I think more practical tests are needed to see if this is really a nerf for sci specced into GG and PG and running max aux or not. Sure the top end of them amount of damage has been nerfed, but the pull has been increased a lot, and holding enemies in the gw is whaat allows the gw to do damage, and also increases effectivnes of other AOE used on them. So this needs to be tested on groups of enemies and seeing if the extra hold strength makes them take more damage to make up for the dps loss or not.
tested, it does, gw + aoe weapons/skills does massive damage since they're now packed in much tighter, gw3's pull distance seems nearly doubled. i have a kar'fi torp boat(max aux), gw1 and 3, always used them more for the pull than damage, so much more effective now when comboed. the breaches just add to that damage, entire groups wiped out with ts3 hyper plasmas + gw's damage + secondary's from core breaches. the carnage is beautiful
vs gate spawn after ones destroyed, old gw's would barely pull in the entire spawn, and there would be stragglers freed from it, now it yanks in everything and hold it. extra gw's from doffs generated will cause a multiple pulls to affect npc's, gw ping pong ^_^
saw another interesting tactic with new gw and tbr...fired of gw, and another player fired tbr...the poor npc ships would get drawn in by gw, then pushed back out by tbr, only to get drawn in again. and it cycled like that for the duration of both skills. tbr's greatest weakness (damage wise not CC) was always shoving the enemy's beyond it's range, comboed with gw at a precise distance, this no longer happens as gw will yank them back into tbr's range.
gw requires some new thinking.
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Oh yes, fully specced out VM will cripple 5-Ldrshp ships somewhat, but utterly ruin the day of everyone else. Especially cheating Roms.
GW stakes anything down with insane GrvG.
TR drains like mad with insane FlwC.
Even PSW3 with everything into PtG can drop shield facings and stun.
Notice a pattern? This is the Sci equivalent of ALL FOCUSED TYPE ENERGY CONSOLES.
Isn't this how it should be? For high investment in one area of specialization you get great results, just in that one area - a "good trick".
I'm really pleased with GW's AoE CC when I shove a few Grav Gens in. I think the damage could scale a little bit better at the "centre" with high investment in Particle Gens (so you could have strong AoE pull OR strong damage at centre for a single target you're "holding" in the centre by one means or another, but not both), but not much. More from the point of view of the "meaning" of the ability than anything else.
Currently I'm having hilarious results in PvE with the combination of GWIII and Scramble Sensors II. Very nice, fun combo when you have lots of small fry to contend with, and are rocking some powerful torps/mines.
I still see Escorts melting things much faster than I ever could, but at least my "trick" is kind of spectacular and fun to watch, with lots of loud 'splosions.
First off, what's been done to Gravity Well is furthest from a nerf. It's got extremely positive results in both PvE and PvP.
The damage per tick is not as important. Consider it an extra. This finally gives sci an edge again. For those in PvE, you'll thank your Sci brethren for making your DPS go toward a convenient group of targets in hope for warp core reactions and for PvP you've finally scored a toy that helps cut out the 'cheap' feeling of hornet-speed DPS beasts which usually have all the time in the world to target you and alpha cleave your ship into two. Not so clear cut when they're delegating getting away from a grav well's pull.
To those who complained it doesn't do enough damage, then you're doing it wrong and looking at the wrong benefits.
First off, what's been done to Gravity Well is furthest from a nerf. It's got extremely positive results in both PvE and PvP.
The damage per tick is not as important. Consider it an extra. This finally gives sci an edge again. For those in PvE, you'll thank your Sci brethren for making your DPS go toward a convenient group of targets in hope for warp core reactions and for PvP you've finally scored a toy that helps cut out the 'cheap' feeling of hornet-speed DPS beasts which usually have all the time in the world to target you and alpha cleave your ship into two. Not so clear cut when they're delegating getting away from a grav well's pull.
To those who complained it doesn't do enough damage, then you're doing it wrong and looking at the wrong benefits.
Thanks cryptic. It was long overdue.
It is very useful for PvE but the damage reduction was unnecessary and does gimp players who are fully invested. I don't ever see them limiting Tacs this way. As to PvP ... it is still pretty useless as most players can fly right through it unless they have low engine power. EptE all but negates that too.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
First off, what's been done to Gravity Well is furthest from a nerf. It's got extremely positive results in both PvE and PvP.
The damage per tick is not as important. Consider it an extra. This finally gives sci an edge again. For those in PvE, you'll thank your Sci brethren for making your DPS go toward a convenient group of targets in hope for warp core reactions and for PvP you've finally scored a toy that helps cut out the 'cheap' feeling of hornet-speed DPS beasts which usually have all the time in the world to target you and alpha cleave your ship into two. Not so clear cut when they're delegating getting away from a grav well's pull.
To those who complained it doesn't do enough damage, then you're doing it wrong and looking at the wrong benefits.
Thanks cryptic. It was long overdue.
The thing here is though, the changes to the pull were needed, but the damage... adjustment (best word I could think of here) make it so that the lower ranks are actually even more powerful than before, making hybrid builds more effective. Granted now GW3 is a beast, but due to another thread about how tac powers buff sci ability damage, an escort running GW1 will still do more damage with it's GW than a science ship using GW3. And this is because of APO3.
So this change is good for both parties and improves in some areas that really really REALLY needed it, but still leaves sci damage behind that of an escort.
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.
I run a SCI boat (Fleet Neb) and I have put in seven or eight points into both Graviton and Particle generator skills.
I went back to some old parses I had lying around from September and compared them to some runs this week. From what I can see the damage output is about the same -- perhaps a bit lower now -- but the enemy ships are rooted much better now.
On a five person defend the starbase mission I would even see the last siege warship get pulled and tossed around by the gravity well effects now. That's something I do not recall seeing previously.
Personally I like this as it lets me setup the enemy ships for the teammates and puts more ships closer together when I use my own skills like Scramble Sensors and Torp Spread.
I've also slotted a DoFF that provides the chance to create even more GWs. Seeing the enemy ships get buffeted between the two GWs is good to watch.
It has really changed the game for my sci ships. Right now I'm setting up a Fleet Varanus for my KDF sci. With the old system I would get a good chroniton torp and slot a torp spread in one of the tac BOFFs (or eject warp plasma, or some other kind of AOE slow), with the idea to slow whatever I was fighting and then drop a GW buffed with partgens on the slowed target.
Now the chroniton spread is 100% unneeded. In fact, it is stupid to slot one, since the spread is kind of dangerous in that it may aggro stuff you dont want it to (something that is 9k away but still in the firing cone). That was always a risk before but it came with the reward of slowing a group. Now you just drop GW and it does everything. Basically just destroyed the market for chronitons even more than it was already.
And partgens seem to be mostly irrelevant. There are items I used to slot that would boost partgens, and now they are not really worth it anymore. Things like the Tholian console are borderline now, when they used to be mandatory for the partgens buff on top of the other treats.
Now the game is drop an unbuffed GW so you can shoot it with moar energy weapons. Its completely inverted.
It is very useful for PvE but the damage reduction was unnecessary and does gimp players who are fully invested. I don't ever see them limiting Tacs this way. As to PvP ... it is still pretty useless as most players can fly right through it unless they have low engine power. EptE all but negates that too.
I disagree. In PVP GW is not something you pop out and hope it catches a player that's already zooming by like a hornet. That would be a rather elementary approach. It's the icing on the cake for a disable in all reality. When you know you've stopped a zippy target with your disables THEN you pop GW. You get to slowly choke the hull while having a valid shot at popping one of the facings for a sci. Not useless in the slightest.
It was useless in PVP before though. I will give you that.
The thing here is though, the changes to the pull were needed, but the damage... adjustment (best word I could think of here) make it so that the lower ranks are actually even more powerful than before, making hybrid builds more effective. Granted now GW3 is a beast, but due to another thread about how tac powers buff sci ability damage, an escort running GW1 will still do more damage with it's GW than a science ship using GW3. And this is because of APO3.
So this change is good for both parties and improves in some areas that really really REALLY needed it, but still leaves sci damage behind that of an escort.
I get the sci vrs tac thing. Really I do. I've got enough tac experience over these past few years to truly agree here that sci's need their own edge but I don't think the war of worlds truly fits in.
To me, it feels like they're finally starting to add to the palette for sci and although I agree, sci needs more work, I think GW is perfectly in place as of now(of course that could change like all things). I don't want sci, even though I play it, to have a super weapon(and I'm sure that's not what you're saying either) but if the damage was increased it'd be too powerful.
I consider the current damage levels spec or no spec to provide adequate volume to sci abilities as a newly returned and valid ability.
The sci vrs tac thing can easily be fixed if they just link tac skills like they link sci skills. It makes too much sense.
GW is better now. End of story. It's even become vaguely useful again in PvP.
They may exist, but I haven't seen a single QQ thread about GW having been nerfed that says anything about the massive, like HUGE boost to its CC viability. And even the Dmg 'nerf' hasn't been that severe. My GW3 dropped to 800 DPS with 100 Aux and 116 PG but, because it actually pulls now, its targets now receive more of that damage. Net result? my GW does more damage than it did before.
Think outside the box people.
Thanks Cryptic, moar plz!!
"So my fun is wrong?"
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
This is a classic post commonly seen from people that are trying to run a ship/class in which it wasn't designed to do...
As a sci, your main job is to provide support to your team mates with CC (Crowd Control, Plactations etc). It is not to do damage. If you are wanting to do damage, then be a Tac officer or fly a more tactical heavy ship. There are ships that offer both Damage with good CC. Wells, Mobius, Fleet MVAE etc etc.
To my understanding they actually buffed GW with its hold and radius? Which is what it's main purpose is, the damage it does is just a bonus
Post-patch: If anyone has any points in Inertial Dampeners, Gravity Well is completely ineffective. This was proven by a few members in our fleet who tried it the day the patch was released.
I will agree on this statement. I've said it before, it sucks we can't debuff sci skill based "armor" like power insulators andand inertia dampeners.
Yeah anybody with a wealth of experience using GW knows it's been ratcheted up appropriately. I was almost certain it was going to be too powerful or vaguely lame but they've seemed to have hit an excellent middle ground. I only use it to augment lining up a target and for the unspec player, I have killed handfuls of players in PVP after a solid disable. It's actually quite useful again.
GW is different now. Its role has changed from being the primary damage-dealer for Sci to being another optional control ability. Its only "better" if you wanted what it does now.
I am taking inventory of all my ships and looking at which ones will benefit and which ones wont. Some of them will benefit from the changes, some of them will be dropping GW since it no longer serves a damage function.
Interestingly the ships that benefit the most are the ones that are able to do weapon damage and dont need GW for that. By definition that is the escort-class ships with LtCmdr sci and 4x DHCs up front, eg the BOPs, the T'varo, the MVAE, etc.
Is it better for sci that escorts benefit the most?
This is a classic post commonly seen from people that are trying to run a ship/class in which it wasn't designed to do...
As a sci, your main job is to provide support to your team mates with CC (Crowd Control, Plactations etc). It is not to do damage. If you are wanting to do damage, then be a Tac officer or fly a more tactical heavy ship. There are ships that offer both Damage with good CC. Wells, Mobius, Fleet MVAE etc etc.
To my understanding they actually buffed GW with its hold and radius? Which is what it's main purpose is, the damage it does is just a bonus
Agree. The OP had me scared because I just dropped 2 mil for a GW doff and a VR aux buffing warp core.
GW is different now. Its role has changed from being the primary damage-dealer for Sci to being another optional control ability. Its only "better" if you wanted what it does now.
I am taking inventory of all my ships and looking at which ones will benefit and which ones wont. Some of them will benefit from the changes, some of them will be dropping GW since it no longer serves a damage function.
Interestingly the ships that benefit the most are the ones that are able to do weapon damage and dont need GW for that. By definition that is the escort-class ships with LtCmdr sci and 4x DHCs up front, eg the BOPs, the T'varo, the MVAE, etc.
Is it better for sci that escorts benefit the most?
Well this is a valid perspective. That's why if they linked tac skills, this would be acceptable otherwise it's still a problem as you outlined. Under linked skills(like sci), tac captains would have to really invest in order to get the damage out of it.
Comments
tested, it does, gw + aoe weapons/skills does massive damage since they're now packed in much tighter, gw3's pull distance seems nearly doubled. i have a kar'fi torp boat(max aux), gw1 and 3, always used them more for the pull than damage, so much more effective now when comboed. the breaches just add to that damage, entire groups wiped out with ts3 hyper plasmas + gw's damage + secondary's from core breaches. the carnage is beautiful
vs gate spawn after ones destroyed, old gw's would barely pull in the entire spawn, and there would be stragglers freed from it, now it yanks in everything and hold it. extra gw's from doffs generated will cause a multiple pulls to affect npc's, gw ping pong ^_^
saw another interesting tactic with new gw and tbr...fired of gw, and another player fired tbr...the poor npc ships would get drawn in by gw, then pushed back out by tbr, only to get drawn in again. and it cycled like that for the duration of both skills. tbr's greatest weakness (damage wise not CC) was always shoving the enemy's beyond it's range, comboed with gw at a precise distance, this no longer happens as gw will yank them back into tbr's range.
gw requires some new thinking.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
Isn't this how it should be? For high investment in one area of specialization you get great results, just in that one area - a "good trick".
I'm really pleased with GW's AoE CC when I shove a few Grav Gens in. I think the damage could scale a little bit better at the "centre" with high investment in Particle Gens (so you could have strong AoE pull OR strong damage at centre for a single target you're "holding" in the centre by one means or another, but not both), but not much. More from the point of view of the "meaning" of the ability than anything else.
Currently I'm having hilarious results in PvE with the combination of GWIII and Scramble Sensors II. Very nice, fun combo when you have lots of small fry to contend with, and are rocking some powerful torps/mines.
I still see Escorts melting things much faster than I ever could, but at least my "trick" is kind of spectacular and fun to watch, with lots of loud 'splosions.
The damage per tick is not as important. Consider it an extra. This finally gives sci an edge again. For those in PvE, you'll thank your Sci brethren for making your DPS go toward a convenient group of targets in hope for warp core reactions and for PvP you've finally scored a toy that helps cut out the 'cheap' feeling of hornet-speed DPS beasts which usually have all the time in the world to target you and alpha cleave your ship into two. Not so clear cut when they're delegating getting away from a grav well's pull.
To those who complained it doesn't do enough damage, then you're doing it wrong and looking at the wrong benefits.
Thanks cryptic. It was long overdue.
It is very useful for PvE but the damage reduction was unnecessary and does gimp players who are fully invested. I don't ever see them limiting Tacs this way. As to PvP ... it is still pretty useless as most players can fly right through it unless they have low engine power. EptE all but negates that too.
- Judge Aaron Satie
The thing here is though, the changes to the pull were needed, but the damage... adjustment (best word I could think of here) make it so that the lower ranks are actually even more powerful than before, making hybrid builds more effective. Granted now GW3 is a beast, but due to another thread about how tac powers buff sci ability damage, an escort running GW1 will still do more damage with it's GW than a science ship using GW3. And this is because of APO3.
So this change is good for both parties and improves in some areas that really really REALLY needed it, but still leaves sci damage behind that of an escort.
I run a SCI boat (Fleet Neb) and I have put in seven or eight points into both Graviton and Particle generator skills.
I went back to some old parses I had lying around from September and compared them to some runs this week. From what I can see the damage output is about the same -- perhaps a bit lower now -- but the enemy ships are rooted much better now.
On a five person defend the starbase mission I would even see the last siege warship get pulled and tossed around by the gravity well effects now. That's something I do not recall seeing previously.
Personally I like this as it lets me setup the enemy ships for the teammates and puts more ships closer together when I use my own skills like Scramble Sensors and Torp Spread.
I've also slotted a DoFF that provides the chance to create even more GWs. Seeing the enemy ships get buffeted between the two GWs is good to watch.
Now the chroniton spread is 100% unneeded. In fact, it is stupid to slot one, since the spread is kind of dangerous in that it may aggro stuff you dont want it to (something that is 9k away but still in the firing cone). That was always a risk before but it came with the reward of slowing a group. Now you just drop GW and it does everything. Basically just destroyed the market for chronitons even more than it was already.
And partgens seem to be mostly irrelevant. There are items I used to slot that would boost partgens, and now they are not really worth it anymore. Things like the Tholian console are borderline now, when they used to be mandatory for the partgens buff on top of the other treats.
Now the game is drop an unbuffed GW so you can shoot it with moar energy weapons. Its completely inverted.
I disagree. In PVP GW is not something you pop out and hope it catches a player that's already zooming by like a hornet. That would be a rather elementary approach. It's the icing on the cake for a disable in all reality. When you know you've stopped a zippy target with your disables THEN you pop GW. You get to slowly choke the hull while having a valid shot at popping one of the facings for a sci. Not useless in the slightest.
It was useless in PVP before though. I will give you that.
I get the sci vrs tac thing. Really I do. I've got enough tac experience over these past few years to truly agree here that sci's need their own edge but I don't think the war of worlds truly fits in.
To me, it feels like they're finally starting to add to the palette for sci and although I agree, sci needs more work, I think GW is perfectly in place as of now(of course that could change like all things). I don't want sci, even though I play it, to have a super weapon(and I'm sure that's not what you're saying either) but if the damage was increased it'd be too powerful.
I consider the current damage levels spec or no spec to provide adequate volume to sci abilities as a newly returned and valid ability.
The sci vrs tac thing can easily be fixed if they just link tac skills like they link sci skills. It makes too much sense.
They may exist, but I haven't seen a single QQ thread about GW having been nerfed that says anything about the massive, like HUGE boost to its CC viability. And even the Dmg 'nerf' hasn't been that severe. My GW3 dropped to 800 DPS with 100 Aux and 116 PG but, because it actually pulls now, its targets now receive more of that damage. Net result? my GW does more damage than it did before.
Think outside the box people.
Thanks Cryptic, moar plz!!
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
As a sci, your main job is to provide support to your team mates with CC (Crowd Control, Plactations etc). It is not to do damage. If you are wanting to do damage, then be a Tac officer or fly a more tactical heavy ship. There are ships that offer both Damage with good CC. Wells, Mobius, Fleet MVAE etc etc.
To my understanding they actually buffed GW with its hold and radius? Which is what it's main purpose is, the damage it does is just a bonus
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I will agree on this statement. I've said it before, it sucks we can't debuff sci skill based "armor" like power insulators andand inertia dampeners.
I tip my hat to Cryptic for actually doing this.
GW is different now. Its role has changed from being the primary damage-dealer for Sci to being another optional control ability. Its only "better" if you wanted what it does now.
I am taking inventory of all my ships and looking at which ones will benefit and which ones wont. Some of them will benefit from the changes, some of them will be dropping GW since it no longer serves a damage function.
Interestingly the ships that benefit the most are the ones that are able to do weapon damage and dont need GW for that. By definition that is the escort-class ships with LtCmdr sci and 4x DHCs up front, eg the BOPs, the T'varo, the MVAE, etc.
Is it better for sci that escorts benefit the most?
Agree. The OP had me scared because I just dropped 2 mil for a GW doff and a VR aux buffing warp core.
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Well this is a valid perspective. That's why if they linked tac skills, this would be acceptable otherwise it's still a problem as you outlined. Under linked skills(like sci), tac captains would have to really invest in order to get the damage out of it.