I'm seriously the only one who sees the benefit in +10 power to all subsystems all the time that ENGs will have next season? Or that EPS transfer might be a bit more useful to shove an escort to 130 shield when it is being focus fired (minor I know).
Huh. And here I thought 125/125/60/130 power would be a boon to a healer.
It's not that they can't heal.
Premade PvP is about crosshealing, you don't need to do everything yourself.
What you do need is the ability to:
Create a kill opening (SNB)
Exploit a kill opening (APA)
Control dangerous targets/Deny kills (SNB)
Ultimately it doesn't matter how much "power" or tanking the devs give to engineers.
Unless they decide the class should actually be a PvP healer, which they are not right now they are PvE tanks, they will continue to be too self-buffing focused. An attribute that does not make for a good healer.
You could give them +50 power always on and they would still suck... cause they do nothing useful. No DPS No Support, most pointless class in any pvp game ever made.
You could give them +50 power always on and they would still suck... cause they do nothing useful. No DPS No Support, most pointless class in any pvp game ever made.
Hows that for a strong statement. lol
I think you're underestimating what an Eng will be able to pull off with sustainable power levels on Tribble. They won't have the SNB, Scattering, Sensor Scan of the Sci...but consider the potential uptime on Captain abilities, eh? Then consider that the Eng won't have to choose between Weapons, Shields, Engines, and Aux like a Sci would as a Healer. It's just so easy to have 4x 125 where the Shields/Engines/Aux are 125 and Weapons is still overcapped...as the normal levels.
You could give them +50 power always on and they would still suck... cause they do nothing useful. No DPS No Support, most pointless class in any pvp game ever made.
Hows that for a strong statement. lol
Yep, 100% agreed. Engies need that lovin that was being discussed in OPvP earlier.
Ever since I switched to my Sci, my poor engie gets no play time.
I think you're underestimating what an Eng will be able to pull off with sustainable power levels on Tribble. They won't have the SNB, Scattering, Sensor Scan of the Sci...but consider the potential uptime on Captain abilities, eh? Then consider that the Eng won't have to choose between Weapons, Shields, Engines, and Aux like a Sci would as a Healer. It's just so easy to have 4x 125 where the Shields/Engines/Aux are 125 and Weapons is still overcapped...as the normal levels.
Meh. You'd be surprised at how close you can manage that as a tac if you're careful with power bonuses, gear selection etc.
And then there's always that emergency power booster doff to think about too.
You could give them +50 power always on and they would still suck... cause they do nothing useful. No DPS No Support, most pointless class in any pvp game ever made.
Hows that for a strong statement. lol
Power levels make beam weapons hurt pretty good. and EPtW gets a damage boost. Cumulative effect is pretty decent, cruisers will be bloodying some noses, well until people adjust to them anyway
I think it's a fairly safe assumption that many folks with an LTC Eng slot on an escort running Energy Weapons are probably gonna have EPtW 3. Hello HEC!
[edit: Posting before coffee is a bad thing.]
If you feel Keel'el's effect is well designed, please, for your own safety, be very careful around shallow pools of water.
I think it's a fairly safe assumption that many folks with an LTC Eng slot on an escort running Energy Weapons are probably gonna have EPtW 3. Hello HEC!
[edit: Posting before coffee is a bad thing.]
Scort flying has become facerollingly easy even on a high level of play. The Art is gone from it. There is no more careful massaging of power levels, no more trade offs between Defenses And Damage. There is no more managing your APO of using it for more power, or saving it for debuffs.
There is no more hard choices between running a second APO or running a second CRF.
Healing and defenses have become so statically powerful now that you simply do not need to use high shield power, save for one circumstance (just post nuke). You do not need to balance having shield power vs engine power. You do not have to make the choice between a second APO, or having a second CRF.
Science is just about deballed completely now.
And healing, like Scorting has become facerolling easy.
Now anyone with 5 tac consoles, and AP doffs can be a hero. When I had taken a break the very first time from STO, I found it took me a couple of weeks to get back into the swing of things. Now when I go back in, I find myself right along where I should be. I haven't even hit T4 yet in Rep Farming, still don't have Elite Fleet shields and I find it flat out boring now if there is even a modicum of cross healing going on.
Tac Scorts aren't the kings, but damned if they aren't too easy to play now. Doffs, the f2p tree, and the bugship, 5 tac console defiant and 5 consoled mvam, with even just T2 rep grind, turned something that used to be a challenge into a complete joke. The yield you get for the low skill investment is too high, for tac damage dealers, and healers.
Healing used to be a hard thing on a good day for me. Now, I find myself even more bored playing my healer, than I do my tacs. Sure, I got better as a healer through my numerous cruiser threads but my sense of timing should be complete garbage now. And now the game is so forgiving on that respect that I have to -really- be TRIBBLE up for someone to get maimed, let alone actually die under my care.
You should never be able to come back to a game dead cold, and find two roles cripplingly easy to play. Especially when one of those roles is against your preferred play style.
The game didn't ''evolve past my ability to play'' it's more done the other way. It's too easy now, for everyone. And the skill threshold required to be able to perform is so much lower now that I would almost liken it to being able to PvE in other games. At pvp's height you had to worry about heals, and which ones you rolled out. You had to worry about enemy crowd control, and damage was timed between feints and full on death runs.
Now, there is no CC. Static defenses have gotten so high, that heal timing or proper heal skill use is nowhere near as critical, and damage is a matter of just waiting on sub nukes, because you know damn well Kills are not going to be generated without them. Period. You could time Kills in STO, to a set timer if Wife Aggro as a mod worked for this game, as if you were timing abilities on a raid boss. And that's why I so rarely play anymore. The anticipation, and sense of danger is gone.
Eng are subpar but do have nitch builds. I wrote this in a early post on genral (wrong place to put it =/ ) this sum up my opinion on what need to be done to eng.
WTF is up with Eng Capt?
That?s right the power creep has removed all viability of eng
Nadion is now a doff connected with dem
Doff, Sets and boff = added res and reg has made eng capt powers almost not need.
With this creep we need a fix for PvE and PvP sake because everything can be done better by the other 2 capt.
Some basic tweak to the regular power could take eng capt out of the darkside of the moon.
First when I see a Eng capt I think one thing power and toughness, it does not need + dps that Tact, it does not need debuffs that Sci. Eng capt need to make the most out of their ships.
Eng capt should be one of the few classes to run more energy weapons and be able to compensate for the drain. Now with doffs eng capt are not the only one that can do this, this needs to be fixed.
1.Nadion Ivasion is now 30 sec on 3min CD.
Change :::: 15 sec on a 1min CD
2.Rotate shield frequency is great but eng need more bite with out +dmg or crit bonus. So why not give us Rotate weapon frequency aswell as rotate shield frequiency on the same
cd and GCD so we can pick one or the other every 90s
Rotate weapon frequency, instead of having a chance to 100% bypass which would be
unfair, give it 40% bleed though for 15 sec and on last volley has a chance upon a critical to apply 20% shield res debuff for 15sec.
3.Miracle worker is a easy fix.
Change::: Let it be able to transfer to teammates.
Now we have a viable eng , one with the option to run sustained power lvl where other capt cant. A fix to make us unique enough to be viable without being op.
.
I wrote that 2 weeks ago above
after playing with the new trait for eng on tribble. Its still sub par to what it needs, a moderate buff is what it needs not a poke, tac Recieved100% res debuff with go down fighting are u kidding me....., and all I get is maybe 2 MW back to back.... who really got the buff.
You should never be able to come back to a game dead cold, and find two roles cripplingly easy to play. Especially when one of those roles is against your preferred play style.
The game didn't ''evolve past my ability to play'' it's more done the other way. It's too easy now, for everyone. And the skill threshold required to be able to perform is so much lower now that I would almost liken it to being able to PvE in other games. At pvp's height you had to worry about heals, and which ones you rolled out. You had to worry about enemy crowd control, and damage was timed between feints and full on death runs.
Now, there is no CC. Static defenses have gotten so high, that heal timing or proper heal skill use is nowhere near as critical, and damage is a matter of just waiting on sub nukes, because you know damn well Kills are not going to be generated without them. Period. You could time Kills in STO, to a set timer if Wife Aggro as a mod worked for this game, as if you were timing abilities on a raid boss. And that's why I so rarely play anymore. The anticipation, and sense of danger is gone.
There are exotic dps builds now though, plasma/rchg , trans bombers, PsW/burst, 4xBO,Boarding partys, tach mines, and good old drain builds. Doffs have expanded what tac captains can do.
SNB is history(with all respect) that's why they had to buff it, and where still b^$%h about eng captains. Eng I think will always feel unwelcome to premades until a benefit arises
Nova Core
ParadiseKiller
House of Beautiful Orions Zeadonouse ToLate
Problem is you don't win a match by not dying. You win a match by killing more then you die.
.
yeah but it gives me a good belly laugh when a tac trys to kill you and its just not gonna happen hahahahaha I can always see em raging behind the screen.. I used to always say yeah I may not kil you but your job is killin and that's not gonna happen today you better get some friends and come back to this party zombie FTW!!!
yeah but it gives me a good belly laugh when a tac trys to kill you and its just not gonna happen hahahahaha I can always see em raging behind the screen.. I used to always say yeah I may not kil you but your job is killin and that's not gonna happen today you better get some friends and come back to this party zombie FTW!!!
That's when exotic tac build come into play. They can do it better=everything, Watch a smart playeer like mini will wait till tact team gap, or trans bomber will eventually waist you, I love the best example of this is drain buids u will spiral your heals u will eventually die.
Yes you are right u can make a zombie that fly around kerrat like a recluce, ambassador anything with TSS3 and aux bats = unkillable and u don't have to be in a eng to get it.
That's right a sci can zombie just as good and has the game changer button SNB, what do u have as a eng; Scotties grandson of a miracle worker.... I'd rather shove him out a airlock for more dps
I just pointing out the huge gap as a eng which = the benefit for having one, the only benefit of a eng at this moment is if u have such a sick build that u must be the first kill, 90% of the time the eng can be forgotten.
Nova Core
ParadiseKiller
House of Beautiful Orions Zeadonouse ToLate
Are you going to say it's -harder- to play now than it was back when we actually had CC on the field to be worried over?
Before the skill tree revamp CC was way too strong. Remember gravity well? Pretty easy to use -- everyone click the same button at the same time on the same target that happens to be close to a few other of his team mates = win.
Nowadays a lot of control powers are unfortunately worthless, but what remains is arguably better balanced than what we had before and needs to be used with a higher degree of precision.
Or that with all the innumerable defenses that we now have, healing is more difficult, or that sustaining yourself in a scort has gotten harder?
There's far more spike than there was before, and far more healing and resistance. This makes the game more yo-yo, more twitch, and more skill based. In high level PvP, both the damage dealers and healers need to be incredibly on the ball. Kills require more coordination and better timing, healing has became more of a twitch skill. You can no longer really succeed as a healer who is a 'clicker' since it's not fast enough.
Before the skill tree revamp CC was way too strong. Remember gravity well? Pretty easy to use -- everyone click the same button at the same time on the same target that happens to be close to a few other of his team mates = win.
In the beginning CC was non existent, damage ruled all. In fact using CC such as gravity well was a sure sign you were a pve player. the only science skills used were sub nuke and the one that actually made you invisible while you could still shoot and science team. It was the reason all half decent pvp sci's were in tactical ships. Tactical ruled and with a little timing even the good healers of the day like Faithborn died in under 5 seconds, along with the other 4 inside 15 seconds leaving it as a simple clean up. entire team killed, one use of cannon rapid fire and high yield 2 or 3.
I cannot speak of nowadays, but in my day gravity well was considered a waste right until the day it went OP, that day being the day it was used on mass to counter the then op builds. It was not patched or improved, it was used in a new strategy and players struggled to find counter, except that was to use it as well. As to your perception that it was just click dumped on a player and job done, well that is in error, it was best used when dumped on two players in close proximity to each other, this created a tug of war between the over lapping wells causing a vibration that made clicking on targets more difficult, of course throwing in a scramble sensors also made this worse.
If it was so easy and required so little skill how come you lost to those players so easily, surely you would have won some games as it would come down to a coin toss.
Coordination and cross cooperation were the keys to science skills, even then, along with the timing and targeting of multiple players on a group of enemy players. it was about waiting and trying to create an opportunity when two of the best teams fought and about making sure your judgement was right, otherwise you had to wait until the skills reset for another go all the while having given the advantage to the other side.
Nowadays a lot of control powers are unfortunately worthless, but what remains is arguably better balanced than what we had before and needs to be used with a higher degree of precision.
tachyon beam, this was not used at all, I am not even sure anyone bothered in pve with it. Again without any alterations to it suddenly it was in vogue, and there is was even a thread it might be OP, why once again it was used to good effect in a coordinated team in conjunction with other skills to create a strong combination. Try to use it solo and it was still terrible. The claim that so many science skills are poor holds about as much value as tachyon beam or gravity well being poor until someone came up with a build to make them useful.
Better balanced is often used by people to describe something who prefer the way something is. You and your fleet are currently as I understand it one of the more dominant fleets. Is it simply the case that your team is better suited to todays game than you were to a CC intensive game. is it that you have all the shiny bridge officers and modules that give you plenty of advantage other those that don't. I recall you could fight with nothing but green equipment and still perform better than someone in full purple gear if you understood the skills their effects and counters and had good timing. Back then skill beat equipment, perhaps equipment beats skill now, oh and that the good players left leaving you as the best of what remains.
There's far more spike than there was before, and far more healing and resistance. This makes the game more yo-yo, more twitch, and more skill based. In high level PvP, both the damage dealers and healers need to be incredibly on the ball. Kills require more coordination and better timing, healing has became more of a twitch skill. You can no longer really succeed as a healer who is a 'clicker' since it's not fast enough.
Spike damage is a relative thing, before it was possible to blow up a ship in a couple of seconds, I know I did it all the time, if fact you had to pay a good deal of attention to the damage you took to survive. Most important was to keep a watch for turret damage plinks, those shots arrived a split second before the damage from cannons. If you didn't activate some defence you could find your shields obliterated by cannons and your hull gone to a high yield torp. I am not sure people are dying any faster now than back then.
then came the age where damage was nerfed and you often could not just pop some powers and burn someone down in a second, fights lasted an age, getting kills then required a ton of coordination and timing between all the team to get a kill, tho naturally as you failed to score wins vs the good teams it was something I assume you never mastered. Far more so that what you describe now, where damage is once again very high and super reactions are needed to survive not to kill, quite an advantage for a KDF team
If twitch reactions have become the only factor in being 'skilled and on the ball' then the game has no true skill requirement and fast reacting 15 year olds will be the only skilled players. While that fast reacting reactions is a good thing, it has usually been associated with games such as BF3. The skill required should be about timing, about choices made during a fight that tip the balance in your favour, not that you can click 0.2 seconds faster, because nothing you can do will enable you to become faster and we will all get slower over time, if that makes us less skilled then we were never skilled to begin with imo.
Before the skill tree revamp CC was way too strong. Remember gravity well? Pretty easy to use -- everyone click the same button at the same time on the same target that happens to be close to a few other of his team mates = win.
Nowadays a lot of control powers are unfortunately worthless, but what remains is arguably better balanced than what we had before and needs to be used with a higher degree of precision.
There's far more spike than there was before, and far more healing and resistance. This makes the game more yo-yo, more twitch, and more skill based. In high level PvP, both the damage dealers and healers need to be incredibly on the ball. Kills require more coordination and better timing, healing has became more of a twitch skill. You can no longer really succeed as a healer who is a 'clicker' since it's not fast enough.
I wouldn't call a game that has zero effective CC more balanced than one that had varying levels of CC effectiveness. It's not the least bit better balanced, when one of the classes of the game is relegated to becoming a second and third healer. Maybe you've forgotten what we had before https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=psb-DTrJDVQ
Now you tell me, what's more balanced. Working CC, or just he with the most heals and spike wins. Also, Grav well only had a very short time of being the hax. For most of it's life it was either, useful but not overbearing, or lame.
Ironically enough thanks to the changes to ASIF and Aux to ID, if GW were returned to where it was (the imba version) it wouldn't be king for long, since the cruisers would roll out with AuxID. Escorts have AP doffs, which is pretty much a 24/7 immunity to movement debuffs.
Healing has not become more of a twitch, resistances have increased far higher, and faster than damage has, especially with the azn grind kicked into full swing. Healing has become -more- forgiving than ever before.
We don't have CC now. There's next to zero point in taking actual science vessels to pvp. That's not balance. Gear dependency is through the roof now, and beam damage is damned near useless.
Now if you've convinced yourself that this is better than what we had that's fine. But don't try and kid the rest of us. The game is crippled compared to what it once was.
Ask yourself this, while the continued neglect of pvp certainly was a factor. As CC gradually became more and more gimped, why did the number of strong pvp fleets drop with it? Because each guild's favorite pet abilities dropped. I can name at least 3 guilds that either became crippled in terms of number of pvpers, or quit the game entirely as each last bastion of CC was killed off.
Healing has gotten so strong, that the Engineers resistances, and miracle worker are not only not required, but to the point that taking Engineer at all on a pvp team means you have crippled your team's effectiveness either by removing High Damage, or a critically needed Debuff. That's not balance, that's not fun. That's ****ing stupid.
The only guilds that are left are the heal and burst intensive guilds, who have toons decked in the best gear.
PvP has become tremendously less approachable thanks to the azn farm experience, starbases, TRIBBLE poor CC (which effectively eliminates an entire ship chassis and play style from the game), and monotonous and boring gameplay.
snip
PvP has become tremendously less approachable thanks to the azn farm experience, starbases, TRIBBLE poor CC (which effectively eliminates an entire ship chassis and play style from the game), and monotonous and boring gameplay.
What you two just described, an evolving meta, team builds instead of cookie cutter role builds, and so fourth, sound so amazing I'm a bit sad to have missed it.
you can do a lot more stuff now then you used to be able too, thats mostly thanks to doffs, and all the ships with more divers station setups. everything is twice as flexable on what you can actually do with it then it was way back when. stuff felt a lot more WAD though, under control, now you can do almost anything with anything. theres ships that fill almost every station niche, and any traditional ship weaknesses have been filled in by new additions.
the most prominent weakness thats no longer a thing is that escorts are fragile. wile fragile escorts are a thing of the past, cruisers did not become better at dealing damage. when FAW was most broken were they the most effective at that. i wouldn't exactly call that a time to lock back at fondly though. tricky sci ship damage is better then ever, with all the dot and shield bypass toys and tactics.
im more found of the current depth, i mean its got more potential to be good, but isn't better. but i would change a LOT about the current meta game, it requires major fundamental changes so all the new things you can build within the system are all closer to the same effectiveness, or at least arent terrible. to much is marginalized and useless.
I don't hate the PUG only crowd, but I do feel like playing PUG only really skews many player's views of careers and powers, and their balance.
Pugland and premade-land are completely different beasts. I prefer the idea of pugs simply because I prefer to hold to the idea that all ships should be able to work independently, that they should be as goo self contained units as they could be. I hate the idea of purpose built ships like pure tanks or pure healers (without precluding a ship that can throw heals or buffs to others without being based solely around that). I'm not saying a purpose built team isn't more effective, it is. Its just how I prefer to view the game. To me a "pure role" ship has no place in a sci-fi setting like Star Trek. Its a Kirk universe after all.
I think PvP would benefit greatly if it had queues where you could only sign up solo and were placed in teams randomly. But alas... that would require work to do with no guarantee of a return of resources.
Haven't read the thread yet, but thought I'd put in my 2 cents. I have a Recluse Engineer I use as a pure healer, and heal I can. The problem is I could do the same amount of healing as a Sci and also help kill people by timing subnukes with tac players' alpha strike. I've put a lot of resources into this toon so I don't want to just give up on it, but I feel like more and more of a burden to my team since I can't actually help kill anyone like a Sci captain can.
Tac players have the captain ability alpha strike, fire on my mark, and go down fighting that help kill people.
Sci players have subnucleonic beam and sensor analysis as captain abilities to help kill players.
Engi players have...target subsystems, which very rarely can help kill someone, not to mention a sci player in a sci ship also has this ability.
Engineers need a unique new captain ability that will actually help the team take down an enemy. Until then, a sci healer will always be more desirable to have on a team.
Edit: reading some of the thread, I have to agree with Pardise1Killer who suggested letting miracle worker be transferable to team mates. While this is a good idea, the problem is that this will only prolong matches, and not help end them like a new offensive cpt. ability would.
Scort flying has become facerollingly easy even on a high level of play.
You've actually been participating in high level play? I must have just missed you all those times :rolleyes:
You should sit in on one of our IC vs. SP matches. Compare yourself to MT, Hank, or Naz and I have a feeling you'll find you still have a long ways to go if you're honest with yourself.
Healing and defenses have become so statically powerful now that you simply do not need to use high shield power, save for one circumstance (just post nuke).
You always want high shield power in the current high level environment, Mav. Running low shield power is suicide. There are specific burst builds out there that have a decent success rates against semi-hardened targets let alone ones with low shield power.
Tac Scorts aren't the kings, but damned if they aren't too easy to play now.
Healing used to be a hard thing on a good day for me. Now, I find myself even more bored playing my healer, than I do my tacs.
So both healing and damage dealing are stupid easy, despite the fact that the game is faster paced and more yo-yo? That doesn't make much logical sense. What does make sense is that you're reading into things too much from low level PvP against scrubs.
At pvp's height you had to worry about heals, and which ones you rolled out. You had to worry about enemy crowd control, and damage was timed between feints and full on death runs.
That hasn't changed. Well, maybe it has in lower level PvP.
I wouldn't call a game that has zero effective CC more balanced than one that had varying levels of CC effectiveness.
Zero effective CC? You know well that that's a huge overstatement.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that many control abilities weren't overnerfed, but in general you have better balance by having something blatantly worthless as opposed to blatantly overpowered. For example, you could nerf siphon drones and TIF into the ground tomorrow and balance would be better because of it. Reason being good players will just ignore the worthless stuff while the broken overpowered things can be abused.
It's certainly gone up, but that didn't stop people from asking MT not to take his, non-rep ground, non-optimally geared, non-fleet B'rel into private matches because it was too devastating. In many cases gear that seems too good not to take can become a creativity trap. For example, our optimal premade setup in SP has moved largely away from using Bugships and fleet shields. In a vacuum both seem overwhelmingly good, but the metagame has moved in different direction where some of these things don't fit in so well.
Healing has gotten so strong, that the Engineers resistances, and miracle worker are not only not required, but to the point that taking Engineer at all on a pvp team means you have crippled your team's effectiveness either by removing High Damage, or a critically needed Debuff. That's not balance, that's not fun. That's ****ing stupid.
That's not the reason people don't take engineers anymore. The death of engineers in high level PvP coincides exactly with FAW being changed to a sucktastic skill. That's when myself and every other competent engineer in the game stopped playing them. Engineers have only made sense when you could boost up damage to high levels through good power management and the added healing was a free lunch on top of that. To be perfectly honest, a dedicated tank is not a good design for a PvP class. Anti-control would be a more interesting role.
What you two just described, an evolving meta, team builds instead of cookie cutter role builds, and so fourth, sound so amazing I'm a bit sad to have missed it.
I've never seen a faster evolving meta than what's been going on between SP and IC these days.
If you aren't directly involved in the evolution of the meta, you might not even notice it happening.
As to your perception that it was just click dumped on a player and job done, well that is in error, it was best used when dumped on two players in close proximity to each other
If we're going to nitpick, proper timing on a fast enough moving target could accomplish the same thing
After the scramble nerf it was generally better to have closer proximity for a stronger pull that's more difficult to escape. Depends on a few factors.
If it was so easy and required so little skill how come you lost to those players so easily, surely you would have won some games as it would come down to a coin toss.
Lost?
If two teams are using the same strategy, the better team will win every time.
Hell, if one team is using some horrendous broken ability and the other team is just comprised of tremendously superior players the better team will still likely win. Doesn't change people from arguing stuff like "Siphon Drones / Temporal Inversion / Graviton Pulse Generators aren't OP because we used them heavily and Pandas still beat us!" We also flew around in Tier 3 ships before the community asked us to stop, doesn't mean that tier 3 ships aren't enormously weaker than tier 5!
Coordination and cross cooperation were the keys to science skills, even then, along with the timing and targeting of multiple players on a group of enemy players. it was about waiting and trying to create an opportunity when two of the best teams fought and about making sure your judgement was right, otherwise you had to wait until the skills reset for another go all the while having given the advantage to the other side.
Sure, the team that coordinates better will win. Doesn't change the fact that popping 3-4 CPBs or GWs at the same time as an escort alphas up isn't exactly difficult.
tachyon beam, this was not used at all, I am not even sure anyone bothered in pve with it. Again without any alterations to it suddenly it was in vogue, and there is was even a thread it might be OP, why once again it was used to good effect in a coordinated team in conjunction with other skills to create a strong combination.
I don't think anyone ever thought Tachyon Beam was overpowered, but shield stripping in general sure. It wasn't picked up because it was a powerful skill -- CPB being better in every possible way -- but because it complemented CPB and in a build that was already heavily spec'd for shield stripping it became a no-brainer.
Try to use it solo and it was still terrible. The claim that so many science skills are poor holds about as much value as tachyon beam or gravity well being poor until someone came up with a build to make them useful.
Agreed. VM is actually quite good. EPW too. You still need a couple copies of PSW on a team. TBR and SS are still decent despite the later being heavily nerfed. What's gone away is three to five guys all spamming the same skill for the win. Control is more surgical now.
Better balanced is often used by people to describe something who prefer the way something is. You and your fleet are currently as I understand it one of the more dominant fleets. Is it simply the case that your team is better suited to todays game than you were to a CC intensive game.
I hate to sound arrogant, but we were dominant back then too. And we had the same initial knee jerk reaction to the changes to control as the rest of the community. Hell, nobody used GW as much as we did. Control could definitely be stronger. Ideally it would be somewhere in between where it used to be and where it is now, but what we have now isn't as bad as many people clinging to an old meta would like to believe.
Back then skill beat equipment, perhaps equipment beats skill now
The difference between green items and top of the line items constantly advances as power creep does. That being said, with the exception of certain lockbox ships, top level gear is far more easy to attain than it was back in the day.
If you didn't activate some defence you could find your shields obliterated by cannons and your hull gone to a high yield torp. I am not sure people are dying any faster now than back then.
Instavape has always been possible in some form or another.
then came the age where damage was nerfed and you often could not just pop some powers and burn someone down in a second, fights lasted an age, getting kills then required a ton of coordination and timing between all the team to get a kill, tho naturally as you failed to score wins vs the good teams it was something I assume you never mastered.
Ouch, why so hostile? SP wasn't around at the time, and I'll openly admit to being a noob in Season 2. If you think that it's impossible for matches to last a couple hours nowadays you're mistaken though.
Far more so that what you describe now, where damage is once again very high and super reactions are needed to survive not to kill, quite an advantage for a KDF team
Pandas was never a KDF team. Our KDF fleet has been mostly abandoned ever since the rep grind came out. In any case, private matches allow for cross faction teams now.
If twitch reactions have become the only factor in being 'skilled and on the ball' then the game has no true skill requirement and fast reacting 15 year olds will be the only skilled players. While that fast reacting reactions is a good thing, it has usually been associated with games such as BF3.
That's a bit of a strawman argument. I never stated that reaction time is the only, or even the primary factor in PvP today. With the current levels of spike you do need fast reflexes as a healer, but anticipating spike and preemptively building defenses is just as important, ditto for controlling enemy damage dealers and maintaining initiative. Sometimes that stuff fails and you need to act fast, moreso than in the past thanks to the wider difference between heavily buffed and unbuffed (and even at times moderately buffed) targets.
The skill required should be about timing, about choices made during a fight that tip the balance in your favour, not that you can click 0.2 seconds faster, because nothing you can do will enable you to become faster and we will all get slower over time, if that makes us less skilled then we were never skilled to begin with imo.
Obviously, there's always going to be both. I'd argue that more extreme gameplay also means that teams need to be more on their feet, that they need to make more decisions, quicker, and more decisively.
Not an evolving one.
team builds are a great deal less complex than they were, as is the gameplay.
It's all gear, burst and heals now.
Build a ship with heals, and it's better than one that has CC.
Yeah... playing yoyo is such a step up from what we had alright. :rolleyes:
They some how managed to both dumb down the game, and make it less approachable at the exact same time. That's just sorry.
How is it devolving? I've never seen this many variations of premade setups in a long time. When was the last time you had a premade match and who against?
Without CC now, whats to stop the bursters? CC is now more important than it ever was. Dont control a damage dealer and your screwed with the current massive spike potential. Hell, Spike cruisers are now fully viable in premades. Ask Inner circle or TRH about this paragraph and i bet they wont disagree.
The yo yo game right now is definately better than the 4 man FAW cruiser build + 1 tac of old. Now that is definately a step up from old.
Just to add, a tournament in the current climate is now possible with less than 10 rules thanks to the devs now putting in the time to try to iron out the kinks. Do you remember this much dev support to pvp ever?
Granted they broke their promises in the past, but isn't current actions better to judge than past?
Granted there are issues which have made certain aspects of the game devolve, but on the whole it has been moving in the right direction.
There are some highly skilled Engineers out there and hats off to them but there also some great pilots who, with a proper build, can nearly compete with a Tier 4 ship in high level PvP.
Just imagine how much better they'd be in a Tac or Sci piloting a Tier 5 or Fleet ship but that's not the point, is it?
Comments
It's not that they can't heal.
Premade PvP is about crosshealing, you don't need to do everything yourself.
What you do need is the ability to:
Create a kill opening (SNB)
Exploit a kill opening (APA)
Control dangerous targets/Deny kills (SNB)
Ultimately it doesn't matter how much "power" or tanking the devs give to engineers.
Unless they decide the class should actually be a PvP healer, which they are not right now they are PvE tanks, they will continue to be too self-buffing focused. An attribute that does not make for a good healer.
I think it's one of the new traits.
Trait gives it for 10 seconds after using EPtX. Duration is effected by battery skill, 50 skill = 15 second duration.
Ya no that does nothing for engis at all.
You could give them +50 power always on and they would still suck... cause they do nothing useful. No DPS No Support, most pointless class in any pvp game ever made.
Hows that for a strong statement. lol
I think you're underestimating what an Eng will be able to pull off with sustainable power levels on Tribble. They won't have the SNB, Scattering, Sensor Scan of the Sci...but consider the potential uptime on Captain abilities, eh? Then consider that the Eng won't have to choose between Weapons, Shields, Engines, and Aux like a Sci would as a Healer. It's just so easy to have 4x 125 where the Shields/Engines/Aux are 125 and Weapons is still overcapped...as the normal levels.
Yep, 100% agreed. Engies need that lovin that was being discussed in OPvP earlier.
Ever since I switched to my Sci, my poor engie gets no play time.
Meh. You'd be surprised at how close you can manage that as a tac if you're careful with power bonuses, gear selection etc.
And then there's always that emergency power booster doff to think about too.
There's a reason my eng got shelved (again).
Power levels make beam weapons hurt pretty good. and EPtW gets a damage boost. Cumulative effect is pretty decent, cruisers will be bloodying some noses, well until people adjust to them anyway
[edit: Posting before coffee is a bad thing.]
Scort flying has become facerollingly easy even on a high level of play. The Art is gone from it. There is no more careful massaging of power levels, no more trade offs between Defenses And Damage. There is no more managing your APO of using it for more power, or saving it for debuffs.
There is no more hard choices between running a second APO or running a second CRF.
Healing and defenses have become so statically powerful now that you simply do not need to use high shield power, save for one circumstance (just post nuke). You do not need to balance having shield power vs engine power. You do not have to make the choice between a second APO, or having a second CRF.
Science is just about deballed completely now.
And healing, like Scorting has become facerolling easy.
Now anyone with 5 tac consoles, and AP doffs can be a hero. When I had taken a break the very first time from STO, I found it took me a couple of weeks to get back into the swing of things. Now when I go back in, I find myself right along where I should be. I haven't even hit T4 yet in Rep Farming, still don't have Elite Fleet shields and I find it flat out boring now if there is even a modicum of cross healing going on.
Tac Scorts aren't the kings, but damned if they aren't too easy to play now. Doffs, the f2p tree, and the bugship, 5 tac console defiant and 5 consoled mvam, with even just T2 rep grind, turned something that used to be a challenge into a complete joke. The yield you get for the low skill investment is too high, for tac damage dealers, and healers.
Healing used to be a hard thing on a good day for me. Now, I find myself even more bored playing my healer, than I do my tacs. Sure, I got better as a healer through my numerous cruiser threads but my sense of timing should be complete garbage now. And now the game is so forgiving on that respect that I have to -really- be TRIBBLE up for someone to get maimed, let alone actually die under my care.
You should never be able to come back to a game dead cold, and find two roles cripplingly easy to play. Especially when one of those roles is against your preferred play style.
The game didn't ''evolve past my ability to play'' it's more done the other way. It's too easy now, for everyone. And the skill threshold required to be able to perform is so much lower now that I would almost liken it to being able to PvE in other games. At pvp's height you had to worry about heals, and which ones you rolled out. You had to worry about enemy crowd control, and damage was timed between feints and full on death runs.
Now, there is no CC. Static defenses have gotten so high, that heal timing or proper heal skill use is nowhere near as critical, and damage is a matter of just waiting on sub nukes, because you know damn well Kills are not going to be generated without them. Period. You could time Kills in STO, to a set timer if Wife Aggro as a mod worked for this game, as if you were timing abilities on a raid boss. And that's why I so rarely play anymore. The anticipation, and sense of danger is gone.
WTF is up with Eng Capt?
That?s right the power creep has removed all viability of eng
Nadion is now a doff connected with dem
Doff, Sets and boff = added res and reg has made eng capt powers almost not need.
With this creep we need a fix for PvE and PvP sake because everything can be done better by the other 2 capt.
Some basic tweak to the regular power could take eng capt out of the darkside of the moon.
First when I see a Eng capt I think one thing power and toughness, it does not need + dps that Tact, it does not need debuffs that Sci. Eng capt need to make the most out of their ships.
Eng capt should be one of the few classes to run more energy weapons and be able to compensate for the drain. Now with doffs eng capt are not the only one that can do this, this needs to be fixed.
1.Nadion Ivasion is now 30 sec on 3min CD.
Change :::: 15 sec on a 1min CD
2.Rotate shield frequency is great but eng need more bite with out +dmg or crit bonus. So why not give us Rotate weapon frequency aswell as rotate shield frequiency on the same
cd and GCD so we can pick one or the other every 90s
Rotate weapon frequency, instead of having a chance to 100% bypass which would be
unfair, give it 40% bleed though for 15 sec and on last volley has a chance upon a critical to apply 20% shield res debuff for 15sec.
3.Miracle worker is a easy fix.
Change::: Let it be able to transfer to teammates.
Now we have a viable eng , one with the option to run sustained power lvl where other capt cant. A fix to make us unique enough to be viable without being op.
.
I wrote that 2 weeks ago above
after playing with the new trait for eng on tribble. Its still sub par to what it needs, a moderate buff is what it needs not a poke, tac Recieved100% res debuff with go down fighting are u kidding me....., and all I get is maybe 2 MW back to back.... who really got the buff.
There are exotic dps builds now though, plasma/rchg , trans bombers, PsW/burst, 4xBO,Boarding partys, tach mines, and good old drain builds. Doffs have expanded what tac captains can do.
SNB is history(with all respect) that's why they had to buff it, and where still b^$%h about eng captains. Eng I think will always feel unwelcome to premades until a benefit arises
ParadiseKiller
House of Beautiful Orions
Zeadonouse
ToLate
Are you going to say it's -harder- to play now than it was back when we actually had CC on the field to be worried over?
Or that with all the innumerable defenses that we now have, healing is more difficult, or that sustaining yourself in a scort has gotten harder?
That's when exotic tac build come into play. They can do it better=everything, Watch a smart playeer like mini will wait till tact team gap, or trans bomber will eventually waist you, I love the best example of this is drain buids u will spiral your heals u will eventually die.
Yes you are right u can make a zombie that fly around kerrat like a recluce, ambassador anything with TSS3 and aux bats = unkillable and u don't have to be in a eng to get it.
That's right a sci can zombie just as good and has the game changer button SNB, what do u have as a eng; Scotties grandson of a miracle worker.... I'd rather shove him out a airlock for more dps
I just pointing out the huge gap as a eng which = the benefit for having one, the only benefit of a eng at this moment is if u have such a sick build that u must be the first kill, 90% of the time the eng can be forgotten.
ParadiseKiller
House of Beautiful Orions
Zeadonouse
ToLate
Before the skill tree revamp CC was way too strong. Remember gravity well? Pretty easy to use -- everyone click the same button at the same time on the same target that happens to be close to a few other of his team mates = win.
Nowadays a lot of control powers are unfortunately worthless, but what remains is arguably better balanced than what we had before and needs to be used with a higher degree of precision.
There's far more spike than there was before, and far more healing and resistance. This makes the game more yo-yo, more twitch, and more skill based. In high level PvP, both the damage dealers and healers need to be incredibly on the ball. Kills require more coordination and better timing, healing has became more of a twitch skill. You can no longer really succeed as a healer who is a 'clicker' since it's not fast enough.
In the beginning CC was non existent, damage ruled all. In fact using CC such as gravity well was a sure sign you were a pve player. the only science skills used were sub nuke and the one that actually made you invisible while you could still shoot and science team. It was the reason all half decent pvp sci's were in tactical ships. Tactical ruled and with a little timing even the good healers of the day like Faithborn died in under 5 seconds, along with the other 4 inside 15 seconds leaving it as a simple clean up. entire team killed, one use of cannon rapid fire and high yield 2 or 3.
I cannot speak of nowadays, but in my day gravity well was considered a waste right until the day it went OP, that day being the day it was used on mass to counter the then op builds. It was not patched or improved, it was used in a new strategy and players struggled to find counter, except that was to use it as well. As to your perception that it was just click dumped on a player and job done, well that is in error, it was best used when dumped on two players in close proximity to each other, this created a tug of war between the over lapping wells causing a vibration that made clicking on targets more difficult, of course throwing in a scramble sensors also made this worse.
If it was so easy and required so little skill how come you lost to those players so easily, surely you would have won some games as it would come down to a coin toss.
Coordination and cross cooperation were the keys to science skills, even then, along with the timing and targeting of multiple players on a group of enemy players. it was about waiting and trying to create an opportunity when two of the best teams fought and about making sure your judgement was right, otherwise you had to wait until the skills reset for another go all the while having given the advantage to the other side.
tachyon beam, this was not used at all, I am not even sure anyone bothered in pve with it. Again without any alterations to it suddenly it was in vogue, and there is was even a thread it might be OP, why once again it was used to good effect in a coordinated team in conjunction with other skills to create a strong combination. Try to use it solo and it was still terrible. The claim that so many science skills are poor holds about as much value as tachyon beam or gravity well being poor until someone came up with a build to make them useful.
Better balanced is often used by people to describe something who prefer the way something is. You and your fleet are currently as I understand it one of the more dominant fleets. Is it simply the case that your team is better suited to todays game than you were to a CC intensive game. is it that you have all the shiny bridge officers and modules that give you plenty of advantage other those that don't. I recall you could fight with nothing but green equipment and still perform better than someone in full purple gear if you understood the skills their effects and counters and had good timing. Back then skill beat equipment, perhaps equipment beats skill now, oh and that the good players left leaving you as the best of what remains.
Spike damage is a relative thing, before it was possible to blow up a ship in a couple of seconds, I know I did it all the time, if fact you had to pay a good deal of attention to the damage you took to survive. Most important was to keep a watch for turret damage plinks, those shots arrived a split second before the damage from cannons. If you didn't activate some defence you could find your shields obliterated by cannons and your hull gone to a high yield torp. I am not sure people are dying any faster now than back then.
then came the age where damage was nerfed and you often could not just pop some powers and burn someone down in a second, fights lasted an age, getting kills then required a ton of coordination and timing between all the team to get a kill, tho naturally as you failed to score wins vs the good teams it was something I assume you never mastered. Far more so that what you describe now, where damage is once again very high and super reactions are needed to survive not to kill, quite an advantage for a KDF team
If twitch reactions have become the only factor in being 'skilled and on the ball' then the game has no true skill requirement and fast reacting 15 year olds will be the only skilled players. While that fast reacting reactions is a good thing, it has usually been associated with games such as BF3. The skill required should be about timing, about choices made during a fight that tip the balance in your favour, not that you can click 0.2 seconds faster, because nothing you can do will enable you to become faster and we will all get slower over time, if that makes us less skilled then we were never skilled to begin with imo.
I wouldn't call a game that has zero effective CC more balanced than one that had varying levels of CC effectiveness. It's not the least bit better balanced, when one of the classes of the game is relegated to becoming a second and third healer. Maybe you've forgotten what we had before
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=psb-DTrJDVQ
Now you tell me, what's more balanced. Working CC, or just he with the most heals and spike wins. Also, Grav well only had a very short time of being the hax. For most of it's life it was either, useful but not overbearing, or lame.
Ironically enough thanks to the changes to ASIF and Aux to ID, if GW were returned to where it was (the imba version) it wouldn't be king for long, since the cruisers would roll out with AuxID. Escorts have AP doffs, which is pretty much a 24/7 immunity to movement debuffs.
Healing has not become more of a twitch, resistances have increased far higher, and faster than damage has, especially with the azn grind kicked into full swing. Healing has become -more- forgiving than ever before.
We don't have CC now. There's next to zero point in taking actual science vessels to pvp. That's not balance. Gear dependency is through the roof now, and beam damage is damned near useless.
Now if you've convinced yourself that this is better than what we had that's fine. But don't try and kid the rest of us. The game is crippled compared to what it once was.
Ask yourself this, while the continued neglect of pvp certainly was a factor. As CC gradually became more and more gimped, why did the number of strong pvp fleets drop with it? Because each guild's favorite pet abilities dropped. I can name at least 3 guilds that either became crippled in terms of number of pvpers, or quit the game entirely as each last bastion of CC was killed off.
Healing has gotten so strong, that the Engineers resistances, and miracle worker are not only not required, but to the point that taking Engineer at all on a pvp team means you have crippled your team's effectiveness either by removing High Damage, or a critically needed Debuff. That's not balance, that's not fun. That's ****ing stupid.
The only guilds that are left are the heal and burst intensive guilds, who have toons decked in the best gear.
PvP has become tremendously less approachable thanks to the azn farm experience, starbases, TRIBBLE poor CC (which effectively eliminates an entire ship chassis and play style from the game), and monotonous and boring gameplay.
Change Nadion Inversion so that it not only reduces power drain to self by 56% but also drain power to all attacking enemies by 56% for the duration.
What you two just described, an evolving meta, team builds instead of cookie cutter role builds, and so fourth, sound so amazing I'm a bit sad to have missed it.
Not an evolving one.
team builds are a great deal less complex than they were, as is the gameplay.
It's all gear, burst and heals now.
Build a ship with heals, and it's better than one that has CC.
Yeah... playing yoyo is such a step up from what we had alright. :rolleyes:
They some how managed to both dumb down the game, and make it less approachable at the exact same time. That's just sorry.
the most prominent weakness thats no longer a thing is that escorts are fragile. wile fragile escorts are a thing of the past, cruisers did not become better at dealing damage. when FAW was most broken were they the most effective at that. i wouldn't exactly call that a time to lock back at fondly though. tricky sci ship damage is better then ever, with all the dot and shield bypass toys and tactics.
im more found of the current depth, i mean its got more potential to be good, but isn't better. but i would change a LOT about the current meta game, it requires major fundamental changes so all the new things you can build within the system are all closer to the same effectiveness, or at least arent terrible. to much is marginalized and useless.
Pugland and premade-land are completely different beasts. I prefer the idea of pugs simply because I prefer to hold to the idea that all ships should be able to work independently, that they should be as goo self contained units as they could be. I hate the idea of purpose built ships like pure tanks or pure healers (without precluding a ship that can throw heals or buffs to others without being based solely around that). I'm not saying a purpose built team isn't more effective, it is. Its just how I prefer to view the game. To me a "pure role" ship has no place in a sci-fi setting like Star Trek. Its a Kirk universe after all.
I think PvP would benefit greatly if it had queues where you could only sign up solo and were placed in teams randomly. But alas... that would require work to do with no guarantee of a return of resources.
Tac players have the captain ability alpha strike, fire on my mark, and go down fighting that help kill people.
Sci players have subnucleonic beam and sensor analysis as captain abilities to help kill players.
Engi players have...target subsystems, which very rarely can help kill someone, not to mention a sci player in a sci ship also has this ability.
Engineers need a unique new captain ability that will actually help the team take down an enemy. Until then, a sci healer will always be more desirable to have on a team.
Edit: reading some of the thread, I have to agree with Pardise1Killer who suggested letting miracle worker be transferable to team mates. While this is a good idea, the problem is that this will only prolong matches, and not help end them like a new offensive cpt. ability would.
@DevolvedOne
You've actually been participating in high level play? I must have just missed you all those times :rolleyes:
You should sit in on one of our IC vs. SP matches. Compare yourself to MT, Hank, or Naz and I have a feeling you'll find you still have a long ways to go if you're honest with yourself.
You always want high shield power in the current high level environment, Mav. Running low shield power is suicide. There are specific burst builds out there that have a decent success rates against semi-hardened targets let alone ones with low shield power.
Any semi competent carry role is a hero in pugland.
So both healing and damage dealing are stupid easy, despite the fact that the game is faster paced and more yo-yo? That doesn't make much logical sense. What does make sense is that you're reading into things too much from low level PvP against scrubs.
That hasn't changed. Well, maybe it has in lower level PvP.
You'd know that to be completely wrong if you've been playing at a high level.
You'd know that to be completely wrong if you've even been playing at some kind of moderate in-between level.
Zero effective CC? You know well that that's a huge overstatement.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that many control abilities weren't overnerfed, but in general you have better balance by having something blatantly worthless as opposed to blatantly overpowered. For example, you could nerf siphon drones and TIF into the ground tomorrow and balance would be better because of it. Reason being good players will just ignore the worthless stuff while the broken overpowered things can be abused.
It's certainly gone up, but that didn't stop people from asking MT not to take his, non-rep ground, non-optimally geared, non-fleet B'rel into private matches because it was too devastating. In many cases gear that seems too good not to take can become a creativity trap. For example, our optimal premade setup in SP has moved largely away from using Bugships and fleet shields. In a vacuum both seem overwhelmingly good, but the metagame has moved in different direction where some of these things don't fit in so well.
That's not the reason people don't take engineers anymore. The death of engineers in high level PvP coincides exactly with FAW being changed to a sucktastic skill. That's when myself and every other competent engineer in the game stopped playing them. Engineers have only made sense when you could boost up damage to high levels through good power management and the added healing was a free lunch on top of that. To be perfectly honest, a dedicated tank is not a good design for a PvP class. Anti-control would be a more interesting role.
I've never seen a faster evolving meta than what's been going on between SP and IC these days.
If you aren't directly involved in the evolution of the meta, you might not even notice it happening.
Uh... Target SUbsystems isn't an engineer ability. IT's a tactical bridge officer ability, or science ship ability.
It has nothing to do with engineers.
Unless the same adaptation/evolution is taking place with each experiment, then it is just specific to that particular experiment.
It's not at the meta level, no matter how much the group of scientists in one of the labs may look down on the other scientists in the other labs.
If we're going to nitpick, proper timing on a fast enough moving target could accomplish the same thing
After the scramble nerf it was generally better to have closer proximity for a stronger pull that's more difficult to escape. Depends on a few factors.
Lost?
If two teams are using the same strategy, the better team will win every time.
Hell, if one team is using some horrendous broken ability and the other team is just comprised of tremendously superior players the better team will still likely win. Doesn't change people from arguing stuff like "Siphon Drones / Temporal Inversion / Graviton Pulse Generators aren't OP because we used them heavily and Pandas still beat us!" We also flew around in Tier 3 ships before the community asked us to stop, doesn't mean that tier 3 ships aren't enormously weaker than tier 5!
Sure, the team that coordinates better will win. Doesn't change the fact that popping 3-4 CPBs or GWs at the same time as an escort alphas up isn't exactly difficult.
I don't think anyone ever thought Tachyon Beam was overpowered, but shield stripping in general sure. It wasn't picked up because it was a powerful skill -- CPB being better in every possible way -- but because it complemented CPB and in a build that was already heavily spec'd for shield stripping it became a no-brainer.
Agreed. VM is actually quite good. EPW too. You still need a couple copies of PSW on a team. TBR and SS are still decent despite the later being heavily nerfed. What's gone away is three to five guys all spamming the same skill for the win. Control is more surgical now.
I hate to sound arrogant, but we were dominant back then too. And we had the same initial knee jerk reaction to the changes to control as the rest of the community. Hell, nobody used GW as much as we did. Control could definitely be stronger. Ideally it would be somewhere in between where it used to be and where it is now, but what we have now isn't as bad as many people clinging to an old meta would like to believe.
The difference between green items and top of the line items constantly advances as power creep does. That being said, with the exception of certain lockbox ships, top level gear is far more easy to attain than it was back in the day.
Perhaps. Here's an older video of Pandas fighting a TSI A-team. You be the judge. We've only improved leaps and bounds since then.
Now if you want to talk about a boring meta, that was it. Snoozers online. FAW spam everywhere. We actually took two engineers on that team.
That's why some players had binds to fire the front weapons first.
Instavape has always been possible in some form or another.
Ouch, why so hostile? SP wasn't around at the time, and I'll openly admit to being a noob in Season 2. If you think that it's impossible for matches to last a couple hours nowadays you're mistaken though.
Pandas was never a KDF team. Our KDF fleet has been mostly abandoned ever since the rep grind came out. In any case, private matches allow for cross faction teams now.
That's a bit of a strawman argument. I never stated that reaction time is the only, or even the primary factor in PvP today. With the current levels of spike you do need fast reflexes as a healer, but anticipating spike and preemptively building defenses is just as important, ditto for controlling enemy damage dealers and maintaining initiative. Sometimes that stuff fails and you need to act fast, moreso than in the past thanks to the wider difference between heavily buffed and unbuffed (and even at times moderately buffed) targets.
Obviously, there's always going to be both. I'd argue that more extreme gameplay also means that teams need to be more on their feet, that they need to make more decisions, quicker, and more decisively.
How is it devolving? I've never seen this many variations of premade setups in a long time. When was the last time you had a premade match and who against?
Without CC now, whats to stop the bursters? CC is now more important than it ever was. Dont control a damage dealer and your screwed with the current massive spike potential. Hell, Spike cruisers are now fully viable in premades. Ask Inner circle or TRH about this paragraph and i bet they wont disagree.
The yo yo game right now is definately better than the 4 man FAW cruiser build + 1 tac of old. Now that is definately a step up from old.
Just to add, a tournament in the current climate is now possible with less than 10 rules thanks to the devs now putting in the time to try to iron out the kinks. Do you remember this much dev support to pvp ever?
Granted they broke their promises in the past, but isn't current actions better to judge than past?
Granted there are issues which have made certain aspects of the game devolve, but on the whole it has been moving in the right direction.
Just imagine how much better they'd be in a Tac or Sci piloting a Tier 5 or Fleet ship but that's not the point, is it?