Don't worry if you cry and whine long enough they will buff phaser damage.
I appreciate your well thought-out and thought provoking reply. I eagerly await a parse from you showing that Phasers are on equal ground to disruptors.
Sardak (Science Officer): Captain of a 23k DPS R'Mor Temporal Science Vessel, R.R.W. Vathos Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
When you have alot of stuff shooting at you, and your shield system collapses, if even for a second or two, that's pretty disastrous.
Even worse if your an escort and the proc knocks out your engines. GOODBYE bonus defense. Frankly phasers are fine in all respects except at the fleet elite level. There they may need a change, but otherwise all the lower phaser choices ingame work very well in what they do- which is knocking out systems as well as doing damage.
Tetryons, now there is a poor weapon in my opinion.
Don't worry if you cry and whine long enough they will buff phaser damage.
you don't get it...nobody is complaining about phaser dmg. They are not designed to increase dmg. other types are.
They simply suck at what they are intended to do...getting sub systems offline.
As mentioned before, polarons in combination with other stuff is the energy type of choice at that.
1) duration is too short and easily countered
2) proc is rng based and ontop there is another rng layer which determines if it is actually a usefull proc.
3) there is an immunity that will prohibit any subsystem to go offline, even if the next would be a different one than the last that triggered the immunity.
ofcourse it is a nasty proc once all the stars align...but compared to each and every other weapon type that instance is simply too rare of an occasion to have an impact.
I'm another that uses Phasers on one of my toons, only because he's Starfleet, and that's what Starfleet uses (along with Photon Torpedo's)...
They could easily make the Phaser Proc more "desireable" by either:
a)Force the duration to be an absolute minimum of 5secs, regardless of immunities (only for PvE though)
b)Increase the Proc chance to maybe 5% or 10% on hit, or maybe 50% on a Crit. (same as Protonic?)
c)Modify the "immunity" so that the individual system was immune to further proc's for 10 secs, but not the other three, so you couldn't have shields offline one instantly after another, but you could have shields and the weapons offline, but by that time, the shields would be back.
Another decent option would be to add a second and possibly 3rd effect to the proc for instance
Weapon's offline - kills the subsystem for the normal time, debuff's energy damage by x% for _ sec and possibly drains x power from the subsystem.
Shield offline - kills subsystem, lowers shield resistance by x% for _ sec, drain power
Engine - kill subsystem, lowers defense by x% for _ sec, and drain
Aux - kills aux, lowers healing & part gen ability's by x% for _ sec and drain
The offline would be affected by the immunity / resistance however the others could be set to ignore it. This would let phasers be quite a bit more useful especially if the drain was tied into flow cap's. It would also prevent the constant offline situation I think the dev's worry about.
It would really make sense as well, you kill the weapons of course their damage & power should drop and as they bring them back online there still should be a short term negative due to the initial damage and whatever jury-rigged insanity your engineer just pulled off to get them back up.
1. Look past the "immediate moar dakka to hull bar" effect that shields offline gives. Look at the utility of some of the other effects:
I have survived a round of the Tac Cube in ISE (back pre-reputation) because the cubes weapons went offline from a phaser proc just long enough for my heals to cycle.
I have smoked a couple of EPTE spheres before they ran to oblivion because I got an engine offline proc. And people forget that engines offline = zero speed = -15 defense = accuracy overflow = more crits = moar dakka... (and more time on target with DHCs... :P)
2. However, the inherent defenses to this reduce the 10 second vs. NPCs to a barely noticable 1 or 2 seconds. If it runs at the full 10 seconds on most enemy targets, people would notice it more often and begin to realize the full utility of the proc...
thats really the only thing i notice.....the npcs never stay disabled for more than 2 seconds and if i use SST (20% chance to knock a system offline...NEVER WORKS!!!) then its barely noticeable.....I get more effect from a TR(1-3) than I do phasers or SST
I would like to see them get an accuracy modifier instead of the subsystem proc. Elite fleet proc could be a shield disable on the current facing you are firing on.
The phaser proc is useless in Pve so it really does not have a proc
Elite phasers arnt much better
PvE is DPS and phasers come in last in DPS
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
The thing with the phaser proc is that it's meant to convey that phasers are precise and accurate, but "hitting things at random" sort of conveys exactly the opposite.
Would phasers still be bad if, instead of a gimmicky proc, they were changed to an innate [Acc] or [CrtH] mod instead?
What about keeping Phasers the way they are now, and link them with Subsystem Targeting abilities... either increasing the chance of a shut down or the duration period...
The thing with the phaser proc is that it's meant to convey that phasers are precise and accurate, but "hitting things at random" sort of conveys exactly the opposite.
Would phasers still be bad if, instead of a gimmicky proc, they were changed to an innate [Acc] or [CrtH] mod instead?
I think that would be pretty awesome. They'd mirror the Anti-Protons then. Though ACC may not be so important in PVE.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Maybe not in PvE but in PvP if Phasers get upgraded they should be good in both PvE and PvP.
I definitely think it would make them more popular and competitive.
It's not that I think the proc currently is neglible, but it also just doesn't feel right to me. Phaser precision and subsystem targeting is poorly represented by randomization.
And if it was me, the Beam Target Subsystem powers probably shouldn't have a proc at all, and always disable the targeted system, the length being dependent on the level of the power - but there shouldn't be a target subsystem shields. (Even if there is some canon evidence for it.). Of course, a lot of things don't work right with that, like the ease of removing a subsystem disable proc would make anything but target subsytem I irrelevant.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
In my short time in this game, I've noticed that there is a hierarchy of damage types. To my understanding, it goes:
Antiproton
Romulan Plasma (a notable 'non gimmick' dual-type)
Disruptor
Plasma
<INSERT ALL OTHER GIMMICK DUAL-TYPES HERE>
Polaron
Phaser
Tetryon
Which makes me wonder, why are the Romulan and Klingon "signature" weapons up near the top of the list in their usefulness, but the Phaser, which, as far as canon is concerned, is an extremely deadly weapon type, is near the bottom? Indeed, the only time I use phasers is on my Chimera, and even then I'm using the Elite Fleet Phasers to get a semi-useful proc out of them, instead of the worthless phaser proc.
Let's go into why phasers are awful. Their base damage is in line with all other types, but their proc is garbage, making them fall very far down the usefulness chain. Their proc is garbage because:
It is a 2.5% chance to have a 25% chance to do something useful.
Phaser could be brought into line with the others by removing this hilariously useless proc, and putting something at least half-decent in it's place.
Here are my suggestions, with the assumption that the proc would be entirely gutted:
Give Phasers an innate [DMG] modifier, making them the highest base-damage weapons in the game.
OR
Give Phasers an innate [Acc] modifier, allowing players who stack phasers to get additional crit hit and crit chance through overflow.
OR
Give Phasers an innate [CritC] modifier, making them crit more often than other weapons.
OR
Give Phasers a "damage multiplier" ability, where every shot you land has a 2.5% chance to apply a damage multiplier, for 5%, with up to 5 stacks.
OR
Give Phasers an innate [ARC] modifier, making them the widest firing weapons in the game.
Those are my thoughts for now. I do not seek to make phasers OP, but rather to bring them in line with the other energy types.
Actually Romulan Plasma can utterly blow away Antiproton with proper Embassy Consoles etc.
Polaron is also extremely powerful but ONLY if what you are doing is a power drain build.
I would suggest that Phasers do in space what they do on the ground instead. Make them actually Stun the enemy for 2 seconds and then slow them down for a little while. There should still be a slight delay between the first time the proc stuns them and when another can stun them to avoid utter stun lock but this would be far more useful.
Maybe not in PvE but in PvP if Phasers get upgraded they should be good in both PvE and PvP.
Why should we use other energy weapon types then? Because of their color maybe Phasers are pvp weapons and they kill a lot, when they shut down your system and you don't have any eptx/battery to use you die. Crying for phaser proc to get a buff is ridiculous. What about the other procs, should they get a buff as well, like tetryon they have a great proc as well:P
Why should we use other energy weapon types then? Because of their color maybe Phasers are pvp weapons and they kill a lot, when they shut down your system and you don't have any eptx/battery to use you die. Crying for phaser proc to get a buff is ridiculous. What about the other procs, should they get a buff as well, like tetryon they have a great proc as well:P
You are joking right, it is the only proc your target gets imune after it procs.
You are joking right, it is the only proc your target gets imune after it procs.
The short lived immunity was added because phasers (mainly turrets) could be buffed to allow for several systems to be proced offline at once.
At a time when Human Boffs didnt help subsystems and subsystem repair skill was pointless so nobody spent points in it this allowed people to field shutdown builds just by using phasers and a few Boff skills to boost rate of fire.
I think an easy fix would be making PVE enemy npcs less resistant to subsystem disables.
If the phaser disables lasted longer on NPCS, it would be cool.
On AP and Romulan Plasma.... AP depends a lot on your critical chance.
This is the problem.. PvE npcs get there systems back so fast.. its a worthless proc. In PvP phaser spamming was frustrating so they add the timer.
This in effect made PvE phasers almost worthless.. so unless they force NPC to be shut down for the full 5 sec or you need to buff phasers in some way. The problem with the forced 5 secs is that power creep with people doing 15k, 20 up to 30k dps that 5 sec is going to render PvE encounters even more easy.
It's not a easy issue to address.. you have to rework phasers or remove the immunity timer or drastically reduce it. To make it viable in PvE... then pvpers would be up in arms again.
In a lot of ways I wish they had a totally different rule set for pvp.. so pve can be balanced away from pvp.
The justification for the lockout nerf means that Phasers can never work as they were designed (the original balance). As such, they should be reworked under a whole new mechanic. But Cryptic wont do it for a variety of reasons (people paid money for it, somebody somewhere likes the broken proc, etc); at best they will fork phasers to another proc type like they have done with Tetryons and Disruptors and AP. But this wont fix things like the lance weapons and Andorian phasers.
Its just one of the things that make the game broken beyond repair. There is a lot of stuff like this, stuff that is clearly broken but cannot be fixed without upending the game, and therefore unlikely to be repaired due to policy, even if they had the time and inclination to fully resolve it, which they have neither of given the assembly-line development methodology that keeps them occupied all the time.
What do mean with short lived as far as I know it is still in place and makes the phaser proc pointless.
The immunity has a time frame that expires before the proc can function again.
Two.changes came in update when it happened.
1) The proc was changed so one could not stack offline proced systems. Hence a proc of weapons offline could not stack with a second proc of weapons offline.
2) After a phasers Proc has ended, the target will recieve a 10-second immunity to additional phaser procs.
These changes where put into effect on 7/19/2012.
In retrospect, 10 seconds seems a bit long. Reducing it to 5 may be better.
It should be known that all other energy weapon procs where updated at the same time.
1 most where improved in effectivenesss
2 Plasma DoT and Tetryon shield damage where improved significantly
3 Plasma procs can be improved by skills
4 Polarons now debuff by for 5 seconds
5 ground Polaron procs where doubled.
At the time Phasers ruled the roost when these changes where made.
I remember what it was like trying to fight Terrans and Cardassians before the change to how Phasers worked.... It was ridiculous. If the AI got lucky you'd get disabled pretty much indefinitely.
Comments
I appreciate your well thought-out and thought provoking reply. I eagerly await a parse from you showing that Phasers are on equal ground to disruptors.
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
Even worse if your an escort and the proc knocks out your engines. GOODBYE bonus defense. Frankly phasers are fine in all respects except at the fleet elite level. There they may need a change, but otherwise all the lower phaser choices ingame work very well in what they do- which is knocking out systems as well as doing damage.
Tetryons, now there is a poor weapon in my opinion.
R.I.P
you don't get it...nobody is complaining about phaser dmg. They are not designed to increase dmg. other types are.
They simply suck at what they are intended to do...getting sub systems offline.
As mentioned before, polarons in combination with other stuff is the energy type of choice at that.
1) duration is too short and easily countered
2) proc is rng based and ontop there is another rng layer which determines if it is actually a usefull proc.
3) there is an immunity that will prohibit any subsystem to go offline, even if the next would be a different one than the last that triggered the immunity.
ofcourse it is a nasty proc once all the stars align...but compared to each and every other weapon type that instance is simply too rare of an occasion to have an impact.
They could easily make the Phaser Proc more "desireable" by either:
a)Force the duration to be an absolute minimum of 5secs, regardless of immunities (only for PvE though)
b)Increase the Proc chance to maybe 5% or 10% on hit, or maybe 50% on a Crit. (same as Protonic?)
c)Modify the "immunity" so that the individual system was immune to further proc's for 10 secs, but not the other three, so you couldn't have shields offline one instantly after another, but you could have shields and the weapons offline, but by that time, the shields would be back.
Weapon's offline - kills the subsystem for the normal time, debuff's energy damage by x% for _ sec and possibly drains x power from the subsystem.
Shield offline - kills subsystem, lowers shield resistance by x% for _ sec, drain power
Engine - kill subsystem, lowers defense by x% for _ sec, and drain
Aux - kills aux, lowers healing & part gen ability's by x% for _ sec and drain
The offline would be affected by the immunity / resistance however the others could be set to ignore it. This would let phasers be quite a bit more useful especially if the drain was tied into flow cap's. It would also prevent the constant offline situation I think the dev's worry about.
It would really make sense as well, you kill the weapons of course their damage & power should drop and as they bring them back online there still should be a short term negative due to the initial damage and whatever jury-rigged insanity your engineer just pulled off to get them back up.
thats really the only thing i notice.....the npcs never stay disabled for more than 2 seconds and if i use SST (20% chance to knock a system offline...NEVER WORKS!!!) then its barely noticeable.....I get more effect from a TR(1-3) than I do phasers or SST
2.5% change to Heal shields for 100% of dmg done.
a copy of the Valdore console.
Kdf can **** shields, FEDs can heal them.
/end thread
Phasers re the worst choice available
Any other energy weapon beats phasers period
The phaser proc is useless in Pve so it really does not have a proc
Elite phasers arnt much better
PvE is DPS and phasers come in last in DPS
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Would phasers still be bad if, instead of a gimmicky proc, they were changed to an innate [Acc] or [CrtH] mod instead?
I think that would be pretty awesome. They'd mirror the Anti-Protons then. Though ACC may not be so important in PVE.
ACC is very important in PvE, since bonus acc translates to not missing your target ever, and bonus crit hit + crit chance.
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
But since enemies tend to not have high defenses, bonus crit hit or crit chance can easily be more useful.
Maybe not in PvE but in PvP if Phasers get upgraded they should be good in both PvE and PvP.
I definitely think it would make them more popular and competitive.
It's not that I think the proc currently is neglible, but it also just doesn't feel right to me. Phaser precision and subsystem targeting is poorly represented by randomization.
And if it was me, the Beam Target Subsystem powers probably shouldn't have a proc at all, and always disable the targeted system, the length being dependent on the level of the power - but there shouldn't be a target subsystem shields. (Even if there is some canon evidence for it.). Of course, a lot of things don't work right with that, like the ease of removing a subsystem disable proc would make anything but target subsytem I irrelevant.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
Actually Romulan Plasma can utterly blow away Antiproton with proper Embassy Consoles etc.
Polaron is also extremely powerful but ONLY if what you are doing is a power drain build.
I would suggest that Phasers do in space what they do on the ground instead. Make them actually Stun the enemy for 2 seconds and then slow them down for a little while. There should still be a slight delay between the first time the proc stuns them and when another can stun them to avoid utter stun lock but this would be far more useful.
Why should we use other energy weapon types then? Because of their color maybe
You are joking right, it is the only proc your target gets imune after it procs.
The short lived immunity was added because phasers (mainly turrets) could be buffed to allow for several systems to be proced offline at once.
At a time when Human Boffs didnt help subsystems and subsystem repair skill was pointless so nobody spent points in it this allowed people to field shutdown builds just by using phasers and a few Boff skills to boost rate of fire.
R.I.P
If the phaser disables lasted longer on NPCS, it would be cool.
On AP and Romulan Plasma.... AP depends a lot on your critical chance.
Where in that list would Bio Molecular Phasers fit? Since they do have a useful proc. Would they go into that all caps part of your list?
This is the problem.. PvE npcs get there systems back so fast.. its a worthless proc. In PvP phaser spamming was frustrating so they add the timer.
This in effect made PvE phasers almost worthless.. so unless they force NPC to be shut down for the full 5 sec or you need to buff phasers in some way. The problem with the forced 5 secs is that power creep with people doing 15k, 20 up to 30k dps that 5 sec is going to render PvE encounters even more easy.
It's not a easy issue to address.. you have to rework phasers or remove the immunity timer or drastically reduce it. To make it viable in PvE... then pvpers would be up in arms again.
In a lot of ways I wish they had a totally different rule set for pvp.. so pve can be balanced away from pvp.
Its just one of the things that make the game broken beyond repair. There is a lot of stuff like this, stuff that is clearly broken but cannot be fixed without upending the game, and therefore unlikely to be repaired due to policy, even if they had the time and inclination to fully resolve it, which they have neither of given the assembly-line development methodology that keeps them occupied all the time.
The immunity has a time frame that expires before the proc can function again.
Two.changes came in update when it happened.
1) The proc was changed so one could not stack offline proced systems. Hence a proc of weapons offline could not stack with a second proc of weapons offline.
2) After a phasers Proc has ended, the target will recieve a 10-second immunity to additional phaser procs.
These changes where put into effect on 7/19/2012.
In retrospect, 10 seconds seems a bit long. Reducing it to 5 may be better.
R.I.P
1 most where improved in effectivenesss
2 Plasma DoT and Tetryon shield damage where improved significantly
3 Plasma procs can be improved by skills
4 Polarons now debuff by for 5 seconds
5 ground Polaron procs where doubled.
At the time Phasers ruled the roost when these changes where made.
R.I.P
And this was PvE.... guess what PvP was like?
My character Tsin'xing