Why do science need high DPS or damage!? Before DR science was still the king in PvP. The fact that you can use control effects to hold/push/pull ships around while needing them to the ground makes sci very powerful. Sure you need very well timed, high damage 60k+ hit to bring a tank with buffs to it's knees in an escort because damage isn't all an escort has to work with. But a science ship can hold, drain and use particle/exotic damage at the same time as clearing their all their buffs and resists to the point where a 20k HY2 will be enough to bring the opponent down.
Sci doesn't need high damage potential because it can literally take away the opponent's ability to defend themselves from even light damage.
Lol, before DR I did PvP a lot and I didn't see any of these mythical 2 sci skill builds you speak of. People went full out on a single skill and control skills except reverse TBR weren't as popular as you're making them out to be.
Any move from SNB from a class ability to something not-class specific also means that you can have the ultimate destruction PvP combo: Attack Pattern Alpha + Buff-Stripping.
And you can combine it all on one character. 5 copies of this build working together will be hard to beat, and it's doubtful that any competitive PvP build that wouldn't combine these two abilities on every character. The synergy between these two abilities is just too good to pass up.
In PvE, it doens't matter where you put buff-strippinig. It's an edge case utility option, nothing that will make or break a build or scenario.
So lets say your dire prediction is true - Oh noes, he's got Attack Pattern Alpha and The PRECIOUS!!
In the solution I'm proposing, he also doesn't have 20+ skill points dumped into red/DPS skills. Burying it deep in yellow line will blunt the teeth of even a Tac captain and the almighty APA. Its gives The PRECIOUS a direct, whole ship all-the-time DPS cost you cannot side-step.
@adamkafei, to be fair, that is a problem the PvP community tried to talk about way before DR, the fact that powercreep is going out of hand and that NPCs are getting more and more dumb.
It is unfair that people rock up to ISA with a 20k build, which is more than enough for someone who knows what they're doing in any STF and is prepared to work in a team, and gets an AFK penalty because some idiot turns up in a 150k DPS build, thinks he's the business, the hero of the story, firmly believes that anyone doing sub 100k DPS is being carried by him, doesn't understand the word teamwork and doesn't realise that his 150k FAW build is completely useless against a 2014 PvP build because the target can actually fight back.
STO has been turned into a game that teaches players that they don't need teamwork, that they are the be all and end all, while representing a beloved franchise that emphasised to its fans that we all must work together and play different parts to accomplish a goal.
The PvE community has become so toxic and against any sort of game balance and teamwork that it's now impossible to have a good time in PvE now. It's a drone fest, where the players are drones mashing the spacebar with the same abilities and builds while exploiting the same broken equipment that doesn't work as intended and complain wildly and abusively when the Devs try to fix it.
Balancing is something that takes time but any big change that doesn't work can be changed again. Stop getting worked up. Try the changes, report it and try to look at things from someone else's viewpoint and benefit for a change. Star Trek has never been about "ME ME ME!!" Yet for some reason this game is.
Any move from SNB from a class ability to something not-class specific also means that you can have the ultimate destruction PvP combo: Attack Pattern Alpha + Buff-Stripping.
And you can combine it all on one character. 5 copies of this build working together will be hard to beat, and it's doubtful that any competitive PvP build that wouldn't combine these two abilities on every character. The synergy between these two abilities is just too good to pass up.
In PvE, it doens't matter where you put buff-strippinig. It's an edge case utility option, nothing that will make or break a build or scenario.
So lets say your dire prediction is true - Oh noes, he's got Attack Pattern Alpha and The PRECIOUS!!
In the solution I'm proposing, he also doesn't have 20+ skill points dumped into red/DPS skills. Burying it deep in yellow line will blunt the teeth of even a Tac captain and the almighty APA. Its gives The PRECIOUS a direct, whole ship all-the-time DPS cost you cannot side-step.
I believe someone on reddit calculated the overall contribution to DPS that the tactical tree adds, and it was not one of the bigger contributions to your damage output
And getting an Ultimate does not require sacrificing all of the tactical tree. Just some more than typical.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I believe someone on reddit calculated the overall contribution to DPS that the tactical tree adds, and it was not one of the bigger contributions to your damage output
With the changes to the critical chance and damage skills, I can easily forego putting points in chance. There are also many sources of armor and shield pen, more than the amount given by red skills. I can easily shave off plenty of points, get the engineering ultimate, and suffer a minimal loss in damage output.
And getting an Ultimate does not require sacrificing all of the tactical tree. Just some more than typical.
With the significant changes to science powers, there is less reason to put points in them. There are plenty of effective hard counters for drain and control abilities, so I see no reason to sprinkle a few points in drainx or controlx.
The major reason not to take the Engineering Ultimate is that it can't be used with AoE powers. You can spend an additional point in Engineering to have the target damage nearby targets with an incredibly underpowered DoT, but you don't need to do that with Frenzy or Probability Manipulation.
Probability Manipulation works well with B:FAW, T:S, and C:SV. It also works well with B:O, T:HY and C:RF. Frenzy does not affect the C/D on torpedoes, so it's more limited (now, torpedoes can affect energy weapon speed). If you spend an additional point, you can get Franzy to boost all weapon damage, so it can boost torpedoes. EPS Corruption puts a weak DoT on a single target. It really has no place in PvE.
In PvP, with all the fancy bells and whistles, it punishes the target for using energy weapons and cripples the target's ability to heal. Now you want it to also strip buffs and cripple C/Ds. At this point, what tac would not want an instant win combo of EPS Corruption and APA?
@adamkafei, to be fair, that is a problem the PvP community tried to talk about way before DR, the fact that powercreep is going out of hand and that NPCs are getting more and more dumb.
Indeed, I was there, although the majority of us accepted that unless pve changed to facilitate pvp builds being just as potent as pve builds were (i.e. a complete shift from HP sacks to NPCs with player potential) that the requirements of pve builds were always going to be completely different to those of pvp and that as such all classes and ships needed to be capable of fulfilling these requirements, chief among these being damage capability. We also accepted that pve was never going to become what we pvpers wanted it to be.
It is unfair that people rock up to ISA with a 20k build, which is more than enough for someone who knows what they're doing in any STF and is prepared to work in a team, and gets an AFK penalty because some idiot turns up in a 150k DPS build, thinks he's the business, the hero of the story, firmly believes that anyone doing sub 100k DPS is being carried by him, doesn't understand the word teamwork and doesn't realise that his 150k FAW build is completely useless against a 2014 PvP build because the target can actually fight back.
This is indeed unfair, but limiting the damage capability of science ships isn't going to solve this issue, it's only going to reduce the number of people flying science. The only way to fix this, as many have pointed out is by reducing the top end capability, part of this is decoupling APA from science boff skills, a combination that makes science captains (especially after the removal of SNB, which I oppose) obsolete, even in science ships, you'd do better to roll a tactical in a science ship, build for partgens and use tactical initiative and APA to get the best out of both weapons and boffs. With that combo, you don't need science captains, or engineers.
STO has been turned into a game that teaches players that they don't need teamwork, that they are the be all and end all, while representing a beloved franchise that emphasised to its fans that we all must work together and play different parts to accomplish a goal.
The PvE community has become so toxic and against any sort of game balance and teamwork that it's now impossible to have a good time in PvE now. It's a drone fest, where the players are drones mashing the spacebar with the same abilities and builds while exploiting the same broken equipment that doesn't work as intended and complain wildly and abusively when the Devs try to fix it.
Balancing is something that takes time but any big change that doesn't work can be changed again. Stop getting worked up. Try the changes, report it and try to look at things from someone else's viewpoint and benefit for a change.
Star Trek has never been about "ME ME ME!!" Yet for some reason this game is.
You are quite right in this although it's very difficult to force players into teamwork when you don't require one of each class and/or ship to start content and the only common factor between the three classes is the ability to deal damage, hence the game design direction. I still would very much like this to change and NPCs to be redesigned in such a way that a wider range of builds are effective against them, but as with discussions among pvpers on the subject in the past, I don't expect this to happen.
With regard to trying the changes before posting, if you check back through this thread and the thread for the 21st and 23rd as well as the general feedback thread, you'll see that I have tried the changes, pulled several numbers and given feedback based on this, much like others.
Balance does take time and several changes back and forth to get right, but without a fundamental change in design philosophy dps will continue to be the deciding factor in pve, the question being the range between the lowest dpser and the highest dpser.
I seem to be seeing an increase in DPS on fleet support as a sci (haven't tested others). But the damage on these ships seems to be increased by a factor of 2.
Maybe something worth looking into? Really noticeable in infected space advanced runs.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Just wondering if this was an unannounced change or if it's unintended only to be fixed at some point in the future after we've all grown accustomed to it.
I seem to be seeing an increase in DPS on fleet support as a sci (haven't tested others). But the damage on these ships seems to be increased by a factor of 2.
Maybe something worth looking into? Really noticeable in infected space advanced runs.
Romulan and Klingon Fleet Support battlecruisers were buffed in the initial Tribble push. The Federation Fleet Support battlecruiser received no changes specific to it.
well, the fed version's always been hard-hitting because it comes with quantum torpedoes - which when run through the NPC scaling system, end up about 17x stronger completely unbuffed than player versions loaded down with every possible torpedo buff
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
well, the fed version's always been hard-hitting because it comes with quantum torpedoes - which when run through the NPC scaling system, end up about 17x stronger completely unbuffed than player versions loaded down with every possible torpedo buff
Well that sounds like something that needs to be looked at...
I'd love to see this so called refinement you speak of happen because right now it pretty much horribly sucks.
Now that we know the release date, this means they have a little shy of a month for refinements and so on. ALOT can get done in a month, especially in a game like this. Consider the new balances in a beta stage of testing of sorts. There's a ton of stuff that's getting worked which is why it's important for folks to test it out and give them constructive feedback. Don't count them out just yet
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
well, the fed version's always been hard-hitting because it comes with quantum torpedoes - which when run through the NPC scaling system, end up about 17x stronger completely unbuffed than player versions loaded down with every possible torpedo buff
Well that sounds like something that needs to be looked at...
they would need to look at it for EVERY NPC armed with quantum torpedoes, because it doesn't just affect fleet support battleships, but every NPC ship armed with quantum torpedoes and any kind of enhancement mode
quantum TS3 is especially deadly, as is borg plasma TS3, as anyone who has regularly played mirror invasion (both old and new) or any other content with terrans and borg red alert respectively can attest to
and the borg plasma torpedo spreads from the cigar are either invisible, failing to render properly (which isn't surprising considering the LSD trip the game's become) or just plain aren't large enough, because i never actually SEE it coming at me; i only realize when my ship is already in the process of exploding
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
quantum TS3 is especially deadly, as is borg plasma TS3, as anyone who has regularly played mirror invasion (both old and new) or any other content with terrans and borg red alert respectively can attest to
Eeeyep, was not impressed when my Excel went from 100% hull and shields to dead because some mirror prommy decided to drop a 400k quantum torp on me out of nowhere in CPA.
"i tested my Elite Romulan Drone Ships on holodeck and tribble,they have the same hp at level 0 on holodeck/tribble(59896) and level 5 stars on holodeck/tribble (63761)"
For the Callistos on tribble the Hull points start higher then holodeck, but by 5 stars they both have 81,150 Hull points. Still with Layered Protection III (I think its mislabelled, Layered Defence only goes up to II), and Warpcore Breach Immunity, they are incredibly tough and almost never die.
Are the balance changes going to do anything about the Zhal trait? I personally feel that if you get killed while having the Zhal trait equipped it should count as 2 kills for the opposing team. Because, let's be honest, Zhal practically cancels a kill, makes skill largely unnecessary, allows you to focus a build solely on attack with no downside to it whatsoever.
Are the balance changes going to do anything about the Zhal trait?
I personally feel that if you get killed while having the Zhal trait equipped it should count as 2 kills for the opposing team.
Because, let's be honest, Zhal practically cancels a kill, makes skill largely unnecessary, allows you to focus a build solely on attack with no downside to it whatsoever.
Its basically another life for anyone who can afford it. And if you do have it, its a must-use which outclasses other traits. Then you only have 4 other slots.
STO has a reward problem which leads to every other problem in the game, including balance. The only rewards that we are getting are powercreep rewards. The game doesnt adequately reward the more difficult Elite queues or PvP which have enemies tough enough that you cant spacebar through. Making enemies do more damage would force people to trade DPS abilities for tanking/healing/utility abilities and use teamwork more. Instead of releasing new novelty ships in lockboxes or Z-Store, why not have a system where we can earn them through a rep?
For example, if they ever released a Borg Sphere as playable, it could be an Elite queue reward for 500 tokens. It wouldnt hurt their pocketbooks because you would have to get z-store and lockbox ships in the first place to be able to pull your weight. Winning the queue gets you 1 token, but doing it with additional bonuses like timed optional tasks will get you more.
Comments
I'd love to see this so called refinement you speak of happen because right now it pretty much horribly sucks.
Lol, before DR I did PvP a lot and I didn't see any of these mythical 2 sci skill builds you speak of. People went full out on a single skill and control skills except reverse TBR weren't as popular as you're making them out to be.
So lets say your dire prediction is true - Oh noes, he's got Attack Pattern Alpha and The PRECIOUS!!
In the solution I'm proposing, he also doesn't have 20+ skill points dumped into red/DPS skills. Burying it deep in yellow line will blunt the teeth of even a Tac captain and the almighty APA. Its gives The PRECIOUS a direct, whole ship all-the-time DPS cost you cannot side-step.
It is unfair that people rock up to ISA with a 20k build, which is more than enough for someone who knows what they're doing in any STF and is prepared to work in a team, and gets an AFK penalty because some idiot turns up in a 150k DPS build, thinks he's the business, the hero of the story, firmly believes that anyone doing sub 100k DPS is being carried by him, doesn't understand the word teamwork and doesn't realise that his 150k FAW build is completely useless against a 2014 PvP build because the target can actually fight back.
STO has been turned into a game that teaches players that they don't need teamwork, that they are the be all and end all, while representing a beloved franchise that emphasised to its fans that we all must work together and play different parts to accomplish a goal.
The PvE community has become so toxic and against any sort of game balance and teamwork that it's now impossible to have a good time in PvE now. It's a drone fest, where the players are drones mashing the spacebar with the same abilities and builds while exploiting the same broken equipment that doesn't work as intended and complain wildly and abusively when the Devs try to fix it.
Balancing is something that takes time but any big change that doesn't work can be changed again. Stop getting worked up. Try the changes, report it and try to look at things from someone else's viewpoint and benefit for a change.
Star Trek has never been about "ME ME ME!!" Yet for some reason this game is.
I believe someone on reddit calculated the overall contribution to DPS that the tactical tree adds, and it was not one of the bigger contributions to your damage output
And getting an Ultimate does not require sacrificing all of the tactical tree. Just some more than typical.
With the significant changes to science powers, there is less reason to put points in them. There are plenty of effective hard counters for drain and control abilities, so I see no reason to sprinkle a few points in drainx or controlx.
The major reason not to take the Engineering Ultimate is that it can't be used with AoE powers. You can spend an additional point in Engineering to have the target damage nearby targets with an incredibly underpowered DoT, but you don't need to do that with Frenzy or Probability Manipulation.
Probability Manipulation works well with B:FAW, T:S, and C:SV. It also works well with B:O, T:HY and C:RF. Frenzy does not affect the C/D on torpedoes, so it's more limited (now, torpedoes can affect energy weapon speed). If you spend an additional point, you can get Franzy to boost all weapon damage, so it can boost torpedoes. EPS Corruption puts a weak DoT on a single target. It really has no place in PvE.
In PvP, with all the fancy bells and whistles, it punishes the target for using energy weapons and cripples the target's ability to heal. Now you want it to also strip buffs and cripple C/Ds. At this point, what tac would not want an instant win combo of EPS Corruption and APA?
Indeed, I was there, although the majority of us accepted that unless pve changed to facilitate pvp builds being just as potent as pve builds were (i.e. a complete shift from HP sacks to NPCs with player potential) that the requirements of pve builds were always going to be completely different to those of pvp and that as such all classes and ships needed to be capable of fulfilling these requirements, chief among these being damage capability. We also accepted that pve was never going to become what we pvpers wanted it to be.
This is indeed unfair, but limiting the damage capability of science ships isn't going to solve this issue, it's only going to reduce the number of people flying science. The only way to fix this, as many have pointed out is by reducing the top end capability, part of this is decoupling APA from science boff skills, a combination that makes science captains (especially after the removal of SNB, which I oppose) obsolete, even in science ships, you'd do better to roll a tactical in a science ship, build for partgens and use tactical initiative and APA to get the best out of both weapons and boffs. With that combo, you don't need science captains, or engineers.
You are quite right in this although it's very difficult to force players into teamwork when you don't require one of each class and/or ship to start content and the only common factor between the three classes is the ability to deal damage, hence the game design direction. I still would very much like this to change and NPCs to be redesigned in such a way that a wider range of builds are effective against them, but as with discussions among pvpers on the subject in the past, I don't expect this to happen.
With regard to trying the changes before posting, if you check back through this thread and the thread for the 21st and 23rd as well as the general feedback thread, you'll see that I have tried the changes, pulled several numbers and given feedback based on this, much like others.
Balance does take time and several changes back and forth to get right, but without a fundamental change in design philosophy dps will continue to be the deciding factor in pve, the question being the range between the lowest dpser and the highest dpser.
I seem to be seeing an increase in DPS on fleet support as a sci (haven't tested others). But the damage on these ships seems to be increased by a factor of 2.
Maybe something worth looking into? Really noticeable in infected space advanced runs.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Just wondering if this was an unannounced change or if it's unintended only to be fixed at some point in the future after we've all grown accustomed to it.
Romulan and Klingon Fleet Support battlecruisers were buffed in the initial Tribble push. The Federation Fleet Support battlecruiser received no changes specific to it.
This was on a fed character. So that's odd then.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Well that sounds like something that needs to be looked at...
Now that we know the release date, this means they have a little shy of a month for refinements and so on. ALOT can get done in a month, especially in a game like this. Consider the new balances in a beta stage of testing of sorts. There's a ton of stuff that's getting worked which is why it's important for folks to test it out and give them constructive feedback. Don't count them out just yet
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
they would need to look at it for EVERY NPC armed with quantum torpedoes, because it doesn't just affect fleet support battleships, but every NPC ship armed with quantum torpedoes and any kind of enhancement mode
quantum TS3 is especially deadly, as is borg plasma TS3, as anyone who has regularly played mirror invasion (both old and new) or any other content with terrans and borg red alert respectively can attest to
and the borg plasma torpedo spreads from the cigar are either invisible, failing to render properly (which isn't surprising considering the LSD trip the game's become) or just plain aren't large enough, because i never actually SEE it coming at me; i only realize when my ship is already in the process of exploding
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Eeeyep, was not impressed when my Excel went from 100% hull and shields to dead because some mirror prommy decided to drop a 400k quantum torp on me out of nowhere in CPA.
For the Callistos on tribble the Hull points start higher then holodeck, but by 5 stars they both have 81,150 Hull points. Still with Layered Protection III (I think its mislabelled, Layered Defence only goes up to II), and Warpcore Breach Immunity, they are incredibly tough and almost never die.
I personally feel that if you get killed while having the Zhal trait equipped it should count as 2 kills for the opposing team.
Because, let's be honest, Zhal practically cancels a kill, makes skill largely unnecessary, allows you to focus a build solely on attack with no downside to it whatsoever.
Its basically another life for anyone who can afford it. And if you do have it, its a must-use which outclasses other traits. Then you only have 4 other slots.
STO has a reward problem which leads to every other problem in the game, including balance. The only rewards that we are getting are powercreep rewards. The game doesnt adequately reward the more difficult Elite queues or PvP which have enemies tough enough that you cant spacebar through. Making enemies do more damage would force people to trade DPS abilities for tanking/healing/utility abilities and use teamwork more. Instead of releasing new novelty ships in lockboxes or Z-Store, why not have a system where we can earn them through a rep?
For example, if they ever released a Borg Sphere as playable, it could be an Elite queue reward for 500 tokens. It wouldnt hurt their pocketbooks because you would have to get z-store and lockbox ships in the first place to be able to pull your weight. Winning the queue gets you 1 token, but doing it with additional bonuses like timed optional tasks will get you more.