Commando Archive

State of the Commando Profession

May 27, 2005



The State of Our Weapons


--Item One is in regards to Playability Concerns, with all bugs aside. Item Two discusses detailed current weapon issues–

Item One: Heavy Weapons do not power up specials in this current span of time. Originally, our weapons are supposed to add in a AoE effect to any special we use in conjunction with our Heavy Weapons as well as a state effect. AoE is nearly non-existent or broken, and state effects are weak. At the very least the Commando Community requests full AoE splash damage and state effects that can stick and/as well last longer than they currently do.

However, if AoE on our weapons was working, the community fears for playability concerns. If AoE is the sole way of allowing the profession to reach its damage dealing role, it does not account for two problems:

1) A straight AoE profession is not entirely damage dealing and commandos only become a "5" in offense when facing multiple enemies. In dungeons where facing many enemies at once may be certain doom for a commando’s group or against a single boss like Necrosis all our damage dealing capabilities effectively are lost. In the long run, commando will not be a group friendly profession, nor live up to its role against single targets. Against single targets, in order to be comparable the Commando requires to take up other range professions to come close to our role, unlike that of our damage dealer professions.

2) AoE is more of a special use, or skill, rather than what constitutes a full profession. Thus, we do become a toolbox profession more so than Pre-CU as another profession can just pick up Beam Weapons IV (for the Lightning Beam Cannon) so they can take out many mobs with AoE in conjunction with their specials. This undermines our profession due to the fact that since all our unique weapons essentially do the same function, only the most damaging Heavy Weapons will be used to come close to our “5 Offense” rating (two weapons: Plasma Flamethrower, and the Lightning Beam Cannon because its similar in damage and has longer range). As a result, commandos fear the profession is heading to become a “one trick pony” of old. Our role then, as a Heavy Weapons Specialist and damage dealer is therefore contradicted.

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What Commando Needs:

Adding variety to our weapons will allow us to have two options:

Damage Dealer of Area Mitigation (AOE)

Damage Dealer of Single Target (Non-AOE/Front-loaded)

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Solutions to Adding Variety:

Note: The Commando Community has been actively discussing these four solutions and expanding them further.

Solution One: To accomplish this, give us an Advanced Launcher Pistol and Rocket Launcher. Then, divide our weapons into these two categories where we have novice to master AoE and Non-AoE weapons that fit our role, and uniquely power up specials Such power-ups could be armour break (a medium to full armour break), increased damage on Non-AoE Heavy Weapons, or powerful state effects that allow for more damage/inhibits defenses to allow for more damage. Our AoE Weapons in this case, would regain at least 80-100% AoE damage

Adding this kind of variety to our weapons, will make Commando a true hybrid and live up to our role without other profession’s specials, while having the ability to enhance other profession’s specials without becoming a toolbox profession (where Mastery offers little). At a cost, Heavy Weapons have higher Special Action Costs (SAC), no specials, and the slowest weapons in the game.

Solution Two: Or...the possibility of allowing Heavy Weapons, since they already are very unique, to having the ability to have “weapon modes”. A commando, in battle, can switch between a “spray” (AOE) or a “concentrated damage” (Non-AOE/Frontloaded). This wouldn’t require immense and lengthy reworking of current weapons nor the need to come up with new ideas of “power-ups” to make our weapons more comparable/damage dealing (ie armour break, new specials, damage modifiers, etc)

Solution Three:Or...grant commandos an “offensive stance”, much similar to BH’s “Duelist Stance” but rather than to allow tanking, allow offense on commando’s part. This special would function by extending either armour breaks, AoEs, or damage multipliers to using Heavy Weapons or combinations of the three. Effectively, this would add Heavy Weapon damage to such an extent to allow different combinations and uses of our weapons (more variety) and achieve our role at the same time. This offensive stance would be used to enhance our damage output without necessarily unbalancing other professions. Our Heavy Weapons would still have states and maybe other innate abilities.

Solution Four: Or...just have regular Heavy Weapons and “Commando Specials” and be very similar to how riflemen or swordsmen is structured for a damage dealing profession, rather than having Heavy Weapons defining the commando role. Adding Specials in would be the best way to amplify what we have without having to worry about unbalancing other profs by people dabbling in our weapons. The Offensive stance could be used in this solution, but our weapons would effectively become like our counterpart’s.

In conclusion, the Commando Community is steadfast in producing the most balanced Commando Profession that is both fun to play and achieves its role. In order to not incur coding messes, we want the best solution to be developed that is not necessarily the easiest, but the most effective in making a commando, a Commando.

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Item Two: In order to make a case for Item One and its proposed solutions as well prediction where the Commando Profession is heading with bugs aside, I present the current state of affairs of our weapons after intense testing on TC-Bria:



Heavy Weapons:

Note: I haven’t nailed down the chances, but it appears that DoTs are sticking 10-30% of the time, and State effects somewhere around that range. Also, these results are for Publish 17 and from a Master Commando/Master Carbineer/0404 Pistoleer Template.

Launcher Pistol

AoE: Yes, does one damage point

State: N/A

Heavy Acid Rifle

AoE: No, it has a radius of 6 meters but doesn’t do any AoE whatsoever.

State: Blinds, but rarely

Plasma Flamethrower

AoE: Yes, does one damage point. However, in the beginning of testing I was able to get 39.7% of my original target damage in splash, in the middle of testing however it reverted back to producing only 1 damage in splash.

State: This was the primary weapon I took fire DoT chances. I was only able to produce one DoT out of 11 shots. This however is low, and I was able to stick a few fire DoTs later on during testing in lesser shots, so the mean average seems to be around 10-30%. Regardless, fire DoTs/States are very rare and don’t help with the profession in damage dealing.

Flamethrower

AoE: At first I was not getting any AoE splash damage. However, splash damage kicked in, doing 80% of my original target damage in splash. After switching to other Heavy Weapons and receiving only one damage point in AoE, the Flamethrower reverted back to doing one damage point as well.

State: Same as the Plasma Flamethrower.

Lightning Beam Cannon

AoE: Yes, but one damage point in splash damage.

State: The DoT seems to be applied a bit more than the flamethrowers, but its still rare and doesn’t help all that much.

Acid Stream Launcher

AoE: Yes, but one damage point in splash damage.

State: Yes, it blinds targets. This was the best state producing Heavy Weapon I tested, in a matter of a few shots I was able to get blind effects.

Proton Rifle

AoE: Does not fire, the Proton Rifle has 6 meter radius in description, but its not an AoE-Weapon, or at least originally wasn’t. The community does not wish to see the Proton Rifle being an AoE weapon.

State: Doesn’t do states, but doesn’t fire due to a bug

Rocket Launcher

AoE: No, same as the Heavy Acid Rifle where it used to do AoE in the Combat Upgrade Beta. It no longer does AoE, but still lists a radius of 6 meters.

State: Very rarely does the RL seem to KD. It doesn’t spam the commando with messages that you didn’t KD the target, but I was only able to produce one or two KD effects testing the weapon.

From my own as well as community member’s opinions on these results:

AoE is now on a dice roll (but that roll is broken), could explain the erratic behavior of our AoE. However, since I was able to continually attain very specific AoE damages when it was working for my weapons, it did not seem to be a random event.

AoE is different for each Heavy Weapon. This could explain why the Plasma Flamethrower recieved a 40% AoE, while the Flamethrower a 80% AoE before reverting back to one damage point on splash damage. This however, would be a bad route to go due to damage disparities in our weapons (lack of an advanced LP/RL for example).

The Heavy Acid Rifle and Rocket Launcher and Proton Rifle are intended not to do AoE, but are incorrectly labeled with radii. This would be taken as an attempt at creating variety in our weapons. However, we lack an Advanced Rocket Launcher (or similar non-AoE CL 54 weapon), the proton rifle still does not fire nor is accessible to most commandos, and none of these weapons are powerful enough compared to non-damage dealing weapons.

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Grenades:

I have taken great interest in our grenades, as if they are improved they can easily supplement our heavy damage dealing role, also because they are now worse than before the Combat Upgrade. During testing, I have discovered that grenade damages change when you are equipped with weapons. Without a weapon equipped, you will typically attain 100-200 damage even with proton grenades. With a weapon equipped, you’ll attain the “correct” damage levels (around 600-800 for a proton grenade). Also, if I may note, if equipped with the Proton Rifle, you cannot fire off a grenade. This leads me to conclude that grenades are somehow tied in with weaponry you have equipped, which should not be the case.

Note: I have discovered a fundamental grenade timer of around 18 seconds. This appears to be the throw between grenades of anytype, aside from independent timers that may incur throwing the same type of a grenade after another. Rather, this is the weapon delay between throws. Also, all my grenades were tossed in a Master Commando/Master Carbineer/0404 Pistoleer template, and all grenade speeds were of 6.66. Please note I may be 1 or 2 seconds off with timers.

C12/C22 Grenades
Timer: Approx 18 seconds (No Independent timer)
State: No idea if it works correctly, as I don’t believe theres a way to see if its doing “more damage”.

Imperial Detonators
Timer: 21 Seconds (3 second Independent Timer)
State: No state. I was unable to achieve a KD, instead I attained a “weird’ medical looking special effect (like a heart monitor line) over my target.

Glop Grenades
Timer: 26 Seconds (8 second Independent Timer)
State: Was able to attain the Blind state, worked quite nicely actually.

Cyroban Grenades
Timer: 17-21 seconds. There didn’t appear to be an Independent Timer (where you will get a system message saying that you need to wait xx seconds to throw xx grenade). Could be because of lag, but the median time between throws was 18 seconds.
State: The Snare lasts for only 1 second, 2 at most.

Proton Grenades
Timer: 26 seconds (8 second Independent Timer)
State: No fire DoT was able to be attained. Rather, I was able to attain bleeds (and was able to get them about 25% of the time)

Thermal Detonator
Timer: 59 seconds (41 second Independent Timer). This, has to not be intended as the Proton Grenade has a fire DoT (well should have) and more damage, but a much lesser timer.
State: I was able to attain a fire DoT, about 20% of the time.

In the current state of grenades, their states are far too weak as well as too infrequent if the damage is to be this low. They are further undermined by long delays between throws. As a commando with the Plasma Flamethrower, I am able to do around 6,000 damage in the span of 18 seconds with improved legshot in the Master Commando/Master Carbineer/0404 Template. Grenades are much worse than they ever were as a result.

Also, grenade stacks have not changed nor the crafting of them, as they’re very time consuming and now even less economically sound to use for commandos. In order to increase their usefulness, either make states much more frequent, stronger, and last for the length of time it takes between throws. If damage is increased significantly, we fear that grenades would become too unbalanced and effectively be the “one hit kill” that should not be in the game.

The community would like to see grenades’ states to be much more useful, grenades be faster (at the very least, have them follow grenade speeds!), much easier to produce, be made in larger stacks (at least stacks of 20), and offer a greater range of damages. In the beginning of the CU Beta, grenades seemed nearly perfect. This of course, would come at one sole cost: Make grenades give only Heavy Weapons Experience, in order they will not be abused again by Force Sensitive Grinders in the village quests.

Also, there are currently two AoE problems with grenades:

1) Grenade radii, are a bit too large. Thirty meters seem to be too big of a radius.

2) On some grenades (or all), the radius seems to start (or at least is taken into account) where the player is standing. So in effect, a commando can aggro mobs 20 meters behind him, when he’s throwing a grenade 35 meters in front of him (a 55 meter radius apparently)

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Current State of Affairs concerning other topics of Interest

Commando No longer has a melee weapon, the Massassi Knucklers are weak and no longer Master Commando. This puts back the questions of, what it means to be a hybrid and what does it entail? As we no longer have melee components to the profession (aside from some ranges, and maybe AoE)

Commando’s Proton Rifle is weaker than the proton carbine. Its much harder to attain (CL 92 Necrosis opposed to a quest that a CL 70-80 can solo). Its also a random loot, the community would like to see its damage bumped up significantly to account for its rarity, or bumped up to that of the Proton Carbine and be made as easy to attain in quest form.

Currently the elemental damage on commando weapons do not work. They do not add damage in combat. Moreso, the damage that originally generated by the elemental aspect of our Heavy Weapons during the CU Beta were weak.

There is a “Heavy Weapon Power-up” section on the bazaar, but no actual Heavy Weapon Power-ups. Also, normal weapon power-ups cannot be placed on the flamethrowers. Are there new Heavy Weapon Power-ups in development? If so, the community feels it doesn’t want to rely on power-ups for damage, but would like to see what is in store regarding this.

Currently all our fire DoTs, rather than killing, incapacitate our targets which erases all existing states and requires commandos to re-initiate combat. This happens only in PvE, and our targets fall over incapacitated then arise still burning. In tight spaces, or dungeons, this is a very annoying bug for both the commando and group members as it can happen from low level mobs to boss NPCs. We know the fire DoTs do not kill (as seen in PvP and as noted from the Developers), but this bug needs to be squashed.

Crafting all our weapons, primary the Rocket Launcher and Grenades, are a chore for weaponsmiths. Our newly made non-consumable weapons (the Lightning Beam Cannon for example) require close to the resources and components of a T-21 and in some cases more components than the Plasma Flamethrower. Unlike other professions, from a low level commando our weapons cost as much as a mastery weapon. Regarding the Rocket Launcher, due to its low level and being the hardest weapon to craft in the game, the weapon will be widely unavailable to low level commandos. Concerning grenades, they are currently uneconomical for commandos to use as it takes many factory runs to pull off just one crate, especially since grenade stacks are still 5 uses rather than being raised as once promised in the Combat Upgrade. The Commando Community Requests that changes and reductions be made to commando weapons. This would allow weaponsmiths to have a much easier time producing our weapons for such a minority of the game player’s as there isn’t a huge market for commando weapons opposed to free CL-only certified weaponry as our weapons are wholly profession based.

The implications of the AoE question on our weapons, and the fact that grenades are functioning poorly have a negative impact on PvE and Group work with the Commando Profession. This has been outlined, however ironically commando is somewhat viable in PvP currently, most likely due to the fact that our weapon damages are about comparable with other professions’ and when DoTs are stuck, they help us far more in PvP than PvE. We are on the level of the other professions, only when we use their specials however. We still do not live up to our damage dealing role, but we are not handicapped in PvP as we are in PvE. However, if our weapons are given better variety, functioning AoE, and the profession given better grenades - we will be able to achieve that role in all aspects of the game.

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A prediction for future state of affairs


The Commando Community knows what will entail if commando remains a profession devoted to AoE. Our weapons do not generate immense amounts of damage where we will need to be careful with our weapon fire, and thus have to be in fine control as our heavy damage could potentially get us killed. Since our weapons do not generate this kind of damage, but still generates an AoE commandos are now in a situation where we become useless in aspects of the game (PvE/Dungeon/High Level, outlined earlier) and do more harm than good when using our own weapons. They are the same as our specials, so it would be as if all of another elite’s certified weaponry/specials become invalid during game play, which we have yet to see. This also brings up the old argument pertaining to rifles, with the concept of minimum ranges. The riflemen feared they would be rendered useless, and the profession undermined in dungeons and tight places if rifles were given a minimum range. The same argument applies to the commando profession in terms of AoE.

If commando continues forward with being solely based off of AoE, we fear that the current state of affairs will be the same as, or worse, before the Combat Upgrade, and that commando will be more of a pain than blessing to use in high level PvE encounters. By giving variety to our weapons that defines a profession, the Commando Profession is enabled to carry out our heavy damage role, as well as our role of a hybrid.

heh...think Lithium would have to do that. Good Job Nick...shows that we have someone looking out for us. Now do us all a favor and sit back and take a breather...don't want you to freak out.

I wonder how long till the devs even read it? It's been really quiet on the dev tracks for the last month almost (since CU went live it's been quiet as the crypt - what gives?)

I sent it in on Friday, at around the same time both TH and Keldarin were online so theres good chance it wasn't missed. However since its a long weekend, you can bet they're pretty much all off and with their families like we are at the moment, im going to be bumping it again reaaaaal soon *evil laugh*

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StarNick wrote:
I sent it in on Friday, at around the same time both TH and Keldarin were online so theres good chance it wasn't missed. However since its a long weekend, you can bet they're pretty much all off and with their families like we are at the moment, im going to be bumping it again reaaaaal soon *evil laugh*

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/forcelightning randompeople

/laugh

I like it StarNick.

One thing that I would not mind seeing (besides all the bugs being fixed and such) is for us to have SIGNIFICANTLY more damage on our weapons. Our weapons are HEAVY weapons, and as such should do more damage than all other weapons within the game. IE - as a plasma flamethrower, make it have a 1500 or so max damage, samewith the proton rifle. I think our weaps should do about 1.25 damage compared to a normal weapon being 1.0. I would not mind having all trees be weapon specific, and the other profs we have giving us our specials (for instance, needing to pick up full auto area in Carbs for an AOE).

• my acid stream launcher averaged a blind every 5 or so shots, which i felt justified its use on PvE level 80+, and the higher wound ratio seemed to help counter the low overall damage.


• My rocket launcher would guarentee a knockdown on the first round fired (it never failed), but all subsequent knockdowns were unsuccessful, and though it attempted to do area damage, it didnt work (all nearby enemies were hit for 0 damage)


• My proton cannon definitely was my favorite in visual effects, making it a very pretty battle, but had no effect on the enemy that i could find, so its damage was relatively useless.


• the lightning cannon was a similar affair- it looked pretty, though not as pretty as the proton cannon, but did little to help. it is my intention to test it out on droid enemies and see how it does, but my hopes arent high.


• primarily, howerver, when the going got rough testing the commando weapons, i reverted back to the t-21 and got myself out of any sticky situations.

by the way, whatever happened to that armor piercing thing? any chance we can get acid to do that for us?

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nbd9k wrote:

My rocket launcher would guarentee a knockdown on the first round fired (it never failed), but all subsequent knockdowns were unsuccessful, and though it attempted to do area damage, it didnt work (all nearby enemies were hit for 0 damage)

harv out.

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Tyyylowyspetily wrote:

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There is a KD timer in effect. Subsequent hits with a rocket launcher will just about garantee knockdown, provided the timer has elapsed. Having tested a variety of other professions during the respec period, the Rocket Launcher's damage range is in line with other KD attacks, and the added benefit of an additional state via special cannot be underestimated. If you have not yet fired a Rocket Launcher in conjunction with advanced disarming shot, you are missing out on a serious tool, both pve, and pvp.

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