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Attack Pattern: Beta 3 vs. Cannon: Rapid Fire 3
furiontassadar
Member Posts: 475 Arc User
A little while back, whilst I was browsing the forums, I saw a post where someone was saying that it was important to get Attack Pattern: Beta in as a high a rank as you could manage in order to boost your dps. I didn't think much of it at the time, but I've found myself mulling it over now that I'm at a stage where I am seeking to optimize my dps.
Currently, my Commander Tactical BO slot is being filled by Cannon: Rapid Fire 3, which not only increases the firing rate of my cannons, of course, but also increase their base damage by about 50%. Meanwhile, Attack Pattern: Beta 3 would reduce my target's damage resistance by about -33%.
Just going by the base numbers, it would seem like C:RF 3 is numerically superior, but perhaps I'm missing something. Would it be better to have Attack Pattern: Beta 3 instead? Should I just stick with what I've got? Are they roughly equivalent?
Currently, my Commander Tactical BO slot is being filled by Cannon: Rapid Fire 3, which not only increases the firing rate of my cannons, of course, but also increase their base damage by about 50%. Meanwhile, Attack Pattern: Beta 3 would reduce my target's damage resistance by about -33%.
Just going by the base numbers, it would seem like C:RF 3 is numerically superior, but perhaps I'm missing something. Would it be better to have Attack Pattern: Beta 3 instead? Should I just stick with what I've got? Are they roughly equivalent?
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Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
Such a great question. I'm sure some people will mention that at least AP:B is a team multiplier, so it's great for PvE.
In 99% of pugs, 99% of the time, people are running around like mad and shooting random things. Beta debuffs the user's current target. With 5 people shooting 5 targets, it is not helping the team. If the team is spamming FAW in a GW, it is only helping to kill ONE of the enemy at any given time.
In most scenarios, because of this lack of coordination and focused fire, beta 2 CRF 3 is better.
In the borg gate scenarios or other missions where you DO have a single target that everyone will hit because its the ONLY target, Beta 3 and CRF 2 will provide more team damage. This is rare, but when you need to burn one tough target fast (timers in advanced mode..) it is the way to go if you are a team player and are doing the specific STFs that have 1) a timer and 2) a single tough target at various stages in the mission.
Infected: everyone is shooting the transformers, gate, tac cube
Vortex: everyone is shooting the transformers, gate, cubes
Crystalline: everyone is shooting the entity
Of course, there's more or less assorted cannon fodder that you kill in those missions as well, but where it matters, for the big targets, everyone is shooting them at the same time, or half of the team in case of Vortex, so APB does make big difference in how quickly pug finishes these missions.
Best combined with FAW or TS to spam the APB on multiple targets, when there are multiple targets around. That helps those situation with swarm of smaller enemies where each from the team chooses his own target.
I used to fly APB2 CRF3 for fairly long time and later I switched to CRF2 APB3 and I stayed with it. I never logged the damage so it's purely subjective, but I just prefer APB3 better. Now I fly APB3 and BO3 and FAW3 on my beam-scort so that I can spam the APB around with FAW if I want and I can use BO for single target. On intel escort I have APO1 and SS2, but that's different story, because imho there's much bigger difference between SS1 and SS2 then there's between CRF2 and CRF3, plus I will replace SS2 with SS3 once I unlock it. And I need APO to counter holds. But for regular escorts, if the question is APB2 CRF3 or CRF2 APB3, then imho the latter is the better.
Edit:grammar
Edit 2: it's kinda obvious but good idea is to have more tactical boffs trained for different scenarios and switch them before mission. The boff slot unlock, if needed, is well worth this flexibility
This was what I was missing. I forgot about the fact that other teammates can take advantage of the debuff as well.
Now I'm curious, though...if multiple players are running AP:B, do all the debuff effects stack? Or does the player with the highest rank in AP:B override everyone else's debuffs?
Yeah, I was already considering this. I noticed that it was much more critical in the more difficult STFs to focus down single targets. Currently, I run a mix of both single target abilities (Cannon: Rapid Fire and Torpedo: High Yield) as well as aoe abilities (Cannon: Scatter Volley and Torpedo Spread), which are nice when soloing, but with the hike in enemy health that comes with the higher difficulties, even with something like killing the probes in Khitomer Vortex, it seems far more efficient to single target them down quick, rather then just throwing aoe at them.
So I was already going to try change things so I had a couple of BOffs that were exclusively single target (for STFs) and a couple that had more aoe (for grinding Argala and such), and then just mix and match those depending on what other scenarios call for. After reading people's feedback, I may want to go even further (so long as I'm already buying up and customizing BOffs), and have one of my single target BOffs with APB2/CRF3 and another with APB 3, as well.
This is a good question. I'm not sure. The indicators on the target definitely show stacks, you can often see the APB1 with the small digit in lower right corner of the icon, showing how much stacks of the APB1 the target has. If it takes the stacks into account, that I don't know. I believe there used the be time sometime back when only different levels stacked together and that was one of the reasons I went to APB3, as almost no one used it. It had something to do with playable Recluse frigates spamming APB like crazy.
If someone know the truth about ABP stacking, please share it with us, thx.
well, that is easy enough. More officers is not always the only solution!
You *should* be able to, with 3 tac officers, swap them around in a way that provides all the necessary skills for a ST and AOE setup swap.
For example...
officer 1, TT1, scatter 1, beta2, rapid 3
officer 2, TT1, rapid 1, scatter 2, beta 3
officer 3, TT1, beta1, rapid2, scatter 3
assuming a tac boat, with a cmdr tac, ltcmdr tac, and ens tac, a fairly standard configuration?
solo/aoe setup:
cmdr is # 3
ltcmdr is #2
ens is #1
single target setup
cmdr is #1
ltcmdr is #3
ens is #2
just random skills for the example, 3 copies of TT1 is kind of silly but there isnt much there if you have no beams and no torps. The point is you don't need more officers every time, in many cases you can just carefully rearrange them. This is extra important for roms where each officer is worth millions.
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Not being a smarty pants, but please tell me where you got that number.
Moving on. The Beta ability decreases your targets resistance rating. Captain skills will have an effect on this. The difference between Beta 1 and Beta 3 with my Captain is 20% rating. For now I'll go with the difference between 2 and 3 as being reasonably close to 10% rating. Each 10% change in rating will yield...an unknown change in actual damage resistance. It's non linear as I'm sure you all know. There's a formula somewhere look it up!
If your target was around 40% resistance, each 10% change in rating would cost it about 5% resistance. Beta will quickly stack to 5 stacks, and as the duration expires you will see the debuff stack tick down till it finally drops off. So there is a very brief ramp up, and a five second decline.
Resistance is a straight reduction to damage. The difference for my ship between the ranks is 25% at the full stack. I'm just going to assume the full values are something, just keep them 25% apart.
CRF gives a base damage boost of 30/40/50. Or so.
So if we are looking at a base damage of 100 and a target with a damage resistance of 50%:
CRF3/Beta2 100 base damage * 150% CRF = 150 Damage
Damage Resistance 50% - Beta2 25% = 25%;
150 Damage * 75% = 112.5 final damage.
CRF2/Beta3 100 base damage * 140% CRF = 140 Damage
Damage Resistance 50% -Beta3 50% = Null Value:eek:
140 Damage at no Resistance = 140 Final damage.
Even Beta1, fully stacked, is like removing 5 fleet neutroniums from your target. Like. Not excactly. And it depends upon your skill points. Of course tactical clears it, but Borg don't use that yet.
It says right over there in that wiki, if you're so smart!
As for the rest of your post...I'm afraid my eyes start to cross when people start throwing math, formula, and too many numbers at me.
That said, there is something that I managed to pick out of all that number jumbling that I wanted to ask about: Do enemy NPCs have damage resistance? Is it a base resistance? If so, how much is it? Does it increase with an increase in difficulty? Is that part of the reason why NPCs in Advance and Elite are such damage sponges?
And if they don't have damage resistance, or if we reduce their resistance to zero through abilities and such, are we essentially giving them negative resistance? Is that primarily how things like AP:B boost our damage? Is it kind of low how, if our Accuracy is significantly higher than a target's Defense, it gets converted to CtrH and CtrD? Kind of similar to my question about if the AP:B debuff stack, is there cap to how much negative resistance we can apply to a target, then?
Not sure if anyone knows the exact answer to any of that (people seemed unsure about the whole debuff stacking thing), but I'm still try to wrap my head around how exactly AP:Bs resistance debuffing works. It is starting to sound like stripping a target's damage resistance is better than just boosting one's base damage though, especially in STFs.
That said, ultimately, I'm not exactly a numbers or theorycrafting kind of guy...as is likely evident by now. :P I'm a "go out and see what works" kind of guy, even when I read what seems like sound advice on forums or guides. What I really need to do is give AP:B 3 a try for myself, in both patrols and STFs, and see how it feels and performs compared to when I was using C:RF 3.
No, that's -33.2 damage resistance, not -33.2% damage resistance. Which means that if it's applying at the same level of the resistance equation as Neutronium is, it's like taking off one and a half Mk XII Neutronium consoles.
Here's how resistance works. If your resistance is 50%, half of the incoming damage just doesn't happen.
You are hit with 1000 damage. You take 500. 500 is resisted.
I DEBUFF your resistance by 25%. Now I shoot you again.
You are hit with 1000 damage. You take 750. 250 is resisted.
This time I BOOST my damage by 25%.
You are hit with 1250 damage. You take 625. 625 is resisted.
Seems odd doesn't it. Just look at what is really happening. Boosting damage by 25% gives the expected 25% increase.
But debuffing by 25% gave a 50% increase. That's because what REALLY happened was I cut your damage resistance by half, or 50%. So by understanding how the values relate to each other the output makes sense.
EDIT: One thing we've known forever is that the BORG don't have any defense to speak of. Once you realize that you simply can't miss it becomes plain that things like beta and fire on my mark will have huge returns. And now Ionic Turbulence. And other goodies coming our way. This is why things like ISA are the dps vunderland, and not something with Undine mucking about all over the map.
EDIT: P.S. Thanks! I always enjoy when somebody in the know breaks down things like this. Knowing the mechanics is super useful but hard to figure out sometimes.
In a pug, BFAW2, APB2. In a premade, APB1, BFAW3.
This is because APB stacks with a cap - in a pug, you will be unlikely to see a full APB stack, meaning your APB2 counts for more. In a premade, especially if one or more Recluses are present, (the pets run BFAW1, and so a full stack can be done from one Recluse's APB3) your APB is merely filling a gap that isn't really required, so BFAW3 works better.
Are your numbers right cause if so then the mechanic is wrong...
if my resist is 50% and you debuff me by 25%... that would mean my resist is now 37.5%
if instead the game just subtracts 25% from my resist... then that is a bug and should be fixed.
Honestly, though, it's one of the more simplistic equations Cryptic coded in, it that *is* truly the case. They have a flair for the nonsensical. Due to funky math, the JH space set bonus of ~13% increased polaron damage comes out to ~2% in practicality.
The confusion is that I didn't show all the steps, I just went through the process once at the beginning.
To summarize, each ship has a resistance rating. Abilities and skills and consoles can add and subtract to the rating. To get a percentage of damage resistance that number is fed into a pretty simple formula.
You can read about it here.
Resistance Rating (the number you see say, on a console) is referred to as magnitude in that article.
So what really happened was I reduced your Resistance Magnitude, lowering your Damage Resistance.
As an aside, many terms in the gaming world don't translate well, mostly because all the formulas aren't fully disclosed. Sometimes, not in this case, but sometimes you will see a game dev/tooltip stating that 'something reduces something else by X %' and it is simply additive. I've always seen those cases to be where the units are the same. 5% reduction? Just take 5 away from whatever percent you had to start with, and you don't get to see any type of internal formula. It's all black box.
In this case you do get to see all the different units, and the formula. I was intentionally playing fast and loose there at the end to highlight how it can be difficult to bring perspective to the problem.
And you're right to point that out as I didn't need to. It is plenty confusing enough.
And CBRJWRR, what is the cap on stacks mean exactly, and what is the lower limit to the debuff? Has it ever been confirmed to be zero? Tell us more!
The amount of APBs you can put on a target before the game ignores any additional APBs - accepted wisdom puts it at 5 APBs applied.
It could also be a specific amount of APB debuff magnitude, but the game does not display if that is the case.
Okay. Let me back up. The part that I know is that APB from one source will stack up to five.
The part that I don't know, and would be worth knowing is:
Can I have APB from two sources? So can I see APB from me and my pal, both counting up to the max five and then counting back down and dropping off?
Or does only the higher rank APB apply? Or just one if they are of equal rank? I dunno but listening to Riveria you would think you could have multiple sources of APB on one target.
As an aside there was an interesting post about that particular mechanic as APB will max out super quickly with a cannon build under CRF, but always takes five seconds to fully drop off.
And finally, is there a negative resist? Can we bring a target below zero and actually bring our damage up beyond our actual output?
I know. I'm lazy and don't want to test things today. So just tell meh!
Your question about how it decides what to stack is a good one, though. I would speculate the most recently applied are the stacks. So if you have APB1 and APB2, they would constantly be fluctuating the actual resistance debuff as they kept over-writing each other. They only last for 5 seconds, so I think that's the only way to compute it during gameplay. Assuming the stack size is 5, as listed in the previous reply, that would mean the most recent 5 incoming hits to a target are being used to determine total debuff.
Just my thought (guess) on the matter.
One APB effect per person, up to max of five.
All apply up to five APBs - what happens on APB 6 I am not certain, but I believe it is ignored. (the reason I don't know for sure comes down to the context of PvE APB use, if you are either in a Recluse, and thus you can use your pets to max APB3 debuffs so anyone else using APB is just filling a gap at most, or you are in a situation where you just aren't going to see beyond 5 APB users at once, so I haven't bothered actually researching as it seemed unnecessary given these gameplay induced constraints.)
The way APB works is you* use APB, and it grants a debuff on next weapon strike, this debuff lasts 5 seconds, after that you need to apply it again - your weapons will naturally do this for the duration of your* APB, including if the target is smart enough to clear it, reference APB use on Tac Team utilizing targets.
Essentially, you can only use your personal APB debuff once at any given point, but you can apply your APB debuff as often as the target is not afflicted by your APB debuff - this is why Recluse + pets APB3 works, as each pet's APB3 is counted separately, despite it being the APB3 of the Recluse itself.
To put into context of said CRF example, your* APB debuff is applied once by your* initial weapon sweep, lasts 5 seconds, and then subsidiary CRF bursts will apply it again - your* continued CRF doesn't stack more and more APB debuffs. ***
You can, but perhaps not by as much as you expect - For example, using all debuffs available to a 5 man ISA team comprised of a 2 Recluse/3 Scim set up (current ISA DPS record), make an approx. 57k** pre-debuff damage Scim into a 107k DPS end result Scim.
As to how much the APB itself counts in that 50k DPS gain, I don't know - my educated guess however, I would place at between 15 and 30k DPS.
Also, on whether a debuff cap, and/or diminishing returns on stacked debuffs, actually exist, I don't know - in the light of the above DPS record, I would say at least one, probably both, exist given all these debuffs only acting to give an extra 88% of pre-debuff DPS.
While not actually inquired about, nearly all of this also covers Attack Pattern Delta's debuff component, once adjusted for that abilities method of action - as to how Ionic Turbulence's debuff works I haven't had a chance to play with, but i would guess it would be similar.
* using this word in a most generous and inclusive sense.
** Source - a post by Ezriryan somewhere on one of the "Wizards of STO present:" threads, my memory fails me on which one though.
*** Unless your opponent is a Tac Team user, and TT uptime coexists with APB uptime. This is not a typical event in PvP as no one uses APB in PvP for precisely this reason, and is so rare as to be near negligible in PvE.
How APB works, applies, stacks, refreshes, and finally drops off is easy peasy.
As a point of interest, continued fire on a target with five stacks of APB effectively serves to refresh the stack this is why when the buff duration on your ship wears off you can watch for the next five seconds as the debuff on your target counts down and finally drops off.
Anyway one questioned you cleared up was that each damage owner (or buff owner as you see fit) can have one instance of APB.
I'm betting Recluse Pets own their own APB as well. Has the recent scaling adjustment to pet's inheritance touched any attack pattern skills trained by the captain? Interesting question.
Yes if NPC's had about 50% damage resistance, fully debuffing them with APB would absolutely turn a 50K ship into a 100k ship. I'm going to guess that their resistance is somewhere above 40 but below 60. That is a reasonable assumption based on your DPS figures.
There's no diminishing returns on stacked debuffs. In fact they accelerate. So far in STO all the formulas that diminish in one direction, accelerate in the other. What a relief.
My actual question that we still don't know, but based on the DPS gains you gave I'm going with 'no', is can we bring resistance under zero and actually increase damage beyond actual output?
100 damage meets 50% resistance = 50 damage done
.
100 damage meets 00% resistance = 100 damage done.
100 damage meets -25% resistance = 125 damage done.
Can we do that? I'm pretty sure we can get to zero. Can we get to negative numbers that actually boost damage done beyond actual output? Honestly I was going to say 'Yes we can'. But it seems like from the numbers your giving for DPS that the answer is 'No'.
Of course that could be wrong. If NPC's resistance in ISA was only 25% to start, and your figures are correct, then negative resistances could actually be a factor.
I guess I need someone to shoot at meh. No one EVER wants to do that.
As far as the bit about 'only acting to give an extra 88% of pre-debuff DPS." well that's interesting. A target would have to have 88% resistance and then you'd have to bring it down to zero for that to happen. And there's a hard cap in the game at 75%. So that can't be happening.
But we COULD be seeing a 40% resistance being taken down to -40%.
Anyways I'm off to go get blown up and see what's what. Read a combat log to unwind or something.
Now, my most up to date DPS record parse is for an ISE (I haven't got round to inquiring about the 107k one yet, I really must do so...) but in that, Cubes are debuffed to between -100% and minus 120%, and the Gateway to minus 143% (averaged across the 4/5 energy weapon type used + Kinetic) for hull resistance.
Now, I only include that to be a rough note as ISA is logically speaking almost certainly different, but it is enough to give an indication that yes, you can definitely debuff below zero. As to what their base resistance is I do not know - almost every Infected Space that has ever been run will have had a debuff used at some point, so I doubt we can just look up pre-existing parses happy as Larry and reverse engineer it.
It is going to devolve to plain shooting stuff now...
Well I think since there's no heavy lifting going on with Acc as the NPC's don't move much I think Ill credit APB with the largest contribution as well.
I was having a hell of a time getting my test subject to keep the range constant, but It certainly does appear that negative resistance absolutely adds to output.
Or else why track it? There would be no reason too, and the DPS parser does so I think we don't need to look any closer. Or maybe we should.
Here's the bit. As the resistance goes negative you would expect that once again you would start to experience diminishing returns. In other words the graph that you see in the link I provided to the wiki, or on the PDF from the podcast, if completed it would show a "U" lying on one side. Zero being the point at which the equation diminishes in each direction.
[ I guess I could have been more clear in that it was idea of IF resistance could be forced into negative numbers or not, not WHAT would happen if you did it. Sorry for the confusion. Moving on.]
Sort of. But that's not really how it works what happens is the magnitudes are diminished by the first equation and then the simple equation uses that figure.
In any case that is what you would suspect happens. Now my own ship in a crappy sample of only one combat shows its expected upper practical limit of 60 or so. And it shows about the same as the negative limit.
So sure it would be nice to look at a bit closer.
Ionci, FOMM, are similar. Just without the stacking and falloff. They affect the magnitude. Or rating. It has been magnitude in the old podcasts, and rating in some of the new stuff. Just so we know it doesn't mean percent.
TY for your time!
Speaking of thanks, I wanted to thank peeps again for attempting to answer my questions...even if I didn't always understand the answers.
That said, I did have another question...or more of a request, really. I don't suppose anyone has a Fed-Rom with a free BO slot that would be willing to help me give one of my BOs Attack Pattern: Beta 3? I will ask around in game if necessary, but usually I just get silence in New Romulus Command and spam and/or trolling on ESD.
It is a quite fascinating subject, isn't it?
Sadly I have only Rom Fed Eng. Anyway, you know you need Rom captain only to train Rom Boffs, right? As a Fed Rom captain you can use Fed Humans Boffs and those can be trained by any Fed captain...
Only works if the Romulan needing training has a Fed/KDF boff of that career already commissioned.
Yes. Now about the parser. I'm getting 100% readings on some resistance values and that shouldn't be the case per Rivera. According to him, at the time, only the ablative console could return a value over 75%
This is the part that's iffy as now I'd actually need to massage the diminished magnitudes formula and see if it behaves correctly with large negative values.
I hate math.