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PvP Feedback for Season 7
naldoran
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Partially, this is a re-post of stuff that likely got buried in the pvp sub-forums, but I decided to grab it and a few further thoughts about PvP in the new Season and put it before a wider audience:
My biggest pvp-related concerns so far:
1. The fundamental problem with siphon drones is that their total drain is uncapped and with doffs, the siphons can be launched faster than most practical levels of AoE can clear them. The target is eventually drained to minimal power levels unless extremely disproportionate amounts of AoE control are used; i.e. it requires two or three ships with notable AoE capabilities to counteract one carrier's worth of drones. Heaven forbid an entire KDF team with these monsters.
2. Considering the critical hit rate my escort can put out with Alpha up (helped by the new Tachyokinetic converter btw, that console could use balance tweaking) and the severity of those criticals, I can see a good attack run from two escorts killing a cruiser with it's shields still up, simply from procs. Obviously I haven't been able to test this, but it is concerning. When you do the math however, we wind up with a .963% chance of at least one DHC critcal penetrating your shields every firing cycle assuming a conservative 10% critical chance. 1% doesn't sound like a lot, sure, but in my experience I find that I'll get an SNB doff proc about every third target and they have similar odds. Add a second escort coordinating alpha-strikes, and every fifth or sixth kill might not care about shields. This has incredible potential to make PvP less fun for newbies who don't have a full grasp of the mechanics yet.
3. Proc flooding. Weapon procs are intended to be both rare events, and powerful. That is absolutely fine from a game design standpoint. What gets worrying is when you have a weapon that has the following: 2.5% chance shield drain, 2.5% phaser proc, 2.5% plasma proc, 2.5% ignore shields, 1% Strip 3 buffs. That's a 10% chance per weapon, per firing cycle of achieving some sort of proc. When you multiply that by seven weapons on an escort that is a whopping 54.2% chance of some kind of proc every firing cycle. Please sit down and do some basic probability analysis of what will happen when you put all these small chances together; individually none of these procs is broken or overly powerful, but you can't look at these things in a vacuum, and it's the sum total when you put everything together that worries me. For comparison, if you have seven weapons with only a single 2.5% proc, your proc rate per firing cycle is only 16%. Not all procs are equal of course, but if we assume that all procs have a significant effect, you've tripled the frequency of procs in general with all these changes. I consider this extremely dangerous.
3. Still no good solution for chained tractor beams from the Danube Runabouts. There's a guy in one of my fleets that I frequently duel; when he equips Danubes, it takes about five times as long to kill him because of the chained tractor beams, and you very definitely notice them when a pair of carriers are using them. The runabouts are tough enough to not die quickly against AoE crowd control, and I think that limiting the tractor to one per squad would be a good solution.
Positive Change: breaking up the Borg set will result in fewer free shield heals. I'll attach the caveat though, that based on combat log analysis, the shield heal is miniscule in magnitude compared to the hull regeneration, and you can still get the two-piece bonus from the deflector & engine, combined with the trusty maco shield. People's shields get a tiny bit weaker, but hull regen stays about the same; the proposed changes aren't enough to make me even contemplate using the new stf pieces for the engine / deflector slot on most ships.
4. Still no appropriate rewards for PvP: adding significant EC / dilithium / fleet mark rewards (teaming up with your fleeties to go kill bad guys and have fun is fleet content, right? It certainly is more fleet-oriented than foundry missions) could do massive good for pvp participation within the community.
5. In most cases with the "choose one" rewards for the progression tree, there is a clear 'best option' for those that know the game mechanics well. I foresee significant backlash from people who do not clearly understand the nitty-gritty of game mechanics (let's face it, you don't have to learn that stuff in the course of even Elite difficulty PvE) and make a choice, only to later learn that they made the wrong choice and are now forever sub-optimal with respect to their PvP build. The abilities (Shield Pen proc, +3% Crit) are very powerful to someone who understands what that means, but a nice big heal could look more appealing to someone who doesn't understand that. My suggestion: take a closer look at ways to either achieve parity between powers, or ways (perhaps for a modest dilithium fee) that they can be re-selected.
My biggest pvp-related concerns so far:
1. The fundamental problem with siphon drones is that their total drain is uncapped and with doffs, the siphons can be launched faster than most practical levels of AoE can clear them. The target is eventually drained to minimal power levels unless extremely disproportionate amounts of AoE control are used; i.e. it requires two or three ships with notable AoE capabilities to counteract one carrier's worth of drones. Heaven forbid an entire KDF team with these monsters.
2. Considering the critical hit rate my escort can put out with Alpha up (helped by the new Tachyokinetic converter btw, that console could use balance tweaking) and the severity of those criticals, I can see a good attack run from two escorts killing a cruiser with it's shields still up, simply from procs. Obviously I haven't been able to test this, but it is concerning. When you do the math however, we wind up with a .963% chance of at least one DHC critcal penetrating your shields every firing cycle assuming a conservative 10% critical chance. 1% doesn't sound like a lot, sure, but in my experience I find that I'll get an SNB doff proc about every third target and they have similar odds. Add a second escort coordinating alpha-strikes, and every fifth or sixth kill might not care about shields. This has incredible potential to make PvP less fun for newbies who don't have a full grasp of the mechanics yet.
3. Proc flooding. Weapon procs are intended to be both rare events, and powerful. That is absolutely fine from a game design standpoint. What gets worrying is when you have a weapon that has the following: 2.5% chance shield drain, 2.5% phaser proc, 2.5% plasma proc, 2.5% ignore shields, 1% Strip 3 buffs. That's a 10% chance per weapon, per firing cycle of achieving some sort of proc. When you multiply that by seven weapons on an escort that is a whopping 54.2% chance of some kind of proc every firing cycle. Please sit down and do some basic probability analysis of what will happen when you put all these small chances together; individually none of these procs is broken or overly powerful, but you can't look at these things in a vacuum, and it's the sum total when you put everything together that worries me. For comparison, if you have seven weapons with only a single 2.5% proc, your proc rate per firing cycle is only 16%. Not all procs are equal of course, but if we assume that all procs have a significant effect, you've tripled the frequency of procs in general with all these changes. I consider this extremely dangerous.
3. Still no good solution for chained tractor beams from the Danube Runabouts. There's a guy in one of my fleets that I frequently duel; when he equips Danubes, it takes about five times as long to kill him because of the chained tractor beams, and you very definitely notice them when a pair of carriers are using them. The runabouts are tough enough to not die quickly against AoE crowd control, and I think that limiting the tractor to one per squad would be a good solution.
Positive Change: breaking up the Borg set will result in fewer free shield heals. I'll attach the caveat though, that based on combat log analysis, the shield heal is miniscule in magnitude compared to the hull regeneration, and you can still get the two-piece bonus from the deflector & engine, combined with the trusty maco shield. People's shields get a tiny bit weaker, but hull regen stays about the same; the proposed changes aren't enough to make me even contemplate using the new stf pieces for the engine / deflector slot on most ships.
4. Still no appropriate rewards for PvP: adding significant EC / dilithium / fleet mark rewards (teaming up with your fleeties to go kill bad guys and have fun is fleet content, right? It certainly is more fleet-oriented than foundry missions) could do massive good for pvp participation within the community.
5. In most cases with the "choose one" rewards for the progression tree, there is a clear 'best option' for those that know the game mechanics well. I foresee significant backlash from people who do not clearly understand the nitty-gritty of game mechanics (let's face it, you don't have to learn that stuff in the course of even Elite difficulty PvE) and make a choice, only to later learn that they made the wrong choice and are now forever sub-optimal with respect to their PvP build. The abilities (Shield Pen proc, +3% Crit) are very powerful to someone who understands what that means, but a nice big heal could look more appealing to someone who doesn't understand that. My suggestion: take a closer look at ways to either achieve parity between powers, or ways (perhaps for a modest dilithium fee) that they can be re-selected.
12th Fleet | Sad Pandas | Starfleet M.A.C.O.
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