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Topics - ZephixLeer (Zephic)
1
« on: February 11, 2014, 03:29:57 pm »
Hello everyone! Long time rarely see! I have finally scratched out a time each night to run a twitch stream. I get on each night at 9 PM central, 10 eastern and try to play for at least 1 hour, usually more. Lately I've been playing Risk of Rain and more casual games like that. I do plan to stream The Repopulation once they allow that kind of thing. Anyway, I'd love to have you guys come hang out with me and maybe even play some games together! I'll start jumping into teamspeak if there's any interest in playing some games with me during the stream. I also wouldn't want to put you guys on blast and stream our voice chat without permission from Tbone. I have several videos up but really only the most recent have solid audio and a webcam setup. Anyway, feel free to check it out and let me know what you guys think. I still have a long way to go with setting up certain features for my twitch channel, but I've been having a blast so far! I'll be looking forward to seeing some familiar names in chat! www.twitch.tv/zephixleer
2
« on: April 12, 2012, 09:33:51 pm »
Who else got an email stating they'd be getting 30 days of game time added to their account, in addition to a tantaun ram?
Kind of caught me by surprise, and I'm not seeing a lot of forum threads on it yet. Only received the email about an hour ago, of course.
Evidentally, I'm "one of the most active and valued high level players..."
I almost felt special for about half a second there, but assume like a million other level 50 players received that?
3
« on: March 17, 2012, 05:23:37 am »
Trooper
General •Full Auto's attack animation now begins more quickly to improve reactiveness and faction balance. •Mortar Volley's animation has been updated. In addition, it now has a 5-meter radius to bring its range in line with other Trooper Area of Effect abilities and it now begins its damage sooner after activation.
Commando •Concussion Charge now triggers snare visual effects on affected targets. •Charged Bolts has been rebalanced. It now costs 2 Energy Cells, has a 2-second activation time, and deals approximately 10% less damage. •Cure now costs 1 Energy Cell (down from 2).
Gunnery •Charged Barrier now provides 1% damage reduction per stack. •Curtain of Fire: the chance to trigger this effect has been increased significantly. •Demolition Round's damage output has been increased by approximately 10%. •Grav Round has been rebalanced. It now costs 2 Energy Cells, has a 2-second activation time, and deals approximately 10% less damage. •Muzzle Fluting no longer reduces Energy Cell costs. It now reduces the activation time of Charged Bolts and Grav Round by .5 seconds. •Tenacious Defense now reduces the cooldown of Concussion Charge by 2.5 seconds per point.
Combat Medic •Field Training now increases critical chance by 1% per point. •Field Triage now reduces the cost of Medical Probe by 1 (down from 2). •Kolto Bomb now affects up to 4 targets (up from 3), improving reliability in group and Operation situations. •Kolto Residue now increases all healing received by 3% (down from 5%). •Psych Aid no longer reduces the cost of Field Aid. It now causes Field Aid to heal the target for a small amount. •Supercharge Cells now restores 1 Energy Cell (down from 2) when used and increases all damage and healing dealt by 5% (down from 10%). The shield applied by Kolto Bomb now reduces damage taken by 5% (down from 10%). •Trauma Probe now costs 2 Energy Cells to activate. So, initially I read over these changes and cried a little inside for the gunnery tree. However, after some thought on it I realize that we may actually see similar damage from this tree. The changes I see are as follows: Although charged bolt and grav round now do 10% less damage, we will see the same cast time and same cost as we previously did, regardless of the other changes. (-As long as we take muzzle fluting to reduce cast time by .5 seconds.) The cost reduction that muzzle fluting previously provided is now permanent as a static reduction in base cost. Full-auto and demo round will now be the go-to skills for recovery of the damage lost due to the 10% reduction in damage of grav round and charged bolts. Demo round got the increase in damage by 10%, and full auto will be casted with 25% increased damage at least once per 6 seconds if all goes well with Curtain of Fire. (Supposedly the chance for this to occur has been increased significantly.) Full auto actives faster now as well. It sounds like we'll be able to keep similar damage in PvE based on current rotations and changes noted above with full-auto and demo round as long as CoF is up at the end of every 6 seconds or soon after. PvP will be harder to pass judgement on just yet. Currently, I try not to waste grav rounds anyway, but with the new changes it will be even more necessary to cast full auto and demo round as often as possible. Which, of course is really the whole reason for these changes to gunnery. People whined about grav and tracer spam and so the developers did what they could do force commandos and merc's to rotate to other skills a bit more often. The other changes to PVP were a surprise to me. Charged barrier now gives half the protection it used to, dropping from a maximum of 10% down to 5% when fully specced into it. Concussion Charge will only get a cooldown reduction of up to 5 seconds, down from a maximum of 10 from Tenacious Defense. I guess we'll see if the extra 5% damage reduction from charged barrier and the extra 5 seconds knocked off the cooldown really changed PVP that much pre-1.2. Now for the REALLY big changes. Combat medic. WTF Bioware?NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF!!! NOOOO! Trauma Probe is no longer a free cast buff for the tank. It will cost us 2 ammo. Supercharge cells has had everything it provided cut in half. The shield from kolto bomb, the extra healing, the ammo regeneration... yup, all of it only provides half of what it used to. Field Triage now provides only a cost reduction of 1 ammo for medical probe, doubling ammo use for medical probe. Kolto residue has been nerfed from 5% to 3% Kolto bomb still only hits 4 targets. Gee, thanks for the extra target and all the other nerfs bioware! Still lame. No increase in radius on these notes, either. Field training's critical bonus was cut in half. My conclusion, for combat medics: The way I see it, ammo conservation is going to be a real pain in the ass now. We're going to see far more out of ammo situations when things get hairy. No more "shit, out of ammo.. supercharge!" It will now be more "shit, out of ammo.. supercharge, hammer shot until full ammo!" Or relying on the second healer to top people off while we regenerate ammo. Thank god for those force users who have practically infinite force! (nevermind... evidentally they got a nerf too..) The biggest letdown for me (outside the surprise nerfs in ammo sustainability and trama probe) is kolto bomb. I expected we'd get more targets and with a higher radius. Increasing the number of people we can hit with kolto by 1 doesn't do shit for Operations, which is where we were complaining about it the most. -What do you guys think of the changes we'll be seeing? Personally, I hope they rethink the changes to combat medic. They feel inspired by wanting to nerf the gunnery/combat medic hybrid with poor ammo sustainability. Which, looking at the sage/sorc, I don't even understand. I'm actually pretty darn furious about these combat medic changes. I thought I'd be mad about gunnery, but instead I see a PVE nerf of combat medic.
4
« on: March 14, 2012, 11:07:56 pm »
So right now I'm running an old core 2 duo 1.8Ghz processor on an intel board. It has finally reached a point where I have to ugprade very soon. SWTOR is running OK, but could run much better. I also find myself doing a lot more rendering with blender 3d and I've gotten much deeper into game design and development. My requirements for a system have gone from a gamer with moderate expectations in FPS to gamer/developer who wants some solid power.
Here's the "upgrade" i came up with, keeping the current case, power supply and video card I have. (GTX 470 1Gig)
Corsair Force Series GT 120 GB SATA 2.5-Inch SATA III Solid State Drive Corsair 16 GB (4 x 4 GB) DDR3 2133 MHz ASUS RAMPAGE IV EXTREME - LGA2011 - X79 Intel Core i7-3820 Processor 3.6 4 LGA 2011 (not going to OC yet, but considering switching to the 2600K or 2700K in case I do in the future... that mobo is asking for it really... Probably a good idea, even though the above processor is technically faster out of the box)
Any suggestions or alternatives?
5
« on: March 14, 2012, 07:35:35 pm »
Anyone willing to help me get this soon? I'm on later at night and on weekends. I just need some help reaching the top. I have the crystal from corellia and the grappling gun thing. mssg or whatever.
6
« on: February 29, 2012, 09:33:36 pm »
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=335108 Hello everyone! We are very excited to announce that Game Update 1.2 will be hitting our Public Test Server soon.
As you know, Game Update 1.2 is packed with new content, including a new Flashpoint, Operation, and Warzone. To that end, we're looking for some end-game guilds to test this new content and to provide feedback before the update goes out to our live servers.
While we don't have the technology for mass character transfers yet, we do have a manual process to copy characters from our Live servers to our Public Test Server that we will be offering for Guilds that are accepted for testing.
If you and your Guild would like to help us out in testing Game Update 1.2 content, please check out the details in this blog post.
Spaces are limited, so we can't guarantee that your Guild will be accepted for testing. Please get your emails in as soon as you can. We are looking to begin the copying process soon. Accepted Guilds will be notified via email, at which point more information will be given.
Thanks in advance!
7
« on: February 29, 2012, 09:29:44 pm »
Live in or near Austin? http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=335137 The Star Wars: The Old Republic team is looking for skilled SWTOR players in the Austin area to test out brand new content in the BioWare Austin office. We are looking for players that are experienced with endgame Operations, Warzones, and Flashpoints.
Players that meet this criteria may fill out this survey and qualifying candidates will be contacted for more information.
This is a temporary paid position and will require at least a weekend a month of your time.
Thank you!
8
« on: February 10, 2012, 12:00:25 am »
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=213530(Easier to read at the link above. -Hard to format on these forms as the scroll bar keeps moving. ) I found this useful even on my commando. Really had to rethink things like Armor Screen and my use of Reactive shield for my PVP build. http://taugrim.com/2012/01/19/unders...-tanks-in-pvp/
Copy of the article in full below.
--------------------------------------
This article describes the Defense and Shield mechanics for SWTOR and their implications for tanks in PVP.
Defense is the Avoidance mechanic and Shield is one of the Mitigation mechanics. In this article I use the terms "defense" and "avoidance" interchangeably.
Avoidance and Mitigation in SWTOR
To quickly define terms:
Avoidance: not being hit Mitigation: reducing damage taken when hit
There are 3 categories of Avoidance as captured in the Defence Chance tooltip: Melee Dodge: base of 5%, boosted by Defense Rating, talents, and buffs Ranged Dodge: base of 5%, boosted by Defense Rating, talents, and buffs Resistance: base of 0%, boosted by talents and buffs. This is against "spells" (Force and Tech attacks)
Mitigation comes from multiple sources: Expertise: stat that provides mitigation against all damage types Armor: mitigation against 2 of the 4 damage types: Energy and Kinetic. Keep in mind that for attacks that deal "weapon damage", to understand whether Armor factors in, you have to check the damage type of the weapon itself. E.g. blasters and rifles deal Energy damage
Talents that provide flat damage reduction Shield Chance / Shield Absorption: provided when you have a Shield offhand equipped and successfully Shield an attack that hit. The amount of damage mitigated (absorbed) is based on the offhand (e.g. 20%), your Absorption Rating, and talents in the tanking tree. SWTOR's Shield functions similarly to WoW's Block mechanic. The main difference is that in SWTOR you don't have to keep oppponents in your frontal facing to Shield "Bubbles": mitigation against all damage types The 2-Roll System
SWTOR leverages a 2-roll system for determining the outcome of an opponent's attack as explained by BioWare's Georg Zoeller (references: 1 2), bold emphasis mine:
Quote: First is a hit roll, accuracy versus defense, and if the attacker misses then no damage occurs. If the attacker rolled poorly enough to miss even discounting the target's defense then a "Miss" result occurs. If he misses because of the defense then the result varies based on the attack type, the cover state of the target, and the target's equipped weapons. All the possible results - Dodge, Parry, Deflect, Resist, Cover - are mathematically the same, but they can trigger different effects and are visualized in different ways.
If the attacker hits, then a second roll is made with the crit chance of the attacker versus the shield chance of the target. If a Crit or a Shield occurs then the damage is adjusted up or down (based on Surge/Absorb), and then it goes through to the armor and damage resistance. A critical can never be shielded, and an attacker with a high enough crit chance can push the target's shield chance off the table. It shouldn't be possible to get your passive crit chance high enough to start pushing off the target's shield chance, but there are short-duration buffs that push these chances high enough to come into conflict.
Which Attack Types are Defensible and Shieldable
There are 4 attack types: Force, Melee, Ranged, and Tech.
The attack types should not be confused with the 4 damage types: Elemental, Energy, Internal, and Kinetic.
Melee and Ranged attacks are Defensible and Shieldable, whereas Force and Tech attacks are not. This is consistent with other games such as WoW and RIFT, where "spell" attacks are not dodgeable / parryable and not blockable.
Implications for Tanks in PVP
A critical consideration for SWTOR is that all classes have either Force or Tech attacks. You can see the attack type by looking at the Abilities tab for a given character and looking at the right-hand column. Therefore, an implication is that you may not get as much mileage out of your Defense and Shield-related talents as you might expect. E.g. Stun-based abilities across all Advanced Classes are classified as either Force or Tech attacks, so the target's defensive capability doesn't come into play I play Bounty Hunter and Trooper and most of my key abilities are classified as Tech Keep in mind per Georg's post that the attacker's Crit Chance can push Shield Chance off the table. There are a lot of buffs (e.g. talent-based, from Relic, etc) that boost Crit Chance, and the implication is that when you most need to Shield heavy incoming damage, your Shield Chance may be reduced significantly or completely. Given that, and the fact that Shield Chance is calculated after the hit roll, Shield Chance is not a strong mechanic in PVP.
Another implication is that the talents for boosting mitigation may be stronger than we might have expected. In particular, this explains why in my experience Guardians and Juggernauts tanks take the longest time-to-kill: they have multiple bubble mechanics in their tank tree, including Invincible (Warding Call) and Sonic Barrier (Blade Barrier), and these excellent abilities provide mitigation against all damage types.
I shared some of the thoughts in this article on a thread for my Guide to Powertech Mechanics and PVP a week ago, and some 50 Powertechs including chainsawsamurai tested and confirmed that the Avoidance and Shield-related talents do not work against Force and Tech attacks.
When I run as a tank-spec'd Vanguard, I will likely use a DPS PVP set based on the game mechanics and avoid (no pun intended) the talents related to Melee Defense, Ranged Defense, and Shield Chance, unless they provide some additional benefit (e.g. the Ammo-regen effect from Shield Cycler).
This is not to say that you shouldn't take the talents and tank PVP gear. If you want to max out your survivability, invest in them. It's just important to understand what benefit you get out of them and the mechanics.
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to Kjollborn, who helped me to realize that the attack type not the damage type is what is factored into Melee Defense, Ranged Defense, and Shield Chance.
Thanks to Lightweight, a 50 Combat Medic Commando in my guild, for helping me with testing.
9
« on: February 04, 2012, 12:24:27 am »
I was curious how other commandos are handling PVP? I watched a video today of a Vanguard in PVP doing pretty well. I'm starting to regret rolling a Commando and trying to PVP with him. I've finally reached about 7% expertise but still seem to have problems even 1v1 against just about any class. I've been told that inquisitors are supposed to be the rock to my paper, but I've really had issues with those guys. They just bubble and heal up. Though I've started trying to save cryo to interrupt heals, it doesnt seem to give me enough time to burn them down with the nearly 2 second cast time of grav round. If they're low, I'll use a grenade round or even hammer shot/maybe full auto them down, but that bubble absorbs so much damage, it's usually just a waste of ammo. Generally by this time I'm low too. Probably just my tactics. I suck pretty horrible so far in PVP, and I am sure further experience will help me out, as well as gearing up more. However, I'm curious how others are doing with their commandos in PVP? What classes do you get excited to see approaching on the battlefield, feeling confident you'll come out with a win? Who do you hate seeing approach? Are there any tricks you guys have learned that help come out on top against others? So far I've tried several talent specs as well, and I haven't set on one specific skill setup yet. I tend to bounce between almost pure gunnery and a hybrid spec between that and assault, which seems more mobile, though only slightly. Anyway, I will keep working at it, and this isn't so much a "how do i get better" thread as a general curiousity about how others are doing. If it's possible to be top damage/healing as a commando in PVP, I'd love to know it, so that I have something to work towards. So far, I've seen very view commandos perform well in WZs that I've been in. :/
11
« on: January 11, 2012, 10:41:03 pm »
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1500157#edit1500157So, last week they did like 4-5 different maintenances (patches of patches that patched a patch.) that allowed me to play, I think, 3 nights including the weekend. Now this week, they start messing with me again. I went to bed last night specifically to avoid the maintenance. I got up and had to deal with real life, now I think while at work, "I'll finally get to play some SWTOR tonight." Nope, not tonight, sorry! Ok, I'm done crying about how SWTOR is picking on me.
12
« on: December 22, 2011, 07:49:06 pm »
Does anyone else have problems in warzones/large scale world pvp? By issues, I mean problems that seem to be latency related or sudden drops in FPS that don't happen anywhere else. (Or maybe only on Taris?) I saw some severe rubber-banding and sudden drops in FPS last night in warzones. Basically, making healing near impossible. I noticed this thread on the official forums, which pretty much sums up my own experience: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=48982Although my processor is lower end, I have no issues anywhere else in SWTOR. Intel core 2 duo 1.8Ghz Nvidia GTX 460 1GB 4GB RAM It has been a while since I built this system, but I've upgraded the video card recently and have plenty of hardware to exceed the minimum requirements. I realize this doesn't mean I'll get 60 FPS everywhere, but I should at least be able to play with minimal FPS drop. -And I do, anywhere but warzones or in world pvp that exceeds 10 players on each side or so, I get at least 20 FPS on the low end. When I get into a warzone, it may very well drop to 5 or less FPS, sometimes locking up and hitching similar to Taris. I'd normally chalk this off to just needing a new processor, and I surely do need a new one... However, it also seems like there is some fix needed here on SWTOR's side too. Is anyone else noticing issues in PVP? Aside from FPS drop, I also noticed some odd lag. I'll hit an ability and it doesn't "fire" for a few seconds in some cases, and not at all in others. -As if I had hit it in the middle of a global cooldown. However, at the time I'll have less than 70ms connectivity. Anyone else seen this?
13
« on: December 19, 2011, 10:42:16 pm »
I was just browsing around the net and decided to check out one of the opposing guild's websites tonight at work.. saw the above on thier status updates. Kind of funny. ...Or am I mistaken and there was some other situation exactly like ours where they actually took down the boss rather than FA taking it down instead? I certainly remember this happening differently. Edit... ah and this was from http://echelonseven.com/
14
« on: December 07, 2011, 11:04:36 pm »
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832130291I admit, I'm easily taken for a ride. I do hope this isn't one of those situations. I paid my $150 to newegg and received my confirmation mail. I hope to get it on the 20th, or shortly thereafter. I don't know how legit this is, considering everything else is sold out at this point and has been for ages... As far as I know, at least. Anyway, if anyone else wants to take a shot at a CE then this is the one and only place I could find. I noticed that the official word is currently that even if you preordered a different version elsewhere, you dont have to enter the new code you get ordering at some other location. You're locked in at this point and upgrading/changing editions doesn't matter now. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=717746
15
« on: November 11, 2011, 09:43:22 pm »
It is a long time away, but eventually I will be needing voice actors to assist in a video-game design project I have started over the last couple of months. We have no details available yet, but I wanted to see how much interest there was here. We have basically no budget, and there would be no pay involved. This is just an independant project that myself and a handful of developers have decided to take on for the purposes of filling out our portfolios. I know we have a lot of talent in this guild and thought this was a great place to ask. The thing is, if we can't get together voice actors we'll have to change up the design of the game a bit to take into consideration the lack of voice. So, anyone who responds would need to take things serious on a professional level. Essentially, we just can't develop a game based around having voices available, then find that noone is available to produce the recordings we need. So far, there's no "public" information available on the project since we are still technically in the design and documentation phase of development. If you want more information before offering up help, I understand. Interested actors please just post here. Tbone, I hope you don't have any issues with me posting here for this kind of thing.
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