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AdamG wrote:

• A few abilities have had the duration of the secondary effects extended, such as Dragon's Talon.

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Hazaa!

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AdamG wrote:

 

• Bonus damage from Strength will now have a much greater effect on abilities with high base damage, but a reduced effect on abilities with low base damage.

 

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This scares the hell out of me, as the largest chunk of the SM's dps comes from low damage DoT tactics.

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Keedo wrote:
Yeah, I'm a little concerned, as well.  We have pretty low tooltip damage on most of our abilities since they are spirit based.  I'm worried we'll be slapping targets with a wet noodle until we hit them with Dazzling Strike.

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i have a feeling your not to far off base. I have rolled a WL in the mean time becuase i think its going to be awhile before they decide what to do with the SM. Nerfing our AE because other classes are to good at it is not the direction this class needs to go. Also we do have very low delve values on most of our attacks so we will have to see where the streangth change comes in.

the PTS isn't live so i know its still to early to see what is going to happen but i have played enough MMOs in the past to know that hybrid role classes (meaning us offensive/tank) tend to get secoundary nerfs that imped the class untill the devs get around to fixing said class again

i guese we need to prepair for the worst and hope for the best.

Hmmmmmmm while the STR damage I think is a good thing over all adds more burst damage and extending affects is good as well

The biggie for me is the AOE melee abilities, changing to a new standard cAoE… which I hope translates into… you will no longer have the issue of running next to a caster and get the out of range message…

Although it’s hard to believe our limited AoE will get worse…but since it was so weak in the first place it won’t be missed, too much.

I looked at these patch notes and the other career patch notes, and other than the one comment about Dragon's Talon- these are all generic, across the board comments.

As were tend to be a non-factor in AoE and CC, these broad changes don't really affect us in the great pecking order of things. We'll be just as mediocre as before! Well, as long as we stack a bit of STR and chain more single target we can maintain a perfect C- grade as a class.

Hooray?

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Duncan wrote:

Global nerfs crit SM's for 5k.

 

Collateral Damage!

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Could it be that Mythic's AOE is more devastating than that of the sorc and BW?

Adam i have to say thank you i actually was just complaining in another thread about getting some nfo like this and have to say i am sorry to have doubted we would get anything. now on to the real issues.

• Bonus damage from Strength will now have a much greater effect on abilities with high base damage, but a reduced effect on abilities with low base damage.

 sounds amazing depending on what you call low and has the potential to put the sm closer to lore. Can we get some rough numbers you are looking at as to not scare us and so we can give some educated feedback. But for all of those that say we do most of our damage in dot they are right but, the damage from the actual dots is not effective at bring down a target. This kind of change will likely make us work much better when speced for damage and when not it will not really have much of an impact as we are not trying to do damage if we dont have a lot of str. Love the idea.

• A few abilities have had the duration of the secondary effects extended, such as Dragon's Talon.

• A number of AoE abilities have been reduced in effectiveness through reductions in damage, or increase in AP cost/cooldown.

This is a bit scary we do not do not do much damage as things are now, many of our ap costs are already high and our mechanic locks us out of skills to start with so im not sure about this. Our aoe punt need to be put to about 15-20foot range 30 is just too much with current aoe ranges. WoH is good as it is but if it takes a hit on damage ap or gets a cd that would keep us form using it more than our mechanic already dose would prove annoying as many times we have to shift targets and if the new target did not get hit or evaded it we would be unable to debuff them taking away a large part of what gives us our damage. Wings of heaven moral could be cut back a bit in terms of it effective radius if it would not fail to fire 60% of the time. Phoenix's Wing is already short range and weaker in terms of damage as it not spiritual damage so many of us don't use it depending one the cone effect changes it may be good overall. as far as i can remember that covers our aoe spells... well raze is always there too but not class related exactly.

 Wow and thank you for your post i know we all have made your job about 700 times harder with mass demands and such in a way its a good thing because it shows how much it matters to us. But tends to drop the world on you shoulders repeatedly while someone is shooting at your feet. let me apologize for the community as i do so for myself for being part of your daily or more accurately multi-daily pain.

•  A few abilities have had the duration of the secondary effects extended, such as Dragon's Talon.

A few things I would like to know about this. WIll this apply to Eagle's Flight too? And does this mean the additional DoT of Graceful Strike will be more effective? Will the Crashing wave immunity last longer? There are more questions but these are the most important.

That being said there are some very decent improvements to your single target spells on the way, most of it coming from stat factor b/c every last one of those abilities tend to have high base damage. This includes DoT spells b/c remember DoT's base damage is very high just spread out over time.

-Adam

am going to bite my tongue till i test but i can gurente that if the change are as minimal as when you guys fixed more typos that skills for swordmaster i will be canceling my sub.

i am expecting to see at least eagles flight duration increased

crashing wave knock down increase

phatoms blade blade being able to proc more than once within 3 seconds, even reduced to 2 seconds is better

blurring shock duration increase

take out calming winds tactic and add it to prefect def and more prefect def up the vaul tree

add some type of effect to graceful strike and gryphns lash so that enscroll blow is not are only "real opener"

both of our healing tactics need to be  improved, also i have reported that they are nt even healing for thier correct amount like when maxed out in te hoeth tree blessing of heaving should be healing for 44  tick instead it is healing for 33

In fact we do we still have so much useless tactics still? start changing some of those tactis to offer more or just change thgem to skills or something, also our mechnic can do a small tweaking have improve and prefect balance offer some type of small buff that builds up the longer you stay in and still last after you left that state.

example: prefect balance increase block, parry, dodge, disrupt chance  is increase by 1% after being in that state for 3 seconds and continues to raise by 1% damage is increased by 5%<- this will be better than what we have, i dont care if BO get it also, hell make us more offensive and the black orc more defensive, i dont care something needs to be done, you guys have the numbers, who ever is playing thier swordmaster reallllllyyyy needs to play wth them in some well organize 6 man groups and wake the **** UP and see how much lacking we are.

and all you other swordmaster the only reason why you guys are happy with your swordmaster is because of the damage increase, yes that is nice but we are bloody tanks what about take that damage? what about CC?
sure we go into the back line, either knock down a healer or silience them everyone rush to us and then the BW cover our asses with AoE, now that AoE is getting an overall< with the overhaul mythic is doing and such little changes to the swordmaster i will find it really hard press for anyone to to still play a swordmaster in serious rvr for more than a month before leveling up a next alt or quitting.

as a tank we HARDLY HAVE ANY GROUP UTILITY, if you look at all the well organize 6 man grous they wont piuck a swordmaster and when they do it is a highly geared one(and yes highly skill) sure a swordmaster is a great class in the hands of a skill player and that goes the same for all classes but a non skilled hardly geared IB or KoTBS can easly replace that swordmaster.

for the AoE changes are being across the board i can understand that but why is our snare being reduced? is desc getting the same nerfs? destro have a million and one CC, and unstopable or unmovable is not the way to slove it, shoot that buff should only really apply to tanks.

Bloodlessdeath - R40 RR: low Swordmaster
Skull Throne Server
Blessed Empire
www.blessedempire.org

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Duncan wrote:
Post Edited / OT / Please keep your posts in line with the 1.3 discussion

Message Edited by RobertS on 05-14-2009 06:40 PM

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It appears from the patch notes that the aoe damage nerfs aimed at some dangerous aoe classes will also hit and perhaps unfairly effect the swordmaster, whose aoe dmg was not imbalanced or a problem or concern.

Just my gut reaction. Also the strength stuff is pretty ambiguous. No one will know though until they play around.

Something that is concerning me is that the AoE changes are universal for all classes. Not all classes are equal, and the SM's AoE isn't anything to brag about, while BW/Sorc is overpowered atm. Nerf them, but it makes no sense to nerf us as well.

I was so happy when you made Gustind Wind have a 30 ft radius in 1.2. It's my favorite skill in the game. I don't think anyone sees this as overpowered at all, and I'd rather not have it nerfed again.

I am happy that the effect duration of Dragon's Talon is being extended. Could you do the same thing with Eagle's Flight? Having a 5 sec duration means that we need to use it every balance cycle in order to keep the effect up, and that limits how often we can use our other improved balance attacks.

im ok with all  of it. aoe being taken back across the board.. ill take it in a heartbeat even if it means im no longer going to  get everyone in my pbaoe spam. gotta admit, sitting in a pile of people doing wrath of hoeth is fun.

will WoH still be pbaoe or is it changing to the new melee standard CaE?

Bonus damage from Strength will now have a much greater effect on abilities with high base damage, but a reduced effect on abilities with low base damage

Dots: 

EA = 300 (for str contrib DoTs get it spread over the duration so you take their listed number first)

PE = 540

DI = 512 (K to ED)

CoT = 252

Khaine assuming specced to ED

WoDS, GL, BS, PW =143

ED = 161 per hit (belive it currently gets full str to each hit so yeah wowza)

SS, QI =107

Vaul Assuming specced to CW

GS =71+80? (dunno if they count together I'd assume so, so 151)

EF, CA =143

DT =125 x 2 so 250

IB, RF = 179

CW =250 

Hoeth assuming specced to WW 

WoH, GW =143

DS = 250 

WW =125 x 2 so 250

EB =107

 Looking over the changes to careers that got adjustments it looks like some of those numbers may change in addition to the you have a flat % increase from str that makes big numbers better

One of my main concerns is with the radius decrease on some core tank abilities, like the ae root.  Before the change few cycles back to fix the radius on abilties Aethyric Grasp was very frustrating to use.  I just hope we don't return to that state.

Another concern I have are the changes to WoH.  Right now the damage on the ability is already low because it doesn't receive contribution from weapon DPS and damage is elemental type so it doesn't debuff for itself.  I can see the need to normalize the gains from stats on AE abilities but with the above limitations the drop seems to extreme.

I could care less about the aoe garbage.  SM is not an AOE class, it doesn't effect us really, it mostly pertains to ranged classes who have far more damage to lose than us.

I care somewhat about how much damage I'm going to dish out.  I care a TON about how much damage OTHER people are going to be dishing out.  As an SM, I felt our class was decent.  Not top of the heap, not terrible either.  Just average.  However, with a lack of strong AOE cc (a knockback is *not* strong aoe cc) and so many skills dependant on a 2h weapon should we desire to do significant burst damage, I see no reason to play a tank, or even a healer, if dps classes become so ridiculous that they simply run around 2 shotting everyone and the fights devolve into 10 second skirmishes where half of one side dies but wipes out the other side completely.

The danger I see is two fold.  On the one hand, it is possible for a tank to get very high strength.  A tank should not be able to put out the damage of a melee dps class as they have somewhat more inherent survivability than a melee dps class due to better armor and defensive tactics, and some tanks like the KOTBS have very good AOE crowd control abilities on top of that.  If a WH and a Swordmaster had comparable single target damage, who would want to group with a witch hunter who is vastly more squishy and difficult to keep alive?

On the other hand, you shouldn't have melee dps classes invalidating all other classes because their single target damage is king above all.  Some melee dps classes have many, many ways to bypass or ignore armor completely (such as agonizing wound + feinted positioning), and this invalidates tanks bonuses completely as our only real bonus to survivability is that armor.  The higher you push the dps, the more lethal a class becomes as it becomes that much more difficult to heal through the damage, prevent it, or negate it.  Changing strength to a percentage contributor vs. a flat contributor means that the more extreme your strength becomes, the more extreme your damage *multiplier* becomes, and when multiplied again by crit damage bonus tactics, high tooltip base damage, and high weapon dps, you're creating a situation where the extremes become exponentially more extreme.  If you continue on in this manner, healing becomes worthless because the healing target dies before any healing can be done.  Tanking becomes worthless because there are many ways a melee dps can either partially or completely ignore a shield and armor.

Right now I feel the game is fairly balanced.  I don't like the direction it's going by strongly encouraging people to stack pure damage and forgo all survivability since in the face of 2-3k damage *melee* abilities, what's the point of bothering with it?  Just stun someone for 3 seconds, kill them before they can move, and move on to the next target.  That's not much of a game though, and not something I'd be interested in playing.

The devil is in the details though, so we won't know for sure who's damage got truly beefed and who's got nerfed, and most importantly, how *much* they got beefed or nerfed until we have the actual % increase from strength and how it relates to the tooltips of our class, and others.

So, I'm not an only child.. I have a younger sister who, when we were younger, always complained and whined when ever my parents said that I could stay up later to watch a particular show I wanted to see while she was forced to go to bed.

So my parents came up with this awesome tactic of telling me that I was not allowed to stay up later to watch whatever show I wanted and needed to go to bed at my 'bed time'.  After my sister got to bed, my mom would always come in and get me to quitely sneak downstairs to the TV.

For those of you that are only children and always got what you wanted you have no concept of why this is important.. but everyone else should know that parents need to look like they are treating their kids equally, just because they take something away from all of their kids, doesn't mean it is being taken away equally!!

Let's just wait and see. 

There seem to be many concerns about aoe range I dont care as much for that because Im wondering if i loose 10Ft on a ability will this make up for it ?

Let me elaborate my 30 Ft ability now has 20Ft consider this scenario unfold in a combat situation I  was able to hit lets say 4 targets in a 30 Ft AOE now I can only lash out at 2 targets with 20Ft. I'd hit 4 targets for roughly 400 Dmg each for a total of 1600.. Now im only getting around 2 tagets can I see base dmg of the ability bump my dmg up would make sence so that for maby 2 targets hit for the loss of 10 Ft I could get maby 600 each for maby a total of 1200.. . Because THE problem ofcourse is also ways of erning renown many classes have it we do not when i see a BW in SC erning it I feel Like a old man, take some AOE range away put me in a wheel chair why dont you.

A few abilities have had the duration of the secondary effects extended, such as Dragon's Talon.

This can come in a sweet wraping Maby I could Dance between 2 perfect balance abilities to maxamize efficiency as it is I am not the dancing killing machine lore speaks of I make one loop and continue the same ability again because the secondary ability has expired no point in loosing out dps in a attempt to reduce someones dmg by (20% example) to drag on a fight longer so that someone has the opurtunity to butt in and uneven the odds aginst me.

Hmmm what ?

So you nerf our AOE base dmg "Bonus damage from Strength will now have a much greater effect on abilities with high base damage"

But now are AOE's will have low dmg =" but a reduced effect on abilities with low base damage."

=Interesting very Interesting Hmm you know what might as well make usuing AOE challenging yeah? 

go on put some icing on the cake            " increase in AP cost/cooldown. " ill take it laying down just wach.