Ability Stacking, Staggering, and Chaining

sloniah

What is this kid on about?!

So after some time in my (tiny) Fleet of friends and family I came to realize that some of the more interesting and intricate details of how to use abilities are often overlooked or unknown.

My goal here is to address this and to (hopefully) compile some real data to explain it. If some one has already done this then by all means linky please.

So! First things first, what is Stacking / Chaining?

Stacking is stacking several abilities together for a greater over all affect.

Example: Tactical Officers have Attack Pattern Alpha, Fire on my Mark, and lastly Tactical Fleet Available to them on a 90 second, 120 second, and a 5 minute cool-downs respectively. By activating all of these together they get a greater over all affect than individual use.

Pretty much every one knows how to "POP EVERYTHING! MOAR LAZARS! MUWAHAHAHAA!" So I'm not going to go into that as much.

Well then what is chaining?

Simply its crating an order you use those very same abilities for a sustained affect vs. a burst affect.

Example:
Attack Pattern Alpha, has a 30 second duration and a 60 second cool-down (effectivly 90 seconds since the cool-down starts after the buff duration).
Attack Pattern: Omega has the exact same cool-down and buff duration as Attack Pattern: Alpha.

So if you use these 2 abilities back to back you now only need another 30 seconds of up time before Attack Pattern: Alpha comes back up. I now introduce you to Fire on my Mark, with another 30 second duration and a 120 second cool-down.

We now have a "Rotation" of: Attack Pattern: Alpha > Attack Pattern: Omega > Fire on my Mark > Attack Pattern: Alpha > Attack Pattern: Omega. The total rotation duration is 2.5 minutes of sustained damage. You can even extend it with Tactical Fleet II to ether 3 minutes or 6.5 depending on if you lead with it or not.

What is this "Staggering" non-sense?

Staggering is when you have duplicate abilities that to can maximize "Up-Time" on.

Example: Tactical Team I has (at max skill ranks) a 30 second individual cool-down and a 15 second shared cool-down with other "Team" abilities. Tac-Team it's self is a 10 second long buff. So in theory With 2 copies of Tactical Team you will only have 5 seconds of "Down-Time" on the buff it provides.

Why Do I care?

Well this bit is simple. With very little effort you can Stack, Stagger and Chain your abilities for Burst or Sustained damage (or healing, or tanking) so that you aren't sitting around thumbing your keyboard wishing you could actually do something after you blow everything on, or so you can reach those ungodly spikes of burst that are some times required in PvE.

The need for sustained Damage isn't often presented out side of S.T.F.s and even then it's often better just to know WHEN to create burst damage. Some of these Stagger and Chain abilities do more than just deal damage though. Auxiliary to Battery grants a significant boost to Weapons power Shield power/regeneration, and Impulse power. Tactical team provides a near-constant +18 weapons skill and automatic shield distribution to the side you need it. All of these secondary effects add up over the course of the fight.

Ok, but what do I DO?

Once again this is fairly simple. the Following is a list of abilities that I commonly Stagger.

Tactical Team I: How to use 2 copies of this is covered in my Example.

Auxiliary to Battery: Again you will be using 2 copies of this and using them on cool-down. 40 Sec Individual CD / 10 Sec Duration / IIRC 15 Sec Global CD

Cannon: Rapid Fire: (or Spread) See Tac-Team Example. Works the exact same.

So what do you want from us?!

I'm constantly looking for more abilities to Stagger or Chain for greater affect and durations. If you know of a combo that has treated you well drop it in and I will try to keep this page updated.

Also! If something I said makes no damned sense. TELL ME! I want to make sure that anyone can grasp this concept.

tevarion

Hi, I have a quick question re. Fire on my Mark. I started a tac captain a few days ago and I'm currently on lvl 17. Problem is that the ability hasn't shown up in my skill list - I can't find either the ground version (lvl 14) or space version (lvl 17) anywhere on my ability list. I haven't spent any skill points yet but I don't see anywhere that I would spend them to get the abilities - I thought it Fire on my Mark was automatically gained at lvl 14/17 (ground/space) simply by levling up?

Sorry to post a question in what is basically a tactics thread, but I can't start new threads as a new member otherwise I would have done so. The forum tells me I can only create new threads "after a certain amount of time has passed" without saying how long so there's literally on other way to get this question answered.

saxfire

sloniah wrote: »

What is this kid on about?!

My goal here is to address this and to (hopefully) compile some real data to explain it. If some one has already done this then by all means linky please.

Example:
Attack Pattern Alpha, has a 30 second duration and a 60 second cool-down (effectivly 90 seconds since the cool-down starts after the buff duration).
Attack Pattern: Omega has the exact same cool-down and buff duration as Attack Pattern: Alpha.

What is this thread? Did you even research this before posting?

APA has 1.5 min cooldown aka 90s cooldown, not 60. Newertheless if it ends sooner or later its still 90s when you activate it(cooldown does not start after the buff ends).

"Omega has same duration and cooldown as APA" How is 15s duration and 60s cooldown same duration and cooldown as 30s duration and 90s cooldown? Even if you use 2 copies of omega its 30s cooldown and 15s duration which would be 30s duration and 60s cooldown or 45 duration and 90s cooldown.

Another point, why would you not use your offensive abilities when they are not in cooldown? If I understood correctly, you use APA, and after 30s, you use APO, and after 15s, you use FOMM, if you just use all of them at once they all go into cooldown and refresh faster, not only they pile up increasing your damage, but you get that extra benefit from hitting harder against weaker enemy(due to FOMM).

canisanubis

Mash your cooldowns early and often. The sooner your put something ON cooldown, the sooner it comes OFF cooldown.

dragonsbite

This is no benefit to stacking vs not stacking. All +x% damage increases are additive and not multiplicative. It's also taken from base damage. Same as a tac console. You want to hit each ability as soon as it comes off cooldown to maximize uptime and your overall damage. The only time you'd be stacking is at the start when all are off cooldown. After that it's as the last poster said. Hit early and often. Hit each as it becomes available. If you wait to stack your dps suffers. Of course if you PvP you'd probably want to stack them as much as possible for 1 shot kills.

yargomesh

There is one benefit to stacking and that's using abilities like FAW, CRF or CSV with any EPtW ability. More overflow means more weapons fire at 100+energy means more damage than otherwise.

No reason not to stack Attack Patterns with those rapid-shot abilities since they all have the same CD.

tevarion: Spend your skillpoints, once you've spent enough to qualify for the level it'll appear either on your bars or in your powers tray.