Why would that make anyone happy? They made the Borg 3 piece set power even less effective.
We need to get people in an uproar about this. Its a simple thing to do, and if more people want to be able to buff the KCB with the generic beam console, the devs might change their minds about it.
I would be fine with this change IF the Borg Tractor cooldown is reduced from 4 minutes down to 2. Otherwise it makes no sense. EDIT: Just checked Tribble -- Borg Tractor recharge time is now 3 minutes
Kinetic Cutting Beam is now 300dps instead of of 209 -- this is a nice upgrade. However, the KCB + Borg Tractor combo now deals 835 kinetic damage instead of 2228.
Two reasons, the Cutting Beam damage WAS BUFFED AS WELL, meaning unless there is a 33% reduction on the combo there is no loss, in fact there is a gain as it can be used more often even if its not as much damage as before, this leads to the second reason.
EVERY TIME we get something useful BUT goes against the static PvP element of the game we have the PvPers crying about it until Cryptic nerfs it to restore their status quo of never changing PvP builds, I dont want to see it buffed because the crying game that will go over that section of the forums means we WILL get a utter worthless beam because when it comes to BAWWWing from certain people around here, the nerf bat will swing ... not it will swing when it comes with the Borg and the like of overpwered NPCs in the game, just a light tap.
So no, I dont want it to see buffed because then I get a nerf later on or along with the buff.
This doesn't even make sense. You don't want us to be able to buff it with generic consoles because you're worried it will get nerfed later on?
How many people use generic beam consoles anyway? It's not a competitive PVP console. People want to use +30 specialized consoles, not the +20 generic ones (+20 is where the generic consoles max out).
If they change this, and you are a player like me that fits a bunch of generic consoles to use the KCB, you aren't maximizing your DPS. You are just maximizing the KCB. It's useful for a specialized build like mine, which is shield-stripping, but not so much for people flying escorts, which is what makes up probably 66% or more of the game.
Remember you can only fit 1 KCB. Using a bunch of generic consoles to buff it maximizes the KCB, but is sub-optimal for every other weapon on your ship.
Letting a generic console buff the KCB will not OP it or turn PVP upside-down. All it will do is make is more useful for that odd duck player that really wants to maximize using this one weapon.
White phaser turret Mk X, inventory, regular space (aka not in a system and skill-boosted): 101.9 DPS.
KCB results from ACT during recent borg sector alert: did anywhere from 11 to 210 shield damage, and only a dozen or so "kinetic" hits (aka against hull, but unable to 100% ascertain if these are crits through shields or just cheap shots on no shields) came in under the "listed" 261 damage per hit... BTW, this is with baseline 25 power to weapons boosted to ~50 with skills and maybe a bit more from energy syphon and omega proc... Confirmable hull hits did minimum 500 damage per hit...
To me, giving up 50% of my anti-shield DPS to minimally quadruple my bare-hull damage is an effective weapon, as long as you expect this and plan around it. On my current Vesta build that I'm experimenting with, I run 2 of the aux DHCs fore, with the Rommie Hyper torp rounding out the nose, and I run the Rommie Plasma Array, the KCB, and the Omega torp (mini V'Ger shots) off the tail, an adaptation of the "traditional" 2 narrow-arc energy + torp fore / 360 arc weapon / escort's slotting of a beam array tail for target subsystems and torp tail. DPS is decent if not maximized... That, and this build is a little more STF-oriented with the KCB's and torps effectiveness against all the unshielded stuff in an STF...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
I would be fine with this change IF the Borg Tractor cooldown is reduced from 4 minutes down to 2. Otherwise it makes no sense. EDIT: Just checked Tribble -- Borg Tractor recharge time is now 3 minutes
Kinetic Cutting Beam is now 300dps instead of of 209 -- this is a nice upgrade. However, the KCB + Borg Tractor combo now deals 835 kinetic damage instead of 2228.
thats freaking pathetic....when i read they were nerfing the combo i was all...ok the will cut the current damage in half at most....but with it being nearly 3/4 cut.....that sucks -.-
yes the 3 min CD is ok....but considering how long it lasts its still not good enough....especially considering how often the borg can use their tractor beam -.-
Hell...I would rather have the tractor beam officer doff add a chance to reduce the cooldown on use of ANY tractor beam instead of stripping shields (it helps but not much) or cutting off engine power (repulsors)
OR, because its a DEFLECTOR SKILL, add it into the deflector doff that has a chance to reduce the cooldown of the other skills that use the deflector....
I find this line of replies sadly hilarious. We put a lot of work into the massive list of fixes/changes above, and ya'll are hung up on the ability to skip our content. =p
People shouldn't have complained about the BTB cooldown in the first place. It had a long cooldown because the combo was essentially a "can of whoopass" ability, as long as it was used at the right moment and not wasted like I assume people often did.
To me, giving up 50% of my anti-shield DPS to minimally quadruple my bare-hull damage is an effective weapon, as long as you expect this and plan around it.
Well using Directed Energy Manifolds wouldn't quadruple your KCB. Let's say your in a Defiant Retrofit with 5 tac consoles. Each Directed Energy Distribution Manifold gives +20% damage, so you would double the output of your KCB.
... At the expense of all your cannons. Assuming you have your quad cannon and dual heavy phasers and turrets and all, you would normally want 5 of the +30 phaser relays to maximize your DPS.
With 5 Energy Manifolds, you would at best be a very sub-par beamscort.
It would probably be more viable for a Cruiser to do this with a bunch of beams and a KCB, but they would still be doing sub-par damage too.
Letting Directed Energy Manifolds buff the KCB really only helps shield-stripping science vessels. They would still see a damage drop compared to using more specialized consoles, but they can keep shields down long enough to make effective use of the KCB. Plus the KCB maintains a constant stream of damage, where as with torpedoes you have to wait 8 or 15 seconds for your next hull attack. So it might be a more favorable to build a ship using a buffed KCB + shield stripping.
But I will never know. Right now you can't buff the stupid thing.
If the cutting beam is getting stronger with a weaker tractor beam on shorter cool-down then it sounds like it should even out. Currently the borg tractor beam is very powerful; it absolutely destroys enemy hull if you can keep their shields down, which isn't hard if you time it right in an escort since you're also using the beam to lock the enemy in place with their weakest shields toward you.
I'd like to see the tractor beam either be more powerful with higher mark sets, or have the faster cool-down (latter is probably best), as currently there doesn't seem a whole lot of reason to upgrade to Mk XII. It might be interesting if the 3-piece bonus for the set actually included a damage buff to the kinetic cutting beam, so the beam would be more powerful in general when using the Mk XII borg shields/engines/deflector set as opposed to the Mk X.
I think that making the beam use generic consoles would be fair; I don't think many people would do that anyway. My main wish for the cutting beam would be to swap it from the current [dmg]x3 bonus that it has, and give it an [acc] bonus instead. I'd also still like the beam to use beam abilities; except maybe beam overload, as it could be very good for anti-projectile point defence when used with fire at will, and it makes sense that it should be able to target subsystems since it's purpose is after all to cut chunks out of ships!
I just hope that if they're tweaking the beam that they're going to look at the assimilated weapon set bonus; the 3-piece bonus is pretty useless, which has me using the romulan plasma torpedo launcher instead, even though I prefer the omega one.
Its a red beam that shoots from turrets hardpoints, if you are in a AP boat its no wonder you can tell since its uses the same color as AP beams but its easy to spot if you flying beamboats as it most of the time will not fire from the usual spots.
I'm definitely not seeing it then; I'm running with plasma weapons at the moment, to take advantage of the romulan singularity harness set in PvE.
I'd also still like the beam to use beam abilities; except maybe beam overload, as it could be very good for anti-projectile point defence when used with fire at will, and it makes sense that it should be able to target subsystems since it's purpose is after all to cut chunks out of ships!
It would be interesting if they made it work with beam target subsystems. For people with the Vesta you could have the KCB in a back slot and have 3 cannons up front, which would let you use subsystem targeting without sacrificing any DPS. Actually it would make sense to me, if it did a little extra damage when you use the KCB to target a subsystem, maybe guaranteed crew damage with a depressurization effect? It might be OP though.
But I'm not banking on it ever being used with beam abilities. If it never does I'm fine with that. I just hope it gets buffed by the generic beam consoles soon.
Comments
I would be fine with this change IF the Borg Tractor cooldown is reduced from 4 minutes down to 2. Otherwise it makes no sense. EDIT: Just checked Tribble -- Borg Tractor recharge time is now 3 minutes
Kinetic Cutting Beam is now 300dps instead of of 209 -- this is a nice upgrade. However, the KCB + Borg Tractor combo now deals 835 kinetic damage instead of 2228.
This doesn't even make sense.
How many people use generic beam consoles anyway? It's not a competitive PVP console. People want to use +30 specialized consoles, not the +20 generic ones (+20 is where the generic consoles max out).
If they change this, and you are a player like me that fits a bunch of generic consoles to use the KCB, you aren't maximizing your DPS. You are just maximizing the KCB. It's useful for a specialized build like mine, which is shield-stripping, but not so much for people flying escorts, which is what makes up probably 66% or more of the game.
Remember you can only fit 1 KCB. Using a bunch of generic consoles to buff it maximizes the KCB, but is sub-optimal for every other weapon on your ship.
Letting a generic console buff the KCB will not OP it or turn PVP upside-down. All it will do is make is more useful for that odd duck player that really wants to maximize using this one weapon.
KCB results from ACT during recent borg sector alert: did anywhere from 11 to 210 shield damage, and only a dozen or so "kinetic" hits (aka against hull, but unable to 100% ascertain if these are crits through shields or just cheap shots on no shields) came in under the "listed" 261 damage per hit... BTW, this is with baseline 25 power to weapons boosted to ~50 with skills and maybe a bit more from energy syphon and omega proc... Confirmable hull hits did minimum 500 damage per hit...
To me, giving up 50% of my anti-shield DPS to minimally quadruple my bare-hull damage is an effective weapon, as long as you expect this and plan around it. On my current Vesta build that I'm experimenting with, I run 2 of the aux DHCs fore, with the Rommie Hyper torp rounding out the nose, and I run the Rommie Plasma Array, the KCB, and the Omega torp (mini V'Ger shots) off the tail, an adaptation of the "traditional" 2 narrow-arc energy + torp fore / 360 arc weapon / escort's slotting of a beam array tail for target subsystems and torp tail. DPS is decent if not maximized... That, and this build is a little more STF-oriented with the KCB's and torps effectiveness against all the unshielded stuff in an STF...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
thats freaking pathetic....when i read they were nerfing the combo i was all...ok the will cut the current damage in half at most....but with it being nearly 3/4 cut.....that sucks -.-
yes the 3 min CD is ok....but considering how long it lasts its still not good enough....especially considering how often the borg can use their tractor beam -.-
Hell...I would rather have the tractor beam officer doff add a chance to reduce the cooldown on use of ANY tractor beam instead of stripping shields (it helps but not much) or cutting off engine power (repulsors)
OR, because its a DEFLECTOR SKILL, add it into the deflector doff that has a chance to reduce the cooldown of the other skills that use the deflector....
Well using Directed Energy Manifolds wouldn't quadruple your KCB. Let's say your in a Defiant Retrofit with 5 tac consoles. Each Directed Energy Distribution Manifold gives +20% damage, so you would double the output of your KCB.
... At the expense of all your cannons. Assuming you have your quad cannon and dual heavy phasers and turrets and all, you would normally want 5 of the +30 phaser relays to maximize your DPS.
With 5 Energy Manifolds, you would at best be a very sub-par beamscort.
It would probably be more viable for a Cruiser to do this with a bunch of beams and a KCB, but they would still be doing sub-par damage too.
Letting Directed Energy Manifolds buff the KCB really only helps shield-stripping science vessels. They would still see a damage drop compared to using more specialized consoles, but they can keep shields down long enough to make effective use of the KCB. Plus the KCB maintains a constant stream of damage, where as with torpedoes you have to wait 8 or 15 seconds for your next hull attack. So it might be a more favorable to build a ship using a buffed KCB + shield stripping.
But I will never know. Right now you can't buff the stupid thing.
I'd like to see the tractor beam either be more powerful with higher mark sets, or have the faster cool-down (latter is probably best), as currently there doesn't seem a whole lot of reason to upgrade to Mk XII. It might be interesting if the 3-piece bonus for the set actually included a damage buff to the kinetic cutting beam, so the beam would be more powerful in general when using the Mk XII borg shields/engines/deflector set as opposed to the Mk X.
I think that making the beam use generic consoles would be fair; I don't think many people would do that anyway. My main wish for the cutting beam would be to swap it from the current [dmg]x3 bonus that it has, and give it an [acc] bonus instead. I'd also still like the beam to use beam abilities; except maybe beam overload, as it could be very good for anti-projectile point defence when used with fire at will, and it makes sense that it should be able to target subsystems since it's purpose is after all to cut chunks out of ships!
I just hope that if they're tweaking the beam that they're going to look at the assimilated weapon set bonus; the 3-piece bonus is pretty useless, which has me using the romulan plasma torpedo launcher instead, even though I prefer the omega one.
I'm definitely not seeing it then; I'm running with plasma weapons at the moment, to take advantage of the romulan singularity harness set in PvE.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
It would be interesting if they made it work with beam target subsystems. For people with the Vesta you could have the KCB in a back slot and have 3 cannons up front, which would let you use subsystem targeting without sacrificing any DPS. Actually it would make sense to me, if it did a little extra damage when you use the KCB to target a subsystem, maybe guaranteed crew damage with a depressurization effect? It might be OP though.
But I'm not banking on it ever being used with beam abilities. If it never does I'm fine with that. I just hope it gets buffed by the generic beam consoles soon.