So basicly almost everyone with a cloak ship is doing double taps stacking BO2 and BO3, and even in the queues this is taking all the fun of the game, a person does not have a chance to defend their selfs against this type of game play, because this players will kill you in 1 second,..
This is taking the fun of pvp, because all you see now is teams that have 2 romulan ships running double tap builds and them 3 healers just tanking for ever while the escorts one shoot the other team and run...
I don't see much of a problem with it. If you are listening carefully for the spool up sound, you can be prepared for an incoming shot.
For groups of cloaked ships doing the same thing at the same time, yes, that's quite annoying. I feel as if the problem lies with the game's current stealth detection - stealth is damned near impossible to detect nowadays without dedicating a whole build towards stealth detection. In most cases, these cloaked ships pose no threat when they can be detected. Problem is, nowadays they are very rarely detected or give the opponents the opportunity to pop an ability.
stardestroyer001, Admiral, Explorers Fury PvE/PvP Fleet | Retired PvP Player
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9 My List of Useful Links, Recently Updated November 25 2017!
This is one of the many many things that have made pvp in this game unplayable for the masses
adapt
THIS IS ANOTHER L2P issue
Is it powerful YES
Is it unbeatable NO
With all the shield heals, precise timing is so necessary its not even funny.
To be successful this is one of the hardest ships to play.
What this ship can do others cant is ANYONE is vulnerable to a well played BO stacked
Basic escapes Jam 1 sec RSP 1 sec
SJ
AMS
NUMBER 1 JUST LISTEN!!!!!
Most player that double tap don't even know how to stealth in silent they just charge and fire. Basic ears can hear a pre-buff. Only experience players stealth in and if opposing ship has any speed buffs its a no go.
This is not a I win like other builds (plasma, drains, so on), its gorilla tactic and players with no patient fail hard with this build.
A lot of players don't relies that they have been stocked for 3-5 min by a player timing a window that could be as little as 2sec depending on players and if they are using macros/binds.
+ the ship to counter alpha boats = Speedscort
IN STO NOTHING OP BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS OPif you know how to play
Ps if you hate alpha boats, just become a zombie
and
To the people saying sto lost money because of balance that's BS, I bet you they made sick money because people have to spend lots of $$ to make these sick builds.
They lost money due to NO NEW MAPS or Open PVP zone
They lost money because they could'nt give us anything in 3yr
They lost 1/2 of the pvp community before S4
They lost any returning PVP'r with LOR lack of content for PVP
They lost respect for lack of knowledge/post of there own games powers
Just throw us a bone here PWE/cryptic R.I.P.....
One huge opens Space pvp zone, it cant be that hard.......
Nova Core
ParadiseKiller
House of Beautiful Orions Zeadonouse ToLate
Am I the only one who finds it funny that he didn't mention the Aux to Bat users who can Double tap BO 3 easier then that?
While Cloaked.. Prep Bo 3.. Pop 2 Aux to Bats.. Buff (EPTW, APA, Tac Fleet etc..) Decloak, Fire, Activate Bo 3 + Weapon Bat, fire. :rolleyes:
(This is a similar Procedure I learned how to do with Torp Spread 3 + Plasma Torps)
Interesting concept, but you Aux bat is only used to reduce BO3 and not DEM or even APO which is what you need also. 90 secs vs 1min is a big difference to being in the game than floating around waiting, which is the main weakness for this Vape builds, absolutely not team friendly.
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
which is the main weakness for this Vape builds, absolutely not team friendly.
This is true.
They aren't as team friendly as a full on escort build, they have other weaknesses as well but most players haven't found the ways to take advantage of that yet.
Interesting concept, but you Aux bat is only used to reduce BO3 and not DEM or even APO which is what you need also. 90 secs vs 1min is a big difference to being in the game than floating around waiting, which is the main weakness for this Vape builds, absolutely not team friendly.
May I bring your attention to the very good A2B forum post Here
The reduction in BO time is only applied to abilities on cooldown
However if he applied the Aux2Bat after his buffs, that would be fine for the next cycle of alpha, but his cloak effectiveness is lowered significantly with an aux of 5.
Any takers on this concept and it's weakness?
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
They aren't as team friendly as a full on escort build, they have other weaknesses as well but most players haven't found the ways to take advantage of that yet.
In addition to testing, one Vape build versus a Fully pro built SCI ship (Moving and using it's abilities in real match, none of that sit still and let me vape you stuff), does not kill it in 2 secs, it usually takes about 2/3rds of it's hull, but with 2 Vape builds, no chance really.
It doesn't have many critical weaknesses tbh, but they sure can run lol, met MT once in Kerrat using this build and he sure was fast after alpha. Took alot of timing and speed to catch him after alpha to kill him.
Well once they have alphaed they can use a singularity jump/ evasive to get away. TB doesn't work on this and you need to be fast yourself to catch them to use TB After they run.
Weaknesses:
Not team friendly due to their long Cd's, an aux to bat may negate this at the cost of 3 DOffs slots which is imo not worth it.
Sensor may help but not always as they get away quick.
Obviously poor hull and they run with low shields and shield power
Did I mention Not team friendly
This build relies heavily on disabled opponents as BO misses sooo much on moving targets
It obviously takes some skill to pull kills off with this niche build. I was testing this build all day again to see it's weaknessness and strengths for the up and coming tourney and it really is OP. Crits of 100k is possible and even worse, if you have another Vape build on your team the enemy is due for some hurtin and vapage.
Any n00b can put this build on but it takes an experiance person/team to time it right and be successful.
I am not agreeing this is what it should be, but unfortunately it's the FOTM and we have to adapt as always and find ways to counter or in this case if you can't beat em join em.
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
May I bring your attention to the very good A2B forum post Here
The reduction in BO time is only applied to abilities on cooldown
However if he applied the Aux2Bat after his buffs, that would be fine for the next cycle of alpha, but his cloak effectiveness is lowered significantly with an aux of 5.
Any takers on this concept and it's weakness?
If you continue to follow the cycle on they'll hit another aux2batt or more depending on the buff you're trying to recharge. There's no way Dem shouldn't be on its shared cooldown. APO should as well if a player manages their cycles well.
A single aux2batt build would be trickier, but that's just a matter of prebuffing long duration abilities like eptw earlier in the cycle. If it's a double tap build you don't expect a long fight anyway, one way or the other.
Regarding the aux there are different options:
1. Follow aux2batt w/EPtA
2. use a low aux preset than go to a high aux/max weapon power preset
3. use aux battery
4. pick your battles, so to speak, so the time you're @ 5 aux is short and sci ships et al that would spot you are distracted.
5. Use a Tvaro and JS the target (this helps maintain tb and prevents them from proc'ing you w/a placate rep ability before you get an alpha off since tb's don't do much damage). Tvaro would also alllow you to have a psw.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
I am not agreeing this is what it should be, but unfortunately it's the FOTM and we have to adapt as always and find ways to counter or in this case if you can't effectively join them lol
Is it truly FOTM? Or is it evolution due to the constantly changing PvP metagame?
At one point, damage dealers ran CRF + 4xDHCs as this was the most consistent damage output and BO was, as you said, unreliable.
Then, we had several different items and powers add to "mitigation inflation" - rep passives, fleet shields, etc.
1v1 those things don't actually pose a humongous issue, but in a team scenario with cross-healing some targets can almost seem invincible.
Couple this with the tactic of denying APA through judicious use of SNB, and things were pretty frustrating for the old CRF+4xDHC builds.
Spike damage became a necessity - you needed to load your damage into a shorter window and not wiggle your APA in the other team's face.
Enter Romulans, stage left.
A whole new game emerged, where Tac's can protect their own APA by simply being cloaked (something KDF BoP pilots have had as an advantage for years), on top of this you get a higher damage bonus but a short window to make your kill in.
So is it FOTM, or is it just simply the shift in the metagame due to all of the converging factors?
In another 6 to 8 months from now, the landscape might be even different.
The reduction in BO time is only applied to abilities on cooldown
However if he applied the Aux2Bat after his buffs, that would be fine for the next cycle of alpha, but his cloak effectiveness is lowered significantly with an aux of 5.
lolwut. i can hump sci ships in my cloaked warbird at 5 aux.
Not team friendly due to their long Cd's, an aux to bat may negate this at the cost of 3 DOffs slots which is imo not worth it.
lolwut, there are no cooldowns shorter then 10 seconds, what AtB has doubled up. theres no doff more powerful then tech doffs, they are always worth the slots if the ship can make use of them
This build relies heavily on disabled opponents as BO misses sooo much on moving targets
BO acc is about 99% with a TB, and BO3 acc in generall has been fine since FAW got fixed.
there really arent weaknesses to a DEM doff doubletaper. especially on a AtB ship, especially on a battleclaoking AtB ship. instead of running EPtS3 or something, and having ET1 as an extra hull heal, you got EPtS1 and DEM2 in most cases. hard core tanking is never really necessary for that long when you can cloak every 12 seconds though
lolwut. AtB doesn't pick and choose whats cooled down
LOL. i guess this was bound to happen eventually, getting your own thread used against your smerf
lolwut. i can hump sci ships in my cloaked warbird at 5 aux.
lolwut, there are no cooldowns shorter then 10 seconds, what AtB has doubled up. theres no doff more powerful then tech doffs, they are always worth the slots if the ship can make use of them
BO acc is about 99% with a TB, and BO3 acc in generall has been fine since FAW got fixed.
there really arent weaknesses to a DEM doff doubletaper. especially on a AtB ship, especially on a battleclaoking AtB ship. instead of running EPtS3 or something, and having ET1 as an extra hull heal, you got EPtS1 and DEM2 in most cases. hard core tanking is never really necessary for that long when you can cloak every 12 seconds though
The guy earlier popped the Aux to bat after BO3 activation before any other abilities, that was what i was refering to.
From my understanding:
-Tech doffs only affect abilities already on cooldown when A2B is activated. It is not passive, nor does it last the entire time A2B is active.
However I do also come across the quote:
"Spamming" 2 copies of A2B with 3 purple Tech doffs will apply the reduction every 10 seconds. This means that abilities with longer cooldowns will have it reduced multiple times. 'Redricky'
So you are correct in that sense after a 10 sec wait
In regards to the cloak, I never said it would be useless, rather reduced theoretically
On using Aux to Bat on a double tap you reduce the DEM CD from 90secs to 1min which is useful and probably the main ability to reduce cd on.
Using 3 Technicians will leave you with a marion and a BO Doff and no more space for others if you want to vary your builds.
However this vape build depends on on support to help you make sure you and your vape buddy score succesfully. But unfortunately vapes can't help their buddies apart from sitting around cloaked and waiting for the next vapictim
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
but what if they were all vapers instead of a few vapers and rest support. Team of battlecloaked, double tapped, players.... + 1 or 2 subneucs. Hit and run/ cloak all done with not timing, but keybind/macros. Best team EVAR?
but what if they were all vapers instead of a few vapers and rest support. Team of battlecloaked, double tapped, players.... + 1 or 2 subneucs. Hit and run/ cloak all done with not timing, but keybind/macros. Best team EVAR?
Yes I wondered about this too and theoretically this is a sound idea. Having all ships to have a vape build in a cloak ship of sort, no support from the scis and Vape everyone, it's entirely doable and within the rules of the tournament, just use different ships.
It will be a game of cat and mouse and who will dare uncloak as bait first.
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
Yeah, I'm not a fan of this mechanic - it's way too much burst damage in a short window. I'll probably take a look at this soon.
That's nice to hear,
but there will always be two sides,
on the one hand it takes great skill to time and kill someone with this (Your target preoccupied with killing cubes in kerrat- DOESNT count)
On the other hand newbies see this and they will say to themselves 'i want a piece of that' then suddenly they are all running around with fail vape builds and everyone is cloaked and it becomes one sided.
Undoubtly people who have attained their most optimised vape build will protect what they have as it gives them success in racking up kills both in kerrat and Premades.
It's a matter of balance and to 'nerf' it there must be careful considerations of the consequences and to make sure it is balanced as well.
Of course alot of rage will come your way both from new and old people.
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
He's got you there...chlamidiot...that is certainly a great post on A2B.
Too bad you haven't written anything of that caliber.
:P
Yeah too bad that guy got perma-banned and will never, ever, be heard from again.
While a double tap build will take 2 copies of BO and likely 2 DBB's, an Aux2Busey build can run with one copy of BO. I prefer to leave it at 1 DBB, although you lose the pure abruptness since you have to wait for the DBB to cycle. My reason for choosing a slightly slower version is that I'm going to double tap often, not just when DEM is up, and that means I need a second in between the BO's anyway to activate A2B (or something else) for power recovery.
3 purple tech doffs will take 30% of the time off of BO, or 9 sec. A DBB takes 4 sec to cycle.
1. BO buff is active on my buff bar.
2. BO tray icon cd reads 13 seconds or less
3. Fire BO
4. Activate A2B and wait for DDB to cycle
5. Activate BO buff
6. Fire BO
If you want to get even more technical (get it, tech doffs?) this cycle is actually only a valid description if the copy of BO hasn't already been reduced by an A2B activation. My point is that this is cycling rapidly and not hanging around waiting for things to come off of cd.
It's less insta-vape than a pure BOx2 DBBx2 because it's not actually stacking and a DBB cycle is plenty of time for most people to live through. Now if I had a disable in there... hmm... where could I find one of those? Maybe one that matches up to BO's cd...
Undoubtly people who have attained their most optimised vape build will protect what they have as it gives them success in racking up kills both in kerrat and Premades.
Or they'll come here and tell you exactly how they do it, down the second.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of this mechanic - it's way too much burst damage in a short window. I'll probably take a look at this soon.
The core problem is that the inflation in shield resists due to the elite fleet shields has made this instakill approach pretty much the only thing other than multi-SNBing that still works to actually score a point against a somewhat coordinated opponent.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of this mechanic - it's way too much burst damage in a short window. I'll probably take a look at this soon.
Will you also be looking at corresponding mechanics such as all of the mitigation power creep that has made all but spike damage easy to shrug off in coordinated team play?
Keep in mind we're talking about an environment that, using traditional escort loadouts, can literally require you to fire off 3 Subnucleonic beams on a single target in a short space of time or they simply will not die.
The past year has seen a stream of survivability improvements that have basically 0 downsides.
Omega Rep T4 shield regen passive, Romulan Rep Placate or "heal when you get crit", Elite Fleet shields with massive resistance through adapt stacking.
We now even have engineering consoles with literally no downsides, all of the turn rate you want +resistance on the side OR all of the resistance you want, with a solid turn rate boost.
Either way there is more resistance to be had.
Of course no one finds it fun to die in 5s, but no one finds it fun to beat their heads against a target that won't die either.
Do you think it's realistic to need to kill a target in basically a 5s to 10s window? If it wasn't a lot of players would love to go back to their consistent, easier to fly, easier to build 4 DHC ships.
So I'm fine if you want to tone down spike, and bring up attrition damage to compensate, as well as go and review the massive survivability inflation that has run rampant - but please keep in mind the puzzle is a lot bigger than this thread makes it out to be.
Yeah too bad that guy got perma-banned and will never, ever, be heard from again.
Or they'll come here and tell you exactly how they do it, down the second.
I am surprised dontdrunkimshoot hasn't done one or rather I haven't read all 51 pages of his threads, but he has one tavro build albeit cannon setup.
I find people will not give up their builds easily, you might hear bit here and there from different people giving opinions and you could put them together to make a basic build. But if you have been playing long enough, you could just about work it out with what's out there, doffs and looking at Opvp channel.
I unfortunately am one of those people, we don't want newbies going around with optimised vape builds do we, but what you have and others have discussed, people could go away and get a decent build for one and improve on it. At the end of the day we weren't given these builds on a silver plate.
We tested them at great length, failed with them and perfected them. My build may not be the same as MT's or Emojoe/Minimax but it's something that suits my play and maximises the kill to fail ratio. You will find alot of top fleets won't give up their builds and so rightly so. You don't want others seeing what you have taken many hours to do and use it or find weaknesses in.
However what i will say about your build is that it isn't a true double tap build and it will not be as effective as there is too much of a delay between your two BO. The key to double tap is to kill them in as quick a time as possible. To give them a chance to survive is akin to not having a vape build but rather a mercy build
however in normal day to day life I use a fleet ha feh with a 4dhc setup with no BS and no cheese. I love it and it has served me well so far, even in Premades with Double tappers.
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
Will you also be looking at corresponding mechanics such as all of the mitigation power creep that has made all but spike damage easy to shrug off in coordinated team play?
Keep in mind we're talking about an environment that, using traditional escort loadouts, can literally require you to fire off 3 Subnucleonic beams on a single target in a short space of time or they simply will not die.
The past year has seen a stream of survivability improvements that have basically 0 downsides.
Omega Rep T4 shield regen passive, Romulan Rep Placate or "heal when you get crit", Elite Fleet shields with massive resistance through adapt stacking.
We now even have engineering consoles with literally no downsides, all of the turn rate you want +resistance on the side OR all of the resistance you want, with a solid turn rate boost.
Either way there is more resistance to be had.
Of course no one finds it fun to die in 5s, but no one finds it fun to beat their heads against a target that won't die either.
Do you think it's realistic to need to kill a target in basically a 5s to 10s window? If it wasn't a lot of players would love to go back to their consistent, easier to fly, easier to build 4 DHC ships.
So I'm fine if you want to tone down spike, and bring up attrition damage to compensate, as well as go and review the massive survivability inflation that has run rampant - but please keep in mind the puzzle is a lot bigger than this thread makes it out to be.
Agreed, it's not so simple than to nerf damage, you have to understand why the players have evolved to use double tap builds and thereby getting both sides of the story.
It's not easy to balance one thing as it might disrupt another element of the game. Lets hope the Devs get it right
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
The core problem is that the inflation in shield resists due to the elite fleet shields has made this instakill approach pretty much the only thing other than multi-SNBing that still works to actually score a point against a somewhat coordinated opponent.
Exactly... as much as I am not a fan of the double tap. (yes I have had ships that double tapped going back to the patch after the buggy weapon offline was removed).... it is sort of needed right now.
Frankly you see this build so often right now because... it is darn near impossible to kill most people with out it.
An engi in anything... and the majority of half decent sci and tac players are next to unkillable with out massive spike.
I am in favor of adding BACK a wepaons offline for a few seconds after an overload to prevent double tapping... and to add some cost to a skill that can honestly hit for 100k+ on its own. (the -50 power isn't enough anymore... not with all the + power doffs and items we have).
What I would honestly suggest... is an in depth look at both spike and the reasons why it is seen as the only option right now.
Myself....
I would add a 5s weapon complete energy wepaon offline to overload and remove the -50 weapon power drain.
I would then also ADD dimminishing returns to shield resists. Right now its a bit stupid that 90% of the people playing the game have 60+% shield resistance at ALL times.
(PS... this is also why you see so many transphasic bombers... and why you never see an escort with torpedos... trying to fight shields is stupid.)
If anything.... to achieve real balance...
Add diminishing returns to Shields... and REMOVE it from Hull resistance.
Yes, posting because a dev posted, but I read most of the whole thread and had a question. Which is the BO doff and what does it do?
AFAIK, there's a couple. One, Marion, gives Directed Energy Modulation an 8 second drain immunity, allowing you to fire multiple back-to-back Beam Overloads with no power loss. The other gives FAW and Beam Overload a much higher shield penetration.
If you feel Keel'el's effect is well designed, please, for your own safety, be very careful around shallow pools of water.
AFAIK, there's a couple. One, Marion, gives Directed Energy Modulation an 8 second drain immunity, allowing you to fire multiple back-to-back Beam Overloads with no power loss. The other gives FAW and Beam Overload a much higher shield penetration.
Apart from Marion, there's the BO Doff that gives 35% chance on activating BO for 30% of shield penetration
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
and why you never see an escort with torpedos... trying to fight shields is stupid.)
If anything.... to achieve real balance...
Add diminishing returns to Shields... and REMOVE it from Hull resistance.
Well I normally only use a torp on a bop to fire it with BO, but have done it on my fleet defiant recently to, also only used with BO. Gone are the 3 DHC 1 torp escort builds that used to be somewhat common back before season 6 I think.
I think spike damage from BO should be toned down a little, but not to shields, just to hull. Your idea of lower shield resistance and increasing hull resistance might encourage that. BO and energy weapons in general should mainly be used to rip away facing for torps to destroy hull. It would be nice to see more escorts able to use torpedos again. Also torps need to scale better so a sliver left on a shield facing doesn't stop most of the torps damage going to hull like it does now.
This probably needs its own thread, I have been thinking about how bad it is for pvp to be skewed in favor of shield resists vs hull resists in general for some time now, and this BO double tap issue is highlighting it.
Comments
I don't see much of a problem with it. If you are listening carefully for the spool up sound, you can be prepared for an incoming shot.
For groups of cloaked ships doing the same thing at the same time, yes, that's quite annoying. I feel as if the problem lies with the game's current stealth detection - stealth is damned near impossible to detect nowadays without dedicating a whole build towards stealth detection. In most cases, these cloaked ships pose no threat when they can be detected. Problem is, nowadays they are very rarely detected or give the opponents the opportunity to pop an ability.
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9
My List of Useful Links, Recently Updated November 25 2017!
adapt
THIS IS ANOTHER L2P issue
Is it powerful YES
Is it unbeatable NO
With all the shield heals, precise timing is so necessary its not even funny.
To be successful this is one of the hardest ships to play.
What this ship can do others cant is ANYONE is vulnerable to a well played BO stacked
Basic escapes
Jam 1 sec
RSP 1 sec
SJ
AMS
NUMBER 1 JUST LISTEN!!!!!
Most player that double tap don't even know how to stealth in silent they just charge and fire. Basic ears can hear a pre-buff. Only experience players stealth in and if opposing ship has any speed buffs its a no go.
This is not a I win like other builds (plasma, drains, so on), its gorilla tactic and players with no patient fail hard with this build.
A lot of players don't relies that they have been stocked for 3-5 min by a player timing a window that could be as little as 2sec depending on players and if they are using macros/binds.
+ the ship to counter alpha boats = Speedscort
IN STO NOTHING OP BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS OP if you know how to play
Ps if you hate alpha boats, just become a zombie
and
To the people saying sto lost money because of balance that's BS, I bet you they made sick money because people have to spend lots of $$ to make these sick builds.
They lost money due to NO NEW MAPS or Open PVP zone
They lost money because they could'nt give us anything in 3yr
They lost 1/2 of the pvp community before S4
They lost any returning PVP'r with LOR lack of content for PVP
They lost respect for lack of knowledge/post of there own games powers
Just throw us a bone here PWE/cryptic R.I.P.....
One huge opens Space pvp zone, it cant be that hard.......
ParadiseKiller
House of Beautiful Orions
Zeadonouse
ToLate
Interesting concept, but you Aux bat is only used to reduce BO3 and not DEM or even APO which is what you need also. 90 secs vs 1min is a big difference to being in the game than floating around waiting, which is the main weakness for this Vape builds, absolutely not team friendly.
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
This is true.
They aren't as team friendly as a full on escort build, they have other weaknesses as well but most players haven't found the ways to take advantage of that yet.
This is incorrect.
May I bring your attention to the very good A2B forum post Here
The reduction in BO time is only applied to abilities on cooldown
However if he applied the Aux2Bat after his buffs, that would be fine for the next cycle of alpha, but his cloak effectiveness is lowered significantly with an aux of 5.
Any takers on this concept and it's weakness?
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
He's got you there...chlamidiot...that is certainly a great post on A2B.
Too bad you haven't written anything of that caliber.
:P
In addition to testing, one Vape build versus a Fully pro built SCI ship (Moving and using it's abilities in real match, none of that sit still and let me vape you stuff), does not kill it in 2 secs, it usually takes about 2/3rds of it's hull, but with 2 Vape builds, no chance really.
It doesn't have many critical weaknesses tbh, but they sure can run lol, met MT once in Kerrat using this build and he sure was fast after alpha. Took alot of timing and speed to catch him after alpha to kill him.
Well once they have alphaed they can use a singularity jump/ evasive to get away. TB doesn't work on this and you need to be fast yourself to catch them to use TB After they run.
Weaknesses:
Not team friendly due to their long Cd's, an aux to bat may negate this at the cost of 3 DOffs slots which is imo not worth it.
Sensor may help but not always as they get away quick.
Obviously poor hull and they run with low shields and shield power
Did I mention Not team friendly
This build relies heavily on disabled opponents as BO misses sooo much on moving targets
It obviously takes some skill to pull kills off with this niche build. I was testing this build all day again to see it's weaknessness and strengths for the up and coming tourney and it really is OP. Crits of 100k is possible and even worse, if you have another Vape build on your team the enemy is due for some hurtin and vapage.
Any n00b can put this build on but it takes an experiance person/team to time it right and be successful.
I am not agreeing this is what it should be, but unfortunately it's the FOTM and we have to adapt as always and find ways to counter or in this case if you can't beat em join em.
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
If you continue to follow the cycle on they'll hit another aux2batt or more depending on the buff you're trying to recharge. There's no way Dem shouldn't be on its shared cooldown. APO should as well if a player manages their cycles well.
A single aux2batt build would be trickier, but that's just a matter of prebuffing long duration abilities like eptw earlier in the cycle. If it's a double tap build you don't expect a long fight anyway, one way or the other.
Regarding the aux there are different options:
1. Follow aux2batt w/EPtA
2. use a low aux preset than go to a high aux/max weapon power preset
3. use aux battery
4. pick your battles, so to speak, so the time you're @ 5 aux is short and sci ships et al that would spot you are distracted.
5. Use a Tvaro and JS the target (this helps maintain tb and prevents them from proc'ing you w/a placate rep ability before you get an alpha off since tb's don't do much damage). Tvaro would also alllow you to have a psw.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Absolutely, unfortunately not everyone recognizes this part.
(Or they do, but they don't want to admit it when they lack a high rate of success).
Is it truly FOTM? Or is it evolution due to the constantly changing PvP metagame?
At one point, damage dealers ran CRF + 4xDHCs as this was the most consistent damage output and BO was, as you said, unreliable.
Then, we had several different items and powers add to "mitigation inflation" - rep passives, fleet shields, etc.
1v1 those things don't actually pose a humongous issue, but in a team scenario with cross-healing some targets can almost seem invincible.
Couple this with the tactic of denying APA through judicious use of SNB, and things were pretty frustrating for the old CRF+4xDHC builds.
Spike damage became a necessity - you needed to load your damage into a shorter window and not wiggle your APA in the other team's face.
Enter Romulans, stage left.
A whole new game emerged, where Tac's can protect their own APA by simply being cloaked (something KDF BoP pilots have had as an advantage for years), on top of this you get a higher damage bonus but a short window to make your kill in.
So is it FOTM, or is it just simply the shift in the metagame due to all of the converging factors?
In another 6 to 8 months from now, the landscape might be even different.
lolwut. AtB doesn't pick and choose whats cooled down
LOL. i guess this was bound to happen eventually, getting your own thread used against your smerf
lolwut. i can hump sci ships in my cloaked warbird at 5 aux.
lolwut, there are no cooldowns shorter then 10 seconds, what AtB has doubled up. theres no doff more powerful then tech doffs, they are always worth the slots if the ship can make use of them
BO acc is about 99% with a TB, and BO3 acc in generall has been fine since FAW got fixed.
there really arent weaknesses to a DEM doff doubletaper. especially on a AtB ship, especially on a battleclaoking AtB ship. instead of running EPtS3 or something, and having ET1 as an extra hull heal, you got EPtS1 and DEM2 in most cases. hard core tanking is never really necessary for that long when you can cloak every 12 seconds though
The guy earlier popped the Aux to bat after BO3 activation before any other abilities, that was what i was refering to.
From my understanding:
-Tech doffs only affect abilities already on cooldown when A2B is activated. It is not passive, nor does it last the entire time A2B is active.
However I do also come across the quote:
"Spamming" 2 copies of A2B with 3 purple Tech doffs will apply the reduction every 10 seconds. This means that abilities with longer cooldowns will have it reduced multiple times. 'Redricky'
So you are correct in that sense after a 10 sec wait
In regards to the cloak, I never said it would be useless, rather reduced theoretically
On using Aux to Bat on a double tap you reduce the DEM CD from 90secs to 1min which is useful and probably the main ability to reduce cd on.
Using 3 Technicians will leave you with a marion and a BO Doff and no more space for others if you want to vary your builds.
However this vape build depends on on support to help you make sure you and your vape buddy score succesfully. But unfortunately vapes can't help their buddies apart from sitting around cloaked and waiting for the next vapictim
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
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Chillax. No Ego. No Drama.
Like my alien? Watch THE VIDEO
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Yes I wondered about this too and theoretically this is a sound idea. Having all ships to have a vape build in a cloak ship of sort, no support from the scis and Vape everyone, it's entirely doable and within the rules of the tournament, just use different ships.
It will be a game of cat and mouse and who will dare uncloak as bait first.
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
That's nice to hear,
but there will always be two sides,
on the one hand it takes great skill to time and kill someone with this (Your target preoccupied with killing cubes in kerrat- DOESNT count)
On the other hand newbies see this and they will say to themselves 'i want a piece of that' then suddenly they are all running around with fail vape builds and everyone is cloaked and it becomes one sided.
Undoubtly people who have attained their most optimised vape build will protect what they have as it gives them success in racking up kills both in kerrat and Premades.
It's a matter of balance and to 'nerf' it there must be careful considerations of the consequences and to make sure it is balanced as well.
Of course alot of rage will come your way both from new and old people.
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
Yeah too bad that guy got perma-banned and will never, ever, be heard from again.
While a double tap build will take 2 copies of BO and likely 2 DBB's, an Aux2Busey build can run with one copy of BO. I prefer to leave it at 1 DBB, although you lose the pure abruptness since you have to wait for the DBB to cycle. My reason for choosing a slightly slower version is that I'm going to double tap often, not just when DEM is up, and that means I need a second in between the BO's anyway to activate A2B (or something else) for power recovery.
3 purple tech doffs will take 30% of the time off of BO, or 9 sec. A DBB takes 4 sec to cycle.
1. BO buff is active on my buff bar.
2. BO tray icon cd reads 13 seconds or less
3. Fire BO
4. Activate A2B and wait for DDB to cycle
5. Activate BO buff
6. Fire BO
If you want to get even more technical (get it, tech doffs?) this cycle is actually only a valid description if the copy of BO hasn't already been reduced by an A2B activation. My point is that this is cycling rapidly and not hanging around waiting for things to come off of cd.
It's less insta-vape than a pure BOx2 DBBx2 because it's not actually stacking and a DBB cycle is plenty of time for most people to live through. Now if I had a disable in there... hmm... where could I find one of those? Maybe one that matches up to BO's cd... Or they'll come here and tell you exactly how they do it, down the second.
Will you also be looking at corresponding mechanics such as all of the mitigation power creep that has made all but spike damage easy to shrug off in coordinated team play?
Keep in mind we're talking about an environment that, using traditional escort loadouts, can literally require you to fire off 3 Subnucleonic beams on a single target in a short space of time or they simply will not die.
The past year has seen a stream of survivability improvements that have basically 0 downsides.
Omega Rep T4 shield regen passive, Romulan Rep Placate or "heal when you get crit", Elite Fleet shields with massive resistance through adapt stacking.
We now even have engineering consoles with literally no downsides, all of the turn rate you want +resistance on the side OR all of the resistance you want, with a solid turn rate boost.
Either way there is more resistance to be had.
Of course no one finds it fun to die in 5s, but no one finds it fun to beat their heads against a target that won't die either.
Do you think it's realistic to need to kill a target in basically a 5s to 10s window? If it wasn't a lot of players would love to go back to their consistent, easier to fly, easier to build 4 DHC ships.
So I'm fine if you want to tone down spike, and bring up attrition damage to compensate, as well as go and review the massive survivability inflation that has run rampant - but please keep in mind the puzzle is a lot bigger than this thread makes it out to be.
I am surprised dontdrunkimshoot hasn't done one or rather I haven't read all 51 pages of his threads, but he has one tavro build albeit cannon setup.
I find people will not give up their builds easily, you might hear bit here and there from different people giving opinions and you could put them together to make a basic build. But if you have been playing long enough, you could just about work it out with what's out there, doffs and looking at Opvp channel.
I unfortunately am one of those people, we don't want newbies going around with optimised vape builds do we, but what you have and others have discussed, people could go away and get a decent build for one and improve on it. At the end of the day we weren't given these builds on a silver plate.
We tested them at great length, failed with them and perfected them. My build may not be the same as MT's or Emojoe/Minimax but it's something that suits my play and maximises the kill to fail ratio. You will find alot of top fleets won't give up their builds and so rightly so. You don't want others seeing what you have taken many hours to do and use it or find weaknesses in.
However what i will say about your build is that it isn't a true double tap build and it will not be as effective as there is too much of a delay between your two BO. The key to double tap is to kill them in as quick a time as possible. To give them a chance to survive is akin to not having a vape build but rather a mercy build
however in normal day to day life I use a fleet ha feh with a 4dhc setup with no BS and no cheese. I love it and it has served me well so far, even in Premades with Double tappers.
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
Agreed, it's not so simple than to nerf damage, you have to understand why the players have evolved to use double tap builds and thereby getting both sides of the story.
It's not easy to balance one thing as it might disrupt another element of the game. Lets hope the Devs get it right
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
Exactly... as much as I am not a fan of the double tap. (yes I have had ships that double tapped going back to the patch after the buggy weapon offline was removed).... it is sort of needed right now.
Frankly you see this build so often right now because... it is darn near impossible to kill most people with out it.
An engi in anything... and the majority of half decent sci and tac players are next to unkillable with out massive spike.
I am in favor of adding BACK a wepaons offline for a few seconds after an overload to prevent double tapping... and to add some cost to a skill that can honestly hit for 100k+ on its own. (the -50 power isn't enough anymore... not with all the + power doffs and items we have).
What I would honestly suggest... is an in depth look at both spike and the reasons why it is seen as the only option right now.
Myself....
I would add a 5s weapon complete energy wepaon offline to overload and remove the -50 weapon power drain.
I would then also ADD dimminishing returns to shield resists. Right now its a bit stupid that 90% of the people playing the game have 60+% shield resistance at ALL times.
(PS... this is also why you see so many transphasic bombers... and why you never see an escort with torpedos... trying to fight shields is stupid.)
If anything.... to achieve real balance...
Add diminishing returns to Shields... and REMOVE it from Hull resistance.
AFAIK, there's a couple. One, Marion, gives Directed Energy Modulation an 8 second drain immunity, allowing you to fire multiple back-to-back Beam Overloads with no power loss. The other gives FAW and Beam Overload a much higher shield penetration.
Apart from Marion, there's the BO Doff that gives 35% chance on activating BO for 30% of shield penetration
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
Well I normally only use a torp on a bop to fire it with BO, but have done it on my fleet defiant recently to, also only used with BO. Gone are the 3 DHC 1 torp escort builds that used to be somewhat common back before season 6 I think.
I think spike damage from BO should be toned down a little, but not to shields, just to hull. Your idea of lower shield resistance and increasing hull resistance might encourage that. BO and energy weapons in general should mainly be used to rip away facing for torps to destroy hull. It would be nice to see more escorts able to use torpedos again. Also torps need to scale better so a sliver left on a shield facing doesn't stop most of the torps damage going to hull like it does now.
This probably needs its own thread, I have been thinking about how bad it is for pvp to be skewed in favor of shield resists vs hull resists in general for some time now, and this BO double tap issue is highlighting it.
energy weapons officer
If not I'll probably take the job.