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What is a non-escorts role?
resoundingenvoy
Member Posts: 439
I've tried, failed, and this question has been asked before. I've thought on it a day or so, and I can't actually give more then a token "this is how it should work" answer.
A tank: There are indeed tank builds out there. They seemed to be hated with a passion. Every time I see one work, it is demolished the the latest bigger and better gun. That's not really my issue with the role of a tank. My issue is with what it accomplishes.
Because I'm at a loss for that one. The question becomes now what?
To do it you have to sacrifice everything else. My question becomes where exactly is that truly useful? I can seek and find a role, but I can't find a use that has a meaningful impact. You can tank, but for the sacrifices do it the end result is pitiful. Not just in raw damage potential (there is that). For the ability to actually stand out as a tank you don't get back what you gave up.
A Disabler: There does exist the ability to disable. However, for all it's shiny toys, they're a better title would be "inconveniencer". I can't find a confluence of ability that actually forces someone stop what they're doing in any truly threatening or frightful way.
Yes, they can make them selves know, but that's the sum total the ability to disable. Just to let you know someone out there does indeed try it, you might need to shift one or two things around.
I'm at a loss for that one. If I go this route, the question is again now what?
A Capital Ship: I would class carriers or some of the bigger cruisers here. This one doesn't exist, and probably should. There are indeed big and slow ships, but there isn't anything that trades speed and manoeuvrable for sheer bulk and big guns. Cruisers and carriers _are_ bigger, slower, and bulker. They don't trade that for fire power or total bulk in equal measure.
A cruiser is big and slow, but doesn't have big guns or bulk in equal measure.
Carrier are actually bigger, and slower then cruiser. Again, they don't have the bulk for functioning fire power though in equal measure or what they lost.
The Healer: There are healers, and exceptional ones! This one is a self forfilling prophesy though. A specialized healer means there's less pressure on the enemy. Meaning the enemy is around longer to do more damage. Meaning you need a healer.
...
Do a way with a healer and basic shield or hull heals mixed in with other rolls forfill a dedicated healers role. Removing the need of one all together.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not ranting "OMG! NERF ESCORTS!!!!11!!111!", or demanding a super ship. I honestly look at the sum total of work accomplished by a escort, and ask:
"Ok, Why can't I accomplish my role with equal success?"
A tank: There are indeed tank builds out there. They seemed to be hated with a passion. Every time I see one work, it is demolished the the latest bigger and better gun. That's not really my issue with the role of a tank. My issue is with what it accomplishes.
Because I'm at a loss for that one. The question becomes now what?
To do it you have to sacrifice everything else. My question becomes where exactly is that truly useful? I can seek and find a role, but I can't find a use that has a meaningful impact. You can tank, but for the sacrifices do it the end result is pitiful. Not just in raw damage potential (there is that). For the ability to actually stand out as a tank you don't get back what you gave up.
A Disabler: There does exist the ability to disable. However, for all it's shiny toys, they're a better title would be "inconveniencer". I can't find a confluence of ability that actually forces someone stop what they're doing in any truly threatening or frightful way.
Yes, they can make them selves know, but that's the sum total the ability to disable. Just to let you know someone out there does indeed try it, you might need to shift one or two things around.
I'm at a loss for that one. If I go this route, the question is again now what?
A Capital Ship: I would class carriers or some of the bigger cruisers here. This one doesn't exist, and probably should. There are indeed big and slow ships, but there isn't anything that trades speed and manoeuvrable for sheer bulk and big guns. Cruisers and carriers _are_ bigger, slower, and bulker. They don't trade that for fire power or total bulk in equal measure.
A cruiser is big and slow, but doesn't have big guns or bulk in equal measure.
Carrier are actually bigger, and slower then cruiser. Again, they don't have the bulk for functioning fire power though in equal measure or what they lost.
The Healer: There are healers, and exceptional ones! This one is a self forfilling prophesy though. A specialized healer means there's less pressure on the enemy. Meaning the enemy is around longer to do more damage. Meaning you need a healer.
...
Do a way with a healer and basic shield or hull heals mixed in with other rolls forfill a dedicated healers role. Removing the need of one all together.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not ranting "OMG! NERF ESCORTS!!!!11!!111!", or demanding a super ship. I honestly look at the sum total of work accomplished by a escort, and ask:
"Ok, Why can't I accomplish my role with equal success?"
Post edited by resoundingenvoy on
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Which basically removes the need for cruisers. Well done.
Well ... yes ...
... That is my problem. That is what I said. Focus on fire power, and you don't need a great deal of healing because the battle is over so quickly.
Bear with me here..
If the objective is generaly to keep pressure on your enemy and break through their healing and defensive abilitys while also keeping them from doing the same, then what tanks need are powers that suppress the enemy in some way.
Yes I know that science has disabling and controll abilitys but im talking about supression. Keeping your enemy behind his defences while you setup your attack.
In infantry terms this would be you machine gunners job, to make sure your enemy keeps his head down and not shooting at you while you do what you need to.
So what if we had powers in the engineering and science trees that didnt simply debuff enemys but actualy reduced their combat potential for a period of time? Like a space version of supressing fire, or the tholian FAW/sub system disable powers. This could give tank ships a more important role in not only healing and attampting to hold agro but actively reducing the effectiveness of the enemy.
Imagine taking your beam boat turning broadside and leffing a grouf of enemy have it and instead of just damage you were slowing them or reducing their damage output allowing your escort teammates to go in and survive more and your science teammates to use their controll and debuff abilitys more effectively.
Mor on this sort of thing here http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=533021
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
Reduces enemy weapons damage/suppresses sort of, though the cooldown seems rather long. I imagine non cruisers do not slot it in due to limited engineering seating which they'd rather use on self preservation. Emergency power to shields and such.
It's whatever you want it to be. My Fed Tac has a whole bunch of ships and the one I like to fly the most is my Fleet Excelsior running Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays and the Omega Torp/Beam/Console.
I out-DPS my teammates, I tank, I heal and I have a great time doing it.
KDF-side, my Eng flies a K't'inga Retrofit equipped with [Borg] Antiproton DHCs - even without the Tac Captain buffs he frequently pulls aggro from Tac/Escorts and is as close to indestructible as you can get in this game.
My KDF Sci flies a Kar'fi built to turn and equipped with Advanced S'Kuls (sometimes Elite Scorps) and Romulan Plasma DHCs - she frequently parses as the top DPS-dealer in Elite STFs whilst throwing out high-Aux Gravity Well 3's.
The Tank/Healer/DPS mechanic in STO is broken, and most likely will never be fixed but whilst some may see that as a negative, I see it as enabling me to do whatever I find the most fun - and I *hate* Escorts
I'd be happy to - next time I'm online I'll get all the details and post them here
Try turrets. Flow Caps, scatter volley. fire for procs. continuous fire ftw.
There is a way to make it happen, Go Tric mines w spread, chroniton mines, Breen Transphasic torps. Something that works together. Dropping 4 trics w dispersal beta 3 can be devastating to an enemy team if you've a sci 'n an escort working to bring down their shields.
There is a way to make it happen.
^^ This.
Anyone can slap DHCs and Tac Consoles on an Escort and say 'job done' - not everyone takes the time to pick a ship they really enjoy flying, spend the time working out all its kinks and figuring out how to get the most out of it.
People obsess about DPS because yes - it's the most significant contribution you can make to STFs and other PvE content but I fly my Excelsior not because it does the most DPS of all my ships (that'd be the Steamrunner I never fly) - I fly my Excelsior because it's elegant and to me, it is Star Trek - and I fly it because, like the Defiant, "She may have flaws, but she has teeth.".
To waste time in PvE.
way to think outside the box mate. rofl..
What you are seeing is the result of very poor decision making on behalf of cryptic. The game was beautifully balanced pre-f2p with each ship type and captain type having a well defined role (not mandatory but they excelled at it in ways the other ships/capt types simply could not match).
Here's what that balance was pre-f2p:
Escorts: Fast. Maneuverable. Weak shields and even weaker hull. Firepower was nowhere near the idiotically massive amounts they have now. Back then the escort's primary strength and the one thing that made it a high damage ship was the fact that it was the ONLY ship type that could maneuver and perform attack runs on the same shield facing.
That means it could focus on one shield at will, bring it down and slam the hull down. All other ships did not have the speed or turn rate to do so.
Science ships: Decent speed, decent turn rate. Science ships were known to have the strongest shield tanks but poor hull tanking (low hull HP). Science ships have the worst firepower due to limited weapon slots and limited tactical slots (boff/consoles).
Sci ships however, were capable of completely dominating another ship in combat through their abilities. Back then a gravity well for example, was so strong that an escort could only break away from its tractor pull (and thus, being in the center of the anomaly) by using polarize hull or evasive maneuvers. Nothing else worked. Even at full speed setting and atk omega speed boost they would be held in the middle of the anomaly.
Drain abilities used to truly suck a ship's power levels down. Subsystem attacks, whose duration and drain amount were based on science captain skills, were twice as effective as they are now. Tachyon beam 3 did use to drain the whole shield out. Feedback pulse used to bypass shields 100%.
Viral matrix, jam sensors, etc... all would have much stronger and longer lasting effects. It used to take a whole group of escorts to bring down a well kitted science ship. The sci ship was not a murder machine though...its damage was the lowest of all ships...its sci abilities would wear down the target's ability to defend itself and fight back. Sci ships were like a flying damage-over-time machine.
Cruisers used to be good damage and excellent tanking ships. They had strong shields, strong hull and had access to powerful heals for both. Their firepower used to be higher than escorts but it was not AS effective as an escort that constantly swung around to hit the same weakened shield.
The balance was:
Cruisers only really feared science ships, science ships feared escorts, escorts feared sci ships and cruiser BUT they had the firepower to bring them both down quickly IF they focused on one shield.
...and yes, back then shield and hull heals were not the current 'omfg instant full shield back' BS heals... the instant heals gave you little heal amount but high resists and the over-time heals would give you a lot of hp back but slowly. Shield balancing back then was not spammable..there was a 3 second delay I believe before you could do it again.
When F2P was put they dumbed down the skill trees and made many abilities share a single stat...and then they completely broke the functionality of other stats. Tactical skills gained 10x power overnight while science abilities became useless in one patch. I remember logging in the day after the first space revamp and watching in horror as my gravity well 3 allowed crawling ships to fly out of it and the damage it did was a fraction per tick than what it used to do.
To do the real work whilst the escort pilots are in respawn limbo :P
Having said that, I perceive that to excel in any role does require sacrificing something else. To be a "healer" means less "blaster". So, tanks should be expected to blast their way quickly through anything, but they'll survive long enough to get the job done. Being a jack-of-all-trades means being a master of none.
Sure, you could do it all "just fine", but there is someone out there doing your job better than you because they are specialized.
So, in my opinion, it's not about straight DPS ... its about finding a synergy with the tools available to you when you solo, then adapting those same tools for a group setting.
But it would be taken as a kindness if you'd put some thought into speccing yourself out for that role before joining any fleet actions/stfs.
But who's to say what my 'job' is other than me?
The only content in the game that requires teamwork is STFs, Fleet Missions, stuff like Azure Nebula Rescue/Mine Trap and PvP.
The career path of your Captain gives you a handful of unique ground and space skills and that's it - everything else - ship/gear/skill points is entirely up to you and you can fill any role you want to.
My number one rule is that any combination I put together has to be able to survive on its own merits - if necessary I'll sacrifice DPS for that but usually I don't have to.
Rule number two is that my Captain/Ship shouldn't be a liability to others because that's not fair - and if I've stuck to rule one then most likely I won't be.
After that, it's about pushing everything to be the best it can - refining, getting better gear, respeccing if necessary (I've respecced Weyland 13 times I think).
My style of play will never fit into PvP particularly well because PvP'ers (in my experience) are very much about working as a team and supporting one another in clearly defined roles - I respect that, but it's not the kind of gaming I enjoy.
But for PvE, if you have me on your team then you're in good company
I disagree with you here.
First of all, since F2P there is no 'healer' role. Every ship must heal itself and there is way or means for a ship to heal others as a healer class. The timers and damage output of the game prohibit it..and they leave the 'healer' completely open to get 1-shotted if he burns his timers healing others.
Currently there is only ONE ship that can function in the healer role: The B'rel BoP since it can heal and autocloak nonstop and can fill all its boff stations with heal abilities.
Second, Tactical captains have insane advantages over engineers and science captains. Among them:
- Timer reducing ability.
- In escort ships: Speed tanking > any other tanking form.
- Atk Patterns. Omega grants immunity to holds, a great speed boost, a very good defense boost, very high damage boost AND a huge boost to turn rate. All in one. This is just BAD game design. Its like giving a science captain the ability to heal shields, heal hull, increase resists by a great amount and cleanse any and all effects on itself.. with just one boff ability.
- two captain abilities that greatly increase damage. they stack with each other and with attack pattern omega/beta.
In any case, my point is, a tactical captain in a tactical ship CAN tank..even better than an engineer in a cruiser.. by speed tanking. He can also heal himself and deal out massive damage all in one. An engineer or sci oth, does have to sacrifice to tank or deal damage regardless of what ship they are in.
Now, pre-f2p I would agree with you the triumvirate of roles existed, was well defined and executed. Now its just a clusterF* of DPS-centric game.
The only reason why cruiser captains now tank is because thats really all they can do. There is no cruiser that can do what an escort does (tank+dps) nor as effectively. Sci ships have been garbage (science wise) since the F2P patch.
Long story short: With current meta, an escort can tank just as well as any cruiser (outside of those wonderful 100k torp hits that only an oddy/gal-r can take and keep on coming), can deal insane amounts of burst and sustained damage, have enough self-heals to EASILY stay alive against all but the most powerful of NPCs, and due to the derping of all but drains are in almost no danger from sci abilities. And 6 points in power insulators + 1 mk XII purple power insulator console and suddenly even drains aren't scary in any way shape or form.
If I want to play STFs I have to take my new tac-escort alt, if I want have a meaningful impact.
(Yes, my sci can grav well the nanites if someone destroys a generator too early, but my tac can just destroy all 4 generators and the main-thing in that time.)
tanking
crowd control
healing
Of course you can also be a glass cannon, all dps abilities Tac Escort.
You can also put in an Engineer and use tanking abilities to reach a fair compromise between tanking and raw damage.
And wham - A Tac Cruiser can do the same thing, just in a slightly different way.
Role depends as much on a players class as it depends on the ship.
He's dead, Jim.
If half the forum had its way (and some devs)...
Target Practice.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
With this ship you have the Dps to do as well as most any escort because in Stfs like Hive elite they usually respawn more than they fire at the borg and you do better than most escorts, they respawn you dont !.....If your a good caption and know your ship
You get great defense as well as firepower with this ship , combined second to none
I also run Romulan Negative threat control consoles because i use fire at will 3 a lot which puts a serious hurt on crowds of enemys while i draw only medium agro
Escorts can look after themselves, If they cant handle the agro they draw they should not be here , i have no problems about agro or defense in my escort
There is no need for a tank currently in the game , its all about Dps
Tanking the Queen at Hive Elite probably the exception
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
There things I can do, but why do them? Not "Why do I want to do them?", but "How is it cost effective to do them?"
I'd like to say there is a zero mark that every class or configuration branches out from. I'd like to at anyrate. Tactical escorts are the zero mark. Anything I do to not be one costs me something. It's not that I don't get something in return from the trade, it's I can't find a way to justify making the trade. (Beyond I really do not want to be a escort.)
Let me ask you two something: Can you do something and answer 'no' to the question "If I was a DPS specialized tactile captain, would the battle been over faster?"
You seem horribly unaware of an Escorts lack of survivability and a Tactical captains lack of abilities to enhance survivability.
Killing things faster helps with survival, yes, but as soon as you're dead your dps drops to exactly zero.
And how are the odds of survival in an Escort?
Correct: they are the worst of any ship class all things equal.
And retreat does not address this - an Escort doesn't have the highest engine power or best impulse engine.
Retreat also means losing time, ground and - once again - all dps.
So if you measure by dps, which you can do, a Tac Escort is the apex of your scale - but it's like measuring a three dimensional object in one dimension.
If you believe all you need is dps and everything else is sacrificing dps (which isn't wrong) then you are free to act on it and enjoy those Tac Escorts of yours, but your stance is no universal truth.
See those Tac Escorts in eSTFs? See them explode? See their dps after they exploded?
He's dead, Jim.
Sure, look at ground for example, ever tried tanking Armek? For space, take the No-Win scenario, now I have to admit a No Win with 5 tac escorts guarantees the battle is over quickly, but not in the way you would like it to end.
There are things to be said for every specialisation, and I agree that the tacscort in potential rules the DPS list. However, you'd be amazed at the actual DPS output of most tacscorts in game. I regularly see 4-5k values, and that's on the STF channels, not pugs. And while some cruiser captain's may not live up to their full DPS potential by not flying an escort, they often score similar 4-5k DPS average values, simply because they don't die so often. Then there's the well build tac-cruisers that do 6-7k DPS like Weyland's fleet excel, and I actually been outdone by that Excel on several occassions before I did a respec.
Now I do around 9k in an average game, and around 12-14k if I'm with a full team of high DPS captains. I made a choice to go for DPS over survivability at all costs, and I'm not sure if I will keep playing like this. My build is fundamentally unsound for anything but PvE because I chose to focus on DPS, and while it can be fun at times, I really *need* backup from a cruiser-sci to take threat and tank. As long as I'm in a full team of player's who provide this, I can blast through an STF with little worry but in a team of random's/non-teamplayers, well, let's just say my MVAE lives up to her name, Blaze of Glory. And trust me, after the 4th death and waiting on the respawn counter, it doesn't matter how much I still am top of the DPS list because the STF is not enjoyable anymore. For that reason I'm thinking of getting my D'Kora out of storage again, I could still do around 7k given it's DHC's, and be tanky enough to take care of myself and maybe some other's in the process.
Apparently some forum posters have diplomatic immunity nowadays, where can I get mine? [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Am I to answer or you? :P Because, if I'm just a starwman in your head, of course any answer "I" give is going to be wrong.
That secret isn't raw speed or engine power. It's the turnrate to use it.
DPS is the how they accomplish the position. I've never had a problem with ship killers being ship killers. What I measure by is time.
Yes, Yes, Yes. Do you see their average DPS over the whole match? Even with all those flaws have you measured the time to complete a match (or even win) with a full escort team vs. a full non-escort team?
So much work is required to complete a match. My problem is even with all those flaws their key feature (their DPS) still accomplishes so much it overshadows everyone else.
Have I ever tried to nail a hammer instead of hammer a nail? No.
Ever tried to have the whole team pulsewave him?
While I disagree with you about tanking agro can easily be shifted between five by only have one go berserk at a time... Also, I should point out:
I never asked if you could get by without healing, I asked why have a dedicated healer.
Which still leaves the question. What of non-escort or escort like roles? Your solution with the D'Kora is to hybridize it with a escort's domain. Not have something wholly different, and still viable.
I never claimed the other roles were without use. I asked why use them predominately or purely?