I had cannons on my phantom. Decided I was not doing enough damage, so I took 200k EC bought some MK XII GREEN, yes green rarity phasers and went and did MU. Did so much more damage and more focused damage on ships to boot.
I think I am about to strip the old cannons off my avenger I've loved for so long. How sad is it?
Cannons should be the shredders and right now they are just not doing enough as beams do.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
I had cannons on my phantom. Decided I was not doing enough damage, so I took 200k EC bought some MK XII GREEN, yes green rarity phasers and went and did MU. Did so much more damage and more focused damage on ships to boot.
I think I am about to strip the old cannons off my avenger I've loved for so long. How sad is it?
Cannons should be the shredders and right now they are just not doing enough as beams do.
HAHA! Now the rubber band is on the other claw!
/Long time beam user
Gloating aside, they really do need to do a balance pass on, well, everything.
I can say that my character who does the most damage is my Klingon with dual heavy disruptor cannons on the vet ship.
Now she is a tac, but still. In mirror normal she erases the group of 3 ships on a rift in 5 to 10 seconds. I use 3 cannons and a gravimetric torp spread. scatter volley 3.
It does require making sure you stay on target, which makes it much more difficult to get right.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I've been doing MI on my kdf character using a B'rel with dual heavy cannons and stuff seems to die at a pretty good pace. Beams are a lot easier because of the huge arc, but I think cannons are still viable.
HAHA! Now the rubber band is on the other claw!
/Long time beam user
Gloating aside, they really do need to do a balance pass on, well, everything.
I actually have multiple builds on my main. I have a beam ship, a cannon ship and I even have a full on torp build on my DSD for craps and giggles so I can divert most of my power to AUX.
But I agree, this is really getting asinine how much more damage you can really do with beams over cannons. I mean since they buffed BO, I feel it does straight up more damage than CRF.
Or with the new intel officers the ability that slows down your fire but you do more damage per shot really amps up beams more than cannons. I really feel they need to go back over how each weapon system does damage and look at it.
Though on the flip side, CSV I will grant you for the conical effect is still one of the best group cannon fodder killers.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
I actually have multiple builds on my main. I have a beam ship, a cannon ship and I even have a full on torp build on my DSD for craps and giggles so I can divert most of my power to AUX.
But I agree, this is really getting asinine how much more damage you can really do with beams over cannons. I mean since they buffed BO, I feel it does straight up more damage than CRF.
Or with the new intel officers the ability that slows down your fire but you do more damage per shot really amps up beams more than cannons. I really feel they need to go back over how each weapon system does damage and look at it.
Though on the flip side, CSV I will grant you for the conical effect is still one of the best group cannon fodder killers.
It's so funny to see posts like this now because I remember a time when cannons were king and everyone laughed at people using beams.
It's so funny to see posts like this now because I remember a time when cannons were king and everyone laughed at people using beams.
These things happen, then they put out A2B, marion and the rest and suddenly beams became king.
Never a happy medium though I'd completely redo cannons to give each cannon a different function.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
I can say that my character who does the most damage is my Klingon with dual heavy disruptor cannons on the vet ship.
Now she is a tac, but still. In mirror normal she erases the group of 3 ships on a rift in 5 to 10 seconds. I use 3 cannons and a gravimetric torp spread. scatter volley 3.
It does require making sure you stay on target, which makes it much more difficult to get right.
3 ships ? No offense, but I do exactly the same. With 10 ships. Because beams doesn't have a small narrow angle, and with BFAW I can hit pretty much everything around me.
I've given up on cannons for the time being. All hail the beams ! All the advantages you can have, without all the disadvantages of the cannons. Meanwhile dual cannons (not DHC) are sitting on the bench crying because nobody want them. Since years now.
This game needs a total balance pass on space and ground combat (mostly space). And it's a balance needed since years when cannon were OP. More powercreep doesn't make a better balance.
In my last ISA run, my combined DPS out of cannons was 7661.714 (One Fleet and one Wide-
Arc DHC)
and my combined DPS out of beams was 10387.486 (One Fleet Beam Bank, two 360 degree antiproton arrays and one kinetic cutting beam)
(I run a science ship btw, so 3/3 weapon slots)
yes I use beams and cannons together. But the point i'm trying to make is that for a maneuverable ship that can turn well enough to keep cannons within their firing arcs, I still see cannons as doing good damage when the targets are grouped together with gravity well and CSV is active.
...but then again, i guess this is assuming some helpful guy in your group can pop a few GW's since your phantom wont be able to heh..
3 ships ? No offense, but I do exactly the same. With 10 ships. Because beams doesn't have a small narrow angle, and with BFAW I can hit pretty much everything around me.
I've given up on cannons for the time being. All hail the beams ! All the advantages you can have, without all the disadvantages of the cannons. Meanwhile dual cannons (not DHC) are sitting on the bench crying because nobody want them. Since years now.
This game needs a total balance pass on space and ground combat (mostly space). And it's a balance needed since years when cannon were OP. More powercreep doesn't make a better balance.
Well if I had my way DHCs would simply become dual cannons we have now. Singles and turrets would basically remain the same.
DHCs, that would be like mounting 16 inch .50 Caliber guns from the Iowa class BB of WWII to Desert storm and sticking them on your warship.
You have a 180 deg or maybe more(maybe more like 230 for broadsiding) and when you fire off a broadside, its like being hit by sledgehammers.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
3 ships ? No offense, but I do exactly the same. With 10 ships. Because beams doesn't have a small narrow angle, and with BFAW I can hit pretty much everything around me.
I've given up on cannons for the time being. All hail the beams ! All the advantages you can have, without all the disadvantages of the cannons. Meanwhile dual cannons (not DHC) are sitting on the bench crying because nobody want them. Since years now.
This game needs a total balance pass on space and ground combat (mostly space). And it's a balance needed since years when cannon were OP. More powercreep doesn't make a better balance.
Hey, they don't give me 10 ships!
My other tac uses romulan plasma beams as they are romulan. I still say she doesn't kill whatever ships come as fast as the cannons.
Though the special Risian abilty which I call "Hang 10 dude." is my single most powerful weapon. Soliton wave with EWP with tholian rep burst.
I'm sure that beams are better and all that. And it's frankly too tiring to constantly be varying speed, but I feel I should have at least 1 cannon character so I do.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Hate to burst your bubble but Cannons are not meant to be the top Dps weapons cannons are meant for burst damage Personally I feel beams should be the strongest weapon as they are afterall the main weapons used in the Star Trek Universe I don't recall seeing the Prometheus using CRF III
and this finaly allows me to use canon escort builds for federation ships.
Hate to burst your bubble but Cannons are not meant to be the top Dps weapons cannons are meant for burst damage Personally I feel beams should be the strongest weapon as they are afterall the main weapons used in the Star Trek Universe I don't recall seeing the Prometheus using CRF III
and this finaly allows me to use canon escort builds for federation ships.
Yup. I run Surgical Strikes with my DHCs on my Phantom and hit for at least 10k per hit, I've seen upward of 30-50k per hit. That's a crapton of damage in one shot. Cannons are more for DPV, which is what escorts do best. Get in, fire off high damaging volleys. Beams get higher DPS numbers due to their sustained damage instead of burst damage. Yeah, I can kill a whole group with BFAW on my cruiser in MU in about ten seconds, but my Phantom can one-two shot kill those little freighters and take out a Typhoon in five seconds. Cannons and beams serve different purposes. While the DPS and wide killing range of beams are nice, I'm an escort pilot that wants to kill single targets in the least amount of time, so I go for DPV.
I did something radical and turned my phantom escort into a beam boat. I used 6 crafted phaser arrays with the over proc(free Beam overload on next attack) and the kcb, I used phasers to take advantage of the phaser Lance console. With the reprocity trait and petal to the metal trait keeping on the move is a must for that ship. Combined with surgical strikes makes it a very deadly escort and combines with the over proc very nicely.
I say to each there own, there is no wrong way to play this game.
Hate to burst your bubble but Cannons are not meant to be the top Dps weapons cannons are meant for burst damage Personally I feel beams should be the strongest weapon as they are afterall the main weapons used in the Star Trek Universe I don't recall seeing the Prometheus using CRF III
and this finaly allows me to use canon escort builds for federation ships.
Then why would we have all those tradeoff on cannons, if they were subpar ? Narrow angle, huge falloff, impossibility to run and fire at all time (strafing run or nothing), only able to mount them on a minority of ships...
And from canon, the Klingons ships were nasty, and they used cannons. Doesn't mean much anyway, when they used plot weapons and armor, everything melted, no matter what.
Yup. I run Surgical Strikes with my DHCs on my Phantom and hit for at least 10k per hit, I've seen upward of 30-50k per hit. That's a crapton of damage in one shot. Cannons are more for DPV, which is what escorts do best. Get in, fire off high damaging volleys. Beams get higher DPS numbers due to their sustained damage instead of burst damage. Yeah, I can kill a whole group with BFAW on my cruiser in MU in about ten seconds, but my Phantom can one-two shot kill those little freighters and take out a Typhoon in five seconds. Cannons and beams serve different purposes. While the DPS and wide killing range of beams are nice, I'm an escort pilot that wants to kill single targets in the least amount of time, so I go for DPV.
Surgical strikes works better with beams, or so I heard. I've seen videos with beams and SS doing an incredible amount of damage.
My cannon Phantom is deadly. Yes, I would probably do more dps with beam constantly firing on target, but nothing beats the sheer devastation of targets that are in my frontal arc!
Surgical strikes works better with beams, or so I heard. I've seen videos with beams and SS doing an incredible amount of damage.
Stuff like this makes me laugh, because I recall many instances in various chats and forum posts that the Intel abilities are weak, T6 ships are weak. It's those Intel abilities that separate T6 from T5/T5u with a huge divide. And we don't even have Fleet T6 yet :cool:
The divide is great enough that PVP is sorting itself out to separate T6 PVP from everything else
In short, too many people were clinging to the old rules of STO and refused to see how combat has been changed.
I much prefer cannons to be honest.
I know that beams can get very high damage numbers but some people fail to take into account that a beam boat can have 8 weapons on target whereas a cannon escort can have 5 at most (plus a few turrets). So when you consider how deadly a cannon user can be with only half the guns I don't consider then sub-par in any way.
A burst of CSV3 fully buffed can wipe out a group of small-medium targets in seconds. And using SS with DHCs can give stupid high numbers.
Really it's about how you use the equipment you slot, I've seen plenty of FAW fail-boats just tickling everything and not doing anything helpful. But I've also seem plenty of cannon boats that can't keep things in their arc.
Learning what suits your style, getting good with it and getting synergy with the rest of your build is more important than what does more damage on paper.
But I agree, this is really getting asinine how much more damage you can really do with beams over cannons. I mean since they buffed BO, I feel it does straight up more damage than CRF.
You realize that you can use BO with a cannon build right? You only need one beam and since the 360 beams arrays come in every flavor now you don't even need a front weapon slot for it.
CRF+BO+APB is king for single target damage if you have the tac powers for it.
Most of them are weak, except for the few that are really good.
That's because you haven't tried using them much if you are going out and say that. There's a lot of good uses from Intel abilities outside the Captain Obvious Choices of Surgical Strikes and Override Subsystem Safeties. There's a number of disabling, debuffing abilities that are quite nasty for both PVE & PVP, and a few of them are AO freaking E abilities. Even Kinetic Magnet is a nice tool for Torpedo Boats or anyone that relies on kinetic dmg. The only one that I haven't consistenly found much use for is Subspace Beacon. In general, Intel ranges from pretty good to insanely good. Certain ones, just like the other ability groups are more useful for certain builds. As usual.
Also, lets not sugar coat it.. Beams are easier to play. Simply put, a beam build requires less skill to play then Cannons. I'm not saying people (like me) that roll with beams all suck, I'm just stating a fact.
I do have one ship, my Fleet Mogai that I run a Cannon/Turret build on and I have to say that Cannons are quite formidable indeed. They're harder to play because you have to constantly move and adjust your speed to keep enemies in your arc, but the payoff can be quite nice especially once you get shields down.
There is a lot of content in the game where large groups of enemies cluster up, you fire a fully buffed Cannon Scatter Volley into a pack of baddies and it can be quite satisfying watching them all melt at once.
The one thing I don't do is mix in Torpedoes, I run 4 cannons up front.. I need to play around more with mixing in a high yield torpedo for a big spike.
Both are viable styles, Cannons just require more patience and quite honestly.. skill.
Your having a hard time with cannons ? Are you sure you know what your doing mate ? I use all cannons I get any where from 1k-3k per volley on main cannons and 400-600 on rets. I also use plasma torps and get at lowest 11k to above 20k damage.
cannons do more damage than beams. To one target at a time, at a much, much shorter range.
I am not uber. And I have broken 10k with individual cannon bolt crits. I hesitate to even wonder what a real player can hit with the things.
Beams work better on many weak targets due to range, arc, and better aoe skill. And a minor issue, beams don't have travel time thru space. Theres no contention on the point. And the game is at least 85% many weak targets. Worse, the beam boat is close enough on single targets that it does not matter, and the cannon is pretty far behind on the aoe.
There is no beam boat out there that can out dps a CRF on a single target boss at point blank range. THere is no cannon ship out there that can out dps a beam boat in the middle of 50 miranda frigates. Guess which one we see more of?
Actually I tend to have multiple builds, beam, cannon and even torp builds, but cannon on my Avenger, just not cutting the mustard anymore.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
You know, for a brief time I considered using the Avenger and could not imagine *not* using Beams. I think it's because when I think of "Star Trek", part of that is the continuous beam lancing out to the target. So the Defiant's cannons is the outlier, not the rule.
Comments
HAHA! Now the rubber band is on the other claw!
/Long time beam user
Gloating aside, they really do need to do a balance pass on, well, everything.
Now she is a tac, but still. In mirror normal she erases the group of 3 ships on a rift in 5 to 10 seconds. I use 3 cannons and a gravimetric torp spread. scatter volley 3.
It does require making sure you stay on target, which makes it much more difficult to get right.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I actually have multiple builds on my main. I have a beam ship, a cannon ship and I even have a full on torp build on my DSD for craps and giggles so I can divert most of my power to AUX.
But I agree, this is really getting asinine how much more damage you can really do with beams over cannons. I mean since they buffed BO, I feel it does straight up more damage than CRF.
Or with the new intel officers the ability that slows down your fire but you do more damage per shot really amps up beams more than cannons. I really feel they need to go back over how each weapon system does damage and look at it.
Though on the flip side, CSV I will grant you for the conical effect is still one of the best group cannon fodder killers.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
It's so funny to see posts like this now because I remember a time when cannons were king and everyone laughed at people using beams.
These things happen, then they put out A2B, marion and the rest and suddenly beams became king.
Never a happy medium though I'd completely redo cannons to give each cannon a different function.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
3 ships ? No offense, but I do exactly the same. With 10 ships. Because beams doesn't have a small narrow angle, and with BFAW I can hit pretty much everything around me.
I've given up on cannons for the time being. All hail the beams ! All the advantages you can have, without all the disadvantages of the cannons. Meanwhile dual cannons (not DHC) are sitting on the bench crying because nobody want them. Since years now.
This game needs a total balance pass on space and ground combat (mostly space). And it's a balance needed since years when cannon were OP. More powercreep doesn't make a better balance.
In my last ISA run, my combined DPS out of cannons was 7661.714 (One Fleet and one Wide-
Arc DHC)
and my combined DPS out of beams was 10387.486 (One Fleet Beam Bank, two 360 degree antiproton arrays and one kinetic cutting beam)
(I run a science ship btw, so 3/3 weapon slots)
yes I use beams and cannons together. But the point i'm trying to make is that for a maneuverable ship that can turn well enough to keep cannons within their firing arcs, I still see cannons as doing good damage when the targets are grouped together with gravity well and CSV is active.
...but then again, i guess this is assuming some helpful guy in your group can pop a few GW's since your phantom wont be able to heh..
Well if I had my way DHCs would simply become dual cannons we have now. Singles and turrets would basically remain the same.
DHCs, that would be like mounting 16 inch .50 Caliber guns from the Iowa class BB of WWII to Desert storm and sticking them on your warship.
You have a 180 deg or maybe more(maybe more like 230 for broadsiding) and when you fire off a broadside, its like being hit by sledgehammers.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Hey, they don't give me 10 ships!
My other tac uses romulan plasma beams as they are romulan. I still say she doesn't kill whatever ships come as fast as the cannons.
Though the special Risian abilty which I call "Hang 10 dude." is my single most powerful weapon. Soliton wave with EWP with tholian rep burst.
I'm sure that beams are better and all that. And it's frankly too tiring to constantly be varying speed, but I feel I should have at least 1 cannon character so I do.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
While I agree that Cannons were kinda OP back then...but Escorts are supposed to be the masters of DPS...them having the strongest weapons made sense.
What sense at all is there in the weakest and least skilled weapon in the game being the best dps...the weapons anyone can equip?
and this finaly allows me to use canon escort builds for federation ships.
Yup. I run Surgical Strikes with my DHCs on my Phantom and hit for at least 10k per hit, I've seen upward of 30-50k per hit. That's a crapton of damage in one shot. Cannons are more for DPV, which is what escorts do best. Get in, fire off high damaging volleys. Beams get higher DPS numbers due to their sustained damage instead of burst damage. Yeah, I can kill a whole group with BFAW on my cruiser in MU in about ten seconds, but my Phantom can one-two shot kill those little freighters and take out a Typhoon in five seconds. Cannons and beams serve different purposes. While the DPS and wide killing range of beams are nice, I'm an escort pilot that wants to kill single targets in the least amount of time, so I go for DPV.
I say to each there own, there is no wrong way to play this game.
And from canon, the Klingons ships were nasty, and they used cannons. Doesn't mean much anyway, when they used plot weapons and armor, everything melted, no matter what.
Surgical strikes works better with beams, or so I heard. I've seen videos with beams and SS doing an incredible amount of damage.
but then again: 8 beams vs 4 cannons....
hmp....
Stuff like this makes me laugh, because I recall many instances in various chats and forum posts that the Intel abilities are weak, T6 ships are weak. It's those Intel abilities that separate T6 from T5/T5u with a huge divide. And we don't even have Fleet T6 yet :cool:
The divide is great enough that PVP is sorting itself out to separate T6 PVP from everything else
In short, too many people were clinging to the old rules of STO and refused to see how combat has been changed.
The synergy works for me. Then again, I just play for fun.
I know that beams can get very high damage numbers but some people fail to take into account that a beam boat can have 8 weapons on target whereas a cannon escort can have 5 at most (plus a few turrets). So when you consider how deadly a cannon user can be with only half the guns I don't consider then sub-par in any way.
A burst of CSV3 fully buffed can wipe out a group of small-medium targets in seconds. And using SS with DHCs can give stupid high numbers.
Really it's about how you use the equipment you slot, I've seen plenty of FAW fail-boats just tickling everything and not doing anything helpful. But I've also seem plenty of cannon boats that can't keep things in their arc.
Learning what suits your style, getting good with it and getting synergy with the rest of your build is more important than what does more damage on paper.
Cannons still reign supreme. Once you remove a facing shield (which cannons can do very easily, launch a load of heavy torps in there, no problem.
CRF+BO+APB is king for single target damage if you have the tac powers for it.
Most of them are weak, except for the few that are really good.
That's because you haven't tried using them much if you are going out and say that. There's a lot of good uses from Intel abilities outside the Captain Obvious Choices of Surgical Strikes and Override Subsystem Safeties. There's a number of disabling, debuffing abilities that are quite nasty for both PVE & PVP, and a few of them are AO freaking E abilities. Even Kinetic Magnet is a nice tool for Torpedo Boats or anyone that relies on kinetic dmg. The only one that I haven't consistenly found much use for is Subspace Beacon. In general, Intel ranges from pretty good to insanely good. Certain ones, just like the other ability groups are more useful for certain builds. As usual.
Yes, I admit.. it's because I'm a little lazy.
Also, lets not sugar coat it.. Beams are easier to play. Simply put, a beam build requires less skill to play then Cannons. I'm not saying people (like me) that roll with beams all suck, I'm just stating a fact.
I do have one ship, my Fleet Mogai that I run a Cannon/Turret build on and I have to say that Cannons are quite formidable indeed. They're harder to play because you have to constantly move and adjust your speed to keep enemies in your arc, but the payoff can be quite nice especially once you get shields down.
There is a lot of content in the game where large groups of enemies cluster up, you fire a fully buffed Cannon Scatter Volley into a pack of baddies and it can be quite satisfying watching them all melt at once.
The one thing I don't do is mix in Torpedoes, I run 4 cannons up front.. I need to play around more with mixing in a high yield torpedo for a big spike.
Both are viable styles, Cannons just require more patience and quite honestly.. skill.
I am not uber. And I have broken 10k with individual cannon bolt crits. I hesitate to even wonder what a real player can hit with the things.
Beams work better on many weak targets due to range, arc, and better aoe skill. And a minor issue, beams don't have travel time thru space. Theres no contention on the point. And the game is at least 85% many weak targets. Worse, the beam boat is close enough on single targets that it does not matter, and the cannon is pretty far behind on the aoe.
There is no beam boat out there that can out dps a CRF on a single target boss at point blank range. THere is no cannon ship out there that can out dps a beam boat in the middle of 50 miranda frigates. Guess which one we see more of?
Actually I tend to have multiple builds, beam, cannon and even torp builds, but cannon on my Avenger, just not cutting the mustard anymore.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Meh.