Thank you. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one tired of the PvP community screaming for nerfs to something. As usual, when something is changed they don't like, they start crying about it before it even hits Holodeck.
I hope to hell Cryptic doesn't listen to them for once.
I'm fine with the PvP community calling for nerfs and/or changes to *PvP*. But when Cryptic listens to them and gives them what they want, it affects everybody and all types of content, TRIBBLE over those of us who don't PvP.
It would be nice if Cryptic had the tech to make specific abilities/skills function differently while in PvP and function normally while in PvE. That would be fair to everybody. This way PvP'ers can have their nerfs without the PvE'ers getting shafted by it.
A good example would be Guild Wars 1. While in a map that has a PvP arena, some of the skills will be changed having '(PVP)' added to the name of the skill. These skills will function differently and/or be less affective to keep them from being too powerful. When you go back to a PvE map, the skills switch back over to their normal function.
Of course I failed to mention that stuff that is too OP for PvE would get nerfed of course. But this would make a lot of sense to me. PvP'ers could have their balances without PvE being affected by it.
The way it is now there is nothing to differentiate equipment, abilities, stats, etc., between PvP and PvE. So when something gets changed to balance PvP, it gets changed for PvE as well, making it less useful for PvE when it didn't need to be changed there.
And what I've been saying is that when the PvP community screams about something being too OP they get what they want while the PvE community gets it too when they don't need it. It isn't fair as it is now. If Cryptic can find a way to make PvP balanced without making PvE less fun, that would be awesome.
Cryptic DOES have the technology to make skills function differently in pvp vs. pve. There are skills/rep passives/weapons that state that they have half effect vs. players like placating for 3 seconds instead of 6 seconds for example. So cryptic could make things that are OP in pvp softer for pvp while keeping the full effect in pve, they just don't do it. Maybe they find it too much work to maintain their schedules or whatever. Though I would strongly suggest making a point of making allowances for that for all future additions and taking the time to go back over old things to give them the same treatment.
Geez, I have to agree with the naysayers. What a terrible, terrible idea. The whole point to the team system is that you get a choice of one of three beneficial effects, either increased damage, a shield heal, or a hull heal. With this change, TRIBBLE that, everyone gets all 3! If that's not the definition of power creep, I don't know what is.
True, tactical team is clearly the best, but that's a failure of balance. Give engineering team the shield balancing effect and science team a periodic heal to the weakest facing or something, but I wanna have to think strategically of what buff to use, not this 'all the powers I'll ever need will handed to me on a silver platter' implementation.
Indeed, the game does not need to be heading in the direction of nigh invulnerability to all things at all times, it extra triple screws engi/sci heavy ships when attack pattern omega/teams/hazard emitters/etc. means that crowd control/debuffs does virtually nothing since that's most of what sci/eng has in the way of offense and people are running around shrugging it off. I feel escorts most of all will be buffed by this change. Eng/Sci/Tac team 1 with doffs for constant cool down and attack pattern omega x2 and hazard emitters and you've got pretty much everything shrugging right off with decent heals and the epic damage native to escorts, particularly with a tac at the helm, through an eng in there and the'll be even harder to kill... of course sci will be made least relevant class in the game... at least for pvp.
If you really think that THIS will break PvP, then I honestly want to know what you are smoking.
That claim is as valid as all the 'DOOM! the game is dead!' threads.
What breaks PvP is a lot of things combined. Amongst them is excessive stacking of bonuses, both offensive and defensive. Yes, this is a part of the latter, but as I said it's just one tiny part in a whole bunch of factors.
And in contrast to some of the other things that break PvP, this change actually also has some good effect.
If at all, it just shows how utterly stale the system was with the mandatory perma-TT.
I'll just throw this out here: Recluse with constant eng team and sci team 3 plus tac team... this can be thrown on to any team mate or themselves... not to mention the stacking their team mates will be doing... yeah... no one should ever die... ever.
Let's just say that even the prospect of these changes has initiated more constructive (and critical) discussion than in a long time, and has already brought up some interesting suggestions.
So even if the devs don't pull through with it, it already has had some positive impact.
Team abilities not balanced? Why didn't anybody point this out earlier?
Aux2Bat too powerful with these changes? Well maybe it's finally time to think things over and balance this 'mash one button for perfect buff rotation' approach?
If it wasn't mandatory to have two copies of TT running all the time, people could've used different X-Team skills all along.
But noone suggested a change to TT. Probably because it simply wasn't necessary.
Now players are getting access to all X-Team abilities at once, and the sky is falling..
I don't want to keep the old, stale system.
So let's discuss whether we want to tweak/improve the old system with a less mandatory TT, OR embrace the new system with a balanced Aux2Bat? Or something in-between?
People have been complaining about the balance of the team abilities FOR YEARS. There's currently two threads about it, one old, one new under powers and mechanics as we speak, and there have been countless ones before that, ones so old they're lost in the old archives of the old forums.
The game actually needs more automation for "back ground" abilities so I don't have to mash my space bar and get carpel tunnel, but also don't have to stare at my starship's dash board babysitting cooldown timers rather than keeping my eyes on the road.
I and many others have been suggesting changes to TT and all the other teams for years, the community has simply never reached a consensus on the best solution, and the devs have never before attempted to address it, at least not in a manner such as this, they may have done internal testing/suggestions that never even made it to tribble.
And I shall refer you to my previous post for my suggestion to make TT less mandatory and also not make TT1 the best bang for the buck out of the three.
Tying crew numbers to efficiency of team (or all powers)... that's an interesting thought. That would actually help ships like the Galaxys...
Than again a Scimitar has a crew of 3000... never mind.
This would suck, but not because some ships have higher crews which would give them an advantage. All crew related things work off of percentages,so small ships and large ships would have the same abilities at full crew, 50% crew, or 0% crew. Because of this, ships with large crews would actually get shafted. Large crews die faster (i.e. en mass) and take longer to get back on their feet than small crews (I call it: enhanced down-time), they are also less benefited by crew death/damage resistance. So yeah, this mechanic would just hurt large crew ships.
Can we give the pvpers a longer cooldown on their whining. Or make them actually play the game for once?
Pvpers have to grind the game just as much if not more than pvers because they need resources to buy all the latest and greatest gear and rep passives and broken (at least for pvp) items to get a leg up on their opponents. So... yeah.
This would suck, but not because some ships have higher crews which would give them an advantage. All crew related things work off of percentages,so small ships and large ships would have the same abilities at full crew, 50% crew, or 0% crew. Because of this, ships with large crews would actually get shafted. Large crews die faster (i.e. en mass) and take longer to get back on their feet than small crews (I call it: enhanced down-time), they are also less benefited by crew death/damage resistance. So yeah, this mechanic would just hurt large crew ships.
Crew mechanic needs a complete overhaul.... Why even have the stat ? If big crews are going to only negatively effect a ship.
That be like saying while escorts have higher speed, we don't have speed controls other then full go and full stop. So while escorts have the advantage of speed they quickly realize this limits their ability to maneuver against slower ships.....
Its the same with crew mechanic while bigger ships have higher base repair, becuase of their large crews they die faster and Regen slower... Thous making lower crews repair faster and better overall.
The Team powers originally were not on a shared cooldown. So this is really just returning them to that state.
The PVP community that I've heard tell of on these forums are a group of salty veterans who have the ingenuity, know how and straight up skill to overcome this change.
I am confident in the ability of the players to weather this "reboot" of team powers and find new and unusual ways to beat other players.
I echo that me and the fleet can beat infected elite easily with opitionals. With T1 ships.... So miranda's and connies (non refit) lol
The only issues that bother me about the reboot, is the gal-x is now the Gal-r by most accounts is basically the same, but at the same time capable of so much more besides two cruiser commands...
I see that me reading through the thread and quoting off for reply everything that I thought to respond to has resulted in a relative wall of me, only broken by your post... lol.
Indeed, pve, way too easy, doesn't train players for pvp at all because pve ships are morons who don't intelligently use their skills and largely rely on having much thicker shields/hull than players and much higher damage than players to be even remotely effective... well... remotely on the easy ones, and potentially uber OP in the case of the lancing tweedles that guard the queen >>
Indeed, it definitely sets the gal-x up as the obviously better choice. If you were only going to buy one of the galaxy's, the x should be it from a pure "best performance" standpoint. Which is probably why they went ahead and rolled them into a bundle. Which... they announced just days after I had finally caved and bought the captain and va level galaxies... also JUST missed the zen sale so yeah... cold compress on my nethers and saving up for a gal-x...
Hopefully they'll give the gal-r a uni ensign and give the gal-x a uni ensign and lt. i don't mind leaning in to the gal-x being the the obvious best of the two, but I'd like to be able to escape the uber eng of the gal-r when I feel like it, at least a little bit. Hopefully they'll also make that lance way more accurate and make the cool down reasonable. The three piece romulan singularity harness set gives a plasma overload type thingie with a cool of just 90 seconds, so that would seem reasonable for the lance... though I'd much prefer 60 or 30 seconds if they really just wanna thrill me... and also help a little to shut up everyone who's complaining the ship isn't tactical enough.
Crew mechanic needs a complete overhaul.... Why even have the stat ? If big crews are going to only negatively effect a ship.
That be like saying while escorts have higher speed, we don't have speed controls other then full go and full stop. So while escorts have the advantage of speed they quickly realize this limits their ability to maneuver against slower ships.....
Its the same with crew mechanic while bigger ships have higher base repair, becuase of their large crews they die faster and Regen slower... Thous making lower crews repair faster and better overall.
I wouldn't mind removing the crew mechanic entirely, but I doubt that will happen, at least if big crews die more and take longer to get back up, they should give more of a benefit while they are on their feet than a small crew does.
I think that it would be nice to remove evasion as a stat for cruisers. Cruisers should be able to creep along at 1/4 speed and tank just as well as at full speed, they are the broad side of a barn and any tactical boff who misses shooting at a cruiser should be blown out the airlock for incompetence... at least if you're on the klingon side you can do that, lol.
I think evasion is a stat for small, fast, maneuverable ships like escorts, and to a lesser extent sci ships, but cruisers should just be big, slow bruisers and lean into that role. Though crusier hull or shield thickness would probably need a buff for losing the evasion stat.
The Team powers originally were not on a shared cooldown. So this is really just returning them to that state.
The PVP community that I've heard tell of on these forums are a group of salty veterans who have the ingenuity, know how and straight up skill to overcome this change.
I am confident in the ability of the players to weather this "reboot" of team powers and find new and unusual ways to beat other players.
I salute you all.
I don't really recall how subnuke works when used on a sci team that's on cool, only has one copy, and is supplemented by doffs... if subnuke will murder the cool down on that, one could possibly get around this when fighting ships that aren't using multiple copies of sci team... however they would then have to contend with pretty much everyone else on the team having a sci team to throw to their team mate... so yeah... I really don't see a way round this one. call it a failure of imagination if you like, but every scenario I try to imagine in my mind is just everyone unkillable.
Nothing in this game is based off of literal logical sense. There's no reason why every ship in the game can't use tractor beams or eject their warp plasma or use emergency power to each system, or torp spread or high yield, these aren't "skills" they are hardware functions of the ship that any crew should be able to activate. Just how well they are used/how often they can be used should be affected by ship type and crew skill. Which is why I would ultimately like to see every ship have every power and how well/often it is used being based off of boff and captain skill trees, which would also be affected by ship type via boff seating. But that's a whole lot of work for some future season, I'm sure.
For now, there are arbitrary cools and restrictions in an attempt to define roles/classes like traditional mmo (a mistake for star trek) and to make an attempt at balance... which... there never is in any traditional mmo. There's always a broadly recognized 'best' class or a class that is most welcome in parties, and that's usually as many DD's as you want, possibly a tank or a healer, depending on how good the dd's are and or how well the game has restricted dd's from getting away with not needing a healer or a tank. So yeah, with traditional mmo mechanics, tac was always going to be king of the hill, it shouldn't be any surprise.
On the bolded part, you do realize that outside of a handful of skills - specifically the ones that start at Lt Cmdr like Gravity Well, every ship can use any power/skill available in STO, however, access to the strength III versions is typically limited to two-three per ship and then limited to what the LtCmdr/Cmdr slot(s) are.
To wit, I could slot GW III in a Cmdr slot, Tractor Beam III and TSS III in the Cmdr's Lt Cmdr slot and the LTC's top slot on "most" actual science ships, however, certain escorts, specifically those with a LtCmdr Sci like the MVAE, can slot Tractor Beam I, TSS II, GW I in the Lt Cmdr science's slots. Many escorts can't even touch GW I as they lack the Lt Cmdr slot, and GW is one of those aforementioned powers.
Which is, IMO, a large portion of the "whining" for a LtCmdr Tac (and Ens. Tac/Uni) for the Gal-X. Consider the two "most common" Tactical builds:
CRF/CSV II in LtCmdr Tac, AP-B Lt Tac, HYT/Torp Spread I and TT I in the two ensign slots, or they want AP-O (coincidentally, another one of those "can't fit on many non-escorts without a Lt Cmdr Tactical" skills) on top of CRF/CSV I, HYT/Spread I, TT I.
That attack pattern every 30 seconds or so is a significant portion of a ship's offense, and of course much whining is invested in making sure that ships have their cake and can eat it too. Sorry, this desire is actually somewhat worthwhile in that many missions have no need for a tank and therefore having a spare Heal III is less useful than offense here in "Escorts Online"...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
I wouldn't mind removing the crew mechanic entirely, but I doubt that will happen, at least if big crews die more and take longer to get back up, they should give more of a benefit while they are on their feet than a small crew does.
I think that it would be nice to remove evasion as a stat for cruisers. Cruisers should be able to creep along at 1/4 speed and tank just as well as at full speed, they are the broad side of a barn and any tactical boff who misses shooting at a cruiser should be blown out the airlock for incompetence... at least if you're on the klingon side you can do that, lol.
I think evasion is a stat for small, fast, maneuverable ships like escorts, and to a lesser extent sci ships, but cruisers should just be big, slow bruisers and lean into that role. Though crusier hull or shield thickness would probably need a buff for losing the evasion stat.
They would need a huge buff in HP to counter, no defense . I never did see cruisers as slow, in fact power wise they should be able to move faster then escorts while having less maneuverability due to their mass.
On the bolded part, you do realize that outside of a handful of skills - specifically the ones that start at Lt Cmdr like Gravity Well, every ship can use any power/skill available in STO, however, access to the strength III versions is typically limited to two-three per ship and then limited to what the LtCmdr/Cmdr slot(s) are.
To wit, I could slot GW III in a Cmdr slot, Tractor Beam III and TSS III in the Cmdr's Lt Cmdr slot and the LTC's top slot on "most" actual science ships, however, certain escorts, specifically those with a LtCmdr Sci like the MVAE, can slot Tractor Beam I, TSS II, GW I in the Lt Cmdr science's slots. Many escorts can't even touch GW I as they lack the Lt Cmdr slot, and GW is one of those aforementioned powers.
Which is, IMO, a large portion of the "whining" for a LtCmdr Tac (and Ens. Tac/Uni) for the Gal-X. Consider the two "most common" Tactical builds:
CRF/CSV II in LtCmdr Tac, AP-B Lt Tac, HYT/Torp Spread I and TT I in the two ensign slots, or they want AP-O (coincidentally, another one of those "can't fit on many non-escorts without a Lt Cmdr Tactical" skills) on top of CRF/CSV I, HYT/Spread I, TT I.
That attack pattern every 30 seconds or so is a significant portion of a ship's offense, and of course much whining is invested in making sure that ships have their cake and can eat it too. Sorry, this desire is actually somewhat worthwhile in that many missions have no need for a tank and therefore having a spare Heal III is less useful than offense here in "Escorts Online"...
I mean every ship should technically have access to every skill in the game all at once. Right now, one must pick and choose, do they want to emergency power to engines into their build or would it be better to go with a different one. Emergency power isn't a skill, it's hardware on your ship and it should be able to be routed to any system on your ship. So every ship should have access to emergency power to engines, aux, shields, and weapons, just how well it is transferred, read: level of the skill, is determined by the boff/captain's skill in eps and the boff seating of the ship.
Every ship has warp nacelles and thus should be able to eject warp plasma. Currently, only certain ships can use it because it's been limited to lt.com eng. Every ship should have every attack pattern. We never heard, "Sir, I can't use attack pattern omega, this is a cruiser!" Just how well the attack pattern performs should be based on captain/boff skills and the ship via boff seating.
And yes, as I have said... somewhere in my wall of replies, DD's are always the most welcome/easy class in any mmo because they pretty much can do well on their own and fit into any party, it's the healers or tanks you only need one or none of most of the time, with rare exception, and usually only if the DD's aren't competent enough.
They would need a huge buff in HP to counter, no defense . I never did see cruisers as slow, in fact power wise they should be able to move faster then escorts while having less maneuverability due to their mass.
I don't mean slow as in, in a straight line race they are slower, I mean that for combat speed they tend to be slower or they'll have that ridiculous sliding around thing going on... at least in sto, in star trek there's inertial dampers... outside of a "skill"... that actually dampens inertia.
Though in the shows we generally saw ships like bops and defiants zipping around in combat at 2-3-4-20 times the speed of large cruisers like the galaxy, so yeah, in combat in sto, I think that cruisers should be able to go along at 1/4 speed without any defense penalty while escorts need to keep their speed up if they don't wanna get hammered... you know, like it was in the show. :P
I love you dropping the Team ability bomb on the game. Based on past experiences you have a reason for this change. I m not into arguing if the change is good or bad. But introducing these changes without any explanation strikes me as very odd.
Looking through forums posts of systems devs, the reasons for changing fundamental game elements and the actual outcomes of these changes rarely matched. That it seems beyond systems to engage what is left of the community of people that care about the mechanics of STO is undeserving of this part of the community.
Thank you posts for playing don't cut it. Telling us your intentions while making us spend time and respecs adopting to these changes, seems the least you can do. It might even facilitate better feedback.
Even if the only reason is to increase the sales of the Gal-R, just say so. Then nobody needs to get upset about the detrimental or beneficial effects this change has on the game at large.
I mean every ship should technically have access to every skill in the game all at once. Right now, one must pick and choose, do they want to emergency power to engines into their build or would it be better to go with a different one. Emergency power isn't a skill, it's hardware on your ship and it should be able to be routed to any system on your ship. So every ship should have access to emergency power to engines, aux, shields, and weapons, just how well it is transferred, read: level of the skill, is determined by the boff/captain's skill in eps and the boff seating of the ship.
Every ship has warp nacelles and thus should be able to eject warp plasma. Currently, only certain ships can use it because it's been limited to lt.com eng. Every ship should have every attack pattern. We never heard, "Sir, I can't use attack pattern omega, this is a cruiser!" Just how well the attack pattern performs should be based on captain/boff skills and the ship via boff seating.
And yes, as I have said... somewhere in my wall of replies, DD's are always the most welcome/easy class in any mmo because they pretty much can do well on their own and fit into any party, it's the healers or tanks you only need one or none of most of the time, with rare exception, and usually only if the DD's aren't competent enough.
In no particular order: In a "properly" generated MMO, you want a 5 pack consisting of the typical tank/cleric/DD (Mage?, Thief?) trinity with two other either hybrids (fill in when a main goes down), QoL types (CC, debuffer, buffer, etc.) or just go all-out DD.
Problem with all out DD is when you lose the tank/cleric, it's usually "run time", "wipe", or "mop-up" and rest - any way you look at it you're down without the trinity in there...
However, this is by design, how many times do you hear in EQ or WOW of 5 packs consisting of nothing but pure DD going out? I'm talking no healing and/or tankiness, attempting to take on max-level content requires an extremely well oiled machine and wolfpack tactics - literally get aggro, kite, and realize when the next guy's become the aggro target so they can start a new kite, and do so before the entire team goes down. Potion up in between rounds, then tackle next target.
However, as I don't play "trinity games" too much, most trinity games work well enough if you have at least a full trinity's worth of classes within the hybrids (two paladins = 1.5 tanks .5 healers, toss a shaman and you have your 1 healer with a touch of CC. Add a couple of DD/QoL mages and bingo, party).
STO is doubly-cursed with both a lack of actual trinity (each ship is a self-contained trinity due to the necessities of single-player content) and content to support a trinity - even the "best" non-tanky content, Crystaline Catastrophe, only rewards "healers" who toss heals, no measurement of how much tanking was done at all - unless the tank is, as someone mentioned off in another post, a Valdore that can heal the damage it takes as fast as it comes in...
And you've forgotten the trick that you can hot-swap BOffs when not in-combat (red alert). This way, you can use most/all skills in a single combat, I vaguely recall reading about builds/players who used to do this (one build for probes, one for Donatra in early-day KASE).
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Honestly, I would nerf speed-based defense bonus a lot.... maybe so that at max half of the incoming hits miss?
A2B is fine, just remove the bonus from technicians, or change it to something else.
The team ability cooldown is good for PVE , because in Pve its really annoying to get subnuke.
It doubles cooldowns, strips all the buffs.... it even makes your weapons fire slower. It is a very powerful, if slow recharge pvp ability, but in pve the enemy ships can spam it against you. Also if you are a sci, enemy npc ships are not that effected by your own subtroll beam.
Honestly , with this patch, now TT and ST can be used at the same time, and that fixes that.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
The team ability cooldown is good for PVE , because in Pve its really annoying to get subnuke.
Than why not to make it for pve only?
I dont play this pve myself, as most of time I am dedicated to pvp. If those subnuke annoying players it can be removed from npc abilities, so all can be happy.
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[Combat (Self)] You lose 6549 (7572) Cold from the torment of the underworld.
The team ability cooldown is good for PVE , because in Pve its really annoying to get subnuke.
Lol, it's annoying, but it makes the game more fun. Would you prefer a target that does nothing that can really hurt and destroy you? I actually like it when enemies are challenging. Most of the other PvE stuff is just press spacebar and boom it goes.
Lol, it's annoying, but it makes the game more fun. Would you prefer a target that does nothing that can really hurt and destroy you? I actually like it when enemies are challenging. Most of the other PvE stuff is just press spacebar and boom it goes.
Its too OP. Like the Voth or Borg one shot torpedoes.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
Well I have said plenty in the Galaxy class blog threads, so I'll say here thanks for fixing the Klingon Costume bug and I'm looking forward to testing out the team skills now with less cooldowns. Sounds like fun.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
In no particular order: In a "properly" generated MMO, you want a 5 pack consisting of the typical tank/cleric/DD (Mage?, Thief?) trinity with two other either hybrids (fill in when a main goes down), QoL types (CC, debuffer, buffer, etc.) or just go all-out DD.
Problem with all out DD is when you lose the tank/cleric, it's usually "run time", "wipe", or "mop-up" and rest - any way you look at it you're down without the trinity in there...
However, this is by design, how many times do you hear in EQ or WOW of 5 packs consisting of nothing but pure DD going out? I'm talking no healing and/or tankiness, attempting to take on max-level content requires an extremely well oiled machine and wolfpack tactics - literally get aggro, kite, and realize when the next guy's become the aggro target so they can start a new kite, and do so before the entire team goes down. Potion up in between rounds, then tackle next target.
However, as I don't play "trinity games" too much, most trinity games work well enough if you have at least a full trinity's worth of classes within the hybrids (two paladins = 1.5 tanks .5 healers, toss a shaman and you have your 1 healer with a touch of CC. Add a couple of DD/QoL mages and bingo, party).
STO is doubly-cursed with both a lack of actual trinity (each ship is a self-contained trinity due to the necessities of single-player content) and content to support a trinity - even the "best" non-tanky content, Crystaline Catastrophe, only rewards "healers" who toss heals, no measurement of how much tanking was done at all - unless the tank is, as someone mentioned off in another post, a Valdore that can heal the damage it takes as fast as it comes in...
And you've forgotten the trick that you can hot-swap BOffs when not in-combat (red alert). This way, you can use most/all skills in a single combat, I vaguely recall reading about builds/players who used to do this (one build for probes, one for Donatra in early-day KASE).
Like I said, it depends on the game you play and how well they enforce the trinity, I didn't play much of wow, by the time I went to try it, free to play mmos were everywhere and I didn't find wow's quality or gameplay or anything so amazing to warrant me paying their monthly subscription. From what you say, maybe wow does a better job of enforcing the trinity. I am used to games where only one healer is needed at most and usually you can get by without a tank, you just need enough DD to wipe things before they wipe you/overwhelm your healer's abilities. That or games that have pets that can heal or tank and thus the right pet combo can eliminate the need for true tanks and healers. But in most games I have played, you only really need one tank, one healer, and the rest is DD. And usually a DD can solo some content where healers are co-dependent on others to kill for them in any reasonable amount of time, and tanks usually have such TRIBBLE damage that soloing for them would take forever. But that's just my personal experience with the games I have played. Shouting for a party as a DD was pretty easy, but as a healer or a tank "We already have a tank, sorry." "We already have a healer, sorry." So even if a tank or a healer are essential in a group, usually you only need one of each and as many dd's as you can get. So even if sto needed a tank and needed a healer... which I really don't want to see as that's not how star trek worked, but even if it were necessary, again, you'd probably end up with the most desireable mix being one engi tank, one sci healer (mostly for their CC/occasional damage amplification on the side) and then everyone else a tac in an escort.
Though I personally don't think STO should have a trinity, we've been moving away from that, and I think that's a good thing. Star trek is not conducive to an MMO trinity of tank, healer, and DD. There are no heal boats in star trek. I think that all ships should be able to reasonably take care of themselves just do it differently, like in the show. Cruisers tank through sheer meatiness. They have super shields, thick hulls, and large crews for repairs, but they're not much on evasion. Escorts are small and nimble, usually well shielded and armored, but they have small crews and despite having good defenses, they will rely more on their speed and maneuverability to avoid a great deal of damage a massive cruiser couldn't. Cruisers should actually hit harder than escorts. Escorts were not meant to be more powerful than cruisers, they were meant to be cheaper than cruisers, less crew, easier to manufacture and put on the front lines. Escorts also have the advantage of maneuverability over a cruiser, not just for evasion, but to get to weak spots/stay on weak spots and hit them hard. Science ships are also usually smaller and more nimble, well shielded, and with decent weapons for self defense should the occasion arise. They usually have more specialized and advanced sensor suites, which would logically make them better at sniffing out the enemy, exposing enemy weaknesses to their allies. So each ship ultimately does the same things, just they go about it a bit differently.
I think that's the direction STO needs to head in, where all the ships are essentially equal in combat ability, just the play style is a bit different. Most damage should come from normal weapons, not space magic. And if we make it so all ships have 8 weapons and then rebalance their secondary features around that, I think it would be much easier to balance the game. Cruisers would be the most tanky, escorts the fastest and most nimble, and sci ships would be somewhere in the middle with good shields and reasonable maneuverability. Cruisers job would be to keep the enemy's attention, not through 'taunts' but because they actually hit hard, Enemies then turn their best defenses to the cruiser and that would free up escorts with their superior combat speed and maneuverability to fly around to the enemy's weak spots to give them a pounding. Science ships could amplify the damage their team does to enemy weak spots because of their super sensors while also contributing to the damage done.
That's just the direction I'd like to see the game go to be more true to the shows. I understand the game started out with the intention of being an MMO first and star trek second, but I think that's a mistake for the fans.
Anywho...
Swapping out boffs outside of combat does not "technically give you access to everything" in the way I am talking about. In star trek, all ships pretty much have all the hardware that other ships do. Torp high yield or spread are not skills, they are hardware functions, ejecting warp plasma is a hardware function, emergency power to any system is a hardware function, all ships should have all of this available to them regardless of boff seating, and you don't need to swap out boffs to gain access to these functions. How well a ship/crew can use these tactics should be determined by the type of ship and the boff seating. So instead of boffs having active skills, they would have passive skill trees like their captains, only exclusively in their department, and depending on boff seating of a ship, your boffs would determine how well your ship's hardware functions perform.
What is the point of tribble if we can't even have enough time to test major changes like team cooldowns, it needs to be a week or more not just 2 days. Really a bad idea and careless to make changes this big without more time for the community to test it and see if we accept it or not.
Like I said, it depends on the game you play and how well they enforce the trinity, I didn't play much of wow, by the time I went to try it, free to play mmos were everywhere and I didn't find wow's quality or gameplay or anything so amazing to warrant me paying their monthly subscription. From what you say, maybe wow does a better job of enforcing the trinity. I am used to games where only one healer is needed at most and usually you can get by without a tank, you just need enough DD to wipe things before they wipe you/overwhelm your healer's abilities. That or games that have pets that can heal or tank and thus the right pet combo can eliminate the need for true tanks and healers. But in most games I have played, you only really need one tank, one healer, and the rest is DD. And usually a DD can solo some content where healers are co-dependent on others to kill for them in any reasonable amount of time, and tanks usually have such TRIBBLE damage that soloing for them would take forever. But that's just my personal experience with the games I have played. Shouting for a party as a DD was pretty easy, but as a healer or a tank "We already have a tank, sorry." "We already have a healer, sorry." So even if a tank or a healer are essential in a group, usually you only need one of each and as many dd's as you can get. So even if sto needed a tank and needed a healer... which I really don't want to see as that's not how star trek worked, but even if it were necessary, again, you'd probably end up with the most desireable mix being one engi tank, one sci healer (mostly for their CC/occasional damage amplification on the side) and then everyone else a tac in an escort.
Though I personally don't think STO should have a trinity, we've been moving away from that, and I think that's a good thing. Star trek is not conducive to an MMO trinity of tank, healer, and DD. There are no heal boats in star trek. I think that all ships should be able to reasonably take care of themselves just do it differently, like in the show. Cruisers tank through sheer meatiness. They have super shields, thick hulls, and large crews for repairs, but they're not much on evasion. Escorts are small and nimble, usually well shielded and armored, but they have small crews and despite having good defenses, they will rely more on their speed and maneuverability to avoid a great deal of damage a massive cruiser couldn't. Cruisers should actually hit harder than escorts. Escorts were not meant to be more powerful than cruisers, they were meant to be cheaper than cruisers, less crew, easier to manufacture and put on the front lines. Escorts also have the advantage of maneuverability over a cruiser, not just for evasion, but to get to weak spots/stay on weak spots and hit them hard. Science ships are also usually smaller and more nimble, well shielded, and with decent weapons for self defense should the occasion arise. They usually have more specialized and advanced sensor suites, which would logically make them better at sniffing out the enemy, exposing enemy weaknesses to their allies. So each ship ultimately does the same things, just they go about it a bit differently.
I think that's the direction STO needs to head in, where all the ships are essentially equal in combat ability, just the play style is a bit different. Most damage should come from normal weapons, not space magic. And if we make it so all ships have 8 weapons and then rebalance their secondary features around that, I think it would be much easier to balance the game. Cruisers would be the most tanky, escorts the fastest and most nimble, and sci ships would be somewhere in the middle with good shields and reasonable maneuverability. Cruisers job would be to keep the enemy's attention, not through 'taunts' but because they actually hit hard, Enemies then turn their best defenses to the cruiser and that would free up escorts with their superior combat speed and maneuverability to fly around to the enemy's weak spots to give them a pounding. Science ships could amplify the damage their team does to enemy weak spots because of their super sensors while also contributing to the damage done.
That's just the direction I'd like to see the game go to be more true to the shows. I understand the game started out with the intention of being an MMO first and star trek second, but I think that's a mistake for the fans.
Anywho...
Swapping out boffs outside of combat does not "technically give you access to everything" in the way I am talking about. In star trek, all ships pretty much have all the hardware that other ships do. Torp high yield or spread are not skills, they are hardware functions, ejecting warp plasma is a hardware function, emergency power to any system is a hardware function, all ships should have all of this available to them regardless of boff seating, and you don't need to swap out boffs to gain access to these functions. How well a ship/crew can use these tactics should be determined by the type of ship and the boff seating. So instead of boffs having active skills, they would have passive skill trees like their captains, only exclusively in their department, and depending on boff seating of a ship, your boffs would determine how well your ship's hardware functions perform.
I would rather keep the trinity. Cruiser's just need a good, non damage related taunt ability.
Do we want all ships to be the same? Basically, your idea would make it boil down to 1 Cruiser online, the best ship being the newest cruiser always.
Yes, A2B is bad now, but at least it could be fixed by removing the technician's cooldown reduction.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
I would rather keep the trinity. Cruiser's just need a good, non damage related taunt ability.
Do we want all ships to be the same? Basically, your idea would make it boil down to 1 Cruiser online, the best ship being the newest cruiser always.
Yes, A2B is bad now, but at least it could be fixed by removing the technician's cooldown reduction.
A non-damage taunt ability only makes them tanks in pve, and there is one, it's that stupid aura that gives a crappy little hull resistance bonus.
In pvp, there is no need for a tank, people ignore tanks, tanks don't do damage and they are hard to kill. I know that pvp is a minority of the game, but I think we should be looking at all aspects, not just focus on pve. Especially because improvments to pvp could make that more of a draw for more players.
My idea doesn't make cruisers the best ships, they hit the hardest, but aren't able to exploit enemy weaknesses well, they are thick and hard to kill but have no evasion and TRIBBLE maneuverability. Escorts would be the fastest and most maneuverable which makes them able to stay on enemy weaknesses and are hard to hit. Thus escorts and cruisers function much like we saw in DS9 where the defiant goes up against a negvar. A negvar technically has better shields, armor, and weapons than a defiant, but the defiant can zip around to take advantage of its maneuverability and evasion and attack the negvar's weak spots. My idea makes the ships largely equal but with different play styles instead of it mostly being escorts online.
Is it possible my idea would make cruisers the favorite/most common ship in the game? Possibly. Star trek was mostly about cruisers anyway, so I don't see how that would be wrong. But my idea doesn't make escorts or science ships non-viable, it just puts them in their cannon roles.
Also, it might help to note that I envision a system on ships where targetable locations are weak spots, some may be constant, but others mostly variable, simulating weaknesses appearing in shields or systems failing in a particular section. These weak spots that change location and whatnot would be what escorts with their superior mobility would be going after. A cruiser wouldn't be able to reposition quickly enough to take advantage so would only be able to normally hit ones that appear on the facing they are attacking. And science ships would have abilities that either enhance the damage done to these weak spots or make more of them show up/targetable at a greater distance. So, for example, a weak spot may not be visible unless you are at 5km, or 3km, etc. So a science ship's sensors would both 1 allow them to more easily exploit these weaknesses from greater range, and 2, broadcast these weaknesses to their allies so they can more easily do the same.
So crusiers would be slow, hit hard, tank well, escorts would be fast, not as high damage, but exploit weak spots that could actually make them as damaging or more damaging than cruisers, and science ships would also exploit these weak spots, they would have better maneuverability and speed than a cruiser, but not as good as an escort, but their sensors allow them to target weaknesses from farther away and also boost the range at which their team mates can exploit weaknesses. So each ship would be pretty equally able to perform solo, but would also synergize in a party.
But I realize that my ideas would require a massive rework of the game that won't happen, so I'm just shooting the breeze here... plus I realize that many people would resist such change, such as yourself, but whatever, can't please everyone... plus it will never happen so it doesn't matter, lol.
You can't be serious... Ever heard of Brace for Impact?
Those torps on elite can blow you out of the water, and brace for impact can only be used once every 60 second, torp high yield/spread can be used every 30 seconds or 15 depending on how many copies, not to mention the possibility of multiple enemies.
Perhaps brace should be made a toggle and given a downside. Like as long as you are braced your repair rates/skills are all very low cause your crew are all under their desks/door frames. :P
Also, it might help to note that I envision a system on ships where targetable locations are weak spots, some may be constant, but others mostly variable, simulating weaknesses appearing in shields or systems failing in a particular section. These weak spots that change location and whatnot would be what escorts with their superior mobility would be going after. A cruiser wouldn't be able to reposition quickly enough to take advantage so would only be able to normally hit ones that appear on the facing they are attacking. And science ships would have abilities that either enhance the damage done to these weak spots or make more of them show up/targetable at a greater distance. So, for example, a weak spot may not be visible unless you are at 5km, or 3km, etc. So a science ship's sensors would both 1 allow them to more easily exploit these weaknesses from greater range, and 2, broadcast these weaknesses to their allies so they can more easily do the same.
So crusiers would be slow, hit hard, tank well, escorts would be fast, not as high damage, but exploit weak spots that could actually make them as damaging or more damaging than cruisers, and science ships would also exploit these weak spots, they would have better maneuverability and speed than a cruiser, but not as good as an escort, but their sensors allow them to target weaknesses from farther away and also boost the range at which their team mates can exploit weaknesses. So each ship would be pretty equally able to perform solo, but would also synergize in a party.
But I realize that my ideas would require a massive rework of the game that won't happen, so I'm just shooting the breeze here... plus I realize that many people would resist such change, such as yourself, but whatever, can't please everyone... plus it will never happen so it doesn't matter, lol.
its an idea with merit. its probably an idea that is too good to bury in this thread, in fact.
obviously we both know its more work than cryptic would be willing to do, and its likely the resulting mechanic would be overly convoluted anyway. but the kernel of this idea could be pretty simple to 'simulate' by simply assigning each and every ship a 'crit modifier' to represent the more nimble ship somehow exploiting weak spots.
with the insane amount of damage many people are pushing out these days a crit modifier may be an unavoidable necessity anyway. may as well present it in a simple, coherent, and logical package, yes?
Comments
Cryptic DOES have the technology to make skills function differently in pvp vs. pve. There are skills/rep passives/weapons that state that they have half effect vs. players like placating for 3 seconds instead of 6 seconds for example. So cryptic could make things that are OP in pvp softer for pvp while keeping the full effect in pve, they just don't do it. Maybe they find it too much work to maintain their schedules or whatever. Though I would strongly suggest making a point of making allowances for that for all future additions and taking the time to go back over old things to give them the same treatment.
Indeed, the game does not need to be heading in the direction of nigh invulnerability to all things at all times, it extra triple screws engi/sci heavy ships when attack pattern omega/teams/hazard emitters/etc. means that crowd control/debuffs does virtually nothing since that's most of what sci/eng has in the way of offense and people are running around shrugging it off. I feel escorts most of all will be buffed by this change. Eng/Sci/Tac team 1 with doffs for constant cool down and attack pattern omega x2 and hazard emitters and you've got pretty much everything shrugging right off with decent heals and the epic damage native to escorts, particularly with a tac at the helm, through an eng in there and the'll be even harder to kill... of course sci will be made least relevant class in the game... at least for pvp.
I'll just throw this out here: Recluse with constant eng team and sci team 3 plus tac team... this can be thrown on to any team mate or themselves... not to mention the stacking their team mates will be doing... yeah... no one should ever die... ever.
People have been complaining about the balance of the team abilities FOR YEARS. There's currently two threads about it, one old, one new under powers and mechanics as we speak, and there have been countless ones before that, ones so old they're lost in the old archives of the old forums.
The game actually needs more automation for "back ground" abilities so I don't have to mash my space bar and get carpel tunnel, but also don't have to stare at my starship's dash board babysitting cooldown timers rather than keeping my eyes on the road.
I and many others have been suggesting changes to TT and all the other teams for years, the community has simply never reached a consensus on the best solution, and the devs have never before attempted to address it, at least not in a manner such as this, they may have done internal testing/suggestions that never even made it to tribble.
And I shall refer you to my previous post for my suggestion to make TT less mandatory and also not make TT1 the best bang for the buck out of the three.
This would suck, but not because some ships have higher crews which would give them an advantage. All crew related things work off of percentages,so small ships and large ships would have the same abilities at full crew, 50% crew, or 0% crew. Because of this, ships with large crews would actually get shafted. Large crews die faster (i.e. en mass) and take longer to get back on their feet than small crews (I call it: enhanced down-time), they are also less benefited by crew death/damage resistance. So yeah, this mechanic would just hurt large crew ships.
Pvpers have to grind the game just as much if not more than pvers because they need resources to buy all the latest and greatest gear and rep passives and broken (at least for pvp) items to get a leg up on their opponents. So... yeah.
Crew mechanic needs a complete overhaul.... Why even have the stat ? If big crews are going to only negatively effect a ship.
That be like saying while escorts have higher speed, we don't have speed controls other then full go and full stop. So while escorts have the advantage of speed they quickly realize this limits their ability to maneuver against slower ships.....
Its the same with crew mechanic while bigger ships have higher base repair, becuase of their large crews they die faster and Regen slower... Thous making lower crews repair faster and better overall.
The PVP community that I've heard tell of on these forums are a group of salty veterans who have the ingenuity, know how and straight up skill to overcome this change.
I am confident in the ability of the players to weather this "reboot" of team powers and find new and unusual ways to beat other players.
I salute you all.
I see that me reading through the thread and quoting off for reply everything that I thought to respond to has resulted in a relative wall of me, only broken by your post... lol.
Indeed, pve, way too easy, doesn't train players for pvp at all because pve ships are morons who don't intelligently use their skills and largely rely on having much thicker shields/hull than players and much higher damage than players to be even remotely effective... well... remotely on the easy ones, and potentially uber OP in the case of the lancing tweedles that guard the queen >>
Indeed, it definitely sets the gal-x up as the obviously better choice. If you were only going to buy one of the galaxy's, the x should be it from a pure "best performance" standpoint. Which is probably why they went ahead and rolled them into a bundle. Which... they announced just days after I had finally caved and bought the captain and va level galaxies... also JUST missed the zen sale so yeah... cold compress on my nethers and saving up for a gal-x...
Hopefully they'll give the gal-r a uni ensign and give the gal-x a uni ensign and lt. i don't mind leaning in to the gal-x being the the obvious best of the two, but I'd like to be able to escape the uber eng of the gal-r when I feel like it, at least a little bit. Hopefully they'll also make that lance way more accurate and make the cool down reasonable. The three piece romulan singularity harness set gives a plasma overload type thingie with a cool of just 90 seconds, so that would seem reasonable for the lance... though I'd much prefer 60 or 30 seconds if they really just wanna thrill me... and also help a little to shut up everyone who's complaining the ship isn't tactical enough.
I wouldn't mind removing the crew mechanic entirely, but I doubt that will happen, at least if big crews die more and take longer to get back up, they should give more of a benefit while they are on their feet than a small crew does.
I think that it would be nice to remove evasion as a stat for cruisers. Cruisers should be able to creep along at 1/4 speed and tank just as well as at full speed, they are the broad side of a barn and any tactical boff who misses shooting at a cruiser should be blown out the airlock for incompetence... at least if you're on the klingon side you can do that, lol.
I think evasion is a stat for small, fast, maneuverable ships like escorts, and to a lesser extent sci ships, but cruisers should just be big, slow bruisers and lean into that role. Though crusier hull or shield thickness would probably need a buff for losing the evasion stat.
I don't really recall how subnuke works when used on a sci team that's on cool, only has one copy, and is supplemented by doffs... if subnuke will murder the cool down on that, one could possibly get around this when fighting ships that aren't using multiple copies of sci team... however they would then have to contend with pretty much everyone else on the team having a sci team to throw to their team mate... so yeah... I really don't see a way round this one. call it a failure of imagination if you like, but every scenario I try to imagine in my mind is just everyone unkillable.
On the bolded part, you do realize that outside of a handful of skills - specifically the ones that start at Lt Cmdr like Gravity Well, every ship can use any power/skill available in STO, however, access to the strength III versions is typically limited to two-three per ship and then limited to what the LtCmdr/Cmdr slot(s) are.
To wit, I could slot GW III in a Cmdr slot, Tractor Beam III and TSS III in the Cmdr's Lt Cmdr slot and the LTC's top slot on "most" actual science ships, however, certain escorts, specifically those with a LtCmdr Sci like the MVAE, can slot Tractor Beam I, TSS II, GW I in the Lt Cmdr science's slots. Many escorts can't even touch GW I as they lack the Lt Cmdr slot, and GW is one of those aforementioned powers.
Which is, IMO, a large portion of the "whining" for a LtCmdr Tac (and Ens. Tac/Uni) for the Gal-X. Consider the two "most common" Tactical builds:
CRF/CSV II in LtCmdr Tac, AP-B Lt Tac, HYT/Torp Spread I and TT I in the two ensign slots, or they want AP-O (coincidentally, another one of those "can't fit on many non-escorts without a Lt Cmdr Tactical" skills) on top of CRF/CSV I, HYT/Spread I, TT I.
That attack pattern every 30 seconds or so is a significant portion of a ship's offense, and of course much whining is invested in making sure that ships have their cake and can eat it too. Sorry, this desire is actually somewhat worthwhile in that many missions have no need for a tank and therefore having a spare Heal III is less useful than offense here in "Escorts Online"...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
They would need a huge buff in HP to counter, no defense . I never did see cruisers as slow, in fact power wise they should be able to move faster then escorts while having less maneuverability due to their mass.
I mean every ship should technically have access to every skill in the game all at once. Right now, one must pick and choose, do they want to emergency power to engines into their build or would it be better to go with a different one. Emergency power isn't a skill, it's hardware on your ship and it should be able to be routed to any system on your ship. So every ship should have access to emergency power to engines, aux, shields, and weapons, just how well it is transferred, read: level of the skill, is determined by the boff/captain's skill in eps and the boff seating of the ship.
Every ship has warp nacelles and thus should be able to eject warp plasma. Currently, only certain ships can use it because it's been limited to lt.com eng. Every ship should have every attack pattern. We never heard, "Sir, I can't use attack pattern omega, this is a cruiser!" Just how well the attack pattern performs should be based on captain/boff skills and the ship via boff seating.
And yes, as I have said... somewhere in my wall of replies, DD's are always the most welcome/easy class in any mmo because they pretty much can do well on their own and fit into any party, it's the healers or tanks you only need one or none of most of the time, with rare exception, and usually only if the DD's aren't competent enough.
I don't mean slow as in, in a straight line race they are slower, I mean that for combat speed they tend to be slower or they'll have that ridiculous sliding around thing going on... at least in sto, in star trek there's inertial dampers... outside of a "skill"... that actually dampens inertia.
Though in the shows we generally saw ships like bops and defiants zipping around in combat at 2-3-4-20 times the speed of large cruisers like the galaxy, so yeah, in combat in sto, I think that cruisers should be able to go along at 1/4 speed without any defense penalty while escorts need to keep their speed up if they don't wanna get hammered... you know, like it was in the show. :P
I love you dropping the Team ability bomb on the game. Based on past experiences you have a reason for this change. I m not into arguing if the change is good or bad. But introducing these changes without any explanation strikes me as very odd.
Looking through forums posts of systems devs, the reasons for changing fundamental game elements and the actual outcomes of these changes rarely matched. That it seems beyond systems to engage what is left of the community of people that care about the mechanics of STO is undeserving of this part of the community.
Thank you posts for playing don't cut it. Telling us your intentions while making us spend time and respecs adopting to these changes, seems the least you can do. It might even facilitate better feedback.
Even if the only reason is to increase the sales of the Gal-R, just say so. Then nobody needs to get upset about the detrimental or beneficial effects this change has on the game at large.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Now, it wasn't enough, so team skill loses its cd. Sub Nuke beam is now useless.
Play with scimmitar or quit, really. I don't want to quit my class.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 6549 (7572) Cold from the torment of the underworld.
In-game handle @Janetza
In no particular order: In a "properly" generated MMO, you want a 5 pack consisting of the typical tank/cleric/DD (Mage?, Thief?) trinity with two other either hybrids (fill in when a main goes down), QoL types (CC, debuffer, buffer, etc.) or just go all-out DD.
Problem with all out DD is when you lose the tank/cleric, it's usually "run time", "wipe", or "mop-up" and rest - any way you look at it you're down without the trinity in there...
However, this is by design, how many times do you hear in EQ or WOW of 5 packs consisting of nothing but pure DD going out? I'm talking no healing and/or tankiness, attempting to take on max-level content requires an extremely well oiled machine and wolfpack tactics - literally get aggro, kite, and realize when the next guy's become the aggro target so they can start a new kite, and do so before the entire team goes down. Potion up in between rounds, then tackle next target.
However, as I don't play "trinity games" too much, most trinity games work well enough if you have at least a full trinity's worth of classes within the hybrids (two paladins = 1.5 tanks .5 healers, toss a shaman and you have your 1 healer with a touch of CC. Add a couple of DD/QoL mages and bingo, party).
STO is doubly-cursed with both a lack of actual trinity (each ship is a self-contained trinity due to the necessities of single-player content) and content to support a trinity - even the "best" non-tanky content, Crystaline Catastrophe, only rewards "healers" who toss heals, no measurement of how much tanking was done at all - unless the tank is, as someone mentioned off in another post, a Valdore that can heal the damage it takes as fast as it comes in...
And you've forgotten the trick that you can hot-swap BOffs when not in-combat (red alert). This way, you can use most/all skills in a single combat, I vaguely recall reading about builds/players who used to do this (one build for probes, one for Donatra in early-day KASE).
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
A2B is fine, just remove the bonus from technicians, or change it to something else.
The team ability cooldown is good for PVE , because in Pve its really annoying to get subnuke.
It doubles cooldowns, strips all the buffs.... it even makes your weapons fire slower. It is a very powerful, if slow recharge pvp ability, but in pve the enemy ships can spam it against you. Also if you are a sci, enemy npc ships are not that effected by your own subtroll beam.
Honestly , with this patch, now TT and ST can be used at the same time, and that fixes that.
I dont play this pve myself, as most of time I am dedicated to pvp. If those subnuke annoying players it can be removed from npc abilities, so all can be happy.
[Combat (Self)] You lose 6549 (7572) Cold from the torment of the underworld.
In-game handle @Janetza
Lol, it's annoying, but it makes the game more fun. Would you prefer a target that does nothing that can really hurt and destroy you? I actually like it when enemies are challenging. Most of the other PvE stuff is just press spacebar and boom it goes.
Its too OP. Like the Voth or Borg one shot torpedoes.
Like I said, it depends on the game you play and how well they enforce the trinity, I didn't play much of wow, by the time I went to try it, free to play mmos were everywhere and I didn't find wow's quality or gameplay or anything so amazing to warrant me paying their monthly subscription. From what you say, maybe wow does a better job of enforcing the trinity. I am used to games where only one healer is needed at most and usually you can get by without a tank, you just need enough DD to wipe things before they wipe you/overwhelm your healer's abilities. That or games that have pets that can heal or tank and thus the right pet combo can eliminate the need for true tanks and healers. But in most games I have played, you only really need one tank, one healer, and the rest is DD. And usually a DD can solo some content where healers are co-dependent on others to kill for them in any reasonable amount of time, and tanks usually have such TRIBBLE damage that soloing for them would take forever. But that's just my personal experience with the games I have played. Shouting for a party as a DD was pretty easy, but as a healer or a tank "We already have a tank, sorry." "We already have a healer, sorry." So even if a tank or a healer are essential in a group, usually you only need one of each and as many dd's as you can get. So even if sto needed a tank and needed a healer... which I really don't want to see as that's not how star trek worked, but even if it were necessary, again, you'd probably end up with the most desireable mix being one engi tank, one sci healer (mostly for their CC/occasional damage amplification on the side) and then everyone else a tac in an escort.
Though I personally don't think STO should have a trinity, we've been moving away from that, and I think that's a good thing. Star trek is not conducive to an MMO trinity of tank, healer, and DD. There are no heal boats in star trek. I think that all ships should be able to reasonably take care of themselves just do it differently, like in the show. Cruisers tank through sheer meatiness. They have super shields, thick hulls, and large crews for repairs, but they're not much on evasion. Escorts are small and nimble, usually well shielded and armored, but they have small crews and despite having good defenses, they will rely more on their speed and maneuverability to avoid a great deal of damage a massive cruiser couldn't. Cruisers should actually hit harder than escorts. Escorts were not meant to be more powerful than cruisers, they were meant to be cheaper than cruisers, less crew, easier to manufacture and put on the front lines. Escorts also have the advantage of maneuverability over a cruiser, not just for evasion, but to get to weak spots/stay on weak spots and hit them hard. Science ships are also usually smaller and more nimble, well shielded, and with decent weapons for self defense should the occasion arise. They usually have more specialized and advanced sensor suites, which would logically make them better at sniffing out the enemy, exposing enemy weaknesses to their allies. So each ship ultimately does the same things, just they go about it a bit differently.
I think that's the direction STO needs to head in, where all the ships are essentially equal in combat ability, just the play style is a bit different. Most damage should come from normal weapons, not space magic. And if we make it so all ships have 8 weapons and then rebalance their secondary features around that, I think it would be much easier to balance the game. Cruisers would be the most tanky, escorts the fastest and most nimble, and sci ships would be somewhere in the middle with good shields and reasonable maneuverability. Cruisers job would be to keep the enemy's attention, not through 'taunts' but because they actually hit hard, Enemies then turn their best defenses to the cruiser and that would free up escorts with their superior combat speed and maneuverability to fly around to the enemy's weak spots to give them a pounding. Science ships could amplify the damage their team does to enemy weak spots because of their super sensors while also contributing to the damage done.
That's just the direction I'd like to see the game go to be more true to the shows. I understand the game started out with the intention of being an MMO first and star trek second, but I think that's a mistake for the fans.
Anywho...
Swapping out boffs outside of combat does not "technically give you access to everything" in the way I am talking about. In star trek, all ships pretty much have all the hardware that other ships do. Torp high yield or spread are not skills, they are hardware functions, ejecting warp plasma is a hardware function, emergency power to any system is a hardware function, all ships should have all of this available to them regardless of boff seating, and you don't need to swap out boffs to gain access to these functions. How well a ship/crew can use these tactics should be determined by the type of ship and the boff seating. So instead of boffs having active skills, they would have passive skill trees like their captains, only exclusively in their department, and depending on boff seating of a ship, your boffs would determine how well your ship's hardware functions perform.
I would rather keep the trinity. Cruiser's just need a good, non damage related taunt ability.
Do we want all ships to be the same? Basically, your idea would make it boil down to 1 Cruiser online, the best ship being the newest cruiser always.
Yes, A2B is bad now, but at least it could be fixed by removing the technician's cooldown reduction.
A non-damage taunt ability only makes them tanks in pve, and there is one, it's that stupid aura that gives a crappy little hull resistance bonus.
In pvp, there is no need for a tank, people ignore tanks, tanks don't do damage and they are hard to kill. I know that pvp is a minority of the game, but I think we should be looking at all aspects, not just focus on pve. Especially because improvments to pvp could make that more of a draw for more players.
My idea doesn't make cruisers the best ships, they hit the hardest, but aren't able to exploit enemy weaknesses well, they are thick and hard to kill but have no evasion and TRIBBLE maneuverability. Escorts would be the fastest and most maneuverable which makes them able to stay on enemy weaknesses and are hard to hit. Thus escorts and cruisers function much like we saw in DS9 where the defiant goes up against a negvar. A negvar technically has better shields, armor, and weapons than a defiant, but the defiant can zip around to take advantage of its maneuverability and evasion and attack the negvar's weak spots. My idea makes the ships largely equal but with different play styles instead of it mostly being escorts online.
Is it possible my idea would make cruisers the favorite/most common ship in the game? Possibly. Star trek was mostly about cruisers anyway, so I don't see how that would be wrong. But my idea doesn't make escorts or science ships non-viable, it just puts them in their cannon roles.
Also, it might help to note that I envision a system on ships where targetable locations are weak spots, some may be constant, but others mostly variable, simulating weaknesses appearing in shields or systems failing in a particular section. These weak spots that change location and whatnot would be what escorts with their superior mobility would be going after. A cruiser wouldn't be able to reposition quickly enough to take advantage so would only be able to normally hit ones that appear on the facing they are attacking. And science ships would have abilities that either enhance the damage done to these weak spots or make more of them show up/targetable at a greater distance. So, for example, a weak spot may not be visible unless you are at 5km, or 3km, etc. So a science ship's sensors would both 1 allow them to more easily exploit these weaknesses from greater range, and 2, broadcast these weaknesses to their allies so they can more easily do the same.
So crusiers would be slow, hit hard, tank well, escorts would be fast, not as high damage, but exploit weak spots that could actually make them as damaging or more damaging than cruisers, and science ships would also exploit these weak spots, they would have better maneuverability and speed than a cruiser, but not as good as an escort, but their sensors allow them to target weaknesses from farther away and also boost the range at which their team mates can exploit weaknesses. So each ship would be pretty equally able to perform solo, but would also synergize in a party.
But I realize that my ideas would require a massive rework of the game that won't happen, so I'm just shooting the breeze here... plus I realize that many people would resist such change, such as yourself, but whatever, can't please everyone... plus it will never happen so it doesn't matter, lol.
You can't be serious... Ever heard of Brace for Impact?
Those torps on elite can blow you out of the water, and brace for impact can only be used once every 60 second, torp high yield/spread can be used every 30 seconds or 15 depending on how many copies, not to mention the possibility of multiple enemies.
Perhaps brace should be made a toggle and given a downside. Like as long as you are braced your repair rates/skills are all very low cause your crew are all under their desks/door frames. :P
its an idea with merit. its probably an idea that is too good to bury in this thread, in fact.
obviously we both know its more work than cryptic would be willing to do, and its likely the resulting mechanic would be overly convoluted anyway. but the kernel of this idea could be pretty simple to 'simulate' by simply assigning each and every ship a 'crit modifier' to represent the more nimble ship somehow exploiting weak spots.
with the insane amount of damage many people are pushing out these days a crit modifier may be an unavoidable necessity anyway. may as well present it in a simple, coherent, and logical package, yes?
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