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Pro Tip: Marion Frances Dulmur And Beam Overload
emoejoe
Member Posts: 229 Arc User
Hi you might remember me from cracked planetoid or solar wind, where u died in one shot and asked yourself what happened.
Welp, not to beat a dead horse as it were, but the fruitfulness of my newly discovered combo merits high praise and discussion.
The key ingredient being Marion Frances Dulmur temporal systems engineer purple doff. His special power reads as "8 seconds -200 energy drain resist".
This effectively reduces the drain from firing one beam overload 3 from 50 to 10 power loss.
Sequentially preparing multiple different level copies of beam overload in advance lets you hit for 3 beam overloads i within this 8 seconds. With minimal power loss.
A specific combat log for a sequentially fired bo2>bo3>bo3 without marion/ dem looks like this after multiple tests with no buffs.
12k bo2
(power to 75)
10kbo3 bo3
(power to 25)
5k bo3
Showing the uselessness of simultaneously drainign all of your power, mind u this is with spec in electroplasma and one eps console. At any rate with marion/dem u have minimal dps loss over the 3 shots.
12k bo2
(power to 115)
14k bo3
(power to 105)
13k bo3
Waiting but a second between gives you your power back, but i try to fire them off as fast as possible so that the shields are down when my hy q torps hit.
In fact this combo is so effective at instant damage, i opted now for two dual beam banks, and i fire the first bo2/bo3 simultaneously.
Anyone who has experienced this on either end in game will not quip about the usefulness of this combo.
So to reiterate, get urself dem (any level) and marion frances dulmur, two different copies of beam overload, and go to town.
gg gl hf
Welp, not to beat a dead horse as it were, but the fruitfulness of my newly discovered combo merits high praise and discussion.
The key ingredient being Marion Frances Dulmur temporal systems engineer purple doff. His special power reads as "8 seconds -200 energy drain resist".
This effectively reduces the drain from firing one beam overload 3 from 50 to 10 power loss.
Sequentially preparing multiple different level copies of beam overload in advance lets you hit for 3 beam overloads i within this 8 seconds. With minimal power loss.
A specific combat log for a sequentially fired bo2>bo3>bo3 without marion/ dem looks like this after multiple tests with no buffs.
12k bo2
(power to 75)
10kbo3 bo3
(power to 25)
5k bo3
Showing the uselessness of simultaneously drainign all of your power, mind u this is with spec in electroplasma and one eps console. At any rate with marion/dem u have minimal dps loss over the 3 shots.
12k bo2
(power to 115)
14k bo3
(power to 105)
13k bo3
Waiting but a second between gives you your power back, but i try to fire them off as fast as possible so that the shields are down when my hy q torps hit.
In fact this combo is so effective at instant damage, i opted now for two dual beam banks, and i fire the first bo2/bo3 simultaneously.
Anyone who has experienced this on either end in game will not quip about the usefulness of this combo.
So to reiterate, get urself dem (any level) and marion frances dulmur, two different copies of beam overload, and go to town.
gg gl hf
Post edited by emoejoe on
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Do you even Science Bro?
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Now the problem I had with him was I could only fire off 1 BO within the 8 seconds. I didn't have the tac slots to have another slotted up, but I can see how you'd use the 1 BO to fire twice within a few seconds.
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(Not sure this beats Thissler's BO3 + HYT3 combo in any case...)
EDIT: I suppose you could squeeze BO3,BO2,HYT3 in
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A2B is the final protip because you can stack BO and HYT like you already can, but DEM comes up more often and instead of the 115/105 numbers you stay at 125+.
A question for those who know, what happens when you stack Marion? Do you get 16 seconds or 8 seconds of even more of the same?
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
My real issue with this doff... is its part of the reason Engi is no longer a viable choice.
I used to do this exact same thing in my Engi scorts (in terms of drain on overload)... and it was the only reason to fly an engi. People used to wonder how my engi kept up with tacs on the score board... ya it was 2 copies of BOL 3 and nadion that everyone still says blows... even on an engi with only omega 3... I would hit 10k+ 3 times in a row. All well give it to the tacs right.
Thanks to this stupid doff anyone can do the same thing helping to make engi obsolete.
Don't worry though Cryptic won't touch this or the other bunch of doffs that are almost pointless in PvE... they aim all this broken TRIBBLE at PvPers and we lap it up like nice like marks. Every time we "discover" must have combos like these WE drive the price up on them and drive sales for Cryptic... funny thing is then we blame them for destryoing PvP balance.
Amazing.
So how much did these boffs cost? (assuming they price jump after this thread).
R.I.P
You get 8 seconds of more drain resistance. I've tested out 3 before, using 3 DHCs, 4 turrets, a DBB using BO 3 all firing at once while using that and my power barely nudged down at all. If I used an Engineer's Nadion on top of that, my power didn't move, AT ALL.
But I am in the same boat as Antoniosalieri on this one. Back when they first came out, I made a thread on here talking about how I really didn't like how they basically made Nadion worthless because now everyone could use them. That thread was mostly ignored when I posted it. In my opinion these are almost, if not equally bad as SNB DOFFs.
While I think Eng does need some kind of boost, I think the word "worthless" is taking things out a stretch.
You have to be able to slot DEM for starters, a power on a 2 minute cooldown and you get an 8s weapon drain reduction from it, it's not the entire duration of DEM. You have to also dedicate a DOFF slot to it.
Further doffs only increase the drain reduction, and from what I've seen that's mostly irrelevant.
If you want to do this more often, now you need either 2 copies of DEM or DEM and Aux to Batts - probably 2 copies.
Putting this on basically any standard Escort for example, not even with Aux to batts, means you need to give up RSP, or EPTS or Sci heals.
Well DEM is a 1:30 cool down not 2.
It can also be chained on cruisers... making tac cruiser do the job of the engi previously.
It can also be kept at global with aux to bat... meaning that yes again Tac Cruiser makes more sense then engi cruiser... every 45s I can have 8s of Nadion. Here is the kicker.... Nadion is a 3:00 cool down with 30s up time... meaning it is up 16% of the time.
With DEM 3 at global thanks to aux to bat... the Nadion effect of Francy Game killer is 17% of the time. On a much faster cycle meaning timing isn't near as much a factor.
Tac out Doing engi at engi along with tac buffs.... yes Engi is pointless as far as dmg goes.
That Tac Cruiser build will be a bit more squishy I grant you... still you got to love broken doffs... combo 2 seperate class killers and yes I consider it an issue.
The escort ya its not all that viable... it can work on a bop by giving up any real survivability outside of extreme offense.
Really You combo the Stupid Cutting Beam 2 piece proc with the DEM doff and a copy of aux to bat on a cruiser... and nothing the engi does looks worth the trade of the tac buffs.
Marion + A2B's weapon power boost also lets you replace HYT with CRF. Without him you would of course take the hit to cannon dmg from power drain, so you take torps and have to give a little thought about putting the torps on hull, timing the BO accordingly. If it's CRF, **** it, just throw it all downrange, there's no shield penalty.
First, I acknowledge that I'm without shame.
TT, BO, CRF, APO
EPTS, A2B, DEM
EPTE, A2B, usually RSP*
PH, HE
SFM, Aux batt
Techx2-3, Marion, rotating based on *
Survivability includes battlecloak (with SFM if needed), APO/PH uptime, RSP, Aux batt+HE, embassy shield and hull heal. Currently running 3 piece Omega but plan to switch to KHG for MEF, so there's another source of survivability, but I might miss tet glider too much. Only tier 3 for both reps, T5 Rom cloak for another source.
Need to run, check aux, have it? A2B+evasive then engine preset. Don't have it, Aux batt, A2B, evasive. Not as amazing as deuts or an engine battery but it will do.
Side note, DEM through RSP is glorious. "Stupid BoP. Ha! RSP, what do you think of that? Moron, why is he still shooting? Why did he waste FOMM, RSP is up? Wait, what happened to my hull?"
With this build I cannot hang with an all cannon AP doff'd bug or defiant 1v1, so instead I go all cannon with APD instead of BO in order to mimic it, then bring something sneaky if possible instead of RSP like VM.
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
That may be, I know that I used two BOs with this doff on the Fed side, but Minimax is the first to implement it so devastatingly on the KDF side in a decloak alphastrike build. Everyone else pretty much copied him after they got wtfowned by him.
It's way past that point. I prefer to fly my Scis now anyway; I heal just as well, mitigate damage more, and can crack hardened targets for my teammates.
That's only if you think the Job of an Eng/Cruiser is high spike damage output (remember, we're talking about 8s window here with BO, so that's spike).
I don't see that as the case at all.
I know people want it to be something Engineer's can do, but if there are improvements to Eng I'd rather it be what they were designed for: Tanking/Healing.
Can you be creative and do something else with a build? Sure.
But how many people are going to recommend you make a Healing Tac?
It means that you have now dedicated 4 DOFF slots to making the build work, and that you have given up on any kind of realistic team or self healing.
You can't even functionally use Aux to SIF with any reliability at this point, and your HE and TSS will be weak.
You've also used 3 out of a potential 7 Lt or Higher Eng stations to make this work.
Assuming a Ltc Tac cruiser, that means 3 out of 4 of your available Lt or higher Eng stations.
For damage, which is exactly as it should be. (What else does Tac do?)
What you get is a Tac flying a Cruiser which is a build working really hard to make that combo work, and giving up survivability to do it.
pretty damned good considerign i dont have acc trait or acc wepaons huh? they are only like 5 mill on exchange
i would reiterate when the target engines are disabled/tractored, i get 35%+ crit rate with apa.
at least ne of those 3 bos will hit ye (crit)
It doesn't cost you that many slots... one dem 3 commander... one lt slot for aux to bat 1... the rest can be extends... Engi Team 3 (at global as well) and EPTS 3 (also at global) leaving you an RSP 1 which is enough to handle most spikes you will get yourself.
Is it as good a healer no... but as everyone likes to point out every team has 2 sci ships handing that job anyway.
My only point is if a team is going to field a cruiser at all... there is no way it needs to be engi.
Yes you give up 4 doff slots... and really who cares about that in a cruiser, for getting RSP at global... Extends at global... Engi Team 3 at global... along with the almost always on DEM 3 + 17% Nadion lite up time... combo that with another 20-30% uptime of nadion lite from the cutting beam... and ya Engi makes Zero sense.
What could engi do better ? Throw on a Sif 3 instead... sure its a great heal but shield healing is where its at... and extend isn't boosted by engi anything... and to get the same uptime you would either have to aux to bat or run 2 copies....
Engi brings nothing... at least before all these terrible doffs there was some point to having at least 1 engi healer.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
You cannot maintain all other powers at global with 1 copy of Aux to batts. This goes especially for the powers on shorter cooldowns (because you have less casts of 1 copy of Aux to batts during CD)
You can either have burst recharge (1 copy) but see-saw performance or everything at global (2 copies) for consistent performance.
Again, that leaves you with 1 free upper tier eng slot. You have 2 Ensigns to fill, so if you take ET 3 it needs to be 2 different EPTX but that means no EPTS 3.
EPTS > Aux to batts (required for GCD) > RSP 2/3 <> DEM 2/3
EPTX > Aux to batts (required for GCD)
Those are your options on a Ltc Tac cruiser.
That's not due to the DEM doff, its a much larger issue - one that encompasses lockbox ships like the Recluse and Wells as well as what an Eng brings vs. what a Sci brings.
Survive under focus fire?
2x Aux to batts means no Aux to SIF, it most likely means either ET 3 or RSP 2.
A lot of your premise relies on 1 copy of Aux to batts, but I've run the build and it's not reliable without 2 copies to have other powers at GCD.
It's still useful, but not nearly as much IMO.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
I never claimed it was the only issue... but its a major one.
In general Cryptic has stepped all over the Captain abilities of both Sci and Engi with the doff system.... seeing as the Engi skills where already boarder line useful... it really seems like they are simply trying to make them completely pointless.
Nuke doffs where a terrible idea... because its a captain level skill.
Marion is terrible for the exact same reason.
We are now due for an Alpha Doff... and it will be a terrible idea as well.
aftershock psw: ball crush with pumped psw3 vs minelayer/carrier: dozens of 20k crit insta kill whole group
esyphon special juel ducane : every hobo brings a lil spice with that drain build, 25% proc any system off (sadly no stacky)
Cpb placate: aoe 5s jam stackable to 60% chance: TRIBBLE yeah
of course the battery dmg guys help beam overload
the tactical team cd ones also give u attack pattern skill: extra dmg/resist/defense/turn to apa and omega and 10% sev/ .7% crit%
Doffs add an intriguing compelxity and offered variety to many otherwise useless powers.
Whether it be sensor scan as a offensive debuff, or turning vminto an afterparty, doffs are great.
In a game where i maxed out in 3 days 3 yrs ago, Im happy to have new ways to improve my ship/character, be it doff/reps/ boff specials.
look forward to soecketing, if u dont like complxity and sadly it brings further balancing challenges, i cant agree with you
sorry for infinite sp fail
You can have up to three active at once. When you apply an Energy Siphon it'll roll once for each of the DOff's chance to proc.
That said, it's a Phaser proc (even shares global immunity with 'em), and can be reduced to sub 1-second duration by Leadership BOffs and Subsystem Repair.
There are some fun doffs... and some doffs that do make mediocre skills interesting.
The main issue is there is a handful of doffs that are TERRIBLE. Ones that anyone that has been pvping for a week can see are terrible... but somehow Cryptic doesn't see it.
Well that isn't true... fact is they know exactly how terrible they are and simply don't care.
There is no reason for a DEM doff or a Sub Nuke doff or an Attack Pattern Doff to exist unless you are marketing the system to PvPers.
We are the only ones that drop 10mil ec on an Attack Pattern Doff... or any of the other ones. Which drives the sale of Doff packs and keys by both us and the Pve kids looking to make bank.
I hope they choose the buffs for the socketing system with more care... and there is the real issue. I am sure they will. They will choose some very broken junk, knowing that we the PvP crowed will push the cost of those items in game and drive there little market scheme.
All well we have no right to wine about balance when we are the ones that make the broken stuff so profitable are we.
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Cruisers with mk x common in infected elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q82PqoFFxjc
Cruisers with good gear in infected elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMnFljZD9m8
Soloing Infected Elite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaEFICFx4E8&feature=youtu.be
Thanks for the tip mate. My Steamrunner just go significantly more entertaining to fly thanks to this. Not sure if it is more effective but a good bit more fun.
If you do load 2 or 3 of them ,the tooltip will display 2x or 3x "+200 Resistance to weapons subsystem energy drain for 8 seconds" but the action is working only for those initial 8 seconds of active DEM.
We tested it and it was verified.
So dont do the mistake i did and waste your credits on a second Marion,which for the KDF side is currently around 50 million ECs.
For escorts that can only use DEM 1,the skill is pretty much useless without the doff.
With Marion though u get a 8 second window of indeed massive dps.Is it worth it ? Maybe.
Many escorts are tempted to use Beam Overload within that time spam to take advantage of
the drain resistance.No doubt u will get quite a few insta kill crit BO shots.But considering the fact that u use a Lt Eng skill for DEM ,and u only realy use the 8 seconds of the 30 duration of the skill as well as the fact that besides that one BO shot ,u will have a lower dps weapon slotted (DBB in place of a forth DHC) the approach is controversial at best
Would you mind explaining how you tested this? I can think of two ways for 3 copies of Marion Frances Dulmur to stack: +200 drain resistance for 24 seconds or +600 drain resistance for 8 seconds. Of course, the utility of the latter is questionable. But how are you distinguishing +200 drain resistance for 8 seconds from +600 drain resistance for 8 seconds?
If Marion Frances Dulmur is not stacking or is not stacking in a useful way, then the power should be fixed. All other doffs that you can slot 3 copies of do stack.
So in fact they do stack, just not in the terms of added duration.
My tests confirm some difference between 1 and having 2. If its worth adding more then one in terms of damage output, no.
In fact my tests showed worse returns when using more then 1 marion. (I think this might be considered as broken I guess? If they are stackable yet returning no additional advantage seems pretty weird.)
Adding a second DBB doesnt let you fire two beam overload simultaneously, though it does compensate somewhat in terms of delay by 1000ms~ in my tests.
Agreed beam overloads is probably the most useful for this kind of doff, but your definately not one of the first that discovered it.
Probably one of the first that actually used it for what its intended, most likely. I left the game before I could finish my BoP, but i already had 2 purples sitting in my dofflist for whenever i returned.
Its just the better version of Weapon bat in between beam overloads, which bops have done since beta.