Tholians are some dang lucky shots

shinnok918 · March 2015

so after fighting the tholians regularly for several months ive figured out...tholians are some lucky shots. seems like 30% of their hits take out your weapons and then with tetryon u get ur shields knocked out faster. now what im wondering is why when my shields get knocked offline it shows "tetryon beam fire at will 3"? I was flying another ship and hit the subsystem targeting on it, and guess what...my bfaw got put on cooldown. so how are tholians so special they get bfaw that knocks weapons offline so much that I spend half the match with weapons offline and no evidence of subsystem targeting abilities?

baudl · March 2015

cheap AI...instead of using powers in a smart way (which would require a good AI), the NPC enemies have "special privileges"
special procs, special buffs and debuffs, ...

adamkafei · March 2015

Yeah, the most annoying part of it is that we don't get the immunity buff from it that every player disable of any type gives.

rodentmaster · March 2015

It's a massive double standard. NPCs cheat. Period. They break all the rules and don't follow half of the game constraints that they should. They go magically immune to damage or pull BS out their afterburners because cryptic doesn't know gameplay balance.

Tholians are some of the worst since DR buffed their hull ratings out the freaking wazoo. You can no longer kill them. You pretty much have to ignore them, which means you take butt-loads of damage and system disables nonstop.

sharxtreme · March 2015

rodentmaster wrote: »

It's a massive double standard. NPCs cheat. Period. They break all the rules and don't follow half of the game constraints that they should. They go magically immune to damage or pull BS out their afterburners because cryptic doesn't know gameplay balance.

Tholians are some of the worst since DR buffed their hull ratings out the freaking wazoo. You can no longer kill them. You pretty much have to ignore them, which means you take butt-loads of damage and system disables nonstop.

lol. if you can't kill tholians then you pretty much fail at PvE.

rodentmaster · March 2015

Way to twist things into an insult. I don't expect any better from you, so don't worry: I'm not surprised.

A simple orb weaver has 250,000 hull points, very fast regenerating shields, and very strong resists, on top of disabling your systems via subsystem targetting and tholian torpedoes. A recluse? It's north of 500,000 hit points, massive first-hit disables, nonstop weapons offline attacks, and torp spread 3 on the tholian torpedo that disables subsytems. Meanwhile it has damage resists out the TRIBBLE and resists most damage.

Now, couple with the fact that you don't get one, that they come in mobs only, you're fighting not only 1 or 2 recluses, plus associated pets, but at least 3-5 orb weavers, you've just added 2-3 MILLION hitpoints to the objective score.

It used to be that in CCA you'd clear the battlefield before engaging the CE itself. This was pre-DR. Post-DR the tholians have so much combined hitpoints they rival the CE. If you stop and have the full 10-player room engage the tholians off the bat, you will lose 5-8 minutes of time with the ENTIRE COMBINED MIGHT of the team focusing on just tholians.

It's utter bull****, and the only resolution to the problem: You can't even engage them. You waste time and effort trying to. Just kill the CE and warp out when 50% of the tholians are still around -- which btw have withstood 2 blasts that insta-kill any single player in the game and are still fighting at full capacity.

sharxtreme · March 2015

rodentmaster wrote: »

Way to twist things into an insult. I don't expect any better from you, so don't worry: I'm not surprised.

A simple orb weaver has 250,000 hull points, very fast regenerating shields, and very strong resists, on top of disabling your systems via subsystem targetting and tholian torpedoes. A recluse? It's north of 500,000 hit points, massive first-hit disables, nonstop weapons offline attacks, and torp spread 3 on the tholian torpedo that disables subsytems. Meanwhile it has damage resists out the TRIBBLE and resists most damage.

Now, couple with the fact that you don't get one, that they come in mobs only, you're fighting not only 1 or 2 recluses, plus associated pets, but at least 3-5 orb weavers, you've just added 2-3 MILLION hitpoints to the objective score.

It used to be that in CCA you'd clear the battlefield before engaging the CE itself. This was pre-DR. Post-DR the tholians have so much combined hitpoints they rival the CE. If you stop and have the full 10-player room engage the tholians off the bat, you will lose 5-8 minutes of time with the ENTIRE COMBINED MIGHT of the team focusing on just tholians.

It's utter bull****, and the only resolution to the problem: You can't even engage them. You waste time and effort trying to. Just kill the CE and warp out when 50% of the tholians are still around -- which btw have withstood 2 blasts that insta-kill any single player in the game and are still fighting at full capacity.

It wasn't insulting, nor that was the intention i was just wanted to state that it's BS, I can deal with tholian mobs in CCA with lv53 SCI Dyson ship with pre RnD and pre DR gear.

But if you can't, mission objective there is to kill CE not tholians anyway.

jellico1 · March 2015

when we fleet up to do a ce we don't fight the tholians at all we avoid and run from them firing only on the CE

you get only 22 skill points to take a recluse out there a complete waste of time to shoot at !

Don't shoot them !

lordsteve1 · March 2015

Yeah they are a pain in the backside.

Probably the most annoying enemy to fight after Undine (with that fluidic space jump thing they do).

The disables can be avoided by having EPtW or having the Nukara 2-pc set (engine + shield etc). Alternatively there's a couple of spec points in the intel tree that help with disables.

The biggest thing with all the NPC's now is that the difference between normal and elite NPC's is massive, I mean astronomical really.
Go into Azure Nebula on normal and you can easily solo wipe out a spawn point in seconds, even against a couple of Recluse carriers and their entourage.

Move it up to advanced and that's where a lot of people come unstuck and get put off. You'd expect an increase in HP's and difficulty but not ramping the HP's up to half a million plus each! It catches newbie players and the unprepared off guard, even if they know the map by heart from lots of normal runs.
You just cannot go in and have a zerg rush at these guys in advanced, most newbies don't come expecting such a big jump in the learning curve. I think that is pushing a lot of people away.

In ANRA you've got to adapt the team tactics to be more diversionary and stealthy, work in pairs so you help each other.
In CCA you just have to be able to either tank the Tholian aggro or not grab it in the first place.

grylak · March 2015

I can't help with tactics for taking the Tholians down, but I can suggest popping an Engineering team when one of your systems gets disabled, even if it's just Eng Team 1. Restores it back up fully straight away. At least on Normal, I've never tried on advanced or Elite.

Works with the Iconian probe disables as well.

jarvisandalfred · March 2015

rodentmaster wrote: »

It's utter bull****, and the only resolution to the problem: You can't even engage them. You waste time and effort trying to. Just kill the CE and warp out when 50% of the tholians are still around -- which btw have withstood 2 blasts that insta-kill any single player in the game and are still fighting at full capacity.

That'd be because they're immune to that damage.

coupaholic · March 2015

I know well that Tholians lurve to dish out their weapon disables like sweets at Halloween, and they retain my number 1 spot for most irritating foes to fight because of it, but this is the first I've heard of them taking shields offline via a subsystem attack as well.

darkjeff · March 2015

colonelmarik wrote: »

I swear I play 80% of the game with no shields at all

That seems consistent with canon, where shields only stay up 20% of the time, at most.

shinnok918 · March 2015

I run eptw and weap battery. good thing too and I still get weaps offline though. the thing that gets me is its saying its from beam fire at will 3. guess what I run beam fire at will 3. why doesn't mine knock weapons offline. turnabout is fair play after all.

phasers-knock 1 random system offline and then theres an immunity to it

subsystem targeting - beam special ability that puts all other beam abilities on cooldown so they cant be stacked. active time subsystem targeting can be FIRED is shorter than the cooldown thrown on the other abilities so there's no chance of stacking

Beam fire at will 3 - doesn't carry an inherent ability to knock weapons offline unless ive missed something.

tetryon - it's called a shield breaker for a reason. it drains all shields at once. but that's all it works on. the rest of its damage is standard weapons damage. no chance to knock subsystem offline.

Science subsystem targeting - ive taken into account sci ship subsystem targeting. that's the one I tested with and it threw beam abilities on cooldown.

we are back to the guy who said "the tholians get special rules".

Devs are we missing something??

baconmaester · March 2015

sharxtreme wrote: »

It wasn't insulting, nor that was the intention i was just wanted to state that it's BS, I can deal with tholian mobs in CCA with lv53 SCI Dyson ship with pre RnD and pre DR gear.

But if you can't, mission objective there is to kill CE not tholians anyway.

Most players dont pay attention to the sidebar mission objectives. They continue playing it the way theyve played it prior to DR. Its why they engage the Tholians even when there is no objective regarding the Tholians.

And in most cases in a PUG you have at best one or two Players that can actually stand their ground while most are still doing 1-4k DPS.

If youre popping 20-30k DPS in your little Dyson Destroyer. Great but even in my 20k FPER its a pain in the *** to deal with Tholians in CCA. Not because I cant handle the HP of the ship. But because Tholians have probably some of the best resists in game. And thats where the problem lie. With the increase to shields and hull they also boosted the resists to the point that youre beating on the resist more then you are the hull.

sharxtreme · March 2015

baconmaester wrote: »

Most players dont pay attention to the sidebar mission objectives. They continue playing it the way theyve played it prior to DR. Its why they engage the Tholians even when there is no objective regarding the Tholians.

And in most cases in a PUG you have at best one or two Players that can actually stand their ground while most are still doing 1-4k DPS.

If youre popping 20-30k DPS in your little Dyson Destroyer. Great but even in my 20k FPER its a pain in the *** to deal with Tholians in CCA. Not because I cant handle the HP of the ship. But because Tholians have probably some of the best resists in game. And thats where the problem lie. With the increase to shields and hull they also boosted the resists to the point that youre beating on the resist more then you are the hull.

all i have to say is: GW1-3, black hole, doffed FBP, iso charge, dyson shield melt, grav spread3 and grav HY2 +QSM. tholian washing machine.

spockout1 · March 2015

Is anyone using a ship where you don't have at least one copy of each ET and EPtW? Or a weapons battery? It's about 2 seconds of annoyance and then you're blazing away at them again.

I agree that they suck and I was extremely annoyed fighting Tholians when they first appeared because of all the downtime on my weapons, but I adapted.

Also, shields are overrated. Hull tank ftw.

Tholians are some dang lucky shots

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