.

We continue to read your feedback and work on these balance changes, please don't take this post as final.

Thanks,
-Chris

Hello everyone, 

 

Shabir here and I am a Gameplay Designer on SWTOR. I wanted to start by saying we appreciate everyone for taking the time and effort to give feedback on the changes. I wanted to explain some of the changes we are making in the upcoming patch: 

 

Lightning/Telekinetics:

• Patch Notes:  

• Convection/Clamoring Force - Critical hit damage bonus goes to 12% (down from 15%).

• Thundering Blast/Turbulence - Second arc of damage deals 20% of Turbulence's damage (down from 25%).  

• Storm watch damage decreased by 4%

• Halted Offensive/Power of the Force cast time increased to 3.0 seconds (up from 2.5 seconds). Alacrity still affects cast time. 

• Decrease Halted Offensive’s/Power of the Force’s damage by 15%.

• Convection/Clamoring Force - Thundering Blast/ Turbulence grants Reserved Darkness/Reserved Light, making Dark Heal/Benevolence an instant cast and increasing its healing by 30%. Stacks up to 2 times.

• Thunder and Lightning/Incoming Turbulence ability mod have their damage increased to 10% (up from 5%) and includes Halted Offensive/ Power of the Force.

Developer Feedback:

• Lightning/Telekinetics is exceeding our DPS targets as a Ranged Burst spec role. For this reason, we are making the following changes:

  • Halted Offensive/Power of the Force cast time increased to 3.0 seconds (up from 2.5 seconds).

    • An increase to cast time allows players to not feel as if they have to hard cast this ability especially in situations that require mobility. 

  • Decrease Halted Offensive’s/Power of the Force’s damage by 15%

    • This change was made to bring the ability’s damage into line to its intended damage value and bring the Ranged Burst spec’s damage correctly into line with the DPS targets. 

  • Convection/Clamoring Force - Thundering Blast/Turbulence grants Reserved Darkness/Reserved Light, making Dark Heal/Benevolence an instant cast and increasing its healing by 30%. Stacks up to 2 times.

    • The change to the Convection/Clamoring Force passive is made in addition to the currently existing passive. The new buff is not replacing the old version of Convection/Clamoring Force. In the future, we will make changes like these much clearer. 

  • Thunder and Lightning/Incoming Turbulence ability mod have their damage increased to 10% up from 5% and includes Halted Offensive/Power of the Force.

    • This change is being made to make the burst option more appealing in comparison to the sustain and utility based option. 

 

Madness/ Balance: 

• Patch Notes: 

• Disintegration/Critical Kinesis - Death Field/Force in Balance and Death Brand/Shifted Balance grant Vitiate's Malice/Warden’s Vigor, giving Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw 20% Lifesteal for 12 seconds. 

• Force Horrors/Drain Thoughts - Increase periodic damage to 20% (up from 15%). 

• Lightning Barrage/Telekinetic balance - Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw reduced damage changed to -20% from -25%.

• Tempest of Rho - Correctly applies 50% chance for Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw to trigger periodic effects down from 75%. 

 

• Developer Feedback:

  • The change to the Tempest of Rho Tactical was designed to first bring it in line with its original power level. And in addition to that, changes were made to distribute that DPS back into the class itself. 

  • We also wanted to discourage players from prioritizing Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw over Lightning Strike/ Disturbance when proced in order to get the best DPS output. 

 

Advanced Prototype/Tactics:

• Patch Notes: 

• Magnetic Blast/Tactical Surge damage reduced by 14%. 

• Power Burst/High Yield Explosives mod stacks damage bonus reduced to 4% per stack down from 5% per stack. (total of 16% damage bonus to thermal det down from 20%). 

• Serrated Blades damage reduced to 5% down from 15%. (combined into Prototype Rail/High Friction Bolts)

• Blood Tracker/Triumph damage increase to bleeding targets is reduced to 3% down from 5%. 

• Lingering Heat/Superheated Cells damage reduced by 50%.

 

• Developer Feedback: 

  • Advanced Prototype/Tactics is exceeding our DPS targets as a Melee Burst spec role. For this reason we made the following changes: 

  • Magnetic Blast/Tactical Surge damage reduced by 14%. 

    • Magnetic Blast/Tactical Surge damage was reduced to lower sustain and reduce the amount of DPS this ability contributed to an overall parse. 

    • Magnetic Blast/Tactical Surge is intended to be a filler ability and not make up a majority of the DPS output on a burst melee class. 

  • Power Burst/High Yield Explosives mod stacks damage bonus reduced to 4% per stack down from 5% per stack. (total of 16% damage bonus to thermal det down from 20%). 

    • The change to Power Burst/High Yield Explosives mod was made to bring the mod more in line with the intended DPS increase a player should receive from a burst DPS mod. 

  • Serrated Blades damage reduced to 5% down from 15%. (combined into Prototype Rail/High Friction Bolts)

    • Much like the Magnetic Blast/Tactical Surge changes this change was made to reduce the sustain of the spec.

  • Blood Tracker/Triumph damage increase to bleeding targets is reduced to 3% down from 5%. 

    • The change to Blood Tracker/Triumph was also made to reduce the sustain of the class. 

  • Lingering Heat/Superheated Cells damage reduced by 50%.

    • The change to Lingering Heat/Superheated Cells mod was made to bring the mod further in line with what a sustain mod should give within a burst melee spec.
       

What will happen after 7.1.1: 

 

• We are going to be taking a look at the tank balance within the game as well as a variety of quality of life changes for various classes. 

• We will be taking a look at other mods across classes and balancing them in order to make them more competitive with the go-to options players tend to take. 

I just wanted to close by thanking everyone for their feedback and hope to keep seeing more of it in the future. I hope these notes added some additional transparency on the changes and that the feedback keeps on coming. And as always balance is an ongoing process and we will keep you all updated with class changes coming your way in the future.

Take it easy,
Shabir