Hull Tanking Meta vs Shield Tanking

n0vastarone

So I know Hull tanking seems to be everyones go to.
Since star trek has always used shields in their shows, I really think its time shield tanking got some love to bring it back on par with hull tanking, because personally, I just don't enjoy the hull tanking meta. Would love to see shields getting some love.

darkbladejk

Simply because something is "meta" doesn't mean you're required to use it. I find most "metas" to be subjective opinion based on a 1-2% difference the player is never going to feel anyways, and also whatever flavor of the month item is. Shield tanking in this game is at a disadvantage thanks to things that can bypass shields, and things like the borg shield drain. Typically why hull tanking has been the more popular of the two. Though I wouldn't mind seeing some more options in the tanking realm and more support for shield tanking.

davefenestrator

^ both of the above. I routinely get shields drained in TFOs on captains with a Covariant Capx3 shield, 2-3 points in Drain Expertise, and a +30% shield console, so hull health and tanking like Neutronium consoles seems to work better right now. But I don't then put all of my effort into hull tanking. Often shields are useful, you just can't rely on them alone.

spiritborn

corinthalas wrote: »

darkbladejk wrote: »

Simply because something is "meta" doesn't mean you're required to use it. I find most "metas" to be subjective opinion based on a 1-2% difference the player is never going to feel anyways, and also whatever flavor of the month item is. Shield tanking in this game is at a disadvantage thanks to things that can bypass shields, and things like the borg shield drain. Typically why hull tanking has been the more popular of the two. Though I wouldn't mind seeing some more options in the tanking realm and more support for shield tanking.

Mostly it's because enemy shield drains are at least 10 times more effective than your own. A non-science enemy ship using Charged Particle Burst 1 will almost (if not completely) deplete your shields in one go. But you can be in a pure-science ship, maxed aux, and your Charge Particle Burst III will barely tickle their shields in return. Go all in on your drain ratings, and it might actually make a noticeable dent.

Is this truly a case of NPC abilities being stronger or simply due them having more shield hp then players, IIRC captain level mobs have hit point numbers most players could only dream of having.

alcyoneserene

Shield tanking may not be meta, but shields definitely do work, if you're willing to work them well.

After a lot of testing, I settled for resilient adaptive shields, as they protect the hull much better. It helps to have shield batteries to maximize shield subsystem power when anticipating a lot of damage as that helps both regeneration and their strength. High shield mod ships and especially science vessels with their highest shield mods do really well with that.

Some options exist that translate damage dealt into shield healing. Warbirds have the Valdore's console. There's a universal console from a low level c-store ship that gives subsystem power with a decent duration and short enough cool-down. Definitely worth using to boost aux power to boost shield healing powers, then switch to shield power immediately to allow them to continue regenerating at their max.

Shield overload trait is great, requiring a T6 Fed ship and EP2shields. K12 consoles can make them even harder, though I'm not sure what the stats really do (diminishing returns, hard caps) entirely as shield hardness stat is bugged, but in itself it does work

I find it a lot of fun to try to rely on shields to protect squishy hulls. Some ships are very special, like the scimitars if owning one of the T5s consoles, which allow shields to stay up while cloaked, and they can regenerate that way.

Those are just some examples. Nothing quite like working a complex ship and accounting for all its abilities in combat, especially when an NPC elite mob decides to focus you while you try to stay in one piece and run, hide (cloak), disable, or divert.

phoenixc

True, even the weakest enemy ships seem to have mega-drain tractor beams and quite often when my tractor-breaking skills are on cooldown I have tried tractoring a mob that has me tractored and my shields drop a lot faster than theirs no matter how much aux power and drain skill I have and what quality my tractor officer is. Recently I have started using "parting gift" a lot despite the expense of outfitting numerous characters with it since the automatic transporter bomb helps even the field a little.

foxrockssocks

spiritborn wrote: »

corinthalas wrote: »

darkbladejk wrote: »

Simply because something is "meta" doesn't mean you're required to use it. I find most "metas" to be subjective opinion based on a 1-2% difference the player is never going to feel anyways, and also whatever flavor of the month item is. Shield tanking in this game is at a disadvantage thanks to things that can bypass shields, and things like the borg shield drain. Typically why hull tanking has been the more popular of the two. Though I wouldn't mind seeing some more options in the tanking realm and more support for shield tanking.

Mostly it's because enemy shield drains are at least 10 times more effective than your own. A non-science enemy ship using Charged Particle Burst 1 will almost (if not completely) deplete your shields in one go. But you can be in a pure-science ship, maxed aux, and your Charge Particle Burst III will barely tickle their shields in return. Go all in on your drain ratings, and it might actually make a noticeable dent.

Is this truly a case of NPC abilities being stronger or simply due them having more shield hp then players, IIRC captain level mobs have hit point numbers most players could only dream of having.

Its the scaling of abilities for sure. If you happen to build a heavy drain boat with 400+ drain, you'll notice a huge improvement in your shield survivability versus the various NPC shield drains versus that same boat with no focus on drain. The scaling issue is also why FBP is so OP on the Queen and requires a separate chatbox to message the player so they might not kill themselves.


Now, drains aside, there is not a whole lot a player can do to harden shields either. The best console for this is the voth subpower core console which offers a huge amount of shield resistance, but there are very few others. This in comparison to a vast array of hull improvement consoles.

darkbladejk

Let's also not forget the Queen gets a Feedback Pulse 4 compared to our 3

baudl

really would like to see something like those Voth shields for players...single reflected BO kills me. Have to hammer ESC everytime I see them raising their uber shields.

seaofsorrows

baudl wrote: »

really would like to see something like those Voth shields for players...single reflected BO kills me. Have to hammer ESC everytime I see them raising their uber shields.

We used to have it and it was nerfed.

At one time, Feedback Pulse was insanely powerful, especially if you used the trait from the Krenim Science Vessel that doubled it's power. It basically let you do what the Voth do to players, the harder they hit you, the quicker they got destroyed. We enjoyed it for a while, but of course it was 'adjusted.'

I am not opposed to abilities that are obviously broken being fixed, but I never liked the way Cryptic adjusts things, and sadly Feedback Pulse was another victim. It went from 'must have' to 'never use' which is a shame. I would love to see Feedback Pulse adjusted back up.. not to the level it was, but somewhere in between where it was and where it is now.

The mechanic was fun and added some interesting build diversity, it prompted builds based around drawing threat and getting everything to focus on you, and that mechanic was fun. It also gave tanks some real teeth and made them fun and dangerous. It's still a mechanic that has a place today, I use it sometimes to get everyone focused on me while my uber DPS buddies rain hellfire but it's just not the same without the feedback pulse.

davefenestrator

There'd be fewer nerfs needed if Cryptic would go ahead and drop the remnants of PVP still in the game.

I have no stats, but I suspect there are more Windows 7 users than people who play PVP outside of when it's an endeavor. So drop PVP February 2022 as well. Stop spending the resources to maintain PVP, spend them on PVE instead.

Fallout 76 just dropped its Battle Royale PVP mode since most players never used it outside of the equivalent of endeavors, and many skipped it even then. The other PVP that existed at launch has been steadily reduced over time.

dragon

Shields need to be buffed regardless; half the time we might as well not even have them. Shield and hull heals, too; no real point when literally the next hit renders it moot.

jagdtier44

Can it really even be called a hull tanking "meta" ? There really is no shield tanking in this game, all the abilities buff hull tanking, hull temp hp and heal massive amounts of hull hp.

We don't have shield versions of Threatening stance, Honored Dead, DPRM, The disco shield + core combo, traits like repair crews or living hull and on and on

Hard to say it's just the meta when the option really doesn't exist for the other version

borg0vermind

n0vastarone wrote: »

So I know Hull tanking seems to be everyones go to.
Since star trek has always used shields in their shows, I really think its time shield tanking got some love to bring it back on par with hull tanking, because personally, I just don't enjoy the hull tanking meta. Would love to see shields getting some love.

I agree, but this is something that won't happen due to tech redesign issues.

I have a shield tank mine-layer but I had to go hullish too, shield tanking is just not enough.

Quick shields fix for players: X2 the cap and reduce the default pen-through for all weapons.

There are plenty of shield-bosting things but the use of them is very limited because you can get rid of shields fast or bypass them (like it happened to my mine layer).

cryptkeeper0

You need shields + abilities that combat shields going down. EpS3 can easily do this with the proper doff support. Being a engineer and using the miracle worker spec tree helps. As a shield tank you can not, only do shields don't forget to heal hull since ultimately hull is more important the shields as you can live without shields. The only thing that makes shield tanking hard is maintaining agro with a shield tank. So if your on a science ship, use the threat gen science consoles and lots of aoe abilities like GW3. Stick with photonic officer 2 and some skill points for cooldowns. Transfer shield strength is one of the best shield BO abilities, but if you still struggle with tactical team, EPS3,TSS, use a science team 1 as it does not share cooldowns with tact team no more and can instantly bring shield back up.

legendarylycan

cryptkeeper0 wrote: »

since ultimately hull is more important the shields as you can live without shields.

Which is the exact opposite of how it was in actual Star Trek - there, keeping shields up was critical, because once they went down, the hull buckled way too easily.

That's why they should swap things around - shields should be the numeric that can get into the hundreds of thousands, while hull can barely reach 40k on most ships...of course, they would also need to rebalance every hull and shield heal in the game around those new numbers AND go through every shield penetrating/ignoring ability in the game and reducing them so SCIENCE! doesn't become even more of a supernova-fest than it already is - so that would never happen.​​

cryptkeeper0

legendarylycan#5411 wrote: »

cryptkeeper0 wrote: »

since ultimately hull is more important the shields as you can live without shields.

Which is the exact opposite of how it was in actual Star Trek - there, keeping shields up was critical, because once they went down, the hull buckled way too easily.

That's why they should swap things around - shields should be the numeric that can get into the hundreds of thousands, while hull can barely reach 40k on most ships...of course, they would also need to rebalance every hull and shield heal in the game around those new numbers AND go through every shield penetrating/ignoring ability in the game and reducing them so SCIENCE! doesn't become even more of a supernova-fest than it already is - so that would never happen.​​

I wouldn't say the opposite. Also that depends on the era, tos hull tended to not blow up from every shot. It was the TMP era that really showed that, and next gen. Science would be king, and torps would be terrible unless they got rid of the whole shield torp resist thing. I personally like hull tanking, but maybe that's because I fly a galaxy class on my main. Changes like this would kill all cruiser viability, escorts would become true glass cannons, science ships would be godly tough and powerful.

phoenixc

cryptkeeper0 wrote: »

legendarylycan#5411 wrote: »

cryptkeeper0 wrote: »

since ultimately hull is more important the shields as you can live without shields.

Which is the exact opposite of how it was in actual Star Trek - there, keeping shields up was critical, because once they went down, the hull buckled way too easily.

That's why they should swap things around - shields should be the numeric that can get into the hundreds of thousands, while hull can barely reach 40k on most ships...of course, they would also need to rebalance every hull and shield heal in the game around those new numbers AND go through every shield penetrating/ignoring ability in the game and reducing them so SCIENCE! doesn't become even more of a supernova-fest than it already is - so that would never happen.​​

I wouldn't say the opposite. Also that depends on the era, tos hull tended to not blow up from every shot. It was the TMP era that really showed that, and next gen. Science would be king, and torps would be terrible unless they got rid of the whole shield torp resist thing. I personally like hull tanking, but maybe that's because I fly a galaxy class on my main. Changes like this would kill all cruiser viability, escorts would become true glass cannons, science ships would be godly tough and powerful.

That hull toughness in TOS compared to anything after it (except for ENT to some degree) is because sometime between the late 2240s and 2270 the Federation stopped building armored ships and went to a thin-skinned shield dependent build doctrine that took advantage of the breakthrough in shield technology that also resulted in having to tie the weapons into the warp reactors instead of the impulse system to defeat those improved shields (and in doing so killed the FTL combat that reigned supreme up until then).

It was an allegory to the trend in warships in the real world in the 20th century, the big heavily armored, big-gunned ships of WWII gave way to thinner-skinned but more agile ships equipped with active defenses and missiles as the idea changed from absorbing hits well to avoiding being hit.