A real solution to make things more "Dynamic" instead f the cycling buffs we have now would necessitate a complete rework of most powers in the game. Most boff and captain powers are actually buffs, some with flashy FX but buffs nonetheless. When you have a game design that makes you have 12 boff powers, most of which are buffs then of COURSE it will lend itself to trying to keep said buffs up for as much time as possible.
My own suggestion would be to halve the number of boff powers all ships have just for starters. Mayor re-balancing of the boff powers would also be needed. But before they'd need to rework all NPCs in the game so that their DPS and effective HPs would not be as big as they are now.
Alternatively they could make NPCs be less giant HP punching bags that hit hard and act like players would, so having an arsenal of boff powers would make sense.
Unfortunately I see neither as a viable solution since they both require lots of time and development that would not show a profit and therefore would never get approved.
A real solution to make things more "Dynamic" instead f the cycling buffs we have now would necessitate a complete rework of most powers in the game. Most boff and captain powers are actually buffs, some with flashy FX but buffs nonetheless. When you have a game design that makes you have 12 boff powers, most of which are buffs then of COURSE it will lend itself to trying to keep said buffs up for as much time as possible.
This may be a bit of a quibble, but when you break it down, almost any power one can conceive of breaks down into being either a buff, a debuff, a direct attack, or a heal (assuming one does not count loss/gain of HP as a type of debuff/buff in its own right). The only powers in STO that don't fit neatly into this framework are tractor beam repulsors (simply because it's way too easy to louse up using it) and pet summoning abilities (carriers, photonic fleet, etc.).
The real trick, I figure, is to make it so that there's some degree of tactical thinking that need to be employed when deploying these buffs and debuffs. Yes, players do often attempt to maximize up-time on their favorite buffs/debuffs, but in the case of powers like AP:O, they must also be used judiciously, since a lot of escorts rely on it to break other debuffs that would otherwise end them. Even with Cannon:Rapid Fire, yes, you want to use it as much as you can, but you also need to be able to draw a good bead on the target for your attack run, otherwise you're wasting it*.
With this in mind, I can see why the devs would want to pull EPtX's up-time, so that there is at least some small amount of decision-making that must be done, other than "keep clicking those buttons every 15 seconds." I can empathize with that desire.
What's kinda' funny, though is that, with the exception of causing cruisers to explode 25 seconds into PvP combat and making EPtW-cycling vessels to lose their teeth for 10 seconds twice a minute (and I don't mean to marginalize how much that's going to suck), EPtX is probably not going to become much more "dynamic" for this change.
Some of the most interesting to use powers in STO wind up being the ones which have some sort of opportunity cost (e.g. if I use Science Team to heal Fred now, I need to be sure I won't be needing it to save my own skin for the next 30 seconds; if I use B:O now, it'll noticeably debuff my energy weapon damage for the next four to six seconds; etc.)
EPtX's nature as a personal-range buff which is still capable of a relatively high up-time to down-time ratio will probably not put it into the realm of having an opportunity cost worth weighing while you're in combat. I'm sure I'm going to raise some hackles for this, but if the devs want EPtX to be a noticeably more "dynamic" power, they need to give it a higher opportunity cost-- either by increasing the potency of its power boost/buff and increasing the length of its recharge time while reducing its duration to 10-15 seconds; or by making EPtX inflict a power drain on the subsytem after its duration ends. Or both!
Of course, doing either of those will exacerbate the problems that the incarnation of EPtX currently on tribble is already causing, but it will at least make the devs' goal of making EPtX a "dynamic" emergency-action power a bit more successful.*
Granted, this is all just the speculation and opinions of a relatively casual player. Your mileage may vary. :P
* I am, to some extent, discounting "park-and-shoot" uses of C:RF for this example. This way of using C:RF has its own trade-off in terms of lowering defensive capability while "parked". Stop-and-park's opportunity cost of defense is much like electing to apply a debuff to yourself, creating an interesting parallel with B:O. Of course, even with this in mind, C:RF is still a pretty brick-simple power to use.
* Of course, one way to make both sides happy here would be to implement an amp'ed up version of EPtX with a real opportunity cost and introduce the EPtX fix proposed by Momaw in his thread here (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=619411) as a new suite of four powers under their own name, like Secondary Power to X, Reserve Power to X, or what have you.
The SPtX/RPtX/whatever power suite would not be a dynamic power by its design and intention, but would free up power slots for more dynamic powers and allow for a little more breathing room to consider how to use them.
After all, you don't need every power in the game to be the picture of dynamism, so long as there's something interesting going on and demanding thought somewhere in the build. [Insert cheap shot at your least favorite STO build here.]
True success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
-- Winston Churchill
This may be a bit of a quibble, but when you break it down, almost any power one can conceive of breaks down into being either a buff, a debuff, a direct attack, or a heal (assuming one does not count loss/gain of HP as a type of debuff/buff in its own right). The only powers in STO that don't fit neatly into this framework are tractor beam repulsors (simply because it's way too easy to louse up using it) and pet summoning abilities (carriers, photonic fleet, etc.).
The real trick, I figure, is to make it so that there's some degree of tactical thinking that need to be employed when deploying these buffs and debuffs. Yes, players do often attempt to maximize up-time on their favorite buffs/debuffs, but in the case of powers like AP:O, they must also be used judiciously, since a lot of escorts rely on it to break other debuffs that would otherwise end them. Even with Cannon:Rapid Fire, yes, you want to use it as much as you can, but you also need to be able to draw a good bead on the target for your attack run, otherwise you're wasting it*.
With this in mind, I can see why the devs would want to pull EPtX's up-time, so that there is at least some small amount of decision-making that must be done, other than "keep clicking those buttons every 15 seconds." I can empathize with that desire.
What's kinda' funny, though is that, with the exception of causing cruisers to explode 25 seconds into PvP combat and making EPtW-cycling vessels to lose their teeth for 10 seconds twice a minute (and I don't mean to marginalize how much that's going to suck), EPtX is probably not going to become much more "dynamic" for this change.
Some of the most interesting to use powers in STO wind up being the ones which have some sort of opportunity cost (e.g. if I use Science Team to heal Fred now, I need to be sure I won't be needing it to save my own skin for the next 30 seconds; if I use B:O now, it'll noticeably debuff my energy weapon damage for the next four to six seconds; etc.)
EPtX's nature as a personal-range buff which is still capable of a relatively high up-time to down-time ratio will probably not put it into the realm of having an opportunity cost worth weighing while you're in combat. I'm sure I'm going to raise some hackles for this, but if the devs want EPtX to be a noticeably more "dynamic" power, they need to give it a higher opportunity cost-- either by increasing the potency of its power boost/buff and increasing the length of its recharge time while reducing its duration to 10-15 seconds; or by making EPtX inflict a power drain on the subsytem after its duration ends. Or both!
Of course, doing either of those will exacerbate the problems that the incarnation of EPtX currently on tribble is already causing, but it will at least make the devs' goal of making EPtX a "dynamic" emergency-action power a bit more successful.*
Granted, this is all just the speculation and opinions of a relatively casual player. Your mileage may vary. :P
* I am, to some extent, discounting "park-and-shoot" uses of C:RF for this example. This way of using C:RF has its own trade-off in terms of lowering defensive capability while "parked". Stop-and-park's opportunity cost of defense is much like electing to apply a debuff to yourself, creating an interesting parallel with B:O. Of course, even with this in mind, C:RF is still a pretty brick-simple power to use.
* Of course, one way to make both sides happy here would be to implement an amp'ed up version of EPtX with a real opportunity cost and introduce the EPtX fix proposed by Momaw in his thread here (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=619411) as a new suite of four powers under their own name, like Secondary Power to X, Reserve Power to X, or what have you.
The SPtX/RPtX/whatever power suite would not be a dynamic power by its design and intention, but would free up power slots for more dynamic powers and allow for a little more breathing room to consider how to use them.
After all, you don't need every power in the game to be the picture of dynamism, so long as there's something interesting going on and demanding thought somewhere in the build. [Insert cheap shot at your least favorite STO build here.]
I think the problem is that there already is a "oh TRIBBLE" button in engineering skills that is reverse shield polarity. It can be insanely useful, but has several drawbacks. If your enemy stops firing heavy energy when you pop it, it's been wasted, if you pop it now, you have to wait two minutes, or one minute if you have two copies, before you can use it again. Thus, reverse shield polarity already does/is what they claim they want out of the emergency powers.
If the branding really is such an issue, rename the powers "Secondary power to" or "reserve power" and the tool tip can describe it as "diverts power from non essential systems to engines" for example. But there is no need for a new "oh TRIBBLE" button, and emergency power to weapons, isn't an oh TRIBBLE button, it's a cruiser's "Oh please, gods that be!(gods=devs) let me do some damage, PUHLEASE!!!" button.
As many others have said, the near constant up time on the emergency powers and the ability to use more than one is one of the few things cruisers have (had?) going for them, and now that's getting a klingon-spike-toed-boot straight to the nethers.
I don't want 15 abilities that are all require decision making in battle.
That is why most MMOs annoy the TRIBBLE out of me. It is why I stopped playing RIFT when I need macros just to play without loosing sanity I draw the line. I play this game to relax if I wanted that level of 'intensity' I would play a MOBA or FPS.
The facerolling 5 abilities every 15 seconds is fine. Strait up passive boost boff abilities would be better mind you (say a CRF that had 1/4th the attack speed boost but always active) but the current is fine.
Yea the "please explode me burst escorts" spot is still there.
You can mitigate it by running the 3 EPTX doffs which gives ok coverage of about 75 -80%. It at leasts keeps someone with a BO3 and HY3 from counting your timer and then exploding you through every single heal you have. Other option is to A2B techs and really rock now that it goes off every 20 secs instead of 30. However the JHEC escort will out shield tank any cruiser in the game using a2b and do better damage so if you plan to a2b just get one of those instead of a cruiser.
If you just cycle 2 epts an escorts gonna pot shot you in the 5 sec window as its pathetically easy to line up an attack on a slow cruiser. Extra funny if its a sci Andorian using the shield resist down console. I bet you could get a cruiser below 10% shield resist with it.
I don't want 15 abilities that are all require decision making in battle.
This is exactly my concern with this game.
On one hand I do think low level engineers especially need more options.
On the other hand if I ever need to add ANOTHER bar of skills in this game at some point... it will have reached levels of true absurdity. And I don't want to see that happen.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
On one hand I do think low level engineers especially need more options.
On the other hand if I ever need to add ANOTHER bar of skills in this game at some point... it will have reached levels of true absurdity. And I don't want to see that happen.
This, this, this a million times. I see two major problems with these changes, aside from the damage it does to cruisers (who now ironically seem to have their choices narrowed GREATLY, mostly in the direction of Aux2Bat builds):
1. Massive concentration drain
2. Lack of uptime
For the latter, it's fairly simple - cruisers are supposed to be taking heavy fire, and a 'once every 2 minute' ability is nearly useless in a lot of ways. They'll be in the exact same emergency situation not in 3 minutes, but in 20 seconds.
But for the former it's a major problem in terms of multitasking. It is at best stressful (and very un-fun) to keep track of:
* 10 captain abilities
* 12 BOff abilities
* However many inherent ship abilities
* Hull HP
* Four shield facings
* 4+ teammates
* Many enemies, in a few situations needing specific order of destruction
All at once.
The EPtX and other sustained uptime abilities takes a LOT of that attention out of it. To be honest, this IS what your bridge officers are supposed to be doing. The crew aren't supposed to sit around in the hull taking bets as to what redshirt's going to get splattered in the next torpedo hit.
Unfortunately at this point I think the only things that are going to "save" this situation are:
1. The "new changes" being something we haven't thought of that fixes this somehow, but for some reason the devs won't say a thing about it, and we have no idea of wh fixed.en or if they'll make it in.
2. Reverse the change.
3. New engineering abilities, possibly resulting in old 'emergency power to X' being relabeled to 'reserve power to X.'
As we have heard nothing but stony silence and if we could get a dev to talk it would probably be a mumbled "working as intended," short of a riot when LoR debuts I am not overly optimistic that this will be fixed, and people will probably be too distracted by the new stuff for a week to notice 'hey, my cruiser's a death trap now!' And as I am less than enamored with commanding escorts, I am rather discouraged and my play levels reflect that.
I don't want 15 abilities that are all require decision making in battle.
That is why most MMOs annoy the TRIBBLE out of me. It is why I stopped playing RIFT when I need macros just to play without loosing sanity I draw the line. I play this game to relax if I wanted that level of 'intensity' I would play a MOBA or FPS.
The facerolling 5 abilities every 15 seconds is fine. Strait up passive boost boff abilities would be better mind you (say a CRF that had 1/4th the attack speed boost but always active) but the current is fine.
Too true! My first break form WoW was when I got fed up with having 14+ buttons that all had a place in my shammie's priority non rotation.... GW2 nailed it, few buttons and all significantly different from each other.
here is an idea i had for some new engineer abilities. cruisers are tanks they are suppose to be shot at. how about add an ability like a taunt your BO hails the enemy ship and pisses them off and they automatically target you even if they are targeting some one else make it so where you can pull the fire off of your escort teammate or any teammate for a fixed duration depending on the ability level. and it could be cleared with a debuff cleanser or science team/engineering team
would at least be a use for the extra ensign slots and we all know cruisers will never gain agro in PVE with there fire power
here is an idea i had for some new engineer abilities. cruisers are tanks they are suppose to be shot at. how about add an ability like a taunt your BO hails the enemy ship and pisses them off and they automatically target you even if they are targeting some one else make it so where you can pull the fire off of your escort teammate or any teammate for a fixed duration depending on the ability level. and it could be cleared with a debuff cleanser or science team/engineering team
would at least be a use for the extra ensign slots and we all know cruisers will never gain agro in PVE with there fire power
or just tell me it;s a stupid idea lol
Some people would say that adding taunt is a good idea, but taunt and threat control where not part of the original game, I created an engineer to be self relient not to make life easier for other players.
Tactical and science ships and characters have sufficient abilities to keep them selves alive without the need for someone else to do it for them.
Some people would say that adding taunt is a good idea, but taunt and threat control where not part of the original game, I created an engineer to be self relient not to make life easier for other players.
Tactical and science ships and characters have sufficient abilities to keep them selves alive without the need for someone else to do it for them.
The problem is more of in the area that if you are toothless tank you are simply ignored.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
The problem is more of in the area that if you are toothless tank you are simply ignored.
True, but I dont want to tank for people, cryptic would have to offer class respecs. Reason being, fleet and lockbox ships are not account wide unlocked.
here is an idea i had for some new engineer abilities. cruisers are tanks they are suppose to be shot at. how about add an ability like a taunt your BO hails the enemy ship and pisses them off and they automatically target you even if they are targeting some one else make it so where you can pull the fire off of your escort teammate or any teammate for a fixed duration depending on the ability level. and it could be cleared with a debuff cleanser or science team/engineering team
would at least be a use for the extra ensign slots and we all know cruisers will never gain agro in PVE with there fire power
or just tell me it;s a stupid idea lol
Whether this is a good idea or not has little to do with the Emergency Power problems that are currently happening, other than I think that coupling it with the Emergency Power changes is an extremely bad idea in terms of timing, as we're seeing ships become less survivable, yet more likely to be beaten up with these proposed powers. It's especially bad for anyone who wants to use a cruiser that is not a tanking-specific engineer.
Were it not for the emergency power problem this would probably be at least a decent idea.
Is it just me, or have they changed EPtS so that the power bonus is 20 sec, but the resist bonus is still 30 sec? That seems to be at least some improvement...
Also, sort of a dumb question, but is there a tooltip of some kind to see your shield resists displayed? Hull resistance is under the Defense tab in the ship UI, but I don't see anything for shields.
I created an engineer to be self relient not to make life easier for other players.
All ships are to an extent self-reliant, the Engineer as a class is designed to have more mitigation that one player could possibly require at a cost of lower damage and utility.
The engineer is pretty clearly a Tank, and building one and not tanking means you are not 'self reliant' because it's very likely your Tacs and Sci's are taking the brunt of incoming damage, while also dealing more damage than you.
here is an idea i had for some new engineer abilities. cruisers are tanks they are suppose to be shot at. how about add an ability like a taunt your BO hails the enemy ship and pisses them off and they automatically target you even if they are targeting some one else make it so where you can pull the fire off of your escort teammate or any teammate for a fixed duration depending on the ability level. and it could be cleared with a debuff cleanser or science team/engineering team
would at least be a use for the extra ensign slots and we all know cruisers will never gain agro in PVE with there fire power
or just tell me it;s a stupid idea lol
I really don't want to be playing a star trek themed wow/other fantasy mmo with the tank that can't do any damage but all their abilities have a +threat to keep attention... laaaaame. I'd much rather them rebalance the mechanic so that ships work the way they should. Cruisers should have the outright highest hull and shields and damage output. The drawback being that they are so slow and lack maneuverability that they can't avoid damage or quickly maneuver to take advantage of an enemy's weak shield facing, for example.
Escorts are so fast and maneuverable, and perhaps could even be made more so, that they don't need the highest damage to be effective, they could have lower damage and use their speed and maneuverability to take advantage of enemy vulnerabilities. That's how an escort is supposed to do their damage and be super effective, they stay out of the enemy's kill zones while targeting a weak facing. They aren't supposed to have the ultimate highest uber damage. How did the defiant win against a negvar? It stayed really close to the ship and maneuvered so that the neg var couldn't get a clear shot all the while continuing to do damage.
Science ships should be a kind of hybrid as it has greater speed and maneuverability than a cruiser to avoid damage and take advantage of weaknesses, they have advanced shields so they can take a hit better than an escort, plus they have all their science tricks.
If the game were rebalanced this way, cruisers would hold agro by virtue of actually technically doing the most damage, but that doesn't prevent escorts from being super useful. If a tac cube was distributing its shields to withstand the cruiser, an escort could zip around to the other side and blast the weak facing. The cruiser would hold agro because it's technically doing more damage, but most of that is getting taken up by shields, the escort would be the one on the other side doing more damage to the hull. Of course, this would work best if they changed shield mechanics so that the integrity of a shield facing also modifies bleed through.
The current shield mechanic has it so that essentially, as long as you have points in a shield, only 5-10% of damage is bleeding through. And a "weak facing" is really only weak to a burst of damage. If they switched it so that 100% in a shield facing was 10% bleed 75% in a facing is 15% bleed, 50% in a facing is 20% bleed, and 25% is perhaps a sharper drop to 30% bleed, a "weak facing" wouldn't just be weak to burst damage, but would be weak to damage in general. I think this mechanic would also be interesting as your shields would stay at least partially up more than with the current mechanic as the lower the integrity, the less damage the shield absorbs while letting more pass.
That may be too complex for them to program in, but I think it would allow escorts to have a greater advantage to their speed and maneuverability rather than giving them both the highest speed and maneuverability and the absolute highest damage.
But then I've gone off topic again >> But I don't really know what more to say about the emergency power abilities than what has already been said. It seems the sentiment everyone has is basically keep the new buffs allowing emergency power to weapons, engines, and auxiliary to be more comparable to emergency power to shields, but keep the current cool/uptime mechanics instead of TRIBBLE that over. Unless of course, they want to turn them into toggles so we don't have to be bothered by constantly clicking them, lol. In which case they could switch emergency power to shield's heal into a "heal over time" or every 30 seconds it could just pop the heal it has now... whichever. I'm all for toggles, less "click and mash" more keeping eyes on the battle field, strategizing, maneuvering. If they turned the emergency powers into toggles that one could have a maximum of two up at a time... perhaps cruisers with their larger power plant have a passive on them that allows them to have two emergency powers up while other ships can only have one up, that would be great. But I'd also like "cannon rapid fire" and "cannon scatter volley" to be toggled modes of fire you can switch between depending on circumstance. Same with "beam focus fire" (which doesn't exist) and "beam fire at will" and attack patterns, etc. I'd much rather have 15+ activateable passives where the strategy/dynamics come from switching between them based on the situation than 15+ powers/attacks I must constantly mash. We're flying starships, not mages with tons of spells.
Whether this is a good idea or not has little to do with the Emergency Power problems that are currently happening, other than I think that coupling it with the Emergency Power changes is an extremely bad idea in terms of timing, as we're seeing ships become less survivable, yet more likely to be beaten up with these proposed powers. It's especially bad for anyone who wants to use a cruiser that is not a tanking-specific engineer.
Were it not for the emergency power problem this would probably be at least a decent idea.
whoops thought i was making a new thread:o
memo to self do not post when half a sleep and drunk
All ships are to an extent self-reliant, the Engineer as a class is designed to have more mitigation that one player could possibly require at a cost of lower damage and utility.
The engineer is pretty clearly a Tank, and building one and not tanking means you are not 'self reliant' because it's very likely your Tacs and Sci's are taking the brunt of incoming damage, while also dealing more damage than you.
That's a drain, that's not self reliance.
This is just nit-picking, but cycling EP2S III is as good of tanking as you really need, making Rotate just about useless in most instances. True, it'll give you a one-off buff, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that engineer powers magically make them wonderful at tanking. The things that matter most for tanking are skills, ship, and then class. While damage requires a tac captain to get the most out of it, tanking can be done sufficiently well enough without an engineer captain at the helm. Sad, but true.
If allied scis/tacs are taking the brunt of damage, it's because whoever was deemed the tank doesn't have enough threat generation. But, as you say that most ships are self-reliant, and those other classes are dealing more damage than the engineer captain....why bother spec'ing into being a tank as an engineer, apart from ship-choice?
In that case, the drain comes from improper balance, not due to someone deciding they don't like being told that, since they chose engineer, that they have to have 9 points into a certain skill, fly a certain ship, and kiss TRIBBLE to the tac officers to kill things.
Threat generation is self-defeating. Sorry. "I don't do any damage, so I need to invest resources into making fake damage so enemies will pay attention to me." What? If you're not doing any damage, then invest into things that give you more damage. You don't need the threat generation. Tanking is also self-defeating. You invest into defense more than attack, so battles take longer, and then you need more defense because you take more damage in the longer fights, so you invest more into defense..the logical conclusion, the perfect tank, is a useless creature that can't do anything besides being unkillable.
In real gameplay the ship that is useful to the team, fun to play, and suitable for all content types can do damage, stay alive, and heal its allies as the situation demands.
I really don't want to be playing a star trek themed wow/other fantasy mmo with the tank that can't do any damage but all their abilities have a +threat to keep attention... laaaaame. I'd much rather them rebalance the mechanic so that ships work the way they should. Cruisers should have the outright highest hull and shields and damage output. The drawback being that they are so slow and lack maneuverability that they can't avoid damage or quickly maneuver to take advantage of an enemy's weak shield facing, for example.
Escorts are so fast and maneuverable, and perhaps could even be made more so, that they don't need the highest damage to be effective, they could have lower damage and use their speed and maneuverability to take advantage of enemy vulnerabilities. That's how an escort is supposed to do their damage and be super effective, they stay out of the enemy's kill zones while targeting a weak facing. They aren't supposed to have the ultimate highest uber damage. How did the defiant win against a negvar? It stayed really close to the ship and maneuvered so that the neg var couldn't get a clear shot all the while continuing to do damage.
Science ships should be a kind of hybrid as it has greater speed and maneuverability than a cruiser to avoid damage and take advantage of weaknesses, they have advanced shields so they can take a hit better than an escort, plus they have all their science tricks.
If the game were rebalanced this way, cruisers would hold agro by virtue of actually technically doing the most damage, but that doesn't prevent escorts from being super useful. If a tac cube was distributing its shields to withstand the cruiser, an escort could zip around to the other side and blast the weak facing. The cruiser would hold agro because it's technically doing more damage, but most of that is getting taken up by shields, the escort would be the one on the other side doing more damage to the hull. Of course, this would work best if they changed shield mechanics so that the integrity of a shield facing also modifies bleed through.
The current shield mechanic has it so that essentially, as long as you have points in a shield, only 5-10% of damage is bleeding through. And a "weak facing" is really only weak to a burst of damage. If they switched it so that 100% in a shield facing was 10% bleed 75% in a facing is 15% bleed, 50% in a facing is 20% bleed, and 25% is perhaps a sharper drop to 30% bleed, a "weak facing" wouldn't just be weak to burst damage, but would be weak to damage in general. I think this mechanic would also be interesting as your shields would stay at least partially up more than with the current mechanic as the lower the integrity, the less damage the shield absorbs while letting more pass.
That may be too complex for them to program in, but I think it would allow escorts to have a greater advantage to their speed and maneuverability rather than giving them both the highest speed and maneuverability and the absolute highest damage.
But then I've gone off topic again >> But I don't really know what more to say about the emergency power abilities than what has already been said. It seems the sentiment everyone has is basically keep the new buffs allowing emergency power to weapons, engines, and auxiliary to be more comparable to emergency power to shields, but keep the current cool/uptime mechanics instead of TRIBBLE that over. Unless of course, they want to turn them into toggles so we don't have to be bothered by constantly clicking them, lol. In which case they could switch emergency power to shield's heal into a "heal over time" or every 30 seconds it could just pop the heal it has now... whichever. I'm all for toggles, less "click and mash" more keeping eyes on the battle field, strategizing, maneuvering. If they turned the emergency powers into toggles that one could have a maximum of two up at a time... perhaps cruisers with their larger power plant have a passive on them that allows them to have two emergency powers up while other ships can only have one up, that would be great. But I'd also like "cannon rapid fire" and "cannon scatter volley" to be toggled modes of fire you can switch between depending on circumstance. Same with "beam focus fire" (which doesn't exist) and "beam fire at will" and attack patterns, etc. I'd much rather have 15+ activateable passives where the strategy/dynamics come from switching between them based on the situation than 15+ powers/attacks I must constantly mash. We're flying starships, not mages with tons of spells.
Interesting write up. I like it for the most part. I don't see it happening for the LOR launch though, even if Cryptic did go with the general concepts presented.
true the main thing i was trying to do was think of skills to put in the now useless engineer ensign slots. as it is i am still trying to figure out what to actually use now that EPTx and EPTy dual chaining is more or less suicide now with the gap in coverage and i refuse to use a aux to bat build as i just do not like the idea of loosing the aux power for my team heals
personally in most PVE even with no points in threat control i still pull aggro from most pugs and when i don't i keep the guy they are shooting at alive as long as i can
true the main thing i was trying to do was think of skills to put in the now useless engineer ensign slots. as it is i am still trying to figure out what to actually use now that EPTx and EPTy dual chaining is more or less suicide now with the gap in coverage and i refuse to use a aux to bat build as i just do not like the idea of loosing the aux power for my team heals
personally in most PVE even with no points in threat control i still pull aggro from most pugs and when i don't i keep the guy they are shooting at alive as long as i can
I'm not even really sure why aux to bat kills your aux power. Aux to structrual doesn't pull all the power out of aux to create the heal, I don't think aux to dampers does that to do what it does either. And since an aux to bat build prevents you from using any of the other aux to X skills effectively, the least it could do is leave aux alone so you could have a decent hazard emitter... I just don't think it would be that OP, or perhaps OP at all considering the state of cruisers, for aux to bat to not drain aux.
I'm not even really sure why aux to bat kills your aux power. Aux to structrual doesn't pull all the power out of aux to create the heal, I don't think aux to dampers does that to do what it does either. And since an aux to bat build prevents you from using any of the other aux to X skills effectively, the least it could do is leave aux alone so you could have a decent hazard emitter... I just don't think it would be that OP, or perhaps OP at all considering the state of cruisers, for aux to bat to not drain aux.
Aux to Bat drains Aux because it boosts all your other power levels. If it didn't that would be a pretty imba "Emergency Power to Everything".
Aux to Bat is currently a very viable build because Technician Doffs reduce the cooldown of all bridge officer ability by 10%. You can read up on the topic if you have time.
Is it just me, or have they changed EPtS so that the power bonus is 20 sec, but the resist bonus is still 30 sec? That seems to be at least some improvement...
With all the changes they've made, I'm not even sure anymore - though I did notice that timer doing something along those lines when I was trying to test it on Tribble. It's a little hard to tell what's "working as intended" and what's not.
Also, sort of a dumb question, but is there a tooltip of some kind to see your shield resists displayed? Hull resistance is under the Defense tab in the ship UI, but I don't see anything for shields.
So far as I know, no such display exists, unfortunately.
Cruisers should have the outright highest hull and shields and damage output. The drawback being that they are so slow and lack maneuverability that they can't avoid damage or quickly maneuver to take advantage of an enemy's weak shield facing, for example.
Escorts are so fast and maneuverable, and perhaps could even be made more so, that they don't need the highest damage to be effective, they could have lower damage and use their speed and maneuverability to take advantage of enemy vulnerabilities. That's how an escort is supposed to do their damage and be super effective, they stay out of the enemy's kill zones while targeting a weak facing. They aren't supposed to have the ultimate highest uber damage. How did the defiant win against a negvar? It stayed really close to the ship and maneuvered so that the neg var couldn't get a clear shot all the while continuing to do damage.
Science ships should be a kind of hybrid as it has greater speed and maneuverability than a cruiser to avoid damage and take advantage of weaknesses, they have advanced shields so they can take a hit better than an escort, plus they have all their science tricks.
If the game were rebalanced this way, cruisers would hold agro by virtue of actually technically doing the most damage, but that doesn't prevent escorts from being super useful. If a tac cube was distributing its shields to withstand the cruiser, an escort could zip around to the other side and blast the weak facing. The cruiser would hold agro because it's technically doing more damage, but most of that is getting taken up by shields, the escort would be the one on the other side doing more damage to the hull.
Dude, that sounds awesome. And my main's a tac. That would totally make escorts want to actually, y'know, escort a cruiser, and make those escorts much more fun to play in PvE content than the somewhat brick-simple way they tend to run right now (that's one reason I'm not currently flying one).
And as for PvP (which I am admittedly rather unqualified to speak on, but why let that stop me now? :P), I can totally see this turning Tactical Team from the current always-use-this power to something which an escort is actively encouraged to exploit.
Also, to make this paradigm work, the tweaks to damage and baseline stats it would require could also make this whole EPtS-chaining-as-a-required-tactic problem a little outmoded, were it to come to pass...
... I can dream, can't I?
True success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
-- Winston Churchill
Aux to Bat drains Aux because it boosts all your other power levels. If it didn't that would be a pretty imba "Emergency Power to Everything".
Aux to Bat is currently a very viable build because Technician Doffs reduce the cooldown of all bridge officer ability by 10%. You can read up on the topic if you have time.
Yes, I know, but it only lasts 10 seconds and doesn't have any bonus resist or +% energy damage or anything, so I really don't think it would be OP for it to not drain aux. and I am aware of the aux2bat build with technician doffs, I use it on my engineer, which is why I know that when you use aux to bat, it removes aux to structural as an effective heal, takes up two of your engineering powers limiting the other heals you can slot, and basically leaves you with just hazard emitters as a hull heal (as tac team should be near constantly up voiding eng team) so throw the aux to bat cruiser a freaking bone and let them have a decent hazard emitters instead of a super gimped one courtesy of next to no aux power, lol.
Dude, that sounds awesome. And my main's a tac. That would totally make escorts want to actually, y'know, escort a cruiser, and make those escorts much more fun to play in PvE content than the somewhat brick-simple way they tend to run right now (that's one reason I'm not currently flying one).
And as for PvP (which I am admittedly rather unqualified to speak on, but why let that stop me now? :P), I can totally see this turning Tactical Team from the current always-use-this power to something which an escort is actively encouraged to exploit.
Also, to make this paradigm work, the tweaks to damage and baseline stats it would require could also make this whole EPtS-chaining-as-a-required-tactic problem a little outmoded, were it to come to pass...
... I can dream, can't I?
I know, right? Let us both blissfully dream of a game in which all ships are awesome and useful in their own, canon ways with true balance where people synergistically team with whomever they want and all ships of all types are welcome because no one is clearly gimped.
It would be like being whisked from our black&white, dust-bowl kansas into sweet, sweet, technicolor OZ.
Comments
My own suggestion would be to halve the number of boff powers all ships have just for starters. Mayor re-balancing of the boff powers would also be needed. But before they'd need to rework all NPCs in the game so that their DPS and effective HPs would not be as big as they are now.
Alternatively they could make NPCs be less giant HP punching bags that hit hard and act like players would, so having an arsenal of boff powers would make sense.
Unfortunately I see neither as a viable solution since they both require lots of time and development that would not show a profit and therefore would never get approved.
The real trick, I figure, is to make it so that there's some degree of tactical thinking that need to be employed when deploying these buffs and debuffs. Yes, players do often attempt to maximize up-time on their favorite buffs/debuffs, but in the case of powers like AP:O, they must also be used judiciously, since a lot of escorts rely on it to break other debuffs that would otherwise end them. Even with Cannon:Rapid Fire, yes, you want to use it as much as you can, but you also need to be able to draw a good bead on the target for your attack run, otherwise you're wasting it*.
With this in mind, I can see why the devs would want to pull EPtX's up-time, so that there is at least some small amount of decision-making that must be done, other than "keep clicking those buttons every 15 seconds." I can empathize with that desire.
What's kinda' funny, though is that, with the exception of causing cruisers to explode 25 seconds into PvP combat and making EPtW-cycling vessels to lose their teeth for 10 seconds twice a minute (and I don't mean to marginalize how much that's going to suck), EPtX is probably not going to become much more "dynamic" for this change.
Some of the most interesting to use powers in STO wind up being the ones which have some sort of opportunity cost (e.g. if I use Science Team to heal Fred now, I need to be sure I won't be needing it to save my own skin for the next 30 seconds; if I use B:O now, it'll noticeably debuff my energy weapon damage for the next four to six seconds; etc.)
EPtX's nature as a personal-range buff which is still capable of a relatively high up-time to down-time ratio will probably not put it into the realm of having an opportunity cost worth weighing while you're in combat. I'm sure I'm going to raise some hackles for this, but if the devs want EPtX to be a noticeably more "dynamic" power, they need to give it a higher opportunity cost-- either by increasing the potency of its power boost/buff and increasing the length of its recharge time while reducing its duration to 10-15 seconds; or by making EPtX inflict a power drain on the subsytem after its duration ends. Or both!
Of course, doing either of those will exacerbate the problems that the incarnation of EPtX currently on tribble is already causing, but it will at least make the devs' goal of making EPtX a "dynamic" emergency-action power a bit more successful.*
Granted, this is all just the speculation and opinions of a relatively casual player. Your mileage may vary. :P
* I am, to some extent, discounting "park-and-shoot" uses of C:RF for this example. This way of using C:RF has its own trade-off in terms of lowering defensive capability while "parked". Stop-and-park's opportunity cost of defense is much like electing to apply a debuff to yourself, creating an interesting parallel with B:O. Of course, even with this in mind, C:RF is still a pretty brick-simple power to use.
* Of course, one way to make both sides happy here would be to implement an amp'ed up version of EPtX with a real opportunity cost and introduce the EPtX fix proposed by Momaw in his thread here (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=619411) as a new suite of four powers under their own name, like Secondary Power to X, Reserve Power to X, or what have you.
The SPtX/RPtX/whatever power suite would not be a dynamic power by its design and intention, but would free up power slots for more dynamic powers and allow for a little more breathing room to consider how to use them.
After all, you don't need every power in the game to be the picture of dynamism, so long as there's something interesting going on and demanding thought somewhere in the build. [Insert cheap shot at your least favorite STO build here.]
-- Winston Churchill
I think the problem is that there already is a "oh TRIBBLE" button in engineering skills that is reverse shield polarity. It can be insanely useful, but has several drawbacks. If your enemy stops firing heavy energy when you pop it, it's been wasted, if you pop it now, you have to wait two minutes, or one minute if you have two copies, before you can use it again. Thus, reverse shield polarity already does/is what they claim they want out of the emergency powers.
If the branding really is such an issue, rename the powers "Secondary power to" or "reserve power" and the tool tip can describe it as "diverts power from non essential systems to engines" for example. But there is no need for a new "oh TRIBBLE" button, and emergency power to weapons, isn't an oh TRIBBLE button, it's a cruiser's "Oh please, gods that be!(gods=devs) let me do some damage, PUHLEASE!!!" button.
As many others have said, the near constant up time on the emergency powers and the ability to use more than one is one of the few things cruisers have (had?) going for them, and now that's getting a klingon-spike-toed-boot straight to the nethers.
That is why most MMOs annoy the TRIBBLE out of me. It is why I stopped playing RIFT when I need macros just to play without loosing sanity I draw the line. I play this game to relax if I wanted that level of 'intensity' I would play a MOBA or FPS.
The facerolling 5 abilities every 15 seconds is fine. Strait up passive boost boff abilities would be better mind you (say a CRF that had 1/4th the attack speed boost but always active) but the current is fine.
You can mitigate it by running the 3 EPTX doffs which gives ok coverage of about 75 -80%. It at leasts keeps someone with a BO3 and HY3 from counting your timer and then exploding you through every single heal you have. Other option is to A2B techs and really rock now that it goes off every 20 secs instead of 30. However the JHEC escort will out shield tank any cruiser in the game using a2b and do better damage so if you plan to a2b just get one of those instead of a cruiser.
If you just cycle 2 epts an escorts gonna pot shot you in the 5 sec window as its pathetically easy to line up an attack on a slow cruiser. Extra funny if its a sci Andorian using the shield resist down console. I bet you could get a cruiser below 10% shield resist with it.
This is exactly my concern with this game.
On one hand I do think low level engineers especially need more options.
On the other hand if I ever need to add ANOTHER bar of skills in this game at some point... it will have reached levels of true absurdity. And I don't want to see that happen.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
This, this, this a million times. I see two major problems with these changes, aside from the damage it does to cruisers (who now ironically seem to have their choices narrowed GREATLY, mostly in the direction of Aux2Bat builds):
1. Massive concentration drain
2. Lack of uptime
For the latter, it's fairly simple - cruisers are supposed to be taking heavy fire, and a 'once every 2 minute' ability is nearly useless in a lot of ways. They'll be in the exact same emergency situation not in 3 minutes, but in 20 seconds.
But for the former it's a major problem in terms of multitasking. It is at best stressful (and very un-fun) to keep track of:
* 10 captain abilities
* 12 BOff abilities
* However many inherent ship abilities
* Hull HP
* Four shield facings
* 4+ teammates
* Many enemies, in a few situations needing specific order of destruction
All at once.
The EPtX and other sustained uptime abilities takes a LOT of that attention out of it. To be honest, this IS what your bridge officers are supposed to be doing. The crew aren't supposed to sit around in the hull taking bets as to what redshirt's going to get splattered in the next torpedo hit.
Unfortunately at this point I think the only things that are going to "save" this situation are:
1. The "new changes" being something we haven't thought of that fixes this somehow, but for some reason the devs won't say a thing about it, and we have no idea of wh fixed.en or if they'll make it in.
2. Reverse the change.
3. New engineering abilities, possibly resulting in old 'emergency power to X' being relabeled to 'reserve power to X.'
As we have heard nothing but stony silence and if we could get a dev to talk it would probably be a mumbled "working as intended," short of a riot when LoR debuts I am not overly optimistic that this will be fixed, and people will probably be too distracted by the new stuff for a week to notice 'hey, my cruiser's a death trap now!' And as I am less than enamored with commanding escorts, I am rather discouraged and my play levels reflect that.
Too true! My first break form WoW was when I got fed up with having 14+ buttons that all had a place in my shammie's priority non rotation.... GW2 nailed it, few buttons and all significantly different from each other.
would at least be a use for the extra ensign slots and we all know cruisers will never gain agro in PVE with there fire power
or just tell me it;s a stupid idea lol
Some people would say that adding taunt is a good idea, but taunt and threat control where not part of the original game, I created an engineer to be self relient not to make life easier for other players.
Tactical and science ships and characters have sufficient abilities to keep them selves alive without the need for someone else to do it for them.
The problem is more of in the area that if you are toothless tank you are simply ignored.
True, but I dont want to tank for people, cryptic would have to offer class respecs. Reason being, fleet and lockbox ships are not account wide unlocked.
Whether this is a good idea or not has little to do with the Emergency Power problems that are currently happening, other than I think that coupling it with the Emergency Power changes is an extremely bad idea in terms of timing, as we're seeing ships become less survivable, yet more likely to be beaten up with these proposed powers. It's especially bad for anyone who wants to use a cruiser that is not a tanking-specific engineer.
Were it not for the emergency power problem this would probably be at least a decent idea.
Also, sort of a dumb question, but is there a tooltip of some kind to see your shield resists displayed? Hull resistance is under the Defense tab in the ship UI, but I don't see anything for shields.
Thanks!
All ships are to an extent self-reliant, the Engineer as a class is designed to have more mitigation that one player could possibly require at a cost of lower damage and utility.
The engineer is pretty clearly a Tank, and building one and not tanking means you are not 'self reliant' because it's very likely your Tacs and Sci's are taking the brunt of incoming damage, while also dealing more damage than you.
That's a drain, that's not self reliance.
I really don't want to be playing a star trek themed wow/other fantasy mmo with the tank that can't do any damage but all their abilities have a +threat to keep attention... laaaaame. I'd much rather them rebalance the mechanic so that ships work the way they should. Cruisers should have the outright highest hull and shields and damage output. The drawback being that they are so slow and lack maneuverability that they can't avoid damage or quickly maneuver to take advantage of an enemy's weak shield facing, for example.
Escorts are so fast and maneuverable, and perhaps could even be made more so, that they don't need the highest damage to be effective, they could have lower damage and use their speed and maneuverability to take advantage of enemy vulnerabilities. That's how an escort is supposed to do their damage and be super effective, they stay out of the enemy's kill zones while targeting a weak facing. They aren't supposed to have the ultimate highest uber damage. How did the defiant win against a negvar? It stayed really close to the ship and maneuvered so that the neg var couldn't get a clear shot all the while continuing to do damage.
Science ships should be a kind of hybrid as it has greater speed and maneuverability than a cruiser to avoid damage and take advantage of weaknesses, they have advanced shields so they can take a hit better than an escort, plus they have all their science tricks.
If the game were rebalanced this way, cruisers would hold agro by virtue of actually technically doing the most damage, but that doesn't prevent escorts from being super useful. If a tac cube was distributing its shields to withstand the cruiser, an escort could zip around to the other side and blast the weak facing. The cruiser would hold agro because it's technically doing more damage, but most of that is getting taken up by shields, the escort would be the one on the other side doing more damage to the hull. Of course, this would work best if they changed shield mechanics so that the integrity of a shield facing also modifies bleed through.
The current shield mechanic has it so that essentially, as long as you have points in a shield, only 5-10% of damage is bleeding through. And a "weak facing" is really only weak to a burst of damage. If they switched it so that 100% in a shield facing was 10% bleed 75% in a facing is 15% bleed, 50% in a facing is 20% bleed, and 25% is perhaps a sharper drop to 30% bleed, a "weak facing" wouldn't just be weak to burst damage, but would be weak to damage in general. I think this mechanic would also be interesting as your shields would stay at least partially up more than with the current mechanic as the lower the integrity, the less damage the shield absorbs while letting more pass.
That may be too complex for them to program in, but I think it would allow escorts to have a greater advantage to their speed and maneuverability rather than giving them both the highest speed and maneuverability and the absolute highest damage.
But then I've gone off topic again >> But I don't really know what more to say about the emergency power abilities than what has already been said. It seems the sentiment everyone has is basically keep the new buffs allowing emergency power to weapons, engines, and auxiliary to be more comparable to emergency power to shields, but keep the current cool/uptime mechanics instead of TRIBBLE that over. Unless of course, they want to turn them into toggles so we don't have to be bothered by constantly clicking them, lol. In which case they could switch emergency power to shield's heal into a "heal over time" or every 30 seconds it could just pop the heal it has now... whichever. I'm all for toggles, less "click and mash" more keeping eyes on the battle field, strategizing, maneuvering. If they turned the emergency powers into toggles that one could have a maximum of two up at a time... perhaps cruisers with their larger power plant have a passive on them that allows them to have two emergency powers up while other ships can only have one up, that would be great. But I'd also like "cannon rapid fire" and "cannon scatter volley" to be toggled modes of fire you can switch between depending on circumstance. Same with "beam focus fire" (which doesn't exist) and "beam fire at will" and attack patterns, etc. I'd much rather have 15+ activateable passives where the strategy/dynamics come from switching between them based on the situation than 15+ powers/attacks I must constantly mash. We're flying starships, not mages with tons of spells.
whoops thought i was making a new thread:o
memo to self do not post when half a sleep and drunk
This is just nit-picking, but cycling EP2S III is as good of tanking as you really need, making Rotate just about useless in most instances. True, it'll give you a one-off buff, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that engineer powers magically make them wonderful at tanking. The things that matter most for tanking are skills, ship, and then class. While damage requires a tac captain to get the most out of it, tanking can be done sufficiently well enough without an engineer captain at the helm. Sad, but true.
If allied scis/tacs are taking the brunt of damage, it's because whoever was deemed the tank doesn't have enough threat generation. But, as you say that most ships are self-reliant, and those other classes are dealing more damage than the engineer captain....why bother spec'ing into being a tank as an engineer, apart from ship-choice?
In that case, the drain comes from improper balance, not due to someone deciding they don't like being told that, since they chose engineer, that they have to have 9 points into a certain skill, fly a certain ship, and kiss TRIBBLE to the tac officers to kill things.
Threat generation is self-defeating. Sorry. "I don't do any damage, so I need to invest resources into making fake damage so enemies will pay attention to me." What? If you're not doing any damage, then invest into things that give you more damage. You don't need the threat generation. Tanking is also self-defeating. You invest into defense more than attack, so battles take longer, and then you need more defense because you take more damage in the longer fights, so you invest more into defense..the logical conclusion, the perfect tank, is a useless creature that can't do anything besides being unkillable.
In real gameplay the ship that is useful to the team, fun to play, and suitable for all content types can do damage, stay alive, and heal its allies as the situation demands.
Interesting write up. I like it for the most part. I don't see it happening for the LOR launch though, even if Cryptic did go with the general concepts presented.
personally in most PVE even with no points in threat control i still pull aggro from most pugs and when i don't i keep the guy they are shooting at alive as long as i can
I'm not even really sure why aux to bat kills your aux power. Aux to structrual doesn't pull all the power out of aux to create the heal, I don't think aux to dampers does that to do what it does either. And since an aux to bat build prevents you from using any of the other aux to X skills effectively, the least it could do is leave aux alone so you could have a decent hazard emitter... I just don't think it would be that OP, or perhaps OP at all considering the state of cruisers, for aux to bat to not drain aux.
Aux to Bat drains Aux because it boosts all your other power levels. If it didn't that would be a pretty imba "Emergency Power to Everything".
Aux to Bat is currently a very viable build because Technician Doffs reduce the cooldown of all bridge officer ability by 10%. You can read up on the topic if you have time.
With all the changes they've made, I'm not even sure anymore - though I did notice that timer doing something along those lines when I was trying to test it on Tribble. It's a little hard to tell what's "working as intended" and what's not.
So far as I know, no such display exists, unfortunately.
EPTS
20 seconds power buff
30 seconds resist buff
EPTW
20 seconds power buff
20 seconds damage buff
Self cooldown 45 seconds
Shared cooldown 20 seconds
System cooldown 15 seconds
Current Status:
EPTx/EPTy chains, and by extension cruisers wanting to use anything other than EPTS1, remain fracked.
Dude, that sounds awesome. And my main's a tac. That would totally make escorts want to actually, y'know, escort a cruiser, and make those escorts much more fun to play in PvE content than the somewhat brick-simple way they tend to run right now (that's one reason I'm not currently flying one).
And as for PvP (which I am admittedly rather unqualified to speak on, but why let that stop me now? :P), I can totally see this turning Tactical Team from the current always-use-this power to something which an escort is actively encouraged to exploit.
Also, to make this paradigm work, the tweaks to damage and baseline stats it would require could also make this whole EPtS-chaining-as-a-required-tactic problem a little outmoded, were it to come to pass...
... I can dream, can't I?
-- Winston Churchill
Yes, I know, but it only lasts 10 seconds and doesn't have any bonus resist or +% energy damage or anything, so I really don't think it would be OP for it to not drain aux. and I am aware of the aux2bat build with technician doffs, I use it on my engineer, which is why I know that when you use aux to bat, it removes aux to structural as an effective heal, takes up two of your engineering powers limiting the other heals you can slot, and basically leaves you with just hazard emitters as a hull heal (as tac team should be near constantly up voiding eng team) so throw the aux to bat cruiser a freaking bone and let them have a decent hazard emitters instead of a super gimped one courtesy of next to no aux power, lol.
I know, right? Let us both blissfully dream of a game in which all ships are awesome and useful in their own, canon ways with true balance where people synergistically team with whomever they want and all ships of all types are welcome because no one is clearly gimped.
It would be like being whisked from our black&white, dust-bowl kansas into sweet, sweet, technicolor OZ.