Squad Leader Archive

Well I hit master squad leader and would like to add some feedback.

The Good

You get to use assault armor and a pistol to train up. Your pistol skills will be lacking so you might want to pick up pistoleer to compensate. With the armor you can take a hit. Using system messages you can lead your group with helpfull commands like fall back, form up, positioning and if I could get it to work %TT target but it seems I'm not using the right syntax. Your abilities can only be used when you are the leader but you do bring bonuses to your whole group.

The Bad

You have to be leader. Some of your skills just are not that useful and some spots you don't even get skills when I think you should. The master box is pretty much empty. Your pistol skills are very poor. If a combatant is in your group rally will stop buffing your group at that group member so if group member 4 is a combatant members 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 will not get the rally buff. Be sure to ask who is combatant or just try and heal them. If you get invalid target when trying to heal and you are on leave they are combatant and will stop your rally buff.

The Skills

Volley Fire - This paints a target with a big red cross hair making all attack do 15% more damage and giving 15% more accuracy best I can tell. You can also use it above your 35m pistol range to pull however i have had enemies become immortal and walk around with 0 hp left with that big red cross hair on them unable to be killed.

Retreat - Group burst run but you need full mind to use this so it becomes almost useless as an escape tool. I would lower the mind cost on this. You can use it to run past stuff or when a jedi gets jumped by a bounty hunter.

Steady Aim - This takes too long to activate you could get off 3 shots in that time and it is a one shot buff that lasts 20 seconds that increases accuracy.

Form Up - Remove group dizzy and stun. Good if your fighting Gorax or krayts I supose.

Morale Boost - Redistribute wounds. Useless. Maybe if it gave the group back half action and mind pools with a 5 or 10 min refresh.

Rally - 80 defence 40 melee and range accuracy 3 seconds or so to activate it lasts for 15 seconds with 30 second refresh. It's a good skill.

For the master box i would add in an improved rally doing say 50% more so 120 defence 60 to accuracy. Forced March skill that improves movement speed by 10% for the group and lasts a long time. Some new skills would be neat but making the skills they have better and providing improved versions of rally, and steady aim higher up the squad leader tree would be nice.

Also if the group could tell that it was getting innate bonuses for defence, accuracy and terrain negotiation with a squad leader buff icon or something that notifies them of the improvment that would go a long way since people probably have no idea we have those innate bonuses.

A thought I had kicked around as a low-programming involvement from the devs to fix the boostmorale skill was to have it even damage out among the party, not wounds. Good SL's would know when to use this skill, and more importantly for their comrades when not to use it.

Though I agree that it should really be a boost in action/mind regen, or something similar.

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Ocidry wrote:

Pretty good sum up of SL. I agree, hitting master is a tad of a let down, and yes the skill summeries i can agree with 100%. To make SL tons more fun, te devs would simply have to make SL use General Weapon Experience, so ANYONE can master it with ease, a swordsman could be one, a riflesman could be one, it would make the grind easier and make SL more appiling to most. Oh yea, change boost moral to a buff to increase Damage/speed and either make Steady Aim a long term buff, or make its cooldown less. So yesh, good job. And i love the idea for a icon to show the innate mods for the group _. Laters and keep up leading squads.

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I don't think it should be made easier for people to strip our profession. We have enough people stripping our profession and not enough Masters out there. Though I did see a post where a WS sold about 500 a week or so, so on a logical thought, I'd say that there are around 240 SL's running around on that server. Maybe more, Maybe less. I myself have dedicated myself to being an MSL and will wear no other tag. As for XP, it should go back to SL, I had to work up one profession then the next when I was MSL/MPistol and then changed from pistols to carbs. SL in fact does need some Dev love, but instead of posting here, we all should post in "If a developer ever posted here..." a Dev did post there, so they are watching, so post there.

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Ocidry wrote:

Pretty good sum up of SL. I agree, hitting master is a tad of a let down, and yes the skill summeries i can agree with 100%. To make SL tons more fun, te devs would simply have to make SL use General Weapon Experience, so ANYONE can master it with ease, a swordsman could be one, a riflesman could be one, it would make the grind easier and make SL more appiling to most. Oh yea, change boost moral to a buff to increase Damage/speed and either make Steady Aim a long term buff, or make its cooldown less. So yesh, good job. And i love the idea for a icon to show the innate mods for the group _. Laters and keep up leading squads.

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The General Weapon Experience is an interesting idea, but I seea coupleproblems with it. The first problem is what experience does it pick from when you train. This could cause a problem when someone is switching between two weapons. For instance, a Rifleman who is working on picking up Carbines and SL, he builds up rifles xp to train SL and carbines to train carbine, and by chance stops by the SL trainer first and suddenly finds his carbines xp gone instead of the rifles after training. Now to fix this, they could make an xp conversion option on SL trainers similar to the FS conversion (Convert Weapon_type to SL xp), but the problem with this would be that you limit training from a player SL forcing players to go to NPCs for training.

Just using Combat xp would be a good plan I think for SL if we can't get a SL xp back.

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ssosvissirz wrote:

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Im not in the best mood so excuse me.

Pistol XP is totally bullcrap for Squad leader.

Since you just hit SL you might havent know about Squad leader XP.

• You should only earn XP when you are leader of the group.


• Your skills should only function when your are leader of the group.

Your squad leader so you should lead the group.

The rest sums it up as it is, though I doubt and might argue some points, volleyfire doesnt give a 15% accuracy as far as the SL community has tested, so please provide some data that this is true, rally last 30 seconds and has a 45 second timer as several squad leader has reportet so pls check that again for your character and your server.

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ssosvissirz wrote:
Well I hit master squad leader and would like to add some feedback.

The Good

You get to use assault armor and a pistol to train up. Your pistol skills will be lacking so you might want to pick up pistoleer to compensate. With the armor you can take a hit. Using system messages you can lead your group with helpfull commands like fall back, form up, positioning and if I could get it to work %TT target but it seems I'm not using the right syntax. Your abilities can only be used when you are the leader but you do bring bonuses to your whole group.

The Bad

You have to be leader. Some of your skills just are not that useful and some spots you don't even get skills when I think you should. The master box is pretty much empty. Your pistol skills are very poor. If a combatant is in your group rally will stop buffing your group at that group member so if group member 4 is a combatant members 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 will not get the rally buff. Be sure to ask who is combatant or just try and heal them. If you get invalid target when trying to heal and you are on leave they are combatant and will stop your rally buff.

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Not to totally rip it apart, the skills assessment was pretty good, but since its out here for reading, leaving it to the 'wolves' that are old, opinionated, grumpy, and disgruntled-because-our-profession-gets-no-dev-lovin'... I'm going to give my opinion.

Like I said, the skills assessment was good,almost 100% right on in myopinion.

Assault armor? Good against Kinetic. REALLY sucks for us PvP'ers who face energy 75% of the time, elemental 10-15% of the time (if its even working correctly. People tell me it is.), and kinetic taking up the remaining sliver. So Assault armor sucks. Battle armor would be much better. Balanced for both play styles, PvE (which does face kinetic often) and PvP.

Pistols? If I wanted to walk close enough to smell those disgusting creatures (Rebels), I'd be melee. Restricting all aspiring SL's to one weapon type is just lame. What about the aspiring carbineer, or rifleman, or melee profession? The old SL xp system was fine. Perhaps give less xp per kill (It WAS rather easy to master, i'll admit), but the SL xp itself was good.

My point? I wouldn't label them as good.

Having to be leader is bad? Point of the Squad Leader. Some say they can't get groups to pass them lead. Well, I guess I haven't had an issue with this. Sometimes they don't, its not often though. In a PvP fight, my groups and other SL-led groups are usually full before anyone else's, because people WANT to be under the SL, getting what bonuses they are able to. So I disagree with leader being bad for Squad Leader. I guess I see it as the point of the profession.

That being said, I can see how Squad Leader is geared more towards guilded and/or factioned toons. Being a neutral SL, especially an unguilded one, would be tougher. Though when I try to consider what that means/is for an SL in real life, I don't think you'd find too many SL's who aren't factioned or related to some form of organization (such as a guild).

Pretty good sum up of SL. I agree, hitting master is a tad of a let down, and yes the skill summeries i can agree with 100%. To make SL tons more fun, te devs would simply have to make SL use General Weapon Experience, so ANYONE can master it with ease, a swordsman could be one, a riflesman could be one, it would make the grind easier and make SL more appiling to most. Oh yea, change boost moral to a buff to increase Damage/speed and either make Steady Aim a long term buff, or make its cooldown less. So yesh, good job. And i love the idea for a icon to show the innate mods for the group _. Laters and keep up leading squads.

From a gameplay standpoint name another profession that only works when it's group leader and you can only have one in a group using skills at a time? In fact it's not so much that you need to be leader since that will usually be handed to you. It's that any other squad leaders in your group can not use thier skills and thier bonuses do not apply. I hope that makes it a bit more clear as to why I think leader is bad. Maybe I should have called it leader exclusive.

What is the point of bringing a novice squad leader into a group with a master? So they can watch and do nothing? Fire your happy pistol, yay! I've been in groups where I said I'm master squad leader please make me group leader for buffs and the group leader didn't care, actually half the groups I get from random joinings at the MO have combatants in them too, which messes up my entire rally buff thing anyway. Is it even worth asking to be made leader? Does your group even see any worth-while benefits for the 3 seconds it takes someone to type /makeleader and give up that /invite button? Truth be told I bet most people don't even care if there is a master squad leader leading the group.

My information on skills might not be 100% accurate feel free to correct me I just wanted a basic review for someone to read and get a feel for the profession and add some feedback on my experience with mastering it.

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ssosvissirz wrote:
From a gameplay standpoint name another profession that only works when it's group leader and you can only have one in a group using skills at a time? (a)

What is the point of bringing a novice squad leader into a group with a master? So they can watch and do nothing? Fire your happy pistol, yay! (b)

I've been in groups where I said I'm master squad leader please make me group leader for buffs and the group leader didn't care, actually half the groups I get from random joinings at the MO have combatants in them too, which messes up my entire rally buff thing anyway. Is it even worth asking to be made leader? (c)

Does your group even see any worth-while benefits for the 3 seconds it takes someone to type /makeleader and give up that /invite button? Truth be told I bet most people don't even care if there is a master squad leader leading the group. (d)

My information on skills might not be 100% accurate feel free to correct me I just wanted a basic review for someone to read and get a feel for the profession and add some feedback on my experience with mastering it. (e)

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Excuse my short temper but Tiggs appearance did cut back on my patience a bit. The shear incompetence in communication the complete SOE Staff shows is a bit draining you might say.

(a) We're unique. We're based on groups and we are squad leaders.

(b) First he can learn how you lead a group. I am mostly involved in base raids, I coordinate attacks and objecvtives between different groups as well as within the group. Any other Squad leader can see how I use my softskills, those you use as a player and learn not those you get via the skillpoint system.
Second 8ppl groups are realy hurting us and we already asked for something like meta groups/ raiding parties. With such ability you could have the squad leader all in one group and each of them leading a sub group. If this ever will be implemented is open as the DEVs "dont know what to do with us".

(c) Explain what your abilities do and how you can enhance the group. Do that in spatial and in groupchat or in tells to the groupleader. I try to promote around the player base what we do, if the player base still doesnt care, they are not worht of your skills frustrating yes, but thats how it is. Ignorance shouldnt be rewarded.

(d) Im guilded within a very family like guild. I get more tells than I can handle if I log in, all says: "Liong we need you here and your SL abilities." I always say i dont do that much but they always want me with them. If its PvP, hunting, grinding quests, baseraids. They want me because I try to support the group as much as I can, but they also want my /rally and my /volleyfire. This is one of the greates rewards I can get. Currently my complete guilds is complaining that I dont have RotW (SOE is not getting that money from me - yet -) since I cant join them on Kashyyk. So yes, all who know me see a great benefit in having me as a squad leader around.

(e) Have a look at the Squad leader page at the star wars wiki. You ll find a very exact description of each skill as well some tips and guildlines to increase your effectiveness with timeres and alarms or some nice colored sys msg.

And finally:
Welcome among the ranks!

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On the note of the type of xp, I think implementing general ranged xp would be too tricky from a coding point of view, as mentioned a couple of posts up, training and other mechanics would become quite complex.

SL xp has gone, and I'd be surprised to see a u-turn occur here... so from the point of view of having more than one SL in the group, I'm sorry but sitting back and watching somebody use their skills doesn't cut it. Half the fun is in learning the profession yourself, masters are there for teaching but to simply watch would certainly not be an option for me. So the notion of only getting xp as the leader is something I'm against - I don't think it's the way to take the profession forward if we are to see it achieve a greater role, regardless of how the former system works.

As for some of the other points in the summary, good to see you enjoying some of the aspects of the profession If only we had a little more to do now...

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Loki_Ashaman wrote:

The General Weapon Experience is an interesting idea, but I seea coupleproblems with it. The first problem is what experience does it pick from when you train. This could cause a problem when someone is switching between two weapons. For instance, a Rifleman who is working on picking up Carbines and SL, he builds up rifles xp to train SL and carbines to train carbine, and by chance stops by the SL trainer first and suddenly finds his carbines xp gone instead of the rifles after training. Now to fix this, they could make an xp conversion option on SL trainers similar to the FS conversion (Convert Weapon_type to SL xp), but the problem with this would be that you limit training from a player SL forcing players to go to NPCs for training.

Just using Combat xp would be a good plan I think for SL if we can't get a SL xp back.

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Message Edited by Landorien on 08-02-2005 04:43 AM

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Landorien wrote:

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Loki_Ashaman wrote:

The General Weapon Experience is an interesting idea, but I seea coupleproblems with it. The first problem is what experience does it pick from when you train. This could cause a problem when someone is switching between two weapons. For instance, a Rifleman who is working on picking up Carbines and SL, he builds up rifles xp to train SL and carbines to train carbine, and by chance stops by the SL trainer first and suddenly finds his carbines xp gone instead of the rifles after training. Now to fix this, they could make an xp conversion option on SL trainers similar to the FS conversion (Convert Weapon_type to SL xp), but the problem with this would be that you limit training from a player SL forcing players to go to NPCs for training.

Just using Combat xp would be a good plan I think for SL if we can't get a SL xp back.

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No, being good with an axe should have ZERO relevance to leadership skill.

Bring back squad leader experience!!!

Oh, and TheRockStar,

It was rumoured by correspondents that the removal of squad leaders and smuggler slicing xp was a temporary thing to accomodate that bloody respec period, since it was initially only for combat professions. It makes sense sort of that SOE failed to consider SL a combat profession

I would not assume sl xp is gone just yet.

Message Edited by Landorien on 08-02-2005 04:43 AM

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Actually it had more to do with the fact that in the precu you were only getting pistols and pistol mods + some pistol specials.... and then that broke (cause a lot of us thought that was a bad idea) and they never did fix the rest of the design.

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No, being good with an axe should have ZERO relevance to leadership skill.

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Uh... if i have a big axe and the others don't, i expect them to obey my commands...