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Escorts have the same Shield Absorb and Reg as Cruisers
allocater
Member Posts: 289 Arc User
Everybody is always concentrating on the overpowered escort-damage, but one of the problems with escorts is also that they have the same Shield Absorb (35%) and Shield Reg as Cruisers or Science Ships.
So if a science ship has 20000 Shields and an Escort has 5000 Shields it only makes difference in the first 2 seconds of combat. From that moment on the Escort is a better tank, because it has everything the science ship has + more defense.
How to fix it:
The shield modifier factor needs to affect Shield Points, Shield Regeneration and Shield Absorption. (and not only Shield Points, like it is now)
So if a science ship has 20000 Shields and an Escort has 5000 Shields it only makes difference in the first 2 seconds of combat. From that moment on the Escort is a better tank, because it has everything the science ship has + more defense.
How to fix it:
The shield modifier factor needs to affect Shield Points, Shield Regeneration and Shield Absorption. (and not only Shield Points, like it is now)
Post edited by allocater on
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Personally I still believe what all escorts need is "-50% to the effectiveness of all heals recieved."
Think that would make other ship types more appealing.
The very least that needs to happen is for escorts to lose the bonus 15% defence they get for moving at top speed.
Sample Escort: 10k Shields per facing, total pool of 40k. Shield resistance 50%, 50% resistance means your enemies need to do double the normal damage so effective 20k per facing, total effective pool of 80k. (10k is a "high" number, some can go higher)
Sample Sci Ship: 15k Shields per facing, total pool of 60k (50% more than the escort). Shield resistance 50%, 50% resistance means effective 30k per facing, total effective pool of 120k. (15k is a midrange number, some can go even higher).
Other points:
1) Sci ships have access to higher tier heals/buffs.
2) Sci ships running high aux bias will boost those heals even further.
3) Sci ships running a kinetic set up can run higher shield bias, with max aux bias, and effectively increase their resistances further.
When Sci/Sci meets Tac/Escort in a 1v1, assuming equal skill and build the win will most likely go to the Sci/Sci or at worst would be a stalemate.
Conclusion:
You can't just look at a something simple like shields per facing and see the entire picture.
Personally, I'd be interested to see Escort Shield Modifier's dropped by .1 or .2. However that might make Field Gen (The Sci +Shield Cap) consoles mandatory rather than 'recommended.'
I can promise you my science ships shields make more than a 2 second difference. I shield tanked in my Deep Space Science Vessel for nearly two years before moving onto to other ships. Numbers be damned, the combination of skills and boffs matter more.
2) an escort does infact make the best tank from the perspective that they will avoid or mitigate more damage than any other ship type. This only applies if you are in a scenario though requiring hyper specialization and a healer to keep the escort healed. Nothing in STO even comes remotely close to this level of sustained damage output. It would only matter if you were literally tanking around 80k raw incoming DPS for an extended period of time.
Seriously, they are epicly overpowered, especially in the debuff department.
So what should we assume to evaluate mechanics? That one player is amazing and one player is terrible?
In Premade vs. Premade pvp, many teams bring 3 Sci/Healers (in sci ships) and 2 Escorts.
There is a reason there are 3 of one, and only 2 of the other. That's because one captain type is stronger than the other, and because stacking more healers is more effective than stacking more damage dealers.
* high defense from movement
* high agility increases firepower by allowing better positioning
* dual heavy cannons are the most power-efficient weaponry by a laughable degree
These things are always working in your favor. No matter what your skill level or situation, the escort will always have access to the most efficient weapons and turn the fastest equating to improved initiative and defense.
A cruiser's role is to stay alive, but in reality the only passive advantages it has in this area are a small edge in shield and hull strength. These advantages are negated in the blink of an eye during heavy combat, and are actively diminished by the fact that cruisers are big ships that don't turn very well which means more time maneuvering at low speed which means lower defense which means more time getting hit. The reason good cruiser designs stay alive has nothing to do with their 10% higher shield and hull strength, and everything to do with running engineering abilities to increase power and heal damage. The cruiser's survival performance comes from active use of abilities that are bought with expenditure of bridge officer slots.
Though, as always, this is pretty much limited to whale-cruisers. Battlecruisers do just fine and are the baseline that all cruisers should be brought up to.
Please post a PvE scenario that you have experience in, and then post a PvP scenario that you have experience in.
I'm curious how you came to this conclusion.
Defense is linked to your speed, you need to control your speed.
Controlling your speed is not passive.
The bump of extra defense an escort gets, is also all but useless in PvE - which I'm pretty sure is the only environment you have stated you play in.
Both are completely doable by everything from ships like the D'kora to every KDF battlecruiser or hybrid such as the Karfi.
Ships that are often actually much more powerful in PvE than Escorts.
I suppose that makes sense if you think 1 vs. 1.1 or 1.15 is a "small" shield mod boost.
And if you think an extra 10k to 15k final hull backed up by resistances is also "small".
There are also these things, called "higher tier eng powers" that Cruisers can make use of.
I've built nearly some version of most of the T5 ships available both Fed & KDF side at this point.
When it comes to PvE, the focus of most posters in this thread I imagine, saying Escorts are "as survivable as Cruisers" is one of those ridiculous misconceptions that are continuously perpetrated.
Unless you mean against the pointless chaff enemies that can barely scratch you without even needing to touch your shield heals in terribly designed content such as the Fleet Starbase Defense or similar.
Yeah, in those circumstances Escorts are "as survivable" because those NPCs don't actually do any real damage.
When I see people die in missions like that I have to wonder how they managed to accomplish such an amazing feat as abandon ship can only be activated at under 50% hull.
Nope. The problem is not the shield modifiers.
The problem is the escorts get too much +def modifiers and immunity bonuses.
Enlighten yourself and add up just how much defense an escort with 50 engine power and dual omega atk patterns (keep em running nonstop) when it has 9 points in attack patterns and maneuvers skill box plus at least 6 in impulse engine.
...and add to that the immunity to snares from omega.
and there you see why escorts are no longer glass cannons. Cant be snared, can hardly be hit and yes, they pack enough shielding to shrug off the odd shot that does hit them.
The game simply needs to stop providing a defense bonus and immunity bonus to omega attack pattern and reduce the defense bonus given by speed by at least 25%.
Plenty of cruisers out there that can do it 1v1 PvP. Even seen engineers and sci tank 3v1 and manage to get kills (mainly sci) because of their shield strip, systems shutdown and CD f**ker upperer.
Some escorts are really hard to kill admittedly but thats where teamwork comes in.
All that will happen is all ships will get nerfed to a tactical Kumari setup with no survivability and suddenly you just end up with 3 hour long PvPs because no one can kill each other because escorts are so delicate you might as well turn up in a space suit.
I play as engineer (KDF), Sci (Fed) and tac toons (Fed).
Out of all of those, my sci is most lethal and the hardest to kill. I dont even have any reputation on my sci.
Math. I am speaking of course of a traditional MMO design big boss that is tank n spanked. All 3 ships can hit resistance caps with support. Healing would be handled by a healer obviously we are talking about content with damage potential far exceeding anything the game currently has. Escort can bring APO for the defense in addition to it's innate bonus. Obviously it would not be dealing normal escort level damage at the same time. Obviously such content does not, nor ever will exist.
As for just as survivable in PvE? Yes, yes they are. The only thing you need to tank PvE would be TT, EPtS, and some form of sustain be it leadership, SDO doffs, TSS, whatever you prefer. Once you get a decent shield everything is face-roll easy to tank.
As for PvP? While I do not pvp very often I have taken my standard PvE builds into the queues from time to time. The fact is sustain is so high that their only exists two methods to get kills against well built ships.
1) Alpha/Burst: Cruisers pop to the dreaded emojoe BoP just as fast as escorts
2) Strip, Lockdown, Murder: Once again doesn't really matter the ship you are in when you get CCed to death and accuracy overflow punishes your now weak shield resist. Ironically escorts have the most options to avoid lockdown. Did you know EM+Deut+Max Engine power will basically let you ignore most holds? I say most because a proper setup can still get you but then again you still have APO every thirty seconds and I hope a polarize hull. Well I don't have PH (PvE builds remember) but I still tend not to die. Never fought a premade though.
Math isn't a scenario.
Math is great for understanding mechanics, actual experience tells you how everything plays out.
I don't doubt your PvE experience, nor do I doubt your math.
So there is no scenario for which you made your statement.
Defense is basically useless in the current PvE design, and in PvP scenarios it is the most glass of all mitigation types.
It is the most easily stripped, ignored and overcome.
You can postulate all you want on APO and escorts, and theoretical limits.
The fact is that Escorts die in PvP. They are often choice targets due to being overall less survivable by nature while also being dangerous.
Control the opposite team's Escorts, and they can't kill you.
We've done this dance in several threads already.
This is a PvE design issue. Something you seemed to disagree with me on.
They are also, quite clearly, less survivable on their own.
Which is the state of PvE for 99.9% of actual gameplay where no one ever heals anyone, and no one but PvPers and a few dedicated nutjobs bring tanks actually have Threat control (I'm in both groups, btw).
PUGing will unfortunately give players a massively skewed view of PvP where Tac/Escort seems to be king of the hill.
In organized matches, Sci is the best captain with the best suite of captain skills.
Escorts are important, but not as important as healing/sci.
More than 2 escorts is generally a liability because you reduce the team's healing and escorts in and of themselves are not as survivable as top end Sci ships or Recluse healers (less native powers to draw on).
Conclusion: You can't just look at the math behind a few items and clearly see the entire picture.
You're the one who brought "defense" into this conversation.
A stat that is not even remtoely close in PvE to what is it is in PvP (along with ACC, which is even less useful), beyond not dropping to negative defense by standing still.
Also, for your information, PvP is growing.
It has some developer attention, there is even fairly official support for PvP bootcamp. The queues are busier than they have been in a while.
The reason for this is clear: PvP is a repeatable endgame content that has usually has a fairly good RoI for most games as players provide the vast majority of content (fighting each other).
I also think your self-serving post shoots itself in the foot. If we only went by what the majority wants, well the favored majority in PvE is Tac/Escorts using DHCs.
Didn't you hear Captain Gecko's interview? They sell the best.
I guess by your estimation, game design should in fact always favor them.
I agree. Nerfing tacticals for PVP purposes would impact all that 90% of the players who only do PVE negativly.
After the recent 10K cruiser thread now cruiser fans are looking for another "in", another way to seem like victims. An escort tanking better than a cruiser? Are all of you mad or just carrying such a huge chip n your shoulders that its affecting your common sense?
Good grief, we KNOW cruisers are designed to tank and pay for that advantage in reduced DPS, why are we discussing this still? If you really feel that you should be in an escort move your behind into one.
Sheesh, at this rate you'll all be asking for a hard trinity soon.
Sci ships have a better shiel modifier and much more sci consoles... hard to tell that escort have a better shiel system than a sci vessel.
None of my escorts have 2000+ shield regen every 6 seconds without using healing abilities only my sci vessel has so much shield regen!
For sure no escort can heal totally its shield in a few seconds!
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
Which is an amount of defense basically any ship type can get, and Escorts zipping around at top speed are not firing on targets.
So moot point?
Nice way to avoid dealing with what I actually said. :rolleyes:
"Sci" =/= "Player".
You can dance around it all you want, the fact is you have little to no premade vs. premade experience and a skewed view of what it actually entails (largely communication and teamwork).
Sci > Tac. Heals > Damage. SNB > APA.
You are not getting any kind of regular kill cycle against a real premade team if you do not have multiple subnucs.
So how many "organized matches" have you been in?
That's not how it works. Some teams run that way, but many of the top premade fleets run "clean" or will always hash out some quick rules sealed with a virtual handshake.
I didn't say escorts are squishy, feel free to try and dig that up.
I said, (paraphrasing) they are not as survivable as a mitigation focused Cruiser.
The problem with PvE is that dealing damage is king, everything else is just occasionally useful like Gravity Well and Eject Warp Plasma for stopping Probes/Nanite Spheres.
There are a few thing that do need tweaking for ship balance, like crew damage so cruisers can heal their hull faster before abilities, and decoupling science skills from tactical ones, but these aren't drastic changes for PvP. PvE is what needs to change, but it needs to do it by changing the enemies and the objectives.
No Win Scenario is a little better in this regard, but there are too many enemies for tanking reliably, but it at least encourages an active healer to strengthen and repair the freighter.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
Agreed with you there. Escorts should have been like the Aquarius. I kept wondering whether the current breeds of escorts (with possible exceptions of Defiant and Saber) should have been rebranded as Destroyers, lost a little turn rate and ability to equip DHCs. This would have redefined Cruiser and Escort roles, increased standard Dual Cannon usage and brought another gameplay style choice to the table.
Clearly the OP does not know what each type of Captain does what or fails to understand that because he got owned in PVP doesn't mean it's the same elsewhere lol.
You forgot abilities play a bigger part
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
And an equally worthy troll reply from someone who hasn't bothered reading any of it.
This is pretty much the crux of the situation.
WARNING: Subjective opinions ahead, brace for impact!
Unfortunately, most players crying for escort and/or tac nerfs, are playing Cruisers and Sci ships but would absolutely loathe to be forced to play a specific role in their Cruisers and Sci ships.
They don't want to tank, or heal, or support.
They'll argue feverishly against being pushed into a role, and then complain constantly that the only role is damage.
Actually what many seem to complain about is that their Cruiser with superior mitigation values or their Sci ship with superior support and control options don't get to do as much damage as the Escort that specializes in damage.
And they'd like very much if Escorts simply exploded when enemies looked at them - with zero intent to ever tank or heal those escorts and argue against gameplay that forces them to tank or heal. :rolleyes:
What that leads to is content that "any team" can complete.
Well, if any team can complete it then that means you might as well choose the team that does it the fastest.
Hence, threads like this.