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Stf difficulty increase?
kdawgenigma
Member Posts: 300 Arc User
This may not be the case, but, it seems that the difficulty of the STFs may have bumped up some. I have been killed more times this week on infected elite than the whole last month. I have noticed numerous others running these with me stating similar feelings. Some people who have gone one on one with tac cube feel squishy all of a sudden. Did something get changed and was it intentional or not?
-Rule of Acquisition #113: Always have sex with the boss.
-I am one of the many victims from the hijacked Caspian Division.
I will not let the childish acts of a criminal ruin this game for me.
-The actions of Cryptic, on the other hand......
Post edited by kdawgenigma on
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Maybe about a month ago, the boss fights all seemed to get harder and a lot less forgiving.
I remember feeling like I was making progress as a player. My PuGs getting most of the optionals. Then WHAM.
It felt like the Borg on Elite started hitting harder. The timers started acting funny on Infected and maybe the Cure, resetting with time still left. The turrets in Cure started bugging out too. Sometimes respawning as they're blown up. Respawn timers on the Infected boss room also seem much higher. The cure boss seems to kill melee like crazy now too.
The bosses don't seem to hit as hard and can be soloed. (In fact, the only time I've beaten any in the last month with PuGs relied on a science sniper tank or two to finish it. As a melee tac, I have to switch to sniping a lot more, almost as if they rebalanced things around the melee buffs.)
It almost seems to me like somebody decided to try to keep the difficulty intact while eliminating one shot mobs by nerfing the Elite Tactical Drones and bosses and buffing everything else.
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
It could well be that PuG quality is declining with the added player created channels and improved fleets, coupled with attention being focused elsewhere.
A few months ago, it seemed like I always had at least 3 solid teammates in a PuG in full Mk XII visuals. Now, I usually am lucky to see one teammate in Mk XII.
I also maintain that I see a HUGE difference between PuGs with Science and without in ground STFs and that more Science is almost always a better team.
Bud tbh here, its not the difficulty that needs fixing its the over crits on elites that need fixed then we can talk about difficulty adjustments. there is no point in setting up a good challenge if you get taken out too fast when they proc and they proc way to much from them to make them fun.
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The opinions expressed in my posts are my own views and do not reflect on any other entity(s) or person(s) I may or may not represent at the time.
I've seen far more carriers not using pets, rainbow beams, cruisers tanking less than a bop not using cloak, or players with miniguns and turret kits in stfs since S6 is out. There are also many more demons now, ie tacs in cruisers, but i guess we'll never get rid of them.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Class and ship selection SHOULD be mostly unrelated. Are you saying it causes a disadvantage?
Have been on the receiving end of numerous one shots over the past couple days myself.
-Rule of Acquisition #113: Always have sex with the boss.
-I am one of the many victims from the hijacked Caspian Division.
I will not let the childish acts of a criminal ruin this game for me.
-The actions of Cryptic, on the other hand......
The only other thing that makes STFs seem difficult is the players themselves, which which a good group, it's smooth sailing. But with a bad group, it can feel like an eternity.
Haven't noticed much difference in cure(assume that's the one you are referencing), am primarily speaking about infected. Seems to be the tac cube more than anything. Players that have been able to go solo with it are being swatted away like flies.
Of course the ridiculous death penalty timer doesn't help matters either.
/start sarcasm
"Oh, sorry guys, have to wait 2 days before I can help finish mission."
/end sarcasm
-Rule of Acquisition #113: Always have sex with the boss.
-I am one of the many victims from the hijacked Caspian Division.
I will not let the childish acts of a criminal ruin this game for me.
-The actions of Cryptic, on the other hand......
What is still relatively new and annoys me are the Isometric charges in CSE, though. Even after tweaking the damage (was always over 100k at first), I often get hit repeatedly with a 40k blow that jumps to a nearby player and back to me. Usually ending in all nearby players dead.
EDIT: Now that I think about the last few ISEs and KASEs, I have a feeling Gateways are somehow more agressive. But for now, it's just a feeling. It might be me getting less wary of them (and being punished for it).
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
Overall though I hope seasons 7 personal progression with stf's involves a system where when you do ground or space that a given person has to have achieved goals that actually classifies them as elite before getting put in a team in pugging before they can jump into it because that is the real problem is under developed players have this ability and they do not have the gear, tactics, or skills to pull off elite stf's. Even trying to get quality players from channels with the words elite or stf in them are usually full of noobs that don't have any business there and makes it very hard to find quality teams.
In the last week I have had the feeling that my dps have been lower than usual, but probabily it's me playing bad. For sure, I notice a loot of noobs: useless players with heavy damaged ships, a lot of support ships (mainly cruisers) not doing their job... many players who can't play. For example often in CSE I have to remember that is very important healing the kang, playes often spawn neghvars but do not care about it... yesterday 3 players have had difficulty in defending the kang.
In KSE often people do not care about probes, it is an easy job even for a support ship and cruiser/sci vessells captains should care about it so that escorts can use their dps to destroy gates as soon as possible... But often it's an escort that have to do it, because players care only about cubes and gates.
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
Simply because the quality of Players is better when you play Elite STFs with the guys from the various Elite Channels compared to even normal STFs in a PUG.
I agree that the Isometric Charge is OP on NPCs.
Even in my Cruisers i'm left with not much hull after these things hit, in any Escort i just go boom instantly.
But that only happens in Cure.
In Khitomer Accord i noticed that if Donatra shoots that... big green instakill thing, the area of effect is not limited to the visual effect, i was killed a few times now by it while clearly being outside of the indicated area, oh and sometimes she decloaks and just instantly fires it without any indication.
Both these things have yet to result in any of my teams failing the optional of any mission.
I am sure the STF's and Borg themsel have not been touched.
All that happened was Geko playing around with the default Mobs, and the Klingon Ships are part of that.
I don't mind if ELITE STFs get a bit harder, they have not been challenging for a while now...
but then the drop chances for the Tech should be increased accordingly.
I always said there should be a normal advanced and elite version of the STFs. Where Elite is really for the Elite players and Advanced is more aimed at PUGs.... with more forgiving timers and stuff like that.
It does. When you choose a non-dps class ship with a dps class character it means that you're trying to do things wrong. Trying to get dps with a heal boat is... dubious, because you can't. Instead of focusing on healing (which is the role of a real cruiser) they slot the wrong powers to try to do some damage they can't do in any way.
It's just facts. All tacs in cruisers are fragile and suck both at dps and survivability. They serve no role but feeling they are independant and of course it doesn't work.
In pvp the tac in cruiser will also often be the first target because it's just a guarantee for an easy kill.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
The issue is still Isometric Charges from the Negh'Vars in CSE, however CSE can still be done fast enough with either Chat Channel I regularly use.
Still can't get that IGE Optional tho. That's more or less my fault as I am an IGE noob, even with 4 really good players.
I'd chalk the idea of DPS classes up to "design flaw."
The game is not supposed to have the tank/dps/heal paradigm enforced totally. Everyone is theoretically a hybrid. Aside from Escorts for some reason and I see the problem there as being that shield tanking is underpowered (for sci) and this game doesn't really have evasion tanking.
Still, you can't DPS if you're dead. So, ideally, all three classes would have differing forms of tankiness.
Said as someone who has evasion tanked as a rogue and DPSed as a warrior for years. The trinity model is a bad model for video games and a worse model for games that involve PuGGing. And a DPS tanker and tanking scrapper in CoH.
Ideally, the model here would have been something more like RogueMonk/PaladinHunter/DruidWarrior as opposed to even having a pure DPS class. And if you have four cruisers in an STF, you might as well have five because of the lack of external support.
But where we're at, I don't think player class is supposed to have all that much influence on space. Part of why they sell ships and mostly cruisers.
Besides which, Captain background and "ship class" on the shows NEVER matched. If anything, pure builds should be what gets penalized.
Yeah. What I was discussing initially was ground and that's what the OP seemed to be referencing.
It all seems to come down to sci-tanks. More = success. Fewer = failure. My observation is that Elite Tactical Drones and bosses themselves seem to one shot a lot less and be safer to attack solo or melee but everything around them and their special abilities seem like they've become tougher as if to compensate.
FYI: I generally use a Tac, specced for melee, melee kit, 3 melee enhancing DOffs, gambling device, teammate with IDIC Tribble, swap between melee and sniper rifle.
In general, looking at Infected, the upper levels of the station feel easier, like maybe the Borg deal less damage but also are harder to kill. It's the final boss fight that feels harder, mostly due to respawn timer and the shield lowering timer sometimes resetting ahead of time.
My teams would traditionally shoot left, then right, then center. Team of three jumps right, left, back left, back right. Two stay in center. The respawns are what seems nuts along with a buggy virus timer. The whole room seems to respawn within about 30 seconds of eachother and only a sci sniper tank with team consumables can take the punishment.
In The Cure, it also feels like Borg do less damage but have higher health. And the final fight, we do four snipers and one melee tank and used to have the alternate approach of five melee. The melee tanks (including experienced ones) seem to die without ever standing in the circle. If we can keep Armus turning after that, we're okay for awhile but then everyone gets hit with an attack in rotation by Armus which almost one shots them, they pop consumables, and get killed by the next two rapid succession shots. It takes an extra shield heal to live and that again comes down to a sci sniper tank.
On the flipside, I've seen sci sniper tanks with a good supply of consumables take down both bosses SOLO after the rest of us made stupid mistakes and wiped before the boss even showed up. (Usually, two people fall in the lava and ask the rest of us to reset. The rest of us commit suicide aside from one sci tank. Traditionally, I'd commit suicide out of courtesy if anyone asks in a run. But I've stopped if there's even one sci still alive.)
STF's seem a bit harder tho, my TAC has had nothing but bad luck against invisible Borg torpedo's, and has been stiffed on all loot drops this last week.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
For example my KDF Tac used the hegh'ta for some average DPS (compared in parses with other escorts/raptors/BoPs), yet was still too fragile to survive for prolonged time the aggro of a larger number of spheres/a Tac cube/gateway... without support from the team. But, putting this Tac in a traditional beamboat Negh'var resulted in very much the same average DPS (now notably higher than that of other careers' cruisers), much better survivability and some bonus ability to heal others (2 sets of shield/hull heals). Not to mention it's far easier playing a beamboat than a front-focused ship.
What I'm trying to say is that the combination Tac-cruiser may be the most useful and most easily playable. It may be just me being unable to play fast enough to use an escort properly (I'll find that soon enough, planning on buying some "true" escort and raptor), but playing with a cruiser on my Tac has for now brought much benefit without any noticeable drawback. So please, don't slam Tacs using a cruiser.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!