Commando Archive

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First, this whole thing about using weapons and specials from novice level professions is absolutely unacceptable. I admit, its nice to have these specials and guns, but how many Mele people do you see using there bare hands and novice specials when there MTK or MF. Lets see, do they do a special that does 200 damage or one that does 2000. To say a professions HAS to use there novice weapons and specials to survive is being unfair since most combat professions never have to use there "old" specials or weapons once they are in an elite profession. Again I say Elite, using novice specials and weapons to survive in a battle because your main weapons and specials don't work is simply pathetic.

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Just because you don't want to use them doesn't mean they aren't there and don't get the job done. Once they fix the other commando weapons the issue of the flamethrower being nerf'd really doesn't matter since grenades will have all of the power and AP abilties you could want. Your saying that the main weapons and specials don't work, thats true in our case. So why are you focussing on the flamethrower when the other weapons will get fixed, why are you so uptight about a single weapon just because it's the only one that is even remotely effective at the moment? The fact is that this is a much needed fix because otherwise the flamethrower will still remain the general purpose, better than everything weapon when the others are working when it's only supposed to be part of a large range of weapons which gives the commando a certain amount of flexability.

As for being forced to use the novice weapons, look at the smuggler and the BH. They both HAVE to use at least some novice weapons so why should the commando be any different...

My one issue with being a commando and fire extinguisher going in game is..

Is everyone going to be able to use one? If so then shouldn't everyone get something that they can use to counter Poisens from CM, a quick acting bandage to stop bleeds, and some kind of drug you can take to remove dizzy?

I mean its only fair if everyone gets a counter to everyones specials, if someone gets one to ours. Not every one has a doctor near by to cure poisens or such. So maybe only a doctor should be able to put out the flames?

Heavy Weapons Specialist..

Guess what.. a bazooka is an awesome weapon.. but should have its flaws too.. great against large objects. hard to hit small.. in a tight area.. unusable.. wheres the danger to the commando? you want to be uber.. everyone else wants balance..

make commandos slower.. they are carrying heavy gear.. make their aim against player size targets bad..

If you turn too fast while shooting a flamethrower.. do you get burned? shouldnt you?

what about range? flame should be uber close.. everything else uber far.. and useless any closer.. its more realistic for heavy weapons..

what do you want? to hit harder then everyone else on a whole.. with no negatives? then why even have other skills?

6k damage is high damage? since when?

i mean, the AP3 is nice, but seriously, its really low damage compared to its intended target's ham bars (100k turrets 55k atst) and in pvp the damage reduction does let most players survive a direct hit by one.

now if it was 12k damage, that'd be a different tune.

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Tal-N wrote:

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Combat balance? There is no such thing. And there isn't because there are always going to be players who are going to push whatever combat system you have to its limits. Even at the higher end of things; each profession, according to many, must have a "role" on the battlefield and it is that very "role" which determines whether or not we throw paper or rocks back at the scissors trying to cut up our fun.

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Thats why the combat balance pass is designed to ensure that people pushing the maximum aren't ending up with overpowered combinations of skills, that is exceptionally hard to do considering the combinations which is partly why after the pass defensive modifiers from seperate professions won't stack. If you have a pistol in hand then you'd get the ranged defance and melee defence modifiers from that profession, when you go unarmed you get the defences from the unarmed or TKA profession. That is a huge step towards limiting the overpowered combinations of skills, each profession does indeed have a role which is why for every attack there needs to be a counter, and for every counter there is another counter leading to a true game of stratagy rather than having unbeatable tactics such as using knockdown, running over and using flamesingle2 and then running away until they die.

Not many a Commando can see this from both sides of the issue; I can as I've stacked the front line defense mods as high as a Master Commando possibly can. I've foughtthe popularvariations of the mod stacker (pistoleer / fencer, rifleman / swordsman, carbineer / pikeman, rifleman / fencer / tk, fencer / tk / master brawler, etc...). When fighting another mod stacker, combat leaves the realm of repeated use of flamethrower specials and expands intomixing in useofpre-requisite skills (all the way down to novice brawler skills) in order for EITHER combatant to be effective. In that case, the outcome of combat is the way it should be; unpredictable.

You nerf defensive mod stacking to hell without also nerfing offensive mod stacking and accuracy to hell, you WILL have a combat system where the winner of any fight can simply be determined by how much damage one can output and that will dictate the "flavor of the publish". Furthermore, when you singularize the professions in this manner, you effectively turn PvP in this game into a rock-paper-scissors fest where the outcome of a fight can be easily predicted before it even begins...

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There's that word again; "balanced". It can NEVER be....

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The current system as it stands is tough to balance (but not impossible), so tough that they're making an all new one. New HAM rules, new skills rules, new weapons rules and everything. But to say that anything they produce cannot be balanced is so utterly wrong I wouldn't know where to start pointing out the failure in your thinking.

Is it? Is it really so utterly wrong? If it is, then why are they building a new one rather than"balancing" the existing one? As you say later on in your reply, "anything is possible" with SoE's budget (Lucas don't shell out cash for this game; if anything they are reaping in licensing royalties from SoE) and time. If so, then why scrap it and start over rather than efficiently using the resources and"balancing" the areas that need fixing?

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I take it this has something to do with "spamming becoming mostly a thing of the past"

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Correct, because you cannot heal the HAM bars under the new system you can't spam specials continually since you will eventually run out of any HAM which needs to generate itself. You can of course use the same specials over and over but only with breaks inbetween plus from what I have seen they're adding new specials which can be used to counter other ones. In some respects this already exists, if someone is spamming stopping shot then you use eyeshot to make them miss a hell of alot more. They said they will be extending things like that.

And let me guess: there will be chef foods that buff the shrink drain & regen rates of the pools themselves, making the whole idea of shrinking HAMs defeatable...right?

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...and Pistoleers allowing Commandos to break cone range on them DESERVE to get their asses charred ALL THE TIME. It's not that hard to stay out of that 16m radius. Not hard at all.

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And I suppose that you don't have any other weapon to use other than the flamethrower, what do you think that master marksman prerequisite is for? If they stay out of the 16m range then pull out a pistol yourself, or pull out a carbine since they cause random status effects, or you might simply want to actually use... *shockhorror* ... the default fire for the flamethrower which is very effective at almost all ranges.

LOL.

First, the arsenal I carry around with me:

Pistols: FWG5, Launcher, Republic Blaster
Carbines: Laser, DH17, DH17 Snub
Rifles: T21, Laser, Jawa, DLT20a, E11
Heavy: Flamethrowers (2), Heavy Acid Rifle, Particle Beam Cannons, Rocket Launchers
Thrown: Protons, Thermals
Melee: Vibroknuckler, Stun Baton, Curved Sword, G-Baton.

Yes, I'm certified to use all of it and yes, when the situation dictates thataweapon would be more effectiveto use than the flamethrower, there is no hesitation.

Second, the default shots from a flamethrower are good when:

• You are a master and are shooting from a kneeled stance


• Your target isn't moving


• Your target isn't buffed


• Your target isn't armored


• Your target has no ranged mitigation

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Get off of Tatooine please, not all PvP takes place on Tatooine....

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Tatooine has water, Naboo has alot of water. It's not usually within the kind of distance where you can run and jump into it so for all intents and purposes fire is unstoppable. However someone can take items around with them or take skills to stop all of the other DOTs, but with fire you cannot. There's not even a skill which allows you to stop it.

Doctors have the skills to cure poison, disease, and dizziness. Some of them even have the packs on them. But they are usually not within range to where they can immediately use one.Therefore, poison, disease, and dizziness are unstoppable.

However, anyone who can move (and fire DoTs do not kd/dizzy) can run into a body of water to instantly cure the fire DoT. With dizziness, disease, and poison, there's no place you can run for an instant cure.

Furthermore, those whoare able toposess the skills to perform such miracles are just as subject to death as we are; I can't kill or evaporate the river no matter how many /flamecone2's I shoot at it....

Relenting on being a smart ass about this, I have only one thing to say about this unjustifiable fire extinguisher: using and building it better require NOVICE COMBAT MEDIC at the very least....

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Hmmm...many things come to mind here. Many things...

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Care to share what those might be? ..cause from what I know of the game there is nothing that some profession or item cannot fix with relative ease.

Why should I walk through the door when on the other side, you're only going to tell me to (in order):

• That I'm utterly wrong


• That I should stop clinging on to what is


• That I should start thinking of what will be

????

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But without taking into consideration how they are, how is one supposed to know if what they think will be is even within the realm of possibility?

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Maybe because with programming and the Lucas budget anything is possible given enough time. Your clinging to how things are despite the fact everything will be changing, I have to admit that the devs have been less than forthcoming with what these changes entail but it can't be any worse than the current system.

Does not history repeat itself? Is knowing the history not to repeat it? Without thinking of what is (which will soon be history) and what has been, how can we think of what will be without repeating some of the mistakes made in the past?

I'm clinging to things because I see the combat system in the gamebeing nowhere near asfar off as SoE and the rest do. I'm clinging to things because, despite my stacking of mods, I still get my ass handed to me when the rolls don't go my way. I'm clinging to things because we are more than six months post release and this is no time to be redesigning the entire combat system from the ground up. I'm clinging to things because a fight where unpredictability clouds the outcome excites me way more than a fight that doesn't need to be fought.

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xpointmanx wrote:

Heavy Weapons Specialist..

Guess what.. a bazooka is an awesome weapon.. but should have its flaws too.. great against large objects. hard to hit small.. in a tight area.. unusable.. wheres the danger to the commando? you want to be uber.. everyone else wants balance..

make commandos slower.. they are carrying heavy gear.. make their aim against player size targets bad..

If you turn too fast while shooting a flamethrower.. do you get burned? shouldnt you?

what about range? flame should be uber close.. everything else uber far.. and useless any closer.. its more realistic for heavy weapons..

what do you want? to hit harder then everyone else on a whole.. with no negatives? then why even have other skills?

bah.. let the one stars begin

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Neeto, sorry if I'm missing something here, but exactly WHAT large targets are we supposed to be using a rocket launcher (or bazooka) against in PvP? I barely ever PvE any longer, and the number of creature handlers that you'll see out there is diminishing. I agree that commandos rocket launcher should be used against AT-ST effectively, but im Imperial... I try to avoid fighting AT-ST most of the time. As for turning with a flamethrower, keep in mind that this is a game, do you die after being shot with a blaster in the head? Shouldn't you? No, you shouldnt, because this is a game. As for the rest of your post, I agree with Garvin's statement. We don't want to be uber, we want to be fixed!

Oh yeah, great original post Garvin. And thank you TH for responding!

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garvin wrote:

We have less accuracy and speed because we have more power...we also have more power because we cost more pts then the other elite professions...now these proposed changes take our power away...so again I ask, what do we get in return?

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greetings from a 217sp bounty hunter you also compared with ;-)

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Thunderheart wrote:

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garvin wrote:

This is meant to be a postive post offering some testing advice for TH to better understand our issues...

He stated the other day that he and a Dev friend logged into TC as Master Commandos and fought each other in a Cantina. I do not believe that was an accurate test to understand our difficulties...

TH...please try your test again...except this time try the following combinations:

Master Commando VS Master TKA - Start next to each other...Flame Special VS Spammed Dizzy/KD...

Master Commando VS Combat Medic - Start at 30m...Deal with ranged disease attack...

Master Commando VS Bounty Hunter - Start at 30m...Deal with ranged kiting and Mind Bleed...

Master Commando VS Any Ranged Profession - Start at 30m...Just deal with ranged kiting...

Master Commando VS Marksman Pistol Tree Only - Start at 30m...Again deal via ranged kiting...

Now remember...Commando is the "Heavy Weapon Specialist" of the game...We have "apparently" one of the most feared weapons and specials in the game...capable of causing serious grief...In all the above test scenerios, who is the victor? Don't use any secondary profession dabbling as not all Commandos have the same templates.

There are plenty of other combos for you to try, but Master Commando Vs Master Commando is just to even to fairly judge our profession...

Now, once you've tried fighting all those combinations, think about adding in the "no stacking" rule and "fire extingishers"...Our advantage (as you and others have expressed)doesn't seem to unfair once you've been in all these types of fights...

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I understand what you are saying. Im a commando and I play PvP. None of this flies.

Some things to keep in mind:

1. There is a combat balance underway / spamming will mostly be a thing of the past

2. There is a PvP balance coming up next

3. Mind Bleeds / other Dots have been balanced

4. HAM costs changing

5. Versus any ranged profession = no dice. Professions are neither "classes" nor is any one class supposed to have "everything"

6. I see Commandos drop Pistoleers all the time. The Pistoleers fret over the fact that they arent as powerful as other elite profession.

Fire DoTs arean unstoppable DoT.

Anything that can be done and NOT un-done is unfair.

When you consider combat items, try to think of them as they will be and not as they are.

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woot TH you are really starting to get the hang of this!

Thunderheart said:
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When you consider combat items, try to think of them as they will be and not as they are.
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This is intensely difficult for the following reasons:

1) You haven't said a word about what the future system will look like.
2) You haven't said a word about what our role in the new system will be.
3) You haven't said a word about when exactly the new system will be implemented.
4) You haven't said a word about understanding our present issues in the context of future decisions.
5) The last time we trusted you to make these decisions, you botched it. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice...


How do you expect us to think of anything in a future system, when we haven't got a single damned clue where you're going with said future system? If you get blasted in posts that are ignorant of the future system, perhaps the best recourse is to not maintain strict secrecy on that future system.