Why do I have the feeling that 'Temporal rebuke' is going to break half the ground missions? Or that it is going to be the new favourite ability for trolls?
We need an option to disable specific spec powers now btw. Things like these may be useful in, for example, a mission like Bug Hunt where enemies don't need to be killed fast, but in a mission like Starbase Incursion it's going to be very detrimental having this active. Transporting a saboteur 30m away (in an unknown direction?) or the other enemies that need be killed quickly will not help you or the team at all here.
And I do hope that it will always be 30m in a straight line, or less if there are no straight lines of 30m of more in a mission. Cause transporting enemies around corners or even in different rooms will be even more disruptive.
Why do I have the feeling that 'Temporal rebuke' is going to break half the ground missions? Or that it is going to be the new favourite ability for trolls?
We need an option to disable specific spec powers now btw. Things like these may be useful in, for example, a mission like Bug Hunt where enemies don't need to be killed fast, but in a mission like Starbase Incursion it's going to be very detrimental having this active. Transporting a saboteur 30m away (in an unknown direction?) or the other enemies that need be killed quickly will not help you or the team at all here.
And I do hope that it will always be 30m in a straight line, or less if there are no straight lines of 30m of more in a mission. Cause transporting enemies around corners or even in different rooms will be even more disruptive.
Unfortunately, devs said that it would be too time consuming (well they didn't say exactly that, but that is effectively the problem) for them to enable players to disable certain parts of the specializations. So you will have to give feedback based on that.
Why do I have the feeling that 'Temporal rebuke' is going to break half the ground missions? Or that it is going to be the new favourite ability for trolls?
We need an option to disable specific spec powers now btw. Things like these may be useful in, for example, a mission like Bug Hunt where enemies don't need to be killed fast, but in a mission like Starbase Incursion it's going to be very detrimental having this active. Transporting a saboteur 30m away (in an unknown direction?) or the other enemies that need be killed quickly will not help you or the team at all here.
And I do hope that it will always be 30m in a straight line, or less if there are no straight lines of 30m of more in a mission. Cause transporting enemies around corners or even in different rooms will be even more disruptive.
I don't see why it's an issue. Captains can choose not to include specific kit modules in their frames. They can swap out BOFF skills before starting a mission and exclude any abilities that they don't want their BOFF's having.
It would have been an issue prior to the BOFF and kit revamps, but not now.
Sorry, a some of the feedback below is negative. I have tried to word it in a not so bad way. But well its kind of not really possible to do that enough. As in: negative feedback is always negative. So brace yourself. Perhaps in the future I can try tricks such as saying exactly the opposite of the truth and expecting readers to negate that (I believe I have reinvented sarcasm, that isn't sarcasm) or something...
[Begin Strategist Spec and related stuff]
A major limitation of the previous specialization for high dps builds is that they use feedback pulse and you could not get the damage bonuses while threatening (and you want to threaten to get max damage from feedback pulse). Of course I am certainly not saying that was a bad thing. Although feedback pulse is a messy thing, both in PvE and PvP. Things like Annorax pets, etc etc reduce its effectiveness in PvE. And well anything that stops or reduces outgoing energy weapon damage has the same effect (e.g. any non subsystem disables, weapon subsystem disables, energy damage reducing abilities, drains (including plasmonic leech)).
Now of course, is this actually an issue? Since well at this point anyone going for high dps probably wants to make a team specifically constructed for the task (that is my opinion at least). I think (as in: in my opinion) that reducing feedback pulses effectiveness outside of these high dps teams is perfectly okay (I mean really good, creating a more balanced environment in the PvE queues).
[Begin PvP Feedback Pulse]
Annorax in PvP with its hangers (with viral matrix 2) and viral matrix 3 in commander sci boff seating, can actually defeat a feedback pulse target. However the order of subsystem disable is random thus there is a less than 50% chance this will work at all. Also eng team can instantly clear viral matrix. Of course most people use energy builds where viral matrix can't even be slotted. If you are in a pilot ship you can use the kinetic immunity. I have a science pilot raptor, but I much prefer other ships. And using drain is not really a solution, if you are doing that you are most likely using kinetic weapons anyway.
Yesterday there was a 3v1 match where the 1 science captain with feedback pulse beat the 3 other energy builds. Of course as soon as one of those energy based builds did a 1v1 without feedback pulse the kinetic build lost (and got the energy player in a cruiser down to 4% hull). The energy player had a slight advantage as they had the 3 coordinations from the spec tree on them from another player. Both players had the fleet combat performance boost. Basically this concludes that a kinetic build doesn't need feedback pulse at all to win against an energy based target. And that a good energy based build (that cannot slot viral matrix or pilot kinetic immunity) has no hope against a good kinetic build with feedback pulse.
Of course the Kar'Fi console can work for a 10 second solution. But well I haven't seen many Kar'Fis in PvP recently (me being the only example). My attempts to build a PvP Drain and Energy based Kar'Fi weren't that successful, you must sacrifice drain or energy. Though there were a few deficiencies in the design/equipment so I will have to revisit that to be sure.
[End PvP Feedback Pulse]
The Offensive Coordination from strategist is insignificant in PvE (parser shows it as something no PvEer would care about), but is a usually impossible to counter death trap in PvP for energy based cannon builds. The description doesn't mention the fact that it reflects all energy damage for 0.4 seconds (or whatever the duration is). Since cannons give a lot of moderate packets of damage in less than this amount of time, all such packets of damage are multiplied and reflected back at the cannon damage dealer resulting in instant death. So yes, this definitely needs to be changed. I completely did not expect such a consequence from a spec ability. So I will be testing specs on the test server/s this time. Since well clearly looking at descriptions only is not a good idea. I am not that surprised that it dosen't deal a lot of damage in PvE, though I think it is (quite a bit?) lower than I expected. Of course the other benefits from strategist for the DPSers evidently make up for it.
[End Strategist Spec and related stuff]
Sorry, in comparing this specialization to strategist I got carried away talking about things that it reminded me of/relevant to strategist.
[Begin Phasic Artillery]
Mines are currently pretty ineffective unfortunately (well I mean the PvP uses of tractor beam mines and tholian web mine are fine, as sources of damage mines in general are practically ineffective). Of course I should probably look into this and make some kind of report somewhere detailing exactly how ineffective.
Of course targetable torps (and stuff) do get shot down by NPCs atm, the fact that this specialization helps is a good thing. Though it would have been much better if this was a game wide change as having to use a spec for this is rather limiting. (are the smiley faces mitigating the effects enough?). I also don't know if this would be enough against NPCs, for that I would need to test. Of course torp spread is the go to thing for everything (PvE and esp. PvP). If you use high yield in PvP you are insane . But of course, assuming high yield and mines will be increased in effectiveness somehow in the future, these changes seem nice.
Though Elite Annorax hangers have near 50k hull, so well mines with a bonus 5k, doesn't seem much, but who knows, maybe it is enough. I have insufficient idea as to what rate mines get destroyed by enemy stuff.
[End Phasic Artillery]
[Begin PvP Mine Stuff]
Though I mean in PvP I can imagine a tractor beam repulsor pushing them (not sure if this occurs though), if it does though, this could quite possibly alone make them even useless against those builds perhaps. Although back in the day I remember being defeated due to the ferengi shield mines from the lobi store in PvP that were super powerful. Back when I was flying in a patrol escort, against a patrol escort.
[Begin Offtopic: About my characters (why I made them and deleted some) (not related to game mechanics)]
Oops no that didn't happen for I am Klingon! Actually the first character I created was as sci Fed, I deleted that because:
a) Had my real name.
b) Was male and I preferred female chars at the time (that has actually kind of reversed a bit). Even now for a fed sci I would prefer a female. Vulcan. But I might make it an Alien for the trait slot, but that would be a shame (to not have it Vulcan). Such a hard decision...
c) Having too many chars with delta rising...
d) It was trill. Bad traits for space. Didn't really like my choice of trill anymore as a species (visually, and for story purposes (this game got me to watch all of Star Trek (except the animated series)...)).
Had some 2nd year anniversary accolade stuff, and Ferengi whip and crossfire tribble and free ody, and no doubt some stuff I forgot about. But well that stuff wasn't all that important.
After making a Fed Sci, I decided to make a Klingon Tac, after liking tac so much I made a tac Fed. I made a second tac Klingon for Alien or something. Though I deleted the first tac Klingon. Much Later I made a KDF sci for PvP.
Basically the reason I don't have an engineer is that I don't like them very much compared to the other two classes. What I am trying to say is: that it isn't because they aren't that effective in space. Though I am planning on making two: TOS and Gorn Eng. I am perfectly aware of engineers capabilities though.
[End Offtopic: About my characters (why I made them and deleted some) (not related to game mechanics)]
[End PvP Mine Stuff]
[Begin Entropic Rider]
Without seeing numbers for the DOT, it is hard to say anything. Also not sure if per shot or per weapon activation (activation I am thinking). I will also need to determine if 2.5% for energy, 10% for kinetic is a fair deal. Keeping in mind things like kinetic (often) takes time to reach target, where beams do not, and cannons have a bit of a delay (often). Torp cooldown reduction completely eludes me at this moment so I have no clue. Of course I am sure the enemies get defeated before DOT takes full effect point is now being considered to a high extent: based on certain forum posts, so I am glad. Of course, high dpsers will see less of a benefit. So basically these things will be skewed for less damaging builds, making them a less desirable option for the playerbase (as in they are viewed inferior, simply because they don't work as well on high end builds (and probably other reasons too)). Not to mention high end players will possibly be giving advice based on what works for them: further complicating matters. So messy...
[End Entropic Rider]
[Begin Inevitability (Space)]
The recharge speed affecting only exotic damaging abilities in space seems possibly in the range of: slightly underpowed to vastly underpowered, though at the moment I don't have access to the strategist spec stats to compare certain things (writing this without an internet connection). And I haven't thought it through well.
[End Inevitability (Space)]
[Begin Uncertainty]
Temporary Hit Points, always useful. These don't even conflict with go down fighting do they (this games mechanics sure would be weird if they did, but I haven't tested this), very nice. 10 TIMES!, oh that is a lot. Why is that so high anyway, its not like we can activate 10 exotic abilities at once. Most of them (all?) have a global cd of at least 30 sec. I mean I understand that its a safeguard. But I have seen other crazy caps like this and thought: well if this cap is reachable than this thing is past the point of being too powerful. So I am kinda confused when these things happen. I mean these safeguards aren't reachable though (or at least lets hope not), so well I guess everything is fine. Is a dev just trying to make people laugh. Or is this a: if I overlook something they won't be able to do 1000000000000dps (oops, in this case hps (heals per second)), but will be able to still tell me something is wrong as they will notice it (hopefully).
[End Uncertainty]
[Begin Anomaly Leash]
Well I am not quite sure how useful this would be. I mean in PvE if an enemy moves a tiny bit away then you can still get max damage from grav well. And it makes escape from drain harder. Though I think the main problem with tykens rift is that the enemies will spread out away from each other (with their "lets just move in a random direction" behaviour) so this won't be as useful as it would first seem to be. People have already talked about the "multitasking grav well, tykens, subspace vortex, and more users". I think I agree with that. It wouldn't affect me personally though, as a grav well user. I hope that stays on the foe if I select an ally though. I was going to suggest adding a pull to all these, but grav well would have two different pulls and that would possibly animate weird. And well you can activate grav well and subspace vortex at the same time already so not really as much a benefit there (relative to what benefit it could bring). You could increase the effectiveness of drain and damage from these though (I think). Though I think you don't want to for some reason that is eluding me.
[Begin Notes about Grav Well and Subspace Vortex in PvP]
The PvPers don't mind an increase in damage of grav well I don't think as it isn't anywhere near as effective there as it is in PvE. I don't think subspace vortex is even viable in PvP, I can't even remember seeing it (I think I have once). But I mean if you do manage to hold someone in place in PvP they would be more effective than tractor beam repulsors at full aux (at least grav well would be). Yes I know about this thing called tractor beam, it dosen't always work/often works poorly. Yes their are a lot of other things that stop players..., lots of things also make you immune to movement debuffs "these days". So well, I don't know. It would be tricky (impossible) to have done in a consistent and certain manner. Depends though, against some builds could be highly effective.
[End Notes about Grav Well and Subspace Vortex in PvP]
Some of the high dps scimitars use gravity well now (it is the go to alternative for feedback pulse in PvE, that, or subspace vortex). Not many people would slot tractor beam repulsors before gravity well in PvE (opposite to PvP).
[End Anomaly Leash]
Continuity: Everything about that has been said I think
:O how many words is this! 2507! I need to be "reduced in effectiveness". I guess I will have to do the feedback about the temporal boffs tommorow. And I didn't even touch on ground. But I mean I don't know much about ground (well at least not compared to space), so...
Offtopic note: Viral Impulse Burst is soooo fun!!! Of course practical application in PvE is slim. So well most of them don't know how fun it can be. Esp. since well it works best (oops meant funniest) against fast enemies (so borg is one of the less enjoyable species to use it against, still it is ... interesting to see it used against them). Okay I must admit, for a while I didn't read the description properly and thought it was a boff power that buffed instead of debuffed, like a horrible ramming speed.
Why do I have the feeling that 'Temporal rebuke' is going to break half the ground missions? Or that it is going to be the new favourite ability for trolls?
We need an option to disable specific spec powers now btw. Things like these may be useful in, for example, a mission like Bug Hunt where enemies don't need to be killed fast, but in a mission like Starbase Incursion it's going to be very detrimental having this active. Transporting a saboteur 30m away (in an unknown direction?) or the other enemies that need be killed quickly will not help you or the team at all here.
And I do hope that it will always be 30m in a straight line, or less if there are no straight lines of 30m of more in a mission. Cause transporting enemies around corners or even in different rooms will be even more disruptive.
I don't see why it's an issue. Captains can choose not to include specific kit modules in their frames. They can swap out BOFF skills before starting a mission and exclude any abilities that they don't want their BOFF's having.
It would have been an issue prior to the BOFF and kit revamps, but not now.
Are you sure it's a kit module though? It could also be a passive thing.
And if someone else on the team is using it, it could still be used to obstruct the team by transporting enemies away so the trolling will remain an issue. Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if we find them stuck behind alcolves, walls or around corners that we can't access.
[Begin Mines]
Hmm, I messed around with mines a lot today. Conclusion is: they will never equal energy in quite a lot of scenarios while retaining their very fun way of being used. I mean mines moving from 10km away instantly to target is a bit weird. Not saying people wouldn't like a mechanic that does that though. I mean even really strong targets die to energy before the mines can even hit them. So well in PvE their use case can never be any better than: viable in a pretty limited number of scenarios.
The only way to really change this is to either make the game content much harder without buffing energy and to buff mines (also affecting PvP negatively, unless damage is different in PvP compared to PvE). Or make energy less effective.
So well other than that they are limited to the "fun and not very effective" class of things. Or the "niche" class of things. Or the "PvP" class of things. At the moment they aren't really being used effectively in PvP. They might be useful there in some small amount of circumstances but I doubt they will be used often unless the game mechanics change (e.g. beam mines to ship or some such thing). So if the time for click to deploy to damage to target is not much much lower than it is currently. Any buffs to mines would help in a relatively (to energy) small amount of scenarios. Of course they would probably mesh well with a foundry or story type thing.
But I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to make a build and use it to actually destroy enemies in red alerts and "deep space encounters" or whatever they are called now. Of course I am a little worried about how a player not familiar with the game mechinics would be able to use them effectively (enough to have fun). Of course very few starship traits affect them positively (and it should be kept that way). They are definitely for fun purposes, I doubt its very economic for Cryptic to make stuff that buffs them that costs much more than the cost of the mine itself. Doing so is probably going to hurt sales of that item. This is unless of course Cryptic decides to buff them for a limited amount of scenarios. But I mean cannons are very useful in a more limited amount of PvE scenarios than beams and look how they are treated...
It would be a good idea to remove mine consoles from the game (or perhaps make them do the same thing as projectile consoles (merge them like CtrlX and DrainX)) and just buff mines as if the consoles were equipped or something. The other problem is some stuff marked as projectile enhancing boost mines, while other such things don't.
Problems with buffing mines are:
1. Reducing cooldowns may or may not negatively affect server performance. This is based on what others have told me, though I think it was more due to the fact that before mines got changed they stuck around for a while, causing tons of mines to accumulate in the map. Since I don't understand how deploying mines that destroy the previously deployed mines is going to kill server performance (unless done an insane amount of times per second perhaps (not even sure if that is possible over the network with this game)). The cool down would have to be reduced a lot for mines to be effective.
2. Since mines are spike damage they are rather unnatural (e.g. insta killing gate in ISA if timed well (to be fair though the gate in ISA is one of the few unshielded enemies in the game (energy weapons have at least in the past destroyed it before destroying the regenerators also))) if made anywhere near as effective as energy. I.e. able to one hit kill everything in game.
3. Previously Mentioned: Because of time to hit enemy from activation. Insta travelling mines, basically make them like the transport warhead intel boff ability.
(1.?), 2. and 3. are not really problems for PvP or Pure Fun in non hard PvE areas though.
[End Mines]
[Begin Some Notes I began to make on mines that I am just dumping here]
I have Time to Kill and Improved Pedal to the Metal and Unconventional Tactics. But not Attack Pattern Delta Prime or Numerical Superiority or Partners in Arms or Potentiality. Not sure if Checkmate would help mines. I am not certain that Super Charged weapons crth and crtd affects mines. Not sure if Weapon System Synergy does either, but I am guessing not.
I have Iconian Set so probably not the most Ideal Set for mines (the set was very rare mk xii (mk xiii very rare for warp core)).
4 Mk XII Very Rare All Mine Damage consoles
(I think) Best two universal consoles for mines (and what I had equipped in the 2 eng console slots, both leveless): Bioneural and Assimilated
I didn't check set Bonuses that benefit mines.
Don't have the 3 mine cooldown reduction doffs.
Mines sometimes waste themselves all on a target that one of them could have destroyed; sometimes not though.
Dispersal Pattern Alpha is terrible compared to beta. It takes longer to deploy. It deploys in two distant (in both time and space) groups. The total damage for it is also less than beta.
I got instakilled (was at full health) by my own tricobalt mines. Though the aoe of tricobalt mines is usually a good thing. This was an interesting experience, though I can see many players not liking it. What is annoying though is when your own hanger pets of the Kar'Fi aoe hit you with tricobalt mines disabling you.
Most times in tholian red alert when you do attempt to place mines on the boss, your attempt fails, doing no damage.
[End Some Notes I began to make on mines that I am just dumping here]
[Begin Some other things about the testing on mines I did]
I was able to solo a borg red alert on redshirt with mines and exotic abilities on a tac captain. But failed to do the same on a tholian red alert (my best run out of two runs: 4/5 groups and ~80% health on the bosses (at the 10min mission termination)).
With 288 in EPG and without particle manipulator (which I usually use), my mines (including omega kinetic shearing) did 60% of the damage my gravity well 1 did. That was with extremely mine friendly rep traits, traits, and pretty nice starship traits (a few all damage ones). I used beta 2, dispersal pattern beta 1. Kinetic magnet 2 and ionic turbulance 1 (or was it 1 and 2, I forget, pretty sure it was 2 and 1). Had control amplification, but no shield disable. Didn't use fore weapons. Had full tac skill tree (other than tac ability cooldown reduction, useless (for this) tac ultimate. As mentioned above same tac and eng consoles. 5 EPIC Mk XIV plasma exploders [EPG]. I went mostly as mine offensive as I could.
Major things lacking were: mine cooldown doffs. Tac boff cooldown reduction (had all hands on deck for captain and sci cooldown reduction though). Anchored space trait, http://sto.gamepedia.com/Trait:_Fluidic_Coccoon . The sci +all damage consoles. Sci ultimate (actually I had really low crth so that was really bad, esp. with the crtd mines I had).
Mines I tested with were Mk XII Very Rare [crtd]x3: Photon, Quantum, Tricobalt. (not optimal layout for cooldown I know).
Well actually Photon I barely released at all, it had crth of 100% on test. Quantum was a lucky 55.556% crth and Tricobalt an 16.66% crth. I basically let tricobalt go whenever I could.
I didn't launch my hangers properly throughout the map and they died a bit. I think I got exotic damage boosted a bit with exotic batteries I used used some of the times I could have. Had max aux power (or at least very close) and rest in engines. I will try and upload my combatlog somewhere later.
Ionic turbulence works much better for mines than it does for energy (and to a lesser extent projectile).
In a borg red alert with Dual Cannons (and 5 EPG consoles) up front and two mines in rear. The mines did not ever reach their target. This was with a nice compromise between cannon and mine damage in traits, rep traits, starship traits. But Energy based consoles. Needless to say, the energy based one went a lot faster even with sacrifices for the completely useless mines. Didn't have kinetic magnet, but I am pretty sure it wouldn't have mattered. Edit: oops photon mine hit twice (from same deployment) in first half of match. I think I recall stuffing up my cannons arc here, not sure.
I think I had particle manipulator this time round.
For all tests I used Intel Primary, Strategist Secondary. Did not have any damage enhancing space boffs during entire testing (had borg ground boff though). Not sure if I had the damage accolades for the mines.
[End Some other things about the testing on mines I did]
LOL what happend to Activating any Exotic Damage or Kit Module Ability grants you a a shield heal. Its now been changed to Temporary Hit Points with a long duration. Can stack up to 10 times.. THAT IS JUST STUPID AS EFFFF. No one needs that plus its stupid for those things to do that or work that way. Exotic Damage restoring some shield makes sense but magically giving some extra point to your hull is stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid . I don't want to play starship wizards. I want some Science fiction on why things work the way they do. What was so wrong about it being a shield heal?
It was broken and the best way to fix it was to redesign it. You may actually find that temporary hit points are quite useful.
Combatlog Link for my mine test (just mines and exotic vs borg red alert on redshirt). Sorry I took so long to upload it. The Chroniton Lance seems to have not done much, I must have fired it at a bad time: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bxis5FPlWXToaVRaY3djMWNTenc
Spoiler: It turns out you were heading the Temporal Joint Alpha Quadrant Alliance Striketask Force Command Initiative the entire time to ensure your own rise to power, thus deciding what was supposed to be part of the timestream, and what wasn't.
Hint: Anything that helped ensure your rise to power was supposed to happen, and anything that threatened your rise to power wasn't.
Dammit iconians. I just retired my tinfoil hat! Also, coffee all over the screen now.
Comments
We need an option to disable specific spec powers now btw. Things like these may be useful in, for example, a mission like Bug Hunt where enemies don't need to be killed fast, but in a mission like Starbase Incursion it's going to be very detrimental having this active. Transporting a saboteur 30m away (in an unknown direction?) or the other enemies that need be killed quickly will not help you or the team at all here.
And I do hope that it will always be 30m in a straight line, or less if there are no straight lines of 30m of more in a mission. Cause transporting enemies around corners or even in different rooms will be even more disruptive.
I don't see why it's an issue. Captains can choose not to include specific kit modules in their frames. They can swap out BOFF skills before starting a mission and exclude any abilities that they don't want their BOFF's having.
It would have been an issue prior to the BOFF and kit revamps, but not now.
[Begin Strategist Spec and related stuff]
A major limitation of the previous specialization for high dps builds is that they use feedback pulse and you could not get the damage bonuses while threatening (and you want to threaten to get max damage from feedback pulse). Of course I am certainly not saying that was a bad thing. Although feedback pulse is a messy thing, both in PvE and PvP. Things like Annorax pets, etc etc reduce its effectiveness in PvE. And well anything that stops or reduces outgoing energy weapon damage has the same effect (e.g. any non subsystem disables, weapon subsystem disables, energy damage reducing abilities, drains (including plasmonic leech)).
Now of course, is this actually an issue? Since well at this point anyone going for high dps probably wants to make a team specifically constructed for the task (that is my opinion at least). I think (as in: in my opinion) that reducing feedback pulses effectiveness outside of these high dps teams is perfectly okay (I mean really good, creating a more balanced environment in the PvE queues).
[Begin PvP Feedback Pulse]
Annorax in PvP with its hangers (with viral matrix 2) and viral matrix 3 in commander sci boff seating, can actually defeat a feedback pulse target. However the order of subsystem disable is random thus there is a less than 50% chance this will work at all. Also eng team can instantly clear viral matrix. Of course most people use energy builds where viral matrix can't even be slotted. If you are in a pilot ship you can use the kinetic immunity. I have a science pilot raptor, but I much prefer other ships. And using drain is not really a solution, if you are doing that you are most likely using kinetic weapons anyway.
Yesterday there was a 3v1 match where the 1 science captain with feedback pulse beat the 3 other energy builds. Of course as soon as one of those energy based builds did a 1v1 without feedback pulse the kinetic build lost (and got the energy player in a cruiser down to 4% hull). The energy player had a slight advantage as they had the 3 coordinations from the spec tree on them from another player. Both players had the fleet combat performance boost. Basically this concludes that a kinetic build doesn't need feedback pulse at all to win against an energy based target. And that a good energy based build (that cannot slot viral matrix or pilot kinetic immunity) has no hope against a good kinetic build with feedback pulse.
Of course the Kar'Fi console can work for a 10 second solution. But well I haven't seen many Kar'Fis in PvP recently (me being the only example). My attempts to build a PvP Drain and Energy based Kar'Fi weren't that successful, you must sacrifice drain or energy. Though there were a few deficiencies in the design/equipment so I will have to revisit that to be sure.
[End PvP Feedback Pulse]
The Offensive Coordination from strategist is insignificant in PvE (parser shows it as something no PvEer would care about), but is a usually impossible to counter death trap in PvP for energy based cannon builds. The description doesn't mention the fact that it reflects all energy damage for 0.4 seconds (or whatever the duration is). Since cannons give a lot of moderate packets of damage in less than this amount of time, all such packets of damage are multiplied and reflected back at the cannon damage dealer resulting in instant death. So yes, this definitely needs to be changed.
[End Strategist Spec and related stuff]
Sorry, in comparing this specialization to strategist I got carried away talking about things that it reminded me of/relevant to strategist.
[Begin Phasic Artillery]
Mines are currently pretty ineffective unfortunately (well I mean the PvP uses of tractor beam mines and tholian web mine are fine, as sources of damage mines in general are practically ineffective). Of course I should probably look into this and make some kind of report somewhere detailing exactly how ineffective.
Of course targetable torps (and stuff) do get shot down by NPCs atm, the fact that this specialization helps is a good thing. Though it would have been much better if this was a game wide change as having to use a spec for this is rather limiting.
Though Elite Annorax hangers have near 50k hull, so well mines with a bonus 5k, doesn't seem much, but who knows, maybe it is enough. I have insufficient idea as to what rate mines get destroyed by enemy stuff.
[End Phasic Artillery]
[Begin PvP Mine Stuff]
Though I mean in PvP I can imagine a tractor beam repulsor pushing them (not sure if this occurs though), if it does though, this could quite possibly alone make them even useless against those builds perhaps. Although back in the day I remember being defeated due to the ferengi shield mines from the lobi store in PvP that were super powerful. Back when I was flying in a patrol escort, against a patrol escort.
[Begin Offtopic: About my characters (why I made them and deleted some) (not related to game mechanics)]
Oops no that didn't happen for I am Klingon! Actually the first character I created was as sci Fed, I deleted that because:
a) Had my real name.
b) Was male and I preferred female chars at the time (that has actually kind of reversed a bit). Even now for a fed sci I would prefer a female. Vulcan. But I might make it an Alien for the trait slot, but that would be a shame (to not have it Vulcan). Such a hard decision...
c) Having too many chars with delta rising...
d) It was trill. Bad traits for space. Didn't really like my choice of trill anymore as a species (visually, and for story purposes (this game got me to watch all of Star Trek (except the animated series)...)).
Had some 2nd year anniversary accolade stuff, and Ferengi whip and crossfire tribble and free ody, and no doubt some stuff I forgot about. But well that stuff wasn't all that important.
After making a Fed Sci, I decided to make a Klingon Tac, after liking tac so much I made a tac Fed. I made a second tac Klingon for Alien or something. Though I deleted the first tac Klingon. Much Later I made a KDF sci for PvP.
Basically the reason I don't have an engineer is that I don't like them very much compared to the other two classes. What I am trying to say is: that it isn't because they aren't that effective in space. Though I am planning on making two: TOS and Gorn Eng. I am perfectly aware of engineers capabilities though.
[End Offtopic: About my characters (why I made them and deleted some) (not related to game mechanics)]
[End PvP Mine Stuff]
[Begin @Odenknight tests]
On the topic of high yield, @Odenknight did some tests (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bpPg8Hc88bI3rGY323L-h-ns2-PP4FL5BViwlVNxd6Q/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=668336123 (make sure to check all the tabs at the bottom)) that determined that High Yield 1 buffs torps more than High Yield 2 and 3. When they had high crtd (I am not sure how crth comes into play here). This is according to @Odenknight, due to increases in crtd as the game has evolved. I believe @Odenknight also said torp spread is affected by it as well, though I am not certain of that point (and have no idea about how much).
[End @Odenknight tests]
[Begin Entropic Rider]
Without seeing numbers for the DOT, it is hard to say anything. Also not sure if per shot or per weapon activation (activation I am thinking). I will also need to determine if 2.5% for energy, 10% for kinetic is a fair deal. Keeping in mind things like kinetic (often) takes time to reach target, where beams do not, and cannons have a bit of a delay (often). Torp cooldown reduction completely eludes me at this moment so I have no clue. Of course I am sure the enemies get defeated before DOT takes full effect point is now being considered to a high extent: based on certain forum posts, so I am glad. Of course, high dpsers will see less of a benefit. So basically these things will be skewed for less damaging builds, making them a less desirable option for the playerbase (as in they are viewed inferior, simply because they don't work as well on high end builds (and probably other reasons too)). Not to mention high end players will possibly be giving advice based on what works for them: further complicating matters. So messy...
[End Entropic Rider]
[Begin Inevitability (Space)]
The recharge speed affecting only exotic damaging abilities in space seems possibly in the range of: slightly underpowed to vastly underpowered, though at the moment I don't have access to the strategist spec stats to compare certain things (writing this without an internet connection). And I haven't thought it through well.
[End Inevitability (Space)]
[Begin Uncertainty]
Temporary Hit Points, always useful. These don't even conflict with go down fighting do they (this games mechanics sure would be weird if they did, but I haven't tested this), very nice. 10 TIMES!, oh that is a lot. Why is that so high anyway, its not like we can activate 10 exotic abilities at once. Most of them (all?) have a global cd of at least 30 sec. I mean I understand that its a safeguard. But I have seen other crazy caps like this and thought: well if this cap is reachable than this thing is past the point of being too powerful. So I am kinda confused when these things happen. I mean these safeguards aren't reachable though (or at least lets hope not), so well I guess everything is fine. Is a dev just trying to make people laugh. Or is this a: if I overlook something they won't be able to do 1000000000000dps (oops, in this case hps (heals per second)), but will be able to still tell me something is wrong as they will notice it (hopefully).
[End Uncertainty]
[Begin Anomaly Leash]
Well I am not quite sure how useful this would be. I mean in PvE if an enemy moves a tiny bit away then you can still get max damage from grav well. And it makes escape from drain harder. Though I think the main problem with tykens rift is that the enemies will spread out away from each other (with their "lets just move in a random direction" behaviour) so this won't be as useful as it would first seem to be. People have already talked about the "multitasking grav well, tykens, subspace vortex, and more users". I think I agree with that. It wouldn't affect me personally though, as a grav well user. I hope that stays on the foe if I select an ally though. I was going to suggest adding a pull to all these, but grav well would have two different pulls and that would possibly animate weird. And well you can activate grav well and subspace vortex at the same time already so not really as much a benefit there (relative to what benefit it could bring). You could increase the effectiveness of drain and damage from these though (I think). Though I think you don't want to for some reason that is eluding me.
[Begin Notes about Grav Well and Subspace Vortex in PvP]
The PvPers don't mind an increase in damage of grav well I don't think as it isn't anywhere near as effective there as it is in PvE. I don't think subspace vortex is even viable in PvP, I can't even remember seeing it (I think I have once). But I mean if you do manage to hold someone in place in PvP they would be more effective than tractor beam repulsors at full aux (at least grav well would be). Yes I know about this thing called tractor beam, it dosen't always work/often works poorly. Yes their are a lot of other things that stop players..., lots of things also make you immune to movement debuffs "these days". So well, I don't know. It would be tricky (impossible) to have done in a consistent and certain manner. Depends though, against some builds could be highly effective.
[End Notes about Grav Well and Subspace Vortex in PvP]
Some of the high dps scimitars use gravity well now (it is the go to alternative for feedback pulse in PvE, that, or subspace vortex). Not many people would slot tractor beam repulsors before gravity well in PvE (opposite to PvP).
[End Anomaly Leash]
Continuity: Everything about that has been said I think
:O how many words is this! 2507! I need to be "reduced in effectiveness". I guess I will have to do the feedback about the temporal boffs tommorow. And I didn't even touch on ground. But I mean I don't know much about ground (well at least not compared to space), so...
Offtopic note: Viral Impulse Burst is soooo fun!!! Of course practical application in PvE is slim. So well most of them don't know how fun it can be. Esp. since well it works best (oops meant funniest) against fast enemies (so borg is one of the less enjoyable species to use it against, still it is ... interesting to see it used against them). Okay I must admit, for a while I didn't read the description properly and thought it was a boff power that buffed instead of debuffed, like a horrible ramming speed.
Are you sure it's a kit module though? It could also be a passive thing.
And if someone else on the team is using it, it could still be used to obstruct the team by transporting enemies away so the trolling will remain an issue. Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if we find them stuck behind alcolves, walls or around corners that we can't access.
Hmm, I messed around with mines a lot today. Conclusion is: they will never equal energy in quite a lot of scenarios while retaining their very fun way of being used. I mean mines moving from 10km away instantly to target is a bit weird. Not saying people wouldn't like a mechanic that does that though. I mean even really strong targets die to energy before the mines can even hit them. So well in PvE their use case can never be any better than: viable in a pretty limited number of scenarios.
The only way to really change this is to either make the game content much harder without buffing energy and to buff mines (also affecting PvP negatively, unless damage is different in PvP compared to PvE). Or make energy less effective.
So well other than that they are limited to the "fun and not very effective" class of things. Or the "niche" class of things. Or the "PvP" class of things. At the moment they aren't really being used effectively in PvP. They might be useful there in some small amount of circumstances but I doubt they will be used often unless the game mechanics change (e.g. beam mines to ship or some such thing). So if the time for click to deploy to damage to target is not much much lower than it is currently. Any buffs to mines would help in a relatively (to energy) small amount of scenarios. Of course they would probably mesh well with a foundry or story type thing.
But I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to make a build and use it to actually destroy enemies in red alerts and "deep space encounters" or whatever they are called now. Of course I am a little worried about how a player not familiar with the game mechinics would be able to use them effectively (enough to have fun). Of course very few starship traits affect them positively (and it should be kept that way). They are definitely for fun purposes, I doubt its very economic for Cryptic to make stuff that buffs them that costs much more than the cost of the mine itself. Doing so is probably going to hurt sales of that item. This is unless of course Cryptic decides to buff them for a limited amount of scenarios. But I mean cannons are very useful in a more limited amount of PvE scenarios than beams and look how they are treated...
It would be a good idea to remove mine consoles from the game (or perhaps make them do the same thing as projectile consoles (merge them like CtrlX and DrainX)) and just buff mines as if the consoles were equipped or something. The other problem is some stuff marked as projectile enhancing boost mines, while other such things don't.
Problems with buffing mines are:
1. Reducing cooldowns may or may not negatively affect server performance. This is based on what others have told me, though I think it was more due to the fact that before mines got changed they stuck around for a while, causing tons of mines to accumulate in the map. Since I don't understand how deploying mines that destroy the previously deployed mines is going to kill server performance (unless done an insane amount of times per second perhaps (not even sure if that is possible over the network with this game)). The cool down would have to be reduced a lot for mines to be effective.
2. Since mines are spike damage they are rather unnatural (e.g. insta killing gate in ISA if timed well (to be fair though the gate in ISA is one of the few unshielded enemies in the game (energy weapons have at least in the past destroyed it before destroying the regenerators also))) if made anywhere near as effective as energy. I.e. able to one hit kill everything in game.
3. Previously Mentioned: Because of time to hit enemy from activation. Insta travelling mines, basically make them like the transport warhead intel boff ability.
(1.?), 2. and 3. are not really problems for PvP or Pure Fun in non hard PvE areas though.
[End Mines]
[Begin Some Notes I began to make on mines that I am just dumping here]
I have Time to Kill and Improved Pedal to the Metal and Unconventional Tactics. But not Attack Pattern Delta Prime or Numerical Superiority or Partners in Arms or Potentiality. Not sure if Checkmate would help mines. I am not certain that Super Charged weapons crth and crtd affects mines. Not sure if Weapon System Synergy does either, but I am guessing not.
I have Iconian Set so probably not the most Ideal Set for mines (the set was very rare mk xii (mk xiii very rare for warp core)).
4 Mk XII Very Rare All Mine Damage consoles
Universal Consoles of note that affect Mines (I think I got them all):
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Romulan_Singularity_Harness#Console_-_Universal_-_Zero-Point_Energy_Conduit
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Silent_Enemy_Set#Console_-_Bioneural_Infusion_Circuits
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Ferengi_Marauder#Console_-_Rule_62_Multipurpose_Combat_Console
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Radiant_Armaments#Console_-_Universal_-_Sustained_Radiant_Field
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Temporal_Warfare_Set#Console_-_Tachyokinetic_Converter
Assimilated
(I think) Best two universal consoles for mines (and what I had equipped in the 2 eng console slots, both leveless): Bioneural and Assimilated
I didn't check set Bonuses that benefit mines.
Don't have the 3 mine cooldown reduction doffs.
Mines sometimes waste themselves all on a target that one of them could have destroyed; sometimes not though.
Dispersal Pattern Alpha is terrible compared to beta. It takes longer to deploy. It deploys in two distant (in both time and space) groups. The total damage for it is also less than beta.
I got instakilled (was at full health) by my own tricobalt mines. Though the aoe of tricobalt mines is usually a good thing. This was an interesting experience, though I can see many players not liking it. What is annoying though is when your own hanger pets of the Kar'Fi aoe hit you with tricobalt mines disabling you.
Most times in tholian red alert when you do attempt to place mines on the boss, your attempt fails, doing no damage.
[End Some Notes I began to make on mines that I am just dumping here]
[Begin Some other things about the testing on mines I did]
I was able to solo a borg red alert on redshirt with mines and exotic abilities on a tac captain. But failed to do the same on a tholian red alert (my best run out of two runs: 4/5 groups and ~80% health on the bosses (at the 10min mission termination)).
With 288 in EPG and without particle manipulator (which I usually use), my mines (including omega kinetic shearing) did 60% of the damage my gravity well 1 did. That was with extremely mine friendly rep traits, traits, and pretty nice starship traits (a few all damage ones). I used beta 2, dispersal pattern beta 1. Kinetic magnet 2 and ionic turbulance 1 (or was it 1 and 2, I forget, pretty sure it was 2 and 1). Had control amplification, but no shield disable. Didn't use fore weapons. Had full tac skill tree (other than tac ability cooldown reduction, useless (for this) tac ultimate. As mentioned above same tac and eng consoles. 5 EPIC Mk XIV plasma exploders [EPG]. I went mostly as mine offensive as I could.
Major things lacking were: mine cooldown doffs. Tac boff cooldown reduction (had all hands on deck for captain and sci cooldown reduction though). Anchored space trait, http://sto.gamepedia.com/Trait:_Fluidic_Coccoon . The sci +all damage consoles. Sci ultimate (actually I had really low crth so that was really bad, esp. with the crtd mines I had).
Mines I tested with were Mk XII Very Rare [crtd]x3: Photon, Quantum, Tricobalt. (not optimal layout for cooldown I know).
Well actually Photon I barely released at all, it had crth of 100% on test. Quantum was a lucky 55.556% crth and Tricobalt an 16.66% crth. I basically let tricobalt go whenever I could.
I didn't launch my hangers properly throughout the map and they died a bit. I think I got exotic damage boosted a bit with exotic batteries I used used some of the times I could have. Had max aux power (or at least very close) and rest in engines. I will try and upload my combatlog somewhere later.
Ionic turbulence works much better for mines than it does for energy (and to a lesser extent projectile).
In a borg red alert with Dual Cannons (and 5 EPG consoles) up front and two mines in rear. The mines did not ever reach their target. This was with a nice compromise between cannon and mine damage in traits, rep traits, starship traits. But Energy based consoles. Needless to say, the energy based one went a lot faster even with sacrifices for the completely useless mines. Didn't have kinetic magnet, but I am pretty sure it wouldn't have mattered. Edit: oops photon mine hit twice (from same deployment) in first half of match. I think I recall stuffing up my cannons arc here, not sure.
I think I had particle manipulator this time round.
For all tests I used Intel Primary, Strategist Secondary. Did not have any damage enhancing space boffs during entire testing (had borg ground boff though). Not sure if I had the damage accolades for the mines.
[End Some other things about the testing on mines I did]
My character Tsin'xing
It was broken and the best way to fix it was to redesign it. You may actually find that temporary hit points are quite useful.