I think they honestly intended this to be a buff to the ability, but only in use cases that might not be common at the moment. I think a fair number of science ships might just have one omni-beam to apply SST. In that use case, it's definitely a nerf. However, from what I read in the patch notes, the ability now applies to *all* energy weapons, and the drain stacks. So if you have 6 energy weapons, each doing 30% of the original drain, you're theoretically now applying 180% of your original drain.
Stacks only 10 times, but I'll let it slide. Seems he removed the annoying cooldown on the ability. I loose a heck of a lot of drain, but gain 100% uptime.
Ok, he made the uptime 100% as long as you switch the subsystem you're targeting. Still semi-worthless to slot subsystem targeting II or III as a tac ability since there is still a 30 sec cooldown on the same type of subsystem targeting.
I'm going to try and keep this productive and objective, given that I'm not really a fan of this patch...
Things I can live with:
FAW nerf - I'm not surprised by this in the least, and as of now agree with it. If you are going to run FAW, you will need to be built for it now.
Plasma Console nerf - Totally fine with it. I wouldn't even mind seeing it go further; I want to be able to choose what goes in my science slots from a list of equal options.
Things I need to test more:
Weapon power drain changes, diminishing returns on weapon power over 100 - I really don't know how this will play out. As of now, it feels a little insulting to given Engineer captains a way to up max weapon power and couple it with a nerf to the same. Kinda puts EPS back where it was in the first place.
Things that still NEED changing:
Torpedoes - Aside from target-able torps (which no one uses), it seems like torps are actually worse with this patch, if that is possible. Up their firing arc to 180 by default (and make 180s 360), reduce the shield resist torps inherently have, or both to at least to start making them a viable option. As it is, torps are only really worthwhile on escorts and raiders, and only in very specialized builds and situations at that.
Tactical Captain Abilities - THESE NEED TO STOP AFFECTING ALL DAMAGE; THEY SHOULD ONLY BUFF WEAPON DAMAGE. I think everyone is fine with TACs being the supreme weapon damage dealers, but they should not be better than Science captains at everything. I mentioned this in my inital reaction post, and lucho80 put this much moreeloquently a few posts back.
Override Subsystem Safeties nerf - I see little reason to slot anything other the OSS1, since the penalty is the same for all three. I also don't care for the fact that the disable can't be resisted...I mean, if you are skilled and plan for it, you should be able to work around it. As it stands now it take the once highly desirable Intel spec slot mostly worthless for me, invalidating a huge number of ship choices.
DEM nerf - In 99% of gameplay scenarios, I don't see why I would EVER want this now. Am I missing something?
Thank you, and I hope that my feedback is helpful at least in a small way.
The ability: Feedback Pulse
cant be buffed with ANY damage buff (with this change)
it cant crit (with this change),
It already has a 15 second global lock out between the end of 1 fbp and the start of another and
shares a cool down with TSS and
its hard counters are available to ships with a LTC sci (and LTC Intel) now,which there are quite a few of..
@crypticspartan#0627 Please allow the default damage and EPG scaling to remain as it is on Holodeck and raise the CAP to 100, 125 and 150 for each respective levels...@ 150% its no higher than the highest of the 1% or 2% chance shield/trait reflects..
..maybe allow an overcap on Science Vessels..
Or Allow all 3 ranks to scale to 100%-150% and modify the duration?
Or "Allow all 3 ranks to scale to 100%-150% " but remove the 50% shield pen.
I LOVE what you did to Tykens Rift! Doubled the initial damage and WOW that subsytem drain looks nice!
Ever get around to changing how Tractor Beam displays it damage?
I'm curious about the thought process that went into bringing SCI +ENG captains closer to effectiveness with TAC captains...but instead of reducing the amount of +all dmg TAC captains get (or changing them to only affect weapons), base damage to nearly everything was brought down, instead.
That kind of makes those +all damage abilities (APA and GDF) MORE desirable, not less so. Wouldn't it have just been easier to adjust everything that adds +all damage (not just tac abilities)? It seems more like treating the symptom, not the problem.
Are all of the damage rates being adjusted still not working as intended even without the stacking +all damage abilities?
Something that I was hoping to see addressed in the space balance pass: making Engineering captain abilities integrate better with teams. If you compare the captain specializations as they stand right now and as they are on Tribble, Science and Tactical work much better as part of a team than Engineering does; playing as an Engineering captain often feels like being a third wheel while the Scis and Tacs combo off of each other. Is it too late to consider reworking some of the Engineering captain abilities to make them more team-oriented?
For comparison, let's take a look at the clear leaders in terms of team support: Science. Science captains get 4 strong team-support abilities and 1 moderately-useful team-support ability:
Sensor Scan and Scattering Field are directly based around boosting the team's performance: increasing the team's damage to affected targets and resistance to energy weapons, respectively.
Science Fleet ability is a strong team buff; anyone on the team will enjoy a 40% shield resistance buff and boosted shield capacity, no matter what build they're flying.
The ostensibly self-only Deflector Overcharge ends up being another team-support ability: heavily controlled and / or enemies are easier targets for the entire team, and additional outgoing shield healing lets the Science captain keep their teammates on their feet. (And, of course, killing enemies with the exotic damage boost means that they can't threaten your teammates.)
Even Photonic Fleet, although not quite at the team-support level of the other abilities, still provides occasional crowd-control effects.
Tactical captains blend 2 self-only buffs with 3 team support abilities:
Fire On My Mark, their primary team-support ability, functions like a single-target Sensor Scan and is useful to a team for precisely the same reasons - team-wide effective damage increase on the affected target.
Tactical Fleet provides a strong team-wide damage buff.
Tactical Initiative, although less commonly used in practice, is still a team-oriented ability that improves Tactical boff ability recharge.
Even their self-only buffs, Attack Pattern Alpha and Go Down Fighting, still in practice benefit the team: Tactical captains can always redirect their damage against whatever targets need to be taken down.
In comparison, Engineering captains have 3 self-only buffs and only 2 team support abilities:
Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle Worker, although powerful, can only be used by the Engineer on themselves; if the Engineer's teammates are taking heavy damage, the Engineer can't use these abilities to save them.
Nadion Inversion is also a self-only buff; although it does increase the Engineer's damage contribution, it's not as effective as Tactical's APA and GDF (nor should it be), and so it's less useful for taking down targets that the team needs eliminated.
Even the buffed Engineering Fleet is not as powerful of a team support ability when compared to Science Fleet; +40 bonus damage resistance is only a 1 - 1 / 1.4 ~= 28.6% hull damage resistance, when compared to Science Fleet's 40% shield damage resistance.
That leaves EPS Power Transfer as Engineering's only strong team support ability; although it's more useful than before with the new +25 max power levels, it's not enough to make up for the rest of the team support Science or Tactical can bring.
Would it be possible to retool some or all of Engineering's self-only buffs so that they benefit the team? Some possibilities:
For Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle Worker, it would be as simple as making them usable on allies; if that happened, the Engineer would become much more useful at keeping the team alive under heavy fire by applying heals where they're needed most.
Nadion Inversion could be re-imagined to become a team support ability; perhaps the buff is weaker, but it now affects all allies within a 5km radius of the engineer. That would let it combo well with Tactical captains that rely on energy-intensive weaponry. (As a bonus, that change would meant that all captains get a team-wide buff on a 3min cooldown.)
Or perhaps the current effects of NI could be rolled into EPS Power Transfer (or a new Engineering bridge offcer power?), and NI could be replaced with a new team-oriented ability.
I personally enjoy flying spaceships as an Engineering captain, but most of the time I feel like I don't bring as much to a team when compared to what I would be able to offer as a Science or Tactical captain. Please consider reworking Engineering captain abilities to make them more useful for a team!
I'm going to have to say that the goals in the blog simply don't ring true to me.
Let me apply it to my Romulan Command Warbird, of which I'm very happy with.
Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
My fun is not being increased, and with the nerf to Plasmonic Leech and DrainX your actually saying that my fun IS wrong.
Not only that but the nerfs will in fact BREAK my build entirely, as it is the cornerstone of this particular build. The builds on my other characters can adapt, but not this one and especially not with that insane power level penalty that Warbirds Suffer.
Player investment retains value – While things need to be adjusted, a setup that was optimized before should still be useful and effective afterwards.
My DrainX consoles, universal consoles and deflector have been rendered useless with this build and will need to be completely replaced. They serve absolutely no function whatsoever on this build anymore and as such the investment retains no value, nor is it in any way useful or effective to me, thanks.
Not only that, but the BFAW nerf also means all the resources I've spent on those Very Rare lockbox doffs to reduce the cooldown of my Beam abilities has also been rendered useless.
Choices should be meaningful – Anywhere the game gives you a choice, there should be no choice that you always take nor one you never take.
You removed my choice to build a formidable Romulan Warbird that could overcome her singularity core handicap. You removed my choice to use DrainX boosting equipment to achieve the build I wanted.
In this case the rebalance is failing spectacularly, because coupled with the Embassy Console Nerf, the Plasmonic Leech Nerf, the Beam Fire At Will Nerf it all comes together to completely crush and invalidate "everything" I have done with this ship.
Thanks a lot.
"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
I'm going to have to say that the goals in the blog simply don't ring true to me.
Let me apply it to my Romulan Command Warbird, of which I'm very happy with.
Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
My fun is not being increased, and with the nerf to Plasmonic Leech and DrainX your actually saying that my fun IS wrong.
Not only that but the nerfs will in fact BREAK my build entirely, as it is the cornerstone of this particular build. The builds on my other characters can adapt, but not this one and especially not with that insane power level penalty that Warbirds Suffer.
Player investment retains value – While things need to be adjusted, a setup that was optimized before should still be useful and effective afterwards.
My DrainX consoles, universal consoles and deflector have been rendered useless with this build and will need to be completely replaced. They serve absolutely no function whatsoever on this build anymore and as such the investment retains no value, nor is it in any way useful or effective to me, thanks.
Not only that, but the BFAW nerf also means all the resources I've spent on those Very Rare lockbox doffs to reduce the cooldown of my Beam abilities has also been rendered useless.
Choices should be meaningful – Anywhere the game gives you a choice, there should be no choice that you always take nor one you never take.
You removed my choice to build a formidable Romulan Warbird that could overcome her singularity core handicap. You removed my choice to use DrainX boosting equipment to achieve the build I wanted.
In this case the rebalance is failing spectacularly, because coupled with the Embassy Console Nerf, the Plasmonic Leech Nerf, the Beam Fire At Will Nerf it all comes together to completely crush and invalidate "everything" I have done with this ship.
Thanks a lot.
Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
He says that, but deflector overcharge is proof that he thinks all the science fun is concentrated on shield heals and part gens. Control and drain are in his "wrong" and "not fun" categories.
Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
He says that, but deflector overcharge is proof that he thinks all the science fun is concentrated on shield heals and part gens. Control and drain are in his "wrong" and "not fun" categories.
Maybe the Overcharge skill does not provide a percentage bonus to drain/control because they also include resistance to those effects, while heal and exotic stuff doesn't ? Not that I'm for it but it could be the reasoning.
So after some actual testing I find that the damage output on my warbird has been slashed by over 60%!!! And I struggle even to pull 100K DPS on my best day in the live game!
That is the cumulative effect of all these irresponsible nerfs. The min-maxers will take a hit, but still be able to output monster DPS levels, while those of us who dare to do something different get completely crippled by it.
As I said, my fun is clearly "wrong". *shakes head*
"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
So after some actual testing I find that the damage output on my warbird has been slashed by over 60%!!! And I struggle even to pull 100K DPS on my best day in the live game!
That is the cumulative effect of all these irresponsible nerfs. The min-maxers will take a hit, but still be able to output monster DPS levels, while those of us who dare to do something different get completely crippled by it.
As I said, my fun is clearly "wrong". *shakes head*
How is 100k dps bad in any shape or form ? Nothing in the game requires that. Don't get me wrong, I support everyone having fun their way, but you make it sound like 100k is useless. Most of my ships probably only do 10-20% of that damage and I never had any trouble completing anything in the game with that. But then again I am actually not a minmaxer or dps chaser.
So after some actual testing I find that the damage output on my warbird has been slashed by over 60%!!! And I struggle even to pull 100K DPS on my best day in the live game!
That is the cumulative effect of all these irresponsible nerfs. The min-maxers will take a hit, but still be able to output monster DPS levels, while those of us who dare to do something different get completely crippled by it.
As I said, my fun is clearly "wrong". *shakes head*
"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
So after some actual testing I find that the damage output on my warbird has been slashed by over 60%!!! And I struggle even to pull 100K DPS on my best day in the live game!
That is the cumulative effect of all these irresponsible nerfs. The min-maxers will take a hit, but still be able to output monster DPS levels, while those of us who dare to do something different get completely crippled by it.
As I said, my fun is clearly "wrong". *shakes head*
Sorry then, but my point is that your build was premeditated on broken OP stuff and yes I blame Cryptic for that because they let players believe their investments were safe after years and years of not doing anything about it. I do understand your anger in regards to that, I really do.
I have 14 characters and all of them use plasmonic leech, every single one of them. Why ? Because using it was a no-brainer and that should have raised a red flag back when the console was released. I always knew it was OP, but Cryptic seemed to be okay with it. The same goes for the plasma consoles, at least I never jumped on that bandwagon too much.
Just nerf everything for balance the Game.. its so simple.. and call it Fun.
Yeahhhh
Build that wall between STO and Fun, and make Fun pay for it!
Yeah, bad political humour aside, I think most of us can agree this nerf-everything-into-irrelevance-and-then-burn-what's-left-with-fire approach to "balance" is going to be brutally hard to live with.
What puzzles me is why this is following so closely upon the heels of the recent skill revamp. If you're going to turn the game upside down and shake it by the heels once, why is it needful to do so again barely a year later?
So you took subnuc beam from a science captain, fine. A couple of problems I have with deflector overcharge.
1) APA boosts exotic damage 50% just like deflector overcharge. Makes no sense whatsoever if exotic damage is science based.
2) Like always, everything new that boosts science goes heavy on heals and exotic damage both of which get boosts left and right. Control, which most people don't push over 400 unless it's a disable build, just gets a paltry +50 which does nothing, and drain which has zero (none whatsoever) percent based boosts in the game gets also +50 which amounts to absolutely nothing. Maybe you decided to punish control and drain because of my "minmax like a 14 year old" posts, but I can pull the same stunt easily with the other two.
3) How can you reconcile that APA gets 4 awesome boosts (5% crit chance with all the CrtD floating around is huge) and science gets subnuc beam ripped off and in return we get only two good boosts and two that do absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.
How about you change a couple of the APA boosts from % to + skill, see how tac captains like it?
This.
If you remove a core ability like SNB from a Sci captain, at least replace it with something that is not a cheap APA knock-off.
It's not "just" the leech though, or even the plasma consoles, its everything.
So many powers and abilities are being nerfed into the ground so hard that it is literally "killing" builds entirely and creating less diversity and "viability".
The leech is not a no-brainer for me and I actually have several characters just without it, but it was the core component of my Warbird since romulan ships are hamstrung by their singularity cores illogical power level penalty.
The Plasma Exploders were a nice bonus DPS and just seeing them nerfed would perhaps have led to a small drop-off in DPS by maybe 5-10%. But then came the FAW nerf, and the FBP nerf etc. Any one of these nerfs would have been fine and managable on their own, but combined its absolutely devestating.
When it comes to the plasma exploders though I quite frankly think they should be reverted to their original proc, but in fixed form.
Originally they had a weaker DoT effect, but due to a bug if one console triggered they all would, which led to a similar problem of high damage output. But quite frankly they should never have turned it into the explosion proc, just fixed the bug alone.
"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
I play a lot of Science Captains in Science VEssels. I am not sure I like that the Subnuke is gone, though admittedly, it was rarely relevant in PvE.
My biggest concern is that Deflector Overcharge is a bit too science-vessel (or temporal vessel) focused. Attack Pattern Alpha boosts all damage, not just exotic stuff, and thus it's useful on all ships. A thing to consider with DO might be if it should not also buff hull heals - then it has at least also a strong place on Cruisers, Command and Pilot ships.
Maybe it could also provide an accuracy buff (which becomes more valuable now with BFAW's accuracy penalty, and accuracy actually affecting BFAW), representing better sensor functioning. (That might warrant some changes to buff bonuses in other areas, but that's the fine work).
Testing on Tribble I noticed one thing:
Subspace Vortex II deals more damage than Gravity Well II, Gravity Well II deals more damage than Destabilizing Resonance Beam III.
Also, Subspace Vortex deals more damage than Subspace Beacon and does not despawn just because you go beyond a certain range, but otherwise provides the same teleport option.
1) Gravity Well is a very powerful crowd control ability. Destabilizing Resonance Beam has a rather weak and situational control effect. Maybe these two powers should be a bit closer in damage, or DSR should grant higher CC/debuffs?
2) Subspace Vortex is admittedly a lockbox power, so maybe it's supposed to be more powerful than "regular" powers (something I don't really appreciate, but if that's how you can get your money, so be it). But it's so far beyond Intel's Subspace Beacon's usefulness it's not even funny. Subspace Beacon needs some serious help. Just teleporting around is not really that valuable, especially since it's difficult to ensure you are also at a useful facing towards the enemy. Maybe give Subspace Beacon significant ambush bonuses, or have it release a strong subspace wake effect that inflicts damage/hold/disable effects on activation/expiration. Definitely remove the expiration distance and just use the range as limit how far you can actually teleport. Increase the duration, too. Or give it extra uses during its existence (not that this would really be useful that often)
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
It's quite hard to discuss all the changes and how they affect each other, it's like dominoes. I really hope that enough time is taken to get feedback and make adjustments. After all that's what Tribble is for.
If you remove a core ability like SNB from a Sci captain, at least replace it with something that is not a cheap APA knock-off.
You got the cheap part right. Basically he took away buff stripping and a cooldown increase, and replaced it with a good boost to the half of science he deemed worthy.
It's not "just" the leech though, or even the plasma consoles, its everything.
So many powers and abilities are being nerfed into the ground so hard that it is literally "killing" builds entirely and creating less diversity and "viability".
The leech is not a no-brainer for me and I actually have several characters just without it, but it was the core component of my Warbird since romulan ships are hamstrung by their singularity cores illogical power level penalty.
The Plasma Exploders were a nice bonus DPS and just seeing them nerfed would perhaps have led to a small drop-off in DPS by maybe 5-10%. But then came the FAW nerf, and the FBP nerf etc. Any one of these nerfs would have been fine and managable on their own, but combined its absolutely devestating.
When it comes to the plasma exploders though I quite frankly think they should be reverted to their original proc, but in fixed form.
Originally they had a weaker DoT effect, but due to a bug if one console triggered they all would, which led to a similar problem of high damage output. But quite frankly they should never have turned it into the explosion proc, just fixed the bug alone.
This is what I'm seeing, as well. Running non-meta builds all under 100k, pretty much everything I've put together for "fun, not dps" is getting smacked just as badly (if not worse) as those stacking minmax exploit combinations. Now strict DPS cookie cutter builds will be the only "fun" one can have without horribly gimping their build, it seems. Not sure if "minmax or stick to Normal queues" is what the aim should be, but that's what it looks like, from what I've seen. The skill revamp opened up a lot of build variety for midrange effectiveness, but that looks to be getting completely overturned.
I like the buffs to engineers. An engineer can get 200 system power using EPS + Reroute Power From Life Support 3 or 205 using EPS + OSS3. Miracle Worker heals me for 100k and I can get weapon power drain down to -1 power.
I think I'll be playing my engineer toons a lot more now
It's not "just" the leech though, or even the plasma consoles, its everything.
So many powers and abilities are being nerfed into the ground so hard that it is literally "killing" builds entirely and creating less diversity and "viability".
The leech is not a no-brainer for me and I actually have several characters just without it, but it was the core component of my Warbird since romulan ships are hamstrung by their singularity cores illogical power level penalty.
Romulan ship singularity cores need to adjusted the whole loose power or use ability thing has made it so no one uses singularity abilities. The power penalty is too steep, and ships need their class bonuses like raider and cruiser commands, with the D'deridex I'd like to see strategic maneuvering and weapon effiency. Maybe just Nerf their shield mods by around 0.05 vs other fleet ships of same class or the case of T'varo make it similar to other raiders with enhanced combat cloak. To make up for the fact they have battle cloak. Though cloak needs stealth consoles to be more useful in pve, enhanced cloak needs some changes as well. Singularity powers do they scale well with level or skills ? or do they even scale? I get the feeling they don't, since the damage of some abilities seems the same to me as T5.
I believe all the Nerfs were needed though some may have been too much, like FAW which might need some tweaking. Which I sure they will do the more people who test and give feedback. I hope they have time for adding a few more changes to space balance. Like looking at singularity cores and Romulan ships as a whole.
I would also like to note give all factions interesting space traits to their Boffs, but maybe make these traits like BOFF abilities exchangeable maybe at a cost. currently Romulans honestly have the best traits arguably. I would also like to see every race get a space and ground version of their racial traits to help even out race selections.
Having finally had a chance to look at these changes in apples to apples comparisons, my main concern is with regard to subsystem targeting, now that I'm basically limited to cutting 10 power (minus any resist the target may have) from a subsystem rather than the 35 I had on holodeck (again, minus any resist) I can't say I like this. That said, I have very little by way of deliberate drain skill so I don't know if that's higher with drain skill but it does seem like an excessively large hit to the skills which very few people use as it is.
Contrasting this with the increase I got on my Tykens rift from 5.2 per second to 19.4 per second the hit subsystem targeting takes seems really out of place.
Is there a reason why control skill took a subtle knock? My grav well dropped from -0.25 repel to -0.24 It's likely not going to be a noticeable difference but it is a difference that wasn't noted in the patch notes.
Having finally had a chance to look at these changes in apples to apples comparisons, my main concern is with regard to subsystem targeting, now that I'm basically limited to cutting 10 power (minus any resist the target may have) from a subsystem rather than the 35 I had on holodeck (again, minus any resist) I can't say I like this. That said, I have very little by way of deliberate drain skill so I don't know if that's higher with drain skill but it does seem like an excessively large hit to the skills which very few people use as it is.
Contrasting this with the increase I got on my Tykens rift from 5.2 per second to 19.4 per second the hit subsystem targeting takes seems really out of place.
Is there a reason why control skill took a subtle knock? My grav well dropped from -0.25 repel to -0.24 It's likely not going to be a noticeable difference but it is a difference that wasn't noted in the patch notes.
with six beams it would be around 60 for a full cycle If I read all the changes right. Could be wrong.
Having finally had a chance to look at these changes in apples to apples comparisons, my main concern is with regard to subsystem targeting, now that I'm basically limited to cutting 10 power (minus any resist the target may have) from a subsystem rather than the 35 I had on holodeck (again, minus any resist) I can't say I like this. That said, I have very little by way of deliberate drain skill so I don't know if that's higher with drain skill but it does seem like an excessively large hit to the skills which very few people use as it is.
Contrasting this with the increase I got on my Tykens rift from 5.2 per second to 19.4 per second the hit subsystem targeting takes seems really out of place.
Is there a reason why control skill took a subtle knock? My grav well dropped from -0.25 repel to -0.24 It's likely not going to be a noticeable difference but it is a difference that wasn't noted in the patch notes.
with six beams it would be around 60 for a full cycle If I read all the changes right. Could be wrong.
It would be nice, although the wording in game states "Stacks up to 10 times", though I haven't been to the bloke and checked the details on the manual so it may or may not be 10 stacks per beam I may have to test that later.
Comments
Stacks only 10 times, but I'll let it slide. Seems he removed the annoying cooldown on the ability. I loose a heck of a lot of drain, but gain 100% uptime.
Things I can live with:
FAW nerf - I'm not surprised by this in the least, and as of now agree with it. If you are going to run FAW, you will need to be built for it now.
Plasma Console nerf - Totally fine with it. I wouldn't even mind seeing it go further; I want to be able to choose what goes in my science slots from a list of equal options.
Things I need to test more:
Weapon power drain changes, diminishing returns on weapon power over 100 - I really don't know how this will play out. As of now, it feels a little insulting to given Engineer captains a way to up max weapon power and couple it with a nerf to the same. Kinda puts EPS back where it was in the first place.
Things that still NEED changing:
Torpedoes - Aside from target-able torps (which no one uses), it seems like torps are actually worse with this patch, if that is possible. Up their firing arc to 180 by default (and make 180s 360), reduce the shield resist torps inherently have, or both to at least to start making them a viable option. As it is, torps are only really worthwhile on escorts and raiders, and only in very specialized builds and situations at that.
Tactical Captain Abilities - THESE NEED TO STOP AFFECTING ALL DAMAGE; THEY SHOULD ONLY BUFF WEAPON DAMAGE. I think everyone is fine with TACs being the supreme weapon damage dealers, but they should not be better than Science captains at everything. I mentioned this in my inital reaction post, and lucho80 put this much moreeloquently a few posts back.
Override Subsystem Safeties nerf - I see little reason to slot anything other the OSS1, since the penalty is the same for all three. I also don't care for the fact that the disable can't be resisted...I mean, if you are skilled and plan for it, you should be able to work around it. As it stands now it take the once highly desirable Intel spec slot mostly worthless for me, invalidating a huge number of ship choices.
DEM nerf - In 99% of gameplay scenarios, I don't see why I would EVER want this now. Am I missing something?
Thank you, and I hope that my feedback is helpful at least in a small way.
Pretty much sums up every "fun" addition to science. Those two get them all, every time, over and over.
The ability: Feedback Pulse
cant be buffed with ANY damage buff (with this change)
it cant crit (with this change),
It already has a 15 second global lock out between the end of 1 fbp and the start of another and
shares a cool down with TSS and
its hard counters are available to ships with a LTC sci (and LTC Intel) now,which there are quite a few of..
@crypticspartan#0627 Please allow the default damage and EPG scaling to remain as it is on Holodeck and raise the CAP to 100, 125 and 150 for each respective levels...@ 150% its no higher than the highest of the 1% or 2% chance shield/trait reflects..
..maybe allow an overcap on Science Vessels..
Or Allow all 3 ranks to scale to 100%-150% and modify the duration?
Or "Allow all 3 ranks to scale to 100%-150% " but remove the 50% shield pen.
I LOVE what you did to Tykens Rift! Doubled the initial damage and WOW that subsytem drain looks nice!
Ever get around to changing how Tractor Beam displays it damage?
Rouge Sto Wiki Editor.
That kind of makes those +all damage abilities (APA and GDF) MORE desirable, not less so. Wouldn't it have just been easier to adjust everything that adds +all damage (not just tac abilities)? It seems more like treating the symptom, not the problem.
Are all of the damage rates being adjusted still not working as intended even without the stacking +all damage abilities?
For comparison, let's take a look at the clear leaders in terms of team support: Science. Science captains get 4 strong team-support abilities and 1 moderately-useful team-support ability:
Tactical captains blend 2 self-only buffs with 3 team support abilities:
In comparison, Engineering captains have 3 self-only buffs and only 2 team support abilities:
Would it be possible to retool some or all of Engineering's self-only buffs so that they benefit the team? Some possibilities:
I personally enjoy flying spaceships as an Engineering captain, but most of the time I feel like I don't bring as much to a team when compared to what I would be able to offer as a Science or Tactical captain. Please consider reworking Engineering captain abilities to make them more useful for a team!
Let me apply it to my Romulan Command Warbird, of which I'm very happy with.
Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
My fun is not being increased, and with the nerf to Plasmonic Leech and DrainX your actually saying that my fun IS wrong.
Not only that but the nerfs will in fact BREAK my build entirely, as it is the cornerstone of this particular build. The builds on my other characters can adapt, but not this one and especially not with that insane power level penalty that Warbirds Suffer.
Player investment retains value – While things need to be adjusted, a setup that was optimized before should still be useful and effective afterwards.
My DrainX consoles, universal consoles and deflector have been rendered useless with this build and will need to be completely replaced. They serve absolutely no function whatsoever on this build anymore and as such the investment retains no value, nor is it in any way useful or effective to me, thanks.
Not only that, but the BFAW nerf also means all the resources I've spent on those Very Rare lockbox doffs to reduce the cooldown of my Beam abilities has also been rendered useless.
Choices should be meaningful – Anywhere the game gives you a choice, there should be no choice that you always take nor one you never take.
You removed my choice to build a formidable Romulan Warbird that could overcome her singularity core handicap. You removed my choice to use DrainX boosting equipment to achieve the build I wanted.
In this case the rebalance is failing spectacularly, because coupled with the Embassy Console Nerf, the Plasmonic Leech Nerf, the Beam Fire At Will Nerf it all comes together to completely crush and invalidate "everything" I have done with this ship.
Thanks a lot.
Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
He says that, but deflector overcharge is proof that he thinks all the science fun is concentrated on shield heals and part gens. Control and drain are in his "wrong" and "not fun" categories.
Maybe the Overcharge skill does not provide a percentage bonus to drain/control because they also include resistance to those effects, while heal and exotic stuff doesn't ? Not that I'm for it but it could be the reasoning.
That is the cumulative effect of all these irresponsible nerfs. The min-maxers will take a hit, but still be able to output monster DPS levels, while those of us who dare to do something different get completely crippled by it.
As I said, my fun is clearly "wrong". *shakes head*
How is 100k dps bad in any shape or form ? Nothing in the game requires that. Don't get me wrong, I support everyone having fun their way, but you make it sound like 100k is useless. Most of my ships probably only do 10-20% of that damage and I never had any trouble completing anything in the game with that. But then again I am actually not a minmaxer or dps chaser.
Make Sto great again. *like*
Just nerf everything for balance the Game.. its so simple.. and call it Fun.
Yeahhhh
David
*** Aktiv since 03.06.10 ***
Sorry then, but my point is that your build was premeditated on broken OP stuff and yes I blame Cryptic for that because they let players believe their investments were safe after years and years of not doing anything about it. I do understand your anger in regards to that, I really do.
I have 14 characters and all of them use plasmonic leech, every single one of them. Why ? Because using it was a no-brainer and that should have raised a red flag back when the console was released. I always knew it was OP, but Cryptic seemed to be okay with it. The same goes for the plasma consoles, at least I never jumped on that bandwagon too much.
Build that wall between STO and Fun, and make Fun pay for it!
Yeah, bad political humour aside, I think most of us can agree this nerf-everything-into-irrelevance-and-then-burn-what's-left-with-fire approach to "balance" is going to be brutally hard to live with.
What puzzles me is why this is following so closely upon the heels of the recent skill revamp. If you're going to turn the game upside down and shake it by the heels once, why is it needful to do so again barely a year later?
This.
If you remove a core ability like SNB from a Sci captain, at least replace it with something that is not a cheap APA knock-off.
So many powers and abilities are being nerfed into the ground so hard that it is literally "killing" builds entirely and creating less diversity and "viability".
The leech is not a no-brainer for me and I actually have several characters just without it, but it was the core component of my Warbird since romulan ships are hamstrung by their singularity cores illogical power level penalty.
The Plasma Exploders were a nice bonus DPS and just seeing them nerfed would perhaps have led to a small drop-off in DPS by maybe 5-10%. But then came the FAW nerf, and the FBP nerf etc. Any one of these nerfs would have been fine and managable on their own, but combined its absolutely devestating.
When it comes to the plasma exploders though I quite frankly think they should be reverted to their original proc, but in fixed form.
Originally they had a weaker DoT effect, but due to a bug if one console triggered they all would, which led to a similar problem of high damage output. But quite frankly they should never have turned it into the explosion proc, just fixed the bug alone.
My biggest concern is that Deflector Overcharge is a bit too science-vessel (or temporal vessel) focused. Attack Pattern Alpha boosts all damage, not just exotic stuff, and thus it's useful on all ships. A thing to consider with DO might be if it should not also buff hull heals - then it has at least also a strong place on Cruisers, Command and Pilot ships.
Maybe it could also provide an accuracy buff (which becomes more valuable now with BFAW's accuracy penalty, and accuracy actually affecting BFAW), representing better sensor functioning. (That might warrant some changes to buff bonuses in other areas, but that's the fine work).
Testing on Tribble I noticed one thing:
Subspace Vortex II deals more damage than Gravity Well II, Gravity Well II deals more damage than Destabilizing Resonance Beam III.
Also, Subspace Vortex deals more damage than Subspace Beacon and does not despawn just because you go beyond a certain range, but otherwise provides the same teleport option.
1) Gravity Well is a very powerful crowd control ability. Destabilizing Resonance Beam has a rather weak and situational control effect. Maybe these two powers should be a bit closer in damage, or DSR should grant higher CC/debuffs?
2) Subspace Vortex is admittedly a lockbox power, so maybe it's supposed to be more powerful than "regular" powers (something I don't really appreciate, but if that's how you can get your money, so be it). But it's so far beyond Intel's Subspace Beacon's usefulness it's not even funny. Subspace Beacon needs some serious help. Just teleporting around is not really that valuable, especially since it's difficult to ensure you are also at a useful facing towards the enemy. Maybe give Subspace Beacon significant ambush bonuses, or have it release a strong subspace wake effect that inflicts damage/hold/disable effects on activation/expiration. Definitely remove the expiration distance and just use the range as limit how far you can actually teleport. Increase the duration, too. Or give it extra uses during its existence (not that this would really be useful that often)
You got the cheap part right. Basically he took away buff stripping and a cooldown increase, and replaced it with a good boost to the half of science he deemed worthy.
This is what I'm seeing, as well. Running non-meta builds all under 100k, pretty much everything I've put together for "fun, not dps" is getting smacked just as badly (if not worse) as those stacking minmax exploit combinations. Now strict DPS cookie cutter builds will be the only "fun" one can have without horribly gimping their build, it seems. Not sure if "minmax or stick to Normal queues" is what the aim should be, but that's what it looks like, from what I've seen. The skill revamp opened up a lot of build variety for midrange effectiveness, but that looks to be getting completely overturned.
I think I'll be playing my engineer toons a lot more now
Romulan ship singularity cores need to adjusted the whole loose power or use ability thing has made it so no one uses singularity abilities. The power penalty is too steep, and ships need their class bonuses like raider and cruiser commands, with the D'deridex I'd like to see strategic maneuvering and weapon effiency. Maybe just Nerf their shield mods by around 0.05 vs other fleet ships of same class or the case of T'varo make it similar to other raiders with enhanced combat cloak. To make up for the fact they have battle cloak. Though cloak needs stealth consoles to be more useful in pve, enhanced cloak needs some changes as well. Singularity powers do they scale well with level or skills ? or do they even scale? I get the feeling they don't, since the damage of some abilities seems the same to me as T5.
I believe all the Nerfs were needed though some may have been too much, like FAW which might need some tweaking. Which I sure they will do the more people who test and give feedback. I hope they have time for adding a few more changes to space balance. Like looking at singularity cores and Romulan ships as a whole.
I would also like to note give all factions interesting space traits to their Boffs, but maybe make these traits like BOFF abilities exchangeable maybe at a cost. currently Romulans honestly have the best traits arguably. I would also like to see every race get a space and ground version of their racial traits to help even out race selections.
Contrasting this with the increase I got on my Tykens rift from 5.2 per second to 19.4 per second the hit subsystem targeting takes seems really out of place.
Is there a reason why control skill took a subtle knock? My grav well dropped from -0.25 repel to -0.24 It's likely not going to be a noticeable difference but it is a difference that wasn't noted in the patch notes.
with six beams it would be around 60 for a full cycle If I read all the changes right. Could be wrong.
It would be nice, although the wording in game states "Stacks up to 10 times", though I haven't been to the bloke and checked the details on the manual so it may or may not be 10 stacks per beam I may have to test that later.