Sharpshooter Gunslinger (Marksmanship Sniper) Mechanics in PVP

Posted on 2012 April 24 by Ed Park

In this video, I discuss the mechanics for the Sharpshooter tree for the Gunslinger class in SWTOR, using footage of my 37 Gunslinger in a Huttball match (queued solo). Sharpshooter Gunslinger is the mirror to Marksmanship Sniper.

While the Sharpshooter tree contains talents that buff cast-time nukes, it also offers instant-cast nuking capability, defensive talents to boost mitigation and control gaps to opponents, and improved “mana” (Energy) management. Between Trickshot and the Foxhole talent, I rarely have to weave in the mana-free ability Rapid Shots. So more non-stop pew pew :)

Here is the spec used in the video

Gunslinger: http://torhead.com/skill-calc#700bcrrdRoRZrz.1
Sniper: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bcrrdRoRZrz.1

At 50, if I don’t go 31 points into Sharpshooter, I am targeting the following 23/16/2 spec:

Gunslinger: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700bcrrdRoRZrI0boRZb.1
Sniper: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bcrrdRoRZrI0boRZb.1

I’ll have to see whether Shock Charge with the 30% snare for 18 seconds is worth investing 16 points into the middle tree. A snare is the main thing Sharpshooter is lacking. TBD.

Let me know if you have any questions, tips, or feedback!

If you want to watch footage of a kick-ass Sharpshooter Gunslinger playing an almost identical spec at 50, check out Revy’s Gunslinger video:

To see me PVP’ing live, check out my TwitchTV channel. My stream features real-time commentary and between matches I interact with the Chat Room.

UPDATE (2012/04/26): I’ve changed my target spec at 50 from 23/16/2 to 28/13/0, to get the Surge talent toward the top of the SS tree. And I’d still have the 30% long-duration snare if needed.
– Gunslinger: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700bcrrdRoRGZrI00oM.1
– Sniper: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bcrrdRoRGZrI00oM.1

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Posted in Gunslinger / Sniper, PVP, SWTOR, Video

Why Games Should Scale Horizontally Instead of Vertically

Posted on 2012 April 19 by Ed Park

“Vertical scaling” is the de facto way that most MMORPGs are designed: gamers level a character up to max level, then they grind out tiers of gear in PVE or PVP. And if you roll another character, you repeat the same process.

Here are the issues with the vertical scaling:

It’s grindy
It creates brackets. You can’t do content with other players unless your character levels / gear scores are sufficiently close
It causes power creep. Content is initially too difficult, but once players obtain the gear to do the content, it becomes progressively less difficult until it’s trivial
It creates dead zones and content. This happens when the bulk of active characters are at level cap and whenever expansions are released with new content

I believe that “horizontal scaling” – where new characters have a baseline set of necessary tools and progressing your character is about broadening your capabilities instead of centering on gear acquisition – would provide a much better solution for both gamers and developers.

Here are the benefits of horizontal scaling:

There are no brackets due to level or gear score. You can roll a new character and immediately group with other more-experienced characters
It levels the playing field in PVE and PVP. Performing well isn’t about your level or gear score, it’s about your ability to play your character effectively and work in a team
Content (zones, instances, etc) stays relevant forever

Here’s how would progression could work in a horizontal scaling system:

Take achievements to the next level, so that the game tracks performance at a granular level…
– What’s my fastest time-to-clear for this instance (because this instance is never outdated)?
– What’s my fastest TTC for this boss fight?
– What’s my fastest Huttball match win ever?…and then have these stats feed into Leaderboards…- Which players / guilds have the fastest TTC for this boss for this week / the past x weeks / all-time?
– Who had the highest DPS on this boss fight this week / month / all-time?

So doing content for competitively-minded players is about excellence in execution, not getting geared up.

Support customization of the character’s look (armor / weapons / clothing) and guild heraldry based on achievements and performance
Have weapons with different capabilities, so that “gearing up” is about building up a collection of weapons that you can use in various situations or to support particular playstyles. So you acquire a Cinderburn staff if you want to buff up your Mage’s DoTs capability, or you acquire an Earthbind staff if you want to buff your Mage’ earth-based CC capability. But you just have to acquire each weapon once. There isn’t a +1 Flaming Sword, +2 Flaming Sword staff, etc – there’s just a Flaming Sword

I believe horizontal scaling would create a much more fun experience for gamers and also provide better ROI on content for game developers.

Let me know what you think!

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YouTube: http://youtube.com/taugrimtv
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Posted in Game Design, PVP, Video

Avoiding False Accelerator Procs for Vanguard (Powertech) in SWTOR 1.2

Posted on 2012 April 17 by Ed Park

In this video, I explain for Patch 1.2 how to avoid “false” procs for the Accelerator talent in the Assault Specialist (Pyrotech) tree for the Vanguard (Powertech) class.

Prior to 1.2, to apply a burn effect on a target within 10 meters, it made sense to use Ion Pulse (Flame Burst) instead of Incendiary Round (Incendiary Missile), because Ion Pulse delivered more damage in a shorter timeframe, cost less mana, applied a snare effect, and could trigger the Accelerator talent to make the subsequent High Impact Bolt (Rail Shot) free.

However, in Patch 1.2, an internal 6-sec cooldown was added to the Accelerator talent, so you want to trigger the proc only when your High Impact Bolt (Rail Shot) has been used and is on cooldown. Remember, even if your High Impact Bolt (Rail Shot) is not on cooldown, by using Ion Pulse (Flame Burst) or Stockstrike (Rocket Punch), you can trigger the Accelerator talent.

Therefore, in some cases you may want to open on a target with Incendiary Round (Incendiary Missile) on your target instead of Ion Pulse (Flame Burst).

Effective PVP gameplay of Assault Specialist (Pyrotech) requires getting the most mileage out of your cooldown resets for High Impact Bolt (Rail Shot), so this is a critical concept to get right.

Let me know if you have any questions.

To see me PVP’ing live, check out my TwitchTV channel. My stream features real-time commentary and between matches I interact with the Chat Room.

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Posted in PVP, SWTOR, Vanguard / Powertech, Video

Transitioning Back to the Corporate World

Posted on 2012 April 14 by Ed Park

Publishing content about games has been a passion of mine for seven years. I started creating guides and narrated videos, because I enjoy teaching and wanted to contribute to the community.

It wasn’t until Q4 2011 that I gave any serious thought about trying to monetize my content. Prior to that time, I was busy with work / RL, my gaming content was a hobby, and I wasn’t clear how I might monetize my content without alienating the people consuming it.

Late last year I decided to give it a go as a full-time blogger. The past 6 months have been, in many ways, a “startup” experience. I’ve learned a lot about online broadcasting, growing an audience, monetizing content, and improving the production value of my videos. That said, I’ve also come to realize that this isn’t sufficient to make ends meet financially, for now. Therefore, I’m in the process of transitioning back to the corporate world.

What does that mean for this blog? Well obviously I’m going to continue playing games, because they’re fun! And I’m going to continue blogging, streaming, and hosting content about games – but mostly on nights and weekends.

I want to thank y’all for your feedback, insights, and support along this journey. It’s been awesome having a community that constructively and intelligently dialogues about games, and I look forward to continuing our conversation.

Cheers,

Ed Park aka Taugrim

P.S. if you work in the gaming industry, I’d welcome the opportunity to speak with you. I have skills / experience that might transfer to that space, and I’d appreciate your perspective for someone coming from outside the industry. You can contact me @gmail.com, my username is the same there.

Posted in Blog Musings

SWTOR PVP in 1.2: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Posted on 2012 April 13 by Ed Park

The much-anticipated behemoth Patch 1.2 is finally here!

The Good

The UI customization is excellent
Game performance seems significantly improved
The addition of Recruit PVP gear provides a viable option for fresh 50s to get decently geared quickly

Since SWTOR launched back in December, the UI has been the main source of criticism across the playerbase. The new Interface Editor provides a high degree of customization, is usable and intuitive, and allows for sharing of the UI settings across characters. My only nitpick is that it lacks “snap-to” functionality for aligning interface elements. But overall, big thumbs up.

Tip: make sure to turn on your Target of Target frame in the Interface Editor. You can do this by clicking on the Target of Target frame and checking the Enabled box.

The other sticking point for many players pre-1.2 has been the poor or inconsistent game performance. Players suffered from low / inconsistent FPS, lag in populated areas, and issues related to animations and their timing. In 1.2, the game performance is significantly better – the game plays faster.

I’m glad the Recruit PVP gear was added to the game, as fresh 50s were cannon fodder pre-1.2. Of course, not all fresh 50s will have or be willing to fork out the ~320k credits to buy the whole set. But the option is there at least for those who can afford it and want to help their team.

The Bad

Ranked Warzones were delayed
The PVP commendation rewards are out-of-whack with the cost of PVP consumables
9 of the 14 War Hero gear slots require the corresponding Battlemaster piece

PVP fans have been eagerly waiting for Ranked Warzones (RWZs), so it was disappointing to hear just 2 days before the Patch went live that RWZs were being delayed. That being said, as I wrote earlier, the planned temporary “flexible” and “mixed” matchmaking systems were unattractive, as they respectively paired solo-queued players against premades and RWZ-queued players against non-RWZ-queued players. In addition, these matchmaking systems did not address the real underlying issue: some servers have low populations and there is no cross-server queueing functionality. I am relieved that BioWare pulled the plug on RWZs instead of going live with those matchmaking systems and risk having them flop out of the gate – especially after the failure with World PVP in Ilum.

The PVP commendations rewarded from warzones no longer cover the cost of actively using warzone medpacs and warzone adrenals because of 3 synergistic factors:

The amount of warzone commendations earned from matches (particularly losses) has been reduced, and
The cost of the warzone medpacs and adrenals has doubled (10->20), and
The cooldown for these consumables has been cut in half (180->90 seconds)

Some of my guildees are getting around this by relying on their re-usable Biochem medpac, which is great if you went Biochem. While some folks stockpiled PVP consumables pre-1.2, many players will experience a commendations deficit per warzone if they use 4+ consumables per match.

Most of the War Hero gear pieces require the corresponding Battlemaster piece to trade-in. This is fine for players who only play 1 spec, play classes where there aren’t multiple viable sets to choose from, or already have all the Battlemaster pieces from various sets that they might use. And keep in mind that Battlemaster pieces are competing for the same commendations that are used to purchase the overpriced PVP consumables.

The Ugly

The quality of the PVP experience experience has suffered due to much lower Time-to-Kill (TTK)
Class balance is heading in the wrong direction

I hadn’t played on the 1.2 PTS due to the lack of character copy (there’s no way I’m going to re-level a character on a test server, that’s rubbish), but my guess was that TTK in 1.2 was going to be roughly the same or higher (due to the number of nerfs to burst damage and talents across classes, and Expertise scaling). For whatever reason (lower Endurance on gear, gap between damage and mitigation provided by Expertise, etc), the opposite is the case. TTK is down dramatically, and this has taken away SWTOR’s best attribute in PVP: drawn-out fights that allow for tactical gameplay. Fully-geared Battlemaster players melt under any kind of focus fire. PVP is now a gibfest.

Since November and up through 1.1.5, I have stated that SWTOR had the best class balance of the major MMORPGs. Of course, the balance was not perfect, but I thought BioWare was taking the wise approach from 1.0->1.1.5 of incrementally making class changes to improve balance. However, in 1.2 BioWare decided to make multiple, significant changes to 7 of the 8 Advanced Classes. In my gaming experience, so many class changes at once has rarely produced a positive overall outcome (with the exception of WoW’s Cataclysm expansion, which streamlined talent trees and added new class mechanics).

In 1.1.5, here is what I thought was overpowered in PVP and needed to be looked at in future patches:

31-pt Shadow / Assassin tanks had it all: high survivability (Resilience, Deflection, plus self-healing), high mobility, very good damage, good debuffs, and Guard
Sentinels / Marauders had too much on-demand survivability and the best group buffs in the game
The friendly pull and sprint for Sages / Sorcs gave them a significant tactical advantage in group PVP, especially compared to the other 2 healing ACs
Assault Spec Vanguards / Pyrotech Powertechs had too much burst capability due to Ionic Accelerator / Particle Prototype Accelerator proc’ing multiple times in a short window
Scrapper Scoundrels / Concealment Operatives could easily gib people in smaller-scale fights (although they faced the same issue that other Rogue classes have faced in longer-scale combat)
Commando / Bounty Hunter healers were too mana efficient

Of the above issues, the latter 3 were changed in 1.2 but the first 3 were not. Sentinel / Marauder was buffed and Shadow / Assassin tanks were untouched. Simply put, the class balance in 1.2 is the worst I’ve seen since the game was launched, and I no longer believe SWTOR’s class balance is positively differentiated from other games on the market.

Closing Thoughts

I’m getting a sense of déjà vu: the sweeping changes in SWTOR 1.2 remind me of the sweeping changes in RIFT 1.5 and 1.6, in terms of having a negative impact on the quality of PVP. Yes, I know 1.2 went live yesterday, but I’ve been fairly accurate in projecting the impacts of live changes in the past.

I greatly enjoyed PVP in SWTOR from Beta through 1.1.5, even with the bugs and issues, because those are par-for-the-course with any new game. I am, simply put, bummed and disappointed with the PVP in 1.2. Things that were “broken” in terms of class balance were not addressed, and many things that were fine are now “broken” – and I mean in terms of how they work not bugs. I’m also concerned with the shift from careful, pinpoint class tweaking to across-the-board class changes. Is this going to happen again post-1.2, like it did with RIFT in 1.6?

P.S.:

If you play a Vanguard / Powertech, give me some time to sort out the changes
I haven’t had a chance to try my Gunslinger in PVP yet
I’m not planning on re-rolling as Shadow or leveling my 20 Sentinel, although both are fun classes and are very strong
Yes, I know Guild Wars 2 is coming, and yes, I pre-ordered it on April 10th as you probably did too. And yes, I know TERA early access on live is happening later this month. It doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been a huge SWTOR fan and want the game to flourish. The more games that are successful, the better it is for gamers and for the industry