Commando Archive

Been thinking about Commandos, and where we stand in the system for SWG...

Right now, it's looking like the Commando profession was just a dumping ground for all the stuff they couldn't build other classes around. If you look at the skills and weapons, the profession effectively contains 4 distinctly different types of weapon - grenades, heavy beams, acid rifles, and flamethrowers. It's almost like after the design team finished passing out weapons certs to Elite professions, they saw a bunch left over and just sort of lumped them together into an ad-hoc class. If that's truly what happened, then it would explain the reason why SOE has made few improvements, and why the majority of the profession isn't working - it's not that the problems are difficult to identify or correct, but rather that the problems are things the development team never worked on past a 'wouldn't it be cool if...' point of design.

It's possible but unlikely that the Commando would come into their own against vehicles - the problem with that notion is that we'd actually be able to damage vehicles effectively in the first place. Vehicles will move pretty fast, inevitably, and with our firing speed we'd get perhaps a single shot against any vehicle which we encounter. We definitely aren't designed to take on structures, especially not turrets on the battlefields, because we only have minimal defense bonuses - high level Entertainer professions get better. In theory we can use the flamethrower and grenades as a form of support for groups in combat, but the grenade is quirky at best(frankly, I'd say the coder who designed that should be beaten - a super version of the Point Blank Area attack would have been sufficient), and the flamethrower has a lot of other complicated issues.

Pretty much anyone playing a Commando is pissed, and SOE doesn't particularly care. They have to know about the problems - Commandos are a running joke all over the place. Now we might even lose our correspondent to SOE's inattention, which would be really sad.

What we really need is a unified vision of the Commando as a PRIMARY class. We should never take any nonsense on this point. We invest a godawful lot of points to become Commandos, and it'd be totally unfair of SOE to demand such a high cost without the class serving as our primary in all regards. This is not to say we should be stronger than Riflemen, Pistoleers, and Carbineers - we should be equally strong, but more flexible.

I see Commando as the ultimate support fighter. I think this was the original intent, but I'm not really positive. We can find our analogies in the EQ hybrid meleers, particularly the Shadow Knight - I use this because I'm very familiar with the class, and many former EQers are present in the community. The class is all about doing damage, but isn't really supposed to be the front line combatant. Instead, they're supposed to fill in flexibly on damage output in the way that best benefits their group. Melee when needed. Drop DoTs on things. Hit stuff withlong-recharge powerhitsevery now and then.

It'd actually be pretty easy to do this with the Commando class, and make it something worth playing in the process. Right off, it's important that we keep all of our present weaponry options, but configure them differently. All of the anti-vehicle stuff goes into the same line. Heavy anti-personnel weapons(acid rifle/flame thrower) in another. Grenades in still another. The last line should go to launcher weapons, which would serve us in much the same way that the pistol line in Smuggler does that class.

So for our DoTs, we have the flamethrower and acid rifle. These should be at least as useful as other classes' weaponry, with suitableability selections to match. At MINIMUM 4 distinct moves each. These will be our primary tools of support - the acid rifle does single target, more powerful DoTs. The flamethrower is always area effect, but the DoTs on it are a little weaker. This line allows us to provide flexible support depending on our group's situation.

Anti-vehicle stuff like heavy beams and other weapons that presently need charges would be there because they need to be. However, instead of building them with charges, it would be better to have a long recharge time inherent to them. This equates relatively to the SK's Harm Touch ability - you get a strong shot with it, but only once in a while. This would minimize the need for constant reconstruction of the weapons, as well as allow for their use in major PvP scenarios. Even with a massive damage shot like these weapons would have to generate with solid accuracy, it would fire far too rarely to be usedas a primary weaponagainst players in PvP, and so would be self-balancing. To keep from having multiple of these guns from being switched out, the Commando would draw their entire firing capacity from a single recharge pool(this must be possible, given the sample timer as a parallel time-delayed process).

For our general support work, we have grenades to assist in heavy damage, many enemy situations. The inherent cost of grenades prevents them from being a mainstay weapon, but they would allow Commandos an extra-strong option for area-effect support. By sticking additional effects on the different types of grenades, Commandos would get some capacity to apply special effects to help the rest of the group. Say, Glop Grenades act as a Blind, and Thermal Detonators add extra heat damage. Functionally, this is little different than the way that Combat Medics already apply poisons and diseases to people.

Last, for our primary weaponry, we need a Launcher weapon line. Basically parallel to the BH/Smuggler Pistol and BH Carbine lines, these would give us a few special skills and enhance the usefulness of our weapons so we can do out primary attack. I would propose a radical adjustment, wherein instead of just launcher pistols we could also get launcher rifles and launcher carbines, so that we can engage at our personally preferred ranges. A few thoughts for specials - the launcher weapons ought to generate stunning and dizzying effects, and an ability to panic pets(just apply an extra strong warning shot vs pets only) would be nice as a support tool as well.

And, of course, it would be good to scatter some decent defense bonuses throughout the tree. All over the place, to encourage people to take the whole tree rather than just a tiny fragment of it...

That's just my thoughts while my server is down - maybe it'd be feasible, maybe not. I expect that it's the former, since almost everything special I described is already implemented in some form or another elsewhere. There'd be items changes made as a consequence, to be sure, but that can't possibly be too difficult for them to swing, given the adjustments various hotfixes have made...

Salahsur Ta'zim - Tattoine - Chilastra

HERE HERE!!!! If the devs dont read this along with our corospondent's letters then im flat out quitting this lame class... It needs to be TOTALY REVAMPED asap.

Come on devs! All these hot fixes yet you cant spend an adequitportion of your time fixing the things that need fixing the most!