One of the main problem is realy, that Tac captain shine in any ship pefomring much better than other captains. This is very obvious escpacially in PvE where DPS is important, and also in the KDF.
Tac captain perform better than Eng captain in cruisers ... they loose a small amount of tanking but can overcome the lower damage output of cruisers.
Tac captain perform better than Sci captain in science ships, because tac abilities boosting science bridge officer abilities in damage. In fact, als a Tac captain I realy like sci powers like tractor beam repulsors or feedback pulse, which can produce insane high damage if used with Tac damage boost.
Heretic's post above sums up the problems and solutions very nicely.
Read with care and implement, oh devs.
There's also the fact that competitive PVE teaches people to play selfish and step on one another in hopes of rewards instead of working together to accomplish goals; it's sick and wrong at its very core.
Now that my temporary forum ban has been lifted, I can FINALLY put a response to this topic.
And it is as follows:
{Absolute truth about the situation}
Yup. I'm not a l337 pl4r crunching every number they can find about ship builds. I happily run an all turret build. But even I can tell that the roles are too loose and favor Tac.
They either have to be further defined like suggested in the above, or cast off completely. I'd prefer more defined because that would force us to use a different playstyle for each ship and career instead of the current DPS + Shield heals = Roflstomp.
but i think there is something you havent mentioned yet, which is in my opinion a big problem as well.
The buff/debuff mechanic.
A Viral Matrix ( lt.-/ Cmdr. Boff abillity ) can easily be removed by a ensign abillity ( eng. team), so the debuff effects wear off rather quickly and long before the duration of the effect could have been in most cases. Whereas the buff kind of abilities ( like apo ) stay until either the duration expires or the corresponding player/ship dies/gets destroyed.
So if it would work v.v so that a tac team could debuff tac buffs ( used on an enemy entitie ) that would be better balanced, but i dont see that a viable solution. It should be rather difficult to shake off an high level debuff and require more than an ensign level abilitie which nearly everyone has.
It should be rather difficult to shake off an high level debuff and require more than an ensign level abilitie which nearly everyone has.
So I'm supposed to give up my primary team heal so that I can shake a disable and have an ensign slot with nothing in it thus reducing my capacity to help allies out? GREAT IDEA! /Sarcasm
So I'm supposed to give up my primary team heal so that I can shake a disable and have an ensign slot with nothing in it thus reducing my capacity to help allies out? GREAT IDEA! /Sarcasm
I did in no way say that read the post, it doesnt say at any point that you should not use your eng team, but it should not be that easy to shake of an debuff for instance it would be better if the strenght of the debuff would require a higher level team abillitie to clean up ( e.g. rank-1 so that a lt. comm. debuff requires a lt. level team to clean )
So considering any class can acquire the abilities listed or use even ApO on certain Cruisers, then its that extra bonus 10% defense that saves the escort in combat????
Remove the movement protection of ApO and its no longer the imbalanced power it was.
Why? Because TB is effective in being the krypyonite to escorts again. Movement de-buffs become fearful again.
I never understood why ApO had a built in PH.
Change all tactical bonus defensive abilities, including the Elusive trait, so that only work when moving.
Give the Cruiser a bonus 10% defense for when moving slower than full impulse.
Again, you're missing the point. You're going into escort vs. cruiser rather than the real issue: tac captain skillpoints & tac captain abilities.
What 'saves' the escort in combat is the fact that he can have the same tanking bonuses that an engineer has since he does have the skillpoints to take every single shield, armor and warp core skill to 9 along with his weapon system skill boxes. That is why you have escorts with the tanking ability of eng/sci ships with the added speed def bonus from escort speed PLUS the added bonuses of APO. This is why the escort ship when flown by a tac capt. can tank damn well with merely lt and ensign abilities.
I agree APO should lose its immunity to holds effect and I would also remove the defense boost... like I said in earlier post, APO movement/def should be put into a separate attack pattern.
Nerf Tacs? No. Reason: They are doing their job of dealing damage. Possibly too well. But that's the nature of a DPS based game. When your score/loot/effectiveness in PvE content in a PvE based game is determined by your damage output, naturally he who deals the most damage will get the best loot, and as such be able to do his job better. That's a game design error, not an overpowered career.
Adjust them? Yes. How? Do not affect their damage ability. Just adjust what they affect. Tactical abilities really should not affect science abilities. That's one of the most ridiculous things that happened with the switch to F2P. All of a sudden, APA and APO are affecting Science powers. What? Ew. Thankfully Tactical powers don't affect Engineering abilities... or do they? You get the idea. Adjust tactical powers so they affect ONLY TACTICALLY BASED DAMAGE (aka damage from weapons. ONLY. Because let's face it, a GW2 from a Tactical using APA3 does more damage than a GW3 from a Sci using full particle generators and graviton generators. WHAT????)
Pre-F2P they did not affect sci abilities because all those sci abilities used a non-weapon linked damage type: Exotic. In the F2P patch they were turned into kinetic. Even kinetic consoles boosted them.
I agree with you in all of this except that they should not have their damage ability affected. It should. All damage bonuses should be removed from the tactical skill boxes...and be replaced with 2ndary effect enhancing skills and accuracy. Why? As I said earlier, the big issue with boosting damage is that it starts a chain reaction:
Boost damage -> AI gets boosted in HP/dmg -> future improvement therefore must be based on damage so another boost -> cycle continues. End result is a game like we have now: combat ends almost as quickly as it starts. No tactics involved in fighting... just point, buff weapons up, FIRE. BOOM. Pre-F2P it took a full team of level 50's a few minutes to bring down a normal borg cube... now a single ship can blow it up in a matter of seconds. See how these things go?
Along with removal of dmg boosts comes removal of all healing/speed/turn rate boosts. Let equipment determine it. It makes the different shield types and engine types suddenly become part of the equation again. So its not just tacs that lose their bonuses, its engineering and sci. The big difference is that engineering and sci abilities do not have the ridiculous bonuses that tactical skill boxes.
Buff Engineers/Science? Yes and no. How? Let's face it, tanking in this game is a joke. The main reason being: the main tanking skill is a permanent skill. Threat Control. Not only is it high up in the skill tree, but you can't turn it off. I would use that skill with no qualms, except for one little problem: my Engi doesn't always run cruisers. And tbh, an escort with Threat Control is an escort asking to die. Which then begs the question: what can we do about it? I have heard this suggested elsewhere, but giving cruisers (the games tanks) naturally higher threat generation (as in equal to 3 or 4 points in that skill) is a start. Add in the threat consoles from the Embassy, and all of a sudden we have use for a tank again. Another possible buff to Engineers would be to adjust CDs on their abilities. Nadion (the main weapon of a lot of engis, especially those in cruisers) could use a slight reduction in CD (bring it from 3 minutes down to 2.5), and MW could use a little more in the hull heal department (let's face it, the 10k you get you can do with an ET3). Other than that, I would not recommend any additional alterations.
Aha.. think of what I'm suggesting for a moment. Remove the heal/speed/turn/HP bonuses from skill boxes. They should be replaced with 2ndary means of boosting tanking (resists, regen rates rather than direct instant heal boosts, etc).
The AI of course is similarly adjusted. The end result? Tank ship equipment must be synergized with the boff abilities. The slowing down of ships and the much lower damage output from weapons makes tanking an active role. Its not that the game will end up with people unable to kill stuff 'tank OP' type of game but rather a gameplay that to bring down a starship you need to not just use raw DPS but OTHER abilities in conjuction with it. Escorts have the ability to focus and hit a single shield, sci and cruisers have their own abilities to slug it out.
As for Science? I don't really want to touch this one, but I will. Science doesn't need to be buffed persay, just re-adjusted back so that science abilities are more heavily affected by actual science skills. As I pointed out earlier, a GW2 from a tac using APA3 does more damage than a GW3 from a fully specced sci captain. It's ludicrous. And as for the snare and hold ability? It's a bloody joke. My Odyssey can escape from most Gravity wells with no points in inertial dampeners. There's something majorly wrong there. Now if science went back to how it was pre-F2P with it actually doing exotic damage, not kinetic, and it being affected by particle generators and not being affected at all by attack patterns, I think a lot of the sci imbalance would disappear as quickly as it appeared in the first place.
You are correct. However the very thing that causes these problems, aside from grav wells and other sci offensives being buffed by tac abilities due to damage type, is that sci abilities have not had their stat-based numbers increased since the ungodly nerf of F2P. On top of that, 'resists' have been added which makes all sci offensive abilities worthless.
All they need to do is triple the effect that the current sci-stats do in the game and change the damage type back to exotic. Resists to sci abilities should not be innate either, they should be based on ship aux power just like shield resists are based on shield power.
As for the adjustments to sci and engi? It's simple. Make there be some incentive to doing things other than outright damage. Engineers and Science can never come close to a tac when it comes to damage. That's how it's supposed to be. It's a little odd though that a Tactical can tank as well as an engi, and can CC as well as a science, but that's another discussion for another time. But why have the other careers in game at all when they only see heavy usage in PvP and ground (two things that aren't stressed at all in this game) and are considered to be partially sub-optimal for PvE? Make it so that content is not a pure damage blitz. Make there a reason for CC and healers.
Just like it was Pre-F2P.
That's the only real thing I can think of that would solve this problem without doing as the OP suggested and outright nerfing Tactical captains (which is funny, you're punishing them for doing their job well).
I think it would not be punishing them for doing their job, its more of punishing them because they were given the means to do the job with every possible advantage. Kind of like the son of a company owner starting as a janitor and being CEO by the end of the day.
Pre-F2P the cruiser was the highest damage ship. A broadside of 8 beams (just one volley) would punch holes in almost anything. The escort came in 2nd with the ability to punch one shield hard and thump the hull but it could not take hits in return. Thats where its speed and turn rate came in. Sci ships could tank for a bit and royally debuff & hurt a target with sci abilities...its guns were merely there as enablers of debuffs (beam tgt subsystem)
I did in no way say that read the post, it doesnt say at any point that you should not use your eng team, but it should not be that easy to shake of an debuff for instance it would be better if the strenght of the debuff would require a higher level team abillitie to clean up ( e.g. rank-1 so that a lt. comm. debuff requires a lt. level team to clean )
Actually that would be the direct consequence of your idea, if I get hit by the borg queen with a VM (which happens) then I can't clear it with my eng team 1 so I have to run eng team 3 which costs me Aux2SIF2 being my primary team heal cos I can use it every 15 seconds without causing a shared cooldown on Tac team so I throw that out aswell, on top of that I then have a useless ensign slot because I only use 1 copy of EPtS and EPtW using 3 DCE doffs so yeah, GREAT IDEA!
Actually that would be the direct consequence of your idea, if I get hit by the borg queen with a VM (which happens) then I can't clear it with my eng team 1 so I have to run eng team 3 which costs me Aux2SIF2 being my primary team heal cos I can use it every 15 seconds without causing a shared cooldown on Tac team so I throw that out aswell, on top of that I then have a useless ensign slot because I only use 1 copy of EPtS and EPtW using 3 DCE doffs so yeah, GREAT IDEA!
Well i guess eng team cant be used to repair the ships of teammembers, and yes vm is supposed to make your ship weaker so if you want to get rid of t you have to sacrifice aux to sif2. So tell me why should anyone use vm whes it could be removed by an ensign.
and i guess wesely could have brought the enterprise back online in no time after that incident with the iconian virus.
Again, you're missing the point. You're going into escort vs. cruiser rather than the real issue: tac captain skillpoints & tac captain abilities.
What 'saves' the escort in combat is the fact that he can have the same tanking bonuses that an engineer has since he does have the skillpoints to take every single shield, armor and warp core skill to 9 along with his weapon system skill boxes. That is why you have escorts with the tanking ability of eng/sci ships with the added speed def bonus from escort speed PLUS the added bonuses of APO. This is why the escort ship when flown by a tac capt. can tank damn well with merely lt and ensign abilities.
I agree APO should lose its immunity to holds effect and I would also remove the defense boost... like I said in earlier post, APO movement/def should be put into a separate attack pattern.
.
The post I replied to was a Escort versus Cruiser post. Hence why I replied that it overlooks the fact that the majority of these defensive buffs can be acquired by anyone regardless of class.
The only defense bonus escorts get is a 10% buff since even Cruisers have the option of running ApO1 and AtB1 or AP DOffs to cycle it faster.
ApO should lose the movement protecton but keep the defense buff, which should remain a strict 5 second ability to be used as a quick defense only.
Cruisers and non-escort vessels can equally use the avaible defensive buffs. Where they fall short is they can not pre-stack thier damage as well as escorts can for bursts and given that Escorts are now enjoying having in combat they have the best of both worlds.
I dont believe it is a matter of how the skill tree is designed. Being the fighter, slugger, bruiser has always been the easier path with any healer or other more specialized careers requiring more handicap for being so designed.
In STO Tacticals have it easiest on spending skill points because they have the simpliest role. Engineers fall in the center with how skill points are spent and Science is the most impacted due to thier more specialized abilities.
That's the only real thing I can think of that would solve this problem without doing as the OP suggested and outright nerfing Tactical captains (which is funny, you're punishing them for doing their job well).
Speaking as the original poster? I'm not going to cry too hard if tacs get mawed with a kung-fu master of the nerf bats. I don't want to nerf them. The title was pure bait to get a real thread started. (A tactic I am not proud of ,btw, but you know what? It worked!)
I got tired of being agreed with nothing done, ignored, or being told "awww ... isn't that cute." Everything past the first "Do I have your attention?" was just debunking the standard boilerplate arguments.
Well i guess eng team cant be used to repair the ships of teammembers
It can but it isn't worth putting TT on cd when you can use Aux2SIF2 and TT for a few heal points less but overall a much more effective heal
and yes vm is supposed to make your ship weaker so if you want to get rid of t you have to sacrifice aux to sif2. So tell me why should anyone use vm when it could be removed by an ensign.
Yes and it happens to have an instant effect so whatever happens it takes something offline for some period of time as for complaining about it being removed by an ensign power, the only time ANY ship packs eng team is when its a healboat (pvp only) or when it has an otherwise wasted ensign slot (largely wasted anyway due to shared cd with TT) and why shouldn't a ships crew have a home field advantage? Surely they know the computer systems better than an attacking crew?
Stop already please, there is way to much nerfing as it is. Put time and effort into your builds like the rest of the pros instead of expecting a hand out because you keep blowing up.
Remember asking for nerfs -- nerfs everything and more then you ask for.
this. all day. until the end of time. honestly, some people have NO GRUMBA!
We've seen the reign of cruisers, apparently it wasn't great, we're seeing the reign of escorts and that is (imo) even worse.... lets have the reign of science
Thats the way i see it and i play all three classes
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
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
I dont believe it is a matter of how the skill tree is designed. Being the fighter, slugger, bruiser has always been the easier path with any healer or other more specialized careers requiring more handicap for being so designed.
In STO Tacticals have it easiest on spending skill points because they have the simpliest role. Engineers fall in the center with how skill points are spent and Science is the most impacted due to thier more specialized abilities.
I strongly disagree. The skill point boxes are precisely what super-boost ship performance. Again, do take a level 1 ship as a level 1 using white mk1 gear and see how fast it goes/how hard it hits. Repeat with a level 50 taking same level 1 ship with white lvl1 gear and compare its speed/dmg. The difference is absolutely ridiculous.
The majority of the items that these skills boost at a massive scale are precisely those that apply to damage dealing and movement. Aka, filling up the Lt. and Lt.Cmdr rank boxes for tactical practically triple the damage whereas filling the same columns on engineering and healing barely increase heals/speed by 20%.
Pre-F2P the tactical boxes had specific skill sets for each weapon damage type. A tactical or sci or engineer captain had to choose his damage type and focus on it or ignore the weapon specialization and stay with the basic/universal damage boxes.
This made tacticals have to use a lot more points in weapons ...points that they could not put into the engineering and science boxes to increase their tanking ability. This is precisely why pre-f2p the tactical capt. escorts had such crappy shield/hulls . Only engineer and sci captained escorts had the survivability...but not the firepower.
Now, granted, pre-f2p the issue was once you locked in a weapon type you were stuck with it and that sucked. The new system of universal damage types is more functional. However, the problem was created by cryptic taking the lazy & easy way out: They simply removed the boxes and created this absurd imbalance.
They should return the tactical (and science) skill boxes to match the same number of skill boxes engineering has (15).
Tactical boxes should split the attack patterns into attack and evasive patterns; split the weapon specialization boxes into +acc (not+dmg) and 2ndary effect; etc.
Science should have the boxes revamped into a categories that synergize with the boff abilities stat requirements.
I'll put together a jpg skill box revamp suggestion later to illustrate. But you get the idea.
Yeah, tactical captains just do too much damage in PVP (intended?), and this is coming from someone who has a Klingon tactical officer. As far as what to do to balance it, I have no idea.
maybe tactical captains in a fleet with fleet cannons and turrets but my character isn't in a fleet, is an escort and I don't do enough damage and I'm using the best you can get playing by yourself.
This made tacticals have to use a lot more points in weapons ...points that they could not put into the engineering and science boxes to increase their tanking ability. This is precisely why pre-f2p the tactical capt. escorts had such crappy shield/hulls . Only engineer and sci captained escorts had the survivability...but not the firepower.
Now, granted, pre-f2p the issue was once you locked in a weapon type you were stuck with it and that sucked. The new system of universal damage types is more functional. However, the problem was created by cryptic taking the lazy & easy way out: They simply removed the boxes and created this absurd imbalance.
I don't think you're thinking it through, what prevents an engi or sci captain from benefiting just as much as a tac from the streamlined tac skills?
Oh! That's right! NOTHING.
In fact my engi already does, as does my sci going all torp damage! I think you and a lot of others need to get out of this "woe is me" victim mentality and start THINKING instead of trying to attack anything with the letters "tac" in the name as some sort of sad reflex. Guys, tac boff powers are the same for everyone, just because you're a sci or an engi doesn't magically preclude you from using it.
I realize its scary and probably quite annoying but most cruiser pilots need to learn to play and build ships as well as coming to terms with how the game works and what they want their place to be.
I do not remember who it was...BUT...somebody had a GREAT idea..one of the best I have seen in some time...
Do away with the different Captains..ie: Tac Eng Sci...and make it Just a Captain. Then we would train them in the different powers. That way we could just mix and match our powers...We would probly need more skill points and they would have to add more skills to train in, but, not enough skill pts to train in ALL the skills.
It would be GREAT for dynamics, PvE would be funner, PvP would be wicked.
However...that would require some imagination and a learning curve for our more...challenged...players...ie: "Dead on Arrival"
Kirk was a Captain with Tac Eng and Sci skills...why can't we be that way too?
Assimilation...it does a body good...:P
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I do not remember who it was...BUT...somebody had a GREAT idea..one of the best I have seen in some time...
Do away with the different Captains..ie: Tac Eng Sci...and make it Just a Captain. Then we would train them in the different powers. That way we could just mix and match our powers...We would probly need more skill points and they would have to add more skills to train in, but, not enough skill pts to train in ALL the skills.
It would be GREAT for dynamics, PvE would be funner, PvP would be wicked.
However...that would require some imagination and a learning curve for our more...challenged...players...ie: "Dead on Arrival"
Kirk was a Captain with Tac Eng and Sci skills...why can't we be that way too?
Assimilation...it does a body good...:P
That.... is a very interesting solution. I actually kinda like it.
"Correction. Humans have rules in war. Rules that make victory a little harder to achieve, in my opinion."
Elim Garak
Didnt I see this same OP on the "nerf escorts" thread?
This is getting a bit annoying now, how about they NERF EVERYTHING, will that make you happy?
Asking for a new nerf every other day is not the way to get ahead around here, Cryptic nerfs enough as it is in the quest for the almighty $, we dont need them effing up everything now.
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Didnt I see this same OP on the "nerf escorts" thread?
This is getting a bit annoying now, how about they NERF EVERYTHING, will that make you happy?
Asking for a new nerf every other day is not the way to get ahead around here, Cryptic nerfs enough as it is in the quest for the almighty $, we dont need them effing up everything now.
It's a little difficult for me to take what you're saying seriously due to your avatar... which shows you aren't really looking at this objectively... just saying...
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
Didnt I see this same OP on the "nerf escorts" thread?
Probably. The thread died for while, and I let it die. That doesn't mean I magically changed my mind. I think escorts are overpowered, but it's done more then let escorts be lazy. If think my view is only summed up by "OMG nerf escorts" I am going to confuse the hell out of you because that's just one face of it.
This is getting a bit annoying now, how about they NERF EVERYTHING, will that make you happy?
Asking for a new nerf every other day is not the way to get ahead around here, Cryptic nerfs enough as it is in the quest for the almighty $, we dont need them effing up everything now.
The difference being not wanting one, and not going to cry if they get a nerf. I think the root issue is they're afraid to lay down the law and reverse the power creep. So, they nerf everything else to try to work around it.
If they fry the root cause they could actually reverse a lot of nerfs. Not that they in the habit of reverse things that no longer make sense. Edit: Thinking that, It's hard not to be ok with a nerf.
Nerf tactical Captains OP? Seriously?? We are supposed to deal the damage, learn to deal with it or go to STO Wiki and learn how to play.
There is too much nerfing in this game from screaming kids that can't handle anything ranked higher then a feather pillow. There is no challenge anymore.
This game needs to get back to the level it was at 2 years ago before the Nerf it all to hell approach kicked in...
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Comments
Tac captain perform better than Eng captain in cruisers ... they loose a small amount of tanking but can overcome the lower damage output of cruisers.
Tac captain perform better than Sci captain in science ships, because tac abilities boosting science bridge officer abilities in damage. In fact, als a Tac captain I realy like sci powers like tractor beam repulsors or feedback pulse, which can produce insane high damage if used with Tac damage boost.
I wholeheartedly agree with ths post as a guy having equal fun in a sci/vesta, tac/krenn, engi/ambassador.
Interested in Role Playing? Join the 12th Fleet Science division!
Read with care and implement, oh devs.
There's also the fact that competitive PVE teaches people to play selfish and step on one another in hopes of rewards instead of working together to accomplish goals; it's sick and wrong at its very core.
Yup. I'm not a l337 pl4r crunching every number they can find about ship builds. I happily run an all turret build. But even I can tell that the roles are too loose and favor Tac.
They either have to be further defined like suggested in the above, or cast off completely. I'd prefer more defined because that would force us to use a different playstyle for each ship and career instead of the current DPS + Shield heals = Roflstomp.
but i think there is something you havent mentioned yet, which is in my opinion a big problem as well.
The buff/debuff mechanic.
A Viral Matrix ( lt.-/ Cmdr. Boff abillity ) can easily be removed by a ensign abillity ( eng. team), so the debuff effects wear off rather quickly and long before the duration of the effect could have been in most cases. Whereas the buff kind of abilities ( like apo ) stay until either the duration expires or the corresponding player/ship dies/gets destroyed.
So if it would work v.v so that a tac team could debuff tac buffs ( used on an enemy entitie ) that would be better balanced, but i dont see that a viable solution. It should be rather difficult to shake off an high level debuff and require more than an ensign level abilitie which nearly everyone has.
So I'm supposed to give up my primary team heal so that I can shake a disable and have an ensign slot with nothing in it thus reducing my capacity to help allies out? GREAT IDEA! /Sarcasm
or they are new/returning players who have not put in the weeks it takes to get borg/romulan reps up to the point to make this possible.
I did in no way say that read the post, it doesnt say at any point that you should not use your eng team, but it should not be that easy to shake of an debuff for instance it would be better if the strenght of the debuff would require a higher level team abillitie to clean up ( e.g. rank-1 so that a lt. comm. debuff requires a lt. level team to clean )
Again, you're missing the point. You're going into escort vs. cruiser rather than the real issue: tac captain skillpoints & tac captain abilities.
What 'saves' the escort in combat is the fact that he can have the same tanking bonuses that an engineer has since he does have the skillpoints to take every single shield, armor and warp core skill to 9 along with his weapon system skill boxes. That is why you have escorts with the tanking ability of eng/sci ships with the added speed def bonus from escort speed PLUS the added bonuses of APO. This is why the escort ship when flown by a tac capt. can tank damn well with merely lt and ensign abilities.
I agree APO should lose its immunity to holds effect and I would also remove the defense boost... like I said in earlier post, APO movement/def should be put into a separate attack pattern.
Pre-F2P they did not affect sci abilities because all those sci abilities used a non-weapon linked damage type: Exotic. In the F2P patch they were turned into kinetic. Even kinetic consoles boosted them.
I agree with you in all of this except that they should not have their damage ability affected. It should. All damage bonuses should be removed from the tactical skill boxes...and be replaced with 2ndary effect enhancing skills and accuracy. Why? As I said earlier, the big issue with boosting damage is that it starts a chain reaction:
Boost damage -> AI gets boosted in HP/dmg -> future improvement therefore must be based on damage so another boost -> cycle continues. End result is a game like we have now: combat ends almost as quickly as it starts. No tactics involved in fighting... just point, buff weapons up, FIRE. BOOM. Pre-F2P it took a full team of level 50's a few minutes to bring down a normal borg cube... now a single ship can blow it up in a matter of seconds. See how these things go?
Along with removal of dmg boosts comes removal of all healing/speed/turn rate boosts. Let equipment determine it. It makes the different shield types and engine types suddenly become part of the equation again. So its not just tacs that lose their bonuses, its engineering and sci. The big difference is that engineering and sci abilities do not have the ridiculous bonuses that tactical skill boxes.
Aha.. think of what I'm suggesting for a moment. Remove the heal/speed/turn/HP bonuses from skill boxes. They should be replaced with 2ndary means of boosting tanking (resists, regen rates rather than direct instant heal boosts, etc).
The AI of course is similarly adjusted. The end result? Tank ship equipment must be synergized with the boff abilities. The slowing down of ships and the much lower damage output from weapons makes tanking an active role. Its not that the game will end up with people unable to kill stuff 'tank OP' type of game but rather a gameplay that to bring down a starship you need to not just use raw DPS but OTHER abilities in conjuction with it. Escorts have the ability to focus and hit a single shield, sci and cruisers have their own abilities to slug it out.
You are correct. However the very thing that causes these problems, aside from grav wells and other sci offensives being buffed by tac abilities due to damage type, is that sci abilities have not had their stat-based numbers increased since the ungodly nerf of F2P. On top of that, 'resists' have been added which makes all sci offensive abilities worthless.
All they need to do is triple the effect that the current sci-stats do in the game and change the damage type back to exotic. Resists to sci abilities should not be innate either, they should be based on ship aux power just like shield resists are based on shield power.
Just like it was Pre-F2P.
I think it would not be punishing them for doing their job, its more of punishing them because they were given the means to do the job with every possible advantage. Kind of like the son of a company owner starting as a janitor and being CEO by the end of the day.
Pre-F2P the cruiser was the highest damage ship. A broadside of 8 beams (just one volley) would punch holes in almost anything. The escort came in 2nd with the ability to punch one shield hard and thump the hull but it could not take hits in return. Thats where its speed and turn rate came in. Sci ships could tank for a bit and royally debuff & hurt a target with sci abilities...its guns were merely there as enablers of debuffs (beam tgt subsystem)
This role balance needs to be restored.
Actually that would be the direct consequence of your idea, if I get hit by the borg queen with a VM (which happens) then I can't clear it with my eng team 1 so I have to run eng team 3 which costs me Aux2SIF2 being my primary team heal cos I can use it every 15 seconds without causing a shared cooldown on Tac team so I throw that out aswell, on top of that I then have a useless ensign slot because I only use 1 copy of EPtS and EPtW using 3 DCE doffs so yeah, GREAT IDEA!
Well i guess eng team cant be used to repair the ships of teammembers, and yes vm is supposed to make your ship weaker so if you want to get rid of t you have to sacrifice aux to sif2. So tell me why should anyone use vm whes it could be removed by an ensign.
and i guess wesely could have brought the enterprise back online in no time after that incident with the iconian virus.
The post I replied to was a Escort versus Cruiser post. Hence why I replied that it overlooks the fact that the majority of these defensive buffs can be acquired by anyone regardless of class.
The only defense bonus escorts get is a 10% buff since even Cruisers have the option of running ApO1 and AtB1 or AP DOffs to cycle it faster.
ApO should lose the movement protecton but keep the defense buff, which should remain a strict 5 second ability to be used as a quick defense only.
Cruisers and non-escort vessels can equally use the avaible defensive buffs. Where they fall short is they can not pre-stack thier damage as well as escorts can for bursts and given that Escorts are now enjoying having in combat they have the best of both worlds.
I dont believe it is a matter of how the skill tree is designed. Being the fighter, slugger, bruiser has always been the easier path with any healer or other more specialized careers requiring more handicap for being so designed.
In STO Tacticals have it easiest on spending skill points because they have the simpliest role. Engineers fall in the center with how skill points are spent and Science is the most impacted due to thier more specialized abilities.
R.I.P
Speaking as the original poster? I'm not going to cry too hard if tacs get mawed with a kung-fu master of the nerf bats. I don't want to nerf them. The title was pure bait to get a real thread started. (A tactic I am not proud of ,btw, but you know what? It worked!)
I got tired of being agreed with nothing done, ignored, or being told "awww ... isn't that cute." Everything past the first "Do I have your attention?" was just debunking the standard boilerplate arguments.
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It can but it isn't worth putting TT on cd when you can use Aux2SIF2 and TT for a few heal points less but overall a much more effective heal
Yes and it happens to have an instant effect so whatever happens it takes something offline for some period of time as for complaining about it being removed by an ensign power, the only time ANY ship packs eng team is when its a healboat (pvp only) or when it has an otherwise wasted ensign slot (largely wasted anyway due to shared cd with TT) and why shouldn't a ships crew have a home field advantage? Surely they know the computer systems better than an attacking crew?
this. all day. until the end of time. honestly, some people have NO GRUMBA!
When is the last time you went 1v1 with someone in a escort vs. a non-escort and that battle lasted longer then 7seconds and shorter then 5minuets?
Thats the way i see it and i play all three classes
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
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I strongly disagree. The skill point boxes are precisely what super-boost ship performance. Again, do take a level 1 ship as a level 1 using white mk1 gear and see how fast it goes/how hard it hits. Repeat with a level 50 taking same level 1 ship with white lvl1 gear and compare its speed/dmg. The difference is absolutely ridiculous.
The majority of the items that these skills boost at a massive scale are precisely those that apply to damage dealing and movement. Aka, filling up the Lt. and Lt.Cmdr rank boxes for tactical practically triple the damage whereas filling the same columns on engineering and healing barely increase heals/speed by 20%.
Pre-F2P the tactical boxes had specific skill sets for each weapon damage type. A tactical or sci or engineer captain had to choose his damage type and focus on it or ignore the weapon specialization and stay with the basic/universal damage boxes.
This made tacticals have to use a lot more points in weapons ...points that they could not put into the engineering and science boxes to increase their tanking ability. This is precisely why pre-f2p the tactical capt. escorts had such crappy shield/hulls . Only engineer and sci captained escorts had the survivability...but not the firepower.
Now, granted, pre-f2p the issue was once you locked in a weapon type you were stuck with it and that sucked. The new system of universal damage types is more functional. However, the problem was created by cryptic taking the lazy & easy way out: They simply removed the boxes and created this absurd imbalance.
They should return the tactical (and science) skill boxes to match the same number of skill boxes engineering has (15).
Tactical boxes should split the attack patterns into attack and evasive patterns; split the weapon specialization boxes into +acc (not+dmg) and 2ndary effect; etc.
Science should have the boxes revamped into a categories that synergize with the boff abilities stat requirements.
I'll put together a jpg skill box revamp suggestion later to illustrate. But you get the idea.
maybe tactical captains in a fleet with fleet cannons and turrets but my character isn't in a fleet, is an escort and I don't do enough damage and I'm using the best you can get playing by yourself.
I don't think you're thinking it through, what prevents an engi or sci captain from benefiting just as much as a tac from the streamlined tac skills?
Oh! That's right! NOTHING.
In fact my engi already does, as does my sci going all torp damage! I think you and a lot of others need to get out of this "woe is me" victim mentality and start THINKING instead of trying to attack anything with the letters "tac" in the name as some sort of sad reflex. Guys, tac boff powers are the same for everyone, just because you're a sci or an engi doesn't magically preclude you from using it.
I realize its scary and probably quite annoying but most cruiser pilots need to learn to play and build ships as well as coming to terms with how the game works and what they want their place to be.
Do away with the different Captains..ie: Tac Eng Sci...and make it Just a Captain. Then we would train them in the different powers. That way we could just mix and match our powers...We would probly need more skill points and they would have to add more skills to train in, but, not enough skill pts to train in ALL the skills.
It would be GREAT for dynamics, PvE would be funner, PvP would be wicked.
However...that would require some imagination and a learning curve for our more...challenged...players...ie: "Dead on Arrival"
Kirk was a Captain with Tac Eng and Sci skills...why can't we be that way too?
Assimilation...it does a body good...:P
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That.... is a very interesting solution. I actually kinda like it.
Elim Garak
I ask from curiuosity.
R.I.P
This is getting a bit annoying now, how about they NERF EVERYTHING, will that make you happy?
Asking for a new nerf every other day is not the way to get ahead around here, Cryptic nerfs enough as it is in the quest for the almighty $, we dont need them effing up everything now.
Joined - 9/2011
"You Best Make Peace With Your Dear & Fluffy Lord" - Malcolm Reynolds
It's a little difficult for me to take what you're saying seriously due to your avatar... which shows you aren't really looking at this objectively... just saying...
Probably. The thread died for while, and I let it die. That doesn't mean I magically changed my mind. I think escorts are overpowered, but it's done more then let escorts be lazy. If think my view is only summed up by "OMG nerf escorts" I am going to confuse the hell out of you because that's just one face of it.
The difference being not wanting one, and not going to cry if they get a nerf. I think the root issue is they're afraid to lay down the law and reverse the power creep. So, they nerf everything else to try to work around it.
If they fry the root cause they could actually reverse a lot of nerfs. Not that they in the habit of reverse things that no longer make sense.
There is too much nerfing in this game from screaming kids that can't handle anything ranked higher then a feather pillow. There is no challenge anymore.
This game needs to get back to the level it was at 2 years ago before the Nerf it all to hell approach kicked in...
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Real Join Date: Monday, 17 May 2010