Pistoleer Archive
Thread: IMPORTANT TEST CENTER UPDATE
Thanks for the great work Philo I follow other profession boards and you're doing a bang up job for us. My question is do you know what the objective was behind the change with special move HAM costs? Were they trying to make medic healing less neccesary? That would have a HUGE implication for the way healing types tend to get their xp, meaning Cantinas and healing the special attack damage for teammates on hunting trips.
The reliance on pets is so high for most players that as a healer type I can run with a hunting team and hardly get anyhealing exp since the pets tend to be the only ones taking damage. Oh well maybe with the CH nerf I'll have melee types around more. Not that this is the forum for any of this. 
Thanks again Philosopher and BLESS YOUR SOUL for keeping fan shot safe. We don't have any dominant state attacks so at least they can let us keep our mob demolisher.
Seems like the HAM costs are a temporary "wound" of a sort. It decreases your HAM potential to be healed from damage, but it also regenerates (which wounds don't do).
So, from what I understand...
You're spamming specials, pseudo-wounding your HAM bar.A creaturecomes up and hits you, and you take damage to your HAM bar. You stop spamming your specials, and that portion of your HAM bar regenerates quickly, leaving only the damage from the creature.
However, let's say you've spammed quite a bit more, and that same mob comes up and hits you. Your Health is actually very small right now, and the creature hitting you can incap you in one hit because of the pseudo-wounding you've done by using specials, even though it hit you for the same amount of damage as in the first scenario. However, becuase your actual health damage was very low, perhaps your incap time will also be very low, on the order of maybe 10 seconds (I'm guessing and hoping)
This is both good and bad:
Good
The regeneration of the pseudo-wounding caused by spamming specials may not be linked to your secondary stats. Which means that you can wear armor and spam specials without worrying that the specials will kill you or limit your ability to spam your specials. As it is right now, wearing big armor means that your secondaries are low, and your HAMs don't regenerate AND you take more damage becuase the secondaries aren't reducing the costs of your specials. If the pseudo-wounding is not dependent on these, then you can spam just as much wearing armor as not wearing it.
Means that you don't need to be a medic to spam. You can just spam spam spam spam and then use the default attack, and then spam spam spam some more, and as long as you don't actually get damaged, you cankeep spamming.
Bad
Means that in the middle of a fight if you do get damaged, your medics can only heal you up to a certain point, becuase your pseudo-wounds from spamming specials are taking up the rest of the bar.
Means that you don't need to be a medic to spam. You can just spam spam spam spam and then use the default attack, and then spam spam spam some more,and as long as you don't actually get damaged, you cankeep spamming.
So...
Boon for Bounty Hunters - they can Eye Shot/Torso Shotyou their entire bar, wait 30 seconds, then Eye Shot/Torso Shotyou their entire bar again.
Boon for Smugglers - they can Last Ditch/Panic Shot/Low Blowyou their entire bars, wait 30 seconds, then Last Ditch/Panic Shot/Low Blowyou their entire bars again.
Boon for Carbineers - they can (whatever big attack they have) their entire bar(s), wait 30 seconds, then (whatever big attack they have) their entire bar(s) again.
Boon for Riflemen - they can Head Shot 3 you their entire bar, wait 30 seconds, then Head Shot 3 you their entire bar again.
Boon for Pistoleers - ....
Well...just means that those with better specials can spam them more often now, and we'll continue to spam what we got...even though we general were able to before without too much trouble.
DilatedPeoples wrote:
Intresting finds. I wonder if everyones damage mitigation is the same at the master level.-DP
That's my impression -- everyone gets either ranged or meleemitigation 1/2/3, and those levels are the same in any profession based on the info I posted in the initial post on this thread. It could have changed since then, but I'll have to wait until I get back from Thanksgiving to find out for sure.
I agree with you and I'm glad that more is being done to encourage Mastery. I was a bit disappointed that you only needed to get three boxes for Mitigation 2, though ... they could have done a better job of placing Mitigation 1 and 2 on the tree. Not a big deal, but that's my initial reaction.
Inhocmark wrote:
Potentially a huge bonus for going Master in a profession
I have no idea whatsoever, but I assume the same thing.
Inhocmark wrote:
I'm assuming that these mitigations wouldn't stack (ie if I have Master Pistoleer/Master Rifle)
Tullius_Cicero wrote:
Possible downside -- a Pistoleer with enough Medic can currently spam specials for a very long time even unbuffed (assuming a reasonable stat migration), and indefinitely when buffed.
That's right -- your analysis is on target. My impression is that this change *helps* the player who *doesn't* have medic skills spam specials but hurts the player who has strong medic skills because prior to this system the medic could spam specials while the non-medic could not.
I want to make clear, if it wasn't clear in the initial post,that I was able to continuously spam specials with a Republic Blaster on TestCenter. I was spamming BodyShot2 as a Master Pistoleer and had no HAM problems at all. (Which makes sense -- ordinarily my action bar would be down to, say,50-60 percent at the end of aPvE fight just from HAM costs, but the regen ratehere is much higher so I'd see it get to 60-70 percent but then regen back super fast.)
I wasn't able to test much -- TC crashed literally every 4-5 minutes on me. I'll test more after Thanksgiving.
Testers might clarify something:
I've seen a message about this elsewhere that specified that the 'HAM Damage from Specials' now affects ONLY secondaries, not the primary Health/Action/Mind bars, so that using a special has no effect on your health, only your strength, etc.
This means that wearing a lot of armor is bad, since one special might incap you by wiping out that 10 strength left after all the armor subs to the already lower secondaries.
Much, much testing and balancing will likely need to be done with this kind of major change to combat.
WesBelden wrote:
Not sure I've entirely got this new HAM system - are you saying that the pools you take from to actually do stuff (shoot, hit, hop on one leg) are now seperate from the pools that take damage when someone attacks you? If so, does that mean that you'll only be incapped because of damage done to you by your enemies rather than the specials you do with a little help from your enemy?
Well it's still possible to incap yourself, it's just harder to do. You do seem to lower your own max HAM, although I ran so few tests so I don't know if your "actual" HAM stays the same even as your "max" is lowered. Here's what I mean:
One possible way the system could work is that if I spam specials and my max HAM goes from 1000 to 800, a creature only needs to hit me for 800 damage to incap me. Another possible way the system could work is that the "max HAM" just limits your specials but that your actual HAM stays the same. So my "max HAM" goes to 800 but it still takes 1000 to incap me.
Based on what I saw on TC, the first one is the way it's working. When you spam specials you get a negative value in the "modifier" column of your Character Sheet (where things like buffs, etc go now). My impression is that your HAM itself goes down as you spam, so it's still possible to hurt yourself enough to help the enemy kill you ... but far less likely for non-medics.
My initial reaction to the system is that it's a lot more newb-friendly. The previous system rewarded players who knew how to clear their combat queue and add a heal in there. The new system allows a new player to spam his CDEF without "punching himself in the head" at the same time, so to speak.
1imawookie1 wrote:
My question is do you know what the objective was behind the change with special move HAM costs? Were they trying to make medic healing less neccesary? That would have a HUGE implication for the way healing types tend to get their xp, meaning Cantinas and healing the special attack damage for teammates on hunting trips.
I reallyhave no idea what's going on in the Devs' heads -- your guess is as good as mine. They posted some comments on Correspondent Forum which I cannot share, but those comments indicate that they are aware that this system will have implications for medical folks and are thinking about those issues.
Thanks for the kind words in the rest of your post. I appreciate it.
Laeren wrote:
[Lots of smart things]
Great post, Laeren. Your description of how the system worked matched what I saw on TC, although I never actually got incapped because I wasn't anxious to test out that feature with the limited time I had.
You're also probably right that this system helps us the least of all the combat professions, since relatively low HAM costs were probably our only real advantage.
I'm not sure what to think about the new system at this point. I'll probably have to do a lot of testing and playing on TC after I get back from Thanksgiving.
That's not what I saw ... on my Character Sheet I saw negative values in the "modifier" column for the Health/Action/Mind pools, not the secondaries. I don't know much more than that, but that's what I saw.
Fedacorr wrote:
I've seen a message about this elsewhere that specified that the 'HAM Damage from Specials' now affects ONLY secondaries, not the primary Health/Action/Mind bars, so that using a special has no effect on your health, only your strength, etc.
One important piece of info that a Dev asked me to pass along to you guys . . .
The change on TestCenter is not necessarily going to the Live servers, and it may be changed or tweaked even if it does make it to the Live servers. So please test it out and let me know what your comments/concerns are, and I'll pass them along to him so they can consider our point of view on this issue.
We do not know how existing defensive mods stack; do we know how these new ones do?
That is, can a character get both a ranged damage reduction and a melee damage reduction by having both a brawler class and a marksman class, and do these reductions work all the time, or only one at a time depending on which type of weapon is equipped?
Tullius_Cicero wrote:
We do not know how existing defensive mods stack; do we know how these new ones do?
I have no idea. Still no response to the request by the TKA Correspondent and me for information as to whether the existing mods stack.
I'm going to run to my plane now, but it's something I'll test when I get back in town.