Commando Archive

Commando Issue 1: The inability to produce damage within our own profession

In accordance to our role dictated by the CU, commandos focus on their potent damage dealing capabilities rather than "utility". Utility is not a substitute for damage, but rather an enhancer to increase our potency, and without the initial damage our profession does not and can not live up to our role. Although not a problem for ranged templated commandos, this has been shown to be a huge problem for that of the melee-commando, the newbie commando, and the crafter commando. A commando cannot be stand alone in range, or he/she will suffer a weak damage as only marksman specials are available to the profession which only produce levels of damage equilvent to that of a ranged profession's AoE attack such as Fanshot or Full Auto Single.

The concept of our weapons being our specials and powering up other profession's specials is not a flexible system for a melee-range hybrid, nor does it make a commando "tactical flexible", and it produces a commando that is fundamentally weaker than a non-damage dealer. Rather, the community wishes to see our weapons powering up our own specials, and our utility enhancing that damage to allow us achieve our role within our profession such as a Rifleman or Carbineer can do with his, without a commando requiring out of necessity another ranged profession to achieve his commando role. The cost of such commando special(s) would be the current high SAC of our weapons, the lack of recovery specials, and the lack of any specials dealing with variety (ie Roots, Snares, KDs, Stuns, other State effects) since our weapons would already have states built in and our special(s) would deal exclusively in damage such as that of legshot or bodyshot from Carbineer and Pistoleer respectively.

Commando Issue 2: Broken AOE

We have "utility" to enhance damage. Our most important utility (AOE) is seriously undermined by the fact that the actual Area damage being done is non existant. On all our weapons aside from the Proton Rifle and Heavy Acid Rifle (and potentially the Rocket Launcher, it seems the Heavy Acid Rifle and Rocket Launcher may be bugged), the AOE draws the attention of creatures but does absolutely any significant damage (generally 0%) base. AOE is unimpressive and weak, and severely hurts the functionality of our profession.

Because of this, we are not a damage dealer in area with weapons that were ment to be, but an antagonist for groups and dungeon raids. AOE needs to be fixed, and brought up to the level of other profession's radius/cone specials (100% splash damage) if commando is to be deemed in utilizing the game's "most damaging area damage in the game".

Commando Issue 3: Lack of diversity in our weapons

Commando's arsenal consists of utility; fire DoTs, innate state effects, elemental damage, grenades, and lastly Area of Effect (AoE). However, most of these utilities are not worthwhile to commando at Master, as they're found in our weapons, which with the disparity of Combat Levels puts the Master Commando at a disadvantage. All our master level weaponry only have Fire DoTs, and all our weapons save the Proton Rifle (looted and doesn't power up specials at all) and Heavy Acid Rifle (CL30 weapon which Blinds), have Area damage. Commandos lack Advanced Kinetic Weaponry at a master level, as well as lack non-AOE weapons that equally "power-up" specials.

This can be solved with the introduction of an Advanced Launcher Pistol as promised to us during the CU Beta, master versions of our innate state effect weapons such as the Rocket Launcher, and allowing commandos to have non-AOE weapons that do front loaded damage and power-up specials through damage itself (such as large levels of elemental damage), and AOE weapons that power-up through dispersing that damage over a target area rather than to a single mob throughout all levels of the profession. We need a far greater degree of diversity in our weapons, with essentially weapons that do concentrated fire (and thus higher min/max damage) and weapons that do area concentrated fire (thus lower min/max damage), in order to effectively to our job of focusing on potent damage capabilities as well as tactical flexibility.

Diversifying would help commandos live up to being a damage dealer using the full utility capabilities available to us.

Commando Issue 4: Grenades in General

Grenades are worse than they were before the Combat Upgrade and are in dire need of a re-revamp. Base throws between grenades are 18 seconds long, and for the amount of damage (Proton Grenades at Master Commando are weaker than most novice elite weapons), they are not useful at all. The Area effect on our grenades are out of synch where commandos have been able to hit targets as far as 90 meters away, while miss targets in the actual radius. Plus, grenades are incredibly difficult to craft and still only come in stacks of 5 charges. State effects found on grenades (noteably snare on the cyroban, which lasts for 1 second) are weak. Lastly, it appears that Grenade damage is solely determined with what weapon you have equiped, ie you'll get full damage with a Plasma Flamethrower, but 80-150 damage with your fists. If balancing concerns are a problem here (namely with FS grinding), it might do everyone a world of good if grenades were just changed to Heavy Weapons experience. It has been shown that the balancing act to ensure useful grenades and dissaude abuse (with extra timers), has clearly not worked.

Commando Issue 5: Power-ups and Cybernetic Arms

Plasma Flamethrowers do not accept ranged power-ups, and do not currently have their ranges extended from the ranged cybernetic arms either.

Commando Issue 6: The Proton Rifle

The Proton Rifle loot is a random loot off of Necrosis and falls short on the action costs compared to the other random necrosis weapon loot. Variations exist with the SAC closer to our Heavy Weapon cap of 100, but these are rarer still considering it requires 10-30 or more Necrosis boss kills to actually acquire said weapon. It would be helpful if we could see the Proton Rifle either drop more, and have its SAC reduced to the Heavy Weapon cap (or very close to it, such as the 106 number) or if this rifle was gained via a quest such as the Proton Carbine.

Commando issue 7: The Effectiveness of Elemental Damage

Although fixed with Publish 19, elemental damage only plays a minor role in our damage, and doesn't give commando an edge in damage when using this utility. Noteably, because our Proton Rifle has no Elemental, our Plasma Flamethrower has only 89 heat damage (before experimentation), and our Lightning Beam Cannon (CL 50, before experimentation) around 140 electrical damage. Although a nice little bonus, elemental doesn't scale up and doesn't offer much of a benefit. Plus our AoE, whether 100% or not, would not offer much help against single targets as elemental damage would. This would be an ideal component to increase its effectiveness on Non-AOE Heavy Weapons.

Commando Issue 8: The Crafting Process of the Rocket Launcher

Rocket Launchers are currently a CL 22 weapon that is still the hardest to craft. If Master commandos were given a Master version, the resource/componet requirement could be justified, but for such a low level weapon that will have virtually any demand, the requirements are simply too large and time consuming to be of any worth.

Commando Issue 9: The Melee Component of Commando

Given the amount of Melee we need to invest into the profession (29 skill points or 24% of commando's overall skill cost), there is barely anything useful stemming from that melee component. It is underused, inefficient, and there is no purpose for going melee as we need ranged professions to supply us with more damaging specials. Nor are we tankers, nor do we get use out of melee specials from brawler (like Center of Being) with our weapons. The Introduction of commando hybrid specials would be nice; special melee attacks that can be used with a weapon that causes damage/state effect (such as a "Bash" attack that would induce stunning if a commando walloped an opponent with his/her Flamethrower).

Commando Issue 10: Sniper Shot and the Plasma Flame thrower

With the new minimum range for Rifleman Sniper Shot set at 20m, the Plasma Flame Thrower has a 5m "window" in which this highly damaging special can be used with the most powerful commando weapon. Is this intended to bar the union of "the most damaging special and most damaging AoE in the game"? If so, if the community may point out...when AOE does work for the brief moments of time, the Plasma Flamethrower only has 40% AoE - a far cry from the most damaging AoE in the game. Since our master weapon is effectively barred from this and our only 64 meter range commando weapon is the non-AOE Proton Rifle, 100% AOE on our weapons that power-up specials with AOE are to be desired.

Thoughts? Comments?

Message Edited by StarNick on 07-10-2005 02:30 AM

Message Edited by StarNick on 07-10-2005 02:34 AM

Message Edited by StarNick on 07-13-2005 02:01 PM

That looks like everything to me.

At least we could have working AoEs, despite the fact that I utterly despise them.

It's been 2 Damn Months...

Devs you better get moving.

---

StarNick wrote:
Ok, I keep feeling I missed something heh...

---

Maybe the lack of benefit in the skill points we sink into melee? Melee and ranged no longer blend well, yet the unarmed 4 requirement remains, and we see little benefit from it. I'd definately like to see that one adressed. I'd even be satisfied if we could use basic COB with Heavies equiped. Right now, it serves zero purpose.

That's pretty much everything I thought of (except for the powerup thing). I posted something like this a while back, but I know a lot of stuff gets lost in the clutter. I have posted in several forums that weapons as a whole need to be gone over and given a balance pass. Both from the standpoint of resources used in crafting and the overall breakdown by profession. As a weaponsmith I can tell you that most professions have some weapon for each interval - CL 14, 22 30, 40, 50 and 54. In most professions they did a sloppy job of setting it up. It was my experience with my Commando alt that made me realize it. What you really need to do is move the former consumables - ASL, HPBC and LBC to CL 50 to make them useful. Add in an assault rifle or carbine at CL 22 & 30. Then give you the Advanced Launcher, Advanced Assault Rifle/Carbine and Advanced Rocket Launcher at Master. Then you could deal some damage. Plus I really worry about people trying to grind new profs. Heaven help any new Commandos. They'll be using an LP for a very long time.

Also on the matter of proton rifles incorrectly doing AOE I'm nto sure if this is really true or not. As I said in another thread on proton rifles. Mine at least DO list an AOE of 6m. It would be nice I think that if it was supposed to be an AOE weapont hat they'd add in an innate KD. At least that way we'd have what ammounts to a master level version of the rocket launcher.

To be honest, if they just can get the AoE working properly (not just damage, but really the line of sight for it) I would be a pretty happy Commando. Getting the Proton Rifle & Elemental Damage fixed for us is great. Funny, now when I use the ole trusty FT the AoE damage is equal to my elemental damage+ 1.

So, they fixed elemental damage and now that is basically the ONLY damage done to folks within AoE, It is quite funnyto see.

I would take our AoE damage being 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, hell even 1/5 of our maintarget damage, if that and the whole AoE through walls, floors, ceilings gets fixed I think we would have a nicely working profession. The other stuffcertainlyis somecore aspects of being a Commando but with the history of our profession being how it is, I think we have already come along way.

i still wanna see the proton rifle have armor break... and 100% AOE.

I think that 100% AOE damage is not unrealistic. We pretty much need it to be competative.

We need specials, aside from our "special weapons". They can't possibly justify not giving us any high damage specials, or other state effects (such as armor break) when there are other professions out there that can crank out 2k/hit compared to our measly 2-500. Currently the only way that we are special involves a short bus.

Topic from another thread.

With the new minimum range for Rifleman Sniper Shot set at 20m, the PFT has a 5m "window" in which this highly damaging special can be used with the most powerful commando weapon.

The requirements of this small window, the need to be prone, and the likely ability of the target to shift position ("rubberbanding") while rooted or snared means that the commando will have limited ability to use this damage combination.

Since it appears that the Devs have limited commando damage levels out of a sense of fear of combining Sniper Shot with high damaging commando weapons (Fan Fest comment I believe), the new minimum range should remove this concern and "Dev Defense" on why commando damage levels should be what they currently are.

For your consideration Starnick, as a leverage point in your correspondent forum discussions.

Btw submitted this list to the devs.

Ok, I keep feeling I missed something heh...

I was trying to get a Proton Rifle all day, wasn't updating stuff..so here I am 3 am writing parts of the commando Guide - Version 3.0 - I love the smell of napalm, and going over some commando issues heh...

Its bee a commando-irrific day!