Insane damage ruining the gameplay

just123me

I think people who regularly play STFs have run into those 100-155k damage build players. That's more than the collective DPS of a "normal T6 (mk 14 geared)" 5 Person Group in The Conduit Adv. Not only does it ruin the challenge completely it furthermore incourages undergeared people to join adv/elite queues. But when these "DPSguys" aren't present the run is a guaranteed fail. Many may enjoy the quick runs, i don't.
I think Cryptic underestimated the resourcefulness of some people when it comes to dps-building. It seems the times are over when tacs in an escort did the damage, engineers in a cruiser did the tanking and scientists in a sci-ship did the healing. These high dpsers aren't even tactical players, they are often engineers in some kind of Dreadnought. So boosting "normal" players abilities would make things too easy which means that the insane dps builds need to get nerfed. I'm usually doing 10-15k dps in ISE in my cannon Defiant class ship, i don't even get a chance to go higher because the match is over so quickly. I think 20-30k dps should be the limit for the current gear progression. The worst thing that just happened was a 2 hrs afk ban from queues. I got damaged badly in ISE so i had to break away from combat to heal up which took a bit, when i returned to combat i realized everything was destroyed already except the tactical cube, i got a few shots off before even that thing melted like ice in the sunshine. Boom, the whole run was over in less than 5 minutes. Just great, 2 hrs afk ban for not participating enough. I know you guys payed a lot of real money to get all the consoles and abilities that are required to do this insane dps but somewhere deep in your heart you know it isn't right, don't you?

arionisa

15000K DPS ? That's enough to melt down every enemy in the STF in 1 second flat......

salazarraze

If you prefer to play cannon builds, then find a fleet that plays cannon builds exclusively and do runs with them. If you don't like the random nature of jumping into a pug, don't do it.

misterferengi

Don't forget the domino effect. Any Nerf to a 150k Dpser is a nerf to EVERYONE as its gear and abilities that have to adjusted. So knocking down a 150ker by say 50% also has the knock on effect of reducing a lower players DPS which results in even worse Public Runs and even more people looking to hide out in private PvE queues meaning even emptier Public Queues.

bobbydazlers

just123me wrote: »

I think people who regularly play STFs have run into those 100-155k damage build players. That's more than the collective DPS of a "normal T6 (mk 14 geared)" 5 Person Group in The Conduit Adv. Not only does it ruin the challenge completely it furthermore incourages undergeared people to join adv/elite queues. But when these "DPSguys" aren't present the run is a guaranteed fail. Many may enjoy the quick runs, i don't.
I think Cryptic underestimated the resourcefulness of some people when it comes to dps-building. It seems the times are over when tacs in an escort did the damage, engineers in a cruiser did the tanking and scientists in a sci-ship did the healing. These high dpsers aren't even tactical players, they are often engineers in some kind of Dreadnought. So boosting "normal" players abilities would make things too easy which means that the insane dps builds need to get nerfed. I'm usually doing 10-15k dps in ISE in my cannon Defiant class ship, i don't even get a chance to go higher because the match is over so quickly. I think 20-30k dps should be the limit for the current gear progression. The worst thing that just happened was a 2 hrs afk ban from queues. I got damaged badly in ISE so i had to break away from combat to heal up which took a bit, when i returned to combat i realized everything was destroyed already except the tactical cube, i got a few shots off before even that thing melted like ice in the sunshine. Boom, the whole run was over in less than 5 minutes. Just great, 2 hrs afk ban for not participating enough. I know you guys payed a lot of real money to get all the consoles and abilities that are required to do this insane dps but somewhere deep in your heart you know it isn't right, don't you?

to avoid a ban don't break away to heal, there is no loss from being destroyed and you can do some more damage in the time before you are destroyed, also the time out before you can respawn is far less then the time you took to heal so you can get back in the game quicker and rack up even more damage before the end.
nerfing the DPS on gear might sound like the answer but realise not everyone has the perfect build and it is only having what we have now that makes the game worth playing, if they nerf the best stuff don't think they wont have to nerf the lesser stuff also otherwise there would be very little point in upgrading to that level at all and they want to make the point of upgrading atractive.
likewise it is not a good idea to increase enemy stats as this would make the game impossible unless you have the best gear and that also would be wrong.
getting the balance right is a tricky affair and until they can scale enemy to just the right level for each player or scale down the higher DPSers or scale up the low DPSers to match on the fly we just have to make the best of things.
I know I don't have the best build ever and mostly do far less damage then other players but I stick to mostly normal and just about manage to rack up enough of a score not to get a ban but as I say nerfing the high end gear would only have a ripple effect all the way down to the lowest gear so this is not the answer.

kostamojenx

Ive said this before but STO needs a new difficulty level above Elite, "Hardcore" I would call it, something like Diablo or other grindy MMO games have, to compensate for the "power creep" of players and give those players something to focus on.

admrenlarreck

I run missions with some of those 100 to 150k crowd I'm not near that only around 30 K on average. They would simply go back to work on those builds to get the numbers back up. OP you said you usually do about 10 to 15K, after the nerf to drop the 100 to 150 K down you would find you are doing only about 1 to 2K As the nerf would hit across the board. Or are you talking about a DPS CAP that no matter what gear you have what abilities you have you cant do any damage above what the cap is set at?
If you are talking about a cap then you start costing Cryptic money. How? why bother to upgrade to 14 gold when 10 white will get you to the DPS CAP.

Sure set up a Hardcore difficulty it will have zero effect on pugs, the reason being the DPS Leagues use Advanced setting to measure there builds. Sure a few will run them but the rewards would have to be 4 times what they currently are to have an effect, That of course is not counting the number of runs that are for testing builds and mechanics, ie advanced. Which btw outnumber runs for rewards about 10 to 1.

admrenlarreck

coldnapalm wrote: »

Not exactly. Say they nerf BFAW to be only half as good as it is now. That will reduce ALL BFAW builds...but cannons and torp boats and space magic boats will still do what they always did. Or they nerf spire consoles. The average 10k or less pugger ain't using those. That means it won't lower their DPS one bit.

Wait a minute is this a NERF BFAW thread in disguise? Anyway the problem is not in one power or weapon, its in the combination of all of them. There are people I know running 75k builds and they do not use spire consoles. The only way to reduce the damage the way you are talking is to reduce it across the board.

admrenlarreck

I admit I dont understand the numbers, but how would nerfing one ability, say BFAW reduce the overall DPS of just the top end dpsers. Without hurting anyone else in the process? I am looking to be convinced, that it would work, but I just don't see how.

admrenlarreck

I thought ALL consoles had the diminishing returns? As for the numbers? I have no clue what they mean.

trennan

The DPS league. The main reason team play died in STO. The power creep does well for sales. The player base keeps calling for more power creep.

The funny thing about this is. The powercreep is why we lost the old Borg Elites. They became "to hard" for those that focus on DPS. They required teamwork. Some people will tell you it's because they were buggy as hell. That's just an excuse. Those bugs were there long before the DPS league came about. The instant death from invisible whatevers. Been there, done that. My two original Fed characters, Tac and Sci, did them in the level 40 promotion ships. I have all the accolades and Mk X Kits to prove it. Then T5, T5U ships and fleet gear was introduced. The DPS league started, and suddenly, these Elites became "to hard."

I've said this before in other posts. The game is balanced. It's just balanced around Mk XII gear, the skill tree, and the level 40 promotion ships.

It isn't balanced around T5, T5U and T6 ships.

It isn't balanced around Mk XIV gear.

It isn't balanced around specialties.

It isn't balanced around Fleet gear.

The NPCs you face are just "stat blocks with abilities." Which, Cryptic's idea of balancing out the power creep is buffing that stat block. They have done this, only to find it out was a failed idea from the start.

With everything we have now. The majority of STO players got what they wanted. An easy mode, Star Trek themed action game.

thunderfoot

Some people play this game to find the maximum damage output they can. They enjoy doing so. Who are the rest of us to tell them they have to play this game a certain way? STO is a game. It is supposed to be fun to play. They are having fun so why encourage the Devs to remove or reduce their fun? Further there is no good way to do so without reducing the damage the rest of us do as well.

I am stridently and vociferously opposed to any attempt to remove or reduce another player's enjoyment of STO. Singling out a whole group as "the problem" is what killed off PvP. We don't need such happening a second time. Because I do not think the game would survive such a reduction in the playerbase.

What the OP is asking for has been asked for many times before. Just like the many times before, this time is selfish, short-sighted and stupid. I used to bemoan seeing one of the Uber DPS guys in an STF Just like the OP is doing. Then, I got up off my butt and learned to play this game better. It's not like there is a serious challenge to getting more DPS out of a ship. But acquiring such knowledge and skill takes time and practice and experience. ALL of these are available to the OP and none of them is locked behind a paywall. So I view the OP's problem as just that. His problem. Not anyone else's.

TL;DR version. Quit whining. It is not attractive and makes you look childish and lazy for asking the Devs to play the game for you.
Now pick up that phaser and get back into the fight!

trennan

thunderfoot006 wrote: »

Some people play this game to find the maximum damage output they can. They enjoy doing so. Who are the rest of us to tell them they have to play this game a certain way? STO is a game. It is supposed to be fun to play. They are having fun so why encourage the Devs to remove or reduce their fun? Further there is no good way to do so without reducing the damage the rest of us do as well.

I am stridently and vociferously opposed to any attempt to remove or reduce another player's enjoyment of STO. Singling out a whole group as "the problem" is what killed off PvP. We don't need such happening a second time. Because I do not think the game would survive such a reduction in the playerbase.

What the OP is asking for has been asked for many times before. Just like the many times before, this time is selfish, short-sighted and stupid. I used to bemoan seeing one of the Uber DPS guys in an STF Just like the OP is doing. Then, I got up off my butt and learned to play this game better. It's not like there is a serious challenge to getting more DPS out of a ship. But acquiring such knowledge and skill takes time and practice and experience. ALL of these are available to the OP and none of them is locked behind a paywall. So I view the OP's problem as just that. His problem. Not anyone else's.

TL;DR version. Quit whining. It is not attractive and makes you look childish and lazy for asking the Devs to play the game for you.
Now pick up that phaser and get back into the fight!

But whole groups have been singled out as "the problem" before. They're just called the KDF and Romulans.

baudl

I'm pretty sure that if you wanted to nerf the 150k+ builds, you'd simply need to do away with weapon power overcapping mechanics...you know, actually make it less of a shrouded mechanic. Seemed to me, that this was always the key to extreme dps.
In my opinion it was a bugged mechanic from day one, that is so obscure and unintuitive (at least for new players) that it should not exist in the game.

rattler2

thunderfoot006 wrote: »

Some people play this game to find the maximum damage output they can. They enjoy doing so. Who are the rest of us to tell them they have to play this game a certain way?

Well... I hate to say it but its a bit of a double edged sword that cuts both ways. While it is true that we can't tell them how to play the game, some DPSers get it in their heads that it is the only way to play and put down anyone who doesn't perform to some percieved level, thus telling others how to play the game.

We have a semi toxic DPS PWNS ALL mentality that is centered around specific built types. The most extreme cases will either just abandon you or sit there and do nothing but rant and rave about how you "fail" if you do not "pull your weight" to help their EPeen get big numbers.

While I am pretty much a veteran player by now, I don't hit 20k+ DPS because my preferred playstyle is more casual. I'm content with 10k-15k as that is enough to comfortably do an Advanced Infected run while still providing a challenge if someone comes in with "less than optimal" DPS and have a shot at victory through teamwork, which IMO is more rewarding. The DPS EPeen Lone Wolf is a community problem honestly.

Any build done right can work, even if the damage output is "subpar" to a point. Its not the size of your howitzer, its what you do with it.

We can let the DPS chasers have their fun, but we need to shift away from this toxic "do this EXACTLY like this or GTFO you idiot" mentality. Only way I can think of doing that is through the community itself. Not some blanket nerf that hits everyone. People don't learn from being insulted. They learn when others offer advice in a constructive way. Let them grow. Don't just hand them a cookie cutter build and expect them to know how to use it.

And also... I think the DPS Chasers need to find another measuring stick besides Infected honestly. "Oh I can solo Infected in 2 minutes!"

Not impressed. Infected is the easiest STF in the game. Want a challenge? Go do Hive Elite. Put the DPS to use on something that actually poses a threat.

Short version: We may be faced with more of a community problem than a mechanics problem.

trennan

somtaawkhar wrote: »

trennan wrote: »

The powercreep is why we lost the old Borg Elites.

Actually, we "lost" them because they were pretty poorly designed, and MMOs in general have been moving away from the "2 hour dungeons/raids" type gameplay in general, since no one wants to spend that much time on one dungeon.

We've never had that. The original one were, do the bonus in 15 minutes. The STF is limited to 30 minutes. And as far as I know, that 30 minute limit has never been changed.

The episodes have always taken longer than the STF.

And people don't want to spend 2 hours in a dungeon? Then why do they spend 2 hours playing the episodes? Those are nothing more than solo dungeons. with story tied in to them. Or why do they spend 2 hours, or more, farming marks from a Battlezone? That's an open world dungeon.

rattler2

trennan wrote: »

We've never had that. The original one were, do the bonus in 15 minutes. The STF is limited to 30 minutes. And as far as I know, that 30 minute limit has never been changed.

The episodes have always taken longer than the STF.

And people don't want to spend 2 hours in a dungeon? Then why do they spend 2 hours playing the episodes? Those are nothing more than solo dungeons. with story tied in to them. Or why do they spend 2 hours, or more, farming marks from a Battlezone? That's an open world dungeon.

While this is before my time, I believe the original setup for the Borg STFs was that they were one complete mission. Not split into two like we have now. So for example Infected would have you start in space, then proceed to the ground portion, all in one go. I also heard that Starbase 24 used to have a ground portion as well back in the day.

If anyone from game launch can provide input on this to confirm or deny... please do. I came in JUST before F2P so I was already used to the current setup pretty much, except we had random tech drops that drove me insane at the time. Random Number Gods did not look upon me favorably many times.

bobbydazlers

kostamojenx wrote: »

Ive said this before but STO needs a new difficulty level above Elite, "Hardcore" I would call it, something like Diablo or other grindy MMO games have, to compensate for the "power creep" of players and give those players something to focus on.

some players asked for a higher level when we only had normal and elite, cryptic created and recreated the normal, advanced and elite system we have now.
it was meant to be that normal was basically unchanged, advanced was supposed to be what elite once was and elite was harder then it used to be, only problem is they messed with all of the difficulty's across the board putting in instant fails where there shouldn't be any and increasing the shied and hull strength of the baddies on all levels.
this is basically what killed the queues in the first place and although they have made some changes so its not quite as bad as it first was nothing has been the same since.
I really don't want to go through all that again by adding yet another level of difficulty.

if you feel your too good for the highest level try going in with lower DPS overall, why should others have to suffer just so you can be fully loaded all the time.

trennan

patrickngo wrote: »

trennan wrote: »

somtaawkhar wrote: »

trennan wrote: »

The powercreep is why we lost the old Borg Elites.

Actually, we "lost" them because they were pretty poorly designed, and MMOs in general have been moving away from the "2 hour dungeons/raids" type gameplay in general, since no one wants to spend that much time on one dungeon.

We've never had that. The original one were, do the bonus in 15 minutes. The STF is limited to 30 minutes. And as far as I know, that 30 minute limit has never been changed.

The episodes have always taken longer than the STF.

And people don't want to spend 2 hours in a dungeon? Then why do they spend 2 hours playing the episodes? Those are nothing more than solo dungeons. with story tied in to them. Or why do they spend 2 hours, or more, farming marks from a Battlezone? That's an open world dungeon.

um, Trennan, I think Somtawwkhar was referring to the ORIGINAL STF-which was all six of the originals stacked together, from infected ground to Cure Ground, as a single instance that took about 1.5 hours to complete for the average team if they were good.

and that one, of course, ceased when they broke it up-first as three combined ground/space team instances, and then divided into Ground or Space (and six at that point).

back-to-backing Infected, then Khitomer, then Cure used to be a fun weekend though-unlike today, you had a motivation for doing it (the only way to get the KHG ground AND space sets, and you had to do it quite a bit because they were 'drops' instead of having the "Grind Infected Space until your eyes bleed" system we have now.)

it's something you can lay on the feet of the Developers there-the mindset of "Least effort for most reward" got a system that rewarded that sort of stance when they introduced the Reputation structure in 2013.

I know. I was around for the introduction of the fleet system, the T5 ships, and the LoR release. I've been playing since the game went free to play.

And as far as back-to-backing them. That was still done after, they were broke up. The days of farming marks to get gear upgrades. Both my fed characters from that time still have 2-3K Omega marks from before rep. Of course back then, STF's where about the only way to get dilithium as well.

As far as the grindfest we have now. Ehh.. I did space ones to kill time for the CD's to reset. I always got most of my marks from ground STFs. The days of carrying two Mk X kits in to The Cure Applied Elite on my Tac and Sci are long since gone. I do miss tanking Aramek at times.

baudl

personally, I always advocated for making every single console on your ship unique...especially the tac ones. being able to carry 5 identical tac consoles really defeats the purpose of having maybe less than 5 tac consoles. Same with certain science consoles.
A 5 tac console setup would then look something like: Fleet (weapon type) vulnerability locator, Fleet (weapon type) vulnerability exploiter, (weapon type) relay console, auto targeting module (weapon type), ...
in other words, 3 very good consoles for your weapon type and 2 optional ones that still add good dps, but not the excelent dps from a 4th and 5th fleet (weapon type) vulnerability locator.
But that's more about the fact that STO is the only RPG that encourages doubling up on identical items to make a build better, which is totally counter intuitive, especially if you consider that many ships come with specific consoles that are made obsolete by design compared to slotting dublicate consoles.

rattler2

trennan wrote: »

As far as the grindfest we have now. Ehh.. I did space ones to kill time for the CD's to reset. I always got most of my marks from ground STFs. The days of carrying two Mk X kits in to The Cure Applied Elite on my Tac and Sci are long since gone. I do miss tanking Aramek at times.

Yea... I've noticed that ground seemed to give more marks too. My fleet actually came up with a rather fun way to play Cure Ground.

We called it the Sword Run.

Go in with melee weapons and cut up everything in sight. Was funny as hell, and very fun. The downside though... was fighting Armek. We usually had our medic tank him and we shot him when we could. But the dang Cover Shields were a PITA. Couldn't just rush up to him because apparently more people triggers some kind of AoE that is nasty.

trennan

rattler2 wrote: »

trennan wrote: »

As far as the grindfest we have now. Ehh.. I did space ones to kill time for the CD's to reset. I always got most of my marks from ground STFs. The days of carrying two Mk X kits in to The Cure Applied Elite on my Tac and Sci are long since gone. I do miss tanking Aramek at times.

Yea... I've noticed that ground seemed to give more marks too. My fleet actually came up with a rather fun way to play Cure Ground.

We called it the Sword Run.

Go in with melee weapons and cut up everything in sight. Was funny as hell, and very fun. The downside though... was fighting Armek. We usually had our medic tank him and we shot him when we could. But the dang Cover Shields were a PITA. Couldn't just rush up to him because apparently more people triggers some kind of AoE that is nasty.

Yeah, Aramek's oribital bombardment can still play hell on a stacked up group. Some of my newer characters have died to it from being to close to others.

warpangel

bobbydazlers wrote: »

kostamojenx wrote: »

Ive said this before but STO needs a new difficulty level above Elite, "Hardcore" I would call it, something like Diablo or other grindy MMO games have, to compensate for the "power creep" of players and give those players something to focus on.

some players asked for a higher level when we only had normal and elite, cryptic created and recreated the normal, advanced and elite system we have now.
it was meant to be that normal was basically unchanged, advanced was supposed to be what elite once was and elite was harder then it used to be, only problem is they messed with all of the difficulty's across the board putting in instant fails where there shouldn't be any and increasing the shied and hull strength of the baddies on all levels.
this is basically what killed the queues in the first place and although they have made some changes so its not quite as bad as it first was nothing has been the same since.
I really don't want to go through all that again by adding yet another level of difficulty.

No, the fail conditions and the stat increases were good. The only problem is the devs turned Advanced into yet another Normal as a response to Normal players who insisted on playing Advanced and whining about it every time they didn't get carried by someone better.

As for Elite, well that never lived up to it's name in the first place.

asuran14

I could see them making some kind of system that syncs up the stats of the group to either the average stats of the group, or to a preset set of stats that the stf was designed to be played with. With such a system it might sync up the group's stats in a pug to be within 5-15% of the average stats of the group, or to be within 5-15% of the preset stats of the stf, in both cases this would preserve the experience for the group as a whole an keep the stf challenging without actually making a true nerf to any abilities.. This would not really nerf anyone so much as level the playing field abit. Also this would still allow those same players to make private groups for stfs if they want to keep their unaltered stats to play thru the stf. Though i do still think there needs to be more incentive to do the content than merely the mark/dil payout for completing them.

I would definitely like to see the stfs have unique drops tied to each of them, as well as the different difficulties too. Though even the idea of having a return of the connected ground/space stfs that give you both increased payouts, but also chances at unique rewards for completing them as well. Maybe have it be a mission you get from a operative from the different reps, that contacts you with a mission requesting you finish specific stfs for a reward. Though I will also say I wish that optionals in the stf instead of paying out additional marks as they do now, would instead payout elite marks instead making it that getting the opitionals was more appealing, such as that if you got all three in say normal it would payout one elite mark while in elite it might payout two elite marks.

morguerage

Are you mad at them for easy the game having easy PvE content? Give them some raids/challenge with rewards and an actual/another difficulty setting maybe they'll stay away..

orondis

The damage is in this game is utterly bonkers

My favourite is watching the Crystalline Entity die in 10 seconds to exotic damage from temporal ships, not even letting it get a pulse off.

neoakiraii

Yaaawwwwn....nerf EVERTHING!!!

markhawkman

rattler2 wrote: »

trennan wrote: »

As far as the grindfest we have now. Ehh.. I did space ones to kill time for the CD's to reset. I always got most of my marks from ground STFs. The days of carrying two Mk X kits in to The Cure Applied Elite on my Tac and Sci are long since gone. I do miss tanking Aramek at times.

Yea... I've noticed that ground seemed to give more marks too. My fleet actually came up with a rather fun way to play Cure Ground.

We called it the Sword Run.

Go in with melee weapons and cut up everything in sight. Was funny as hell, and very fun. The downside though... was fighting Armek. We usually had our medic tank him and we shot him when we could. But the dang Cover Shields were a PITA. Couldn't just rush up to him because apparently more people triggers some kind of AoE that is nasty.

That was allegedly Gozer's idea. It's a chain lightning attack similar to that one the Klingon ships use. I've heard that peeps who are REALLY good can gank him in melee before he uses it.

snoggymack22

kostamojenx wrote: »

Ive said this before but STO needs a new difficulty level above Elite

The map the OP is talking about is ISA. Infected Space currently doesn't HAVE an Elite map available. And you want them to make a map beyond a level that isn't even there right now?

What?

tempusmagus

patrickngo wrote: »

(prepares the bunker ahead of time...)

They could always apply the same thing to Tac consoles they did to Engineering and Science consoles-a "Diminishing Returns" algorithm. say, each additional console of the same or similar type adds 30% less performance than the one previous, possibly with the decline starting with the third console. Thus, having 4 consoles of the same type would give

worked thusly:
Value X= statted bonus from a given console by itself
x
(x-30%)
((x-30%)-30%)
((x-30%)-30%)-30%

for example, where X=30 (iirc, Purple energy console at Mk XII)

30
20
13.3
4.4
added together a total stack of 64.7

vs.
the present:
30
30
30
30

which provides 120.

the difference in damages from a 3 console cruiser or battlecruiser, and a 4 console setup, isn't all that big, right? except that an Escort or Raider gets more innate bonus to weapons power. Likewise, the difference between 4 consoles and 5 isn't that big, assuming same/similar tac consoles in use. This would probably rein in a LOT of the powercreep, while still leaving 'room' for all the build-doffs and such to boost DPS, the only thing it would really do, is rein the numbers down enough that Cryptic isn't tempted to give Dreadnought stats to Borg Probes.

The built-in workaround, of course, being to vary the console types-either using the configuration-specific consoles (say, a Beam console in there with your Antiproton consoles, or a cannon console in there), or by varying weapon type consoles (3 consoles for Antiproton, one Beam console, and a torp console for your follow-on shot, or maybe a manifold console on a beam build to get around the diminishing returns.)

Kinda the way you might mix RCS with (+turn)Armor consoles to get your defense up.

sum total impact, I wager, would be a 'nerfing' of the 120K-plus leaguers down, a mild inconvenience for the mid-range 30K-50K builds, and no net change for low-end builds. Cryptic could still make money off refined dil. for upgrading costs, (30% of gold Mk XIV is still going to leave you more than 30% of Purple or Ultraviolet MK XII)

The math on how Tactical damage buff consoles work resembles diminishing returns, even the Spire ones. Depending on your build, a fifth console might add 3% to your dps. In fact the 200k+ builds are using either one or none for actual Tactical consoles or even the Lobi Store consoles. It's the Embassy Plasma consoles that are the highly sought after ones, right after Plasmonic Leech. These consoles give a pretty dramatic increase in dps.

I saw earlier in this thread that someone suggested a 50% reduction of damage for FAW, this would probably hurt lower end players more than the higher end ones. If this nerfed happened, my 200k+ build would lose between 10-20% of my total dps in my runs. The higher end players are working in multiple things that the average player doesn't fully understand: ie. haste, armor pen, damage resistance debuff, power management, cooldown reductions, damage sources, etc. Most players in the game don't know about concepts like "damage category oversaturation", where a 30% increase in damage can actually be way less than a 10% damage increase. Almost all of the game mechanics have a diminishing returns type of effect built in, it's the high end guys that are minimizing these diminishing returns using multiple mechanics. The lower end doesn't really do this, so one thing that is hit hard will affect them to a greater extent. Just a rough guess from parses I've seen, they would probably lose between 30-40% of thier dps if they use FAW.

warmaker001b

You can nerf stuff all you want, but the simple fact is the better players with better equipment and better ships will do far more than Captain Average Joe.