My biggest complaint is a game-wide one. All characters, whether PC or NPC, should have the same capabilities and disadvantages.
That is, if my Gravity Well does 100dps, there's no way the Undine one should be doing 1000dps. If my human Captain has 500 health, then an NPC Captain should have 500 health. And so on. Sure, there might be exceptions (like Khan, who would be superior to normal humans), but generally, there should be consistency.
I agree completely, sadly that would involve writing a good AI, something escort players would hate
I agree completely, sadly that would involve writing a good AI, something escort players would hate
Why would they? I use Escorts a lot of the time and I'd rather we got something other than an extra 0 added to the HP and damage figures for NPCs.
From what I've seen in game, and from the D'Deridex Defender when it was accidentally released outside of the Vault, the whining came from those that didn't know how to debuff a target rather than just sitting back and spamming the spacebar to victory and a lot of them are using Cruisers.
I'm not sure anyone would complain about more intelligent AI if it meant getting rid of the annoying two million HP NPCs where the only challenge is if you'll survive the next attempt at a one shot or not.
Don't expect to do end-game content without dying. That's what's broken. Not the enemies.
I have witnessed a Borg Unimatrix ship use Torpedo: Spread III without the icon or visual effect noting a buff ever appearing. That is broken. You know what else is broken? A kinetic attack hitting with numbers so ludicrously high that the 90% damage resistance offered by shields can't compensate. It's even more ridiculous when said shields and your hull are fully buffed for damage resistance and you're still getting one-shotted.
I've been into this before, and I'm going to bring it up again. In game design, there are two kinds of difficulty you can offer to a player, artificial (bad) and natural (good). Cryptic has taken the artificial route, where NPCs ignore the rules of the game and are equipped with abilities so powerful that they overwhelm the player's ability to resist them. To put it bluntly, this is a terrible solution that reeks of laziness. They should instead give the Borg Hazard Emitters III an AI that promotes cross-healing other Borg ships. This has already been done with the Regeneration Probes, so we know they're capable of it. To balance this out, give them higher sustained DPS (as of now, even with spikes, it's sub-1,000) and remove their ability to spike so outrageously high.
Cryptic has taken the artificial route, where NPCs are equipped with abilities so powerful that they overwhelm the player's ability to resist them. To put it bluntly, this is a terrible solution that reeks of laziness.
I'm not sure it's fair to call it "laziness." I doubt there's any time where they all sit in the Cryptic office doing nothing. My guess is that they are constrained by a list of priorities, and revamping AI tactics takes a back seat to adding resource grind and microtransactions. Thanks, Perfect World!
:rolleyes:
You know.. its ok to make the borg more powerful.. but please lets tone down the 1 shot kill weapons. These do not make gameplay more fun.. nor challenging.. just frustrating.
A single torpedo should no be able to rip through 100% shields and 100% hull with no problem
Agreed. The Borg being uber powerful is fine with me, it only makes sense and is canon. But being killed by some invisible torp with full shields and 100% hull integrity is a bit much and not very realistic. The fact that I cannot even see these things coming too is a tad too unrealistic.
"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." - Rocky Balboa (2006)
I've been into this before, and I'm going to bring it up again. In game design, there are two kinds of difficulty you can offer to a player, artificial (bad) and natural (good). Cryptic has taken the artificial route, where NPCs ignore the rules of the game and are equipped with abilities so powerful that they overwhelm the player's ability to resist them. To put it bluntly, this is a terrible solution that reeks of laziness. They should instead give the Borg Hazard Emitters III an AI that promotes cross-healing other Borg ships. This has already been done with the Regeneration Probes, so we know they're capable of it. To balance this out, give them higher sustained DPS (as of now, even with spikes, it's sub-1,000) and remove their ability to spike so outrageously high.
They did do something similar with the Defender they released which, whilst still having a lot of HP, it healed and resisted attacks with (IIRC) Science Team, ASIF3, EPtS and HE (I'm sure there was more too) but the whining from those that think the Spacebar is the most powerful ability in game got it removed. If they'd just given it a couple of extra BA's or increased the weapon power of that particular NPC it would have been an interesting NPC to deal with: It wasn't perfect by any means, and was still easy to defeat due to the low damage it dealt but it was a good start none the less.
I was hoping it was the start of decent NPCs that weren't just bags of HP with the occasional one shot thrown in, but the whining seems to have put a stop to all that, which is a real shame.
Our group plays Hive Onslaught on elite a lot, often a few times a day. Is it ultra difficult? Not really, but you need to be disciplined. 3/4 times we get all 3 optionals.
You need to pull a set of spheres and a cube and eliminate them, stupidly the spheres are a more serious threat then the tac cube. You can do this until you eliminate 3 sets and then start pouncing on the last bunch. Where HOSE goes wrong can be many many places, no real tank is an issue, people that don't heal others is a problem as well, and people using AoE firing without thought can cause major problems. There is one massive problem out of the players control which needs the dev's attention and that is the Houston, that ship can agro 5 sets of cubes/spheres and wipe your whole team. Didn't they learn from Sulu in Terradome? We need to have some control over this ship, or allow us to call it in before part 2.
90% of the deaths in our group come from one thing... torpedo spreads. The unimatrix ships torp spread can be survived often, an escort with EPtS1 up most often dies, EPtS2/3 will survive. The queen's torp spread is far worse than the unimatrix ships, it one hits cruisers almost always. There really is no defense to the ability either, you can see the buff icon on the enemy, but it fires more often than brace for impact is available. So unless you never look at anything else its going to kill you over and over and over, the visual display of torp spread occurs after you take the damage. It needs to be stepped back to make HOSE not full of one shots.
The bug that makes you respawn without any ship movement controls for up to 2 minutes needs to be fixed as well, you have no control of where you can fly. In any STF that is a major problem, from running into cubes, gates or unimatrix ships.
Our group plays Hive Onslaught on elite a lot, often a few times a day. Is it ultra difficult? Not really, but you need to be disciplined. 3/4 times we get all 3 optionals.
You need to pull a set of spheres and a cube and eliminate them, stupidly the spheres are a more serious threat then the tac cube. You can do this until you eliminate 3 sets and then start pouncing on the last bunch. Where HOSE goes wrong can be many many places, no real tank is an issue, people that don't heal others is a problem as well, and people using AoE firing without thought can cause major problems. There is one massive problem out of the players control which needs the dev's attention and that is the Houston, that ship can agro 5 sets of cubes/spheres and wipe your whole team. Didn't they learn from Sulu in Terradome? We need to have some control over this ship, or allow us to call it in before part 2.
90% of the deaths in our group come from one thing... torpedo spreads. The unimatrix ships torp spread can be survived often, an escort with EPtS1 up most often dies, EPtS2/3 will survive. The queen's torp spread is far worse than the unimatrix ships, it one hits cruisers almost always. There really is no defense to the ability either, you can see the buff icon on the enemy, but it fires more often than brace for impact is available. So unless you never look at anything else its going to kill you over and over and over, the visual display of torp spread occurs after you take the damage. It needs to be stepped back to make HOSE not full of one shots.
The bug that makes you respawn without any ship movement controls for up to 2 minutes needs to be fixed as well, you have no control of where you can fly. In any STF that is a major problem, from running into cubes, gates or unimatrix ships.
The only catch here being that 90% of players who do ESTF and then proceed to complain about HSE have never done Terradome. And that control bug is easily countered. You respawn, you select a target, then you deselect the target. All of a sudden, your ship works again
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
90% of the deaths in our group come from one thing... torpedo spreads. The unimatrix ships torp spread can be survived often, an escort with EPtS1 up most often dies, EPtS2/3 will survive. The queen's torp spread is far worse than the unimatrix ships, it one hits cruisers almost always. There really is no defense to the ability either, you can see the buff icon on the enemy, but it fires more often than brace for impact is available. So unless you never look at anything else its going to kill you over and over and over, the visual display of torp spread occurs after you take the damage. It needs to be stepped back to make HOSE not full of one shots.
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Keep your ships in her 90 degree and the spread will spread damage amongst multiple ships instead of one-shotting a single ship that eats the brunt. The same thing with any torp spread.This is a common MMO mechanic, and one of STOs greatest failings is that it's player base seems to refuse to be able to handle even the most basic of teamwork exercises. Instead of saying "how do we beat this?", we scream for it to be nerfed. Frankly it's embarrassing.
Also, if anyone can show me a vid where you legitimately get one-shot where I can't point out something blatantly wrong with what you are doing that could have prevented it, I'll give you an Internet cookie. Resolution must be high enough to see buffs.
Wow, you don't even know how torp spread works, do you? It doesn't spread out damage, its a damage multiple on an ability with a maximum number of targets. Since the torpedo damage is already buffed to crazy levels the added damage multiplier to spread is worse.
Yes, I have seen 5 very experienced players go down all from one torpedo spread. But I'm sure you'll come up with some other reason for how bad these people you don't even know. One was our cruiser built to tank in Hive Onslaught.
There is nobody who can keep out of the queen's 90? range for torpedo spread, you can't be closer than 6k or you die, and being so far away with an enemy that can spin around quickly means you are always at risk. The flaky agro she runs is also an issue because it targets anyone and anything, it had a fixing a couple nights ago for the repair platform some KDF was using, which was funny.. but so buggy.
The gate one hit me last night, just boom.. EPtS3 up, full hull and shields, usually I can tank it at point blank range, but it gets lucky and it criticals even though its ability to critical was removed some time ago. Using the blind spot and firing from 9.5k away isn't a valid way to fight, using broken game mechanics is not how the game should be.
I've been hit by Donatra enough times on torpedo spreads, the game lagged severally, one hit.. dead. I had no agro but couldn't control my ship during the lag, thats why one hits are junk.
The spawning bug has never seemed to clear that way for me, I've smack the keyboard, did everything I can think of and flew straight into a unimatrix a few times, others report the same problems. I'll pay more attention to it, but I'm 100% sure I have changed targets with no affect before.
I know this has been stated before, but I'm going to beat this dead horse some more because it's the only thing making me feel better right now.
I'm sick and tired of that effing invisible torpedo that seems to be laying waste to not only myself, but countless other players. I got it, it's an Elite STF, it's supposed to be hard, but exploding for no freaking reason when you're not in enemy range is the most rediculous and asanine thing I've ever heard of in a game.
I'll admit this thread is a direct result of getting pasted multiple times in Infected Space Elite just a few minutes before the servers went down (all by the invisible torpedo I might add), but it doesn't change the fact that there is not one single good reason for this particular "feature". The first time ok, but the second time I popped every buff and heal I had (hazard emmiters, brace for impact, engineering team, etc.) and I still got blown up. Rage doesn't quite cover the way I feel about this. It makes me want to take my laptop and beat it across the head of whatever bonehead that came up with this idea in the first place.
It reminds me of the first Mercenaries game on the original Xbox where you would be driving over a bridge and, for no reason at all, suddenly find yourself launched right off the bridge into some water to die.
If you're not going to fix this soup sandwich of an idea, at least explain why it happens, and give us a way to defend against it. How about we leave Sudden Death Syndrome in real life m'kay?
they've already explained that this isn't intentional. Maybe Borticus or someone could pop in and explain it better, but as I understand, the torpedo's graphic is being dropped by the engine because there are too many things going on at the time, its the same as the normal borg oneshot plasma torpedoes that you can see, but it's just not being rendered because of a limitation in the graphics software. Apparently it is already at the highest priority for the engine to render, but in the STFs there are so many things at that same level that the torpedoes can get lost in the clutter.
Im pretty sure bort thinks we are all talking about invisable high yield torps i.e the big balls. Yet i think they are ok now its just them small omega torp type ones that they seem to fire the very tiny ones. They are the ones i think are causing the very high damage i.e when hy is applied to these small torps they do not convert to large targetable torps. I know they can be hy ones because the combat log states it.
Also i have a feeling about the gates. Im wondering about the cutting beam they use and tractors. We know the combo deals severe damage when players use the borg tractor and a cutting beam (getting nerfed soon i hear) but is there a similar issue with the combo when the borg gate or cubes use them too causing over the top damage, while shields are up imo as well tho it shouldnt work when shields are up but im thinking it does.
Would like to know if bort as A investigated the tiny green blob torps as the problem and not the HY targetable ones and B about the cutting beam and tractor beam combo that can happen with the gate in ISE and the cubes "sometimes".
I do wonder if they are confusing the high yield torps and the standard torpedos you have no defence against.
If you look in the game through all the STFs and one hit kills you'll find
CSE
Iso charge (used to wipe groups, now its strong, very dangerous, but not crazy)
High yield plasma torpedo - you can shoot them down, its fine.
ISE
Plasma torpedos from the gate seem to have a crazy high damage variance, they can hit soft or one hit you with fully buffed shields or even with RSP up
High yield plasma torpedo as before
KASE
Plasma torpedos from gates, as before
High yield plasma torpedo as before
Donatra's torpedo spread, which is probably just modifying the damage on the normal plasma torpedos, which is buggy. The real problem here is like against the queen, if you are within 5k of the ship, it will cloak, getting out of range or this ability at 5k+ is impossible. I've seen this wipe groups on the opening attacks
HOSE
High yield plasma torpedo as before
Lance weapon - which is range limited so ok
The giant plasma balls from the space logs, which are slow enough and able to be shot down, so again, ok
The queen's green blob of death, self centered 5k radius. Avoidable if you stay out of 5k. It makes the fight a mess but you can handle it, escorts have to face the queen so can get trapped quickly. Cruisers fly too slowly to constantly keep out of the 5k range, the queen moves extremely fast at impulse.
Torpedo spread/high yield torpedos from the queen aren't targetable, and you can not get out of range. Being within 5k = death by green blob. These are one hit kills to pretty much everything but the shipped speced for tanks, even then the follow up or burn is likely to kill you. Torpedo spread kills you and possibly the entire team, high yield kills you almost every time. There is no way you can tell which way the queen is facing, it switches agro every few seconds, and brace for impact can save you, but the 1 min cooldown is impractical. The queen also seems to be capable of having high yield and torpedo spread at the same time, making her throw one hit kills extremely frequently.
The logs fire off torpedo spread as well, and due to the weird chain geometry of firing angles in the game, you really can't escape this. Their version is often survivable, but it does one hit a lot of people still.
As Borticus said, there haven't been any intentional changes to make the Borg harder. I'll take another look at their torpedoes, though - those damage numbers do sound too high.
We've had some general tech changes that could be impacting things (like breaking Tachyon Harmonic) even if the Systems Designers haven't been intentionally rebalancing anything. For example, as I mentioned in another thread, the way certain targeting cones work was changed - that's cut down the "safe spots" above and below Borg Cubes.
As a general rule, we don't want players in level appropriate gear to be one-shotted. There can be some exceptions for special mechanics - like if players are out of position in the fight with the two Unimatrix ships and get hit by the lance, for example. Normal torpedoes shouldn't be producing that kind of burst damage.
I'll try to track down what's causing this and make adjustments as needed.
2 months now and still haven't seen a change in the invisible torpedo issue, a standard plasma torpedo (not high yield) is the culprit. That is the only plasma torpedo fast enough to catch you in distance issues. While these seemingly invisible torpedos do in fact seem to cause critical damage, for which I could care less if the borg are or are not able to do. Cause massive damage thru full shields, meaning 1-2 torpedo impacts should in fact have a damage ammount reduction for impacting your shields first, but instead bypass them all together at times. I know plasma torpedos deal plasma dot damage, but for the borg invisatorp it seems to cause 20k+dmg in an instant hull burn it seems like during these instances.
71 THOUSAND in Damage. How do you even tank that? You cant!
There's being hard. And then there's just being unfair.
Wow. This one ALMOST hit the 30 day mark. Very close to a necro thread. I have three letters for you and one word. BFI and Monotanium. Thank you come again!
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
The issue with the borg damage is that their weapons are having sudden, random, massive damage spike.
I have seen these damage spikes only occur in two weapons: heavy plasma cannon and plasma torpedo.
Note: the plasma torpedo only spikes when it is unbuffed. Aka no heavy plasma no critical hit shown in the log.
These spikes happen when ships are full shield and full hull.
The spikes are very curious in the sense that they completely ignore ship resists. This is easily seen with the heavy plasma... The combat log always shows something like this:
Heavy plasma cannon hits your shields for 12576 (7235) damage
The damage is higher than the base damage yet there is no crit proc nor any weapon buff indicated or seen in the borg ship cube itself. The shots before or after it show the normal inflicted damage being lower than the base damage.
Now..the curious this is this is direct shield damage. Your shields are 100% then POW they're gone.
This bug has always been around even when they allegedly 'fixed it' . However as of a couple of patches ago, the rate in which these spikes happen has increases so dramatically that every single encounter with an elite stf borg means you will get at least 5 to 10 such insane hits before the enemy borg ship dies.
Now I want to make this very clear: My ship setup is such that it is an absolute monster tank.
Its damage output is garbage however. I'm a pure threat control and shield tank ship.
Prior to one month ago, my ship was capable of tanking the ISE gate, all the spheres and the tac cube at the ISE nonstop (except for the low-chance BS supertorpedo hit that would strike for 500k~ dmg and 1-shot me). It was NOT easy to do and it took me a long time to get the right gear, boff setup and even power bar layout set up to keep the more than 4 cycled tanking abilities running nonstop.
Understand this: My tank back then did NOT lose shields. the worst danger was a shield dropped to 20% from a mini-lag spike or a power bar that I clicked and decided not to activate. My setup kept my shields up.
Now however, with the exact same setup... I have died twice and more to the mere cube at the start of ISE when out of freaking nowhere my shields were dropped so fast not even tac team (which was running!) could balance shields fast enough to plug the shield back up before the next spike damage hit obliterated my vessel.
the tac cube and gate pull nonstop spike hits which make it impossible even for my tanking setup to even dream of tanking more than one at a time. I'm talking serious garbage where your 100% shield and hull ship takes the FIRST hit from the enemy while all buffs are up and full wing of shield drones buzzing around me and my shield is gone along with 40% of my hull. All in one ridiculous burst of super-spike damage heavy plasma cannon (~12 to 40k dmg hits each).
My plasma resists? KHG shield mk 12 running 70 shield power and upped to 125 via emg2shld III/II + trnsf shld str 3&2. You figure out how much plasma shield resist I have. My shields are 14k thick each facing. I've even increased it to 18k with multiple extra shield hp boosters. Still nothing. one hit and its gone.
So yes, there IS a BIG change done to the borg weapons as of a few patches ago.
My best guess from observing this... something to do with the cutting beam.
This TRIBBLE begun when the damage boost to the tractor/cutting beam combo was changed. I think there is some effect from the cutting beam that is not showing up on player's effects bar that is completely negating ship resists for the weapon the borg fires following the cutting beam. That weapon is the heavy plasma cannon and plasma torpedo.
The spheres do not exhibit this type of damage spike behavior. Do they not have cutting beams? (never seen them use it). Could be a place to start.
Here's a snippet of my combat log from ISE done this morning. I will try and bold the inexplicable damage spikes and put color comments on a couple that are really weird.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 572 (990) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1000 (1575) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 175 (3030) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 974 (1533) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 170 (2950) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 572 (990) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 0 Physical Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 572 (990) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 941 (1482) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 165 (2852) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 953 (1501) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 167 (2888) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Torpedo dealt 5269 (26258) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 2918 (51088) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo. Note: Supertorpedo
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 572 (990) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 855 (1346) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 150 (2591) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 1100 (1733) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 193 (3334) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 889 (1401) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 156 (2695) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 0 Physical Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 1056 (1663) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 185 (3201) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 0 Physical Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 1080 (1701) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 189 (3272) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo
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[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Torpedo dealt 5270 (26264) shield damage to you. Note: Yet another unbuffed torp damage spike in the base damage.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 552 (956) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 2918 (51098) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo. Note: Yet another unbuffed torp damage spike in the base damage.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 552 (956) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 512 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 0 Physical Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 0 Physical Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 855 (962) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 107 (2592) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 948 (1067) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 119 (2874) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 887 (998) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 111 (2687) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Torpedo dealt 5023 (17987) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 1999 (48706) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 410 (994) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
Note: Supertorpedo. This one is very curious. It is all from ONE torpedo. At first we see a really strange variance of 17k base damage dealing 5k applied damage to the shields but it doesnt say WHAT kind of damage (kinetic?). Then we have the same torpedo, somehow, inflicting a second hit for a massive ~49k damage and applying 2k kinetic damage (damage so far to shields: 7k'ish) and finally the plasma burn dot.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 848 (954) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 106 (2569) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 933 (1050) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 117 (2828) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1021 (1149) shield damage to you. Note: Heavy plasma cannon suddenly hitting for 95% of its base damage on shields that have approximately 70% resists to plasma (20% plasma resist +Emg2Shld3+Trnsfr Shld3+shld power base @70).
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1477 (1407) shield damage to you. Note: Another heavy plasma cannon spike. Notice the shot inmediately before it does not do this spike so it is not that my ship was under some debuff effect os anything (not that I know any effect that debuffs shield resists).
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1318 (1255) shield damage to you.
+
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1427 (1359) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 151 (2615) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1643 (1565) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 129 (2234) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 174 (3012) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
+
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 1266 (1206) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 134 (2320) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1338 (1274) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 142 (2452) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1419 (1351) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 150 (2600) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
Note: Looking at all the above +'s bolded spikes you can see a pattern. Some shots hit me for normal damage others for extremely high damage. This is not the effect of a ship firing weapons under a buff nor of my ship having a debuff on it. This all happens in the space of seconds and well within the duration of any known buff/debuff ability. Therefore this is NOT caused by buffs or debuffs. The weapon itself is spiking a huge damage variance at random.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Torpedo dealt 7866 (23716) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 6839 (53503) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.Note: The HOLY TRIBBLE super-torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 1266 (1206) shield damage to you. Note: Another plasma array spike.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 134 (2320) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 909 (1432) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 159 (2755) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 950 (1497) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 166 (2880) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 838 (1320) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 147 (2539) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
this last bit is normal spam damage. I mean just look at that..it does reflect my SHIELD RESISTS working properly.
Lets look at two supertorpedo logs again:
First one:
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Torpedo dealt 5023 (17987) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 1999 (48706) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 410 (994) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
Second one:
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Torpedo dealt 7866 (23716) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 6839 (53503) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
Both happen inside one minute time, from different sources. Both are regular plasma torpedoes.
So... the game is spiking torpedo damage and applying resists correctly:
First supertorp did a total of 66.6k (17987+48706) as base damage. It did 5k damage to shields and 2k damage to hull. The game splits the combat log into shield and hull damage if the shield is stripped off by the torpedo.
The second torpedo did 56k base damage, hit the shield for 7866 dmg and stripped it off and then applied almost 7k damage to the hull.
What's wrong with this:
An unbuffed plasma torpedo spiking to 60k+ damage. this is the equivalent of a high yield 3 in a player with good torp skills.
What's good with it:
The shield vs kinetic resists are working and the 'kinetic' damage entry is the damage applied to hull from the leftoever damage amount and mitigated by hull kinetic resists.
...but this does not explain the sudden spikes+no plasma damage mitigation in the shield from the heavy plasma cannon and plasma array hits.
A good example:
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 1266 (1206) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 134 (2320) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1338 (1274) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 142 (2452) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1419 (1351) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 150 (2600) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
As mentioned in notes my plasma resists are basically maxed out yet the weapon is inflicting non-crit, non-buffed damage with this weapon that is higher than the base damage. To the shields... in random spikes.
I have seen the beam array and the heavy plasma cannon proc critical hits in my combat log before (didnt happen in this one sadly) so it is not a case of the combat log not displaying crits for this weapon.
These spikes in both plasma weapons and torpedoes have been around for a long time but as of 3 patches ago their frequency has been increased to utterly ridiculous levels. Just look at this log and you will see that in the space of less than one minute (and this is just 1/4th of the total combat log for just 2 minutes of combat) I had multiple spike hits from two different sources.
It is so silly that not even Tac team running can keep the shield facing stable.
From your post it seems evident that something is wrong with borg energy weapons ignoring damage resistance in some cases. In fact, given the way they do more than the number in brackets (the before resistance number), it sees like some specific shots every now and again are getting "-100% damage resistance" on them.
This seems like a pretty serious issue. Devs probably need to take a look at this.
They need to re-tune the aggro mechanic again. I've run into situations where I get one-shotted, respawn and get one-shotted again at 9.9km. Repeat this four or five times a round and one gets sick of STFs really quick.
I'm not running any aggro modifiers nor do I have any points into threat-generation. It's also not a case of out-DPSing the rest of the team or using any particular ability... and it happens across Sci Tac and Eng.
I've watched this happen with team-mates both in fleets and to pug-mates.
Currently the only solution is to sit there de-spawned for 3-4 min until the mechanic resets. That more often than not causes the loss of the optional.
Allow me to explain something to you guys. These ESTF Borg are end-game enemies. They are supposed to be very powerful. Now let's take a look at your average escort/science ship (both are considered squishy hull-wise): as stated many times by bareel, you can tank virtually ANYTHING using those ships due to how defenses and resists go.
Now if end-game enemies can be tanked by the non-tanks something is wrong. So... input the massive damage spike abilities. As an escort you can tank high damage over longer periods of time with ease. But a spike hit? Only a cruiser can take that (as it should be). And look at it this way: if the Borg never hit you with those massive damage spikes you would never die... which would mean these end-game enemies are uselessly pitiful.
To sum it up: the one shots are in there to balance out the fact that players can tank the sustained normal Borg damage with EASE. Add in the one shots, and you actually die. You can survive if you're a cruiser, but then you need to heal your TRIBBLE up asap. But you actually die. End-game enemies being able to kill you... what a novel concept...
-.-
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
I've been dying more due to the game refusing to activate skills like today my cruiser died several times while I was spamming a heal skill but it was refusing to activate... in one case I hit my RSP a few dozen times and it didn't even register I pressed the damned button...
This thread should probably be forked and locked. What I was complaining about has been addressed. Now things are getting confused by a semi-necro involving possible problems with borg energy weapons ignoring resistances, and that deserves to be its own thread.
Comments
I agree completely, sadly that would involve writing a good AI, something escort players would hate
Why would they? I use Escorts a lot of the time and I'd rather we got something other than an extra 0 added to the HP and damage figures for NPCs.
From what I've seen in game, and from the D'Deridex Defender when it was accidentally released outside of the Vault, the whining came from those that didn't know how to debuff a target rather than just sitting back and spamming the spacebar to victory and a lot of them are using Cruisers.
I'm not sure anyone would complain about more intelligent AI if it meant getting rid of the annoying two million HP NPCs where the only challenge is if you'll survive the next attempt at a one shot or not.
I have witnessed a Borg Unimatrix ship use Torpedo: Spread III without the icon or visual effect noting a buff ever appearing. That is broken. You know what else is broken? A kinetic attack hitting with numbers so ludicrously high that the 90% damage resistance offered by shields can't compensate. It's even more ridiculous when said shields and your hull are fully buffed for damage resistance and you're still getting one-shotted.
I've been into this before, and I'm going to bring it up again. In game design, there are two kinds of difficulty you can offer to a player, artificial (bad) and natural (good). Cryptic has taken the artificial route, where NPCs ignore the rules of the game and are equipped with abilities so powerful that they overwhelm the player's ability to resist them. To put it bluntly, this is a terrible solution that reeks of laziness. They should instead give the Borg Hazard Emitters III an AI that promotes cross-healing other Borg ships. This has already been done with the Regeneration Probes, so we know they're capable of it. To balance this out, give them higher sustained DPS (as of now, even with spikes, it's sub-1,000) and remove their ability to spike so outrageously high.
I'm not sure it's fair to call it "laziness." I doubt there's any time where they all sit in the Cryptic office doing nothing. My guess is that they are constrained by a list of priorities, and revamping AI tactics takes a back seat to adding resource grind and microtransactions. Thanks, Perfect World!
:rolleyes:
Agreed. The Borg being uber powerful is fine with me, it only makes sense and is canon. But being killed by some invisible torp with full shields and 100% hull integrity is a bit much and not very realistic. The fact that I cannot even see these things coming too is a tad too unrealistic.
They did do something similar with the Defender they released which, whilst still having a lot of HP, it healed and resisted attacks with (IIRC) Science Team, ASIF3, EPtS and HE (I'm sure there was more too) but the whining from those that think the Spacebar is the most powerful ability in game got it removed. If they'd just given it a couple of extra BA's or increased the weapon power of that particular NPC it would have been an interesting NPC to deal with: It wasn't perfect by any means, and was still easy to defeat due to the low damage it dealt but it was a good start none the less.
I was hoping it was the start of decent NPCs that weren't just bags of HP with the occasional one shot thrown in, but the whining seems to have put a stop to all that, which is a real shame.
You need to pull a set of spheres and a cube and eliminate them, stupidly the spheres are a more serious threat then the tac cube. You can do this until you eliminate 3 sets and then start pouncing on the last bunch. Where HOSE goes wrong can be many many places, no real tank is an issue, people that don't heal others is a problem as well, and people using AoE firing without thought can cause major problems. There is one massive problem out of the players control which needs the dev's attention and that is the Houston, that ship can agro 5 sets of cubes/spheres and wipe your whole team. Didn't they learn from Sulu in Terradome? We need to have some control over this ship, or allow us to call it in before part 2.
90% of the deaths in our group come from one thing... torpedo spreads. The unimatrix ships torp spread can be survived often, an escort with EPtS1 up most often dies, EPtS2/3 will survive. The queen's torp spread is far worse than the unimatrix ships, it one hits cruisers almost always. There really is no defense to the ability either, you can see the buff icon on the enemy, but it fires more often than brace for impact is available. So unless you never look at anything else its going to kill you over and over and over, the visual display of torp spread occurs after you take the damage. It needs to be stepped back to make HOSE not full of one shots.
The bug that makes you respawn without any ship movement controls for up to 2 minutes needs to be fixed as well, you have no control of where you can fly. In any STF that is a major problem, from running into cubes, gates or unimatrix ships.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
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The only catch here being that 90% of players who do ESTF and then proceed to complain about HSE have never done Terradome. And that control bug is easily countered. You respawn, you select a target, then you deselect the target. All of a sudden, your ship works again
Keep your ships in her 90 degree and the spread will spread damage amongst multiple ships instead of one-shotting a single ship that eats the brunt. The same thing with any torp spread.This is a common MMO mechanic, and one of STOs greatest failings is that it's player base seems to refuse to be able to handle even the most basic of teamwork exercises. Instead of saying "how do we beat this?", we scream for it to be nerfed. Frankly it's embarrassing.
Also, if anyone can show me a vid where you legitimately get one-shot where I can't point out something blatantly wrong with what you are doing that could have prevented it, I'll give you an Internet cookie. Resolution must be high enough to see buffs.
Yes, I have seen 5 very experienced players go down all from one torpedo spread. But I'm sure you'll come up with some other reason for how bad these people you don't even know. One was our cruiser built to tank in Hive Onslaught.
There is nobody who can keep out of the queen's 90? range for torpedo spread, you can't be closer than 6k or you die, and being so far away with an enemy that can spin around quickly means you are always at risk. The flaky agro she runs is also an issue because it targets anyone and anything, it had a fixing a couple nights ago for the repair platform some KDF was using, which was funny.. but so buggy.
The gate one hit me last night, just boom.. EPtS3 up, full hull and shields, usually I can tank it at point blank range, but it gets lucky and it criticals even though its ability to critical was removed some time ago. Using the blind spot and firing from 9.5k away isn't a valid way to fight, using broken game mechanics is not how the game should be.
I've been hit by Donatra enough times on torpedo spreads, the game lagged severally, one hit.. dead. I had no agro but couldn't control my ship during the lag, thats why one hits are junk.
The spawning bug has never seemed to clear that way for me, I've smack the keyboard, did everything I can think of and flew straight into a unimatrix a few times, others report the same problems. I'll pay more attention to it, but I'm 100% sure I have changed targets with no affect before.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
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I'm sick and tired of that effing invisible torpedo that seems to be laying waste to not only myself, but countless other players. I got it, it's an Elite STF, it's supposed to be hard, but exploding for no freaking reason when you're not in enemy range is the most rediculous and asanine thing I've ever heard of in a game.
I'll admit this thread is a direct result of getting pasted multiple times in Infected Space Elite just a few minutes before the servers went down (all by the invisible torpedo I might add), but it doesn't change the fact that there is not one single good reason for this particular "feature". The first time ok, but the second time I popped every buff and heal I had (hazard emmiters, brace for impact, engineering team, etc.) and I still got blown up. Rage doesn't quite cover the way I feel about this. It makes me want to take my laptop and beat it across the head of whatever bonehead that came up with this idea in the first place.
It reminds me of the first Mercenaries game on the original Xbox where you would be driving over a bridge and, for no reason at all, suddenly find yourself launched right off the bridge into some water to die.
If you're not going to fix this soup sandwich of an idea, at least explain why it happens, and give us a way to defend against it. How about we leave Sudden Death Syndrome in real life m'kay?
Rest in Peace Brothers
Also i have a feeling about the gates. Im wondering about the cutting beam they use and tractors. We know the combo deals severe damage when players use the borg tractor and a cutting beam (getting nerfed soon i hear) but is there a similar issue with the combo when the borg gate or cubes use them too causing over the top damage, while shields are up imo as well tho it shouldnt work when shields are up but im thinking it does.
Would like to know if bort as A investigated the tiny green blob torps as the problem and not the HY targetable ones and B about the cutting beam and tractor beam combo that can happen with the gate in ISE and the cubes "sometimes".
If you look in the game through all the STFs and one hit kills you'll find
CSE
Iso charge (used to wipe groups, now its strong, very dangerous, but not crazy)
High yield plasma torpedo - you can shoot them down, its fine.
ISE
Plasma torpedos from the gate seem to have a crazy high damage variance, they can hit soft or one hit you with fully buffed shields or even with RSP up
High yield plasma torpedo as before
KASE
Plasma torpedos from gates, as before
High yield plasma torpedo as before
Donatra's torpedo spread, which is probably just modifying the damage on the normal plasma torpedos, which is buggy. The real problem here is like against the queen, if you are within 5k of the ship, it will cloak, getting out of range or this ability at 5k+ is impossible. I've seen this wipe groups on the opening attacks
HOSE
High yield plasma torpedo as before
Lance weapon - which is range limited so ok
The giant plasma balls from the space logs, which are slow enough and able to be shot down, so again, ok
The queen's green blob of death, self centered 5k radius. Avoidable if you stay out of 5k. It makes the fight a mess but you can handle it, escorts have to face the queen so can get trapped quickly. Cruisers fly too slowly to constantly keep out of the 5k range, the queen moves extremely fast at impulse.
Torpedo spread/high yield torpedos from the queen aren't targetable, and you can not get out of range. Being within 5k = death by green blob. These are one hit kills to pretty much everything but the shipped speced for tanks, even then the follow up or burn is likely to kill you. Torpedo spread kills you and possibly the entire team, high yield kills you almost every time. There is no way you can tell which way the queen is facing, it switches agro every few seconds, and brace for impact can save you, but the 1 min cooldown is impractical. The queen also seems to be capable of having high yield and torpedo spread at the same time, making her throw one hit kills extremely frequently.
The logs fire off torpedo spread as well, and due to the weird chain geometry of firing angles in the game, you really can't escape this. Their version is often survivable, but it does one hit a lot of people still.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
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2 months now and still haven't seen a change in the invisible torpedo issue, a standard plasma torpedo (not high yield) is the culprit. That is the only plasma torpedo fast enough to catch you in distance issues. While these seemingly invisible torpedos do in fact seem to cause critical damage, for which I could care less if the borg are or are not able to do. Cause massive damage thru full shields, meaning 1-2 torpedo impacts should in fact have a damage ammount reduction for impacting your shields first, but instead bypass them all together at times. I know plasma torpedos deal plasma dot damage, but for the borg invisatorp it seems to cause 20k+dmg in an instant hull burn it seems like during these instances.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Cryptic's idea of troubleshooting is to stick your fingers in your ear and hum real loud until its all over.
Resurrecting this thread because well
I thought it was fixed. I thought they said they fixed it. But with the last few patches... Well this is happening.
http://imgur.com/oMSozMl
Oh boy. 71k Damage. The gate critted me for.
71 THOUSAND in Damage. How do you even tank that? You cant!
There's being hard. And then there's just being unfair.
Wow. This one ALMOST hit the 30 day mark. Very close to a necro thread. I have three letters for you and one word. BFI and Monotanium. Thank you come again!
The issue with the borg damage is that their weapons are having sudden, random, massive damage spike.
I have seen these damage spikes only occur in two weapons: heavy plasma cannon and plasma torpedo.
Note: the plasma torpedo only spikes when it is unbuffed. Aka no heavy plasma no critical hit shown in the log.
These spikes happen when ships are full shield and full hull.
The spikes are very curious in the sense that they completely ignore ship resists. This is easily seen with the heavy plasma... The combat log always shows something like this:
Heavy plasma cannon hits your shields for 12576 (7235) damage
The damage is higher than the base damage yet there is no crit proc nor any weapon buff indicated or seen in the borg ship cube itself. The shots before or after it show the normal inflicted damage being lower than the base damage.
Now..the curious this is this is direct shield damage. Your shields are 100% then POW they're gone.
This bug has always been around even when they allegedly 'fixed it' . However as of a couple of patches ago, the rate in which these spikes happen has increases so dramatically that every single encounter with an elite stf borg means you will get at least 5 to 10 such insane hits before the enemy borg ship dies.
Now I want to make this very clear: My ship setup is such that it is an absolute monster tank.
Its damage output is garbage however. I'm a pure threat control and shield tank ship.
Prior to one month ago, my ship was capable of tanking the ISE gate, all the spheres and the tac cube at the ISE nonstop (except for the low-chance BS supertorpedo hit that would strike for 500k~ dmg and 1-shot me). It was NOT easy to do and it took me a long time to get the right gear, boff setup and even power bar layout set up to keep the more than 4 cycled tanking abilities running nonstop.
Understand this: My tank back then did NOT lose shields. the worst danger was a shield dropped to 20% from a mini-lag spike or a power bar that I clicked and decided not to activate. My setup kept my shields up.
Now however, with the exact same setup... I have died twice and more to the mere cube at the start of ISE when out of freaking nowhere my shields were dropped so fast not even tac team (which was running!) could balance shields fast enough to plug the shield back up before the next spike damage hit obliterated my vessel.
the tac cube and gate pull nonstop spike hits which make it impossible even for my tanking setup to even dream of tanking more than one at a time. I'm talking serious garbage where your 100% shield and hull ship takes the FIRST hit from the enemy while all buffs are up and full wing of shield drones buzzing around me and my shield is gone along with 40% of my hull. All in one ridiculous burst of super-spike damage heavy plasma cannon (~12 to 40k dmg hits each).
My plasma resists? KHG shield mk 12 running 70 shield power and upped to 125 via emg2shld III/II + trnsf shld str 3&2. You figure out how much plasma shield resist I have. My shields are 14k thick each facing. I've even increased it to 18k with multiple extra shield hp boosters. Still nothing. one hit and its gone.
So yes, there IS a BIG change done to the borg weapons as of a few patches ago.
My best guess from observing this... something to do with the cutting beam.
This TRIBBLE begun when the damage boost to the tractor/cutting beam combo was changed. I think there is some effect from the cutting beam that is not showing up on player's effects bar that is completely negating ship resists for the weapon the borg fires following the cutting beam. That weapon is the heavy plasma cannon and plasma torpedo.
The spheres do not exhibit this type of damage spike behavior. Do they not have cutting beams? (never seen them use it). Could be a place to start.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 572 (990) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1000 (1575) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 175 (3030) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 974 (1533) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 170 (2950) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 572 (990) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 0 Physical Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 572 (990) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 941 (1482) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 165 (2852) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 953 (1501) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 167 (2888) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Torpedo dealt 5269 (26258) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 2918 (51088) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
Note: Supertorpedo
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 572 (990) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 855 (1346) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 150 (2591) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 1100 (1733) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 193 (3334) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 889 (1401) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 156 (2695) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 0 Physical Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 1056 (1663) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 185 (3201) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 0 Physical Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 1080 (1701) shield damage to you.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 189 (3272) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo
.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Torpedo dealt 5270 (26264) shield damage to you.
Note: Yet another unbuffed torp damage spike in the base damage.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 552 (956) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 2918 (51098) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
Note: Yet another unbuffed torp damage spike in the base damage.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 587 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 552 (956) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 512 (1016) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 0 Physical Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:04] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 0 Physical Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 855 (962) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 107 (2592) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 948 (1067) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 119 (2874) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 887 (998) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 111 (2687) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Torpedo dealt 5023 (17987) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 1999 (48706) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 410 (994) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
Note: Supertorpedo. This one is very curious. It is all from ONE torpedo. At first we see a really strange variance of 17k base damage dealing 5k applied damage to the shields but it doesnt say WHAT kind of damage (kinetic?). Then we have the same torpedo, somehow, inflicting a second hit for a massive ~49k damage and applying 2k kinetic damage (damage so far to shields: 7k'ish) and finally the plasma burn dot.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Array dealt 848 (954) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 106 (2569) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 933 (1050) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 117 (2828) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1021 (1149) shield damage to you.
Note: Heavy plasma cannon suddenly hitting for 95% of its base damage on shields that have approximately 70% resists to plasma (20% plasma resist +Emg2Shld3+Trnsfr Shld3+shld power base @70).
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1477 (1407) shield damage to you.
Note: Another heavy plasma cannon spike. Notice the shot inmediately before it does not do this spike so it is not that my ship was under some debuff effect os anything (not that I know any effect that debuffs shield resists).
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1318 (1255) shield damage to you.
+
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1427 (1359) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 151 (2615) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
+
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 1219 (1161) shield damage to you.
+
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1643 (1565) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 129 (2234) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 174 (3012) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
+
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 1266 (1206) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 134 (2320) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1338 (1274) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 142 (2452) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1419 (1351) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 150 (2600) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
Note: Looking at all the above +'s bolded spikes you can see a pattern. Some shots hit me for normal damage others for extremely high damage. This is not the effect of a ship firing weapons under a buff nor of my ship having a debuff on it. This all happens in the space of seconds and well within the duration of any known buff/debuff ability. Therefore this is NOT caused by buffs or debuffs. The weapon itself is spiking a huge damage variance at random.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Torpedo dealt 7866 (23716) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 6839 (53503) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.Note: The HOLY TRIBBLE super-torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 1266 (1206) shield damage to you.
Note: Another plasma array spike.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 134 (2320) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 909 (1432) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 159 (2755) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 950 (1497) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 166 (2880) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 619 (1073) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 838 (1320) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 147 (2539) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
this last bit is normal spam damage. I mean just look at that..it does reflect my SHIELD RESISTS working properly.
Lets look at two supertorpedo logs again:
First one:
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway's Plasma Torpedo dealt 5023 (17987) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 1999 (48706) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Gateway deals 410 (994) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
Second one:
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Torpedo dealt 7866 (23716) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 6839 (53503) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Torpedo.
Both happen inside one minute time, from different sources. Both are regular plasma torpedoes.
So... the game is spiking torpedo damage and applying resists correctly:
First supertorp did a total of 66.6k (17987+48706) as base damage. It did 5k damage to shields and 2k damage to hull. The game splits the combat log into shield and hull damage if the shield is stripped off by the torpedo.
The second torpedo did 56k base damage, hit the shield for 7866 dmg and stripped it off and then applied almost 7k damage to the hull.
What's wrong with this:
An unbuffed plasma torpedo spiking to 60k+ damage. this is the equivalent of a high yield 3 in a player with good torp skills.
What's good with it:
The shield vs kinetic resists are working and the 'kinetic' damage entry is the damage applied to hull from the leftoever damage amount and mitigated by hull kinetic resists.
...but this does not explain the sudden spikes+no plasma damage mitigation in the shield from the heavy plasma cannon and plasma array hits.
A good example:
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Plasma Array dealt 1266 (1206) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 134 (2320) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Array.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1338 (1274) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 142 (2452) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube's Heavy Plasma Cannon dealt 1419 (1351) shield damage to you.
[10:05] [Combat (Self)] Tactical Cube deals 150 (2600) Plasma Damage to you with Heavy Plasma Cannon.
As mentioned in notes my plasma resists are basically maxed out yet the weapon is inflicting non-crit, non-buffed damage with this weapon that is higher than the base damage. To the shields... in random spikes.
I have seen the beam array and the heavy plasma cannon proc critical hits in my combat log before (didnt happen in this one sadly) so it is not a case of the combat log not displaying crits for this weapon.
These spikes in both plasma weapons and torpedoes have been around for a long time but as of 3 patches ago their frequency has been increased to utterly ridiculous levels. Just look at this log and you will see that in the space of less than one minute (and this is just 1/4th of the total combat log for just 2 minutes of combat) I had multiple spike hits from two different sources.
It is so silly that not even Tac team running can keep the shield facing stable.
This seems like a pretty serious issue. Devs probably need to take a look at this.
I'm not running any aggro modifiers nor do I have any points into threat-generation. It's also not a case of out-DPSing the rest of the team or using any particular ability... and it happens across Sci Tac and Eng.
I've watched this happen with team-mates both in fleets and to pug-mates.
Currently the only solution is to sit there de-spawned for 3-4 min until the mechanic resets. That more often than not causes the loss of the optional.
Allow me to explain something to you guys. These ESTF Borg are end-game enemies. They are supposed to be very powerful. Now let's take a look at your average escort/science ship (both are considered squishy hull-wise): as stated many times by bareel, you can tank virtually ANYTHING using those ships due to how defenses and resists go.
Now if end-game enemies can be tanked by the non-tanks something is wrong. So... input the massive damage spike abilities. As an escort you can tank high damage over longer periods of time with ease. But a spike hit? Only a cruiser can take that (as it should be). And look at it this way: if the Borg never hit you with those massive damage spikes you would never die... which would mean these end-game enemies are uselessly pitiful.
To sum it up: the one shots are in there to balance out the fact that players can tank the sustained normal Borg damage with EASE. Add in the one shots, and you actually die. You can survive if you're a cruiser, but then you need to heal your TRIBBLE up asap. But you actually die. End-game enemies being able to kill you... what a novel concept...
-.-
Nice one Cryptic... nice one...