I was messing around with my science build and realised how pointless hull and shield regeneration skills are. Even maxed out they are tiny compared to the amount of damage you can take in 6secs. So if you are struggling for points these are the best places not to put them imo. Running both with no skill points is barely noticeable.
Yeah, I started skipping those in subsequent tests. They don't seem to make any difference at all, points or no points. My shields are gone in next to no time unless I spam the Distribute Power key which is notorious for interfering with every other power on your tray and even your weapons fire.
I have also learned that more than 1 point General "Readiness" columns is a waste because of global cooldowns. With 1 point in Engineering Readiness and (depending on the rarity) Maintenance Engineers, you can run with a single Engineering Team. The same applies to Science Team and its corresponding DOff. You will be at or a second or two from global cooldown. (Aux to Bat people probably wouldn't need any DOffs but their technicians.)
Science skills have long globals on many skills - enough that running a second copy is a waste of a BOff seat. If you fly a science boat, you have a good chance to hit your globals with just one point and no changes to your DOff set.
Hear is the thing about normalizing the effectiveness of science builds. You cant really normalize them to the average without nerfing them. Please let me explain.
When a captain uses cannon rapid fire on its global cool down, he gets the benefit of that ability for 2 seconds out of every three. He can pop three or four enemy ships and keep benefiting from that ability the whole time.
When a captain uses tractor beam on its global cool down, he gets the benefit of the ability for only so long as his first target stays alive, then for the next two or three kills he would have been better off with rapid fire.
Now when the game was released, the long reuse time on abilities wasn't so bad, because even the tactical captains might use the full duration of their ability to pop a single target, but we don't live in that STO any more. We have optional timers to beat and STFs with huge numbers of enemies.
To keep up, us science captains have written off a lot of science abilities, normalizing to an average that includes these under performers can only be a nerf because it means bringing the abilities we do use down to meet them.
So what do we use and how do we use it to keep up with the tacticals? Two things, G. Generators and P. Generators. The Key component in a science captians damage arsenal is the gravity well. Not for its damage, that honestly isn't so important. We need the gravity well to overcome the 'Kill one ship, wait for our cool downs' problem.
See those abilities that continue to do damage once the first target is dead are the AoE hazard abilities. As we cant go from target to target individually we instead adopt a 'Hit all of the things with all of the things at once' Strategy. We put the enemies in the same place, hit them with the same things, at the same time, and hope its enough to start a warp core breach chain reaction. Then it doesn't matter that everything is on cooldown and its going to be 40 seconds until we are useful again, because our spike damage was multiplied by the number of things we were able to suck into the well, and hopefully that five to ten seconds of usefulness makes up for the 30 seconds of not so much.
While this strategy is super fun, it is not cheep to implement, and its usefulness is situational. Using the 'hit all of the things with all of the things' strategy dose not work when 'the things' are two spread out, or not present in large enough numbers to get a good multiplication going.
Now, drain builds. I have a question. What would be so bad about normalizing the effectiveness of drain builds to the high end rather then the low end? A high end drain build utilized against a boss should be effective, because the rest of the time in that PVE match I guarantee you it is not pulling its weight. Drain builds require a 'use all of the things on just one of the things' strategy. This strategy dose nothing to compensate for the long cool down waiting game. Its not at all like the previous strategy. If a team carries a drainer to the boss in an STF why shouldn't he get his moment to shine?
Drain builds in PvP. Ok in PvP a drain build can be devilishly difficult to fight, in a one v one. But the increased flow capacitors that are now available to drainers are balanced by the increased power insulators now available to defenders, and in multi participant engagements the drain boat is week and squishy. If you do away with drainers because they are good at one v one engagements and difficult to counter then the vapors have to be next, or your simply picking on science.
What of subspace decompiler? This is meant to buy you a moment of opportunity, but said moment is only valuable if you have the capability to exploit it. Dedicating points and equipment to this stat buys you only fractions of a second more disable time, which can easily be eaten up by interface lag or a bad ping. The best use of decompiler is typically not on a science ship at all but on a bird of prey set up to perform high spike damage during the opportunity created. That's why science ships are typically built to achieve disable through drain rather then photonic shockwave or viral matrix, they simply can not work within the windows of opportunity that said abilities provide.
What of countermeasures? Counter measures don't buy you an opportunity to exploit, they buy you a moment to exploit the enemy's capability's before they stop firing. The control is therefor still in the hands of the enemy. When using a control ability the point is to be the one in control so countermeasures aren't that useful
So Bort. If you want to revamp the skills to make them easier to understand and calculate I think that's really grate. But please preserve the science we have now. It is fun to play, and STO will easily survive a little lite science buffing. There realy isn't any danger that science builds are going to take over from beam fire at will any time soon, and what would be so bad about it if they did?
Excellent post of how normalizing science abilities pretty much has no effect on PvE gameplay and nerfs already useful skills in PvP gameplay. @borticuscryptic could improve science abiltity usage by:
1) Removing any left over science shared cooldowns.
2) Adjusting science ability cooldowns for the ones that have ridiculously long cooldowns.
3) Adjusting the base drain of energy siphon up under the new system. The normalization went too far reducing the ability's usefullness and it ends up nerfing the Breen set's bonus since it's the same ability (ES2 on 3 piece).
I was messing around with my science build and realised how pointless hull and shield regeneration skills are. Even maxed out they are tiny compared to the amount of damage you can take in 6secs. So if you are struggling for points these are the best places not to put them imo. Running both with no skill points is barely noticeable.
Thanks for the heads up with those two. Saves me 6 points I could use on the tac tree. By the way, that feedback on those 2 skills would probably be more useful on the official skill revamp feedback thread.
Spent an hour on tribble tonight since we can finally copy our captains.
My Flow Cap builds no longer suck (This is not a good thing).
My Part Gen builds no longer rip things apart.
My Grav Gen builds no longer create new stars from the fleets of my enemies.
My Countermeasure and Subspace decompiler builds, have been dead for most of STOs life time now, didn't bother to test them.
Please tell me your just playing it cautious and planning to slowly tweek the science back up Bort.
BFaW is nice and all but I don't think I can stomach doing it every day. I need my science Bort. Give me back my science Bort. Waaaagh.
Ok I think I need some time to myself now. If any one wants me I will be in my room...
All of this!
Destabilizing Resonance Beam was taken out back and beat with a hunk of rebar. He is now in the hospital, missing teeth with a broken orbital bone and fractured skull. ATM Doctors don't think he will make it. Particle Emissions Torpedo plasma clouds were filled with argon gas as filler, the manufacturer is blaming some ferengi trader.
I would keep going, but nah.
Science is always getting the snot knocked out of it. It already takes a lot of work to get science to do good, but I guess they have always just want the entire game to be tactical escorts with beams, or (now) cannons.
I think the only Science captains complaining about the changes are the PVP science captains. More specifically, the gimmick drain builds of science. Shield and Hull regen not powerful enough? Who cares. In PVE, more specifically, STF's you going to lose those shields anyways. Focus on DPS. You have the ability to restore partial shields and heal the hull if you need it. Drains? Well those have no useful place in a PVE, that's PVP's thing. And PVP is the minority here in STO.
Honestly, it is about time that people stop stacking PartG and flow caps to the sky. Game was not meant for it to get out of control as it was. I run science in a paradox, and coupled with FAW III, vortex, gw and destabilizing beam, I will continue to rip stuff apart, change to science stuff and all. Of course, I do not stack these things to the point I have gimped every other system to uselessness. Have had 0 issues with that same build on tribble now.
Honestly, it is about time that people stop stacking PartG and flow caps to the sky. Game was not meant for it to get out of control as it was. I run science in a paradox, and coupled with FAW III, vortex, gw and destabilizing beam, I will continue to rip stuff apart, change to science stuff and all. Of course, I do not stack these things to the point I have gimped every other system to uselessness. Have had 0 issues with that same build on tribble now.
Just because we don't want to play within your meta it doesn't mean our builds aren't any less viable than yours. Besides, what you are proposing only serves to lessen build variety, which is bad any way you put it.
I do not PVP but some of my builds focus on PrtGs and Crowd-Control. There are some things not working correctly right now and we want those fixed. There are some abilities in the exotic damage group (like DRB) which seems to be underperforming right now in Tribble. I'm hoping that was a mistake and that it would be fixed.
Comprehensive Holodeck vs Tribble spreadsheet of the same character copied into Tribble using approximately the same multi-purpose ship build spec tree, slanted into Tac & Sci. The ship setup is a mix of Tac offensive, Partigen, and flowcaps, with 1 fleet EPS neutronium mk14 epic, and a plasmonic leech, flown by my main Fed Science character, with 3 part temporal ship consoles set. Stats from Ds9 system space.
Spoils of War Elite, Cardassian Arc, 1st Space Sequence until Beam down prompt. Flown in the same way, without use of rTBR3. Swapped a phaser turret for AP turret is the only gear difference but insignificant. Subsystem power levels left as reported on spreadsheet except for occasional shield tanking purposes.
The parse numbers may not show much, but qualitatively it does feel like a reduction in drain abilities for a ship that's really only 1/4 set up for drain. The tribble content feels more challenging, my science abilities (Tykens1, ES2, sensor scan 3, sensor analysis, subsystem targeting shields, endothermic beam 1) when focused at the same time on single targets make a noticeable difference in holodeck, unlike tribble. A single enemy NPC escort could tear through a shield facing and then erode my hull in no time. Aux2SIF2 with full overcapped Aux (~127 when OSS not in use) seems vastly inferior and outright ineffective in combat.
The Terran frigates at the end of the mission each had over 2 Million hull HP, nearly twice as much as the Terran Cruisers in the same mission. Same holodeck frigates are at ~700K.
Devs: Provide the option to Turn OFF full screen flashes from enemy ship explosions
· ♥ · ◦.¸¸. ◦'¯`·. (Ɏ) V A N U _ S O V E R E I G N T Y (Ɏ) .·´¯'◦.¸¸. ◦ · ♡ ·
«» \▼/ T E R R A N ¦ R E P U B L I C \▼/ «»
﴾﴿ ₪ṩ ||| N A N I T E S Y S T E M S : B L A C K | O P S ||| ₪ṩ ﴾﴿
I run science in a paradox, and coupled with FAW III, vortex, gw and destabilizing beam, I will continue to rip stuff apart, change to science stuff and all. Of course, I do not stack these things to the point I have gimped every other system to uselessness.
By every other system you mean the ones you care about which are the ones tied to your spacebar to spam FAW beam DPS. Frankly, you're missing out on all the fun of running other kinds of science builds.
Oh, by the way to people on this thread. It seems the science cooldown deflector mod got nerfed and its benefit cut in half.
I think the only Science captains complaining about the changes are the PVP science captains. More specifically, the gimmick drain builds of science. Shield and Hull regen not powerful enough? Who cares. In PVE, more specifically, STF's you going to lose those shields anyways. Focus on DPS. You have the ability to restore partial shields and heal the hull if you need it. Drains? Well those have no useful place in a PVE, that's PVP's thing. And PVP is the minority here in STO.
Honestly, it is about time that people stop stacking PartG and flow caps to the sky. Game was not meant for it to get out of control as it was. I run science in a paradox, and coupled with FAW III, vortex, gw and destabilizing beam, I will continue to rip stuff apart, change to science stuff and all. Of course, I do not stack these things to the point I have gimped every other system to uselessness. Have had 0 issues with that same build on tribble now.
They have already capped the CritD from PartGens, effectively ending stacking. I'm not sure what you gimp to stack PartGens and GravGens with. They are on science consoles generally. When you have only 2 or 3 tactical consoles, there's not much there to gimp.
I don't run much drain but it serves its purpose in PvE. AMP. Want 75 in all 4 subs? Thank you, NPCs.
Patiently waiting to see when they release the next Tribble patch this week to see the promised adjustments that will fix most issues we've complained about on the science front. Since Borticus says the patch is big enough that a new feedback thread will be opened since the old one will become obsolete, I'm cautiously hopeful.
I just ran my Fleet Scryer PartGens build with the same stats setup (130 Aux, Max Part Gens), though without being able to see my EPG skill, its difficult to tell whether my consoles have an effect. From what I can see, it looks like the Fleet consoles that boost my PartGens in Holodeck, still have the same tooltip showing an increase in Starship Particle Generators (rather than an increase in Exotic Particle Generators) on Tribble, when that stat doesn't actually exist, which could explain the damage decrease on my exotic damage abilities.
Here the base damage stats are, Tribble first, then holodeck.
Tribble
419?=EPG (Can't see the actual modified stat from the Starship UI Screen. Bort said they would fix that soon)
1197.4=DRB1
1526.7=DRB2
2579.8=GW3
2989.1=SV1
632.5=EIB2 (Endothermic Inhibitor Beam)
1.4=FB1
1102=PEPT Cloud
I've also found that the Probability Manipulator Sci Ultimate Ability plus the Particle Manipulator trait does not give a 100% crit chance for Exotic Damage abilities. Still seems to cap at 50% Crit chance.
Yeah, if so most science builds will find that ultimate ability rather useless. Any chances it could be adjusted some bort? I'm cool with the bonus being lowered as long as it can stack.
If you're going to nerf Sci, just come out and say you're nerfing Sci. This whole dancing around 'oh, but 1 pt is still 1 pt' is misleading and tiresome.
Frankly, so is the insistence that I'm lying.
Stop misleading and being evasive then?
...If so, 'players lose nothing' is clearly incorrect...
Further, since both control and drain expertise both boost their resists by 100% effectiveness while the active skills which apply those effects only gain 50% effectiveness, is it not completely factual to say that science-based abilities are being nerfed by providing a much higher and intrinsic resist pool from the same number of skill points?
Worse is that there's no option to take the resist without the skill or vice versa. Gone now is the option to take your points and only put them in the resists because you weren't going to use heavy GWs or TBRs and just wanted to fly around unhindered, for example.
The point about insinuating evasiveness where there is none still stands...he's not being evasive about what the new skills do, and how they scale, it's simply that the direction in which they change some abilities is a net down and others a net up. [DrainX], per point, provides half the benefit that a point in [Flow] does now on holodeck. This is an average value, since some abilities on holodeck are seeing less than 0.5% benefit from each point and some more. More sources of [DrainX], combined with a working-as-intended aux scaling (when it gets there, that's why we test on Tribble) should then bring most abilities back up on par.
There is a point about the resists, though...how do those scale with invested points, and is the 100 [DrainX] points in the skill tree, for example, enough to nullify the effect of an energy siphon used against you by another person having only those same 100 points?
I was messing around with my science build and realised how pointless hull and shield regeneration skills are. Even maxed out they are tiny compared to the amount of damage you can take in 6secs. So if you are struggling for points these are the best places not to put them imo. Running both with no skill points is barely noticeable.
Yeah, I started skipping those in subsequent tests. They don't seem to make any difference at all, points or no points. My shields are gone in next to no time unless I spam the Distribute Power key which is notorious for interfering with every other power on your tray and even your weapons fire.
I have also learned that more than 1 point General "Readiness" columns is a waste because of global cooldowns. With 1 point in Engineering Readiness and (depending on the rarity) Maintenance Engineers, you can run with a single Engineering Team. The same applies to Science Team and its corresponding DOff. You will be at or a second or two from global cooldown. (Aux to Bat people probably wouldn't need any DOffs but their technicians.)
Science skills have long globals on many skills - enough that running a second copy is a waste of a BOff seat. If you fly a science boat, you have a good chance to hit your globals with just one point and no changes to your DOff set.
Do they stack with kremin boffs ? If so you could use engineering to replace your cooldown reducing doffs.
Lol, I hit globals most of the time with 3 deflector doffs for my drain abilities. You add stuff like epic deflectors, Krenim Boffs, or AHOD and it's overkill.
Remember cooldown math in this game is weird. When it says "10% reduction to cooldowns" it means divide the cooldown by 1.1 so a 10% reduction of a 30 second cooldown is 2.7 seconds NOT 3 seconds.
So in order to hit global you need a cooldown rating of 2.0.
You can usually slot two krenim boffs on any science ship without gimping your build and most reputation deflectors get a 10% (looks to be cut in half now) so that's 30% and AHOD can reliably proc twice every 30 seconds so that is up to 50%. If you throw in the Terran reputation passives with reciprocity you can get 15% every 15 seconds for a total of 85% with basically no effort.
So anything with a cooldown longer than 30 seconds will easily be set to global and anything around 30 seconds will be there or very close depending on your build management skills.
You can usually slot two krenim boffs on any science ship without gimping your build and most reputation deflectors get a 10% (looks to be cut in half now) so that's 30% and AHOD can reliably proc twice every 30 seconds so that is up to 50%. If you throw in the Terran reputation passives with reciprocity you can get 15% every 15 seconds for a total of 85% with basically no effort.
Exactly how would slotting Krenim boffs ever gimp science focused builds, lol? Last I checked, that's pretty much the only boff that benefits science, since the other ones are tactical bonuses (damage or crits) or engineering (efficient or subsystem repair).
Remember cooldown math in this game is weird. When it says "10% reduction to cooldowns" it means divide the cooldown by 1.1 so a 10% reduction of a 30 second cooldown is 2.7 seconds NOT 3 seconds.
So in order to hit global you need a cooldown rating of 2.0.
You can usually slot two krenim boffs on any science ship without gimping your build and most reputation deflectors get a 10% (looks to be cut in half now) so that's 30% and AHOD can reliably proc twice every 30 seconds so that is up to 50%. If you throw in the Terran reputation passives with reciprocity you can get 15% every 15 seconds for a total of 85% with basically no effort.
So anything with a cooldown longer than 30 seconds will easily be set to global and anything around 30 seconds will be there or very close depending on your build management skills.
I'm not as well versed on cooldowns, what does this mean for engineers take emergency power to blank.
[DrainX], per point, provides half the benefit that a point in [Flow] does now on holodeck. This is an average value, since some abilities on holodeck are seeing less than 0.5% benefit from each point and some more.
I actually did another scan yesterday, and found only 43 total Power entries that used the 1% per FlowCap formula, 187 that used 0.5%-per-FCap, and another 62 that used an 0.25%. The "average" is actually below what it currently is on Tribble, just based on how frequently it was used in different ways.
Anyway... wasn't really trying to make a point, just sharing some anecdotal data points I had gathered. Thought others might find it interesting.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
These traits are T4 of a Reputation, and your Rep Trait slots could arguably be better spent slotting something else.
The point is: The Readiness skills aren't meant for everyone. If you've already invested in the above options, or some of the other sources of CDR out there (like Doffs, e.g.) then maybe you don't need to spend 1-3 points in Readiness. But another player might not have those options at their disposal.
(Side-note - they're being increased to 20% max benefit in a future patch.)
Post edited by borticuscryptic on
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
I think the only Science captains complaining about the changes are the PVP science captains. More specifically, the gimmick drain builds of science. Shield and Hull regen not powerful enough? Who cares. In PVE, more specifically, STF's you going to lose those shields anyways. Focus on DPS. You have the ability to restore partial shields and heal the hull if you need it. Drains? Well those have no useful place in a PVE, that's PVP's thing. And PVP is the minority here in STO.
So let me get this straight. Your feedback is "Waaah, stop providing feedback and trying to make sure the transition is smooth because I want bugs to stay in the game!" and- from what I can tell- you're only reading this thread because if you were reading the others you'd know that pretty much everyone who has brought up these issues are also reporting all the other issues like the hull regen dropoff, the weapon damage decrease, mislabeled items, consoles and deflectors that receive the wrong boosts or get random wtf changes, powers that don't work properly anymore- and a whole host of other things.
But no, no, it must be the pvpers whining so we should just ignore all those issues to... what... spite them?
If you aren't here to provide feedback or contribute to the discussion- and are just going to whine about pvpers... dude, you need a new hobby.
@borticuscryptic Would it be possible for you to add an entry to the description text for the readiness skills that makes it clear they don't stack with other cooldown effects? That'd be really help the 'players who don't have access to the other things' make an informed decision about their expenditures.
I actually did another scan yesterday, and found only 43 total Power entries that used the 1% per FlowCap formula, 187 that used 0.5%-per-FCap, and another 62 that used an 0.25%. The "average" is actually below what it currently is on Tribble, just based on how frequently it was used in different ways.
Anyway... wasn't really trying to make a point, just sharing some anecdotal data points I had gathered. Thought others might find it interesting.
Lol, anyone care to name all those powers and classify them?
Here, I'll add some to the list.
Tgt subsystems 1/2/3 Engines/Aux/Weapons/Shields = 12
Energy Siphon 1/2/3 and Breen set siphon = 4
Tyken's Rift 1/2/3 = 3
Tachyon Beam 1/2/3 = 3
Voth Aceton Console = 1
Voth Diplomat Doff = 1
Neutronic torp = 1
Quantum Phase torp = 1 (well Torp Spread 1/2/3 offers variations so it could be 4)
Aceton Assimilator =1
Breen Energy Disipator = 1
Antiproton Sweep = 1
Tetryon Glider = 1
Polarons/Phased Polarons/Dominion Polarons (special case as it's tetryon also)/Polarized Disruptors/Protonic Polaron = ?
Dominion Polarons/Tetryon/Resonating Tetryon/Refracting Tetryon/Piercing Tetryon/Phased Tetryon/Destabilizing Tetryon = ?
Now outside of these, maybe that shield drain that borg spheres use is a special souped up version of Tachyon Beam.
I was messing around with my science build and realised how pointless hull and shield regeneration skills are. Even maxed out they are tiny compared to the amount of damage you can take in 6secs. So if you are struggling for points these are the best places not to put them imo. Running both with no skill points is barely noticeable.
Yeah, I started skipping those in subsequent tests. They don't seem to make any difference at all, points or no points. My shields are gone in next to no time unless I spam the Distribute Power key which is notorious for interfering with every other power on your tray and even your weapons fire.
I have also learned that more than 1 point General "Readiness" columns is a waste because of global cooldowns. With 1 point in Engineering Readiness and (depending on the rarity) Maintenance Engineers, you can run with a single Engineering Team. The same applies to Science Team and its corresponding DOff. You will be at or a second or two from global cooldown. (Aux to Bat people probably wouldn't need any DOffs but their technicians.)
Science skills have long globals on many skills - enough that running a second copy is a waste of a BOff seat. If you fly a science boat, you have a good chance to hit your globals with just one point and no changes to your DOff set.
Do they stack with kremin boffs ? If so you could use engineering to replace your cooldown reducing doffs.
Lol, I hit globals most of the time with 3 deflector doffs for my drain abilities. You add stuff like epic deflectors, Krenim Boffs, or AHOD and it's overkill.
I haven't used Kermin Boffs. I can get them. I might even go look at them now in fact. I had been using the romulan operatives but with the amount of tactical I chose in the new system, I could equalize them out and not lose critX between the two systems.
These traits are T4 of a Reputation, and your Rep Trait slots could arguably be better spent slotting something else.
The point is: The Readiness skills aren't meant for everyone. If you've already invested in the above options, or some of the other sources of CDR out there (like Doffs, e.g.) then maybe you don't need to spend 1-3 points in Readiness. But another player might not have those options at their disposal.
(Side-note - they're being increased to 20% max benefit in a future patch.)
Exactly Bort. I hope what I said about them came off as praise because 1 point in engineering and science readiness capped off my "I don't have these things" timers. I decided, like you just said, that there are traits better spent. Being a science doing science, I have capped Aux power. The Auxiliary Defense and Auxiliary Offense bonuses are very nice. (Not sure which reputation they come from.)
I had a few minutes to look at my romulan sci this evening. This character is not exceptionally well equiped and is currently leveling a Romulan tactical command warbird. The Traelus daily mission was nearby so I decided to use it to see how things worked. The new threat control seems to work well.
The ship was set up with the Romulan Rep space set, Vr Mk Xii plasma, embassy consoles, spire tac consoles, no armor consoles. Skills for the first attempt had science at 26, tac at 12, the balance in eng, mostly in power boosting skills.
On elite difficulty the NPC Jem Hadar and Galor handed me my head 6 quick times before I decided something isnt right. I had every shield hardness, regen, capacity, mastery, etc., and my shields melted away no matter what I tried. Tachyon beam 1 seemed to do nothing and I could barely scratch the targets. It became obvious the points in sci and the ultimate sci ability was not helping. So I left, respecd to a more balanced engineer heavy point distribution and tried again
After 4 deaths I completed the daily. On Holodeck I never have problems with this mission at elite. On tribble at elite settings, it was difficult and I am not sure most of my Boff abilities were doing much for me. aux to SIF provided almost no healing (2kish) and Eng Team 1 in the 5k range at 85ish Aux power. EPtS was weak. My power levels I kept all 4 over 75, 125 in weapons of course.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Comments
Yeah, I started skipping those in subsequent tests. They don't seem to make any difference at all, points or no points. My shields are gone in next to no time unless I spam the Distribute Power key which is notorious for interfering with every other power on your tray and even your weapons fire.
I have also learned that more than 1 point General "Readiness" columns is a waste because of global cooldowns. With 1 point in Engineering Readiness and (depending on the rarity) Maintenance Engineers, you can run with a single Engineering Team. The same applies to Science Team and its corresponding DOff. You will be at or a second or two from global cooldown. (Aux to Bat people probably wouldn't need any DOffs but their technicians.)
Science skills have long globals on many skills - enough that running a second copy is a waste of a BOff seat. If you fly a science boat, you have a good chance to hit your globals with just one point and no changes to your DOff set.
Excellent post of how normalizing science abilities pretty much has no effect on PvE gameplay and nerfs already useful skills in PvP gameplay. @borticuscryptic could improve science abiltity usage by:
1) Removing any left over science shared cooldowns.
2) Adjusting science ability cooldowns for the ones that have ridiculously long cooldowns.
3) Adjusting the base drain of energy siphon up under the new system. The normalization went too far reducing the ability's usefullness and it ends up nerfing the Breen set's bonus since it's the same ability (ES2 on 3 piece).
Thanks for the heads up with those two. Saves me 6 points I could use on the tac tree. By the way, that feedback on those 2 skills would probably be more useful on the official skill revamp feedback thread.
I think the only Science captains complaining about the changes are the PVP science captains. More specifically, the gimmick drain builds of science. Shield and Hull regen not powerful enough? Who cares. In PVE, more specifically, STF's you going to lose those shields anyways. Focus on DPS. You have the ability to restore partial shields and heal the hull if you need it. Drains? Well those have no useful place in a PVE, that's PVP's thing. And PVP is the minority here in STO.
Honestly, it is about time that people stop stacking PartG and flow caps to the sky. Game was not meant for it to get out of control as it was. I run science in a paradox, and coupled with FAW III, vortex, gw and destabilizing beam, I will continue to rip stuff apart, change to science stuff and all. Of course, I do not stack these things to the point I have gimped every other system to uselessness. Have had 0 issues with that same build on tribble now.
Just because we don't want to play within your meta it doesn't mean our builds aren't any less viable than yours. Besides, what you are proposing only serves to lessen build variety, which is bad any way you put it.
I do not PVP but some of my builds focus on PrtGs and Crowd-Control. There are some things not working correctly right now and we want those fixed. There are some abilities in the exotic damage group (like DRB) which seems to be underperforming right now in Tribble. I'm hoping that was a mistake and that it would be fixed.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Spreadsheet.
Spoils of War Elite, Cardassian Arc, 1st Space Sequence until Beam down prompt. Flown in the same way, without use of rTBR3. Swapped a phaser turret for AP turret is the only gear difference but insignificant. Subsystem power levels left as reported on spreadsheet except for occasional shield tanking purposes.
Holodeck Parse 1
Holodeck Parse 2
Tribble Parse 1
Tribble Parse 2
The parse numbers may not show much, but qualitatively it does feel like a reduction in drain abilities for a ship that's really only 1/4 set up for drain. The tribble content feels more challenging, my science abilities (Tykens1, ES2, sensor scan 3, sensor analysis, subsystem targeting shields, endothermic beam 1) when focused at the same time on single targets make a noticeable difference in holodeck, unlike tribble. A single enemy NPC escort could tear through a shield facing and then erode my hull in no time. Aux2SIF2 with full overcapped Aux (~127 when OSS not in use) seems vastly inferior and outright ineffective in combat.
The Terran frigates at the end of the mission each had over 2 Million hull HP, nearly twice as much as the Terran Cruisers in the same mission. Same holodeck frigates are at ~700K.
By every other system you mean the ones you care about which are the ones tied to your spacebar to spam FAW beam DPS. Frankly, you're missing out on all the fun of running other kinds of science builds.
Oh, by the way to people on this thread. It seems the science cooldown deflector mod got nerfed and its benefit cut in half.
They have already capped the CritD from PartGens, effectively ending stacking. I'm not sure what you gimp to stack PartGens and GravGens with. They are on science consoles generally. When you have only 2 or 3 tactical consoles, there's not much there to gimp.
I don't run much drain but it serves its purpose in PvE. AMP. Want 75 in all 4 subs? Thank you, NPCs.
Here the base damage stats are, Tribble first, then holodeck.
Tribble
419?=EPG (Can't see the actual modified stat from the Starship UI Screen. Bort said they would fix that soon)
1197.4=DRB1
1526.7=DRB2
2579.8=GW3
2989.1=SV1
632.5=EIB2 (Endothermic Inhibitor Beam)
1.4=FB1
1102=PEPT Cloud
Holodeck
418=SPG
2003.8=DRB1
2554.8=DRB2
1994.2=GW3
2310.6=SV1
918.8=EIB2
1.2=FB1
1573=PEPT Cloud
I've also found that the Probability Manipulator Sci Ultimate Ability plus the Particle Manipulator trait does not give a 100% crit chance for Exotic Damage abilities. Still seems to cap at 50% Crit chance.
The point about insinuating evasiveness where there is none still stands...he's not being evasive about what the new skills do, and how they scale, it's simply that the direction in which they change some abilities is a net down and others a net up. [DrainX], per point, provides half the benefit that a point in [Flow] does now on holodeck. This is an average value, since some abilities on holodeck are seeing less than 0.5% benefit from each point and some more. More sources of [DrainX], combined with a working-as-intended aux scaling (when it gets there, that's why we test on Tribble) should then bring most abilities back up on par.
There is a point about the resists, though...how do those scale with invested points, and is the 100 [DrainX] points in the skill tree, for example, enough to nullify the effect of an energy siphon used against you by another person having only those same 100 points?
So in order to hit global you need a cooldown rating of 2.0.
You can usually slot two krenim boffs on any science ship without gimping your build and most reputation deflectors get a 10% (looks to be cut in half now) so that's 30% and AHOD can reliably proc twice every 30 seconds so that is up to 50%. If you throw in the Terran reputation passives with reciprocity you can get 15% every 15 seconds for a total of 85% with basically no effort.
So anything with a cooldown longer than 30 seconds will easily be set to global and anything around 30 seconds will be there or very close depending on your build management skills.
Exactly how would slotting Krenim boffs ever gimp science focused builds, lol? Last I checked, that's pretty much the only boff that benefits science, since the other ones are tactical bonuses (damage or crits) or engineering (efficient or subsystem repair).
I'm not as well versed on cooldowns, what does this mean for engineers take emergency power to blank.
I actually did another scan yesterday, and found only 43 total Power entries that used the 1% per FlowCap formula, 187 that used 0.5%-per-FCap, and another 62 that used an 0.25%. The "average" is actually below what it currently is on Tribble, just based on how frequently it was used in different ways.
Anyway... wasn't really trying to make a point, just sharing some anecdotal data points I had gathered. Thought others might find it interesting.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
C-store Purchase
Fleet progression, potentially beyond many players' grasp.
These traits are T4 of a Reputation, and your Rep Trait slots could arguably be better spent slotting something else.
The point is: The Readiness skills aren't meant for everyone. If you've already invested in the above options, or some of the other sources of CDR out there (like Doffs, e.g.) then maybe you don't need to spend 1-3 points in Readiness. But another player might not have those options at their disposal.
(Side-note - they're being increased to 20% max benefit in a future patch.)
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
So let me get this straight. Your feedback is "Waaah, stop providing feedback and trying to make sure the transition is smooth because I want bugs to stay in the game!" and- from what I can tell- you're only reading this thread because if you were reading the others you'd know that pretty much everyone who has brought up these issues are also reporting all the other issues like the hull regen dropoff, the weapon damage decrease, mislabeled items, consoles and deflectors that receive the wrong boosts or get random wtf changes, powers that don't work properly anymore- and a whole host of other things.
But no, no, it must be the pvpers whining so we should just ignore all those issues to... what... spite them?
If you aren't here to provide feedback or contribute to the discussion- and are just going to whine about pvpers... dude, you need a new hobby.
What I meant was trying to slot three or even four krenim science boffs.
@borticuscryptic
Now THAT is a nice bonus thank you! I will most certainly be investing in those now.
@illcadia
What do you mean they don't stack?
@everyone else
Y'all vote today? We got two evil crooks need to be kicked off the top before the general election hits.
@borticuscryptic
Now that's a bonus! How about that drain infection DPS? It's pretty paltry and not worth slotting right now.
I've never really needed to ever slot more than 2 science boff in any ship. Heck, more than 2 of any 1 type usually means sucky boff seating.
Lol, anyone care to name all those powers and classify them?
Here, I'll add some to the list.
Tgt subsystems 1/2/3 Engines/Aux/Weapons/Shields = 12
Energy Siphon 1/2/3 and Breen set siphon = 4
Tyken's Rift 1/2/3 = 3
Tachyon Beam 1/2/3 = 3
Voth Aceton Console = 1
Voth Diplomat Doff = 1
Neutronic torp = 1
Quantum Phase torp = 1 (well Torp Spread 1/2/3 offers variations so it could be 4)
Aceton Assimilator =1
Breen Energy Disipator = 1
Antiproton Sweep = 1
Tetryon Glider = 1
Polarons/Phased Polarons/Dominion Polarons (special case as it's tetryon also)/Polarized Disruptors/Protonic Polaron = ?
Dominion Polarons/Tetryon/Resonating Tetryon/Refracting Tetryon/Piercing Tetryon/Phased Tetryon/Destabilizing Tetryon = ?
Now outside of these, maybe that shield drain that borg spheres use is a special souped up version of Tachyon Beam.
I haven't used Kermin Boffs. I can get them. I might even go look at them now in fact.
Exactly Bort. I hope what I said about them came off as praise because 1 point in engineering and science readiness capped off my "I don't have these things" timers. I decided, like you just said, that there are traits better spent. Being a science doing science, I have capped Aux power. The Auxiliary Defense and Auxiliary Offense bonuses are very nice. (Not sure which reputation they come from.)
The ship was set up with the Romulan Rep space set, Vr Mk Xii plasma, embassy consoles, spire tac consoles, no armor consoles. Skills for the first attempt had science at 26, tac at 12, the balance in eng, mostly in power boosting skills.
On elite difficulty the NPC Jem Hadar and Galor handed me my head 6 quick times before I decided something isnt right. I had every shield hardness, regen, capacity, mastery, etc., and my shields melted away no matter what I tried. Tachyon beam 1 seemed to do nothing and I could barely scratch the targets. It became obvious the points in sci and the ultimate sci ability was not helping. So I left, respecd to a more balanced engineer heavy point distribution and tried again
After 4 deaths I completed the daily. On Holodeck I never have problems with this mission at elite. On tribble at elite settings, it was difficult and I am not sure most of my Boff abilities were doing much for me. aux to SIF provided almost no healing (2kish) and Eng Team 1 in the 5k range at 85ish Aux power. EPtS was weak. My power levels I kept all 4 over 75, 125 in weapons of course.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE