Carbineer Archive

If this has already been elaborated on please cry me a river but I don't really think the "we're screwed!" topic explained the changes well enough, took this from the fencer forum.

3. HAM Changes

The Developers are working on an experimental change to the way HAM is use for specials. They plan to bring it out in stages so each part can be examoined for validity. Just looking at any one part can lead to exaggerated expectations both positive and negative, so until the entire system is revealed it might be hard to see the end result.

Phase One:

Now the HAM cost from executing a Special Attack Move is not directly deducted form your current HAM pools. Incoming damage form an oppoent's attack still is, however. Instead, HAM costs are deducted from the maximum value of the HAM pools. If the cost of a Special Attack Move is greater than your current HAM pool's maximum, then it cannot be performed. This means that you cannot incapacitate yourself through the use of Specials.

Example: You begin with 1000 Health. You execute a special that costs 100 Health which reduces your maximum Health to 900. You are hit with 200 Health damage which reduces your current Health down from 900 to 700, but your Maximum remains at 900. You then execute another 100 Health special and it brings your maximum down to 800, but your current remains at 700. You execute another special (a big one) that costs 300 Health. This brings your maximum Health from 800 down to 500. Since 500 maximum Health is less than the 700 you previously had in current Health, your current Health mustobviously be dropped to the new 500 maximum.

What this accomplishes is the alieviation of both incomming attacks and performing specials to be eating away at your current HAMs in the same manner, and will permit you to avoid making yourself as vulnerable as the way HAMs used to work. ... this is a good thing.

Ok, now for the second part of the equation.Some of you will like this, and some of you will not. At this time I must reinforce the knowledge that none of this is set in stone, and subject to tremendous change as the need arises.

The "damage" (if you can call it that) to your maximum HAM pool size.... is NOT healable via Stimpacks. A Stimpack can still heal damage done to you by an attack, but only up to your current maximum. This is going to require a change in strategies for many of us that used the occasional Stimpack. (And any of you Doctor/Melees out there that were constantly boasting and bragging all over the place about how effective you were in melee combat... guess where that just got you?) In fact, part of this change was to allow us combat professions to be able to be effective without requiring a SWG PhD. Just a wee bit of Medic ability is going to take you a long way, since you won't we worrying about healing Specials costs.

Hold on... before you panic... that's not all. We aren't left this way. The maximum value of you HAM pool can be restored! In fact, it regenerates. Not at the same old creepy crawly rate that your regular healing regeneration provides. The damage from specials is on it's own timer completely independant of the regular regeneration rate. In fact, the damage form each special you perform is on it's own regen timer.

To find the regeneration rate, take the total HAM cost of your special (to that pool) and divide it by 25. This is the regnerate rate "per second." I put "per second" in parenthesis because the "ticks" may not be exactly on the 1second interval... but the total regeneration rate is the same. In short, regardless of how much HAM a special uses, it will be completely restored within 25 seconds of when performed that special.

This is a very significant regeneration rate... and the nice thing is... you didn't require Doctor buffs to have it.

The good: You no longer have to either BE a Doctor or have access to Doctor buffs to be a competant melee profssion. Yes, Doctor buffs will give you a larger HAM pool which helps. But by reducing the negative impact of performing special on your HAM, and the greatly accellerated rate at which it regenerates, we can last much longer in combat before requiring any healing.

The bad: You must now be more observant of the use and timing of specials. You cannot bring yourself down to a bare minimum HAM and pop a Stim to make it all better. When you get a reasonable ways down in maximum HAM, you will want to fall back on regular attacks for a few seconds to allow your maximum to regenerate. You will want to time the use of your big Stims to when you maximum HAM pool is higher rather than lower, and have some small Stims on hand for when your maximum HAM is lower. Not that big of a "bad"... we just have bene presented with a system that relies a bit more on strategy than it did before.

"To find the regeneration rate, take the total HAM cost of your special (to that pool) and divide it by 25. This is the regnerate rate "per second." I put "per second" in parenthesis because the "ticks" may not be exactly on the 1second interval... but the total regeneration rate is the same. In short, regardless of how much HAM a special uses, it will be completely restored within 25 seconds of when performed that special."

First, where are you getting this info?

Second, I hate this. This means your secondary stats are much less important. Quickness doesn't matter because if the rate of regeneration = cost/25. If it costs 100 or 25, it is still going to take 25 seconds to regen. Further, Stamina is almost pointless now since this will only effect true damage regeneration.

I could easily drain all my action in under 25 seconds. Carbineers are going to be doing ALOT of waiting around for regen while classes like pistoleer that can already spam like mad will be even better off. In essence, these changes polarize the HAM system. In the past, we could use a number of methods to keep our HAM full.

Why should some classes be able to spam and others not be able to do so? This seems like a huge nerf to carbineers YET AGAIN.

Further, we are getting a stealth nerf. Range damage mitigation seems to reduce the spread on damage. Wide spread weapons like our Laser Carbine will have its max damage reduced considerably. Weapons with high minimum damage will be the only viable weapons in PvP. Is everyone ready to use a DXR6 or Elite Carbine in PvP?

We are getting a further stealth nerf! Creatures are being rebalanced to remove armor from many. With armor removed, this significantly reduces the amount of damage we do compared to pistoleers. In truth, we are not being nerfed, but pistoleers are getting a huge boost. Ar1 reduces damage by 50% and this is going away.

as for the rest, pistoleers will be eating the ham costs in the same way. It is safe to say that the "maximum" HAM will regenerate faster than you are anticipating.

Everyone who spams specials will be forced to change their ways regardless of the class, even me getting doctor buffs i'll have to use less specials when possible. This simply means that a carbineer can not straight incapacitate themselves anymore, only make themselves extremely vulnerable by spamming specials.

Untrue.

The smaller the HAM cost, the more regeneration matters because the smaller HAM cost is smaller fraction of the overall pool.

Look at it this way...50 action cost special, 1000 pool...can be spammed 20 times.

100 action special, 1000 pool, can be spammed 10 times.

Another way to look at it is this. If you can fireconstantly for 25 seconds and not run out, you will have the ability to fire endlessly since once you get to the 26 second, your first shot will have completely regen. Are carbineers going to be able to do this? no way. Are other classes? yup.

Getting so much conflicting information. First I heard it the way you dsecribe it here, then I heard that the pool drained by ham costs was separate from damage so if you had 1000 action and used a burst shot lost 100 action from your max, but you still would have to take 1000 pts of damage to your action to be incapped.

Now its back to the first way it was described. In which case its idoitic, I liked the separate pool theory, but this way of reducing your max stats basically means that a carbineer cant use any specials, where as medics will still again reign king of this game.

My usual PVP takedown combo is wildshot+charge Shot+cripple Then its either burst or scatter to finish depending on the situation, occasionaly I'm really unlucky and the guy is able to heal after that cripple. so assuming he used no specials (becuse usually they dont have time to fire back at me with that combo) I'll be down around 400 health and ACtion (since carbines drain from both) and he'll be healed at full health, and likely pistoler to whom ham costs is non existent. Unless it heals REALLY fast all carbineers are really screwd. Seriously do the devs want us out of the game? I'm starting to think they do now, like they are afraid of our potential.

This...

Is beyond stupid.

The game is set, the rules are set, people have built their characters around those rules.

Changing the rules completly post-release is a no-no.

Fix and adjust the rules that currently exist to aliviate your problems SOE, do not change the game like this post-release. You have to live with what you decided to realease, like it or not. Adjust the HAM costs to be more ballanced acording ot the damage output of the specials for each class, and make the current system work.

Do not change the game like this, unless you want another huge section of your player base deciding to move on to another game.

This game does not have much value or ability to retain players as it is, and with the coming attractions that are near release, making changes like this will be suicide for your product.

You have made plenty of poor decisions, I was hoping that you would finaly come to your sences and start making some wise decision.

To recover from a special in a fixed time regardless of cost does not make sense. Regen rate should be dependent on your supporting stat. This would make expensive high damage specials more effective than low cost specials. I hope it doesn't work like this as it would lessen the importance of buffs and remove penelaties for using armor.

Games like this are always in a state of change, welcome to online games Rencon, no need to be ashamed of being a newbie. This isn't a single player game with a few months of expected life on the shelf and your hard drive. These changes are corrections and adjustments to the current combat system. You still take damage as you did before. Specials still reduce your HAM like before. The adjustment is that HAM cost for specials can no longer be recovered with a stimpack leaving you with only some mind to recover. Using specials make you tired, you get rested and recover with time. You still can't incap yourself by working too hard, but the harder you work the easier to incap you are. The overal idea of combat and its process is unchanged, how you recover from the cost of specials has been adjusted or corrected.

Why are people saying they could incap themselves with specials? I can't. If I try to use a special w/o enough pool it won't let me. When people say that, they mean that they drain their pool, then get hit by a durni and incap.

What is the difference between 100/1000 and 100/100? When you are talking about mobs that can do 100 damage in a hit...nothing really. Both will incap you in 1 hit. This system does not change how easy it is to get yourself incapped as a carbineer. In fact, it will make it easier since you will not be able to heal up fast.

You can spin this anyway you want, but life is going to get even rougher for carbineers. Yes it might get slightly more challenging for other classes. But, for carbineers this is BAD, really BAD.

I just wish SOJ wasn't MIAso he could defend us.

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novamarine wrote:

Second, I hate this. This means your secondary stats are much less important. Quickness doesn't matter because if the rate of regeneration = cost/25. If it costs 100 or 25, it is still going to take 25 seconds to regen. Further, Stamina is almost pointless now since this will only effect true damage regeneration.

An excellent point. There should be some serious inquiry into howstamina, constitutionand willpowerplay into this scheme. If they really don't affect the regen times for special HAM then they will be even less useful than they were before.

Further, we are getting a stealth nerf. Range damage mitigation seems to reduce the spread on damage. Wide spread weapons like our Laser Carbine will have its max damage reduced considerably. Weapons with high minimum damage will be the only viable weapons in PvP. Is everyone ready to use a DXR6 or Elite Carbine in PvP?

Well it's not like rifleman and pistoleers aren't going to suffer as well. Ever checked the damage on a laser rifle or fwg5? If not I can tell you that they have huge damage ranges and will make these guns useless. But this will at least give some merit to using the other guns for something besides damage type.

We are getting a further stealth nerf! Creatures are being rebalanced to remove armor from many. With armor removed, this significantly reduces the amount of damage we do compared to pistoleers. In truth, we are not being nerfed, but pistoleers are getting a huge boost. Ar1 reduces damage by 50% and this is going away.

As an ex-pistoleer I can tell you this much, I never had a problem with not having armor pierce. I always had the right damage type for the job and took advantage of the mob's vulnerabilities. So it's no real buff here. If I was still a pistoleer I would still probably take advantage of the vulnerabilities even if the mob doesn't have armor. So I doubt this will have any significant effect for pistoleers. Infact, if armor pierce worked properly you'd be getting a buff since you'd be doing +25% damage for each level of armor pierce better than the opponent. Sadly armor pierce seems to be bugged to all hell.

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so..

• we cant artificiallyboost our ham with stims whenham gets low


• doctor secondary buffsbecome less desireable


• doctor buffs to primary stats are more desireable (and MUCH more necessary as the carbineer will no longer have any control over his/her own HAM via stimpacks)


• chef buffs become LESS usefull since they seem to primarily buff secondary stats


• melee classes will be able to tank more effectively.


• ranged classes have less crowd control ability (again) as they will be able to use less cc specials (ie knockdown, posture change) regardless of their own healing ability or the healing ability of those in the group.


• our own ham bars effectively become 'timers' when it comes to specials


• medic (heals)skills and the profession in general become useless to ranged professions since rangedprofessions properly played do not take melee damage in pve and most mobs use melee damage.


• melee classes become more dependant on medic/healing skills as they theoretically will be playing a larger roll in group pve (ie the tank)downtime increases as we become dependant on HAM maximums rather than HAM pools.


• more confusion (my HAM bar is at 50%, 20% of that is damage that is not healable by stims as i did it to myself with specials and 30% of it IS healable with stims. heal the 30%, sit down/back off/stand still toregen the 20%) during frantic combat as healers need to assess whether wounded teamates are 'healable' or not (ie if they depleted their ham with specials)

when you boil it all down for the most part, many professions just seem to get rounded down more-essentially they lose their bite. imagine a master doctor standing 3m away from a carbineer who is at 10% ham as a rancor aggros on the carbineer. does the master doc heal him to 100% as a master doc should be able to? hell no, 90% of the carbineers damage is from ham costs, not combat damage; carbineers dont tank. sobecause the carbineer used a few too many specials hes going to die.

how does this affect the carbineer?

• we suffer MORE because despite faster regen rates we are helpless to heal (or have someone else heal) us with a stimpack that which has been our biggest achilles heal and flaw since beta. it doesnt matter if the regen rate is 5 or 25per tic, no carbineer has the time to wait formax HAM to regenduring combatwhile that last mob from the nest is beating on them- in fact with their max HAM solow in such a situation it wont matter if they have a stimpack or not---if i have25/35 health and a diseased luna hits mefor 10 and im at 15/35, i use a stim (a nice 500 pt stim C) it will heal me to 35/35, the luna dies as i autofire, his buddy "Chuck" (another luna) whacks mea couple times and its all over.

Carbineers are actually MORE likely to "kill themselves" due to HAM costs after the proposed TC patch tthan they are now and their 'crutch' options are lessened.

why is SOE doing this? narrowing the usefulness of heals, stims, buffs.. and forcing us to wait for max HAM pools to regen before we engage our next target...

If they wanted us to have more downtime **edit** dont they just tack another 2minutes on to shuttle waits like they stealthed on us shortly after beta?

Actually secondaries are still important, just not the ones that control regen.

The ones that control HAM costs, strength and quickness, become extreme important. It will be critical to drive your HAM costs as low as possible.

It will also require people to rethink specials. It may be desireable to use slower, harder hitting specials since if they are firing slower they are using HAM slower. This may be better than firing several quicker specials only to have to default to regular attacks while HAM regens.

To lessen the shock of the patch, it may be a good idea to stop using medic skills in combat (except for emergencies). The only good thing about this is that I can drop alot of medic skills I have. I am going to keep just novice medic for emergencies and reviving incapped players.