CSE. The bane of ALL pug players. I have only had maybe 4 successful CSE pugs out of the 60+ I ran before joining an actually active ESTF channel. But I had one that was just... well read on and find out.
CSE pug
Players:
Me (Tactical Captain, Fleet Tor'Kaht Retrofit running full Disruptor Cannons and Turrets)
Some Dude #1 (Science Captain, Fleet Tactical Escort Retrofit. Running Skittles (polaron, tetryon, and... wait for it... plasma, and a phaser. And these are all DCs, not DHCs. And no turrets, just 3 mines. I $%^& you not)
Some Dude #2 (Tactical Captain, Odyssey Operations Cruiser. Full Plasma Beam Arrays. And the full retro borg set)
Some Dude #3 (Engineering Captain, Tholian Recluse Carrier. 5 Phased Tetryon Beam Arrays, 1 Thermionic Torpedo Launcher, 2 Widow Fighter hangar bays.)
Some Total IDIOT #4 (Tactical Captain, Neg"Vhar Heavy Battlecruiser. Full Turrets. Full... *shudders* plasma turrets).
For the sake of being concise, I shall refer to these players by numbers.
So upon warping in, I see the ship comp, and see what kind of pilots they have, and am thinking "Ok, we have a fleet defiant, an oddy, a neggy, and a recluse. This is viable/Doable." So #2 calls kang, and #4 immediately full impulses off to the left. I watch his trail blow past and just shrug and head mid. Literally 5 seconds later I see #4 dead. What? Turns out he got hit by a tachon beam and then a heavy plasma. Sucks to be him. Meanwhile #3 heads off to the right and starts murdering the BoPs and nanites. #1 is not moving.
About 2 minutes in, #4 has kicked the can 3 times already. I am starting to wonder wtf is going on, so right before death 4, I watch his stats as he engages the nanites. Then I click on the cube by accident and see that one of it's shields are down. The idiot has been attacking the cube the whole time... And then he dies. I saw 3 things missing when he went down. 1) Tactical Team. 2) ANYTHING RESEMBLING A HEAL. 3) Any BOff abilities for that matter. He respawns, and guess what, hoofs it back and starts shooting at the cube again. At this point, I just facepalm and go back to killing mid.
Meanwhile, #2 is sitting there firing on the BoPs that are coming from the left since #4 is too busy dying to do anything useful. #1... you guessed it, still at spawn, only he's cloaked now. Ooook then...
So I clear out all the nanites from mid, kill the neggy and the raptor (not at the same time mind you), and then check on #3. To my complete surprise and amazement, he's not only killed all the nanites, but has his cube down to 50%. Faster than my Tor'Kaht. Dayum!!! I then check his accolade points and see +10k, so I figure he's probably quite experienced. XP I check back on #4 and see him FINALLY firing on nanites. After 8 deaths. Bout bloody time... He kills one, then kills the one above it, then gets mauled by the neggy. Why am I not surprised? And to my complete and utter horror, the neggy makes a beeline for #2 and the kang. Then suddenly... #1 moves!!! He comes sweeping in and starts attacking... my cube. Not the neggy, not the raptor, not nanites, but my cube. Which I carefully brought down to 1%. That's HARD in a full cannon turret ship.
Sufficed to say, he killed it. #3 sees this happening and quickly levels his cube. He also starts on the raptors. I am not worried about that side at all, so I turn my attention to the neg'vhar bearing down on the kang. I move in and kill it with some help from #2, only to have the worst possible thing happen. Right as it died, it fired it's iso charge at #1. Who died. Instantly. From the first hit. WTF??? Then the iso charge hit #4, who lost all but 10% of his hull, hit me (insta kill), and then hit #2, who also died. Which leaves #3 and #4 still alive. #4, instead of attacking the 3 neggys now bearing down on the kang instead starts attacking the nanites. The cube 2 shots him. He dies. At this point, #1 says: "I do all this work, and you noobs can't even handle a single borg ship? TRIBBLE you idiots" and then leaves. Um... right then. #2 respawns and rushes back to the kang, and then starts firing on the neggy's, who despite #3s best efforts, have almost reached her. #4 has died so many times that he's still dead. #2 is still firing. Then I see the numbers above the neggy he's firing on. 200-250-25-227-221-200... He's not even at 100 weapons power... At this point the fail is so great that I am laughing more than anything. And now for the grand finale. #3 finally kills off the second neggy (he wasted the first REAL fast), and #2 starts firing on the third neggy. #4 respawns. And then flies behind the neggy. Opens fire on neggy. TBR the neggy to the kang. I think you guys know what happens next. Iso charge. Kang first, me next (I barely live), #2 third (he's a goner), then #3 (he's quite dead). I hit BFI, but a plasma torp wastes what's left of my hull. #4 goes rushing in to the rescue... and is destroyed hilariously fast. Leaving the neggy and the kang by themselves. Neggy starts blasting the kang, and just as I and #3 respawn, the kang is almost dead, we both rush over, and get there in time to see a plasma torp end Jar'rod's miserable existence.
And here's the best part: #4 says "GG, wp, too bad you guys all suck. I am the best one here." And leaves. *facepalm. #2 simply leaves. Leaving myself and #3. We have a short convo, mostly about what just happened, and then we both leave.
Welcome to CSE pug.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
And here's the best part: #4 says "GG, wp, too bad you guys all suck. I am the best one here." And leaves.
Isn't it interesting that the ones who have the least DPS, don't know how to heal their ships, or set off 35K in the distance, always think they are the best ones there???
But really, its annoying how Cryptic built failure into missions... MMOs don't support failure. You can wipe and wipe but at the end of the day at least you get to the last boss if you hung on long enough.
But not Cure and KA. Its bad that pugs lose me the optional, but lose me the entire mission as well?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Captain Ruri Gokou of the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk
Catian Atrox Carrier
Am convinced that they've made ISE more difficult.
Just come away from an instance with an excellent team. There were, however, DEFINITELY more spheres than usual, said spheres were nastier and hit harder, and the tac cube at the end seemed a touch 'faster' than usual. And the shield drain was INSANE. We all agreed that our shields were next to useless the majority of the time.
Optional failed too - and considering the overall ability of each player, and how well we worked as a team, this was surprising.
Assume that they've, basically, brought the difficulty level of this up so that it's more on-par with 'Hive Onslaught'.
Huh? Did you test this on the Tribble server? Because on Holodeck ISE is as easy as ever :-)
But in ISE on the Tribble Server I noticed that the Borg were ignoring my shields and doing some nasty hull damage. Full shields and half hull with an Engie on a AC is not nice :-P I see a lot of PUG's dying horrible and often in ISE xD
I move in and kill it with some help from #2, only to have the worst possible thing happen. Right as it died, it fired it's iso charge at #1. Who died. Instantly. From the first hit. WTF??? Then the iso charge hit #4, who lost all but 10% of his hull, hit me (insta kill), and then hit #2, who also died.
No, this was on Holodeck but we experienced, pretty much, what you described.
I didn't saw this effect in ISE in the last days. Perhaps you were unlucky and got a critical ;-)
To bad I didn't had combat log on. And I could'nt find another ISE group on Tribble to test this.
Well, it was this morning (therefore post-patch) - and it wasn't just me.
To be fair, perhaps it's not a bad thing if they made it more difficult; the team I was with were the type of players who would've steamrollered the mission usually.
We followed the 10% rule, and the number of spheres that appeared subsequent to transformer popping was definitely larger than previously. And I maintain that they were hitting harder too - their shield drains seems faster which was probably why we were getting taken out quicker.
I really hope they make it so. That would mean that Tanks, Healers or Crosshealing will be needed in at least one STF :-) (Couldn't test the new one yet -.-)
I don't know if it's my worst experience, per se, but it did leave me baffled.
I queued for CSE, and beamed in, only to see 6 raptors and 2 BoP's swarming the Kang and 3 out of 4 players in respawn oblivion. One of the players announced to me that they'd lost, because somebody'd blown a cube early.
Well, I still fired up the old impulse engines on my carrier, threw all of my heals at the Kang (which was down to 20% and no shields by that time), only to prolong it's life by some 5 seconds.
In about 40 seconds I had beamed in and back out again.
I have had the fortune of never facing any players with bad attitudes before. Bad builds I have seen, but at least they had decent attitudes. Until today.
I go for ISE for a quick run. One of the players was a Chimera who launched off fireworks at the beginning of the match. I think, "Cool, seems it'll go well."
Then, something inside me shatters as I see rainbow beams flying from the Chimera. Of course, I just type in, "Um, why are ya running beams on that ship?" He replies that he has a reason but won't tell me. I say OK, and keep going.
I later notice that he's beginning to collect injuries. So, I ask him if he has any components to repair with. That sets him off. He starts ranting about how we're all doing 0 dps and he's the only one doing anything. He then says that he'll have to go through the trouble of going to a shipyard and paying for repairs. Of course, I tell him that he can just use components. He ignores that, and boasts about completing optional even with one team member missing and taking down a tac cube on his own in two minutes, and saying we can't do it in one. We tell him to do it, but he says he's "Turning off dps", whatever that means, and runs off to 20 km for the rest of the match, continuing to rant about our 'trashing his build' and 'giving him repair b*s'. We finish the map without him but not under optional, given that two others had rainbow beams. At least the others knew what to do.
If there was any player I wanted to turn my disruptors on and utterly decimate, it would be him. Wish I could, given I was KDF and he was a fed.
I have begun to get deep feelings of dread when I PuG certain missions-especially Cure and Khitomer, and I see 3 or more Feds in the line up.
Even when I am, myself, playing my fedside alts.
it's called, "How in HELL am I drawing Aggro off the Feddie Cruiser? I'm in a BIRD OF PREY with NO C-store consoles, NO threat control, No weapons console better than MkXI blue, running DISRUPTORS!!!"
On fedside, playing my Tac in an Advanced Escort, it's usually more "Jesus, people, have you ever heard of fixing your injuries??" (I don't actually SAY that-no reason to spew venom on the channel, and my fingers have better things to be doing-like killing Probes.)
Guess I'm not the only one with this story. C'ept I'm running phasers on my raptor while the feds got AP and all the agro is after me.
Lol. I know for a fact that first hit from an iso does about 45k if you aren't running any defensive consoles. So the way I figure it (and based on what his ship was doing) is that he wasn't running any defensive consoles, so him dying makes perfect sense to me.
Tbh, that was just a terrible run.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
I have begun to get deep feelings of dread when I PuG certain missions-especially Cure and Khitomer, and I see 3 or more Feds in the line up.
Even when I am, myself, playing my fedside alts.
it's called, "How in HELL am I drawing Aggro off the Feddie Cruiser? I'm in a BIRD OF PREY with NO C-store consoles, NO threat control, No weapons console better than MkXI blue, running DISRUPTORS!!!"
On fedside, playing my Tac in an Advanced Escort, it's usually more "Jesus, people, have you ever heard of fixing your injuries??" (I don't actually SAY that-no reason to spew venom on the channel, and my fingers have better things to be doing-like killing Probes.)
I play a fed fleet patrol escort, so i know the feeling, I did one stf earlier and one player who I shall name mr comatose spend the whole game dead.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I have now, when will pugs learn, HAVE ONE TYPE OF WEAPON!!!!!!!
On my Fleet Patrol Escort, I run nothing but Plasma weapons, in fact my whole build is based my use of Plasma weapons. All my tactical consoles are geared towards my weapon type,so are 2 of my engineering consoles. I've count damage markers of between 800-1200 damage markers from my dual heavy plasma cannons alone, my torps have even scored hits of 6k and a heavy plasma torp registering 16k of damage.
If you build a ship right, you should have no problems.
I also run the full borg set on it
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Time for my own little CSE PuGging story - this one with a happier ending than most
Most of the time I hang out on the PublicEliteSTF channel but once in a while, when it's slow I PuG a game or two - usually KAGE or ISE 'cause they're pretty straightforward even for the most horrible teams but for some masochistic reason, this time I found myself in Cure.
I arrive in my Tac/Chimera to be greeted by a Tac/Escort, a Regent, and Oddy and a Sovvy. Hmm... OK...
No discussion whatsoever in chat so I do what I usually do in these scenarios, hang back and wait to see who does what.
Tac/Escort heads straight for the middle cube and starts blasting probes - 'OK...' thinks I - 'maybe this guy knows MRRMLL'
Looking at the cruisers, they all veer off to the left - something that nobody that 'knows' CSE ever does - it's either right (if you're inexperienced - or very experienced) or middle if you know the drill.
At this point there's no one on Kang and my instincts are that even if the cruisers were, they wouldn't be able to defend it. Tac/Escort looks confident doing what he's doing so I take a gamble and head right - take out the BoPs and start on the probes.
Cruiser group meanwhile is getting nowhere - they're sitting at maximum range from the cube ineffectively tickling it with a rainbow of colors and occasionally taking their frustration out on the BoPs as they appear. Every so often one of them pops and disappears to respawn limbo. One in particular has 12 or so damaged systems *sigh*
So I finish the probes, take out the BoPs, the Neg, the Raptor and shoot a /t to Tac/Escort: "If I blow this cube, can you handle the Raptors your side?" - "np" comes the response so I take a deep breath, die once (damn one-shots) and blow the cube.
Two things happen - Tac/Escort - good to his word chains all his Tac buffs and starts nuking his Raptors. At the same moment all three cruisers disappear to respawn limbo *pop!* gone.
I hightail it over to the middle cube as Tac/Escort's got it down to around 10% and help finish it off before he pops Evasive and I burn some Deuterium to get to the left cube. Cruiser group hasn't respawned yet.
Between the two of us we bury the Negs and start dismantling the probes (they're all still there - the cruisers hadn't gotten a single one) - probes, Neg, Raptor, probes. By this time the cruisers are back but each time something spawns (the Neg, the Raptor) they're just as quickly gone again.
With the last spawn of Negs, me and Tac/Escort open fire on the cube - it's gone in seconds and I Evasive back to the Kang whilst he opens fire on the Negs from behind. In front I see cruisers exploding. Again.
Kang warps out and I head back to see two Negs remaining - one heavily damaged - it doesn't take long to finish them. The assimilated cruiser spawns and Tac/Escort and myself juggle aggro back and forth for a minute I guess until it explodes.
Cruiser group warps out immediately without saying a word as I type my customary (for 'challenging' stfs) 'thx everyone' in Zone chat. Once they'd left I chatted a bit with Tac/Escort about how it was a miracle that things didn't go completely pear-shaped.
I've count damage markers of between 800-1200 damage markers from my dual heavy plasma cannons alone, my torps have even scored hits of 6k and a heavy plasma torp registering 16k of damage.
You might want to go check this thread and read it from the beginning.
If I get under 2000 off my DHC's once the shields are down then I check to make sure I don't have the weapons set on stun. As for the torp, 20 to 40k is pretty much normal.
I may repost my latest build on there today if I have time. :cool:
Ugh. KASE run on my sci alt in a fleet recon sv. First time I've ever put an entire team on ignore, not so much for being bad (although it certainly was a contributing factor in one case) but for more effort being put into talking trash than actually playing the game.
Let me just preface this with a claim you all are probably going to find quite dubious: I can top this thing out at around 4000 dps (with tbr, but not abusing its bugged state, I refuse to TRIBBLE my build's survivability up to accomplish that), which should be more than adequate for a sci ship. So I consider it the first sign I'm going to have a bad day when I top out the dps chart on a team that has an escort (or several, as was the case here) on it. A team of all cruisers or cruisers and sci ships? Not a surprise, most cruisers can survive a hell of a lot more than I can, but sacrifice damage output to do it, and most other sci's I pug with simply have no idea wth they're doing). But escorts? Escorts should get 4000 minimum, not <1100 and having trouble killing probes. So yeah, that was the second sign of an impending disaster.
There is no third sign of impending disaster in this one.
Optional is failed after about ten minutes (which is about how long it takes me to grind down the right transformers and gateway; key to grinding down the gateway solo in the time it takes a team of idiots to get one transformer down: fly underneath and park straight and level at a distance of about 1.7-2k, and you can get all beam arrays and torp launchers firing at it, with no dmg range falloff, nor will you get shot at if you have aggro), and so I call out the escort on probe duty (using antiproton dhc's, antiproton turrets and quantums, so I see nothing inherently wrong with his build, although tbqh we'd have been better off if he were an afker) for it, which sets the whole rest of the team off. Massive trash talking ensues, and five more probes make it past them (while I'm killing probes the fail escort is having trouble with) as they park outside firing range of the remaining gateway.
It takes the team another two minutes to grind down the gateway (seems the trend for idiots these days is sitting pretty, facing a target with dual beam banks and letting half one's dps potential go to waste) while they spend that time talking trash while I'm off killing probes just to keep things from failing altogether.
Donatra fight was fun though, simply due to how hilariously inept that team was both at tanking the torpedo spreads/salvos and how uninclined they were to stop talking trash, even while facing down thalaron beams and sitting still, mashing out poorly-typed third-grade insults in team chat. Just took forever. I saved their bacon several times *while* they were talking trash due to judicious use of tractor beam repulsors, while spreading heals around (hey, i'm a sci, what the hell else am I gonna do? sit back and watch? I was sorely tempted to!). Knocking Donatra around seemed to egg them on further, I guess they liked getting killed cuz they only seemed to get really annoyed when I'd keep Donatra from wiping them out.
*shrugs*
So yeah, a team of trolls, and one minmaxer in a science vessel taking the brunt of the team's abuse for *gasp* actually knowing how to play the game.
-- Lyra@PyrionCelendil, if anyone wants to friend me (this is my sci alt; Nylith@PyrionCelendil is my main) for STF runs, build advice or whatever else.
... and so I call out the escort on probe duty (using antiproton dhc's, antiproton turrets and quantums, so I see nothing inherently wrong with his build, although tbqh we'd have been better off if he were an afker) for it, which sets the whole rest of the team off. Massive trash talking ensues...
As for the team not being able to handle Donatra easily, they did something with her AI that made her even actually nasty to fight.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
Something seriously must be done. Players don't always work together and when they all don't communicate and work as a team a single player can TRIBBLE it up for everyone.
Tonight I'm in Cure. We blow all the cubes within seconds. A small wave of warships spawn. The problem is most of the mission 4 ships are barely able to keep the kang alive while I solely run around blowing up nanite units. So...three of us blow up the cubes all at the same time. Two guys are defending and manage to allow the Kang to blow up. The rest of us are trying to kill off the single wave of warships and are unable to reach the Kang to hail it. Low and behold the other two idiots manage not to hail the Kang as they were suposed to do and allowed it to blow up. So...40 min of hard work down the drain. The most wonderful thing about it all? I did get a single one of the drops. Nothing. I am level 50 on an elite mission. I literally walked away from that 40 minute long mission with NOTHING. Had I left I would have been forced to wait an hour.
Now, it would be really nice if someone would make an attempt to rebalance these missions. They take long enough and with a single idiot on the team it can draw a mission out to nearly an hour long event. In the end you may even walk out in failure and nothing to show for it. I am a lifetime subscriber. I did so to support the game I enjoy to play. I also did it after the free to play option came in. I seriously didn't pay all that money to lose countless hours in game because some moron joined up in missions I have no control over who comes in and who doesn't, the only place I can get the highest grade equipment for my maxed out character, and pretty much the only worth wild things to do for end game content.
Honestly...these missions are a joke and need a serious rethink.
Honestly...these missions are a joke and need a serious rethink.
Yes, they're a joke indeed - they're laughably easy as they are and yet people still complain and call for a nerf.
CSE can be completed in 3-5minutes, FYI.
Seriously, just join any of the "Elite" channels in the game and you won't have to worry about mindless pugs. PvE queues are simply not the way to go when it comes Elite STFs. Like, at all...
Right now I'm either doing STFs with fleetmates or with people from "Elite" channels, or not doing them at all. And you know what? As a result the absolute worst experiences I can recall from recent months have only to do with people using TBR too much, or being too afraid to make a RML run in CSE, sticking with boring MRRML, because they won't accept the fact that some people are able to solo spawning Raptors and even Negh'Vars just fine.
This is the reason you people either need a fleet, a group of friends or the above mentioned community channels. Once you know how to play them the Elite STFs are extremely easy. People I know play them solely to beat their times, such as all cubes in CSE destroyed with 12:18 left on the optional timer.
I've arrived "late" to the STF and there are only 3 other people in. The 1st cube is still alive, and drifted all the way over to the left hand gate. One of the guys is moaning (lets call him "P"), saying that the group is too poor for him to consider playing with.
We take down the cube, and someone pulls up the left cube on the left hand side. I end up defending probes on both side. 1 guy is dead ("J") and the 4th guy (lets call him "B") pulls up up both cubes on the right, making no effort to kill them. And either "P" or "B" pulls up the final cube for the full set. And "P" and "B" just want to fail the mission to they can get out without a leavers penalty.
I've been pugging KA a lot recently, and I've seen a lot of failed optionals recently, but I've never seen anything like this before.
Something seriously must be done. Players don't always work together and when they all don't communicate and work as a team a single player can TRIBBLE it up for everyone.
Tonight I'm in Cure. We blow all the cubes within seconds. A small wave of warships spawn. The problem is most of the mission 4 ships are barely able to keep the kang alive while I solely run around blowing up nanite units. So...three of us blow up the cubes all at the same time. Two guys are defending and manage to allow the Kang to blow up. The rest of us are trying to kill off the single wave of warships and are unable to reach the Kang to hail it. Low and behold the other two idiots manage not to hail the Kang as they were suposed to do and allowed it to blow up. So...40 min of hard work down the drain. The most wonderful thing about it all? I did get a single one of the drops. Nothing. I am level 50 on an elite mission. I literally walked away from that 40 minute long mission with NOTHING. Had I left I would have been forced to wait an hour.
Now, it would be really nice if someone would make an attempt to rebalance these missions. They take long enough and with a single idiot on the team it can draw a mission out to nearly an hour long event. In the end you may even walk out in failure and nothing to show for it. I am a lifetime subscriber. I did so to support the game I enjoy to play. I also did it after the free to play option came in. I seriously didn't pay all that money to lose countless hours in game because some moron joined up in missions I have no control over who comes in and who doesn't, the only place I can get the highest grade equipment for my maxed out character, and pretty much the only worth wild things to do for end game content.
Honestly...these missions are a joke and need a serious rethink.
I think I ended up joining the one you left. It took a while but it went ok after a bit of guidance.
Other than that I had a KAE that took over an hour because the people in my group wanted to ignore the cubes after triggering them, but also they were mostly beam boats and we were sorely lacking in firepower. With Donatra they just wanted to get in close and hit her with beams so I gave up with staying 5km away and just hit her with my console attacks.
Comments
CSE pug
Players:
Me (Tactical Captain, Fleet Tor'Kaht Retrofit running full Disruptor Cannons and Turrets)
Some Dude #1 (Science Captain, Fleet Tactical Escort Retrofit. Running Skittles (polaron, tetryon, and... wait for it... plasma, and a phaser. And these are all DCs, not DHCs. And no turrets, just 3 mines. I $%^& you not)
Some Dude #2 (Tactical Captain, Odyssey Operations Cruiser. Full Plasma Beam Arrays. And the full retro borg set)
Some Dude #3 (Engineering Captain, Tholian Recluse Carrier. 5 Phased Tetryon Beam Arrays, 1 Thermionic Torpedo Launcher, 2 Widow Fighter hangar bays.)
Some Total IDIOT #4 (Tactical Captain, Neg"Vhar Heavy Battlecruiser. Full Turrets. Full... *shudders* plasma turrets).
For the sake of being concise, I shall refer to these players by numbers.
So upon warping in, I see the ship comp, and see what kind of pilots they have, and am thinking "Ok, we have a fleet defiant, an oddy, a neggy, and a recluse. This is viable/Doable." So #2 calls kang, and #4 immediately full impulses off to the left. I watch his trail blow past and just shrug and head mid. Literally 5 seconds later I see #4 dead. What? Turns out he got hit by a tachon beam and then a heavy plasma. Sucks to be him. Meanwhile #3 heads off to the right and starts murdering the BoPs and nanites. #1 is not moving.
About 2 minutes in, #4 has kicked the can 3 times already. I am starting to wonder wtf is going on, so right before death 4, I watch his stats as he engages the nanites. Then I click on the cube by accident and see that one of it's shields are down. The idiot has been attacking the cube the whole time... And then he dies. I saw 3 things missing when he went down. 1) Tactical Team. 2) ANYTHING RESEMBLING A HEAL. 3) Any BOff abilities for that matter. He respawns, and guess what, hoofs it back and starts shooting at the cube again. At this point, I just facepalm and go back to killing mid.
Meanwhile, #2 is sitting there firing on the BoPs that are coming from the left since #4 is too busy dying to do anything useful. #1... you guessed it, still at spawn, only he's cloaked now. Ooook then...
So I clear out all the nanites from mid, kill the neggy and the raptor (not at the same time mind you), and then check on #3. To my complete surprise and amazement, he's not only killed all the nanites, but has his cube down to 50%. Faster than my Tor'Kaht. Dayum!!! I then check his accolade points and see +10k, so I figure he's probably quite experienced. XP I check back on #4 and see him FINALLY firing on nanites. After 8 deaths. Bout bloody time... He kills one, then kills the one above it, then gets mauled by the neggy. Why am I not surprised? And to my complete and utter horror, the neggy makes a beeline for #2 and the kang. Then suddenly... #1 moves!!! He comes sweeping in and starts attacking... my cube. Not the neggy, not the raptor, not nanites, but my cube. Which I carefully brought down to 1%. That's HARD in a full cannon turret ship.
Sufficed to say, he killed it. #3 sees this happening and quickly levels his cube. He also starts on the raptors. I am not worried about that side at all, so I turn my attention to the neg'vhar bearing down on the kang. I move in and kill it with some help from #2, only to have the worst possible thing happen. Right as it died, it fired it's iso charge at #1. Who died. Instantly. From the first hit. WTF??? Then the iso charge hit #4, who lost all but 10% of his hull, hit me (insta kill), and then hit #2, who also died. Which leaves #3 and #4 still alive. #4, instead of attacking the 3 neggys now bearing down on the kang instead starts attacking the nanites. The cube 2 shots him. He dies. At this point, #1 says: "I do all this work, and you noobs can't even handle a single borg ship? TRIBBLE you idiots" and then leaves. Um... right then. #2 respawns and rushes back to the kang, and then starts firing on the neggy's, who despite #3s best efforts, have almost reached her. #4 has died so many times that he's still dead. #2 is still firing. Then I see the numbers above the neggy he's firing on. 200-250-25-227-221-200... He's not even at 100 weapons power... At this point the fail is so great that I am laughing more than anything. And now for the grand finale. #3 finally kills off the second neggy (he wasted the first REAL fast), and #2 starts firing on the third neggy. #4 respawns. And then flies behind the neggy. Opens fire on neggy. TBR the neggy to the kang. I think you guys know what happens next. Iso charge. Kang first, me next (I barely live), #2 third (he's a goner), then #3 (he's quite dead). I hit BFI, but a plasma torp wastes what's left of my hull. #4 goes rushing in to the rescue... and is destroyed hilariously fast. Leaving the neggy and the kang by themselves. Neggy starts blasting the kang, and just as I and #3 respawn, the kang is almost dead, we both rush over, and get there in time to see a plasma torp end Jar'rod's miserable existence.
And here's the best part: #4 says "GG, wp, too bad you guys all suck. I am the best one here." And leaves. *facepalm. #2 simply leaves. Leaving myself and #3. We have a short convo, mostly about what just happened, and then we both leave.
Welcome to CSE pug.
Isn't it interesting that the ones who have the least DPS, don't know how to heal their ships, or set off 35K in the distance, always think they are the best ones there???
:P
But really, its annoying how Cryptic built failure into missions... MMOs don't support failure. You can wipe and wipe but at the end of the day at least you get to the last boss if you hung on long enough.
But not Cure and KA. Its bad that pugs lose me the optional, but lose me the entire mission as well?
Captain Ruri Gokou of the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk
Catian Atrox Carrier
For the record he died a stupidly huge number of times.
Well then he didn't exactly leave without firing a shot then, did he? Not that it helps his case any. :P
Captain Ruri Gokou of the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk
Catian Atrox Carrier
Huh? Did you test this on the Tribble server? Because on Holodeck ISE is as easy as ever :-)
But in ISE on the Tribble Server I noticed that the Borg were ignoring my shields and doing some nasty hull damage. Full shields and half hull with an Engie on a AC is not nice :-P I see a lot of PUG's dying horrible and often in ISE xD
totally not op, working as intended!
10k DPS Vesta threads: 1; 2
I didn't saw this effect in ISE in the last days. Perhaps you were unlucky and got a critical ;-)
To bad I didn't had combat log on. And I could'nt find another ISE group on Tribble to test this.
I really hope they make it so. That would mean that Tanks, Healers or Crosshealing will be needed in at least one STF :-) (Couldn't test the new one yet -.-)
There I was....
Fleet Mission.
I pug in and the first thing I see is 'Im in a shuttle! I'm in a shuttle!'
I type, 'Oh Goody.'
Someone else types, 'That could be a problem.'
We won despite the shuttle.
I never saw him die, but i never saw him do anything either. :eek:
I queued for CSE, and beamed in, only to see 6 raptors and 2 BoP's swarming the Kang and 3 out of 4 players in respawn oblivion. One of the players announced to me that they'd lost, because somebody'd blown a cube early.
Well, I still fired up the old impulse engines on my carrier, threw all of my heals at the Kang (which was down to 20% and no shields by that time), only to prolong it's life by some 5 seconds.
In about 40 seconds I had beamed in and back out again.
I go for ISE for a quick run. One of the players was a Chimera who launched off fireworks at the beginning of the match. I think, "Cool, seems it'll go well."
Then, something inside me shatters as I see rainbow beams flying from the Chimera. Of course, I just type in, "Um, why are ya running beams on that ship?" He replies that he has a reason but won't tell me. I say OK, and keep going.
I later notice that he's beginning to collect injuries. So, I ask him if he has any components to repair with. That sets him off. He starts ranting about how we're all doing 0 dps and he's the only one doing anything. He then says that he'll have to go through the trouble of going to a shipyard and paying for repairs. Of course, I tell him that he can just use components. He ignores that, and boasts about completing optional even with one team member missing and taking down a tac cube on his own in two minutes, and saying we can't do it in one. We tell him to do it, but he says he's "Turning off dps", whatever that means, and runs off to 20 km for the rest of the match, continuing to rant about our 'trashing his build' and 'giving him repair b*s'. We finish the map without him but not under optional, given that two others had rainbow beams. At least the others knew what to do.
If there was any player I wanted to turn my disruptors on and utterly decimate, it would be him. Wish I could, given I was KDF and he was a fed.
An Ausmonaut run ^_^
Guess I'm not the only one with this story. C'ept I'm running phasers on my raptor while the feds got AP and all the agro is after me.
Must be a klink thing.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Lol. I know for a fact that first hit from an iso does about 45k if you aren't running any defensive consoles. So the way I figure it (and based on what his ship was doing) is that he wasn't running any defensive consoles, so him dying makes perfect sense to me.
Tbh, that was just a terrible run.
I play a fed fleet patrol escort, so i know the feeling, I did one stf earlier and one player who I shall name mr comatose spend the whole game dead.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I have now, when will pugs learn, HAVE ONE TYPE OF WEAPON!!!!!!!
On my Fleet Patrol Escort, I run nothing but Plasma weapons, in fact my whole build is based my use of Plasma weapons. All my tactical consoles are geared towards my weapon type,so are 2 of my engineering consoles. I've count damage markers of between 800-1200 damage markers from my dual heavy plasma cannons alone, my torps have even scored hits of 6k and a heavy plasma torp registering 16k of damage.
If you build a ship right, you should have no problems.
I also run the full borg set on it
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
lol, i've seen 40K from mine, but my sci is a torp boat so, yeah.
Most of the time I hang out on the PublicEliteSTF channel but once in a while, when it's slow I PuG a game or two - usually KAGE or ISE 'cause they're pretty straightforward even for the most horrible teams but for some masochistic reason, this time I found myself in Cure.
I arrive in my Tac/Chimera to be greeted by a Tac/Escort, a Regent, and Oddy and a Sovvy. Hmm... OK...
No discussion whatsoever in chat so I do what I usually do in these scenarios, hang back and wait to see who does what.
Tac/Escort heads straight for the middle cube and starts blasting probes - 'OK...' thinks I - 'maybe this guy knows MRRMLL'
Looking at the cruisers, they all veer off to the left - something that nobody that 'knows' CSE ever does - it's either right (if you're inexperienced - or very experienced) or middle if you know the drill.
At this point there's no one on Kang and my instincts are that even if the cruisers were, they wouldn't be able to defend it. Tac/Escort looks confident doing what he's doing so I take a gamble and head right - take out the BoPs and start on the probes.
Cruiser group meanwhile is getting nowhere - they're sitting at maximum range from the cube ineffectively tickling it with a rainbow of colors and occasionally taking their frustration out on the BoPs as they appear. Every so often one of them pops and disappears to respawn limbo. One in particular has 12 or so damaged systems *sigh*
So I finish the probes, take out the BoPs, the Neg, the Raptor and shoot a /t to Tac/Escort: "If I blow this cube, can you handle the Raptors your side?" - "np" comes the response so I take a deep breath, die once (damn one-shots) and blow the cube.
Two things happen - Tac/Escort - good to his word chains all his Tac buffs and starts nuking his Raptors. At the same moment all three cruisers disappear to respawn limbo *pop!* gone.
I hightail it over to the middle cube as Tac/Escort's got it down to around 10% and help finish it off before he pops Evasive and I burn some Deuterium to get to the left cube. Cruiser group hasn't respawned yet.
Between the two of us we bury the Negs and start dismantling the probes (they're all still there - the cruisers hadn't gotten a single one) - probes, Neg, Raptor, probes. By this time the cruisers are back but each time something spawns (the Neg, the Raptor) they're just as quickly gone again.
With the last spawn of Negs, me and Tac/Escort open fire on the cube - it's gone in seconds and I Evasive back to the Kang whilst he opens fire on the Negs from behind. In front I see cruisers exploding. Again.
Kang warps out and I head back to see two Negs remaining - one heavily damaged - it doesn't take long to finish them. The assimilated cruiser spawns and Tac/Escort and myself juggle aggro back and forth for a minute I guess until it explodes.
Cruiser group warps out immediately without saying a word as I type my customary (for 'challenging' stfs) 'thx everyone' in Zone chat. Once they'd left I chatted a bit with Tac/Escort about how it was a miracle that things didn't go completely pear-shaped.
Best part? We got the optional
You might want to go check this thread and read it from the beginning.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=244532
If I get under 2000 off my DHC's once the shields are down then I check to make sure I don't have the weapons set on stun. As for the torp, 20 to 40k is pretty much normal.
I may repost my latest build on there today if I have time. :cool:
Edit;
I posted my build.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=6491441&postcount=755
Enjoy!
Let me just preface this with a claim you all are probably going to find quite dubious: I can top this thing out at around 4000 dps (with tbr, but not abusing its bugged state, I refuse to TRIBBLE my build's survivability up to accomplish that), which should be more than adequate for a sci ship. So I consider it the first sign I'm going to have a bad day when I top out the dps chart on a team that has an escort (or several, as was the case here) on it. A team of all cruisers or cruisers and sci ships? Not a surprise, most cruisers can survive a hell of a lot more than I can, but sacrifice damage output to do it, and most other sci's I pug with simply have no idea wth they're doing). But escorts? Escorts should get 4000 minimum, not <1100 and having trouble killing probes. So yeah, that was the second sign of an impending disaster.
There is no third sign of impending disaster in this one.
Optional is failed after about ten minutes (which is about how long it takes me to grind down the right transformers and gateway; key to grinding down the gateway solo in the time it takes a team of idiots to get one transformer down: fly underneath and park straight and level at a distance of about 1.7-2k, and you can get all beam arrays and torp launchers firing at it, with no dmg range falloff, nor will you get shot at if you have aggro), and so I call out the escort on probe duty (using antiproton dhc's, antiproton turrets and quantums, so I see nothing inherently wrong with his build, although tbqh we'd have been better off if he were an afker) for it, which sets the whole rest of the team off. Massive trash talking ensues, and five more probes make it past them (while I'm killing probes the fail escort is having trouble with) as they park outside firing range of the remaining gateway.
It takes the team another two minutes to grind down the gateway (seems the trend for idiots these days is sitting pretty, facing a target with dual beam banks and letting half one's dps potential go to waste) while they spend that time talking trash while I'm off killing probes just to keep things from failing altogether.
Donatra fight was fun though, simply due to how hilariously inept that team was both at tanking the torpedo spreads/salvos and how uninclined they were to stop talking trash, even while facing down thalaron beams and sitting still, mashing out poorly-typed third-grade insults in team chat. Just took forever. I saved their bacon several times *while* they were talking trash due to judicious use of tractor beam repulsors, while spreading heals around (hey, i'm a sci, what the hell else am I gonna do? sit back and watch? I was sorely tempted to!). Knocking Donatra around seemed to egg them on further, I guess they liked getting killed cuz they only seemed to get really annoyed when I'd keep Donatra from wiping them out.
*shrugs*
So yeah, a team of trolls, and one minmaxer in a science vessel taking the brunt of the team's abuse for *gasp* actually knowing how to play the game.
-- Lyra@PyrionCelendil, if anyone wants to friend me (this is my sci alt; Nylith@PyrionCelendil is my main) for STF runs, build advice or whatever else.
As for the team not being able to handle Donatra easily, they did something with her AI that made her even actually nasty to fight.
Nah, I just lampshaded it. The disaster happened before I said anything.
Tonight I'm in Cure. We blow all the cubes within seconds. A small wave of warships spawn. The problem is most of the mission 4 ships are barely able to keep the kang alive while I solely run around blowing up nanite units. So...three of us blow up the cubes all at the same time. Two guys are defending and manage to allow the Kang to blow up. The rest of us are trying to kill off the single wave of warships and are unable to reach the Kang to hail it. Low and behold the other two idiots manage not to hail the Kang as they were suposed to do and allowed it to blow up. So...40 min of hard work down the drain. The most wonderful thing about it all? I did get a single one of the drops. Nothing. I am level 50 on an elite mission. I literally walked away from that 40 minute long mission with NOTHING. Had I left I would have been forced to wait an hour.
Now, it would be really nice if someone would make an attempt to rebalance these missions. They take long enough and with a single idiot on the team it can draw a mission out to nearly an hour long event. In the end you may even walk out in failure and nothing to show for it. I am a lifetime subscriber. I did so to support the game I enjoy to play. I also did it after the free to play option came in. I seriously didn't pay all that money to lose countless hours in game because some moron joined up in missions I have no control over who comes in and who doesn't, the only place I can get the highest grade equipment for my maxed out character, and pretty much the only worth wild things to do for end game content.
Honestly...these missions are a joke and need a serious rethink.
CSE can be completed in 3-5minutes, FYI.
Seriously, just join any of the "Elite" channels in the game and you won't have to worry about mindless pugs. PvE queues are simply not the way to go when it comes Elite STFs. Like, at all...
Right now I'm either doing STFs with fleetmates or with people from "Elite" channels, or not doing them at all. And you know what? As a result the absolute worst experiences I can recall from recent months have only to do with people using TBR too much, or being too afraid to make a RML run in CSE, sticking with boring MRRML, because they won't accept the fact that some people are able to solo spawning Raptors and even Negh'Vars just fine.
This is the reason you people either need a fleet, a group of friends or the above mentioned community channels. Once you know how to play them the Elite STFs are extremely easy. People I know play them solely to beat their times, such as all cubes in CSE destroyed with 12:18 left on the optional timer.
I've arrived "late" to the STF and there are only 3 other people in. The 1st cube is still alive, and drifted all the way over to the left hand gate. One of the guys is moaning (lets call him "P"), saying that the group is too poor for him to consider playing with.
We take down the cube, and someone pulls up the left cube on the left hand side. I end up defending probes on both side. 1 guy is dead ("J") and the 4th guy (lets call him "B") pulls up up both cubes on the right, making no effort to kill them. And either "P" or "B" pulls up the final cube for the full set. And "P" and "B" just want to fail the mission to they can get out without a leavers penalty.
I've been pugging KA a lot recently, and I've seen a lot of failed optionals recently, but I've never seen anything like this before.
I think I ended up joining the one you left. It took a while but it went ok after a bit of guidance.
Other than that I had a KAE that took over an hour because the people in my group wanted to ignore the cubes after triggering them, but also they were mostly beam boats and we were sorely lacking in firepower. With Donatra they just wanted to get in close and hit her with beams so I gave up with staying 5km away and just hit her with my console attacks.
STOP PUGGING.
And suddenly your problems stop existing as well.
Or better yet, just wait till season seven. Don't all optionals go bye bye ?