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Demolition Teams: Commando Starship Trait - Worst of all Traits?, or just worst of all Spec Traits?
mustrumridcully0
Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
No offense to the designer - it was one of the first traits release for the game, who knows under what rush you were to bring it out, and what not.
But Demolitions must be the most terrible trait in the entire game. I'd go almost so far to say that, say, the Tachyon Beam Starship Trait is better - when you don't even have Tachyon Beam.
The whole trait seems to be designed completely ignoring the realities of the game.
Just look at the Wiki description:
Okay, so every 4 seconds you apply a buff. You need 5 seconds before anything happens, and the enemy must be within 2kms the whole time. When you do that, you deal damage.
That means, after 4 x 5 seconds = 20 seconds, you deal some damage to your enemy.
Now, the number of enemies that could even possibly make it to the 20 second mark in STO is surprisingly low in typical combat. You basically need to play on Advanced or Elite for this trait to matter. But beware - you must stay within 2km to this particular target at all times!
Whatever the final damage tally is going to be... It won't be worth it. The enemy would need to basically explode from the explosion to make it worthwhile.
How can we possibly save this skill? Any ideas?
Here are mine.
It's called "Demolition Teams". So, let's make it a skill that boost the Team skills.
Flavor Text: Under the guise of your internal transporter activity, you send out commando teams equipped with heavy demolitions. Once they are ready, the enemy will recieve a serious surprise.
Demolition Teams - Variant [CLASS] Team Skill Buff
When activating any Team skill, you have a 25 % chance to beam over a demolition team to your primary target or the closest enemy within 10km. Within 10 seconds, the demolitions will be set off unless it is cleared by a Tactical Team. This inflicts X-Y damage (the higher the rank of your team skill, the higher the damage), and has a 50 % chance to disable one subsystem. The subsystem disabled depends on the team skill used. (Science: Auxiliary; Engineering & Pilot: Engine; Tactical and Intel: Weapons)
The above trait is a bit complicated in what it does, but can have very targeted effects. A bit more generic and abstract approach would be the one below. It still takes some time to trigger this skill, but when you do, it has a chance to affect a fresh target.
Demolition Teams - Variant Team Skill Buff
When activating any team skill, you gain a demolition teams counter. Once the counter has reached 4, your primary target or the nearest enemy receives a Demolitions Debuff that triggers a serious shield-ignoring kinetic explosion that will disable a random subsystem. The debuff can be cleansed with a Tactical Team.
It's unusual for starship mastery traits from specs to buff specific skills, but maybe this is a viable candidate for an exception.
Demolition Teams - Variant Boarding Party Buff
Your Boarding Party carry specially trained demolition teams aboard. Each time Boarding Party would disable a subsystem, you also inflict X damage to the target.
But Demolitions must be the most terrible trait in the entire game. I'd go almost so far to say that, say, the Tachyon Beam Starship Trait is better - when you don't even have Tachyon Beam.
The whole trait seems to be designed completely ignoring the realities of the game.
Just look at the Wiki description:
Demolition Teams wrote:Space Trait. While within a short distance of your foe, you will periodically beam over commando squads trained in demolition, to plant charges aboard the enemy vessel. After sufficient charges have been placed, they will be detonated to deal shield-ignoring kinetic damage.
Demolition charges that haven't yet been detonated can be removed using Tactical Team, or will also expire harmlessly after a short duration if the attacker does not remain within the short transporter range.
Every 4 sec, applies a Demolition Team debuff to your primary target (or nearest foe) within a 2km radius
Once 5 debuffs applied, deals X Kinetic Damage (100% Shield Penetration)
Additional Demolition Teams cannot be applied for 12 sec after a successful detonation
Okay, so every 4 seconds you apply a buff. You need 5 seconds before anything happens, and the enemy must be within 2kms the whole time. When you do that, you deal damage.
That means, after 4 x 5 seconds = 20 seconds, you deal some damage to your enemy.
Now, the number of enemies that could even possibly make it to the 20 second mark in STO is surprisingly low in typical combat. You basically need to play on Advanced or Elite for this trait to matter. But beware - you must stay within 2km to this particular target at all times!
Whatever the final damage tally is going to be... It won't be worth it. The enemy would need to basically explode from the explosion to make it worthwhile.
How can we possibly save this skill? Any ideas?
Here are mine.
It's called "Demolition Teams". So, let's make it a skill that boost the Team skills.
Flavor Text: Under the guise of your internal transporter activity, you send out commando teams equipped with heavy demolitions. Once they are ready, the enemy will recieve a serious surprise.
Demolition Teams - Variant [CLASS] Team Skill Buff
When activating any Team skill, you have a 25 % chance to beam over a demolition team to your primary target or the closest enemy within 10km. Within 10 seconds, the demolitions will be set off unless it is cleared by a Tactical Team. This inflicts X-Y damage (the higher the rank of your team skill, the higher the damage), and has a 50 % chance to disable one subsystem. The subsystem disabled depends on the team skill used. (Science: Auxiliary; Engineering & Pilot: Engine; Tactical and Intel: Weapons)
The above trait is a bit complicated in what it does, but can have very targeted effects. A bit more generic and abstract approach would be the one below. It still takes some time to trigger this skill, but when you do, it has a chance to affect a fresh target.
Demolition Teams - Variant Team Skill Buff
When activating any team skill, you gain a demolition teams counter. Once the counter has reached 4, your primary target or the nearest enemy receives a Demolitions Debuff that triggers a serious shield-ignoring kinetic explosion that will disable a random subsystem. The debuff can be cleansed with a Tactical Team.
It's unusual for starship mastery traits from specs to buff specific skills, but maybe this is a viable candidate for an exception.
Demolition Teams - Variant Boarding Party Buff
Your Boarding Party carry specially trained demolition teams aboard. Each time Boarding Party would disable a subsystem, you also inflict X damage to the target.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
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Demolition Teams is just one of the worst examples, but it is pretty in the line with the limited usefulness or outright uselessness of "free" starship traits.
So I don't expect any action taken in this regard in near perspective. Sad, but true.
Not all traits are good. That's completely normal. Some traits are hilariously bad which adds variety to the game.
Linking it to Boarding Parties could be interesting, they seriously need a revamp to give us some more options for high rank engine abilities.
You don't need to have Commando active to be able to use the trait. Once you unlocked it, you can always slot it, even if you pick different Specs as Primary and Secondary.
Like Mustrum says, you don't need to have Commando active to use the trait.
So if you're main, for instance, ends up grinding all spec traits, eventually you'll get Commando too. And at that point you'll unlock this starship trait.
Traits improving specific BOff powers actually seem to be in vogue right now (they're all over the Temporal ships), and this seems like a nice, straightforward way of implementing the idea. Your other ideas are neat, but seem more difficult to implement.
Yeah my bad. I was thinking it was like Rock n' Roll for some reason and bound to the spec tree......it was a long day at work!
Can't agree with that at all. It's a nice shield heal for certain Romulan builds that don't use standard shield restoration skills.
I wonder what accessible power, outside of a tractor beam, people could use to try to hold enemies for 20 secs. I'm pretty sure Tractor Beam 1 or 2 lasts for 20 secs, and I use Tractor Beam 1 all the time.
I always thought the cost of the duration (both the accumulation of stacks and the number of stacks) and the proximity seemed to outweigh the damage deal. Especially with a 12 sec cooldown. This comes off as a power that would be mostly applied to bosses by most.
What would make it more workable for me would be to tweak the time to earn a debuff stack. I am always in motion, so if I could earn a stack by passing by a target within 2km while on a strafing run (bring the debuff timer down from 4 secs to 1 sec to earn a stack with a slight interruption bestween earning stacks) I'd consider trying it out.
Otherwise, historically speaking, when naval ships locked then boarded each other at close range the idea was to take the enemy ship out of combat. Perhaps a long disable could be applied or the ship could be removed from combat. Otherwise I see demotion teams first hitting the shield (with charges) to take it down then hitting the ship or hull with more demolitions.
My character Tsin'xing
This trait causes your boarding party to have a group of demolition experts onboard the shuttle, which when they arrive at their target will set demo-charges aboard the ship dealing damage after a short duration, while also may debuff the target for a short time. The debuff inflicted is based on which team abilities that were used that leave a charge that is consumed on the next use of your boarding party. These charges last till they are consumed to a max stack of 5 per team type (science, tactical, engineering used.
I developed this based around the info of how boarding party works via the wiki. So it having a 1 min an 40 second cooldown at base, a range of 10 km base-line. I could see the damage of the demolition party being based on how many of the boarding party shuttles arrive at the target, which would make the doff ability that gives them point defense a little bit useful. Also keeping mind that base-line the boarding party can still knock offline sub-systems, deal hull damage over time (not sure if the mean actual hull damage or the old crew damage), as well as increasing the recharge time of abilities an weapons on the target ship.
Boarding Party
Look at the end of the entry. Here, I'll put it in bold for people who miss these important details.
Borg vessels using this ability use transporters instead of shuttlecraft.
So ... what's the big problem with Boarding Party? Beam Fire At Everything Forever and "Hazards" and Tractor Beam Repulsors and ... well ... anything and everything that involves launching tissue paper shuttles into a battle with way too much stuff going on.
Here's what Demolition Teams does right now.
In other words, complicated and stupid.
Here's what it SHOULD have been doing instead (y'know, inspired by THE BORG sitting *right there* example).
DONE.
S imple
E asy
E ffective
... not being done ...
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
I actually think that is an issue overall of all small craft based play ranging from the hanger-bay using ships that sacrificed a weapon slot per hanger-bay they have, as well as to abilities that use such craft in their ability like with the boarding party ability. I actually think a better fix would be to both makes small-craft less defenseless against aoe spam (not completely invulnerable, but just not able to be vaporized so quickly either), as well as doffs that might adjust how an ability like boarding party works could be a help. I could see the following list as things either added as baseline, or as doff abilities that affect both the hanger-bay pets an boarding party.
There are some skills that are for bosses only, that do not apply to enemies that are trash mobs.
Some of the command skills and even the intel skills are designed just for those instances. I change my skills out before I get to the boss in instances on my intel ships because some skills just do nothing for trash mobs and take forever to do anything.
It's the same for command such as the bombing run on ground abilities, that skill does nothing when trying to kill mobs it's almost always the last especially for the trash mobs with no shields it never hits them. So I swap that out when it's time to fight trash mobs and swap it back when trying to fight bosses.