Rifleman Archive
Thread: Does this mean no more headshot?
Leadhead101 wrote:
Sotaudi wrote:
Gonzotha wrote:
[snip]
My god if they do that, then they better REALLY think hard about the ham values on weapons. I dont think they will however because I think that their real intention is not with pvp, it is with pve. They want to give all professions a serious sap in strength so that creatures that are supposed to only be able to be taken down by groups are no longer soloed by players that find the loop holes in their current system. While I sort of agree that mabee people shouldnt be able to solo rancors or nightsisters, but I dont think trying to eliminate the spamming of specials to oblivion is the way to go. When I was a blademaster, it was super fun to get jacked up on the muon with some buffs and head to endor with the pimp stick. I would grap a couple of missions and go solo some crimson blurg lairs pound of the f-keys in different orders and find some really good combos!
The whole point if this was to change the way HAM costs work. What they have stated is that they think that battles are being won too quickly because of the way the current HAM system works. It allows people to get buffed to the gills and spam specials all day, and if they have specials that mostly drain the health or action pools, they can pop a stim B or have a doctorheal them, and continue spamming away (something Riflemen cannot do because our HAM costs primarily affect mind, which is unhealable). They want a more ebb and flow battle format rather than the current spam fest.
We got a glimpseof the new system. As it appeared on TC for a short time, the HAM costs from specials would draw from the pool's maximum rather than beingassessed as damage. Because heals do not change the pool maximum, but, rather, raise the current value to the maximum, this means that all HAM costs, not just those affecting mind, would be come unhealable. This, or some incarnation of it, will almost certainly eventually show up as the new HAM system.
With HAM costs all being unhealable, the need to make mind unhealable is no longer a necessity. Think about it. If you use mind to heal health and action, and you can also heal mind, then you could, theoretically, heal indefinitely. Thus, mindhad to be unhealable. But healing is a special ability (just not a special attack) which has HAM costs (mind). Thus, under the new system, heals will also deduct from the pool maximum, meaning the heals themselves will still be unhealable, so they could not heal indefinitely. They will eventually run out of mind just like now.
That being the case, they will have equalized HAM costs from abilitieslike they said, and at the same time, they removed the only real reason to make Mind unhealable. Thus, to balance damage in all three pools (their other goal), the only real way to do that is to make mind healable like the rest of the pools.
So they have thought it out, and unfortunately, this likely means we that mind will no longer be targeting an unhealable pool, but, we will still be targeting mind.
If they make it so special costs are unhealable, will that make tumbling do the same? Tumbling is the main way for people to "grind" the medic professions, but if they make it so that special isn't healable, well, there went the prime way for rising medics right out the window, lol.
*thankful he is already a master doc*
Leadhead101 wrote:
My god if they do that, then they better REALLY think hard about the ham values on weapons. I dont think they will however because I think that their real intention is not with pvp, it is with pve. They want to give all professions a serious sap in strength so that creatures that are supposed to only be able to be taken down by groups are no longer soloed by players that find the loop holes in their current system. While I sort of agree that mabee people shouldnt be able to solo rancors or nightsisters, but I dont think trying to eliminate the spamming of specials to oblivion is the way to go. When I was a blademaster, it was super fun to get jacked up on the muon with some buffs and head to endor with the pimp stick. I would grap a couple of missions and go solo some crimson blurg lairs pound of the f-keys in different orders and find some really good combos!
not soloable by who?? the vast majority of folks in the game cant solo a rancor or even a nitesister slave. this isnt a rifle specific problem. i witnessed a comando soloing a ancient canyon krayt with a flamethrower and a speeder bike. the only way to stop EVERYONE is to make all monsters invulnerable to all damage.
to me high end content are the force users and ancient canyon krayts. to others durni and sharnaff bulls on corellia are high end content...
KnightHawk420 wrote:
Your confused on what the ham changes will be. As it had previously existed on testcenter "specials" in no way lowered your HAM. That's exactly what it does now. It doesn't change the maximum either, but lowering the maximum your essentially taking damage. All that would be is a change ham movement graphics.. hehe.. Thats not what is different about the new ham system.
What IS effected however are your secondary ham bars. When you use specials the "damage" you now take to your main ham bars will be instead transferred to your secondary stat bars. The maximums of those stats will be lowered. This system will far more severly limit special attack usage. And will kill "tumbling medic xp".
I suspect ultimately in the future they will probably add mind stims, or allow the current stims to also heal mind. In effect creating no particular difference between any given ham bar.
Granted, I did not see the changes on TC myself, but every description that I read stated that the reduction went against the pool, not the secondaries.If you are saying you saw it yourself, I will take your word for it.Not that it really matters, because the effect is exactly the same as far as this discussion goes.
Whether HAM costs are charged as reductions to the Pool maximum, or the maximums of the Pool secondaries, the damage remains unhealable. Thus, everything I said still applies. HAM costs from abilities for all professions will be unhealable, and, therefore, there is no longer a reason to keep mind as an unhealable pool. So, they will not be removing mind as a "type of damage done by specials" but making mind a healable pool just like Health and Action, making it no longer a special, unhealable damage type.
Again, either way, this also means that people who have been using tumbling or other non-combat related means of healing damage will no longer be able to grind healing XP from HAM usage.
edine wrote:
I hope what you said is right, but that won't stop people from cryin NERF on us, and that doesn't explain the phrase "Take mind out of special damage type"
The phrase is already worded poorly enough that it is important that we do not misquote the phrase. You have inadvertentlyreworded the sentence. It says, "Remove mind as a special damage type," not "Take mind out of special [abilities] damage type." In other words, special means "unique" in the context of what they are saying.
Try this. Ignore that phrase for a moment. And read, instead, the fact that they want to "place equal emphasis on Health, Action and Mind pools for both abilities and damage." Now, understand that, however the final HAM cost change assesses HAM usage, it will be unhealable (we have already seen this in testing on TC). Thus, we know that HAM costs will be unhealable. That makes HAM costs on all three pools equal. Now, to finish the balancing, they want to "place an equal emphasis" on damage to all three pools as well. Now, look at the disputed phrase again.
How, in that context, does leaving Mind damage as the only unhealable damage pool equalize how they are handling damage across all three pools? Likewise, how does removing only targeting of the mind pool equalize either abilities or damage across all three pools? The answer is it does not. Doing so treats mind differently than the other two pools, and they have clearly stated they are trying to change that. But if you substitute the word "unique" for "special" in that phrase, I think you will see that all the peices fall neatly into place.
xc_Tytan_xc wrote:
Its very easy with buffs to attain a state where you do not take special move costs. In which case, you would take no special wounds and would be able to heal indefinately. Macroing wouldn't be affected as long as the tumbler is buffed, and in pvp it will have no effect becasuse everyone is buffed.
The only way for them to change this is to increase ham costs to the point that they always hurt you no matter how buffed your secondaries are, or put a minimum cost in. If they do not, it will just make having buffs more a priority.
Leadhead101 wrote:
Sorry, I dont think I am totally catching on. Will you be penalized in the secondary ham stats like nighthawk says or the primaries like sotaudi said? There is a huge difference and the reason I ask is that I am a wookie and cant wear armor. This means that when I go hunt something like tuskan captains, I can absorb only one of their huge damage attacks. If I hunt Force crystal hunters, I will die with one shot of their choking death ray without a buff. If I am penalized in the primary ham stats, that means I really need to be carefull hunting stuff that could take me out in two shots because if my health is 900, and I end up burning 100 pts of primary health I am down to 800 enough to be toasted in one shot by a tuskan captain. If it is like nighthawk says and the penalty is applied to the secondaries, then I am probably ok.
Sotaudi wrote:
KnightHawk420 wrote:
Your confused on what the ham changes will be. As it had previously existed on testcenter "specials" in no way lowered your HAM. That's exactly what it does now. It doesn't change the maximum either, but lowering the maximum your essentially taking damage. All that would be is a change ham movement graphics.. hehe.. Thats not what is different about the new ham system.
What IS effected however are your secondary ham bars. When you use specials the "damage" you now take to your main ham bars will be instead transferred to your secondary stat bars. The maximums of those stats will be lowered. This system will far more severly limit special attack usage. And will kill "tumbling medic xp".
I suspect ultimately in the future they will probably add mind stims, or allow the current stims to also heal mind. In effect creating no particular difference between any given ham bar.
Granted, I did not see the changes on TC myself, but every description that I read stated that the reduction went against the pool, not the secondaries.If you are saying you saw it yourself, I will take your word for it.Not that it really matters, because the effect is exactly the same as far as this discussion goes.
Whether HAM costs are charged as reductions to the Pool maximum, or the maximums of the Pool secondaries, the damage remains unhealable. Thus, everything I said still applies. HAM costs from abilities for all professions will be unhealable, and, therefore, there is no longer a reason to keep mind as an unhealable pool. So, they will not be removing mind as a "type of damage done by specials" but making mind a healable pool just like Health and Action, making it no longer a special, unhealable damage type.
Again, either way, this also means that people who have been using tumbling or other non-combat related means of healing damage will no longer be able to grind healing XP from HAM usage.
I did see it myself on testcenter. I forget the time frame now, but it was around the time this discussions about HAM costs had really started for the player community. You know before most of us found BUFFS!, and still all had graul maulers hehe.
But just to confirm I did in fact play with this on TC, this isn't just mindless conjecture.
Anyway, your totally correct otherwise on your comments.
No more using stims as "virtual buffs" to spam specials.
No more tumbling for medic xp.
Mind damage will become less pertinent.... HOWEVER unless it also becomes healable as easily as health and action, I dont' see otherwise how it still won't be special. I've read a couple blurbs to this effect, but /shrug who knows.
Unbuffed combat won't suck so bad. And that right there I see as a big plus to the HAM changes. It will shorten the gap between the buffed and unbuffed. But make no mistake even in this system the buffed will have a distinct advantage over the non-buffers. Just perhaps now not so impossible of a difference.
I think lower level players will probably like this change the most. For those of us who don't leave our homes unbuffed, we won't notice much me thinks.
In particular when I tested these changesI was a novice brawler, and at least from that perspective I loved it. I really wish I had a betterHAM burning character to have tested out, but such is life on TC.