Rebalance Patch a small review

Secret World Legends General Discussion
#1

A plea for more Freedom of Choice…

A very little rewiev on the new “balance” patch: First of all, I appreciate a lot that keys have been removed, now finally we have reason to play dungeons more than our key limit. We have reason to play more now!!! Why was it limited in the past anyways? I could never understand that. Did Funcom want to prevent us from playing too much?

And something I completely dislike about the new patch and I hope it will be changed: Cooldown time increase on certain abilities to 60 seconds!!! Why!?!? You think I have use in the small amount of slots to fill it with an ability that I can barely use during the whole fight? You may think it is somehow a great balance idea, but I can tell you it is only a limitation of our possibilities to create a build that we enjoy playing. Ok, I see you want to prevent players from being able to survive without healers, to give healers a reason to exist in the game - but couldnt there be found another solution than to increase the cooldown of an elite ability to 60 seconds?!

Personal experience: I used shotgun as offhand weapon (DPS). I tried Full Salvo but didnt like it very much, cause mobs move out of the cone and also the whole attack lasts very long. So you are firing still while mobs are already dead. But worst part, when you are interrupted during this attack, you are stuck with an ammunition amount that cannot trigger Full Salvo anymore even when the cooldown is ran out as long as combat is going on, cause shotgun doesnt reload itself during combat, and Full Salvo requires exactly 5 shells. So after interrupt during Full Salvo you may have 3 shells in your gun, with no other ability slotted that is able to fire these 3 shells to force a reload, you are doomed to abandon your shotgun for the rest of the fight - yes there is a passive ability to auto reload each 5 seconds one shell, but it has no other greater benefit than to help you slowly out of this damn situation with interrupted Full Salvo. However: Full Salvo - Very inconvenient ability for me!
So I tried Bombardment - btw. Funcom announced “no more annoying ground targeting” when it comes to granades from Assault Rifle - nice - but Bombardment still uses the annoying ground targeting while being pretty much the same as firing granades with AR. Also has the problem it takes very long and mobs move out of the targeted area (or being pulled out). And it is a very boring ability in my opinion also, hardly of any use and I found it no fun at all.
But there was also Kneecapper. Yeah! That was finally fun! All rounds being fired at once and no matter if you had 5, 2 or whatever amount of shells in your gun, it always worked like a dream! And no more mobs having the chance to run out of your aimed area, no more dying mobs at the beginning and still firing holes into the air for a long long time as with the other two elite shotgun abilities. This ability finally was fun to use and even looked cool!!! - But now: “the balance patch”… increased cooldown to 60 seconds!!! Making it completely useless. One missed shot and wait another minute to use it again… OMG!

Funcom, seriously, dont you want us to have fun when we play your game? You couldnt think of something better than just that 60 seconds cooldown increase?! Ok I give you a very simple solution to fit to your new “balance” system: For tanks - if you insist in making life boring for them - keep the 60 seconds and the kickback. For DPS (less than 51% armor in AA) remove the ■■■■ back effect (since you seem to think CCs are bad for our need for healers - while they are actually just a lot of fun) and add more damage instead and bring back the 20 seconds cool down, so that we have reason and fun to use it! That would be a fair trade.
Your simple cooldown increases rob us from our freedom of choice in making a build that is somehow fun to play. Stop these limitations that make a game boring. The Secret World Legends has a lot of potencial as most Funcom games have, but as in other Funcom games you are not using the potencial that you put in there. Why?

…ah yeah and please improve the character editor and give us more chances to create a good looking character. It is very dissatisfying as it is now.

#2

I thought you were leaving the game because we’re ugly?

1 Like
#3

I dont know if you are ugly in real life, Anael. Just the toons are ugly, and that can be fixed if they improve the editor.

#4

It wasn’t limited. We got a certain number of free keys each day, and then we could buy more using Marks of Favour. We weren’t prevented from doing anything.

Tanking elites have their cooldowns increased to 1 minute. If you’re taking a taking elite whilst playing DPS, you’re making bad choices.
In terms of stuff interrupting your cast, I can only assume that you’re talking about solo play, because there’s not really much that interrupts you otherwise. Having short cooldowns on tank defensive abilities means that they can just be mashed as soon as they’re available, instead of having to make decisions about when to use them to mitigate specific attacks or mechanics. The longer cooldown means that your abilities matter more, and encourage more tactical gameplay.

If you’re only using one elite skill for your offhand weapon, you’re hurting your own DPS. Using an offhand gives you a second reservoir of energy to use when you’ve exhausted your mainhand’s energy, as well as providing extra utility. If the only ability you’ve got is an elite, then you’re wasting a lot of potential damage.

Only one grenade ability had the ground targeting removed, the others were already Targeted AoEs. Elemental still uses the ground targeting circles too. If you dislike the mechanic, you can check the “Invert simple ground targeting” box in Settings >Interface options >Combat, and that’ll place ground effects onto your target without needing to place a circle, (though if you’re not pointing at a target, you’ll still get the circle).

Freedom of choice is not freedom from consequence. You can choose to use tanking abilities, and they will help your survivability in solo content. But that comes at a cost of reduced damage and longer cooldowns so that you can’t use them all the time. You can choose to only take an elite ability from your secondary weapon, and it’ll still work, but you’ll have a load of weapon energy that goes to waste, reducing your DPS output. The choice is yours, and so are the results.

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#5

But with the cooldown increasing, the uptime of the ability decreases, so the ability matters less over time. Also, I believe “long cooldowns” don’t particularly mesh well with “action RPGs”.

Judging from my usage of “Pain Suppression” over the last two evenings, which was three times, I’m inclined to get rid of it altogether.

#6

I survived a World Boss just on using 4 tank cooldowns (fiery blast, pain suppression, unstoppable force, and osmium gadget) without a direct healer for a couple minutes, they do have their place still it’s just not as much of a mandatory in all situations thing anymore. I’ve had much better luck slotting active prevention (purge/impair/cleanse) and using the direct mitigation for the big hits (whatever they renamed the DW2 dog’s Concuss for example)

The 60 second ones are definitely the least useful; best I’ve found for them is waves of adds like Pol5 and DW5. And that’s specifically the new Chaos multiself one which cuts 80% of damage temporarily, it’s the highest burst mitigation available anymore, everything else is 30-50%.

The global cast time added to the Signatures has killed me several times already, it’s just not active until after I needed it or I accidentally overwrite it in the ability queue. Really not a fan of how they tried to make them multipurpose as dps for tanks.

#7

Because tank cooldowns are overkill for dps and solo content of people without cooldown heads. Bombardment with passiv gives you 10 seconds of 40k protection aka “F*ck I am immortal” in dps terms. Having that on a 20 second cooldown would be lunacy.
Sure you could make it weaker but honestly no dps should be incentiviced in using them plenty…they are at best a crutch for the rougher points of DA…a big dps dum-dum button of upsy daisy.

As for your misuse of shotgun…who sent you to personally torture me?
Slot shell salvage with passiv and Raging shot and be done with it…there is no magic to offhand shotgun dps and it is passed around as one if not the strongest offhand dps wise right now with DB stacking.
How you find Full Salvo…an Elite that whipes the floor with mob groups and even single targets a burden is beyond me. Sure the cone is a struggle but it is considerable larger than the annoying Bothbarrel and hits like a truck that lets you reaim during the full cast.
As for Bombardment you literally said that it is for AR grenades the no groundtarget. If it annoys you use the simple cast and look at the enemy.
As for using Kneecapper…using that in a dps build that doesn’t involve some rough solo content like DA (And there it can be argued on a build to build basis) should be punished by death (Petition pending). It always was a tank cooldown with utility aspects that you only slot in othermost rimcases. Using that on an offhand shotgun build is the equivilent to shooting yourself in the foot.
Honestly your problems with shotgun read as part torture and part you just failing to utilize them.

#8

Well, Im in a game to have fun, not to get a PhD in finding the one and only build that works perfectly. Im asking for a freedom of choice, Im bored if I am limited to choices and I find it interesting to use different ability combinations. So there should be a possibility to do that instead of making only a handful or less ability combinations useful. What also could work, is increase the number of slots by adding one more (one for passive and one for active) and unlock 2 more keys to use them. That would very much increase the possibilities in making the combat more creative.

#9

So you are saying the game should bend over backward to accompany your attitude of not wanting to learn your weapon and just doing your thing. And you are rubbed the wrong way that the rebalance didn’t account for that.

Reading you loud and clear. And even if I was in support of that notion, which I am not, the chances of that ever happening are as high as as the bottom of Agartha.

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#10

Get yourself a Tachyon head talisman (to help cooldown specials) and/or recursive talisman (if you purge or interrupt to help cooldown ALL abilities with a cooldown, even elites), an efficiency weapon and a signet that cools down the elite ability if you’re worried about those.

Honestly, though, if you hate the game so much before and after the rebalance… I’m not sure why you’re still playing

#11

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1 Like
#12

Why use 2 skill slots for the off-hand weapon? I thought 1 was preferable.

#13

I use half and half for blade/hammer to get the most out of both - unless you’re only talking about SG. Swallow Cut & Demolish are my most used.

#14

Aside from the obvious ways this patch was made just for me (forged in fire is good now, tanks need healers, …) they heard me saying I was bored of using DB stacking raging shot all the time and buffed both my other offhand options heavily.

The easy one to explain is AR. passive grenade generation is high enough that 20 seconds into combat, every Burst Fire loads a grenade. (or with Aux rifle, 10 seconds) this gives you a grenade every 12 seconds, grenades are very nearly as strong a DoT as fully stacked DB. (and it’s 2 active instead of 2 active + 1 passive) The initial 20 seconds is like rampup time on DB anyway.

The slightly puzzling one is Blade. I can see it’s doing good dps, possibly better than DB… I’m not quite sure why. Maybe from not needing the reload time? Anyway the build is dead simple, Swallow Cut & Focused Breathing (active/passive; not necessarily the most optimal passive but the easiest to play with). After your 4th or 5th Swallow Cut in an instance, every single one after that has a spirit blade bonus until you die.

Maybe it’s cause I use a Seventh Son of Destruction? So I’m getting 5000 swallow cut, 5000 spirit blade, 1300 destruction (under 35% hp; it’s MK2 for now but I have a MK3 in the wings) on every cast, which factoring in crit is 20k damage per cast. Or maybe Swallow cut has >80% chi generation. (from old 50%)

In terms of usage, my preference on the 3 builds is
Shotgun - using offhand as ranged taunt (DA multi-spawns, I want to fire a gun this way and that way and then run away, not manage grenades. former tank-only power move is now always viable)
Blade - all purposes that can be full melee (extra active slot means it’s good at everything)
Rifle - add management at a distance (Pol 5 for eg.) (even offhand, IG is a very strong aoe)

Due to how they work, shotgun/rifle are only strong in long single fights, blade’s only strong if you stay alive consistently.

#15

You need something to stack the DB with (Raging Shot) and shell salvage offers you (at least with passiv) both energy for your mainhand and you always have the spend shell as option for reload letting you stay on DB shells.

#16

I lost the focus on that game shortly after having some fun with doing that what later was called “sustain tanking”. That was in August 2017.
Maybe now I’m going to reconsider.
But what I missed most in SWL was being able to do some spontaneously PVP. Has something changed there too? Or are there opportunities organized by the community?