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cryptkeeper0
Member Posts: 989 Arc User
It is well know that STO has a very soft trinity system, while when the game started/beta it was harder.
This shift away from the standard MMORPG trinity, in my eyes has been both a good and bad thing. Its good in that it makes the game more accessible, but it also has removed a lot of possible group play.
But even though the game has shifted many of the shells of the harder system still exist. Making gameplay suffer in some areas. Including useless abilities, or fake chooses. Just a bunch of inconsistent values with they way the rest of the game is going.
Which leads me to my question, what roles do you see the character classes space and ground. Being good at in this system of damage is king, every thing else is secondary. You can even include their pvp roles.
Then on to another question, then what about the player ships roles along with the boff ability categories engineering, tactical etc role in combat.
Their main primary role must be a style of damage production and secondary roles healing, tanking, etc can also be said. I look forward to seeing what people see the roles of these are.
This shift away from the standard MMORPG trinity, in my eyes has been both a good and bad thing. Its good in that it makes the game more accessible, but it also has removed a lot of possible group play.
But even though the game has shifted many of the shells of the harder system still exist. Making gameplay suffer in some areas. Including useless abilities, or fake chooses. Just a bunch of inconsistent values with they way the rest of the game is going.
Which leads me to my question, what roles do you see the character classes space and ground. Being good at in this system of damage is king, every thing else is secondary. You can even include their pvp roles.
Then on to another question, then what about the player ships roles along with the boff ability categories engineering, tactical etc role in combat.
Their main primary role must be a style of damage production and secondary roles healing, tanking, etc can also be said. I look forward to seeing what people see the roles of these are.
Post edited by cryptkeeper0 on
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Engineer Ground: Turret based DPS, and Mine/Bomb based DPS.
Science Ground: Expose created DPS. With some healing to top off. Can tank really great in at least two specific encounters I can think of.
Tactical Ground: Melee DPS. Grenade DPS. If they ever bother to work on it, stealth based DPS too.
Engineer Space: Energy management, which transforms into Beam based DPS.
Tactical Space: Gravity Well DPS, and Attack Pattern enhanced DPS.
Science Space: In PVE ... I'm thinking ... Gravity Wells?
PVP: I have no idea anymore. But PVP hasn't really been given a lot of focus in 4 years, so I'm not entirely out of bounds in being unfamiliar with its specifics. I probably know more about it than the devs do right now. Which is a sad, sad testament to how things are.
For example, the turret DPS is weak, even the embassy one, while it takes about 1-2s to create them. The mortar one being the lowest of them all, since it take so much time to hit, and they can't hit moving target.
As for space, powers like nadion inversion are very weak compared to dem+marion, especially in an a2b build. Even without that, while it was difficult to have a power drain reduction back when the game was released, it's very common nowadays.
And let's be honest, when it comes to DPS, AP:A is pretty much king. Sensor scan is a good pretender though.
If Cryptic really want to drop the trinity, which is the current trend it seems, then they need to really do that. And not the current half way system.
The problem is the one-dimensional gameplay and horrid powercreep. The sole content of the game is shooting, something the tac is best at because of powerful, straight forward damage buffs. When they finally broke the trinity with hybrid ships, they created ships that would feature high damage potential and high healing potential on their own, so they didn't need outside support anymore PLUS they introduced a lot of items that eliminated the dependency on anything but damage dealing on purpose (leech, magic fleet consoles etc.). So power management and buffing/debuffing are basically not needed anymore while tacs can put out the highest damage and heal themselves completely on their own.
Ground combat is the only part of the game that remotely resembles a team based system of complementary skills. But I have a hunch that cross-class kits and more strange magic boost tiems will eliminate that as well.
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Doesn't take much IQ to get tank, healer, dps...when those blend together with one being heads and shoulders above the rest *cough DPS *cough...we end up with something akin to what we have now
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
Engineers are the ground damage class, with Seeker and Support Drones, Turrets, Mortars, Mines, Bombs, and stacking Diagnostic Engineer doffs. Oh, and Orbital Strikes that chase their target now.
Tac captain's abilities are centred around damage. Either by increasing your damage (AP:A, GDF, TF) or by debuffing enemy DR which is a force multiplier in team settings (FOMM), or by putting all your tac boff abilities on global (TI).
Eng captain's abilities are centred around energy management (EPS transfer, Nadeon Inversion) and damage mitigation/self healing (RSF, MW, and EF).
Science captain's abilities are centred around debuffing targets (sensor scan, subnuke), or team based buffs (scattering field, SF) with a particularly unique ability that can help distract enemies and take damage off you and your team (holo-fleet).
The roles are 'soft' trinity because the game is set up in such a way that you don't require a tank and a healer and a debuffer as well as damage dealers. Other MMOs need those things or the party gets wiped. Thing is, everyone wants to deal damage. Not everyone wants to sit back and watch the hp bars of team mates and be ready to cast a heal here or a buff there. Not everyone wants to attract all the fire while putting all power to shields while everyone else kills the bad guy. Arguably, a team is enriched when those positions are filled, but unlike in other games where the trinity is rock hard, it's simply not a prerequisite for success in STO.
Dealing damage is visceral. It's constantly reinforced as favourable whenever you see the occasional crit followed by BIGNUMBER. It follows a causative pattern: you deal damage, the target blows up, you by your actions have made the team one step closer to achieving the objectives. When you see the tac cube blow up at the end of ISE you can think to yourself 'I helped make that happen'. The same can't really be said if you're a healer and you saved one team mate from spending 15 seconds in the respawn timer while the rest of the time you made the occasional debuff that didn't do very much.
What the other roles need is that same sense of accomplishment that tac captains or any captain flying an escort or tac-oriented cruiser gets. Some content is in the game where that can happen, like how ISE and KASE and CSE used to require someone being ready to cast grav well or TBR (preferably away from the nanite transformers or vortex or Kang :V ). I remember feeling chuffed at myself when I used to play as a sci and cast grav well on nanite spheres, because by my actions I helped retain the optional in an ISE. But now? You can do that content in your sleep thanks to the power creep.
Seeker drone : meh DPS, high occasional burst
Support Drones : almost no DPS, they mostly buff
Turrets : meh DPS
Mortars : very very slow firing and hitting target. No DPS against most targets.
Mines, Bombs : best engi DPS, but they either have an arming time or spawn time. Also, they need to be put on the enemy feet, making them useless sometimes (ISE when doing optional)
Orbital Strikes that chase their target now : good power, long CD, long activation.
You can do a tremendous amount of damage with a tac, a pulsewave, flanking bonus and some buffs/debuffs. And you can do it at every shot.
I really love my engi on the ground, more than my tac. But I can see the numbers and the parser.
Tactical: always DPS, sometimes to the point of glass cannon.
engineer: tank. plain and simple.
science: debuff, cleanser, healer in some cases with TSS and HE.
thats how i believe it should be. if combat was balanced to require tanks, to go faster with debuff, and not be governed by "highest DPS and nothing else"
as it stands in a DPS based world, here's the actual way each class preforms in a DPS world.
tactical: my pew pew is bigger (stacking buffs to make cannons and torps do extremely high damage
engineering: my pew pew is stronger (double meaning. not only do engineers last longer in a fight, but their resistance to drains, plus bonus to power levels allows them to have a higher base damage then tactical. i know very few engineers who see weapons power below 70 when at max pew pew mode. on the other hand i've seen some tacticals who are pretty good get down to 15 power at times.)
science: DPS through making the target weak, or DPS through damages the target is already weak to. no one likes direct hull damage, and its no secret that science can burn, crush, blast, and drain through almost all shields in the game. if only science could keep targets disabled longer, distribute power in the fleet from what they steal from targets, or more effectively subdue enemies, maybe more people would care about this misunderstood class.
Character classes:
Tac:
Primary: Burst dps
Secondary:
Group Offensive buffs
Engi:
Primary: Sustained dps
Secondary:
Group Defensive buffs
Science:
Primary: Debuff/AOE dps
Secondary:
Group Control and debuff buffs
I'm going to focus on the main 3, covering them all would be a large write up.
Ship classes/boff:
Escorts/Tac:
Primary: Burst dps
Secondary:
Defense tank
Short description:
Need to take out a dangerous opponent fast, who will only grow in strength. The tactical commander seating give these ships the highest dps in a burst.
Cruisers/Engi:
Primary: Sustained dps
Secondary:
Hull Tank
Support
Short description:
A master at sustained Dps, meant to outlast most opponents. Maintains consistent dps with powerful engineering abilities to levels which only ships with a commander in engineering can match.
Science/Sci:
Primary: Debuff/AOE dps
Secondary:
Shield tank
Healing support
Controller
Short description:
With science heavy boff abilities, they should be able to perform the best in debuff for improved team and player damage as well as have great AOE crowd damage.
As far as pvp is concerned I'd like to see somewhat of a rock, paper, scissors balance.
Escort beats cruiser, cruiser beats science, science beats escorts. Something like that.
Actually a good engineer and a good tac are nearly equal. Engineer has a advantage in stfs, when enemies shift from friendly to fiendly, that way activation-times are compensated.
Also, its very easy to do optional in ISE with one Engineer in a pug, even if there are two Officers to be rescued, just mine one and Orbitalstrike or bomb the other spawn of worker drones. Yes, you have to be fast, and your mines must be layed precise, but its one of the easiest ways to do it.
Of course you have to be very, very aggresive for that.
And, to compensate for mentioned activation-times, you have to stay ahead of the group, else any good Sci or Tac will just spike-dmg the group into extinction before activation time is up. Unfortunately you encounter said Sci/Tacs only in premades. Engineers too, pugs arent really good, some decent, but far from good.
The big disadvantage of engineer is simply, they have a tremendous amount of dps, but nearly no synergies. A tac-sci-combo is more powerful, has buffs and debuffs blend into each other and just steamroll one mob after another, while engineers have to be even faster then other classes, because of said activation times. A tac and a sci can each lay an entire mob including heavy tactical drone in 3seconds, chroniton mines need 5sec to activate, thanks to the recent nerf. Now all classes are quite equal, if played aggressive, though engineers are beginning a loosing strive like in space.
Tacs have more spike then Sci, but therefore Sci are far more tanky, even without heal-skills in kit (heals on ground other than two piece-bonuses or hypos are pretty much wasted slots^^).
Bottomline: All that matters is playstyle.
Ah, and for the OP: DPS for all with varying subroles like tanking/debuffing, though those come pretty much with DPS(especially debuffing in ground), so, yeah: DPS DPS DPS.
But Op, you are making one mistake by tying one Class with one shipclass, thats wrong. A tactical cruiser (lt.cmd.tac, 4 tac consoles) and the vesta (as well as some other lockbox ships) pretty much close any gap between shipclasses. If my eng on monbosh pugs with 20k and my sci on vesta too, a tac on those should easily go over 30k. Even though my tacs stick to escorts (aside from one scimitar), you must be clear in one thing: Escorts in pve arent really the topclass for damage anymore, not in STFs and especially not in the new, cannon-hating Undine-content.
Also, before you try to get more trinity: its a concept perfectly fit to burn screaming in hell
Ground:
Tac is for team buffs
Sci is for enemy debuffs
Eng is for damage
Space:
Tac is for damage
Eng is for damage
Sci is for damage (plus maybe debuffing the one or two NPCs where it might matter)
It seems lame but this is how I see it. Since any career can fly any ship, your ship choice matters more than your career IMO. Just my observations.
For ship roles, I see sci ships providing crowd control, cruisers drawing agro, and escorts spiking bad guys in their faces.
I think your misinterpreting what I meant i'm not tying captain class and ship togather. Mearly that they should represent the higest potiental dps catagory of thier roles if put togather. Any thing with a commander tac even thr scimitar is primaryly a burst style ship, if mixed with enigineer for example would be able to put out good sustained but it wouldn't have max burst like it would with a tac.