I pugged with my healer but I stopped doing that since everyone and I mean everyone and every ship has epte.I simply cant keep up the speed of my recluse with any ship so theres no reason to play as healer.
Or your team mates don't have a clue about 10km Healing range and just captain Kirk it, shame and sad really.
I tried telling them a few times, but they don't listen, there's only so much you can do before Captain kirk Habits die hard... they die of course and they start raging at their own team for not helping them lolz. At that point I don't even reply, in fact I leave them to it. They only comment when they want to blame others for their demise.
You know why, it's because PVE ill equips them for PVP period!!!!
Just because you can tank a gate or a borg cube, doesn't mean you can take a competant human Tacical officer, and time and again they rage in chat about how bad their team is and ignore pleas for ways to work as a team or to improve. The I am right your wrong mentality is ever present....
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
What I see a lot of, and which is part of what prompted this thread, is that people are unwilling to work with what a player asks for in their thread.
For example, let's say a tac is building a high damage output vesta build, trying to max out the tac damage boosts on sci powers. He asks for advice on which damaging powers to run (gravwell/tykens/tractorbeam/whatever), whether embassy consoles or spire consoles are better suited to that, and which sets he should run on his ship- and a bunch of people show up to the thread and tell him "If you want to run a sci ship play a sci char, you need subnuc, you can't do anything with a tac in a sciship blah blah blah"
Or we get the "Trying to make a high partigen sci power damaging build? No, no, you need to get in an escort and run DHC's and CRF 1 and APO3, that's how you'll be the best at damaging people with sci powers!" sort of troll responses.
I get that a lot of noobs have no real direction, and just want general improvements, but it seems like building under limitations to certain goals is a lost art. Want to make the best drain build? TRIBBLE you, DEM+FAW beam cruiser is where it's at!
I mean yes, obviously this sort of thing has happened for a long time, but it seems to have gotten particularly bad lately. I mean before help threads generally just got ignored, but now I'm seeing elements in the community being *actively hostile* to players trying to do new things, or things which are not cookie cutter builds.
I must be TOTALLY mixing you up with someone else.
Maybe I'm not. In any case I'm still confused and absolutely not sure if your trolling here or not.
I'll assume you aren't.
This has almost always been the case on this forum. I've been followed off the forum so that I can be told how much I suck. Maybe I'm just special that way.
Seriously now, how long has a certain guide been up? Not for nothing but the premise there has been clearly stated already.
You are essentially correct though.
Pack mentality? Feeling threatened? Unwilling to learn or change? I dunno. Best to just go do something positive and not feed it.
my help thread really isnt there to provide the perfect minmaxed builds for people, its more to show them what a basic functioning build on a ship they might want to use would look like, its something to trick out and customize as they go. new players tend not to have any idea were to start with pvp ship building, they wont ever learn anything unless they have a solid baseline to build off of, that doesn't explode instantly in a fight.
this is the feedback ive gotten too, that it opened the doors of pvp for people, and when they got past that initial barrier they were able to figure out the rest and become competent.
and those 2 threads asking for help, i posted in both, what do you want from us?
my help thread really isnt there to provide the perfect minmaxed builds for people, its more to show them what a basic functioning build on a ship they might want to use would look like, its something to trick out and customize as they go. new players tend not to have any idea were to start with pvp ship building, they wont ever learn anything unless they have a solid baseline to build off of, that doesn't explode instantly in a fight.
this is the feedback ive gotten too, that it opened the doors of pvp for people, and when they got past that initial barrier they were able to figure out the rest and become competent.
and those 2 threads asking for help, i posted in both, what do you want from us?
Your help thread proved pivital in helping me to come into PVP, without which I would likely be another rager in Zone chat. The basics yes, the advanced and more veteran stuff no, that's the beauty, you have to learn that youself, where's the fun in being given a veterans build and not knowing how it works or why itworks.
Now found frequenting MWO short term and then Star Citizen long term. Raged Quit PVP long ago
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
What I see a lot of, and which is part of what prompted this thread, is that people are unwilling to work with what a player asks for in their thread.
For example, let's say a tac is building a high damage output vesta build, trying to max out the tac damage boosts on sci powers. He asks for advice on which damaging powers to run (gravwell/tykens/tractorbeam/whatever), whether embassy consoles or spire consoles are better suited to that, and which sets he should run on his ship- and a bunch of people show up to the thread and tell him "If you want to run a sci ship play a sci char, you need subnuc, you can't do anything with a tac in a sciship blah blah blah"
Or we get the "Trying to make a high partigen sci power damaging build? No, no, you need to get in an escort and run DHC's and CRF 1 and APO3, that's how you'll be the best at damaging people with sci powers!" sort of troll responses.
I get that a lot of noobs have no real direction, and just want general improvements, but it seems like building under limitations to certain goals is a lost art. Want to make the best drain build? TRIBBLE you, DEM+FAW beam cruiser is where it's at!
I mean yes, obviously this sort of thing has happened for a long time, but it seems to have gotten particularly bad lately. I mean before help threads generally just got ignored, but now I'm seeing elements in the community being *actively hostile* to players trying to do new things, or things which are not cookie cutter builds.
A Tac Vesta makes sense (Kax pulls it off nicely with the right support), but an escort engineer doesn't.
What i'm trying to say is that there is build originality but within reason. There's more synergy if you group a specific captain with a specific ship to do a defined role.
If I was to say "Today, I'm gonna be a tac healer", most people would laugh. Yes it would heal, but would it make use of its captain abilities effectively for yourself and more importantly for your team? I'm pretty sure not.
personally, i don't like cookie cutter ship guides. Whenever i'm asked for help, i get them to come on TS and explain to me what role they want to perform and in what environment.
That way i help them personalise it to their play style and taste. That way i can help them maintain some build originality and at the same time they pick up basics first hand. If they ask questions, no matter how basic and "dumb" they may sound, i make sure they are answered in a manner that would make them not feel dumb.
The forums can be too hostile at times for newcomers or they receive too much conflicting info at once by too many experts to actually be effective.
Your help thread proved pivital in helping me to come into PVP, without which I would likely be another rager in Zone chat. The basics yes, the advanced and more veteran stuff no, that's the beauty, you have to learn that youself, where's the fun in being given a veterans build and not knowing how it works or why itworks.
thats it exactly, once you really understand why the build you got works, you dont need help anymore, your able to build yourself. without that build you use to get to that point though, it might have taken a year of frustration to get to that understanding of why, point.
For example, let's say a tac is building a high damage output vesta build, trying to max out the tac damage boosts on sci powers. He asks for advice on which damaging powers to run (gravwell/tykens/tractorbeam/whatever), whether embassy consoles or spire consoles are better suited to that, and which sets he should run on his ship- and a bunch of people show up to the thread and tell him "If you want to run a sci ship play a sci char, you need subnuc, you can't do anything with a tac in a sciship blah blah blah"
Or we get the "Trying to make a high partigen sci power damaging build? No, no, you need to get in an escort and run DHC's and CRF 1 and APO3, that's how you'll be the best at damaging people with sci powers!" sort of troll responses.
I understand what you are getting at here. My mentality and philosophy has always been:
"No such thing as a bad ship, only bad players."
Which isn't a jab or insult to players, more that I feel that any ship SHOULD be competitive in some fashion, and made even better if the ship has a very good pilot.
The Tulwar, the sci-heavy version of the Dreadnought Warbirds.
Does that scream 'healer' ship to anyone? I doubt it. But get a good enough pilot, and you might be able to make it work. It has a hangar, it has 5 sci consoles (only 2 eng consoles can be a dampener), and can potentially have up to 6 sci or 6 eng slots (or a mix there of)
Would it be the best healer? Not at all.
Could somebody out there make it work if they REALLY REALLY wanted to try? Absolutely.
(Plus I'd just love to see it happen)
I know that most people here would either die of laughter at seeing that, or completely reject the idea, stating many other better ideas and ships. But if someone did want to, they could try, and who knows, could be fairly good.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
Hmmm, a tactical captain could also make it do a ton of damage if and when they wanted on top of the healing.
I'll talk to you about it tomorrow, see if we can't get you to realise your very obscure dream of making people cry from laughter then die in game due to not being able to see properly.
Speaking for myself, other than posting hear and there I stay out of them, b/c the game changes too much too quickly.
There was a time you could tell a new player to dump any uni/c-store consoles and go all white. They kick and scream for a little bit, but then try it out and after a week or so come back and post how much better the game experience and their learning curve had grown significantly. This is because the meta game hadn't been significantly altered.
They could then find a play style they liked build around from that. Raiders were good for this, since the uni boff slots allowed for experimenting, and a player would find out quickly if a hit an run play style was for them. They could also learn from the targets who survived decloak initiative based strikes and apply it to their own defenses.
Now there's just so many gimics and every changing/escalating powercreep there really isn't a point of giving build advise. The underlying gameplay just isn't stable enough nor close to maintaining any kind of balance.
[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'm pretty sure the best or most cutting edge builds are the one's never posted.
No surprise here: We live in an environment where loose lips sink ships. An environment in which anything worth doing is nerfed until it isn't, is not an environment that promotes open discussion.
No surprise here: We live in an environment where loose lips sink ships. An environment in which anything worth doing is nerfed until it isn't, is not an environment that promotes open discussion.
There is also a lot of drama that goes into anything others do that others don't understand.
Instead of open dialog, it's a cheat or exploit.
Etiquette is foreign.
Regarding OP, IMO, during S3 was the start of the decline. Hopefully it improves.
No surprise here: We live in an environment where loose lips sink ships. An environment in which anything worth doing is nerfed until it isn't, is not an environment that promotes open discussion.
To be fair, rarely does Cryptic nerf things 'enough'. Either it's nerfed so hard that you might as well never use it in any situation, or it's barely touched to the degree that it really is still pretty bad to deal with.
A good example is the SIC console. It was nerfed just enough. It was changed to not be as ridiculously insane, while still being kept useful and worth giving up a slot for.
For something different, the Valdore console is still stupid powerful, even after the first time they changed it. It really needs to be nerfed more, because it gives a Romulan essentially permanent shields as long as they continue to shoot something.
Tric weapons on the other end of the spectrum were nerfed a bit too hard when they did that. They could get some ridiculous numbers of course, especially due to the 'one-crit all-crit' bug back then, and could break PvE missions, but they just went a bit overboard about them is all.
Or something just isn't touched at all. Like SS DOFFs. I'd give a Master Key to anyone who can 100% prove that they are worth slotting in PvE, because I see NO point for them in there. PvP they are nothing but cheese IMO, and Cryptic hasn't touched these in the slightest bit. Heck, some of the more common 'cheese' complaints are items that haven't been touched.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
My two mains before going with Willard for LoR, were two Eng in Escorts. Before my S7 reroll-a-pa-looza, my two mains were Engscort and Sciscort.
It's far too easy to overspecialize that way...and leave yourself highly reliant on others that may just not be there. There are different types of synergy.
FoMM is FoMM.
TacFleet is TacFleet.
TacInit is TacInit.
GDF/LDE is some additional resist.
APA...could help with finishing off a target as you switch power settings.
It can be a trip to be a Tac Healer in a Vo'Quv, doing your thing - somebody decides to take out the healer, next thing they know...they're dead, cause a friendly Sci stripped/debuffed the target, the Vo'Quv jumped, and unloaded some APA/GDF DHCs into it along with the other DPS guys.
An Eng on the other hand, is pretty much just selfish. Nadion, MW, RSF...they're the Eng only. EPS is all but moot in most cases to drop out on somebody outside of a potential Rom, and even Trait'd EngFleet doesn't really compare to Tac/SciFleet.
Still, I broke out Plague in his Chel Grett either last night or this morning (yeah, I can be as senile as I sometimes joke)...he did ~1.4m damage and ~1.6m healing.
Weapons
Fore: Omega Torp, Experimental Plasma Array, 2x Rom Plasma Array Mk XII [Acc]x2
Aft: Hyper-Plasma Torp, Cutting Beam, 2x Rom Plasma Array Mk XII [Acc]x2
TT1, TS2, APO1, APO3
FAW1, FAW2 EPtW1
4x Plasma Infuser Mk XI +28.1% base each
2pc Harness +7.6% base
For healing...
EPtS1, AtS1,HE2, TSS3,MW3, RSF3
...yes, that resulted in over 1.6m healing.
No Rep procs, no Gear procs...just those four BOFF abilities and 2 Captain abilities.
The numbers, imho, are kind of bogus though. The healing numbers have always thrown me, as if there's something off about how it's handling the DCE'd EPtS. The damage was simply from staying alive as much as I did...so it added up. If you're dead and have to make it back to the action, that's time you're not doing damage.
It was extremely selfish healing numbers - there was only a single pairing of AtS/HE that got tossed to another guy...he just happened to be in range.
The average player, ime, tends to go after the hardest target to kill for some reason. I've seen it in countless games. They play like a NPC would...ignore the DPS, ignore the healers, and beat on the tank...it's kind of trippy. It's basically what was going on in that match, and what usually would happen in most matches. If 2-3+ guys are beating on the meatshield, it leaves the rest and even them open to being taken out by the rest of the team.
Which is where those numbers on the board can come off as a distraction - they can give the false impression that the guy's actually a threat from the damage point of view as well as making him look like some kind of healer...when it's just a few BOFF abilities mixed in with the two Captain abilities that are generating those numbers. It's a trip, really, because outside of the MW/EPtS - I'll do far more healing with Willard (ET1, AtS1, HE1, HE2, TSS2) where I do nothing but toss heals to folks, and he won't even do a third of what Plague gets...I really think the EPtS thing is bugged, but I've never really looked at it close enough to see if that's it.
Yeah, we lost 15-9...and I was two of those deaths. One was either extreme rust on my part or just damn good timing on their part (I'll give them the credit for it, cause it was an awesome kill and they deserve that credit)...but it was literally one of those striking at the perfect moment, SNB/CD'd...dead. The other was my thinking I only had four of them on me, when I had all five of them...so yeah, he eventually went down. Don't get me wrong, it's no uber thing on my part by any means - they just didn't have the comp that would have put a stomp on him. Very few PUGs do, almost all Premades do.
Had I been a Tacscort instead of an Engscort, might we have won? I doubt it. Figure we would have lost faster...because they wouldn't have been chasing a meatshield around as much as they were, they would have planted him just like the rest. Sciscort, Sciwtfever...would have still lost - they had awesome crosshealing going for them.
One ship might change the speed of the outcome, but it's unlikely to change the outcome overall.
Yes, in the end it comes down to the team...but unless you're part of a regular team or doing a regular role on a number of similar teams - it's a far different world over in PUGland.
An Eng brings Defense to a Ship. A Tac brings Offense to a Ship. A Sci brings a dirty bag o' tricks to any ship. One can find other synergies, which in turn can bring other synergies to a team...without it being Do A, then B, and then C.
I tend to joke that my builds are flaky, I all but refuse to give anybody any sort of build advice outside of talking the basic underlying mechanics of things...
...at the end of the day, though, I'd rather fly what I fly - take note of what's going on, see if what's out there can help with that; rather than trying to conform to some shoebox cookie cutter build where if I'm out there, I run the risk of being completely useless.
Folks asking for build advice, impo, should distinguish if they're looking to work their way toward being a regular on a regular team or having a regular role on similar teams...and if they're looking to pug it. The advice for one could be brutally bad for the other...
Your point being?
The way you built your ship as a tac healer, the biggest assett a tac brings (apa) would not be maximised. Same could be said for the other abilities. That's not to say they would be useless.
A sci scort is still viable in a fashion, but an eng scort? In all my time pugging or premade fighting, never seen an effective one yet.
As to your reference for 1 member not making a significant impact, I would have to disagree strongly. Get MT in his vaper and see him become a wrecking ball. Get Entrax in his healer, and see him make his team look like a fortress. The point here is that the mentioned guys make complete use of their captain abilities to perform insanely well.
I have done bud. Used to pug with him a lot. Learnt most my scort skills off him. In the same time frame he was far superior in his tac scort from what I saw to bring it into perspective.
Lately I've noticed that the community has made a definite shift from providing advice and suggestions for builds to a sort of blanket "You're doing it wrong, if you're [profession] flying [ship type], you need to be doing [cookie cutter build of the month".
Whenever someone asks for build help, or tries to make a build that isn't just a variation on the cookie cutter build of the month, the response seems to be almost universally negative. Nobody really seems interested in trying to make that build better, except by just scrapping everything and doing cookie cutter.
And frankly I've really been soured on PVP lately because we as a community seem to have lost that desire to create new builds, optimize underutilized skills into effectiveness, or otherwise go against the grain. I don't know if it's just collective fugue or tiredness- but it's rather disheartening when 9/10 posts in a thread are "You're stupid, your build is stupid, you should be running X instead", rather than trying to make a better capable version of that kind or style of build.
Maybe it's just me that's noticed this- idk, but I felt like maybe the community would benefit by thinking about the prevalence of this sort of behaviour, because it seems to have subtly crept up on everyone without them noticing they do it.
builds that arent minmaxed for specific premade play for me are just more fun and exciting with way more variables. **** em and have fun
I have done bud. Used to pug with him a lot. Learnt most my scort skills off him. In the same time frame he was far superior in his tac scort from what I saw to bring it into perspective.
recommend play with markg, the spike is insane on that puppy
A sci scort is still viable in a fashion, but an eng scort? In all my time plugging or premade fighting, never seen an effective one yet.
Eric Carter was an amazing eng scort back in the day. Of course, during that time weapons power drain worked completely differently in a way that really benefited engineers.
With current system though, you're right, there's no reason to take an eng scort. Basically, an eng scort trades damage (specifically burst damage) for survivability. However, being able to mount an effective offence is one of the best forms of defence in the game -- when an enemy team is focused on keeping themselves alive their ability to coordinate damage on your team is vastly reduced. Therefore, an eng scort is doubly useless -- you gimp your offensive power, and by giving the enemy team that much more breathing room you also gimp your team's ability to survive, all in spite of having one team member that on the surface is more tanky.
I think the point being made is that yes, you can make a Tac/Healer, or yes you can make an Eng/Escort, etc., but it isn't an optimal choice.
Optimal, this is the operative word.
I think a lot of players work off of what I consider to be a misguided notion of "creativity" or "individuality".
They think making large, obvious, oddball build choices will let them express themselves - rather than playing with what they consider a "boring" build but simply doing amazing things with it - and tweaking the minutiae to optimize for certain aspects.
You can take a near clone of a build, and let me hand pick 5 guys to give it to.
I guarantee you one or two players will be at the top of performance with it, and someone will be at the bottom.
However, if that build is at least a good solid framework, there is a good chance that while the spectrum of performance amongst those 5 players demonstrates who is the best with it - it's probably a much narrower spectrum than if we took the same 5 players and just said "build an escort" and let their imaginations run wild.
This is where a "cookie cutter" build that contains most (not all) of the working parts already sorted out benefits the general playerbase.
"What is available" has been boiled down to "what works best most of the time, in most situations".
There is always going to be some leeway in the skills or even a few BOFF powers, console/gear choices that can be customized for preference and optimized for whatever reason - but at least at that point you're already working under the most currently optimal framework.
Engi scort seeing as its been mentioned... YES it USED to be an option.
It was one of the first hybrids to die. Power creep did it in.
Yes at one time you could fly engi scort and put out enough spike to down people... good luck with that the last 2-3 years.
For a short time in the Warriors of Grethor fed fleet we ran an all engi escort team. All escort cross healing teams... wouldn't work now... but then... we had more then enough burst and had no issues cross healing like mad being all engies. I remember around that time Bio was doing one as well... you did see a few of them back then. It could be argued that the tac/sci versions where more effective... but what made it effective for us was flying 5 of them at once.... with no nukes or super spikes that was doomed by power creep pretty fast. lol (in fairness I think most of the times when SOG did the all escort thing we probaly had 2-3 engi scorts with some sci)
Engi scort seeing as its been mentioned... YES it USED to be an option.
It was one of the first hybrids to die. Power creep did it in.
Yes at one time you could fly engi scort and put out enough spike to down people... good luck with that the last 2-3 years.
For a short time in the Special Operations Group fleet we ran an all engi escort team. All escort cross healing teams... wouldn't work now... but then... we had more then enough burst and had no issues cross healing like mad being all engies. I remember around that time Bio was doing one as well... you did see a few of them back then. It could be argued that the tac/sci versions where more effective... but what made it effective for us was flying 5 of them at once.... with no nukes or super spikes that was doomed by power creep pretty fast. lol (in fairness I think most of the times when SOG did the all escort thing we probaly had 2-3 engi scorts with some sci)
Fixed that for you
I remember doing WOG matches with bops with ET3. It was smexy. Dang T'Par. That dirty Eng-BoP. Then S'Fhar! Dang Sci-BoPs... So rude!
I remember doing WOG matches with bops with ET3. It was smexy. Dang T'Par. That dirty Eng-BoP. Then S'Fhar! Dang Sci-BoPs... So rude!
Season 2-3. What fun that was.
lol ya... there was a bunch of fun to be had klink style back then. Power creep killed the bop and killed the build fun that was the bop.
We can circle this thread back to the bop... the bop was the canary in the coal mine so to speak.
There was a time like you say around season 2-3 where you could do all manner of crazy thing on the bops... and they would work pretty well. There where plenty of all bop teams back then... cause you could bring along crazy things like ET3 and Sci teams... and pull of a team with nothing but good team play cross healing.
The game lost a lot of original thinkers when the bop died. You where there, Webdeath used to come up with some crazy strange bops that worked... there was the QEW guys, furque had some strange bop setups.
Power creep overtook the bop first, now it has went 10 steps past that. There is really very little way you can deviate from best practice anymore.
Elaborate why please. No use just making a statement and convincing people.
No use mindlessly condemning "unapproved" builds, either. Add to the list of utterly pointless debates this "DPS parser score above all else" way of evaluating them.
That said, you would have to define the terms for a build "making sense," taking the area of play into account. I say my engscort build makes sense because it works for me.
Even confining your terms to PvP you need to admit that "premade" teams don't necessarily validate one individual's build, and that being on a "pug" team stomped by some "premade" doesn't necessarily condemn anyone's build.
No use mindlessly condemning "unapproved" builds, either. Add to the list of utterly pointless debates this "DPS parser score above all else" way of evaluating them.
That said, you would have to define the terms for a build "making sense," taking the area of play into account. I say my engscort build makes sense because it works for me.
Even confining your terms to PvP you need to admit that "premade" teams don't necessarily validate one individual's build, and that being on a "pug" team stomped by some "premade" doesn't necessarily condemn anyone's build.
well...i can tell you haven't actually been following what's going on...also this is the pvp theread...parsers are not useful in pvp because most people spike kill.
In pve and engscort is awesome....in pvp it can't do enough spike damage ( because consistent damage just gets negated with passive heals and resists) to get any meaningful kills if any kills at all. An engineer does, however shine as a healer or even in a science ship, because an engineer's self healing powers become more useful with those two choices.
This isn't coming from a vet pvp'er too. I mostly pve and only sometimes pvp. In pve, honestly, most anything works...which is what makes pve fun for me. I like to do off-the-wall builds and see what I can do with it. In pvp, however, some builds just wont work.
Comments
Or your team mates don't have a clue about 10km Healing range and just captain Kirk it, shame and sad really.
I tried telling them a few times, but they don't listen, there's only so much you can do before Captain kirk Habits die hard... they die of course and they start raging at their own team for not helping them lolz. At that point I don't even reply, in fact I leave them to it. They only comment when they want to blame others for their demise.
You know why, it's because PVE ill equips them for PVP period!!!!
Just because you can tank a gate or a borg cube, doesn't mean you can take a competant human Tacical officer, and time and again they rage in chat about how bad their team is and ignore pleas for ways to work as a team or to improve. The I am right your wrong mentality is ever present....
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
I must be TOTALLY mixing you up with someone else.
Maybe I'm not. In any case I'm still confused and absolutely not sure if your trolling here or not.
I'll assume you aren't.
This has almost always been the case on this forum. I've been followed off the forum so that I can be told how much I suck. Maybe I'm just special that way.
Seriously now, how long has a certain guide been up? Not for nothing but the premise there has been clearly stated already.
You are essentially correct though.
Pack mentality? Feeling threatened? Unwilling to learn or change? I dunno. Best to just go do something positive and not feed it.
this is the feedback ive gotten too, that it opened the doors of pvp for people, and when they got past that initial barrier they were able to figure out the rest and become competent.
and those 2 threads asking for help, i posted in both, what do you want from us?
Your help thread proved pivital in helping me to come into PVP, without which I would likely be another rager in Zone chat. The basics yes, the advanced and more veteran stuff no, that's the beauty, you have to learn that youself, where's the fun in being given a veterans build and not knowing how it works or why itworks.
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
A Tac Vesta makes sense (Kax pulls it off nicely with the right support), but an escort engineer doesn't.
What i'm trying to say is that there is build originality but within reason. There's more synergy if you group a specific captain with a specific ship to do a defined role.
If I was to say "Today, I'm gonna be a tac healer", most people would laugh. Yes it would heal, but would it make use of its captain abilities effectively for yourself and more importantly for your team? I'm pretty sure not.
personally, i don't like cookie cutter ship guides. Whenever i'm asked for help, i get them to come on TS and explain to me what role they want to perform and in what environment.
That way i help them personalise it to their play style and taste. That way i can help them maintain some build originality and at the same time they pick up basics first hand. If they ask questions, no matter how basic and "dumb" they may sound, i make sure they are answered in a manner that would make them not feel dumb.
The forums can be too hostile at times for newcomers or they receive too much conflicting info at once by too many experts to actually be effective.
thats it exactly, once you really understand why the build you got works, you dont need help anymore, your able to build yourself. without that build you use to get to that point though, it might have taken a year of frustration to get to that understanding of why, point.
I understand what you are getting at here. My mentality and philosophy has always been:
"No such thing as a bad ship, only bad players."
Which isn't a jab or insult to players, more that I feel that any ship SHOULD be competitive in some fashion, and made even better if the ship has a very good pilot.
For example:
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Tulwar_Dreadnought_Warbird
The Tulwar, the sci-heavy version of the Dreadnought Warbirds.
Does that scream 'healer' ship to anyone? I doubt it. But get a good enough pilot, and you might be able to make it work. It has a hangar, it has 5 sci consoles (only 2 eng consoles can be a dampener), and can potentially have up to 6 sci or 6 eng slots (or a mix there of)
Would it be the best healer? Not at all.
Could somebody out there make it work if they REALLY REALLY wanted to try? Absolutely.
(Plus I'd just love to see it happen)
I know that most people here would either die of laughter at seeing that, or completely reject the idea, stating many other better ideas and ships. But if someone did want to, they could try, and who knows, could be fairly good.
I'll talk to you about it tomorrow, see if we can't get you to realise your very obscure dream of making people cry from laughter then die in game due to not being able to see properly.
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.
There was a time you could tell a new player to dump any uni/c-store consoles and go all white. They kick and scream for a little bit, but then try it out and after a week or so come back and post how much better the game experience and their learning curve had grown significantly. This is because the meta game hadn't been significantly altered.
They could then find a play style they liked build around from that. Raiders were good for this, since the uni boff slots allowed for experimenting, and a player would find out quickly if a hit an run play style was for them. They could also learn from the targets who survived decloak initiative based strikes and apply it to their own defenses.
Now there's just so many gimics and every changing/escalating powercreep there really isn't a point of giving build advise. The underlying gameplay just isn't stable enough nor close to maintaining any kind of balance.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
There is also a lot of drama that goes into anything others do that others don't understand.
Instead of open dialog, it's a cheat or exploit.
Etiquette is foreign.
Regarding OP, IMO, during S3 was the start of the decline. Hopefully it improves.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I admit, that is who I thought of when I was making that post. I bet Renim could make that work.
"Excuse me while I heal my teammates while I unload a decloaking strike on you.
To be fair, rarely does Cryptic nerf things 'enough'. Either it's nerfed so hard that you might as well never use it in any situation, or it's barely touched to the degree that it really is still pretty bad to deal with.
A good example is the SIC console. It was nerfed just enough. It was changed to not be as ridiculously insane, while still being kept useful and worth giving up a slot for.
For something different, the Valdore console is still stupid powerful, even after the first time they changed it. It really needs to be nerfed more, because it gives a Romulan essentially permanent shields as long as they continue to shoot something.
Tric weapons on the other end of the spectrum were nerfed a bit too hard when they did that. They could get some ridiculous numbers of course, especially due to the 'one-crit all-crit' bug back then, and could break PvE missions, but they just went a bit overboard about them is all.
Or something just isn't touched at all. Like SS DOFFs. I'd give a Master Key to anyone who can 100% prove that they are worth slotting in PvE, because I see NO point for them in there. PvP they are nothing but cheese IMO, and Cryptic hasn't touched these in the slightest bit. Heck, some of the more common 'cheese' complaints are items that haven't been touched.
Your point being?
The way you built your ship as a tac healer, the biggest assett a tac brings (apa) would not be maximised. Same could be said for the other abilities. That's not to say they would be useless.
A sci scort is still viable in a fashion, but an eng scort? In all my time pugging or premade fighting, never seen an effective one yet.
As to your reference for 1 member not making a significant impact, I would have to disagree strongly. Get MT in his vaper and see him become a wrecking ball. Get Entrax in his healer, and see him make his team look like a fortress. The point here is that the mentioned guys make complete use of their captain abilities to perform insanely well.
I have done bud. Used to pug with him a lot. Learnt most my scort skills off him. In the same time frame he was far superior in his tac scort from what I saw to bring it into perspective.
builds that arent minmaxed for specific premade play for me are just more fun and exciting with way more variables. **** em and have fun
Chillax. No Ego. No Drama.
Like my alien? Watch THE VIDEO
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recommend play with markg, the spike is insane on that puppy
Chillax. No Ego. No Drama.
Like my alien? Watch THE VIDEO
Need custom graphics for you or your fleet? Click HERE
Eric Carter was an amazing eng scort back in the day. Of course, during that time weapons power drain worked completely differently in a way that really benefited engineers.
With current system though, you're right, there's no reason to take an eng scort. Basically, an eng scort trades damage (specifically burst damage) for survivability. However, being able to mount an effective offence is one of the best forms of defence in the game -- when an enemy team is focused on keeping themselves alive their ability to coordinate damage on your team is vastly reduced. Therefore, an eng scort is doubly useless -- you gimp your offensive power, and by giving the enemy team that much more breathing room you also gimp your team's ability to survive, all in spite of having one team member that on the surface is more tanky.
Optimal, this is the operative word.
I think a lot of players work off of what I consider to be a misguided notion of "creativity" or "individuality".
They think making large, obvious, oddball build choices will let them express themselves - rather than playing with what they consider a "boring" build but simply doing amazing things with it - and tweaking the minutiae to optimize for certain aspects.
You can take a near clone of a build, and let me hand pick 5 guys to give it to.
I guarantee you one or two players will be at the top of performance with it, and someone will be at the bottom.
However, if that build is at least a good solid framework, there is a good chance that while the spectrum of performance amongst those 5 players demonstrates who is the best with it - it's probably a much narrower spectrum than if we took the same 5 players and just said "build an escort" and let their imaginations run wild.
This is where a "cookie cutter" build that contains most (not all) of the working parts already sorted out benefits the general playerbase.
"What is available" has been boiled down to "what works best most of the time, in most situations".
There is always going to be some leeway in the skills or even a few BOFF powers, console/gear choices that can be customized for preference and optimized for whatever reason - but at least at that point you're already working under the most currently optimal framework.
FALSE.
:mad:
It was one of the first hybrids to die. Power creep did it in.
Yes at one time you could fly engi scort and put out enough spike to down people... good luck with that the last 2-3 years.
For a short time in the Warriors of Grethor fed fleet we ran an all engi escort team. All escort cross healing teams... wouldn't work now... but then... we had more then enough burst and had no issues cross healing like mad being all engies. I remember around that time Bio was doing one as well... you did see a few of them back then. It could be argued that the tac/sci versions where more effective... but what made it effective for us was flying 5 of them at once.... with no nukes or super spikes that was doomed by power creep pretty fast. lol (in fairness I think most of the times when SOG did the all escort thing we probaly had 2-3 engi scorts with some sci)
Fixed that for you
I remember doing WOG matches with bops with ET3. It was smexy. Dang T'Par. That dirty Eng-BoP. Then S'Fhar! Dang Sci-BoPs... So rude!
Season 2-3. What fun that was.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Elaborate why please. No use just making a statement and convincing people.
lol ya... there was a bunch of fun to be had klink style back then. Power creep killed the bop and killed the build fun that was the bop.
We can circle this thread back to the bop... the bop was the canary in the coal mine so to speak.
There was a time like you say around season 2-3 where you could do all manner of crazy thing on the bops... and they would work pretty well. There where plenty of all bop teams back then... cause you could bring along crazy things like ET3 and Sci teams... and pull of a team with nothing but good team play cross healing.
The game lost a lot of original thinkers when the bop died. You where there, Webdeath used to come up with some crazy strange bops that worked... there was the QEW guys, furque had some strange bop setups.
Power creep overtook the bop first, now it has went 10 steps past that. There is really very little way you can deviate from best practice anymore.
No use mindlessly condemning "unapproved" builds, either. Add to the list of utterly pointless debates this "DPS parser score above all else" way of evaluating them.
That said, you would have to define the terms for a build "making sense," taking the area of play into account. I say my engscort build makes sense because it works for me.
Even confining your terms to PvP you need to admit that "premade" teams don't necessarily validate one individual's build, and that being on a "pug" team stomped by some "premade" doesn't necessarily condemn anyone's build.
well...i can tell you haven't actually been following what's going on...also this is the pvp theread...parsers are not useful in pvp because most people spike kill.
In pve and engscort is awesome....in pvp it can't do enough spike damage ( because consistent damage just gets negated with passive heals and resists) to get any meaningful kills if any kills at all. An engineer does, however shine as a healer or even in a science ship, because an engineer's self healing powers become more useful with those two choices.
This isn't coming from a vet pvp'er too. I mostly pve and only sometimes pvp. In pve, honestly, most anything works...which is what makes pve fun for me. I like to do off-the-wall builds and see what I can do with it. In pvp, however, some builds just wont work.