3.0 Global Combat Changes livesteam notes

[Neves Eanur]

Keeping my troopers in the loop

Source: Dulfy's post on SWTOR's forums - http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=772889

Might have missed some, doing a re-listen now

Twitch link: http://www.twitch.tv/swtor/b/583547078

Alt link for notes: http://dulfy.net/2014/10/30/swtor-3-...estream-notes/

DPS Changes

• We want to look at global DPS. Some classes have exceeded the baseline values we setup. We took the opportunity to get the classes back to the baseline values we wanted (i.e. DPS numbers were creeping up, we toned it down). Players at level 60 will do similar DPS as current level 55s while the 55s in 3.0 will do less DPS than current 55s.
• We also made some changes so that all the mobs in leveling planets etc will now die faster
• Nightmare DF/DP might be get a bit difficult due to these changes but we will make some adjustments.
• Nightmare DF/DP will rolled into an optional part of the new endgame content and might be another path to gear for level 60s by either keeping ultimate comms or adding gear drops from the new operations into them.

Raid Buffs

• Every advanced class now get raid buffs – either all have it or restricted to a specific discipline
• Debuffs that make mobs take more damage from different attacks, armor debuff etc
• Buffs – everyone get healed more etc
• Also raidwide buffs with their own lockouts such as Bloodthrist, alacrity buff, crit chance buff, etc.
• These will be able to be used in PvP, except for arenas.
• The idea of these buffs is to make you to bring players of every base class.

Training dummies

• Operation Dummies on your ship now get a module that allow you to apply all the raid debuffs to it
• http://i.imgur.com/XN6dBNf.jpg

DoTs

• DoTs from players can no longer be cleansed. You can still purge them off.
• Cleanses are what healers get to cast on other people. Purges are what people uses on themselves (agent – evasion, assassins – force shroud, sorcs –force barrier)
• The change was made to ensure DoT classes are still viable in PvP
• DoTs from mobs can still be cleared
• Most of the crowd control effects can now be cleansed – adds more team play to PvP.
• Can you force cleanse a tech stun etc? (Don’t think so but don’t quote me on that, we might be getting rid of the concept of types).
• Cooldown of cleansed increased (12s CD)
• If the increased cooldown causes difficulty in content, we will change the content.

Interrupts

• Increased cooldown on interrupts – melee increased to 12s and ranged increased to 18s. Make you pick what to interrupt.

Channeled Abilities

• Channels – abilities that start to happen as soon as you press the button.
• Channels are no longer going to be affected by pushback (it will no longer end sooner or cause you to miss ticks).
• Resource cost of channels now changed so there is a cost per tick instead of a huge upfront cost (mostly a QoL change).

Accuracy changes

• A bunch of passives removed from the skill trees when we changed to the discipline system. We got rid of everyone’s accuracy skills via this change.
• We turned up the accuracy you get from your accuracy rating but you also need to gear up accuracy.
• Tanks in tank stance get a bunch of free accuracy (10% accuracy at the expense of some damage loss).
• Taunt now are able to miss if you don’t have high accuracy – this is mostly a PvP change as we want taunts able to miss so there is not a huge damage reduction.

Alacrity changes

• Alacrity has always been the red haired stepchild of the stats.
• Alacrity will now does the following
• Speed up ability activation, GCD, resource generation
• Speed up dot ticks, duration of channel
• Reduce internal cooldowns on stuff like procs.
• If you have 20% alacrity, you should be hitting all of your buttons 20% faster

Crit changes

• No changes to crit, we might have to make changes sometimes to make it better.

Buff/debuff changes

• Images: http://imgur.com/a/ev79E
• Effect procs - Abilities that benefits from procs are now highlighted on your hotbar when the proc is active.
• Player debuffs and player buffs bars are now separated – this is just for the player frame at the moment and not for focus or raid frames.
• You can now also control how the buffs/debuffs expand and how many are present per row
• Highlight effects – any effects you apply yourself (i.e. buffs, debuffs) can now be highlighted. You could filter it so the highlight could be any duration, 1 min or below, 5 mins or below, 1 hr or below.
• Sorting options – personal effects can now be sorted to the front. Effects can also be sorted by apply time, total duration, by time remaining.
• There are some improvements to the raid frames that may not make it to 3.0. The lockouts on the raid buffs could clutter the raid frames and we are looking into it.
• Not something that is guaranteed – we are looking to sort debuffs by those that can be cleansed first.

Bolster

• Bolster will now take account of player’s augments in 3.0. Augments are no longer free stats.
• Bolster will give you augment stats but not the best augments obviously.
• Aiming for 20-25% gear difference between newbie and most geared PvPers. Augments were responsible for 16% of your power in 2.0.

PvP Gear/Expertise

• We are not striping the expertise off current PvP gear like we did in 2.0 for War Hero stuff.
• Expertise cap not changing – 2018 expertise is still the cap.
• Better PvP gear will have more stats, not expertise.
• 3.0 will bring two new PvP sets – warzone and ranked warzone comms
• High level PvE gear will not get as much expertise from bolster.

Line of Sight

• Most ranged attacks have 180 LoS, now we are changing it to 270. This change was done mostly for FoV people play it on screen and make it so that it is harder for players to escape your abilities.

Q&A

• Q: Are healers and tanks expected to respec to DPS to level though content
• A: It shouldn't be an issue, DPS leveling will be slightly easier
• Q: Taunts can now miss on Operation bosses?
• A: Dependent on the operation boss, the system now allow this capacity and some bosses can have buffs that have extra defense to force players to gear up accuracy.
• Q: Bolster – Full level 55 PvP gear and max expertise. If you go a level 60 warzone, will your stats be increased.
• A: Expertise and stats change are separately handled by bolster. If your stats are lower it will be increased.
• Q: What happen to warzone and ranked warzone comms in 3.0?
• A: Get you an answer tomorrow or next week. The answer is likely nothing but we will find out for sure.
• Q: Can you explain lower damage at level 60
• A: If you are at 186 gear at 55, when you login your DPS will come down. If you equip the 198 gear and be level 60, your DPS will be similar to current 55s with 186 gear.
• Q: New color crystals?
• A: There might be one tied to PvP
• Q: Any change to +41 color crystals
• A: No changes to +41 color crystals. No plan to increase it further.
• Q: Will augments and augment kits go up in level?
• A: Yes
• Q: Increasing secondary stats on augments like crit, alacrity to make them desirable compared to main stats?
• A: I havn’t done a full scan of the augments, but I would be surprised if the secondary stats are increased
• Q: Set bonuses same for PvP/PvE?
• Yes but you can’t equip PvP or PvE gear to push up set bonuses. PvP/PvE gear have the same bonuses but they are technically different set.
• Q: Will cleanses work on all CC?
• Anything with duration will work (i.e. no knockbacks)
• Q: How does alacrity affect classes those without resource regen like JK
• You activate abilities faster so you get resources faster
• Q: Accuracy in PvP – will there be much changes?
• A: Not really. You won’t notice much unless you are going up against someone geared for defense.
• Q: Main stat passive removed from discipline tree?
• A: Also gone for the most part

[Neves Eanur]

Discuss! How do you all feel about the changes? Looking over it I can see the huge impact on PvP coming. It's confusing they admit that

"Some classes have exceeded the baseline values we setup."

and decide to tone damage down for all players rather than those classes. Though they haven't released the changes yet to specific classes as far as I'm aware, so there is still hope.

Also the changes to cleanses (or practical removal of) will make DoT specs that much more powerful, and healing more difficult. I wonder if there will be a reflecting nerf to dot damage as it stands to compensate.

The raid buffs/debuffs seems like an interesting concept, looking forward to trying it out.

Increased CD on interrupts, damn... will make caster more powerful.

Increased cone of attack for Line of Sight. Up from 180 degrees to 270 degrees. I personally don't like this. If you aren't skilled enough to keep your target in your sights in front of you, then you shouldn't be able to get the shot off in my opinion. On top of that, if you position yourself properly, you should have no issues keeping targets in front of you. The only exception is when a melee is able to close on you. Obviously this is when you change to a defensive fight to create standoff and finish them. Just seems like dumbing down of ranged mechanics to me. If they wanted to help ranged classes then I would've liked to see more utility to kite a melee/play defensively. /shrug.

So what are everyone else's thoughts so far?

[Aerees]

First off, thanks for posting this Neves. I had read this on dulfy but I'm sure a good bit of our people didnt see it.

Agree with neves on the LoS change. 270 is too dumbed down.

Really diggin the changes to buffs. Like the highlights on toolbars, etc..

Not crazy about interrupt change. I LOVE killing healers. This is gonna make me have to really use my interrupts at the perfect time but its do-able.

Also gonna have to stack some extra accuracy on my assault VG since those taunts can now miss.

As a slight DoT class, gonna like that cleanse change but lethality/dirty fighting is gonna have a blast.

[Dronos Eos]

I'm really happy for the alacrity changes. I saw the video yesterday and when they said yp to 20% faster I got happy. I already use alacrity to out cast/interrupt casters so I'd like to see how much is too much alacrity depending on how the other stats are used per new moves and etc.

[Dany]

Let's find something to dick with ACoy SPECIFICALLY - "Encourage every base class to come for buffs."

Non DoT cleanses? Thanks, nothing like having to make sure everyone self purges, assuming they are even capable of that.

[Leonid]

The global damage nerf, LoS, and Raid Buffs seem to be the biggest problems. Global damage is well obvious, LoS change will just make it easier for the melee twitch kiddies to hit you while sprinting past you in combat... instead of letting them face the drawback of such an annoying tactic, this makes it more viable. And Raid Buffs are great for everyone but ACoy (and our like guilds)... which smells a lot like a personal beef.

[Dany]

Also, we shall see. With their closed beta in progress, I'm sure there will be some morons that will break their NDA and leak info.

[Illumori Victus]

Some of these changes sound good, some sound like shit. We will just have to see and learn as we go along.

[Aerees]

The global damage nerf, LoS, and Raid Buffs seem to be the biggest problems. Global damage is well obvious, LoS change will just make it easier for the melee twitch kiddies to hit you while sprinting past you in combat... instead of letting them face the drawback of such an annoying tactic, this makes it more viable. And Raid Buffs are great for everyone but ACoy (and our like guilds)... which smells a lot like a personal beef.

Don't think it's anything personal. Think they're just trying to make it to where some classes don't get completely unused for raids.

[Vejovis]

Like the expanded 270, (personally i believe cone of fire is stupid, it relies on latency exploitation, Melee hoppers anyone?) don't like the cleanses getting nerfed, but I suppose a free key is a free key, something will undoubtedly replace it. Raid buffs aren't actually going to be so much of a problem as it will provide us an incentive to look outside the guild, however, that is a double edged sword for us. (we can has friends to help, but may have to disclude internally due to "raid buff" issues) Like that they are now accounting for augments this time round. Might be less of a slaughter when it comes to fully geared and freshies. Raid frame changes look intriguing but basically lose all worth for me in the facet that my primary tool for their use is being removed anyways. (cleansing DOTs). Sad and happy that channels are getting some love, nice to be able to cause ticks to miss with pushback, but also been a victim in the same so its an upsetting thing. Alacrity is looking nicer, obviously the number crunchers will have to chew on the data a bit before we see the real values on the change but overall I suspect we will see far more stacked builds relying on speed over heavy hits. Accuracy I like and don't like, but overall as a healer it only means that my tank needs to try a little harder to keep people from turning me into a tombstone. Interrupts getting pushed out is painful, very useful for shutting down big heals, but as a healer I generally used them only on Targets of Opportunity. Overall: not very excited for the new patch, but I am sure it will be game changing on several levels, for the better or worse only time will tell.

[Neves Eanur]

Don't think it's anything personal. Think they're just trying to make it to where some classes don't get completely unused for raids.

Much agreed.

[Duno'van]

I'm not a huge fan of adding another stat to tanks. This also releases around Dec 1st right? There is a lot of "we will see what happens" in the features which means the game will be a mess for several months afterwards.

[Fairbairn]

Here are the specifics:.
http://www.swtor.com/info/news/blog/20141107 (Trooper / Commando changes).

Fancy moving while that full-auto is channelling from the moment you press the button?

"On the whole, the new Tactics discipline can be summarized as having a play style similar to the old Assault Specialist without all of the burning, while the new Plasmatech can be summarized as having a play style similar to the old Tactics with a lot more burning."


Vanguard

All Vanguards are getting two additional passive abilities in the 3.0 update:
Focused Impact: High Impact Bolt ignores 60% of the target's armor and Stockstrike or Shockstrike deals 10% more damage.
Blaster Augs: Increases the effect of your cells while they are active:
Plasma Cell: Increases the damage and critical hit chance of elemental attacks by 3%.
Ion Cell: Increases the damage dealt by Ion Cell by 10%.
High Energy Cell: Further increases all energy and kinetic damage dealt by 2%.
Diversion has been removed from the Vanguard ability kit. Sonic Round will now reduce threat for Vanguards that do not have Ion Cell active, but continue to be an area taunt for Vanguards that do. Ion Cell also now increases accuracy by 10%, but it causes the Vanguard to do 10% less damage as well. Neural Jolt and Sonic Round can now miss, but the accuracy granted by Ion Cell offsets this for tanks, while damage dealers will need to continue to gear for some accuracy to keep all of their abilities from missing.
High Energy Cell now increases energy and kinetic damage instead of elemental and internal damage. This change makes more sense when viewed with the changes to the Tactics discipline.


Shield Specialist

The Shield Specialist discipline will be rather familiar to Vanguard tanks. No drastic changes have been made to Vanguard tanking, but there is a new ability:
Ion Storm: Sprays waves of ionizing energy in a 10-meter cone, depleting 28 energy cells and dealing elemental damage to up to 8 enemy targets over the duration. Affected targets are impaired for 45 seconds, reducing the Force and tech damage they deal by 5%. Shares a cooldown with Pulse Cannon.


Plasmatech

The Plasmatech (formerly Assault Specialist) discipline has undergone significant changes. Assault Plastique has been traded for Fire Pulse, and many other passive skills have followed suit – being traded for elemental skills that were formerly in the Tactics skill tree – with the end result being that the Plasmatech now feels like the pyromaniac’s dream discipline. The Plasmatech also has two new abilities:
Plasmatize: Drenches the target with a blast of plasma, melting them for elemental damage over 30 seconds. Plasmatize also makes the target Susceptible for 45 seconds, increasing the damage the target takes from tech attacks by 5%. When a target affected by Plasmatize dies, Plasmatize will jump to the closest enemy target within 10 meters that is not already affected by your Plasmatize.
Shockstrike: Strikes the target with an overcharged rifle butt, dealing kinetic damage and releasing a powerful discharge that deals elemental damage. Shares a cooldown with Stockstrike.


Tactics

The Tactics discipline still has Gut, but now has Assault Plastique instead of Fire Pulse. The periodic burning damage caused by Assault Plastique has been removed, while the damage of the initial kinetic blast has been increased to compensate for this change. Additionally, this discipline has two new active abilities:
Tactical Surge: Fires a concentrated surge of energy at an enemy target, dealing energy damage. This ability has no cooldown and effectively replaces Ion Pulse for this discipline.
Cell Burst: Unleashes your High Energy Cell's stored energy to decimate the target, dealing energy damage. This damage increases based on your current number of Energy Lodes. While High Energy Cell is active, Energy Lodes build when High Impact Bolt is used, and up to 4 charges may be stored at once.
On the whole, the new Tactics discipline can be summarized as having a play style similar to the old Assault Specialist without all of the burning, while the new Plasmatech can be summarized as having a play style similar to the old Tactics with a lot more burning.



Utilities

The Vanguard has many utility choices that will be familiar to players from the old skill trees, along with quite a few new utility choices. Here are a few of the new choices:
Sonic Rebounder: Sonic Round protects all friendly targets in its area of impact, excluding you, granting Sonic Rebounder, which reflects the next direct, single-target attack back at the attacker.
Charge the Line: Hold the Line increases movement speed by an additional 45% while active.
Re-energizers: When Reserve Powercell is activated, it recharges 10 energy cells over the next 5 seconds and immediately increases threat towards all current enemies by a small amount if Ion Cell is active, or reduces threat towards all current enemies if Ion Cell is not active.

[Aerees]

So is HIB still gonna be a staple of plasmatech or is that now tactics?

[Kjvago]

@Aerees It's going to be Tactics.

Just judging by the discipline calculator, new Tactics is going to play like old Assault, but with Gut instead of burns and a new ability that you fire after every 4th HiB.

Plasmatech will play like old Tactics with the charging up of Pulse Cannon but with 3 dots that you'll have to manage.