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Auxiliary to Battery Builds
majortiraomega
Member Posts: 2,214 Arc User
Someone had to bring this up, Auxiliary to Battery builds are out of control right now. There is a reason every Scimitar, Cruiser, and Battlecruiser in the game is using them. They allow the player to essentially maintain a high amount of survivability while also dealing damage capable of far surpassing escorts. This isn't for one single reason at the moment.
The devs had previously attempted to resolve the discrepancy with EPtX chaining, yet the PvP boards exploded with how overpowered it would make escorts. The opposite happened; cruisers, battle crusiers, and scimitars are now the most powerful ships in almost every respect. Cruiser commands exist now, that extra +10% shield resistance from the shield passive is more than enough to take the place of EPtS chaining.
It is getting old going into the public queues to fight teams of five man Auxiliary to Battery Fire at Will cruisers, battle cruisers, and scimitars. It takes absolutely no skill to kill someone with such a setup. They are inherently tanky due to the EPtX chaining and the Borg two piece. The presence of auxiliary to battery allows the ship to function as if it had double the bridge officer seating, almost doubling the uptime of all offensive and defensive abilities.
The downside for the setup? It loses Auxiliary power for a few seconds...which may be removed simply by having Emergency Power to Auxiliary on standby. Now I realize a lot of players use auxiliary to battery builds, this thread may not be met warmly, but it's an issue that needed to be brought up. Hopefully nobody will take it the wrong way.
- Technician Duty officers reduce all bridge officer cooldowns by 30% for the full duration of auxiliary to battery, making them them the most powerful cooldown reduction duty officers in the game. This duty officer needs some form of drawback.
- The Borg two piece bonus provides +0.35 Regeneration as a passive as well as the massive hull heal proc. That's 35% total hull regeneration over the course of a minute. This regeneration bonus is too high, as it stacks with human bridge officers and the Tier II Omega Force Hull regeneration passive. This makes it easy for the cruiser pilot to obtain well over 100% in combat hull regeneration.
- Emergency Power to X chains allow the cruiser to obtain +46 (23 x2) power via two ensign bridge officer slots. With the double tap fix, Emergency Power to X is now the only bridge officer category type that allows players to directly stack the abilities. Attack Patterns cannot be stacked, Beam Overloads may not be stacked, Subsystem targeting may not be stacked. The fact that auxiliary to battery cruisers/battle crusiers/scimitars may stack two Emergency Power abilities further increases their ability to reach 125+ in all subsystems.
The devs had previously attempted to resolve the discrepancy with EPtX chaining, yet the PvP boards exploded with how overpowered it would make escorts. The opposite happened; cruisers, battle crusiers, and scimitars are now the most powerful ships in almost every respect. Cruiser commands exist now, that extra +10% shield resistance from the shield passive is more than enough to take the place of EPtS chaining.
It is getting old going into the public queues to fight teams of five man Auxiliary to Battery Fire at Will cruisers, battle cruisers, and scimitars. It takes absolutely no skill to kill someone with such a setup. They are inherently tanky due to the EPtX chaining and the Borg two piece. The presence of auxiliary to battery allows the ship to function as if it had double the bridge officer seating, almost doubling the uptime of all offensive and defensive abilities.
The downside for the setup? It loses Auxiliary power for a few seconds...which may be removed simply by having Emergency Power to Auxiliary on standby. Now I realize a lot of players use auxiliary to battery builds, this thread may not be met warmly, but it's an issue that needed to be brought up. Hopefully nobody will take it the wrong way.
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Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
Post edited by majortiraomega on
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If A2B was hit with the nerf hammer it would gimp the FED/KDF cruisers, but I fear the Scimitar would be left in a class of its own.
I'm not saying that perma uptime on things is good. I think that killing A2B would perhaps, unintentionally, buff the Scimitar and create an even greater difference between classes and specific ships. Cryptic seems to have dug themselves into a hole and I'm not sure if they can easily dig themselves out with some of these powers.
Sorry, that's not particularly helpful.
Gardiner, Suval, Thran
Korvak, Raketh, Xedar, Zidow
Decis, Vesok
Technician doffs on the other hand, they could use some tuning, and rather than just draining aux down to 5 maybe have A2B result in aux offline mode for those 10 seconds so you need high power transfer rates to get your power back in time for the next A2B, this would give a serious downside to running two A2Bs, plus it would remove the near immunity to cooldown extenders like SNB and the SS doff.
For now though, that's as far as I would be willing to go, I don't want to nerf it, just adjust it.
R.I.P
Nah VD, it's about ap:b, bfaw, tt, dem, eptX, all at global cool down and also helping to overcap beams further.
Turning 3 tactical boffs slots into 6 is a huge boon. Nothing really compares to that...
Edit: just realize this is a pvp thread, so the above is semi relevant
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
I hear you there.
But, here me on this.
Heavy escorts like the scimitar and MANY OTHERS should use cannons and not beams.
Scimitar with cannons is a balanced ship, you get bigger guns with starbase turn rate and lack of survivability (all the consoles, 5/3 weapon, boff layout, battleclock, the movie... screams for cannons, and cryptic made this to be cannon ship, not acting to be a cruiser ).
The only exploit here is using those ships (not just scimitar) for aux2batt DEM leeach or whatever like cruiser.
I think there might be solution for the problem
Limit Damage Control Engineers and Technician Doffs to just one per ship.
Kill two birds with one stone. No more EptX chaining and no more aux2bat madness.
People would have to get back to actually think about which ability they use instead of just spam their keybinds and/or spacebar.
You may still slot those doffs and could still make use of 10% cooldown reduction with just one Technician doff. That ain't much worse than using Photonic Officer.
Of course this will create alot of whining, because many (bad) players have become so used to mindlessly roflstomping stuff (whether it is PVE or PVP) with their spacebar "builds" that they can't be bothered to actually think about the mechanics of the game anymore.
And regarding Scimitars. I'd say limit them to DC's and DHC's. They would still be juggernauts of destruction, but you would actually have to think about how to use them.
Piloting skills would actually start to matter again.
You know.. I really liked the lower level PVP. With the limited amount of abilities there was no chaining, people had to use abilities when they needed them and had to rely on on skill and situational awareness to succeed.
That would be a sufficient adjustment (for most A2B boats), but it would take just a single aux battery to restore it. Unless they make it so that you cannot.
*Claps slowly*
Well done, congratulations, no really, excellent idea, we'll nerf two doffs to uselessness, nerf an ability back to it's previous level of uselessness and everyone will run 2 copies of EptS and EPtW and use the doff slots they saved to run FAW cooldown doffs and play exactly as they do now.
Nice job!
That would be the idea, there are other skills/effects that do the same thing, cloaking for example has the desired effect on shields.
EDIT: Sorry for the double post, I think this qoute became available as I was writing my last post
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
They where balanced when Aux to bat shared a cool down with EPTx... since that change they are very badly over powered ... to the point of making 10 other doffs stupid... and filling the role of doffs that don't exist.
2 possible fixes....
1) give them a 30% chance to proc
2) put Aux to Bat back on the ETPx system cool down.
Don't hold back... we know they will never fix pvp... but it seems when ever the community in general gets a bit more vocal then normal... they throw out some token skill fix.
A A2B doff fix could make things a bit more tolarable... not much but a bit more.
All that would happen is people have to spend more in game currency on doffs to get the same level of OPness.
Here's a link to another thread about nerfing it, pay attention to the post by agresiel where he shows the DPS of the non A2B ships compared with running with A2B.
Also this should be in the builds and mechanics sections if you want an ability nerfed.
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.
Shock! Gasp! Awe! So a Scimitar is stupid-powerful even without A2B?!? :P
Surely you can't be serious! It's not like Mal has completed ISE by himself in a Scimitar or anything!
This thread is intended to discuss the PvP implications of Aux2bat builds while looking for a general solution the devs could implement to resolve the overpowered nature of the current standard aux2bat PvP build. It's not a generic "nerf Aux2Bat" thread, the concerns are on the PvP side of things, rather than the PvE.
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Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
I'd prefer to see them share a cooldown, but that's just me.
Oh wait. What I'd really prefer is to remove the aspect of cooldown reduction in the first place. CD's are being badly mishandled in this game. Why that is who knows. The original design of not including a global cooldown was instrumental in bringing us the game we have today. Of course it also allows for the magic of aux to bat.
Oh well. CD reductions as a matter of course need to be removed. CD's are the metric of the game, they are what keep things from happening 'all at once'. CD's are essentially little tiny turns. In a turn based game how balanced would you reasonably think it to be to allow some players to take twice as many turns as others get? Right. Not very.
It is weird that something so obvious is actually debated.
EDIT: So yes, STO like life, is turn based. CD's define the turns.
Then I stand by my original idea of making A2B equate to aux offline rather than aux at minimum, given that A2B will not activate if power is at 5 or less it would force users of dual A2B builds to run EPS flow regulators to hit 6 aux power before the second A2B becomes available, regardless of this it would remove outright the power buff from it.
Though the above then comes with the problem of the ship only gets a power buff once so I'd tie the 'aux offline mode' to technician doffs rather than the skill itself as this removes any science powers from an A2B build thus giving a major downside to it and on low power transfer versions it strips it of it's near immunity to cooldown extensions, everyone wins.. except A2B pilots, but they get their skills on global so they win in a way as well.
aux2bat makes people's build lazy, and less effective at some points.
Thats probably why its often in conjunction with FaW. LOL
hahaha.
If the whole problem is with the scimitar then why not give all escorts 5 fore weapons slots. then for good measure make some embassy doffs of the sci/eng variety with superior operative.
Last thing I want is for my fleet advanced escort or my bug ship to be substandard.
However, that's not the issue - or rather it's not what can solve this.
Weapon power over-capping and drain resistance (two sides of the same coin) grant an enormous damage output benefit to only one weapon type - one that was balanced around this drain with no method of realistically circumventing it like we have available now.
Over-capping needs a visible hardcap somewhere around 135 power.
Items that grant drain resistance need to be tweaked.
Otherwise you can nerf A2B into the stone age, and we will still be in a very similar situation as we are now.
I admit, I was mostly just trying to be funny with that post.
I'm counting that as a kill for forum PvP :P
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.
or should i say AtB, SNB, DHC? AtB beats SNB, SNB beats DHC, and DHC beats AtB. or something like that.
face it, AtB tac cruisers are as much an integral part of this game as DHCs are, now. its one of the pillars of a chosen play style. its the newest addition to the old guard way things worked, very threatening in that way, but ultimatly fits in, and improves the balance that its became a part of. not to mention cruisers no longer had to fly around toothless, but could be they hyper versatile dangerous in their own way ships they always should have been. at the oposite end of the AtB build, there is still the heal boat option there always was. and you can do both at once, it auto balances in that way.
nerf AtB at all, and about half the ships in the game go from viable with an AtB build back to cant hold a candle to escorts and lockbox ships, not to mention vape warbirds. oh boy, i cant wait to fight against an even less diverse group of ships, sounds good to me. the most dangerous and effective ships in game cant use, or dont need AtB builds, still. regardless of what tech doffs do on paper, this is still the most important fact. the 3 most deadly beam array scimitars, the 3 most deadly ships i have ever faced, didn't even use an AtB build.
now why dont we actually talk about the real problems in game now?
1. here's the big one, i agree.
-solution? hard cap overcaping at 150 and let it actually display correctly in the UI. leave the effect cap 125 as always. normalize the benifit for all beams and cannons. fix BO so it doesn't drain ALL overcaped power, +50 when its fired, FFS.
2. FAW, in that if there are 2 targets in range, each array fires 10 shots per cycle. not to big a deal when thers just 1 or 2 faw boats, but more then taht, and you have out of control damage suppressing an entire team, by just haveing autofire on, and binding FAW to space bar.
-solution? maybe remove those extra 5 shots from FAW? it would have a hard time scaleing out of control then in 5 mans. would have a hard time being worth a tac slot too, even more so would it be TRIBBLE in the wind.
-better solution? turn faw into a 5 shot per cycle beam rapid fire, create a new FAW skill based on photonic shock wave that lasts 3 seconds, has 3 pulses, has accuracy roles for targets it hits, a 10 range, and has a chance to hit and decloak cloaked ships. have it look like a cross between antimater spread and the beam spray the enterprise fired off in nemisis to detect the scimitar. that would be iconic faw. the purpose would be to clear spam, deal quick AOE damage to up to as many targets as you have beams equiped per pulse, and have a chance to decloak ships in weapons range. its unlikely to, due to the defense score it would contend with.
3.GW aftershock doff.
-solution? needs to be a team global cooldown for its procing. hey, i actually used the term global cooldown correctly!
4. scimitars can use beam arrays
-solution? bar use of beam arrays on dreadnought warbirds
feels like im forgetting one or 2 things, oh well. im trying not to sound to hypocritical, with my own rock paper sizers thing, at the very least everyone of those things i bring up nerfs me.
There are two pieces to making the player so powerful with auxiliary to battery. They have the massive cooldown reduction and the massive subsystem power bonus. All a ship needs is two Engineering Ensign slots and two Lt. slots to create the cycle. Emergency Power to Shields I + Auxiliary to Battery I then Emergency Power to Engines I (or Weapons I) + Auxiliary to Battery I. Throw in Plasmonic leech and you have three subsystems with 125+ power. If you are worried about auxiliary power, then simply run Emergency Power to Auxiliary I in an extra ensign slot. Also, throw in the 40% chance to clear all debuff warp core engineer duty officer to make yourself immune to subnuke beam, DoT attacks, and any debuffs.
You get the best of all worlds by chaining Emergency Power to X and Auxiliary to Battery. Maximum power levels, a large speed boost, weapon overcap with beam arrays, global cooldowns, near immunity to tractor beams and gravity wells, near immunity to power drain science vessels, high survivability, and escort level damage. The only thing the setup can't do is crowd control...yet. Who knows, the next lockbox might bring a new duty officer that gives fire at will a chance to apply beam target engines III to all targets hit.
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Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
It wouldn't be the first time they brought an overpowered mechanic back into line with the rest of the game.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
This is different - it's working as intended. How many threads do you see now in the general section saying my cruiser sucks or calling the game escorts online? That's right - none. Now all those thousands of player with their oddys and others are happily spamming the faw - atb space bar and feeling like powerful awesome players - and you are asking cryptic to pull that rug out from under them?? Lol - never happen.
No wine there that people will have to find a group to do group content again. :P