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Suggested changes for Extend shields
falloutx23
Member Posts: 456
With the recent change and rewind of this last patch, many great ideas have been thrown out there that I believe would have a better chance of being looked at if it was in it's own thread. This thread is to talk about a change to extend shields. While we can talk about the synergy of this ability with other abilities, lets keeps the thread on topic as to how to better balance extend shields and keep the ideas of how to balance other abilities in their own threads.
My hope is to have a CIVIL discussion. Most the community agrees that this ability could be better balanced, so lets throw out some ideas.
Here's mine:
Make the uptime and the cd the same as TSS and HE. There's no reason this ability should last 30secs and be able to be chained back to back with the next one. By making it the same cd as TSS and HE, it means if you blow all three at once to heal someone, in 15 secs about the only thing you'll have left to throw at a teammate is a spot heal and an A2SIF (which I believe needs to be changed as well). This will make healers have to manage their HOT heals better or possibly be caught with their pants down after 15 secs.
My hope is to have a CIVIL discussion. Most the community agrees that this ability could be better balanced, so lets throw out some ideas.
Here's mine:
Make the uptime and the cd the same as TSS and HE. There's no reason this ability should last 30secs and be able to be chained back to back with the next one. By making it the same cd as TSS and HE, it means if you blow all three at once to heal someone, in 15 secs about the only thing you'll have left to throw at a teammate is a spot heal and an A2SIF (which I believe needs to be changed as well). This will make healers have to manage their HOT heals better or possibly be caught with their pants down after 15 secs.
Post edited by falloutx23 on
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CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
That said, shields are the bread for the butter. Certainly extend is nice, but the constant circle jerk is annoying, but at least it can be snuffed without a snb verse the other heals.
PS. Please change back to the old extend graphics. Much easier to see the extender to bump.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
You are talking about ONE pve mission that could 1 easily be rewritten if its that big a deal... and 2 doesn't require you to use es... its nice but hardly the only option.
I run that fleet mission in my escort... I hit the freighter with a tac team and a Transfer shield strength 2... I then engage my scatter and destroy all the npcs.... its not like its a hard mission to complete. The NPCs that have the annoying p2w are annoying sure... but still ES is far from required. In that mission...
Honestly if it's the best way to do that by a country mile (which I agree ES is).... well perhaps the skill is just a tad OP for PvE and deserves a nerf.
1) 15 second up time. 30 seconds is way to long
2) Reduce the cool down to match other 15 second heal skills 45 seconds. with global to match... meaning no more back to back extends... but 2 copies will save the healer 15 seconds.
3) change the gfx back to the old ones so we can tell who the heck is casting the extend again.
4) Knock it down one level in the abiliy line. Making ES 3 a lt. commander skill. I know I know this is a buff... but coupled with the UP time reduction and chaining removal... I think putting it on par with Transfer Shield Strength in terms of cost would be in order.
5) This one will cause some contraversy.... Make ES self castable.... I know that makes no sense... but Cough Cough Transfer Shield Strength. Yes this could make escorts a bit more tanky.... which we don't need... but that is a BFI doff issue almost solely. IMO it makes no sense for one to be self castable and not the other. It would make for many more "tank" builds that could perhaps share some heals though.
20 Seconds of Uptime. I would also scale the resistance back by 8 percent on each level of ES. I would also revert the graphic back to the original Extend shields effect, so that people can actually see when it is being thrown down range.
Not this still born abomination that completely ruins the effectiveness of every other single heal in the game.
I really like the idea of them being moved down a tier, as that'd also provide a nice buff to anyone with a spare Ensign ENG slot laying around, and help to alleviate the ridiculously narrow selection of Ensign Engineering powers (5 powers, 4 with a group global cooldown, and 1 that has a group cooldown with its Tactical and Science equivalents).
Hey, maybe the Galaxy would be slightly more attractive as a group anchor. Slightly. Then again, dat Odyssey. The Excelsior would get a nice bump, too, since it'd have a great power for that Ensign-level slot.
"Last Engage! Magical Girl Origami-san" is in print! Now with three times more rainbows.
Support the "Armored Unicorn" vehicle initiative today!
Thanks for Harajuku. Now let's get a real "Magical Girl" costume!
Not yet it hasn't. I'm watching a shared CD on my eng right now.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=411481
Terribly sorry. This is embarrassing...
"Last Engage! Magical Girl Origami-san" is in print! Now with three times more rainbows.
Support the "Armored Unicorn" vehicle initiative today!
Thanks for Harajuku. Now let's get a real "Magical Girl" costume!
It's alright.
By the way this is the literal First and Only time they have ever decided "oh TRIBBLE this really is a horrible idea".
Assuming he's not lying to us.. this is a sign of improvement over at the lolcryptic studios.
For everything else, I would suggest waiting for BFI and most importantly TT changes before tweaking ES. ES has almost no shield healing, it is almost completely a resist ability. Without permanent TT redistribution, it is significantly weaker.
Don't change too much at the same time, or you wont know which changes work and which don't.
Err, blockade, pahse 2 of the 15 man and NWS ALLL require it, and thats just off the top of my head the most vital and heavilly used. It's also not a question of what is the best way.
You use chained ES or you write the misions off. There's nothing else that works effectivlly, belive me i've tried. I've also yet to see cryptic ever re-balance a mission, klet alone 3 of their most major peices of content to such a massive degree as would be required.
Yes ES is too strong to some degree but short of a massive mision re-work that i don't see as ever happening where never going to be able to reduce sustainable cross healing +resistance amounts.
Well lets see... blockade is easily winnable with OUT ES .... so there goes the needed part.
NWS... Yes I will agree beating wave 10 with out es is likely impossible... I will say this though as someone who has gotten half way through the final wave a few times... its not winnable anyway... and if it is it shouldn't be... NWS name says it all I think.
I think 30 seconds Extends is way too long. Either change that, or the cooldown. And if you are extending, shouldnt something negative happen to your own shields? If Im sharing my umbrella with you, then Ill get a little more wet myself.
they should just change the hue of the new red graphic the RSP green, so when a noob gets extended, he knows it s a good thing. green around your shields= good!
Remove the shared cool down
If it stays I drop exts3 for a better ability to
Benefit me
Dropping my defense to save another is not
A option, defense is all a Eng has
It suks to be you other guys is all I have to
Say it's up to the tacs and science guys if
They want engs to help them survive cryptic
Only listens to Tacs anyways
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
If you can keep the freighter alive through all the damage intake it gets without ES your doing somthing that every build prmutation i've ever tried can't do, without ES your stuuck with TSS as your only sheild heal and it's nowhere near enough. And even 60K of hull heals in 30 seconds, (I can do 50K in 15 as a burst), won't do it as hull healing.
The groups do too much damage too fast to simply burn down in time without major healing on the freighter and TBR + Grav well only generally stops 2 out of 3 of the big ships. the other two just tend to hit EPTE and zoom back into the fight. The fact is you have no choice in blockade but to heal the freighter. Don't heal it, it dies. And ES is the only heal thats upto the job.
NWS IS supposed to be beatable, (devs made explicit statments on this, it's just supposed to require a really carefully put togetehr team to do it), and in my experiance you need ES WAY before wave 10.
There's also the fact that ES is a heal that can't be used on self, it needs to be a damm sight more powerful than any other heal in any case, or it's just not justifable as such a high teir ability with such a large downside.
I agree mind that currentlly ES is a bit too good. I really should be able to get away with using TSS or Hull heals to keep the targets alive in these peices of content. ES should simply reduce the number of abilities i have to use, not be the only viable option.
It's especially bad in 15 man starbase. I've seen entire teams hurling TSS+all Team Abilitie+HE+Aux2SIF at the thing and it stll goes down. 2 players each with 2 copies of of ES2, and a copy of Tac team apice can bassiclly cut the SB's damage intake massivlly, add on a few hull heals to deal with bleedthrough and such like and it's trivial to keep the base healed with just 2 players, (albiet you do have to completly ignore the enemy and not draw aggro to make it work with just 2 healing the base).
My own thoughts on this skill run in the direction of many ground weapons. They have procs who's magnitude or duration is reduced vs. other players. The heal on ES may not seem like much, but it is actually quite a good heal overall, even if TSS outdoes it on paper in terms of burst. TSS is pretty much the only skill with more raw SHP/second in healing on it, so ES still ends up healing nice amounts of health. Drop off that healing amount and much of the issue in PVP would dissappear. You might even be able to get away with a straight magnitude nerf overall but i doubt it.
Also as somone else allready said, the tac team interaction dosen;t help as it means even the lv 2 vershion heals an effective 640SHP/s. Add on resistances and that meas you need 2.6K DPS before you even break the healing on it.
I'd disagree however on the resistances beign the issue. My PVE cruiser with EPTS running allready hits 59% resistance, by combining an Aux battery with TSS i can cap my resistances on my own for a short period, a resistance nerf would only end up hurting PVE, (the resistance is the biggest reason it's so good there, it's the only way to get decent sheild resistances on NPC's. The heal is still important as it's te only continual over time sheild heal option we have, but the resistances are what makes it so good), since PVP is so burst focused that by the time TSS wore off the worst of the burst would probably be over.
Whys that? TSS and he have the same timers and seem to work out ok, although they are a lower tier. With this change, I wouldn't be opposed to seeing this slide down a tier though to give the ens eng boffs one more option
Instead of talking about nerfing ES, i would really like to see some changes to TT, BFI etc. No reason to ***** about ES.
Unlike TSS (pre-soon to be nerfed ES dofff) ES has zero benefits for the extender, and it has hard counters.
So either bring some friggin PSW, change targets or coordinate better.
RSP is still way more problematic then ES.
Starting with Fixing ES is trying to fix resists from the wrong end, imv
P.S.: One more post where i agree with Jorf, dammit
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Hitting someone with a TSS, extend, and TT creates a pretty damn hard target to penetrate. I just don't see the need for the extend to last another fifteen secs longer than the TSS. Look it the other way around. Imagine if TSS and HE also lasted 30 secs
That change happened sometime before 1.2. Because when I had my sci in a starcruiser she had 2x ES and could chain them.
TSS has a larger magnitude heal and can be used on self. HE would actually benefit from being double duration given the current state of hull tanking.
Given ES has just over half the magnitude of the same teir TSS in healing per second and it's trivial to cap out somones resistances with cross healing without ES any kind of nerf like that would make ES totally useless becuase TSS would be an outright supiriour skill with it's doubled heal magnitude and the ability to be used on self.
So, not only do you think ES is fine the way it is, but you'd like to see Hazard last 30 secs and be able to be chained as well?
Exactly what abilities outside of ES are you using that makes it so trivial to reach 75% resistance cap?
I had to read your post a couple of times. Are you trying to say that extend isn't that good of an ability?