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.