My VoQuv can tank infected elite tac cube and the 6~10 spheres near it when it spawns and survive no problem (except when the game pulls that lovely 200k+ damage invisible plasma torpedo (not heavy) that insta-kills you).
I have threat control 6 and im saving to respec to get it to 9.. the game just has too many escorts out there with ridiculous damage that do pull aggro from me on rare occasions.
I also do quite a bit of damage to the target in return. I'm a Mirror tank. I use feedback pulse 1 and 3 plus ATK Ptrn Delta 2 to make the feedback pulses hurt more. I use Disruptor beams to add a further hull debuff.
I just did an Infected Elite. This is the feedback 3 spam from just using one Feedback 3 at very high aux & with good particle skills.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1264 (1061) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1297 (2357) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1194 (1002) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1224 (2226) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1121 (941) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1150 (2091) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1200 (1334) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1630 (2204) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1179 (1311) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1602 (2166) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1105 (1228) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1501 (2029) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1036 (1496) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1828 (1888) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1335 (1929) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2357 (2435) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1340 (1935) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2366 (2444) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1102 (1836) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2244 (1996) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1204 (2005) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2451 (2180) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1080 (1787) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2184 (1943) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1065 (1763) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2155 (1917) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 836 (1384) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1691 (1505) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1077 (1770) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2164 (1925) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 695 (1143) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1397 (1242) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 988 (1615) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1973 (1755) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 956 (1561) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1908 (1698) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 708 (1157) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1414 (1258) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 924 (1500) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1834 (1631) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
...and this is just the feedback pulse 3 spam from the tactical cube. There were half a dozen spheres also machine gunning my carrier & getting hit in return by the pulse.
The damage it does is significant but it is diluted by the silly 50% shield penetration. Still, its a lot, LOT more damage than my beam arrays would have put out in that same 10 seconds or so and to almost 10 targets at once.
Thats a good point, Generally as a tac in an escort I fly above the cube, Doesnt matter how close I get its simply rarely a threat. And that Tac too is still specced into threat and that threat is always on me. I plan to spec outta it once I grind up Dilith. To help those that should tank, tank.
That said I went and bought the Fleet star Cruiser and did a pug with my Engineer. Just changed my Boff from all healing to other stuff, Like Eject Warp Plasma, Dual Tractor Beams, etc. And had a blast. I held threat the entire time and even almost died a couple times. No reason to over tank so I went the other route.
Obviosuly none of the Escorts specced into threat to steal it away from me. So they were free to go about DPS, and the map went fast. No hiding outside range, etc.
I fly an Oddy and have it specced out as a healer. Does wonders with my fleet mates. I don't have any points in the threat control because I put those points where they would help my healing.
Reason for all this is simple, instead of trying to get the threat from escorts I just have it set up with doffs that reduce the cooldown on my heals so I can heal them as the aggro gets them. Sure they can use the "exploits" to stay out of the way of the big damage and can tank most other damage, however, when I'm with an escort that is doing massive AoE damage and gets 10 spheres suddenly quite interested in it my Aux to SIF III and Eng Team III plus extend sheilds and attack pattern Delta along with my worker bees for giggles is nice. Also with that many heals I can throw them around to the whole team and keep everyone less squishy.
This gets back to what people have said about poor builds though. I have a grand total of three heals that are "self" heals since I can not give em out to others. Two copies of EPtS I and RSPII. The big thing is my weapons system is the system with the most power in it. I also run disruptors to lower the damage resistance of the target. Couple that with my sensor analysis, yes I know its not on a target enough in STFs to "matter" it still debuffs the target. I also carry turrets and scorpian fighters to deploy to add that little bit extra.
I've had fleetmates run a parser as we were doing STFs and I've walked out with 3K dps. I did one ISE with four escorts and the only person to die was me thanks to the tac cube being at 8% and decided that it was time for an loltorp that hit me for 400K as I was the highest DPS and closest for the split second everyone was backing off.
As others point out though, I'm not overtanking with no where to go. I'm using the inherent tank ability of my cruiser, and Im science in cruiser even, and handing out heals to the escorts and others. My damage isn't going to come close to the escorts but its geared to help debuff the target.
A lot of the cruisers got shafted/cruisers suck does indeed come from people that aren't flying them right. A well flown cruiser does have a niche though.
Got two of us in CSE? Have one protect the Khang the other work on clearing the spheres and killing the spawns from one side, by themselves, while keeping an eye out to help the one guarding the khang.
Got a cruiser in ISE? Have us tank the cube while you get the generators down to 10% or attack the cube and have us get the gens to 10% while healing you. When the Tac cube comes in and someone accidentally grabs aggro, have us take the aggro by everyone stop firing at it, well lead it 10km+ from the gate and be its special friend while you pound the gate to nothing sitting just outside its range.
Cruiser in KASE? Have us take the aggro from the cube that spawn while you kill the generators and transformers. Then we can either follow you to the other side and do it there or leave us to get the one gate to 10%.
Point being again, even without tons of points in threat or even zero, cruisers can and do have a helpful role in Elite STFs, and the fleet blockade missions? If you've got two well built healing Oddys, the other three team mates can just go save the third freighter. The Oddys should heal the the freighter while the mobs lightly scratch at our paint. I know because my fleet admiral and I have been in that scenerio, and neither of us is even an Eng in a cruiser. He's Tac and I'm science.
Thing is, and no offense to escort drivers, even a poor escort as long as it mounts dual cannons, turrets, and torps with the apporiate skills is more useful, even if more squishy than it should be, than a poor cruiser.
In short, you can have a poor escort that will still be useful for dps, whereas a poor cruiser is just worthless. That's where you get the rage at/for/about cruisers from.
Since this thread appears to be directed at me, I'll say that the issue of cruisers being proper tanks or not is a complicated and heated one and I can't sum it up in a pithy paragraph or sentence.
My complaints about the Gal-R weren't that it couldn't tank at all, rather that it pales compared to other cruisers for a dozen reasons.
I doubt anyone is really complaining that cruisers can't tank (God help the soul who meets a properly-flown Eng cruiser). Rather I personally feel that Fed cruisers don't gain enough of a unique tanking benefit to justify their horrendous turn rates and lackluster threat.
EDIT:
We have a WinRar.
Cool that Ego of yours. This thread is towards everyone rallying to this arguement. Not 'special' ole you.
As been stated by a number of people, including myself. Cruisers are fine and anyone sitting here making loud claims of it being otherwise is either niave or purposesly looking to influence buffs to stats. From my point of view, some of you are looking to turn Cruisers into the Paladins of STO.
Cool that Ego of yours. This thread is towards everyone rallying to this arguement. Not 'special' ole you.
As been stated by a number of people, including myself. Cruisers are fine and anyone sitting here making loud claims of it being otherwise is either niave or purposesly looking to influence buffs to stats. From my point of view, some of you are looking to turn Cruisers into the Paladins of STO.
Cruisers are fine, PvE is bollocksed, point well taken.
I fly an Oddy and have it specced out as a healer. Does wonders with my fleet mates. I don't have any points in the threat control because I put those points where they would help my healing.
Reason for all this is simple, instead of trying to get the threat from escorts I just have it set up with doffs that reduce the cooldown on my heals so I can heal them as the aggro gets them.
The problem with being a healer and not a tank is that the aggro is spread between multiple ships and it bounces back and forth. This means one of your escorts can suddenly be insta-popped or worse, be forced to retreat and heal (or be healed by you) and thus decreasing the team's dps.
For example: 3 escorts and your healcruiser. Escort A gets aggro and starts to take damage. You heal him with a shield and a hull heal. He keeps at it for a few seconds but the npc hits him hard again and he is forced to withdraw out of 10km range and heal himself.
Right there your team lost a big dps source for half a minute or so. You cannot perma-heal an escort since timers alone (no matter how much timer reduction abilities you have) will prevent you from it. This game is not set up to allow a true healer class.
The aggro is then switched to Escort B. He takes a few hits and your timers are still ticking so he withdraws. Now you have 2 escorts out of the fight for a precious half minute.
Escort C is a bit luckier and your timers are back up. Between his heals and yours he can stay there enough so that the other 2 escorts come back.
Case in point: on average you lose 1 escort worth of damage at any given time.
On the other hand, if your ship was a tank with threat control and the ability to permanently tank the hostiles... your team will rarely lose the dps from one escort through the entire fight.
I've had fleetmates run a parser as we were doing STFs and I've walked out with 3K dps. I did one ISE with four escorts and the only person to die was me thanks to the tac cube being at 8% and decided that it was time for an loltorp that hit me for 400K as I was the highest DPS and closest for the split second everyone was backing off.
2:
Parsers can give you erroneous data.
I'll give you a great example. A guy in chat was bragging about his massive dps cannon ship. I had him come with me to an elite stf and show me. I doubted he could do more damage than my torpedo b'rel with tricobalt mines (x4 with dispersal and super-buffed with all tac abilities.. it can one-shot transformers and most cubes).
We went into infected elite. First thing he does is use cannon spread 3 and 2 at all targets he could swing his nose at. The targets were barely taking shield damage from his attacks....
... but he was hitting 4 to 6 targets at a time plus the gate. At times he would just sit in space firing volley after volley of AOE cannon fire at ships with the gate behind them inside 10km range.
In short, his cannon damage was hitting a lot of targets for completely ineffective damage.
But the parser was adding them all up. In the end he had like 4 million damage inflicted but didnt kill or seriously hurt more than one or two ships.
I was laughing so hard at his chest thumping from 'his massive dps' that I could not type for a bit. Minutes later as I tried to explain to him why he was getting massive dps he put me on ignore. Some people just can't handle the truth. The parser cant be wrong!
So.. be sure your damage is EFFECTIVE damage not just added up damage from target you tickled with your weapons but did nothing to them to write home about.
Your points are well taken. The way my teammates and I play though, we do well. I may some day respec into threat control.
As for my dps, I know what you mean. This damage though was against targets that mattered. Its not my average by any means, but I just wanted to illustrate that having a cruiser doesn't mean were running around with pea shooters here.
I agree with you about keeping the escorts on the line without having to retreat. When it comes to cruisers our job isn't dps. Our job is to support the escorts so their damage hits harder. That's done by tanking, using things like disruptors, sensors scan, etc., et. al. How individual cruiser drivers do this varies, and everyone will argue their way is better, as it should be. Being in a build does you no good if you don't like it.
That said, we get back to where all the anti-cruiser/cruiser-whiners come from. Cruisers aren't huge god mode ships. We aren't your primary damage dealers. Were support vessels that fill a variety of roles, but we need to focus on those roles and do them well. I think you get a lot of people thinking cruisers are going to be these huge unstoppable killing machines, and when they aren't, they get all bent out of shape.
Cool that Ego of yours. This thread is towards everyone rallying to this arguement. Not 'special' ole you.
As been stated by a number of people, including myself. Cruisers are fine and anyone sitting here making loud claims of it being otherwise is either niave or purposesly looking to influence buffs to stats. From my point of view, some of you are looking to turn Cruisers into the Paladins of STO.
Oh, I apologize, I certainly wouldn't want to be "niave"!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Former/Cryptic Name: Captain_Hans_Langsdorff
Founding member, Special Service Squadron
"Fear God and Dread Nought." First Sea Lord, Adm. Jacky Fisher
Crusiers do fine in PVE. The 1-hit kill wonders from NPCs takes out everyone. I still don't like this type of development, but I'm now used to it. There is no build that can counter, there is no "skill" that you can use to get thru, it's just Cryptic says "your dead and we can blow up your pixels anytime we want, muahahahaha".
Where Crusiers do not "excel", is PVP. There, it's "Escorts Online" and personaly I stopped all PVP gameplay after the NERFs with the skill-box revamps, the healing NERFs, etc etc etc just before F2P. I beleive I said then that those NERFs would kill PVP in general and have nothing except pre-mades of escorts screaming "there's no red dots to kill". A year or so later, a Cryptic dev goes to the PVP forums and says something to the effect of "we could take PVP out of the game and no1 would even notice". Cyptic NERFed and P2Wed themselves right out of PVP gameplay. No sence in wondering why, now.
There is something wrong tho when my eng in a "fleet" version of the fleet escort has the exact same resists as my tac in an excel. No longer, is the P2W escort a "glass cannon".
Comments
My VoQuv can tank infected elite tac cube and the 6~10 spheres near it when it spawns and survive no problem (except when the game pulls that lovely 200k+ damage invisible plasma torpedo (not heavy) that insta-kills you).
I have threat control 6 and im saving to respec to get it to 9.. the game just has too many escorts out there with ridiculous damage that do pull aggro from me on rare occasions.
I also do quite a bit of damage to the target in return. I'm a Mirror tank. I use feedback pulse 1 and 3 plus ATK Ptrn Delta 2 to make the feedback pulses hurt more. I use Disruptor beams to add a further hull debuff.
I just did an Infected Elite. This is the feedback 3 spam from just using one Feedback 3 at very high aux & with good particle skills.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1264 (1061) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1297 (2357) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1194 (1002) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1224 (2226) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1121 (941) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1150 (2091) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1200 (1334) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1630 (2204) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1179 (1311) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1602 (2166) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1105 (1228) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1501 (2029) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1036 (1496) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1828 (1888) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1335 (1929) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2357 (2435) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1340 (1935) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2366 (2444) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1102 (1836) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2244 (1996) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1204 (2005) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2451 (2180) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1080 (1787) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2184 (1943) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1065 (1763) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2155 (1917) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 836 (1384) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1691 (1505) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 1077 (1770) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 2164 (1925) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 695 (1143) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1397 (1242) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 988 (1615) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1973 (1755) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 956 (1561) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1908 (1698) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 708 (1157) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1414 (1258) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III dealt 924 (1500) shield damage to Tactical Cube.
[8/19 3:51] Your Feedback Pulse III deals 1834 (1631) FeedbackPulse to Tactical Cube.
...and this is just the feedback pulse 3 spam from the tactical cube. There were half a dozen spheres also machine gunning my carrier & getting hit in return by the pulse.
The damage it does is significant but it is diluted by the silly 50% shield penetration. Still, its a lot, LOT more damage than my beam arrays would have put out in that same 10 seconds or so and to almost 10 targets at once.
That said I went and bought the Fleet star Cruiser and did a pug with my Engineer. Just changed my Boff from all healing to other stuff, Like Eject Warp Plasma, Dual Tractor Beams, etc. And had a blast. I held threat the entire time and even almost died a couple times. No reason to over tank so I went the other route.
Obviosuly none of the Escorts specced into threat to steal it away from me. So they were free to go about DPS, and the map went fast. No hiding outside range, etc.
The way it should be.
Reason for all this is simple, instead of trying to get the threat from escorts I just have it set up with doffs that reduce the cooldown on my heals so I can heal them as the aggro gets them. Sure they can use the "exploits" to stay out of the way of the big damage and can tank most other damage, however, when I'm with an escort that is doing massive AoE damage and gets 10 spheres suddenly quite interested in it my Aux to SIF III and Eng Team III plus extend sheilds and attack pattern Delta along with my worker bees for giggles is nice. Also with that many heals I can throw them around to the whole team and keep everyone less squishy.
This gets back to what people have said about poor builds though. I have a grand total of three heals that are "self" heals since I can not give em out to others. Two copies of EPtS I and RSPII. The big thing is my weapons system is the system with the most power in it. I also run disruptors to lower the damage resistance of the target. Couple that with my sensor analysis, yes I know its not on a target enough in STFs to "matter" it still debuffs the target. I also carry turrets and scorpian fighters to deploy to add that little bit extra.
I've had fleetmates run a parser as we were doing STFs and I've walked out with 3K dps. I did one ISE with four escorts and the only person to die was me thanks to the tac cube being at 8% and decided that it was time for an loltorp that hit me for 400K as I was the highest DPS and closest for the split second everyone was backing off.
As others point out though, I'm not overtanking with no where to go. I'm using the inherent tank ability of my cruiser, and Im science in cruiser even, and handing out heals to the escorts and others. My damage isn't going to come close to the escorts but its geared to help debuff the target.
A lot of the cruisers got shafted/cruisers suck does indeed come from people that aren't flying them right. A well flown cruiser does have a niche though.
Got two of us in CSE? Have one protect the Khang the other work on clearing the spheres and killing the spawns from one side, by themselves, while keeping an eye out to help the one guarding the khang.
Got a cruiser in ISE? Have us tank the cube while you get the generators down to 10% or attack the cube and have us get the gens to 10% while healing you. When the Tac cube comes in and someone accidentally grabs aggro, have us take the aggro by everyone stop firing at it, well lead it 10km+ from the gate and be its special friend while you pound the gate to nothing sitting just outside its range.
Cruiser in KASE? Have us take the aggro from the cube that spawn while you kill the generators and transformers. Then we can either follow you to the other side and do it there or leave us to get the one gate to 10%.
Point being again, even without tons of points in threat or even zero, cruisers can and do have a helpful role in Elite STFs, and the fleet blockade missions? If you've got two well built healing Oddys, the other three team mates can just go save the third freighter. The Oddys should heal the the freighter while the mobs lightly scratch at our paint. I know because my fleet admiral and I have been in that scenerio, and neither of us is even an Eng in a cruiser. He's Tac and I'm science.
Thing is, and no offense to escort drivers, even a poor escort as long as it mounts dual cannons, turrets, and torps with the apporiate skills is more useful, even if more squishy than it should be, than a poor cruiser.
In short, you can have a poor escort that will still be useful for dps, whereas a poor cruiser is just worthless. That's where you get the rage at/for/about cruisers from.
Cool that Ego of yours. This thread is towards everyone rallying to this arguement. Not 'special' ole you.
As been stated by a number of people, including myself. Cruisers are fine and anyone sitting here making loud claims of it being otherwise is either niave or purposesly looking to influence buffs to stats. From my point of view, some of you are looking to turn Cruisers into the Paladins of STO.
Cruisers are fine, PvE is bollocksed, point well taken.
1:
The problem with being a healer and not a tank is that the aggro is spread between multiple ships and it bounces back and forth. This means one of your escorts can suddenly be insta-popped or worse, be forced to retreat and heal (or be healed by you) and thus decreasing the team's dps.
For example: 3 escorts and your healcruiser. Escort A gets aggro and starts to take damage. You heal him with a shield and a hull heal. He keeps at it for a few seconds but the npc hits him hard again and he is forced to withdraw out of 10km range and heal himself.
Right there your team lost a big dps source for half a minute or so. You cannot perma-heal an escort since timers alone (no matter how much timer reduction abilities you have) will prevent you from it. This game is not set up to allow a true healer class.
The aggro is then switched to Escort B. He takes a few hits and your timers are still ticking so he withdraws. Now you have 2 escorts out of the fight for a precious half minute.
Escort C is a bit luckier and your timers are back up. Between his heals and yours he can stay there enough so that the other 2 escorts come back.
Case in point: on average you lose 1 escort worth of damage at any given time.
On the other hand, if your ship was a tank with threat control and the ability to permanently tank the hostiles... your team will rarely lose the dps from one escort through the entire fight.
2:
Parsers can give you erroneous data.
I'll give you a great example. A guy in chat was bragging about his massive dps cannon ship. I had him come with me to an elite stf and show me. I doubted he could do more damage than my torpedo b'rel with tricobalt mines (x4 with dispersal and super-buffed with all tac abilities.. it can one-shot transformers and most cubes).
We went into infected elite. First thing he does is use cannon spread 3 and 2 at all targets he could swing his nose at. The targets were barely taking shield damage from his attacks....
... but he was hitting 4 to 6 targets at a time plus the gate. At times he would just sit in space firing volley after volley of AOE cannon fire at ships with the gate behind them inside 10km range.
In short, his cannon damage was hitting a lot of targets for completely ineffective damage.
But the parser was adding them all up. In the end he had like 4 million damage inflicted but didnt kill or seriously hurt more than one or two ships.
I was laughing so hard at his chest thumping from 'his massive dps' that I could not type for a bit. Minutes later as I tried to explain to him why he was getting massive dps he put me on ignore. Some people just can't handle the truth. The parser cant be wrong!
So.. be sure your damage is EFFECTIVE damage not just added up damage from target you tickled with your weapons but did nothing to them to write home about.
Your points are well taken. The way my teammates and I play though, we do well. I may some day respec into threat control.
As for my dps, I know what you mean. This damage though was against targets that mattered. Its not my average by any means, but I just wanted to illustrate that having a cruiser doesn't mean were running around with pea shooters here.
I agree with you about keeping the escorts on the line without having to retreat. When it comes to cruisers our job isn't dps. Our job is to support the escorts so their damage hits harder. That's done by tanking, using things like disruptors, sensors scan, etc., et. al. How individual cruiser drivers do this varies, and everyone will argue their way is better, as it should be. Being in a build does you no good if you don't like it.
That said, we get back to where all the anti-cruiser/cruiser-whiners come from. Cruisers aren't huge god mode ships. We aren't your primary damage dealers. Were support vessels that fill a variety of roles, but we need to focus on those roles and do them well. I think you get a lot of people thinking cruisers are going to be these huge unstoppable killing machines, and when they aren't, they get all bent out of shape.
Oh, I apologize, I certainly wouldn't want to be "niave"!
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Where Crusiers do not "excel", is PVP. There, it's "Escorts Online" and personaly I stopped all PVP gameplay after the NERFs with the skill-box revamps, the healing NERFs, etc etc etc just before F2P. I beleive I said then that those NERFs would kill PVP in general and have nothing except pre-mades of escorts screaming "there's no red dots to kill". A year or so later, a Cryptic dev goes to the PVP forums and says something to the effect of "we could take PVP out of the game and no1 would even notice". Cyptic NERFed and P2Wed themselves right out of PVP gameplay. No sence in wondering why, now.
There is something wrong tho when my eng in a "fleet" version of the fleet escort has the exact same resists as my tac in an excel. No longer, is the P2W escort a "glass cannon".