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A Proposal for Cannons
leviathan99
Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
I've been thinking a lot about BFAW, A2B, DPS, etc. lately as I've been trying out the technical side of DPS a bit more. I've also been paying attention more to PUGs and thinking about the issues that have resulted in making BFAW popular on escorts.
While, sure, BFAW is powerful, I think the skill demands of BOff management plus piloting are a bit demanding and, really, that keybinding is intuitive for a large number of players.
So I'll cut to the chase:
Piloting an escort at full throttle results in DPS dips when you turn around and requires more focus than firing beams.
I suggest:
- Turning cannon abilities into toggles rather than click abilities.
- Reducing the cooldown for these abilities (without reducing the GCD) to discourage A2B builds on ships with cannons while supplying some of the benefits of A2B inherently.
If cannons ran at the global cooldown for their own abilities, they wouldn't be worth running A2B with. If their attacks were "always on", escort pilots would focus on piloting.
Now, one other thing I'd consider is to actually reduce what the CD and GCD is for certain abilities based on ship class. There currently are no GCD reductions but if ship class could modify this and CDs as well for SPECIFIC ABILITIES, you'd see more specialization.
Destroyers: Reduction in Attack Pattern and Debuff cooldowns (and global cooldown reduction).
Science: Reduction in exotic damage and shield heal cooldowns (and global cooldown).
Escorts: Reduction in cannon upgrade and cooldowns (and global cooldowns).
Cruisers: Reduction in torpedo and beam cooldowns.
Battle Cruisers: Reduction in torpedo and cannon cooldowns.
Additionally, maybe give each ship class a subsystem specific flow capacitor mod that matches what they already get bonus power to and a flow capacitor penalty to subsystems their class doesn't ordinarily get bonus power to. So if you run plasmonic leech on an escort, sure, your weapon power is maxed out but your shields won't QUITE be. If you run it on a cruiser, your weapon power won't be QUITE maxed out but your engine power will be.
While, sure, BFAW is powerful, I think the skill demands of BOff management plus piloting are a bit demanding and, really, that keybinding is intuitive for a large number of players.
So I'll cut to the chase:
Piloting an escort at full throttle results in DPS dips when you turn around and requires more focus than firing beams.
I suggest:
- Turning cannon abilities into toggles rather than click abilities.
- Reducing the cooldown for these abilities (without reducing the GCD) to discourage A2B builds on ships with cannons while supplying some of the benefits of A2B inherently.
If cannons ran at the global cooldown for their own abilities, they wouldn't be worth running A2B with. If their attacks were "always on", escort pilots would focus on piloting.
Now, one other thing I'd consider is to actually reduce what the CD and GCD is for certain abilities based on ship class. There currently are no GCD reductions but if ship class could modify this and CDs as well for SPECIFIC ABILITIES, you'd see more specialization.
Destroyers: Reduction in Attack Pattern and Debuff cooldowns (and global cooldown reduction).
Science: Reduction in exotic damage and shield heal cooldowns (and global cooldown).
Escorts: Reduction in cannon upgrade and cooldowns (and global cooldowns).
Cruisers: Reduction in torpedo and beam cooldowns.
Battle Cruisers: Reduction in torpedo and cannon cooldowns.
Additionally, maybe give each ship class a subsystem specific flow capacitor mod that matches what they already get bonus power to and a flow capacitor penalty to subsystems their class doesn't ordinarily get bonus power to. So if you run plasmonic leech on an escort, sure, your weapon power is maxed out but your shields won't QUITE be. If you run it on a cruiser, your weapon power won't be QUITE maxed out but your engine power will be.
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Comments
But again, I'm not an expert on escorts, so I may not know what I'm talking about.
Dogfighting is different and might be more prevalent in certain fights.
Obviously there's some contradiction around the idea of reducing cooldown and making it a toggle. That's more of an either/or although the toggle might be rooted in the idea of
In any case, I think focus should be applied in making it easier to get good DPS. Because right now, the "good" options (when you factor in ease of use) are what everyone flocks towards and the "decent" options tend to require more technical play. Rather than nerf the good options (probably without even touching their ease of use and with only a partial reduction to their superiority unless the nerf is massive), I think a more productive approach would be ease of use based.
Like I say, if cannons on escorts start at or close to the GCD --- OR don't employ a cooldown at all (toggle, always on) and do comparable damage to what a cooldown reduced ability would, this helps push escorts away from A2B.
Still some good ideas though.