[2022] Class Balance Changes Feedback

• How does the adjusted threat and damage output of tank classes feel?
• Darkness Assassin and Annihilation Marauder’s rotations have been smoothed out, does this feel better or worse than 7.0?
• The Ward of the Continuum tactical has been redesigned to synergize better with Darkness Assassin mod choices. Have you tried it? What do you think?
• What are your impressions of the redesigned Annihilation mod choices?
• How do you feel about the overall state of tanks in PVE?
• How do you feel about the overall state of tanks in PVP?
• What do you feel tanks are missing in PVP or PVE?
• What are things you would like to see in the future for tanks?
• What are your impressions on the itemizations around tanks?
• Medals and Achievements for PVP
• Would you like to see additional achievements added on a bi-seasonal or seasonal basis?
• Do achievements motivate you to play more PVP?
• Do you feel medals should be easier or harder to achieve?
• What actions in PVP would you like to see represented in medals?
   

Balance Changes Coming to Game Update 7.2

Hey everyone, Shabir here with another round of balance changes. On this pass, we took a look at Tanks across all 3 disciplines and made adjustments to bring up their Threat generation as well as  damage in line with our targets for tanks. There are also adjustments made to Marauder/Sentinel and Mercenary/Commando. We look forward to seeing your feedback on these balance changes and will post updates on any changes that may occur in this thread. Be sure to check out these changes on the PTS and leave feedback here. Thanks and take it easy. 

General

• Threat generation has been increased for all tank combat styles.

 

Assassin/Shadow

Darkness/Kinetic Combat

• Depredating Volts/Cascading Debris damage has been increased by 5%

• Mounting Darkness/Pulsating Force now increases Discharge/Force Breach and Wither's/Slow Time’s damage by 30%, up from 20%. 

• Energize/Particle Acceleration now additionally reduces the Force cost of Shock/Project by 15 while in effect. 

• Assassinate/Spinning Strike now has a 100% chance to trigger Energize/Particle Acceleration.

• Spike's/Spinning Kick’s stun duration is increased by 1 second. 

• Spike/Spinning Kick now applies 10% damage reduction to the user whenever it deals damage for 6 seconds.

• The Dark Forces/Light Forces ability mod now heals for 2% of max health whenever damage is dealt to a taunted target, up from 1%. 

• Increased the damage reduction given by the Dark Charge/Combat Technique passive ability from 2% to 5%. (15)

• Severing Slash/Cleaving Cut has been redesigned for Darkness/Kinetic Combat. It now does the following:

  • Strikes targets in a cone, dealing weapon damage, immobilizing targets for 2 seconds, then slowing them for an additional 6 seconds once the immobilize effect wears off. (68)

• The Ward of the Continuum tactical has been redesigned. It now does the following:

  • Dark Ward/Kinetic Ward now has 10 charges and Dark Bulwark/Kinetic Bulwark can no longer restore charges. Consuming a charge of Dark Ward/Kinetic Ward increases defense chance by 1%. This effect stacks up to 10 times and lasts for 20 seconds or until Dark Ward/Kinetic Ward is reactivated. (43)

• Fixed an issue where Reckless Defense/Potent Defense was incorrectly adding multiple stacks with Depredating Volts/Cascading Debris.

• Gloom Ward now does 50% more damage upon Dark Ward/Kinetic Ward breaking from damage.

• Increased the duration of Reckless Defense/Potent Defense from 6 seconds to 10 seconds. 

 

Juggernaut/Guardian

• The Warmonger/Battlefield Command utility has been redesigned. It now additionally enables Vicious Throw/Dispatch or Hew/Whirling Blade after using Force Charge.

• War Master utility has been redesigned per discipline, with Immortal replacing War Master with a new utility called Field Commander/Front Line Veteran.

Vengeance/Vigilance 

• War Master's has been redesigned to add movement-impairing and push and pull effects to the immunity granted by Unstoppable. It now grants 20% damage reduction while Unstoppable is active. War Master no longer grants Vicious Throw/Dispatch from Force Charge/Force Leap.

• Brawn has been replaced by Deafening Defense/Commanding Awe, which increases damage reduction at all times and by an additional 15% while Endure Pain/Enure is active.

  • Deafening Defense/Commanding Awe was previously a passive gained at level 1, although hidden from the tree. This is now part of the ability tree at level 51.

Rage/ Focus

• War Master's has been redesigned to add movement-impairing and push and pull effects to the immunity granted by Unstoppable. It now grants 20% damage reduction while Unstoppable is active. War Master no longer grants Vicious Throw/Dispatch from Force Charge/Force Leap.

Immortal/ Defense

• War Master has been replaced by Field Commander/Front Line Veteran. It reads:

  • Force Charge/Force Leap finishes the cooldown of Disruption/Force Kick and grants Unstoppable, granting immunity to interrupts, stuns, knockdowns, incapacitating and movement-impairing effects, and effects that push or pull you around for 4 seconds.

• Conquering Defense/Abating Defense - Increases shield chance by 4% and reduces the cooldown of Saber Ward by 30 seconds. Crushing Blow's/Guardian Slash’s damage is increased by 12%. 

• Lash Out/Lunge - Retaliation/Riposte consumes 1 less rage, has its damage increase by 12%, and no longer causes a global cooldown. In addition, melee and ranged defense is increased by 3%. 

• Crushing Rage/Guardian Focus is being replaced with Crushing Grip/Stasis Mastery. 

• Crushing Grip/Stasis Mastery - Dealing damage with Crushing Blow reduces the cooldown of Force Choke/Force Stasis by 2 seconds and generates one additional Rage/Focus. 

• Aegis Shield/Warding Shield is replacing Targeting Assault mod. 

• Aegis Shield/Warding Shield - Dealing damage with Aegis Assault grants a barrier of protection to up to 8 allies within 10 meters for 6 seconds.

 

 

Marauder/Sentinel

Annihilation/Watchmen

• Deadly Saber’s/Overload Saber’s damage has been increased by 3.5%. 

• Devious Wounds/Smoldering Burns now lasts for 6 seconds and increases bleed damage by 5%, up from 3%. 

• Juyo Mastery now additionally increases bleed damage by 1% per stack of Juyo Form.

• Pulverize/Mind Sear now resets the cooldown of Dual Saber Throw/Twin Saber Throw and has a 30% chance to trigger, up from 20%. 

• Swift Demise/Acceleration Victory no longer grants stacks of Swift Demise from Annihilate/Merciless Slash. Instead, it increases Vicious Throw/Dispatch damage by 10%. The rest of its effect is unchanged. 

• Damage done by the Blood Fury/Burning Zen ability mod has been increased by 6%. 

• The Bleeding Center/Burning Center ability mod now generates 4 rage/Focus whenever Berserk/Zen is activated. 

• Force Fracture damage has been increased by 10%. 

• The Juyo Rend/Juyo Melt ability mod has been redesigned. It no longer increases the damage of Force Rend per stack of Juyo Form. Instead, it causes Force Rend to immediately grant 6 stacks of Juyo Form and build 10 Fury/Centering stacks. 

• The Draining Center/Melting Center ability mod has been redesigned. It now reads: 

  • “Force Rend deals twice its initial damage whenever it consumes a stack of Berserk and heals you for 50% of the damage that it deals.”

Fury/Concentration

• Reduced the critical strike damage bonus given by Vehemence/Fervor from 10% to 5%.

• Decreased the Fury/Centering stack bonus given by Furious Discovery/Zealous Revelation from 6 to 4. 

• The Furious Rumination/Focused Meditation ability mod has been redesigned. It no longer grants a guaranteed critical hit after activating Berserk. Instead, this has been moved to the Gravity Fissure passive. 

• Gravity Manipulation has been redesigned and renamed Gravity Fissure. It now reads: (60)

  • “Obliterate/Zealous Leap and Force Crush/Exhaustion each consume 1 less rage. Activating Berserk/Zen causes your next direct damage attack to critically hit.”

Carnage/Combat

• Shard of Mortis critical hit chance bonus per stack has been reduced from 25% to 15%.

 

Powertech/Vanguard 

Shield Tech/Shield Specialist

• Payday/ Disruptor Rifle - Payday/Disruptor Rifle benefits from Heat Screen’s cooldown reduction in addition to Heat Blast. 

• Thermal Screen - Thermal Screen tactical correctly applies its effects to Payday/Disruptor Rifle.

• Payday’s/Disruptor Rifles damage is increased by 12%. 

• Ion Overload - Shock has its duration increased to 9 seconds. 

• Flame Engine/Pulse Engine - Firestorms/Ion Storms damage increased by 50% up from 40% when Flame Engine/Pulse Engine is triggered and proc chance is increased to 75% up from 50%. 

• Shield Vents/Shield Cycler - Ion Gas Cylinders damage is increased to 10% up from 5%. 

 

Mercenary/Commando

• Rocket Out/Propulsion Round is taking Hydraulic Overrides'/Hold the Line’s place on the ability tree as a level 68 mod choice.
• Rocket Out/Propulsion Round includes the utility Smoke Screen.
  • Smoke Screen: Rocket Out/Propulsion Round generates a Smoke Screen when used keeping you from being pulled or lept to and making you immune to interrupts and ability pushback for 4 seconds. In addition, taking melee or tech damage within 4 seconds of previously using Rocket Out/Propulsion Round, refreshes its cooldown. These effects cannot occur more then once every 40 seconds.
• Jet Escape/Tenacious Defense no longer reduces the cooldown of Rocket Out/Propulsion Round but instead increases the duration of Hydraulic Overrides/Hold the Line by 4 seconds.
• Rocket Out's/Propulsion Round’s cooldown reduction from Jet Escape/Tenacious Defense is now the default cooldown for Rocket Out/Propulsion Round.

Innovative Ordnance/Assault Specialist

• Innovative Particle Accelerator/Ionic Accelerator - Rate limit reduced from 7.5 to 7.0 seconds.

Hello all,

I wanted to respond to some of the things brought up in this thread. First of all, I want to thank everyone for their feedback on these changes.

There has been a lot of discussion around Marauder changes, particularly Annihilation. I would like to give a little reasoning as to why these changes are being made, so as we continue feedback y'all can have the context of what the goal here is.

Annihilation / Watchmen (from here out I'll just call them Annihilation) were consistently outperforming our DPS targets slightly and we noticed their level 23 mod choices were very unbalanced. While we enjoyed the gameplay this offered, unfortunately it made their optimal DPS require a strict rotation that was only usable if they selected the Draining Center mod choice. The redesign for these choices was to make all mods at level 23 competitive with one another. On PTS, any choice Annihilation makes at level 23 is a now a good one. While some are slightly better at others in some circumstances, there is no "wrong" choice.

We understand this removes a particular rotation people enjoyed in 7.0, but we believe it opens the door for more playstyle choices as multiple mod choice paths offer competitive DPS. We are exploring ways to give a semblance of this back without making it the best-in-slot.

To be perfectly clear, any choice on Force Rend that makes it into a burst damage ability should not be the optimal DPS choice, so it cannot outperform the rest in all cases, but can be close. Annihilation has never been intended to be a burst class, and while we seek it give some burst options with mod choices, we do not want these choices to be out-and-out above the rest.

I hope that clears up the reasoning behind why we've done some things we've done. As we continue to gather feedback, please keep these in mind. But I would like to request that you try some of the other Annihilation mods and see how you feel about the rotation and damage output.

23 minutes ago, Sikssix said:

What was unbalanced about it?  The current (live) choices are some what valid, use one for focus target, another for AOE specific applications.  Could you show us what you mean by the DPS targets?  What are you referring to?

I would have to disagree.  While there is still a certain amount I still don't understand, taking away the ability to build stacks of center (watchman reference) will require us to rely on RNG for other abilities to build centering and focus regen more heavily than it already does.  While I was able to obtain 34K DPS on both live and PTS, the issue with the PTS was I had to wait 1-3 GCDs on Force Melt just to get Zen, so using that with the X2 Force Melt damage (instead of X4) will hurt more than expected.

 

It isn't quite the rotation, while it does the job nicely, it's more so on stability in operations.  

 

The first sentence I do agree with you, however, there are a lot of fights (looking at R4) that require burst.  

 

Some of it is cleared up.  There are better ways to clean this up, as I stated plenty of times, I noticed Force Fracture has been given a damage boost, however, when it comes to replacing Cauterize, is a silly thing.  It would be wise to have the option to replace Slash instead of Cauterize, additionally, let the tactical Spiteful Saber still work with the Cauterize burn while using Force Fracture, Leaving the Focus cost the same instead of taking over Slash completely, so that way we have to re-evaluate our rotation effectively while still dealing the ideal DPS.  That or get a tactical that works for Force Fracture.

 

Most importantly.  I believe there are other specs that are in cry for help so the DPS between every single subclass can actually compete (if we are going bring out measuring sticks here).  I will continue testing when I can and report back.

Hi, thanks for your reply. I will try to answer a few of these as best as I can.

When picking Draining Center, their DPS was too high. The other choices did not bring their DPS nearly to what it was with Draining Center. PTS evens this out a bit more.

And you can still build Centering / Fury stacks with Force Melt / Rend, when choosing the Juyo Melt / Rend mod choice instead. The functionality is simply now spread across multiple mod choices to not make one a clear winner in all situations. Draining Center was giving great burst in addition to adding stacks of Centering. Rotationally, if you choose Juyo Melt on PTS, you can still play the exact same way you could previously (Zen right before Force Melt), you just won't get the 4x damage on Force Melt anymore, but you will build stacks at exactly the same rate.

As far as Force Fracture, this was never intended to wholesale replace Cauterize in operations, it is simply a more burst option if you like it. It has been improved to be more competitive, but it is not supposed to be equal to the others in terms of damage output.

Hey everyone, Shabir here back with another update. After looking over data collected from PTS and player feedback on Fury/Concentration, we will be making changes in regards to their DPS performance. We are implementing the following changes:

Fury/Concentration

 

• Gravity Fissure - Berserk/Zen no longer causes your next ability to auto crit. 

• Vehemence/Fervor - Critical Strike damage from all attacks increased back up to 10% from 5%. 

Dev Feedback: I wanted to add a bit of insight on this change as it does not come lightly. Since Fury/Concentration is a hybrid spec, we saw that Fury/Concentration was leaning too far as a burst spec and wanted to bring back into balance as a hybrid spec. This change also gives more flexibility to the player when they can activate Berserk/Zen. This also allows Carnage/Combat to further establish itself as the burst specialization and Annihilation/Watchman to establish itself as the sustain spec.

We appreciate the time taken for giving feedback. We are keeping an eye on this thread and will be making updates when changes occur. Take it easy.