speaking of factually wrong, the power from EPtA gets removed and used by AtB as well, it does nothing to remove the times you end up with about 5 power. oh but its worse then that. when EPtA's cool down ends, its in instant guarantied negative aux level for you, every time. theres a reason i haven't used EPtA on AtB builds for quite a wile. especially since EPtE and EPtW are SO good now.
there is not a damn thing factually false about AtB cruisers being less durable then a cruiser being used as god intended, as a healers. LOL
If it's used AFTER aux2batt, it unlocks the hard 5 aux power drop. EPtA lasts 30 seconds right around the time a single aux2batt ends, so they can be chained w/o a negative drop, again I'm talking about single Aux2batt builds.
TSS and HE are more effective w/these builds since they only require a single copy to be more effective then 2 unequal quality builds. Part of ES effectiveness is based on shield power last I heard, hey it gets a shorter cooldown too. So does every other boff power ... many of which are better than 2 copies. I wonder how hard would it be to fit aux2sif in that cycle? So yeah, I'm not seeing your point at all.
[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 think he means in comparison to some of the upper end numbers we've seen, and not specifically a comment on whether this is balanced.
Also, I don't want to be too repetitive, but...
It is not BFAW.
I know it's not FAW, I just refer to the FAW build with Tech Doffs, DEM, Aux2Batt and Rep passives combined because using BFAW with this build is the most effective with the least amount of effort. You can pretty much put a drinking bird on your spacebar and still come out on top.
Why bother using weapons that focus on one target when you can do the same amount of damage on multiple targets and not even have to be facing them or targeting them?
They dont do as much damage as focused fire weapons like dhc. Those massive numbers come from 2 things.
1st: multiple targets are attacked at the same time.
2nd. time on target as those beam arrays have wider arcs.
Try attacking such an bfaw cruiser from behind, only half its weapons will be firing on you.
Use holds to keep it in front of you and blast away. Preferably use dhc and some torpd an a beam array or dual bank with tss:s. once you either breach his shields or its taken down by tss:s the hull is easy pickings. Phasers are usefull for this because its proc hurts alot. Sure its random, but with offl?ine weapons it cant shoot back, without shieldsthwe hull is yours, without engines its defense value drops massivly and without aux no shield heals, no aux to bat to push other systems and for cloackers, no cloack available.
Try attacking such an bfaw cruiser from behind, only half its weapons will be firing on you. Use holds to keep it in front of you and blast away.
And this is where we separate the skilled cruiser captains from the clueless spacebar smashers. A skilled captain will employ a variety of techniques to "shake you from his behind," including:
1. APO/PH to break your hold, plus T4 Placate to disrupt your alpha.
2. EM to help swing that fat butt around and put more beams on target.
3. Throttle variation and frequent course changes to make you overshoot/undershoot and create an opening to maneuver.
In fact, it's the skilled captain's ability to keep those beams on target - despite your attempts to limit his or her movement - that makes them so deadly. Just flying in a straight line or, god forbid, the infamous "circle of death," is the easiest way to ensure a spikey demise once your TT and RSP are on CD.
Being elusive and unpredictable will throw off your opponent's timing. Get aggressive. Turn into their attacks. Time your EM to confuse them. Keep yourself slippery with APO and PH.
But whatever you do, don't just sit there smashing that spacebar and hoping they pop themselves against your never-ending wall of beam spam...
From the threads on the forum in the last 60 days...
- Marion is OP
- TIF is OP
- Aceton Assimilators are OP
- Escorts are OP
- BO is OP
- DHCs are OP
- BFAW is OP
- BOPs are OP
- Romulans are OP
- Elite Fleet Shields are OP
- Rep is OP
- APA is OP
- APO is OP
- APB is OP
- Everything tactical is OP
- Subnuke is OP
- Tykens Rift is OP
- Drain builds are OP
So... in order to PvP in this game without causing a thread to show up on these forums, one must be in a free level 40 neghvar with an engineer captain specced for cannons, using the 180 degree singles, white base gear, a bunch of biologist duty officers, not a member of a fleet, that has never done the rep system
Surely you haven't missed people talking about the "Fedball" or "FAWball" throughout the entirety of this thread?.
How exactly do you approach two or three separately mobile cruisers "from behind"?
You couldn't if it was more than 1 target which speaks to every situation since involving 2 or three players which are hardly to be found neck to neck and facing the same direction. You can however scimi battle cloak though which is one of a handful of ways to get that job accomplished. Then there's always the 'ol sweep and tuck where you sensor jam/grav well which can potentially end in hilarity.
Mostly a grip players with FAW premades on full blast creates an air of difficulty unsuitable to most players and to that effect your comment still stands for the majority of situations.
They dont do as much damage as focused fire weapons like dhc. Those massive numbers come from 2 things.
1st: multiple targets are attacked at the same time.
2nd. time on target as those beam arrays have wider arcs.
Try attacking such an bfaw cruiser from behind, only half its weapons will be firing on you.
Use holds to keep it in front of you and blast away. Preferably use dhc and some torpd an a beam array or dual bank with tss:s. once you either breach his shields or its taken down by tss:s the hull is easy pickings. Phasers are usefull for this because its proc hurts alot. Sure its random, but with offl?ine weapons it cant shoot back, without shieldsthwe hull is yours, without engines its defense value drops massivly and without aux no shield heals, no aux to bat to push other systems and for cloackers, no cloack available.
have fun
In theory this may be close to the truth but in real pvp scirmishes its highly unlikely to be the case.
Nowadays Cruisers compared to escorts, fly faster ,with a better turn rate with more overall damage ,better heals and resistances and are superior in just about every aspect.
Of course not every cruiser build ,but there are quite a few that are overpowered in every thinkable way.
It explains the fact that there has been a huge shift in the ship choices of the game.
In PvP ,on the Federatrion side especially, there is an absolute prevalence of cruisers
all with very similar builds,utilizing AtB/Bfaw.They add an Aux to In dampeners and not only become super strong but also super manouverable ,fast and immune to Gravities and mines...
Even if a poor escort would struggle maintaining a position on the back of the cruiser,
and use a tractor beam (wasting a cruicial for heals sci bo slot) it would be of a very short lived success.Placate proc( occuring at an alarming rate with the use of FAW) would ruin targeting,remove tractor...let alone the use of AMS,warp plasma,pH...oh and feedback pulse...did i mention fbp? ( another so OP skill.OP because simple logic dictates that reflecting damage could (should) never be higher of the incoming firepower that is initilaly causing it.)
As much as i love this game,i m afraid that at this point there is no turning back.At least not for PvP is STO
The inbalance introduced with the Doff system and the Rommies as well as all the known -and yet unknown- unintented skills available are pretty much beyond repair.
Considering the fact that most players of STO do not care about PvP,it will never become a serious issue.
Zelda is right .Perhaps its time to move into Space citizen,that seems promising.
Definitely NOT an easy choice for a trekie at heart like myself.
Doom and Gloom. OMG there are other viable pvp options than Cannon Rapid Fire SPAM.
Why is it all these people crying about bfaw 'spam' fly ships with multiple copies of tac team, emerg to shields and cannon rapid fire. thereby fitting the definition of spam. lol
whats that you guys used to say about the decloak alphas? the double taps?
something like "oh they're easy to counter, just listen, brace for impact, yaddayadda blah blah."
well. the bfaw is easy to counter. especially if your ship can rocket across the map like a , well a rocket.
Stop crying and adapt.
Really you're just throwing your credibility out the window to anyone with half a brain to see through this nonsense.
Why arent you crying about super buffed gravwells?
(cause you're using them) lol.
Here is an idea for you guys if you run into this faw spam stuff why not do a tac in a sci ship with a fully buffed fps with rsp build so say that someone is doing 24k dps you can send it back to them for 250 to 300 percent return just an idea on how to counter it.
Faw is spread out over multiple targets.... the only time a FBP could perhaps kill someone before they kill you would be if you where the only target.
In the average team match... most Faw cruisers with a basic hazards should be able to just continue as normal... most likely the sci ship with the faw is going to go down well before the cruiser is honestly in danger.
Almost the same issue with SS... all that does is increase the target number more... there by spreading the dmg out more. Takes some heat off yes... but doesn't really do any thing to harm the other team.
For the most part the logical Science counters just don't work... trying to counter a skill with 90% or so up time with science skills that in general have 60s cool downs... ya good luck with that.
Doom and Gloom. OMG there are other viable pvp options than Cannon Rapid Fire SPAM.
Why is it all these people crying about bfaw 'spam' fly ships with multiple copies of tac team, emerg to shields and cannon rapid fire. thereby fitting the definition of spam. lol
whats that you guys used to say about the decloak alphas? the double taps?
something like "oh they're easy to counter, just listen, brace for impact, yaddayadda blah blah."
well. the bfaw is easy to counter. especially if your ship can rocket across the map like a , well a rocket.
Stop crying and adapt.
Really you're just throwing your credibility out the window to anyone with half a brain to see through this nonsense.
Why arent you crying about super buffed gravwells?
(cause you're using them) lol.
its whatever though.
really. it is, whUt, ever.
This is pretty much how I feel. Escorts didn't lose their ability to alpha someone down in 3-5 seconds. I still see bugs zipping across the screen at more than two times the speed of cruisers. Escorts are doing perfectly fine. The only real difference is that there are other viable DPS options. The people who are used to zipping in behind a cruiser and nuking it while surfing the internet, are finding it more difficult.
People are like cats and hate change. Especially change that makes something that was once a cake walk more difficult.
I've also found people's ability to exaggerate the dmg output of a faw/a2b/dem/apb build. Especially considering how faw quickly loses effectiveness with multiple targets. With so many pets, aceton assimilators, photonic fleets, nimbus pirates, and other destructible spam, (not to mention other players) it's not hard to spread the DPS out. But people act as if every beam that hits them does the same damage as faw vs a single target.
Weeelllll......something about the combination stacking of beams and FaW is a little off, for the following reasons, IMHO:
1. Beams are now capable of doing damage in the broadside arc seemingly exceeding that of DHCs/turrets in their forward arc. Personally, I feel it needs some tweaking, as such high pressure damage really seems wrong with such an arc. What happened to arc/damage balance?
2. If FaW is used, there is no need to select targets. This is the prime reason why decloak alpha strikes are not performing as well as one may expect - the reaction time to lock on to a target is reduced (no need to change view and click), making it possible to deal heavy damage even before shields are raised.
3. Also, there is the matter of uneven treatment of beams and cannons when it comes to weapons power drain. We need to know - is the difference in behaviour intended?
4. I think that in premade vs. premade scenarios, these tactics are counterable - often through dedicated healing. It's when multiple users of this tactic enter the PuG queues (not necessarily teamed, they just have to be on the same side) where this is a problem - dedicated healers are rare, and people carrying middling amounts of heals are no longer able to get by.
Well, to reply to some people who feel that there are other things just as BS, most of us have kind of given up on complaining about those things. Beams are what's happening now - so many people use this method it's not even funny. At the very least doubletaps needed timing and required people to wait out fairly long timers in order to ensure kills - this, though, is a bit much. Super buffed grav wells? Well, make a thread! Do something about it, if you feel so strongly about it. Would love to see the arguments. Don't just say that we can't complain about A because B is just as bad.
Anyway, thanks for reading. It's not just one clear-cut case of a single ability being out of balance - it's the combination of so many things that were rather iffy on their own, but are really over-the-top when combined. At the very least, I would prefer that the inconsistencies I listed would be explained, even if there was no change made.
And a little other stuff - a lot of the Sci counters being bandied about is stuff that tends to be cheese-ish based on history. Elachi, SS, AMS?
I will personally adapt to the change eventually, but is the change good for the game as a whole, or is it bad? Has it made things more or less fun? That's the question to ask, not whether we can adapt or not.
It would be different if beams got the pickup they needed beyond a very narrow scope of 1 or 2 doffs. The fact that this is the case truly irritates me. People aren't necessarily going all beam because of the OP effect of beams but rather the OP effect a doff or two have made funneling players into exhibiting this need so they can better fulfill ship types and variants they have been unable to utilize in prior years. If it hadn't been for the BO doff and Marion, beams would still largely be ineffectual in performance and the spotlight would still be on to properly integrate cruisers and sci ships into the fold.
To me I still see that need. We don't nor has anyone ever truly drummed the beat of change on the premise that all we want is 1 or 2 doffs to make beams a boss instrument. The fact that this doff comes springing out of a lock box is truly telling to say the least.
Their minds are being led by monetary performance indicators rather than spending just a little more time in the kitchen and serve us something that makes mouths happy.
Right now faw seems like the perfect counter to cloak because people die the moment they decloak, and on top of that it's hard to decloak in a faw ball because... Well, you die the moment you do. But people have another option of decloaking just a little under 10km, fully buffed on resists, quickly spam the science and disengage. If successful, a few options will open for you, scramble sensors, black poo etc could give you as much as 20 seconds of possible engagement. When you do engage, spamming ams could give you a few more seconds of engagement. Possibly enough time to kill a couple.
Incredible team effort and coordination is required to pull this off though.. So maybe I might be kidding myself.
No all you are doing is presenting less targets for the people that get detected and or have to decloak. Those people are basicly gift kills.
Trust me there is no way to win with a mainly claoking team vs a competent fed ball... pretty much with or with out FAW.
I think every long time klink understand that truth. There is no place on a team for more then 1-2 claokers... at a high level of play.
Piling on a ton of P2W is simply not going to be an option for most of us either... not that I honestly believe doing that would make any difference whatsoever.
You can toy with people at 10k all you like... you won't kill them from there. All you are doing is reveling yourself for the other guys sci to at some point decloak and resapwn you.
On the old turny cloak rule bs... I think they where more concerned with the traditional fed ball that had one romulan declaok spiker on it then full teams. The ones concerned about full teams have/had no idea what they where talking about.
The issue as I see it ... there is a perfectly good counter to FAW teams.
More Faw.
That is sort of the problem.
Why go through a ton of headache trying to counter it with X or Y cloaking... and A or B combing sci skills... or B and C decloaking... while D and E sci spam....
The simple counter;
bring more healing then they do.
bring more more Faw then they do.
That is sort of the issue... we are back to the boring mess this game was during the last incarnation of Cruisers online... the dark times that saw a good 3/4 of the games players leave.
Base DPV of a DHC is 174. Base DPS is 116.
Base DPV of an Array is 100. Base DPS is 80.
DPV Ratio: 1.74:1 (DHCs do 174% the DPV)
DPS Ratio: 1.45:1 (DHCs do 145% the DPS)
Course, that only works if as long as you've got the same number and are ignoring drain. If we were going with 8 Arrays, we'd have to add in 4 Turrets...eh?
Base DPV of a Turret is 45. Base DPS is 60.
So if we add that up for 8 weapons...
Base DPV of 4x DHC/4x Turrets is 876. Base DPS is 704.
Base DPV of 8x Arrays is 800. Base DPS is 640.
DPV Ratio: 1.095:1 (Cannons do 109.5% the DPV)
DPS Ratio: 1.1:1 (Cannons do 110% the DPS)
Let's work some more stuff into that, eh? Let's give them 4x VR Mk XII Tac Consoles, give them 9 Weapon Training, 9 Energy Weapons, Omega Weapon Training. Let's make the weapons all VR Mk XII's. Let's give them 125 Aux for the T4 Nukara. Let's fake perm 125 Weapon Power. That's enough for now, eh?
New DHC DPV is 2,119.0 and DPS is 1,412.67 or so.
New Turret DPV is 547.7 and DPS is 730.27 or so.
New Array DPV is 1,217.1 and DPS is 973.68 or so.
New 4x DHC/4x Turret DPV is 10,666.8 and DPS is 8,571.76 or so.
New 8x Array DPV is 9,736.8 and DPS is 7789.44 or so.
DPV Ratio: 1.095:1 (Cannons do 109.5% the DPV)
DPS Ratio: 1.1:1 (Cannons do 110% the DPS)
No surprises there...that's how multiplicative benefits work. The ratio is maintained as those bonuses are added.
Let's work some more into that, eh? Let's do a Rombush, APA3 & APO3 (neither boosted by DOFF'd TT boosting SAP, I don't have the patience to work all that into it)...
New DHC DPV is 4238.0 and DPS is 2825.33 or so.
New Turret DPV is 1095.4 and DPS is 1460.53 or so.
New Array DPV is 2434.2 and DPS is 1947.36 or so.
New 4x DHC/4x Turret DPV is 21333.6 and DPS is 17143.44 or so.
New 8x Array DPV is 19473.6 and DPS is 15578.88 or so.
DPV Ratio: 1.095:1 (Cannons do 109.5% the DPV)
DPS Ratio: 1.1:1 (Cannons do 110% the DPS)
Yeah, cause all we did was multiply the previous DPV numbers by two...so yeah, the ratios are going to stay the same. We could crit it up, but again - the ratios would stay the same.
So how about working something in before the crits, eh? How about a little CSV3 vs. FAW3 action, eh? FAW3's about +38% damage per cycle. CSV3's about +25% damage per cycle. Course, cycle's don't match - buff durations are a curiosity given that as well (they fit better with the Array's x/5 than the Cannons x/3). Oh well...so knowing that...and just looking at a single cycle...
Surprise! Well, not really. Remember, that's a 3s cycle vs. 5s cycle. Say we fudge each out to 15s where they would normally meet (buffs don't last long enough to do that, so it's totally fudged)...
Cannon 321440 vs. Beam 322482.81 Damage. The DPS numbers would remain the same obviously, but you can see there the damage works out almost equal...
...at which point, you should be reaching for the Excedrin after the /wtf-facepalm you just did.
45 arc vs. 250 arc? WTF? Am I right? Well...you see...(and you probably already knew, but you /facepalmed so hard you might have forgotten for a moment)...Cannons and Beams have different firing cycles and drain mechanics. Those mechanics resulted in a semblance of balance as the Arrays would actually have less damage to balance out their wider arcs.
Folks could overcap Weapon Power to offset some of that drain, but it would cost them elsewhere. So even that was still somewhat balanced...
...but these days, well - we're oozing power out the wahzoo. We've got more drain resistance than you can shake a stick at.
So yep, you've got folks doing that Cannon damage with a 250 arc using Beams. Might be just below, just at, or even just above...funky, eh?
As an aside, some might say - hey, DEM favors cannons though! - and well, consider this...
30s, eh?
4x DHCs/4x Turrets: 240 hits
8x Arrays: 192 hits
Yeah, baby...DEM favors Cannons!
Let's FAW!
8x Arrays: 480 hits
Oopsie...what? Well, not only do you have the extra shot with FAW that would take you to 240 - FAW doubles procs, as well as DEM - so you'd have 480 hits.
edit: Note - the 480 hits are not necessarily equivalent to 480 hits. It's just 480 hits. Somewhere (can't remember if it was earlier in this thread or in another thread) is the breakdown of how much each hit is - as well as the potential for the hits because of CRITS! based on being Rom and stuff...
Comments
If it's used AFTER aux2batt, it unlocks the hard 5 aux power drop. EPtA lasts 30 seconds right around the time a single aux2batt ends, so they can be chained w/o a negative drop, again I'm talking about single Aux2batt builds.
TSS and HE are more effective w/these builds since they only require a single copy to be more effective then 2 unequal quality builds. Part of ES effectiveness is based on shield power last I heard, hey it gets a shorter cooldown too. So does every other boff power ... many of which are better than 2 copies. I wonder how hard would it be to fit aux2sif in that cycle? So yeah, I'm not seeing your point at all.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
I think he means in comparison to some of the upper end numbers we've seen, and not specifically a comment on whether this is balanced.
Also, I don't want to be too repetitive, but...
It is not BFAW.
I know it's not FAW, I just refer to the FAW build with Tech Doffs, DEM, Aux2Batt and Rep passives combined because using BFAW with this build is the most effective with the least amount of effort. You can pretty much put a drinking bird on your spacebar and still come out on top.
Why bother using weapons that focus on one target when you can do the same amount of damage on multiple targets and not even have to be facing them or targeting them?
1st: multiple targets are attacked at the same time.
2nd. time on target as those beam arrays have wider arcs.
Try attacking such an bfaw cruiser from behind, only half its weapons will be firing on you.
Use holds to keep it in front of you and blast away. Preferably use dhc and some torpd an a beam array or dual bank with tss:s. once you either breach his shields or its taken down by tss:s the hull is easy pickings. Phasers are usefull for this because its proc hurts alot. Sure its random, but with offl?ine weapons it cant shoot back, without shieldsthwe hull is yours, without engines its defense value drops massivly and without aux no shield heals, no aux to bat to push other systems and for cloackers, no cloack available.
have fun
Less than half of his beams, as he's going to put the borg cutting beam in the back.
And this is where we separate the skilled cruiser captains from the clueless spacebar smashers. A skilled captain will employ a variety of techniques to "shake you from his behind," including:
1. APO/PH to break your hold, plus T4 Placate to disrupt your alpha.
2. EM to help swing that fat butt around and put more beams on target.
3. Throttle variation and frequent course changes to make you overshoot/undershoot and create an opening to maneuver.
In fact, it's the skilled captain's ability to keep those beams on target - despite your attempts to limit his or her movement - that makes them so deadly. Just flying in a straight line or, god forbid, the infamous "circle of death," is the easiest way to ensure a spikey demise once your TT and RSP are on CD.
Being elusive and unpredictable will throw off your opponent's timing. Get aggressive. Turn into their attacks. Time your EM to confuse them. Keep yourself slippery with APO and PH.
But whatever you do, don't just sit there smashing that spacebar and hoping they pop themselves against your never-ending wall of beam spam...
RCK
no.
just use a galaxy x
OR BETTER!! a galaxy retrofit!!
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=528931&page=271
Surely you haven't missed people talking about the "Fedball" or "FAWball" throughout the entirety of this thread?.
How exactly do you approach two or three separately mobile cruisers "from behind"?
You couldn't if it was more than 1 target which speaks to every situation since involving 2 or three players which are hardly to be found neck to neck and facing the same direction. You can however scimi battle cloak though which is one of a handful of ways to get that job accomplished. Then there's always the 'ol sweep and tuck where you sensor jam/grav well which can potentially end in hilarity.
Mostly a grip players with FAW premades on full blast creates an air of difficulty unsuitable to most players and to that effect your comment still stands for the majority of situations.
In theory this may be close to the truth but in real pvp scirmishes its highly unlikely to be the case.
Nowadays Cruisers compared to escorts, fly faster ,with a better turn rate with more overall damage ,better heals and resistances and are superior in just about every aspect.
Of course not every cruiser build ,but there are quite a few that are overpowered in every thinkable way.
It explains the fact that there has been a huge shift in the ship choices of the game.
In PvP ,on the Federatrion side especially, there is an absolute prevalence of cruisers
all with very similar builds,utilizing AtB/Bfaw.They add an Aux to In dampeners and not only become super strong but also super manouverable ,fast and immune to Gravities and mines...
Even if a poor escort would struggle maintaining a position on the back of the cruiser,
and use a tractor beam (wasting a cruicial for heals sci bo slot) it would be of a very short lived success.Placate proc( occuring at an alarming rate with the use of FAW) would ruin targeting,remove tractor...let alone the use of AMS,warp plasma,pH...oh and feedback pulse...did i mention fbp? ( another so OP skill.OP because simple logic dictates that reflecting damage could (should) never be higher of the incoming firepower that is initilaly causing it.)
As much as i love this game,i m afraid that at this point there is no turning back.At least not for PvP is STO
The inbalance introduced with the Doff system and the Rommies as well as all the known -and yet unknown- unintented skills available are pretty much beyond repair.
Considering the fact that most players of STO do not care about PvP,it will never become a serious issue.
Zelda is right .Perhaps its time to move into Space citizen,that seems promising.
Definitely NOT an easy choice for a trekie at heart like myself.
Why is it all these people crying about bfaw 'spam' fly ships with multiple copies of tac team, emerg to shields and cannon rapid fire. thereby fitting the definition of spam. lol
whats that you guys used to say about the decloak alphas? the double taps?
something like "oh they're easy to counter, just listen, brace for impact, yaddayadda blah blah."
well. the bfaw is easy to counter. especially if your ship can rocket across the map like a , well a rocket.
Stop crying and adapt.
Really you're just throwing your credibility out the window to anyone with half a brain to see through this nonsense.
Why arent you crying about super buffed gravwells?
(cause you're using them) lol.
its whatever though.
really. it is, whUt, ever.
However I do have to say... seeing so many people wine is sort of funny...
Where they complaining about BS mechanics like tier 4 placates ?
Or where they complaining about crazy amounts of HPS coming out of combos of borg sets and fleet shields.
People only seem to be upset about stuff other people run it seems.
Faw is spread out over multiple targets.... the only time a FBP could perhaps kill someone before they kill you would be if you where the only target.
In the average team match... most Faw cruisers with a basic hazards should be able to just continue as normal... most likely the sci ship with the faw is going to go down well before the cruiser is honestly in danger.
Almost the same issue with SS... all that does is increase the target number more... there by spreading the dmg out more. Takes some heat off yes... but doesn't really do any thing to harm the other team.
For the most part the logical Science counters just don't work... trying to counter a skill with 90% or so up time with science skills that in general have 60s cool downs... ya good luck with that.
FAW is the counter to cloak... so not sure that makes any sense at all.
Truely the only counter to massive faw spam... is super healing... and FAW.
Which is why its so game breaking.
Its one of those things that encourages more of it to counter it ... next thing you know the game is filled with Faw boats... its boring.
This is pretty much how I feel. Escorts didn't lose their ability to alpha someone down in 3-5 seconds. I still see bugs zipping across the screen at more than two times the speed of cruisers. Escorts are doing perfectly fine. The only real difference is that there are other viable DPS options. The people who are used to zipping in behind a cruiser and nuking it while surfing the internet, are finding it more difficult.
People are like cats and hate change. Especially change that makes something that was once a cake walk more difficult.
I've also found people's ability to exaggerate the dmg output of a faw/a2b/dem/apb build. Especially considering how faw quickly loses effectiveness with multiple targets. With so many pets, aceton assimilators, photonic fleets, nimbus pirates, and other destructible spam, (not to mention other players) it's not hard to spread the DPS out. But people act as if every beam that hits them does the same damage as faw vs a single target.
1. Beams are now capable of doing damage in the broadside arc seemingly exceeding that of DHCs/turrets in their forward arc. Personally, I feel it needs some tweaking, as such high pressure damage really seems wrong with such an arc. What happened to arc/damage balance?
2. If FaW is used, there is no need to select targets. This is the prime reason why decloak alpha strikes are not performing as well as one may expect - the reaction time to lock on to a target is reduced (no need to change view and click), making it possible to deal heavy damage even before shields are raised.
3. Also, there is the matter of uneven treatment of beams and cannons when it comes to weapons power drain. We need to know - is the difference in behaviour intended?
4. I think that in premade vs. premade scenarios, these tactics are counterable - often through dedicated healing. It's when multiple users of this tactic enter the PuG queues (not necessarily teamed, they just have to be on the same side) where this is a problem - dedicated healers are rare, and people carrying middling amounts of heals are no longer able to get by.
Well, to reply to some people who feel that there are other things just as BS, most of us have kind of given up on complaining about those things. Beams are what's happening now - so many people use this method it's not even funny. At the very least doubletaps needed timing and required people to wait out fairly long timers in order to ensure kills - this, though, is a bit much. Super buffed grav wells? Well, make a thread! Do something about it, if you feel so strongly about it. Would love to see the arguments. Don't just say that we can't complain about A because B is just as bad.
Anyway, thanks for reading. It's not just one clear-cut case of a single ability being out of balance - it's the combination of so many things that were rather iffy on their own, but are really over-the-top when combined. At the very least, I would prefer that the inconsistencies I listed would be explained, even if there was no change made.
And a little other stuff - a lot of the Sci counters being bandied about is stuff that tends to be cheese-ish based on history. Elachi, SS, AMS?
I will personally adapt to the change eventually, but is the change good for the game as a whole, or is it bad? Has it made things more or less fun? That's the question to ask, not whether we can adapt or not.
To me I still see that need. We don't nor has anyone ever truly drummed the beat of change on the premise that all we want is 1 or 2 doffs to make beams a boss instrument. The fact that this doff comes springing out of a lock box is truly telling to say the least.
Their minds are being led by monetary performance indicators rather than spending just a little more time in the kitchen and serve us something that makes mouths happy.
No all you are doing is presenting less targets for the people that get detected and or have to decloak. Those people are basicly gift kills.
Trust me there is no way to win with a mainly claoking team vs a competent fed ball... pretty much with or with out FAW.
I think every long time klink understand that truth. There is no place on a team for more then 1-2 claokers... at a high level of play.
Piling on a ton of P2W is simply not going to be an option for most of us either... not that I honestly believe doing that would make any difference whatsoever.
You can toy with people at 10k all you like... you won't kill them from there. All you are doing is reveling yourself for the other guys sci to at some point decloak and resapwn you.
On the old turny cloak rule bs... I think they where more concerned with the traditional fed ball that had one romulan declaok spiker on it then full teams. The ones concerned about full teams have/had no idea what they where talking about.
The issue as I see it ... there is a perfectly good counter to FAW teams.
More Faw.
That is sort of the problem.
Why go through a ton of headache trying to counter it with X or Y cloaking... and A or B combing sci skills... or B and C decloaking... while D and E sci spam....
The simple counter;
bring more healing then they do.
bring more more Faw then they do.
That is sort of the issue... we are back to the boring mess this game was during the last incarnation of Cruisers online... the dark times that saw a good 3/4 of the games players leave.
Let's look at some stuff, eh?
Base DPV of a DHC is 174. Base DPS is 116.
Base DPV of an Array is 100. Base DPS is 80.
DPV Ratio: 1.74:1 (DHCs do 174% the DPV)
DPS Ratio: 1.45:1 (DHCs do 145% the DPS)
Course, that only works if as long as you've got the same number and are ignoring drain. If we were going with 8 Arrays, we'd have to add in 4 Turrets...eh?
Base DPV of a Turret is 45. Base DPS is 60.
So if we add that up for 8 weapons...
Base DPV of 4x DHC/4x Turrets is 876. Base DPS is 704.
Base DPV of 8x Arrays is 800. Base DPS is 640.
DPV Ratio: 1.095:1 (Cannons do 109.5% the DPV)
DPS Ratio: 1.1:1 (Cannons do 110% the DPS)
Let's work some more stuff into that, eh? Let's give them 4x VR Mk XII Tac Consoles, give them 9 Weapon Training, 9 Energy Weapons, Omega Weapon Training. Let's make the weapons all VR Mk XII's. Let's give them 125 Aux for the T4 Nukara. Let's fake perm 125 Weapon Power. That's enough for now, eh?
New DHC DPV is 2,119.0 and DPS is 1,412.67 or so.
New Turret DPV is 547.7 and DPS is 730.27 or so.
New Array DPV is 1,217.1 and DPS is 973.68 or so.
New 4x DHC/4x Turret DPV is 10,666.8 and DPS is 8,571.76 or so.
New 8x Array DPV is 9,736.8 and DPS is 7789.44 or so.
DPV Ratio: 1.095:1 (Cannons do 109.5% the DPV)
DPS Ratio: 1.1:1 (Cannons do 110% the DPS)
No surprises there...that's how multiplicative benefits work. The ratio is maintained as those bonuses are added.
Let's work some more into that, eh? Let's do a Rombush, APA3 & APO3 (neither boosted by DOFF'd TT boosting SAP, I don't have the patience to work all that into it)...
New DHC DPV is 4238.0 and DPS is 2825.33 or so.
New Turret DPV is 1095.4 and DPS is 1460.53 or so.
New Array DPV is 2434.2 and DPS is 1947.36 or so.
New 4x DHC/4x Turret DPV is 21333.6 and DPS is 17143.44 or so.
New 8x Array DPV is 19473.6 and DPS is 15578.88 or so.
DPV Ratio: 1.095:1 (Cannons do 109.5% the DPV)
DPS Ratio: 1.1:1 (Cannons do 110% the DPS)
Yeah, cause all we did was multiply the previous DPV numbers by two...so yeah, the ratios are going to stay the same. We could crit it up, but again - the ratios would stay the same.
So how about working something in before the crits, eh? How about a little CSV3 vs. FAW3 action, eh? FAW3's about +38% damage per cycle. CSV3's about +25% damage per cycle. Course, cycle's don't match - buff durations are a curiosity given that as well (they fit better with the Array's x/5 than the Cannons x/3). Oh well...so knowing that...and just looking at a single cycle...
3s Cannon Cycle
DHC (2 shots each) Damage - 10,595
Turret (4 shots each) Damage - 5,477
Total Damage (4x DHC/4x Turret) - 64,288
&DPS: 21,429.33
5s Beam Cycle
Array (5 shots each) Damage - 13,436.78
Total Damage - 107,494.27
&DPS: 21,498.85
Surprise! Well, not really. Remember, that's a 3s cycle vs. 5s cycle. Say we fudge each out to 15s where they would normally meet (buffs don't last long enough to do that, so it's totally fudged)...
Cannon 321440 vs. Beam 322482.81 Damage. The DPS numbers would remain the same obviously, but you can see there the damage works out almost equal...
...at which point, you should be reaching for the Excedrin after the /wtf-facepalm you just did.
45 arc vs. 250 arc? WTF? Am I right? Well...you see...(and you probably already knew, but you /facepalmed so hard you might have forgotten for a moment)...Cannons and Beams have different firing cycles and drain mechanics. Those mechanics resulted in a semblance of balance as the Arrays would actually have less damage to balance out their wider arcs.
Folks could overcap Weapon Power to offset some of that drain, but it would cost them elsewhere. So even that was still somewhat balanced...
...but these days, well - we're oozing power out the wahzoo. We've got more drain resistance than you can shake a stick at.
So yep, you've got folks doing that Cannon damage with a 250 arc using Beams. Might be just below, just at, or even just above...funky, eh?
As an aside, some might say - hey, DEM favors cannons though! - and well, consider this...
30s, eh?
4x DHCs/4x Turrets: 240 hits
8x Arrays: 192 hits
Yeah, baby...DEM favors Cannons!
Let's FAW!
8x Arrays: 480 hits
Oopsie...what? Well, not only do you have the extra shot with FAW that would take you to 240 - FAW doubles procs, as well as DEM - so you'd have 480 hits.
edit: Note - the 480 hits are not necessarily equivalent to 480 hits. It's just 480 hits. Somewhere (can't remember if it was earlier in this thread or in another thread) is the breakdown of how much each hit is - as well as the potential for the hits because of CRITS! based on being Rom and stuff...