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.
what about balancing the romulans jumpin with quantum singuliary every 6 seconds? or having twice more critH and criD than fed/kdf, with a 25% dmg bonus from cloak, and a perfect cloack cause of the high stealth value give by the boffs.
-check combat logs or watch what weapon type the high damage dealer cloaker is using and switch to the appropriate ResA or ResB shield and armor console.
-Listen for cloaked players buffing.
-keep track of the number of players you see, if one is missing assume he is cloaked and about to ambush you.
-never put all your defensive buffs on cooldown, always have something ready to use when someone decloaks or if you hear them getting ready to, then activate stuff like TT, TSS, evasives, omega, ph
-If you like to keep TT up permanently with 2 copies you need to make sure that you have other buff to use if you get caught during the vulnerable 5 sec window between tt.
-many of these Romulan double tap builds are too weak to fight out of cloak for long, simply having your own BO or CRF ready to blast them can either result in kills or them running and cloaking.
- debuff the attacker. SNB, ams, grav pulse, SS or VM with doffs can also foil an alpha, or the new elachi console until it gets nerfed soon.
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.
Put an energy cap on Marion (along with the timer). That will also fix some of the other problems that come from having too much energy on Tac captains.
what about balancing the romulans jumpin with quantum singuliary every 6 seconds? or having twice more critH and criD than fed/kdf, with a 25% dmg bonus from cloak, and a perfect cloack cause of the high stealth value give by the boffs.
Whats really fun is take a reman tact with the fleet 5x tactical console tier 5 fleet ship and then make it elite fleet disruptor. So basing it on a losely 26% xi blue console as the placeholder for the tactical power there.
5x tactical consoles
Reman tacts can get the passive for the 25% ambush buff to last 12 seconds
then the damage to shields add another 25% to that.
So roughly if you setup like this based on that placeholder you can be decloaked for 15 seconds which 12 of those seconds with those kind of weapons with the proc you are basically commanding a 7x tactical console ship plus the power you mentioned every 6 seconds too. Tis ironic to think people still say the B'rel bop is too OP and you can't really get a consistent torpedo with decent shield penetration but of course I am sure like usual that would never be considered because it would be too OP like beam overload LOL. Yet this blatant over powered monster of a ship is not balanced
-check combat logs or watch what weapon type the high damage dealer cloaker is using and switch to the appropriate ResA or ResB shield and armor console.
-Listen for cloaked players buffing.
-keep track of the number of players you see, if one is missing assume he is cloaked and about to ambush you.
-never put all your defensive buffs on cooldown, always have something ready to use when someone decloaks or if you hear them getting ready to, then activate stuff like TT, TSS, evasives, omega, ph
-If you like to keep TT up permanently with 2 copies you need to make sure that you have other buff to use if you get caught during the vulnerable 5 sec window between tt.
-many of these Romulan double tap builds are too weak to fight out of cloak for long, simply having your own BO or CRF ready to blast them can either result in kills or them running and cloaking.
- debuff the attacker. SNB, ams, grav pulse, SS or VM with doffs can also foil an alpha, or the new elachi console until it gets nerfed soon.
One thing about the TTx2, payattention to your cool down window and just make an erradict manuever so you are harder to predict and ambush. THey are likely shadowing you and preparing an attack run, alter their angle of attack and limit their effectiveness.
PvE Jem'Hadar motto:Participation Ribbonsare life.
Bo used to trigger a weapons shutdown after firing. Thank cryptic for removing that a while back.
It disabled all weapons of the same energy type as the DBB/BA that fired the overload, forcing you to either; sit there and wait it out (stupid), or spec with 2 energy types (inefficient, especially back in the day when you had to skill into energy/projectile types).
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.
im no fan ether, out side of a high level premade battle its totally overpowered.
i would propose a 5 second lockout before your ship can fire another BO
i also propose extend shield's duration get cut in half, along with the additional resistance it grants, to help compensate for the loss of true double taping
also, could you take a look at the -50 power BO takes? when you overcap your weapons power, BO takes all that power PLUS another 50 power starting at 125. overcaping helps mitigate damage falloff by keeping your power from droping as low as it would if you just had it topped out at 125, almost everyone does it. but BO is taking way more then it should, taking the 10 to 40 energy you have built up over 125 in addition to 50 power below 125.
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.
I thought the shield penetration doff worked only with BO. Does it work with BFAW too?
I would add a 5s weapon complete energy wepaon offline to overload and remove the -50 weapon power drain.
Does this mean you are in favor of taking cannons offline after firing a BO? I assume that a weapons battery or engineering team would not bring the weapons back online; otherwise, you could still use the double-BO combo. Also, the functionality of the shield penetration doff would have to be changed, since its effect lasts only 4 seconds. (I'm not saying that it shouldn't be changed, just that taking weapons offline for 5 seconds would completely vitiate the 4-second extra shield penetration.)
im no fan ether, out side of a high level premade battle its totally overpowered.
i would propose a 5 second lockout before your ship can fire another BO
i also propose extend shield's duration get cut in half, along with the additional resistance it grants, to help compensate for the loss of true double taping
also, could you take a look at the -50 power BO takes? when you overcap your weapons power, BO takes all that power PLUS another 50 power starting at 125. overcaping helps mitigate damage falloff by keeping your power from droping as low as it would if you just had it topped out at 125, almost everyone does it. but BO is taking way more then it should, taking the 10 to 40 energy you have built up over 125 in addition to 50 power below 125.
I like the BO weapons lockout idea, makes it so only classic bop alpha strike builds that use torps will still work, but the new double tap roms will be forced to learn how to use torps as part of an alpha or become irrelevant.
Other Eng skills need to be buffed and/or new skills added that don't share cooldowns with other boff skills if es is nerfed, not much for eng heavy ships to put in Cmdr and Lt cmdr slots as healers. I do agree shield resists is a problem, but also eng being irrelevant is to. right now its either use that or aceton beam, dem or ewp in those slots, something healers can't really use, and only 1 copy of a2sif is needed so that still leaves 1 or 2 eng abilties that need to be filled with something useful.
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.
Don't just look at the burst damage, also look at the cloak values of a Rom.
Right now, I can have 4 aux in my fleet Dhelan or T'Varo with a2b from cloak and nothing will detect me without Sensor Scan + EPTA (at 5.2km), or 10.9km with those and the Tachyon Detection Field console.
If you guys adjust the cloak of the Roms to make high Aux meaningful (the difference between 45 Aux and 125 Aux is 0.9 km in detection against that setup), it will clamp down on those popular a2b Dhelan, T'varo setups.
Does this mean you are in favor of taking cannons offline after firing a BO? I assume that a weapons battery or engineering team would not bring the weapons back online; otherwise, you could still use the double-BO combo. Also, the functionality of the shield penetration doff would have to be changed, since its effect lasts only 4 seconds. (I'm not saying that it shouldn't be changed, just that taking weapons offline for 5 seconds would completely vitiate the 4-second extra shield penetration.)
Yes I am saying I would make it take ALL energy weapons offline...
The first incarnation of overload had it a chance to offline beams... and it was buggy and half the time you couldn't fire that beam again until you logged out... I seem to remember even switching maps didn't fix it. lol
Yes I would see nothing wrong with it setting your weapons to zero for 5s... perhaps 5s could be changed to 3s or so... still yes I would be in favor of it being a complete offline.
All the more reason to load torpedos.
However I wouldn't be a fan of them changing it at all UNLESS they look at the issue that has forced so many players to adopt the tactic.
Shield resists need to change... that's the bottom line. There adding of so many new ways to jack your shield resist... things like Fleet shield have simply highlighted the issue that has always been there. Shield resists stack perfectly until the max resistance is reached. It used to be only a handful of very smart players that understood how to roll there buffs right and choose there power settings/gear would be above 50% resist almost all the time.
Now there is no thought involved to achieve the same effect... Spam 2 copies of EPTS, or run doffs to do the same thing... and slot a Fleet Shield. Done.... chances are you resists will be north of 50% all the time... making anything short of doubled up overloads hitting you with in a second or 2... pretty much pointless.
I think the best solution is what I stated.... Give Shield Resistance Diminishing Returns... Take the Hull resist formula and make it Stack... pretty much reverse the way it works right now.... At that point you can also take Tac Team and fix it... removing the very stupid shield quadrupling mechanic it is now. They could also add back a tweaked version of the overload offline mechanic.
People would have shields down more often... and they would have hulls that could take more of a punch.... net result more diversified DPS builds.... More interesting and more Trek like game play.
Demystify that ****, the sooner you do it. The less people complain about the setups.
9 days before a tourney too, that would be nice lol, But in all honesty what's already been said isn't new and we all know it, but it takes a team to defeat 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)
In regards to reducing the Vape builds, seeing a delay of 2-3secs before the second BO would more than give ppl a chance to escape and leave vape for coordinated premades.
However with the new changes to the Subspace integration circuit, it is now more suitable to dealing with vapers
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
I thought the shield penetration doff worked only with BO. Does it work with BFAW too?
How it works is that, when you hit someone with BO, you can put a tactical debuff (dunno the name exactly, but it is cleared with TT) that will grant ALL weapons fire, I believe from any source, could be mistaken, to have considerable more bleed through.
Namely, if you have 10% normally, and a purple version of the DOFF procs, that is an extra 30% damage going through shields.
Ignoring resists for sake of example, here are some made-up numbers to give you an idea of how it works:
Quantum torpedoes, 5000 damage. Normal bleed, 10%, normal bleed damage, 500.
With DOFF: 40% bleed, 2000 bleed damage.
Transphasic torp: 1500 damage. Normal bleed, 50% (10% base, 40% bonus), normal bleed damage, 750.
With DOFF: 80% bleed, 1200 damage
Made-up numbers, except on the bleed through stuff, but I hope that helps.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
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.
With all due respect. There are many things wonky about beams, resists, energy drain, and the role of spike in sto's meta.
I'm not even sure BO stacking is on that list for me. As glad as i am that a dev is looking into mechanics. Your priorities are screwed.
If you don't like bo as the go to option of escorts and warbirds. Why release the new BO doff making it even stronger? Followed by elachi DBB? To be combined with Marion
All the while, the one class that has beam skills as a cpt skill and Bleedthorugh Bofff skills is dieing by the way side. (thats eng btw, those yellow guys that are still part of the game in some weird twilight way.)
My PvP experience isn't very vast, but I have run into a few double tappers in both the Arenas and Ker'rat. And they are quite... brutal. However I have only ever died to them when I got hit by the Elachi console at the same time. They are survivable, but that's also because I am paranoid as hell and always listening for buffs etc.
However, if you're already engaged in a fight with something, that double tap coming out of nowhere is usually a deathblow. But tbh, the advice marc gave (IE the TT and EPtS and always having something left over out of the cycle just in case) was gold. I can remember a few times where I survived a double tap because of precisely a few things he named.
But I have noticed that I was killed through my shields a few times by this one particular T'varo from HoBOs. They would double tap my shields (FACR so I survived that easily), but then all of a sudden, even with TT active, my bleedthrough spiked like crazy, as in I was seeing values of over 1k on my hull through my shields (fleet resilients), even with a double neutronium and 7 points in hull plating. Not completely sure what that was, but I know said person (won't name them) was using tetryon DHCs x2 and tetryon DBB x2.
But to something other than a cruiser, this double tapping business is very problematic, and usually a death sentence. And even to tank cruisers, it's still devastating.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
My PvP experience isn't very vast, but I have run into a few double tappers in both the Arenas and Ker'rat. And they are quite... brutal. However I have only ever died to them when I got hit by the Elachi console at the same time. They are survivable, but that's also because I am paranoid as hell and always listening for buffs etc.
However, if you're already engaged in a fight with something, that double tap coming out of nowhere is usually a deathblow. But tbh, the advice marc gave (IE the TT and EPtS and always having something left over out of the cycle just in case) was gold. I can remember a few times where I survived a double tap because of precisely a few things he named.
But I have noticed that I was killed through my shields a few times by this one particular T'varo from HoBOs. They would double tap my shields (FACR so I survived that easily), but then all of a sudden, even with TT active, my bleedthrough spiked like crazy, as in I was seeing values of over 1k on my hull through my shields (fleet resilients), even with a double neutronium and 7 points in hull plating. Not completely sure what that was, but I know said person (won't name them) was using tetryon DHCs x2 and tetryon DBB x2.
But to something other than a cruiser, this double tapping business is very problematic, and usually a death sentence. And even to tank cruisers, it's still devastating.
Double neutronium and hull plating won't save you against insane crits.
If he wasn't using Tetryons, he was using those Elachi disruptor beam banks.
Don't just look at the burst damage, also look at the cloak values of a Rom.
Right now, I can have 4 aux in my fleet Dhelan or T'Varo with a2b from cloak and nothing will detect me without Sensor Scan + EPTA (at 5.2km), or 10.9km with those and the Tachyon Detection Field console.
If you guys adjust the cloak of the Roms to make high Aux meaningful (the difference between 45 Aux and 125 Aux is 0.9 km in detection against that setup), it will clamp down on those popular a2b Dhelan, T'varo setups.
The Stealth Bonuses from BOFFs (per the March 13th, 2013 release notes) are not supposed to stack. Don't remember when they started stacking again...which makes the 80 Stealth one might normally get from the 45 to 125 Aux kind of moot.
I agree that the double tap is a problem in this game. the solution you set forth makes sense , however there are other things that are a great concern as well such as the Doffs that make them do 30% chance to ignore shields (energy weapons doff).
Not in-game right now; but I distinctly recall that the 30% chance to ignore shields this boff offers comes from every *other* weapon than the one firing the BO.
As for double-tapping, I'd say nerf the sh*t out of it! Disabling weps for a few secs after a BO is not only an elegant solution, but makes great sense conceptually too (as in: it makes sense the weps would have to recover a bit from the overload).
I would like to offer a counter, first off with ignoring shields, elachi weapons can 1 hit KO fully buffed out of cloak as well and if a BoP or other BO out of clock and all weapons are disabled for a sec, the BoP is completely defenseless, meaning BO would go away completely (as in no one would use it)
How about instead of stacking, you make it that it replaces the other copy of BO when you activate a second (you activated BO3, you wait 15 sec and activate BO2, it replaces BO3 with 2 instead of stacking)? As the system works now, you activate one copy and than another they stack and you get a 2 on the icon, each being used as the beam fires (with Marion/DEM there is almost no hit to your current power lvl). Another solution would be to increase the shared CD to 30 seconds, so not even an Aux2Batt would allow repid firing of BO.
Hi, my name is: Elim Garak, Former Cardassian Oppressor
LTS, here since...when did this game launch again?
Adjust shields to not resist kinetic damage. Either have that resist lowered, or removed. Now, shields could GET kinetic resistance still, but it'd be subject to all the same rules as energy resists are currently.
Torpedoes, due to their usually slower speed (which is an issue by itself, but a topic for another thread), and longer recharge are generally ignored by a lot of people, even in PvE, mostly because of the huge natural resists all shields have vs. torpedoes.
Even a SLIVER of shields will stop a heavily buffed HY torpedo almost entirely and leave the hull virtually untouched. I won't bring 'canon' into my argument, but torpedoes, except by VERY good timing (and a bit of luck) are extremely difficult to actually hit hull with.
That's why transphasics are popular, not so much the damage (exception being the Breen Cluster torp), but the fact that a decent amount of said damage actually hits HULL instead of shields is what makes em better than some other torps.
Other torps can have their usage of course, like Chronitons for the slow, well-times Quantums for spike, true true.
But they still aren't used as often compared to BO.
All I'm saying is, if you want to alter BO, including BO stacking, go ahead if you want, but just keep in mind that there's a WHOLE other series of weapons that've been mostly left by the wayside for a long time, and I bet people would use them if shields weren't such a factor.
Torpedoes and mines are still on long CDs, and while they could be a little too effective with the numbers some folks can achieve on em (I don't doubt DDIS and others who are good with torps have hit some wicked-strong Quantum crits and such), there are still a lot of takes for using a torp. Longer CD, more 'hit or miss' kind of firing compared to BO shots
As in, if you miss with a BO shot, you just ignore it, maybe pop a weapon battery, and move on, still able to fire all your weapons without worry. Compared to a...torpedo HY attack, which, if you miss with that, you are out both a whole tac buff and an entire weapon slot until the torp comes off of cooldown.
Heck, even without the buff, a normal torp shot, if you miss it, you are out of that torp until the CD is gone. Sure there are DOFFs, but you gotta be willing to slot PWO DOFFs instead of other things like an AP DOFF, or a Technician, etc.
Anyways, if you choose to alter BO builds, that's ok, I'm pretty neutral on that. But whether you do or don't, look at torpedoes and other kinetic damage, they have excellent spike potential while still having some pretty balancing drawbacks, yet the huge kinetic resists on shields REALLY hurts em for the most part.
And if none of that convinced you Hawk, consider this: It'd be great for PvE too.
Think about it, right now a lot of folks have the idea of 'DHCs and turrets, or a lot of BAs', but rarely mines or torps (primary exception being KCB). Or if they do, it's again transphasics, or they slot it for the sake of being 'canon' with their ships (like slotting Quantum torpedoes on a Fed ship). But if kinetic was good against shields, I think you'd see a TON of people who play lots of PvE use torpedoes, because they wouldn't be fighting against that kinetic resists that even the NPCs have on their shields.
I'm done rambling now Hawk, I've talked your ear off quite a bit, but I felt that this was a good time to mention this since you seemed receptive to comments about all this, and I figured maybe bringing up kinetic damage again for an adjustment.
Heck, if you changed it so you couldn't double-tap a BO, that would in some ways make it more difficult to hit people with torps because you'd not be making as many holes in shields to hit with torpedoes in the first place.
(Apologies ahead of time DDIS, I know I basically stole your idea)
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
I would like to offer a counter, first off with ignoring shields, elachi weapons can 1 hit KO fully buffed out of cloak as well and if a BoP or other BO out of clock and all weapons are disabled for a sec, the BoP is completely defenseless, meaning BO would go away completely (as in no one would use it)
How about instead of stacking, you make it that it replaces the other copy of BO when you activate a second (you activated BO3, you wait 15 sec and activate BO2, it replaces BO3 with 2 instead of stacking)? As the system works now, you activate one copy and than another they stack and you get a 2 on the icon, each being used as the beam fires (with Marion/DEM there is almost no hit to your current power lvl). Another solution would be to increase the shared CD to 30 seconds, so not even an Aux2Batt would allow repid firing of BO.
there is a problem in your solution... if you buff the overload and wait 29 secs fire it you will have another overload avaiable and shoot again...
the only solution is the 5 secs cooldown Between Beam Overload fire
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Federation :: Fleetless :: Klingon Jorge Silva - Tac | Nayja - Sci | Jorge E. Silva - Eng Jorge R. Silva - Tac (Romulan Fed) Nayja K Silva - Sci | Vurg'jah - Tac
Perhaps the whole solution is to simply balance the stupid bridge officer imbalance from fed/kdf versus romulans..
Romulan vs Fed/kdf = 7.5% crith, 18% severity.
On the other hand they can also achieve unrealistically high bonus defense with stacking the superior infiltrator boffs. Didnt calculate but that i think the. bonus defense could be difference of 30% even versus a fed/kdf.
If this was in either way balanced, beam overloads would have ALOT more chance to miss, and it would be even harder to pull off. Bonus defense is the big killer of beam overload builds in general. Ill admit before LoR timing with slows (tb and stuff) was alot more difficult and required then currently.
I blame the massive imbalance on the boff aspect since LoR. Also stealth detection is pretty screwed up in this game.
Trying to fix a years old tactic or game mechanic simply becuase they made other indirect factors receive a nerf/buff doesnt seem to be the way to fix things imo. It will only limit builds even further. In that case we are seemingly getting closer to a game were nothing can be combined and stacked or chained which will seriosly simplify the game and remove any fun of tweaking builds. Boring game of chess. back to the old days of 2-3 hour battles what startrek is all about, right? haha
Comments
what about balancing the romulans jumpin with quantum singuliary every 6 seconds? or having twice more critH and criD than fed/kdf, with a 25% dmg bonus from cloak, and a perfect cloack cause of the high stealth value give by the boffs.
Vin Naftero@playhard88 - FED Sciencie
K'tan@playhard88 - KDF Tactical
Argento@playhard88 - RRF Tactical (FED)
-check combat logs or watch what weapon type the high damage dealer cloaker is using and switch to the appropriate ResA or ResB shield and armor console.
-Listen for cloaked players buffing.
-keep track of the number of players you see, if one is missing assume he is cloaked and about to ambush you.
-never put all your defensive buffs on cooldown, always have something ready to use when someone decloaks or if you hear them getting ready to, then activate stuff like TT, TSS, evasives, omega, ph
-If you like to keep TT up permanently with 2 copies you need to make sure that you have other buff to use if you get caught during the vulnerable 5 sec window between tt.
-many of these Romulan double tap builds are too weak to fight out of cloak for long, simply having your own BO or CRF ready to blast them can either result in kills or them running and cloaking.
- debuff the attacker. SNB, ams, grav pulse, SS or VM with doffs can also foil an alpha, or the new elachi console until it gets nerfed soon.
At the very least they should remove the gravwell funciton. Jump and target-break is more than enough for a free power.
Whats really fun is take a reman tact with the fleet 5x tactical console tier 5 fleet ship and then make it elite fleet disruptor. So basing it on a losely 26% xi blue console as the placeholder for the tactical power there.
5x tactical consoles
Reman tacts can get the passive for the 25% ambush buff to last 12 seconds
then the damage to shields add another 25% to that.
So roughly if you setup like this based on that placeholder you can be decloaked for 15 seconds which 12 of those seconds with those kind of weapons with the proc you are basically commanding a 7x tactical console ship plus the power you mentioned every 6 seconds too. Tis ironic to think people still say the B'rel bop is too OP and you can't really get a consistent torpedo with decent shield penetration but of course I am sure like usual that would never be considered because it would be too OP like beam overload LOL. Yet this blatant over powered monster of a ship is not balanced
One thing about the TTx2, payattention to your cool down window and just make an erradict manuever so you are harder to predict and ambush. THey are likely shadowing you and preparing an attack run, alter their angle of attack and limit their effectiveness.
It disabled all weapons of the same energy type as the DBB/BA that fired the overload, forcing you to either; sit there and wait it out (stupid), or spec with 2 energy types (inefficient, especially back in the day when you had to skill into energy/projectile types).
Commander, Starfleet Corps of Engineers • 7th Fleet
Commanding Officer, U.S.S. HEART OF OAK • NX-1759-B • Odyssey class Star Cruiser ( Lexington Tactical Configuration))
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im no fan ether, out side of a high level premade battle its totally overpowered.
i would propose a 5 second lockout before your ship can fire another BO
i also propose extend shield's duration get cut in half, along with the additional resistance it grants, to help compensate for the loss of true double taping
also, could you take a look at the -50 power BO takes? when you overcap your weapons power, BO takes all that power PLUS another 50 power starting at 125. overcaping helps mitigate damage falloff by keeping your power from droping as low as it would if you just had it topped out at 125, almost everyone does it. but BO is taking way more then it should, taking the 10 to 40 energy you have built up over 125 in addition to 50 power below 125.
I thought the shield penetration doff worked only with BO. Does it work with BFAW too?
Does this mean you are in favor of taking cannons offline after firing a BO? I assume that a weapons battery or engineering team would not bring the weapons back online; otherwise, you could still use the double-BO combo. Also, the functionality of the shield penetration doff would have to be changed, since its effect lasts only 4 seconds. (I'm not saying that it shouldn't be changed, just that taking weapons offline for 5 seconds would completely vitiate the 4-second extra shield penetration.)
I like the BO weapons lockout idea, makes it so only classic bop alpha strike builds that use torps will still work, but the new double tap roms will be forced to learn how to use torps as part of an alpha or become irrelevant.
Other Eng skills need to be buffed and/or new skills added that don't share cooldowns with other boff skills if es is nerfed, not much for eng heavy ships to put in Cmdr and Lt cmdr slots as healers. I do agree shield resists is a problem, but also eng being irrelevant is to. right now its either use that or aceton beam, dem or ewp in those slots, something healers can't really use, and only 1 copy of a2sif is needed so that still leaves 1 or 2 eng abilties that need to be filled with something useful.
Don't just look at the burst damage, also look at the cloak values of a Rom.
Right now, I can have 4 aux in my fleet Dhelan or T'Varo with a2b from cloak and nothing will detect me without Sensor Scan + EPTA (at 5.2km), or 10.9km with those and the Tachyon Detection Field console.
If you guys adjust the cloak of the Roms to make high Aux meaningful (the difference between 45 Aux and 125 Aux is 0.9 km in detection against that setup), it will clamp down on those popular a2b Dhelan, T'varo setups.
Do it, man.
Demystify that ****, the sooner you do it. The less people complain about the setups.
Yes I am saying I would make it take ALL energy weapons offline...
The first incarnation of overload had it a chance to offline beams... and it was buggy and half the time you couldn't fire that beam again until you logged out... I seem to remember even switching maps didn't fix it. lol
Yes I would see nothing wrong with it setting your weapons to zero for 5s... perhaps 5s could be changed to 3s or so... still yes I would be in favor of it being a complete offline.
All the more reason to load torpedos.
However I wouldn't be a fan of them changing it at all UNLESS they look at the issue that has forced so many players to adopt the tactic.
Shield resists need to change... that's the bottom line. There adding of so many new ways to jack your shield resist... things like Fleet shield have simply highlighted the issue that has always been there. Shield resists stack perfectly until the max resistance is reached. It used to be only a handful of very smart players that understood how to roll there buffs right and choose there power settings/gear would be above 50% resist almost all the time.
Now there is no thought involved to achieve the same effect... Spam 2 copies of EPTS, or run doffs to do the same thing... and slot a Fleet Shield. Done.... chances are you resists will be north of 50% all the time... making anything short of doubled up overloads hitting you with in a second or 2... pretty much pointless.
I think the best solution is what I stated.... Give Shield Resistance Diminishing Returns... Take the Hull resist formula and make it Stack... pretty much reverse the way it works right now.... At that point you can also take Tac Team and fix it... removing the very stupid shield quadrupling mechanic it is now. They could also add back a tweaked version of the overload offline mechanic.
People would have shields down more often... and they would have hulls that could take more of a punch.... net result more diversified DPS builds.... More interesting and more Trek like game play.
9 days before a tourney too, that would be nice lol, But in all honesty what's already been said isn't new and we all know it, but it takes a team to defeat double tappers.
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
However with the new changes to the Subspace integration circuit, it is now more suitable to dealing with vapers
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
How it works is that, when you hit someone with BO, you can put a tactical debuff (dunno the name exactly, but it is cleared with TT) that will grant ALL weapons fire, I believe from any source, could be mistaken, to have considerable more bleed through.
Namely, if you have 10% normally, and a purple version of the DOFF procs, that is an extra 30% damage going through shields.
Ignoring resists for sake of example, here are some made-up numbers to give you an idea of how it works:
Quantum torpedoes, 5000 damage. Normal bleed, 10%, normal bleed damage, 500.
With DOFF: 40% bleed, 2000 bleed damage.
Transphasic torp: 1500 damage. Normal bleed, 50% (10% base, 40% bonus), normal bleed damage, 750.
With DOFF: 80% bleed, 1200 damage
Made-up numbers, except on the bleed through stuff, but I hope that helps.
With all due respect. There are many things wonky about beams, resists, energy drain, and the role of spike in sto's meta.
I'm not even sure BO stacking is on that list for me. As glad as i am that a dev is looking into mechanics. Your priorities are screwed.
If you don't like bo as the go to option of escorts and warbirds. Why release the new BO doff making it even stronger? Followed by elachi DBB? To be combined with Marion
All the while, the one class that has beam skills as a cpt skill and Bleedthorugh Bofff skills is dieing by the way side. (thats eng btw, those yellow guys that are still part of the game in some weird twilight way.)
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
However, if you're already engaged in a fight with something, that double tap coming out of nowhere is usually a deathblow. But tbh, the advice marc gave (IE the TT and EPtS and always having something left over out of the cycle just in case) was gold. I can remember a few times where I survived a double tap because of precisely a few things he named.
But I have noticed that I was killed through my shields a few times by this one particular T'varo from HoBOs. They would double tap my shields (FACR so I survived that easily), but then all of a sudden, even with TT active, my bleedthrough spiked like crazy, as in I was seeing values of over 1k on my hull through my shields (fleet resilients), even with a double neutronium and 7 points in hull plating. Not completely sure what that was, but I know said person (won't name them) was using tetryon DHCs x2 and tetryon DBB x2.
But to something other than a cruiser, this double tapping business is very problematic, and usually a death sentence. And even to tank cruisers, it's still devastating.
Double neutronium and hull plating won't save you against insane crits.
If he wasn't using Tetryons, he was using those Elachi disruptor beam banks.
The Stealth Bonuses from BOFFs (per the March 13th, 2013 release notes) are not supposed to stack. Don't remember when they started stacking again...which makes the 80 Stealth one might normally get from the 45 to 125 Aux kind of moot.
Not in-game right now; but I distinctly recall that the 30% chance to ignore shields this boff offers comes from every *other* weapon than the one firing the BO.
As for double-tapping, I'd say nerf the sh*t out of it! Disabling weps for a few secs after a BO is not only an elegant solution, but makes great sense conceptually too (as in: it makes sense the weps would have to recover a bit from the overload).
How about instead of stacking, you make it that it replaces the other copy of BO when you activate a second (you activated BO3, you wait 15 sec and activate BO2, it replaces BO3 with 2 instead of stacking)? As the system works now, you activate one copy and than another they stack and you get a 2 on the icon, each being used as the beam fires (with Marion/DEM there is almost no hit to your current power lvl). Another solution would be to increase the shared CD to 30 seconds, so not even an Aux2Batt would allow repid firing of BO.
LTS, here since...when did this game launch again?
Adjust shields to not resist kinetic damage. Either have that resist lowered, or removed. Now, shields could GET kinetic resistance still, but it'd be subject to all the same rules as energy resists are currently.
Torpedoes, due to their usually slower speed (which is an issue by itself, but a topic for another thread), and longer recharge are generally ignored by a lot of people, even in PvE, mostly because of the huge natural resists all shields have vs. torpedoes.
Even a SLIVER of shields will stop a heavily buffed HY torpedo almost entirely and leave the hull virtually untouched. I won't bring 'canon' into my argument, but torpedoes, except by VERY good timing (and a bit of luck) are extremely difficult to actually hit hull with.
That's why transphasics are popular, not so much the damage (exception being the Breen Cluster torp), but the fact that a decent amount of said damage actually hits HULL instead of shields is what makes em better than some other torps.
Other torps can have their usage of course, like Chronitons for the slow, well-times Quantums for spike, true true.
But they still aren't used as often compared to BO.
All I'm saying is, if you want to alter BO, including BO stacking, go ahead if you want, but just keep in mind that there's a WHOLE other series of weapons that've been mostly left by the wayside for a long time, and I bet people would use them if shields weren't such a factor.
Torpedoes and mines are still on long CDs, and while they could be a little too effective with the numbers some folks can achieve on em (I don't doubt DDIS and others who are good with torps have hit some wicked-strong Quantum crits and such), there are still a lot of takes for using a torp. Longer CD, more 'hit or miss' kind of firing compared to BO shots
As in, if you miss with a BO shot, you just ignore it, maybe pop a weapon battery, and move on, still able to fire all your weapons without worry. Compared to a...torpedo HY attack, which, if you miss with that, you are out both a whole tac buff and an entire weapon slot until the torp comes off of cooldown.
Heck, even without the buff, a normal torp shot, if you miss it, you are out of that torp until the CD is gone. Sure there are DOFFs, but you gotta be willing to slot PWO DOFFs instead of other things like an AP DOFF, or a Technician, etc.
Anyways, if you choose to alter BO builds, that's ok, I'm pretty neutral on that. But whether you do or don't, look at torpedoes and other kinetic damage, they have excellent spike potential while still having some pretty balancing drawbacks, yet the huge kinetic resists on shields REALLY hurts em for the most part.
And if none of that convinced you Hawk, consider this: It'd be great for PvE too.
Think about it, right now a lot of folks have the idea of 'DHCs and turrets, or a lot of BAs', but rarely mines or torps (primary exception being KCB). Or if they do, it's again transphasics, or they slot it for the sake of being 'canon' with their ships (like slotting Quantum torpedoes on a Fed ship). But if kinetic was good against shields, I think you'd see a TON of people who play lots of PvE use torpedoes, because they wouldn't be fighting against that kinetic resists that even the NPCs have on their shields.
I'm done rambling now Hawk, I've talked your ear off quite a bit, but I felt that this was a good time to mention this since you seemed receptive to comments about all this, and I figured maybe bringing up kinetic damage again for an adjustment.
Heck, if you changed it so you couldn't double-tap a BO, that would in some ways make it more difficult to hit people with torps because you'd not be making as many holes in shields to hit with torpedoes in the first place.
(Apologies ahead of time DDIS, I know I basically stole your idea)
there is a problem in your solution... if you buff the overload and wait 29 secs fire it you will have another overload avaiable and shoot again...
the only solution is the 5 secs cooldown Between Beam Overload fire
Federation :: Fleetless :: Klingon
Jorge Silva - Tac | Nayja - Sci | Jorge E. Silva - Eng
Jorge R. Silva - Tac (Romulan Fed)
Nayja K Silva - Sci | Vurg'jah - Tac
Romulan vs Fed/kdf = 7.5% crith, 18% severity.
On the other hand they can also achieve unrealistically high bonus defense with stacking the superior infiltrator boffs. Didnt calculate but that i think the. bonus defense could be difference of 30% even versus a fed/kdf.
If this was in either way balanced, beam overloads would have ALOT more chance to miss, and it would be even harder to pull off. Bonus defense is the big killer of beam overload builds in general. Ill admit before LoR timing with slows (tb and stuff) was alot more difficult and required then currently.
I blame the massive imbalance on the boff aspect since LoR. Also stealth detection is pretty screwed up in this game.
Trying to fix a years old tactic or game mechanic simply becuase they made other indirect factors receive a nerf/buff doesnt seem to be the way to fix things imo. It will only limit builds even further. In that case we are seemingly getting closer to a game were nothing can be combined and stacked or chained which will seriosly simplify the game and remove any fun of tweaking builds. Boring game of chess. back to the old days of 2-3 hour battles what startrek is all about, right? haha
With warp core the code is already in game to adjust max power settings, so it could be a "quick fix"(I don't really know)
Also this would leave one BO attack unchanged, and still let you do more then one just not so strong.
It would kill BO as a legitimate option, as using it would then kill all other damage sources like CRF for example.
We don't need to nerf BO into the stone age.
It doesn't have to be -50 it could be -10 or 15