Nerf Resistances
Seriously an escort running around with 50% shield resistance by itself is silly. Simple fix is to bump EPTS up a tier, better fix is to nerf majority of big resistance items/abilities by a small amount like EPtS, Shield Power, Maco/Fleet Shields, etc.
Increase HPs
The 10% buff from fleet is not enough. Shield facings under 10k should not be seen at endgame. This should be combined with the resistance nerf to maintain or slightly increase average effective health of ships.
Nerf Mary Sue Abilitites/Things
Shield power grants increased regen and resistance. Move one of them. EPtS heals and increases resist in addition to shield power and cleanse effects. Nearly every heal increases resists that is bad especially since many can have nearly 100% up-time.
End Results?
Sustain goes down, buffer goes up, current EHPs stay the same.
Anything the escort can do survivability wise the other ships do in greater measure.
If you think they can "simply burst them down" you are really mistaken.
I guess it's fun to nerfmonger on escorts in every thread though?
Actually in a PvE sense it is one of the things that skews escort balance.
IF the primary factor in a ship's resistance capabilities lies in its equipment and utilizing low tier boff skills that allows the difference between the EHP, or buffer tank capability, between the escort and other ships to become so small it is insignificant. Do the same with sustainability and once again the issue arises.
Yes it is true a cruiser can pack more resistance and sustain than an escort, but how much more? And at what opportunity cost? When an escort uses an ensign ability like EPtS 1 to hit 45% shield resist their is very little opportunity cost. Yet when the cruiser uses EPtS 3, which mind you one of the very few ways for it to gain more resistance and establish a significant difference in EHP or buffer, he does pay a large opportunity cost.
*edit addon*
I mean let us look at what the major changes in current game are from pre-F2P
*Maco/Fleet shields granting strong passive resistance
*Shield power resistance granting increased
*Increased ship power levels
*Additional passive healing added primarily via Doffs
*Favored shield type becoming Resilient
Has damage gone up by a large amount? Not really other than escorts have more time on target. The major change is how easy it has become to get high damage mitigation numbers with little effort.
Anything the escort can do survivability wise the other ships do in greater measure.
If you think they can "simply burst them down" you are really mistaken.
I guess it's fun to nerfmonger on escorts in every thread though?
I'm not sure other ships can practically have higher survivability.
Except for healers focusing on themselves instead of their team and zombie cruisers who aren't either DPSing or healing, other ships really aren't any more durable than escorts. All of the bread-and butter defenses are in ensign and LT slots, so everyone has access to them.
I don't think this thread is really about nerfing escorts, it's just pointing out that non-escorts can't do damage. I don't think anyone is even asking for non-escorts to do equal or competitive damage -- it just feels silly that unless you're using DHCs damage doesn't get close to punching through shields no matter how long you take. You essentially have to wear down all 4 shield facings, and by that time they usually heal.
No. "Moving towards" in the "everyone will eventually have T4 passives and access to elite fleet shields" way. Things will get progressively worse as more and more players/characters gain access to these things.
So far, Elite Shields are not widespread and there are probably still lots of characters without T4 rep out there (at least I still have many of them). Look at how often you see the transphasic torp combo or other "build of the month" things - even the players who are sometimes belittled as "PVErs" aren't stupid, they notice trends and jump on the bandwagon and these healing/resist passives/gear will see (more) widespread use eventually.
They are more widespread than you think, as people are selling them now, just get an invite to another tier 4 fleet pay them ECs and they give you access to fleet store.
I can tell when someone especially in an escort is using them in pvp.
Lastnight 2 of my fleetmates jumped in the arena with 2 randoms, me in my bug and my friend in fleet patrol i think we jumped a guy in another bug and both of us could not kill him, i couldnt hardly scratch his shields, and i have high DPS so did my friend, and i hit the guy with tachyon mines,,tractor beam, with two of us slamming on him and he still killed me then my friend after i died. Something is wrong with that picture
i dont understand why people think this is a problem, this is a valid tactic, and with speedy targets like escorts being so hard to hit and pin down already, there is more then enough resistance to this tactic already. its current functionality is barley good enough as it is, with the placates breaking holds too. long as pet spam tractors are BS though, but player originated holds are not, thats a TSS or HE or something your giving up for that.
even in pug vs pug, non DHC damage is useless. its all actually the same fruit right now
ugh i hate those stupid runabout pets with the tractor spam and chroniton
Just duelled a bud who flew a JHAS with elite adaptive shields res A type. In the course of near 20 mins he did roughly 755k healing and 250k dmg. I was flying my Wells, with a 6 beam boat, 3 photonic ships, a warbird while spamming VM3, SNB, Heavy Grav beam, and PSW on him, not to mention i backstepped when i could to hurry the skills back. But did he go down?
NO. Simply no! Was i close? Yes. But the passives, and active cloack ability bought him time to escape and heal up, and he tanked all that damage really fine thanks to the shields.
Was i rather upset when i left the match? You bet i was! Without those shields and the horrific rep passsives +1 space active he would have never survived.
Yet, he did. This added survivalbilty adds so much longevity to escorts, and virtually nothing to other ships as they can simply burst them down.
lol wonder if thats the same bug i just played in arena lastnight?
people are right,,what happens when everyone is at tier 5 omega/rom and has elite fleet shields? We just shoot each other for an hour??
Actually in a PvE sense it is one of the things that skews escort balance.
This thread isn't about PvE.
"Pressure" damage doesn't even exist in PvE, it's just sustained DPS at that point - and NPCs have not suddenly gained several new sources of passive healing and resistance.
All ships have had their passive healing and resistances pushed to extreme levels.
Agreed, BUT:
Cruisers and sci ships are not given anything back in the damage department. Escorts still rule while still given the extra survivalbility making them even harder to kill. That was really uncalled for, as escorts now can rely on speed tanking as well somewhat better shield tanking with several ways to escape if so need be.
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Cruisers and sci ships are not given anything back in the damage department. Escorts still rule while still given the extra survivalbility making them even harder to kill. That was really uncalled for, as escorts now can rely on speed tanking as well somewhat better shield tanking with several ways to escape if so need be.
True. The oddest part is how escorts control the battlefield. Hit and run or hit and stay. Hit and chase down escaping ships. Conversely, the majority of science ships and cruisers can't maneuver or effectively escape (comparatively) or do significant pressure damage or spike. All that plus tanking abilities that rival cruisers... It's skewed.
Much of what's being discussed simply comes about because of the single player angle of PvE...as far as why certain ships may appear to have better survivability than they should, they lack the need for other certain ships to keep them alive, etc, etc, etc...
...to get around that, they would have to significantly increase the damage of those ships to cover for the lack of survivability. Turning them into potential glass cannons - where the cannon part would far outweigh the glass aspect. By making that boost to the survivability in regard to the other ships though, likewise - they'd see their damage reduced even more.
Funny how that works out, if you stop to think about it for a moment... and yes, that's PvE - this is a PvP discussion - but this is a PvE game, you can't ignore PvE just because it's a PvP thread in the PvP section of the forums.
The core root of the problem is still high resistance rates. They are skewing all of the math.
Lets say we take an escort right now with 8k shields. Let us say they can self restore 6k shields each minute, or 100 per second.
Buffer EHP = 8,000 or an 8,000 damage alpha will kill them.
Sustain EHP = 100 per second, or DPS over 100 will eventually kill them.
Now let us add 40% resists to that equation.
Buffer EHP = 13,333
Sustain EHP = 167
So now you are forced to ramp up the overall damage to compensate and in addition the natural sustain is much stronger. Finally against a target that lacks that resist for whatever reason that damage will be more likely to Alpha the target.
If instead we increase the base shield strength but lower the resistance we would see this assuming resist 20% and say 11k shield.
Buffer EHP = 13,750
Sustain EHP = 125
And that gives us a stronger ability to apply pressure damage without increasing the frequency of alpha strikes. Also it encourages having a friend around to help restore lost shields.
Right now that defiant build I stated can fully restore its shields in about 50 seconds. That means to apply pressure damage an enemy must deal 2% of my shields in damage every second. Sounds reasonable but hang on one mere moment. My engineer steamrunner can restore his shields every 25 seconds on average meaning the pressure damage an enemy must deal is 4% of my shields per second. Let us assume DPS is boosted to allow that to happen and someone can deal 6% constantly. Now the defiant explodes in 20 seconds or less if the enemy front loads his damage.
There is an ideal ratio between Max HP vs Time to Heal. When that ratio gets wonky you end up overpowering either Alpha Strikes or Pressure Damage. That ratio is extremely skewed at the moment and the blame lies solely on the higher amounts of damage being mitigated via resists combined with the new sources of free healing.
Ask yourself these two simple questions.
1) Was it possible pre-F2P for an escort to fully restore all shield and hull damage every minute in battle?
2) Was it easy pre-F2P to get 40%-60% shield resist F2P with a single ensign ability and gear?
1) Was it possible pre-F2P for an escort to fully restore all shield and hull damage every minute in battle?
2) Was it easy pre-F2P to get 40%-60% shield resist F2P with a single ensign ability and gear?
1.
Totally depends on what shield you used, and what shield heals you carried, in combat mode, out of combat, shield power level, etc.
Same story for Hull, but you would need to have HE2/HE3 and a Engiteam/aux2sif to do that prolly.
2. Epts1 was always like 18% Shield resist, Power level adds another 10/15%? Not sure if the Maco shield was already there tho (10% + 5% Absorb = 15% excluding the 5x +2 powerlevel stacks (Another few percent = 15-20% resist total for maco)
I just got back into the game after 3 months of absence and i definately notice shields are a lot more resilient now.
I think a good solution to the whole PvP community would be to simply remove or at least alter the whole Distribute_Shields function to that its either removed or altered in a way that its no longer spammable and has a negative transferring speed towards each facing compared to only distributing your shields manually to up, down, left or right facings.
Not only would this solve alot of problems it will also bring back a new dynamic to the game since I sincerely believe that the function was never supposed to be spammed continuously. It would add a whole new dimension of dynamic to the PvP and a new grade of complexity/player skill level to the game's PvP system.
So in a nutshell
- Manually distributing to a single shield side should transfer faster than the Distribute shields to all facings simultaneously would (I believe this is already the case more or less logically)
- Or remove the whole Distribute_Shields function (To all facings simultaneously) or make it so its only usable in a specific interval (But the RP'ers might cry but really like 99% of the PVE'ers dont even use this mechanic at all)
Not only this, but it will also reduce the gap between newbies not knowing how to bind distribute_shields to their spacebar and advanced players that do use it. This will place both player grades much closer together all of the sudden.
Another problem which is still around is that Tactical team is still spammed way too much and it should be dealt with imo. Bring some new useful abilities to the tacticals instead, most noticably the ensign stations.
I think this will resolve loads of problems and add a new fun factor to the game.
As for the issue raised/responded-to by Mancom... Honestly, I probably should not have replied to that one just yet, as my reply didn't offer much in the way of constructive feedback, or a step toward resolution. It's a many-faceted issue that can't accurately be boiled down to a single variable. I can see how Resists/Regen can appear to be the issue, but there's just as much of an argument to be made that they NEED to exist in their current state BECAUSE spike damage builds and SNB coordination strikes exist.
The massive issue that you're missing here is that you're balancing the full time spent on a game map around the most powerful aggressive combo tactic there is. This doesn't weaken the hand of SNB/spike, it makes it stronger; essentially, if nukes/coordinated burst can't kill a target, nothing else in the game can. This is made particularly more curious considering that two very common, humble skills are a total hard counter to a timed nuke (ST and TT).
The more you ramp up the passive healing/resists/DOffs situation, the more people will rely on timed nukes/burst to actually bring games to a close. Without these outside sources, burst would still be strong (as it is in any game, since essentially it's taking advantage of someone's reaction time) but there'd be many, many other options to either counter the opposing team's strategy or even to form an offensive one of one's own.
Frankly, by the way these captain skills work (and given that they've been around for three years without much complaint) it's quite clear that Attack Pattern: Alpha and Subnucleonic Beam are "working as intended". They're the highest tier skills of an entire career choice respectively, of course they're going to be strong. But counters that rely on team play and good timing also exist, and they're really not exceptionally difficult to master.
The whole passives/DOffs/shields situation is just trying to fill a non-existent demand. AP:A/SNB's credibility is not in dispute, but these untested, rushed-out passives/DOffs absolutely are. Just look at how the original version of the T4 shield heal turned out in practice.
One thought, if alphas/nukes are a genuine concern of yours for whatever reason: rather than turning everyone into their own personal nigh-invulnerable tanky-deeps ship, how about taking the opportunity to make Engies a more valuable team asset? With castable captain powers, now a team with one or two Engies is much more defensively prepared for high burst damage (RSF and a shield battery can shrug off the worst the game has to throw at you). So now you'd have a choice of running moar Sci, aggressive yet vulnerable, or moar Eng, better for a war of attrition.
I think it'd be a lot more healthy for the game's balance as a whole and for making everyone feel like a desirable, worthwhile part of a team, instead of simply shifting the burden onto silly fleet gear and gimmick items.
Actually in a PvE sense it is one of the things that skews escort balance.
IF the primary factor in a ship's resistance capabilities lies in its equipment and utilizing low tier boff skills that allows the difference between the EHP, or buffer tank capability, between the escort and other ships to become so small it is insignificant. Do the same with sustainability and once again the issue arises.
Yes it is true a cruiser can pack more resistance and sustain than an escort, but how much more? And at what opportunity cost? When an escort uses an ensign ability like EPtS 1 to hit 45% shield resist their is very little opportunity cost. Yet when the cruiser uses EPtS 3, which mind you one of the very few ways for it to gain more resistance and establish a significant difference in EHP or buffer, he does pay a large opportunity cost.
*edit addon*
I mean let us look at what the major changes in current game are from pre-F2P
*Maco/Fleet shields granting strong passive resistance
*Shield power resistance granting increased
*Increased ship power levels
*Additional passive healing added primarily via Doffs
*Favored shield type becoming Resilient
Has damage gone up by a large amount? Not really other than escorts have more time on target. The major change is how easy it has become to get high damage mitigation numbers with little effort.
In the old days that opportunity came in the form of a disable power that the Cruiser player could use to set that escort up for the kill.
Now, not so much unless one is a really good Cruiser player.
Pressure damage is quite dead. Beam arrays deal pathetic amounts of damage. They simply drain too much power, the fire cycle is way too long, and they lack significant force. You might as well be shooting blanks. Changing beam arrays to fire once per volley while draining 5 weapon power should help in this area.
PUG 5v5 PvP matches have come to a point where the team with the most Jem'hadar attack ships and Temporal ships (constant temporal backsteps/temporal inversion field) will win every time. I used to be able to kill players flying the bug ships. Then season six rolled around and Cryptic decided the already overpowered ship needed an extra tactical console slot and 10% more hull and shields. They took an overpowered ship and they made it even more overpowered.
Once fleets started to get the elite shields right before Season Seven, Jem'hadar attack ships with this shield were unkillable 1v1 (and in many cases up to (3v1) in PUGs if the pilot was worth his salt. The ship already has turn rate to rival bird of prey, hull higher than every escort with the exception of the fleet escort carrier, cruiser level shield mods, and on top of that they have the highest impulse modifier in the game. Not only are they insanely tanky, they can run away from other players and there isn't a single ship in the game capable of catching up to them.
The season seven procs are all heal over time to counter pressure damage, which isn't really a problem at this point. The problem in this game are 5 Tactical console ships with 4x Dual Heavy Cannons and 3x Turrets under Cannon Rapid Fire III with Attack Pattern Omega I, Attack Pattern Alpha III, and Tactical Fleet II. Nerf the all dual heavy cannon super spike build and super shield resists are no longer needed. Adding a major power drain mechanic to running that many dual heavy cannon weapons would help. Dropping the Jem'hadar attack ship's base hull to 28,000 and shields to 0.88 would compensate for it's bird of prey level turn rate and speed. As for the elite shields, right now escorts can get a free 35% shield resistance from incoming weapons damage simply by running the elite shields. Dropping [ResA] and [ResB] down from 15% to 10% and the max number of stacks of [Adapt] from 10 down to 5 while at the same time dropping the uptime from 30 seconds/proc to 15 seconds/proc should remove the problem. The change to the elite shields would have minimal effect on cruisers, as they already have many abilities capable of raising the shield resistances to the cap. The last problem is the sensor targeting assault proc from the reputation system. If the escort is running jam sensors , the sensor targeting assault passive, and the Adpated MACO/KHG shields it's impossible to keep a target lock on the ship. All this does is it hurts science vessels (and it's very annoying having to constantly retarget a ship). Science vessels can't use sensor analysis if the escort is breaking it every 2-3 seconds. Adding a 30 second immunity to sensor targeting assault and the KHG/Adapted MACO should fix the constant proccing with escorts. Sensor jamming is a science ability and super stacking shield resistances is a engineering ability. Escorts shouldn't be able to do both of those in addition to dealing the most damage.
Cruisers and sci ships are not given anything back in the damage department. Escorts still rule...
Escorts haven't been given anything extra in the damage department that Cruisers and Sci ships do not also have access to (generally, more crit %).
This means life is harder for escorts as well.
I know everyone like to think or pretend that just pointing 4 DHCs at something will evaporate - but I promise you that without Sci for control & SNBs, escorts are not getting clean kills on opposing teams that know what they are doing.
With the new passive resistances and heals, and a little bit of cross-healing, a full even well timed alpha strike can just bounce off targets without proper kill assist by sci.
So I think we're in agreement that the passive healing and resistance has gone kind of nuts, but its gone nuts for everyone and should not be some "nerf escorts" issue.
The massive issue that you're missing here is that you're balancing the full time spent on a game map around the most powerful aggressive combo tactic there is. This doesn't weaken the hand of SNB/spike, it makes it stronger; essentially, if nukes/coordinated burst can't kill a target, nothing else in the game can. This is made particularly more curious considering that two very common, humble skills are a total hard counter to a timed nuke (ST and TT).
The more you ramp up the passive healing/resists/DOffs situation, the more people will rely on timed nukes/burst to actually bring games to a close.
I had to quote this because it's extremely important.
I agree that one of the important points Bort should take away from this conversation is that fleet gear / leadership / rep procs > these things are not equalizers giving weaker players a fighting chance against stronger players.
All this does is push the gap wider.
Anything the weak pug team is capable of bringing to bear with this new system, the strong coordinated team brings even more of - except they also have complete dominance when it comes to offense.
Now, the weak uncoordinated team actually has to not only surmount the strong team's skill level - they also have to overcome all of these passive heals and resistances.
The biggest factor here is the fleet shields. OMGWTFBBQ awesome against pressure, but bad against spike damage.
Elite Fleet Shields are a major contributor. But even only regular MACO shields and T4 shield passives work really well to nullify pressure damage.
And just to stress that point again for the general public: Shields, Reputation passives and Human Boffs can be used on ALL ships regardless of class with basically no opportunity cost.
And just to stress that point again for the general public: Shields, Reputation passives and Human Boffs can be used on ALL ships regardless of class with basically no opportunity cost.
From which obviously the so called "glass" canon profits the most.
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Pressure damage is quite dead. Beam arrays deal pathetic amounts of damage. They simply drain too much power, the fire cycle is way too long, and they lack significant force. You might as well be shooting blanks. Changing beam arrays to fire once per volley while draining 5 weapon power should help in this area.
PUG 5v5 PvP matches have come to a point where the team with the most Jem'hadar attack ships and Temporal ships (constant temporal backsteps/temporal inversion field) will win every time. I used to be able to kill players flying the bug ships. Then season six rolled around and Cryptic decided the already overpowered ship needed an extra tactical console slot and 10% more hull and shields. They took an overpowered ship and they made it even more overpowered.
Once fleets started to get the elite shields right before Season Seven, Jem'hadar attack ships with this shield were unkillable 1v1 (and in many cases up to (3v1) in PUGs if the pilot was worth his salt. The ship already has turn rate to rival bird of prey, hull higher than every escort with the exception of the fleet escort carrier, cruiser level shield mods, and on top of that they have the highest impulse modifier in the game. Not only are they insanely tanky, they can run away from other players and there isn't a single ship in the game capable of catching up to them.
The season seven procs are all heal over time to counter pressure damage, which isn't really a problem at this point. The problem in this game are 5 Tactical console ships with 4x Dual Heavy Cannons and 3x Turrets under Cannon Rapid Fire III with Attack Pattern Omega I, Attack Pattern Alpha III, and Tactical Fleet II. Nerf the all dual heavy cannon super spike build and super shield resists are no longer needed. Adding a major power drain mechanic to running that many dual heavy cannon weapons would help. Dropping the Jem'hadar attack ship's base hull to 28,000 and shields to 0.88 would compensate for it's bird of prey level turn rate and speed. As for the elite shields, right now escorts can get a free 35% shield resistance from incoming weapons damage simply by running the elite shields. Dropping [ResA] and [ResB] down from 15% to 10% and the max number of stacks of [Adapt] from 10 down to 5 while at the same time dropping the uptime from 30 seconds/proc to 15 seconds/proc should remove the problem. The change to the elite shields would have minimal effect on cruisers, as they already have many abilities capable of raising the shield resistances to the cap. The last problem is the sensor targeting assault proc from the reputation system. If the escort is running jam sensors , the sensor targeting assault passive, and the Adpated MACO/KHG shields it's impossible to keep a target lock on the ship. All this does is it hurts science vessels (and it's very annoying having to constantly retarget a ship). Science vessels can't use sensor analysis if the escort is breaking it every 2-3 seconds. Adding a 30 second immunity to sensor targeting assault and the KHG/Adapted MACO should fix the constant proccing with escorts. Sensor jamming is a science ability and super stacking shield resistances is a engineering ability. Escorts shouldn't be able to do both of those in addition to dealing the most damage.
I agree with a lot of what you just stated and i fly a bug, i have defended it on the forums as well, what im agreeing with though is what you stated about the elite shields and all these new placate procs from rom tier and adapted maco,,,the guy i complained about in my fleet is a sci captain in a vesta with those spamming/annoying runabouts, cool sci abilities plus he can equip cannons (and the aux phaser cannons which are stronger than fleet weps cause he runs 125 aux) then he has the rom tier offensive placate as well as adapted maco shield placate, if im not spammed to death by chroniton and tractors from his pets and VM from him and can actually shoot at him i can never keep a lock he just disappears, the only time i can take him out is when playing 3 on 3 or higher, 2on 2 or 1on1 he always focuses on me first and spams me to death while i cant keep a lock on hiim,,i have no problem with cool sci abilities but all these placates stacked are bogus as far as im concerned and if STO isnt going to do anything about it, then i will go and get all that stuff as well to compensate against those already using it.
And those elite shields need nerfed badly and i dont usually use that word on here, but when im in a bug and my fleetmate in a fleet patrol both pushing high DPS tag teaming a guy in another bug who just got hit with tachyon mines and tractor beam and we couldnt even get him lower than 60% hull at any time for 45 seconds only to have him turn around and smoke us both is just well,,,,guarantee he had those elite shields.
UThe JHAS is too the only ship which can take out my Wells with 17k shields and 39k hull in one volley if the player is properly buffed. Dont get me started with how poorly crusiers and sci ships perform in the damage department. This fact is further impacted by the third factor -->
So Defiant cant do that or you meant as the normal "bug is op because its purple" ?
Defiants with 3 crtH boffs from emabssy will always out dps the jhas .
I'm sorry I missed this thread... thats what I get for barely checking in anymore.
Yes preasure damage is completely pointless at this point.
Honestly its been a long time coming... anyone that knows me. Knows I have been running my sci boats full kinetic for a long time... because of this problem... there is zero point in Preasure. Your better off letting loose with torp barrages on both sci and cruiser vessels... let the escorts pump and when they manage to catch a sheild have as much kinetic in the air and spamed on the field as possible. Really the beams coming off the cruisers is doing nothing anyway might as well spam torps... and hope to add a nice but of burst when an escort manages to get a shield down for a few sec.
Here are a few of the things I would point to.
1) heals are far to active... cool downs have always been quick in STO... but thanks to many doffs cool downs on many skills is a thing of the past.
2) passive regen with rep bonuses will keep up with 2-3 ships of beams.... frankly even DHC escorts can't out pace full rep bonus regen anymore... thanks to on crit heals and + shield heal consoles... I feel even the 4 DHC escort is almost pointless... unless you have a team willing to pop 2 sub nukes per kill.
3) shield resists... the E Fleet shield is still a terrible idea... button mashing friendly no thinking items are always bad design imo.
4) Doffs... there are far to many doffs that upset healing balance. We all know 2 AP doffs will keep your omega 3 up 50% of the time... with delta protection up the other 50%... hazard doffs are underrated... 1-2 of them and its like strapping on a couple extra armour
units. DMG control will keep 2 systems perma buffed... Tech doffs will drop skills like RSP to global. The first version of the shield distro doff was terrible... but it was far from the only badly designed doff.
5) Bad skill tree designs.... there are a few we could talk about here
- Electro Plasma Flow... we don't talk about this one often but really who ever runs an EPS unit anymore... One advantage to the old system where people had to run 1-2 EPS units to properly switch power settings... and even feed there weapons drain... keep people from slotting 2-3 neutronium armour units.
- Sci Resists... I have been on record saying I don't think the resists are a major issue where they are... however considering ALL the new shield +s lately... it might not be a bad idea to look at perhaps killing 20-30% of the resist values from Insulators.
- Warp Core Potential / Effic.... I am not saying we shouldn't be able to spec our power systems... however There are Far to many people running at 125 shield power... while maintaining high high power levels everywhere else. This further pushes resists and regen values... not to mention help make many people feel the Staple Engi Captain skill is completely useless. (this goes to Electro Plasma as well... the combo usurps EPS transfer)
- Star Ship manuvers. There has been lots of talk recently about defense rating on escorts... and I would mainly point at the badly designed doffs that allow 50% up time on the commander omega 3... however Every ships defense is up thanks to the manuvers skill.
I really haven't been pvping much in STO lately... because frankly it does nothing but annoy me. I like to think I still know enough about this game to make some intelligent observations. Honestly I can think of plenty of small fixes... I am not sure if they would correct the overall picture or not. I do empathise with the Cryptic guys and Bort. I really don't see any quick 1-2 change fixes. (I understand PvP can't be there only concern)... I understand asking to revert things like weapon power draws and stuff would not go down well with the pve crowd... honestly though most of the newer power / power drain / cool down mechanics are responsible for both the death of Preasure dmg... and at the same time the death of the Engi Captain. The Engi Skills are simply Not needed anymore... they have no place... preasure dmg is pointless, and survivability is so high for everyone that there self buffs are simply a waste in a team. There is nothing the engi does that is unique to them or really seen as a good enough reason to run one anymore....
I think at least on that level the PvE guys might appreciate some changes... then again Engi does just fine in PvE. Its a quagmire no doubt.
(PS... just to be clear when I say the doff cool down reductions on presure dmg... we simply need to think about how it worked before... when buffs where up preasure dmg was always a none issue, mostly anyway... however there was always that window where in a fight we could see the preasure spike happen, as peoples buffs where either down for 15s... or they had to switch to there lower powered secondary copies. Good teams would at that point have there engis pop there nadions and throw the escorts there eps transfers... and even with out a ton of Nukes games where won... that end of the game has been completely removed and dumbed down now thanks to doff cool down reductions)
Why not just buff pressure damage... for example, by making elite fleet weapons actually offensively useful? Or with a doff? Something like that. Power creep isn't going to go away, so let them steer it more into a new direction.
It's funny you should say that because the Elite Fleet weaps have, of all things, a built-in heal proc, lol.
Idea: What if beams included a reliable (ie: 50%) proc to re~tard shield regeneration by a small value, that expires in like, 15 seconds and can stack up to an arbitrary amount, like say 20 times.
This would buff beams immensely without increasing the damage value, but also reward running multiple beams- as you could significantly re~tard an enemy's shield regen rate running a full beam boat.
Why not just buff pressure damage... for example, by making elite fleet weapons actually offensively useful? Or with a doff? Something like that. Power creep isn't going to go away, so let them steer it more into a new direction.
i dont use any fleet weapons at all, i think they suck for being something thats so hard to come by,,,sure the advanced once have overall higher damage than whats on the exchange but you wont get higher than 10% acc,,,or 30 crit unless AP,,,i have a tet set from exchange that is 30 crit severity with 20% acc,,impossible to get that on fleet weapons, so yeah would be nice if they made those higher, but these shields are getting ridiculous,,,its taking forever just to wear down a target and finally blow them up,,,i dont like playing in the arena and the match takes like 45 mins,,,its only going to get worse when everyone has tier 5 rom/omega and gets elite shields.
Comments
Nerf Resistances
Seriously an escort running around with 50% shield resistance by itself is silly. Simple fix is to bump EPTS up a tier, better fix is to nerf majority of big resistance items/abilities by a small amount like EPtS, Shield Power, Maco/Fleet Shields, etc.
Increase HPs
The 10% buff from fleet is not enough. Shield facings under 10k should not be seen at endgame. This should be combined with the resistance nerf to maintain or slightly increase average effective health of ships.
Nerf Mary Sue Abilitites/Things
Shield power grants increased regen and resistance. Move one of them. EPtS heals and increases resist in addition to shield power and cleanse effects. Nearly every heal increases resists that is bad especially since many can have nearly 100% up-time.
End Results?
Sustain goes down, buffer goes up, current EHPs stay the same.
Anything the escort can do survivability wise the other ships do in greater measure.
If you think they can "simply burst them down" you are really mistaken.
I guess it's fun to nerfmonger on escorts in every thread though?
Actually in a PvE sense it is one of the things that skews escort balance.
IF the primary factor in a ship's resistance capabilities lies in its equipment and utilizing low tier boff skills that allows the difference between the EHP, or buffer tank capability, between the escort and other ships to become so small it is insignificant. Do the same with sustainability and once again the issue arises.
Yes it is true a cruiser can pack more resistance and sustain than an escort, but how much more? And at what opportunity cost? When an escort uses an ensign ability like EPtS 1 to hit 45% shield resist their is very little opportunity cost. Yet when the cruiser uses EPtS 3, which mind you one of the very few ways for it to gain more resistance and establish a significant difference in EHP or buffer, he does pay a large opportunity cost.
*edit addon*
I mean let us look at what the major changes in current game are from pre-F2P
*Maco/Fleet shields granting strong passive resistance
*Shield power resistance granting increased
*Increased ship power levels
*Additional passive healing added primarily via Doffs
*Favored shield type becoming Resilient
Has damage gone up by a large amount? Not really other than escorts have more time on target. The major change is how easy it has become to get high damage mitigation numbers with little effort.
Except for healers focusing on themselves instead of their team and zombie cruisers who aren't either DPSing or healing, other ships really aren't any more durable than escorts. All of the bread-and butter defenses are in ensign and LT slots, so everyone has access to them.
I don't think this thread is really about nerfing escorts, it's just pointing out that non-escorts can't do damage. I don't think anyone is even asking for non-escorts to do equal or competitive damage -- it just feels silly that unless you're using DHCs damage doesn't get close to punching through shields no matter how long you take. You essentially have to wear down all 4 shield facings, and by that time they usually heal.
They are more widespread than you think, as people are selling them now, just get an invite to another tier 4 fleet pay them ECs and they give you access to fleet store.
I can tell when someone especially in an escort is using them in pvp.
Lastnight 2 of my fleetmates jumped in the arena with 2 randoms, me in my bug and my friend in fleet patrol i think we jumped a guy in another bug and both of us could not kill him, i couldnt hardly scratch his shields, and i have high DPS so did my friend, and i hit the guy with tachyon mines,,tractor beam, with two of us slamming on him and he still killed me then my friend after i died. Something is wrong with that picture
ugh i hate those stupid runabout pets with the tractor spam and chroniton
lol wonder if thats the same bug i just played in arena lastnight?
people are right,,what happens when everyone is at tier 5 omega/rom and has elite fleet shields? We just shoot each other for an hour??
This thread isn't about PvE.
"Pressure" damage doesn't even exist in PvE, it's just sustained DPS at that point - and NPCs have not suddenly gained several new sources of passive healing and resistance.
I don't disagree with some of the things you posted, but please first go back and re-read the post I quoted and was responding to.
This, is not true.
All ships have had their passive healing and resistances pushed to extreme levels.
Agreed, BUT:
Cruisers and sci ships are not given anything back in the damage department. Escorts still rule while still given the extra survivalbility making them even harder to kill. That was really uncalled for, as escorts now can rely on speed tanking as well somewhat better shield tanking with several ways to escape if so need be.
PaxOttomana: gawd mirror event is like fighting a tsi premade, they keep comin and comin!
True. The oddest part is how escorts control the battlefield. Hit and run or hit and stay. Hit and chase down escaping ships. Conversely, the majority of science ships and cruisers can't maneuver or effectively escape (comparatively) or do significant pressure damage or spike. All that plus tanking abilities that rival cruisers... It's skewed.
From cruisers online to Escorts online.
...to get around that, they would have to significantly increase the damage of those ships to cover for the lack of survivability. Turning them into potential glass cannons - where the cannon part would far outweigh the glass aspect. By making that boost to the survivability in regard to the other ships though, likewise - they'd see their damage reduced even more.
Funny how that works out, if you stop to think about it for a moment... and yes, that's PvE - this is a PvP discussion - but this is a PvE game, you can't ignore PvE just because it's a PvP thread in the PvP section of the forums.
Lets say we take an escort right now with 8k shields. Let us say they can self restore 6k shields each minute, or 100 per second.
Buffer EHP = 8,000 or an 8,000 damage alpha will kill them.
Sustain EHP = 100 per second, or DPS over 100 will eventually kill them.
Now let us add 40% resists to that equation.
Buffer EHP = 13,333
Sustain EHP = 167
So now you are forced to ramp up the overall damage to compensate and in addition the natural sustain is much stronger. Finally against a target that lacks that resist for whatever reason that damage will be more likely to Alpha the target.
If instead we increase the base shield strength but lower the resistance we would see this assuming resist 20% and say 11k shield.
Buffer EHP = 13,750
Sustain EHP = 125
And that gives us a stronger ability to apply pressure damage without increasing the frequency of alpha strikes. Also it encourages having a friend around to help restore lost shields.
Right now that defiant build I stated can fully restore its shields in about 50 seconds. That means to apply pressure damage an enemy must deal 2% of my shields in damage every second. Sounds reasonable but hang on one mere moment. My engineer steamrunner can restore his shields every 25 seconds on average meaning the pressure damage an enemy must deal is 4% of my shields per second. Let us assume DPS is boosted to allow that to happen and someone can deal 6% constantly. Now the defiant explodes in 20 seconds or less if the enemy front loads his damage.
There is an ideal ratio between Max HP vs Time to Heal. When that ratio gets wonky you end up overpowering either Alpha Strikes or Pressure Damage. That ratio is extremely skewed at the moment and the blame lies solely on the higher amounts of damage being mitigated via resists combined with the new sources of free healing.
Ask yourself these two simple questions.
1) Was it possible pre-F2P for an escort to fully restore all shield and hull damage every minute in battle?
2) Was it easy pre-F2P to get 40%-60% shield resist F2P with a single ensign ability and gear?
1.
Totally depends on what shield you used, and what shield heals you carried, in combat mode, out of combat, shield power level, etc.
Same story for Hull, but you would need to have HE2/HE3 and a Engiteam/aux2sif to do that prolly.
2. Epts1 was always like 18% Shield resist, Power level adds another 10/15%? Not sure if the Maco shield was already there tho (10% + 5% Absorb = 15% excluding the 5x +2 powerlevel stacks (Another few percent = 15-20% resist total for maco)
I just got back into the game after 3 months of absence and i definately notice shields are a lot more resilient now.
I think a good solution to the whole PvP community would be to simply remove or at least alter the whole Distribute_Shields function to that its either removed or altered in a way that its no longer spammable and has a negative transferring speed towards each facing compared to only distributing your shields manually to up, down, left or right facings.
Not only would this solve alot of problems it will also bring back a new dynamic to the game since I sincerely believe that the function was never supposed to be spammed continuously. It would add a whole new dimension of dynamic to the PvP and a new grade of complexity/player skill level to the game's PvP system.
So in a nutshell
- Manually distributing to a single shield side should transfer faster than the Distribute shields to all facings simultaneously would (I believe this is already the case more or less logically)
- Or remove the whole Distribute_Shields function (To all facings simultaneously) or make it so its only usable in a specific interval (But the RP'ers might cry but really like 99% of the PVE'ers dont even use this mechanic at all)
Not only this, but it will also reduce the gap between newbies not knowing how to bind distribute_shields to their spacebar and advanced players that do use it. This will place both player grades much closer together all of the sudden.
Another problem which is still around is that Tactical team is still spammed way too much and it should be dealt with imo. Bring some new useful abilities to the tacticals instead, most noticably the ensign stations.
I think this will resolve loads of problems and add a new fun factor to the game.
MT
The massive issue that you're missing here is that you're balancing the full time spent on a game map around the most powerful aggressive combo tactic there is. This doesn't weaken the hand of SNB/spike, it makes it stronger; essentially, if nukes/coordinated burst can't kill a target, nothing else in the game can. This is made particularly more curious considering that two very common, humble skills are a total hard counter to a timed nuke (ST and TT).
The more you ramp up the passive healing/resists/DOffs situation, the more people will rely on timed nukes/burst to actually bring games to a close. Without these outside sources, burst would still be strong (as it is in any game, since essentially it's taking advantage of someone's reaction time) but there'd be many, many other options to either counter the opposing team's strategy or even to form an offensive one of one's own.
Frankly, by the way these captain skills work (and given that they've been around for three years without much complaint) it's quite clear that Attack Pattern: Alpha and Subnucleonic Beam are "working as intended". They're the highest tier skills of an entire career choice respectively, of course they're going to be strong. But counters that rely on team play and good timing also exist, and they're really not exceptionally difficult to master.
The whole passives/DOffs/shields situation is just trying to fill a non-existent demand. AP:A/SNB's credibility is not in dispute, but these untested, rushed-out passives/DOffs absolutely are. Just look at how the original version of the T4 shield heal turned out in practice.
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[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
One thought, if alphas/nukes are a genuine concern of yours for whatever reason: rather than turning everyone into their own personal nigh-invulnerable tanky-deeps ship, how about taking the opportunity to make Engies a more valuable team asset? With castable captain powers, now a team with one or two Engies is much more defensively prepared for high burst damage (RSF and a shield battery can shrug off the worst the game has to throw at you). So now you'd have a choice of running moar Sci, aggressive yet vulnerable, or moar Eng, better for a war of attrition.
I think it'd be a lot more healthy for the game's balance as a whole and for making everyone feel like a desirable, worthwhile part of a team, instead of simply shifting the burden onto silly fleet gear and gimmick items.
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[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
Now, not so much unless one is a really good Cruiser player.
R.I.P
PUG 5v5 PvP matches have come to a point where the team with the most Jem'hadar attack ships and Temporal ships (constant temporal backsteps/temporal inversion field) will win every time. I used to be able to kill players flying the bug ships. Then season six rolled around and Cryptic decided the already overpowered ship needed an extra tactical console slot and 10% more hull and shields. They took an overpowered ship and they made it even more overpowered.
Once fleets started to get the elite shields right before Season Seven, Jem'hadar attack ships with this shield were unkillable 1v1 (and in many cases up to (3v1) in PUGs if the pilot was worth his salt. The ship already has turn rate to rival bird of prey, hull higher than every escort with the exception of the fleet escort carrier, cruiser level shield mods, and on top of that they have the highest impulse modifier in the game. Not only are they insanely tanky, they can run away from other players and there isn't a single ship in the game capable of catching up to them.
The season seven procs are all heal over time to counter pressure damage, which isn't really a problem at this point. The problem in this game are 5 Tactical console ships with 4x Dual Heavy Cannons and 3x Turrets under Cannon Rapid Fire III with Attack Pattern Omega I, Attack Pattern Alpha III, and Tactical Fleet II. Nerf the all dual heavy cannon super spike build and super shield resists are no longer needed. Adding a major power drain mechanic to running that many dual heavy cannon weapons would help. Dropping the Jem'hadar attack ship's base hull to 28,000 and shields to 0.88 would compensate for it's bird of prey level turn rate and speed. As for the elite shields, right now escorts can get a free 35% shield resistance from incoming weapons damage simply by running the elite shields. Dropping [ResA] and [ResB] down from 15% to 10% and the max number of stacks of [Adapt] from 10 down to 5 while at the same time dropping the uptime from 30 seconds/proc to 15 seconds/proc should remove the problem. The change to the elite shields would have minimal effect on cruisers, as they already have many abilities capable of raising the shield resistances to the cap. The last problem is the sensor targeting assault proc from the reputation system. If the escort is running jam sensors , the sensor targeting assault passive, and the Adpated MACO/KHG shields it's impossible to keep a target lock on the ship. All this does is it hurts science vessels (and it's very annoying having to constantly retarget a ship). Science vessels can't use sensor analysis if the escort is breaking it every 2-3 seconds. Adding a 30 second immunity to sensor targeting assault and the KHG/Adapted MACO should fix the constant proccing with escorts. Sensor jamming is a science ability and super stacking shield resistances is a engineering ability. Escorts shouldn't be able to do both of those in addition to dealing the most damage.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
Escorts haven't been given anything extra in the damage department that Cruisers and Sci ships do not also have access to (generally, more crit %).
This means life is harder for escorts as well.
I know everyone like to think or pretend that just pointing 4 DHCs at something will evaporate - but I promise you that without Sci for control & SNBs, escorts are not getting clean kills on opposing teams that know what they are doing.
With the new passive resistances and heals, and a little bit of cross-healing, a full even well timed alpha strike can just bounce off targets without proper kill assist by sci.
So I think we're in agreement that the passive healing and resistance has gone kind of nuts, but its gone nuts for everyone and should not be some "nerf escorts" issue.
Sci controls the battlefield when two strong teams face each other.
Escorts only control the battlefield in pug matches with little to no coordination.
I had to quote this because it's extremely important.
I agree that one of the important points Bort should take away from this conversation is that fleet gear / leadership / rep procs > these things are not equalizers giving weaker players a fighting chance against stronger players.
All this does is push the gap wider.
Anything the weak pug team is capable of bringing to bear with this new system, the strong coordinated team brings even more of - except they also have complete dominance when it comes to offense.
Now, the weak uncoordinated team actually has to not only surmount the strong team's skill level - they also have to overcome all of these passive heals and resistances.
And just to stress that point again for the general public: Shields, Reputation passives and Human Boffs can be used on ALL ships regardless of class with basically no opportunity cost.
From which obviously the so called "glass" canon profits the most.
I agree with a lot of what you just stated and i fly a bug, i have defended it on the forums as well, what im agreeing with though is what you stated about the elite shields and all these new placate procs from rom tier and adapted maco,,,the guy i complained about in my fleet is a sci captain in a vesta with those spamming/annoying runabouts, cool sci abilities plus he can equip cannons (and the aux phaser cannons which are stronger than fleet weps cause he runs 125 aux) then he has the rom tier offensive placate as well as adapted maco shield placate, if im not spammed to death by chroniton and tractors from his pets and VM from him and can actually shoot at him i can never keep a lock he just disappears, the only time i can take him out is when playing 3 on 3 or higher, 2on 2 or 1on1 he always focuses on me first and spams me to death while i cant keep a lock on hiim,,i have no problem with cool sci abilities but all these placates stacked are bogus as far as im concerned and if STO isnt going to do anything about it, then i will go and get all that stuff as well to compensate against those already using it.
And those elite shields need nerfed badly and i dont usually use that word on here, but when im in a bug and my fleetmate in a fleet patrol both pushing high DPS tag teaming a guy in another bug who just got hit with tachyon mines and tractor beam and we couldnt even get him lower than 60% hull at any time for 45 seconds only to have him turn around and smoke us both is just well,,,,guarantee he had those elite shields.
So Defiant cant do that or you meant as the normal "bug is op because its purple" ?
Defiants with 3 crtH boffs from emabssy will always out dps the jhas .
Yes preasure damage is completely pointless at this point.
Honestly its been a long time coming... anyone that knows me. Knows I have been running my sci boats full kinetic for a long time... because of this problem... there is zero point in Preasure. Your better off letting loose with torp barrages on both sci and cruiser vessels... let the escorts pump and when they manage to catch a sheild have as much kinetic in the air and spamed on the field as possible. Really the beams coming off the cruisers is doing nothing anyway might as well spam torps... and hope to add a nice but of burst when an escort manages to get a shield down for a few sec.
Here are a few of the things I would point to.
1) heals are far to active... cool downs have always been quick in STO... but thanks to many doffs cool downs on many skills is a thing of the past.
2) passive regen with rep bonuses will keep up with 2-3 ships of beams.... frankly even DHC escorts can't out pace full rep bonus regen anymore... thanks to on crit heals and + shield heal consoles... I feel even the 4 DHC escort is almost pointless... unless you have a team willing to pop 2 sub nukes per kill.
3) shield resists... the E Fleet shield is still a terrible idea... button mashing friendly no thinking items are always bad design imo.
4) Doffs... there are far to many doffs that upset healing balance. We all know 2 AP doffs will keep your omega 3 up 50% of the time... with delta protection up the other 50%... hazard doffs are underrated... 1-2 of them and its like strapping on a couple extra armour
units. DMG control will keep 2 systems perma buffed... Tech doffs will drop skills like RSP to global. The first version of the shield distro doff was terrible... but it was far from the only badly designed doff.
5) Bad skill tree designs.... there are a few we could talk about here
- Electro Plasma Flow... we don't talk about this one often but really who ever runs an EPS unit anymore... One advantage to the old system where people had to run 1-2 EPS units to properly switch power settings... and even feed there weapons drain... keep people from slotting 2-3 neutronium armour units.
- Sci Resists... I have been on record saying I don't think the resists are a major issue where they are... however considering ALL the new shield +s lately... it might not be a bad idea to look at perhaps killing 20-30% of the resist values from Insulators.
- Warp Core Potential / Effic.... I am not saying we shouldn't be able to spec our power systems... however There are Far to many people running at 125 shield power... while maintaining high high power levels everywhere else. This further pushes resists and regen values... not to mention help make many people feel the Staple Engi Captain skill is completely useless. (this goes to Electro Plasma as well... the combo usurps EPS transfer)
- Star Ship manuvers. There has been lots of talk recently about defense rating on escorts... and I would mainly point at the badly designed doffs that allow 50% up time on the commander omega 3... however Every ships defense is up thanks to the manuvers skill.
I really haven't been pvping much in STO lately... because frankly it does nothing but annoy me. I like to think I still know enough about this game to make some intelligent observations. Honestly I can think of plenty of small fixes... I am not sure if they would correct the overall picture or not. I do empathise with the Cryptic guys and Bort. I really don't see any quick 1-2 change fixes. (I understand PvP can't be there only concern)... I understand asking to revert things like weapon power draws and stuff would not go down well with the pve crowd... honestly though most of the newer power / power drain / cool down mechanics are responsible for both the death of Preasure dmg... and at the same time the death of the Engi Captain. The Engi Skills are simply Not needed anymore... they have no place... preasure dmg is pointless, and survivability is so high for everyone that there self buffs are simply a waste in a team. There is nothing the engi does that is unique to them or really seen as a good enough reason to run one anymore....
I think at least on that level the PvE guys might appreciate some changes... then again Engi does just fine in PvE. Its a quagmire no doubt.
(PS... just to be clear when I say the doff cool down reductions on presure dmg... we simply need to think about how it worked before... when buffs where up preasure dmg was always a none issue, mostly anyway... however there was always that window where in a fight we could see the preasure spike happen, as peoples buffs where either down for 15s... or they had to switch to there lower powered secondary copies. Good teams would at that point have there engis pop there nadions and throw the escorts there eps transfers... and even with out a ton of Nukes games where won... that end of the game has been completely removed and dumbed down now thanks to doff cool down reductions)
It's funny you should say that because the Elite Fleet weaps have, of all things, a built-in heal proc, lol.
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[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
WHAT? Thats the best weapons you can get from the starbase aye? Horrible horrible :eek:
PaxOttomana: gawd mirror event is like fighting a tsi premade, they keep comin and comin!
This would buff beams immensely without increasing the damage value, but also reward running multiple beams- as you could significantly re~tard an enemy's shield regen rate running a full beam boat.
EDIT: Oh for the love of, that's censored? wtf.
i dont use any fleet weapons at all, i think they suck for being something thats so hard to come by,,,sure the advanced once have overall higher damage than whats on the exchange but you wont get higher than 10% acc,,,or 30 crit unless AP,,,i have a tet set from exchange that is 30 crit severity with 20% acc,,impossible to get that on fleet weapons, so yeah would be nice if they made those higher, but these shields are getting ridiculous,,,its taking forever just to wear down a target and finally blow them up,,,i dont like playing in the arena and the match takes like 45 mins,,,its only going to get worse when everyone has tier 5 rom/omega and gets elite shields.