Kinetic Cutting Beam viability in PvP

afree100

Points to consider:
1. Does not benefit from abilties like CRF, BO and FAW
2. No consoles for it
3. Omega Weapon Proc (about every 2 volleys in a DHC escort (with 2 turrets and one kinetic beam), must be paired with borg console) also I am guessing resistance means less drain on weapon power for the duration
4. Is still firing in the firing cycle after the one in which it was "fired" so may drain the DHC (or whatever) in the next firing cycle.
5. Since its kinetic damage should not be affected by Starship Energy weapons skill (and related) and I doubt it is affected by projectile weapon skill (and related) since that does not affect all kinetic damage (as far as I know).

Does the resistance + extra weapon power overcome (or even exceed) all of the above caveats?

shookyang

My fleet mate got one and he was pretty underwhelmed by it.

aquitaine985

Finally gave in and got one this morning, hell, half of me wanted it just to have something new to play with.

ocp001

Been playing with it, and actually I really like it. For ships that are setup as shield strippers it works very well when paired with tetryon glider. It's instantaneous hull damage over time. It has a 1 second recharge per 4 pulses. Oh and you can stack DEM with it too.

It's my new favorite kinetic weapon.

maicake716

does the target subsystems work with it?

if yes then its the new best weapon for torp builds on science ships. stick one of these on the rear with 2 mines and the 3 torps up front and youre good to go.

rudiefix1

Tomorrow I have it available on my plas'tinga... and will try it out. Should fit perfectly with that build

shimmerless

My instinct is that this thing is perfectly balanced: you trade off lower consistent damage to shields for more damage once shields are down.

Just hypothesizimizing, though!

rudiefix1

maicake716 wrote: »

does the target subsystems work with it?

if yes then its the new best weapon for torp builds on science ships. stick one of these on the rear with 2 mines and the 3 torps up front and youre good to go.

Tested it:

No target subsystems
No Beam overload

Tooltip shows that tet glyder, DEM, plasmonic leach are added.

other interesting thing: Combat log shows that it does 2 types of damage: shield damage + kinetic damage.

regarding tac consoles: disruptor coil, ambiplasma envelope, plasma infuser dont buff the dmg. think the other ones won't do either. The beam also has its own color.

disposeableh3r0

Its unaffected by any weapons specific consoles or powers.
It is affected by energy weapons skills.
It is affected by weapons power levels.
It is affected by anything that globaly increases damage (attack patterns and such)
Only ONE per ship (there has been confusion about this in other threads)
Omega weapons amp applies to ALL weapons including console weapons.


Hope this helps.

kalvorax

its useful with tetryon builds....really good with the omega 2 pc bonus....and if running the 3-pc borg you have the borg tractor beam which inflicts large amts of damage to the hull (i think its around 2,500 per tick or per 4 seconds...either way its still big...) but the 4 min CD kills it and makes me run the 2-pc omega with tetryon weapons. i havent tried it in PVP yet...but ist really good in PvE (the tholians hate it thats for sure hahaha)

afree100

rudiefix1 wrote: »

other interesting thing: Combat log shows that it does 2 types of damage: shield damage + kinetic damage.

That seems very interesting because one of the biggest problems with it was lack of shield damage.
Edit: Are you sure that this is not the kinetic (or whatever energy type you are using) and shield damage all weapons have.

Edit 3: One is the bleedthrough and the other is the damage to the shields or the "main" damage.

disposeableh3r0 wrote:

It is affected by energy weapons skills.

Very suprised since it does kenetic damage, guess the devs choose to "hook" it up



Also, am concerned that the weapon has no ACC mods but it is only one weapon...
I am going to try some tests now but I don't think I will determin much (well I am not good at testing power level stuff).

Edit 2: when shields are up against my test ship (another account (non-moving) at level 46 with 6 in energy damage resist and 6 in threat control and 0 in kinetic resist) shield damage is 160-190 (reman mk x) with bleedthrough being 70-80 and without shields (took them off) 700-800 (all damage is each "tick" or "hit" (4 per firing cycle) and only firing the cutting beam (not other weapons)). So without counting bleedthrough when shields are on thats approx 23% (lets just say 25%) of damage when firing on shields as oppose to hull.

It also looks as if distance from target scales damage.

Edit 3: From a firing distance of 9.42km and no buffs at 125 weapon power in a Fleet Patrol Escort with nothing enhancing damage except for 4 mk xi blue polaron consoles and the borg console and accx3 mk xi polaron turrets and DHC on the same ship as above I did these tests by (non-moving, shield power at 100 and aux at 50):

1. Started firing cycle and alt tabed to the other game (where the other char resided)
2. As first volley from firing ship approached activated Emergency Power to Shields II and tactical team (rotated both tac teams throughout the duration)
3. As soon as Emergency Power to shields II ended activated Emergency Power to Shields I.
4. When Epts I was 3-5seconds from ending switched back to other char and stopped firing by clicking away.

Combatlog screenshots in .png format inside zip folder http://www.mediafire.com/?sp90clc3d08aya2.

Note: Remember to take crit hit amounts into account for each weapon (and also hits) and remember that the firing cycle thingy for cutting beam lasts a long time so will spread throughout firing cycles.

My conclusion (for PvP, or anything else with a lot of shields on a escort build (Cannon Rapid Fire)): Is that you are better without cutting beam, it has low crit hit chance (meaning it will scale worse with Attack Pattern Alphies Crit Damage boost etc than other weapons), low accuracy (well I am assuming it has the same strike chance as any other non-acc modded weapon and everyone who plays PvP will have at least one acc mod, and Cannon Rapid Fire will drive it further into the ground since it dosen't benefit from it.

Edit 4: Actually those acc weapons probably would of been benefiting from acc crit chance overflow since the target wasen't moving so forget the crit hit chance (that does stuff the results up a bit but I think my point still stands).

And I doubt it matters but the weapon slot I used for the cutting beam was the middle turret.

rudiefix1

afree100 wrote: »

It also looks as if distance from target scales damage.

YEs, distance matters.

Also, when shields are down, one single beam already burns the hull severely

And maybe the shield damage In reffered to before is cause from tet glyder. Not sure about that


Now Im thinking.

Maybe the cutting beam is affected by the directed energy distribution manifold (beam console). Then you can min-max an all energy build with in the front dual beam banks with BO or target shields and in the back 3 to 4 cutting beams. Would be good on escorts also, since they can keep the front arc.

rudiefix1

disposeableh3r0 wrote: »

Only ONE per ship (there has been confusion about this in other threads)

Are you sure? (like tried it yourself?)

disposeableh3r0

rudiefix1 wrote: »

Are you sure? (like tried it yourself?)

Yes.
(No but here are some reasons to believe me.)
1) it is a set item and all set items are unique as in one per
2)It is also a unique weapon ans all the current unique weapons are also one per (waqy/missles/quad cannon
3) there are other threads where people have stated they bought 2 and can only equip one.