Commando Archive

No one saw me get my correspondents mixed up... no one.

Message Edited by Raanan on 07-09-2005 09:30 PM

"No one saw me get my correspondents mixed up... no one."

Whats that eh?

Ill add it to the list, I wasn't sure if this was floating around still or not.

far as I can tell. The ranged arms do seem to properly increase the max range on most of our weapons. I ahvent really tested it out to be honest as I rarely use anything other than the PFT and my proton rifle these days.

As well as greandes... borked as they are. I still love them. And their ever so useful in PvP when you can actually throw them far enough to be of any use.

Well I certainly started rambling off there...and just saw its 4 am heh, been working 3 hours on an easier to read at a glance brief form of my verbose issues list that I posted on the corr forums, heres a copy:

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

Our role according to the Combat Upgrade was to focus on potent damage dealing rather than Utility. Utility is not a substitute for damage, but right now it is. Rather the community wishes to see the profession return to our role of damage dealing with our utility enhancing the potency as well as a return to "tactical flexibility". This return would mean introduction of a Commando Special.

Currently this utility-only mentality causes:

Inability to produce damage. A ranged template has no problem (with specials such as legshot, bodyshot, or critical shot), but a melee-commando/crafter commando/newbie commando suffers greatly from the weak damage that our marksman specials offer. Right now our damage within our profession is comparable to the damage ranges of AoE specials such as fanshot or full auto single, which are far from the full damage capabilities of the respective professions that have access to those specials.

Its a flawed system. If our weapons matched those of specials, and if carbines were 1x damage and a special be 2x, our weapons would have to be 2x likewise. Combined with that special, commandos would do 4x damage, very unbalanced. Relying solely on utility built into our weapons either makes us overpowered or underpowered.

A stark difference from our proposed role with the CU. We are exactly opposite of what was proposed, therefore no longer a damage dealer in our own right. We only become our role when mixed with a ranged profession that has damaging specials! We do not like the idea of shopping for our role when the role should be in our profession.

What can be accomplished with commando special(s):

It would eliminate the flawed system. Our weapons would power-up our own specials at the cost of high SAC, lack of recovery specials, lack of variety within specials, and possibly the commando special being slow in cool-down time between shots. Essentially, our commando special would only deal in damage with our weapons applying the stats unique to commando. Since we were intended to focus on potent damage, this is the most logical way to go...with a special that only focuses on damage like a legshot or bodyshot, and nothing more because our weapons already have unique effects. Hence the damage dealing capability would be restored, and if a commando would opt for a ranged profession for recovery specials, more variety with specials, and more mods (like any other profession).

Restore the "tactical flexibility" proposed, and produce a damage dealer that focuses primarily on damage and nothing else. It would also allow a commando to remain stand-alone that any other profession enjoys. He can also become better at tanking or using his hybrid skills by going melee, or increase his ranged capabilities like our counterpart ranged damage dealer by dabbling in range too.

Hence, this would NOT be combining a powerful attack with powerful utility, as it has already been proven our utility is not all powerful and with damaging specials such as legshot, body shot, or critical shot a commando already fits his role without being unbalanced. The idea is to incorporate such an attack within commando and make it our only special. There could be a balancing issue with AoEs however, but that is covered in Critical issue #3. Don't let the AoE's be detrimental to our role! They can be tuned down on AoE specific weapons and those weapons' damages made weaker, as they should be.


Commando Critical Issue 2: Broken AOE

Our AoE is perhaps the most important utility granted to commandos. Now, most of us do not want to be an all-AoE profession, and we are requesting that our weapons be diversified especially since we believe AoE is the reason why commandos don't have specials, for fear of combining a powerful attack with a lot of area. Broken AoE, and this concept that disallows us to do damage dealer quality damage within our profession, both are detrimental if not addressed.

All AoE on Heavy Weapons (save for grenades), for the past two months has been yielding 0 or 1 damage points (base damage). Commandos don't live up to "Most damaging AoE in the game" unless if its 100%, to match AoEs created with other Specials.

Commando Critical Issue 3: Lack of diversity in our weapons

The Community requests that our arsenal to be diversified. We cannot be a straight AoE profession with every weapon producing the same function. Also because of Combat Level restraints, most of our "utility" (mainly elemental/state effects) are lost to a master because the CL is too low. The disparity between CL causes Masters to not have full use of their utility offered by weapons such as our grenades, Rocket Launchers, Acid weapons, etc. Needless to say, we need a far greater diversification of our weapons in order to do our job of focusing on potent damage.

How our weapons can be diversified:

Commandos be given Advanced versions of their low-CL weapons (or the majority of their Low-CL weapons, mainly the kinetic weapons) such as the Launcher Pistol, Rocket Launcher, Cyroban Grenade, Heavy Acid Rifle, etc. Hence a commando will have access to all of his state effects at a master level damage range. This would help tremendously because as it stands, all CL50/CL54 commando weapons have AoE and DoT effects

Divide our weapons into two groups: Concentrated fire weapons and Area weapons. Concentrated fire weapons would have higher min/max ranges (our current ranges would work), and would have no AoE but would be better vs single targets. Our Area weapons would have the same AoE as now, but lower min/max damages for balance since they disperse their damage across a wide area.

Commando Critical Issue 4: Grenades in General

Grenades are worse than they were before the Combat Upgrade and are in dire need of a re-revamp. They were working fine in the beginning of the CU Beta before incurring a nerf in damage and the introduction of grenade timers.

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. This does not include secondary timers between throws of the same type of grenades. Pre-CU, timers were 9 seconds...with damage GREATLY reduced, our new timers are twice as long...yielding very VERY little usefulness.

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.

Grenades are incredibly difficult to craft and still only come in stacks of 5 charges. Not economically sound, given the strength/usefulness of grenades.

State effects found on grenades (noteably snare on the cyroban, which lasts for 1 second) are weak and last for incredible short amounts of time compared to the grenade timers.

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.

Hahaha Wes? Lol

And yeah you're right, but at least Im updating you guys on exactly what Im trying to get noticed on the Corr Forums

Plus I also have my head screwed on straight on the course we need to take; not everyone may agree with it (the possible idea of reintroduction of consumables or the idea of commando damage modifiers will never go away though!), but I feel its the most workable right now and most befitting to our proposed role and what we have to work with in profession features at this time.

Well for one thing I went back and added a bit more. Also went back to the corr forums and added more issues to our "Critical List" (currently inability to do damage, AoE, Grenades, and lack of diversity)

We need a return to the role proposed by the CU documents, and I see exactly what we need to achieve that. We need specials, we can't be an all AoE profession, we need single target weapons (with Area weapons being lower min/max damages with working AoE), we need access to all our utility, and we need our grenades fixed.

The system that we were given was flawed; rather commando utility is only functionable for our profession if it powers up our own specials instead of it to be our substitute. If utility truly was a substitute it would overpower our weapons, making them into true specials (a carbine is 1x damage, a special is 2x damage...our weapons would have to be 2x damage to match, thus with specials would be 4x). The system either makes us overpowered or underpowered. Our weapons define us, unlike other profs our abilities come from our weapons...but that doesn't mean our damage has to. Nor can it really as that would be unbalancing. We should focus on ways of doing potent damage, and DoTs/AoE allow us to in conjunction with actual damage.

Rather than a carbineer's role of position control with decent defenses and damage. Or pistoleer's role of decent damage and rooting/disarming/stunning folks, it is our role to be able to dish out damage in a myriad number of ways. The two basic that fits in with our current weapon set would be area and concentrated (our proton rifle is an example of concentrated as it, unenhanced, has a higher damage range), then add in DoTs and elemental to the mix for some unique damage dealing. We can't, nor were we ment to be a vehicle of one type of damage delivery as our utility right now deems for us...rather, we were designed with tactical flexibility in mind. The development was halfway right, we just need more advanced forms of our weapons, tweaks and fixes here, some weapons changed around (so it aint all AoE), and a damage-only special. Our weapons grant flexibility, hence define us...

For balance? We already have high SAC, we already have tough weapons to craft, we already have movement penalities, we wouldn't have variety of specials (ie Roots, Stun shots, Duelist Stance, Crowd and Position control, etc etc) nor recovery specials, also potential cool-down restrictions on the commando special, and of course the extra skillpoints. We would truly be hybrids in damage, all with these costs. Plus...we aren't overpowered with legshot or bodyshot from Carbineer/Pistoleer, but we are grossly underpowered alone. This wouldn't be adding sniper shot to our weapons...

Its a long shot, but it fits into the original role and uses essentially every commando feature we have right now. Any other idea would be a departure or at the least require some serious re-working of how our profession works.

Message Edited by StarNick on 07-10-2005 03:56 AM

Message Edited by StarNick on 07-10-2005 03:57 AM