Point noted, and I definitely hear you guys on this one, but EPS Manifold Efficiency also interacts with the Capacitor power on Very Rare quality warp cores, so it's not strictly limited to consumables. That should probably be explicitly spelled out in the tooltip - I'll get that fixed asap.
I haven't seen any values on very rare warp cores yet, so it's hard to evaluate whether that's going to be very useful. Still it's good to get that on the tooltip. Does it also work with RMC or anything else like the Aux to X powers?
There, the ability to pop miracle worker again would help against the elite invisible torpedoes.
Again that's not the issue tpalena, the issue is that if those pesky invisible torpedoes do more than 20% damage after I have popped miralce worker, meaning I can activate the ability again. What's to stop the borg cube hitting me a third time with an invisible torpdoe? MW trait would be on cooldown and its not like I'm waving a white flag at the cube to stop :rolleyes:
What's to stop a third volley or invisitorp? Get out of range and/or drop aggro by cloaking, placating, etc. Right now that's what I generally use Miracle Worker for. "oops, took a lot of damage, shields and hull are almost wiped out, hit MW and run away..." and it's more or less guaranteed that I'll make it. It's not like I'm rolling without shield or hull resistance powers in the first place, but sometimes you get caught off guard and that's when MW is nice to reset things. Being able to use it when I'm only in moderate danger and knowing it will still be available if I take massive damage in the meantime would be hugely useful. Certainly good enough to justify a single trait.
Also, your point about subnuc doesn't make much sense to me. Completely reset is completely reset. Even if Subnuc increases the existing cooldown, if GUP activates, cooldown should instantly reset, with or without the subnuc debuff on you.
Very Disappointed we don't get to choose our character traits at all, not even one. Aliens are less of a customized race since they all start out with the same traits.
Trill have better stats than the Joined Trill. (People paid a lot of money for them, Joined Trill should have better).
Trait UI:
It's slightly better with the descriptions, but ashame you have to widen the UI window to read them.
Also the UI needs better intution when it comes to selections.
Darken the selectable traits if you selected them all.
The Traits you did select, make them more apparent.
Class Traits should be included as you rank up like Captain Powers, not selectable.
Much of these Class Traits are Overpowered, especially Tactical.
I wonder if the new EPS Manifold Efficiency might be a bit... much.
With zero point in Starship batteries, but using the battery exocomp... triggering my Red Matter Capacitor gives 60 power to all four subsystems for ten seconds. After that, I still had the +25 for ten more seconds. I wonder how crazy it would get if I had some points in Starship batteries... heck, with a few points I could probably hit 125 to all four just from popping my reusable RMC, every three minutes.
Not to mention if I hit EPtW, EPtS, or EPtA, which my ship has as well. My power conduits might explode... and this is with the stock MK X white Warp Core.
the science space traits their pretty useless to science vessels. u need to make a brand new trait to replace Photonic capacitor (preferably a one that increases debuff potential). and increase the percentage of exotic damage for conservation of energy. cause 10% of nothing equals nothing.
Photonic capacitor isn't aweful, but I do agree it could use a boost. I actually wonder if having it also affect photonic officer might boost the effectiveness of that skill and add some utility to the trait. It might also be nice if Photonic capacitor just reduced to cooldown on all the captain powers.
As for conservation of energy. A small damage boost would be nice, but more importantly, it should boost flow capacitors so shield (and power) drains get a much needed boost.
Engineer:
Space - Grace Under Fire
Whenever you are hit for more than 25% of your hull in a 5 second period, the cooldown on Miracle Worker is reset.
This effect cannot occur more often than once per 90 seconds.
Space - EPS Manifold Efficiency:
Using a Battery for one subsystem also gives 25% of its effect to other subsystems.
Grace under Fire looks like an interesting ability, albeit very situational. For PvE it might be interesting because I can keep at my point blank grudge match against the Elite Borg Gate or Tac Cube a little longer before I need to retreat.
For PvP it might allow me to get lucky and survive for a few seconds longer, but again highly situational because I might just as well get spiked to death without the chance of reacting in time.
EPS on the other hand looks like a waste of space. I do not use batterys to boost the power of a different subsystem, I use them because I need more power in one. Of course with the help of the new warp core you can try to combine the bonus it gives to an area threw another (synergy bonus) with the appropriate battery but that sounds more like trying to compensate for bad power management to me .
Furthermore this ability does not only rely on batteries but is also one that will increase or lose effectiveness depending on the type of ship you are flying.
Personally I would recommend to remove it and try something else. (Something to strip [not completely remove] the defence of others might be highly interesting ^.^)
Science:
Space - Photonic Capacitor:
Science powers you activate reduce the remaining cooldown of Photonic Fleet by 15 seconds.
This ability cannot trigger more often than once every 15 seconds.
Space - Conservation of Energy:
When Energy Weapons hit your shields, your exotic damage has a chance to be increased by 10%, stacking up to 3 times.
Exotic Damage is any damage which is increased by the Starship Particle Generators skill.
Photonic Capacitor:
As others have said Photonic Fleet is nice to look at but not very effective because those ships can be cleared out very fast. Maybe instead change it so that you can call up to 9 ships in a Photonic Fleet?
There is also the problem that this skill is very likely very ship dependant again because because you will not be using an escort or cruiser very good with this one.
Conservation of Energy:
Federation Science Vessel skill. From the text it seems that this skill has been created with federation science vessels in mind which in turn means that the BoP will get the short end of the stick with this skill. Of course I also have to admit that my knowledge on the science path is not that large because I do not play that character a lot.
As such looking at what others have posted this skill also does not help a lot. Maybe change it to an increase of effect time of certain science skills? Say 3x Stack 15% increase on duration on skills like Viral Matrix, Jam Sensors, Tractor Beam, Polarize Hull etc.? (Though not Hazard Emitters and Transfer Shield Strength I think)
Tactical:
Space - Last Ditch Effort:
While Go Down Fighting is active, you gain 10% Damage Resistance to all damage types when you attack a target, stacking up to 3 times.
Space - Crippling Fire:
Your critical hits reduce your target's Accuracy by 5%, stacking up to 3 times.
Personally I think that the tactical skills come off the best. They are not dependant on ships at all and boost the tactical path in the area it is "most lacking", namely tanking.
Last Ditch Effort:
This skill is bound to an inert tactical one and can thus be always used in concert with it. As such it will never suffer in effectiveness. Furthermore it can give a large improvement on survivability when active while the skill it is in synergy with boosts damage a lot. Now admittedly with the changes you need to be on lower health to get this skill. But on the other hand threw this trait the actual danger of using it gets negated by a certain margin.
Crippling Fire:
Removing an enemy accuracy is simply another form of tanking and will be a no brainer for any PvP player and very likely also be used in PvE a lot because a 200k miss is still a miss. Also like the above skill it doesn?t matter on which kind of ship you are here.
Of course this is all a personal opinion going by the current stats delivered and I will not be able to actually test this for another week or so .
Right now I would say that the space traits per class are unbalanced. If I were in a bad mood I would probably be screaming about "Tac Favoritism". (I might also be ranting about forcing all devs to play nothing but STO PvP for 4-6 months ^.^)
Were they moved into the Vulcan racial mega-trait? I haven't tried creating a Vulcan character yet so I couldn't say.
I saw on the character creator that Nerve Pinch is a general Vulcan trait now (all Vulcans get), but didn't see Mind Meld. So not sure if that's going to be an Advanced Racial Trait or not.
Also noticed that they took out of traits as well. Some racies that had Telekinetic Power (mainly Aliens) no longer have them. And Humans lost Leadership.
Seeing some fun traits disappear is making me not like these trait changes more and more.
Regarding the new class-specific traits, I'm of the same opinion as quite a few of the other people in this thread: the Science and Engineering space ones are a little less effective than the Tactical space ones, especially in PvP.
It seems like all three classes have a captain-ability-related space trait. Giving a +30% bonus to GDF is an incredibly effective addition, especially given that most Tacs who use it for maximum effectiveness will pop it at low hull; the +30% hull resist magnitude (I think?) bonus essentially means that they can use it at even lower hull values to hit harder with even less fear of being killed.
In contrast, Eng's MW-related trait, while useful, may not come close to the same effectiveness; using MW usually just means an extra second or two of survivability because MW's heal isn't incredibly strong and doesn't come with any resists or debuff cleanses, so having it effectively cycle every 1:30 with the possibility of using MW twice in a row may not be so helpful. (Also, oddly, the current implementation would benefit Science ships and other low-hull ships when compared to Cruisers; the damage equal to 20% of hull over 5s requirement means that's more easily satisfied for Science ships, and the current, non-scaling-to-ship's-base-hull-levels MW implementation means that the heals are a proportionally larger fraction of a Science ship's hull than of a Cruiser's.)
However, Sci's Photonic Fleet-related trait is the most disappointing of these three. Like previous posters have mentioned, Photonic Fleet isn't that useful of an ability, especially in PvP; they'll clear some mines and occasionally use useful abilities, but since they're rather fragile and cannot be controlled, they're not very helpful. The trait, as written, effectively allows a 2min cooldown on Photonic Fleet instead of its current 4min cooldown, but because of the lackluster nature of Photonic Fleet itself the trait isn't that appealing.
Aside from these three captain-ability-related traits, each captain profession seems to have gotten a miscellaneous space trait. Unfortunately, Tac's still seems to be the most impressive one here. Their accuracy-reduction-on-crit ability is almost always useful -- they're almost always firing their weapons at someone, and reducing your enemies' accuracy is a crucial part of reducing the damage that they do. There's hardly a situation or build that I can think of where this ability is not useful.
Sci's exotic damage boosting trait, on the other hand, doesn't share the Tac's generalized usefulness. While it will certainly help ships that focus on science-based damage dealing methods (what few that are viable), there are plenty of science builds out there that don't do much science-based damage at all, but instead focus on control, healing, or some other idea. These builds would not benefit from this trait. Part of the problem with this is that Science bridge officer abilities are incredibly diverse, and that the Science captain abilities don't dictate a build setup as strongly as a Tac captain abilities' push them towards damage-focused builds. Perhaps create a more general trait that doesn't tie in specifically to a small handful of science abilities?
Engineering's batteries/capacitor-related trait also doesn't feel as useful. I think a couple of previous observations really hit the mark: 1) players don't activate batteries to spread power everywhere; they use batteries because they need a strong boost to a single system, and 2) the power boost is really short-lived compared to the CD of the consumables they're tied to. Plus, tying a trait to the use of a consumable leaves a bad feeling when compared to the other professions' "miscellaneous" space trait; their traits don't require activating any special abilities, but instead come about naturally as a function of things that are going on pretty much all the time, whether it be firing weapons for Tac or taking damage as Sci.
A rethinking of EPS Manifold Efficiency could be to do something that will help boost Engineer's natural EPS Power Transfer ability and make it better applicable to team settings, instead of effectively being a glorified red matter capacitor: increase the subsystem power cap on targets for duration, similar to what the Warp Cores are doing now, but with increased magnitude and across all systems.
In general, I get the feeling that Tacticals in general have gotten the best and most useful of the new space traits; Sci's and Eng's are lacking for various reasons, such as the points I've described above. The new trait system is a great way to explore the strengths of Science officers and bring Engineers back into greater use, especially in PvP and team settings; even though these traits weren't exactly what I was hoping for, I look forward to where Cryptic goes next!
It seems like all three classes have a captain-ability-related space trait. Giving a +30% bonus to GDF is an incredibly effective addition, especially given that most Tacs who use it for maximum effectiveness will pop it at low hull; the +30% hull resist magnitude (I think?) bonus essentially means that they can use it at even lower hull values to hit harder with even less fear of being killed.
As a tac I find the new iteration of GDf and its related trait to be among the LEAST attractive. If I'm at 50% hull or less I'm not goign to be fighting, I'm going to be running away, you can't really depend on your defensive CDs to save you in cases you're a few seconds away from exploding.
As for the new traits.... will boffs be able to have their traits changed? I ask because my MACO photonic tac boff has creative.... as far as I know it doesn't have any healing powers? Creative seems something tailor made for healer or defensive type PCs, or PCs that like to use Hypos a lot, so where does that leave Boffs with the Creative Trait?
As a tac I find the new iteration of GDf and its related trait to be among the LEAST attractive. If I'm at 50% hull or less I'm not goign to be fighting, I'm going to be running away, you can't really depend on your defensive CDs to save you in cases you're a few seconds away from exploding.
As for the new traits.... will boffs be able to have their traits changed? I ask because my MACO photonic tac boff has creative.... as far as I know it doesn't have any healing powers? Creative seems something tailor made for healer or defensive type PCs, or PCs that like to use Hypos a lot, so where does that leave Boffs with the Creative Trait?
Well, perhaps it meant for those tacs, that actually fight to death and do not run. I like the new GDF aproach, I will reserve it esclusively for ramming speed, which will be enhanced greatly with that :P
Also cruisers can generally afford running low hull/strong shields for a while so this new GDF will suit tac/cruiser combo.
With that said, I generally dislike anything that adds more tankyness to escorts.
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At this point providing feedback on the Tac skills is just silly.
IS GDF still providing the boost independent of current hull% or will I be able to dip below 50% activate and reap the benefits even when i m back at 100%? Sounds horrible to me if it is the latter.
If you want to delete engs from game, go ahead now is good time. Just give us a recareer token already. Clearly systems can't handle the trinity, engs are already obsolete, instead of working to counteract it. Tac gets more tankiness??????? and more crits. Eng get more energy, which has been maxed out since S5, and Bort already complained about it publicly back then. Have our energy levels dropped? no, moaaar energy to all, and moar on top to engs. The forums are full of reasonable suggestion about what to do with eng skills, if you can't think outside of the box of moar energy, give em a look.
Sic gets more spam, great, useless in PvE or PvP but more spam just what we ordered. Seriously, its not even a good april fools joke.
I suggest that these threads be merged into this one, even though some of the replies will look a little strange. Perhaps, xiaoxiaon's original post should be given a prominent link, since it contains a lot of information:
That's all a work-in-progress and may not be indicative of how the final version will be -- it's why there were no notes in Tribble. I'm not saying that this trait's ability will or won't be there, as things are still being decided on, but until there are Tribble patch notes about it, please remember that it's all not finalized and still WIP.
Also noticed that they took out of traits as well. Some racies that had Telekinetic Power (mainly Aliens) no longer have them. And Humans lost Leadership.
Humans haven't lost the leadership trait. It was subsumed under a new trait called "Human".
Engineer Traits:
- I like the Miracle Worker one. I love that ability on my cruiser, it's a nice "oh ****!" button. Having the chance of it being up for often? I'd definitely pick this trait.
- I'm personally not a fan of using batteries besides RMC. I just dislike keeping track of my inventory on consumables. If rechargable batteries would make a comeback I'd like this trait very much though.
- At least my turrets rarely die and I can set up new ones on rather short cooldowns. Pet survivability was never something that seemed like a problem to me, so it seems like a solution to a problem that didn't exist. Maybe things are way different in PvP, I can only say what my personal experience with them is.
- Shield adaptation might be cool, I'd have to test it more in-depth. Are resistence charges kept even when the shield is down? Ground shields don't tend to last long.
Tactical Traits:
- I like that GDF is only usable below 50% now. It was just too big of a boost even at 100% and thus often not used as intended.
- However, as others have also said before me, I vehemently disagree with giving tactical captains any more defensive abilities. Escorts can tank way too much as it is, STOP increasing their survivability further. Seriously, WTF. (Yes Tac Captain != Escort necessarily, but we all know how it is ingame)
- Accuracy rending: Again, speed tanking escorts have amazing defense, by reducing the targets accuracy you make them even better tankers once again. STOP! Now I said I'm only coming from PvE perspective, but even I know that PvP is next to impossible without maximum Acc weapons as it is, this will just make things worse and worse.
- The ground traits seem strong but fine I guess. As long as the Eng traits get an equally strong impact, so far that's not the case
Science Traits:
- Photonic Fleet is a largely useless ability, wouldn't pick this trait if other options are available.
- Conservation of Energy sounds like a neat idea, though still just a drop of water in the desert. As others have said before, 1.3 * 0 is still 0. If science abilities are supposed to be serious sources for damage you need to work on the science abilities directly. Afterwards, THEN this trait will be awesome. Or, as others have stated, if you just do not want to have science players deal competitive damage, Science needs a trait that buffs crowd control and/or debuffs, not damage.
- Medical Vanguard: No cooldown? Seems insane.
- Field Researcher: Nice, though for PvE I'd still pick the healing kit over any other every day.
The update is still 6 weeks away and these are systems issues. I hope for once our feedback will be heard before it gets pushed to the game.
the science space traits their pretty useless to science vessels. u need to make a brand new trait to replace Photonic capacitor (preferably a one that increases debuff potential). and increase the percentage of exotic damage for conservation of energy. cause 10% of nothing equals nothing.
Agree, if we compear the scie traits with the tact?s, they are a bit of a joke.
?A chance to increase exotic damage by 10% against a chance of gain 15% of reduction to ACC of the enemy? ?Is that really fair?
Now escorst are going to be a tank beast (more than they are now).
Point noted, and I definitely hear you guys on this one, but EPS Manifold Efficiency also interacts with the Capacitor power on Very Rare quality warp cores, so it's not strictly limited to consumables. That should probably be explicitly spelled out in the tooltip - I'll get that fixed asap.
Will it also apply to our Red Matter Capacitors?
[ edit / add ]
Blah, someone did ask it. I'm a doof.
So I can add another remark. maybe.
Lib Borg at char creation appear to get 5 traits. Entering game, just have 4, losing Neural Blast [with Borg Nanites being the racial].
Point noted, and I definitely hear you guys on this one, but EPS Manifold Efficiency also interacts with the Capacitor power on Very Rare quality warp cores, so it's not strictly limited to consumables. That should probably be explicitly spelled out in the tooltip - I'll get that fixed asap.
Could it also be made to work with engineering powers like 'Auxiliary to Battery' too?
Can you be any vaguer on the Conservation of Energy Trait?
It says you have a Chance of increasing your Exotic Damage.
Whats the number? Is it a .000000000000001 chance or .0001 chance or 1.5 chance, well Cryptic what are my chances of having this trait activate. I would really like to know before I use up my respec token, I would hate to find out later that it was .000000000000001 chance to proc.
And how long will it last before the proc expires, 1 sec or 2 maybe 5.
The patch notes says that the damage increase is 10% but the MOST important place to show the information says nothing specific about anything. Its one BIG vague explanation of the trait
Hows about you guys use a check list and keep it if front of you so you can use it before any one puts anything into the game to make sure that all basic info is included in the game.
Something about the re-balancing of traits has made me think of; why not allow the power level of a subsystem to diminish, or increase, the recharge time of click abilities? If you want a shorter cool down on, say, torpedo spread, you increase the weapons power level; want a shorter cooldown on EPtS, then run high shield power levels.
All cool downs would start as they currently are at the balanced subsystem power level of 50, and increase/decrease their cool downs by 1 second per ten points, upward or downward, on the appropriate power level.
Klingon characters have 15% as their racial bonus. So now that everyone has 15% from the trait, will Klingons lose their appeal? I only created one (Fed, had to purchase the race with Zen) because it had a higher bonus than everyone else.
Did I waste my money?
Suggestion: increase melee damage bonus further for Klingon race in their racial/required trait.
Medical Vanguard
It is a little unclear if the perfect shield effect applies to self, or only to allies.
If it applies to self, then it looks stupidly overpowered.
Mental Discipline / Stubborn
The long cooldown doesn't make these traits attractive at all. Having a power that removes effects on a 240 cooldown is not better than having points in Willpower.
Suggestion: reduce the cooldown to 45s. Or give the active powers a lingering effect that makes the player immune to further effects for a while.
General System
With the current system, players are limited to two to four traits of their choice. This makes the player decide which will be best for their goals. But now with NINE traits... I'm seeing everyone picking the same stuff. It's very easy now to avoid traits that don't provide a reliable good effect (see Mental Discipline/Stubborn above).
This, for me, beats the purpose of "traits", as in the definition of unique things you character has. As in, the more traits you have, the more you will be like everyone else. One of the reasons being the number of traits you can have is now closer to the total number of traits you can choose from.
One thing I don't understand: if the intended goal of this system is to incentivize creative combinations of traits, why are they permanently locked once you commit them?
Having yet another skill tree that's walled away behind a c-store respec purchase doesn't fill me with happiness, nor does the prospect of having to repeatedly character copy to tribble so I can figure out which set of traits I prefer for each build without having to burn the free trait respec being given.
Grace Under Fire - I think this is decent, not sure I'd take it. If I take 25% hull damage in 5s, use miracle worker, and take another 25% hull damage in 5s, is it going to be available again? Or will the first one reset it?
EPS Manifold Efficiency - As an eng, I almost never use batteries, I have a ton of power. This is kinda.. bleh. Give me some pressure damage bonus.
Ground - Shield Harmonic Resonance - Terrible, in an STF your shields last a single hit, there is nothing to adapt to, even in fleet actions your ground shields are irrelevant. The adaption needs to be fast and very strong for it to be any us, and it likely won't be then.
Photonic Capacitor - Is this a late April Fools? Photonic fleet is hilariously bad, do a combat log parse and check out the damage it does. Do with this sensor analysis or something useful.
Conservation of Energy - 30% increase to sci damage would be nice, but won't fix whats wrong with science. It at least kinda starts to help tacs doing better at science than sci's do.
Medical Vanguard seems almost too powerful, especially with something like triage effected by tactical initiative.
Field Researcher - Is this 25% bonus to any damage by the player? It'd make debuffing scis more viable, and medics feel a little better.
Last Ditch Effort - With the change to GDF not being used until 50% hull this is extremely situational. Tac escorts rarely seem get lower than 50% hull and survive in elite STFs anyway.
Crippling Fire - Pretty nice, but more passive escort defense is going to make others yell. Not too over powering, imo, but strong.
Strike Team Specialist - I don't understand how this one works. This only works with strike team, or is it just a name? The more I attack something, the higher my crit chance gets?
Creative is making medics really crazy tanks, but seeing how fragile we are on the ground, maybe not a bad idea. Combined with perfect shields and aoe heals? I'd have to see how that works.
Physical strength - the knocking down in melee is over the top messed up right now, it actually makes melee frustrating at time. Maybe a quick stun instead?
Most of the other ground traits are not bad, strong but situational with limited use, I like them.
The most powerful space trait seems to be Grace Under Fire. The science ones look a bit lame, photonic fleet is still a poor ability, with weak summoned ship doing nothing but warping out every time when they don't get one shot by any npc/player. And since exotic damages are still low (except for TBR, but TBR is in no way designed to deal damage), it won't change anything.
The two sci traits need to be improved or changed, because engineers get the best stuff (a lot more tanking or more power to every subsystems), tacs get more tanking (is that a joke?), and scis get.. Well, a useless boost to dps control abilities do while all scis need is more powerful control stuff. Control is supposed to do control, not dps.
I know you guys don't like suggestions but if you could make a sci trait boosting repel by 100% then it would be a useful trait. I'd like my gravity well pulling stuff harder and a TBR repulsing mobs and players far away. Is that too much to ask? :P
I know you guys don't like suggestions but if you could make a sci trait boosting repel by 100% then it would be a useful trait. I'd like my gravity well pulling stuff harder and a TBR repulsing mobs and players far away. Is that too much to ask? :P
I think I can feel players who pug stfs with bad sci-ship players cringing already.
Definitely not intended, though I'm not seeing it occur for me. All class-specific traits stand alone. Grace Under Fire should require you to be at least Captain rank, however, as it (along with Photonic Capacitor and Last Ditch Effort) modify Captain-rank abilities.
I noticed this last night too, but it's to the tune of "Only three of the class-specific traits appear until you take one (ground or space) and the fourth one will magically appear." The split, on both of the characters I looked at, was one class-specific space trait and both class specific ground traits were available with the second space trait not visible to select until one of the class-specific's were chosen.
Comments
I haven't seen any values on very rare warp cores yet, so it's hard to evaluate whether that's going to be very useful. Still it's good to get that on the tooltip. Does it also work with RMC or anything else like the Aux to X powers?
What's to stop a third volley or invisitorp? Get out of range and/or drop aggro by cloaking, placating, etc. Right now that's what I generally use Miracle Worker for. "oops, took a lot of damage, shields and hull are almost wiped out, hit MW and run away..." and it's more or less guaranteed that I'll make it. It's not like I'm rolling without shield or hull resistance powers in the first place, but sometimes you get caught off guard and that's when MW is nice to reset things. Being able to use it when I'm only in moderate danger and knowing it will still be available if I take massive damage in the meantime would be hugely useful. Certainly good enough to justify a single trait.
Also, your point about subnuc doesn't make much sense to me. Completely reset is completely reset. Even if Subnuc increases the existing cooldown, if GUP activates, cooldown should instantly reset, with or without the subnuc debuff on you.
Very Disappointed we don't get to choose our character traits at all, not even one. Aliens are less of a customized race since they all start out with the same traits.
Trill have better stats than the Joined Trill. (People paid a lot of money for them, Joined Trill should have better).
Trait UI:
It's slightly better with the descriptions, but ashame you have to widen the UI window to read them.
Also the UI needs better intution when it comes to selections.
Darken the selectable traits if you selected them all.
The Traits you did select, make them more apparent.
Class Traits should be included as you rank up like Captain Powers, not selectable.
Much of these Class Traits are Overpowered, especially Tactical.
With zero point in Starship batteries, but using the battery exocomp... triggering my Red Matter Capacitor gives 60 power to all four subsystems for ten seconds. After that, I still had the +25 for ten more seconds. I wonder how crazy it would get if I had some points in Starship batteries... heck, with a few points I could probably hit 125 to all four just from popping my reusable RMC, every three minutes.
Not to mention if I hit EPtW, EPtS, or EPtA, which my ship has as well. My power conduits might explode... and this is with the stock MK X white Warp Core.
Photonic capacitor isn't aweful, but I do agree it could use a boost. I actually wonder if having it also affect photonic officer might boost the effectiveness of that skill and add some utility to the trait. It might also be nice if Photonic capacitor just reduced to cooldown on all the captain powers.
As for conservation of energy. A small damage boost would be nice, but more importantly, it should boost flow capacitors so shield (and power) drains get a much needed boost.
Grace under Fire looks like an interesting ability, albeit very situational. For PvE it might be interesting because I can keep at my point blank grudge match against the Elite Borg Gate or Tac Cube a little longer before I need to retreat.
For PvP it might allow me to get lucky and survive for a few seconds longer, but again highly situational because I might just as well get spiked to death without the chance of reacting in time.
EPS on the other hand looks like a waste of space. I do not use batterys to boost the power of a different subsystem, I use them because I need more power in one. Of course with the help of the new warp core you can try to combine the bonus it gives to an area threw another (synergy bonus) with the appropriate battery but that sounds more like trying to compensate for bad power management to me
Furthermore this ability does not only rely on batteries but is also one that will increase or lose effectiveness depending on the type of ship you are flying.
Personally I would recommend to remove it and try something else. (Something to strip [not completely remove] the defence of others might be highly interesting ^.^)
Photonic Capacitor:
As others have said Photonic Fleet is nice to look at but not very effective because those ships can be cleared out very fast. Maybe instead change it so that you can call up to 9 ships in a Photonic Fleet?
There is also the problem that this skill is very likely very ship dependant again because because you will not be using an escort or cruiser very good with this one.
Conservation of Energy:
Federation Science Vessel skill. From the text it seems that this skill has been created with federation science vessels in mind which in turn means that the BoP will get the short end of the stick with this skill. Of course I also have to admit that my knowledge on the science path is not that large because I do not play that character a lot.
As such looking at what others have posted this skill also does not help a lot. Maybe change it to an increase of effect time of certain science skills? Say 3x Stack 15% increase on duration on skills like Viral Matrix, Jam Sensors, Tractor Beam, Polarize Hull etc.? (Though not Hazard Emitters and Transfer Shield Strength I think)
Personally I think that the tactical skills come off the best. They are not dependant on ships at all and boost the tactical path in the area it is "most lacking", namely tanking.
Last Ditch Effort:
This skill is bound to an inert tactical one and can thus be always used in concert with it. As such it will never suffer in effectiveness. Furthermore it can give a large improvement on survivability when active while the skill it is in synergy with boosts damage a lot. Now admittedly with the changes you need to be on lower health to get this skill. But on the other hand threw this trait the actual danger of using it gets negated by a certain margin.
Crippling Fire:
Removing an enemy accuracy is simply another form of tanking and will be a no brainer for any PvP player and very likely also be used in PvE a lot because a 200k miss is still a miss. Also like the above skill it doesn?t matter on which kind of ship you are here.
Of course this is all a personal opinion going by the current stats delivered and I will not be able to actually test this for another week or so
Right now I would say that the space traits per class are unbalanced. If I were in a bad mood I would probably be screaming about "Tac Favoritism". (I might also be ranting about forcing all devs to play nothing but STO PvP for 4-6 months ^.^)
Were they moved into the Vulcan racial mega-trait? I haven't tried creating a Vulcan character yet so I couldn't say.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
I saw on the character creator that Nerve Pinch is a general Vulcan trait now (all Vulcans get), but didn't see Mind Meld. So not sure if that's going to be an Advanced Racial Trait or not.
Also noticed that they took out of traits as well. Some racies that had Telekinetic Power (mainly Aliens) no longer have them. And Humans lost Leadership.
Seeing some fun traits disappear is making me not like these trait changes more and more.
It seems like all three classes have a captain-ability-related space trait. Giving a +30% bonus to GDF is an incredibly effective addition, especially given that most Tacs who use it for maximum effectiveness will pop it at low hull; the +30% hull resist magnitude (I think?) bonus essentially means that they can use it at even lower hull values to hit harder with even less fear of being killed.
In contrast, Eng's MW-related trait, while useful, may not come close to the same effectiveness; using MW usually just means an extra second or two of survivability because MW's heal isn't incredibly strong and doesn't come with any resists or debuff cleanses, so having it effectively cycle every 1:30 with the possibility of using MW twice in a row may not be so helpful. (Also, oddly, the current implementation would benefit Science ships and other low-hull ships when compared to Cruisers; the damage equal to 20% of hull over 5s requirement means that's more easily satisfied for Science ships, and the current, non-scaling-to-ship's-base-hull-levels MW implementation means that the heals are a proportionally larger fraction of a Science ship's hull than of a Cruiser's.)
However, Sci's Photonic Fleet-related trait is the most disappointing of these three. Like previous posters have mentioned, Photonic Fleet isn't that useful of an ability, especially in PvP; they'll clear some mines and occasionally use useful abilities, but since they're rather fragile and cannot be controlled, they're not very helpful. The trait, as written, effectively allows a 2min cooldown on Photonic Fleet instead of its current 4min cooldown, but because of the lackluster nature of Photonic Fleet itself the trait isn't that appealing.
Aside from these three captain-ability-related traits, each captain profession seems to have gotten a miscellaneous space trait. Unfortunately, Tac's still seems to be the most impressive one here. Their accuracy-reduction-on-crit ability is almost always useful -- they're almost always firing their weapons at someone, and reducing your enemies' accuracy is a crucial part of reducing the damage that they do. There's hardly a situation or build that I can think of where this ability is not useful.
Sci's exotic damage boosting trait, on the other hand, doesn't share the Tac's generalized usefulness. While it will certainly help ships that focus on science-based damage dealing methods (what few that are viable), there are plenty of science builds out there that don't do much science-based damage at all, but instead focus on control, healing, or some other idea. These builds would not benefit from this trait. Part of the problem with this is that Science bridge officer abilities are incredibly diverse, and that the Science captain abilities don't dictate a build setup as strongly as a Tac captain abilities' push them towards damage-focused builds. Perhaps create a more general trait that doesn't tie in specifically to a small handful of science abilities?
Engineering's batteries/capacitor-related trait also doesn't feel as useful. I think a couple of previous observations really hit the mark: 1) players don't activate batteries to spread power everywhere; they use batteries because they need a strong boost to a single system, and 2) the power boost is really short-lived compared to the CD of the consumables they're tied to. Plus, tying a trait to the use of a consumable leaves a bad feeling when compared to the other professions' "miscellaneous" space trait; their traits don't require activating any special abilities, but instead come about naturally as a function of things that are going on pretty much all the time, whether it be firing weapons for Tac or taking damage as Sci.
A rethinking of EPS Manifold Efficiency could be to do something that will help boost Engineer's natural EPS Power Transfer ability and make it better applicable to team settings, instead of effectively being a glorified red matter capacitor: increase the subsystem power cap on targets for duration, similar to what the Warp Cores are doing now, but with increased magnitude and across all systems.
In general, I get the feeling that Tacticals in general have gotten the best and most useful of the new space traits; Sci's and Eng's are lacking for various reasons, such as the points I've described above. The new trait system is a great way to explore the strengths of Science officers and bring Engineers back into greater use, especially in PvP and team settings; even though these traits weren't exactly what I was hoping for, I look forward to where Cryptic goes next!
As a tac I find the new iteration of GDf and its related trait to be among the LEAST attractive. If I'm at 50% hull or less I'm not goign to be fighting, I'm going to be running away, you can't really depend on your defensive CDs to save you in cases you're a few seconds away from exploding.
As for the new traits.... will boffs be able to have their traits changed? I ask because my MACO photonic tac boff has creative.... as far as I know it doesn't have any healing powers? Creative seems something tailor made for healer or defensive type PCs, or PCs that like to use Hypos a lot, so where does that leave Boffs with the Creative Trait?
Well, perhaps it meant for those tacs, that actually fight to death and do not run. I like the new GDF aproach, I will reserve it esclusively for ramming speed, which will be enhanced greatly with that :P
Also cruisers can generally afford running low hull/strong shields for a while so this new GDF will suit tac/cruiser combo.
With that said, I generally dislike anything that adds more tankyness to escorts.
IS GDF still providing the boost independent of current hull% or will I be able to dip below 50% activate and reap the benefits even when i m back at 100%? Sounds horrible to me if it is the latter.
If you want to delete engs from game, go ahead now is good time. Just give us a recareer token already. Clearly systems can't handle the trinity, engs are already obsolete, instead of working to counteract it. Tac gets more tankiness??????? and more crits. Eng get more energy, which has been maxed out since S5, and Bort already complained about it publicly back then. Have our energy levels dropped? no, moaaar energy to all, and moar on top to engs. The forums are full of reasonable suggestion about what to do with eng skills, if you can't think outside of the box of moar energy, give em a look.
Sic gets more spam, great, useless in PvE or PvP but more spam just what we ordered. Seriously, its not even a good april fools joke.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=599611
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=598381
I suggest that these threads be merged into this one, even though some of the replies will look a little strange. Perhaps, xiaoxiaon's original post should be given a prominent link, since it contains a lot of information:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=8887601&postcount=1
Love this part the most: Broken's feedback still stands.
Nerf it, nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Humans haven't lost the leadership trait. It was subsumed under a new trait called "Human".
Engineer Traits:
- I like the Miracle Worker one. I love that ability on my cruiser, it's a nice "oh ****!" button. Having the chance of it being up for often? I'd definitely pick this trait.
- I'm personally not a fan of using batteries besides RMC. I just dislike keeping track of my inventory on consumables. If rechargable batteries would make a comeback I'd like this trait very much though.
- At least my turrets rarely die and I can set up new ones on rather short cooldowns. Pet survivability was never something that seemed like a problem to me, so it seems like a solution to a problem that didn't exist. Maybe things are way different in PvP, I can only say what my personal experience with them is.
- Shield adaptation might be cool, I'd have to test it more in-depth. Are resistence charges kept even when the shield is down? Ground shields don't tend to last long.
Tactical Traits:
- I like that GDF is only usable below 50% now. It was just too big of a boost even at 100% and thus often not used as intended.
- However, as others have also said before me, I vehemently disagree with giving tactical captains any more defensive abilities. Escorts can tank way too much as it is, STOP increasing their survivability further. Seriously, WTF. (Yes Tac Captain != Escort necessarily, but we all know how it is ingame)
- Accuracy rending: Again, speed tanking escorts have amazing defense, by reducing the targets accuracy you make them even better tankers once again. STOP! Now I said I'm only coming from PvE perspective, but even I know that PvP is next to impossible without maximum Acc weapons as it is, this will just make things worse and worse.
- The ground traits seem strong but fine I guess. As long as the Eng traits get an equally strong impact, so far that's not the case
Science Traits:
- Photonic Fleet is a largely useless ability, wouldn't pick this trait if other options are available.
- Conservation of Energy sounds like a neat idea, though still just a drop of water in the desert. As others have said before, 1.3 * 0 is still 0. If science abilities are supposed to be serious sources for damage you need to work on the science abilities directly. Afterwards, THEN this trait will be awesome. Or, as others have stated, if you just do not want to have science players deal competitive damage, Science needs a trait that buffs crowd control and/or debuffs, not damage.
- Medical Vanguard: No cooldown? Seems insane.
- Field Researcher: Nice, though for PvE I'd still pick the healing kit over any other every day.
The update is still 6 weeks away and these are systems issues. I hope for once our feedback will be heard before it gets pushed to the game.
Agree, if we compear the scie traits with the tact?s, they are a bit of a joke.
?A chance to increase exotic damage by 10% against a chance of gain 15% of reduction to ACC of the enemy? ?Is that really fair?
Now escorst are going to be a tank beast (more than they are now).
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www.divisionhispana.com
(EPS Manifold Efficiency)
Will it also apply to our Red Matter Capacitors?
[ edit / add ]
Blah, someone did ask it. I'm a doof.
So I can add another remark. maybe.
Lib Borg at char creation appear to get 5 traits. Entering game, just have 4, losing Neural Blast [with Borg Nanites being the racial].
Could it also be made to work with engineering powers like 'Auxiliary to Battery' too?
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
It says you have a Chance of increasing your Exotic Damage.
Whats the number? Is it a .000000000000001 chance or .0001 chance or 1.5 chance, well Cryptic what are my chances of having this trait activate. I would really like to know before I use up my respec token, I would hate to find out later that it was .000000000000001 chance to proc.
And how long will it last before the proc expires, 1 sec or 2 maybe 5.
The patch notes says that the damage increase is 10% but the MOST important place to show the information says nothing specific about anything. Its one BIG vague explanation of the trait
Hows about you guys use a check list and keep it if front of you so you can use it before any one puts anything into the game to make sure that all basic info is included in the game.
All cool downs would start as they currently are at the balanced subsystem power level of 50, and increase/decrease their cool downs by 1 second per ten points, upward or downward, on the appropriate power level.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
Physical Strength
Klingon characters have 15% as their racial bonus. So now that everyone has 15% from the trait, will Klingons lose their appeal? I only created one (Fed, had to purchase the race with Zen) because it had a higher bonus than everyone else.
Did I waste my money?
Suggestion: increase melee damage bonus further for Klingon race in their racial/required trait.
Medical Vanguard
It is a little unclear if the perfect shield effect applies to self, or only to allies.
If it applies to self, then it looks stupidly overpowered.
Mental Discipline / Stubborn
The long cooldown doesn't make these traits attractive at all. Having a power that removes effects on a 240 cooldown is not better than having points in Willpower.
Suggestion: reduce the cooldown to 45s. Or give the active powers a lingering effect that makes the player immune to further effects for a while.
General System
With the current system, players are limited to two to four traits of their choice. This makes the player decide which will be best for their goals. But now with NINE traits... I'm seeing everyone picking the same stuff. It's very easy now to avoid traits that don't provide a reliable good effect (see Mental Discipline/Stubborn above).
This, for me, beats the purpose of "traits", as in the definition of unique things you character has. As in, the more traits you have, the more you will be like everyone else. One of the reasons being the number of traits you can have is now closer to the total number of traits you can choose from.
STO Screenshot Archive
Having yet another skill tree that's walled away behind a c-store respec purchase doesn't fill me with happiness, nor does the prospect of having to repeatedly character copy to tribble so I can figure out which set of traits I prefer for each build without having to burn the free trait respec being given.
EPS Manifold Efficiency - As an eng, I almost never use batteries, I have a ton of power. This is kinda.. bleh. Give me some pressure damage bonus.
Ground - Shield Harmonic Resonance - Terrible, in an STF your shields last a single hit, there is nothing to adapt to, even in fleet actions your ground shields are irrelevant. The adaption needs to be fast and very strong for it to be any us, and it likely won't be then.
Photonic Capacitor - Is this a late April Fools? Photonic fleet is hilariously bad, do a combat log parse and check out the damage it does. Do with this sensor analysis or something useful.
Conservation of Energy - 30% increase to sci damage would be nice, but won't fix whats wrong with science. It at least kinda starts to help tacs doing better at science than sci's do.
Medical Vanguard seems almost too powerful, especially with something like triage effected by tactical initiative.
Field Researcher - Is this 25% bonus to any damage by the player? It'd make debuffing scis more viable, and medics feel a little better.
Last Ditch Effort - With the change to GDF not being used until 50% hull this is extremely situational. Tac escorts rarely seem get lower than 50% hull and survive in elite STFs anyway.
Crippling Fire - Pretty nice, but more passive escort defense is going to make others yell. Not too over powering, imo, but strong.
Situational Awareness - Guaranteed expose? Thats pretty strong
Strike Team Specialist - I don't understand how this one works. This only works with strike team, or is it just a name? The more I attack something, the higher my crit chance gets?
Creative is making medics really crazy tanks, but seeing how fragile we are on the ground, maybe not a bad idea. Combined with perfect shields and aoe heals? I'd have to see how that works.
Physical strength - the knocking down in melee is over the top messed up right now, it actually makes melee frustrating at time. Maybe a quick stun instead?
Most of the other ground traits are not bad, strong but situational with limited use, I like them.
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The two sci traits need to be improved or changed, because engineers get the best stuff (a lot more tanking or more power to every subsystems), tacs get more tanking (is that a joke?), and scis get.. Well, a useless boost to dps control abilities do while all scis need is more powerful control stuff. Control is supposed to do control, not dps.
I know you guys don't like suggestions but if you could make a sci trait boosting repel by 100% then it would be a useful trait. I'd like my gravity well pulling stuff harder and a TBR repulsing mobs and players far away. Is that too much to ask? :P
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
I think I can feel players who pug stfs with bad sci-ship players cringing already.
I noticed this last night too, but it's to the tune of "Only three of the class-specific traits appear until you take one (ground or space) and the fourth one will magically appear." The split, on both of the characters I looked at, was one class-specific space trait and both class specific ground traits were available with the second space trait not visible to select until one of the class-specific's were chosen.