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Protonic Polaron - Worth It?
hfmudd
Member Posts: 881 Arc User
So I have a Dyson science vessel (doesn't everyone?) with all the consoles, etc etc. Grav torpedo, experimental proton weapon. Right now, the other weapon slots have phaser beam arrays in. But I find myself wondering if it's worth going full proton, buying PP weapons from the rep store, to chase the set bonuses to proton damage etc. Thoughts?
Join Date: January 2011
Post edited by hfmudd on
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They do the same damage as any other weapon, so you have to decide which Proc you want i.e Single Target High Damage for mainly PvP or Multi Target and/or Debuff for Team or PvE.
If the former, go AP, if the latter go Rom Plasma or Fleet Disruptor.
Protonic Polaron has a good Proc for Debuffing and also damaging targets with pure kinetic damage (if it procs), particularly on a Rom Toon with bucket loads of CritH. The Jem-H 2 pce Space Set has a good Polaron Damage Boost, and if you add Spire Damage Consoles with the +Plasma proc, you can have 3 procs on one weapon, with 2 of them doing damage regardless of shields.
So again the answer is ... Maybe yes, maybe no ...
I built out a Falchion Scimidar using phased polaron arrays as the primary weapon. Once my Dyson rep was complete I had almost a complete set of Protonic Polarons. I had heard good things from people I now consider to be unreliable, so I replaced the phased with a set of Protonics and ran a few tests.
Note I am NOT a high DPS is everything type of player.
Phased polaron arrays + rom plasma torp + spire tac consoles, I averaged 16-18K on ISE.
Protonic polaron arrays + rom plasma torp + spire tac consoles, I averaged 14-16K on ISE.
- interesting results, damage and crits happening to hull before shields dropped.
Protonic polaron arrays + rom plasma torp + protonic tac consoles, I averaged 9-10K on ISE.
- felt like someone had taken away half my firepower.
Huge waste of resources - or I suck as to how to use them effectively. Reminded me of the time I wasted resources buying fleet advanced tetryons.... *rolls eyes* NEVER AGAIN.
Thanks for the advice.
I mean if you had a high crit build then maybe.
But at that point you would probably still do more damage with any other weapon.
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
Member since early 2011
How do you explain this clear discrepancy?
This result is completely unsurprising, since the Protonic consoles are both inferior in quantity of boost and provide no CrtH/D. The minor improvement to an infrequent proc cannot possibly make up for the loss of that proc happening in the first place, since you lose the CrtH that made the proc even occur!
IMO it is quite simple:
DPS is not ultimate way of measuring damage capabilities of ship.
Why? Because damage ignoring hull is allowing you to kill ship faster, then damage not ignoring hull.
First example: Let say under normal conditions you need 10 seconds to kill a ship with 50000 hull and 50000 shields - therefore your DPS is 10000.
Second example: Let say your damage is ignoring shields - You will kill this ship in 5 seconds... but your DPS is still the same - it is 10000 . So Your combat effectiveness was doubled without increasing DPS
Third example: You are doing 7500DPS ignoring shield - You will kill enemy ship in less then 7 seconds - but you have DPS 25% lower then ship from first example. At the same time you are actually 50% more effective in killing ships...
Conclusion:
DPS is invalid parameter to estimate effectiveness of weapons able to ignore shields. These weapons are SIGNIFICANTLY more effective then you expect from regular DPS calculation.
The weapons and abilities that use proton damage exclusively are obviously going to work better when buffed, and if you plan to make heavy use of them then you should spec the ship into maximizing proton damage.
The hybrid weapons and science consoles have a moderate proc rate, but they give a very low damage bonus when they do proc. As such they arent worth spec'ing the whole ship, but if you are using the other items and are buffing for those, then you will get more from these too.
Short answer, if you are using the 4-pc Dyson set on a DSD, then go ahead and get the protonic polarons, but you arent going to get much from just using the weapons alone.
There should not be much difference between them in.
Your results are random and depends on other 4 players in scenario.
I log ISC with same builds, usually i get +10/-10%, sometimes i get -50% in DPS, maybe even more because of other players or random unpredictable things
You need more tests.
But looking at the procs, i really dont see how can phased ones outgun protonic polaron ones.
It's absolutely normal for weapons doing direct damage to hull to:
- do less DPS then standard weapons
- kill ships faster then standard weapons.
Why? It's because protonic polarons/plasma are wasting less DPS on breaking shield. These weapons DPS are lower, but much more efficient.
If you want to give REAL results of dps comparison, you must calculate following thing:
Damage done to hull per seconds vs shielded target. [where "shielded" mean target starting engagement with shields on]
You did not read my post well, i said phased ones cannot do more damage than protonic ones
because parsing a single STF and using overall damage to compare weapon performance is a horribly inaccurate thing to do.
You simply won't be able to reproduce two STFs in the same way so you can draw those kinds conclusions. The discrepancy in that case could have a million other reasons and not be releated to weapon performance at all.
Well... Actualy protonic polarons may have lower DPS then phased ones... and still kill ships faster. I am not against Your point of view, I am just supporting it by some theoretical knowledge
General DPS is calculated over the entire match, weapons "economically" distributing DPS are always heavy underated in this method of build comparison.
I do agree with you that overall DPS is not the best indicator for better build, especially not for PVP.
Lets compare these weapons in detail:
same base DPS
same number of modifiers
same energy cost
same power drain proc
the difference : protonic - 25% chance: on critical: 180.1 proton damage (ignores shields) vs. non-voth versus 2.5% chance: disable 1 subsystem for 5 sec (phaser proc)
0.625% to disable weapons - no DPS gain
0.625% to disable shields - your DPS goes strait to hull
0.625% to disable engines - gain accuracy, but little use for it in PVE
0.625% to disable auxiliary - no DPS gain
versus constant 25% proc on critical 180.1 proton damage (unbuffed base number) considering gain in players crit chances
This is comparison for gaining pure DPS in lets say ISE, the reason i said that phased polaron cannon do more DPS there in same conditions.
EDIT: phased polarons have phaser proc / and this is the reason why nobody uses phaser, because of a worthless proc.
Furthermore, the direct-to-hull aspect vs. having shields to gnaw on is almost wholly irrelevant: Firstly, this is ISE: most enemies don't even have shields. Secondly, the fact that not all or even a majority of the damage is shield-ignoring means that you ultimately have to chew through the shield anyway: NPCs are all giant bags of hitpoints, and ignoring shields occasionally does not ultimately change the fact that you will have to chew through all of it to kill them. Practically no NPC will ever roast inside its shield like a player will.
So I am convinced that there is some kind of major inaccuracy at foot here if Protonics are parsing as less than the equivalent Phased weapons, since the Protonic Proc causes damage, the Phased proc does not: Therefore, in an otherwise identical run, anytime Protonic procced, the target took damage, any time Phased procced, absolutely nothing happened...and both weapons are Polaroid, so the Polaroid result was the same.
The difference can be milliseconds in button presses and millionths of a % in random Proc chances, between several thousands of DPS, so who really cares?
OP, if you want to use Protonic Polaron then I say, go ahead, give it a try, and see what you can get out of the build = experiment with gear and setups, I garantee that you'll get way more enjoyment out of doig that than simply buying " W + X with Y on Z ship" .. .It's a GAME ... Have fun, and I'll maybe see you around in my Phased Polaron toting, Scimitar Turret Boat that I absolutely love flying STF's in..
What I'm trying to show the OP is that for every player that posts that they like this or that weapon type, there will be another that says those a rubbish, and you should use that or this weapon type! It's all about finding a combination that works FOR YOURSELF.
In the tau dewa sector there is a mission to run wargames/destroy SB 234.
The mission is the same every time you do it and is single player so the only variable is you, its even timed.
Run the mission,parse it. Depending on your effectiveness you will either take up the entire time limit or finish it early.
If you take the entire time limit then your DPS parses will be accurate compared to eachother, That is if the mission took 5 minutes both times then your DPS isnt effected by total mission time.
If you manage to complete it before the time limit you will have to take into account the differenced between completion times.
I would run it at least 3 times ber build to get afew comparison points so other discrepencies, like the time it takes you to manuever or good crits, can be evened out a bit.
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
As far as unshielded targets go, Solo-STFs are a nice place to test, too. ISE, kill the patrol, kill the cube/sphere above the transformer and use the latter one for your parses.
You can pretty much sit there, peacefully at the same range for as long as you want and test your damage or your rotation against a stationary, indestructable target.
Time will only tell!
That's kind of the crux of the debate. Deathray is pointing out that the metric isn't being used in a good context. Which happens a lot. DPS is an acronym that is getting its meaning lost in a game like this.
Part of is how the damage is measured (parsers do differ and the variable do differ and then the situations differ). Part of it is how the data is then utilized by the players.
I'll harken back to Everquest. That game had test mobs (initially it had enemies that just had too many HPs and would not fight back very well, but then later put in actual testing dummies). Enemies you could beat on for extended periods of time. You could then set up controlled parses. And you could get sample sizes large enough to make accurate comparisons.
This game has none of that. So a parse for ISE will be different than a parse from Crystaline Entity. For a lot of reasons, including the enemies differ, and the powers used actually have specifically different effects against the CE than they do against other enemies.
An EQ testing dummy was rather constant.
But also Deathray is finding one of the other subtle problems with the ongoing love affair these forums have with the acronym DPS. It's lost its actual meaning. People now toss it around to mean a measure of their damage potential. When all it ever was, was a measurement of one's damage over time, specifically damager over a second. This was really key in Everquest because weapons hinged on damage ratios and what not. It started to get glossed over and simplified in other games, notably WoW.
And the thing is, damage range, and how it affected spike damage, especially when under the effects of buffs, was something that was ancillary to DPS (because over an hour or longer of doing your rotation against a testing dummy, the spikes smoothed out), but was really significant in shorter fights in other games like WoW and eventually Cryptic games.
But DPS keeps getting used a shorthand to encompass all damage related debate. And parsers keep parsing.
But the shorthand creates a problem because it misuses the concept frequently. DPS is really a metric based on sustained damage. Not spike damage. And so to really oversimplify this, it's a metric that will in the end favor a power like Beam Fire at Will than it will a power like Cannon Rapid Fire.
But spike damage can clear out a particular situation much faster.
And so situation becomes relevant.
Which then cycles back to ISE, which is less situationally relevant because of how that encounter works out. (A lot of static enemies and sitting there just firing at pin cushions when compared to something like, say, Storming the Spire where things have more shields, more shield tricks, and force some movement by the player).
Man, this is rambling.
All I'm getting at is, DPS was a great metric when I needed to know which 2hander was a better weapon and I could hit a testing dummy for 65 minutes straight to get an idea of how it played out.
In this game, there's more at play because of situational variables, spike damage, and Cryptic's own math being a complex mess of diminishing returns versus straight additive stacking.
TLDR: DPS ... not so simple to apply to actual in game context.
EDIT: Back on the narrow topic itself ... Protonic Polaron ... I've thought about trying to use, but each time I end up going with something else. I don't know, I keep waffling on how effective it really seems compared to other weapon choices. It seems interesting, but in the end I usually opt for something different. Last time I faced this choice (was pretty recently with a guy I got to 50), I ended up just going Antiproton. I keep thinking the Protonic part has some interesting effects I want to try to utilize, but keep wanting to stay consistent overall with the damage boosting, and it seems like there's too much tradeoff in the end. But I could be wrong. I'm just going off of tooltips and haven't had much chance to test them on Tribble.
Very good point sir
I agree completely with you.
And we will see more and more content like that.
does it do gigantic dps ? no, i don't think so, i haven't parsed it and i don't care about it's dps, yes i have spent hundreds of thousands of dil to get the equipment but it isn't real money so who cares, dil is easy to gather, so in the end i have a weird setup/build very different to what i am used to and i like it very much cause it is more fun than the overused cruiser build
now if you want it for pvp then i think there are better weapon choises for a good damage build
I love them, but there ARE some caveats that may or may not put them "below" certain other weapons.
BUT, if you spec AROUND them, using the ships and equips built with THEM in mind, sometimes the synergies you get can feel absolutely INSANE, and at least give the ILLUSION that you're doing huge amounts of damage, which, I believe, matters more than the raw numbers given the lack of general challenge in existing content.
Best of all, it's quite CHEAP to get a well-equipped Protonic Polaron build, in light of the new equipment additions and the lower cost/higher speed of the Dyson rep grind. Well, it's more expensive if you start factoring in fleet consoles, gimmick consoles, etc, but still.
For example, I built my freebie Dyson Science Destroyer (Warbird version) around proton damage, to maximize both Proton Damage AND Polaron Damage. I found and bought a couple of the auto-targeting consoles that increase Proton Damage, accuracy, and have the [+pol] mod and mixed them with vulnerability locators that boosted polaron damage. Instantly, I could boost both my Polaron and my Proton damage.
I combined this with the full Protonic Arsenal set from the dyson rep, which further boosts Proton damage AND photon projectile damage AND modifies the Experimental Proton Weapon to be compatible ability-wise to the Dyson ship's native Dual Heavy Cannons. I used plasma infused science consoles to add in an extra plasma burn. I used vulnerabilit
I ran my Dyson almost exclusively in tactical mode, to use high damage cannon powers with as many weapons as possible and attack maneuvers. In essence, I tailored as many abilities as possible to boost both proton damage and polaron damage AND adding as many damageboosting consoles as I could find. Example:
The results felt absolutely unfair. Even in a 9-console freebie ship I was vaping heavy Voth ships in 10% of the time it took my fully decked-out Antiproton fleet avenger with A2B double-Beam Overload madness to kill them.
Power Overwhelming.
BUT of course that took a lot of work to truly specialize in that relatively small niche of damage. Would I do better against normal ships instead of Voth? I can't say, but I FELT like a grim reaper, dealing hot purple death at will, and to me that's what matters most.
I'm the first to admit that, even after some years playing this game, I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to builds. I'm strictly a PvEer and, as others have noted, selection pressure is not exactly high in that aspect of the game - but that's what I enjoy. And as the last poster surmised, I mostly just want to feel effective and/or competent. (Being able to keep to some kind of "theme" is good too, and not just 'cause it means only stocking one sort of console.)
I also acknowledge that most of the notional effectiveness of this build would be against Voth ships... and frankly, I don't shoot at them very often anymore, nor plan to. I earn my Dyson marks on the ground. So this was more a matter of, "how expensive will it be to kit out my freebie Dyson the way the set bonuses seem to imply I should, and will I embarrass myself if I do and take it into other PvE battles?"
So, if you're lucky and have a working set of them, give it a try, it costs you nothing. If not...well, I can't justify paying an infinity% premium on top of that. The cost of trying to complete a set from the rep store is about infinity times higher than the boxes, which is just insane.
I didn't realize that for a while, and had a few built up.
And Snoggy hit the nail on the head about DPS. With no context its meaning is lost.
I can run my FAW boat all day long in ISE and "win" but I don't necessarily consider that more effective for most situations. Burst is many times more important in a PvP situation, and burst AE has the potential to be so much more valuable then sustained AE but it never gets a mention (Until you manage to pull every damned thing into the middle and pop the scimmy at the end of a fleet alert before it can cloak... then people notice!)
It is sadly working on pushing me back into my Avenger as a PvP healboat. As much as I love my dread I miss my burst. The burst is so important that I am choosing to be worse at healing, sustained DPS, and surviability at the same time just to get my hands on it (And I *LOVE* my Galaxies, so its doubly painful to say... At least my ADD will keep me ship hopping back to it, and I'm still a nightmare in my dread)
But a burster won't rank on a ISE parse... even tho they have the most potential to wield death around.
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard