Scoundrels strike back!

[Mazikeena]

These proposed changes for scoundrel look like they will restore scoundrels as the class everyone loves to hate.  Muahahahahaha! *claps hands and giggles evily*

PS - I asked nicely for a proc'd heal on the forums and perhaps others asked also....and Bioware listened! And this new teleport ability is going to be OP!

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/11/swtor-4-0-class-changes-for-agents-and-smugglers/

Contents included inline:

The official blog detailing the 4.0 class changes for Imperial Agents and Smugglers players can expect in Knights of the Fallen Empire.

 

Good afternoon and welcome to another Game Update 4.0 Class Change Blog! Today, we are covering the lethal and stealthy Imperial Agents and Smugglers.

While they are already masters of deception and shadow, we wanted to reinforce the slipperiness of Operatives and Scoundrels, so we gave them a new ability that allows them to more easily chase down or flee from their enemies, depending on the situation.

We wanted to increase the survivability of Snipers/Gunslingers in order to make them a bit harder for their foes to take down in a fight. Their new ability reinforces this design intention by resetting the cooldowns of many powerful defensive abilities, allowing those abilities to be used twice in a row with little or no downtime between uses.

Below you will find a full list of changes coming to the Imperial Agents and Smugglers in 4.0. Like always, this list is not final, and is subject to change!

Operative/Scoundrel

• New Ability: Holotraverse/Trick Move! Supercharge your stealth generator, quickly moving you to a friendly or enemy target and increasing your movement speed by 75% for 3 seconds. Does not break stealth, cannot be used against enemy targets in cover, has a 45 second cooldown, and is off of the Global Cooldown.

Medicine/Sawbones

• New Passive Skill: Enduring Kolto/Prolonged Prescription! Increases the duration of Kolto Probe/Slow-release Medpac by 3 seconds (granting one extra activation of healing before it needs to be refreshed or falls off), and makes Stim Boost/Pugnacity grant a 15-second-long buff that causes your next Kolto Infusion/Pack or Kolto Injection/Underworld Medicine to activate instantly (it gets consumed when you use Kolto Infusion/Pack or Kolto Injection/Underworld Medicine).
• Surgical Probe/Emergency Medpac is now trained at level 42 (up from 41).
• Kolto Waves is now trained at level 58 (up from 57).
• Tactical Medicine/Bedside Manner is now trained at level 60 (up from 59)

Concealment/Scrapper

• New Passive Skill: Prey on the Weak/Pierce and Batter! Laceration/Sucker Punch deals 5% more damage to targets affected by your Acid Blade/Flechette Round. You get this new passive earlier than usual (at level 48), because we want the levelling experience to be better for Concealment/Scrapper. Additionally, we are granting Volatile Substance/Blood Boiler earlier, and replacing Shiv/Blaster Whip with Veiled Strike/Bludgeon later, as we needed to move two passive skills that buff Veiled Strike/Bludgeon to the end of the Discipline path for these changes to all make sense together.
• Veiled Strike/Bludgeon is now trained at level 58 (up from 41).
• Volatile Substance/Blood Boiler is now trained at level 42 (down from 57).
• Enhanced Chemicals/Pressure Cooker is now trained at level 44 (down from 59).
• Surgical Strikes/Scrappy is now trained at level 64 (up from 44).
• Calculated Frenzy/Rolling Punches is now trained at level 60 (up from 48).

Lethality/Ruffian

• New Passive Skill: Acidic Compounds/Sharpened Materials! Corrosive Grenade/Shrap Bomb gets a 10% chance to explode twice, and Toxic Blast/Sanguinary Shot deals 5% more damage.
• Toxic Blast/Sanguinary Shot is now trained at level 42 (up from 41).
• Lethal Strike/Point Blank Shot is now trained at level 58 (up from 57).
• Cut Down/Cheap Shots is now trained at level 60 (up from 59).

Utility
Tier 1 – Skillful

• New Utility: Curbing Shots! Overload Shot/Quick Shot and Carbine Burst/Blaster Volley slow the targets they damage by 40% for 6 seconds

Tier 2 – Masterful

• New Utility: Fortified Kolto/Supplemented Medpac! Each stack of your Kolto Probe/Slow-release Medpac increases your damage reduction by 3%, stacking up to 6%. This damage reduction is not conveyed to the target of your Kolto Probe/Slow-release Medpac.

Tier 3 – Heroic

• New Utility: Circumvention/Sleight of Foot! Allows Holotraverse/Trick Move to be used while immobilized, and it removes immobilizing and slowing effects when used

Sniper/Gunslinger

• New Ability: Imperial Preparation/Bag of Tricks! Resets the active cooldown on Evasion/Dodge, Countermeasures/Surrender, Shield Probe/Defense Screen, Cover Pulse/Pulse Detonator, Entrench/Hunker Down, and Covered Escape/Hightail It. This ability has a base cooldown of 3 minutes and is off of the Global Cooldown.

Marksmanship/Sharpshooter

• New Passive Skill: Marksman’s Finesse/Sharpshooter’s Touch! Snipe/Charged Burst grants Marksman’s Finesse/Sharpshooter’s Touch, increasing the armor penetration and damage dealt by your next Followthrough/Trickshot by 10%. Stacks up to 2 times.
• Followthrough/Trickshot is now trained at level 42 (up from 41).
• Sniper Volley/Burst Volley is now trained at level 58 (up from 57).
• Honed Shots is now trained at level 60 (up from 59).

Engineering/Saboteur

• New Passive Skill: Field Command/Conflagration! Increases the critical chance of your Area of Effect abilities by 15%.
• Plasma Probe/Incendiary Grenade is now trained at level 42 (up from 41)
• EMP Discharge/Sabotage is now trained level 58 (up from 57)
• Energy Overrides/Seize the Moment is now trained at level 60 (up from 59)
• Imperial Auto Loader/Jury-Rigged Mods is now trained at level 36 (down from 56)
• Electrified Railgun/Blazing Speed is now trained at level 40 (up from 36)
• Electrified Blast/Hot Shot is now trained at level 44 (up from 40)
• Efficient Engineering/Dealer’s Discount is now trained at level 48 (up from 44)
• Sector Ranger/Spacer is now trained at level 52 (up from 48)
• Scatter Bombs is now trained at level 56 (up from 52)
• Explosive Engineering/Independent Anarchy is now trained at level 24 (up from 16)
• Cluster Bombs/Contingency Charges is now trained at level 16 (down from 20)
• Imperial Methodology/Insurrection is now trained at level 20 (down from 24)

Virulence/Dirty Fighting

• New Passive Skill: Caustic Substances/Gushing Wounds! Corrosive Grenade/Shrap Bomb gets a 10% chance to tick twice and Weakening/Hemorrhaging Blast deals 5% more damage (both these % values are adjustable up or down to reach the discipline’s target DPS).
• Weakening Blast/Hemorrhaging Blast is now trained at level 42 (up from 41).
• Lethal Shot/Dirty Blast is now trained at level 58 (up from 57).
• Corrosive Mine/Incendiary Mine is now trained at level 60 (up from 59).

Utility
Tier 1 – Skillful

• New Utility: Pulse Screen! Cover Pulse/Pulse Detonator increases your chance to resist Force and tech attacks by 20% for 6 seconds.
• Calculated/Hot Pursuit is now Tier 1 (instead of Tier 2).

Tier 2 – Masterful

• New Utility: Lumbering Impact! Shatter/Flourish Shot slows the target by 50% for the duration of the trauma effect (meaning the duration can be increased by other skills that boost the Trauma duration).
• Reestablish Range/Reset Engagement is now Tier 2 (instead of Tier 1).

Tier 3 – Heroic

• New Utility: Over-prepared/Perfect Scheme! Reduces the cooldown of Imperial Preparation/Bag of Tricks by 30 seconds (from 3 minutes down to 2 min 30 sec), and when you activate Imperial Preparation/Bag of Tricks, your damage reduction is increased by 10% for 10 seconds.

Thanks for joining us today, and we’ll see you next time! Or we won’t. Because of stealth.

 

[Kayllek Veran]

OP

#deathtocommandos   

#again

[Zojen]

Trick move sounds like a life saver! :)

[Wylan]

Once again, gunslinger equals getting the shaft.

[Mazikeena]

Whatever, Wylan! GS has some of the best dps and they are making them even harder to kill than they are already.

[Waars]

I'm still going to play my gunslinger.  I'm enjoying it. Yes they probably will still be hard in ranked but im going to give it a shot.  If anything i'll do regular wzs cause man.. i love obliterating people who walk into my blaster fire.

As for the scoundrels..  idk seems like it's going to be a pain but when ive faced operatives in wzs.. they don't seem to hit that hard so this teleport thing might help them get some extra damage off but im still going to lean on my vanguard.  Vanguard leap for dps oh hell yeah.

[Nwahs]

Yeah that Gunslinger change isn't really that great in my opinion, because the Gunslinger protection cooldowns don't seem to do anything.

[Wylan]

Never mind that all they are doing is bringing back an ability that Engineering/Saboteur Agents/gunslingers had back before 3.0. 

Mazi, not arguing that Gunslingers don't do plenty of DPS, I am looking at it from a pvp perspective.  More mobility for Scoundrels and shadows and their imp counterparts?! Whoever thought that was a good idea? You made the 2 best classes in PvP even more insane. Great going Biofail.

[Nwahs]

I agree Wylan, when I read that they will be MORE mobile, my pants got a little wet, and not in the good way.

[Kayllek Veran]

Nwahs Nirom wrote:

I agree Wylan, when I read that they will be MORE mobile, my pants got a little wet, and not in the good way.

 Like I said, OP.  They've got Roll as a getout, or gap closer, and now this!?!?  There's no way in hell I can kill an operative now, no way.

[Mazikeena]

For pvp scoundrels have no pulls or pushes and no abilities that negate interrupts, stuns, pulls or pushes (unlike troopers or GSs or guardians). Bravely running away is their one thing. 

 

[Mazikeena]

Scoundrels also have no aoe, so count your blessings in your other favorite classes!

[Waars]

Scoundrels are not even the top dps class.  They have good burst but it's not the best.  In pvp it's been really annoying to have to chase someone because all my attacks are melee.  I use legshot to hope to slow them down but then they manage to still get away.  Operatives will still be one of the best at 1 v 1 fights but in grouped fights it can be a pain.  People seem to be targeting me when i pop out in groups so i get stunned slowed or just focused.  But when i think im actually doing good dps i look at the scoreboard at the end and see that i only did 700k compared to all the other classes doing 1.5 mil.  maybe the gear but i haven't seen operatives doing insane amount of overall dps at all.  You can ignore what im saying about defending them but i don't think they are as scary as ive been hearing.  Vanguards for tactics that can do 15k hit instantly and possibly 30k in 2 seconds for a crazy combo is much worse imo.  Now giving tactics vanguards a leap to finish targets faster will be a problem.. Defensive cooldowns still suck for them but this still gives them a huge damage boost then what they already have.  So yeah im not too concerned about the changes to operative as much as others.  I'll try scoundrel pvp when it comes out to see if  it's as bad as people say..  MY ONLY CONCERN WITH THEM IS..... if one faction has about 4 of them in a match then yes it will be op but that's like 4 infiltration sins or 4 tactic Vanguards.  But 1 operative in the entire match i don't think will be op.  It's just the numbers of a certain class.  We'll have to see how many people roll a certain class in pvp matches in the next patch.  You can play one in 60 pvp and see how it is.  It's not as easy as it looks.  Get stunned then you have to roll away and hope that your not being followed.  It's very annoying when that happens.

With Gunslingers,  the cooldowns are not that great..  but i'll still be happy to even get something to help me.  An extra roll is very nice.  I rely on that more then the other cooldowns lol.  Roll, legshot, knockback and legshot again are my friends. :)  

I'm going to play whatever class i feel like.  If it's the underpowered class im still going to play it to have fun. I'm not concerned with pvp.  Anyway.. that's all im going to say..

[Waars]

They are still making changes to the update anyway.  I believe they took Force barrier on the move away from sorcs and sages now.  So who knows if they'll change more.  We'll find out.