Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Is BE impact ever considered when CH's are nerfed?
Here's my reply to Thunderheart. I thought it was worth reposting here. Those who are BE/CH's will probably find it most relevant:
Thunderheart,
I see the point, but consider the dedicated CH's who have not reached a high level yet who you are nuking back to the stone age, as well as the BE's who's markets you are ulitmately impacting. Take my main character for example.
- CH 1/1/1/1
- BE 2/2/4/1
- Pistol Specialist
As a BE/CH, one of the preferrable combos for a BE character, I can't afford to sink a lot of points into weapon skills. I spend my life in the field and my lone creature and my meager pistol skills are my only protection. By making the proposed changes you've nearly cut my level of creature protection in half and are telling me that I'll be subject to aggro more often (...as if DNA sampling aggro wasn't bad enough). You're telling me that I won't see the same level of protection again until I hit CH 3/2/2/2. That's almost 300k xp away! And I'm going to take more punishment personally even after I make up all that ground? Sure, the tappered progression looks pretty, but did anyone bother to do the math?
Where's the fun in that?
I've historically been supportive of the development team in my posts, but I'm not real thrilled with this new revelation. When do the CH changes end? When they are completely marginalized as a profession? How does this make my other profession, Bio-Engineer, more viable? If CH's are dropping like flies the upper end of the BE's clone market will be severly diminished. We might as well stick with sampling yard trash in the n00b areas around town because Very High level DNA is now overkill for most of what people will be buying.
IMHO, this needs to be re-examined. Every time there is a hue and cry about how overpowered CH's are it's not just CH's, but CH's and BE's who reap the nerf. The BE impact is never addressed (...at least not publicly). Players who happen to be both you're doubly borked.
Respectfully, if these changes go through, there will be disgruntled and alienated players who have been pursuing one or both professions in good faith. How do you plan to address their frustrations? Sure, the Terms of Service declare that there are no guarantees regarding content changes, but this is the second major hit these professions will have taken (not to mention the fact that BE's have been broken since day one). How can these players have any kind of confidence level that the nerfs won't keep coming? Why should they continue to be loyal to steadily weakening professions when they could be maxing out their combat skills and hunting holocrons?
Dismayed and dissappointed,
Haggis
Does anyone see anything good coming out of these changes for anyone other then MCH's? I'm trying to find the silver lining in all this, but so far it has eluded me. My positive attitude is really being challenged on this one.
Haggis
so no more selling kahmurras and such. droids are more usefull then pets so no one will want pets.
so in a way we got screwed
Not just us, but how about all of the folks running around with lvl 15 pets? After the nerf they won't be able to call them anymore. Maybe we can convince the devs to change the minimum level around for non-CH's every few months so we can sell more pets.
Haggis
On the current cloning system yes this is gonna totally annihilate the non-ch market since we have very few CL10 and lower critters to work with, under the new system it's not a problem but we've not even seen a whiff of that when the designer assured us it'd be in the next monthly patch. Well if it is you're not gonna see it being tested very much now as we approach the 25th with a supposed November 1st - 15th window for the publish.
As for how dabblers are being kicked in the nads I say thats a good thing indeed as I can agree that CHs were only overpowered cause they didn't need the full tree and could get away woith 4/4/0/0 and still control the some of the most powerful creatures in the galaxy. Also there is another concern that babies and now going to be become alot more common.. again under the current cloning system we're gonna lose out big time... under the new one we'd be laughing still as we'd top anything found in the wild bar none.
Something that WILL work in our favour is the new abilities to order a pet to do special attacks, this brings us much closer to a more indepth pet combat system (don't say poke-mon 
) which would mean customers will have a per for all occasions and sometimes ask for ones with ranged attacks or a certain ability. That will naturally mean customers buying with more variety rather than simply wanting a high ham and damage critter.
However in the case of mounts and the CL10 cap we're also laughing, cause our weak CL10 Kaadu and carrionis the ONLY mount which a non-ch will now be able to use since the wild versions are too high a rating.
So yes, slapped with one hand and stroked with the other it seems.
Oh and as for CH/BEs, i think you need to remember that this nerf was aimed at dabblers to give dedicated CHs a real benefit. Indeed if you have one of the most powerful combat classes then you should expect to need to commit alot to it in order to reap the full benefits. Mind you even with master CH and BE you still have at least 52 skill points to work with which is actually a very significant amount.
Once the cloning changes go in, we may have it even better than that. We were told certain creature skins would have minumum cl to preserve theuniqueness which I assume means things like rancors. It would not surprise me, however, if we could put cl 10 stats in say a dewback skin at the very least.
I guess it all boils down to what you consider good as far as combat effectiveness goes: using only pets, or pets and yourself. I'm all for a bit of overkill, and my profession choices are really making things difficult. I'm feeling the squeeze right now, as I'm 3 boxes from master bio-e, one tree from master pistoleer, and 2 boxes from empathy 4. I kinda wish the devs would stop being so evasive as to whether it takes full CH mastery or simply the entire empathy tree to train mounts; I've spent the last 4 days working on empathy in hopes that I'll be able to create and "mountify" non-CH mounts. :-/ Guess we'll know in a week or two.
Well i'm not impressed at all. As a master medic master BE master CH I have no points left ( 4? ) for any combat skills at all. I wield my CDEF pistol with embarassment and if caught without my pets outI fall in seconds to chubas and gnorts.
Iama support character for my others, I heal them and my pets fight for me and provide me witha useful combat role in a hunting group.
Now I am told the only thing I can give towards a group ( my creature taking the hits for them ) is taken away. I can only have one pet out so even the pathetic attack damage done by my pets is reduced. So now I am left with a pet that won't stop a mob or do any real damage to it and the fact that my weak non combat character is gonna get killed every fight for healing my pets ormaking them attack.
Where am I going to fit in to groups now?
I've never been able to do anything alone just because I have MCH...but I see commando's and BH's blowing up high end mobs daily.
Yes sort the dabblers out....but i'm a master...and i've been nerfed because i chose to have pets as my weapons and not a rocket launcher.
and with those 37 points you can get to 4/1/0/3 ? you have ANY clue what headshot 3 with a decent laser rifle can do? or mind shot 2? not sure about the other classes
but i have to say: i REALY feel sorry for those master commandos and BH that they wount be able to get the best tank pet in game for nearly nothing anymore NOT :/
thanks to those people, the ch profession got put down to nothing worthy without at least basic medic and medium combat skills....
52 skill points is a considerable amount until you consider the fact that unless you just want to stand idly by and watch as your pets attack, you'll have to invest another 15 into one of the starting combat professions...That drops you to 37 right there. Then, you have to spend another 14 at least (say you're going for pistoleer) to get the pistol tree (or rifle, or carbine, or unarmed, etc). That's cut you down to 23. 6 more for novice pistoleer drops you to 17, which is enough to take one entire pistoleer tree (leaving 3 skill points to spare).
That is actually a very good combination, being able to take a whole branch from another elite profession on top of two masteries (one of which allows you to solo CL100+ critters) is fantastic. Professions like the Bounty Hunter are only left with around 33 points after they master their profession and even they can't solo above CL40 critters on the whole.
It reminds me of that quote from the Matrix Reloaded... what do all men with power want... more power.