We’d like to thank everyone for their patience as we’ve worked through the Bonds of Weakness rollback (details here) and gone through the process of finding another solution to prevent Critolyte. We went back to the drawing board of our discarded ideas (along with generating some new ones) and gathered feedback from the forums, Reddit, and players. As we looked at different options, we asked ourselves, “Can we alter Nightsister Acolyte’s kit in such a way as to maintain her PvE/PvP balance while keeping her kit functionally the same and somehow also cutting down Critolyte?" Our preference is always to find a solution without touching character kits (if possible), but we think an adjustment to Nightsister Acolyte is preferable to other options that would impact the game with a much larger footprint and have wider balance ramifications for other teams or game modes.
After we did some exploring in the studio and came up with our proposal, we sat down with beta testers and other players highly engaged on this issue and discussed our solution. They asked some questions about other options, why we chose our solution, and clarified some of the finer points. These players gave us great feedback and asked really pointed questions. Ultimately, they carried your voice forward and helped us keep the Nightsisters great. Thank you for your service!
So what are the changes?
Basic – Strike from the Shadows
- Two attacks if stealthed -> Double damage if stealthed
- Stealth chance increased from 70% -> 90%
Unique – Thrill of Victory
- Heal Amount increased from 20% -> 40%
The end result, our testing shows, is that Nightsister Acolyte’s PvP utility/damage output should remain virtually unchanged (our data shows she is part of a common strategy in many shards and rankings, so we wanted to preserve her ability to dish out damage). Simultaneously, this cuts down the Critolyte strategy in the Sith Triumvirate Raid. Finally, given that Nightsister Acolyte’s viability remains virtually unchanged (aside from neutering Critolyte), we’re going to leave all equipment and abilities seated on her.
This change will go live next week with our next release. We want to put it in front of you so that you can see the upcoming change and have a chance to share your thoughts in advance. Again, thank you for your patience and help in getting to a change that is more acceptable to the community at large.
Finally, we’re still working through the Zombie changes and will be for a little bit. Expect any changes to Zombie to occur sometime before the end of September. Similarly, the plan is still to refund Old Daka Zetas at that time.
Thank you.
Replies
Zombie is fine. It doesn’t break the raid. You should trash reworking or changing zombie.
Because when she was getting double attack, the heals would instantly fill her turn meter. Now that they changed it to double damage, she only attacks once and doesn’t get full turn meter. At least if I’m reading the post right.
your reasons aren't logical at all and you took critolyte as an excuse to change her kit after several months, and you were always saying that she's working as intended.
And now you do this. Not saying it’s a huge problem, probably won’t change much in terms of arena results, but it’s still kinda ironic.
Ugh. They've already said they're going to look at it.
Have to say, slightly worried about the mention that the Daka zeta refund is still on for when the Zombie change happens. That implies that you guys think the change will reduce its usefulness, when what you'd said previously just made me think you were going to try and set things up such that we'd want to gear up Zombie to make her as useful as she currently is at low gear. Guess it's wait and see on that one though.
In my experience using NS in arena is that she needs both attacks(while stealthed) one to break foresight and one to actually do damage. For me NS really shine against Jedi and JTR teams and I feel like this change is definitely a change in her utility especially against teams where a majority of the time they are buried behind foresight. I think this will break acolyte a lot more than your testing had led on. At least in arena and TW. Please consider giving her some ability to ignore foresight during stealth or keep her two hits.
It shouldn’t be a thing, ever. This change can’t come soon enough in my opinion.
If I’m correct most use - asajj daka Mt talia and zombie.
Good stuff. Glad you all rolled this back and went this route.
The daka zeta - I will keep on daka. But it shouldn’t be a refund but a whole zeta for free.
As for zombie I’m worried that a gear threshold will be implemented for a raid. That scares me for many reasons.
This is a great point about the appearance of how we feel the change will go and really appreciate the perspective. We are early enough in the design process for the change to Zombie, that I can't reasonably say what the specifics of what it's going to be. That said, we're keenly aware of the position we've put players in: some players geared her up heavily and now regret it and some players have her under-geared and strategies around her being under-geared.
For us, the most successful version of the change means that we need to make sure that gearing her up feels awesome and that she still fits in with the core Nightsister team in a way that is either reminiscent of previous strategies or better than previous strategies. Meaning 1) you still always want Zombie in a Nightsister team and 2) that we've respected previous strategies by either keeping them in play or improving on them. Obviously, that's a big bill to fill but we're excited to try to do it right and we're going to try to hit these goals.
We're offering the Daka Zeta with the update of Zombie because it is a high bar for us to reach. And while we are going to do our best to reach it, we know that some people may still feel that their Daka maybe doesn't have a place in their Nightsister team after the change. And for that, we think it only makes sense to remove the Zeta and return it to the players that no longer want it on Daka. I hope this helps clarify some of our thinking on it.
TL;DR We don't know what the change looks like. Our goals are to make sure you want to keep the Daka Zeta slotted. We recognized we might not hit the bar and want to offer returning it to players.
This is definitely the right approach, and I applaud you all for that. I’m cautiously excited to see a zombie rework in hopes that my strong zombie will be even better.
You can go ahead and refund all gears/ zetas that i've put on any of my NS in the past 8 months because thats how long i've used Acolyte in my arena team and you're changing all of the benefits of her double attack.
Acolyte has been around for over the 2 years that i've been playing, Trayas been around for 6 months now....so lets change the character thats been around longer instead of the one A LOT less people have. Makes sense!
I run NS obviously in arena, and for now, the only fights i really struggle with are the ones against Traya or EP. With the addition of Bastilla teams, I had a break from fighting for positions because it's quite a "time-consuming" but easy enough fight the 90% of the cases.
With this change in the early turns (when my entire team is still alive vs Bastilla), I have to remove protection from Kenobi (or Old ben), that means that my acolyte always could land the second attack despite him having prevision.... Now with this change I won't be able (and the other ones running NS), to get off some of the protection...Will have to see it live, but it seems it may give an advantatge vs Bastilla with GMY teams.
Cheers
This may be the lesser of all evils to prevent a bigger kitten show. Arena metas change all the time. We can get over that. All I want is the one zeta back as it is made less useful now. Sisters as a faction will still have value and utility in the raid.
In regards to Zombie and Daka, when the change comes to Zombie, it might be a good idea to tweak Daka’s zeta where she still benefits in some way with NS Zombie. I’m not sure in what way, but it could be a good way to keep Daka zeta’d and provide some of the same benefits in the STR.
Just a couple of thoughts, thanks for listening!
Second Edit: Also, the change from two shots to one will change the TM reduction chance when she’s under an Asajj lead.
For the purpose of raids, one way to 'encourage' players to gear Zombie is to place a health penalty on her NS allies when she dies, and have it associated with her gear tier.
Say each time Zombie dies, all NS allies lose health equivalent to (1/gear tier x 100% of their base health), with no prohibition of a character being able die from this loss of health. They can of course be revived as normal if dying this way.
Yes, it will make Mother Talzin's unique zeta more valuable, but it will keep Old Daka's unique zeta relevant also because she may be reviving NS allies more frequently. The caveat is that you will also need to gear Old Daka sufficiently so that she also is able to withstand the loss of health from Zombie frequently dying herself.
It's almost like EA will have them killed if this raid doesn't work or something.
Raid bad, rewards bad, nerfs (sorry, rebalancing) also bad. Conclusion = gigantic cluster fondle, which saps will to live of all but a handful of players.