HK-47 rework

Analysis: It would appear that my primary assassination protocols have been tampered with, Master.
Inquiry: Do you think it will make me a better assassin, Master?
Declaration: If not, I will enjoy tearing those meatbags apart for putting their filthy fleshy hands on me.

"MD_Geist;c-1804250" wrote:
Changing HK finally for this stupid Revan stuff is so wrong.... It wasnt OP cause HK was super outdated compared to his solid but simple lead and most droids arent strong enough on their own and it was already No easy task to balance a HK Team with the right amount of damage and other abilities to control/finish the fight since newer Teams are more durable.

I mean:
a) droids with HK wasnt Meta, even after GG Rework
b) L3 missed a Leader ability
c) C3PO offers nothing for droids and is the last named Droid (Legend) for the game too
d) 4-LOM wasnt at Long BH pass so expect he never comes
e) Grievous Rework wasnt as good as expected and still aims clearly for seperatist droids
f) HK crit lead was already countered in many ways GK, Zarris, Rex, even Biggs at old days and Run vs Something than CLS now is a Nightmare too
g) that leaves JTR as best droid lead which is mostly for LS Droids and a big fail Design at Lore anyway
i) leaving us with IG88, Poggle, Nebit... C'mon CG...

How does nobody understand this dev message? Is it really so difficult?

Nobody is saying HK and droids are currently OP. Currently. This leadership rework is to prevent the same nonsense Finn lead can create prior to his rework. And his leadership design is likely the reason for most of the other problems you listed. Let's go through them one at a time.

A) Droids with HK aren't meta, even after GG rework. Perhaps the GG rework was so complicated and weak because of HK's leadership? If the devs are afraid of making him create infinite loops, they would've had to jump through hoops to make sep. droids avoid that interaction.

B) L3 missed a leader ability. This one's unrelated, I'll grant that.

C) C-3PO adds nothing for droids. This could easily be because the devs didn't want to create game breaking loops with him under HK.

D) 4-LOM wasn't in the Bounty Hunter pass. Very easily explained by not wanting to create a character that could cause problems under HK. Bounty Hunters are known for AoEs and Crits. Both would make him ideal for HK. If he had anything useful in his kit, it would stand out on droids.

E) GG Rework wasn't as good as expected. See part A.

F) HK lead was already countered in many ways. True. His time came and went in the meta long ago. But these counters are easily addressed with a simple character addition. Say, a droid that guarantees critical hits, and prevents TM gain outside of speed for its enemies.

G) JTR is the best droid lead(?) JTR is a Resistance lead. She doesn't lead droids. They might be good when used under her, but they're not led by her.

I(H, really) Leaving us with IG-88, Poggle, Nebit... Not sure what you're trying to say, here. HK lead rework will leave these characters as useless? They are ancient. They should either get reworked (something that might happen, eventually, because HK is changing his lead), or become useless. That's the nature of the game. If you thought there wouldn't be forced obsolescence, you're playing the wrong game. Freemium games always, always, make older stuff obsolete eventually.

To add to this, you haven't even seen the kit. They said they want to change the leadership to avoid difficulties designing droid characters, or reworking them, in the future. To me, that doesn't mean it'll be a ruined lead, just different. Instead of granting droids turn meter on criticals, perhaps it'll grant droids ramping offense with criticals. Or ramping speed, even. Something that isn't completely broken by being a loop.

His current leader ability is so open ended, it doesn't take a genius to see how easily it could be broken, given the right character. Even a character as simple as Snowtrooper is completely broken under HK, if he is a droid. Can't you see how limiting that is to the faction as a whole?

"Corrog;c-1804742" wrote:
Also, HK shouldn't even be the droid leader. He's not a leader, he's an assassin. Let him become the murder murderbot he was always supposed to be.

All of the BHs worked alone and shouldn’t be leaders. Farmboy Luke or Old Ben never led anything. Heck, even CLS was not a leader. That line of reasoning is flawed, because so many of our leaders in game were not leaders in-universe.

"Killbot5000;c-1804578" wrote:

"IG75;c-1804344" wrote:

"Reyalp;c-1804338" wrote:
GG, B1, B2, Droideka and Magnaguard are the only real 'droids' and they've been synergised as such.

Fun fact - GG isn't even a droid, he is from a species known as the Kaleesh.

Right?
If he has a droid tag, then by that logic, so should Darth Vadar. Grevious was the early experiment that lead to vadar's bionic suit.

Exactly! :smile:

Vader would round off my droid squad nicely.

What this announcement really means is that the direction they wanted to take HK in for synergy with revan would have caused his current leadership to enter an infinite loop and/or eclipse DR in performance. Droids won't beat DR for sure, but it's possible that HK post-rework might give GG droids an edge over JKR. (It's been speculated that HK will get deathmark, given dark bastila kit. I don't know the GG team well but imagine that deathmark would be a good addition to them for countering Jolee)

We'll have to wait for the rework details to know all m anything for sure

"Corrog;c-1804742" wrote:
Also, HK shouldn't even be the droid leader. He's not a leader, he's an assassin. Let him become the murder murderbot he was always supposed to be.

This is right but leaves the Problem of a Lack of leads in the faction and very outdated leads If you throw in non droids like already mentioned. Its a faction with a lot of characters that maybe can only Form one Team at Future (seperatist droids) and Missing that L3 lead will matter and it is not we have Something "lets wait for Grievous Rework or other "named" droids that arent in the Game yet" after Grievous Rework and now HK (both bound to Happen) and C3PO Legend faction is really complet and still Missing leads compared to Empire, rebels etc.

I am fine with HK is a murderbot and yes he should work well with his Master but i am not fine with changing a 3 year old lead without any real Problem over the years (Finn is another Level and already was before C3PO, Heck Revan itself is a big Design Trap). Keep in mind that this is without L3 lead, IG88 already got BH pass and nearly all named droids (we looking for a lead) are in the Game and finally seperatist droids are done too (without any Impact). So this is a Nerf (at least Looks Like) for a faction with nothing on the Tablet to replace that Missing lead and with nothing we can Hope for at Future.

And yes even If (i doubt) HK keept a lead you cant simply use +30 Speed or whatever on it cause faction is already slow (attackers) and cant Take a Punch well or offer any broken stuff and this with some legendary toons etc.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fRfMkQwTr1o

In SWTOR HK-47 led the droid army.

Lobot Meta go go!

"CazNeerg;c-1805853" wrote:

Droids in Star Wars aren't leaders. They are literally built to be support characters.

Found a well written answer on Reddit about Droid leads and that "droids are only Support for other factions":

"This is a nonsense statement. C-3PO, Chopper, and K2 are designed to work with other factions. Droideka and Magnaguard are designed to work with Separatists moreso than Droids or even specifically Separatist Droids. The 11 other droids in the game all either grant bonuses to other droids, get bonuses from being used with other droids, have Target Lock synergy, or some combination of the above.

And it's not like they recently changed this either; look at T3-M4's kit, which includes 2 zetas that literally only do anything when used with other droids, and basically no Old Republic synergy. Or L3's zeta which also is useless on a Prepared squad and only matters when she gets run with other droids. That refrain around here about how Jedi Training Rey is the best droid leader? Well, the core truth behind that is that JTR synergizes amazingly with BB-8, and BB-8 synergizes amazingly well with other droids.

Droid squads are a thing, they have arguably the oldest faction synergy in the game (back at release, HK, IG-86, IG-88 and Poggle was one of the few teams whose faction-specific benefits were strong enough that it mattered whether you ran them together or not), and to argue that "that's just not what droids are designed for" shows a complete lack of understanding of the faction."

From mstormcrow

"MD_Geist;c-1806240" wrote:

"CazNeerg;c-1805853" wrote:

Droids in Star Wars aren't leaders. They are literally built to be support characters.

Found a well written answer on Reddit about Droid leads and that "droids are only Support for other factions":

"This is a nonsense statement. C-3PO, Chopper, and K2 are designed to work with other factions. Droideka and Magnaguard are designed to work with Separatists moreso than Droids or even specifically Separatist Droids. The 11 other droids in the game all either grant bonuses to other droids, get bonuses from being used with other droids, have Target Lock synergy, or some combination of the above.

And it's not like they recently changed this either; look at T3-M4's kit, which includes 2 zetas that literally only do anything when used with other droids, and basically no Old Republic synergy. Or L3's zeta which also is useless on a Prepared squad and only matters when she gets run with other droids. That refrain around here about how Jedi Training Rey is the best droid leader? Well, the core truth behind that is that JTR synergizes amazingly with BB-8, and BB-8 synergizes amazingly well with other droids.

Droid squads are a thing, they have arguably the oldest faction synergy in the game (back at release, HK, IG-86, IG-88 and Poggle was one of the few teams whose faction-specific benefits were strong enough that it mattered whether you ran them together or not), and to argue that "that's just not what droids are designed for" shows a complete lack of understanding of the faction."

From mstormcrow

Maybe I was being unclear; I wasn't saying the game was designed around droids not being leaders. I was talking about the narrative of Star Wars. There are virtually no droids who ever lead anything in the franchise, and in the extremely limited examples where they did, none of the droids who did the *following* of those droid leaders are in this game.

At launch, a lot of characters had leader abilities which (narratively speaking) they probably shouldn't have, because *somebody* needed to have leader abilities, and for whatever reason that hadn't included enough of the characters that actually warrant them. And, again displaying a lack of any kind of coherent plan, CG threw a leader ability on HK-47 to make up for the fact that none of the characters he is actually supposed to synergize with were in the game, and without a droid leader ability he had no real niche.

As new characters display much better overall design and faction synergy, it would be nice if reworks of older characters would start not just changing but *eliminating* leader abilities which never should have existed in the first place, like HK, Farmboy Luke, and Old Ben.