System Designer John Jarynowski took on the forums to address some of the Patch 3.2 feedback regarding class balance.
Fine members of the galactic community,
Just wanted to pop up and thank you all for the continued feedback. We are testing many of your ideas presently. Even if some of these changes do not come around in this patch cycle, we are archiving community perspectives/ideas for future updates.
To help curb some continued points of contention that I’ve seen, I’d like to address two particular areas:
1) Many of you are concerned about melee viability against bosses in various Flashpoints and Operations. We have all heard your cries, and I know that our Encounter Designers are actively assessing improvement strategies. That aside, I want to clarify that we, the Combat Team, will not reconfigure an entire class or Discipline around a single boss encounter. While we continually work to improve both PvE and PvP experiences, we cannot allow a single event or boss to call us to restructure our design choices. For these particular concerns, I recommend that you voice yourselves on the Flashpoint, Operations, and Heroic Missions threads:
By sharing your experiences and objections in this forum, you reach out directly to the designers responsible for the content and its changes. This is the fastest way to catch notice and improve your encounter experiences.
2) Discussions regarding DPS buffs have been tossed around by many of you, and I want to restate what some of you have already discerned: Classes who are observed doing less damage than others do not necessarily need a DPS buff. Instead, over-performing classes need to have their DPS reduced to balanced, comparable levels. Alongside Quality of Life and Utility improvements across all classes, this is the central focus of our upcoming class update patches. Simply raising DPS levels to match the highest performers would drastically skew the fundamental balance of PvE scenarios and surge the PvP “time-to-kill” ratios to unfavorable levels. Instead, we are targeting over/under-performing groups in initiative focused updates.
As a final reminder, I ask that everyone stay focused on the Classes, Disciplines, and initiatives being discussed in these threads. When conversations derail due to tangential commentary or confrontational quibbles, we developers have a more difficult time gleaning your earnest feedback. Keep it clean, folks. We’re all working to improve the Star Wars: The Old Republic play experience.
Thank you all for your perspectives and insight. The final update for the 3.2 PTS is coming later this week, and we look forward to seeing your response.
Cheers, all!
-John
