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Cant we nerf BFAW?
tasila
Member Posts: 77 Arc User
8x Beams + Hitting BFAW and Space is just too suprior and boring Beam Overload should also maybe be overlooked that it should do Massive energy spikes for 5-10 seconds like the Romulan Singularity power does. But most the time singletarget abilities are worthless if there are always 10 enemys+....
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so... make FAW useless if there are 10 enemies+? you realize most of the game is multi-targets.
Well i mostly use Elite Scorpions because i fly 90% romulan and they have no Beam array but i find BO a litte more useless without the 35% Doff and the BO Spacetrait were are Mostly better Doffs n Space Traits witch a mostly less Situational
I have said this before, I'll say it again. The chief concern with Fire At Will right now is that everyone uses it. It's the 'best' ability and is therefore the 'go to.'
Lets ask ourselves why this is? Why does everyone FAW everything? Does everyone hate the idea of Cannons?
There is one reason only.. lack of alternatives.
You can go Cannons, who's mechanics are horribly flawed and make them require far more effort for less payoff (in most cases.)
Even if you're a Beam Captain, what's your alternative? Beam Overload? Again.. odd mechanics, most people don't use it. Surgical Strikes? Sure.. that one is not bad but of course there is what.. 3 ships that can even use it? Hardly a mass solution.
Nerfing abilities does not cause diversity.. it never has and it never will. When you take the best ability and reduce it's effectiveness, it has one of two effects. Either it still remains the best ability even after the nerf and everyone sticks with it while setting the forums on fire. Or the nerfed ability moves below the 2nd best option and the 2nd best becomes the new 'Meta' and the problem persists.
The way you create diversity is creating desirable alternatives. You overhaul Cannons to make them competitive. You look at introducing other Beam Skills or improving things like Overload or Surigical Strikes to make them viable alternatives to Fire At Will. When you give people options, they'll try different things. Back when Aux2Bat was the big thing everyone wanted it nerfed. Cryptic instead did the smart thing, and introduced alternatives. They put in the Nukara traits that made people want high Aux, they put in traits and other mechanics that people could use as alternatives and people naturally moved away from A2B. Meanwhile, those who enjoyed it were able to stick with it and didn't have to change if they didn't want to.
Nerfing Fire At Will is a reactionary, short sided solution that lacks imagination and won't fix the problem. You want to really fix the problem? Give people alternatives.. give them other effective abilities and people will naturally migrate away from Fire At Will.
Just say no to nerfs.
A proper balancing would involve:
1) limiting BFAW to cruisers -- making that their primary DPS ability
2) limiting CSV and CRF to Escorts/Raiders -- making that their primary DPS ability
3) limiting GW and other major damage dealing Sci magic abilities to Science ships -- making that their primary DPS ability
4) that leaves TS and THY as an ability available to all types of ship, allowing a variety of torp builds -- balance Torpedo builds against the other three styles.
Do all that, and make it approximately equal chances, in terms of the possible DPS output.
But that would take a whole heck of a lot of work.
That's the way it should be.
Just about everybody uses it and low DPS players depend on it almost as much as the high DPS'ers, if not more.
It has become the 'Go To Ability', to survive the ever increasing HP's of the NPC's.
It may not be in the best interest of the game for Them to fiddle with it at this point.
As Seaofsorrows said, better too bring some of the other abilities up to par with BFaW, than risk alienating a very large part of the player base.
<shrug>
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Curious if the 5% creative sci captains and religious torpedo maniacs in game who don’t rely on FAW are strong enough to carry matches and ensure fun play for the others while another million Dil or two is in order for everybody to rearrange.
The number of running PvE matches is not even half the value of what it is has been 14 months ago. I think the nerf you ask for would ensure another cut in half within the next 14. If at all cuz by the time peeps will have lost confidence in this game entirely.
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This would probably still TRIBBLE-off a number of players, but it's not a half bad idea.
The only thing is, after the dust settles, we'd probably see a much larger population of players using nothing but Cruisers.
I'm not sure this would encourage players to play any of the other classes of ships.
Except maybe the folks who love a challenge.
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Pretty much. Remember, TS was specifically targeted for a nerf because it was overperforming and players were happy about it, so it had to get nerfed into the ground. TS was completely bug-free, as we all know and read in the patchnotes. So FAW, which is likewise completely bug-free and has no issues with say Accuracy or power drain that hurt it's performance, needs to be nerfed for the good of the game.
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Although...with BFAW it's better.
A limited arc around a main target would increase the need for team play IMO and make BFAW less spammy and easier to use in target rich environments where you want to focus fire on a specific target. It'll reward skilled pilots more too. I don't think it's right that I could just park my cruiser above the transformer and let my BFAW auto-kill all of the generators at the same time and take out all the spheres without moving much at all. Damage-wise, I think it should remain the same.
Cannons need a buff. I think it's high-time its damage drop-off was adjusted to be at par with beams. They have a narrow firing arc anyway.
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I don't think that limiting weapons to specific ship classes would be a great idea, as honestly each ship could use any weapon system from cannons to beams an even torpedoes, as it is just a launching/emitter system installed into the ship so would be largely pretty universal in it's installation. Now i could see the different classes of ships having bonuses they gain fro using different weapon systems, like with a massive cruiser might have higher scaling for beams per point of power you have in your weapon power over fifty (and then a cannon version for more of the escort), while you might have other bonuses based on the class say like for a destroyer might have increased rate of fire or projectile speed on torpedoes based on weapon power levels. This would not limit you to certain weapons by sheer fact you can't really equip them, but that you are rewarded for using weapons that suit your ship type. Though this is a general idea an concept would love to know based on what ship types, such as escort, cruiser, dreadnought, ect you would give what kind of buff to along these kinds of lines.
I will say that i wish that the tactical beam an cannon abilties (beam fire at will,cannon rapid fire, beam overload, cannon spread) were gained at the same seat rank (so ens or Lt) maybe switch torpedo abilities (torp spread, and high yield) to make it that ships would gain access to these at the same time for the same boff seat rank. Though i also wonder why torp spread only effects one torpedo launcher, instead of affecting the used launcher as well as firing one addition (maybe per rank of the ability) torpedo from the other similar slotted torpedo launcher types the ship has(so photon, plasma, transphasic, ect. Which would put those lauchers on a cd).
That would be my nerf buts its also a buff nerf^^
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And that’s the right way to think.
Instead of nerfing one ability one could give some more portend alternatives. Worked with aux2bat nicely; with the admirality it kind of worked for contraband too.
Bringing in torpedoes, cannons and sci stuff more in line with the current options to stack damage with fire at will is what we need.
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There is not actually a difference between nerfing Beam Fire At Will or making cannons better.
Either way you can undershoot your goal or overshoot it and end up with some power being at the top. The benefit of nerfing BFAW is that you bring down DPS overall, which means more challenging endgame content. And you need to look at only one power, not half a dozen (or more, if you also look into non-weapon DPS builds like for Science Vessels).
But even if you focus on BFAW it's not trivial. It becomes complicated if you consider that BFAW alone is probably not the issue. A combination of other factors enters into it. For example - the ability to lower energy drain from weapons. The ease with which to raise power levels. Overcapping. Embassy Consoes.
Before Cruiser Commands, Plasmonic Leech, Embassy Consoles and so on, running a lot of beams also meant severe energy drain, which practically neutered it and BFAW. Running 125 weapon power was possible then, but the drain was still so severe that the 7th and 8th beam on a Cruiser would barely add damage output, and you got more out of a torpedo (or making one or two beams Dual Beam Banks.). I think in that context BFAW recieved a few buffs to finally make it useful*, but afterwards, more benefits were added, some quite possibly not even directly aimed at buffing BFAW or Beams, just as general buffs to Cruisers since people complained about Escorts Online.
Finding the right thing to change will not be easy, and probably is one of the reasons that Cryptic has done only baby steps so far.
*) Heck, there was a time where BFAW affected only a single beam. Can you believe it?!
The game has been adjusted over the last year to compensate for BFAW. Enemies have considerably more HP and Shields then they used to, this was done to compensate for increased player damage and has been done to virtually all end game content across the entire game.
At this point, there are two choices. Bring other abilities up to FAW, or Bring FAW down to everything else. Doing the latter requires a complete revamp of the game. Enemies would have to be re-adjusted on an almost global scale to compensate for such a large change, an obviously impractical decision.
Bringing other abilities up is the obvious and only logical course of action. It's the only solution that truly creates parity and does so without stepping on the way the vast majority of the player base currently plays.
And for the record, attacking people personally doesn't make your argument look stronger. Going right to personal insults is the first sign that someone has a weak argument or isn't confident in their view point.
It's the variety of 'viable' builds that makes this game enjoyable (or not).
If one looks at the queue list, yea, one gets that impression easily. This is sad you know. In my close to 4 years of playing STO I have yet to find anything more entertaining than teamed PvE maps.
I’m in luck I suppose that I play in a community which still runs them or otherwise this game would not have enough substance for me to justify playing it. If I don’t have full teams there are still usually 1-2 peeps in queue getting the maps to start for us. Should also be noted that if you reach a certain level of performance yourself it does not really matter which pug joins cuz he has hardly any influence at the outcome of a match.
If the situation gets worse there would be nothing left to do for me. I mean tinker out a build to test it in patrols? Upgrade gear for battle zones? Buy new ships to play story contend. I don’t think so.
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In regards to BFAW, if anybody is able to explain why for whatever reason a AoE ability is supposed to have a higher singe-target damage output than single-target abilities I might chime in to say it's "okay", but so far nobody was able to give a logical explanation for that.
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