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Tactical Captain Buffs and Sci Powers
matthew486dx
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
So we all know that Sci powers have gotten nerf'd so many times in so many ways.
Most recently, Photonic shockwave. Someone was talking about tens of thousands of damage being done by a min/maxed build in Photonic Shockwave III, with a Tactical Captain at the helm of a ship with a Cmdr Sci boff slot.
So, TPTB, have nerf'd sci skills into being completely useless, for Sci class Captains.
I think we're not getting to the root of the problem. Tactical Captain buffs.
Attack Pattern Alpha, Tactical Fleet and especially, Going Down Fighting, which deals more damage the lower the hull, and if you shield tank, and keep your hull below 50, this is a massive percentage boost
They buff *ALL* damage done by your ship and your powers. Including Sci powers. So all those over powered Sci ships, were probably flown by Tactical captains. I know I've done it.
I've flown an Atrox as a Tactical Captain, I used Feedback Pulse III in PvP. With buffs active, and my skill and consoles in particle generators, Aux power to max, My FBP III was sending back 2.2 damage to the attacker. And 50% of that, bypassed shields. So, 1.1 of the attackers damage, is going straight to their hull. Even if it was an escort, with RSP I active, they would be dead in a matter of moments.
Forgive the quality of this video, it was a quick test I did to show my Fleet what I had done.
I've since learned new settings to improve rendering and fix the temporary blackout that happens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuH38esvFeU
People keep saying that Tactical is better than the other three classes. This is why.
Tactical Captain buffs, should only buff damage done by WEAPONS.
What does a tactical officer know about improving the damage done by particles and other crazy science magic like Gravity Well? It's not canon. It's not game balance. This is what should be fixed.
If tac buffs, buff only weapons and not Damage Dealing Sci powers, then sci powers could be rebuffed and be more effective for Engineers, or Sci captains in Science ships.
And Tactical captains in science ships wouldn't be so OP.
Most recently, Photonic shockwave. Someone was talking about tens of thousands of damage being done by a min/maxed build in Photonic Shockwave III, with a Tactical Captain at the helm of a ship with a Cmdr Sci boff slot.
So, TPTB, have nerf'd sci skills into being completely useless, for Sci class Captains.
I think we're not getting to the root of the problem. Tactical Captain buffs.
Attack Pattern Alpha, Tactical Fleet and especially, Going Down Fighting, which deals more damage the lower the hull, and if you shield tank, and keep your hull below 50, this is a massive percentage boost
They buff *ALL* damage done by your ship and your powers. Including Sci powers. So all those over powered Sci ships, were probably flown by Tactical captains. I know I've done it.
I've flown an Atrox as a Tactical Captain, I used Feedback Pulse III in PvP. With buffs active, and my skill and consoles in particle generators, Aux power to max, My FBP III was sending back 2.2 damage to the attacker. And 50% of that, bypassed shields. So, 1.1 of the attackers damage, is going straight to their hull. Even if it was an escort, with RSP I active, they would be dead in a matter of moments.
Forgive the quality of this video, it was a quick test I did to show my Fleet what I had done.
I've since learned new settings to improve rendering and fix the temporary blackout that happens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuH38esvFeU
People keep saying that Tactical is better than the other three classes. This is why.
Tactical Captain buffs, should only buff damage done by WEAPONS.
What does a tactical officer know about improving the damage done by particles and other crazy science magic like Gravity Well? It's not canon. It's not game balance. This is what should be fixed.
If tac buffs, buff only weapons and not Damage Dealing Sci powers, then sci powers could be rebuffed and be more effective for Engineers, or Sci captains in Science ships.
And Tactical captains in science ships wouldn't be so OP.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Matthew@Matthew486DX -> Eng Lvl 60
FAW/Tank: Tactical Oddyessy T5-U, Tank/Heal Science Oddyessy T5-U, DPS Cruiser: A2B Battlecruiser T5-U, DPS/Debuff Tholian Recluse T5-U
Fleet Admiral: Angry Tribbles
Matthew@Matthew486DX -> Eng Lvl 60
FAW/Tank: Tactical Oddyessy T5-U, Tank/Heal Science Oddyessy T5-U, DPS Cruiser: A2B Battlecruiser T5-U, DPS/Debuff Tholian Recluse T5-U
Fleet Admiral: Angry Tribbles
Post edited by matthew486dx on
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Comments
No, the OP is right.
Think about it. If you 'buff' science you also end up buffing tac captains IN science ship. It'd be a double buff for them.
Tactical capt. should only buff weapon damage.
The problem is, the devs have so stupidly put all damage inflicting science abilities as 'kinetic' damage that they cant really have tac capt abilities buffing kinetic and energy alone.. that is why a tac capt firing a grav well 3 makes a science capt in a sci ship cry with shame.
The irony of it is that this was not an issue pre-f2p when science abilities had their own damage type: anomaly/exotic if I remember correctly.
That needs to return. The counter to those damage types should be through countermeasures skill and consoles.
A Sci Captain in a Sci Ship should be a viable option for playing the game. Every one of our abilities has been nerfed, and we kind of just suck right now.
Like what matthew486dx said, what does a tactical officer know about creating Gravity Wells or Tyken Rifts?
the real problem is a lack of synergy with science captains and science ships, they should have a way to buff the non knetic damage abilities in ways the tactical captains cant, that way sci ships can get the buff they need, shield striping abilities that deal drain damage and not energy or kinetic damage would be viable again, and taci wouldn't be the only really effective captain type to put in a sci ship like it is right now.
engineering captains are terrible, and science captains are only good in a premade. both are overdue for a buff, thats why you are all coming to the conclusion that tac/sci is overpowered. really, a tac captain in absolutely everything works best right now. the other 2 captain types need to be brought to a tac's level. a tac is perfect as is, and is the only interesting type to play right now imo, nerfing it like that would destroy what i and many others enjoy, buffing the other types up to a tacs level would just make them fun too.
Take a Tact and Sci character. Use the same ship, equipment, character skills and bo skills. What you find is the Sci character gets smoked in his own ship with technology that he/she understands better.
Great balance.
And separating science abilities out of Tactical's damage boosts is the first step to doing this.
I fully support the original idea. Once Tacticals are longer confusing the issue with massive bonuses to damage, we can then properly address the balance of science abilities.
There's a reason most of my chars are Sci.
There is no 'interesting synergy' for tac captains when in other ships. Its something that is broken and gave tac captains an advantage they were not designed to have.
It is not worthless. A tac captain in a science ship STILL has the same damage output via science that SCIENCE captains have now.
He has extra oomph with the guns on the ship and if that wasnt enough, he can lower timers AND damage resists on the target.
Incorrect. A tac captain in a science ship has EXACTLY the same heals and debuffs in a science ship that a sci captain has now. Heals has nothing to do with the tac capt damage buffs.
Yes, a tac capt is the damage dealer..with weapons. In a science ship his guns will do a lot more damage than a sci capt will put out while still doing the same exact damage the sci capt does via science abilities currently.
Actually even more so since sensor analysis significantly boosts weapon damage.
there are no non-kinetic damage abilities now. All science damage abilities were switched to kinetic. There is also no lack of synergy between sci ships and sci captains.. the abilities work (albeit majorly nerfed) but the stats those abilities are based upon have been neutered and in some cases rendered useless.
sci ships dont need buffs. The sci abilities need to be fixed from their broken condition.
I disagree. Engineering and science captain are balanced and do not need a buff. A science captain in an escort enhances the damage via science debuff and can add damage and hate with holo fleet. Engineer capt can make an escort put out good damage with his power manipulation abilities. However, neither sci nor engineer can match or exceed a tac captain damage output in an escort.
On the other hand, tac capt always makes cruisers and sci ships perform better WITH engineering and science boff abilities because of that universal damage boost.
It is precisely that universal damage boost, which only came about post-f2p when the game was dumbed down significantly, which is the source of the imbalance.
There is no way to 'buff' science and engineer either. The captain abilities ARE balanced because they were made pre-f2p ..when the game was balanced.
What changed was the damage type and stats the abilities were based upon.
By RETURNING science and engineering damage abilities to their own damage types the tactical captain will not have the extreme bonus to performance in other ship types that he has now.
The great dumbing down of the game in the F2P patch did one thing : it boosted tactical captains to ridiculous levels.
Why?
The old skill tree looked like this:
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/wordpress/wp-content/gallery/star-trek-online-review-images/STO%2021.jpg
Tactical captains back then had the same decision to make as science and engineering captains when it came to how they dealt their damage. They had to CHOOSE which weapon type to put points in.
Post F2P that was squeezed into the dumbed down 'all energy, all projectile' categories we have currently.
The effect? By training just energy weapons they became superb at all energy weapon types.
Science captains? Still had to choose a minimum of 3 stats between 8+ different stats so they could use just ONE boff ability effectively. If a sci ship wants to use 2 sci abilities to fight back forget it, theres no way to skill the ship for it unless you ignore basics like power settings or weapons or healing abilities.
Engineers lost a bunch of their skills to science (shield based) and their primary stats for boosting engineering abilities were absorbed into science category..which doesnt matter anyway... but the primary thing engineers lost in the F2P patch was that their offensive abilities became impotent due to the buffing of tac team and attack pattern abilities. Before a tac team 1 had no hope of counteracting a boarding party 3. Now? LOL... click! its gone.
a tac focusing on the weapons damage on a sci ship is doing it wrong. its all about the TBR damage and FBP damage is some one is dumb enough to kill them self with it. the weapons are just gravy, and should proboly have transphaiscs in them for extra direct hull damage. tac skills not buffing the science skills absolutely makes the tac/sci combo worthless, i shouldn't have to explain this to someone who actually knows what their talking about.
yes there is. tach beam and charged particle burst deal drain damage, its not any energy type and is only resisted by power insulators. FBP doesn't deal kinetic damage ether, its an exotic damage that is resisted by 'all energy' armor. tac buffs don't buff the drain damage, a sci captain that could buff drain damage would make the sci/sci combo as good as it was back before the skill tree change, science they would have their bread and butter back.
science captains are crucial in team battle, alone they cant exploit their debuffs to their full potential, only a sci/escort comes close. they are fine, working as intended. engineers are 100% terrible. compared to a tac captain, they gain 2 self heals, 2 worthless energy skills, and have maybe a quarter the damage dealing potential. they are like the easy difficulty setting for this game, its the hardest to get killed in, and getting killed breaks immersion. :eek: a LONG time a go an eng/escort was a good combo, before doffs and sets. now their extra survivability is redundant, and they cant even spike as hard as a tac cruiser.
oh no, not holo fleet :rolleyes:
yes. they are doing their job. a tac in a cruiser can be set up to deal a large amount of damage over time, at the experience of team support. for pure support, an eng doesn't have anything that helps him do his job beter then a tac captain in his place, other then self heals to fall back on. something that is again made redundant with the bonuses of doffs and sets. this is why engineers are terrible. instead of nerfing a tac captain so its terrible too, engineers should be buffed. and the synergy between sci captains and sci ships should be buffed, along with the synergy between eng captains and cruisers. a tac has synergy with all energy and all kinetic damage.
tac buffing not just weapons is a new thing? thats not how i remember it.
balanced is a very strong word. these sci skills ALWAYS were the same damage type they are now. the only real change was the insulators skill canceling out shield drain and kicking energy drain in the nuts. the damage skill are same as always.
all that did was make all energy types as cheap as phasers and disrupters to use. and benefited all captains in all ships. several tactical consoles on top of the skill point bonus make the difference, you need both.
on the current sci skill tree you spec super cheap flow cap to buff drain and some weapons proc, farely cheap partial generators to buff kinetic and exotic damage, graviton to buff pushes and pulls but is counter intuitive for dealing damage, the rest are expensive and not terribly needed. decompiler is good with VM, and buffs tric stun and PSW stun by a split second, so not needed unless VM is a big part of your build. the other buffs or resists confuses and jams, so worthless, and inertial dampeners just makes it easier for TDR to damage you. everything you need as a sci captain in a sci ship is tier 3 or below, and some times decompilers. what are you complaining about, seriously. on my tac cruiser i have to fully spec into flow cap and particles to if i want to buff my weapon proc, tetryon glider, EWP, TBR, all at the expense of other skills. poor sci captains :rolleyes:
your not remembering things right. tt forever removed the always worthless boarding party, and all the debuffing attack pasterns, even before they distributed shields. the shield skills being in sci or eng doesn't mater, they all get speced into by everyone.
You're asking for changes that would significantly affect Player vs. Environment gameplay, which it doesn't matter there if it's overpowered.
No changes should be made just because of how unbalanced it turns out to be in PVP.
-The Milkshake Song: Vulcan Edition
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Because that's how we got into this mess in the first place. All sci abilities got nerf'd because of PvP and now they are useless in PvE, unless you min/max and sacrifice all your subsystem power to Aux.
Particularly against the borg. A lot of sci skills don't make a dent on the borg. They seem to have a lot of resist, as well as their large HP. Scramble sensors has no effect on cubes or the gateway, and it only confuses spheres for like a few split seconds, if at all.
If you put five intrepids, with sci characters, in ISE, I garrantee you the results would be god awful.
If you put five defiants, with Tac captains, in ISE, everyone gets the optional.
And yes, IMHO, it would still be possible for Five cruisers and engineers to get the optional in ISE. Assuming the whole team was competent.
---
Fire on my Mark is a Debuff. FYI.
And as for engineering being useless, they are tanks and healers. If you think they're useless, you're doing it wrong or don't understand it. My main is Engineering. I do my job. I'm a TANK and a HEALER. I fly the Sci Oddy variant. I still pull around 3,000 DPS. But according to parsers, I run about 1,500 HPS.
Engineering Team III heals 11,500 HP and with my DOFFs, I pop it every 15 seconds.
Aux to SIF III, with my Aux power up, gives about +40 damage resistance for 10 seconds and +9,000 HP, naively with 15 second cooldown. My Extend Shields II, gives 27% Resist to Shields, and 159 shield regen every sec for 30 seconds, 15 second cooldown after 30 seconds. I also have Hazard Emitters I, and Transfer Shield Strength II, I used 2x EPtS 1 and 2x RSP 1 to keep myself alive, along with my engineering heals RSF III and Miracle Worker III.
I can support and maintain the health of 2-3 players at a time with my hotkeys, I am quick. I can keep a team alive in mobs, or take all the aggro from a tac cube and tank it on my own. Cube aggro'd in ISE? No problem. I distract it and pull it away while 4 others work on the remaining spheres and gateway. I am spec'd into threat generation with pride I can survive any PvE encounter. If I have died, I made a serious mistake or got caught up typing.
My mines and FAW keep OHKO HY Plasma away for the most part, but since the last nerf of the borg dreadnaught plasmas, I can now survive most HY plasma hits. Not many cruiser captains can say the same.
This is getting off topic here, I think my point is made. BOTTOM LINE: Science
This isn't a thread about PvP per say. It's a thread about how Science was Nerf'd SO MUCH, *because* of PvP, it is now useless, In PvE, which is a sad state of affairs.
Matthew@Matthew486DX -> Eng Lvl 60
FAW/Tank: Tactical Oddyessy T5-U, Tank/Heal Science Oddyessy T5-U, DPS Cruiser: A2B Battlecruiser T5-U, DPS/Debuff Tholian Recluse T5-U
Fleet Admiral: Angry Tribbles
ya, don't be blaming the state of science on us, thats nothing but slander. we have never been happy with the state of science since the new skill tree. the new skill tree had all new science buff and resist skills, and all the attributes of each of the science abilities was hooked up to them in various way. particle generators buffs the damage of TBR, wile graviton generators buffs the push of TBR for example. the end result, not all thanks to the resist skills, was science abilities being a shadow of their former self, especially shield drain. its talked about all the time by us pvper how much it needs to be buffed. we even brought up how bad it is in pve with science, thats the buzz word that trigger action, when the pve crowd isnt happy. they must be so busy that they still cant adress it, and this has been a problem since season 5 launch. we have to beg, make videos of broken abilities in action, to get even an acknowledgment of the problem, wile we see pve problem gets hotfixed that night.
why ignore what i already said about it? its a debuff that has a counter with a 66% up time. i don't need your information.
well good for you. that sounds like the same setup my tactical officer sometimes flys in his ktinga. but he can also deliver actual spike damage wile doing it. did you think i was joking when i said a tac officer can do everything in a cruiser that an eng can?wile also dealing measurable damage? aside from mentioning redundant self heals, my tac does all of that. gonna call for tac abilities to not buff cruiser weapons next?
Nobody here expects damage to be the same as an escort, but they do expect they're skills to actually do something.
Instead all sci skills have been disgustingly nerfed into uselessness cuz of tacs who took advantage of a broken system in PvP.
there's not 1 sci crowd control or debuff skill that's more then a minor inconvenience, and hull/shield heals alone, for exactly the same reason, are nowhere near a solution to keep up with an escort dmg output.
Even worse! it's actualy the escort that survives better. the ridiculous defense bonus from its maneuverability + the fact u can slot in a few heals make it better in every way then flying a sci ship.
and with all the nerfes flying sci is getting to be pointless in PvE aswell.
So a tac in a cruiser is good because of higher damage and can still heal/tank.
Then a tac in a sci ship would still be good because of higher damage and could still heal/debuff/ect even if his capt. abilities didn't improve sci ability damage.
Providing of course that sci abilities were worth using to begin with. Other than in a carrier in pve at-least.
And yeah, engineer abilities need some serious help.
i dont know where your coming from with that. nobody here expects damage to be the same as an escort, including myself. you would know that if you read my posts. there was no active nerf, it was the switch to the new skill tree that left everything easily resisted and overal more weak. it had nothing to do with pvpers or tac captains.
sci/sci can still befuddle pretty good. not good enough but its something. vm with doffs leaves people with 3 down subsystems without needing any aux, graviton buffed repulsers pushes players far from team aid, rift with the doff can actually drain you down to almost nothing , doffs with gravity well do actually pose a threat, feedback pulse is always at least somewhat nasty, holding someone in a tractor beam for the escorts to shoot leaves the target with a large defense penalty. they have strong hull an shield heals, the captain skills are good at throwing a hull debuffs, of course subnuk, and the scattering field gives a good amount of protection. sci fleet gives a bunch of helpful shield resistence too
notice how this is all only really any good in a team setting. the sci ship has always been fairly worthless on its own, with the exception of the tac/sci combination. if your not happy with sci ships, and you only pve, thats the problem.
sci captains need a beter synergy with their ship. tac captains have a synergy with all energy and kinetic damage currently, there is nothing like that for ether sci or eng.
science needs a synergy with drain damage that is only defended by insulators, and perhaps beter stun and pull strength and duration. they would be able to do thier sci/sci job beter that way. engineers need... well i guess synergy with heals, less cooldown or double the effect from hull repair skill or something. perhaps energy levels too. sci and eng are simply below the tac's level. scis are of course great to have in teams for at the very least subnukes.
in the character creation screen it should list each captain types special synergy
for tacs it should say that all damage buffs effect all energy and knetic damage.
for sci it should say they receive an extra 99 bonus skill points to flow cap, graviton gens, countermeasures, and decompiler
for eng it should say they receive an extra 99 bonus skill points to hull repair, shield emitters, structural integrity, and electro plasma systems
really, even if you made it so tac skills didn't also effect sci ship skills, or also eng captain skills like DEM and EWP, tacs would still deal more damage by a large order of magnitude and still be the best type to have around. you would just do away with tac/sci being viable in any way, and make tac/cruisers less fun, dropping tac buffed EWP and using tac buffed DEM can be sweet. so thats why i think eng and sci need the buff i propose.
this would make the eng captains the best healers bar none, have the highest energy buffs from EPtX, and the most hitpoints by far as well. that would make eng much more viable in all ship types.
sci would be able to deal terrible glider damage, and strip shields like they used too. their other abilities would pull much harder, push much harder, and disable much harder too. it would be left to the tacs to deal damage and nothing else.
or you could nerf tacs till it doesnt mater what captain type you are because all 3 suck.
Because of this boff damage abilities have been weakened, or atleast have not been buffed, because of the potential damage they would then have with tac captains would be unfair primarily in PvP.
So camp 1 is calling for a nerf on tac captain abilities and hoping the boff abilities will get a buff as well making them just as strong as they currently are for tac captains for all captains.
And camp 2 simply wants the other captain abilities buffed so they also have a DIRECT impact on boff abilities, possibly simply making specific captain/ship combos all be equally broken so to speak.
Am I right so far?
Here is the thing though, what camp 2 wants does not fit this game's design philosophy. Everything in this game is designed around limiting the number of things that can modify other things and making sure they are additive bonuses not multiplicative. When you use rapid fire it adds its damage to the weapons and when you use go down fighting it also adds its damage it the weapons without (not 100% sure) increasing the damage increase from rapid fire at the same time. However, it does directly increase (as before) the damage of say gravity well. This is also what makes APB so stupidly powerful in STFs as it does multiply ALL damage dealt to target's hull.
You cannot balance a damage ability so it is useful for both a sci and a tac captain in a sci ship at the current time. Can't be done. It is either too strong with the tac, or too weak with the sci.
Camp A's method would promote variety, allowing various combinations of captain abilities (if they were balanced to begin with) to work well with various ship types, boff ability combinations, and builds.
Camp B's method would promote Hyper Specialization even more than we already have, where if one desires to be a shield stripper its Sci captain or bust. Damage of any kind? Tac or bust. And so on.
And finally a science ship's guns will deal just as much raw damage as a cruiser's thanks to SA with the same amount of weapon power so its not like the tac abilities go to waste.
PPS: And does anyone really think anyone at cryptic cares about balance nearly as much as the posters in this thread? When was the last time something was 'tweaked' for balance purposes instead of simply 'nerfed into oblivion' or ignored if not game-breakingly overpowered?
Okay so we get to the root of the problem right here. It's nice that you finally came out and admitted it.
All science abilities need to be buffed so that science captains can fly their own ships effectively. However if they did that, tac captains would be overpowered in science ships.
The best solution, is to change the damage type of science abilties to exotic, and make sure tac captains can only buff energy and kinetic with their captain's abilities.
Anything else just means that we keep things as they are - where tac captains can fly escorts and science ship extremely well, and science captains can't fly anything with any effectiveness.
No one is saying that tac captains shouldn't be able to fly escorts well. Why are you going up in arms at the thought that science captains should be able to fly their own ships well?
Sci captains should be more powerful in a sci ship than any other captain. Likewise, a sci ship should be more effective under the command of a sci captain.
If tac captains wish to disagree they should ask themselves how they would feel if a tac ship was more devastating under the command if a sci captain than a tac captain. I think the tac captains out there would be super mad if that happened. (I think there will b a lot of tac caotains who wouldnt be mad about this because it benefits them.)
In all honestly I have characters from all career paths, and I feel nerfing the tactical's is simply not the answer, I am more in favour of the science and engineering classes getting a buff. Perhaps restrict it so tacticals can't fly science ships, I don't know but something I feel needs to be done for the science career. Speaking of career paths I also feel that they need to be overhauled, to make them more unique from one another, a tactical shouldn't be able to get away flying a science ship or an engineer in a escort. Just goes to show that a change needs to be made to make these classes more unique with more specialised playing styles.
And yes I don't think Cryptic cares about balance, haven't for a long time, their answer for everything is either nerf it or it's an exploit, so nerf it. I think it goes to show they really don't play the game much, don't know the mechanics of their own game, a lot of players seem to be way more knowledgeable that the people who make the game are.
all those skills VM, GW, TR all have hard counters now as for Feedback ... lol just lol... a tac will kill u be4 his shield drops from it so thats like~ 5k dmg at best.
and lets not forget cool downs which are just.... fail
1 min feedback, viral, syphon, tachyon,jam , disrupt and 45secs GW, TR, PSW
30 secs RF, 30 BO, 30/45 patterns, SST and u get a skill to bring all of them to half cooldown
Forgot something: a doff that has 50% chance to reduce cooldown on RF by 20secs... SOMEONE AT CRYPTIC MUST HAVE BEEN HIGH WHEN HE/SHE MADE THAT ONE.
What he doesn't want to understand is that in the multivector assault ESCORT he can load gravity well 1 and outdamage a science captain fully spec'd in graviton and particle ..using gravity well 3 @ full aux.
Yes. Its THAT significant. The tac capt buffs plus LT CMDR and CMDR level buff powerups (omega) stack up to give gravity well 1 an absolutely ridiculous damage output. Far more than grav well 3.
...while at the same time buffing all the escort's weapons. Peachy little situation there.
A little history lesson for him as well since he seems to conveniently forget how tac captains have been the constant source of science nerfs:
After the F2P patch changed the damage types a patch came along which had a lil' glitch in it.
That glitch was that warhead tac consoles (generic + kinetic) actually boosted gravity well.
(Do note this was BEFORE cryptic also broke graviton stat.. this was back when gravity well still pulled ships in HARD and kept them in its maw)
Sci captains, having seen their gravity well damage drop by 50% post F2P due to the kinetic resists affecting the gravity well damage now.... jumped at the chance to return to glory.
Science ships flew around with just two tac consoles ... that brought them almost...almost... back to their old damage.
But then tac captains begun to whine that ... get this... its SO damn ironic... TAC captains in SCIENCE ships were dropping murderously overpowered gravity wells that were boosted by the tac capt abilities + warhead consoles.
I'm talking gravity well 3's that would do 2.5k damage to hull PER TICK after resists.
Elite Khitomer STF for example, when the sphere + probe swarm spawned a single tac capt in a sci ship just dropped a boosted grav well 3 and that ALONE killed all the ships and held them inside the well.
In PVP (which is why the complaining came about) the whining was of sci ships killing people and they had 'no way' to defend against such massive damage output. (OH THE IRONY).
What did Cryptic do?
They completely screwed up gravity well in three separate stages.
1- They made the tac consoles not boost grav well damage. That effectively removed sci captains in sci ships from the grav well damage equation.
..but that wasnt enough, the whining continued. Tac capt in sci ships STILL could boost the kinetic damage to ridiculous levels...and grav well 3 was just too damn good to give up.
2- They said 'oh if the problem is the damage per tick then lets weaken the gravity well pull so ships can get out and not take so much damage' ...
so, in one patch... the gravity well lost about 75% of its tractor strength. Probes were sucked in once and then let go. The damage per tick went 2.2k (tac capt dmg boost minus tac consoles)... next tick was 1.9 as the probe moved away from the centerpoint... then 1.5.. then 1.2.. and so on. Sci capts oth, were doing 1.1 at first tick. This is why science ships literally vanished from the game after this patch.
But the whining continued. Why? Tac capt in science ships still did very high damage in pvp even though ships could now easily exit the grav well. On top of that, the sci ship with tac capt also did darn good weapon damage (6 beam arrays + grav well = great dps). Sci ships had disable subsystem engine, could load tractors and a whole slew of stuff to hold ships down.
So Cryptic put the final nail in the science ship's coffins:
3- In one patch, ships gained 75% resists to all remaining science abilities via power insulators.
Now, tac captains in science ships suddenly did less damage in a sci vessel than they could in their escorts. The great migration back to the gunships took place.
What was left was science captains piloting science ships that had no more science abilities to use. What was left was completely ineffective for its intended role and science as a skill set just CEASED to matter when it came to damage.
Oh, and a few patches later they completely broke the graviton stat and gravity well was absolutely useless even as a crowd control ability for like 3 months until they finally bothered to fix it.
Also, in one of your previous posts you said repulsors and feedback dont do energy/kinetic damage. They do. Repulsor is kinetic damage that bypasses the shields. Feedback pulse SEEMS to reflect the damage type that triggered it because hull resists lower the damage (when there is no shield to further lower it via the 50/50% dmg split).
Tachyon Beam and Particle Burst are drain abilities not 'damage types'. Its a silly distinction since they 'hurt' the shields but fact is, if there are no shields and you use the ability it wont hurt the hull as any 'damage type' would. Oh, and for these two abilities, if you had not bothered to test it... a SINGLE point in insulators lowers the drain amount of a 9 flow cap / 9 particle burst spec sci ship @ max aux by 50%. Its THAT freaking ridiculous. Now you know why nobody uses those abilities. Read above to see WHY they nerfed. :mad:
In the mean time, who gives a damn how PVP ruins anything in the PVE game? Just stop begging for them to ruin it further just because one class/ship combo is too powerful.
-The Milkshake Song: Vulcan Edition
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Cryptic is now PWE. The zstore is all that this game is about now. Damage and explosions and other power-ups is what sells not the fixing of free science abilities or the broken stat system.
The change to F2P alone proves it. The whole game was utterly dumbed down and simplified for one purpose: to open the market for powerups in the store. All you need to do is count how many zstore items are focused on weapons and ship design (escorts) vs how many are peddled to science and engineers types.
This is not a case of the market adjusting to the buyers, its the environment being modified to bottleneck the buyers into the market PWE can sell the most.
i actually said this.
and ya thats thanks only to the new skill tree, NOBODY called for that to happen
cryptic always considered the warhead console buffing sci abilities a bug that needed fixing. its called a warhead console after all. but no it must be the tac captain boggy man again. :rolleyes:
the pull from gravity well was nerfed down to nothing long before FTP, and then buffed a bit back to were it is now. tac captains were never using gravity well as a main damage dealer anyways, except maybe in stfs, if anyone was complain about tac boosted gravity well it was the noobs that considered everything overpowered, i don't recall ever seeing that complaining on the pvp forum.
its TBR thats the favorite, and FBP when someone launched an alpha strike at them. the role of a tac/sci is very limited, and tricky to deal damage in. because thats basically all they are really good for. you can try to CC in them but your skill tree would have to favor graviton over particle. its just a build to kirk around in and blow through stfs in, it has no function in an actual team setting.
as gimped as it may be now, sci/sci still is the key to getting kills in matches were there is a lot of talent to go around. the damage and healing can cancel each other out indefinitely. all this vaunted tac buffed abilities you all are so holier then though railing against get lost in the healing ether. they might as well not use their tac buffs at all. the sci debuffs and a strong tractor repulser push with a vm to further make someone helpless puts a target in a position were healing is out of range and the target is vulnerable. in a lot of matches without that no one would ever die.
sci/sci has never been good, or had a function outside of a team like that, and that has nothing to do with tac captains. what sci/sci can accomplish, only it can accomplish, matches literally cant end without them. its kind of hilarious that the complain here is that tacs in sci deal more damage then sci in sci. that is SO not the point. their score board numbers arent supposed to be great, they are supposed to put someone in the position that they can be killed by others.
but is universally agreed at that skill level that sci needs to be able to do all the things it used to again. the grav well needs to hold better, the shield striping needs to work, and the stuns need to stun longer then a fraction of a second.
I'm not asking for Tactical to be Nerf'd. I'm asking for Tactical to not Buff Science.
It's THAT simple. It's not a nerf. It's a bugfix.
Tactical should not buff Science.
Wouldn't it be bull TRIBBLE if spec'ing into Attack Patterns suddenly doubled the damage of Tyken's Rift? It just doesn't make any more sense than Attack Pattern Alpha making Photonic Shockwave death and destruction to anything that comes near.
Matthew@Matthew486DX -> Eng Lvl 60
FAW/Tank: Tactical Oddyessy T5-U, Tank/Heal Science Oddyessy T5-U, DPS Cruiser: A2B Battlecruiser T5-U, DPS/Debuff Tholian Recluse T5-U
Fleet Admiral: Angry Tribbles
But for tac captains that is a 'nerf'. Taking away kinetic console buffing a KINETIC DAMAGE ability grav well (post-f2p) is not a 'nerf' but a 'fix'... but it is perfectly ok for tac capt. buff ability to buff the gravity well and ALL other science abilities that use damage stat PLUS the ship's own guns..all at once.
:rolleyes:
wrong point of view:
1) first of all, GW is a sci ability executed by a sci BOFF
2) the captain of a ship, regardless of his career only give order... even if in the game based on your career you have specific abilities.
I think the problem is different: why does a sci captain command a tact/eng ship? why does a eng captain command a sci/tact ship? why does a tact captain command a sci/eng ship?
I think a captain should have the command only of ship based on his specific career... es a sci captain should only command a sci (or science oriented) vessell... think about " it is a waste of knowledge assigning a tactical ship to a sci captain and it's a waste of knowledge assigning a sci vessel to a tactical captain" because a sci captain has a poor knowledge about tactics and a tact captain has a poor knowledge about physical phenomena...
We should change that... and I think this change will improve a good mixing of players both in pvp and pve.
I think sinergy should be preserved based on team only... Do you want that sinergy? than you need to be in a mixed team: tact captain in tact oriented ship, eng captain in eng oriented scip and sci captain in sci oriented ships.
I have both a tact captain using an advanced escort and a sci captain using a LRSV... The tactical captain deal great damage... not much more. The sci captain can be a specialist in debuff or heal (or a good mix of both) but can't deal a great damage. IMHO the tact toon is effective and good balanced (deal a great damage but fragile enough)... the sci toon instead is too much fragile compared on it's effectiveness: ability like GW generates a loot of threat and the shield of LRSV can be stripped really fast. I thnk sci vessels and some sci ability should be improved (GW is good to stop ships but not to deal enough damage, many sci abilities are uselless, sci vessell should have more shields) and sci captain should have some specific healing ability.
no strange career/ship mix...
p.s.
I hope my english is not so bad!
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
*wipes a tear from my eye* That...that is amazing, and wonderful idea. I do mean that, I REALLY really like that.