this is a bad nerf in many ways and i made my new skills over on tribble as close as i could to holodeck but yet i lost many things 45 points is no where near enough points please add more here is a link to my drop in power, resist, crit chance, crit serverity and base damage on a cannon i have. to me if this goes live right now as is i would just about stop playing. http://imgur.com/a/pwkjg
Jumped on to Tribble to reproduce my current build. My current build is pretty much dead.
I lost: (base numbers)
.9 power drain from Plasmonic Leech. (This alone is enough to kill the build).
6% Crit Chance
15% Crit Severity
Some shield strength (though this I expected because Ive no longer specced into a shield skill)
1% Defense
I gained:
3% to all of my Energy Resists
6% to my Kinetic Resist
Some hull strength. (Roughly equivalent to the amount of shield strength I lost.
Yep. I'm pretty much done if this goes live. Ive spent way too much time and resources on this build to see it killed off like this.
Tactical 5 and Tactical 10 should be split differently:
Energy CritH / Projectile CritH
and
Energy CritD / Projectile CritD
Not sure how I can explain any more clearly that this is a non-choice, and that we won't be making that change. It does not support any of the design principles that we're trying to reinforce with these choices.
Additionally, I'd urge folks to think about the impact that 1% CritH -or- +5% CritD will actually have on their gameplay experience. I'm encouraged by the idea that you care so much, but many of the arguments here are making mountains from molehills.
But you are creating the very situation you say the design principles are trying to avoid. Not sure how I can explain it any more clear than I did last time. You are doing the very thing you are trying to avoid and creating a frustrating situation for players.
Let me try asking this a different way about the tac passives when a player gets to the stage that’s the opposite of the weapon they use. Where is the choice-with-consequences? Where is the option to pick a meaningful choice? All I see is the very opposite of your design principles where the player may as well pick randomly as there is no useful choice. There is no reward; all we get is the feeling of a wasted choice that may as well have not been made.
The current passive options seems like a bad design choice, I don't understand why you have done it. It hasn't archived anything useful, all its done is create problems.
EDIT: The Ground weapon damage boost skills still make no reference to Kinetic damage.
Tactical 5 and Tactical 10 should be split differently:
Energy CritH / Projectile CritH
and
Energy CritD / Projectile CritD
Not sure how I can explain any more clearly that this is a non-choice, and that we won't be making that change. It does not support any of the design principles that we're trying to reinforce with these choices.
Additionally, I'd urge folks to think about the impact that 1% CritH -or- +5% CritD will actually have on their gameplay experience. I'm encouraged by the idea that you care so much, but many of the arguments here are making mountains from molehills.
And Im not sure how I can clearly explain that ITS /quote]
You can't, because it's not.
If you have the choice between a superior option and an inferior option, it's a non-choice. You take the superior option.
Obviously, your energy weapon build doesn't need any projectile buffs. So in your proposed way, you do not have an actual choice to make. The Torpedo bonuses could just as well not exist at all for you.
With the current sytem on Tribble, you have two points where you need to choose. The Torpedo choice might be irrelevant if you never intend to use torpedoes, but that's okay - you only pick between two things of equal use. Your energy weapon choice however will be interesting - do you find the crit chance bonus more important, or the severity bonus?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Tactical 5 and Tactical 10 should be split differently:
Energy CritH / Projectile CritH
and
Energy CritD / Projectile CritD
Not sure how I can explain any more clearly that this is a non-choice, and that we won't be making that change. It does not support any of the design principles that we're trying to reinforce with these choices.
Additionally, I'd urge folks to think about the impact that 1% CritH -or- +5% CritD will actually have on their gameplay experience. I'm encouraged by the idea that you care so much, but many of the arguments here are making mountains from molehills.
And Im not sure how I can clearly explain that ITS /quote]
You can't, because it's not.
If you have the choice between a superior option and an inferior option, it's a non-choice. You take the superior option.
Obviously, your energy weapon build doesn't need any projectile buffs. So in your proposed way, you do not have an actual choice to make. The Torpedo bonuses could just as well not exist at all for you.
With the current sytem on Tribble, you have two points where you need to choose. The Torpedo choice might be irrelevant if you never intend to use torpedoes, but that's okay - you only pick between two things of equal use. Your energy weapon choice however will be interesting - do you find the crit chance bonus more important, or the severity bonus?
So you have one choice that is interesting and one choice that is irrelevant and a waste of time. Why not do the changes that have suggested to make both choices interesting and relevant? I don't understand why we cannot have both choices as a choice-with-consequences. Why do we have to have a useless choice?
Tactical 5 and Tactical 10 should be split differently:
Energy CritH / Projectile CritH
and
Energy CritD / Projectile CritD
Not sure how I can explain any more clearly that this is a non-choice, and that we won't be making that change. It does not support any of the design principles that we're trying to reinforce with these choices.
Additionally, I'd urge folks to think about the impact that 1% CritH -or- +5% CritD will actually have on their gameplay experience. I'm encouraged by the idea that you care so much, but many of the arguments here are making mountains from molehills.
You can't, because it's not.
If you have the choice between a superior option and an inferior option, it's a non-choice. You take the superior option.
Obviously, your energy weapon build doesn't need any projectile buffs. So in your proposed way, you do not have an actual choice to make. The Torpedo bonuses could just as well not exist at all for you.
With the current sytem on Tribble, you have two points where you need to choose. The Torpedo choice might be irrelevant if you never intend to use torpedoes, but that's okay - you only pick between two things of equal use. Your energy weapon choice however will be interesting - do you find the crit chance bonus more important, or the severity bonus?
CritH vs CritD is a non-choice. CritH is the superior choice. (As you yourself pointed out... if you have a superior and an inferior choice, you take the superior one).
With the current system on tribble I take Energy CritH and let the projectile bubble keep flashing... (and the pet bubble at 20) My choice for the projectile bubble literally does not matter. It provides me no player agency, I either choose at randome because it doesnt affect me, or choose nothing because it doesnt affect me. Nor does the choice for the energy bubble, since CritH is the superior option. Double the no player agency. My choices for those two bubbles matter exactly 0. If they were split the way suggested, the choice will actually matter (both to me, and my build, aswell as everyone else whether they run a full energy, full torp or a hybrid build).
1 choice matters the way its split now. As I suggested both choices matter. Infact, they would matter MORE for anyone running a hybrid build, because you would have to choose what you want to crit harder and more often.
From what I can tell, the boost scaling for certain drain powers is either bugged or too minor. Quantum Destablizing beam, aceton mode (palisade console), energy siphon all have very minor increases in effectiveness from the most outrageous increase in drain expertise skill, and much lower levels compared to holodeck at normal skill levels.
A look at drain vs resist effectiveness would really help us pvpers too, right now it's looking kind of bad, even in vacuum napkin math analysis. Boosting the benefit those skills receive from flow caps, or bumping their base effectiveness up would help.
In order to get my drain numbers looking anything like they do on holodeck, I end up losing like, 8k shields and 10k hull- and about 15% resists (actual modified number values, not base values) across the board.
Probably been said but can we please have the names of each skill displayed under the respective box and have each box be a different icon. at least with the old system if you wanted to drop some points into hull healing or turn rate it was very easy to find.
Probably been said but can we please have the names of each skill displayed under the respective box and have each box be a different icon. at least with the old system if you wanted to drop some points into hull healing or turn rate it was very easy to find.
This would be nice. I imagine things like this will be cleaned up ready for Holodeck, but IMO it's a very important minor detail. Especially if the aim is to make things easier for new players to grasp.
"So my fun is wrong?"
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
Energy Siphon is a single target ability in a meta designed for AOE so it needs to be pretty effective to be worthwhile. So I would postulate that the base value needs to be increased to the point that the new drainx maximum values of 600-700 put it very close to where it was before. You may reduce the power benefit players receive if that's the issue because I could care less about that then draining my enemies.
Secondly, Plasmonic Leech needed to be beat to death with the nerf club I totally agree but cutting it in half may have been a bit too drastic. Perhaps reducing the base drain from 8 to 5-6 would be a good compromise? I won't complain either way but quite a few people have spent a fortune on it and if it goes live like this the forums will burn. Lol
Guys, guys, guys. The normalization is here to stay, but I've said many, many times that individual powers are subject to further tuning.
So please, stop with the dramatic cries of nerf, and let's approach this from a more civil angle -- how much do I need to increase the *base values* of these re-scaled abilities, in order for them to remain competitive and worthwhile in your current builds?
I hate to keep hitting away at this, but I'd still like an answer to why we can't have a threat toggle for ground like you've given to space? Ground tanking is going to be impossible without it.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
As I mentioned previously, we'd be willing to consider this if we had any fantastic ideas for Skills to take the place of the 3 that would be removed. We haven't come up with anything appropriate internally, nor seen any such suggestions from players.
Alright, so the issue is finding replacement mechanics to fill the resulting gaps caused by merging some projectile/energy lines.
How about~
Dire Consequences. Your weapon procs are 20%/40%/60% times their base chance more likely to trigger.
So 2.5% procs would become 3%/3.5%/4%
5% base becomes 6%/7%/8%
10% base becomes 12%/14%/16%
...and so on.
Torpedoes with their higher base proc chances gain proportionately more benefit, but it interacts uniformly with all weapon types.
(...Except antiproton, and frankly TRIBBLE those guys, they're over powered .)
...let's approach this from a more civil angle -- how much do I need to increase the *base values* of these re-scaled abilities, in order for them to remain competitive and worthwhile in your current builds?
So, plasmonic leech. All my Klingons and Klingon-allied Rommies get this for a song. My Feds pay a sizable fraction of a billion for it per character. So, ultimately I'm happy to see it nerfed into the ground just to reduce the disparities.
-BUT-
Is there room to discuss lowering it's base effectiveness more and bringing the skill contribution up so that there's a greater sense of being involved in the decision to use it well or not? This is considered pretty much a pure DPS console feeding your thirsty weapons while giving you survivability as your opponent sputters... Win-win. That makes it a perfect place to make Tactical-tree captains have to think about pulling some points out of the red line and spending into blue to empower this tool. If the skill contribution remains as low as we're seeing, there's not much incentive to reallocate those points away from red-and-more-red choices.
Guys, guys, guys. The normalization is here to stay, but I've said many, many times that individual powers are subject to further tuning.
So please, stop with the dramatic cries of nerf, and let's approach this from a more civil angle -- how much do I need to increase the *base values* of these re-scaled abilities, in order for them to remain competitive and worthwhile in your current builds?
Dramatic is a science captain needing to spend 20 points in tac to buff his science carrier pets. I've used 5 respec tokens and run Tau Dewa about 6 or 7 times and can't even come close to my build on Holodeck. I'm glad I came to Tribble to test this. There's no way I would have spent (so far) $25+ to think outside the box and explore the possibilities. The only possibility I want to is retain what I have been using for years and it be as close to the same as it was before.
I won't cry nerf, but I will firmly assert that science is nerfed. I spent 20 points in Tac, 14 in engineering, and 12 in science. Also, I am completely bogged why tactical skills (Beam Overload III) need 17 points in science to unlock. Viral Matrix III needs 17 points in tactical. These should unlock per their class skill tree under their system, not based on points spent in a tree branch of a completely different class.
Every career path has to unlock BOFF manuals by investing in all three and it makes sense. You need all three to be successful.
Investing in shields, particle generators, and crowd control makes sense to unlocking the ability to train a weapon skill? Training in engineering on hull and power makes sense to unlock attack patterns? Tac should unlock tac. Sci should unlock sci. That's like saying a mage should train in swords to cast magic.
First impressions (keep getting disconnected after a couple of minutes - so feedback is limited at the moment).
1) Seem to be able to set my main characters tanking build reasonably ok, might mean some tweaks to the build I've been using but from a pure tree skill tree layout it seems ok and some improvements in some areas as well. Not sure how it compares in combat scenarios, due to the disconnects I keep getting which prevent me testing that aspect.
2) The Skill tree window UI is "wobbling" when I drag it around, the buttons are the bottom right side (purchase/respect) are moving position in the window every so slightly when I drag it. The bottom bar with the tree progress is also changing sizes very slightly at the same time and this is causing the actual skill tree window size to change on the move as well.
3) Not sure I like the change to bring access to the specialisations into a drop down menu on the skills page, seems to make accessing them a little less intuitive and quick as you've essentially now got to click through an extra menu page to get to the specialisation you want now.
Though I do see it is based on the same coding as the Specializations, I do find it tedious in having to place a point into a skill the hit purchase 45 times. Especially if you wanting or needing to respec down the track.
I was seeing if it could be looked at and to make it similar to the current/old skill tree and be able to place points into it, then once finished filling out the points, press the purchase the one time.
If not, would it be a consideration for any future tech that may come along.
Also, I notice that the Tac/Eng/Sci Team 3 training manuals are not around, are they hiding somewhere good, or coming back, or are there other plans to obtain them.
I'm starting to have a look with my main char, and did one run in a battle with one of my tanks - seems to be about the same as before. I dug out two of my favorite ships - my Phaser Canon Tac Vesta and my Tetryon Sci Vesta. I had to fix up a couple of things and will take them both out on runs later today. However, I already noticed that my valuable fleet particle focus science consoles are *NOT* buffing my science abilities at all - that's a *HUGE* problem, esp for the sci Vesta as it's main focus is CC.
Jumped on to Tribble to reproduce my current build. My current build is pretty much dead.
I lost: (base numbers)
.9 power drain from Plasmonic Leech. (This alone is enough to kill the build).
6% Crit Chance
15% Crit Severity
Some shield strength (though this I expected because Ive no longer specced into a shield skill)
1% Defense
I gained:
3% to all of my Energy Resists
6% to my Kinetic Resist
Some hull strength. (Roughly equivalent to the amount of shield strength I lost.
Yep. I'm pretty much done if this goes live. Ive spent way too much time and resources on this build to see it killed off like this.
Similar situation here, also. I've lost a little base damage (from Joined Trill no longer providing its bonuses properly), but a great deal more as I did a little looking last night. Some other things I lost:
Plasmonic Leech power (need to measure, but A LOT)
Massive Hull Regeneration (it was at least 100%/min out of combat that I lost - what's going on here?)
about 5% resist all (from the loss of threat control as a skill, I'd wager)
a small amount of Hull HP
I'm also really, really miffed by the loss of Drain Resistance on my Assimilated Deflector Mk 14 Epic. It is now all control resist now? Huh?
If I had more time, I'd do a side by side of skill effectiveness and so forth...but let's just say that it feels like everywhere I look, my build lost something, gaining almost nothing in return (5% hull pen does NOT compensate for this). I'm not going to say if this goes live I'm done, as I'm a lifer...I'll still come back for story content. But I'll be done spending money, as I'll be too paranoid about another systems redesign like this lurking around the corner.
Holodeck numbers are at the left and Tribble is on the right. GW seems to have given a big boost (as expected since it didn't gain as much per PrtG before) but TBR and DRB both got a substantial hit. At Holodeck, DRB is close to the 0.5% per PrTG bonus so it shouldn't be hit this hard. Is this intended? That seems to be a big nerf to me.
On the torpedo side of things, damage seems higher. So my Sci builds are essentially going to get a substantial DPS drop, while my more tac-oriented torpedo builds will be getting a buff.
On live, Polarons are about even with Energy Siphon 3, at least for me. On Tribble, ES3 is now about equal to the old ES1. I don't have time to pull unbuffed numbers at the moment to show comparisons of the "base" values with no investment in drain, so maybe someone else could provide those for review, but if this amount of drain is fine for Polarons, why not for ES with the same investment? Tachyon Beam and Tyken's Rift both also are about even(or better) on Tribble, from numbers I've seen elsewhere(and don't have time to pull myself) either.
The difference that I see between ES and the rest(and this is just speculation)? ES provides power to the user, while the other three are pure drain only. This would be the same reason that Leech was cut in half - with Live numbers I could have 50s in everything and still hit power cap. As such, here is a thought on a compromise, if it is possible:
Return the power drain on ES to at least 3/4 or higher of the live value(to allow for the additional stats gained in the change) but keep the power gain at it's current Tribble level.
This would allow Drain to be at least as (in?)effective as Live, but address any power concerns on the power the drain user is getting. Given the resistance most PvPers have to drain, the high resistance of Elite bosses, and that ES is Single Target in an AoE meta, you could even buff the drain further if you wanted to make it a viable strategy in PvP or Elites, as long as it is disconnected from the power gains, as the current values seem fair to you apparently, based on your last post about normalization.
That assumes of course that you can seperate the power drain component from the power gain component, but from my perspective it would address what seems tome to be your primary concern with ES, based on how none of the other drain abilities have been hurt this bad(or at all).
Gotta love how tactical builds get all the love, as usual, while Science ships and hybrid builds repeatedly get beaten to death.
I mean its not like science ships need weapons or anything. :P
Jumped on to Tribble to reproduce my current build. My current build is pretty much dead.
I lost: (base numbers)
.9 power drain from Plasmonic Leech. (This alone is enough to kill the build).
6% Crit Chance
15% Crit Severity
Some shield strength (though this I expected because Ive no longer specced into a shield skill)
1% Defense
I gained:
3% to all of my Energy Resists
6% to my Kinetic Resist
Some hull strength. (Roughly equivalent to the amount of shield strength I lost.
Yep. I'm pretty much done if this goes live. Ive spent way too much time and resources on this build to see it killed off like this.
I know "exactly" how you feel.
I've invested hundreds of millions of EC, millions of dilithium and Thousands of Zen into making my Pathfinder, Beam/Torpedo/Exotic damage work, 46k DPS as an engineer.
The skill revamp in its current state can under no circumstance be allowed to go live. It's just simply unacceptable.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
I haven't given the system a thorough testing yet, but I do have some feedback already.
Specialization selection
I really don't like the dropdown menu, this is a big downgrade from what we used to have when it comes to user friendliness.
My suggestion to fix this is the following;
When you click on the Specialization tab, you open the first specialization just like you did with the old system. (The Command tree.)
On the left side you have a bar again where you can switch between the different specializations.
Alternatively, on the top of the window you could have radio buttons where you can select your spec, but I think that would cause issues when we're getting more specializations. Either way, the pulldown menu has to go.
Specialization advancement bar
There is a bar below the specializations that tells you what you unlock at which level of that spec. You can hover over an unlock and it will tell you what it does. In the old system the area you could hover over was much larger. Now it's almost impossible to get your mouse just right to see the little window showing up that tells you what you get.
Ground skills
Currently, we're only getting 10 points for a ground spec. I love ground PvE and it's my most played content. In the old system I could put far more points in there than I can now and it makes me feel like ground skills got the dirty end of the stick. As it is, I can't even max out both tier 1's without being short on points. Overall it feels like a severe lack luster and you'll end up with a sub optimal build no matter what you try. Please give us more points for ground skills, or better yet, just let us fill all the points by the time we reach level 50. To compensate you could make the powers a bit weaker, but right now it's just not funny having to chose between the lesser of two evils.
@borticuscryptic thank you for the response. I don't think it was anyone's attention not to be civil re: the drain situation. Perhaps using the term nerf was premature. But while there have been many comments about the tac tree, crith/d, and training manuals, this was the first response I saw (you may have said it elsewhere and I missed it) that mentioned the drain. ..glitch, we'll say. I think the main thing we wanted to know was if it was planned, or if it still needed adjustment. I think your answer helped, because now we understand that the massive drop was not intentional.
Guys, guys, guys. The normalization is here to stay, but I've said many, many times that individual powers are subject to further tuning.
So please, stop with the dramatic cries of nerf, and let's approach this from a more civil angle -- how much do I need to increase the *base values* of these re-scaled abilities, in order for them to remain competitive and worthwhile in your current builds?
Challenge accepted!
So I did this considering my drain ship with similarly equivalent gear could potentially get close to +122 drain skill between the primary deflector (Terran +10) and swapping the secondary one (Solanae for regular one +15), and one simple console swap (Apex for Nukara +17.3). Let's assume I swap out my 4 embassy consoles for R&D ones at the expense of shield healing (+80).
So, instead of Tribble's:
ES drain = Base Value + [(Base value*0.01)/2] * Drain
we could try
ES drain = Base Value + [(Base value*0.01/1.25] * Drain
Changing it to 1.25 makes energy siphon keep similar (just very slightly lower) values to the old ones given the extra skill points available so, in essence, no nerfing of the skill.
FYI - I'm assuming all consoles stay the same as in Tribble right now. Just putting that out there because if the +80 using 4 consoles changes for R&D consoles, then the equation shifts to 1.2 instead of 1.25.
Holodeck's equation:
ES drain = Base Value + (Base value*0.01*Flow caps)
this is a bad nerf in many ways and i made my new skills over on tribble as close as i could to holodeck but yet i lost many things 45 points is no where near enough points please add more here is a link to my drop in power, resist, crit chance, crit serverity and base damage on a cannon i have. to me if this goes live right now as is i would just about stop playing. http://imgur.com/a/pwkjg
I lost ~15% space weapon damage (85% of old values, and that was with taking everything that would increase it), Defense went down from 90% to 80%, lost CritH/CritD, a bit of Accuracy and damage resists went down as well.
I know it won't happen since it's supposed THE feature of 11.5 , but I hope they scrap it and go back the drawing board with it.
Comments
I lost: (base numbers)
.9 power drain from Plasmonic Leech. (This alone is enough to kill the build).
6% Crit Chance
15% Crit Severity
Some shield strength (though this I expected because Ive no longer specced into a shield skill)
1% Defense
I gained:
3% to all of my Energy Resists
6% to my Kinetic Resist
Some hull strength. (Roughly equivalent to the amount of shield strength I lost.
Yep. I'm pretty much done if this goes live. Ive spent way too much time and resources on this build to see it killed off like this.
Let me try asking this a different way about the tac passives when a player gets to the stage that’s the opposite of the weapon they use. Where is the choice-with-consequences? Where is the option to pick a meaningful choice? All I see is the very opposite of your design principles where the player may as well pick randomly as there is no useful choice. There is no reward; all we get is the feeling of a wasted choice that may as well have not been made.
The current passive options seems like a bad design choice, I don't understand why you have done it. It hasn't archived anything useful, all its done is create problems.
EDIT: The Ground weapon damage boost skills still make no reference to Kinetic damage.
A look at drain vs resist effectiveness would really help us pvpers too, right now it's looking kind of bad, even in vacuum napkin math analysis. Boosting the benefit those skills receive from flow caps, or bumping their base effectiveness up would help.
In order to get my drain numbers looking anything like they do on holodeck, I end up losing like, 8k shields and 10k hull- and about 15% resists (actual modified number values, not base values) across the board.
This would be nice. I imagine things like this will be cleaned up ready for Holodeck, but IMO it's a very important minor detail. Especially if the aim is to make things easier for new players to grasp.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
I hate to keep hitting away at this, but I'd still like an answer to why we can't have a threat toggle for ground like you've given to space? Ground tanking is going to be impossible without it.
This, I like this. A lot.
So, plasmonic leech. All my Klingons and Klingon-allied Rommies get this for a song. My Feds pay a sizable fraction of a billion for it per character. So, ultimately I'm happy to see it nerfed into the ground just to reduce the disparities.
-BUT-
Is there room to discuss lowering it's base effectiveness more and bringing the skill contribution up so that there's a greater sense of being involved in the decision to use it well or not? This is considered pretty much a pure DPS console feeding your thirsty weapons while giving you survivability as your opponent sputters... Win-win. That makes it a perfect place to make Tactical-tree captains have to think about pulling some points out of the red line and spending into blue to empower this tool. If the skill contribution remains as low as we're seeing, there's not much incentive to reallocate those points away from red-and-more-red choices.
More dilemmas please
Dramatic is a science captain needing to spend 20 points in tac to buff his science carrier pets. I've used 5 respec tokens and run Tau Dewa about 6 or 7 times and can't even come close to my build on Holodeck. I'm glad I came to Tribble to test this. There's no way I would have spent (so far) $25+ to think outside the box and explore the possibilities. The only possibility I want to is retain what I have been using for years and it be as close to the same as it was before.
I won't cry nerf, but I will firmly assert that science is nerfed. I spent 20 points in Tac, 14 in engineering, and 12 in science. Also, I am completely bogged why tactical skills (Beam Overload III) need 17 points in science to unlock. Viral Matrix III needs 17 points in tactical. These should unlock per their class skill tree under their system, not based on points spent in a tree branch of a completely different class.
Investing in shields, particle generators, and crowd control makes sense to unlocking the ability to train a weapon skill? Training in engineering on hull and power makes sense to unlock attack patterns? Tac should unlock tac. Sci should unlock sci. That's like saying a mage should train in swords to cast magic.
1) Seem to be able to set my main characters tanking build reasonably ok, might mean some tweaks to the build I've been using but from a pure tree skill tree layout it seems ok and some improvements in some areas as well. Not sure how it compares in combat scenarios, due to the disconnects I keep getting which prevent me testing that aspect.
2) The Skill tree window UI is "wobbling" when I drag it around, the buttons are the bottom right side (purchase/respect) are moving position in the window every so slightly when I drag it. The bottom bar with the tree progress is also changing sizes very slightly at the same time and this is causing the actual skill tree window size to change on the move as well.
3) Not sure I like the change to bring access to the specialisations into a drop down menu on the skills page, seems to make accessing them a little less intuitive and quick as you've essentially now got to click through an extra menu page to get to the specialisation you want now.
I was seeing if it could be looked at and to make it similar to the current/old skill tree and be able to place points into it, then once finished filling out the points, press the purchase the one time.
If not, would it be a consideration for any future tech that may come along.
Also, I notice that the Tac/Eng/Sci Team 3 training manuals are not around, are they hiding somewhere good, or coming back, or are there other plans to obtain them.
Similar situation here, also. I've lost a little base damage (from Joined Trill no longer providing its bonuses properly), but a great deal more as I did a little looking last night. Some other things I lost:
Plasmonic Leech power (need to measure, but A LOT)
Massive Hull Regeneration (it was at least 100%/min out of combat that I lost - what's going on here?)
about 5% resist all (from the loss of threat control as a skill, I'd wager)
a small amount of Hull HP
I'm also really, really miffed by the loss of Drain Resistance on my Assimilated Deflector Mk 14 Epic. It is now all control resist now? Huh?
If I had more time, I'd do a side by side of skill effectiveness and so forth...but let's just say that it feels like everywhere I look, my build lost something, gaining almost nothing in return (5% hull pen does NOT compensate for this). I'm not going to say if this goes live I'm done, as I'm a lifer...I'll still come back for story content. But I'll be done spending money, as I'll be too paranoid about another systems redesign like this lurking around the corner.
362 EPG @ 130 Aux
GW - 1438.1 -> 1716.9
TBR - 3280.6 -> 2235.1
DRB - 3541.6 -> 2000.4
Holodeck numbers are at the left and Tribble is on the right. GW seems to have given a big boost (as expected since it didn't gain as much per PrtG before) but TBR and DRB both got a substantial hit. At Holodeck, DRB is close to the 0.5% per PrTG bonus so it shouldn't be hit this hard. Is this intended? That seems to be a big nerf to me.
On the torpedo side of things, damage seems higher. So my Sci builds are essentially going to get a substantial DPS drop, while my more tac-oriented torpedo builds will be getting a buff.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Live:
Flow: 397
ES3: 74.6
ES2: 59.7
ES1: 44.8
Polaron: 74.7
Tribble:
(Guestimated)Flow: 467
ES3: 48.7
ES2: 38.9
ES1: 29.2
Polaron: 81
On live, Polarons are about even with Energy Siphon 3, at least for me. On Tribble, ES3 is now about equal to the old ES1. I don't have time to pull unbuffed numbers at the moment to show comparisons of the "base" values with no investment in drain, so maybe someone else could provide those for review, but if this amount of drain is fine for Polarons, why not for ES with the same investment? Tachyon Beam and Tyken's Rift both also are about even(or better) on Tribble, from numbers I've seen elsewhere(and don't have time to pull myself) either.
The difference that I see between ES and the rest(and this is just speculation)? ES provides power to the user, while the other three are pure drain only. This would be the same reason that Leech was cut in half - with Live numbers I could have 50s in everything and still hit power cap. As such, here is a thought on a compromise, if it is possible:
Return the power drain on ES to at least 3/4 or higher of the live value(to allow for the additional stats gained in the change) but keep the power gain at it's current Tribble level.
This would allow Drain to be at least as (in?)effective as Live, but address any power concerns on the power the drain user is getting. Given the resistance most PvPers have to drain, the high resistance of Elite bosses, and that ES is Single Target in an AoE meta, you could even buff the drain further if you wanted to make it a viable strategy in PvP or Elites, as long as it is disconnected from the power gains, as the current values seem fair to you apparently, based on your last post about normalization.
That assumes of course that you can seperate the power drain component from the power gain component, but from my perspective it would address what seems tome to be your primary concern with ES, based on how none of the other drain abilities have been hurt this bad(or at all).
I mean its not like science ships need weapons or anything. :P
I know "exactly" how you feel.
I've invested hundreds of millions of EC, millions of dilithium and Thousands of Zen into making my Pathfinder, Beam/Torpedo/Exotic damage work, 46k DPS as an engineer.
The skill revamp in its current state can under no circumstance be allowed to go live. It's just simply unacceptable.
Specialization selection
I really don't like the dropdown menu, this is a big downgrade from what we used to have when it comes to user friendliness.
My suggestion to fix this is the following;
When you click on the Specialization tab, you open the first specialization just like you did with the old system. (The Command tree.)
On the left side you have a bar again where you can switch between the different specializations.
Alternatively, on the top of the window you could have radio buttons where you can select your spec, but I think that would cause issues when we're getting more specializations. Either way, the pulldown menu has to go.
Specialization advancement bar
There is a bar below the specializations that tells you what you unlock at which level of that spec. You can hover over an unlock and it will tell you what it does. In the old system the area you could hover over was much larger. Now it's almost impossible to get your mouse just right to see the little window showing up that tells you what you get.
Ground skills
Currently, we're only getting 10 points for a ground spec. I love ground PvE and it's my most played content. In the old system I could put far more points in there than I can now and it makes me feel like ground skills got the dirty end of the stick. As it is, I can't even max out both tier 1's without being short on points. Overall it feels like a severe lack luster and you'll end up with a sub optimal build no matter what you try. Please give us more points for ground skills, or better yet, just let us fill all the points by the time we reach level 50. To compensate you could make the powers a bit weaker, but right now it's just not funny having to chose between the lesser of two evils.
Challenge accepted!
So I did this considering my drain ship with similarly equivalent gear could potentially get close to +122 drain skill between the primary deflector (Terran +10) and swapping the secondary one (Solanae for regular one +15), and one simple console swap (Apex for Nukara +17.3). Let's assume I swap out my 4 embassy consoles for R&D ones at the expense of shield healing (+80).
So, instead of Tribble's:
ES drain = Base Value + [(Base value*0.01)/2] * Drain
we could try
ES drain = Base Value + [(Base value*0.01/1.25] * Drain
Changing it to 1.25 makes energy siphon keep similar (just very slightly lower) values to the old ones given the extra skill points available so, in essence, no nerfing of the skill.
FYI - I'm assuming all consoles stay the same as in Tribble right now. Just putting that out there because if the +80 using 4 consoles changes for R&D consoles, then the equation shifts to 1.2 instead of 1.25.
Holodeck's equation:
ES drain = Base Value + (Base value*0.01*Flow caps)
Just so people don't think I came up with these equations from thin air:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FoOyl56JvhBVpaCDE0vxCsIhQfwyvthZ-B_cu3P-M3Q/edit?usp=sharing
I know it won't happen since it's supposed THE feature of 11.5 , but I hope they scrap it and go back the drawing board with it.