this should be in PvP forums. the test is primarily in PvP rather than PvE.
SS3 is anything but OP or broken in PvE.
It has been Standard Operating procedure of PvPers, nerf something rather than adapt. It only benefits 400 PvP players or around 12 hardcore PvPers who spend more time in the forums rather than PvPing at the expense of millions of PvEers.
In PvE, T5Us are still superior than T6. But then again those whining in this thread about T6 superiority are PvPers.
I'm quoting this post for truth, and for posterity. And thank you for it!
this should be in PvP forums. the test is primarily in PvP rather than PvE.
SS3 is anything but OP or broken in PvE.
It has been Standard Operating procedure of PvPers, nerf something rather than adapt. It only benefits 400 PvP players or around 12 hardcore PvPers who spend more time in the forums rather than PvPing at the expense of millions of PvEers.
In PvE, T5Us are still superior than T6. But then again those whining in this thread about T6 superiority are PvPers.
As for the lack of tac console, the only thing worth it on those console is the crit bonus from spire console. The damage increase by itself is really small in the end, and barely noticeable. SS provide such a large boost to crit, it almost makes the spire console looks rather weak in comparison.
Let me start by saying, I'm fine with leaving SS as-is for PvE. It's practically a P2W ability except if you grinded the Been ship during the Winter event. Having said that, it needs its PvP effect adjusted. (This to quiet at least the last 4 people that posted before me. If you look far enough back in my posts, I used to complain like you guys, but I saw the shining light of PvP once I made an awesome build)
So I don't know much about tac damage mechanics except simple stuff so I may be talking out of my TRIBBLE, but I think the main problem is the CrtH boost combined with the Acc which can also overflow into CrtH/CrtD. Before CrtH was more limited and you tried to keep that 1:10 ratio between CrtH and CrtD so you usually went for Vulnerability locator consoles. [Acc]x3 weapons used to be king in PvP and [CrtD]x3 were favorites for PvE.
Then comes surgical strikes. SS2 replaces [Acc]x3 and SS3 [Acc]x4. CrtH is irrelevant given the boost from SS so forget about the vulnerability locator consoles, go for exploiters and antiprotons [CrtD]x4 for maximum pain.
Maybe on paper, without taking into consideration how players shift their gear given the ability, the old tac abilities and this new intel one seem fine, but players don't keep their gear static. Players will exploit whatever mechanic you give them to maximize the advantage and that's where SS3 is causing the pain.
So I don't know much about tac damage mechanics except simple stuff so I may be talking out of my TRIBBLE, but I think the main problem is the CrtH boost combined with the Acc which can also overflow into CrtH/CrtD. Before CrtH was more limited and you tried to keep that 1:10 ratio between CrtH and CrtD so you usually went for Vulnerability locator consoles. [Acc]x3 weapons used to be king in PvP and [CrtD]x3 were favorites for PvE.
Then comes surgical strikes. SS2 replaces [Acc]x3 and SS3 [Acc]x4. CrtH is irrelevant given the boost from SS so forget about the vulnerability locator consoles, go for exploiters and antiprotons [CrtD]x4 for maximum pain.
Yup, pretty much. The extra [Acc] is probably meaningless in PvE, though. But even I knew, the moment I saw its stats, that I would build me wicked Vulnerability Exploiters Phantom (like pretty much everyone with half a brain figured out that you could do the same with a 100% CrtH BO). Not exactly rocket-science.
No good shiptraits ? Like reciprocity perhaps ? And I don't know why you stop at faction ship, after all we are comparing t5 with t6, not factions ships.
Reciprocity is neither KDF nor Rom And traits can be used by all ships, you only need one to get it.
If you compare t5 vs t6 than you have to also compare them factionwise. I did both in my post, and yet -dps wise- they wont make a cut in the upper echelons, but are very strong on the lower ones.
SS3 can deal, at the very least using dual heavy cannons (beams are even worse) 20k raw damage. Every cycle fires off 4 shots of them, for 80k raw average. At least, Surgical fires three cycles before finishing its effect, so 80k*3=240k. I for one pulled out 50k criticals per shot out of it, do the math again (enough for me to not use SS3 in PvP).
The average hull in PvP sits at 75k for T5Us, beyond that there are high-hull cruisers, battlecruisers and healers. So, how do you counter something that in a few seconds is able to outdamage your hull easily by three or four times?
Answer is you don't. Surgical can even be cooled down to 15s, which means that for two thirds of the time, it's active.
At least in PvP, it needs to act as a slow firing Rapid Fire. CRF3 fires rapid cannon volleys, each one can miss the target. SS3 should keep its slow firing component, remove CrtH bonus, keep the accuracy bonus and increase the damage per shot to match (read: not brutally outperform) the outgoing damage from CRF3. On slow targets, SS3 and CRF3 would have nearly no difference (even if SS3 may overflow resulting in more crits), but on zippy targets SS3 gains the advantage in being able to land the damage of CRF3 on the target with less chances to miss.
tl:dr; Surgical would still be the best choice to load on an Intel ship, but it's nowhere going to be the instawin button it currently is.
Some people truly wanted to believe Cryptic when they said T5 would not become obsolete.
Guess what, T5 now are as much obsolete as T4 before DR. You can fly them, and they'll work in endgame content, but let's be honest a second, they are not competitive.
While that's true, let's notice something REALLY important IMO :
SS is an "attack" buff skill, yet it's not a tac skill. Usually defensive heavy ship have limited offensive abilities. For obvious balance. This is not true in this case, as a com engi can be turned in a SS3 skill, which is highly offensive. On top of any tac skill you already have. While not loosing much on the defensive side (you still have up to ltcom engi in this case, on top of everything else you probably have).
That is also something to consider, but I think it's not as "problematic". The power itself locks out BFAW, BO, CRF and CSV, so you can't use it on top of good buffs. But you can turn a mostly defense-oriented BO slot into an offense-focused slot. That is a game changer. But that it doesn't cost you much defensively is mostly a consequence of the little need for defensive abilities in the first place. That's why tac-heavy ship are so vastly preferred in the first place.
Especially if you think how many passive powers exist to heal or make your ship tougher these days. It sometimes feels as if my Phantom Escort is just kept alive by passive hull heals and temporary hit points.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
and luckly there are some methods to counter ss3 now that a feaght can no longer shoot it while cloaked they can also be killed so yea fun. well more fun then it was
But imho, if folks don't want to draw Cryptic's attention to it resulting in it being nerfed...lmfao...their best bet would be to stop defending it in the way they are, because they're giving more reasons for Cryptic to do something about it than the OP or any of the folks seeking to get it nerfed possibly could. It's a freakin' trip...I got tears in my eyes from laughing so hard.
And then there is the bullsh*t reasoning that balance only matters in PvP. No, it doesn't. It matters in PvE as well.
People on the forums cry about the DPS forums and how the enemies got just more hit points and you now need to bring 40K DPS or whatever if you don't want to be ridicilued in an Advanced or Elite run, if you actually want to beat a queue and earn some neural processors or ancient power cells?
Guess what - every time Cryptic adds something overpowered, that overpowered stuff will end up being a requirement for more advanced content, and will raise the gap between the experts and the so called "casuals". You'll never get to sit on your favourite space ship with a decent build you made once - that ship is long obsoleted by a bunch of new lockbox ships and access to the newest set of OP powers.
Imbalanced gear, ships or power means less variety, because all the underpowered stuff gets thrown aside. If you dare to use it, you will get people accusing you of either being ignorant or being a griefer, because you're clearly not even trying anymore.
If a power is too strong, it must be brought in line.
It is super-easy for Cryptic to create something overpowered and put a price tag on it. If you reward and support that attitude by not asking for balance and hating on them for nerfing overpowered stuff, then the future of STO is everyone that wants anything nice has to find a way to get a lot of Zen and Dilithium to always keep up to date, or you can forget doing the newer challenging content (and any neat toys that it might give access to.)
If you think the newest overpowered item is a must-have for PVE content, you already are in a problem. If it's a must-have, then it's too good, and it needs to be nerfed, and the PVE content must be brought in line as well.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
This is the kind of reply the thread should have been saturated with...make it into a petty PvP vs PvE squabble, Cryptic would have ignored it, and the mods might even have locked it...it would have gone away.
Well, nothing to be surprised about. A power that is working just fine (on a level of CSV dps-wise interestingly) in PvE is OP in PvP. Now you can go ahead and have it work differently depending on pvp or pve (like raider flanking) which would be ok. Or you just go ahead and ask for a general nerf, which isnt ok, as it would have the potential of making it inferior in pve. Or you could go ahead and make suggestions -like you- to bring it in line for pvp without nerfing it for pve.
Considering the way the game is headed, the Devs have decided that pve is the thing to go and that pvp isnt giving them enough to care about. It would be nice if it werent like this, but at the end of the day one has to acknowledge reality and stop living in a delusion world.
And when I read "balance" of some posters, well, that train is long long gone.
Clearly does more damage than intended regardless of PvP or PVE, that's irrelevent. It does far more than the tooltip suggests...its undefendable...nerf it hard, nerf it soon.
My suggestion to balance it would be to remove the +acc component completely. Base damage is maintained for PVE and it will miss in PvP.
Nah, my involvement would not be welcomed. If I weren't laughing so much at some of the replies, folks that think they're defending SS when they're actually providing all sorts of reasons for Cryptic to look at it...I might have taken some of the replies personally. Just laughing too much...numbers
In plain vulgar words. For practical PvE SS3 means sht and no one sane would use it instead of CSV3, TS3, FAW3, CSV2, OSS3, HY3, APO3, APO1, APB3. For PvE all those skills are better then 3 shots on a single target.
People complaining here about how "PvPers want to nerf everything" are first that wouldn't use
SS 1-3 instead of skills above. Anybody saying different is an actor.
For PvP numbers like 0% defense are purely theoretical. For example, when i stay completely still on my romulan i have 35-40% defense. On Fed its 25%.
Where SS did excel in PvP was on targets that are already low speed, low resist, low defense, heavily debuffed, held, chain-stunned etc, but in those situations anything would kill you anyway be it HY3, BO3, TS3 or beam broadside.
Since the fix of EAP, Viral-ionic chain stuns I don't see the point of nerfing SS. I don't even use it in PvP, let alone in PvE. IMO if someone sacrifices the cmdr slot for SS3 that skill might as well be able to kill the enemy like HY3 or BO3, and we all know how those skills are deadly in PvP, right?
I had greater expectation from the PVP comunity , guys since you understand so
much and better than the rest of us , the game mechanics you should realize by
now that not the skills and new specializations are the reason for pvp imbalance .
I don't mind that you try to nerf some skills , but in your arrogance you will try to
touch skills that works perfectly . The main reason that you guys get vaped in pvp
is that weapons get a huge bonus after upgrading to MK XIV and to ultrarare/epic , than shield and defence consoles. What do shiels get from upgrading ...? a bonus
capacity , regen and a random resitance to a type of damage , but nothing more ,
the resilience is still 10% , the bleedtrough remains the same , the way that
damage reduction works , remain the same . Hull defence gets to little boost from
upgrading allsow . But weapons get a large boost - damage / crth / crtd/ and most
important accuracy. The damage increases with a exponential rate , but defence increases with a fixed rate , that leads to huge damage in pvp.
I understand that you dislike CC's but those skills are a part of gameplay , i
understand that stoping you in pvp it lowers your "speed-defence" , but thats
another part of gameplay , don't try to nerf that.
Next skills , that in your mind are broken , are SSIII , GW , feedback pulse, beam
overload , and other. But those are all related to defence-damage proportion - SS III adds acc+crit chance , not that op , but combined with your fire power and
accuracy , it deals alot of damage and you dont have the defence for it , - GW is
nothing op about it , it just stops you = less defence , feedback ... just returns your
damage. PLEASE first look at whats really the cause of the imbalance , and after that ,request
for nerfs, allsow when you request a nerf think about ALL rezults , it may be worse
after the nerf than before. please stop thinking you are a genious if you can speed-
tank and use some emergency powers , STO pvp is easy compared with other
games with a much more complicated mechanic. Come to ISA in a pug and see what recent nerfs did to normal people. Virusdancer when you will go past basic aritmetics ?
Or you just go ahead and ask for a general nerf, which isnt ok, as it would have the potential of making it inferior in pve.
Not nerfing it generally means it is making all the other powers you could theoretically slot instead inferior.
A single overpowered ability is essentially auto-nerfing every non-overpowered ability that could be slotted in its place. And it nerfs everyone that can't put a similar-powerful ability.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
i love threads like this because the pve peeps made their own league so they could be arrogant too but then still get all weepy and submissive like whipped dogs when the pvp lords descend from olympus to reveal yet higher echelons of pomposity
And the winner for the nerf is?....... "Surgical strikes" beating being able to equip weapons and tactical consoles by a split decision from our judges.
Comments
I'm quoting this post for truth, and for posterity. And thank you for it!
countered by
EXACTLY NO RESISTS or HEALS or active resist skills WHATSOEVER ...
clearly your build is TRIBBLE, rather than surcical is OP.
(clearly surgical is synergizing well with bleedthroughs and critC/critH builds.)
and beeing exposed to vulnerability is always bad, because youll suffer 50% bleedthrough for 10seconds.
no news. adapt or die. l2p, l2counter (aceton beam, target weapons1/2/3, or fly from the dmg in such cases) id say
This, so very much this.
Let me start by saying, I'm fine with leaving SS as-is for PvE. It's practically a P2W ability except if you grinded the Been ship during the Winter event. Having said that, it needs its PvP effect adjusted. (This to quiet at least the last 4 people that posted before me. If you look far enough back in my posts, I used to complain like you guys, but I saw the shining light of PvP once I made an awesome build)
So I don't know much about tac damage mechanics except simple stuff so I may be talking out of my TRIBBLE, but I think the main problem is the CrtH boost combined with the Acc which can also overflow into CrtH/CrtD. Before CrtH was more limited and you tried to keep that 1:10 ratio between CrtH and CrtD so you usually went for Vulnerability locator consoles. [Acc]x3 weapons used to be king in PvP and [CrtD]x3 were favorites for PvE.
Then comes surgical strikes. SS2 replaces [Acc]x3 and SS3 [Acc]x4. CrtH is irrelevant given the boost from SS so forget about the vulnerability locator consoles, go for exploiters and antiprotons [CrtD]x4 for maximum pain.
Maybe on paper, without taking into consideration how players shift their gear given the ability, the old tac abilities and this new intel one seem fine, but players don't keep their gear static. Players will exploit whatever mechanic you give them to maximize the advantage and that's where SS3 is causing the pain.
/10
Yup, pretty much. The extra [Acc] is probably meaningless in PvE, though. But even I knew, the moment I saw its stats, that I would build me wicked Vulnerability Exploiters Phantom (like pretty much everyone with half a brain figured out that you could do the same with a 100% CrtH BO). Not exactly rocket-science.
Reciprocity is neither KDF nor Rom
If you compare t5 vs t6 than you have to also compare them factionwise. I did both in my post, and yet -dps wise- they wont make a cut in the upper echelons, but are very strong on the lower ones.
This is exactly the baseline how you need to evaluate the power.
The average hull in PvP sits at 75k for T5Us, beyond that there are high-hull cruisers, battlecruisers and healers. So, how do you counter something that in a few seconds is able to outdamage your hull easily by three or four times?
Answer is you don't. Surgical can even be cooled down to 15s, which means that for two thirds of the time, it's active.
At least in PvP, it needs to act as a slow firing Rapid Fire. CRF3 fires rapid cannon volleys, each one can miss the target. SS3 should keep its slow firing component, remove CrtH bonus, keep the accuracy bonus and increase the damage per shot to match (read: not brutally outperform) the outgoing damage from CRF3. On slow targets, SS3 and CRF3 would have nearly no difference (even if SS3 may overflow resulting in more crits), but on zippy targets SS3 gains the advantage in being able to land the damage of CRF3 on the target with less chances to miss.
tl:dr; Surgical would still be the best choice to load on an Intel ship, but it's nowhere going to be the instawin button it currently is.
And I don't have SS3 yet even.
"Use Temporal Skills to NERF EVERYTHING before it happened!" -Unknown source.
not anymore after the last patch. Guess what I've PvPed all the afternoon, something that was impossible after DR.
Fixing SS3 is the last important thing to do.
Some arenas were popping faster than borg STFs. Think, think think...
That is also something to consider, but I think it's not as "problematic". The power itself locks out BFAW, BO, CRF and CSV, so you can't use it on top of good buffs. But you can turn a mostly defense-oriented BO slot into an offense-focused slot. That is a game changer. But that it doesn't cost you much defensively is mostly a consequence of the little need for defensive abilities in the first place. That's why tac-heavy ship are so vastly preferred in the first place.
Especially if you think how many passive powers exist to heal or make your ship tougher these days. It sometimes feels as if my Phantom Escort is just kept alive by passive hull heals and temporary hit points.
People on the forums cry about the DPS forums and how the enemies got just more hit points and you now need to bring 40K DPS or whatever if you don't want to be ridicilued in an Advanced or Elite run, if you actually want to beat a queue and earn some neural processors or ancient power cells?
Guess what - every time Cryptic adds something overpowered, that overpowered stuff will end up being a requirement for more advanced content, and will raise the gap between the experts and the so called "casuals". You'll never get to sit on your favourite space ship with a decent build you made once - that ship is long obsoleted by a bunch of new lockbox ships and access to the newest set of OP powers.
Imbalanced gear, ships or power means less variety, because all the underpowered stuff gets thrown aside. If you dare to use it, you will get people accusing you of either being ignorant or being a griefer, because you're clearly not even trying anymore.
If a power is too strong, it must be brought in line.
It is super-easy for Cryptic to create something overpowered and put a price tag on it. If you reward and support that attitude by not asking for balance and hating on them for nerfing overpowered stuff, then the future of STO is everyone that wants anything nice has to find a way to get a lot of Zen and Dilithium to always keep up to date, or you can forget doing the newer challenging content (and any neat toys that it might give access to.)
If you think the newest overpowered item is a must-have for PVE content, you already are in a problem. If it's a must-have, then it's too good, and it needs to be nerfed, and the PVE content must be brought in line as well.
Make a PVP channel where none use SS3 and only invite like-minded people, problem solved.
He's Dead, Jim ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0yXqU-w9U0
"Use Temporal Skills to NERF EVERYTHING before it happened!" -Unknown source.
Well, nothing to be surprised about. A power that is working just fine (on a level of CSV dps-wise interestingly) in PvE is OP in PvP. Now you can go ahead and have it work differently depending on pvp or pve (like raider flanking) which would be ok. Or you just go ahead and ask for a general nerf, which isnt ok, as it would have the potential of making it inferior in pve. Or you could go ahead and make suggestions -like you- to bring it in line for pvp without nerfing it for pve.
Considering the way the game is headed, the Devs have decided that pve is the thing to go and that pvp isnt giving them enough to care about. It would be nice if it werent like this, but at the end of the day one has to acknowledge reality and stop living in a delusion world.
And when I read "balance" of some posters, well, that train is long long gone.
My suggestion to balance it would be to remove the +acc component completely. Base damage is maintained for PVE and it will miss in PvP.
In plain vulgar words. For practical PvE SS3 means sht and no one sane would use it instead of CSV3, TS3, FAW3, CSV2, OSS3, HY3, APO3, APO1, APB3. For PvE all those skills are better then 3 shots on a single target.
People complaining here about how "PvPers want to nerf everything" are first that wouldn't use
SS 1-3 instead of skills above. Anybody saying different is an actor.
For PvP numbers like 0% defense are purely theoretical. For example, when i stay completely still on my romulan i have 35-40% defense. On Fed its 25%.
Where SS did excel in PvP was on targets that are already low speed, low resist, low defense, heavily debuffed, held, chain-stunned etc, but in those situations anything would kill you anyway be it HY3, BO3, TS3 or beam broadside.
Since the fix of EAP, Viral-ionic chain stuns I don't see the point of nerfing SS. I don't even use it in PvP, let alone in PvE. IMO if someone sacrifices the cmdr slot for SS3 that skill might as well be able to kill the enemy like HY3 or BO3, and we all know how those skills are deadly in PvP, right?
This entire thread makes no sense.
Super SpecialStar Trek Online Review
SpecialTemporal PUG 100K DPS Build
We are Travelers
It has been done already.
And it's well alive.
much and better than the rest of us , the game mechanics you should realize by
now that not the skills and new specializations are the reason for pvp imbalance .
I don't mind that you try to nerf some skills , but in your arrogance you will try to
touch skills that works perfectly . The main reason that you guys get vaped in pvp
is that weapons get a huge bonus after upgrading to MK XIV and to ultrarare/epic , than shield and defence consoles. What do shiels get from upgrading ...? a bonus
capacity , regen and a random resitance to a type of damage , but nothing more ,
the resilience is still 10% , the bleedtrough remains the same , the way that
damage reduction works , remain the same . Hull defence gets to little boost from
upgrading allsow . But weapons get a large boost - damage / crth / crtd/ and most
important accuracy. The damage increases with a exponential rate , but defence increases with a fixed rate , that leads to huge damage in pvp.
I understand that you dislike CC's but those skills are a part of gameplay , i
understand that stoping you in pvp it lowers your "speed-defence" , but thats
another part of gameplay , don't try to nerf that.
Next skills , that in your mind are broken , are SSIII , GW , feedback pulse, beam
overload , and other. But those are all related to defence-damage proportion - SS III adds acc+crit chance , not that op , but combined with your fire power and
accuracy , it deals alot of damage and you dont have the defence for it , - GW is
nothing op about it , it just stops you = less defence , feedback ... just returns your
damage. PLEASE first look at whats really the cause of the imbalance , and after that ,request
for nerfs, allsow when you request a nerf think about ALL rezults , it may be worse
after the nerf than before. please stop thinking you are a genious if you can speed-
tank and use some emergency powers , STO pvp is easy compared with other
games with a much more complicated mechanic. Come to ISA in a pug and see what recent nerfs did to normal people. Virusdancer when you will go past basic aritmetics ?
A single overpowered ability is essentially auto-nerfing every non-overpowered ability that could be slotted in its place. And it nerfs everyone that can't put a similar-powerful ability.
Free Tibet!
agreed. You know, without Surgical in the way it currently is, PvE ships are doomed.
How can they live without it?
It's not the "God Skill" that people think it is, and it's even more mediocre now that Enhanced Armor Penetration has had its bug fix.
Free Tibet!
If I use OSS3 and SS3 on my Faeht or Phantom it is a guaranteed kill.
And I mean, guaranteed.
[10:55] [Combat (Self)] Your Phaser Dual Heavy Cannons - Surgical Strikes III deals 53885 (45784) Phaser Damage(Critical) to Taz.
that's one, just one cannon hit. three more landed, eight more until cycle ends. After that hit I never used SS3 again in PvP.
You talk pvp, he talks pve. And in pve SS isnt such a dps-increase, especially not in the upper echolons.
The solution is simple: Open a channel (or join one) with rules which soften the difference of playstyles, and have fun playing pvp in there.
Its..not...a...DPS...ability. Whether it effects DPS is irrelevant...did anyone here watch the video...? Laughable...