Crazy Borg Shield Penetration?

distantworlds

It appears that the Borg now have rather absurdly high shield penetration in STFs. Without ever losing a facing in my shields, my battlecruiser ended up with 10% hull left at one point. What is going on? Is this a bug? Is this intended? It feels really wierd to see your hull falling apart while shields aren't even below 50%.

supergaminggeek

Borpedo.
The goo ball of death.

bareel

distantworlds wrote: »

It appears that the Borg now have rather absurdly high shield penetration in STFs. Without ever losing a facing in my shields, my battlecruiser ended up with 10% hull left at one point. What is going on? Is this a bug? Is this intended? It feels really wierd to see your hull falling apart while shields aren't even below 50%.

Hazard Emitter those plasma dots away. On the plus side it does make cruisers *slightly* more useful as they tend to be the best at hull tanking.

xantris

bareel wrote: »

Hazard Emitter those plasma dots away. On the plus side it does make cruisers *slightly* more useful as they tend to be the best at hull tanking.

You don't have enough Hazard emitters tbh. I just spent 90% of a Cure Elite under 20% hull because I just couldn't keep the plasma dots off enough to gain hull back. Everything else seems to bleed through more too, it definitely makes it feel like you might as well not have shields.

Not that I really mind, I enjoyed that it was challenging, but... with the new STFs giving you basically no reason to run more than 1 or 2 a day, this is just going to funnel people into running nothing but ISE.

disposeableh3r0

Borg penetration....giggity. I haven't seen this one yet, altho i do run a borg set so the proc may be keeping it at bay.

duaths1

invisible torpedo.

i seem to be able to see the torps aimed at the team, but not these aimed at myself..

Got my Kar'fi from 100 to boom in 0.5 seconds. I have seen no torpedo at all, yet log stated it clearly.. They should look into it.

Into the Hive is hilarious!

distantworlds

xantris wrote: »

You don't have enough Hazard emitters tbh. I just spent 90% of a Cure Elite under 20% hull because I just couldn't keep the plasma dots off enough to gain hull back. Everything else seems to bleed through more too, it definitely makes it feel like you might as well not have shields.

Not that I really mind, I enjoyed that it was challenging, but... with the new STFs giving you basically no reason to run more than 1 or 2 a day, this is just going to funnel people into running nothing but ISE.

I'm not so sure it's the plasma dot. It's possible, but I do run hazard emitters as much as I can.

I wouldn't mind higher difficulty in the form of more incoming damage, but this is a really poor way to do it. Options for hull defense are much more limited than for shields. There is no skill involved, it's all just waiting on cooldowns. There are more abilities that affect shielding, in addition to facing and balance.

megacharge07

Yep, Borg shield bleedthrough/penetration is just stupid now, and with no dilithium or console drops in any STF's any more, it's quite obvious the Developers do NOT want us playing STF anymore....

http://www.change.org/petitions/perfect-world-entertainment-cryptic-studios-star-trek-online-return-to-the-previous-dilithium-reward-consoles-drops-for-stf-s

shaeply

megacharge07 wrote: »

Yep, Borg shield bleedthrough/penetration is just stupid now, and with no dilithium or console drops in any STF's any more, it's quite obvious the Developers do NOT want us playing STF anymore....

actually it is great. finally i must do something in stf and not only stay at one place with finger in my nose.

megacharge07

shaeply wrote: »

actually it is great. finally i must do something in stf and not only stay at one place with finger in my nose.

really, u actually played like that? so youre the reason they made the borg do TRIBBLE damage now.

http://www.change.org/petitions/perfect-world-entertainment-cryptic-studios-star-trek-online-return-to-the-previous-dilithium-reward-consoles-drops-for-stf-s

allocater

It was and is still the best tactic to stand still and shoot frontal weapons 100% of the time. The increased penetration or dot does not change that. They should drop plasma fields on you, so that you are forced to fly out of it.

bareel

This is how most of my STF runs go, from an RP perspective

Tactical, fire all forward weapons!
Helm, one quarter speed forward
Rapid Fire those cannons son!
Helm, attack pattern beta one quarter speed reverse
Helm, one quarter speed forward
Gimmie a torp spread, oh and helm one quarter speed reverse

Its kinda, silly.

szim

I just keep blowing up out of the blue. With full shields and no (visible) weapons impact. And I'm not talking about the Borg torpedo spread you see coming 3 seconds after you blew up.

This is really frustrating. My ship feels like a card box. I'm all pro increasing the difficulty but I want to able to counteract!

momaw

My Vor'cha died for the first time in forever, yesterday. I was tanking the elite tactical cube as usual, then suddenly I'm taking thousands of plasma damage per second from a fire and nobody threw me a HE. Full shields + full hull => full shields + dead, in moments.

Not impressed.

brigadooom

Instakills make things difficult and a challenge.

cotp0maurafey

Another way to save your ship is to change to full defensive power when the plasma DOT is on you, when its over, go back to offensive power.

nicha0

It got pretty ridiculous, massive bleed throughs on top of endless plasma DOTs make you helpless. Cruisers are popping everywhere.

I went from full shields to 60% hull.. but my shields were still up. Hit HE, next hit 10% hull, HE is broken and won't clear for more than 1s... bleed to death.

Happened a few times like that, its more than just the massive torp damage the ships through out because they at least down a shield.

ajstoner

I have noticed this. The STFs were actually very nicely balanced before and I am hard-pressed to figure out how this was seen as an improvement on any level. The only thing I can come up with is that they want to cut-down on the successful optionals so that people will complain less about how they now get nothing for it with the drops removed.

borticuscryptic

No changes were made to standard or STF Borg enemy NPCs alongside Season 7. A few new ones were added for the Into The Hive STFs, but their addition has had no impact on the abilities of their allies.

Plasma DOTs have always had 100% shield bleedthrough, and high-damage torpedoes have always been a difficult-to-balance issue (to put it nicely).

Borg damage was not increased.
Borg abilities were not beefed up.

That said, it's possible that Borg encountered in Into The Hive are set to a higher level than they are in other STFs. I haven't checked to be certain. But if they are, that means they are rolling on different (higher) damage tables.

distantworlds

cotp0maurafey wrote: »

Another way to save your ship is to change to full defensive power when the plasma DOT is on you, when its over, go back to offensive power.

What defensive power? Shield? Worthless, that's the problem: OUR SHIELDS ARE UP. The borg are killing us without breaking our shields.

As far as I know, there's no way to fight hull damage outside of passive repair and repair cooldowns. If it is, in fact, the plasma dot, then the only way to stop it is hazard emitters. And that isn't much fun.

sean2448

borticuscryptic wrote: »

No changes were made to standard or STF Borg enemy NPCs alongside Season 7. A few new ones were added for the Into The Hive STFs, but their addition has had no impact on the abilities of their allies.

Plasma DOTs have always had 100% shield bleedthrough, and high-damage torpedoes have always been a difficult-to-balance issue (to put it nicely).

Borg damage was not increased.
Borg abilities were not beefed up.

That said, it's possible that Borg encountered in Into The Hive are set to a higher level than they are in other STFs. I haven't checked to be certain. But if they are, that means they are rolling on different (higher) damage tables.

when will the supre rapors in cure space be fixed I have 12 maco shield and one shotted

distantworlds

borticuscryptic wrote: »

No changes were made to standard or STF Borg enemy NPCs alongside Season 7. A few new ones were added for the Into The Hive STFs, but their addition has had no impact on the abilities of their allies.

Plasma DOTs have always had 100% shield bleedthrough, and high-damage torpedoes have always been a difficult-to-balance issue (to put it nicely).

Borg damage was not increased.
Borg abilities were not beefed up.

That said, it's possible that Borg encountered in Into The Hive are set to a higher level than they are in other STFs. I haven't checked to be certain. But if they are, that means they are rolling on different (higher) damage tables.

This is happening outside of into-the-hive. Please check the values. Something has DEFINITELY changed. Never before had I seen 10% hull left while shields remained up.

kitsunesnout

So the borg weren't changed? Then I hope this means that the new borg ability to shoot torpedos at any arc angle now is a bug and that it will be fixed, cause it's a real pain now not being able to stay out of cube and gate vertical torp arc's and this is happening in STF's that never had this going on before till now.

adaephondelat

distantworlds wrote: »

This is happening outside of into-the-hive. Please check the values. Something has DEFINITELY changed. Never before had I seen 10% hull left while shields remained up.

I totally agree. I've played an ISE before i found this thread with my kdf eng in a mirror vorcha. I've played hundreds of estfs with all my toons combined, and i felt something was wrong, but couldn't exactly say what. Until one of my pug teammates, which got popped a bit too often, complained about not beeing healed by us others. There I discovered that all my hull heal skills were constantly on cooldown since i had to use them on myself.

I then died a couple of times against the spammed spheres and the tac cube with nearly hundred percent shields, but constantly dropping hull strength. It's just not true that nothing had changed, never experienced that before.

innuwarrior

borticuscryptic wrote: »

No changes were made to standard or STF Borg enemy NPCs alongside Season 7. A few new ones were added for the Into The Hive STFs, but their addition has had no impact on the abilities of their allies.

Plasma DOTs have always had 100% shield bleedthrough, and high-damage torpedoes have always been a difficult-to-balance issue (to put it nicely).

Borg damage was not increased.
Borg abilities were not beefed up.

That said, it's possible that Borg encountered in Into The Hive are set to a higher level than they are in other STFs. I haven't checked to be certain. But if they are, that means they are rolling on different (higher) damage tables.

Well check your coding, something definitely changed. I'm used to bleedthrough damage from borg plasma proc but now its insane compare to 2 days ago (read pre season 7). Not even talking about those invisi torp that you can't see and destroy before they do you in.

And into the hive is simply way too much, too hard and simply not worth it, not enough to gain from doing that mission compare to the difficulty. **** loot and uber ennemy that one shot you constantly. I'll just pug infected and do cure and ka with my fleet but I'm not wasting another hour trying to finish Onslaught. And who had the bright idea to put feedback pulse on borg now, they're not powerful enough as it is? Get serious, if you want anyone playing the new mission change it because I'm not even gonna bother with that one again on elite, simply not worth the hassle.

An now, the borg have no more blind spot, thanks a lot for that, it makes everything so much more fun when you get blown away with nowhere to hide but out of range. And no matter what you fly, cruiser, escort or science ship. Better keep yourself well stocked with components, all of them.

archoncryptic

kitsunesnout wrote: »

So the borg weren't changed? Then I hope this means that the new borg ability to shoot torpedos at any arc angle now is a bug and that it will be fixed, cause it's a real pain now not being able to stay out of cube and gate vertical torp arc's and this is happening in STF's that never had this going on before till now.

Some cone-based targeting was changed so that it calculates from a center point rather than a specific facing. While this affected nearly every entity in the game, it only significantly impacts very large entities. A side effect of this is that there aren't as many "safe zones" from Borg Cube torpedoes.

momaw

borticuscryptic wrote: »

Plasma DOTs have always had 100% shield bleedthrough

Yes.

Borg damage was not increased.
Borg abilities were not beefed up.

But here's where you are mistaken. I can tell you for a fact that I have never seen the kind of damage I saw yesterday, in hundreds of battles. Plasma DOT from their torpedoes is usually around 500-800ish. It stings but you can keep on trucking. Taking thousands of damage per tick, enough to kill the ship in seconds even with full shields unless your HE happens to be ready in the brief time you have to notice this, is a new phenomenon that I have only seen in season 7.

It may not have happened deliberately but there's something very wrong.

And this was on ISE, so your Hive hypothesis doesn't work. Not that it really makes any difference. When you have cruisers, a class of ship intended for maximum survivability, that can be destroyed in seconds regardless of its shields being up there is a conflict of goals and mechanics.

darramouss1

borticuscryptic wrote: »

No changes were made to standard or STF Borg enemy NPCs alongside Season 7. A few new ones were added for the Into The Hive STFs, but their addition has had no impact on the abilities of their allies.

Plasma DOTs have always had 100% shield bleedthrough, and high-damage torpedoes have always been a difficult-to-balance issue (to put it nicely).

Borg damage was not increased.
Borg abilities were not beefed up.

That said, it's possible that Borg encountered in Into The Hive are set to a higher level than they are in other STFs. I haven't checked to be certain. But if they are, that means they are rolling on different (higher) damage tables.

I understand what you're saying, but every ship I fly is now getting killed by every second Borg shot. The day before, my ships could take the damage and keep fighting. Maybe a flow on effect from another change? I don't know. Something has changed, though.

nicha0

I noticed there were no safe zones anymore, but this is well beyond that. Our whole team was dying one after another, I went to look at them to heal but they had their shields up still. Having only one possible hull heal on my ship I couldn't help them.

This wasn't happening on tribble when I played there.

We've heard quite a number of times that nothing was changed about (insert topic) but it always end up something was changed.

sensorghost

archoncryptic wrote: »

Some cone-based targeting was changed so that it calculates from a center point rather than a specific facing. While this affected nearly every entity in the game, it only significantly impacts very large entities. A side effect of this is that there aren't as many "safe zones" from Borg Cube torpedoes.

In other words your college lied, things have changed. Our perception does not lie, months and years of a constant changes by a nose hair, we'll notice. Don't take us for idiots. Some of us get paid far more than you I'd bet for more complicated work.

Now go back, examine what you all have actually done and give us a honest complete answer so we can make sense of the 'New Reality' or you can 'Fix It'

kitsunesnout

archoncryptic wrote: »

Some cone-based targeting was changed so that it calculates from a center point rather than a specific facing. While this affected nearly every entity in the game, it only significantly impacts very large entities. A side effect of this is that there aren't as many "safe zones" from Borg Cube torpedoes.

Thank's for clarifying! So it was an across the board change, then I can understand that, so then can the borg eventually get an exception to reflect more like how they were before? I'd be so happy if that could be done, it's my only major issue with playing STF's now that I never had before. This would go a long way to restore balance.