Commando Archive
Thread: Dont mean to pick on dablers but really, I think the flame skill mods should be spread out.
In reference to the master CH earlier on. I know it kinda sucks what they did to the pets and that they nerfed some CH favorites but they say thats part of a greater combat change but who knows what they really intended. Al I know is I've seen a lot lesss maulers and rancors starport guarding and yet have been seeing a larger variety of pets.
Tac, while I think moving the DOT may detur dabling as much, I dont think it would be as good as spreading the skills. The DOT sets us apart from other professions and is what gives us the lift above other professions, but I still think our real power lies in that initial hit. Heres why I say that and this also shows where we are no more powerful at master:
Grenadeer: I'll use my grinding friends the torturs. Ok, yes torturs pack asside from meagers. At flame 4< I could walk up behind a tortur, hit flamesingle 2, and if it hit the tortur droped from initial shot 9/10 times amd the rest of em get no chance of detecting I attacked their buddy. If I missed, I have to wait about 5 secs to fire again, even if it was a miss and burn, the second shot usually would be what killed em befor the DOT kicked in and manwhile, their buddies are all over me.
Master Commando: Torturs again fr 6k please. Ok, here we go, I got the ever famous flame cone 2 that dablers point out we got all the time. Let me teel you what happens. I got up to tortur laying next to its 2 buddies overlapping each other. Ok, theres the perfect scenario for flame cone to work. I target one and where with flamesingle2 how I can kill the target with one shot, flamecone acts as a more spread out version and I only do half damage on the initial target, land burn. second target I do no initial damage land burn, 3rd target no initial damage, no burn. Now all I managed to do was take a chunk out of what I otherwise would have killed burnt another and pissed 3 torturs off, even the one that wasnt hit. What I do from there is flame cone again, this time I typically if I hit the same bar as befor drop the original target. Then turn to the unhit one and if I flame cone again, chances are, the one that was just burning is finally going to die from DOT but Im going to have to (or guess could is more accurate)shoot twice at the untouched one with flamecone whereass if I go to flamesingle 2 it instead it wil most likely drop with the one shot and at master I got 4.5 seconds roughly instead of 5 to wait.
In case 1, at grenadeer I used 3 shots of flamesingle to kill 3 torturs without much risk at all to me. In case 2, I used 3 shots if I mixed flame single in there or 4 without it with much risk. I think I would goo with case 1 every time, especially back in the damage mod days where having 3 torturs on me would kill me. Now, I can toy with them with my ubese on.
So you see, grenadeer can do just as good as master, and the real dirty work IMO is done with the initial hit. The DOT is definately a plus, but by the time it kicks in with my 846 max damage FT I've landed 2 shots for a total of 8k damage. When you think about that, that is some high level friggin NPCs dead if they resistant to fire befor the DOT and all flame cone 2 does is spread the DOT to multiple targets. Rarely, not never, have I done initial damage to a secondary target, and the initial damage has always from my experience been half that of flame single 2.
Where DOT is important? Unfortunately that 8k damage wont always be in the same bar, the DOT is always on the red adn makes a saving grace when you are in a jam.
The DOT IMO is like a commando leaving his calling card, novice and master alike. I would think it to be funy to see non-masters shooting this stream of flame and not be able to burn something. It would be like a zippo that I couldnt get to light my cigarette but every time I tryed it would knock the thing out my mouth. lol
The reason I say to spread it out, well actually 2 reasons and the secondary reason from the topic of this post is the best but just secondary cause its not as direct to the topic:
1. We would be in line with other ranged classes to where you would prefer to have at least the 2 speed and accuracy mods skill lines and more than likely the specials line (see pistoleer stopping shot). Thsi would allow you to stil dabble since a lot dabble in 2 of our lines which would get you good at HWS but you would have to ivest quite a bit more in the FT if you want to be as powerful as you are now with just one line.
2. This is the best, then again it could be the worst. Imagine if our HAR shared the already working mods of the FT. Then the HAR would atl east mods would stack since it all would be HW speed and accuracy increase. Also, think of the LP, which currently we get no mods for, now shares that same HW mod. I know disposables are supposed to be slower but that can be adjusted to the weapons individual speed. The part where this could be the worse idea is if it didnt use the FTs accuracy and spped mods and they used the HARs which dont work. Then all our weps would be broke. They would have to let at least LordS get his character over to TC and make sure all is working.
commando is a one trick pony because the other weapons are pointless.
and SOE cant up the damage of the other weapons because then we'd be truly overpowered. no, its easier for them to just nerf the hell out of the flamethrower to a point where using grenades and hpbc's and even the acid rifle will look like a good idea.
and to think that the whole problem with the flamer is the dot. if moved to master you will see an instant, overnight drop of powermonger dabblers. just like ch's.
techno, without the dot the flamer does the same damage as an LLC.
spreading out flame modifiers only hurts those who are upping the commando trees to master, for if you move the accuracy or speed you end up with someone upping flamer with the accuracy and speed penalties of a novice for all purposes.
CH's got fixed, not nerfed. Commandos need to get fixed, not nerfed.
your example with the torturs is a good way of testing..but remember, those are torturs..barely 5 to 7k ham creatures with pathetic resists.
go do that against a nest of enraged rancors, where the 100% heat resist means the initial damage is removed. You will drop those 3+ rancors all at the same time, mighty fast with just the dots. Heck ive had groups walk by me and just gawk at the 8 to 10 rancor corpses strewn across the grass. SOLO'd.
even with the flamespecial 1 dots you will do this.
my grenadeer guildy does this too, all on his own. with flamesingle2 and flamecone1.
put the dot in master and the flamethrower whining STOPS...because if you ever get dropped by a fire dot you will know it was a master commando, just like you know that if a TKA dropped you in a few hits he was a master (UH3).
Well what im talking about is simiar to the CH changes so you cant call one a fix and the other a nerf.
As far as people trying to climb to master, dont you think it is a lot easier to master commando than the other combat professsions? Asside from getting the pre-reqs it is. Why? Cause once you get one line of our profession you can smoke things like enraged rancors like you said.
I know, Im at the top looking down. And as far as things with greater resists, I never said our other weapons dont need fixed, they do and then the dot needs to not work like this. See what im getting at? if our other weapons get fixed, then the resists get counted into effect against our DOT, then the DOT becomes a lot less important compared to our front end damge cause for high resist to fire we no longer count on the DOT, but rather our other weapons and it takes a while for the DOT to catch up to the front loaded damage when it doesnt start ticking till the second shot can hit with a 3.3 speed FT that just did 4k-5k+ damage per shotfor a total of up to 10k (found that out when I got on and watched my combat screen).
And to the other guy about a lot more masters. It is a holo surge. I trained 4 masters during the weekend and all 4 right there said "time to see what the next holo says."
techno, they wont rework the resists on creatures, its way too big a list to go through each one. the alternative is to make the dot subject to the resists, but if they do that then all bleeds and poisons and diseases must be subjected to the same limitation (else its a NERF not a FIX).
doing 4-5k damage every 3 seconds is nice, but then again, what good is it against high heat resist targets? Go use the acid rifle and use cone and single to try and kill ONE rancor. you'll be as powerless as a master marksman (i have a 3.5 spd acid rifle, and when i use it to single and cone, even though the timer delay is high, the damage is not higher than 4k damage.. any other elite proffession can dish out that much in 2 seconds while we do it in twice that time). remember the dot not only 'ticks' the ham bars, but on top of that the wounds also cause damage (id say 2800 damage per tick, counting both ham damageand wound-caused ham damage,on said 100% heat resist rancor is standard).
Then theres the fire and forget issue. How do you pvp now? torch them and run or keep moving. staying close is suicide after a succesfful hit. even full comp, buffed players will tick down to incap withina dozen seconds. same with me and rancors now, I just bunch the brutes, cone them, fire any other weapon aoe (rifle or just supression fire with an energy gun) to hit them for like 1 pnt of damage to get looting rights and voila!.
the same thing any grenadeer can do.
removing the dot to master is really no different from what you're saying as far as the initial damage being good is concerned..because it IS. The difference is, grenadeer4 meeting master should only be able to do that initial damage, while the master should be able to dot on top of that.
Think of it as the difference between marksman box4 and novice elite. they get a new gun and a superior version of the special (bleeds mostly). commando is like that.. at master box we should have the 'improved' version of the flamer attack... the addition of a DOT. Think of it also as like what BH's are getting.. eyeshot moved to master because its too powerful. the DOT is *very* powerful, and like eyeshot, easily avaliable to a single tree dabbler.
IMO spreading out Heavy weapon skills would only work if:
- HAR and FT skills were complied into a single skill, such as heavy assault weapons
- The total speed/accuracy mods totalled up to being higher than they currently are for any specific line of weaponry we have.
This encourages mastering more than just a single line for the weapon, and would at the same time reward those who have gone through the trouble to master it all significantly.
/disagree
I do not believe the entire profession should be centered around 1 weapon. As such the profession should not be rebalanced so that 1 weapon idea is further reinforced.
Ahh but you see Tac, they did rework a lot of creatures resists, at least some of the pets I used to have but I gave up quite a while ago. I used to use GSPs and fight them from time to time and remembered them being very dificult to kil TKA at the level Im at. Ran into some the other day and they went down easy for me. One guy I trained in flame 4 was one of the ever so popular CH/grenadeers and I asked him about the GSPs and he said they lowered their kinetic. I miss my allies from time to time until I saw how easy they fell, and with the 2.5 damage mod gone, I am much tougher than my little pet ever was.
At any rate, I would say that saving the DOT for master would be a good idea for masters, that I agree with you, but that really isnt dabler friendly at all when they also weigh heavily on using that to get past resists. This is just another option that I feel leaves the ability to have that without mastering, but the quality of how well they do it would depend on investing a few more skill points to do it.
It wont be friendly on heat resist targets..unless you have the dot. Which if grenadeers dont have it, it will be the reward for master level.
Im not even talking about the other weapons now because I know for a FACT that SOE wont increase their damage. Because the flamethrower NOW does too much PERCEIVED damage (even though we are outdamaged by other elite classes). grenades wont be upped to the 5k damage I think they should do, with 15m blast radius, heavy weapons will never get the 10k or so damage with very slow refire timers... acid rifle wont get AP2 or an increase in damage for its special, because it has never worked right in the first place and theres nothing to compare it to...except the flamethrower, which is on its own an exceptional weapon which has caused much whining and attracted many insects to buzz around it.
And its because of THAT that SOE will just simply nerf the flamer. Probably cutting the dot damage to half (aka, masters royally screwed, dabblers go back to special1 dot damage levels) or applying heat resist to dots (making it practically useless in pvp and against most high level mobs..and I sure as hell wont be cought dead using an acid rifle, even if fixed mods, because its damage is vastly inferior and accuracy mods in weapon are just pathetic).
its the path of least effort for soe, the path of making the majority (whiners) happier. And it also gives them the perfect excuse to simply 'fix' the broken mods in acid rifle and grenade accuracy so they become 'more effective' and then tell us that this is how it was supposed to be in the first place. You know how it goes.
I think our DOT is the most important thing. I PvP as a master commando and do large group encounters against what would be considered well buffed, well prepared opponnents and the DOT is essential to success. The most important DOT we have is cone2, even though this does less initially and over its time than single2 the fact that it affects more than is where it wins. The idea in large PvP encounters is to apply pressure on the other side to maintain their group, having 2 or 3 people tick off 500 points every few seconds is huge in those encounters, they can't continue to special after since it will interfer with their ability to self heal, their healers will be dedicated to helping keep those few keep alive or giving up on them. While this is happening a commando can look for other as yet unafflicted targets. Throw in a combat medic with AoE mind poison and watch your opponnent rip themselves apart. Whenever I hit some with a DOT and the message reported is soandso dodges/blocks/counters I do the same as if I had hit them full on, tab, `1 and a new special.
What we do solo or in duels is unimportant.
tacwraith wrote:
jaz, ive dueled a guildy of mine that dropped all his commando skill except flame 4 to go up droid engineer (aka he has not other combat skills).
im tka 4.0.0.4, rifleman 4.3.0.4, master commando. standing or running around in a closed space dueling with flamesingle2 only, he hit me as many times as I hit him.
and my ranged defenses are rather high compared to his. my flamer accuracy is high compared to his.
If this was a fight where both master and dabbler had composite (which is practically everyone in pvp) it wouldnt matter who hit first because both will live long enough to attack 3 times with the flamespecial. and one flamespecial is all you need to get the other player, for the dot will kill him if he dont run to water.
i miss now as many times as I missed when i wansn't master as well. in pvp the running around flaming is disastrous for the flamer since we dont have on-the-move mods, so in the end both grenadeer and master end up firing their zippos with the same accuracy levels.
the dot has to go to master. there is no other way other than a complete and systemwide nerf of the flamer as a whole. Which is, im afraid, what SOE will end up doing anyway.
ok your being about as hypocritical as they come,you are wanting to ruin your class for dabblers,but yet you admit to dabbling in two other proffessions in an attemp to min max your character.*points to his ranks in TKA and Rifleman.*convenently place to give you the best melee def.get off your high horse,you want all those melee def. you picked up in your other two skills to be moved to master only?no i dont think so,this game isnt meant for masters only.
Why are we forever wishing to nerf things that we don't understand?