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Power Drain.
wrathofachilles
Member Posts: 937 Arc User
Alrighty, I'm all for science getting a needed buff, but I just got out of a PVP match where I was completely shut down by power drain. As far as I could tell, it was just from energy siphon possibly mixed with a tyken's rift when full shut down occurred. The siphon seemed to be doing the most drain though, and I have 6 points in power insulators. However, I know the devs said that for those who were expecting tyken's rift to be able to completely shut down a ship, they were dreaming and the devs would never make it that OP. Well... is it OP for one power to be able to shut down a ship but not two powers together? Or maybe two ships both using energy siphon?
I think a complete shut down like that is OP no matter what lengths were gone to for it to happen, so instead of power insulators being drain resistance, at least in regard to ship power drain (shield drain is a different matter), why don't we make it a minimum power guarantee? e.g. 9 points in power insulators guarantees your power level in each system can't be drained below 25. With this mechanic, if you have 100 in weapons, 70 in shields, 15 in engines, and 15 in aux, if someone hits you with a drain, your systems with power lower than your 25 guarantee have no effect, but your systems higher than the guarantee like shields and weapons can be drained all the way down to 25. If we switch to this mechanic, the 'resistance' to ship power drain might be removed so that draining power is easier, but there is a bottom below which one cannot fall. Additionally, I think all ships should have a 5 power minimum for drain without any insulators as a total shut down is pretty much guaranteed insta-pop.
And just in case *someone,* invariably pops in to say I should be posting this in pvp forums, the pvp forum says it is for discussing pvp "content" which... is virtually non-existant and this forum is for "feedback on powers and game mechanics." Additionally, a total shut down could theoretically ocur at the hands of npcs if a player can do it, so this is not just a pvp issue, but a general mechanics and powers issue, this is technically the right forum, so get over it. :P
I think a complete shut down like that is OP no matter what lengths were gone to for it to happen, so instead of power insulators being drain resistance, at least in regard to ship power drain (shield drain is a different matter), why don't we make it a minimum power guarantee? e.g. 9 points in power insulators guarantees your power level in each system can't be drained below 25. With this mechanic, if you have 100 in weapons, 70 in shields, 15 in engines, and 15 in aux, if someone hits you with a drain, your systems with power lower than your 25 guarantee have no effect, but your systems higher than the guarantee like shields and weapons can be drained all the way down to 25. If we switch to this mechanic, the 'resistance' to ship power drain might be removed so that draining power is easier, but there is a bottom below which one cannot fall. Additionally, I think all ships should have a 5 power minimum for drain without any insulators as a total shut down is pretty much guaranteed insta-pop.
And just in case *someone,* invariably pops in to say I should be posting this in pvp forums, the pvp forum says it is for discussing pvp "content" which... is virtually non-existant and this forum is for "feedback on powers and game mechanics." Additionally, a total shut down could theoretically ocur at the hands of npcs if a player can do it, so this is not just a pvp issue, but a general mechanics and powers issue, this is technically the right forum, so get over it. :P
Post edited by wrathofachilles on
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Now, I ain't gonna deny that being perma-shut down due to lots of power drains is more than a little 'irking' to say the least.
But removing the actual 'drain resist' part of PI itself would be worse IMO. Because then there would be nothing holding people back from even more easily draining you to that 25 power limit. Even at 25 power, you are not gonna be doing much anyways. Weapons will do a pittance of damage, shields will barely be regening, you will be hardly moving or turning (which also means little to no bonus defense), and anything aux-based will barely matter.
You may as well still be drained all the way at that point. You may have power, but unless there are some super-good team mates, you will still be a sitting duck and an easy kill. You can do stuff, but that doesn't mean necessarily you'd be able to save yourself if people were totally focused on draining you.
Putting aside PvP, if such a thing existed for PvE, then NPCS would be easy to drain. NPCs currently fall into two categories: So weak it's pointless to drain them. Or. Boss-level (or nearly that) and have uber-levels of drain resist already so that it's still pointless to drain because you would be better off shooting them.
Removing drain resist and only adding in a minimum power level would make NPCs way easier to drain and stop, basically making them into little more than giant, toothless, targets. Even if they had only 5 power across the board, it wouldn't be that big a deal to easily chew through with just killing them at that point.
I'd rather see your idea happen, but KEEP in drain resists. Power drain has generally been an issue, both PvP and PvE wise in the past, but removing the resist would make it easier for things, but adding in a minimum power level would prevent total shut downs.
BUT....drains are also a legit strategy IMO. There's always been a bunch of drain stuff in the game (Tyken's, ES, and Polaron weapons are ALL universal, and anybody can use them), so it's clear that it's meant to be there. It shouldn't be a guaranteed permanent shut down, but it also shouldn't be pointless either.
At the moment you need to REALLY spec into flow caps to even be remotely effective at drains, we're talking 250 points more or less to get something worth using. Also at the moment there's only 2 abilities that make a science ship worth anything in PvE atm, tykens and GW.
GW for obvious reasons and tykens because, well, with high flow caps and high aux you can actually cause a lot of enemies to sit there and get a small window for firing off torps where they have no shield.
Sure compared to these uber dps builds it's not as effective but it keeps them capable and it's only because you can switch off power in low order spam units.
Might I also point out the example you chose was of a romulan ship which already has lower power levels and what you did with that is run too little in engines so you couldn't escape. Max drain anyone has got from energy siphon is 50 I believe so an engine battery, emergency to engines and many other things on their own will save you from a tykens even if hit with energy siphon.
Most federation and Klingon ships are sitting on +75 power all systems now, I see this as more of a rommy problem and frankly considering they get battlecloaks, cannons on all ships, escape systems etc I'm not too bothered. See how it plays out first but really both tykens and ES are countered entirely by HE, so I can't see how on earth it's a problem.
I certainly didn't see anyone complaining tykens was OP in the PvP thread I made for feedback. Perhaps you want to dig it up in the PvP forums and get the debate going again?
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Say you've got 10k resilient shields, 50% shield damage reduction, and shields have their 75% innate kinetic damage reduction.
You get hit by a 10k damage torp.
10000 * 0.95 = 9500 * 0.25 = 2375 * 0.5 = 1187.5 damage done to the shields.
You try not to LoL at the torp, right? If there's just a single torp, normal situation, you're not going to see another one for around 8.5 second or so. Yeah, you try not to LoL at the torp.
Now imagine instead that you're getting hit by 8+ of those torps at the same time...different story, right? Those shields are going to get overwhelmed by those LoLtorps.
One can overwhelm Power Insulators in the same fashion. Sure, PI provides that reduction - but you can overwhelm it.
Picture somebody in a Fleet Corsair, running 8x Phased Polaron Turrets, with Plasmonic Leech, running Energy Siphon, Siphon Drones, dropping Aceton Assimilators, Tyken's Rift, and maybe even Aceton Beam. They DOFF stuff up...and...they're running 250-300+ Flow Caps.
Yeah, that's kind of at the extreme range (but even a guy with just 8x Polaron Turrets, Leech, Siphon 1, normal Siphon Drones, and 205ish Flow Caps is going to cause trouble)...
6 in Power Insulators is what...42%?...drain resistance? So each thing's still draining at 58% strength? That's still something that can be overwhelmed.
Both Energy Siphon and Tyken's Rift are "debuffs" that can be cleansed by HE...wham, bam, no drain for you ma'am.
There are multiple ways to deal with various things. Somebody's shooting at you with Polarons/Leech/etc...well, get them to shoot at somebody else. Get somebody to blow them up if you can't.
Does it perhaps need a balance pass? Is the potential there to stack far too much drain? Well, there's all sorts of extremes like that. But even so, what are the odds of getting them to look at combining everything - looking at what it could be - without breaking all the individual pieces in the process?
In pvp, countering tactics keeps you alive. You leave a vulnerability, someone will exploit it
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Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
Actually, that wasn't a romulan ship, it was a federation ship, you can set your power levels down to 15 in subsystems on fed ships now, gives you more power into weapons and shields if you want to boost defense and offense, and I have plenty of "efficiency" bonus as I use efficient saurians.
You wouldn't need as much flow capacitors to be effective anymore with my proposed changes because it would be easier to drain to that minimum power guarantee, so no, this isn't exactly a nerf. And no, it's not okay to be able to bring someone to a complete stop, take their shields offline, no weapons, and no aux. If it's just the science ship against you, then it gives a brief opportunity for their lower damage to do something, but in pvp which is typically multiple opponents, it means their escort buddy can effortlessly blow you away, and escorts can already do that well enough on fully functional ships, let alone completely crippled ones.
Sci team and hazards do not clear siphon, hazards, to my understanding, clears tykens, but then if your aux is knocked offline, you can't use hazards, now can you? Evasive maneuvers doesn't make you move if you have no engine power.
If they give the npcs enough insulators, they could have a minimum of 50 power in all systems, maybe even minimum of 75, so the npc issue isn't actually an issue
And being at 25% power in all systems is not "might as well have no power" lol. with a 25% power minimum, you can still move enough to evasive away, you stil have aux for some heals or to activate your hazard emitters, you still have a touch of weapons for maybe taking out the cluster torp inbound, you still have your shields even if they are barely regenerating/not regenerating, at least they are still up. So no, nowhere near as bad as having no power.
My proposed changes make it impossible to completely cripple someone, but keeps draining effective for science, they can more easily take you down to your minimum guarantee, but they can't take you down to nothing. It makes target subsystems more effective, it pretty much makes everything more effective, especially on its own, it just makes super stacking of power drain less effective at TRIBBLE someone into oblivion.
Actually, 8 torps still don't do much to shields, so comparing this to torps is silly.
Yes, clearly power insulators can be overwhelmed, and that's the problem. The devs already said when they were making changes to tyken's rift that a total shutdown would be op, and yet it is still possible to manufacture a total shut down through power combining, if a total shut down is OP, it should be OP regardless of if tyken's can do it by itself, or if it just needs an energy siphon/leech console on top to do it. If we're not going to switch power insulators to my suggestion, which I think still keeps science very potent without making it op, we need to at least put in a 5 or 10 power minimum that no ship can be drained below so that they can still use their hazards if they've got them, or try to limp away from the area or whatever. Either way, the complete shut down needs to be put on lock down.
Meanwhile, 100 points in Power Insulators does 50% reduction on drain. You have six bars, so a couple of pieces of ship gear like Assimilated console will get you over 100 pretty easily. That is enough to knock the original drain down to about 15 per subystem.
Fill your subsystem energy skill points and you will have +10 power in each subsystem, for the 40 you lost to singularity powers.
When you see them start, run off and make them eat cooldown. You will still have power, they wont have their one magic trick.
/sigh
80000 * 0.95 = 76000 * 0.25 = 19000 * 0.5 = 9500 damage done to the shields.
500 shields left. The next salvo of 8 torps hits ~1.5s later. Do you get it now?
Insulators can be pretty strong against a single drain mechanic...against multiple sources, it's going to crumble. Still going to slow it down, but the more that's being thrown at it - the less noticeable it's going to be.
Um, no - it isn't. If somebody invested heavily in it - they should get a decent return on their investment out of it. If somebody was just willy nilly with it, dropped Energy Siphon 1 on their boat without a single point of Flow Caps...they shouldn't expect much from it.
That's like saying shields or hull can be overwhelmed is a problem.
Like blowing something up is possible through combining damage...curious. Not trolling, but I'm just trying to see the point of view where one thing is fine but not the other.
HE1...an Ensign ranked ability...clears Tyken's 3 and Siphon 3. An Ensign ability can cleanse Commander ranked abilities. Now...that's a problem if you want to talk about problems.
Did you know that EPtE1 will have you zip along...even if you don't have any engines on the ship?
Then combat needs to be removed from the game. Because getting blown up is a complete shut down.
That so brings it to the point.
Best comment i red today.
As alrady posted from others you can easy counter it with a ensign lvl ability, that you even can get from your teammates, there is no reason why it shouldn?t be possible to shut down a oponent completely. Think the reason why ppl are complaining about sci powers so much, is that they can be getting pretty anoying since it is more a soft defeat instead one with pure force.
Depending how strong the Vorth space ships will be for the next season, i bet we will get similar complains about them shortly after the new season started, since they will also rely on drains, debuffs and holds.
U.S.S. Helios -Vesta Class / R.R.W. Dark Science - Dyson Surveillance Science Destroyer
U.S.S. Donut - Fleet Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit
TheWiseGuys
Again, I'm not using a romulan ship, lol. I'm using a federation ship with efficient saurians and put points into captain efficiency and all the power boosters, my ship is at no loss for power under normal circumstances, but this one sci ship was able to effortlessly knock me down to no power, even with six points in insulators .
Pretty hard to run with no power in engines.
The second problem with your analogy is that you're using 10k torps... where the EFF do those come from? no player has them, I can promise you that.
It's a problem when you can be knocked down to zero power and can't defend yourself at all. Don't try to relate this to hull or shields, we both know those are completely different, you're just being ridiculous.
Again, you're being ridiculous, it's one thing to do damage and ultimately kill something, it's something else entirely to shut them down so that they have NO CHANCE at all.
Hazard will only work if you still have aux power to activate it, this person drained power so quick aux was gone in literally two seconds, pretty hard to react that quickly when you're dealing with everything else on the field of battle. Also, I've had threads discussing how our counters shouldn't be hard counters but soft ones that work over time or mitigate effect rather than removing it entirely, but people run in there all negative nelly fussing at how all the crowd controls would be uber op then so... you won't get any argument from me that debuffs need to be less effortlessly cleared. It quite squarely makes damage king with most crowd controls and debuffs shrugged off.
Yes... I should totally carry around a copy of emergency power to engines that I will likely never use except in this one situation... that or we can simply make it so that power drain isn't ridiculously op by even just making a hard minimum of 5 power so that no ship can be drained to absolute zero.
Quit being facetious.
Also you make the claim of them "effortlessly shutting you down", did you ask how many points they had in flow caps? Did you ask them if they had to wait for the right time and how many abilities they used?
I can tell you this, look up Iskandus' maximum drain build, that requires heavy investment to combat 6 in insulators and even he commented that tykens was useless.
Once again, if you're so adamant that it is OP why not go to page 5 of the PvP forums and give feedback in the tykens rift feedback thread discussing it? I believe, Bort even kept an eye on it to make sure nothing needed tweaking.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Let's look at a Quantum Torpedo, eh?
Base: 1503
VR: + 112.725 = 1615.725
Mk XII: + 1808.7102 = 3424.4352
9 Weapon Training: + 743.985 = 4168.4202
9 Projectile Weapons: + 743.985 = 4912.4052
Omega Weapon Training: + 225.45 = 5137.8552
@125 Aux Power Config - Offense: + 375.75 = 5513.6052
TT1: + 135.27 = 5648.8752
2pc KHG: + 375.75 = 6024.6252
Rule 62: + 165.33 = 6189.9552
4x VR Mk XII Zero Points: + 1803.6 = 7993.5552
APO3: + 1998.3888 = 9991.944
APA3: + 3996.7776 = 13988.7216
That's a non-crit. It's not from a Rombush. There's no HY.
Let's do that.
Rombush: + 1998.3888 = 15987.1104
HY3: * 2.948 = 47130.0014592
185% CrtD sound good? Probably higher, but I'm skimping on DOFFs other gearing for the example.
CRIT!: *2.85 = 134320.50415872
Easy rounding... 134320.5 damage.
Let's run that by the same resilient shield mentioned in the analogy (10k shield, 50% shield damage reduction, & the 75% innate kinetic reduction)...
134320.5 * 0.95 = 127604.475 * 0.25 = 31901.11875 * 0.5 = 15950.559375
So I didn't go with that kind of possible torp which would have obliterated the shield facing...
...I just went with a nice round number that I knew wouldn't drop shields with a single hit. Thus the low number of a 10k hit.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Actually NPCs all have 50 power across the board irregardless of anything else. I believe if they use any kind of power that would grant a player power (like EPTS), they also get it, but that is about it.
He didn't kill me every time and it wasn't him that killed me, he just disabled me so that an escort could kill me.
It doesn't matter what lengths he went to for my power to hit zero, completely crippled power is OP, the devs were saying that in the tyken's thread, there's no if's and's or but's about it.
He didn't cripple my power with tyken's alone, but his tykens did very quickly pull my power down ridiculously, so apparently it's not useless as this sci ship managed to get enough drain collectively to bottom out my power. Perhaps iskandus thinks it's useless because he wants it to completely cripple people and if not completely crippled, he thinks it's useless.
No, it's not right to be able to cripple someone. And frankly it's not right that players can pop people in two seconds flat either, that hardly allows for a reaction time which means the opponent doesn't even have a fighting chance. If the devs ever actually invest a season into pvp like they've been saying for forever now, they need to introduce some sort of airbag mechanic to keep people from being throttled like that. Something like grace under fire, they can call it "fighting chance" where if you're receiving more than 100% of your hull in damage in under 5 seconds it gives you some sort of super resistance for a few seconds to give you a chance to react.
Do you start with 5 seconds for a naked ship with no skills allotted, no passives, etc, etc, etc? Or do you start that 5 seconds at some other point? Is that 5 seconds for a single attacker? What if there are 5 attackers? What is the quality of those attackers? Are they in all but naked ships with no skills/etc with only a single TRIBBLE/Mk 0 weapon?
Do they go with what they envision to be an average target being attacked by an average attacker? Well, the below average target will die faster vs. the average attacker and the average target will die faster to the above average attacker.
I can take the same toon, put him in two different builds...one of them I'm flying around going neener and one them I'm pretty much always staring at the respawn button. Some folks out there try to downplay it, but if it's the same me flying the ship...well yeah, no kidding that the gearing/build/etc makes a major difference in the game.
I've got one toon that can blip around and harass five or more players without much effort. Get another group of five players, and they'll get me in the end. Guess what...there are single players out there that can slaughter me on that toon. Because skill matters as well, and I'm just average - there are some insanely skilled players out there. There are also some players that need to work on things. There are far more of the latter than the former...I consider myself to be in the latter group. I'll never be as good as I could have been 20 years ago, but I could definitely be better than I am...
...I just don't really care if I get popped or not, as long as I have fun in the process. Win or lose, I can have fun. Doesn't mean there aren't scenarios where I don't find it to be fun...but until that becomes the majority of the time, I'm still going to fly around going wheeee and having fun.
First, if it was actually 2-v-1 then you will die fast to that no matter what it is. And if you change your build to adapt to that, you will be weaker to something else and get killed by thing easier, especially when it is 2-v-1.
Also, dying fast is very common with Internet games. There is nothing fun about it for the victim, I know, I have had my ship cut in half by a super-buffed tac, its irritating. But thats the way it goes. Heck this game is slow compared to some others, like COD, where you die in one shot to a guy in the bushes that you cant even see. There's very few games where fights drag out for a while, especially when they are N-v-1. You either deal with it or you move on to something else.
As to being drained of all engine power, there are lots of options: EPtE, APO, Evasive, deuterium, singularity jump, some consoles that will teleport you forward/backwards, and so on.
I got late to this drain bashing party, but sorry, the devs didn't TRIBBLE up.
Tyken's Rift can't possibly drain you completely by itself so the devs didn't TRIBBLE there. Now, if you just stood there while a 250+ flow caps drain boat was pounding away with polaron (or worse polarized disruptor) weapons, ES3, and equipped with the plasmonic leech console, then yes, you can get to zero.
At 6 power insulators you have about a 47% reduction in overall drain.
I'm going to throw some random numbers out, leaving tyken's rift since I haven't tested it. If someone knows the number, add it.
At 300 flow caps (Lets assume some temp doff assignment buff and/or insp leadership working since I want to use a round number):
Total plasmonic leech drain = 32 (4 per activation)
Energy Siphon 3 = 60 (There is a broken doff with a chance to disable a system on use)
A polaron weapon proc = 62.5 (tough luck if this did it)
Tyken's Rift = ?
So yes, the guy drained you, but had to sacrifice 5 sci consoles and 1 other console slot to do it so either he has almost no armor or deals low damage, and you were running around in a ship with low power to one of your systems. Also, are you sure only 1 ship drained you? All the "cool kids" run with the plasmonic leech console these days so you might have just been drained by both ships. The lesson for you here is, if you're using all your sci console slots for universal +crit, +power, or whatever other junk you can think of console against drain boats, you should rethink your strategy.
Had to add this, the tier 5 Romulan Rep power gives 8 seconds of extra drain (+100 flow caps), hitting that and using power drain abilities gets downright nasty.
Wrath, you want you're cotton wool button? Rotate Shield Polarity. With the doff to push it to 20s it's just not a problem. Once again though *looks at PvP forum* if you think it is unbalanced make a post in the TR feedback thread in the PvP forums, the debs were watching it and that's where you can get a good debate and anecdotes from as well as stratergies like "I got hazard emitters, lol power drain".
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
So it is not ok if you get killed by a sci/escort combo in a 2 on 1 in a few seconds, but it is ok to get killed by 2 escorts in a few seconds?
I mean the result is the same, so where is the difference?
Oh yeah, wait the differnece is that you can basically counter all drains with ensign lvl abilities. Not sure about the plasmonic leech console, but iirc. energy syphons is countered by sci team. So you basically need a sci team and a he to counter it. Best part of it is, you can your teammates can throw them to you also.
A long time ago i was running a eps console on my nebula to counter drains, cause you build up more power per sec then they can drain, dunno if that still works, but it would be worth a try. Maybe you would need 2 eps consoles or so.
At least it should give you more time to counter drain skills.
Btw, the new rep that is comming offers such a thing like increased hull resistence, depending on how much hull you have left. The less hull you have, the more resistence you get.
And if you do it right, and react in time ppl won't be able to kill you in a few seconds on a 1 on 1. If they can they did everything right, you didn't which menas they deserve the point.
In a 2 on 1 it is ok, that you die fast if you don't get support from other teammates.
I mean how many ppl should it need to kill oyu in a few seconds in your opinion?
Not to mention that it would take forever to get a kill if it takes to long, since it will increase the time the targets team has to support their teammate. And i dunno, a match which lasts forever cause you can harly kill anyone sounds pretty boring.
U.S.S. Helios -Vesta Class / R.R.W. Dark Science - Dyson Surveillance Science Destroyer
U.S.S. Donut - Fleet Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit
TheWiseGuys
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
See? There's your problem right there. You need to be calling for a nerf to Escorts so that they can't kill people in drained ships, because the Science Ship that drained you certainly couldn't kill you alone.
<snerk>
While having 125/125/125/5 power thanks to Aux to Battery I is NOT OP, I presume? :rolleyes:
Look, let's just cut to the chase here and Expose what you're REALLY complaining about.
You don't like having CONTROL of your ship taken away from you.
This is a fairly common complaint in ALL games that feature PvP, in that players "hate it" when they are reduced from being PLAYERS and are turned into SPECTATORS by what happens in the game, unable to affect the outcome of what is currently happening. This is fundamentally a complaint about CONTROL of your character (in this case, your ship), and how an enterprising adversary figured out a method to take that control away from you ... so you cry for a NERF so that you are never denied CONTROL (because doing so is, as you say, an "OP" thing to do).
The irony of course is that players have NO PROBLEMS WHATSOEVER with using these exact same abilities and combinations on PvE Foes (who can't exactly complain) ... but as soon as they're the VICTIM of such abilities and combinations in PvP ... well ... The Tears Must Flow to form a River that will reach The Salty Sea Of Grievances Eternal.
So ... here's a trick question for you. You ready? :rolleyes:
If it's an "OP" thing to be able to drain your power levels to zero ... why is it not an "OP" thing to be able to drain your hull points to zero? After all, both of these tactics force you into the role of being a Spectator rather than a Player ... although, to be fair, getting your power levels drained to zero doesn't in and of itself put "points on the board" like having your hull getting drained to zero.
And in a slightly LESS rhetorical question sense ...
What if the minimum power you could be drained down to in any subsystem was your (Power Insulators Skill Level / 10)? So if you've got 6 pumps in Power Insulators for a skill level of 84 ... the lowest your power levels could be drained would be down to 8.4 each. The drain would be "crippling" but it wouldn't be TOTAL.
Of course, if you rewrite the underlying mechanics LIKE THAT, so as to give a "fractional immunity" to Drains functionality to Power Insulators, you'd need to do something to compensate Power Draining effects and abilities to mitigate that "loss" of effectiveness and functionality. So, to compensate, you wind up rewriting the Drain mechanics system such that rather than draining -X for Y seconds, and if the amount of Drain hits the "hardcap" provided by Power Insulators then the Drain just "loses" and it sucks-to-be-you ... instead you wind up with a Drain mechanics system where you have a "Drain Quota" to fill that is given a maximum "rate" of Drain, but if the overall Drain levels "hit the hardcap" then the amount of total Drain is "throttled back" to match what is needed to reach that hardcap but the time used to Drain that total amount is increased meaning the Drain lasts longer to compensate for the fact that it isn't Draining at 100% capacity on every tick.
So for simplicity of illustration purposes, if I've got an ability that can Drain -10 Power per second for 10 seconds, making for a nice round "100 Drain Capacity" to keep the math easy ... if I run into a situation where for some reason or another that ability can only Drain -5 Power per second (due to hitting a "hardcap" somewhere), then the duration of the ability is extended from 10 seconds to 20 seconds in order to reach the same "100 Drain Capacity" in terms of its effect(s). That way, Drain Capacity isn't "wasted" by overcapping Drain.
Power Drain, like so many other Crowd Control abilities tends to be an All Or Nothing kind of deal. This is substantially a legacy of City of Heroes and its Mezz Mechanics, where you were either Mezzed or you Weren't, with no real "useful" middle ground in between in terms of "degrading" capabilities for meaningful effect. Because of how the game mechanics operate under the hood, there really isn't a whole lot of "value" in having some kind of "partial" Crowd Control as opposed to "total" Crowd Control.
Kind of like how being "all dead" is more useful than being "half dead" in terms of controlling hostile forces. :P
The key point here being that in order to achieve this kind of performance AT ALL requires stacking multiple abilities (some of which have cooldowns in excess of 30 seconds) backed up by an entire Build Plan (involving console selections and skill investment choices) all aimed at delivering this ONE synergistic performance result. In other words, you're complaining about being "victimized" by a COMBINATION OF SCIENCE ABILITIES that when used creatively is able to effectively "neutralize" you in PvP so that ANOTHER player can take advantage of the situation.
At THAT point, you're just whining that you're not INVULNERABLE TO EVERYTHING and can't play on Ghod Mode. Even worse, you're complaining that you can't negate an adversary's ENTIRE BUILD STRATEGY by investing 30,000 skill points (or 8.2% of your total available) into a SINGLE SKILL (6 pumps into Power Insulators)!
"Cry me a river" seems to be a very appropriate response at this point.
Imagine what would happen if you could invest points into Threat Control skill to passively "negate" the value of Beam Overload ... or Fire At Will ... or High Yield Torpedo ... or Torpedo Spread ... or Dispersal Pattern Beta ... or Attack Pattern <All!> ... or ... :eek:
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
Frankly, I've never liked the GW or TR aftershock doffs too much. They never seem to proc as much as they state.
Very true. This guy is complaining while probably running around with a bunch of extra crit universal consoles and doesn't want to give up his precious DPS in order to resist drains more. In order to get to the max flow caps, you have to sacrifice a lot as far as DSP goes (and probably survivability). I'll give you the list just so you see how much you have to use to max it out.
1) Best deflector is probably the MK XII Jem'Hadar deflector. Not exactly the best set out there, but if you use two parts, you get extra polaron damage.
2) Rule 62 console and plasmonic leech (There go 2 console slots)
3) 5 embassy flow capacitor consoles (There go 5 more slots, but you can choose extra hull or shield heal to help)
4) Max out flow caps in the skill tree
5) Inspirational leader (To get up to 30 more)
6) I'd add power insulators just because you don't want to get drained yourself.
Now adding all that up, I think it's 286 in standard flow caps (approx). Plus you need the romulan tier 5 rep completed to add another +100 for 8 seconds, BUT you only have 3 console slots left. Guess what, you've sacrificed engineer and/or tactical consoles slots in the process. So to the OP, there is your weakness. Guy has probably little to no armor and low DPS.