Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: First lowered HAM, now no regen... Whats next?
RemoMoxey wrote:
Straker_Atrella wrote:
Ok this is good for Droids, seriously, if you don't think so you are not looking at the big picture.
Our goal as Droid Engineers should be to make everybody want to have 5 droids in their datapad. You want specialized droids for different uses. You DON'T want one Droid that does everything. With the old regen rates, you basically made it so Auto-Repair modules, Stim Packs, and other Tank versions were useless. Due to the old really fast repair rates, basically every single Droid was a Tank droid, there was no reason to sell anything but pure combat droids.
Now with the current repair rates people are faced with choices. All damage, fast healing, or a combination of both.
To those saying that droids are now worthless, you are very wrong. First Armor works now, so Droids take less damage. Second, I make Droid stims with 1800+ healing with 40 charges. By using those Stims, a droid can tank far better then one with the fast regen rate.
This is good.
I hate to say it, but droids are useless now.....BUT so are pets.....and TKMs.....and all other so called "tanks" in the game. They CONTINUE to nerf pets/droids and don't bother fixing the hate system. Simple fact is mobs go after the highest damage dealer. As a master rifleman I have watched mobs run right past a TKM using taunt to hit me. I had to pick up some BH and Pistoleer for the defenses.
Come and join the ranks of the ELITE Riflemen......we tank for TKMs.
See comments like this are totally misleading. Yes the Hate system still needs some work. Yet Pets are awesome, especially CH pets. I hunt with CH's all the time, their pets do very well. Tonight I saw a Pet Boar Wolf giving a Jedi fits in PVP.
Here is another example. One of my toons is a Master BH, Master Rifleman, 0003 Pistol with a little medic. I dueled my Master CH and Master Rifleman friend. We dueled 6 times, he won every single time. My Rifle is better, my Armor is better, and he doesn't have Medic. Yet he still beat me every single time. The reason is simple. Even though I hit a little harder with my Rifle, the 138 damage his pet was doing every 2 seconds really hurt.
Pets are hardly useless.
Straker_Atrella wrote:
RemoMoxey wrote:
Straker_Atrella wrote:
Ok this is good for Droids, seriously, if you don't think so you are not looking at the big picture.
Our goal as Droid Engineers should be to make everybody want to have 5 droids in their datapad. You want specialized droids for different uses. You DON'T want one Droid that does everything. With the old regen rates, you basically made it so Auto-Repair modules, Stim Packs, and other Tank versions were useless. Due to the old really fast repair rates, basically every single Droid was a Tank droid, there was no reason to sell anything but pure combat droids.
Now with the current repair rates people are faced with choices. All damage, fast healing, or a combination of both.
To those saying that droids are now worthless, you are very wrong. First Armor works now, so Droids take less damage. Second, I make Droid stims with 1800+ healing with 40 charges. By using those Stims, a droid can tank far better then one with the fast regen rate.
This is good.
I hate to say it, but droids are useless now.....BUT so are pets.....and TKMs.....and all other so called "tanks" in the game. They CONTINUE to nerf pets/droids and don't bother fixing the hate system. Simple fact is mobs go after the highest damage dealer. As a master rifleman I have watched mobs run right past a TKM using taunt to hit me. I had to pick up some BH and Pistoleer for the defenses.
Come and join the ranks of the ELITE Riflemen......we tank for TKMs.
See comments like this are totally misleading. Yes the Hate system still needs some work. Yet Pets are awesome, especially CH pets. I hunt with CH's all the time, their pets do very well. Tonight I saw a Pet Boar Wolf giving a Jedi fits in PVP.
Here is another example. One of my toons is a Master BH, Master Rifleman, 0003 Pistol with a little medic. I dueled my Master CH and Master Rifleman friend. We dueled 6 times, he won every single time. My Rifle is better, my Armor is better, and he doesn't have Medic. Yet he still beat me every single time. The reason is simple. Even though I hit a little harder with my Rifle, the 138 damage his pet was doing every 2 seconds really hurt.
Pets are hardly useless.
Okay.......since when is your friend a MOB? I'm talking PvE.....and they are useless as tanks. No matter what you say pets Don't hold agro (mostly they get hit and run away). I was a master CH....I respeced out because I have a feeling that pets and combat droids are "working as intended". The Devs stated they wanted this game to have a more "Star Warsy" feel.......and pets/droids tanking is not Star Warsy at all.
Also you lost because you don't have a root attack. You root the pet and kill you buddy, after that the pet just loses interest......lol.
RemoMoxey wrote:
Okay.......since when is your friend a MOB? I'm talking PvE.....and they are useless as tanks. No matter what you say pets Don't hold agro (mostly they get hit and run away). I was a master CH....I respeced out because I have a feeling that pets and combat droids are "working as intended". The Devs stated they wanted this game to have a more "Star Warsy" feel.......and pets/droids tanking is not Star Warsy at all.
I was talking PVE as well. His pets do just fine. Yes the hate system needs some work, but his pets Tank very well. No you can't expect it to kill the creature on it's own, but it does tank. You also need to take the time to get decent pets. He has some that are level 69, which is better then an ATST.
Also you lost because you don't have a root attack. You root the pet and kill you buddy, after that the pet just loses interest......lol.
As I said, I am 0003 Pistoleer, which gives me advanced stopping shot.Which if you don't know it is a root. His pet has Ranged attacks, so I had to root it then run out of it's range. The entire time he was shooting me with his rifle. Even when I rooted, he won. Simply because I was forced to then take my attention away from him. Pets help.
RemoMoxey wrote:
Okay.......since when is your friend a MOB? I'm talking PvE.....and they are useless as tanks. No matter what you say pets Don't hold agro (mostly they get hit and run away).
I'm going to disagree with you on this one, again. Pets and Droid can hold aggro just fine, if you unlearn the old thinking of how things worked prior to the CU. By changing your weapons and tatics in combat, anyone can get a pet/droid to hold aggro on a mob, without ever getting hit by the target. I know this one first hand, since I respeced into CH and haven't had a single issue with using my CL65 pet as cannon fodder, while I take out the target. This is with a MCH / MSmugglerusing a 350+ DPS Pistol. I also have a Novice Rifle / Novice CH that can do the same thing, as well as a Master Carb that only uses a full combat R3. Its all about the tatics that you use.
I was a master CH....I respeced out because I have a feeling that pets and combat droids are "working as intended". The Devs stated they wanted this game to have a more "Star Warsy" feel.......and pets/droids tanking is not Star Warsy at all.
The Hate system is not working as intended, at least not as completely intended as it was supposed to be. Tanks, whether they are PCs or pets, are not being able to do the job that was set forth by their role description. Pets, specifically droids, are very Star Warsy and I've already seen a trend towards increasing their role in the game. Take a look at some of the changes in the last months to pet art assets and the increase in get peoples awareness of pet use into the game (New Tutorial, MCH reward mount, DD reward mount, Clone relic / Quest mounts from EPS III.)
Also you lost because you don't have a root attack. You root the pet and kill you buddy, after that the pet just loses interest......lol.
Funny, I thought Improved Stopping Shot was a 0003 Pistoler skill.
I don't PvP, so I can't comment on using pets/droids in PvP, but I do a lot of PvE exclusively using pets/droids, with at least 4 different combat toons. I haven't had a single problem using them to take out targets that are higher in level then me, with my now Level 19 Novice CH / Novice Rifles, by at least 4 levels. I was able to take out 2 CL 26 Maulers, using a max damage R3 unit as a tank. Even my Master Smuggler / Master CH is able to take on most CL 80 mobs in one on 'one' combat. It all comes down to changing your tatics and using the best available weapons at your disposal, which aren't always the weapons with the highest damage output.
Aerous wrote:
QFE:
Allow me to retort. The former regenerative ability of a droid didn't heal damage nearly fast enough to be effective while it was being attacked.
Save your condescending attitude. You are a fool if you think any recent changes are a good thing for you and your profession. Combat repair modules eh? That is your solution. You think it's obvious that i'm not an engineer well it's WOEFULLY CLEAR that you never used these droids before in combat YES THEY DID HEAL DAMAGE ENOUGH. I know, I used them, hence your talking without any facts to back you up.
Fact is this, I was going to spend 65k (an outrageous sum) on a combat droid put out there by a greedy engineer, and while I don't know you i'll venture to say thay they arenot to far removed from yourself in terms of personality. "an outrageous sum" ??? You've got to be kidding??? 65k for a droid that lasts forever?? I bet you did'nt think twice about paying 15k for buff pre-CU. Those buffs lasted you 3 hours. After 4.3 buff cycles you have no buffs. But you will still have that droid. I bet you did'nt think twiceaoubt armor for 450k-600k. That armor decayed. The droid does'nt. Did I mention that the droid lasts forever?? 65k well spent I would say.
Now i will not be buying another droid ever. Keep on heaping accolades on the latest changes. You're just making yourself look more like an imbecile.
That's the last i'll say on the matter, good luck.
RenObiOne wrote:
The way things are going, how would this help us? Sure if droids would sell. The way they are now, they do not sell, except BH droids. No one really wants to buy a droid anymore.
This is why it is not a "good" change.
It's another nerf, on top of a nerf, on top of a nerf. Reduced regen would have been one thing (still a nerf) but turning it off totally was a killer. You can't deny the fact that the value of combat droids just dropped - they used to have a feature that now they don't have. It's pretty cut and dry.
It's just another reason for people to not bother with droids. Droid usage is so low right now, however, the impact will be minimal. When you are already hovering over the bottom of the pit, there isn't much further you can drop.
I think we need to face some hard facts about DE : the profession is really in the worst place it's been since launch. The number of useful products we have has dropped considerably, as has droid awareness of the few things we do have left that are useful. They undid any good the Droid Publishes did us, and we are easily the most generally useless crafting profession right now. Hell, we can't even sell medical droids now.
Then there is the overall issue of crafting in general, as well as the overall game population. Go check out some of the other crafting forums, and see the dearth of posts. Hell, look at the merchant forum - the first page (even after the stickies) has TWO WEEKS worth of postings. Look at our forum - it's pretty indicitive of the rest - questions from respecers mostly and a very low volume compared with even a few months ago.
I'm terribly glad I made my fortune already. DE's are good for two things now - bomb droids and disposable BH droids. Ironically, I have never made/sold either of these types of droids, and I refuse to begin now just because they've decimated the rest of the profession and that's all that is left.
So, to answer the original question - what's next? Not much, probably. The Dev team has made such a mess of the combat game and the content on Kashyyyk that they are going to have their hands full for quite some time just fixing that mess. After all, that's what this game is all about now - combat combat combat. The rest of the professions will live off of crumbs until this fall/winter when they push another buggy expansion out for the combat players, and the cycle will begin anew. As soon as they get one mess cleaned up they will create another - anyone paying attention to SWG for any length of time has to admit that.
Unless your profession includes guns, hitting people with blunt/sharp objects, or fists, don't expect much from SWG in the future. It's the best way to avoid disapointment.
AO
Straker_Atrella wrote:
RemoMoxey wrote:
Okay.......since when is your friend a MOB? I'm talking PvE.....and they are useless as tanks. No matter what you say pets Don't hold agro (mostly they get hit and run away). I was a master CH....I respeced out because I have a feeling that pets and combat droids are "working as intended". The Devs stated they wanted this game to have a more "Star Warsy" feel.......and pets/droids tanking is not Star Warsy at all.
I was talking PVE as well. His pets do just fine. Yes the hate system needs some work, but his pets Tank very well. No you can't expect it to kill the creature on it's own, but it does tank. You also need to take the time to get decent pets. He has some that are level 69, which is better then an ATST.
Also you lost because you don't have a root attack. You root the pet and kill you buddy, after that the pet just loses interest......lol.
As I said, I am 0003 Pistoleer, which gives me advanced stopping shot.Which if you don't know it is a root. His pet has Ranged attacks, so I had to root it then run out of it's range. The entire time he was shooting me with his rifle. Even when I rooted, he won. Simply because I was forced to then take my attention away from him. Pets help.
Hmmm. I stand corrected. I also re-read your original post and 138 ranged damage from a pet seems high (considering 350ish is max I saw my pets hit for, and ranged is usually 1/2 that value). So as a MBH/MR you should have 170ish ranged defenses, plus your Level bonus (the pets max level is 70, after all). Wild level 80 elite mobs only hit me for around 200 (give or take 50 points), and using duelist stance cuts that down.
Was he using a grandfathered level 1(0) pet? If so that might have made a heckuva difference. If he was duel him again....those pets are not callable now (i had a few of those 1(0) pets.......lol).
Also, as a MBH/MR I suggest dropping Stopping Shot in Pistoleer and picking up Disarming Shot (if you're tight on skill points). Disarming shot and Startle shot are both delays. YES delays break on damage..........BUT if you hit them with another delay it sticks 
.
My alt is a MR/MBH/0413Pistoleer and I would root the pet, then delay the pets master. With that template I would be hitting the master for 1K of damage every 3 seconds (700 from Startle shot, 300 from Disarming shot), so it'd be about a 10 second fight. The pet would take off 1.5K of my health (healed by 1 stim-d). Then the pet gets the delays.....game over.