Reputation Tier Rewards - Answers and Advice sought

amvielle

Salutations fellow captains,

I play more or less casually, but seek to optimise my choices a little to fulfill a helpful role when flying elite STFs and the like. Thus, I have some questions and seek some advice, and would be glad if some people with a more in-depth understanding of the game could help me out. I'd appreciate insightful and data-backed answers where possible, as I have a rather inquisitive mind!

So thanks to any volunteers .

So... I'm playing an engineering captain, flying an odyssey (tac variant). I'm trying to fulfill a "tanking" role, as that is fun and seems helpful. However, even with maxed threat control, I'm quite occasionally having trouble holding aggro (I'm equipped in XI-XII purples for weapons).

Thus, I am entirely split about the reputation rewards:

On the one hand, I'd really like to pick the defensive ones. Yay more survibability! Yay investing into my core role!

However, the hull nanite defensive perk seems odd: 10% hull repair... every 60 seconds? Seriously? Not a constant effect? That would mean that most of the time, it happens when you don't need it, and is rather wasted (though it may have the psychological effect of occasionally pulling that one-in-thousand proc at just exactly the right minute when you need it).

Furthermore, the problem is that whenever I'm not holding aggro, defensive perks are almost entirely wasted. Also, I figure that damage dealers will all take the offensive perks without question - so you'd have to take them simply to "pull even" with threat generation, and to not fall even further behind.

Then again, the hive space mission showcases that every bit more survivability could be useful for the challenging (and thus the only fun) elite content.

Do aggro reduction consoles come in here, and say that it's the DDs job to reduce their threat rather than me to invest into a weakness (damage) rather than a strength (surviving) chasing them?

Also, of course, for your daily grind and soloing and less challenging missions, more damage is just more fun than more survivability, as it means you'll get through it faster and less cumbersomely.

I'd be happy to hear some thoughts and some explanations (especially on that nanite hull repair perk - I can't really believe that it only ticks every 60 seconds for 10%?), and am grateful for your advice!

Cheers,

hevach

Something to consider here: a lot of people with PVP builds have points in threat control themselves for the defense bonus, despite being DPS set ups. It does kind of hurt things on people actually trying to tank, you'll never match their threat in those situations. Thankfully, most those people are prepared to deal with that.

Even without that, the concept of threat is a fairly recent addition to the game, and it's not where it should be.

One mid-term solution, starting at tier 1, fleet embassy rewards include threat scaling consoles. They increase threat generation by a pretty hefty chunk and offer some additional stat bonuses you can pick from when buying them. Starting projects on embassies are pretty cheap, and many fleets should start hitting tier 1 this week and next.

Those consoles would be a better investment than taking DPS reputation talents, since the people pulling threat off you are probably going to be taking the DPS talents as well, offsetting your investment.

amvielle

Hey hey,

and thanks for the reply!

Just to see whether I understood you correctly, what I'm taking away here:

Something to consider here: a lot of people with PVP builds have points in threat control themselves for the defense bonus, despite being DPS set ups. It does kind of hurt things on people actually trying to tank, you'll never match their threat in those situations. Thankfully, most those people are prepared to deal with that.

Even without that, the concept of threat is a fairly recent addition to the game, and it's not where it should be.

I should probably not bother with tanking at this point, and thus dealing damage is the more helpful thing in missions, as I cannot reliably expect to be holding aggro anyway (and thus survivability is not really worth investing in, as it's wasted while you're not taking amounts of damage you couldn't cope with). Whereas in such a situation, the damage boost would still be beneficial - by doing damage.

One mid-term solution, starting at tier 1, fleet embassy rewards include threat scaling consoles. They increase threat generation by a pretty hefty chunk and offer some additional stat bonuses you can pick from when buying them. Starting projects on embassies are pretty cheap, and many fleets should start hitting tier 1 this week and next.

Those consoles would be a better investment than taking DPS reputation talents, since the people pulling threat off you are probably going to be taking the DPS talents as well, offsetting your investment.

Those consoles would basically mean a console slot tax on attempts of tanking (I could not find them on stowiki, and I doubt they are as good as standard consoles from their other bonuses?), making it an even more undesirable route.

Furthermore, if you want to tank, taking the damage perks for threat is a must - as you'd just be one leg behind in threat generation if you didn't, and could not hope to out-threat a DD even with a console if they took the damage route and happen to have some threat control for PvP reasons.

Is this about the gist?

I'm also still curious whether anyone still actually knows what the hull repair nanites actually do. I simply cannot fathom they'd offer something as terrible as the description suggests, my guess is it is actually equalized over the duration and does not proc every 60s for 10% of your hull...

hevach

amvielle wrote: »

I should probably not bother with tanking at this point, and thus dealing damage is the more helpful thing in missions, as I cannot reliably expect to be holding aggro anyway (and thus survivability is not really worth investing in, as it's wasted while you're not taking amounts of damage you couldn't cope with). Whereas in such a situation, the damage boost would still be beneficial - by doing damage.

That's only dealing with people in PVP builds, and you can check out the PVP queues to see how many people actually do that, and watch as entire groups simply melt to see how many actually have PVP builds. Now, you might be better off with a damage build than a tanking build, but it's not for this reason but the fact that the game doesn't really value tanking except in a handful of specific circumstances, the most notable of which being Hive Onslaught phase 3... and even that mission includes one of the strictest DPS checks in the game in phase 1.

Those consoles would basically mean a console slot tax on attempts of tanking (I could not find them on stowiki, and I doubt they are as good as standard consoles from their other bonuses?), making it an even more undesirable route.

They're ultra-rare, so they have the highest stat budget of any consoles currently in the game. When available on tribble, the mk X ones had a stat bonus that was comparable to mk X purples (sometimes higher, sometimes a couple points lower), as well as a special proc (generally a small hull heal that triggers when taking damage), and a huge threat increase or decrease that can be switched on or off. There were quite a few variations with different stats, but it doesn't hit everything you could usually get in science consoles, and I don't think it had a field generator equivalent, so there is some slot tax to it, but by stat budget these consoles are head and shoulders above anything else to dampen it.

Yuzral's got a video on them here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZZrdmawjuig
Starts talking about the consoles about 10 minutes in.

amvielle

Great link, thank you!

Very interesting that there are both threat reduction as well as threat increase consoles - this means that, as it should be, for proper role setups it's the DDs duty to watch threat just as much as the tank's.

Now, with that, I'm confident enough I could take the defense perks as I'd prefer theme-wise, as the old adage for someone pulling aggro and dying would apply: If the tank dies it's the healer's fault. If the healer dies it's the tank's fault. If a DD dies - it's the DD's fault. :-) But yeah, the game does not really seem to have put too much thought into group tactics at this point, I usually find that a big damage output simply is the most useful, even in the elite STFs most of the time.

Now only to find out how those nanites work, because no way I'm picking them up if they only tick every 60 seconds for a big chunk, instead of just raising hull regeneration.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the information and commentary, hevach.

Cheers,