Worse, many of the powers on a single kit are actually spread across multiple skill sets. Not just 2, but sometimes 3 or more, and there's not enough skill points to make them effective. It also means once you spec into a kit, you can never, EVER change because if you do, you'll find half the powers are too weak to be useful. Kit swapping is a dream.
Something I noticed along these lines is that for many kits, you've managed to spec up three of the powers, with a fourth useless one.
On that note, it also seems like a lot of kits in general have three useful powers and one relatively useless one.
This is something that ought to be addressed. Actually they need not be useless in game terms in order to be useless in effect - for instance, I've found Smoke Grenade to be of little value because often I blind MYSELF! Not something most squad leaders would want to deal with.
Engineers are the strongest ground profession in the game right now. As with the other classes, there are optimal kits and setups but science and tactical have nowhere near the versatility of an engineer, nor do they have the ability to both tank and deal damage that an engineer has at the present time.
I would like kits to function as a utility belt, have x slots that you could put a module into that allows use of a skill, this could be rolled in with personal device slots being classed as universal slots.
Different ranks of skills could have more damage / better heals + resists / reduced cooldowns
Different ranks of kits could have different ratios of universal to career slots and could allow more customisation for ground combat. Boffs are less limited in what combinations of skills they can have then your character can get from the kits available.
It would be awesome to rewards those that maxed out crafting to be able to craft their own kit with abilities from their class, could be part of the upcoming (soon) crafting revamp.
Engineers are the strongest ground profession in the game right now. As with the other classes, there are optimal kits and setups but science and tactical have nowhere near the versatility of an engineer, nor do they have the ability to both tank and deal damage that an engineer has at the present time.
Funny, sounds close to what Cruisers have become in space.
I would like kits to function as a utility belt, have x slots that you could put a module into that allows use of a skill, this could be rolled in with personal device slots being classed as universal slots.
Different ranks of skills could have more damage / better heals + resists / reduced cooldowns
Different ranks of kits could have different ratios of universal to career slots and could allow more customisation for ground combat. Boffs are less limited in what combinations of skills they can have then your character can get from the kits available.
Oh you hit it on the nose. That would be AWESOME.
Please adjudicatorhawk, consider this man's proposal.
I'm with a previous poster on this idea..
can we get orbital strike with a bonus reputation type unlock..
Orbital Bombardment - make it Omega T5 unlock..
that way all captains can get Bombardment
Targetable Ground AOE torpedo spread 1, give it a large ground icon so you know how much carnage is going to be done.. im even for it being a 6 minute CD along side Orbital Strike.
have the target reticle be a wal or corridor type soa stripe of land will be hit..
like a C130 droppin napalm, straight line damage across an area
Make them faction specific
Fed - Quantum 5 torps Crit D
KDF - Photon 7 torps Crit H
Rom - Plasma 3 Torps DOT3
Interesting ideas I'll preface this by saying I like ground combat more than space usually because the crew and I get to run around , currently I run 23 Tacticals, 12 Engineers, and 13 Scientists ( 2 of which are level 12 atm).
List of who kits I never use:
Science Kit - Xenobiologist:
Anesthizine Gas - Ok when it lasts the full duration which seems rare
Biofilter Sweep - Never found a point for it
Stasis Field - any damage breaks it occasional give it to a Boff but meh
Medical Tricorder - best power, but better used by Boffs or in a different kit
Science Kit - Physician:
Hypospray - Melorazine - nice for the Energy resist but better equipped on a Boff
Hypospray - Dylovene - Physical damage boost is nice (and I do a lot of melee) but better on a Boff
Vascular Regenerator - very useful especially on boffs
Nanite Health Monitor - very useful especially on boffs
Science Kit - Bioresearch:
Hyperonic Radiation - Nice minor AoE damage when speccd for it but Physist kit does it better
Stasis Field - any damage breaks it occasional give it to a Boff but meh
Tachyon Harmonic - very nice especially when speccd for it, but better in the Analyst kit
Biofilter Sweep - Never found a point for it
Romulan Science Kit - Xenobiologist:
Mostly full of Meh abilities haven't even bothered to get one
Engineering Kit - Support Technician:
Combat Supply - Full of meh I carry the dual component hypos for a reason
Equipment Diagnostics - with the doffs it can be nice but 90s cd no thank you
Shield Generator Fabrication - rather give to a boff or use the Jem Doff to spawn this and a medical generator
Quick Fix - better used by my Boffs than wasting a whole kit
Engineering Kit - Breach Engineer:
Seeker Drone Fabrication - nice but Doffed support drone is better
Combat Supply - Full of meh I carry the dual component hypos for a reason
Shield Recharge - Better spammed by my Boffs
Quantum Mortar Fabrication - Mixed bag decent damage if it hits, but the ToT seems like it stopped for a coffee on the way there so rarely used.
Maybe its a run of bad luck but I can never get my Romulan/Reman Boffs to get any extra turrets from "Turret Fabrication ability" even running the Purple Doff from the DS9 bundle and I ran the Nimbus zone on an Engineer with 4 engineer boffs little confused about that KDF, FED characters no problem occasionally get the triple turrets.
Tactical Kit - Grenade Satchel:
So much fail 1 kit with 4 abilities on the same CD facepalm
Tactical Kit - Squad Leader:
Rally Cry - Great ability except ontime is too short, vs CD to waste the kit space for me
Overwatch - Nice ability especially when doffed but again better spammed by my Boff
Smoke Grenade + Photon Grenade - same CD better spammed by a Boff
Tactical Kit - Security Protocol:
Overwatch - Nice ability especially when doffed but again better spammed by my Boff
Suppressing Fire - Great ability just 10x better in the Fire team kit
Draw Fire - even Doffed with WMF I don't use just so meh
Stun Grenade - I get better use of this in the Close combat kit in conjunction with doffed sweeping strikes
Ability: Stealth Module - rarely use this and I never use on Boffs
Is the Field Researcher trait working as intended or working at all, tooltips on weapons vary widely but I have yet to see any addition +25 damage to a debuffed target or even +25% damage to a debuffed target with and without tricorder scan on the turrets in Otha whereas I can clearly see the +33% damage from aiming and the +25% damage from using a Large power cell and Which science abilities are supposed to trigger it?
The Idea of being able to craft a Mk XII kit and pick 3-4 abilities to be included I would love to see implemented.
Is the Field Researcher trait working as intended or working at all, tooltips on weapons vary widely but I have yet to see any addition +25 damage to a debuffed target or even +25% damage to a debuffed target with and without tricorder scan on the turrets in Otha whereas I can clearly see the +33% damage from aiming and the +25% damage from using a Large power cell and Which science abilities are supposed to trigger it?
Field research applies a passive +25% damage to debuffed targets. Anything on your buff bar is either an ability or a proc, passives are not listed. The field researcher trait does work, I can confirm that much. Tricorder Scan and anything classified as a debuff will provide the bonus.
My biggest gripe with ground combat is the 'buff, fight, buff, fight' nature of it. I really wish more abilities were simply toggles that had purpose or granted a passive buff merely from equiping with an activatable that put the buff on cooldown or some such.
For example what if the suppressing fire power was a toggle with a slightly stronger debuff but it set your critical severity to 0%.
Take overwatch and let it grant the resistance buff to allies just by being on your kit and upon activation it grants the expose portion and a higher resistance buff for 10 seconds but you loose the weaker buff until it the ability recharges in 45 seconds.
This would be a small, but nice step to improving ground IMHO.
My biggest gripe with ground combat is the 'buff, fight, buff, fight' nature of it. I really wish more abilities were simply toggles that had purpose or granted a passive buff merely from equiping with an activatable that put the buff on cooldown or some such.
Buffing in Ground combat is not bad at all, there is very little compared to space combat. Converting all ground buffs into passives would not work, it would require a complete redo of all ground combat mechanics. Such a change would be like taking Starship Attack Patterns and converting all of them into passive abilities. Could you imagine passive always on Attack Pattern Alpha? Passive always on Emergency Power to Engines? That would change the game completely and not for the better. We don't need ground combat to be a dumbed down to the point where everything is a passive. This is an RPG game, not a full all out FPS game.
I'm currently taking a look at a number of Kit Powers that are largely ignored, and coming up with tweaks to them to make them more usable and more interesting. In some rare cases, powers are so unused that we can pretty much totally change their functionality completely *cough*CombatSupply*cough* - but in most cases, I'm taking care to retain the essence of any given power while making it more usable and more competitive with other Kit Powers.
So, why am I here on the forums, telling you all this? For one, I'm curious how you all feel about kits. Are they fun pieces of equipment? Do you enjoy switching them up to change playstyles from time to time? What Kit Powers do you find especially fulfilling and fun, and what Kit Powers do you really want to like but just aren't there yet?
Secondly, a number of the changes we're thinking about making involve increasing the cooldown of some Kit Powers, but boosting their effects to be worthy of the longer recharge. The reason for this is twofold - primarily, most of a player's actions on ground are Weapon activations, and the longer activation and root times of kit powers lend themselves less well to frequent use than do the short times of weapon powers. Second, having longer cooldown times on kit powers lets us make them really impactful when they do go off, so you only have to spend 1-2 seconds of animation to do something really cool.
How would you feel about, say, Weapons Malfunction being a 60 second cooldown instead of 30 seconds - but being a much bigger deal when it goes off? Are there any Kit Powers that you really like being able to use every 15 seconds?
Please feel free to provide general feedback on any Kit Powers you feel strongly about in any regard in this thread as well. Thanks!
Gorn dogs?
Are we ever going to see a Targ handling/summoning kit or a Gorn lizard beast kit?
What about the once sponsored idea for KdF ground combat kit from Tribbles In Ectasy?
Otherwise I dont ground very mch unless its in the Dysons sphere ground zones.
I'd probably use something like the mortar more if they were changed to a line-of-sight direct fire isomagnetic turret with an AoE on hit instead; slow firing but they'd at least generally hit the target they shoot at.
Starting off with Engineer, a review of the current powers. The following comments are based on performance in PVE situations, and I make no allowances for ground PVP where powers like fuse armour are stronger. No comment yet on kits that require spire 3 to unlock, as it's still a few weeks before I'll be able to test them in play.
Key: Red = Unused Orange = Unloved Green = Adequate Blue = Very Strong
Chroniton Mine Barrier: In the hands of a player this is a large direct damage spike. The fast recharge time, the high damage, the aoe, and the shield bypass create an ability that lets you instant kill NPC groups on their spawn in. Transphasic Bomb: As with chroniton mine barrier, this is very strong in the hands of a player. It lacks the former's fast recharge time, and is vulnerable to being destroyed. However it is easier to control the detonation time with precision, and it is easier to get a flanking damage bonus. Quantum Mortar Fabrication: Equipping a purple doff for the 20% chance to spawn 2 extra mortars for 180s really help this power. They can be fragile when placed in the open, but since they dont require a line of sight, this weakness is easily countered by placing them in cover. Getting the most out of them requires some skill on the part of the player to ensure that opponents stay semi-static. The end fights of several ground STFs can be solod by fishing for a 3 mortar spawn in cover, and then engaging the boss defensively. Seeker Drone Fabrication: These are fragile, and do relatively low dps. However the time cost of activating them is short, and another source of extra dps is rarely a bad thing. They can be situationally useful, for example in Mine Trap as a source of dps on the salt vampires while the player under the effects of crowd control spam. Turret Fabrication: Poor cousin to the quantum mortar due to their requirement of a line of sight to target, their shorter range, and rapid adaptation vs borg. Duty officer extra turrets only last for 60 seconds, rather than 180 seconds for quantum mortars. These perform best when placed close to a shield generator, as they attract fire and die fast. Situationally powerful when placed in concealed flanking positions on static defence maps such as mine trap. The turrets could do with a self-only version of Quick Fix I. Turret Fabrication (Embassy): The addition of the plasma fire thrower dramatically improves the close range dps of these turrets over conventional turrets. Can avoid borg adaptation by placing behind a line of sight blocking wall so that only the plasma fire thrower can fire. Combat Supply: Already covered in previous post. Please dont have an improved version of this spamming voth battlezone buffs, they are aesthetically jarring, and break immersion badly. Walking up to the box and interacting with it for a buff is much more setting appropriate. Force Field Dome: I really like the idea of what an ability of this nature could do. I'd like to see a player power equivalent of how the voth mechs use this. Fuse Armour: I tend to only use this on NPCs i've just hit with weapon malfunction, and usually because I myself have just been hit with a movement denial ability. Keep in mind that the borg mass spam this ability, so a buff could have unforseen difficulty consequences for ground STFs. Weapon Malfunction: Discussed in previous post. The cooldown time fits this well as a debuff to throw in each encounter group, and is meaningful when used. Medical Generator Fabrication: Is a great team buffing fabrication. It draws a lot of hate, so it needs to be placed out of line of sight. Shield Generator Fabrication: Like the medical generator it draws a lot of attention to itself and needs to be placed out of sight. I usually put this in support of exposed turrets. Shield Recharge: The resistance buff is far too short. I'd like to also see it have a small % chance to expose targets that fire on the entity that just recieved the shield recharge. Equipment Diagnostics: At endgame the resistance buff is weak except vs non-standard attacks, such as cold. The buff is situational, defensive, and not especially proactive. I struggle to think of a situation where I'd not prefer to have quick fix. Might be interesting to add in a long heal over time when used on fabrications/androids. Quick Fix: I like quick fix, while it's primary function is situational, it can be used as a minor offensive ability at any time, so it is never a dead power slot.
Kits: Bunker Fabrication X: This is a poor cousin to Fabrication specialist. Trades 2 dps powers: quantum mortar and seeker drone to gain shield generator and forcefield dome. A lower grade shield generator can be gained on fabrication by running a dominion doff. Enemy Neutralisation X: The benchmark for other engineering kits. An engineer running this kit can solo KGE entirely. Equipment Technician X: Poor cousin to Enemy Neutralisation. Trades Chroniton Mine Barrier and Transphasic Bomb for Equipment Diagnostics and Shield Recharge. Needs more proactive "haha deal with THIS!" factor to it. Support Technician X: The collection of powers in this kit seem illogical. Why is quick fix in a kit that has no meaningful frabrications? Given you're only going to be using quick fix to clear engineer debuffs or as a damage boost, why have a second engineer debuff clearing power? Breach Engineer X: I like what this kit is trying to be. With an improved combat supply, this could become more viable. Fabrication Specialist X: 3 offensive pet summons, and the more favourable of the team healing fabrication summons. A solidly performing kit for static defense maps, and with some imagination also on faster assault oriented maps. Fabrication Specialist XII [Embassy]: Strict upgrade of fabrication specialist. The addition of quick fix provides situational flexibility, the upgrade of the turret significantly improves dps.
I would say Combat supply should simply bounce out buff balls a la the Voth Battle-zone instead of useless hypos. Like one of each at, say 30 second or 1 minute intervals. This could possibly be adjusted by one of your captain engineering skills and how many points you have in it...
This would make it useful. Otherwise, Enemy Neut is the way to go.
please dont nerf or 'adjust' sweeping strikes or lunge. they are fine the way they are, and since there are ppl here talking about how they arent great abilities and they dont use them... pls dont change them to appease those ppl please.
not really keep on seeing neutralisation getting nerfed either. mines and bomb have a long enough cd as it is that its a tight race to get all the borg spawns booby-trapped on defera. they dont need a longer cd, they dont need to be made more 'epic'. they just need to be left alone.
I would say Combat supply should simply bounce out buff balls a la the Voth Battle-zone instead of useless hypos. Like one of each at, say 30 second or 1 minute intervals. This could possibly be adjusted by one of your captain engineering skills and how many points you have in it...
No kit ability should force players to compete against other players to receive the benefit in a PVE context. If you go the "pops out skittles like battlezone" route, then each client needs to have an individual set so players aren't competing.
A key issue that needs to be decided is whether we want the combat supply crate to be a point that we grab buffs and move on from, or if we want combat supply to be tactical landscaping in the same vein as shield generators or mine fields. The answer to that question will heavily color the mechanics of how we receive its benefits.
Continuing on with Science. [For Science!] As before I base this on performance in PVE at endgame level, and make no allowance for ground PVP. Spires not included.
Key: Red = Unused Orange = Unloved Green = Adequate Blue = Very Strong
Common complaint: For all sci expose powers, the Luck trait is overly dominant on the performance of that power at generating expose.
Exothermic Induction Field: Please liase with the team responsible for NPC movement AI scripts and ask if there is any plan to fix AI movement scripts. If no, please remove the ground fire hazard from this power and replace it with an instantly applied fire dot, with a cosmetic only fire effect. This power is currently a negative dps power due to the way it breaks movement scripts, causing NPCs to moonwalk backwards out of efficient to kill groups. The one saving grace for this power is that a sci running geologist doffs can use it safely if electro-gravitic field created an attraction anomaly. I'd like to see this power with a much larger cooldown and a larger direct damage component. Hyperonic Radiation: I like what this power is trying to be, and it is an efficient expose generator. It lacks dps against NPC targets. Maybe change the aoe dps to escalate in effect the longer a secondary target stays in close proximity to the primary target. Medical Tricorder: Spike direct heal. The damage resistance buff is a little short for my liking, but overall it is a solid ability. Frequency is great. Longer cooldown higher amount would make it overheal, so please keep as it is. Nanite Health Monitor: The reactive heal works while stunned, and it allows the sci to heal a target near to them instantly, without changing target. Purges a helpful selection of debuffs, including assimilation nanites. My only complaint with this ability is that it will spam away all its charges when certain long duration debuffs hit the player, such as borg shield neutraliser. Please fix this "while you're in there under the hood". Triage: AOE spike heal, with no max target number. Functions well as a blind fire heal that will heal your team mates while you remain targetted on a dangerous NPC such as an elite tactical drone. Excellent for protecting large numbers of NPCs, such as in Mine Trap. Vascular Regenerator: Has a few bugs. It is not purging some of the newer bleed effects, such as the vicious bites from voth dinosaurs. Otherwise its a good power. Purges assimilation nanites and a few other things while applying a HoT. This makes it a time efficient power. Anesthizine Gas: Just doesnt work as described. I would really like to see a version of this that worked as printed, or with the efficiency of the elachi gas drones. Short duration fragile hold repeatedly generated by a long duration gas cloud should be awesome. Electro-Gravitic Field: The interrupt part doesnt seem to function on important NPC actions. I would like the use of this attack on NPCs interacting with consoles to immediately pause the console timer for a few seconds. The non-doffed version of this is a little underwhelming, although tactically useful to keeping slow moving high hp NPCs grouped together, such as heavy tactical drones. The geologist enhanced version is really fun when it procs. Sonic Pulse: The on-demand knockback is situationally very useful. The damage is lacklustre. I'd be happy to see the damage removed and replaced with a stun effect. As with tractor beam repusors in space, this ability is really annoying in the hands of someone who is incompetant or a troll. Stasis Field: Add "bans the player that breaks this effect from the game for N hours where N = 2000-Damage dealt to target by that player". Ok, ok, fine that's a little extreme. This really needs to not be fragile when used on NPCs, because in it's current state it is broken faster by other players than it took the sci to animate the ability. How I'd like this to work:
*Sci holds target, lucks out and generates an expose*
*Tac sees exposed held target*
*Tac Climbs onto the top rope* (moves to flanking position)
*Tac Waves to the crowd* (Activates Ambush)
*Crowd cries "ITS THE PEOPLE'S ELBOW!"* (Lunges)
Goodbye important, dangerous NPC. And pretty please with sugar on top, if you could get an accolade into the game for generating that specific circumstance I would love all of you devs. TY Tachyon Harmonic: When the proc lands on high value NPCs like Rebecca, the results are spectacular. I've seen <7 second boss kills because of this ability. It is good. Probably too good. Biofilter Sweep: I like what this wants to be. It is a purge that clears a wide selection of debuffs as an aoe power. A tac running overwatch with a dominion advisor doff equipped does the same thing better. Hypospray - Dylovene: Solid DPS buff alone justifies its use. The purge is handy, although vascular regenerator seems to purge all the same things. Hypospray - Melorazine: Doesnt purge what it says it purges. I've yet to find a use for this. Reads like it should be an effective counter buff to situations like the confuse/placate spam in mine trap, it isnt.
Kits: Analyst X: Of the kits that can deliver tachyon harmonics, this seems to be the most viable at the moment. It has a little bit of noob trap potential from sonic pulse misuse, exagerrated by knockback from tachyon harmonics. With anesthizine gas being lacklustre right now it's effectively a 3 power kit. This could easily be a solid kit with some polish. Bioresearch X: I love the concept of this layout, this seems to be grouping an iconic style. If the individual powers worked to the extent that their names impied this would be appealing. Medic X: The consolidation of all of the sci healing abilities into one kit creates a kit that is greater than the sum of its parts. The amount of healing put out allows the player/party to play very agressively. This kit covers up for a lot of mistakes from the player or their team. Physician X: Melorazine brings this kit down. This kit trades some healing capacity for increased melee dps. As a self-sufficient dps build that brings sci captain powers, this still a solid concept. Physicist X: This kit is simultanously a superb kit when heavily invested into and used carefully, and the worst kit when used badly and without investment. It is too doff dependant for my liking. Xenobiologist X: I like the concept, I'd love to see this working properly. Xenobiologist XII [Embassy] Strict upgrade of a non-functioning kit is still a non-functioning kit. I like what this kit could be.
Sweeping Strikes... uhmm... can't think of a tac who uses this...
Keep your hands of my favourite power ya Danube!:mad:
What I don't like is Motion Accelerator. It doesn't break you out of holds as advertized, the speed boost is small and the cooldown too high. I would just love to replace it with Ambush.
FKA K-Tar, grumpy Klingon/El-Aurian hybrid. Now assimilated by PWE.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
My biggest gripe with ground combat is the 'buff, fight, buff, fight' nature of it. I really wish more abilities were simply toggles that had purpose or granted a passive buff merely from equiping with an activatable that put the buff on cooldown or some such.
For example what if the suppressing fire power was a toggle with a slightly stronger debuff but it set your critical severity to 0%.
Take overwatch and let it grant the resistance buff to allies just by being on your kit and upon activation it grants the expose portion and a higher resistance buff for 10 seconds but you loose the weaker buff until it the ability recharges in 45 seconds.
This would be a small, but nice step to improving ground IMHO.
Interesting notion...each kit could have its own passive bonus.
I'd rather see a lot of this revamped into a more Trek feel. While we are all dev stalking that is
Use the assets of ground combat but clean up the powers like all of the gazillions of lists of stuff that is not useful where it can be found in any class.
My view of a revamp would be to make the kits specific to for example there are many areas of Science so you could say you would have a lot more science kits for the federation. Then on the other hand there could be something to the lines of The Empire bring back the different class's from the days before the ENT Era.
So basically I think the kits should be revamped and having a system kind of like neverwinter's crafting in some regards have some basic standard issue training kit powers (kind of like what I took from hearing some podcasts where some devs spoke about something similar) so what we have now might be a standard issue medical training kit of what you have the medical tricorder and vascular regen. So to some degree reusing assets would be cool but then where they could expand the ground combat would be fixing those that really serve no purpose or are not used because they so vastly under perform compared to other kits. As well put some in there that give uniqueness to your faction as well as your characters race.
The only other problem I see with ground combat is its a very very simple system which by far is just microscopic compared to space but yet all these wannabe self proclaimed gods of pvp get one shotted by some weak npc like a regular borg drone.
Apart from the whole itemisation of kits that's needed/coming, as an engineer who like the fabrication kit, some things I'd like to see.
All turrets and generators should take less time to deploy. Many of sci and tac skills (I believe) are pretty instant, but engys best ones are tied to an animation lock while things beam in and you bend down get up.
Maybe just point finger at spot and the thing beams in there.
A deploy all button would be nice. Depending on your kit, bunker vs fabrication (and subject to all items not being on CD), all items beam in at once in a predefined layout (eg for fabrication kit. turrets in front, cover shield behind them, med gen behind cover shield, you behind gen, mortars behind you, drones beam in each side.
This would save the many seconds it takes an engy to beam everything in individually.
Mortars, would like to see a decrease in time between firing and when it comes down. Or maybe give it the ability to slowly shift a little while in flight to acquire moving targets on way down.
Med/Shield gens. I like them as stationary units but also wish they were mobile I like the idea someone gave of having them be able to be an aura from yourself. However having them stationary so they can heal/protect someone/something stationary while you run around elsewhere is just as important.
Maybe make all gens/turrets have a mobile and static state?
Many times in PvE missions the action is moving fast in a direction. By the time you drop down turret, mortar, gen, maybe cover shield, the action has largely moved on and away from that area.
(For example Mine Trap, as you escort the residents to the evac site. I have to run well ahead of the pack, drop med gen and turret quickly before the pack runs on through so they get the benefit of the med gen heal and turrets cover fire). Means I cannot help the team much if I'm the one at the back pushing the civilians on as all my turrets/gens wont benefit anyone.
If you could click a button and the gens/turrets lift up and follow you until you tell them to go to static mode again could be nice and interesting. In mobile mode the things could be weaker versions of what they normally do, or simply stop working.
Quick fix, have it extend the life of any fabrication too. So a turret/motar/gen can be made to hang around longer before disappearing. If its doing a good job you should be able to keep it alive longer.
Doff that beams in 3 support drones, make it apply to all drones. So seekers benefit too.
Well, having just lost my first attempt at this (shouts at keyboard on laptop) here's my main thoughts on kits.
Engineering:
Bunker/Fabrication kits - These need to be much more mobile friendly as in most of the game you're constantly moving and so by the time you've dropped the fabrications (turrets, generators etc) you're already moving on to the next target. That said there are a few times when these are useful as they are (i.e. fixed), but its not often. So if these could be mobile type pets that would be useful, they'd also benefit from their own control interface like carrier pets have now.
Mortars - These are really powerful as they currently are (especially when you spawn several using doffs), however they are useless against mobile enemies that can dodge the blasts from them. So they either need the time between firing and hitting cut somewhat (with an appropriate damage reduction) or an increased blast radius/something to hold mobile enemies in the blast range more.
Combat Supply - Think enough has been said on this as it currently stands not being worth the code its programmed in , that said I do like the sound of a revised version that spews buffs.
Equipment Diagnostics - Think this is the one that includes a remod for fighting the borg, seems rather pointless given that everyone carries omega rep armour with instant remods these days.
Quick Fix - Can this be made more effective, e.g. bigger heal/heal over time, combined with a temporary increase in hit point capacity at the trade off that it gets a longer cooldown. Thinking that way it can be cast earlier in a fight before a fortification gets blown and therefore extends the fortifications useful life in battle.
Science kits:
Mainly use the medic kit, but just started using analyst and physicist kits, so some of the comments below are around why I don't use other kits.
Electro-Gravitic Field/Statis Field - These are too weak and fragile in my opinion, they need to be harder to break and I'd suggest give some sort of debuff to perception/accuracy immediately after coming out of the hold (imagine the person this has been used on is having to get reorientated to a changed battlefield and so can't shoot straight so to speak). This is even more of problem when boffs start picking targets under these affects as targets and so break the hold, so maybe incorporate a massive threat reduction into this power as well so they are very unthreating for the duration of the hold.
Bio-filter sweep - Just doesn't seem useful enough to me given the limited number of debuffs it clears which players are exposed to in PvE combined with a fairly low damage resistance effect.
Tactical kits:
Grenade Satchel - Doesn't seem useful due to the common cooldowns on the grenades. I'm also not convinced that the situational awareness trait works at all as I've never seen grenades expose their targets on my toons when situational awareness is a selected trait. If this trait did work (which I don't believe it does based on my experience on my fed and fed rom tacs) then I can see this kit being much more useful, especially when combined with a split beam rifle.
Sweeping Strikes - Can this be increased to 80% shield penetration to bring it inline with other close combat weapons (maybe make it a set of different moves like melee weapons).
Draw Fire - Needs to provide more damage resistance/in-built heals to the user to mitigate the increased damage they receive. I've found using this on Boff's to be especially hazardous given that they die very quickly when using it.
Just a few thoughts on the powers that stand out most to me, looking forward to testing the changes when they arrive.
And finally tactical powers. Again, the perspective here is mainly elite stf difficulty, with no regard for performance in PVP. Spires not included.
Red = Unused Orange = Unloved Green = Adequate Blue = Very Strong
Lunge: Allows the tac to quickly close range. Has a high base damage which opens up synergy with other tactical powers. Exploits expose. Sweeping Strikes: I like that this does aoe melee damage on demand and knockdown on demand. However it feels redundant once you learn the combo moves for your melee weapon of choice. The ability to skip streight to cleaving strike without the preceding 2 attacks is handy at times (especially when under threat of enemy knockdown) but it doesnt feel worth a power slot. Seems most useful in the hands of a tac running 2 ranged weapons who wants to keep a competative level of melee dps without swapping in a melee weapon. Plasma Grenade: Please liase with the... blah blah. I've said this enough times. The fire hazard needs removing or enemy AI needs improving. One or the other. While unfixed this is a negative dps ability in ESTF groups. Lets assume for the moment it didnt break the NPC AI. What is the point of this grenade when we have photon grenade? Seems to be identical, but the damage is partially delivered by DoT. Plasma grenade needs better differentiation from photon grenade to justify the two existing as seperate abilities. Maybe give plasma grenade a -15 all resistances debuff to targets on fire. Photon Grenade: Solid shield bypassing damage with no downside. Not especially interesting, but its damage, it works, and it compliments other players using shield bypass attacks, such as engineers running neutralisation, or folks swinging melee weapons. Rally Cry: Poster child for the tactical kit buffs. Has synergy with pretty much every build concept. Draw Fire: Very interesting when boosted using doffs that upgrade it to produce weapon malfunction on attackers. Outside that scenario I dont like how it functions. A sci or engineer with agro would rather heal themselves than heal the tac. Healing the tac requires targetting the tac briefly, meaning they lose dps time on the npcs. Self healing can be done while targetting an enemy. I'd like to see a change to how this functions into a temporary forced taunt (using the same tech as the Obelisk console) that debuffs any attacker's resistance to flanking damage by, say, 50. Smoke Grenade: The in game animation obscures the vision of players that are crouching. Would be nice to see friendly smoke have their display opacity reduced by 50%. I like what this is trying to be. I very rarely get to use it (I'll toss it onto someone planting the bomb on turrets in cure ground for example). I'd like to see it gain a functional upgrade. +10% Stacking dodge bonus, +25 resistance to flanking damage. That buff would be granted each second while in the cloud, and persist for 6 seconds after leaving it. StunGrenade: I am on the fence about this grenade. Hard stun on demand is powerful. However this is lacking something, somewhere, and I cant put my finger on it. I think it comes down to the duration of the stun requires multiple targets to be in the aoe for the stun to have been worth the tac's time casting. Groups of multiple targets tend to be squishy, so it would have been just as efficient to just kill them. It's relatively rare to get, say, 2 heavy tacs and a few of their interesting friends in the same area. Ambush: Is great. When not being an awesome dps mutator, it can be situationally used to avoid initial agro on first contact with a group. Timed well, lets a tac bomb a turret in cure ground without cover fire. Battle Strategies: Would be more useful if tactical debuffs were more prolific. Currently it's generic tactical damage buff #37. This is not really Battle Strategies' fault. Motion Accelerator: Situationally helpful to the entire party. I'd like it to last longer and be on a bigger cooldown. Historically the immunities seem to occasionally like to take a vacation when some patches come out. I've not checked them lately. Overwatch: Doffed with a dominion adviser, the on demand purge is a very helpful addition to the tac suite of toys, particularly because of how many abilities it can remove. Undoffed the combination of debuffing enemy resists, buffing allied resists, and generation of expose make this an always useful ability. Stealth Module: Situational. When it's useful it's very good. When its not its a deadslot. Can be used to skip large sections of fighting on maps where enemies are simply agressive scenery rather than required kills. Supressing Fire: A soft movement control power and a soft damage debuffing power with a reasonable duration and a fast recast time. Handy for small numbers of enemies (boss fights, or when the tac is doing an important activity without support).
Kits: Close Combat Specialist X: The kit powers compliment each other well. With both lunge and motion accelerator the player can really get around the map quickly. Does well in the hands of someone taking the "floater" role in cure ground. Fire Team X: Poor cousin to Operative. Breaks up the Ambush-Lunge combo to gain supressing fire. Fixing the movement AI script problems will go a long way to making this kit viable. Fire Team XII [Embassy] Useful as a Motion Accelerator swap-to kit to be willing to be stuck in during red alert. Outside the context of ESTF, is a viable soloing kit. Grenade Satchel X: Shared cooldowns. So much fail. Operative X: Ambush + Lunge combo is strong. can be a bit of a one trick pony when you're the only tac in the group. Worth keeping the kit in inventory on every tac for the situational Stealth Module. Security Protocol X: Solid but boring. Built right, will tank boss fights without much help, something other kits traditionally struggle with. Squad Leader X: The benchmark for ESTF tactical kits. The only real fly in the ointment is smoke grenade. The remaining abilities have strong internal synergy, and strong team synergy.
please dont nerf or 'adjust' sweeping strikes or lunge. they are fine the way they are, and since there are ppl here talking about how they arent great abilities and they dont use them... pls dont change them to appease those ppl please.
not really keep on seeing neutralisation getting nerfed either. mines and bomb have a long enough cd as it is that its a tight race to get all the borg spawns booby-trapped on defera. they dont need a longer cd, they dont need to be made more 'epic'. they just need to be left alone.
Lunge is fine, Sweeping strikes needs a change in a bad way. Right now it's the most useless tactical ability in the game. Enemy Neutralization, at least the Mk XII version, does need a change. The Chroniton Mine Barrier ability is a bit too powerful right now, especially in PvP. This has been the case ever since Cryptic increased the base damage and then removed the "damage reduced from epicenter" in the very next patch. The Mine Barrier IV is even worse, 1-2 mines out of 5 is all that is needed to oneshot a player through all heals.
mines - relies on enemy being dumb enough to run over them. needs a way to deploy at range
if invisible, very cheap
fuse armour - needs an inherent dot
shield recharge - heals ok, buff is too short, activation time makes it useless.
bomb - its ok, needs ranged deployment.
hyperonic - range too short
tricorder - decent heal & buff, seems like it should have been an engie ability.
sonic pulse - good close range clearence... thats about it, needs directed ranged version
see dead space
harmonic - less knockback, more shield hurt, more range
triage - the big heal i get, but the resistance? another big heal with big resistance. a lot of redundancy there imo. too much.
rally cry - lol
smoke grenade - barely effects npcs, players defeat it with tab.
Chroniton Mine Barrier is currently the Engineer's most powerful ability. It would be overpowered if the engineer could deploy the mine barrier from range. All he'd need to do would be to sit at 30 meters, pop fuse armor, and teleport mines from range. They can already do that with Orbital Strike, we don't need to give them a 22 second cooldown ability that can do the same thing, it would be impossible to get close to such an engineer.
Fuse armor already deals a DoT attack. Shield Recharge is fine, it's no different than any other heal in the game. Transphasic Bomb needs a bit of a deployment rework, but ranged deployment is not the answer for the same reason as mine barrier.
Hyperonic Radiation is fine as is, but I'd be happy to see an increase to the damage based on invested skill points. Medical Tricorder makes sense as a science ability, when did you ever see an engineer heal someone while using a medical tricorder? Half the time the engineer didn't even know how to use it. Engineers are repaired to fix broken technology, not broken lifeforms. Sonic Pulse would be overpowered at range, though I do think it would be nice if the ability applied a stun. Tachyon Harmonics could strip more shields, but the knockback is a nice feature.
Triage is more vital in ground than you might think. It allows the Medic to quickly restore the team after a large area of effect attack. The damage resistance may be further used to block incoming cloak attacks or similar.
Rally Cry works very well, it's an area of effect Critical stat buff, making it one of the best Tactical abilities in the game. Smoke Grenade is effective, even in PvP, the attack debuffs perception significantly. All the player needs to do is slot the covert trait to ensure maximum effectiveness.
I would love see to the kit powers get a bit of TLC to even out their rough spots.
But first, I have to play negative Nancy for a moment: I think modular or customizable kit powers is a bad idea. It would only lead to the issues we see in space builds: everyone ends up with one or 2 of the same builds for everyone. Even with their limited numbers, the kits as they are now provide a bit of balance in game, regardless of which kit you take, you have to work with the good and bad (especially if the poor performers can be buffed and/or tweaked).
Now back to the love this thread part:
Well, in my opinion, we have more clumsy-to-use-but-helpful than we do OMG-so-bad-useless.
Eng:
Mortars: Long time between summon mortar and you starting to see benefits. To go along with what Adjucatorhawk said about them being something that doesn't get used for any npc...why not a short duration in play/long CD, but launches salvoes with a bit of randomness around their aimpoint? Change Doff to summon photon grenade turrets that can provide more CC and a bit of damage.
Turrets, Generators, Mortars: The summon/transport/build animation can be a major headache. Perhaps change them to use the quicker summon like Chroniton Mines or support drones use, but have a short delay before they become active.
Seeker Drones: Don't seem to do much damage and often get you into more trouble than you're prepared for. How about changing them to prioritize cloaked targets or exposed targets. Basically let the drone and the player form a bit of a hunter-killer team.
Weapon Malfunction: The long duration on this one seems to be the major issue. I'd like to see it changed to a much shorter duration, but with a 'backfire' effect on the target when you use it (preferably with a mechanic that damages them based on their weapon power/buffs, etc.)
Equipment Diagnostics: Works great as is, but the very long CD for a kit power is aggravating. Change to 20 second duration, 60 second CD?
Combat Supply: This is the big one. If only one kit power can be assigned dev time to fix, this is the one. I like the idea of the buff dispenser, but I am concerned about the screen clutter with these in play. Perhaps a change to fit in with the engineer theme, how 'bout a new type of generator? Combat Power Supply, creates aura/zone that reduces CD on weapon powers (i.e. the things on the toolbar that represent you pulling a trigger), essentially being a battery/capacitor that you beam down from your ship, links to your team's weapon/turrets/redshirts and gives you faster rates of fire. Skills: Generators skill buffs radius, Mod. Specialist buffs magnitude?
Sci:
Anestizine Gas: Very long CD for a gas grenade that misses unless you already have a target under CC effects...needs a quicker deployment time and perhaps drop damage debuff for better stun chances.
Nanite Health Monitor: Great proactive heal, has an issue where any sort of debuff triggers it to attempt to heal. Fix it so that only low health or nanoprobe infestation triggers a heal (and make sure it's healing infestation, not sure of that lately).
Sonic Pulse: really short range, perhaps increase the range, but make damage/distance knocked back scale with distance?
Biofiler Sweep, if it's only role is to clear debuffs and give a small DR buff, make it clear ALL debuffs: Toxic, mental, physical, mechanical, tactical, etc.
Stasis Field: Fragile nature of hold causes frustration, any 1 point of damage from any source (other than the stasis field doffs) breaks the effect. Change to a invulnerable hold (like stasis pistol) or add a damage threshold like Jam Sensors.
Hypospray Dylevene: really long CD. Melorazine can be used with 100% uptime on self, or to buff many allies in short time, change Dylovene to similar (may need a bit of nerf to buff strength)
Vascular Regenerator: just needs a tooltip once over, just what are the 'debuffs' it claims to clear 100 of? Is it just a DoT cleanse? If so, make sure it is coded to clear of them.
Tac:
Smoke Grenade: Make it total blackout type skill, i.e. blind and cloak both friend and foe in the effect. Also fix the issue where when targeting an enemy, it can chuck the smoke grenade at a random ally or at your feet.
Plasma Grenade: Damage/DoT seems to overlap with functionality of Exothermic Field. Perhaps change to applying small DoT to targets in AoE that receive a slowly increasing DR debuff as the fire burns through their armor.
Rally Cry: Long CD for a short effect, reduce CD, lower chance to expose all to compensate.
Grenades in general: Shared CD between 4 skills is unpopular. Split Grenades into 2 groups: Photon, Plasma share CD and Smoke, Stun share their own CD.
I have been in this game since beta. Pretty much all of my toons are specced for Ground combat. I GET it.
My suggestions would be these:
Keep it simple. Less is more (you can always add more later). Instead of nerfing, buff lacking powers; instead of bringing down, bring wanting powers UP.
My opinions:
Echoing what others have said:
I'd say leave Enemy Neut alone - it is a fine example of what a kit SHOULD be like. Same thing for Fire Team and Geologist/Geophysicist.
Fleet or Special kits should give 4 powers + 1 optional: Blue allows the optional to be selected from your class (Eng, Sci, Tac), Purple VR allows to select from other specialties.
I stand by the idea that Combat Supply should give out Buff Balls instead of lame hypos that are not usable in real-world gameplay. How it's executed is up for discussion.
Grenade Satchel should either grant a passive buff that makes grenade cooldowns super low OR should just wipe out the shared cooldown altogether; if someone wants to blow their wad with all 4 grenades in succession, let them. (I suppose some sort of shared cooldown might be needed, but it should be SUPER low: like 5 seconds or something.)
I personally am OK with animations being there for more powerful abilities.; Orbital Strike and mortars makes sense that you have to kneel down or type in something to a tricorder. However, the idea that they could be build into armor has merit - enough for a new kit perhaps?
Like others have said, many engi powers have little use or offer too little to be of value. Same thing for many sci powers - some I would argue aren't WIA.
Again, this is just my $.02
PS - since this tangentially relates to ground combat, could you PLEASE make it so Voth cant auto-res from disintegration? It's annoying, silly and breaks immersion.
I'd say leave Enemy Neut alone - it is a fine example of what a kit SHOULD be like. Same thing for Fire Team and Geologist/Geophysicist.
I think Enemy Neutralization should be left alone, but I suspect the Chroniton Mine Barrier needs a slight toning down. I was PvPing last night and an engineer was dropping Chroniton Mine Barrier IV mines that dealt 750 damage per mine (before resistances). 750 x5 mines is enough to oneshot a PvP player 3 times over. It's been like this ever since Cryptic upped the mine damage and then also removed the damage reduced from epicenter mechanic, the damage wasn't also toned down in the process.
Now with the Fleet kits releasing Mine Barrier IV, this is becoming increasingly noticeable. It wasn't as bad with Mine Barrier III, it took 3-4 mines to kill, now only 1-2 are needed to kill a player. Engineers can spawn 5 of these every 22 seconds, it should take 4 mines to oneshot players. I wouldn't be opposed to a longer cooldown, but it wouldn't be the ideal solution either, the ability is great for building defenses and clearing NPC groups.
Comments
Something I noticed along these lines is that for many kits, you've managed to spec up three of the powers, with a fourth useless one.
On that note, it also seems like a lot of kits in general have three useful powers and one relatively useless one.
This is something that ought to be addressed. Actually they need not be useless in game terms in order to be useless in effect - for instance, I've found Smoke Grenade to be of little value because often I blind MYSELF! Not something most squad leaders would want to deal with.
Vanilla Ground PvP information
Different ranks of skills could have more damage / better heals + resists / reduced cooldowns
Different ranks of kits could have different ratios of universal to career slots and could allow more customisation for ground combat. Boffs are less limited in what combinations of skills they can have then your character can get from the kits available.
This is definitely true, the grenade kit with all of its shared cooldowns is a complete mess.
Funny, sounds close to what Cruisers have become in space.
Please adjudicatorhawk, consider this man's proposal.
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can we get orbital strike with a bonus reputation type unlock..
Orbital Bombardment - make it Omega T5 unlock..
that way all captains can get Bombardment
Targetable Ground AOE torpedo spread 1, give it a large ground icon so you know how much carnage is going to be done.. im even for it being a 6 minute CD along side Orbital Strike.
have the target reticle be a wal or corridor type soa stripe of land will be hit..
like a C130 droppin napalm, straight line damage across an area
Make them faction specific
Fed - Quantum 5 torps Crit D
KDF - Photon 7 torps Crit H
Rom - Plasma 3 Torps DOT3
yes plasma.. i want to watch the world burn
List of who kits I never use:
Science Kit - Xenobiologist:
Anesthizine Gas - Ok when it lasts the full duration which seems rare
Biofilter Sweep - Never found a point for it
Stasis Field - any damage breaks it occasional give it to a Boff but meh
Medical Tricorder - best power, but better used by Boffs or in a different kit
Science Kit - Physician:
Hypospray - Melorazine - nice for the Energy resist but better equipped on a Boff
Hypospray - Dylovene - Physical damage boost is nice (and I do a lot of melee) but better on a Boff
Vascular Regenerator - very useful especially on boffs
Nanite Health Monitor - very useful especially on boffs
Science Kit - Bioresearch:
Hyperonic Radiation - Nice minor AoE damage when speccd for it but Physist kit does it better
Stasis Field - any damage breaks it occasional give it to a Boff but meh
Tachyon Harmonic - very nice especially when speccd for it, but better in the Analyst kit
Biofilter Sweep - Never found a point for it
Romulan Science Kit - Xenobiologist:
Mostly full of Meh abilities haven't even bothered to get one
Engineering Kit - Support Technician:
Combat Supply - Full of meh I carry the dual component hypos for a reason
Equipment Diagnostics - with the doffs it can be nice but 90s cd no thank you
Shield Generator Fabrication - rather give to a boff or use the Jem Doff to spawn this and a medical generator
Quick Fix - better used by my Boffs than wasting a whole kit
Engineering Kit - Breach Engineer:
Seeker Drone Fabrication - nice but Doffed support drone is better
Combat Supply - Full of meh I carry the dual component hypos for a reason
Shield Recharge - Better spammed by my Boffs
Quantum Mortar Fabrication - Mixed bag decent damage if it hits, but the ToT seems like it stopped for a coffee on the way there so rarely used.
Maybe its a run of bad luck but I can never get my Romulan/Reman Boffs to get any extra turrets from "Turret Fabrication ability" even running the Purple Doff from the DS9 bundle and I ran the Nimbus zone on an Engineer with 4 engineer boffs little confused about that KDF, FED characters no problem occasionally get the triple turrets.
Tactical Kit - Grenade Satchel:
So much fail 1 kit with 4 abilities on the same CD facepalm
Tactical Kit - Squad Leader:
Rally Cry - Great ability except ontime is too short, vs CD to waste the kit space for me
Overwatch - Nice ability especially when doffed but again better spammed by my Boff
Smoke Grenade + Photon Grenade - same CD better spammed by a Boff
Tactical Kit - Security Protocol:
Overwatch - Nice ability especially when doffed but again better spammed by my Boff
Suppressing Fire - Great ability just 10x better in the Fire team kit
Draw Fire - even Doffed with WMF I don't use just so meh
Stun Grenade - I get better use of this in the Close combat kit in conjunction with doffed sweeping strikes
Ability: Stealth Module - rarely use this and I never use on Boffs
Is the Field Researcher trait working as intended or working at all, tooltips on weapons vary widely but I have yet to see any addition +25 damage to a debuffed target or even +25% damage to a debuffed target with and without tricorder scan on the turrets in Otha whereas I can clearly see the +33% damage from aiming and the +25% damage from using a Large power cell and Which science abilities are supposed to trigger it?
The Idea of being able to craft a Mk XII kit and pick 3-4 abilities to be included I would love to see implemented.
Field research applies a passive +25% damage to debuffed targets. Anything on your buff bar is either an ability or a proc, passives are not listed. The field researcher trait does work, I can confirm that much. Tricorder Scan and anything classified as a debuff will provide the bonus.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
For example what if the suppressing fire power was a toggle with a slightly stronger debuff but it set your critical severity to 0%.
Take overwatch and let it grant the resistance buff to allies just by being on your kit and upon activation it grants the expose portion and a higher resistance buff for 10 seconds but you loose the weaker buff until it the ability recharges in 45 seconds.
This would be a small, but nice step to improving ground IMHO.
Nobody would use an ability that removes the ability to critically hit, it would be a massive self debuff and a nerf to a decent existing ability.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
Gorn dogs?
Are we ever going to see a Targ handling/summoning kit or a Gorn lizard beast kit?
What about the once sponsored idea for KdF ground combat kit from Tribbles In Ectasy?
Otherwise I dont ground very mch unless its in the Dysons sphere ground zones.
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Key:
Red = Unused
Orange = Unloved
Green = Adequate
Blue = Very Strong
Chroniton Mine Barrier: In the hands of a player this is a large direct damage spike. The fast recharge time, the high damage, the aoe, and the shield bypass create an ability that lets you instant kill NPC groups on their spawn in.
Transphasic Bomb: As with chroniton mine barrier, this is very strong in the hands of a player. It lacks the former's fast recharge time, and is vulnerable to being destroyed. However it is easier to control the detonation time with precision, and it is easier to get a flanking damage bonus.
Quantum Mortar Fabrication: Equipping a purple doff for the 20% chance to spawn 2 extra mortars for 180s really help this power. They can be fragile when placed in the open, but since they dont require a line of sight, this weakness is easily countered by placing them in cover. Getting the most out of them requires some skill on the part of the player to ensure that opponents stay semi-static. The end fights of several ground STFs can be solod by fishing for a 3 mortar spawn in cover, and then engaging the boss defensively.
Seeker Drone Fabrication: These are fragile, and do relatively low dps. However the time cost of activating them is short, and another source of extra dps is rarely a bad thing. They can be situationally useful, for example in Mine Trap as a source of dps on the salt vampires while the player under the effects of crowd control spam.
Turret Fabrication: Poor cousin to the quantum mortar due to their requirement of a line of sight to target, their shorter range, and rapid adaptation vs borg. Duty officer extra turrets only last for 60 seconds, rather than 180 seconds for quantum mortars. These perform best when placed close to a shield generator, as they attract fire and die fast. Situationally powerful when placed in concealed flanking positions on static defence maps such as mine trap. The turrets could do with a self-only version of Quick Fix I.
Turret Fabrication (Embassy): The addition of the plasma fire thrower dramatically improves the close range dps of these turrets over conventional turrets. Can avoid borg adaptation by placing behind a line of sight blocking wall so that only the plasma fire thrower can fire.
Combat Supply: Already covered in previous post. Please dont have an improved version of this spamming voth battlezone buffs, they are aesthetically jarring, and break immersion badly. Walking up to the box and interacting with it for a buff is much more setting appropriate.
Force Field Dome: I really like the idea of what an ability of this nature could do. I'd like to see a player power equivalent of how the voth mechs use this.
Fuse Armour: I tend to only use this on NPCs i've just hit with weapon malfunction, and usually because I myself have just been hit with a movement denial ability. Keep in mind that the borg mass spam this ability, so a buff could have unforseen difficulty consequences for ground STFs.
Weapon Malfunction: Discussed in previous post. The cooldown time fits this well as a debuff to throw in each encounter group, and is meaningful when used.
Medical Generator Fabrication: Is a great team buffing fabrication. It draws a lot of hate, so it needs to be placed out of line of sight.
Shield Generator Fabrication: Like the medical generator it draws a lot of attention to itself and needs to be placed out of sight. I usually put this in support of exposed turrets.
Shield Recharge: The resistance buff is far too short. I'd like to also see it have a small % chance to expose targets that fire on the entity that just recieved the shield recharge.
Equipment Diagnostics: At endgame the resistance buff is weak except vs non-standard attacks, such as cold. The buff is situational, defensive, and not especially proactive. I struggle to think of a situation where I'd not prefer to have quick fix. Might be interesting to add in a long heal over time when used on fabrications/androids.
Quick Fix: I like quick fix, while it's primary function is situational, it can be used as a minor offensive ability at any time, so it is never a dead power slot.
Kits:
Bunker Fabrication X: This is a poor cousin to Fabrication specialist. Trades 2 dps powers: quantum mortar and seeker drone to gain shield generator and forcefield dome. A lower grade shield generator can be gained on fabrication by running a dominion doff.
Enemy Neutralisation X: The benchmark for other engineering kits. An engineer running this kit can solo KGE entirely.
Equipment Technician X: Poor cousin to Enemy Neutralisation. Trades Chroniton Mine Barrier and Transphasic Bomb for Equipment Diagnostics and Shield Recharge. Needs more proactive "haha deal with THIS!" factor to it.
Support Technician X: The collection of powers in this kit seem illogical. Why is quick fix in a kit that has no meaningful frabrications? Given you're only going to be using quick fix to clear engineer debuffs or as a damage boost, why have a second engineer debuff clearing power?
Breach Engineer X: I like what this kit is trying to be. With an improved combat supply, this could become more viable.
Fabrication Specialist X: 3 offensive pet summons, and the more favourable of the team healing fabrication summons. A solidly performing kit for static defense maps, and with some imagination also on faster assault oriented maps.
Fabrication Specialist XII [Embassy]: Strict upgrade of fabrication specialist. The addition of quick fix provides situational flexibility, the upgrade of the turret significantly improves dps.
This would make it useful. Otherwise, Enemy Neut is the way to go.
not really keep on seeing neutralisation getting nerfed either. mines and bomb have a long enough cd as it is that its a tight race to get all the borg spawns booby-trapped on defera. they dont need a longer cd, they dont need to be made more 'epic'. they just need to be left alone.
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No kit ability should force players to compete against other players to receive the benefit in a PVE context. If you go the "pops out skittles like battlezone" route, then each client needs to have an individual set so players aren't competing.
A key issue that needs to be decided is whether we want the combat supply crate to be a point that we grab buffs and move on from, or if we want combat supply to be tactical landscaping in the same vein as shield generators or mine fields. The answer to that question will heavily color the mechanics of how we receive its benefits.
Key:
Red = Unused
Orange = Unloved
Green = Adequate
Blue = Very Strong
Common complaint: For all sci expose powers, the Luck trait is overly dominant on the performance of that power at generating expose.
Exothermic Induction Field: Please liase with the team responsible for NPC movement AI scripts and ask if there is any plan to fix AI movement scripts. If no, please remove the ground fire hazard from this power and replace it with an instantly applied fire dot, with a cosmetic only fire effect. This power is currently a negative dps power due to the way it breaks movement scripts, causing NPCs to moonwalk backwards out of efficient to kill groups. The one saving grace for this power is that a sci running geologist doffs can use it safely if electro-gravitic field created an attraction anomaly. I'd like to see this power with a much larger cooldown and a larger direct damage component.
Hyperonic Radiation: I like what this power is trying to be, and it is an efficient expose generator. It lacks dps against NPC targets. Maybe change the aoe dps to escalate in effect the longer a secondary target stays in close proximity to the primary target.
Medical Tricorder: Spike direct heal. The damage resistance buff is a little short for my liking, but overall it is a solid ability. Frequency is great. Longer cooldown higher amount would make it overheal, so please keep as it is.
Nanite Health Monitor: The reactive heal works while stunned, and it allows the sci to heal a target near to them instantly, without changing target. Purges a helpful selection of debuffs, including assimilation nanites. My only complaint with this ability is that it will spam away all its charges when certain long duration debuffs hit the player, such as borg shield neutraliser. Please fix this "while you're in there under the hood".
Triage: AOE spike heal, with no max target number. Functions well as a blind fire heal that will heal your team mates while you remain targetted on a dangerous NPC such as an elite tactical drone. Excellent for protecting large numbers of NPCs, such as in Mine Trap.
Vascular Regenerator: Has a few bugs. It is not purging some of the newer bleed effects, such as the vicious bites from voth dinosaurs. Otherwise its a good power. Purges assimilation nanites and a few other things while applying a HoT. This makes it a time efficient power.
Anesthizine Gas: Just doesnt work as described. I would really like to see a version of this that worked as printed, or with the efficiency of the elachi gas drones. Short duration fragile hold repeatedly generated by a long duration gas cloud should be awesome.
Electro-Gravitic Field: The interrupt part doesnt seem to function on important NPC actions. I would like the use of this attack on NPCs interacting with consoles to immediately pause the console timer for a few seconds. The non-doffed version of this is a little underwhelming, although tactically useful to keeping slow moving high hp NPCs grouped together, such as heavy tactical drones. The geologist enhanced version is really fun when it procs.
Sonic Pulse: The on-demand knockback is situationally very useful. The damage is lacklustre. I'd be happy to see the damage removed and replaced with a stun effect. As with tractor beam repusors in space, this ability is really annoying in the hands of someone who is incompetant or a troll.
Stasis Field: Add "bans the player that breaks this effect from the game for N hours where N = 2000-Damage dealt to target by that player". Ok, ok, fine that's a little extreme. This really needs to not be fragile when used on NPCs, because in it's current state it is broken faster by other players than it took the sci to animate the ability. How I'd like this to work:
*Sci holds target, lucks out and generates an expose*
*Tac sees exposed held target*
*Tac Climbs onto the top rope* (moves to flanking position)
*Tac Waves to the crowd* (Activates Ambush)
*Crowd cries "ITS THE PEOPLE'S ELBOW!"* (Lunges)
Goodbye important, dangerous NPC. And pretty please with sugar on top, if you could get an accolade into the game for generating that specific circumstance I would love all of you devs. TY
Tachyon Harmonic: When the proc lands on high value NPCs like Rebecca, the results are spectacular. I've seen <7 second boss kills because of this ability. It is good. Probably too good.
Biofilter Sweep: I like what this wants to be. It is a purge that clears a wide selection of debuffs as an aoe power. A tac running overwatch with a dominion advisor doff equipped does the same thing better.
Hypospray - Dylovene: Solid DPS buff alone justifies its use. The purge is handy, although vascular regenerator seems to purge all the same things.
Hypospray - Melorazine: Doesnt purge what it says it purges. I've yet to find a use for this. Reads like it should be an effective counter buff to situations like the confuse/placate spam in mine trap, it isnt.
Kits:
Analyst X: Of the kits that can deliver tachyon harmonics, this seems to be the most viable at the moment. It has a little bit of noob trap potential from sonic pulse misuse, exagerrated by knockback from tachyon harmonics. With anesthizine gas being lacklustre right now it's effectively a 3 power kit. This could easily be a solid kit with some polish.
Bioresearch X: I love the concept of this layout, this seems to be grouping an iconic style. If the individual powers worked to the extent that their names impied this would be appealing.
Medic X: The consolidation of all of the sci healing abilities into one kit creates a kit that is greater than the sum of its parts. The amount of healing put out allows the player/party to play very agressively. This kit covers up for a lot of mistakes from the player or their team.
Physician X: Melorazine brings this kit down. This kit trades some healing capacity for increased melee dps. As a self-sufficient dps build that brings sci captain powers, this still a solid concept.
Physicist X: This kit is simultanously a superb kit when heavily invested into and used carefully, and the worst kit when used badly and without investment. It is too doff dependant for my liking.
Xenobiologist X: I like the concept, I'd love to see this working properly.
Xenobiologist XII [Embassy] Strict upgrade of a non-functioning kit is still a non-functioning kit. I like what this kit could be.
Keep your hands of my favourite power ya Danube!:mad:
What I don't like is Motion Accelerator. It doesn't break you out of holds as advertized, the speed boost is small and the cooldown too high. I would just love to replace it with Ambush.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
Interesting notion...each kit could have its own passive bonus.
Use the assets of ground combat but clean up the powers like all of the gazillions of lists of stuff that is not useful where it can be found in any class.
My view of a revamp would be to make the kits specific to for example there are many areas of Science so you could say you would have a lot more science kits for the federation. Then on the other hand there could be something to the lines of The Empire bring back the different class's from the days before the ENT Era.
So basically I think the kits should be revamped and having a system kind of like neverwinter's crafting in some regards have some basic standard issue training kit powers (kind of like what I took from hearing some podcasts where some devs spoke about something similar) so what we have now might be a standard issue medical training kit of what you have the medical tricorder and vascular regen. So to some degree reusing assets would be cool but then where they could expand the ground combat would be fixing those that really serve no purpose or are not used because they so vastly under perform compared to other kits. As well put some in there that give uniqueness to your faction as well as your characters race.
The only other problem I see with ground combat is its a very very simple system which by far is just microscopic compared to space but yet all these wannabe self proclaimed gods of pvp get one shotted by some weak npc like a regular borg drone.
All turrets and generators should take less time to deploy. Many of sci and tac skills (I believe) are pretty instant, but engys best ones are tied to an animation lock while things beam in and you bend down get up.
Maybe just point finger at spot and the thing beams in there.
A deploy all button would be nice. Depending on your kit, bunker vs fabrication (and subject to all items not being on CD), all items beam in at once in a predefined layout (eg for fabrication kit. turrets in front, cover shield behind them, med gen behind cover shield, you behind gen, mortars behind you, drones beam in each side.
This would save the many seconds it takes an engy to beam everything in individually.
Mortars, would like to see a decrease in time between firing and when it comes down. Or maybe give it the ability to slowly shift a little while in flight to acquire moving targets on way down.
Med/Shield gens. I like them as stationary units but also wish they were mobile I like the idea someone gave of having them be able to be an aura from yourself. However having them stationary so they can heal/protect someone/something stationary while you run around elsewhere is just as important.
Maybe make all gens/turrets have a mobile and static state?
Many times in PvE missions the action is moving fast in a direction. By the time you drop down turret, mortar, gen, maybe cover shield, the action has largely moved on and away from that area.
(For example Mine Trap, as you escort the residents to the evac site. I have to run well ahead of the pack, drop med gen and turret quickly before the pack runs on through so they get the benefit of the med gen heal and turrets cover fire). Means I cannot help the team much if I'm the one at the back pushing the civilians on as all my turrets/gens wont benefit anyone.
If you could click a button and the gens/turrets lift up and follow you until you tell them to go to static mode again could be nice and interesting. In mobile mode the things could be weaker versions of what they normally do, or simply stop working.
Quick fix, have it extend the life of any fabrication too. So a turret/motar/gen can be made to hang around longer before disappearing. If its doing a good job you should be able to keep it alive longer.
Doff that beams in 3 support drones, make it apply to all drones. So seekers benefit too.
Engineering:
Bunker/Fabrication kits - These need to be much more mobile friendly as in most of the game you're constantly moving and so by the time you've dropped the fabrications (turrets, generators etc) you're already moving on to the next target. That said there are a few times when these are useful as they are (i.e. fixed), but its not often. So if these could be mobile type pets that would be useful, they'd also benefit from their own control interface like carrier pets have now.
Mortars - These are really powerful as they currently are (especially when you spawn several using doffs), however they are useless against mobile enemies that can dodge the blasts from them. So they either need the time between firing and hitting cut somewhat (with an appropriate damage reduction) or an increased blast radius/something to hold mobile enemies in the blast range more.
Combat Supply - Think enough has been said on this as it currently stands not being worth the code its programmed in
Equipment Diagnostics - Think this is the one that includes a remod for fighting the borg, seems rather pointless given that everyone carries omega rep armour with instant remods these days.
Quick Fix - Can this be made more effective, e.g. bigger heal/heal over time, combined with a temporary increase in hit point capacity at the trade off that it gets a longer cooldown. Thinking that way it can be cast earlier in a fight before a fortification gets blown and therefore extends the fortifications useful life in battle.
Science kits:
Mainly use the medic kit, but just started using analyst and physicist kits, so some of the comments below are around why I don't use other kits.
Electro-Gravitic Field/Statis Field - These are too weak and fragile in my opinion, they need to be harder to break and I'd suggest give some sort of debuff to perception/accuracy immediately after coming out of the hold (imagine the person this has been used on is having to get reorientated to a changed battlefield and so can't shoot straight so to speak). This is even more of problem when boffs start picking targets under these affects as targets and so break the hold, so maybe incorporate a massive threat reduction into this power as well so they are very unthreating for the duration of the hold.
Bio-filter sweep - Just doesn't seem useful enough to me given the limited number of debuffs it clears which players are exposed to in PvE combined with a fairly low damage resistance effect.
Tactical kits:
Grenade Satchel - Doesn't seem useful due to the common cooldowns on the grenades. I'm also not convinced that the situational awareness trait works at all as I've never seen grenades expose their targets on my toons when situational awareness is a selected trait. If this trait did work (which I don't believe it does based on my experience on my fed and fed rom tacs) then I can see this kit being much more useful, especially when combined with a split beam rifle.
Sweeping Strikes - Can this be increased to 80% shield penetration to bring it inline with other close combat weapons (maybe make it a set of different moves like melee weapons).
Draw Fire - Needs to provide more damage resistance/in-built heals to the user to mitigate the increased damage they receive. I've found using this on Boff's to be especially hazardous given that they die very quickly when using it.
Just a few thoughts on the powers that stand out most to me, looking forward to testing the changes when they arrive.
Red = Unused
Orange = Unloved
Green = Adequate
Blue = Very Strong
Lunge: Allows the tac to quickly close range. Has a high base damage which opens up synergy with other tactical powers. Exploits expose.
Sweeping Strikes: I like that this does aoe melee damage on demand and knockdown on demand. However it feels redundant once you learn the combo moves for your melee weapon of choice. The ability to skip streight to cleaving strike without the preceding 2 attacks is handy at times (especially when under threat of enemy knockdown) but it doesnt feel worth a power slot. Seems most useful in the hands of a tac running 2 ranged weapons who wants to keep a competative level of melee dps without swapping in a melee weapon.
Plasma Grenade: Please liase with the... blah blah. I've said this enough times. The fire hazard needs removing or enemy AI needs improving. One or the other. While unfixed this is a negative dps ability in ESTF groups. Lets assume for the moment it didnt break the NPC AI. What is the point of this grenade when we have photon grenade? Seems to be identical, but the damage is partially delivered by DoT. Plasma grenade needs better differentiation from photon grenade to justify the two existing as seperate abilities. Maybe give plasma grenade a -15 all resistances debuff to targets on fire.
Photon Grenade: Solid shield bypassing damage with no downside. Not especially interesting, but its damage, it works, and it compliments other players using shield bypass attacks, such as engineers running neutralisation, or folks swinging melee weapons.
Rally Cry: Poster child for the tactical kit buffs. Has synergy with pretty much every build concept.
Draw Fire: Very interesting when boosted using doffs that upgrade it to produce weapon malfunction on attackers. Outside that scenario I dont like how it functions. A sci or engineer with agro would rather heal themselves than heal the tac. Healing the tac requires targetting the tac briefly, meaning they lose dps time on the npcs. Self healing can be done while targetting an enemy. I'd like to see a change to how this functions into a temporary forced taunt (using the same tech as the Obelisk console) that debuffs any attacker's resistance to flanking damage by, say, 50.
Smoke Grenade: The in game animation obscures the vision of players that are crouching. Would be nice to see friendly smoke have their display opacity reduced by 50%. I like what this is trying to be. I very rarely get to use it (I'll toss it onto someone planting the bomb on turrets in cure ground for example). I'd like to see it gain a functional upgrade. +10% Stacking dodge bonus, +25 resistance to flanking damage. That buff would be granted each second while in the cloud, and persist for 6 seconds after leaving it.
Stun Grenade: I am on the fence about this grenade. Hard stun on demand is powerful. However this is lacking something, somewhere, and I cant put my finger on it. I think it comes down to the duration of the stun requires multiple targets to be in the aoe for the stun to have been worth the tac's time casting. Groups of multiple targets tend to be squishy, so it would have been just as efficient to just kill them. It's relatively rare to get, say, 2 heavy tacs and a few of their interesting friends in the same area.
Ambush: Is great. When not being an awesome dps mutator, it can be situationally used to avoid initial agro on first contact with a group. Timed well, lets a tac bomb a turret in cure ground without cover fire.
Battle Strategies: Would be more useful if tactical debuffs were more prolific. Currently it's generic tactical damage buff #37. This is not really Battle Strategies' fault.
Motion Accelerator: Situationally helpful to the entire party. I'd like it to last longer and be on a bigger cooldown. Historically the immunities seem to occasionally like to take a vacation when some patches come out. I've not checked them lately.
Overwatch: Doffed with a dominion adviser, the on demand purge is a very helpful addition to the tac suite of toys, particularly because of how many abilities it can remove. Undoffed the combination of debuffing enemy resists, buffing allied resists, and generation of expose make this an always useful ability.
Stealth Module: Situational. When it's useful it's very good. When its not its a deadslot. Can be used to skip large sections of fighting on maps where enemies are simply agressive scenery rather than required kills.
Supressing Fire: A soft movement control power and a soft damage debuffing power with a reasonable duration and a fast recast time. Handy for small numbers of enemies (boss fights, or when the tac is doing an important activity without support).
Kits:
Close Combat Specialist X: The kit powers compliment each other well. With both lunge and motion accelerator the player can really get around the map quickly. Does well in the hands of someone taking the "floater" role in cure ground.
Fire Team X: Poor cousin to Operative. Breaks up the Ambush-Lunge combo to gain supressing fire. Fixing the movement AI script problems will go a long way to making this kit viable.
Fire Team XII [Embassy] Useful as a Motion Accelerator swap-to kit to be willing to be stuck in during red alert. Outside the context of ESTF, is a viable soloing kit.
Grenade Satchel X: Shared cooldowns. So much fail.
Operative X: Ambush + Lunge combo is strong. can be a bit of a one trick pony when you're the only tac in the group. Worth keeping the kit in inventory on every tac for the situational Stealth Module.
Security Protocol X: Solid but boring. Built right, will tank boss fights without much help, something other kits traditionally struggle with.
Squad Leader X: The benchmark for ESTF tactical kits. The only real fly in the ointment is smoke grenade. The remaining abilities have strong internal synergy, and strong team synergy.
Lunge is fine, Sweeping strikes needs a change in a bad way. Right now it's the most useless tactical ability in the game. Enemy Neutralization, at least the Mk XII version, does need a change. The Chroniton Mine Barrier ability is a bit too powerful right now, especially in PvP. This has been the case ever since Cryptic increased the base damage and then removed the "damage reduced from epicenter" in the very next patch. The Mine Barrier IV is even worse, 1-2 mines out of 5 is all that is needed to oneshot a player through all heals.
Chroniton Mine Barrier is currently the Engineer's most powerful ability. It would be overpowered if the engineer could deploy the mine barrier from range. All he'd need to do would be to sit at 30 meters, pop fuse armor, and teleport mines from range. They can already do that with Orbital Strike, we don't need to give them a 22 second cooldown ability that can do the same thing, it would be impossible to get close to such an engineer.
Fuse armor already deals a DoT attack. Shield Recharge is fine, it's no different than any other heal in the game. Transphasic Bomb needs a bit of a deployment rework, but ranged deployment is not the answer for the same reason as mine barrier.
Hyperonic Radiation is fine as is, but I'd be happy to see an increase to the damage based on invested skill points. Medical Tricorder makes sense as a science ability, when did you ever see an engineer heal someone while using a medical tricorder? Half the time the engineer didn't even know how to use it. Engineers are repaired to fix broken technology, not broken lifeforms. Sonic Pulse would be overpowered at range, though I do think it would be nice if the ability applied a stun. Tachyon Harmonics could strip more shields, but the knockback is a nice feature.
Triage is more vital in ground than you might think. It allows the Medic to quickly restore the team after a large area of effect attack. The damage resistance may be further used to block incoming cloak attacks or similar.
Rally Cry works very well, it's an area of effect Critical stat buff, making it one of the best Tactical abilities in the game. Smoke Grenade is effective, even in PvP, the attack debuffs perception significantly. All the player needs to do is slot the covert trait to ensure maximum effectiveness.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
But first, I have to play negative Nancy for a moment: I think modular or customizable kit powers is a bad idea. It would only lead to the issues we see in space builds: everyone ends up with one or 2 of the same builds for everyone. Even with their limited numbers, the kits as they are now provide a bit of balance in game, regardless of which kit you take, you have to work with the good and bad (especially if the poor performers can be buffed and/or tweaked).
Now back to the love this thread part:
Well, in my opinion, we have more clumsy-to-use-but-helpful than we do OMG-so-bad-useless.
Eng:
Mortars: Long time between summon mortar and you starting to see benefits. To go along with what Adjucatorhawk said about them being something that doesn't get used for any npc...why not a short duration in play/long CD, but launches salvoes with a bit of randomness around their aimpoint? Change Doff to summon photon grenade turrets that can provide more CC and a bit of damage.
Turrets, Generators, Mortars: The summon/transport/build animation can be a major headache. Perhaps change them to use the quicker summon like Chroniton Mines or support drones use, but have a short delay before they become active.
Seeker Drones: Don't seem to do much damage and often get you into more trouble than you're prepared for. How about changing them to prioritize cloaked targets or exposed targets. Basically let the drone and the player form a bit of a hunter-killer team.
Weapon Malfunction: The long duration on this one seems to be the major issue. I'd like to see it changed to a much shorter duration, but with a 'backfire' effect on the target when you use it (preferably with a mechanic that damages them based on their weapon power/buffs, etc.)
Equipment Diagnostics: Works great as is, but the very long CD for a kit power is aggravating. Change to 20 second duration, 60 second CD?
Combat Supply: This is the big one. If only one kit power can be assigned dev time to fix, this is the one. I like the idea of the buff dispenser, but I am concerned about the screen clutter with these in play. Perhaps a change to fit in with the engineer theme, how 'bout a new type of generator? Combat Power Supply, creates aura/zone that reduces CD on weapon powers (i.e. the things on the toolbar that represent you pulling a trigger), essentially being a battery/capacitor that you beam down from your ship, links to your team's weapon/turrets/redshirts and gives you faster rates of fire. Skills: Generators skill buffs radius, Mod. Specialist buffs magnitude?
Sci:
Anestizine Gas: Very long CD for a gas grenade that misses unless you already have a target under CC effects...needs a quicker deployment time and perhaps drop damage debuff for better stun chances.
Nanite Health Monitor: Great proactive heal, has an issue where any sort of debuff triggers it to attempt to heal. Fix it so that only low health or nanoprobe infestation triggers a heal (and make sure it's healing infestation, not sure of that lately).
Sonic Pulse: really short range, perhaps increase the range, but make damage/distance knocked back scale with distance?
Biofiler Sweep, if it's only role is to clear debuffs and give a small DR buff, make it clear ALL debuffs: Toxic, mental, physical, mechanical, tactical, etc.
Stasis Field: Fragile nature of hold causes frustration, any 1 point of damage from any source (other than the stasis field doffs) breaks the effect. Change to a invulnerable hold (like stasis pistol) or add a damage threshold like Jam Sensors.
Hypospray Dylevene: really long CD. Melorazine can be used with 100% uptime on self, or to buff many allies in short time, change Dylovene to similar (may need a bit of nerf to buff strength)
Vascular Regenerator: just needs a tooltip once over, just what are the 'debuffs' it claims to clear 100 of? Is it just a DoT cleanse? If so, make sure it is coded to clear of them.
Tac:
Smoke Grenade: Make it total blackout type skill, i.e. blind and cloak both friend and foe in the effect. Also fix the issue where when targeting an enemy, it can chuck the smoke grenade at a random ally or at your feet.
Plasma Grenade: Damage/DoT seems to overlap with functionality of Exothermic Field. Perhaps change to applying small DoT to targets in AoE that receive a slowly increasing DR debuff as the fire burns through their armor.
Rally Cry: Long CD for a short effect, reduce CD, lower chance to expose all to compensate.
Grenades in general: Shared CD between 4 skills is unpopular. Split Grenades into 2 groups: Photon, Plasma share CD and Smoke, Stun share their own CD.
My suggestions would be these:
Keep it simple. Less is more (you can always add more later). Instead of nerfing, buff lacking powers; instead of bringing down, bring wanting powers UP.
My opinions:
Echoing what others have said:
I'd say leave Enemy Neut alone - it is a fine example of what a kit SHOULD be like. Same thing for Fire Team and Geologist/Geophysicist.
Fleet or Special kits should give 4 powers + 1 optional: Blue allows the optional to be selected from your class (Eng, Sci, Tac), Purple VR allows to select from other specialties.
I stand by the idea that Combat Supply should give out Buff Balls instead of lame hypos that are not usable in real-world gameplay. How it's executed is up for discussion.
Grenade Satchel should either grant a passive buff that makes grenade cooldowns super low OR should just wipe out the shared cooldown altogether; if someone wants to blow their wad with all 4 grenades in succession, let them. (I suppose some sort of shared cooldown might be needed, but it should be SUPER low: like 5 seconds or something.)
I personally am OK with animations being there for more powerful abilities.; Orbital Strike and mortars makes sense that you have to kneel down or type in something to a tricorder. However, the idea that they could be build into armor has merit - enough for a new kit perhaps?
Like others have said, many engi powers have little use or offer too little to be of value. Same thing for many sci powers - some I would argue aren't WIA.
Again, this is just my $.02
PS - since this tangentially relates to ground combat, could you PLEASE make it so Voth cant auto-res from disintegration? It's annoying, silly and breaks immersion.
I think Enemy Neutralization should be left alone, but I suspect the Chroniton Mine Barrier needs a slight toning down. I was PvPing last night and an engineer was dropping Chroniton Mine Barrier IV mines that dealt 750 damage per mine (before resistances). 750 x5 mines is enough to oneshot a PvP player 3 times over. It's been like this ever since Cryptic upped the mine damage and then also removed the damage reduced from epicenter mechanic, the damage wasn't also toned down in the process.
Now with the Fleet kits releasing Mine Barrier IV, this is becoming increasingly noticeable. It wasn't as bad with Mine Barrier III, it took 3-4 mines to kill, now only 1-2 are needed to kill a player. Engineers can spawn 5 of these every 22 seconds, it should take 4 mines to oneshot players. I wouldn't be opposed to a longer cooldown, but it wouldn't be the ideal solution either, the ability is great for building defenses and clearing NPC groups.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)