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Beams are still BS(you know exactly what I mean)
alexindcobra
Member Posts: 608
After all this new patches and new seasons, beams are still a worthless form of firepower. It doens't matter if you are in PVP or PVE, you only deal minimal damage in comparison to cannons, or torpedos. Its useless against players now because they can heal faster than you can deal damage. Its the opposite affect with the cannons. They deal damage faster than you can heal. With that type of imbalance, it makes most of the ships on the Fed side oppsolete in comparison to KDF and cruisers lacking extra weapon slots, Tac BOFF slots, or cannons oppsolete in comparison to escorts. As a cruiser in a PVP match, all you can do is heal. You can't go 1 on 1 with an escort because he will mop the floor with you. He can deal damage to you with his rappid cannon fire faster than you can heal yourself, yet you can barely scratch his hull with your inefficient beams because cryptic has made things to where escorts can heal themselves just as fast as cruisers. If you are lucky to get his shield down he can turn and burn, leaving you in the dust because his engines are way more powerful than yours. If your ship don't have the higher than LT Tac Boff slots, cannons, carries fighters, or have more than two weapons consoles, then you are just going to be another target magnet for those carriers cannons.
Post edited by alexindcobra on
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However I will disagree with this part:
I can outheal the majority of an alpha strike from a bug in my Odyssey. Anything I can't outheal straight up I can usually pick up with HoTs. You are correct, cannon and BA damage have a massive disparity, almost to the point of stupidity, but you vastly underestimate or devalue the ability of cruisers to heal not only themselves but others.
Word of advice:
If you're having trouble surviving against an escort, use the following ability combo: EPtS3, TT1, HE2, TSS1, Aux2SIF3, as appropriate. If you keep cycling those abilities and time them properly, the escort will never pop you. Also you have MW3 as your "oh ****" button, and combined with a RSP2, you can EASILY outlast any escort, at least long enough that it will get bored/one of your teammates will come and kill it.
I play an engi in a cruiser. I have no illusions whatsoever to the fact that I am not the main damage dealer. I also have no illusions to the fact that in PvP, if it takes less than 3 people to kill my Odyssey (without a sub-nuke), then I am doing something wrong.
I also play tactical captains. And THEM I go bat-**** crazy and kill things. I have no illusions to the fact that I am anything but a damage dealer. It's all about knowing what your ship can and cannot do (well), and knowing what each career can and cannot do (well).
So please, save your sarcastic mockery for one of your random unfounded request threads.
It simply comes down to the simple fact that dealing damage is easy, but so is healing and tanking. However DD tend to seem OP since they are just the most effective in PvE. However in PvP, it's a TEAM effort (something OP doesn't always seem to remember), and each ship has it's own role and place in that TEAM effort. Full escort teams often get rolled hard by mix teams. They can't heal each other nearly as well as a cruiser can heal something. An escort cannot CC nearly as well as a science ship can.
So beams have their place, as weak as they are. But as I stated multiple times in multiple threads, the only buff on beams I would support would be the return of the ~20% damage lost at some point after BFAW came out, and a slight (VERY slight) accuracy bonus.
Also another thing to point out, beams are far more effective at longer ranges than cannons. By a significant margin.
anyway, personally i think the most obvious thing "wrong" (i wouldn't even call it that, but in favor of this thread i do) is the high drain rate, which basically means you need to run a setup for max weapon power on your cruiser to make them effective...once you do it works, but you have to sacrifice surviveability on your cruiser, which kind of makes the issue moot for me, since they are designed as tanks in this game and not prime DD's.
in my opinion, the cruiser with beams played as intended, like a tank/support/healer works fine in this game...once you try to make it a DD, you either sacrifice a lot of the 3...which basically means you are better off with an escort/dual cannons anyway, or you fail completely and the ship is not capable of filling in any of those roles (that happens a lot)
i'm completely in favor of reducing beam energy drain to 6, but would that increase beam dmg to a point where they are viable DD weapons...certainly not, most cruiser classes would still be horrible ships for the DD role.
the problem with beams lies not with beams, but with people wanting to fly their favourite ships in roles they are not designed for in this game.
The funny part actually is, that in PVE that really doesn't even matter, since you can practically reach 4-5k dps with any T4/T5 ship in this game if you look around for usefull builds.
Thats not entirely true. For PvE, Cannons on cruisers are ... acceptable. The KI is stupid and does not try to outmanouver you.
In PvP, even the Vor'cha has too low turn rate to match with the agility of any escort, beside you are using aux2damp ... however, if you do that, you loose so much engineering that you also simply could fly a raptor and would be better with.
Cannons have an absurd damage and rate of fire and this is what makes the beams look so decrepit.
Cannons need to be changed to:
Single cannon
Single Heavy Cannon*
Dual Cannon
*Rather than it being dual heavy cannon.
By removing the very high damage dual heavy cannon and 'trimming it' to a single heavy cannon the cannon ships in the game fall in line with the beam weaponry.
How? Simple. The cannon's primary advantage is that it has a rapid refire & fire rate plus the boff abilities buff ALL cannons not just one (unlike beams) when firing on a single target.
The dual heavy cannon receives an insane damage boost and rate of fire bonus from boff abilities and this is why most people dont bother with single cannons and rarely use dual cannons. The dual heavy is the one that has the massive damage output.
A single heavy cannon would have the same refire rate the dual heavy has now but only have minimally better damage output than the dual cannons .The catch: the heavy cannon has twice the secondary effect the non-heavy cannons have. Not chance to proc but the effect itself.
I don't even know where to start here.
1) Procs on DHCs are not more powerful. They're 100% the same.
2) DHCs receive the exact same bonuses from a given boff ability as every other cannon type
3) What makes DHCs better is not some crazy base damage superiority, but their power efficiency. Solve the drain problem for DCs, single cannons and beams, and they'll be just
as good as DHCs.
4) If you really think FaW only affects one beam array, you've got serious issues.
Fix Beam Arrays, not nerf cannons.
Fix Beam Array power drain issue.
Give Beams a CRF style BOff ability in the game.
Adjust All other weapon types to make sense in reflection with handicaps balanced to thier increased damage values.
DBBs a better Firing arc.
Single Cannons a better firing arc.
Dual Cannons a better firing arc.
Create a Heavy Beam Bank that is to Cruisers as DHCs are to Escorts.
Create a Beam turret.
Do anything but go backwards by nerfing cannons, especialy based on perception.
Why? Because the perception of thier suckage will never change to those who continue to to thinks cannons are why thry suck.
Because Beam Arrays still suck because they havent fixed them yet.
R.I.P
Do beams suck or is it that cannons are OP or Escorts are OP or healing for Cruisers suck or fed ships suck or KDF ships are OP or........ What? Your post is all over the place and hints at many agendas within agendas...
Did you drink Sophies cool aid or just make your on?
R.I.P
Indeed, well said.
Well you can't heal your buddies if you they die before you can catch up to them in your slow ship. That the problem i run into. Most escort pilots want to zip off by themselves than get mad at you becasue you coulnd't keep up with them to heal them. May I remind you, that you don't get rewards for healing yourself or anyone else. I am a Tac camptain so my heals are not very strong because I am set up for offense, at least I try to be.
The Vorcha is a an Attack Cruiser wich means it's compared with cruisers, not escorts. Raptors and raiders are escorts. If you may know, almost all KDF ships are armed with cannons except for the carriers so that can they culd deal alot of damage quite easy if they wanted to.
Incorrect.
FAs give contribution for hull and shield healing done, both to yourself and others.
Yeah, we complained about this at the begining of the game but the DEVs said they were not going to nerf the cannons because it was more fun to see stuff blow up at a fast rate versus at a normal realistic rate. As long as they don't nerf cannons, they need to boost beams to make an level playing field.
That what i'm talking about. Good Idea
I was trying to convey the domino affect of beams sucking causing Fed ships to be worse than KDF and cruisers worse than escorts.
All weapons should have the same DPS and the same firing arc, the same procs, the same everything. Weapons should only be a visuall aspect and should have nothing to do with the damage output of the ship.
:rolleyes:
Oh! also, cannons should do the same damage from a distance, just like beams, I don't need to be within 5km to do maximum damage with beams, why do I have to be so close with cannons, it's unfair.
and Escorts should have the same hull as any cruisers, otherwise it's not fair.
We should all have the same speed, DPS, Hull, turn rate, etc. the Same Everything for Everyone, the different weapons, armor, ships, etc.. should only be visual widget and not influence the space battles.
PVE? That is not saying anything. How do we know you weren't paired up with beginner pilots or a bunch of cruisers? Anybody can get top damage depending on what type of players was in with you.
Right now broadsiding with beams don't do a damn thing. A cruiser and I broadsied eachother the whole match. I couldn't kill him or drain his shield fast enough and neither could he do the same to me. We just wasted PVP time trying to hurt one another with beams.
One would be either a rate of fire increase/shots per cycle or an inate increase to acc or CTH under the guise that Beams are a much more accurate weapon due to its instant hit ability. *Remeber heavy cannons get a bonus to Crit damage due to slower RoF compared to reg cannons.* Procs should should also be increased to give them the same chance to proc as a faster firing cannon.
Alot of powers we have been getting lately to our weapons have been adding chances per shot to add damage or proc some sort of ability. So the more something fires the more of a chance it will proc. I believe quad cannons fire the most shots per cycle atm. Cannons especially when using either Rapid or scatter. The chance to proc is greatly increased because you get more rounds down range.
Maybe, but it shows that beams are not useless. Canons may give more DPS, but used correctly beams and torpedo combos can be lethal.
Though i don't play PvP that often i get plenty of kills there as well against both Escorts and Cruisers. Timing is critical though and hence beams take more skill to use to their full potential.
You have to take down the opponents shields at the exact moment the torpedoes arrive. Usually it's taking broadside pot shots to the point where you see someone recharging their shields, launch torpedoes, throw hazards their way, BO + target shields and they're down when the torpedo salvo strikes. Bye bye opponent.
Don't get me wrong i also run escorts with canons to great effect, but beams are far from useless. Beams, as i stated earlier, simply take more skill to master.
Once again the misconception that player versus player denotes a one versus one interaction is perpetuated. Successful PVP is always balanced around team interaction which leads to the second point.
Also perpetuated is the fallacy that every ship/character/weapon/skill must be able to perform every function of every other ship/character/weapon/skill in an equal or even roughly equal fashion. When differentiation is removed, choices no longer exist and tactics become unnecessary.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
*votes yes*
/thread
What good is it if you can hit everything with a pea shooter or dim flashlight?
I agree. Even if beam damage remained the same or close, adjusting the power drain would balance out the disparity somewhat.