Commando Archive

I have seen a lot of suggestions and this by far sounds the best and easiest to do.

/sign

"I'm not, and don't think i'll ever be a fan of a high elemental damage for one reason, it makes the people who pick up carbines, or rifles weak, because the specials will only have a 10-20 damage spread, but the people who pick up smuggler/pistoleer will be much stronger, due to only needing Ranged/Placed shot, and them having a ton of debuffs, snares, and roots to place at will. Either they'll have to make it so our DPS will be lower than it is now, or nerf it to hell later. My $0.02 "

Half of the commando arsenal would be non-aoe (plasma flamer, LP, proton rifle, particle beam cannon, corellian destroyer, rocket launcher, acid rifle) the other half be aoe (basic flamer, old republic flamer, acid cannon,lightning cannon, lava cannon)

With master commando and rifleman or carbineer commando receives a healthy boost in damage using the specials.Those picking up pistoleer/smuggler get improved areaattack abilities..its part of the commando diversity in templates.

The DPS of each commando weapon will of course have to be tuned so that the elemental damage doesnt make it the uber damage dealer.

Instead elemental damage should grant its '5' rating in damage by CONSISTENTLY AND RELIABLY inflicting damage on a target.

Think of the difference between a 2h sword and a lightsaber. The saber's short range between min/max gives the lightsaber tremendous advantage over swords in PVE and PVP.. but the swords DO deal more damage. This is what the elemental damage in commando weapons is there to achieve: increasing the 'min' damage of our weapons but in a way that OTHER proffessions cannot abuse it by using their high damage multiplier weapons.

Do the math.

If a T21 rifle is 600 min 1100 max thats a spread of 500 damage in between. In comparison a plasma flamer would be something like min 100 max 250 elemental 800 (no fire dot or effect).

T21 hits target..afterthe game checkstargetdefenses vs rifleman accuracy and then checks the damage vs armor rating the damage inflicted is around 600.

Plasma Flamer hits target...100-250 damage is checked target defenses vs commando accuracy (ELEMENTAL DAMAGE NOTSUBJECT TO THIS CHECK)dealing about 80 pnts of damage. Therefore 880 damage (elemental 800+80)is then checked vs target armor,inflicting about 680 damage.

Not a BIG BIG advantage but..... consider therifleman can face super high defenses super high armor opponents andbe in trouble because he will be dealing lower damage than usual unless he switches to a different damage type weapon.... while commando can RELIABLY inflict that 680 damage to most targets.

Smugglers and pistoleers would indeed become a favourite commando2ndproffession for their special abilities...just like they inreturn might pick up a branch or 2 ofcommando to apply their effects in AOE like they do now.

I may, of course, be as thick as a whale omlette but I had in mind that the concept of commando was that our weapons would be our specials.

Why not just crank up the damage output on our weapons, add more and varied state effects, tweak the action cost for firing a HW and then remove the ability to use other proffessions' specials? Surely if it is proposed that commando specials will only work with commando weapons then the inverse can also be achieved easily?

Is this not the most simple solution of all? Have a flamer that does huge damage and a powerful DoT flame state but takes a long time to re-fire. Have a rocket launcher with KD but low damage. (er,what we have now, for instance). Have an armour piercing howitzer with decent damage and an armour break state effect. Instead of having a number of specials on your toolbar you would have your arsenal of useful weaponary.

Anyone wishing to dabble in commando could pick up the weapons they wanted, like the old skill certs.

Of course, my idea is nothing like as well thought out as tacwraith's. Bravo for a clever, positive and ultimately ignored proposition!

---

tacwraith wrote:

"I'm not, and don't think i'll ever be a fan of a high elemental damage for one reason, it makes the people who pick up carbines, or rifles weak, because the specials will only have a 10-20 damage spread, but the people who pick up smuggler/pistoleer will be much stronger, due to only needing Ranged/Placed shot, and them having a ton of debuffs, snares, and roots to place at will. Either they'll have to make it so our DPS will be lower than it is now, or nerf it to hell later. My $0.02 "

Half of the commando arsenal would be non-aoe (plasma flamer, LP, proton rifle, particle beam cannon, corellian destroyer, rocket launcher, acid rifle) the other half be aoe (basic flamer, old republic flamer, acid cannon,lightning cannon, lava cannon)

With master commando and rifleman or carbineer commando receives a healthy boost in damage using the specials. Those picking up pistoleer/smuggler get improved area attack abilities.. its part of the commando diversity in templates.

The DPS of each commando weapon will of course have to be tuned so that the elemental damage doesnt make it the uber damage dealer.

Instead elemental damage should grant its '5' rating in damage by CONSISTENTLY AND RELIABLY inflicting damage on a target.

Think of the difference between a 2h sword and a lightsaber. The saber's short range between min/max gives the lightsaber tremendous advantage over swords in PVE and PVP.. but the swords DO deal more damage. This is what the elemental damage in commando weapons is there to achieve: increasing the 'min' damage of our weapons but in a way that OTHER proffessions cannot abuse it by using their high damage multiplier weapons.

Do the math.

If a T21 rifle is 600 min 1100 max thats a spread of 500 damage in between. In comparison a plasma flamer would be something like min 100 max 250 elemental 800 (no fire dot or effect).

T21 hits target..after the game checks target defenses vs rifleman accuracy and then checks the damage vs armor rating the damage inflicted is around 600.

Plasma Flamer hits target... 100-250 damage is checked target defenses vs commando accuracy (ELEMENTAL DAMAGE NOT SUBJECT TO THIS CHECK) dealing about 80 pnts of damage. Therefore 880 damage (elemental 800+80) is then checked vs target armor, inflicting about 680 damage.

Not a BIG BIG advantage but..... consider the rifleman can face super high defenses super high armor opponents and be in trouble because he will be dealing lower damage than usual unless he switches to a different damage type weapon.... while commando can RELIABLY inflict that 680 damage to most targets.

Smugglers and pistoleers would indeed become a favourite commando 2nd proffession for their special abilities...just like they in return might pick up a branch or 2 of commando to apply their effects in AOE like they do now.

---

What I'm saying is that commando will be a 5 in offence, as will a commando/rifleman, and a commando/pistoleer, and so on. Because although your doing with 680 one special, your sniper shot will do 690, but stopping shot does 670, making it impossible to make a truly high damage commando, but possible to stack your CC, and still do high damage.

Message Edited by tacwraith on 10-14-2005 11:51 PM

Interesting idea. One problem I can think of is the fact that elemental ignores the whole "your accuracy versus their defense" balance that controls where in the weapon's damage range you hit for that exists currently. So basically, to take your example stats on the acid rifle, you've got a weapon with a guaranteed min damage (assuming a hit, of course) of 100 base + 700 elemental -- for a staggering total of 800 damage. That is well beyond the sort of numbers available to any other profession/weapon that I can think of.

It does make some sense for *heavy* weapons to have quite high minimum damage, but if you get near the kind of numbers that would make your proposed system work for us, I think the timeline would go something like this:
1) Every Jedi-hunting BH in the game picks up enough commando to get a high min-damage weapon.
2) Said BH's notice a marked increase in their effectiveness on Jedi bounties, particularly versus Master Defenders.
3) Said Jedi do what they do best -- whine and cry for nerfs.
4) Devs balance the newfound viability of a fringe combat profession with their continued appeasement of the glowstickies, and surprise surprise, commando gets re-nerfed.

Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but thats what I see happening. To prevent that, the elemental damage would either have increased some but not drastically, which would mitigate the effectiveness of this whole idea; OR they would have to change elemental types to have a min-max damage range like standard kinetic/energy damage, that would be controlled with the same accuracy-versus-defense system.

Don't get me wrong -- I like the idea, and I think that boosting commando weapon's elemental damage is a good way to benefit the profession, but I think we are better off going for a limited version of this *in addition to* the AoE fixes and new specials that are proposed under the new mini-revamp.

Message Edited by armord1 on 10-14-2005 10:25 PM

/sign

Really nice and simple solution.

nokah: no special attacks increase the elemental damage.

Leche: Yes, armor does affect elemental damage. However since this damage bypasses defense vs accuracy check it balances out. You can test this easily by making a jedi gen1 saber and putting a blue crystal (adds like 40 elemental damage). For simple math lets say it does 100 damage + 40 elemental. Then put a purple crystal (120 elemental damage).. voila! 100+120 damage.

Of course, I did mention that the stats of the commando weapons whose bulk damage would be elemental do need to have their math looked at. Im no genious with numbers but the concept is a solid one and the numbers can be made to fit the requirements. I dont thing an acid rifle of say 50 min 250 max (to give it wider range of min/max damage) and 700 elemental would be bad either.

Yes, DPS wise it would royally SUCK compared to a T21 spewing headshot or legshot. But OTH, its innate armor break and bypassing def vs acc check plus a small add-on damage by using legshot with the acid rifle (at high ham cost since Acid rifle has high sac) could very well be the equivalent of a the t21...except it has the potential to be MUCH more powerful in a group enviroment thanks to the armor break effect and def vs acc bypassing (not all mobs or players have the same defenses!).

Like I said, if Helios would take our HAR and just change the schematic in live to something akin to this we could test it in LIVE and get some real feedback, not some fantasy test results done in a dev cluster server that has been proven has no real connection to the live servers.

tacwaith try torso shot with an element damage weapon then use a special with same raw damage multiplier ull see.

btw i like ure idea .