Rework avoid incap

Rework avoid incap
  • Thread starter Thread starter Rheasconstruct
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  • Open Senate Sponsored Combat PvP Force Sensitive 
This idea/suggestion is Open. You can respond to ask questions or discuss the idea and either vote it up or down if you believe it should or should not be implemented, respectively. Popular suggestions and ideas will be considered by the development team to become reality in-game.
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Proposal
Rework "Avoid incap" to be a long cooldown and short duration ability. 15 second duration. 2 Min cooldown. Reduce movement speed reduction to a 25% penalty as a trade off.
Justification
Avoid incap is far too strong in PVE Heroics. Currently it requires no skill and is sustainable for an unhealthy amount of time (Force Feed/Channel/Nimans).
Motivation
The suggested change would elimate the skill trivialising top tier heroics while repurposing it for a meaningful, healthy spot in the current game environment.
Good Day, Ladies and Gentlmen.

Today we are here to discuss the invincible elephant in the room. Avoid incap needs to be reworked.

For too long "AI" has been used to trivialise our hardest PVE content. Tanks rely on a single button press every 25-30 seconds, are then fed force or channel their way out of all damage/skill checks. It's time to make tanking great again.

I propose the ability be reworked to a short duration - high cooldown ability. I think a 15 second duration (half its current duration) and a 2 min cooldown on this ability is reasonable with a buff to the movement speed penalty moving it to 25% or so (open to this number being different). As the ability sits at the master box of Defender, I recognise it needs to be strong, have impact and feel rewarding. However, for too long this has become the solution to all problems in high end content.

I believe my suggestion would change the ability from being an overpowered one-size-fits-all button press to a tool that can be utilised when it is required. Effectively repurposing it to either give healers a break mid-fight or for use as a panic button if things head south fast, putting it in a much healthier spot for game balance.

This will obviously impact PVP/BH too as said changes will significantly reduce the consistency a MDefender can utilitise AI to stay alive. However, as most of the time it merely delays the inevitable, i think the impact should be minimal to outcomes changing. However, i do think that the movement speed penalty should be reduced to balance out the loss the ability would suffer in PVP/BH to help bring it to a healthier place.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, feel free to flame me in the comments below.
 
Just wanted to revisit this with some numbers to further explain my thoughts. Correct me if I am wrong but it is my thought that the objective here is to do away with the perma 0HP, unkillable degen use of AI.

Currently AI costs 880 force per cast and sets your force regen to 1 per second. This means with no other outside factors and using no other abilites, you can sit at 0HP for about 3.5 min using 7-8 AI's with a Dual Mastery Temp. FYI this is the equivilant cost of ~29.33 Force per second for AI. (Obviously this can be increased with Niman, Channel and feeding force but will also be decreased by using specials)

My idea to have AI instead consume force each time you would be incapped would look something similar to this....
Each time you reach 0HP AI would consume 300 force with an internal CD of 3sec. This means over the 30sec duration of AI if you are using it to degen at 0hp it could potentially cost you 3000 force (100 force per second over tripling the current amount). There would also potentially be the option to add an AI Cost reduction to the current Defender set to bring it down to 200-250 force per hit and actually make the defender set useful.

Alternatively, instead of a flat 30sec duration, this Ability could instead be made to be stacked up to 3-5 times with each stack instead reducing your force regen by 10%, damage dealt by 10%, and increasing the snare by 10%. This would make it up to the player to decide if sacrificing regen/damage/mobility is worth it to ensure staying alive. Now you would also have to monitor your AI stacks much closer as well. If you do not have the force available for AI when consumed, all stacks would be removed and you would instead incap.

I strongly believe this would kill the use of it to solo unintended content while still providing the tank a useful ability to get out of an "OH CRAP" situation at EXTREME cost to their force bar.
 
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So basically... "Force Armor", except its less at the start, but also temporary, but also snares you as it gets stronger and consumes far more force...

Why not just move Force Armor to defender tree instead and remove Ai.

This is a joke, but I seriously dislike these ideas because people are just going to drop Master Defender instead and not deal with a bad skill, it has one of the worst heroic jewelry sets anyways, AI is Overpowered for that reason. It has nothing else.

This is why I am not for touching the skill until Jedi is revamped, it needs new balance anyways, perhaps even glow ups on the heroic jewelry sets or less restrictions.

I think people forget that the heroic jewelry set they have was made with AI in mind, so it makes it sort of worthless if your taking everyones damage and just die instantly from your Master skill after using it. After this change, it needs a new heroic set.

I am expecting for people to ask for refunds, if they all were not using the lightsaber set anyways.
 
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So basically... "Force Armor", except its less at the start, but also temporary, but also snares you as it gets stronger and consumes far more force...

Why not just move Force Armor to defender tree instead and remove Ai.

This is a joke, but I seriously dislike these ideas because people are just going to drop Master Defender instead and not deal with a bad skill, it has one of the worst heroic jewelry sets anyways, AI is Overpowered for that reason. It has nothing else.

This is why I am not for touching the skill until Jedi is revamped, it needs new balance anyways, perhaps even glow ups on the heroic jewelry sets or less restrictions.

I think people forget that the heroic jewelry set they have was made with AI in mind, so it makes it sort of worthless if your taking everyones damage and just die instantly from your Master skill after using it. After this change, it needs a new heroic set.

I am expecting for people to ask for refunds, if they all were not using the lightsaber set anyways.
I'm still trying to see if force armor lets me sit at 0 hp and never have to heal a single time tanking during a nightmare boss fight. You also know force armor mitigates a lot damage at the cost of a lot of force. Avoid incap makes the damage not matter at all and incap impossible and the cost of very little force. They are not the same in any comparison.
 
I'm firmly in the camp that almost everyone trying to address AI is making their proposed solutions way too complicated. The vast majority of complaints regarding AI can be resolved by keeping AI as is, except:
* Make AI cost 1500 force to cast​
* Reduce all force regen from all sources to 0 while AI is active​
This means with AI lasting 30sec and with 7500 total force, a MDef could use AI a maximum of 5 times, totaling 2min30sec of AI time *IF* the jedi literally only uses AI. All force regen/restore being reduced to 0 means Niman can't affect AI and, using FA or any Jedi defensive or any saber/force attack or debuff during AI's duration continues to use additional force without being able to passively regen it, meaning that using AI while using any other Jedi buff or attack will result in less total possible total AI uptime. This still gives a MDef about 2min of AI uptime against long bosses, which is still long enough to take healing pressure off the tank (allowing the healer to focus/reset the rest of the group), but 2min is also not quite long enough to free tank through these bosses with effectively infinite health.

After changing to this, we feel it out for a bit and use metric data to determine if it needs to be tweaked more, and increase the cost as needed until it is balanced. I really don't see a need to take the time to completely redesign, revamp, code, playtest, balance, playtest again, release, then discover something else that broke or that the new AI allows for some other abuse, when simply changing the cast cost and setting regen from all sources to 0, would solve the issues across PvP AND PvE without taking all the time and energy to cook up something new that will also be abused in some new way.

I would much rather not reinvent the wheel, and all that time be put towards fixing more of the other bugs/GCW/other unintended things/balance that have popped up since Petranaki and Ornj's vacation
 
I'm firmly in the camp that almost everyone trying to address AI is making their proposed solutions way too complicated. The vast majority of complaints regarding AI can be resolved by keeping AI as is, except:
* Make AI cost 1500 force to cast​
* Reduce all force regen from all sources to 0 while AI is active​
This means with AI lasting 30sec and with 7500 total force, a MDef could use AI a maximum of 5 times, totaling 2min30sec of AI time *IF* the jedi literally only uses AI. All force regen/restore being reduced to 0 means Niman can't affect AI and, using FA or any Jedi defensive or any saber/force attack or debuff during AI's duration continues to use additional force without being able to passively regen it, meaning that using AI while using any other Jedi buff or attack will result in less total possible total AI uptime. This still gives a MDef about 2min of AI uptime against long bosses, which is still long enough to take healing pressure off the tank (allowing the healer to focus/reset the rest of the group), but 2min is also not quite long enough to free tank through these bosses with effectively infinite health.

After changing to this, we feel it out for a bit and use metric data to determine if it needs to be tweaked more, and increase the cost as needed until it is balanced. I really don't see a need to take the time to completely redesign, revamp, code, playtest, balance, playtest again, release, then discover something else that broke or that the new AI allows for some other abuse, when simply changing the cast cost and setting regen from all sources to 0, would solve the issues across PvP AND PvE without taking all the time and energy to cook up something new that will also be abused in some new way.

I would much rather not reinvent the wheel, and all that time be put towards fixing more of the other bugs/GCW/other unintended things/balance that have popped up since Petranaki and Ornj's vacation
The problem with your proposed change whilst simplistic is that it is horribly unimaginative and boring.

The skill is BORING. It needs to be reworked from the ground up to actually be something that is fun to use. I'm sorry if that takes development resources, but how is it a solution to hand wave that requirement aside and say "I'd rather we do the bare minimum and move on to something that I find more interesting." ? It has already been stated that development time sinks should NOT BE A CONSIDERATION in PV's.
 
The problem with your proposed change whilst simplistic is that it is horribly unimaginative and boring.

The skill is BORING. It needs to be reworked from the ground up to actually be something that is fun to use. I'm sorry if that takes development resources, but how is it a solution to hand wave that requirement aside and say "I'd rather we do the bare minimum and move on to something that I find more interesting." ? It has already been stated that development time sinks should NOT BE A CONSIDERATION in PV's.
With that logic a number of things needs reworked. Like crafting, so booorrring...like Feign Death, I mean you just lay there. How boring. Accoding to the AI description it sounds like it is meant to be "boring". Not everything has to be fireworks and the earth moving exciting.
 
With that logic a number of things needs reworked. Like crafting, so booorrring...like Feign Death, I mean you just lay there. How boring. Accoding to the AI description it sounds like it is meant to be "boring". Not everything has to be fireworks and the earth moving exciting.
Absolutely brilliant take. Thank you for contributing to the conversation,

The one thing I will agree with Vryka about is that it's a master skill. Yes, a Master skill should be fireworks and earth moving exciting. Feign Death is working supremely well in PvP, given the amount of people whom are fooled by it. It is not a Master skill. I quite like crafting as well.

Neither of those have to do with reworking AI. If you could kindly stay on the topic of the PV that'd be phenomenal.
 
Absolutely brilliant take. Thank you for contributing to the conversation,

The one thing I will agree with Vryka about is that it's a master skill. Yes, a Master skill should be fireworks and earth moving exciting. Feign Death is working supremely well in PvP, given the amount of people whom are fooled by it. It is not a Master skill. I quite like crafting as well.

Neither of those have to do with reworking AI. If you could kindly stay on the topic of the PV that'd be phenomenal.
Actually they were a response to your suggestion. But to appease you I will say since the OP claims this is a problem currently and is asking for a fix it stands to reason that maybe, just maybe, suggestions that are long and complicated to do might not be as useful seeing as it allows it to stay broken. Now I know you have thought of that already and will say well why don't we have Fezix's idea implemented for the short term fix which would allow them to then rework it to make the "it's boring" crowd happy. Though hohw you make intense concentration and no or little movement exciting eludes me.
 
Actually they were a response to your suggestion. But to appease you I will say since the OP claims this is a problem currently and is asking for a fix it stands to reason that maybe, just maybe, suggestions that are long and complicated to do might not be as useful seeing as it allows it to stay broken. Now I know you have thought of that already and will say well why don't we have Fezix's idea implemented for the short term fix which would allow them to then rework it to make the "it's boring" crowd happy. Though hohw you make intense concentration and no or little movement exciting eludes me.
The problem with allowing it to be chained in general is that it doesn't very much address the issue of allowing you to ignore certain mechanics entirely, potentially for an entire fight, or portions of a fight. Hence the OP's suggestion that it maintain its duration but have a two minute cooldown attached to it. I'd be fine with allowing it to be chained once even, to give a group a one-minute window to recover from a disaster in PvE, or... well, there really is no application for this ability in PvP other than to grief people, as what is usually said is "ignore them, they're useless."

And yes, I agree, the ability in its current state cannot be made exciting.
 
The problem with your proposed change whilst simplistic is that it is horribly unimaginative and boring.

The skill is BORING. It needs to be reworked from the ground up to actually be something that is fun to use. I'm sorry if that takes development resources, but how is it a solution to hand wave that requirement aside and say "I'd rather we do the bare minimum and move on to something that I find more interesting." ? It has already been stated that development time sinks should NOT BE A CONSIDERATION in PV's.
Amazing. Everything you just said was wrong.

But since you broke the seal on condescending messages, allow me to speak your language:

In this case it's less about general "Development Time Sink" and more about "not over-complicating a theory craft when an easy and obvious solution is right there." Feel free to sign up to Code the thing yourself though. I expect you know how to do it better than anyone given your passion on the topic.
 
Amazing. Everything you just said was wrong.

But since you broke the seal on condescending messages, allow me to speak your language:

In this case it's less about general "Development Time Sink" and more about "not over-complicating a theory craft when an easy and obvious solution is right there." Feel free to sign up to Code the thing yourself though. I expect you know how to do it better than anyone given your passion on the topic.
Want to actually address the main point of the skill being able to be chained back to back to avoid mechanics? Your theoretical cap of 5 uses allows two and a half minutes of 0 effort applied tanking, and still doesn't address the fact that it's not something enjoyable to use. Not that 5 uses is possible with that force cost, but I digress.

What you proposed is not an obvious solution, as it doesn't directly address the issue. At the very least it would prevent AI Jedi from being able to last far longer in PvP than they should, but so would the original posted change, whilst also not neutering their force pool.

I don't know what you want me to say to you. I do not like the proposed change, I'm not a fan of the skill in general. Short term fixes are necessary to prevent its current abuse in PvE and PvP, but it, in the long haul, needs to be examined and reworked to be a rewarding skill that encourages utilization at key times, rather than something that overall harms your capabilities when used [draining your force by a fourth of your bar, in this instance].
 
Complaint's about AI in PvP are a skill issue, it's a high cost ability that snares you and has many counters, like simply stepping away from them. They can't regain force if you simply get out of Niman range.

The Bane set completely removes it, and there is also Breach.

The ability has only been perceived as a problem recently because of it's strength in PvE, so any change to it should only be one that affects PvE.
 
Do you actually play the game?

If you have AI already active sever does nothing, you have to sever them before they get to apply the buff meaning if you're smart with AI you just keep it perma rolling. If you actually read most of the thread you would know people can spam channel meaning you don't have to go anywhere close to them to keep it up.

This post is evident how little you actually know about the game
 
Do you actually play the game?

If you have AI already active sever does nothing, you have to sever them before they get to apply the buff meaning if you're smart with AI you just keep it perma rolling. If you actually read most of the thread you would know people can spam channel meaning you don't have to go anywhere close to them to keep it up.

This post is evident how little you actually know about the game
If you have or find a bug please use the bug channel.

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AI is a Force Buff and is intended to be one of the things that can be removed by Breach, thats why Breach Guard exists. It was like that before I remember when we tested it, but I suppose the set isn't popular so it never got reported after it got bugged. Often enough abilities are moved and remade, even when they do small things like change icons.

I can assure you that is not intended. It's a force buff and all force buffs should be affected by Breach, it's why all the other ones are.

I just tested it on TC again and you are correct, but that is obviously *not* intended.
 
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I think Defender as a whole needs a buff and to just scrap AI entirely. instead of a band-aid fix wait till a complete work up can be done.