I'll give my take on this. Standard disclaimer: This is my opinion and my experience. Your experience may vary. etc etc
Personally, while my main is Sci (and I love her to pieces, especially since getting Particle Manipulator), I MUCH prefer playing my Engi than my Tac. I find tac really kind of boring, honestly. On ground, Tac is a lot of fun, combining martial arts with party buffs, but in space ... you just press a button once every couple of minutes that boosts your damage. There's no survival ability. Engi has two survival abilities and two dps abilities.
Now what people here are saying is true ... with the appropriate *gear*, anyone can cap out some energy levels. And therein lies the problem. A lot of these are really hard to get. For example, Plasmonic Leech for Fed is stupidly expensive on the exchange for those players who don't spend their whole life playing this game. And even there, you need good Flow Caps to take advantage of it. If your Tac has 0 in Flow Caps, that Leech will do sweet nothing. Mind you, the fact that Flow Caps is a tier 1 skill makes it really easy to rank up in.
Then there's the starship trait system which depends on purchasing tier 6 ships to acquire. For example, the new darling trait Emergency Weapon Cycle (have it, love it).
Nadion Inversion is a really powerful ability. For running cannon escorts, it's decent. But when running beam boats with 7 or 8 broadsiders, it basically prevents your weapons energy level from *ever* dipping below 125 as long as it's running, regardless of how good or poor your power transfer rate or overcapping is. BFAW with 8 beams? No problem! That's all kinds of huge. NI is a really underrated skill. I personally wish the cooldown was dropped to two minutes.
Grace Under Fire and Miracle Worker means you basically have an "Oh Sh**!" button you can use *twice* every five minutes (it's also by far the strongest healing ability in game). EPS Manifold Efficiency makes it so that all your Emergency Power abilities and EPS Power Transfer give you an extra 10 energy to all systems every time you use it (and we all know players jam their finger into EPtW and never let go). And of course, Rotate Shield Frequency is not only a potent shield heal and hardening ability ... it basically allows you to equip less shield heals from bridge officers. In fact, because of that and MW, you can basically equip less boff heals and more pew pew abilities. All of the above makes playing an Engi in an escort a pretty fun ride.
Plus *Romulan* Engis, due to the lower power in their ships, are pretty golden. That's what I'm running.
Now, all that aside, you are absolutely right in saying that in terms of DPS, *in absence of strong sources of danger and with the inclusion of pricey Zen and EC Exchange gear*, Engis do fall behind. But we're talking like 20% less damage over a long fight at the most (APA is 30 seconds every two minutes ... and that's basically the only thing that Tacs have that Engis can't take advantage of). In exchange for that 20%, you get *MUCH* better survivability.
I also agree that tanking should play a part in this game, at least to some extent. There's already one or two PVE queues that grant bonuses if few people die. I think that should be included in ALL of them. Other MMOs depend on a tank because parties can't res mid-fight. They can here which I think is silly. There is simply no real penalty for dying aside from being out of the fight for 10 seconds (meaningless in long missions like Borg Disconnected). Repair components are common so it's not like repair costs are an issue either. Seriously ... offer a significant penalty for dying in a Queued fight and you'll notice the number of Engis on the field skyrocket.
LATER EDIT: There's also Aux2Batt which greatly boosts three of the energy levels. Had forgotten about that. It's just that I never ever equip it as I value my Aux a great deal, no matter what I play.
Wakeoflove, I understand your point, but the parsers are what they are, providing data. It's up to us to determine what to take from them.
You are correct, the parsers are what they are, my point is it would be nice if they were MORE than they are. Parsers have a quick "here's the dps of everyone on the team" summary that can be posted into chat, they have been built to have this feature. It would be nice if someone would build the parsers to also have a "this is the tanking summary" or "this is the healing summary" that can be easily posted in to chat so that other roles are more easily recognized.
And I think it would be wonderful if STO would actually build parsing into the game so that stfs and other such things can actually give rewards based on performing roles and also recognize those individuals in a match. I think it would be awesome for the game itself to pop up with at "Kaptain Cerk did the most epic dps, Jerdy L'frg held the most aggro keeping everyone alive, and Dooctor Krushin'it did the most cross healing support"
The devs have been trying stupid things like "science ships close the portals faster" and "cruisers repair the emitter faster" tactics to offset "escorts online." They put in "engineers will close this rift faster for no apparent reason, but science will close this rift faster for... again, no apparent reason." As a very poorly executed attempt to make other classes/ships relevant. I mean, we've moved away from the old tac escorts online that prompted these things due to real improvements to the game that have made other ships/classes more competitive. But I think another excellent step in that direction would be rewarding other forms of play but also recognizing it. Right now you can ask your team "who took first?" but it would be nice if the game announced it at the end of matches.
And I agree with karlbarb, the non-DPSy optionals should be added to all the stfs so it's not just all about blowing through the enemy fast as you can. But as I said before, I think they need to even out the time one spends in each stf so one isn't obviously the quickest way to your daily caps or proportionately increase the rewards of these more difficult or more time consuming queues so that the players will actually bother with them.
The Nebula-configured Odyssey needs to be a thing.
Wakeoflove, I understand your point, but the parsers are what they are, providing data. It's up to us to determine what to take from them.
You are correct, the parsers are what they are, my point is it would be nice if they were MORE than they are. Parsers have a quick "here's the dps of everyone on the team" summary that can be posted into chat, they have been built to have this feature. It would be nice if someone would build the parsers to also have a "this is the tanking summary" or "this is the healing summary" that can be easily posted in to chat so that other roles are more easily recognized.
And I think it would be wonderful if STO would actually build parsing into the game so that stfs and other such things can actually give rewards based on performing roles and also recognize those individuals in a match. I think it would be awesome for the game itself to pop up with at "Kaptain Cerk did the most epic dps, Jerdy L'frg held the most aggro keeping everyone alive, and Dooctor Krushin'it did the most cross healing support"
Heh, funny thing is... the game has that code function, it's just not used in STFs to display scores. It's how the game decides who gets first in missions like CC. It tracks the damage you do, and healing, etc... and gives someone first based on that.
We would go in there GWIII, Photonic Fleet. And watch the fireworks. Or Lagworks (my PC probably won't be able to handle 5 x Photonic fleet).
And about DPS. I don't know how, or why, or maybe the group I was with was just, really, bad. But my Rom Engi alt with a free Ha'apex came in 3rd to 1st place in CC quite consistently (if I didn't lag). Though, it was not advanced, so there's that.
There's also another important thing that doesn't get mentioned about Engis: They can take much bigger risks. In my guild, one of our hardest hitters is an engi in an escort. He's the one who rushes headlong into tac cubes with everyone catching up.
I have one character of each class, including an Orion Tac. And you know what? I HATED flying raptors with her because of how fragile I was. At least with BoPs (would be nice if there was a T6 version ... sigh), you have battle cloaks. But regular cloaked raptors would get me killed often. I've since dropped into a Kurak battlecruiser and haven't looked back. I like not dying.
My rom engi? T'Varo, Mogai, Faeht ... no problem. I can be reckless.
Engineering has to be the solo'ing career. I've done the Delta Quadrant patrols in the mandatory Episodes in an old assault cruiser undergeared; granted, it was too long, boring and had my TRIBBLE$ handed to me in a silver plate many times BUT I did them all, even the mission where you are helping a borg cube and sphere to repell a Vaadwaur assault in a star with solar flares. In my tac I just called it quits because a simple Vaadwaur raider just obliterated me in a way to hard to describe in the middle of a flair and my sci just had impenetrable shields but my armor was PAPERMANTIUM (r) coated with tin-foil; dot's from the solar flare killed me fast.
However in a team engineers are really lackluster in space. On ground they are very useful, powerful and fun with the intel and command kits.
This is sad really. In teams you are just a paper pusher, and that has to change without making tacs obsolete or worthles because that is not the answer.
Maybe if we had more, how to put it; more "tanky" cruisers in the sense that it attracts all aggro and raises shields and hull resistances by a large margin and every second it passes aggro just increases and resistances as well; needing a science/engineering buddy for shield and hull heals and tacs for attack patterns buffs.
I like the idea of some sort of "proc" or "procs" that are exclusive to cruisers with engineering captains that are useful for aggro and survival.
When I think of ways to buff engineers in space (they don't need it for ground) I try to think of the things Geordi on the Enterprise and O'Brien on DS9 could do. When the captain needed something crazy done to the ship they could do it.
So how about replacing Nadion Inversion with a skill similar to Override Subsystem Safeties but without taking a system offline when it's over? How about a skill that modifies the next torpedo launched - regular, HY or TS - to increase it's warhead yield and proc effect, or maybe add some new proc effect? Engineers use turrets, generators and drones in ground combat all the time and can buff them, so how about an innate, significant bonus to mines and deployable turrets and platforms?
There are possibilities for engineers in space that aren't all about tanking.
Most deployable platforms in space are really of no significance, especially compared to frigate pets and fleet support ships.
Engineers could become to exception to this. Remove the outdated innates, and replace them with powerful deployable structures that do serious damage output and team buffs.
While that would certainly make Engineers more viable from a DPS standpoint (and maybe even preferred to Tacs in some cases), I think the current skills just need a little reworking (especially Nadion Inversion and EPS Power Transfer) to make them just as good as damage buffs from Tactical or enemy debuffs from Science.
My reasoning is this: "The longer you live, the more damage you do/Dead DPS is no DPS". NI and EPSPT could be reworked to provide survivability buffs for Engineers with minor/scaling team bonuses. Just my 2 bits on that one.
EPS should raise not only your energy levels, but also your MAX energy levels a la OSS. Boom, engi problem solved. To compensate, they'd probably have to drop how much energy you get from it, since there's no power drop or subsystem cut like in OSS, but it would definitely help engis get a DPS boost.
EPS should raise not only your energy levels, but also your MAX energy levels a la OSS. Boom, engi problem solved. To compensate, they'd probably have to drop how much energy you get from it, since there's no power drop or subsystem cut like in OSS, but it would definitely help engis get a DPS boost.
Ok EPS as an OSS would work too.
What I want to see is simple: all three classes do DPS in different ways. For the longest time it was really only tactical captains that dealt it but specialized science builds soon took on great DPS roles (those GW builds, wow). Engineers never did. They were designed from the very beginning to be tanks, which is unfortunate because the game was never designed to require tanks.
Engineers deal their DPS on the ground through mines, turrets etc. so I think that's the perfect way to have them deal DPS in space. We already have mines and turrets, it's just that they're never used because they're useless. Well that can be changed, and engineers can be the ones to make them useful.
My reasoning is this: "The longer you live, the more damage you do/Dead DPS is no DPS". NI and EPSPT could be reworked to provide survivability buffs for Engineers with minor/scaling team bonuses. Just my 2 bits on that one.
See my previous post which addresses that. Tacs have access to a large array of mechanisms for mitigating damage and staying alive. No matter how tanky you make engineer innates, this problem will still exist, unless we remove or nerf certain things.
Staying alive is no longer a problem for DPS orientated ships, so the best we can do is help Engineers reach the same level as Tacs, but via different means.
My reasoning is this: "The longer you live, the more damage you do/Dead DPS is no DPS". NI and EPSPT could be reworked to provide survivability buffs for Engineers with minor/scaling team bonuses. Just my 2 bits on that one.
See my previous post which addresses that. Tacs have access to a large array of mechanisms for mitigating damage and staying alive. No matter how tanky you make engineer innates, this problem will still exist, unless we remove or nerf certain things.
Staying alive is no longer a problem for DPS orientated ships, so the best we can do is help Engineers reach the same level as Tacs, but via different means.
Yes, and that precedent is already set with their ground modules.
Their ground modules are the only reason I continue to play them. In space they're clearly outclassed by the other two classes because tanking is not an engineer-only ability anymore.
EPS should raise not only your energy levels, but also your MAX energy levels a la OSS. Boom, engi problem solved. To compensate, they'd probably have to drop how much energy you get from it, since there's no power drop or subsystem cut like in OSS, but it would definitely help engis get a DPS boost.
Ok EPS as an OSS would work too.
What I want to see is simple: all three classes do DPS in different ways.
I kinda think that is the best way to go, if you don't want stuff like the classic trinity (Healer, DPS, Tank). Every class must bring firepower, the difference is how you can achieve the classes potential.
I like the idea of using EPS allowing you to override your max power levels - but maybe this should be something better given to Nadion Inversion or a buff granted by Miracle Worker? The idea here here to create some synergy. +X power is great, but if you can also lower your energy drain and exceed your normal power levels, it's even better. Just like getting a damage boost is great, but also having an ability that lets your enemy take more damage is better.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
My engineer flies an arbiter. I would be extremely upset if I was forced into tanking. Just improve the tean buff ability of engineers in space, I'm already amazing on ground. space needs work.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Comments
Personally, while my main is Sci (and I love her to pieces, especially since getting Particle Manipulator), I MUCH prefer playing my Engi than my Tac. I find tac really kind of boring, honestly. On ground, Tac is a lot of fun, combining martial arts with party buffs, but in space ... you just press a button once every couple of minutes that boosts your damage. There's no survival ability. Engi has two survival abilities and two dps abilities.
Now what people here are saying is true ... with the appropriate *gear*, anyone can cap out some energy levels. And therein lies the problem. A lot of these are really hard to get. For example, Plasmonic Leech for Fed is stupidly expensive on the exchange for those players who don't spend their whole life playing this game. And even there, you need good Flow Caps to take advantage of it. If your Tac has 0 in Flow Caps, that Leech will do sweet nothing. Mind you, the fact that Flow Caps is a tier 1 skill makes it really easy to rank up in.
Then there's the starship trait system which depends on purchasing tier 6 ships to acquire. For example, the new darling trait Emergency Weapon Cycle (have it, love it).
Nadion Inversion is a really powerful ability. For running cannon escorts, it's decent. But when running beam boats with 7 or 8 broadsiders, it basically prevents your weapons energy level from *ever* dipping below 125 as long as it's running, regardless of how good or poor your power transfer rate or overcapping is. BFAW with 8 beams? No problem! That's all kinds of huge. NI is a really underrated skill. I personally wish the cooldown was dropped to two minutes.
Grace Under Fire and Miracle Worker means you basically have an "Oh Sh**!" button you can use *twice* every five minutes (it's also by far the strongest healing ability in game). EPS Manifold Efficiency makes it so that all your Emergency Power abilities and EPS Power Transfer give you an extra 10 energy to all systems every time you use it (and we all know players jam their finger into EPtW and never let go). And of course, Rotate Shield Frequency is not only a potent shield heal and hardening ability ... it basically allows you to equip less shield heals from bridge officers. In fact, because of that and MW, you can basically equip less boff heals and more pew pew abilities. All of the above makes playing an Engi in an escort a pretty fun ride.
Plus *Romulan* Engis, due to the lower power in their ships, are pretty golden. That's what I'm running.
Now, all that aside, you are absolutely right in saying that in terms of DPS, *in absence of strong sources of danger and with the inclusion of pricey Zen and EC Exchange gear*, Engis do fall behind. But we're talking like 20% less damage over a long fight at the most (APA is 30 seconds every two minutes ... and that's basically the only thing that Tacs have that Engis can't take advantage of). In exchange for that 20%, you get *MUCH* better survivability.
I also agree that tanking should play a part in this game, at least to some extent. There's already one or two PVE queues that grant bonuses if few people die. I think that should be included in ALL of them. Other MMOs depend on a tank because parties can't res mid-fight. They can here which I think is silly. There is simply no real penalty for dying aside from being out of the fight for 10 seconds (meaningless in long missions like Borg Disconnected). Repair components are common so it's not like repair costs are an issue either. Seriously ... offer a significant penalty for dying in a Queued fight and you'll notice the number of Engis on the field skyrocket.
LATER EDIT: There's also Aux2Batt which greatly boosts three of the energy levels. Had forgotten about that. It's just that I never ever equip it as I value my Aux a great deal, no matter what I play.
And I think it would be wonderful if STO would actually build parsing into the game so that stfs and other such things can actually give rewards based on performing roles and also recognize those individuals in a match. I think it would be awesome for the game itself to pop up with at "Kaptain Cerk did the most epic dps, Jerdy L'frg held the most aggro keeping everyone alive, and Dooctor Krushin'it did the most cross healing support"
The devs have been trying stupid things like "science ships close the portals faster" and "cruisers repair the emitter faster" tactics to offset "escorts online." They put in "engineers will close this rift faster for no apparent reason, but science will close this rift faster for... again, no apparent reason." As a very poorly executed attempt to make other classes/ships relevant. I mean, we've moved away from the old tac escorts online that prompted these things due to real improvements to the game that have made other ships/classes more competitive. But I think another excellent step in that direction would be rewarding other forms of play but also recognizing it. Right now you can ask your team "who took first?" but it would be nice if the game announced it at the end of matches.
And I agree with karlbarb, the non-DPSy optionals should be added to all the stfs so it's not just all about blowing through the enemy fast as you can. But as I said before, I think they need to even out the time one spends in each stf so one isn't obviously the quickest way to your daily caps or proportionately increase the rewards of these more difficult or more time consuming queues so that the players will actually bother with them.
The Nebula-configured Odyssey needs to be a thing.
My character Tsin'xing
We would go in there GWIII, Photonic Fleet. And watch the fireworks. Or Lagworks (my PC probably won't be able to handle 5 x Photonic fleet).
And about DPS. I don't know how, or why, or maybe the group I was with was just, really, bad. But my Rom Engi alt with a free Ha'apex came in 3rd to 1st place in CC quite consistently (if I didn't lag). Though, it was not advanced, so there's that.
I have one character of each class, including an Orion Tac. And you know what? I HATED flying raptors with her because of how fragile I was. At least with BoPs (would be nice if there was a T6 version ... sigh), you have battle cloaks. But regular cloaked raptors would get me killed often. I've since dropped into a Kurak battlecruiser and haven't looked back. I like not dying.
My rom engi? T'Varo, Mogai, Faeht ... no problem. I can be reckless.
However in a team engineers are really lackluster in space. On ground they are very useful, powerful and fun with the intel and command kits.
This is sad really. In teams you are just a paper pusher, and that has to change without making tacs obsolete or worthles because that is not the answer.
Maybe if we had more, how to put it; more "tanky" cruisers in the sense that it attracts all aggro and raises shields and hull resistances by a large margin and every second it passes aggro just increases and resistances as well; needing a science/engineering buddy for shield and hull heals and tacs for attack patterns buffs.
I like the idea of some sort of "proc" or "procs" that are exclusive to cruisers with engineering captains that are useful for aggro and survival.
So how about replacing Nadion Inversion with a skill similar to Override Subsystem Safeties but without taking a system offline when it's over? How about a skill that modifies the next torpedo launched - regular, HY or TS - to increase it's warhead yield and proc effect, or maybe add some new proc effect? Engineers use turrets, generators and drones in ground combat all the time and can buff them, so how about an innate, significant bonus to mines and deployable turrets and platforms?
There are possibilities for engineers in space that aren't all about tanking.
Engineers could become to exception to this. Remove the outdated innates, and replace them with powerful deployable structures that do serious damage output and team buffs.
My reasoning is this: "The longer you live, the more damage you do/Dead DPS is no DPS". NI and EPSPT could be reworked to provide survivability buffs for Engineers with minor/scaling team bonuses. Just my 2 bits on that one.
Ok EPS as an OSS would work too.
What I want to see is simple: all three classes do DPS in different ways. For the longest time it was really only tactical captains that dealt it but specialized science builds soon took on great DPS roles (those GW builds, wow). Engineers never did. They were designed from the very beginning to be tanks, which is unfortunate because the game was never designed to require tanks.
Engineers deal their DPS on the ground through mines, turrets etc. so I think that's the perfect way to have them deal DPS in space. We already have mines and turrets, it's just that they're never used because they're useless. Well that can be changed, and engineers can be the ones to make them useful.
See my previous post which addresses that. Tacs have access to a large array of mechanisms for mitigating damage and staying alive. No matter how tanky you make engineer innates, this problem will still exist, unless we remove or nerf certain things.
Staying alive is no longer a problem for DPS orientated ships, so the best we can do is help Engineers reach the same level as Tacs, but via different means.
Yes, and that precedent is already set with their ground modules.
Their ground modules are the only reason I continue to play them. In space they're clearly outclassed by the other two classes because tanking is not an engineer-only ability anymore.
I like the idea of using EPS allowing you to override your max power levels - but maybe this should be something better given to Nadion Inversion or a buff granted by Miracle Worker? The idea here here to create some synergy. +X power is great, but if you can also lower your energy drain and exceed your normal power levels, it's even better. Just like getting a damage boost is great, but also having an ability that lets your enemy take more damage is better.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."