i acted like an TRIBBLE and called the system devs unqualified after these changes, but they didn't make RSP and ES unusable like i originally thought. i apologize. after lots and lots of pvp with the way things are now, it all works fine. some stuff works over the top fine even, i'll get to that. judging by their reasoning for doing what they did, i don't think they really accomplished it, but what ended up happening anyway was beneficial to reeling in healing.
RSP- version 1 lasts 9.4 seconds, unless your under gonna die anyway amounts of focus fire, that ~5 seconds of no EPtS time isn't game breaking, an an actual disadvantage to using 1, and an incentive to use i higher end version. RSP2 and RSP3 don't have the problem at all.
ES- now only cruisers that can slot 2 copies can effectively use this. actually they cant, they get to use it as soon as it comes off cooldown, not exactly when it is needed. this in a way is a nerf to ES being too good
that also means no more escorts with it, no more sci with it except the nebula, all good things. too much ES is game ruining, there needed to be actually down sides to running this so a premade cant comfortably put it on every ship, this is done by having it fowl up EPtS coverage.
AtS/AtD- hull tanking definitely got buffed with this, wile shield tanking and healing took a bit of a hit. good, it was a bit... uneven. 2 copies can be cycled every 10 seconds for full up time on the resist, or movement buff. pretty cool
AtB- now its on the system cooldown with AtS/AtD, it doesn't interfere with EPtX powers anymore at all. even without tech doffs, that makes this skill not useless anymore. but umm, this might not have gotten the testing it needed. run 2 copies of this with 3 purple tech doffs... thats all im gonna say about that.
DEM- not hooked to Aceton Field anymore, not that that ever held it back. DEM currently does not deal its extra damage when an over time cannon or beam ability is in use, severely limiting its ability to... do anything. its tiny but cumulative damage is dealt over such a long time that anyone with AtS can cancel it out just by cycling it. it would be a great skill for tac cruisers if it actually worked with CRF and FAW.
Aceton Field- this skill is proboly worse then boarding party, at least that can practically sub nuke your cooldowns. aceton assimilaters are awesome, and do something completely different from this skill. maybe that should not be the case? maybe shooting someone that casts Aceton Field on them selves should emit the damageing energy and shield draining pulses, it would be a close range discouragement to escorts, but anyone staying out of range of the pulses wouldn't be effected at all.
PH and HE- more hull tanking buffing, before it was always on with AtS, but this is spike resists. overall, good move with hopefully less ES around in premades.
MES, JS and CPB -now these are free of interference, a good thing. i think MES should have a battle cloak like effect, its just a dead station slot when ever red alert is on. its a MUCH weaker stealth then an actual cloak, and only heavy specing will make you invisible to anyone.
JS, useful for a bop thats trying to get away, ANNOYING when some pug idiot your about 5 seconds away from killing you uses it on you. just prolonged the inevitable dude. no good opinion of these sensor debuffing skills, AMS most of all.
CPB should be buffed by both particle skill and flow cap skill. it really needs to be twice as powerful, tach beam too. so basically the skill would have an extra 99 skill points buffing it. if you used 4 flow cap for it before, its not like you can also place 4 more particle gens too at the same time. other then on deflectors, theres no way to exploit the double skill benefit. this would require probably no rebalanced of insulators too, so the least amount of work to try to get to a fix.
VM/SS- VM is soooooo powerful with doffs. but everything on your active roster has an opportunity cost. this skill is proboly just right, it needs to be this powerful. im running into more and more highly buffed scrambles, and im tempted to put skill points in sensors again. fighting a sci that can hit you with both is definetly a chore to deal with, you cant clear both by yourself too.
TR, ES- now you can use these at the same time, and with doffs your fed sci can be nearly as effective as a kdf carrier with siphon pods.
the changes to sci has made dueling with a good sci ship basically impossible, built right they can purma disable your ability to fight back better then ever. this is helpful in a team setting too, a single sci ship can hit someone in ways it took multiple to do before, and now 2 different scis can do it to 2 different opponents. theoretically, this could be the sci buff we have been waiting for, and the stronger sci's debuffing is, the weaker the healing output can be, the pendulum is swinging in the right direction.
still hoping CPB and tach beam get fixed too. but those fully buffed plus the tractor beam boff and tetryon glider could actually be quite effective, even against us 9 to insulators guys.
the only change as far i as i know being reverted was the epts and extend shields shared cooldown. everything else is staying.
i understand what they were trying to do, but to remove extend shields from every ship except a cruiser is not a good idea and quite frankly extend shields needs a different downside.
maybe a shield power cost, or a shield regen cost or if whatever youre shielding is damaged you take some of the damage etc etc.
making it so that its a forced choice between keeping yourself alive or helping out the team (extend shields is the ONLY teammate only power) 99% of people will take the keeping yourself alive option.
the only change as far i as i know being reverted was the epts and extend shields shared cooldown. everything else is staying.
i understand what they were trying to do, but to remove extend shields from every ship except a cruiser is not a good idea and quite frankly extend shields needs a different downside.
maybe a shield power cost, or a shield regen cost or if whatever youre shielding is damaged you take some of the damage etc etc.
making it so that its a forced choice between keeping yourself alive or helping out the team (extend shields is the ONLY teammate only power) 99% of people will take the keeping yourself alive option.
welp. your a d&%^%#$. seriously bro, extemnd spam ftw eh? cmon maikai i actually gave u some credit before. please stop doing pvp updates, or talking. your bias bleeds thru too hard it isnt even funny.
"forced choice" gimme a break. every ship shouldnt have extend shields. what kind of fairy tale uber healing world you live in i cant tell.
anyway if this change is reverted just another signal of the voice of total noobs and veteran tardos prevailing of the less vocal (and half quit ) minority.
You two, dontdrunk and Husanak, with your thank you threads... :P.
Joke aside, I agree with this post, even though I wonder what would have happened if rsp would share cool down with eps... I guess that would not have been as bad as many of us thought. What I still don't like is rsp's time is too long. I think 5 secs should be enough for rsp1. IMO rsp shouldn't be a common escort ability, but I may be in minority here.
Hopefully those sci changes(tach beam, cpb) will be implemented the way you suggested, it has sense to be this way. Also, what Husanak said in another thread is a neat idea: have extend shield become an engi captain ability. This way not only engis become more useful, but all this es jerk around would stop.
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welp. your a d&%^%#$. seriously bro, extemnd spam ftw eh? cmon maikai i actually gave u some credit before. please stop doing pvp updates, or talking. your bias bleeds thru too hard it isnt even funny.
"forced choice" gimme a break. every ship shouldnt have extend shields. what kind of fairy tale uber healing world you live in i cant tell.
anyway if this change is reverted just another signal of the voice of total noobs and veteran tardos prevailing of the less vocal (and half quit ) minority.
back to headshot in a game with no healing at all
what the hell is your problem? i dont even use extend shields or rsp. i have a single copy of epts1 on my wells. thats it.
stop doing pvp updates? ive been trying to find someone else to gather the patch notes and put them up. guess what. noone has done it yet.
how am i showing bias in my own opinion that the changes were the right idea but done poorly? extend shields does need a nerf and i hate how they introduced a duty officer that makes it even better at no cost to the user.
yes every ship should have the choice of extend shields if they want it. but it shouldnt be a death sentence for the user if it isnt a cruiser. it also needs to not be nearly as effective if it isnt on a cruiser. simply make it like photonic shockwave. boom thats solved. that way the level 1 is a ltcmdr and the 2 and 3 are commanders with the 3 being then made trainable by engineering captains (i dont know if it currently is).
i dont think i deserved to be called names, so in order to deserve that ill tell you to go **** yourself.
what the hell is your problem? i dont even use extend shields or rsp. i have a single copy of epts1 on my wells. thats it.
stop doing pvp updates? ive been trying to find someone else to gather the patch notes and put them up. guess what. noone has done it yet.
how am i showing bias in my own opinion that the changes were the right idea but done poorly? extend shields does need a nerf and i hate how they introduced a duty officer that makes it even better at no cost to the user.
yes every ship should have the choice of extend shields if they want it. but it shouldnt be a death sentence for the user if it isnt a cruiser. it also needs to not be nearly as effective if it isnt on a cruiser. simply make it like photonic shockwave. boom thats solved. that way the level 1 is a ltcmdr and the 2 and 3 are commanders with the 3 being then made trainable by engineering captains (i dont know if it currently is).
i dont think i deserved to be called names, so in order to deserve that ill tell you to go **** yourself.
Well, level 3 is trainable. Level 1 needs to stay at Lt. or it becomes a null choice for most non-cruisers, which lack LtC engi slots.
All the cooldowns do now, is make you choose between either tanking/healing, or having both with a slight reduction in efficiency. It prevents mindless cycling of skills. Good! Now you get an advantage of knowing what you're doing!
If there was an antonym for "dumbing the game down" this patch would be it!
(antonym=the opposite of)
Let's just hope we're not too late to avert the un-nerf hammer!
ES- now only cruisers that can slot 2 copies can effectively use this. actually they cant, they get to use it as soon as it comes off cooldown, not exactly when it is needed. this in a way is a nerf to ES being too good
that also means no more escorts with it, no more sci with it except the nebula, all good things. too much ES is game ruining, there needed to be actually down sides to running this so a premade cant comfortably put it on every ship, this is done by having it fowl up EPtS coverage.
You can make a rotating combo with 2x EptS, 2x EptX and 1x ES (and with the damage engineer doffs,only one copy of both EptX are needed) This because ES has now a 30 second cooldown of its own and you rotate the 2 different Ept's every 15 seconds, having them both almost 100% uptime. Like drunk said, the nerf is in the fact that ES needs to be activated at the same time as the other EptX. However, with the doffs, escorts can still run extends.
so:
0s: EptS
15s: EptX + ES
30s: EptS
45s: EptX + ES
We must also consider that because ES is no longer on demand, it will be probably most of the times be activated. This means that you have to pay more attention yourself when shooting an opponent: He might have an extend on him. So the escort captains have to learn to read the game also instead of just shooting around.
Well, level 3 is trainable. Level 1 needs to stay at Lt. or it becomes a null choice for most non-cruisers, which lack LtC engi slots.
Actually I'm for that. There's no reason why Escorts and Most sci ships should be carrying ES.
If you want more than 1 extends on the field at any given time. Take more than one Cruiser, or high eng station Escort or sci ship. Hey look we finally gave a use to the Akira again!
"But we lose damage then" and that's a sacrifice you'll just have to make.
Even Cruisers like say mine for example to carry 2 Extends, would have to sac a Lt Cmdr slot. Which means ET3 or Warp Plasma would have to get sacced to carry the 2nd extends. It would also give bite back to non Oddy Cruisers, as their healing could be more Resist focused, and the oddy's heals are just more raw.
I have to admit having gotten it in game the ES/EPtS change wasn't so horribad as it didn't quite work as i expected, (i was expecting ES to lock out EPtS for the full duration of it's effect plus the global CD). Thought te lack of on demand is still an issue IMHO.
That said i agree with the devs that restricting choice like that isn't great. As a meashure to adress the whole "escorts packing ES" issue. How about scrapping the current ES1, renaming the current ES2 to ES1, and the current ES3 to ES2, with no actual ES3 vershion. This neatly limits it to ships with Lt Cmdr and Cmdr Eng slots. This would limit it to Lt Cmdr and Cmdr slots only, which dosen't scratch cruisers one littile bit, (i never see less than ES2 on a cruiser and work the same way myself on my cruiser), but it would keep it off most escort and sci ships which i agree is perfectly fair.
I have to admit having gotten it in game the ES/EPtS change wasn't so horribad as it didn't quite work as i expected, (i was expecting ES to lock out EPtS for the full duration of it's effect plus the global CD). Thought te lack of on demand is still an issue IMHO.
That said i agree with the devs that restricting choice like that isn't great. As a meashure to adress the whole "escorts packing ES" issue. How about scrapping the current ES1, renaming the current ES2 to ES1, and the current ES3 to ES2, with no actual ES3 vershion. This neatly limits it to ships with Lt Cmdr and Cmdr Eng slots. This would limit it to Lt Cmdr and Cmdr slots only, which dosen't scratch cruisers one littile bit, (i never see less than ES2 on a cruiser and work the same way myself on my cruiser), but it would keep it off most escort and sci ships which i agree is perfectly fair.
Everything but the EPtS cooldown change made sense and works. It is certainly a step in the right direction for science, although there are still some skills that could use a buff (I agree with the OP on most of his suggestions).
I am ok with the revert, I would prefer to see DEVs implement legitimate solutions rather than partial workarounds. I am starting to think reducing the effect of RSP 1 and ES 1 to make them less useful is a better approach than trying to add dependency on EPtS, because EPtS is not broken as is, and people who slot ES or RSP at LCDR/CDR are basically committing their build to those powers, and should reap the benefits.
Improving Aceton and DEM would be useful, as a lack of useful Engineering skill alternatives does contribute to the problem.
the joint cd of EptS and ES (and RSP) was TRIBBLE.
I m still not sure if A2B build didn't become to powerful vis-a-vis all other cruiser builds.But thats another question.
One more time, I'm sorry that ES spoils the day of escort pilots. It'S supposed to. There are counters, and it has zero benefits for the caster, so it better stay a damn good heal.
That being said, I can see ES1 being a Lt.Cmdr. skill and ES2&3 cmdr skill.
RSP duration can be renerfed to less then what it was before the out of the blue buff it received a couple of weeks ago, fine. If you really want to rattle the cage of tanky escorts, don't punish dedicated team work and healers, how about you make RSP1 Lt.Cmdr skill. Bug just got more squishy. Let's see if people in here still think ES is to good after that.
AB and DEM need fixing regarding their effectiveness, CD issues are not what holds them back.
All in all the rollback on the changes is still the way to go. It was a poorly implemented half baked untested piece of fragrant roses.
Attack Pattern Beta, Delta and Fire On My Mark need to become effective debuffs again.
-that- is why healing is just so ludicrous right now.
Imo a much more needed change than any change to Extend Shields, is that Tac Team should only clear for 4 seconds. Not 10. At that point, FOMM APB, and APDs debuffs all become Useful and usable again in pvp. Ideally I would go so far as to say maybe TT shouldn't clear Tac Debuffs at all, but I unlike a cryptic dev do have some concept of what over stacking can do when it comes to debuffs.
This also will consequently reinstate the viabilty of Beam Boats in pvp. (such as Eng Cruisers carrying APBs, and FAW and Tac Cruisers Fedside carrying anything that isn't Cannons) as well as Torpedoes, (on a massive scale more people than just me would be carrying them :P).
Well, level 3 is trainable. Level 1 needs to stay at Lt. or it becomes a null choice for most non-cruisers, which lack LtC engi slots.
Good. It should.
Why shouldn't Cruisers be Mainline healers again exactly? And why shouldn't ships with LTC eng be you know Special, like ships with LTC Sci are?
Oh lookit, with that proposed change, and a change to TTs debuff cleansing you just made Tac Cruisers actually Appealing fedside without going for the full on single barrel cannon excelsior build.
It also makes engineers in ships that are not cruisers a little more appealing because not everyone and their brother would be mounting Extends.
TT no longer clearing for 10 seconds straight also increases the viability of ships that can't mount Heavy Cannons for dps purposes (which is something that has been an issue ever since TT changed especially with BFI doffs now), which puts Tacxcelsiors, and AC Retrofits actually appealing again. Ships that have limited tac slots (like LTC tacs), also benefit tremendously from such a change to TT. It also gives actual incentives for tacs to consider rolling in an Excelsior, as opposed to just running a Scort.
This also would raise the effectiveness of DEM again, something that is direly needed in Skilled pvp matches. It also helps Disruptor weapons in the long run. Oh and Beta, Delta and FOMM actually working again and Extends being an LTC+ skill would make Torpedoes a hell of alot scarier across the board.
i acted like an TRIBBLE and called the system devs unqualified after these changes, but they didn't make RSP and ES unusable like i originally thought.
no TRIBBLE. maybe you just need to think about everytghing and see the whole picture. or maybe dont be such an rp'er
Thanks for your feedback on this, now that you've actually played with the cooldown changes. I don't wanna come across as preachy about this, but it'd help a lot in the future if there were a bit less immediate outcry over changes of this nature. I know that "change is scary," but these past few days are a good example of how reading about a change, and playing with it, can give very different points of view on how they all pan out.
For the immediate future, at least until Season 7, we have no further major power changes to implement. So the cooldown changes on Holodeck will remain as they are, aside from the one change that's currently on Tribble/Redshirt.
Once Season 7 has landed, we'll get back to tackling some of the remaining balance concerns.
Also, I'm happy to hear that the changes made to Science powers appear to have performed exactly as intended. Reducing the cost of opportunity associated with certain sci powers and builds was our primary goal.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Thanks for your feedback on this, now that you've actually played with the cooldown changes. I don't wanna come across as preachy about this, but it'd help a lot in the future if there were a bit less immediate outcry over changes of this nature. I know that "change is scary," but these past few days are a good example of how reading about a change, and playing with it, can give very different points of view on how they all pan out.
For the immediate future, at least until Season 7, we have no further major power changes to implement. So the cooldown changes on Holodeck will remain as they are, aside from the one change that's currently on Tribble/Redshirt.
Once Season 7 has landed, we'll get back to tackling some of the remaining balance concerns.
Also, I'm happy to hear that the changes made to Science powers appear to have performed exactly as intended. Reducing the cost of opportunity associated with certain sci powers and builds was our primary goal.
Heh. Actually after playing with the new changes my thread still remains. for pugging it might be a ''good'' thing against players of No Skill. However the moment Skilled players who are capable of keep running timers in their heads of various abilities on the field, it however becomes far too easy to exploit the weaknesses presented when ES is deployed.
How about a change to TT so it only clears for 4 seconds (which would make said above mentioned abilities Usefull again which will have those sweeping effects I mentioned already), and moving Extend up to an LTC+ ability for a while and lets see how that goes? Leave ES unchanged otherwise, but just delete ES1 from the game for a while. I bet people would get all over that change after playing with it for a while.
Thanks for your feedback on this, now that you've actually played with the cooldown changes. I don't wanna come across as preachy about this, but it'd help a lot in the future if there were a bit less immediate outcry over changes of this nature. I know that "change is scary," but these past few days are a good example of how reading about a change, and playing with it, can give very different points of view on how they all pan out.
Yeah, almost makes you wish STO had some sort of test server, where we could try out the changes and give feedback before they were put into the game....
Yeah, almost makes you wish STO had some sort of test server, where we could try out the changes and give feedback before they were put into the game....
If also makes me wish we had some sort of Real open pvp on said server so people could easily make matches.
Oh and that feed back was actually listened to over there instead of just using it as a Bug Test Server.
I don't wanna come across as preachy about this, but it'd help a lot in the future if there were a bit less immediate outcry over changes of this nature.
I think that the majority of the outcry was due to the fact that there was something like two hours between the tirbble build hitting and it going to live, and it brought into doubt that Cryptic's development attitude had changed at all.
That being said, I disagree with a lot of the people in this thread and still believe EPtS and ES sharing a 15sec cooldown was an extremely bad change. If you want ES to be more risk/reward the best way to go about it is to undo the misguided, multiple nerfs to PSW's stun duration.
All this talk about the evil extend escorts... seriously, who besides myself even does that? Is there any other player routinely running ES on an escort?
And where does this nonsense idea originate that players who oppose the ES cooldown are doing so because they want to keep their invulnerable ships? Is it too difficult to see that many of these players are screaming at the top of their lungs for a massive change in shield healing by addressing TT and BFI?
That being said, I disagree with a lot of the people in this thread and still believe EPtS and ES sharing a 15sec cooldown was an extremely bad change.
I completely agree. (And I used to disagree with Jorf on a lot of things. It took months before he saw the light regarding Sci/Cruisers :P)
All this talk about the evil extend escorts... seriously, who besides myself even does that? Is there any other player routinely running ES on an escort?
And where does this nonsense idea originate that players who oppose the ES cooldown are doing so because they want to keep their invulnerable ships? Is it too difficult to see that many of these players are screaming at the top of their lungs for a massive change in shield healing by addressing TT and BFI?
Anyone with a brain that flies a Patrol Escort, Saber, Akira, or even Jemmy does. It's too much of a no brainer choice for it to stay a mere LT slot. And its of a great detriment to pvp as a whole.
It's hard for them to comprehend that we might actually you know play multiple ships, both on Premade and Pug levels.
Comments
i understand what they were trying to do, but to remove extend shields from every ship except a cruiser is not a good idea and quite frankly extend shields needs a different downside.
maybe a shield power cost, or a shield regen cost or if whatever youre shielding is damaged you take some of the damage etc etc.
making it so that its a forced choice between keeping yourself alive or helping out the team (extend shields is the ONLY teammate only power) 99% of people will take the keeping yourself alive option.
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| Dues Ex Mechina |
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i half agree, keep the epts and rsp on a shared cooldown.
figure something else for the extend shields.
R.I.P
Keep EPtS separate, but lock RSP and ES together. That way people won't be completely invulnerable, but not completely gimped either.
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welp. your a d&%^%#$. seriously bro, extemnd spam ftw eh? cmon maikai i actually gave u some credit before. please stop doing pvp updates, or talking. your bias bleeds thru too hard it isnt even funny.
"forced choice" gimme a break. every ship shouldnt have extend shields. what kind of fairy tale uber healing world you live in i cant tell.
anyway if this change is reverted just another signal of the voice of total noobs and veteran tardos prevailing of the less vocal (and half quit ) minority.
back to headshot in a game with no healing at all
Joke aside, I agree with this post, even though I wonder what would have happened if rsp would share cool down with eps... I guess that would not have been as bad as many of us thought. What I still don't like is rsp's time is too long. I think 5 secs should be enough for rsp1. IMO rsp shouldn't be a common escort ability, but I may be in minority here.
Hopefully those sci changes(tach beam, cpb) will be implemented the way you suggested, it has sense to be this way. Also, what Husanak said in another thread is a neat idea: have extend shield become an engi captain ability. This way not only engis become more useful, but all this es jerk around would stop.
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean.
The Warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill...
what the hell is your problem? i dont even use extend shields or rsp. i have a single copy of epts1 on my wells. thats it.
stop doing pvp updates? ive been trying to find someone else to gather the patch notes and put them up. guess what. noone has done it yet.
how am i showing bias in my own opinion that the changes were the right idea but done poorly? extend shields does need a nerf and i hate how they introduced a duty officer that makes it even better at no cost to the user.
yes every ship should have the choice of extend shields if they want it. but it shouldnt be a death sentence for the user if it isnt a cruiser. it also needs to not be nearly as effective if it isnt on a cruiser. simply make it like photonic shockwave. boom thats solved. that way the level 1 is a ltcmdr and the 2 and 3 are commanders with the 3 being then made trainable by engineering captains (i dont know if it currently is).
i dont think i deserved to be called names, so in order to deserve that ill tell you to go **** yourself.
Well, level 3 is trainable. Level 1 needs to stay at Lt. or it becomes a null choice for most non-cruisers, which lack LtC engi slots.
All the cooldowns do now, is make you choose between either tanking/healing, or having both with a slight reduction in efficiency. It prevents mindless cycling of skills. Good! Now you get an advantage of knowing what you're doing!
If there was an antonym for "dumbing the game down" this patch would be it!
(antonym=the opposite of)
Let's just hope we're not too late to avert the un-nerf hammer!
it would still be available for those escorts/science ships with ltcmdr engineering slots and those ships with ltcmdr+ universal slots.
it would be a perfect fit.
You can make a rotating combo with 2x EptS, 2x EptX and 1x ES (and with the damage engineer doffs,only one copy of both EptX are needed) This because ES has now a 30 second cooldown of its own and you rotate the 2 different Ept's every 15 seconds, having them both almost 100% uptime. Like drunk said, the nerf is in the fact that ES needs to be activated at the same time as the other EptX. However, with the doffs, escorts can still run extends.
so:
0s: EptS
15s: EptX + ES
30s: EptS
45s: EptX + ES
We must also consider that because ES is no longer on demand, it will be probably most of the times be activated. This means that you have to pay more attention yourself when shooting an opponent: He might have an extend on him. So the escort captains have to learn to read the game also instead of just shooting around.
@rudiefix Feds: Rudiefix / Thron / Opa
@rudiefix KDFs: Lill / Xifeidur / Dehr / Ugly
@rudiefix Roms (KDF alligned): Chicita
Actually I'm for that. There's no reason why Escorts and Most sci ships should be carrying ES.
If you want more than 1 extends on the field at any given time. Take more than one Cruiser, or high eng station Escort or sci ship. Hey look we finally gave a use to the Akira again!
"But we lose damage then" and that's a sacrifice you'll just have to make.
Even Cruisers like say mine for example to carry 2 Extends, would have to sac a Lt Cmdr slot. Which means ET3 or Warp Plasma would have to get sacced to carry the 2nd extends. It would also give bite back to non Oddy Cruisers, as their healing could be more Resist focused, and the oddy's heals are just more raw.
That said i agree with the devs that restricting choice like that isn't great. As a meashure to adress the whole "escorts packing ES" issue. How about scrapping the current ES1, renaming the current ES2 to ES1, and the current ES3 to ES2, with no actual ES3 vershion. This neatly limits it to ships with Lt Cmdr and Cmdr Eng slots. This would limit it to Lt Cmdr and Cmdr slots only, which dosen't scratch cruisers one littile bit, (i never see less than ES2 on a cruiser and work the same way myself on my cruiser), but it would keep it off most escort and sci ships which i agree is perfectly fair.
thats basically what i suggested a few post up.
I am ok with the revert, I would prefer to see DEVs implement legitimate solutions rather than partial workarounds. I am starting to think reducing the effect of RSP 1 and ES 1 to make them less useful is a better approach than trying to add dependency on EPtS, because EPtS is not broken as is, and people who slot ES or RSP at LCDR/CDR are basically committing their build to those powers, and should reap the benefits.
Improving Aceton and DEM would be useful, as a lack of useful Engineering skill alternatives does contribute to the problem.
Rules of Acquisition at Priority One
I m still not sure if A2B build didn't become to powerful vis-a-vis all other cruiser builds.But thats another question.
One more time, I'm sorry that ES spoils the day of escort pilots. It'S supposed to. There are counters, and it has zero benefits for the caster, so it better stay a damn good heal.
That being said, I can see ES1 being a Lt.Cmdr. skill and ES2&3 cmdr skill.
RSP duration can be renerfed to less then what it was before the out of the blue buff it received a couple of weeks ago, fine. If you really want to rattle the cage of tanky escorts, don't punish dedicated team work and healers, how about you make RSP1 Lt.Cmdr skill. Bug just got more squishy. Let's see if people in here still think ES is to good after that.
AB and DEM need fixing regarding their effectiveness, CD issues are not what holds them back.
All in all the rollback on the changes is still the way to go. It was a poorly implemented half baked untested piece of fragrant roses.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
-that- is why healing is just so ludicrous right now.
Imo a much more needed change than any change to Extend Shields, is that Tac Team should only clear for 4 seconds. Not 10. At that point, FOMM APB, and APDs debuffs all become Useful and usable again in pvp. Ideally I would go so far as to say maybe TT shouldn't clear Tac Debuffs at all, but I unlike a cryptic dev do have some concept of what over stacking can do when it comes to debuffs.
This also will consequently reinstate the viabilty of Beam Boats in pvp. (such as Eng Cruisers carrying APBs, and FAW and Tac Cruisers Fedside carrying anything that isn't Cannons) as well as Torpedoes, (on a massive scale more people than just me would be carrying them :P).
Good. It should.
Why shouldn't Cruisers be Mainline healers again exactly? And why shouldn't ships with LTC eng be you know Special, like ships with LTC Sci are?
Oh lookit, with that proposed change, and a change to TTs debuff cleansing you just made Tac Cruisers actually Appealing fedside without going for the full on single barrel cannon excelsior build.
It also makes engineers in ships that are not cruisers a little more appealing because not everyone and their brother would be mounting Extends.
TT no longer clearing for 10 seconds straight also increases the viability of ships that can't mount Heavy Cannons for dps purposes (which is something that has been an issue ever since TT changed especially with BFI doffs now), which puts Tacxcelsiors, and AC Retrofits actually appealing again. Ships that have limited tac slots (like LTC tacs), also benefit tremendously from such a change to TT. It also gives actual incentives for tacs to consider rolling in an Excelsior, as opposed to just running a Scort.
This also would raise the effectiveness of DEM again, something that is direly needed in Skilled pvp matches. It also helps Disruptor weapons in the long run. Oh and Beta, Delta and FOMM actually working again and Extends being an LTC+ skill would make Torpedoes a hell of alot scarier across the board.
no TRIBBLE. maybe you just need to think about everytghing and see the whole picture. or maybe dont be such an rp'er
For the immediate future, at least until Season 7, we have no further major power changes to implement. So the cooldown changes on Holodeck will remain as they are, aside from the one change that's currently on Tribble/Redshirt.
Once Season 7 has landed, we'll get back to tackling some of the remaining balance concerns.
Also, I'm happy to hear that the changes made to Science powers appear to have performed exactly as intended. Reducing the cost of opportunity associated with certain sci powers and builds was our primary goal.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Heh. Actually after playing with the new changes my thread still remains. for pugging it might be a ''good'' thing against players of No Skill. However the moment Skilled players who are capable of keep running timers in their heads of various abilities on the field, it however becomes far too easy to exploit the weaknesses presented when ES is deployed.
How about a change to TT so it only clears for 4 seconds (which would make said above mentioned abilities Usefull again which will have those sweeping effects I mentioned already), and moving Extend up to an LTC+ ability for a while and lets see how that goes? Leave ES unchanged otherwise, but just delete ES1 from the game for a while. I bet people would get all over that change after playing with it for a while.
Yeah, almost makes you wish STO had some sort of test server, where we could try out the changes and give feedback before they were put into the game....
If also makes me wish we had some sort of Real open pvp on said server so people could easily make matches.
Oh and that feed back was actually listened to over there instead of just using it as a Bug Test Server.
I think that the majority of the outcry was due to the fact that there was something like two hours between the tirbble build hitting and it going to live, and it brought into doubt that Cryptic's development attitude had changed at all.
That being said, I disagree with a lot of the people in this thread and still believe EPtS and ES sharing a 15sec cooldown was an extremely bad change. If you want ES to be more risk/reward the best way to go about it is to undo the misguided, multiple nerfs to PSW's stun duration.
And where does this nonsense idea originate that players who oppose the ES cooldown are doing so because they want to keep their invulnerable ships? Is it too difficult to see that many of these players are screaming at the top of their lungs for a massive change in shield healing by addressing TT and BFI?
Anyone with a brain that flies a Patrol Escort, Saber, Akira, or even Jemmy does. It's too much of a no brainer choice for it to stay a mere LT slot. And its of a great detriment to pvp as a whole.
It's hard for them to comprehend that we might actually you know play multiple ships, both on Premade and Pug levels.