Dash reworked

[S1ck]

My other thread got closed, however after playing last night I think I figured out what a significant problem with dash is vs. gunners and sith.

The fact that dash makes you invincible for 0.02 seconds, or whatever it is, definitely makes a difference. This second of invincibility combined with P3 gives you a significant advantage over other gunners. This means in any given gun fight, you can use 4 consecutive dashes and get practically 4 free shots without your enemy being able to do anything about the dash. The other reason why this is game breaking is that you can use dash with p3 to pretty much do an extreme pop snipe, or use the dash to line up your aim perfectly causing very easy headshots/hits especially with slower moving enemies. You can just time your dash into their strafe and wallah, instead 1-2 hit combo.

Overall I think you either need to make it possible for gunners to hit a hero while he is dashing or there needs to be less consecutive/higher cool down on dash and most players that I have played with/against agree. At its current state it is way too viable especially with P3. This goes for both Hero vs. Sith and Hero vs. Gunners.

The cons the dev's proposed for P3 is the low amount of ammo, while this is semi true, I don't know anyone who doesn't use ammo 3, P3. This makes this a moot fact as you have more than enough ammo unless you go against several really good Jedi/Sith that just deflect and run away, deflect and run away. I think if you slowed down the ROF just a tad it would be perfect. I just think it fires a little too quickly for the amount of damage it can do.

Also I would say that the amount of people using P3 compared to e11 (atleast on NA servers) is literally everyone. I don't think I have seen an e11 Hero/BH other than new players that don't understand how to lead/use p3 and how deadly i can be.

In the end, everyone who I have talked to on the servers agree that dash itself is broken whether its a small fix or a total rework is a different question. I would just encourage the dev's to look at it from a game play aspect and how much it can be abused by players who have played the game for several years.

 

[Supa]

Something I came up with during your last thread:

+ Have an actual animation that can be drawn during use.
+ Increase the distance of dash, otherwise the animation will look stupid.
+ Add a short 1500-2000ms (1.5-2.0 second) cooldown.

In the short term this isn't possible, because we don't, at least to my knowledge, have an existing animation that can be used that won't make certain weapons look ridiculous while dashing. The other problem is that doesn't really solve dash's identity crisis. I still don't even understand what it's intended purpose is, because right now it's just a blink that leaves little to the imagination.

 

[Hexodious]

I like the above, but I still think the CD should be tied to regeneration of dodge points. I'd modify the way dodge points regenerate and have a requirement for full dodge points to dash.

• Dodge points regenerate 0-100 in 3.0 seconds
• Dash requires 100 dodge points to use and drains 35 dodge points on use (and stunts regeneration for 1.0 seconds)
• Dash 2 allows normal gunfire to be dodged during the ability but each hit dodged drains 10 dodge points (increasing the regeneration time slightly)
• Leg Snipes drain 33 dodge points (and stunts regeneration for 1.0 seconds)
• Chest snipes drain 66 dodge points (and stunts regeneration for 1.0 seconds)
• Headshots cannot be dodged
• If you don't have enough dodge points to dodge an attack you take full damage (dodge points are not drained unless a dodge/dash is performed)

This means we can still have flexible dashes available, sniping can be used to counter the ability to dash momentarily and chest sniping someone within 1.0s of dashing will kill them (making dash > proj > snipe a lot weaker). As the dash user its easy to know when you can dash without a cooldown because you know a full yellow bar = dash.

As always numbers are just examples, but you get the idea and its easy to tweak the numbers to add more time between dashes, more punishment for dodging snipers ect.

On a side note I don't like heal as an ability and wish we had another (offensive) ability in place here that ties into dodge/luck points. Something like, each time you kill an enemy you gain 100 dodge points / 50 for an assist (hell that could even be a replacement for dash 2 - dash, kill someone dash again into cover).

 

[Preston]

Honestly all I think needs to be done is add an animation, and remove dash level 2. Balance issues then would be pretty much solved imo

 

[BigBossBigTeef]

What would the animation look like though, that is what im having problems with.

Like I thought a similar cool down the arc has to the dash would be fine for balancing purposes.
You know that giant thing that erodes the blue meter every-time he rolls. Could add that to the dash system but not as long cool down.

 

[Supa]

On a side note I don't like heal as an ability and wish we had another (offensive) ability in place here that ties into dodge/luck points. Something like, each time you kill an enemy you gain 100 dodge points / 50 for an assist (hell that could even be a replacement for dash 2 - dash, kill someone dash again into cover).

I toyed around with a rework for the way heal functioned, because it's kind of lame right now. I was thinking of a mobile shield generator, that actually regenerates shield.

 

[S1ck]

Something I came up with during your last thread:

+ Have an actual animation that can be drawn during use.
+ Increase the distance of dash, otherwise the animation will look stupid.
+ Add a short 1500-2000ms (1.5-2.0 second) cooldown.

In the short term this isn't possible, because we don't, at least to my knowledge, have an existing animation that can be used that won't make certain weapons look ridiculous while dashing. The other problem is that doesn't really solve dash's identity crisis. I still don't even understand what it's intended purpose is, because right now it's just a blink that leaves little to the imagination.

That actually sounds like it would work and Hex's idea also looks like it has potential to alter how dash functions as a whole.

On the heal business, I always personally use heal as it gives me roughly 2-3 more hits each round as long as I am not directly in contact with people. If you were going to alter it to make it more of an active ability instead of a passive the shield generator idea would be awesome. (This could then also be used to alter the class into a more assault style, and less proj oriented class allowing the proj to be moved elsewhere)

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

I'd simply slow down the speed of Dash. It's insane right now. It needs momentum to make it look less teleportatious.

 

[Stassin]

I'd simply slow down the speed of Dash. It's insane right now. It needs momentum to make it look less teleportatious.

The problem with this though is that hero is already a fast class, so in order for dash to be useful at all, it needs to offer a burst of greater speed; a burst that would only be slightly faster would be meaningless.

 

[S1ck]

I think that's what would make it more skill-based though. The good heroes would use it to stay on the edge of the saber length or to dodge a saber that is just close enough to hit you, instead of having it be a feature that is easily abuse-able by anyone who has it bound to a key.

 

[Stassin]

Skill-based isn't the same thing as useless though. You can also often dodge swings by suddenly changing directions manually or jumping away even though it's not theoretically great if the jedi/sith's reaction time is good enough. But you probably have a point that the move would still be useful if its speed were to be toned down a bit, yet still remain quite noticeably greater than hero's base speed.

 

[Spaghetti]

The thing is, dash was never intended for hero in the first place. The entire ability was shoehorned in.

Instead of trying to salvage it, what if we restored dodge to its former glory. Make dodge capable of dodging anything but with the caveat that it has to be manually triggered. Adjust cost accordingly and have dodge points regenerate quickly like in Hex's proposal.

 

[Fergus]

The thing is, dash was never intended for hero in the first place. The entire ability was shoehorned in.

Instead of trying to salvage it, what if we restored dodge to its former glory. Make dodge capable of dodging anything but with the caveat that it has to be manually triggered. Adjust cost accordingly and have dodge points regenerate quickly like in Hex's proposal.

I really appreciate a skill based dodge, but how would it works?

 

[Supa]

He explained it, you would have to activate it yourself rather than it be an automatic skill.

 

[BigBossBigTeef]

Would you just press the button and your stam bar runs down until you get hit?

 

[Supa]

We haven't even decided whether we want to change dodge or not. These are all proposals, nothing is set in stone. That's what threads like these are for, to help us make that determination in the best interests of game balance.

 

[BigBossBigTeef]

Well that's why I am asking this question. If people are going to make proposals we need to dissect them.

Something my previous team did was throw shit at a wall until they figured out what works.
I was not a fan of it because it took months of process of elimination to reach the goal we wanted. Gotta take every single thing apart so we better understand it before implementation and get it right the first time.

Now I like dodge, it makes things easier when im playing ET/CMDR because I don't have to focus on snipers so much. The only thing that ignores dodge was head-shots, and 1/10 times I get hit by one of those. From the current system the ET/CMDR can only dodge one at a time. Not sure about heroes.

Is the dodge mechanic fine? This would be the next question.
Because I just see people complain about heroes, nobody really says anything about their dodge. Why not run a poll on the dodge mechanic to better gauge how everyone feels about it, would they want a change, do they think it's fine, ect.

Edit: Heres my idea of what the dash animation could look like.
http://blocked_domain/znpvbj.gif

Just a hop in either direction.

 

[dwarf]

Just give them Stamina like clones/ARC.

 

[Vitéz]

@Spaghetti: The old Dodge was fine, it was a wrong decision to change it in the first place, it was just turned into an unnecessary skill, just like QT is. There were 2 things what made Dodge imbalanced: Projectile Rifle (for Hero) and Reinforcement (for ET). If you restore Dodge, even if you make it to be a manual skill, it'll be as imbalanced in the hands of a good player, as it was for years. If we combine your idea with the fast regen idea of Hexodious, a good player will go out of cover, shoot like hell, and when the Dodge is out, the player will simply go back into cover, wait the 3 sec to fully recharge the skill, and continue fighting... a gunner wont kill a good Hero or ET in long-, and medium range combat.

Anyway, I dont understand why do you guys want to redesign the whole skill. The only problem with Dash (except the thing that it isnt a Hero skill) is the spamming... Dexterity forward diving has ~3,5s CD, wook Barrage has ~5s CD, even Jetpack has a longer CD, while Dash has ~1,5s. CD. But same goes to almost all Force abilities... adding CD to all these skills could prevent stuffs like Push spam or Dash spam. Its totally unnecessary to overcomplicate this whole thing.

Btw, this is my idea (a little redesigned) from the previous topic to change Hero. I noted every change proposal what I want to say. This contains all proposals for Hero, not just for Dash, because as I said, IMO the mechanic of Dash is fine.

Spoiler

- Pistol (0-4-15) (19)
- Blaster (6-7-8) (21)
- Frag Grenade (10-10-10)
+ Dodge (15+10+5) (30) //this is the old Dodge, the old points (5+10+15) are reversed, seeing that D2 was enough even for medium-skilled players, the old 15 points for it was too cheap, 25 is much better
+ Dash (25) //changed into a 1 level ability, this is the current lvl2 with a little longer backward dashing and with a 3-4s CD... longer backward dashing is added because of the higher point cost, higher point cost is to prevent a Pistol3/Blaster3-Dodge3-Dash-FragGrenade build
* Proj. Rifle (20)
* Repeater (?-?-?) //any repeater-type weapon what can be used by mercenaries like Kyle, could be A280 or even a stolen Imperial Repeater from the core game
- QT (15) //throwing secondary grenade via QT does extra Force dmg now... it also gives +1 Grenade, just like M5 Launcher does
- Bacta (10-10) //lvl1 gives 1, lvl2 gives 2; each of them is restoring 25HP... reason: if Hero is on 65 HP, lvl3 heal restores 1 HP up to 66HP, while lvl1 restores 15HP up to 80, what is nonsense
- alternative to replace Heal/Bacta: Health (10-10) //if you want to prevent using inventory items, just give the Hero a simple HP boost, so the base HP wouldnt be 100 if this skill is bought, but 125 and/or 150... or you know, anything you want
- Armour (0-4-6) (10)
- Ammo (0-4-6) (10)
Abilities marked with + cannot be purchased if abilities marked with * are purchased.
Abilities marked with - are basically simple Trooper skills, the + skills are the Hero skills, the * skills are the Mercenary skills.

 

[Hexodious]

QT giving you a grenade would be nice. I'd reduce the maximum amount of grenades by 1 to compensate.