Return of Reckoning

Hi,

I know SW's are getting an .ab ex mode very soon for assault (I hope, at least so we've been promised) but there's another slight issue with assault SW's that has nothing to do with their skills/masteries - gear. This is also related to gear in general for the SW.

The issue

SW gear progression does not go smoothly. Too many points go into weapon skill, that provides about 1% armor penetration per 10 points. However, both scout and assault specc don't benefit much from armor penetration, due to both having skills that go through armor. Even skirmrish takes not that much armor penetration. And the weapon skill takes away from defensive stats/ballistic skills that don't allow gear progression to be smooth. All speccs of SWs already have issues they didn't have on live, because on live a SW came online with conqueror/invader gear, which allowed it to balance stats much better.


I took the liberty of making this:

anni -
boots - 10 wounds 13 ws 25 bal
gloves - 11 tough 9 ini 16 ws 29 bal
helm - 16 wounds 29 ws 13 bal
shoulders - 12 tough 18 ws 28 bal
chest - 12 wounds 17 ws 32 bal

TOTAL - 38 wounds 23 toughness 9 initiative 93 ws 127 bal

ruin -
boots -9 willpower 23 wounds 11 ini 12 bal
gloves - 8 wounds 12 ws 23 bal
helm - 14 tough 11 ini 12 ws 28 bal
shoulders - 11 tough 13 wounds 26 bal
chest - 15 tough 14 ws 29 bal

TOTAL - 44 wounds 40 toughness 22 ini 38 ws 118 bal (9 willpower)

merc
boots - 25 wounds 29 ws 13 bal
gloves - 29 tough 9 ini 16 ws 11 bal
helm - 16 wounds 29 ws 13 bal
shoulders - 28 tough 18 ws 12 bal
chest - 23 wounds 17 ws 32 bal

TOTAL - 64 wounds 57 tough 9 ini 109 ws 81 bal

Now, if we look at the totals we see a few weird things -

Annihilator set has very low defensive stats and only marginally higher ballistic skil than ruin. It trades that off for much, much higher weapon skill. Mercenary has great defensive stats, but also the highest weapon skill in exchange for low ballistic skill.

Now, in general, the ruin set is a starter set, with anni being slightly better and merc slightly better. Sometimes specialized for specific masteries. In the SW's case, weapon skill is only good for skirmrish - scout specc has festering arrow and assault has brutal assault. So in case you go scout, you get a slightly higher ballistic skill from annihilator, but a big drop in defensive stats from anni, which is barely worth it. Ruin is practically the best set for Scout SW. For Assault, merc has the best defensive stats, but the 109 weapon skill is largely useless and since you have to max ballistic skill practically only by gear (so it transfers to strength via assault stance) the lower ballistic skill gimps you.

Therefore ruin ends up being practically the same if not better than merc for assault SW.

So basically the gear progression is good only for skirmrish, because skirmrish does get an ok bonus from weapon skill.

However, weapon skill also only marginally helps skirmrish. Even then the difference of WS between anni and merc is about 2% armor penetration and between merc and ruin about 7% armor penetration. That's still terribly low and in the case of merc against anni the extra ballistic skill makes anni better for skirmrish in terms of damage.

After this long analysis, it's time for my proposals:

Switch half the weapon skill of merc armor to ballistic skill. This would mean it would end up with 54 weapon skill and 135 ballistic skill. That makes merc a nice progression from anni and especially good for assault SWs (merc sets are often for stranger masteries anyway).

Switch at least 40 of the weapon skill on annihilator to defensive stats to make a good solid progression of the defensive stats as well. This would mean about 25 additional toughness and 15 additional wounds

SW's are already gimped in many ways and having to mix and match gear and put in wounds/toughness talis, gimping your own ballistic skill hits them on already weak spots, such as having little survivability when targetted, struggling to maintain damage stats as an assault SW and being anything but a healdebuff/critbuff bot in groups as skirmrish.

This shouldn't overpower SWs, because through mixing gear it's already possible to reach a high ballistic skill. What you end up losing is toughness and wounds or you end up sacrificing ballistic skill to gain those.

And let's be absolutely frank - unless the .ab ex change incoming is a heavy buff, some 40 additional wounds/toughness will NOT overpower SWs in any way. It might give an assault SW a chance, due to being slightly more resilient and it might slightly improve SWs ability by themselves and not as group players, allowing for a more fun playstyle.

Edit: I had the time to check over squig armor and I got this:

anni -
boots - 13 wounds 13 weapon skill 25 bal
gloves - 11 toughness 9 ini 16 weapon skill 29 bal
helm - 16 wounds 29 weapon skil 13 bal
shoulders - 12 toughness 18 weapon skill 28 bal
chest- 12 wounds 17 weapon skill 32 ballistic
TOTAL - 41 wounds 23 toughness 9 ini 93 weapon skill 127 ballistic skill

Merc -
boots - 25 wounds 13 weapon skill 10 bal
gloves - 29 toughness 9 ini 16 weapon skill 11 bal
helm - 16 wounds 29 weapon skill 13 bal
shoulders - 28 toughness 18 weapon skill 12 bal
chest - 23 wounds 17 weapon skill 32 bal
TOTAL - 64 wounds 57 toughness 93 weapon skill 78 bal

Now I'm literally the last person to ask for this, but I also think ballistic skill on squig merc seems a little low for progression. Maybe a squig could weigh in here.

Either way, that's not what the thread is about and I don't think mirror applies to this case, due to the stabbin path being less core than assault (squigs have a 30% speed buff, if you're in melee you're wrong). Plus gas squigs and spiked squigs get a bonus from weapon skill, so WS can be a little more useful for squigs. Either way, if merc gets a little remake to be more melee heavy, it should also do so for squigs, but I'm not an expert on that.

As the person who redesigned the itemization on Annihilator and created the Mercenary set, I'll respond.

First off, your stat totals are wrong - you're not including the set bonuses, which you should. The itemization was redesigned in such a way that ensured

1. The total stat value of each piece of gear remained the same as the old Annihilator itemization (when factoring for weighted values)
2. The total stat value of the entire set remained the same as old Annihilator, again when factoring for differently weighted values.

So the stats on just the gear pieces themselves might not seem linear, but each piece has the same total value as it did before, as does the entire set.

Here are the correct totals:

Ruin
+ 9 Willpower
+ 40 Toughness
+ 44 Wounds
+ 22 Initiative
+ 38 Weapon Skill
+ 173 Ballistic Skill
+ 296 Elemental Resist
+ 7% Dodge
+ 3 Morale Gain
+ 3% Ranged Crit
+ 1 Left Tree

OLD Annihilator
+ 12 Willpower
+ 104 Toughness
+ 47 Wounds
+ 16 Initiative
+ 48 Weapon Skill
+ 187 Ballistic Skill
+ 2% Dodge
+ 2% Disrupt
+ 3 AP Per Second
+ 3% Crit Reduction
+ 2 Middle Tree

NEW Annihilator
+ 23 Toughness
+ 38 Wounds
+ 9 Initiative
+ 93 Weapon Skill
+ 189 Ballistic Skill
+ 320 Corporeal Resist
+ 3 AP Per Second
+ 2% Dodge
+ 2% Disrupt
+ 8% Ranged Crit
+ 1 Left Tree

Mercenary
+ 57 Toughness
+ 64 Wounds
+ 9 Initiative
+ 93 Weapon Skill
+ 140 Ballistic Skill
+ 240 Armor
+ 2% Dodge
+ 2% Disrupt
+ 5% Ranged Crit
+ 52 HP/4s
+ 3% Crit Reduction
+ 1 Right Tree

Second, Annihilator and Mercenary were not designed to be "better" or "worse" than each other. Annihilator was designed to be a set that complemented the SW in RvR and the Scout tree, an Mercenary was designed to complement the SW in scenarios and small scale combat through the Skirmisher tree. The former is more of a glass-cannon-at-a-distance build, the latter trades some damage for better survivability. In other words, one was designed to be the more defensive set an the other more offensive, and the lines between the two are not likely to be blurred for SW/SQ.

Third, it seems a bit disingenuous to say that because you have 2 skills that hit resists (and require you to be in scout stance) and one skill that ignores armor, that WS is less valuable. Festering and Flame arrows and Brutal Assault all require a tactic to be effective and the latter additionally requires being in melee range. If you're including tactics, I'd make the argument that slotting Replenishing Strikes and No Quarter and spamming Eagle Eye will get you better DPS against non-tanks than slotting EA and spamming FA. But if that's not the case, then for what it's worth remember that the sets were redesigned at a time when EA only ignored 50% of resists instead of 100%.

Fourth, these set changes were open for comments and changes for about 3 weeks before implementation and for another 2 months after implementation - and during that time, no SW asked for a single change. Which is not to belittle your concerns, I'm just wondering why nobody brought the up before - especially when almost every other class who asked for changes got the changes they wanted. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know that well how the SW class plays in T4 (I never leveled mine past T3 on AoR nor RoR), but these sets seemed decent.

Lastly, as a reminder - there will be no more scenario sets beyond Mercenary, and sets after Annihilator are unlikely to be redesigned.

I completely understand your whole reasoning and let me say that I'm fine with annihilator being a glass cannon specific set, if mercenary provides adequate scaling over ruin for assault.

Because while you can make the case for mercenary scaling for skirmrish, which I can accept, in a way, you completely forget assault.

Assault needs to desperately max wounds, toughness and ballistic skill, due to the fact only BS from gear and not tactic goes to strength. Merc has too low BS to allow for maintaining both damage and defensive stats.

Assault is the most gimped specc and while I have been assured changes are coming, I think it will stay a problem (until conqueror) that assault has limited armour options.

I would suggest an outright strength bonus to merc (will only ever affect assault and not overpower anything else) but I'm not sure you can change armour values.

To answer your other question - I believe I'm the only vocal assault SW in RoR and I was away since month 1 of the project and just rejoined after merc was implemented.

Believe me, I'm not saying you made the wrong choices. I understand them, especially considering assault is heavily gimped and not that popular. But it exists and on live was ok with higher gear levels, so one of the main things holding it back is gear - so a specc viable on live is not living to its potential. If new sets are to be released in the very near future (around new year's) this is a pointless complaint and I'd happily accept my topic being deleted.

On the other hand I can concede merc and Anni being scaling sets for scout and skirmish correctly.

Don't take anything I said as an outright refutation of your proposal - I'm not actively on the staff and I wouldn't be the one making any changes. And like I said, I don't play a SW regularly, so I can't comment on any specifics - nor can I contest what you're saying. But Assault stance converts BS from items to Strength, doesn't it? The +140 "strength" that Merc would give to Assault is 49 less strength than the offensive MDPS set grants them, but 30 more than the defensive MDPS sets. So while it's not great for Assault, it's not as bad as it could be.

One thing I can say for sure though, is that the staff has a hard policy of not using itemization to fix or balance classes in any capacity, at any time. If the problem with Assault SWs is that their skills are subpar, that will get addressed as soon as it can. If their skills and mastery tree are fine but their itemization sucks, that can be addressed. But if it's a combination of the two, the balance changes will and must always come first before any itemization changes. We/they won't willingly make temporary changes to itemization knowing that balance changes are/can come in the near future. When you do that, you wind up making a class temporarily OP, and then we have to fight the community tooth and nail to bring them back into line.

I'm not saying you can't have your itemization changes, but that they will only be considered if they're not a band-aid for some deeper problems. I think we can both agree that if it's possible to bump SWs higher up the list for balance changes, that's a more favorable discussion to have for everyone. Of course, I say that knowing that with the pending-approval WP/DoK overhaul, their itemization might need looking at in the near future as well.

I suppose, then, that my proposal is a bit pointless, since we have been assured assault SW changes are inbound very soon. I would still like to see assault be able to get a bonus out of itemising above ruin and not having to itemise around Anni being bad and most merc pieces heavily below ruin, but judging from what you say, such a change cannot happen with an .ab ex on the way. I just hope this thread stays open, because I think if changes come, armour will at some point need rethinking.