Fire at Will

mancom

FAW was originally 15s duration, 30s cooldown with a 20s global (a category 1 ability in Snix's terminology).

Because of the permanent 100% accuracy that it provided, it was later changed to only 10s duration.

Now the accuracy problem with FAW has been resolved for the most part and since sustained damage is not particularly powerful at the moment because of T4 rep / elite shields, maybe it is time to restore the original FAW duration of 15s?

borticuscryptic

mancom wrote: »

Because of the permanent 100% accuracy that it provided, it was later changed to only 10s duration.

This change pre-dates me coming aboard to STO. Can you provide reference that this was the specific reason it was changed?

anazonda

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This change pre-dates me coming aboard to STO. Can you provide reference that this was the specific reason it was changed?

Well its simple really:

Before: 15 Secs of 100% hit-chance, at max possible power for the FAW

Now: 10 Seconds of "Random" hit chance at max possible power for the FAW.

The 5 second cut was to reduce the total damage deal by FAW, wich if the issue has indeed been solved, no longer applies.

borticuscryptic

anazonda wrote: »

Well its simple really:

Before: 15 Secs of 100% hit-chance, at max possible power for the FAW

Now: 10 Seconds of "Random" hit chance at max possible power for the FAW.

The 5 second cut was to reduce the total damage deal by FAW, wich if the issue has indeed been solved, no longer applies.

The change could have been made for completely different reasons. I'm asking for verification of whether it was publicly stated that the Accuracy (and subsequent potential DPS) was the motivation for the duration decrease.

If all you're going by is assumptions, then forgive me if I don't take your word for it.

I'm not dismissing the claim that FAW may be in need of a boost to its potential DPS. Just the reasoning behind this particular claim.

tangolight

A search of the forums finds the following changes in the Season 4 patch notes:

Fire at Will Update:

• Fire At Will now lasts for 10 seconds, instead of 15 seconds.
• Dual beam banks under Fire At Will will fire on two targets if more than one is available.
• Fire At Will should now be subject to accuracy.

Since the change from 15 seconds to 10 seconds was made at the same time they thought they fixed accuracy working with Fire at Will, it seems doubtful that the change was made because it always hit.

mancom

borticuscryptic wrote: »

The change could have been made for completely different reasons. I'm asking for verification of whether it was publicly stated that the Accuracy (and subsequent potential DPS) was the motivation for the duration decrease.

It was a band-aid fix. I think the reason was the excessive damage output of New Faw (which I suppose was at least partially caused by the perfect accuracy). The patch notes (S4: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=222483) claim that at the same time as the duration reduction a change to take accuracy into account happened, but this is not true. My first bug report thread regarding FAW and [Acc] modifiers is from more than half a year later, and I doubt I waited so long before complaining. We were told that this was a problem that required changing "thousands of lines of code" or something to that extent, so it took some time after this band-aid nerf before the next accuracy attempt completely broke [Acc] modifiers.

mancom

borticuscryptic wrote: »

This change pre-dates me coming aboard to STO. Can you provide reference that this was the specific reason it was changed?

You were doing a podcast about STO back then and "mathed" the people. Shouldn't you have covered New FAW and its changes? Maybe there is something in your archive.

But let's face the truth here: After Snix left, basically no balance change (or new ability / item addition) was ever truly explained by anyone. Cryptic did not engage in any meaningful discussions abotu balance, so I doubt that there is a reference about the true motives of this change available publicly.

You'll have to use your inside sources (read: co-workers) and ask some of the old guys at Cryptic, unless they all jumped ship.


EDIT: Could someone fix the forums and make the (tm) symbol appear correctly again? When I enter it, it only shows as "?" for me. (Use ALT+0153 to get that symbol.)

nicha0

The 10s duration always seemed odd to me, especially considering the long beam firing cycle you tend to waste a good portion of it. Even with fleet accx1 dmgx3 weapons, after the fix there is no real net increase in damage, which I didn't expect.

The question is, would making it 15s make it better? I'm not sure about that really. Its not going to fix the disparity between CSV and BFaW if that is what people are hoping for. Bringing the global cooldown to 15s and leaving it at 10s would make it more equal, but you still have the issue of multiplicative damage vs divided damage on CSV vs BFaW

anazonda

borticuscryptic wrote: »

The change could have been made for completely different reasons. I'm asking for verification of whether it was publicly stated that the Accuracy (and subsequent potential DPS) was the motivation for the duration decrease.

If all you're going by is assumptions, then forgive me if I don't take your word for it.

I'm not dismissing the claim that FAW may be in need of a boost to its potential DPS. Just the reasoning behind this particular claim.

Heh... of cause I go by assumptions... I mean.. It's not like you guys document your meetings and put them out publicly for full review.

ussultimatum

anazonda wrote: »

Heh... of cause I go by assumptions... I mean.. It's not like you guys document your meetings and put them out publicly for full review.

You know it's pretty bad form to give grief to one of the few devs that interacts with players on the forums in a very meaningful and game impacting way.

A little perspective perhaps?

anazonda

ussultimatum wrote: »

You know it's pretty bad form to give grief to one of the few devs that interacts with players on the forums in a very meaningful and game impacting way.

A little perspective perhaps?

Grief? Where?

It would have been grief if I had claimed my statements as fact and said that he should be a little quicker to talk to the other people in the office instead of insulting me...
That would have been grief and trolling.

I merely confirmed to him that I was working based on a assumption, since I have no background info supplied by Cryptic to confirm my assumption.

So perhaps you might want to turn the "perspective" remark around a little?

wildweasal

ussultimatum wrote: »

You know it's pretty bad form to give grief to one of the few devs that interacts with players on the forums in a very meaningful and game impacting way.

A little perspective perhaps?

I agree ...if you really think about it they don't owe you any explanation....but hey that's the nature of (grabs box of tissues)StarTears online

dontdrunkimshoot

dinking around with FAW is never going to be the answer for fed cruisers actually dealing effective damage again. again, as in they used too. its still an AOE that is worse then not using FAW when you are trying to damage a particular opponent. not only are all the cannons higher dps, they have CRF to further boost DPS by between ~30% and ~45%, and with DHCs that damage is front loaded and kills shield facings with a single fireing cycle.

beam arrays could have the same DPS as DHCs and still be AS completely ineffective. DCs having the same DPS as DHCs doesn't do a whole lot for them, even though you can use CRF with them!

ether a massive buff to beam DPS, a true single target beam rapid fire skill, or a changing of fireing cycles to 2 per cycle for things like beam arrays and single cannons is needed. with any of those changes they would deal considerably more damage, but in all but 1 case it would still be pressure damage, and not enough to drop a shield faceing in a single cycle, or outpace the proc healing, regeneration and manual distribution.

im not talking about escort replacing damage here, even if cruisers would completely out dps escorts and blow up the scoreboard. DPS is a worthless number, effective damage is everything, and effective damage comes in peeks and valleys. currently escorts have peeks and plateau, and cruisers have nothing but valleys. plateau and valleys are not effective damage, but at least a plateau is enough to force a heal or 2. cruisers used to have plateau, it was a good thing when they did. escorts have huge additional survivability over what they used to have, wile cruisers have gotten no buffed levels of damage in return. WAD?


and dont even get me started on what a disaster the EPt changes are for cruisers and what a hilarious buff they are for escorts. i dont know what game some of the system guys are playing that dreamed all that up, but its not STO.