So I queued for an ISE PUG with my upgraded freebie DSD specced for grav megawell of doom.
A Scimitard, looked like an Aux2Bat FAW spammer, and three other guys I didn't see.
Holy mother of god was that a nightmare!
We took a solid 2 minutes to drop the cube, and the mission was failed in less than 2 minutes after the first left gen blew! Looks like the 10% rule is a necessity now, as is an absurdly specced sci Captain--I mean, I was tossing out grav well THREE there and the spheres were ignoring it.
What a nightmare. I appreciate the AI boosts, but the buffing is absolutely absurd!
So the FAW AtB Scimitars are not owning the mission now?:eek:
I've only attempted Crystal Advanced so I can speak of the other "Advanced" level missions, but I have to say I'm a little disappointed. Obviously, the game needed a difficulty increase I'm sure a lot of people can agree with that, but the way they "raised the bar" so to speak leaves a lot to be desired. Rather then create more intelligent AI they simply added hundreds of thousands of hit points to the NPC's and called it a day. I mean I saw a Tholian Orb Weaver with over 800k hit points. That's pretty TRIBBLE. In any event we got the Crystal Entity down to about 20-30% and that was about it...people started leaving the mission at that point which made it un-winnable for the 4 or so people that had decided to stay and grind it out.
I've only attempted Crystal Advanced so I can speak of the other "Advanced" level missions, but I have to say I'm a little disappointed. Obviously, the game needed a difficulty increase I'm sure a lot of people can agree with that, but the way they "raised the bar" so to speak leaves a lot to be desired. Rather then create more intelligent AI they simply added hundreds of thousands of hit points to the NPC's and called it a day. I mean I saw a Tholian Orb Weaver with over 800k hit points. That's pretty TRIBBLE. In any event we got the Crystal Entity down to about 20-30% and that was about it...people started leaving the mission at that point which made it un-winnable for the 4 or so people that had decided to stay and grind it out.
I expect a lot of people to start posting bad experiences from Crystalline Advanced. I was in the same boat - 25% was all we could do - after 5 min an not going lower - people started dropping out. When that happened the thing increased in health rapidly. Mission over - everyone quit. When you have almost 1 million HP Tholians and Shards spawning everywhere - the slug fest just becomes a futile bore.
Just run CSA (Cure Space Advanced) and OH MY GOD!!!
They haven't buffed the NPC's, they've made them godlike. We had two of the new intel escorts, a Rom timeship and I think a support cruiser along with my Vesta. Everyone sporting top o' the line kit and multiple Mk XIII weapons etc.
We couldn't even get past the first waves of BOP's as they've got 650K HPs each now (the cubes over the dockyards only have around 750K).
Oh and they shoot back at you now...
Oh and there's a sphere over each cube too, with insane HPs too...
So imagine being swarmed by 9 cubes all aggro'd up in your face and trying to kill your team and the Kang.
Now the Kang has been buffed too, it's practically unsinkable from what we saw, it's hull never dropped below 98%
We ran the full time length and I don't think anyone even bothered to go and shoot the nanites or the cubes (which ironically would have been easier than trying to stop the BOP's.
My poor Vesta is not built for tanking the equivalent of 9 cubes at once!!!
The Kang can be destroyed.
It was my first sortie with my new T6 MatHa.
Buffed then hit the first 2 Borg BoPs from the center Cube.
Buffed a third cycle that should have sent them screaming into Gre'thor...nothing.
Checked my Power levels and even checked if I mounted the 4 DHC's.
Long story short, the Borg BoPs were circling Kang when the "Mission Failed" notification popped up.
NO to ARC RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
Got both wave optionals, lost timer optional. Snowflake was beaten down to 30-ish % and stayed there. Something (I think that were shards spawning on me) killed me 3 times in 2 minutes.
I saw a Recluse with 998k hp, Orb with 790-ish k and Weavers with 307k. They couldn't really hurt me, but kiling them took ages.
Big Snowflake itself had 21 million hp and insane resists, my fleet AP dhc were doing about 300 damage per shot. After HP stopped at ~30% some people wandered off to chase Tholians, and some were just afking.
I tried for about 15 minutes, but after this time it became clear that rest of the participants lost interest and slowly started leaving one by one.
This 'difficulty level" is just sad. Its not even trolling players, its straight up "you can't do anything here, go find yourself another game".
May 2013, automatic permanent ban for mentioning gold-seller sites pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should. moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
Yep, nothing changed but the HP's. To just a ridicules mountain of HP requiring the entire team to focus fire trash...TRASH to kill it in under a minute. But you can still sit surrounded by a dozen or more and no one die. Literally watching team HP not really going any where.... =.= But greifly neither was the mobs.
Trash mobs should be cleared by one person with some AoE and move on tot he next pile.
I disagree 1000%... This is not nightmare, it's just tedious and senseless dps zerging (gosh I hope you know what that term means). When people start making (being forced more like) their 30k dps boat, they will notice how "yawn" this entire situation brings.
I just so, happen to have one of these beam boat spamming builds and, I will tell you this much.
It is, quite literally the most boring build, I have ever seen in my entire life playing this game.
I tried a cure advanced. It could have been fun if the game didn't keep crashing every five minutes (running sto on a mac). Thankfully after reloading I was able to log back in and continue with the STF. I don't know what my poor team must have thought, seeing me leave the game several times and then coming back in a few minutes later. Thankfully the team must have been good because we actually finished the STF.
In terms of the difficulty, I was playing a Romulan Tac flying a Scimitar. My build is quite modest, the most I've ever done is about 18k, I know there are players out there doing way better. Yesterday when I was playing Cure elite, birds of pray would melt away in seconds after I started shooting them. Now my scimitar just tickles them, it's like fighting lions with a feather duster. I'm starting to wonder if it might be better to go with single target abilities like beam overload and torp high yield.
Anyway as we go from level 50 to 60 I'm sure our ships will all get a lot more powerful. The enemy hp increase might seem over the top now but perhaps with all the new traits and specialisations the extra hp won't be a problem.
I did enjoy the new cure advanced when the game worked, even though the little birds of prey and spheres kicked my butt. Now if the mac client could just get fixed. Hopefully that won't be too long.
PUGS are for normal
ESTF and other channels are for advanced
Your Fleet for elite with voice communication
I stopped doing those channels because previously you could Elite pug and get the optional 85% of the time. The Advanced are SIGNIFICANTLY harder than the old Elite.
Not even a T6 with XIV will make it "easy" because there is NO way to counter 500% more HP AND much stronger shields (at last 3 times i think) AND strongly reduced shield migrating damage AND higher damage resistence (not much but it is a little higher i think) AND much higher resist to energydrains AND higher shield and HP regeneration.
That's good to know. One could theorize Cryptic borked everything to get players to try and upgrade ships, consoles/gear, etc. Maybe, or maybe not... Only Cryptic knows. The perception is, it's tougher... so you need better ships, etc. The reality is, it's not going to make a big difference. But Cryptic still got the sale.
Folks, this is a discussion. I do read the posts carefully, as I hope you do, too. This thread is about discussing "Advanced" STF content experiences -- and additional context is always welcomed. resumod, you offer one point of view; I hope we'll see many others, too. The more in-game experiences shared here, the merrier.
What I'm getting from this thread: Upgrading my T5 ships for STFs is a waste of time and monies (Zen). At least until Cryptic gets sensible about their recent STF revamp choices.
Admittedly, I'm looking forward to trying my new T6 ships in-game in a few days to see for myself. (I'm waiting until Cryptic irons out some of the DR release bugs before jumping back in.) You've given me reason to doubt T6 is going to make much of a difference, though. And it sounds like T5-U upgrades are probably a total waste right now. For STFs and DR play, anyways.
Even prepared teams wont be able to as quickly deal with the mountains of HP STF's now have. DPS focusing still only kills one single trash mob at a time at a bearable rate....yes all FIVE members spamming everything they got at one single mob at a time and it still takes over a minute to kill just one trash mob at a time.
Where the old Elite...these same players with same ships could just wipe 3-4 of those same trash mobs every few seconds. Even getting first place near every time in Crystal....these new trash mobs just laugh at their tickles.
It's not the players, it's not the players gear. It's solely the mob HP that's at fault.
And yes, non-mob hps are unchanged. All those anchors and what not still drop in no time.
At this point any AoE spam can cost you an Optional...but on the other hand not using that extra DPS can also cost you that same optional. So it's a lose/lose deal there.
Infected Space Advanced. Me in my mostly-offense T5U tac Odyssey level 52 and four others. I've got Mk. XII and XIII fleet everything at this point.
It still takes us three minutes to get through the cube and sphere group; we lose a couple right off the hop. Then it's on to the node. We torch the generators fast but everyone else is getting swarmed by spheres and nobody uses Gravity Well or TBR. Blown objective on the first transformer.
Second run, it's me, two Avengers, an Atrox and a Scimitar. Atrox goes in alone and gets popped instantly. The rest of us take a couple minutes to mow down the cube and spheres. Then it's on to the node. We torch the cube fast and start icing generators. We have the transformer down to 2% HP when a nanite reaches it. Fission mailed. Again, no gravity well in sight.
The artist formerly known as PlanetofHats.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
I just did CC Advanced. Probably the most boring fight I ever had in this game. I am not sure if the pug was lacking DPS or the buffed HP of advanced combined with the CE regen was too much but there was no way to get the damned thing below 30%. The worst part is that there was no challenge whatsoever, no enemies that could put my T5U Chimera in danger, just this DPS goal the group couldn't reach. Can't wait for the Elites... :rolleyes:
I am going to give it a try later with my fleet to see if there is any difference, but this reminds me when the revamped crystaline was released an no one could finish it because of a scaling bug with the HP regen.
So I queued for an ISE PUG with my upgraded freebie DSD specced for grav megawell of doom.
A Scimitard, looked like an Aux2Bat FAW spammer, and three other guys I didn't see.
Holy mother of god was that a nightmare!
We took a solid 2 minutes to drop the cube, and the mission was failed in less than 2 minutes after the first left gen blew! Looks like the 10% rule is a necessity now, as is an absurdly specced sci Captain--I mean, I was tossing out grav well THREE there and the spheres were ignoring it.
What a nightmare. I appreciate the AI boosts, but the buffing is absolutely absurd!
Will have to try my uber drain ship. Maybe the NPCs power levels were left intact.
As for the HP, this is the devs fault for not listening. Better AI trumps damage sponges with beams.
Not even a T6 with XIV will make it "easy" because there is NO way to counter 500% more HP AND much stronger shields (at last 3 times i think) AND strongly reduced shield migrating damage AND higher damage resistence (not much but it is a little higher i think) AND much higher resist to energydrains AND higher shield and HP regeneration.
You don't know what you are talking about. RodentMaster does.
Better players than you have already beaten the new stuff on FT5/Lockbox T5s equipped with Mk XII gear.
Better players than you are already able to put out the DPS amounts required by new stuff, far more than what is strictly definable as Elite level players.
Better players actually did some sort of forward planning and realised this content was intended for level 60s with Mk XIV gear, max reps, max specialisation points, max crafting, not for old stuff.
failed ISA in literally 15 seconds as some one flew off and hit a generator causing the sphere horde of death to come flowing out of the gate failing the optional which failed the mission
so much for being "optional"
ships was a T6 Guardian captain was level 51 with MKXiii VR to UR gear
failed ISA in literally 15 seconds as some one flew off and hit a generator causing the sphere horde of death to come flowing out of the gate failing the optional which failed the mission
so much for being "optional"
ships was a T6 Guardian captain was level 51 with MKXiii VR to UR gear
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
Finally completed CC advanced. Took us around 30 mins to do it but we got there in the end.
We actually had it down to 0% once and then it recrystallized and was back up to around 10% in a few seconds. I felt it got tougher the less health the entity had, the first 3rd was pretty simple but by the end everyone had around 5-10 injuries and was pretty smashed up.
I even got 3rd place in my smashed up "held together by sticky tape" Vesta (kept getting all the aggro so died a lot!)
Personal favourite part was getting several 170K+ critical hits with a HY enhanced bio-torp, plus I even beat the scimitars that were trying to BFAW everything on the map.
You don't know what you are talking about. RodentMaster does.
Better players than you have already beaten the new stuff on FT5/Lockbox T5s equipped with Mk XII gear.
Better players than you are already able to put out the DPS amounts required by new stuff, far more than what is strictly definable as Elite level players.
Better players actually did some sort of forward planning and realised this content was intended for level 60s with Mk XIV gear, max reps, max specialisation points, max crafting, not for old stuff.
I won ISA yesterday with 3 different chars with T5U level 0 ships and at level 50.
I never wrote advanced can't be won.
The question was if T6 together with XIV gold will compensate the massive scale up in HP, shieldHP, resistence, shield resistence, hullregeneration and shieldgeneration cryptic build in if the player has the same skill.
And i said that it does not. Not is a very friendly word there. Even if we speak about 50% more damage with XIV gold and T6 on the one hand we speak about 500% more HP combined with the other points on the other.
God lord, I have flown my sci CC and survival Vesta with full XII purple gear, my sci BoP with full XII purple and my rom sci dyson destroyer with full XII purple gear.
Read, think, write. Allways the best way before attacking someone.
My apologies, rodentmaster. Can't help but chuckle at your crabby post, though. :P
Like with any bug report, it helps to understand the details leading to the problem. It would be nice if players provided some insights. A lot of this, in my opinion, is just whining/complaining.
T6 MatHa.
Since you don't have any "insights" how do you know it's just whining/complaining? :rolleyes:
NO to ARC RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
Comments
So the FAW AtB Scimitars are not owning the mission now?:eek:
I expect a lot of people to start posting bad experiences from Crystalline Advanced. I was in the same boat - 25% was all we could do - after 5 min an not going lower - people started dropping out. When that happened the thing increased in health rapidly. Mission over - everyone quit. When you have almost 1 million HP Tholians and Shards spawning everywhere - the slug fest just becomes a futile bore.
I don't consider myself a good player but this difficulty jump in one day is a wee bit excessive.
The Kang can be destroyed.
It was my first sortie with my new T6 MatHa.
Buffed then hit the first 2 Borg BoPs from the center Cube.
Buffed a third cycle that should have sent them screaming into Gre'thor...nothing.
Checked my Power levels and even checked if I mounted the 4 DHC's.
Long story short, the Borg BoPs were circling Kang when the "Mission Failed" notification popped up.
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
CCA.
Got both wave optionals, lost timer optional. Snowflake was beaten down to 30-ish % and stayed there. Something (I think that were shards spawning on me) killed me 3 times in 2 minutes.
I saw a Recluse with 998k hp, Orb with 790-ish k and Weavers with 307k. They couldn't really hurt me, but kiling them took ages.
Big Snowflake itself had 21 million hp and insane resists, my fleet AP dhc were doing about 300 damage per shot. After HP stopped at ~30% some people wandered off to chase Tholians, and some were just afking.
I tried for about 15 minutes, but after this time it became clear that rest of the participants lost interest and slowly started leaving one by one.
This 'difficulty level" is just sad. Its not even trolling players, its straight up "you can't do anything here, go find yourself another game".
pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should.
moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
Trash mobs should be cleared by one person with some AoE and move on tot he next pile.
I just so, happen to have one of these beam boat spamming builds and, I will tell you this much.
It is, quite literally the most boring build, I have ever seen in my entire life playing this game.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
In terms of the difficulty, I was playing a Romulan Tac flying a Scimitar. My build is quite modest, the most I've ever done is about 18k, I know there are players out there doing way better. Yesterday when I was playing Cure elite, birds of pray would melt away in seconds after I started shooting them. Now my scimitar just tickles them, it's like fighting lions with a feather duster. I'm starting to wonder if it might be better to go with single target abilities like beam overload and torp high yield.
Anyway as we go from level 50 to 60 I'm sure our ships will all get a lot more powerful. The enemy hp increase might seem over the top now but perhaps with all the new traits and specialisations the extra hp won't be a problem.
I did enjoy the new cure advanced when the game worked, even though the little birds of prey and spheres kicked my butt. Now if the mac client could just get fixed. Hopefully that won't be too long.
PUGS are for normal
ESTF and other channels are for advanced
Your Fleet for elite with voice communication
I stopped doing those channels because previously you could Elite pug and get the optional 85% of the time. The Advanced are SIGNIFICANTLY harder than the old Elite.
Folks, this is a discussion. I do read the posts carefully, as I hope you do, too. This thread is about discussing "Advanced" STF content experiences -- and additional context is always welcomed. resumod, you offer one point of view; I hope we'll see many others, too. The more in-game experiences shared here, the merrier.
What I'm getting from this thread: Upgrading my T5 ships for STFs is a waste of time and monies (Zen). At least until Cryptic gets sensible about their recent STF revamp choices.
Admittedly, I'm looking forward to trying my new T6 ships in-game in a few days to see for myself. (I'm waiting until Cryptic irons out some of the DR release bugs before jumping back in.) You've given me reason to doubt T6 is going to make much of a difference, though. And it sounds like T5-U upgrades are probably a total waste right now. For STFs and DR play, anyways.
Where the old Elite...these same players with same ships could just wipe 3-4 of those same trash mobs every few seconds. Even getting first place near every time in Crystal....these new trash mobs just laugh at their tickles.
It's not the players, it's not the players gear. It's solely the mob HP that's at fault.
And yes, non-mob hps are unchanged. All those anchors and what not still drop in no time.
At this point any AoE spam can cost you an Optional...but on the other hand not using that extra DPS can also cost you that same optional. So it's a lose/lose deal there.
It still takes us three minutes to get through the cube and sphere group; we lose a couple right off the hop. Then it's on to the node. We torch the generators fast but everyone else is getting swarmed by spheres and nobody uses Gravity Well or TBR. Blown objective on the first transformer.
Second run, it's me, two Avengers, an Atrox and a Scimitar. Atrox goes in alone and gets popped instantly. The rest of us take a couple minutes to mow down the cube and spheres. Then it's on to the node. We torch the cube fast and start icing generators. We have the transformer down to 2% HP when a nanite reaches it. Fission mailed. Again, no gravity well in sight.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
I am going to give it a try later with my fleet to see if there is any difference, but this reminds me when the revamped crystaline was released an no one could finish it because of a scaling bug with the HP regen.
Will have to try my uber drain ship. Maybe the NPCs power levels were left intact.
As for the HP, this is the devs fault for not listening. Better AI trumps damage sponges with beams.
You don't know what you are talking about. RodentMaster does.
Better players than you have already beaten the new stuff on FT5/Lockbox T5s equipped with Mk XII gear.
Better players than you are already able to put out the DPS amounts required by new stuff, far more than what is strictly definable as Elite level players.
Better players actually did some sort of forward planning and realised this content was intended for level 60s with Mk XIV gear, max reps, max specialisation points, max crafting, not for old stuff.
so much for being "optional"
ships was a T6 Guardian captain was level 51 with MKXiii VR to UR gear
I guess the old 10% rule is mandatory again.
But the 5-60...very very few of them only 3 exactly. Try one, no mega HPs on mobs.
Joined January 2009
We actually had it down to 0% once and then it recrystallized and was back up to around 10% in a few seconds. I felt it got tougher the less health the entity had, the first 3rd was pretty simple but by the end everyone had around 5-10 injuries and was pretty smashed up.
I even got 3rd place in my smashed up "held together by sticky tape" Vesta (kept getting all the aggro so died a lot!)
Personal favourite part was getting several 170K+ critical hits with a HY enhanced bio-torp, plus I even beat the scimitars that were trying to BFAW everything on the map.
I won ISA yesterday with 3 different chars with T5U level 0 ships and at level 50.
I never wrote advanced can't be won.
The question was if T6 together with XIV gold will compensate the massive scale up in HP, shieldHP, resistence, shield resistence, hullregeneration and shieldgeneration cryptic build in if the player has the same skill.
And i said that it does not. Not is a very friendly word there. Even if we speak about 50% more damage with XIV gold and T6 on the one hand we speak about 500% more HP combined with the other points on the other.
God lord, I have flown my sci CC and survival Vesta with full XII purple gear, my sci BoP with full XII purple and my rom sci dyson destroyer with full XII purple gear.
Read, think, write. Allways the best way before attacking someone.
T6 MatHa.
Since you don't have any "insights" how do you know it's just whining/complaining? :rolleyes:
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev