Nobody sais any specific ability needs a nerf. The thing we were talking about was that extremely high EPG skill (which was not a result of the skill revamp, but has been around much longer) was equivalent to other forms of stacking. And stacking is generally called the main source of problems with the game's, shall we say, very wide range of build effectiveness.
1- You are calling for the nerf of Gravity Well since that's the single most commonly use power that takes advantage of EPG in terms of damage output.
2- The Skill Revamp boosted the damage capability of these EPG builds. So yes the skill revamp is very much involved here.
3- The development team has been making adjustments for a couple of years now to make Science damage more and more possible, and the route they chose was exotic damage and Auxiliary Power. The reason being that science ships can't compete pound for pound, slot for slot against beam boats. Just by virtue of beam boats having 8 weapons. So the development team chose to make science "wizardry" competitive but in a different channel ... exotic damage.
This is all intended. And you're trying to shoehorn the "stacking" issue onto it to support and crusade for a massive nerf to science viability, science ship damage capability, and the power of gravity well that a lot of non-science users actually use.
There's no way around that. You're trying to advocate for a nerf to science builds. I doubt you'll get any support for that. Science builds require going AGAINST the meta. They require different kinds of flying. They require different kinds of gear. Different kinds of ships.
And semalda's build and parses are excellent. But don't crack the top DPS charts because it's NOT a beam boat.
You're kind of obsessed with nerfing this game. I'm not sure why. But nerfing science? That's insane. All the work and all the effort a player puts in to make a great science ship and to defiantly go against the meta. And you want to say nerf that?
Sigh.
(And I don't even fly a ship like that. I fly a tank that runs beams, spamming FAW and going up close and personal just so I can get DPS and Proximity Aggro). So this ain't me being invested in the powers, gear or skill loadout at all. I'm too busy taking advantage of Feedback Pulse, Threatening Stance, and my absolute favorite power of ALL-time ... scratch the paint (which IMO is both working totally as intended, and is DISGUSTINGLY OVERPOWERED! Thanks Devs! Warp Core Breaches are like dirt on my shoulder and Scratch the Paint can brush it off for me).
I don't think it needs to be limited if you confine yourself to Elite queues with that build or go only into private matches. But do you? Because if you PUG with it, you will break the mission as a combat mission and make it, as warpangel put it so eloquently, "pest control".
But that shouldn't be up to the players either. In addition to actually providing appropriate content for players of different skill levels, the reward structures should be designed to discourage playing far below your own level.
In other words, winning a long, glorious battle against all odds should give you a better reward than repeatedly grinding some piece-of-cake 2 minute pest control mission.
As it is, that isn't the case. All the queues long and short, easy and maybe-not-so-easy have the same standard rewards. The incentive is to just spam whatever you can finish the fastest, so no surprise that's exactly what people do.
All the queues long and short, easy and maybe-not-so-easy have the same standard rewards. The incentive is to just spam whatever you can finish the fastest, so no surprise that's exactly what people do.
Advanced queues give better rewards than Normal queues.
If Elite queues would yield better RPS (Rewards Per Second - see what I did there ) more of the top end guys would run Elite queues. If rewards were balanced out, a good portion of top players would leave the advanced queues, thereby making them more challenging for the mid to lower end dps guys. Problem solved.
In a game where grinding is necessary, most players will take the "path of least resistance". Which in STO terms is, Advanced content.
Oh and I just ran 5 cca's. 2 of my alts died (but they arent very well equipped). 1 toon almost died My 2 mains did very well.
So advanced can still be somewhat challenging for under equipped alts. I don't find it unreasonable that my two mains pretty much facerolled CCA because I've put a lot of effort into those 2. Just as @semalda226 has with her sci/exo build. Lots of time and resources had to be sunk to accomplish such feats.
Lots of time and resources had to be sunk to accomplish such feats.
Just to underscore this ... time and resources are needed to get that type of build and perform at that level. Which Cryptic wants out of its players. They want people spending time playing the game. And spending resources.
So from a development standpoint, there's a very big deterrent to "nerf" the gameplay the way Soph suggests since that curbs the behavior Cryptic wants its players engaging in.
Yes I agree snoggy, and thats the reason I believe pvp is doomed. The Cryptic mandate since DR is to peddle power. Which I guess is okay if it keeps the lights on.
But with EPG beyond 350 or so, it does raise the question if there is a balance issue with the game. And that's the point.
On the topic of sci builds... Actually the damage gain of stacking EPG at those levels is minimal at best. I'd actually think you're losing overall damage past 350 (based on my own experience). Individual exotic damage abilities may be gaining slight damage increases but you are sacrificing damage elsewhere (like weapons) resulting in a net DPS loss. So no, I do not think stacking EPG beyond 350 creates a balance issue, because you end up with a sub-optimal build (if DPS is your goal).
In my case it is optimal for the build style I'm going for which is science damage as my primary and my torps as secondary. As I like to say: my ship doesn't pew! And oddly enough by not focusing on weapons (weapon power is always at 25 or lower) my ship does monstrous DPS and has unbelievable Survivability (125 shield power with shields that restore 4,687.63 every 6 second with a capacity of 13712) and a hull that heals 4% every 3 seconds makes it 1 tough SoB.
In my case it is optimal for the build style I'm going for which is science damage as my primary and my torps as secondary. As I like to say: my ship doesn't pew! And oddly enough by not focusing on weapons (weapon power is always at 25 or lower) my ship does monstrous DPS and has unbelievable Survivability (125 shield power with shields that restore 4,687.63 every 6 second with a capacity of 13712) and a hull that heals 4% every 3 seconds makes it 1 tough SoB.
Yeah like I said, it depends on your overall goal. I tend to try to split my damage 50:50 between my torps and exotic damage and 350-360 seems to be the sweet spot for me. Any higher, I lose torp damage and overall DPS and any lower and I lose exotic damage and overall DPS because of how my ship(s) is/are built.
I also tend to build my ships for spike rather than sustained DPS. My Eng's cruisers for example will do better in longer fights than my Sci's exotic damage builds. Because of how I built those ships, my Sci will vape targets faster than my Eng can with her FAW ships so I get higher ISA DPS on short runs, but on longer runs (5 mins+) my Eng will start edging out in DPS.
There's a new Foundry map being used by the DPS-Numbers league for parsing solo and my sci ships do worse there than my Eng FAW ships despite my Sci ships having higher ISA (or even HSE) DPS than my Eng boats. And that's all due to how my ships were built to apply damage.
See that's another factor in determining damage balance. There are builds (like mine) that are expressly built for high-damage spike (alpha) strikes and there are builds that are made for sustained high damage. Some builds are suited to certain maps better (see CCA on a torp/sci ship vs CCA on a beam ship) so DPS as measured in ISA, DPS Mark, CCA or HSE doesn't really translate 1:1 in all STFs.
Either way, the developer team has to do something.
They don't HAVE to do anything.
You would like them too, but it's only required if they decide they wish to try and appeal to you and the extremely vocal minority who are more concerned with tailoring the game to your own personal preferences.
Comments
1- You are calling for the nerf of Gravity Well since that's the single most commonly use power that takes advantage of EPG in terms of damage output.
2- The Skill Revamp boosted the damage capability of these EPG builds. So yes the skill revamp is very much involved here.
3- The development team has been making adjustments for a couple of years now to make Science damage more and more possible, and the route they chose was exotic damage and Auxiliary Power. The reason being that science ships can't compete pound for pound, slot for slot against beam boats. Just by virtue of beam boats having 8 weapons. So the development team chose to make science "wizardry" competitive but in a different channel ... exotic damage.
This is all intended. And you're trying to shoehorn the "stacking" issue onto it to support and crusade for a massive nerf to science viability, science ship damage capability, and the power of gravity well that a lot of non-science users actually use.
There's no way around that. You're trying to advocate for a nerf to science builds. I doubt you'll get any support for that. Science builds require going AGAINST the meta. They require different kinds of flying. They require different kinds of gear. Different kinds of ships.
And semalda's build and parses are excellent. But don't crack the top DPS charts because it's NOT a beam boat.
You're kind of obsessed with nerfing this game. I'm not sure why. But nerfing science? That's insane. All the work and all the effort a player puts in to make a great science ship and to defiantly go against the meta. And you want to say nerf that?
Sigh.
(And I don't even fly a ship like that. I fly a tank that runs beams, spamming FAW and going up close and personal just so I can get DPS and Proximity Aggro). So this ain't me being invested in the powers, gear or skill loadout at all. I'm too busy taking advantage of Feedback Pulse, Threatening Stance, and my absolute favorite power of ALL-time ... scratch the paint (which IMO is both working totally as intended, and is DISGUSTINGLY OVERPOWERED! Thanks Devs! Warp Core Breaches are like dirt on my shoulder and Scratch the Paint can brush it off for me).
In other words, winning a long, glorious battle against all odds should give you a better reward than repeatedly grinding some piece-of-cake 2 minute pest control mission.
As it is, that isn't the case. All the queues long and short, easy and maybe-not-so-easy have the same standard rewards. The incentive is to just spam whatever you can finish the fastest, so no surprise that's exactly what people do.
Advanced queues give better rewards than Normal queues.
If Elite queues would yield better RPS (Rewards Per Second - see what I did there
If rewards were balanced out, a good portion of top players would leave the advanced queues, thereby making them more challenging for the mid to lower end dps guys.
Problem solved.
In a game where grinding is necessary, most players will take the "path of least resistance".
Which in STO terms is, Advanced content.
Oh and I just ran 5 cca's.
2 of my alts died (but they arent very well equipped).
1 toon almost died
My 2 mains did very well.
So advanced can still be somewhat challenging for under equipped alts. I don't find it unreasonable that my two mains pretty much facerolled CCA because I've put a lot of effort into those 2.
Just as @semalda226 has with her sci/exo build.
Lots of time and resources had to be sunk to accomplish such feats.
Just to underscore this ... time and resources are needed to get that type of build and perform at that level. Which Cryptic wants out of its players. They want people spending time playing the game. And spending resources.
So from a development standpoint, there's a very big deterrent to "nerf" the gameplay the way Soph suggests since that curbs the behavior Cryptic wants its players engaging in.
The Cryptic mandate since DR is to peddle power.
Which I guess is okay if it keeps the lights on.
On the topic of sci builds... Actually the damage gain of stacking EPG at those levels is minimal at best. I'd actually think you're losing overall damage past 350 (based on my own experience). Individual exotic damage abilities may be gaining slight damage increases but you are sacrificing damage elsewhere (like weapons) resulting in a net DPS loss. So no, I do not think stacking EPG beyond 350 creates a balance issue, because you end up with a sub-optimal build (if DPS is your goal).
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Yeah like I said, it depends on your overall goal. I tend to try to split my damage 50:50 between my torps and exotic damage and 350-360 seems to be the sweet spot for me. Any higher, I lose torp damage and overall DPS and any lower and I lose exotic damage and overall DPS because of how my ship(s) is/are built.
I also tend to build my ships for spike rather than sustained DPS. My Eng's cruisers for example will do better in longer fights than my Sci's exotic damage builds. Because of how I built those ships, my Sci will vape targets faster than my Eng can with her FAW ships so I get higher ISA DPS on short runs, but on longer runs (5 mins+) my Eng will start edging out in DPS.
There's a new Foundry map being used by the DPS-Numbers league for parsing solo and my sci ships do worse there than my Eng FAW ships despite my Sci ships having higher ISA (or even HSE) DPS than my Eng boats. And that's all due to how my ships were built to apply damage.
See that's another factor in determining damage balance. There are builds (like mine) that are expressly built for high-damage spike (alpha) strikes and there are builds that are made for sustained high damage. Some builds are suited to certain maps better (see CCA on a torp/sci ship vs CCA on a beam ship) so DPS as measured in ISA, DPS Mark, CCA or HSE doesn't really translate 1:1 in all STFs.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
They don't HAVE to do anything.
You would like them too, but it's only required if they decide they wish to try and appeal to you and the extremely vocal minority who are more concerned with tailoring the game to your own personal preferences.