Advanced or Elite queues are the answer to what you're experiencing. They're more difficult. Although...Crystalline Entity Advanced is, 90+% of the time a joke, as the entity is destroyed before you can say "Jack Robinson!" Finishing off the remaining Tholian vessels after the entity is destroyed is more often than not more challenging than destroying the entity itself.
Ugh. The Tholians in CCA are twice as powerful as they are anywhere else. If I see that no one stayed to clean them up, I depart the area as quickly as I can and still sometimes blow up on re-entry because they all shot at me on my way out.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
Sad thing is that the entity did used to be A LOT harder, but people were too stupid to read and comprehend that Cryptic ended up nerfing it.
Used to require a fair bit of coordination and skill, things like AoE spam was a sure fire way to fail. And the reason for that was that the small shards actually used to "heal" the entity if they were allowed to return.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
Ugh. The Tholians in CCA are twice as powerful as they are anywhere else. If I see that no one stayed to clean them up, I depart the area as quickly as I can and still sometimes blow up on re-entry because they all shot at me on my way out.
You really just have to focus on the Crystalline entity itself with Beam Overload and Torpedo Yield. Players do still use Fire at Will, Torpedo Spread and and Gravity Well which by my observation gets a lot of players killed unnecessarily.
Oh, I know. I always focus on the entity. I was speaking of after the Entity shatters. Most of the time people will stay to mop up any remaining Tholians. Sometimes not though.
So I usually do a quick look around and if no one stayed when there are extra Tholians around, I beat a hasty retreat while I'm out of their range.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
Oh, I know. I always focus on the entity. I was speaking of after the Entity shatters. Most of the time people will stay to mop up any remaining Tholians. Sometimes not though.
So I usually do a quick look around and if no one stayed when there are extra Tholians around, I beat a hasty retreat while I'm out of their range.
Yeah, those Tholians twice as hard as the ones in the actual Tholian Red Alert.
Oh, I know. I always focus on the entity. I was speaking of after the Entity shatters. Most of the time people will stay to mop up any remaining Tholians. Sometimes not though.
So I usually do a quick look around and if no one stayed when there are extra Tholians around, I beat a hasty retreat while I'm out of their range.
Yeah, those Tholians twice as hard as the ones in the actual Tholian Red Alert.
Of course they are, CCA tholians are balanced around Advanced difficulty, while Red Alert's are just "Normal".
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
Oh, I know. I always focus on the entity. I was speaking of after the Entity shatters. Most of the time people will stay to mop up any remaining Tholians. Sometimes not though.
So I usually do a quick look around and if no one stayed when there are extra Tholians around, I beat a hasty retreat while I'm out of their range.
Yeah, those Tholians twice as hard as the ones in the actual Tholian Red Alert.
Of course they are, CCA tholians are balanced around Advanced difficulty, while Red Alert's are just "Normal".
Good point. Didn't think of that. Would be great if the Red Alerts could pop by difficulty.
They will just add Advanced Elite missions and then introduce T7 ships at about the same time. Hopefully they don't mess it up like when Delta Rising launched....players were not ready for that increase in challenge.
Ohh, and the number of players hitting over 10K isn't too bad and took them some effort to get there. The numbers over 10K drop off fast. As someone else pointed out, if Cryptic gave those guys a reason to go run the other higher difficulties, the Advanced runs could return to some normalcy.
I play on elite difficulty and can still one-shot just about everything in elite queues. I'm not using Iconian set or FAW either. It's now possible to have nearly 100% armor pen on a build, plus dmg resistance debuffs. Ships are literally melting before the shots have even touched them in some cases. And pvp is nothing more than battle cloak, feedback pulse, invincibility trait, Iconian set. Decloak, alpha strike, recloak before anyone has a chance to retaliate - that's how the "honorable kdf warriors" play the game.
Ships were doing massively more damage than they had hull since before PvP died, it just wasnt noticed as much because it was spike damage and escorts on line, so people didnt even think about the hp side, because most of the players ships had no hps during the "Escorts Online" era..
The biggest difference now is the spike damage has been smoothened out and increased along the whole curve.
Cryptic has made their bones pandering to the high DPS meta. As a result of said pandering, the amount of damage players can pump out is extremely disproportional to the amount of HP enemies have.
When we reach another "DPS cliff", Cryptic will "solve" the problem by just tacking on a higher percentage of HP across the board or implementing new ways to make enemies immune to damage.
All the while creating new ways to make the player even more overpowered.
I'm rather disappointed when on a CCA run the Entity gets off a single PBAOE blast. It means our group didn't do their job.
I've said this before, but again - almost feel sorry for the Borg. They were such a formidable foe once..
These days they barely manage to complete their familiar opening line. It's "We ar... *KABOOOM* BFAW wins again.
Hm, just like in the Star Trek TV shows? If I remeber correctly the Borg were only hard to cope with in the beginning of TNG. In the Voyager finale on the other hand one torpedo was enough to smash a cube. Since Star Trek Online is set a decade or so after that I think how we deal with the Borg at the moment is nothing else but canon.
Come to think of it the Borg are perfect the way they are in STO at the moment.
If one wants more interesting foes to fight, it’s not as I we would not have a wide selection of other maps by now.
Edit: Oh I forgot, nobody plays those.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
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Tell me that dps is too much when i need the dps of 5 players and be in 2 places at once to not fail PUG Khitomer space advanced.
Considering how many countless bad players run through Star Trek Online and seem to get lost in advanced and elite PvE maps on a regular basis I agree with you 100%. If good players could not get into a position to deal with major parts of a map on their own the queues were even more barren than they already are.
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Comments
Used to require a fair bit of coordination and skill, things like AoE spam was a sure fire way to fail. And the reason for that was that the small shards actually used to "heal" the entity if they were allowed to return.
You really just have to focus on the Crystalline entity itself with Beam Overload and Torpedo Yield. Players do still use Fire at Will, Torpedo Spread and and Gravity Well which by my observation gets a lot of players killed unnecessarily.
So I usually do a quick look around and if no one stayed when there are extra Tholians around, I beat a hasty retreat while I'm out of their range.
Yeah, those Tholians twice as hard as the ones in the actual Tholian Red Alert.
Of course they are, CCA tholians are balanced around Advanced difficulty, while Red Alert's are just "Normal".
Good point. Didn't think of that. Would be great if the Red Alerts could pop by difficulty.
Ohh, and the number of players hitting over 10K isn't too bad and took them some effort to get there. The numbers over 10K drop off fast. As someone else pointed out, if Cryptic gave those guys a reason to go run the other higher difficulties, the Advanced runs could return to some normalcy.
The biggest difference now is the spike damage has been smoothened out and increased along the whole curve.
"Last Engage! Magical Girl Origami-san" is in print! Now with three times more rainbows.
Support the "Armored Unicorn" vehicle initiative today!
Thanks for Harajuku. Now let's get a real "Magical Girl" costume!
I'm rather disappointed when on a CCA run the Entity gets off a single PBAOE blast. It means our group didn't do their job.
Hm, just like in the Star Trek TV shows? If I remeber correctly the Borg were only hard to cope with in the beginning of TNG. In the Voyager finale on the other hand one torpedo was enough to smash a cube. Since Star Trek Online is set a decade or so after that I think how we deal with the Borg at the moment is nothing else but canon.
Come to think of it the Borg are perfect the way they are in STO at the moment.
If one wants more interesting foes to fight, it’s not as I we would not have a wide selection of other maps by now.
Edit: Oh I forgot, nobody plays those.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Considering how many countless bad players run through Star Trek Online and seem to get lost in advanced and elite PvE maps on a regular basis I agree with you 100%. If good players could not get into a position to deal with major parts of a map on their own the queues were even more barren than they already are.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.