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What skills have you found that aren't worth taking?
genemorph
Member Posts: 404 Arc User
I've been testing some of the new and old skills trying to determine those that are worth taking especially if the new "one chance" respec system goes live. I know this will be dependent on the build you run, but I thought I would post some of the skills I've found to be lacking in some respect, and ask questions about skills I'm vague about. BTW this is from a science character.
Feel free to post your own observations of other skills, or thoughts on the below.
(1) Control Amplification (Sci): I found this to be a bit of a junk skill. First is acts as a single target even on powers that that have an AoE effect, and second 5secs just seems too short a window to do much. To get the most out of it you have to load up on control powers which in my opinion means you have to sacrifice your overall dps to do so. Just not worth it.
(2) Drain infection (Sci): Seems to have some potential, but the damage is quite low even if you can keep up a constant application. More for drain focused builds than anything else, but still lacklustre. I'll definitely be saving a skill point here.
(3) Shield Mastery (Sci): Negating all damage of one 1 crit every 20secs. The first point isn't really worth it, but the second point into the 20% Shield Absorption heal is according to my parse results, even at approx every 20secs sometimes you can get lucky and get a fairly big life-saving heal. In fact it healed much better than a science team (I) in elite patrols. However the other point for Shield Reflection is absolute junk, and does very little damage and came out to about 70dps probably because it isn't affected by modifiers.
So two skill points into this for the Shield Absorption is worth it for the heal depending on your build, but putting 1 or 3 skill points into it just isn't.
Note: It would be nice to get better descriptions for Shield Absorption and Shield Reflection, because I have no idea how they work, do they activate just once when Shield Mastery is triggered or are they activate for a short duration afterwards?
(4) Damage Control (Eng): After playing around with this with 0-3 skill points in it I just didn't notice any substantial difference in hull regeneration or survivability. I fly science ships so we have the lowest hull which may be a factor, but honestly it didn't make hardly any difference whether I had points in it or not. The only worth of the skill to me was the increased innate out-of-combat hull heal, i.e. going from one fight to another in an instance you heal faster. But I don't need it when I'm out of combat, so I usually put no points into this at all, and haven't noticed any adverse effects.
(5) Shield Regeneration (Sci): Personally I've always found shield regen a bit of a joke. The amount of regen you get every 6 secs is negligible compared with the amount of shield damage you will get in those 6 secs. Maybe there are shield regen builds out there where this modifier actually makes a big difference, but on normal builds it just sucks. So after confirming this with 0-3 skills points into this, like Damage Control I put no points here at all, because the benefits are minuscule.
(6) Targeting expertise (Tac): As far as PvE goes I'm not sure what benefit this really conveys. For instance in my ship stats I already have 22.4% bonus accuracy, so I presumably I'm already over the 100 threshold and any more points into this may be a waste (my hit chance in an elite patrol is over 99%). Of course bonus accuracy overflow is supposed to convert into increased hit chance and crit severity, but I read somewhere that this isn't working properly, and from my tests 0-3 points into this skill I didn't notice any reproducible increase. I'm really not too sure about this one, if anyone one can shed light on this I would grateful. But going from my own tests I now tend to put no any points into this as well.
(7) Defensive Maneuvering (Tac): Not really tested this one as it depends on the base accuracy of PvE npcs. But it seems straight forward enough, the more points you put here should decrease the number of hits against you. The stipulation though is hit chance cannot drop to below 25%. So if you already have a very high defense bonus that already reduces the hit chances against you to 25% (based on speed as well) then points here would be wasted. I'm not exactly sure how defense bonus works. For instance does 100 % defense bonus scale to 75% miss chance or does 75% defense bonus equal the maximum 75% miss chance? If someone knows this, it would help to determine how many points you need in this skill, or if I've totally misunderstood how this works
Well from the skills I've tested these are the conclusions I've come to. If you have noticed any other like skills like this please post them, or if you think some of the skills mentioned do have more or even less value than I gave credit for. Also if anyone knows answers to point (6) and (7) that would be great.
Feel free to post your own observations of other skills, or thoughts on the below.
(1) Control Amplification (Sci): I found this to be a bit of a junk skill. First is acts as a single target even on powers that that have an AoE effect, and second 5secs just seems too short a window to do much. To get the most out of it you have to load up on control powers which in my opinion means you have to sacrifice your overall dps to do so. Just not worth it.
(2) Drain infection (Sci): Seems to have some potential, but the damage is quite low even if you can keep up a constant application. More for drain focused builds than anything else, but still lacklustre. I'll definitely be saving a skill point here.
(3) Shield Mastery (Sci): Negating all damage of one 1 crit every 20secs. The first point isn't really worth it, but the second point into the 20% Shield Absorption heal is according to my parse results, even at approx every 20secs sometimes you can get lucky and get a fairly big life-saving heal. In fact it healed much better than a science team (I) in elite patrols. However the other point for Shield Reflection is absolute junk, and does very little damage and came out to about 70dps probably because it isn't affected by modifiers.
So two skill points into this for the Shield Absorption is worth it for the heal depending on your build, but putting 1 or 3 skill points into it just isn't.
Note: It would be nice to get better descriptions for Shield Absorption and Shield Reflection, because I have no idea how they work, do they activate just once when Shield Mastery is triggered or are they activate for a short duration afterwards?
(4) Damage Control (Eng): After playing around with this with 0-3 skill points in it I just didn't notice any substantial difference in hull regeneration or survivability. I fly science ships so we have the lowest hull which may be a factor, but honestly it didn't make hardly any difference whether I had points in it or not. The only worth of the skill to me was the increased innate out-of-combat hull heal, i.e. going from one fight to another in an instance you heal faster. But I don't need it when I'm out of combat, so I usually put no points into this at all, and haven't noticed any adverse effects.
(5) Shield Regeneration (Sci): Personally I've always found shield regen a bit of a joke. The amount of regen you get every 6 secs is negligible compared with the amount of shield damage you will get in those 6 secs. Maybe there are shield regen builds out there where this modifier actually makes a big difference, but on normal builds it just sucks. So after confirming this with 0-3 skills points into this, like Damage Control I put no points here at all, because the benefits are minuscule.
(6) Targeting expertise (Tac): As far as PvE goes I'm not sure what benefit this really conveys. For instance in my ship stats I already have 22.4% bonus accuracy, so I presumably I'm already over the 100 threshold and any more points into this may be a waste (my hit chance in an elite patrol is over 99%). Of course bonus accuracy overflow is supposed to convert into increased hit chance and crit severity, but I read somewhere that this isn't working properly, and from my tests 0-3 points into this skill I didn't notice any reproducible increase. I'm really not too sure about this one, if anyone one can shed light on this I would grateful. But going from my own tests I now tend to put no any points into this as well.
(7) Defensive Maneuvering (Tac): Not really tested this one as it depends on the base accuracy of PvE npcs. But it seems straight forward enough, the more points you put here should decrease the number of hits against you. The stipulation though is hit chance cannot drop to below 25%. So if you already have a very high defense bonus that already reduces the hit chances against you to 25% (based on speed as well) then points here would be wasted. I'm not exactly sure how defense bonus works. For instance does 100 % defense bonus scale to 75% miss chance or does 75% defense bonus equal the maximum 75% miss chance? If someone knows this, it would help to determine how many points you need in this skill, or if I've totally misunderstood how this works
Well from the skills I've tested these are the conclusions I've come to. If you have noticed any other like skills like this please post them, or if you think some of the skills mentioned do have more or even less value than I gave credit for. Also if anyone knows answers to point (6) and (7) that would be great.
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Comments
- It should not be affecting only a single target, if you fire an AOE. This sounds like a bug.
- It is about to be increased from -20 to -35 in a future patch.
- Will be receiving a substantial damage increase, as well as improved level/EPG scaling.
- You say it's not worth it, then you say it is! Which is it? How could it be improved?
- Based on the mountains of feedback I'm digging through from other players, I'd say you're in the minority on your opinion of this one.
- Also, it's under review and may not be working correctly. Also might receive a boost, even if it is.
- Well, not every skill is right for everyone. Improving your Shield Regen is a good thing for some people.
- Probably worth noting that Shield Regen is currently in a bugged state on Tribble, and is too high. It will be corrected soon. With that correction, the value of this Skill may increase.
Accuracy that exceeds the 100% hit cap is translated into Critical Hit and Critical Severity. Basing your feedback on the nebulous "I read somewhere" is never a great plan. AccOverflow currently doesn't work correctly in just one place: Fire at Will. If you rely heavily on that ability, then ... yeah, maybe +ACC isn't the best build for you.
(Note: The lack of AccOverflow with FAW is a known bug, and one that we'd definitely like to fix.)
Base accuracy of NPCs is +25%. After level 50, they start to gain more each level. On Advanced and Elite difficulties, they gain even more. If you're participating in Adv/Elite queues, it may be a good idea to increase your Defense.
Also, there are a few abilities/effects that rely upon being Missed by incoming fire, such as Reciprocity. Higher Defense values directly improve the performance of such abilities.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
So is shield regen going to be fixed back to the same values as Holodeck, or is it getting lowered too? Are we going to be required to put a point in hardness and regen each just to keep our shield performance from dropping?
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" - Agatha Heterodyne
To get back to approximately what you have on Holodeck, it will take one point in Shield Regen. The 2nd and 3rd points will take you beyond your old values by a decent margin.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
As for HOW it could be improved... That really isn't my area. maybe also give it a VERY slight increase to shield hardness/healing/capacity (delete as appropriate) as well? Might be nice to have a small constant bonus to incentivize the, otherwise kinda situational, nature of it? After all, most of the new ship consoles have passive bonuses as well as their situational usefulness...
Ignores all critical hits for 1-3 seconds every 20 seconds. And the healing and reflecting could scale based on the number of crits in that time-frame. This should fix most of the issues he outlined above.
The rest look pretty good my concern on control amplification and drain infection is that anomalies like Grav well and Tykens rift don't reapply them. Adding that would make them immensely more useful even without huge boosts to their base effectiveness. Barring that they need a longer application timer like 10 seconds.
Targeting and Maneuvering expertise add a relatively small bonus compared to other places you can get it. Skill points are a more precious resource of course. So my idea is (and I may be misunderstanding how they currently work) to make them a flat % increase that is calculated after all other bonuses. So if they add a 15% bonus then my accuracy of 100% becomes 115% and it could affect Accuracy mods as well. Also 15% is a relatively paltry bonus for the investment required... exactly what is the math on accuracy overflow? You may want to increase that to make it seem more useful because currently [Crth] and [Acc] are extremely useless and have almost no use at all, especially [Crth].
(1) Control Amplification:
If the non-AoE effect is a bug then that is half the problem to me with this skill. I did check this and it didn't seem to be affecting other npcs. Pushing up the -dam resist is a good also, but if I had to choose I would prefer a longer duration over increase -dam resist to have enough time to take advantage of it.
(2) Drain infection:
Well the damage is the main concern here. So if that going to be improved as you mentioned that would be the main issue addressed.
(3)a Shield Mastery:
I didn't say this skill is both good and bad at the same time, what I said was putting 2 points into it (the second point being into Shield Absorption) is definitely worthwhile, but I found just putting 1 point into Shield Mastery (1 crit negation per 20 secs) alone, or 2 points (i.e. plus Shield Reflection) just doesn't seem to perform well empirically. I did say better description of SA and SR would help.
- 1 crit negation per 20 secs is poor. In it's current form I would only take Shield Mastery, because you have to to get Shield Absorption (which is pretty good).
I think the first point in Shield mastery would be far more valuable if had a duration attached to it. Suggestions: Activation of Shield Mastery negates 1 crit, but also give 10secs of immunity from incoming hits from critting, or the make it so it negates more than 1 crit. However if I understand the skill correctly this would impact the way the two daughter skills work as they depend on crit hits. If this is so just remove the crit requirement for them and give them a flat duration when they are activated by SM.
(3)b Shield Absorption:
As mentioned above I like this skill. Over the course of an elite patrol I got a good amount of healing, but didn't feel it was too much.
(3)c Shield Reflection:
I was surprised at how little damage this does compared with how much heal I got from Shield Reflection. The only thing I could think of was that Shield Absorption takes into account heal modifiers, but Shield Reflection does not use any of the damage modifiers. Either way I wouldn't slot it as it is now.
I'll hold off a suggestion for this one as it may not be working as intended.
(4) Damage Control:
I'm not sure what is going on with this skill. I was expecting with crew changes that this would have been a must have skill. But empirically I'm just not personally seeing its benefits. Maybe out of combat but that's no good to me. I'll hold off a suggestion for this one too, because if people are having different experiences for it then something else maybe happening here.
(5) Shield Regeneration:
For me this has always sucked, and after putting 3 points into it I get just over only 800/6 secs. That doesn't even replace 1 hit's worth of damage from an npc in an advanced stf. So whether I get 280 or 800/6secs is still negligible. My suggestion is just rework shield regen. I might look at it if it were 800/sec, but I still wouldn't take it, because even that is poor in a fire fight.
(6) Targeting expertise:
As I said I just wasn't sure about this one, so thanks for the information. Yes I use FAW so maybe that is why I'm not see the practical benefit of this skill. So a good place to save skill points for me. What is the overflow for Crit chance an Crit severity suppose to be again?
(7) Defensive Maneuvering:
Thanks for answering this. I currently put 2 points in as I do notice I take more more damage without it.
You say we won't lose anything, and then you cut our base shield regen ... yes it's still available as a skill, but that's not my point. My point is we need to sacrifice other choices just to get what we already have, because our base abilities are getting nerfed.
I get that there are balance reasons for all of this, but please just redact all statements that we won't lose anything because that's false, and will lead to an uproar that Cryptic is dishonest when this goes live, whether that statement is justified or not.
[modded]
Your saying that shield regen, in addition to shield hardness, is going to have its base value reduced from where it is on Holodeck.
So unless I want my shield performance compromised, I have no choice but to put 1 point each into these 2 skills I didn't have before.
In order to "not lose anything", 2 points are basically not optional.
Yes, I'm planning to put points into those skills, but I'm trying to look at it from the perspective of someone who may not want to put points into something they didn't have before. Not putting points into these skills is going to cost them.
Shields are kind of important in this game and I'm sure for many people it's going to come across as having 43 points and 2 points pre-spent.
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" - Agatha Heterodyne
What you say about weapon mods in the last paragraph changes heavily based on the build in use. If you push your crit chance high, yeah, [CrtH] becomes the worst mod. On characters without a lot of crit chance, [CrtD] is the worst. The one consistent thing is that [Dmg] is always a good choice now. I don't want to steer this thread too off-topic, but the issue is mostly with sources of chance and severity not being normalized--if they were, D and H would be equally valued on high end builds.
Also, @borticuscryptic, I've read that accuracy overflow only works with the primary target of Scatter Volley, not the other two. I believe Torpedo Spread has a similar issue, but I'm having a hard time digging up any info for you.
---
To get things back on topic, even post-buff, I don't really see myself taking the Eng/Sci/Tac Readiness skills. Maybe I'm just missing the potential here, but nothing I've tried seems worth the cost when you consider we have plenty of doffs that can drop the cooldown on abilities to (near) minimum. I realize these need to be weaker since they apply across the board and someone could potentially max all 3 skills, and run up to 6 CDR doffs (and traits, and gear) with them which makes giving a suggestion for improvement here hard.
-edit-
Added a quote, since I took entirely too long typing this.
The direct quote included the phrase "as much as possible" as a key part of the statement. We knew from the outset that we weren't going to achieve 100% accuracy with this particular design goal, and we said as much in the original Dev Blog that's being quoted out of context:
The context of the original statement was directly in regards to Skills and equipment benefits. All of the other mechanics and abilities you have been bringing this up in regard to are outside of that context. We set out with the goal of allowing you to build the same Skill bonuses in this system as you had in the old, and to ensure as much as possible that the benefit gained from your equipment/traits/set bonuses/etc is comparable.
In this particular instance, you can still lose nothing, so long as you to spend a few Skill Points in things you couldn't previously invest in. Shield Hardness and Shield Regen never existed before. But so did a great number of other Skills that are being introduced, while others are no longer available. In every build translation I have attempted, I have had Space Points left over. In the range of 3-9, from my testing. No harm in spending some of those extra "freed up" points in Shield Hardness and Shield Regen in order to match your previous performance. OR, you can make the decision to accept a lower performance in those areas, in favor of buying other new Skills such as Hull Penetration, Long-Range Targeting, etc.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
People tend to be good at comparing the number between holodeck and tribble and see if it's higher or lower. But how good are they at actually evaluating how much the number means?
Currently, on Holodeck, my total hull on one character is 80,000 (it happens to be the one I am just logged in while I write this, a Klingon Tactical Officer in a Command Cruiser with Starship Hull Repair +54 and 93 Aux
).
Apparently I can heal about 90 % of this per minute out of combat. That means 1.5 % per second or 1,200 per second. The same character's Hazard Emitters II heals about 1,000 hit points per second for its duration.
That means out of combat, the innate hull regeneration is worth about one use of hazard emitters II. Not bad.. If that was also the in-combat number. But it's not, is it?
Out of combat, the innate hull repair rate on that character sinks to ~15 % per minute or 200 hit points per second. That's a lot less impressive. Of course, HE has a cooldown, so it's total average healing rate is lower than the 1,000 per second (about 375 if we consider not the time it heals, but the time it requires to recharge it). Every little bit helps, of course.
But in this particular case at least, we can see that just slotting one hull heal enabled that heal power to exceed regeneration, and every additional heal power I could take would go beyond that.
So I guess you have an idea where the benchmark for an improvement of the skill will have to be - spending a point on hull restoration vs damage control should be a competitive choice. That will not be easy, since there is really a lot of hull healing available via bridge officers, console abilities, set abilities and traits, that would potentially all be boosted by picking Hull Restoration, but not by Damage Control. (Or boosted by neither).
Maybe Damage Control needs to affect more abilities than just innate regeneration...
Can this skill be change to where it does not do damge.
I would think a Drain Infection would cause an overload is "A" subsystem to cause it to go offline for Xsecs. Mainly have it act like a Phaser proc
I apologize, I could have made my point without bringing that into it.
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" - Agatha Heterodyne
You completely missed my point.
I was not complaining, though if you skim my post without actually reading it it might seem that way. I was stating that when this goes live, people who have not kept up on these things will blow up the forums saying cryptic lied. No matter what anyone says, this WILL happen if the language is left as is.
Uhh, people were gonna say that no matter what, because the mob mentality of this forum ovverules almost everything.
You could give EVERY fed player a free Plasmonic leech, and then they'd all complain about being 'forced' to invest in Flow Caps...
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" - Agatha Heterodyne
Emphasis on the part of the point you've missed. You are only losing something if you refuse to re-invest. and even then, you are just replacing that with other, new, bonuses elsewhere.
Then we took them all back. (OMG JERK!) Hang on....
Then, we gave you 8 things, and it cost you $8.
Then we gave you $2 and more things you could buy, some of which included those other 2 things we didn't give to you.
If you spend your $10 in the same 10 places, nothing is lost. But that choice is yours now.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
I had a whole argument as to why that doesn't add up for me, but I'm afraid it would be a derail of this thread and we ultimately would just be arguing in circles, accomplishing nothing. So I'm just going to drop it.
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" - Agatha Heterodyne
I never said it was useless. But personally I have never had a useful shield regen so this skill doesn't really add anything to it. My generally impression is that most people don't have very high regen, and 5K/6sec is definitely not the norm. Out of interest what is giving you such high values?
Shield Regen is effectively additional lifespan, just as much as Shield Capacity, Shield Hardness, Damage Resistance, Hull Regen, or a bunch of other things are. They aren't intended to completely offset incoming damage, only mitigate it.
Take Damage Resistance, for example. It will *never* be capable of completely offsetting incoming damage, due to its diminishing values. Yet, it's still a useful Skill/Stat because the more you have, the more punishment you can take before needing to heal (or exploding).
Shield Regen doesn't need to be powerful enough to negate/offset the incoming damage being poured over your hull in buckets. It just has to mitigate enough so that you can react before it's too late.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Does the Shield Regan and Hardness get boosted by Shield power?
Frankly, when I read the bonus without the description the first time, I thought we were getting something like when viral matrix jumps from one target to another using the systems engineer doff.
Wow, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.
To the OP, thanks for posting that stuff, and Borticus, thanks for clarifying. Now I have a good idea where to and not to spend points.
By the way, shield reflection is usually better in troll PvP build when players stack every available damage reflection bonus on a single ship and wait for a tac to make an unlucky alpha strike.
Shield mastery needs at least the potential of a much shorter internal cooldown. If each of its follow-on nodes also reduced the cooldown by 4 seconds (20s/16s/12s) THEN you'd feel like you weren't just whistling in the dark.
...I'm also surprised it cancels the entirety of the incoming damage and not just the extra damage from the crit. I'm guessing the math must be easier the way it's presented now.
I asked elsewhere before seeing this thread, but how is the Hull Penetration and Shield Penetration computed? Does it get run through Diminishing Returns to produce a percentage subtracted from target's percentage, or is the rating subtracted from target's rating before DR is applied? Because if it's that later, then those nodes are insultingly bad
STO has always suffered from native shield regeneration being insignificant compared to the utility of shield healing across the incredibly short timespans of most encounters. So any skill points spent adding a tiny coefficient to a terrible base are themselves terrible
That one skill has warped the snot out of every serious DPS build calculation in the game. The nerf/complete re-work can't come fast enough. If nothing else, bumping them all up one rank so there's some tension between BFAW III and APOmega III (and no one has multiple copies of BFAW III to rock back and forth) would be a fine place to start.
If that particular bug does not get fixed, I'd be OK with that. Perhaps it is just me, but it seems if you are running multiple beam attacks your accuracy should be dropping off while getting multiple strikes.