Droid Engineer Archive

Well if any of you have looked over at the CH board then you'll know that the devs dont like how much power they have and are trying to nerf them down as much as possible while also making them feel they're still powerful. Sound like a contradiction in terms? Your right. That's because in my opinion the developers are looking at the situation from the wrong perspective. Let me elaborate.

The issue is that CHs in effect have the potential to use two weapons at the same time on the same target. Namely a master CH can throw a Rancor at something while also being a master rifleman and dish out at least double the damage of any profession in the game if not more. Odd to that the fact that the creatures themselves have around x10 the HAM and resistances of any player and you can see their point about overpowering. There really isn't an easy way out of this for how they're takling things. If you weaken the power of the CH then the people who use them as their primary offensive skills are cheated, then again if you leave them alone then the people who use them to suppliment their existing weapons abilities are too strong.

In the end, the answer lies not within the CH profession but without.. with the droid engineers.

If anyone had the ability to own a 'pet' which could help fight with them then you instantly have a rebalance for the professions themselves. Naturally like the creature certifications you need to moderate who can use these new pets for the non-CHs. I am of course talking about battle droids here people. They'd need to make sure that getting and operating a combat droid is just as difficult as being a creature handler except without it eatting into their skill points. They should allow you to buy certifications using accumilated combat experience which clear you for using certain combat droids. Additionally the CHs should not be allowed to have both combat droids and normal pets active at once since they are already controlling existing pets.

Pets and battle droids each need their own pros and cons. In the case of droids they'd need regular upkeep while animals dont. However droids behave more intelligently than wild animals plus they have ranged attacks. On the downside they aren't physically as powerful and tend to use their AI to be combat effective rather than storming in and soaking up damage. Battle droids on the whole should have lower HAMs and resistances but higher damage output to counter the fact that creature pets tend to have lower damage output and higher HAMs.

The battle droids would also be one of those money sinks the developers keep trying to promote. Like any machine they'd need to be repaired and upkept with credits plus they'd need regular servicings and you'd need to refill their power sources.

Given that creatures go from the CL15 to CL70 range then the battle droids need to be the same. Low level droids would be something like the probot (CL15), moving up the the mid-range droids which would be like the trade federation battle droids (CL25). Mid range to higher would be the super-battle droids (CL35). Upper would be droidekas (CL45) and finally the biggest and meanest (CL70)would be practically miltary class droids like the IG-88 which isn't so much highly resistant but they are extremely intelligent warriors using all of the best weaponry that a commando could have.

This way rather than having to rebalance the professions and then rebalance the game, they simply balance the droids to each other than balance the game to the added power that players can wield.

BOOOYAH! exactly. Now if we could get the devs to read this... wait, my bad, they ignore everything ever posted in this board.

Not a bad idea in itself, but me, as someone who is looking to master Creature Handler & Droid Engineer both, I'd like to use a probot along with my creatures, and my 1 tree of rifleman skills (or whatever weapon I use) to back them up.

I guess that could make me a super powered player, along with the faction pets I want to get... tho ironically I'm not playing to be Uber Killer. I just like me my pets, always have in games like this. In EQ, played a Druid and loved charming creatures to fight for me, played necros for my skeletons, in Diablo 2 played Druid and Necros for the pets.

Pets are just my thing, and I love the combo of CH for pets, and Droid Engineer for some combat droids to support them.

But that's nothing against your idea, because from a completely unbiased opinion, that is a lot more balancing.

Well first of all let me say that I felt the same way about the bio-engineer and the devs for the past 4 months (yes even during beta) on the whole no they dont have their act together but they have shown they're circling around to the most broken professions and working up from there. Droid engineer on the whole does have a market, the trouble is that there's now enough diversity in it yet plus the repeat business is limited. On the whole though, things do work. Now take a look at the bio-engineer and chef. These are currently being looked at by the devs since we have totally broken items and goods and of course the same market troubles as you. Once they get us at least up and running I'm sure you folks will be getting a look at too. Afterall the good sign is they're looking at pets, a topic which the droids fall into.

"If you weaken the power of the CH then the people who use them as their primary offensive skills are cheated, then again if you leave them alone then the people who use them to suppliment their existing weapons abilities are too strong."

Untrue. CH always use critters to suppliment their weapon. A CH that uses pets as their only way to deal damage is a dead man. Anytime hes targetted directly, hes got troubles. In PvP hes worse off. Just target him directly and forget about the pet. Sure you might die to the pet, but he will be dead too. And without a master, the pet will soon follow suite. So you have to use another weapon along with your pets.

I dont think the battle droid idea is a good one. They need to fix what they already have. Then they can worry about adding content.

I like this idea for a cert system except I believe you need to have a way for a non-combat class to gain the certs to operate the battle droid.

Guess they could add Droid cert points to every non-combat action and then everyone could slowly but surely gain droid certs.

In fact they could have some actions allowa personto gain way more points then others.For example.. Droid engineering skills gives you 100 times more then any other skill.

About the Bio-Engineer'd pets...

And idea that I've had (I have highly contemplated the BE profession and the CH / BE combo, but didn't do it cuz whatever a BE could make, a CH could tame, at least at the time I made the decision), is to instead nerf CH so that there are creatures that they cannot tame and only Bio-Engineers can make, make it so that Bio-Engineers can actually create new and unique creatures.

Say for example, since Bio-Engineers need the DNA to make a creature, they can make DNA, and just for example, you can have a creature that is the mix between a fanned rawl and a gnort, lol. As they get higher level, maybe they can mix creatures from different planets together, and of course mix higher level pets together.

I know that's kinda out there, but that would definatley satisfy my sadisic and twisted side, and I'd be more than happy to give up combat skills to be a CH / DE / BE for that.

Errr Nell, if you look at the Bio-Eng board you'll see that's amost exactly what we're going to be capable of in around 4 weeks. We'll be able to customize the colours, special attacks, CL rating and armour for any of the clones to have a nearly infinent numbers of combinations which cannot be found in the wild. But this is about droids being the solution to the imbalance not bio-engineed beasts.

I have to disagree that a CH who doesn't have another weapon is deadmeat, not at all. Sure they can't take on the big stuff but on the whole a master who throws his rancor at a famba can sit back and enjoy the show. Creatures are very viable weapon by themselves but the CHs want more and more power since they have become to used to solo'ing the biggest and meanest mobs in the game. But as i said there is utterly no way to balance the CH against any other combat profession, it's impossible.

As soon as someone has the ability to attack a target themselves and have a sidekick do the same they instantly exceed the maximum capabilities that a master rifleman, pistoleer or carabineer or any combat profession can reach by themselves. Even if a masterBH went up against another masterBH who uses pets as well the BH withtout pet would stand a very good chance of losing because they're causing less damage. A creature by any standards means extra damage, even if they are nerfed down to 1% of what they are then the CH can allow the player to cause 1% more damage than any other when combined with another combat profession.

There's only two solutions. Prevent Chs from using any other weapons when using pets or allow everyone to use a pet of some kind as I have suggested with the droid certifications and battle droids.