Profession Updates – Smuggler

**Valara**

Profession Updates – Smuggler

This year the development team will be taking a close look at each profession and focusing on your concerns and issues. The Top 5 issues presented by the representative senator are the basis for the updates for each profession.

While the professions and expertise will not be completely revamped, the team will spend time on the issues in the Top 5 and address as many as possible. Please keep in mind that this won't be in the form of a chapter dedicated to each profession, but an update between major content releases that focuses on one or two specific professions.

For the first profession update, the development team is focusing on smugglers and spies.

Smuggler Issues

Here is an overview of the issues the developers are looking into for smugglers:

Bugs that cause problems with combat and missions

Bugs that cause problems with smuggler skills

Smuggler weapons

As these profession updates do not include large, sweeping changes, an overhaul of the smuggling system is not planned as part of this update. Concerns and suggestions about the smuggling system will continue to be noted, discussed, and considered by the development team, so please continue to give your thoughts on the system.

Give Us Your Feedback!

In addition to the issues mentioned above and in the Top 5 list, we want to hear from you! Tell us your concerns and suggestions for other issues that you think should be addressed in the smuggler update. Please keep in mind that this is a pressing update planned for the near future, so keep your ideas within a reasonable scope.

When posting, keep it short, sweet, and constructive! We'll be monitoring this thread very closely and joining in the discussion. Flames, personal attacks, and other inappropriate posts will be removed so that the thread can be as useful as possible.

What smuggler issues would you like to see addressed in the next update?

**NeenerNeener** · 01/15/2008 17:10:38

First!

Bug: Dire snare will apply when when shots are dodged, parried, etc
Fix: Apply only when shots actually hit target

**KupyiLabe**

As we are the pistoleers, for many of us the large number of pistols certed for other professions that do not actually focus on pistols (e.g. Spies) is something we'd like to see addressed.

While a complete overhaul of the smuggling system may not be in the works, there are a number of small tweaks we'd like to see to improve them. Chief among these is (1) the ability to actively select space-based missions and (2) the ability to run missions from lower-level brokers for variety's sake.

**gassygunslinger**

The fact that because the smuggling missions have no point after Master Underworld Smuggler, the smuggling mission-only abilities in our expertise (that we're mostly pigeonholed into acquiring) are incredibly useless. Either make them useful outside of smuggling, or make smuggling useful after tier 5.

**Daboora** · 01/15/2008 19:42:38

Of course the smuggler system needs to be looked at, but I will focus my answer toward our expertise, and what I perceived to be the problem.

Smuggler is meant to be the crowd controller/debuffer. The following changes would enhance our role in that.

1) Pistols in general needs a revamp - with the abundance of block suit out there, pistol damage has become negligible. Currently, there is absolutely no advantage to using pistol. They generally have a lower dps than rifle, and they are limited in range. Being closer to the enemy should give you the potential to do more dmg, not less. Perhaps pistol should have innate action cost reduction compare to rifle. Same with carbine of course. This would give advantages of using a pistol vs rifle, like it used to be.

2) Spot a sucker line - action cost too high, cool down too long, and the effects are too low and too short for the amount of expertise point we spend on it. While I am not saying that we need something that's comparable like the armor debuff offered by advance ambush by BH, but we should be able to keep a debuff on a target if we want to, and it should be effective considering how many points you can spend on it

3) Break the deal - action cost, cool down need to be toned down - same concern with #2

4) False Hope - extra expertise point only increase it by 1 second. That increase is too little and not worth the point invested. Make the increase in duration last longer

5) Lucky Break - for an investment of 12 points on Feeling Lucky, Lucky Break, and Card up your sleeves, the return on the skill should be much better. For example... Feeling Lucky should not be a proc, but it should activate automatically if we have 1/4 of life left. The Proc for the Lucky Break firing should increase exponentially the lower our health gets, and then if you get the full Card up your sleeves, it should grant the new ability "last ditch" like the old smuggler special. Also, lower the cool down for Feeling lucky/Luck Break to 2 minutes. 4 minutes is too long.

6) Change the innate armor to work like other profession.

7) Narrow escape needs higher movement multiplier.

The smuggler related expertise skill should go also. But I don't have any clear idea on how to improve on those at the moment. I think bringing back old smuggler skill would be welcomed. Feign death would be good, as would slicing skills. Slicing skill should only work for a smuggler's own weapon, and it would give it only a temporary boost, either in dmg or debuff skills. Perhaps this would help us enhance the profession that is limited by close range contact. Give us a mez where the other person won't be able to do an action for 5 - 10 seconds unless he or she is fired upon, like in CU.

I feel that these changes would begin to help smuggler define a role.

Daboora

**Thanos112** · 01/15/2008 18:27:08

First, I would like to reccomend that Hanse be hands on with updating our profession. He's been the dev that's done the main work for our expertise when it came out, and he's also promised us that he has several pages of notes worth of things he'd like to be able to do when our turn for a profession update came along.

With that said, here are my top 5 issues/bug fixes I'd like to see done to Smuggler.

1. Many Smugglers would like to see Break the Deal changed into a Cone Effect attack to help fit our current crowd controlling abilities. Increase the duration of the debuff by 5 seconds.

2. For a skill called Dirty Tricks, there's nothing very dirty about it. Add in a debuff ( action bleed?) to the snare and damage effect of Dirty Tricks. .

3. Add a 4 percent to Dodge and Evasion per point in the Idiot Proof Plan box. In it's current form, the damage reduction is nearly worthless.

4. Increase elemental damage on Pistols with elemental effects. This will help with increasing overall damage.

5. Fix Hammer Fanning. It's currently working at 3-4 percent, instead of the 12 percent granted by the whole box.

For more info on things wrong with Smuggler, please take the time to read this thread

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/...topic_id=577112

**wpog** · 01/15/2008 22:56:58

A concern for group dynamic for smuggler should be addressed.
As of now, we are only useful in groups for our camo ally (which should have a 8 or a 10m range), damage bursts (melee), and dare i say it? bounty checks.
You want to us to get invited into groups more often? Or be NEEDED for a change?
Suggested solution:
1. Currently smugglers have the ability to "slice" locked doors such as ones in the geo caves on yavin iv. But when doing so, we are the only ones granted to pass without having the keys or codes for the doors.
Give us the ability to allow anyone grouped with us to pass through a sliced door by a smuggler for 5 minutes for that door after we slice it.
2. Giving us this ability on the corellian corvette would be nice as well.
3. Let us group slice mission terminals for 2 minutes. This gives the group ample time to gather their missions all in the same direction so that the group can run them together, with a sliced benifit.
4. How about a different group buff, like "down the hatch" or something to that effect. You can think of it as "The smuggler gives everyone in the group a stim." older smugglers can refer to this stim as a "spice" =p
Let this group buff have a 60-120 sec buff effect that grants random modifiers and has a 5 minute immunity or small debuff. Random Modifiers can include:
+15% movement
+5% dodge/evasion
+5% critical hit chance
+5% strikethrough chance/100 strikethrough value
+5% damage reduction

These are just some examples of what kind of group buffs smugglers could do. Short bursts of help with slightly longer cooldowns. Hell this could be a replacement to some of out "smuggler" expertise skills. This would help make smuggler more group marketable. Where as our group is about to charge the gauntlet of restuss, the smuggler hands out some stims (/cough *spice*) to the group, and says "take these they wont hurt" or "down the hatch."
=)

A few changes to current skills would be great as well.
Once such example:
Narrow Escape. If you want to have an effect that fits this description, then change the movement modifier to +25% and add a +5% dodge/evasion chance.

Ayda

**Lunchy** · 01/15/2008 18:59:48

My top 5 issues I'd like to see for Smuggler:

1. Make pistols a viable option in combat, bring their damage up to par with 1h or unarmed melee weapons. Remove the profession restrictions from several pistols, as it stands now the 3 best pistols are granted only through Master Underworld, Rebel General, and the 3rd being 'Spy Only'. We're one of two professions with a pistols expertise yet we have less viable weapons than spy, which doesn't have a pistols line. This leaves Imperial Smugglers very little leeway in having a viable weapon, we must grind through a boring and bugged system, which as stated above won't be looked at or settle for a less effective weapon.
2. Reduced action costs, as it stands now we can fire each of your specials once or so if we 'unload' and be left with very little action remaining.
3. Upgrade Narrow Escapes movement speed modifier as well as have it remove roots, bring it on par with bounty hunters Power Assisted Sprint.
4. Fix Break the Deal so that we can pull a MOB from a group again, the majority of us feel this was an unnecessary change.
5. Give Dire Snare the ability to snare Elites but not at a high a chance as it has to apply to a player or non elite NPC.

- CaMNoM/Ergos

Puck_Starfire

Valara..

This isn't a flame, but all the devs have to do is look at our stickied bug threads to know what we want.

Here

and Here.

1. Fix the bugs.
2. Innate armor needs an overhaul, especially since every other profession gets to stack their "innate armor" and we can't.
3. Pistol damage.
4. Expertise - half our expertise is for a half-done system. Give us useful expertise.

**-Firestar-** · 01/15/2008 19:29:43

Can't we get a choice between space and ground? The Dev team has done such a wonderful job with the last few chapters, making sure that things like Restuss to not ever force a PVE player to engange in PVP. Hell, it took.... half a year before Emory, one of our drop offs was removed from Restuss? (His WP still leads into Restuss, BTW..) Why is this different?

Open up missions so that you can do all of them at any time. While this "This mission is beneath you" makes a lick of sense, Dathomir is very very dreary. Why can't I go back to Tat.... or Rori or Lok? For a little change in scenery, I'll go pick up nerf poof, so don't gimmie that "this mission is beneath you" nonesense.

The level 92 elites are still spawning on missions- is this intended?

We do have a handy List of Smuggler Bugs and Issues.

I understand that revamping expertise is not on the table, but half our expertise is useless. It's a very glaring problem. There's a thread that states we really only have a small few chouices for expertise builds as some boxes give too little modifiers like the Spot a sucker, which is % of a % to fire.

Half of one tree alone can only be used on the smuggler mission you're running. That's the one run on Dathomir for our MUW Smugglers. That's a very very small piece of gameplay, all things considered on what a typical player does for the day at a login.

The only Smuggler I have seen with the Off the Books line was a RE optimizer. Gave the luck buff through Off the books and sold single spices that gave the luck buff.

**Iheamylap**

1. Break the Deal Aggro's targets in an AoE range behind its primary target.

2. False Hope needs to cause opponent to +MISS+ not +GLANCE+ since current Glance does not equate to the original intention of Glance.

3. Switcheroo's +8 to Glancing Blow (Melee) Needs to be Changed to +8% Dodge or Parry to equate to current combat systemand its original intention.

4. Call a Medic Cooldown is too long

5. Spot a Sucker Line not worthwhile in Expertise Investment in comparrison with other similar debuffs available to other professions.

6. Master Underworld Missions expertise boxes need to be usable when NOT running missions.

7. Precision and Luck Enhancing Boxes need to be moved or reduced in cost, due to them not being worthwhile investments since they are on the same Tier level as Armor Line, Pistol Line, Melee Line.

8. Hammer Fanning does not +Proc+ at its intended percentage

9. Narrow Escape does not break roots and should.

10. Dire Snare needs to apply a "Dire Snare Immunity" for 5 seconds on target after it fades off and it needs to affect Gold Elites.

Spiderhammer

Just when i was about to pull the plug on my subscription again.......

At any rate....

I'd love something done to our overrideable armor expertise. maybe add in some dodge bonuses to bring it up to par with some of the other proffs armor enhancements.

Hammer Fanning is under performing. we are getting 3-4% on this instead of the 12% we should. Ideally I'd love to see it reworked to proc once in a while with a cool animation.. but thats just my cinematic side coming out.

not sure i have seen that mentioned yet

Oh.... and do we get HanseSOE?

**Wewa** · 01/15/2008 20:06:30

reserved

(just not to forgot...it is late)

items/loot from tier 5 smuglers missions + any weapon + some type of recycler = 5% better schematic for crafted weapon.

this 5% is on damage/dps...

**Melvic**

My biggest concerns are:

make pistols viable
make smuggler mission expertise more useful (i.e. outside of smuggler missions) or remove them, perhaps giving similar themed abilities such as feign death.
innate armour should not lose more than 1/2. e.g. 4000 armour will still give 4000 with no armour equipped but only 2000 when it would otherwise have been negated (or lower than 2000)

NoyjitatPS

Bring back spice and smuggling spice. Nuff said.