Another thing to note about Donatra is she tends to have tunnel vision, esp on Elites. I have had games where I am in my AC with a squad of escorts that are doing great DPS (usually 5-8x mine), and I pick up aggro and NEVER lose it, despite these escorts beating the TRIBBLE out of her. I mean, it's like she wants me dead or something. What usually ends up happening is she kills one or two of the escorts on the team (3 shotted hurts), and then comes after me, and NEVER drops aggro from me, or if she does, I just have to broadside her a few times and I get it back. And this is all without Threat Control. Not sure how that works, but as I said, it's like she gets tunnel vision. So I usually kite her at about 9k, takes the bite off of most of her weapons and gives me time to hit BFI if I see a torp spread coming.
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 am refering to spaceWhen I am facing Donatra I have many "Anti-cloak" and one "Detect" cloak abilitys. They are: Metron Gas Eject Warp plasma Grappler Tachyon Detection Field Ionized Gas Sensor
THEY DO NOT WORK what so ever Can anyone or even a Dev etc explain why they lose thier purpose, I bought these things and I expect them to work :mad:
Thanks for your Time
Actually, they do work.
I know for a fact that the Tracking Torpedo DOES track Donatra while cloaked. A joke with my friends, I call it "Tinkerbell" as she goes wandering about until she hits.
While the gasses and grapler do not stop the cloaking, their effects such as snaring do stay on her.
I know for a fact that the Tracking Torpedo DOES track Donatra while cloaked. A joke with my friends, I call it "Tinkerbell" as she goes wandering about until she hits.
While the gasses and grapler do not stop the cloaking, their effects such as snaring do stay on her.
I think his issue is the fact against normal enemies those abilities decloak them and let you start whaling on them again, whereas it does nothing against scimitar dreadnaughts (not just donatra, but ALL scimitars).
So I'll say what was said earlier. The Scimitar-class Dreadnaught has a PERFECT CLOAK. It leaves no emissions of any kind and has no weaknesses that the normal cloak does. So it won't be vulnerable to the stuff a normal cloak is.
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'm one of the people that ignore the 5k rule, as an escort that might as well mean just sit the fight out. If the multitude of cruisers don't have threat control speced that is their fault, not mine. If she does cloak I'll send my fighters after her, track her down and open fire on her preventing the healing. Without the healing and long cloaks the fight is faster than the 5k rule BS that bad players have created.
- Focus on Target
- Have fighters deployed (they will follow her... cloaked or not).
- Cloak seeking torps
- Get close to her (by using any of the above).
Don't look silly... Don't call it the "Z-Store/Zen Store"...
I'm one of the people that ignore the 5k rule, as an escort that might as well mean just sit the fight out. If the multitude of cruisers don't have threat control speced that is their fault, not mine. If she does cloak I'll send my fighters after her, track her down and open fire on her preventing the healing. Without the healing and long cloaks the fight is faster than the 5k rule BS that bad players have created.
Let's examine that argument for a minute:
At 5k-6k distance, Beams dropoff to 84%-80% of their maximum damage (attainable at 0-1km), and Cannons to 72.5%-65%. Details of other distances can be found here.
If everyone else stays at a "safe distance" of 6km and you move into 1km, two things happen:
(i) Your Cannons inflict 50% extra relative damage: moving from 65% of their maximum output to 100% of their maximum output.
(ii) Your teammates who you "expect" to hold aggro over you now have to compete with you suddenly generating 50% extra threat.
The "Threat control" skill works by multplying the threat generation of your inflicted damage. If you were to sit at 1k distance to a foe, in order to hold aggro over you; a typical tank taking 6 ranks of threat control (for 184% threat generation) sitting at a distance of at 6k distance would need to inflict:
with Cannons: 1/(0.65*1.84) = over 84% of your damage output. with Beams: 1/(0.8*1.84) = over 68% of your damage output.
I don't know how good a damage dealer you claim to be, but on PUGs the average Cruiser pilot isn't exactly optimised for damage output. And even if they WERE optimised, the extra Tactical BOFF abilities and Console slots available to your average Escort (never mind the differences in raw Damage output between beams/cannons and Dual Heavy Cannons, or factoring in Tactical Captain Buffs) make that a difficult figure to reach for your average Cruiser.
Therefore the problem is NOT your teammates being "bad players" if they lose aggro in such a scenario, the problem is that YOU are not adjusting your gameplay to a new type of enemy behaviour.
Finally, let's examine the benefits of your moving-into-1km-range choice:
Let's assume for the sake of argument that you've got a brilliant setup and can inflict twice the damage of anyone else on the team under normal circumstances:
Original Team damage output with everyone at @6km:
6*X Damage at 6km = 6*0.65 = 3.9
Team damage output with 4 teammates @6km and you @1km:
4*X Damage at 6km = 4*0.65 = 2.6
2*X Damage at 1km = 2*1.00 = 2
Total damage inflicted = 4.6
(realistically, with damage from abilities such as 'Gravity Well' and Fighters ignoring the distance limitation; I doubt you'd end up inflicting that much more damage than the average teammate... but let's stick with the "best case" scenario here)
So yes, damage inflicted goes up [by 1-(3.9/4.6) = 15.2%].
But as mentioned above, you have a high potential for your tank to lose aggro, meaning that Donatra will fire at you and cloak. If she spends longer that 15% of the duration of the fight cloaked (less than this in practice, due to her insane shield regeneration rate effectively reversing the damage inflicted on her) your team will end up killing her more slowly than if they'd just stuck to the "safe" keep-her-more-than-5km-away method.
TL; DR: Sticking to the 5k method is proven, reliable and at worst only lowers team damage output by 27.5% to 35%. One high-dps teammate closing to 0-1km is risky and does not drastically speed the fight up (best-case above: fight is sped up by 15.2% if the aforementioned teammate has ridiculously good DPS, the tank is insanely good and Donatra never cloaks).
- Focus on Target
- Have fighters deployed (they will follow her... cloaked or not).
- Cloak seeking torps
- Get close to her (by using any of the above).
TBR as well.
It homes in on her nicely whilst cloaked, with a big pointy beacon of blue light.
But if you decide to take TBR, just be sure to run it at low AUX so you don't push her all round the map like some of the typical thick PUG teammates.
There've been several occasions where a team member has decided that pushing Donatra ~20km away is a wonderful idea. By the time the slow cruisers catch up to her, (i) she's recovered a good deal of health and (ii) she's probably diverted her attention to an Escort, fired at it (bonus points if it was one-shot) and recloaked.
This is wrong. I have tested this many times and can confirm that Donatra will only cloak if the ship with the highest aggro is less than 5km from her.
It is very clear that Donatra is designed to be tanked by a ship with high Threat Control staying at the 5-10km range with the other ships pounding on the ship from the rear. I have done this multiple times in a cruiser tank build and she has never cloaked even with 4 tactical escorts blasting away with their full arsenal.
This!
I have successfully followed this run like a rabbit approach with my ship in full aggro control and she never cloaks. Only once did I get too far away and an escort stole aggro from me and she cloaked.
If everyone stays back 5km she will not cloak at all.
That's one way of doing it. Generally only good if your team has extremely low DPS, otherwise get close behind her and blaze away. She'll cloak once in a while but so what? Unless you're doing very little damage her regeneration is negligible and will give your team a chance to repair and get CDs ready. Best of all it'll be an interesting fight instead of a long range tank and spank. Just be sure to constantly be racing behind her.... she's very squirrely for her size!
Sorry but having done this upteen times i can tell you point blank a group never needs to stay outside 5KM if it can actualy complete this. It's also unresonable to expect it, Cruisers with their broadsides and decent numbers of weapons slos can happilly run away from her all day, Escort's actually need to turn to face, a full volley would require the escort to start much furthar back than 5KM to avoid slipping inside 5KM. As the above chart shows (assuming it's accurratte), beams start matching cannons at 7KM out and cruisers pack more of them, (while escorts get better abilities). The escort likliy still has the advantage at 7KM, but if they're running in from 10KM to 5KM the advantage over a crusier is going to be very small. At which point you might as well not be there, another crusier would get the job done just as well and be more resilient.
The fact is in real terms an escort that isn't firing from inside 5KM is a LOT worse off than one thats furthar out because the buiffer zone it needs to make it's run is just so disadvantageous. Besides, if she cloaks, so bloody what. It dosen't matter. Eitheir you can kill her or you can't. Staying way back isn't going to change that and just makes it go even slower becuase everyones DPS is through the floor, (Well unless there's a death of escorts anyway).
Since you didn't actually quote anyone, I'm going to assume you're replying to me because you mention a "chart" (technically I didn't post a link to a chart but a spreadsheet, however it's the closest thing I can see to a chart in this thread and is also the only post so far that's actually substantiated by parsed numbers)
Sorry but having done this upteen times i can tell you...
Firstly, I wouldn't start off a post like that by bragging about how many times you've run a certain task force and using that as the sole basis for your argument.
The word "umpteen" implies a number somewhere in the late teens to twenties. There are plenty of people, myself included, who have successfully completed KASE hundreds, if not thousands of times. Most people I know who are in that ballpark prefer to run with premade teams, the STF runs becoming part of their regular fleet gameplay or just as a means to farm EDCs/Dilithium. Personally I tend to stick with PUGs, mostly because of the extra challenge involved in getting lumbered with a group of largely incompetent players and still being able to pull off a win (though probably also partly because of the Blackadder effect...)
point blank a group never needs to stay outside 5KM if it can actualy complete this. It's also unresonable to expect it, Cruisers with their broadsides and decent numbers of weapons slos can happilly run away from her all day, Escort's actually need to turn to face, a full volley would require the escort to start much furthar back than 5KM to avoid slipping inside 5KM. As the above chart shows (assuming it's accurratte), beams start matching cannons at 7KM out and cruisers pack more of them, (while escorts get better abilities). The escort likliy still has the advantage at 7KM, but if they're running in from 10KM to 5KM the advantage over a crusier is going to be very small. At which point you might as well not be there, another crusier would get the job done just as well and be more resilient.
Fine.
Let's start at the top:
Assuming you have a decent tank and nobody in a high-dps escort decides to go on a "rambo" run... then no, your team doesn't all need to stay outside 5km, it just makes it a lot safer for teams where aggro control is not locked down hard.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the team should be trying to "run away" from Donatra. The goal isn't to get away from her, but to keep her at a certain distance - this is called "kiting". Providing the person with aggro stays outside 5km she will not cloak, the reason you don't want to be further away is that your damage output starts to drop off more noticeably- therefore the "sweet spot" is to keep her between 5 and 6km.
You don't "hit and run" - you park and fire, only backing away slightly if she changes target and makes a move towards you. There's no "making a run" involved here. It's actually very disadvantageous for the team to be moving about much when fighting Donatra because it makes it much easier for someone to make a mistake and momentarilly pull aggro and move within 5km of her.
Keeping Donatra at least 5km from you at all times can be accomplished in a large variety of ways - movement debuffs such as Eject Warp Plasma/Vent Theta Radiation/Gravity Well/etc are the safest method. Chroniton Torpedos are less reliable but can still be made to work with Multiple Projectile DOFFs. Energy drains such as Tyken's Rift, Plasmonic Leech, Aceton Assimilator, Power Siphon Drones or even Polaron Weaponry can be used to lower her Engine Power and thus slow her movement to manageable levels. Personal movement buffs such as Evasive or APO are another method. Pushing abilities such as Tractor Beam Repulsors are yet another although they need to be very tightly controlled in order to be beneficial instead of detrimental.
So yes, it's possible for a cruiser to orbit around Donatra and keep broadsiding her without using any extra powers - but many of the above abilities can allow an Escort to tank Donatra without turning a single degree. I do it regularly.
The fact is in real terms an escort that isn't firing from inside 5KM is a LOT worse off than one thats furthar out because the buiffer zone it needs to make it's run is just so disadvantageous. Besides, if she cloaks, so bloody what. It dosen't matter. Eitheir you can kill her or you can't. Staying way back isn't going to change that and just makes it go even slower becuase everyones DPS is through the floor, (Well unless there's a death of escorts anyway).
I've covered the "run" bit above, but the bit in red is just so utterly wrong that I had to address it particularly.
The whole issue at hand here is that bad PUGs can't kill Donatra.
They can't kill her because they ignore the fact that she doesn't cloak if they stay 5km away. They fly close to her, gaining a slight damage buff from reduced range, and then she shoots her megabeam at one of them and cloaks.
Even if (and we're discussing a bad PUG, so it's a big "if") the megabeam doesn't kill anyone, Donatra stays cloaked for a considerable period of time. During this time, she regenerates shield strength at a very high rate, and hull a bit more slowly. By the time she decloaks again, chances are that all the damage the bad PUG has done has been healed. The result is that the PUG can't make noticeable headway against her (and being oneshot by her megabeam probably doesn't help morale much!) and eventually people begin to ragequit.
If someone on that PUG takes it upon themselves to stay 5km away from her and hold aggro (and I have been that person, hundreds of times now) she doesn't cloak, and the team are able to chip away at her until she dies. This is how bad PUGs can be made to win that STF with just one decent player on the team.
Bad PUGs need just one "decent" person to stay 5km away and tank Donatra because nobody else on that PUG can do enough DPS at closer range to pull aggro off the tank. On teams with better players, chances are that someone else's DPS will be much higher than on that bad PUG and you're left with a choice:
(i) The high-DPS ships will all have to stay 5km away from Donatra in case they pull aggro off the tank. This will drop their Damage output by around 25% compared to flying at 1km away from her, but will prevent her from cloaking and therefore speed up the fight.
(ii) Everyone but the main tank (who remains 5km away) closes in and blasts her. Everyone apart from the tank does maximum DPS, but you run the risk of her cloaking a few times if aggro lock is temporarilly lost (if the "tank" has extremely good DPS combined with high investment into Threat Control, and all other teammates have no investment into Threat Control, this may never happen...)
(iii) Everyone closes in to point blank range and and blasts her. Technically the team will do very high spike damage, but Donatra will cloak regularly and the fight will drag out for a long time unless you have some means of completely preventing her from cloaking (and in my experience about the only thing that can accomplish this is a lot of stacked energy drains and/or disables).
Firstly, I don't PUG. Most elite space STFs we do are with the fleet now, as I don't have much use to run space STFs anymore for "stuff"
If we have a cruiser with threat control able to hold Donatra that is great, but generally they don't. Even in a channel PUG it doesn't happen often. The 5km is slow and stupid.
1. Attack Donatra, let her cloak, she won't cloak right away so throw some damage out.
2. Use fighter or other tricks to track her, find her in 15s and open fire, she'll uncloak completely unprepared, no high end weapons, AoE attack
3. Her cloak seems dependant on when she first cloaked, if you break it fast she can't cloak again for a while, just destroy her then and there, its easy.
This method is faster than any 5km runs I've ever seen, even from players with higher DPS averages than people in our fleet.
Being an escort at 5km and having agro is ridiculous, you can't do anything, and if no cruisers are using threat control the minute you can stop running to stay out of 5km range you get it back again.
Firstly, I don't PUG. Most elite space STFs we do are with the fleet now, as I don't have much use to run space STFs anymore for "stuff"
If we have a cruiser with threat control able to hold Donatra that is great, but generally they don't. Even in a channel PUG it doesn't happen often. The 5km is slow and stupid.
1. Attack Donatra, let her cloak, she won't cloak right away so throw some damage out.
2. Use fighter or other tricks to track her, find her in 15s and open fire, she'll uncloak completely unprepared, no high end weapons, AoE attack
3. Her cloak seems dependant on when she first cloaked, if you break it fast she can't cloak again for a while, just destroy her then and there, its easy.
This method is faster than any 5km runs I've ever seen, even from players with higher DPS averages than people in our fleet.
Since you "don't PUG", I'm going to assume your teammates are at least semi-competent.
That being the case, together your team likely has sufficient levels of damage output to kill Donatra despite regular cloaking. If no one person on the team is sufficiently equipped/skilled to reliably hold aggro on their own, it then becomes a question of whether your "aggro pullers" all sitting 5-6km away and doing constant damage (albeit 8% to 35% less than their maximum output, depending on weapons loadouts) is faster or slower than letting her cloak and trying to keep within 1km of her for maximum spike damage.
For many teams, particularly those with low Damage output (or certainly low SPIKE damage output!) that tradeoff is worth it.
Being an escort at 5km and having agro is ridiculous, you can't do anything, and if no cruisers are using threat control the minute you can stop running to stay out of 5km range you get it back again.
I'd suggest that it's more ridiculous to state that staying at 5km and holding aggro implies that an Escort can't do anything...
In a typical STF Escort build, versus a single target I deal ~40% of my damage via Torpedos and ~60% via Energy Weapons. Torpedo damage is unaffected by range, so if I sit at 5-6km I can expect my total damage output only to be reduced by about 18% (0.4+(0.6*0.7)). If I'm flying my Armitage, the damage dropoff is lessened even further due to my fighters' damage being unaffected by me sitting further back.
"Tanking" as an Escort in such a situation would therefore trade approximately 15-18% of my damage, and let my teammates wail away on Donatra to their hearts' content without any fear of her cloaking. A marginal tradeoff in damage, in exchange for a vast decrease in fight time, is simply good tactics.
Comments
Actually, they do work.
I know for a fact that the Tracking Torpedo DOES track Donatra while cloaked. A joke with my friends, I call it "Tinkerbell" as she goes wandering about until she hits.
While the gasses and grapler do not stop the cloaking, their effects such as snaring do stay on her.
I think his issue is the fact against normal enemies those abilities decloak them and let you start whaling on them again, whereas it does nothing against scimitar dreadnaughts (not just donatra, but ALL scimitars).
So I'll say what was said earlier. The Scimitar-class Dreadnaught has a PERFECT CLOAK. It leaves no emissions of any kind and has no weaknesses that the normal cloak does. So it won't be vulnerable to the stuff a normal cloak is.
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- Focus on Target
- Have fighters deployed (they will follow her... cloaked or not).
- Cloak seeking torps
- Get close to her (by using any of the above).
Let's examine that argument for a minute:
At 5k-6k distance, Beams dropoff to 84%-80% of their maximum damage (attainable at 0-1km), and Cannons to 72.5%-65%. Details of other distances can be found here.
If everyone else stays at a "safe distance" of 6km and you move into 1km, two things happen:
(i) Your Cannons inflict 50% extra relative damage: moving from 65% of their maximum output to 100% of their maximum output.
(ii) Your teammates who you "expect" to hold aggro over you now have to compete with you suddenly generating 50% extra threat.
The "Threat control" skill works by multplying the threat generation of your inflicted damage. If you were to sit at 1k distance to a foe, in order to hold aggro over you; a typical tank taking 6 ranks of threat control (for 184% threat generation) sitting at a distance of at 6k distance would need to inflict:
with Cannons: 1/(0.65*1.84) = over 84% of your damage output.
with Beams: 1/(0.8*1.84) = over 68% of your damage output.
I don't know how good a damage dealer you claim to be, but on PUGs the average Cruiser pilot isn't exactly optimised for damage output. And even if they WERE optimised, the extra Tactical BOFF abilities and Console slots available to your average Escort (never mind the differences in raw Damage output between beams/cannons and Dual Heavy Cannons, or factoring in Tactical Captain Buffs) make that a difficult figure to reach for your average Cruiser.
Therefore the problem is NOT your teammates being "bad players" if they lose aggro in such a scenario, the problem is that YOU are not adjusting your gameplay to a new type of enemy behaviour.
Finally, let's examine the benefits of your moving-into-1km-range choice:
Let's assume for the sake of argument that you've got a brilliant setup and can inflict twice the damage of anyone else on the team under normal circumstances:
Original Team damage output with everyone at @6km:
6*X Damage at 6km = 6*0.65 = 3.9
Team damage output with 4 teammates @6km and you @1km:
4*X Damage at 6km = 4*0.65 = 2.6
2*X Damage at 1km = 2*1.00 = 2
Total damage inflicted = 4.6
(realistically, with damage from abilities such as 'Gravity Well' and Fighters ignoring the distance limitation; I doubt you'd end up inflicting that much more damage than the average teammate... but let's stick with the "best case" scenario here)
So yes, damage inflicted goes up [by 1-(3.9/4.6) = 15.2%].
But as mentioned above, you have a high potential for your tank to lose aggro, meaning that Donatra will fire at you and cloak. If she spends longer that 15% of the duration of the fight cloaked (less than this in practice, due to her insane shield regeneration rate effectively reversing the damage inflicted on her) your team will end up killing her more slowly than if they'd just stuck to the "safe" keep-her-more-than-5km-away method.
TL; DR: Sticking to the 5k method is proven, reliable and at worst only lowers team damage output by 27.5% to 35%. One high-dps teammate closing to 0-1km is risky and does not drastically speed the fight up (best-case above: fight is sped up by 15.2% if the aforementioned teammate has ridiculously good DPS, the tank is insanely good and Donatra never cloaks).
TBR as well.
It homes in on her nicely whilst cloaked, with a big pointy beacon of blue light.
But if you decide to take TBR, just be sure to run it at low AUX so you don't push her all round the map like some of the typical thick PUG teammates.
There've been several occasions where a team member has decided that pushing Donatra ~20km away is a wonderful idea. By the time the slow cruisers catch up to her, (i) she's recovered a good deal of health and (ii) she's probably diverted her attention to an Escort, fired at it (bonus points if it was one-shot) and recloaked.
This!
I have successfully followed this run like a rabbit approach with my ship in full aggro control and she never cloaks. Only once did I get too far away and an escort stole aggro from me and she cloaked.
That's one way of doing it. Generally only good if your team has extremely low DPS, otherwise get close behind her and blaze away. She'll cloak once in a while but so what? Unless you're doing very little damage her regeneration is negligible and will give your team a chance to repair and get CDs ready. Best of all it'll be an interesting fight instead of a long range tank and spank. Just be sure to constantly be racing behind her.... she's very squirrely for her size!
The fact is in real terms an escort that isn't firing from inside 5KM is a LOT worse off than one thats furthar out because the buiffer zone it needs to make it's run is just so disadvantageous. Besides, if she cloaks, so bloody what. It dosen't matter. Eitheir you can kill her or you can't. Staying way back isn't going to change that and just makes it go even slower becuase everyones DPS is through the floor, (Well unless there's a death of escorts anyway).
Firstly, I wouldn't start off a post like that by bragging about how many times you've run a certain task force and using that as the sole basis for your argument.
The word "umpteen" implies a number somewhere in the late teens to twenties. There are plenty of people, myself included, who have successfully completed KASE hundreds, if not thousands of times. Most people I know who are in that ballpark prefer to run with premade teams, the STF runs becoming part of their regular fleet gameplay or just as a means to farm EDCs/Dilithium. Personally I tend to stick with PUGs, mostly because of the extra challenge involved in getting lumbered with a group of largely incompetent players and still being able to pull off a win (though probably also partly because of the Blackadder effect...)
Fine.
Let's start at the top:
Assuming you have a decent tank and nobody in a high-dps escort decides to go on a "rambo" run... then no, your team doesn't all need to stay outside 5km, it just makes it a lot safer for teams where aggro control is not locked down hard.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the team should be trying to "run away" from Donatra. The goal isn't to get away from her, but to keep her at a certain distance - this is called "kiting". Providing the person with aggro stays outside 5km she will not cloak, the reason you don't want to be further away is that your damage output starts to drop off more noticeably- therefore the "sweet spot" is to keep her between 5 and 6km.
You don't "hit and run" - you park and fire, only backing away slightly if she changes target and makes a move towards you. There's no "making a run" involved here. It's actually very disadvantageous for the team to be moving about much when fighting Donatra because it makes it much easier for someone to make a mistake and momentarilly pull aggro and move within 5km of her.
Keeping Donatra at least 5km from you at all times can be accomplished in a large variety of ways - movement debuffs such as Eject Warp Plasma/Vent Theta Radiation/Gravity Well/etc are the safest method. Chroniton Torpedos are less reliable but can still be made to work with Multiple Projectile DOFFs. Energy drains such as Tyken's Rift, Plasmonic Leech, Aceton Assimilator, Power Siphon Drones or even Polaron Weaponry can be used to lower her Engine Power and thus slow her movement to manageable levels. Personal movement buffs such as Evasive or APO are another method. Pushing abilities such as Tractor Beam Repulsors are yet another although they need to be very tightly controlled in order to be beneficial instead of detrimental.
So yes, it's possible for a cruiser to orbit around Donatra and keep broadsiding her without using any extra powers - but many of the above abilities can allow an Escort to tank Donatra without turning a single degree. I do it regularly.
I've covered the "run" bit above, but the bit in red is just so utterly wrong that I had to address it particularly.
The whole issue at hand here is that bad PUGs can't kill Donatra.
They can't kill her because they ignore the fact that she doesn't cloak if they stay 5km away. They fly close to her, gaining a slight damage buff from reduced range, and then she shoots her megabeam at one of them and cloaks.
Even if (and we're discussing a bad PUG, so it's a big "if") the megabeam doesn't kill anyone, Donatra stays cloaked for a considerable period of time. During this time, she regenerates shield strength at a very high rate, and hull a bit more slowly. By the time she decloaks again, chances are that all the damage the bad PUG has done has been healed. The result is that the PUG can't make noticeable headway against her (and being oneshot by her megabeam probably doesn't help morale much!) and eventually people begin to ragequit.
If someone on that PUG takes it upon themselves to stay 5km away from her and hold aggro (and I have been that person, hundreds of times now) she doesn't cloak, and the team are able to chip away at her until she dies. This is how bad PUGs can be made to win that STF with just one decent player on the team.
Bad PUGs need just one "decent" person to stay 5km away and tank Donatra because nobody else on that PUG can do enough DPS at closer range to pull aggro off the tank. On teams with better players, chances are that someone else's DPS will be much higher than on that bad PUG and you're left with a choice:
(i) The high-DPS ships will all have to stay 5km away from Donatra in case they pull aggro off the tank. This will drop their Damage output by around 25% compared to flying at 1km away from her, but will prevent her from cloaking and therefore speed up the fight.
(ii) Everyone but the main tank (who remains 5km away) closes in and blasts her. Everyone apart from the tank does maximum DPS, but you run the risk of her cloaking a few times if aggro lock is temporarilly lost (if the "tank" has extremely good DPS combined with high investment into Threat Control, and all other teammates have no investment into Threat Control, this may never happen...)
(iii) Everyone closes in to point blank range and and blasts her. Technically the team will do very high spike damage, but Donatra will cloak regularly and the fight will drag out for a long time unless you have some means of completely preventing her from cloaking (and in my experience about the only thing that can accomplish this is a lot of stacked energy drains and/or disables).
If we have a cruiser with threat control able to hold Donatra that is great, but generally they don't. Even in a channel PUG it doesn't happen often. The 5km is slow and stupid.
1. Attack Donatra, let her cloak, she won't cloak right away so throw some damage out.
2. Use fighter or other tricks to track her, find her in 15s and open fire, she'll uncloak completely unprepared, no high end weapons, AoE attack
3. Her cloak seems dependant on when she first cloaked, if you break it fast she can't cloak again for a while, just destroy her then and there, its easy.
This method is faster than any 5km runs I've ever seen, even from players with higher DPS averages than people in our fleet.
Being an escort at 5km and having agro is ridiculous, you can't do anything, and if no cruisers are using threat control the minute you can stop running to stay out of 5km range you get it back again.
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Since you "don't PUG", I'm going to assume your teammates are at least semi-competent.
That being the case, together your team likely has sufficient levels of damage output to kill Donatra despite regular cloaking. If no one person on the team is sufficiently equipped/skilled to reliably hold aggro on their own, it then becomes a question of whether your "aggro pullers" all sitting 5-6km away and doing constant damage (albeit 8% to 35% less than their maximum output, depending on weapons loadouts) is faster or slower than letting her cloak and trying to keep within 1km of her for maximum spike damage.
For many teams, particularly those with low Damage output (or certainly low SPIKE damage output!) that tradeoff is worth it.
I'd suggest that it's more ridiculous to state that staying at 5km and holding aggro implies that an Escort can't do anything...
In a typical STF Escort build, versus a single target I deal ~40% of my damage via Torpedos and ~60% via Energy Weapons. Torpedo damage is unaffected by range, so if I sit at 5-6km I can expect my total damage output only to be reduced by about 18% (0.4+(0.6*0.7)). If I'm flying my Armitage, the damage dropoff is lessened even further due to my fighters' damage being unaffected by me sitting further back.
"Tanking" as an Escort in such a situation would therefore trade approximately 15-18% of my damage, and let my teammates wail away on Donatra to their hearts' content without any fear of her cloaking. A marginal tradeoff in damage, in exchange for a vast decrease in fight time, is simply good tactics.
So many people dont know that and dont listen if you tell them