08/02/2023

I Still Miss My Abilities

In her video "Is SWTOR worth returning to in 2022" from a few months ago, Swtorista had this to say about 7.0's update to class abilities: "High-skill players who were using every single one of their abilities often express frustration about missing having all their useful abilities at once, and that includes me - though six months later, I care a lot less. I haven't missed it quite as much."

When I first heard this, it made me think. We're coming up on the one-year-anniversary of Legacy of the Sith's launch, and back then I said in my first impressions that I wasn't sure yet how I felt about the ability pruning, as I liked some aspects of it but found myself somewhat frustrated by others. Do I also care a lot less twelve months later? Sadly, the answer is: not exactly.

To be clear, I don't miss every single ability that has been removed or that I've had to forfeit. Especially on classes that I don't play that often, it's not like I had ever truly memorised everything in the first place. However, on my Commando, I still have issues.

Specifically, I still don't like the level 68 ability choice, which at the start of 7.0 forced you to choose between Hold the Line, a movement speed increase that breaks snares and roots while also making you immune to them for a few seconds, Echoing Deterrence, a reflect that can be activated while stunned and that heals you for any direct damage reflected, and Cryo Grenade, the trooper's hard stun.

The main problem for me is that I just can't go back to a life without Echoing Deterrence, because I remember all too well just how much of a punching bag healing Commandos were before its introduction. Even if it's not quite as powerful these days as it used to be, not least because most players actually know to stop attacking you when it's up, I still can't imagine wanting to PvP without it. But even if I just look at PvE, it's saved my life so many times when I got healing aggro on trash or a tank was slow to pick up adds on some boss fights. It's just utterly irreplaceable for me.

Having to make do without Cryo Grenade has mostly been okay, except that I still haven't quite managed to shake the habit of reflexively wanting to stun people in the fire in Huttball, and I still get caught off guard by being unable to do it, but I'll fully admit that that's an edge case. Hold the Line was much more of an issue though, as Commandos don't have much mobility without it.

Now, over the course of several months I painstakingly trained myself to rely more on Propulsion Round instead - which doesn't help with roots, but it can get you from A to B more quickly. The only "problem" is that it goes backwards, so it's easy to get yourself in trouble with it as you can't exactly see where you're going.

And then what does Bioware do with 7.2? They swap out Hold the Line and Propulsion Round, meaning the the former is now baseline and the latter has to be chosen, meaning that just as I got used to relying on Propulsion Round, I can't have that anymore and now have to re-train for Hold the Line only. Argh!

My only temporary saving grace has been that the system is a bit buggy, meaning it granted most of my Commandos and Mercs Hold the Line or its Imperial equivalent without taking Propulsion Round away... this seems to be quite a common bug that fixes itself as soon as you switch loadouts - which has of course meant that I've tried hard not to do that. I dread the day when I either forget and accidentally make the switch or Bioware fixes the bug.

As mentioned, it hasn't been as bad on other classes that I don't play as much, but still, there are others where I'm in a similar situation of just struggling to pick one of two abilities over the other. For example my Guardian tank always feels like she's missing either Saber Reflect or Blade Blitz for quick threat, and while having to choose between Phase Walk and Force Lift as a Sage is not totally unreasonable, it feels like I find myself stuck in combat and looking for whichever ability I don't have at that particular moment way too often.

How do others feel about the ability pruning a year later? Do you also have that one choice that still feels bad? Do you have several? Or have you adapted just fine?

4 comments :

  1. I've had to live through so many class/ability changes in another MMO that I've just gotten used to having things just disappear and living with it. I mean, I still wish Jedi could stun droids, but that skill has been gone for a long, long time now. (Unless I'm having a senior moment and remembering a Kotor ability. ^_^)

    As well, I've come to prefer fewer abilities to have to deal with as I've gotten older. Having three or four ability bars to deal with is just too much for me these days. Ideally everything I need should fit on one or two bars. While I don't want things to be console controller simple *cough*ESO*cough* I don't necessarily want things to be Final Fantasy 14 complex when it comes to doing well in the game.

    I do wonder if Swtor 8.0 will return in some fashion to talent trees since Dragonflight in Wow has paved that path. After all Swtor followed the path Wow blazed in simplifying the talents. Perhaps a talent system similar to Dragonflight would make it easier for people to select the abilities they really wanted without overloading our ability bars with everything.

    Who knows? All I can guess is that things will change eventually as reinvention seems to be a standard event in many MMOs.

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    1. Well, I never liked all the class changes in WoW either! As far my personal enjoyment is concerned, they often made things worse, and coming back after a break became extremely confusing.

      (And you remember correctly that Sentinels and Marauders used to be able to CC droids. As did Snipers/Gunslingers.)

      I'm generally okay with some ability pruning; I think many classes have too many different dps abilities to rotate through for example... but of course those are not what gets taken away, it's the utility skills that actually let you do different things. 😐

      While I kinda like the Dragonflight talent trees, I'd prefer it if SWTOR didn't waste time on another talent revamp so soon. It was kind of inevitable this time around due to combat styles requiring the decoupling of origin stories and advanced classes, but I'd rather the next expansion focused on some other aspect of the game.

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  2. As a NiM raider, I definitely still miss parts of the old toolkit. Most perplexing to me is that pruning in the 7.X system often means limiting access to strong and highly useful abilities while leaving abilities that have almost zero use and should never be part of an endgame rotation. As a merc main for instance, I thought for sure explosive dart would be the first ability to go when the pruning started, they even took away its dot spread for IO so now it's 100% pointless for everyone. But it's still sitting there on the tree. No one chooses it but it's still there... Merc aoe is another confusing example. The class has 5 potential aoe abilities (fusion missile, explosive dart, death from above, sweeping blasters, missile blast) and somehow none of them are particularly good. Why not combine these? (Please keep death from above though for the animation alone, it's super cool).

    Another issue is how frustrating the leveling/new player experience is now with all the moved and removed abilities. I was leveling a pyrotech dps recently and got to a point in the tree where I had decide between passives - one that buffed my kolto overload and one that buffed sonic missile. But guess what, I didn't have either of those abilities at that level! Even as an experienced player who already knew what both of these abilities do I found this incredibly frustrating, can't imagine how confused a newer player might be by something like that.

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    1. I liked Explosive Dart/Sticky Grenade for node-capturing PvP, where you can use it on someone who's capping just before you die and then enjoy interrupting them post-mortem when it goes off a few seconds later. 😂 But yes, that's extremely niche and I wouldn't take it as an elective just for that.

      I remember running into the issue with out-of-order passives while levelling myself, but that was relatively shortly after 7.0 and I thought I'd seen a patch note since then that said this had been fixed. Disappointing to hear that it hasn't apparently. 😕

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