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New life for Single Cannons and Dual Cannons?
rmy1081
Member Posts: 2,840 Arc User
From Tribble patch notes December 1, 2015
Since single and dual cannons have the most shots per cycle, is this a stealth buff for them? It's obviously not been tested yet, but in theory it would seem that using single/dual cannons would give the best chance for a plasma explosion proc?
What do you think?
coldsnapped wrote: »We will be bringing down the Tribble server for maintenance to apply a new update: ST.55.20151120a.4.
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Powers:
[*] Plasma Explosions (from Embassy Consoles) now check their chance to activate on every shot of a firing cycle, instead of only the first shot....
- Due to the increase in opportunity to trigger, their base damage has been reduced by 18%.
- This change will allow all firing modes to benefit equally from these effects
Since single and dual cannons have the most shots per cycle, is this a stealth buff for them? It's obviously not been tested yet, but in theory it would seem that using single/dual cannons would give the best chance for a plasma explosion proc?
What do you think?
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Don't think it makes them "valid" again. Sure they may fire a couple more shots but you'd rely on a proc to actually fill quite the big base damage gap and then there's still the issue of weapon power economy. So if almighty RNG lets you down you'll still end up with significantly less DPS compared to DHCs I'd say.
I've been hearing rumblings that DCs actually overcap power more than DHCs. If true, power economy would be in favor of DCs. With both more overcap and proc chances for Plasma Embassy consoles, it could make DCs interesting.
Yeah, with a high EPS score and the current CrtD bug with DHCs, DCs can actually pull more DPS.
Right now, it's so bad that there's only one exception per weapon type to all rep and sets being Beam Array and DHCs. So the devs know no one's using the remainder, and the torpedoes are just there as a restriction you have to sink your DPS with if you really want that full set bonus.
A few have a second if you've got the lobis
One cannon (proton), with potentially the long range sniper cannon from the hirogen set
One mine (Nukara web) though at least they're good
One DBB (goes with the mines) and a second in the chroniton array with lobis
I think resonant had a dual cannon?
This change that they are doing seems to be a plus on the one hand, however, if the SPEED of cannons firing has been slowed over the years this may be a lateral move to give cannons a little more punch from console mods.
Full disclosure: I mainly fly Cruisers and until about 6 months ago had rarely had a cannon build of any worth for a couple years. Recently, mainly because of the T6 Defiant I have begun to build cannon focus builds on several different toons.
Just have to see what happens. Like I always say,, hope for the best,, plan for the worst!
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Regarding Cannons: a few changes that would make things more interesting:
1) DHCs now degrade to 40% but over 10.5km. A questionable decrease, and a questionable increase, but could they, together give us an interesting improvement and playstyle? They remain the close range punch, just, slightly more viable for slightly longer than before.
2) Single Cannons now degrade only to 80%, but also lose up to 20% accuracy over full range. Surely this could be built around?
3) Regular DCs get an improvement, degrading now only to 70% (marginally more than beams)
4) Turrets...uh... something. Maybe drop their max range but no degradation? They're pretty weak to begin with...
As for torpedoes, what if torpedo impacts damaged shield generators? The 75% cut remains, but every launcher debuffs shields temporarily with -Max ShieldHP every hit, as well as increasing kinetic bleedthrough by a small %. Of course shield heals recover several charges of those stacks per cast.
The idea is using a simple ability/boost to torpedoes to completely revamp their meta. A torpedo barrage would overwhelm shields and eventually blow them utterly offline (barring of course heals or a bit of time away from angry warbirds), preventing the common sight of beams doing full damage through a piddling 1% while torpedoes see their HYIII Heavy strike turned into a pathetic 5k pop because the target went back to 00001/180000
At least that is how a developer once explained the damage calculations.
That may be how it's supposed to work, but I think it only has one calculation time, so it sees shields and applies that resist before anything else.
You can probably not build a torpedo boat Escort, but I don't think that any build must be viable on every ship. A FAW build will be subpar on a Science Vessel, too.
Well, the devs explained in a manner that suggests that it does work like that, and doesn't get "confused". It depends on how you calculate things and what shields actually are (considering the game engine started with Champions Online or earlier, a game without the concept of shields).
Pseudo-Code
// shieldHardness = Multiplication of all shield hardness modifiers that apply, // (75 % kinetic resistance means x4, and if you, say, got 25 % from shield power that would be something like 5.33. ) damageCalculation(double incomingDamage, double shieldPoints, double shieldHardnessMultiplyer) { hullDamage = 0,1 * incoming damage. // Bleed Damage effectiveDamage= 0,9 incoming damage - (shieldPoints * shieldHardness) if (effectiveDamage > 0) { // shields were penetrated, so there are no remaining and everything left is applied to hull. setShields(0); hullDamage += effectiveDamage } else { setShields(effectiveDamage * -1) } applyHullDamage(hullDamage); }Torpedo Launchers have a 2s Global Cooldown (1.5 plus an exclusive launch activation of 0.5s). Assuming the console, your first will leave the tubes at 0.5, second at 2, third at 3.5, and fourth launch at exactly 6 seconds.
Sure they're decently heavy single hits, but They're *ONE* hit of DPS half a single DBB's volley every 1.5 or 2s as opposed to as many guns as you can bring to bear on the enemy. And then they get a couple more seconds cooldown, rather than all firing again a second from now.
The Omega aside (look at that DPS tooltip, remember reality, and choose to laugh or cry), torpedoes not only have lower DPS than beams offer, but it's lower-still due to the GCD: They don't even offer the burst damage that would warrant their cooldowns because they *can't* be used to burst a target down; not the way that even the weaker current form of Surgical Strikes can do.
Back to cannons, though. Is there currently *ANY* use the single cannon currently has that we can use as an example to build from?
Edit: Just to note; it's unbelievably common in-game to find people who assume either:
>The GCD is 1s
>Omega Torpedoes fire every 0.5s
>Shields are the only kinetic resist, anything that hits hull is not reduced, that's why it's so high because once your shields go down it's over
I sincerely worry some devs themselves may not even know how torpedo launchers work by now.
Anyway, I found this from Vel and it's what I was looking for:
So it is a buff to DCs!
Cannons suffer from many issues in the current meta. This wasn't always the case; there was a time when cannons had ascendancy but that is not longer the case. The BIGGEST issues facing cannons are (listed in order of importance)
1. Time to target (beams hit targets instantly, so parsers will always be biased...hard to kill a target when beams have cooked it before you have..) READ: DHC and Cannon shots in-general are TOO slow and are not consistent with I.P..
2. Damage falloff from distance
3. The inherent +10% CritD is bugged (In reference to DHCs)
4. The damage differential you get from using cannons is not even REMOTELY compensated for because of limited firing arc and damage falloff. THIS is why we have all-beam Defiant builds....they kill stuff faster.
There are more issues, but I'm in the process of penning a "Cannons Suck"-mega thread, so input here would be nice.
you're pretty spot on. I would love to see the drop off start at about 4-5 km rather than the 2 km we have now.
This is all true, this is why beams, of both kind, reign supreme the queues. First the cannons need to be brought to the same level with beams, then we can address the issue of usefulness (or lack thereof) of single cannons. DC I see the use for specific builds because of their constant firing speed, unlike their bigger slower brethren.
That said, I also agree with what someone else posted, single cannons could enjoy new life if Devs gave them 270 degrees firing arc and lowered down their damage to compensate. With ways to augment weapon power these days, even running eight wouldn't be a problem (besides, there's KCB, torps etc that most people would run as well), and even though BA would still be preffered, since their damage doesn't falloff, for slightly nimbler (but still big) ships that can get into a range better, single cannons would be useful then. Of course, the single cannons should have their limit of not being loadout-able on the aft slots lifted.
This could also tie itself to reworkings of the CSV's limited arc, or at the very least, make single cannons be able to use BFAW mechanics (or even the spell itself).
Edit: ah the typos...zombie needs the coffee.
This is exactly what I've said for years. A shield should be at maximum effectiveness when fully charged, every time it lowers it should still provide defense but the risk of it failing or loosing resistance should increase.
100% capacity = 75% resistance
50% cap = 50% res
25% cap = 25% res
1% cap = 1% res
Those are purely arbitrary numbers but they show how it could be done. This would only be for torpedoes though as energy weapons already get good bleed-through and little resistance.
Perhaps torp crits could also give a chance to knock a facing off entirely?
As for cannons, heck there is so much wrong with them it's just embarrassing to use them sometimes in a team setting!
Somewhere like the Badlands battlezone for example is almost impossible to get decent rewards with anything but beams. It's not so much cannons are so poor (or torps) they can still do massive damage, but the beams have a million more advantage like not worrying about arcs and being able to just park up and spam BFAW till the cows come home.
Basically single target attacks in general are losing out to multi-beam spam all over the place. Even the single target beam attack, beam overload is pointless in most cases.
To fix cannons i'd consider:
DHCs if anything need a boost, not to degrade to 40%. With beams, especially BFAW, ruling all, they can afford to get rid of the distance dropoff entirely.
They can also afford to get rid of the high yield penalty that reduces torpedoes base damage with each additional torpedo fired. This penalty along with spread's hit certainty makes spread THE go-to ability.
Go right ahead with the "Cannons Suck" thread. I'll be there shortly after to post myself.
I like that idea.
A buddy of mine made a good suggestion about this one, simply count in the hit when the shot's fired (ie if it hits at all, and not misses, but cannon accuracy is something for another thread) and not when it lands -- for cannons. This would make sure cannon hits land on the target before BFAW spam of death destroys the enemy, but still wouldn't OP cannons because of the fall-out damage decrease to range, smaller arcs and no BFAW mechanics for 'em (CSV is meh compared to beam 'equivalent').
Torps are in a different kettle, in a sense that it just wouldn't make sense to do it. In their case, I'd speed them up for about 25% (flight speed), stackable with the skill for faster torp travel rate.