Post Patch the most powerful side of the force?

[VISA]

After downloading the patch and playing for days the question needs to be asked. Which side of the force is the most powerful? Now before the patch I would say imo that the dark side was the most powerful. First off is grip, I will miss the days of running full speed gripping somone and throwing them off the ledge never slowing down a bit. Drain, do I need to even say anything? Back in the day I would almost never die because of this. Lighting still seems the same to me. And Dark rage is useless before and after. Now on to the light side I really dont have much to say but JUST DAMN. We all know about the new absorb. I still think mind trick is useless because it only works on one person at a time. Protect what a waste of points it only delays the inevitable. Heal was good but now what the hell. Now I'll ask you not to think of the past only the present. I still think Darkside is the best assuming you want lots of kills. If I had to give them percentages it would be 60/40 dark against light respectively. Now it would be more like 54/46 and really this is soley because of the new absorb. I really hope some of you can intelligently disagree with me for a good debate.

[Desslock]

Light side was dominant once everyone figured out how to use it before the patch. I saw more lightys than darkys most of the time..

 

Protect is useful because you could get a lucky hit off in the 'delay before the inevitable'.

[BG clan]

If it was 60/40, as you say, before, then now it is 70/30 in favour of the dark side. Heal takes up a ridiculous amount of force, mind trick is useless if they have 1 level of sight, using protection is just asking to be drained, and absorb is barely usable. It is now impossible to heal against a dark side opponent. While they cannot drain you from the start, it costing more for them than they drain, at the end if you need to heal and they know it you are screwed. Drain after drain after drain will keep your force on nothing while their health increases to full. I have been playing this new patch constantly on lan and I know this for a fact. You cannot get absorb up, and what good would it be if you did? You cannot get force from absorbing drain...all you do is delay your death while they wait for absorb to run out or drain you again. And when there are force boons on the level it becomes even more imbalanced. What good are they for the lightside when you cannot recharge force when using all of their powers? Compare this to the darkside....If they manage to drain you, well you are dead. Drain plus spam lightning equals dead jedi. Oh and Dark rage is not that bad combined with speed. Keeping a lightside jedi below half force = dead jedi, due to the ridiculous cost of healing 25 points.

[Desslock]

Keeping a lightside jedi below half force = dead jedi, due to the ridiculous cost of healing 25 points.[/Quote]

 

So put 3 points in it, so it now heals 50 points...

[Zek]

BG clan, it's obvious you're not very good at playing Light Side(or you never bothered). In duels, a skilled Light player can dominate pretty easily.

 

Nice first post, BTW.

 

Desslock: Level 3 heal is 25 health now. I haven't tried 1 or 2 yet, but I imagine they're pretty useless.

 

As for keeping a Light Jedi below 50% force.. How do you intend to do that? Well timed Absorbs make Drain useless, at very little cost to your own power.

[Desslock]

Desslock: Level 3 heal is 25 health now. I haven't tried 1 or 2 yet, but I imagine they're pretty useless. [/Quote]

 

Doh!

[BG clan]

Zek for starters you have to back up your post. It is easily to say someone is something, much harder to back it up. My clan, by the way, is an entirely light side clan, as it has been from the beginning. I wonder how you manage to predict the future, as you seem to know when a drain is incoming....no matter that it drains your force in less than a second. It is not at the beginning of the fight that they drain you, it is at the end. When you desparately need to heal or absorb and they chain drain you into oblivion. They can keep your force on nothing while easily keeping theirs on enough to drain you and pull if necessary, while also healing themselves to full. You obviously have not played a drain whore in this latest patch, otherwise you would not have posted such an ignorant post. I agree that absorb is average to good, but all the other lightside powers are USELESS. Even absorb is easily waited out, as it activates for 20 seconds only then turns itself off. While you are absorbing your force also cannot recharge, so what good does it do you unless you turn it off and on. But to do that you would need to be able to predict the future. My point is you cannot even turn absorb on when they are draining you to nothing. When you are out of force they drain more than they use. Are you also saying your force never drops below half when you are lightside?!?! Wow I would love to duel you, you would die within 30 seconds if you did not use force. Everyone knows all lightside powers eat up the force, as do the neutral ones. So what do you do? Absorb then use sabre? Sabre throw would kick your ass, plus you cannot use any other force powers, if as you say you never drop below half force.

 

P.S can you please tell me how you develped ESP and can read the future.

[Ryuken]

That's a pretty amazingly ignorant assumption you make on one players skills based on a single posting Zek. Instead let's try factual reasoning shall we - I'm sure you can grasp that.

 

Facts of the matter -

 

Absorb

 

- A light side player cannot be detected as using absorb until force is used directly against them. Most skilled players will "test the waters" before draining ie. Push - if they glow blue hold off on drain.

 

- "Timing" against a drain is a tricky thing to do. Unless you KNOW they are about to heal through drain (you just inflicted serious damage on them) absorb must be pre-emptive - Too slow and you've lost a substantial amount of force that could be put to better use.

 

- Absorb requires AT LEAST 2 of your 14 bars of force (Jedi Master + 3 points in Absorb) to activate. Your opponent needs you to only have 1 bar to drain for health. At that point a draining opponent could keep you on no force while slowly increasing their health to maximum - backpedalling, rolling and chasing to keep you within drain distance but out of harms way until they are fully healed. (Pulling them closer to engage while they are draining or throwing your saber is no longer an option - no force remember?)

 

-When damaged and at the point where you have less than half your force remaining you must wait for force to build back up again to heal. However knowing full well your opponent uses drain you are faced with a dilemma - Absorb and pre-empt their drain but lose your ability to heal (for a while at least)? Or hope to God they don't drain and heal themselves while stripping your remaining force? Waiting in duels is a LONG time.

 

Remeber these are POSSIBLE situations - no posts saying "Man I'm too l33t to get drained!" or "Light sided Jedi's don't get below 50% force EVA!"(bollocks). I'd like some intelligent thoughts on the matter and welcome any viable alternative views

[Gaming Nut]

Is it me or dose drain not even give you back force power if it dose its not much.

 

heal is nerfed to much I think should have either healed 50 piotns and used half your forces or healed 25 and used a 1/4th both are to much and it's just barely holding on to usful right now.

 

Drain seems fine now if heal was alitte better.

[w1ggl3s]

First off Mindtrick is a blast, i cant tell you how many flag kills ive gotten with mindtrick.

 

Secondly Lightside is so far over balancded that even good dark players are patheticly easy to beet.

 

There is nothing a dark player can do to me that can kill me other then hit me with a saber.. and if yer that closer yer already flat on yer back sucking on a backstab.

 

The only options dark players have is attacking people from the back and hoping that absorb is off

 

Once people figured out how to use absorb and push.

 

Grip/drain whores where easy to beat.

 

The fix was to tone down dark vs dark attacks. but what you have done is in a land full of even fights made light side the giant and turn dark force players into gnomes.

 

Absorb is the single most imbalancing force pwr in the game

 

And that is said by a player that uses absorb to block everything

 

Wiggles

[TheDarkSide]

Okay as an experienced lightside jedi, I'll intelligently and respectfully disagree with several points made on this thread with respect to the "new" absorb.

 

 

Facts of the matter -

 

Absorb

 

- A light side player cannot be detected as using absorb until force is used directly against them. Most skilled players will "test the waters" before draining ie. Push - if they glow blue hold off on drain.

 

 

Using absorb does make a distinct noise as does every force power when it is activated. It's not very loud though and easily masked by a saber swing.

 

"Timing" against a drain is a tricky thing to do. Unless you KNOW they are about to heal through drain (you just inflicted serious damage on them) absorb must be pre-emptive - Too slow and you've lost a substantial amount of force that could be put to better use.

 

I don't have ESP but when I'm playing against a dark jedi I'm always expecting a drain. There are certain signs that foretell when a drain may be coming.... they stop attacking, usually backing off or seem to be lining you up. And as you mentioned, get a good hit on them is the best form of ESP Being pre-emptive doesn't really hurt you as they can't really tell if its on. A Dark Jedi who tests your "absorb" with a force push or even better grip or lightning, just gave you your force pool back. Assuming he tested you, saw it was on and isn't about to try anything force related in the immediate future, turn that absorb off. If he tests you and sees its not on, you better turn it on asap. A drain is surely coming your way. It's all about out-thinking your opponent now, not out-waiting him until he stops glowing blue.

 

 

 

Absorb requires AT LEAST 2 of your 14 bars of force (Jedi Master + 3 points in Absorb) to activate. Your opponent needs you to only have 1 bar to drain for health. At that point a draining opponent could keep you on no force while slowly increasing their health to maximum - backpedalling, rolling and chasing to keep you within drain distance but out of harms way until they are fully healed. (Pulling them closer to engage while they are draining or throwing your saber is no longer an option - no force remember?)

 

Anything they can do, you can do speed wise. They roll at you...roll away. The back pedal from you, back pedal from them. Really though, this is more of a corner you've backed yourself into. Better force management lets you avoid this. Level 3 drain has been nerfed pretty bad. A full level 3 drain will leave both guys with 4 bars of mana. Before it would only take 3 bars for the dark jedi to eliminate an entire opponents pool.

 

 

 

-When damaged and at the point where you have less than half your force remaining you must wait for force to build back up again to heal. However knowing full well your opponent uses drain you are faced with a dilemma - Absorb and pre-empt their drain but lose your ability to heal (for a while at least)? Or hope to God they don't drain and heal themselves while stripping your remaining force? Waiting in duels is a LONG time.

 

This is what I love about it now. You have a choice. Pre-patch you didn't. You're trying to out-strategize your opponent. The dilemma you posed (IMO) is due a lot more to the "new" heal not being worth it in many situations.

 

 

Basically , what I see from this patch is that Raven nerfed both sides ability to heal pretty severely. Heal lvl 1 gives 5 points of health for using half your force pool. If that's not the definition of worthless force power I dunno what is. Level 3 has been cut in half giving you a medpack (essentially) at the cost of half your force pool. In non-duel modes this is a non factor.

 

Dark healing (drain) has been converted from a very high reward low risk proposition to a still high reward, high risk proposition. A drainer who drains you has little if any force left. Drain acts more like a healing ysalimari more than anything else now. It creates a no force situation between the two.

 

Anyways this is only my opinion, and given all the crap we've seen on the forum the past day or two, this kind of civilized debate is sorely needed.

 

TDS

[Zek]

Originally posted by Ryuken

That's a pretty amazingly ignorant assumption you make on one players skills based on a single posting Zek. Instead let's try factual reasoning shall we - I'm sure you can grasp that.

 

Happily; not much of it on these forums anymore.

 

Originally posted by Ryuken

Absorb

 

- A light side player cannot be detected as using absorb until force is used directly against them. Most skilled players will "test the waters" before draining ie. Push - if they glow blue hold off on drain.

 

This is true, but a couple things should be noted:

 

1.) A wise darksider will test the waters with Drain, not anything else, making their intentions obvious. This is because Drain doesn't give the Lightie back any of his power, which all the others do; also, if you "test the water" with Push or something, the Light Jedi will turn on Absorb then, and negate your Drain afterwards.

2.) Once they've tested your Absorb status, if you have Absorb on, they will VERY rarely try again immediately afterwards, so you can turn it off to save power. If after fighting them a bit you find that they usually predict this and try again, you keep it on a little longer next time. Knowing your opponent is half the battle.

 

Originally posted by Ryuken

- "Timing" against a drain is a tricky thing to do. Unless you KNOW they are about to heal through drain (you just inflicted serious damage on them) absorb must be pre-emptive - Too slow and you've lost a substantial amount of force that could be put to better use.

 

Timing is not tricky anymore, now that Drain drains more slowly, you can hit Absorb before losing much(and they'll likely continue for a second or two, thus putting their power even lower). Besides, you don't have to KNOW they're about to heal; Absorb is cheap enough that you can just predict it and not waste much. Whenever I hit a Darkie with anything but a very small hit, I turn on Absorb for a couple seconds(unless they don't back up at all and just keep fighting). If at any time I see them back up and they don't seem to be concentrating on finding an opening or coming to hit you again, I turn on Absorb. If they're going to Drain you, they'll do it as early as possible, so a couple seconds of Absorb is sufficient.

 

Of course it isn't guaranteed. That's the beauty of it; Absorb creates a whole new level of strategy in saber fights for both combatants. Predicting their actions is more important than ever before, and lightsaber duels are SO much more interesting because of it.

 

Originally posted by Ryuken

- Absorb requires AT LEAST 2 of your 14 bars of force (Jedi Master + 3 points in Absorb) to activate. Your opponent needs you to only have 1 bar to drain for health. At that point a draining opponent could keep you on no force while slowly increasing their health to maximum - backpedalling, rolling and chasing to keep you within drain distance but out of harms way until they are fully healed. (Pulling them closer to engage while they are draining or throwing your saber is no longer an option - no force remember?)

 

If you used Absorb wisely(even if you couldn't predict their Drain, it's very hard to be drained empty now) you'll never be in that situation except by your own fault. Force management is very important for a Light Sider. It's all part of the game.

 

Originally posted by Ryuken

-When damaged and at the point where you have less than half your force remaining you must wait for force to build back up again to heal. However knowing full well your opponent uses drain you are faced with a dilemma - Absorb and pre-empt their drain but lose your ability to heal (for a while at least)? Or hope to God they don't drain and heal themselves while stripping your remaining force? Waiting in duels is a LONG time.

 

Choices are good. The great thing about force duels is nothing is constant; you have to be on the lookout for everything. In this case, force management is again important: if you keep yourself at high power, you can afford a heal and still be able to absorb when necessary and regenerate it back eventually.

 

This is why I like Force Duels so much more than NF ones; Jedi Master especially. People tend not to understand exactly how much this adds to the game, and now that none of the powers are so uber anymore, it's worth it. If anything, NF duels make the latest backstab/slash epidemic worse, just like they made the DFA problem worse.

[Sludgehed]

I'm almost a strictly duel jedi, so keep that in mind. I avoid NF servers like the plague. They remove the ability to do most acrobatics, remove the ability to kick, and remove the ability to push away people using very strong attacks ( dfa, backstabs ). Personally, I believe there are two things that keep me from dying to a saber-spam player. Latency and Force. If someone has a fifty ping to my hundred ping and saber spams me, the chances of me finding an opening aren't very likely. All I can really do to protect myself is put him on his ass. If I can't kick, push, pull, or throw, my victory over a saber spammer is decided mostly by luck.

 

The idea of a saber-spamming wanker winning fifty percent of the time is disgusting to me. That is my main motivation for playing on force servers. Force, while it can be abused to ridiculous degrees, still takes skill. Force requires strategy, intuition, and discretion. Yes, people can spam force powers like crazy. At least I can absorb that. Against saber-spam all I can really hope is that my light stance defense is enough to counter the latency difference between his location and what his location appears to be.

[Ferox]

if heal heals 25 at 3 then heal is better then drain.

 

 

 

most of the times i drain im lucky to get 7 or 8 health back... sometimes ( i have a feeling this is with a full force bar) ill get 20 or so. and thats if it works .. you need a lot of force to drain because ive tried it and my hand just goes out i hear a sound and nothing happens.