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The major nerf to Maelstrom Torpedo (updated with changes to maelstrom on tribble)
xgamefreakz
Member Posts: 76 Arc User
Newest for post Aug 23 patch: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/comment/13750028
The link to my comment in this thread for feedback on the updated changes from the blog that cryptic posted on Jul 31 to the Maelstrom Torpedo that is currently present on tribble: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/comment/13749366 (if link does not identify which comment, its my lengthy comment on the same page the link is, probably located near when you scroll all the way down)
This is part 1 of this write-up, as the number of words in it turned out to be too long to upload in a single thread.
Part 2 directly continues from this article and is linked here: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1271236/the-major-nerf-to-maelstrom-torpedo-part-2 (edit: part 2 is in the comment directly below)
Hi, I hope this reaches mainly the system developer Jonathan Herlache.
This is regarding the nerf to the maelstrom torpedo as of the latest patch today of 7/13/23.
The changes are: "Updates for Maelstrom Quantum Torpedo Launcher: Recharge time halved, damage reduced to compensate with overall dps unchanged."
As tested today post patch, its base damage has been essentially halved while its cooldown per charge has also being halved.
Here are my thoughts on the maelstrom torpedo pre-nerf:
When the maelstrom torp was shown on the developer live-stream, it was immediately apparent that it was going to be drastic addition to our builds. When tested day one of launch, it turned out to be true performance and mechanics wise and immediately to me it set the record for the new best thing ever added to DPSing/min-maxing. The maelstrom torpedo is both powerful and extremely versatile and being one of the top DPSers and min-maxers at the moment, I liked its usefulness utility wise just as much to its brute force in damage, as the maelstrom easily became one of the most useful tools on support builds. The maelstrom was easily a straight upgrade-addition to full torpedo and support build, while also offering some use for Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) builds, giving DEW builds a decent alternative to slot in at least 1 maelstrom with torpedo spread to offer good spike damage which is more favorable on elite and or shorter content, while its performance diminishes on more general and or longer content.
These are my thoughts on how the nerf has affected the use of the maelstrom torpedo:
Firstly, its important to note a few mechanics and how it affects where the torpedo sits in its usefulness. Under High yield 3 (HY3) and 3 charges, the total damage of maelstrom is roughly around 7-10 times the total damage of a quantum torpedo that is also under HY3. So each charge of the torpedo is around 2+ times the damage of a quantum. This high damage comes with a very long recharge of 30s per charge. If you math out the recharge of a quantum torp of around 8-10 seconds, the average DPS of the maelstrom under 1 charge is slightly higher to similar to a quantum torp, this makes it seem fine on paper. However, this isn't the scenario normally, most torpedoes, and recently now, 1 tricobalt, can have their recharge reduced massively through the use of either Concentrate Firepower (CF) or the use of multiple projectile weapons officer duty officers (DOFFs) that each gives a chance to recharge torpedo cooldown. In order not to make the maelstrom be able to recharge a their huge damage charges in such a fast time, maelstroms cannot have their cooldowns recharge by anything (at this moment, haste can recharge maelstroms, although its supposedly planned to be changed, and that in the first place, haste based recharging of cd for maelstroms is not effective as it requires too many cost opportunities (you can waste like 4-5 consoles for a 1 time reduction of 1 maelstrom charge to be recharged in 8 seconds) so it is not a concern at the moment). This means that the averaged DPS on a non-maelstrom torpedo is much higher than the averaged DPS based on the typical recharge, which also puts its averaged DPS higher than a maelstrom, as it cannot reduce its cooldown. However, the maelstrom has the ability to store charges and deal damage based on how many charges it has, creating a huge burst damage. This gives maelstrom its characteristics where its performs more favorably where higher burst damage is better than higher average damage. But this also means that the maelstrom's entire strength comes only from how high it's burst damage is. Essentially, if while retaining its inability to have its cooldown reduced, you decrease the base damage of the maelstrom while also reducing its cooldown so its average damage is the same, it becomes increasingly less effective, up to the point where if it has the same damage as a quantum, while its recharge is also the same, it essentially becomes a useless torpedo in the meta as its simply a quantum but one that cannot have its cooldown reduced. Do also note that in addition to CF giving multiple procs of HY, there are traits that can also give potentially multiple procs of either Torpedo spread or HY.
As was described on the developer live stream, the maelstrom was designed to imitate the idea of shooting down an enemy ships's shield and then launching torpedoes at the enemy that is also seen on ST TV shows. The maelstrom's long cooldown but high damage tries to incentivize you to use that torpedo in that way to supposedly get the most out of it. However in practice, trying to use maelstrom this way is not always the better decision. Fast time to kill, torpedo travel time and build archetypes and mechanic constraints, and that some enemies can regenerate a decent portion of their shield facing in a rather short amount of time are some of the hindering factors. However, before the nerf, this issues are not really of concern thanks to the torpedo's huge spike damage; you are likely going to ignore needing to fire the torpedo only when shields are down, and simply firing it regardless anyway. For most DEW builds, you will be using maelstrom alongside with torpedo spread, most likely torpedo spread 3 if possible. Under torp spread 3, its potential to massively damage or out-right one-shot multiple enemies is high pre-nerf. The nerf robbed the maelstrom of half of its potential spike damage, which is a straight downside to all kinds of builds, to give players the capability to let off another round of the torpedo in what is essentially a "less charged up state". I question the actual usefulness of that. Take for example a maelstrom spread 1 that does 2x hits to 3 enemies each at 5000 damage per hit. You have 2 groups of enemies, each with 3 enemies and 1000 shield facing and 5000 hull. For the sake of simplicity, bleedthrough is ignored in this example. Within 29seconds, a pre-nerfed maelstrom spread 1 that is currently at 1 charge would do to 3 targets each 1000 shield damage for the first hit due to shields, taking its entire facing down, then dealing 1000 hull damage (1000/0.25 is 4000, shields reduce kinetic damage by 75%, remainder of the 1000 damage in full to hull), the second hit will then deal 5000 hull damage, killing all 3 targets. Since each charge is at 30 seconds, it will deal no damage to the 2nd group of enemy as you have no charges to fire by 29 seconds. Its total damage after 29 seconds is 21000 damage with 3000 of the damage being overkill (7000 damage x3). A post-nerfed maelstrom torp that is currently at 1 charge would do to 3 targets each 625 shield damage for the first hit due to shields. Because its shield facing is still up, the 2nd hit would deal 375 shield damage, and then 1000 hull damage (2500x0.25 is 625, remainder shield at 375, 375/0.25 is 1500, remainder 2nd hit at 1000 (2500 - 1500) damage directly to hull). The 3 targets of the first group is still alive, you are unlikely going to sit and wait 15s while doing nothing for its next charge, and likely will kill the targets with your other weapons. The same is then repeated on the 2nd group of enemies 15s later after firing the maelstrom for the first time. This bring the total damage done by maelstrom for this scenario after 29 second to be 12000 damage (2000 damage x3 x2 groups). So even though the base damage was halved but the cooldown was also halved which was supposed to retain the same overall DPS, in practice it does not due to the various factors. This example shows why for this kind of charge up style of equipment, you are better off waiting until that equipment is charged up further, instead of letting it off as soon as it gain a charge. In practice, take for example the VAQ console from the Texas ship, similar to this, you are better off waiting until it has gain a bit more charge before firing than letting it go off the moment it has gained 1 charge, although most people are going to fire it off the moment it has 1 charge, not for the reasons of efficiency but in order to refresh the duration of the starship trait Universal Designs, as well as some people will spam fire anything they use regardless.
Here are some build archetypes and its constraints on the use of maelstrom on them.
Fire at will (FAW) DEW builds:
The priority is to keep uptime on FAW as high as possible, it is done through 2 ways , with the starship trait entwined tactical matrices (ETM) or redirecting arrays. ETM is preferred as the minimum cooldown of FAW is 20s, and redirecting arrays only allows up to a 15s long FAW. ETM requires you to slot a torpedo, and fire it off consistently so that you can consistently activate further torpedo spreads which gives you more activations of FAW, allowing for potential for a full 20s of FAW back to back. Because you cannot activate torpedo spread again if there already is a torpedo spread that is currently, you are incentivized to have a torpedo launched nearing the 8-10 second mark regardless. in order to maintain 2 10s long FAW back to back and repeat it. This means that the minimum recharge time your torpedo needs outside of torpedo reducing stuff is at least 10s. Unless you are consistently able to let off your torpedo right at the moment it recharges at 10s, a slightly short torpedo recharge is more ideal. Most people slot in dark matter quantum torpedo for both having a 8s recharge and for the 2pc bonus from the lorca's ambition set. This means that by default on a 8 weapon ship, 1 weapon is already reserved to a torpedo instead of beam array. Because each charge is 15s post-nerf, replacing that torp with maelstrom will not work, so you are left with the choice to lose another beam array for the maelstrom. On more general content, there is less to no need to slot in CF3 on the build for torpedoes as targets do not live for long, while in elite content, slotting in CF3 to recharge the torpedo is more ideal. FAW targets 2 targets at random to hit, not even guaranteeing the current target you are targeting to be hit with FAW, making controlling which target's shield or hull to deplete less consistent. However this matters little in the first place as torpedo spread is generally the most useful way to use maelstrom, and you are not likely to wait for a moment where you have ensured multiple enemies shields are down before firing it and fire it regardless. Additionally since most people prefer FAW builds with beam arrays instead of dual beam banks, the ship is in a broadside state which means additional delay before being able to fire your maelstrom from needing to turn the ship to face enemies. Post-nerf, on general content you lose damage in the charge-based efficiency example as explained above, and on elite content, slotting CF is now appealing and its loss in massive spike damage while still being unable to be recharged from CF is a huge downside.
Beam overload (BO) / Surgical Strike (SS) / Reroute reserves to weapon (RRTW)
These builds generally work in a similar fashion, the constraints for slotting maelstrom here is down to how these builds function fundamentally. They do big single target DPS at the expense of loss of AOE/multitarget damage. On most of these builds on general content, you are able to one shot most frigates in a single salvo, and on more well meta equipped builds, can one shot cruisers and even battleships. This make the concept of attempting to shoot its shield down and then fire a torpedo at it rather moot. What maelstrom offers in these builds is that on say a 5/3 ship, losing 1 front dual beam bank for a maelstrom, can be a useful alternative, giving what is usually a only single target DPS build the capability to deal AOE/multitarget damage once in a while, further more the high spike damage pre-nerf made it likely to one shot the enemies the maelstroms hit, making it unlikely that you would need to spend further BO salvos on each enemy. Post nerf, this benefits have been drastically reduced, and if each enemies are still alive after the maelstrom salvo, and you would still need to individually target them and put in them a BO salvo anyway, then its usefulness basically got reduced to near zero, as its only usefulness that remains is to be used on single target HP enemy that can well survive many BO salvos. Keep in mind that on such builds, the vast majority of your consoles would be ideally only boosting DEW damage, and maelstrom itself is relying entirely on itself that is buffed mainly only from your bridge officer (BOFF) skills, and not your passive stats. In elite scenarios, its unlikely that you would sacrifice 2 front weapon for a torpedo for these kinds of builds as optimal single target builds for these archetypes puts dual beam banks at a higher priority, that cannot be slotted in aft slots, and if its forward facing build, slotting the maelstrom aft is not ideal either, so you would either pick a torp that can have its CD reduced for sustained fire under CF3, or the maelstrom, of which post-nerf similar to FAW, a massive lose in spike damage is a huge downside in this scenario.
Full torpedo boats
Pre-nerf maelstrom use on torpedo build is a straight addition and upgrade due to how torpedo builds work. Slotting more torpedoes doesn't equal that each torpedo has equal distributed additional usefulness. With CF3 being the ultimate choice in elite content, while multiple projectile torpedo DOFFs being preferred in use on non-elite content, maelstroms only improve torpedo builds because torpedo special attacks are not spread out equally among all the torpedoes equipped, they are focused only a few or even just one torpedo at a time, which is why beyond enhanced biomolecular photon (EBM) torpedo, which is the only non targetable AOE torpedo under HY, every other torp is better slotted with quantum's, as the longer cooldown can be greatly mitigated while providing straight up bigger damage; EBM and your strongest quantum will be priority for torpedo special attacks. Because the other torpedoes equipped are less useful, instead they can be replaced with maelstrom, offering greater overall efficiency and DPS. Under CF3, a quantum under constant fire would out DPS a maelstrom, so its spike DPS is its only benefit, the faster the content is, the bigger of portion the usefulness of maelstroms will be. Post-nerf, this improved efficiency and DPS has been straight out halved, as on torpedo boats, its directly tied with the relation explained earlier above since all your front weapons are basically torpedoes; the closer the maelstrom gets to a regular quantum, the less useful it will be.
Full support builds
Support builds can simply be characterized like this: deal as little damage as necessary while improving the damage of the main DPSer as much as possible. This is done basically from tactical damage and debuffs. A better tactical damage comes from doing as much damage in little time as possible, while also ignoring the need to have high overall averaged / sustained DPS, as doing high DPS overall is detrimental to the main DPSer, for the purpose of dealing just enough damage to certain enemies. Though technically this is taking damage away from the main DPSer, it can massively improve the main DPSer's overall DPS by going after where its least efficient for the main DPSser to focus on (eg, main DPSer is a BO build, biggest weakness is in the lack of AOE/multitarget damage. Additional smaller targets with low HP can reduce the main DPSer overall DPS, the support can cover for that instead so the main DPSer doesn't have to, improving overall DPS). The maelstrom easily sits as the number one tactical damage at the moment that you can use on a support build, and post-nerf, the effectiveness of that has also been straight out halved.
Full EPG builds
To keep this short, weapons on science builds are generally not effective in dealing damage, and weapon slots are mainly used for set bonuses to further boost science damage. Maelstrom can replace some of that to a decent degree in usefulness. Post-nerf, that usefulness has also been halved.
The link to my comment in this thread for feedback on the updated changes from the blog that cryptic posted on Jul 31 to the Maelstrom Torpedo that is currently present on tribble: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/comment/13749366 (if link does not identify which comment, its my lengthy comment on the same page the link is, probably located near when you scroll all the way down)
This is part 1 of this write-up, as the number of words in it turned out to be too long to upload in a single thread.
Part 2 directly continues from this article and is linked here: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1271236/the-major-nerf-to-maelstrom-torpedo-part-2 (edit: part 2 is in the comment directly below)
Hi, I hope this reaches mainly the system developer Jonathan Herlache.
This is regarding the nerf to the maelstrom torpedo as of the latest patch today of 7/13/23.
The changes are: "Updates for Maelstrom Quantum Torpedo Launcher: Recharge time halved, damage reduced to compensate with overall dps unchanged."
As tested today post patch, its base damage has been essentially halved while its cooldown per charge has also being halved.
Here are my thoughts on the maelstrom torpedo pre-nerf:
When the maelstrom torp was shown on the developer live-stream, it was immediately apparent that it was going to be drastic addition to our builds. When tested day one of launch, it turned out to be true performance and mechanics wise and immediately to me it set the record for the new best thing ever added to DPSing/min-maxing. The maelstrom torpedo is both powerful and extremely versatile and being one of the top DPSers and min-maxers at the moment, I liked its usefulness utility wise just as much to its brute force in damage, as the maelstrom easily became one of the most useful tools on support builds. The maelstrom was easily a straight upgrade-addition to full torpedo and support build, while also offering some use for Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) builds, giving DEW builds a decent alternative to slot in at least 1 maelstrom with torpedo spread to offer good spike damage which is more favorable on elite and or shorter content, while its performance diminishes on more general and or longer content.
These are my thoughts on how the nerf has affected the use of the maelstrom torpedo:
Firstly, its important to note a few mechanics and how it affects where the torpedo sits in its usefulness. Under High yield 3 (HY3) and 3 charges, the total damage of maelstrom is roughly around 7-10 times the total damage of a quantum torpedo that is also under HY3. So each charge of the torpedo is around 2+ times the damage of a quantum. This high damage comes with a very long recharge of 30s per charge. If you math out the recharge of a quantum torp of around 8-10 seconds, the average DPS of the maelstrom under 1 charge is slightly higher to similar to a quantum torp, this makes it seem fine on paper. However, this isn't the scenario normally, most torpedoes, and recently now, 1 tricobalt, can have their recharge reduced massively through the use of either Concentrate Firepower (CF) or the use of multiple projectile weapons officer duty officers (DOFFs) that each gives a chance to recharge torpedo cooldown. In order not to make the maelstrom be able to recharge a their huge damage charges in such a fast time, maelstroms cannot have their cooldowns recharge by anything (at this moment, haste can recharge maelstroms, although its supposedly planned to be changed, and that in the first place, haste based recharging of cd for maelstroms is not effective as it requires too many cost opportunities (you can waste like 4-5 consoles for a 1 time reduction of 1 maelstrom charge to be recharged in 8 seconds) so it is not a concern at the moment). This means that the averaged DPS on a non-maelstrom torpedo is much higher than the averaged DPS based on the typical recharge, which also puts its averaged DPS higher than a maelstrom, as it cannot reduce its cooldown. However, the maelstrom has the ability to store charges and deal damage based on how many charges it has, creating a huge burst damage. This gives maelstrom its characteristics where its performs more favorably where higher burst damage is better than higher average damage. But this also means that the maelstrom's entire strength comes only from how high it's burst damage is. Essentially, if while retaining its inability to have its cooldown reduced, you decrease the base damage of the maelstrom while also reducing its cooldown so its average damage is the same, it becomes increasingly less effective, up to the point where if it has the same damage as a quantum, while its recharge is also the same, it essentially becomes a useless torpedo in the meta as its simply a quantum but one that cannot have its cooldown reduced. Do also note that in addition to CF giving multiple procs of HY, there are traits that can also give potentially multiple procs of either Torpedo spread or HY.
As was described on the developer live stream, the maelstrom was designed to imitate the idea of shooting down an enemy ships's shield and then launching torpedoes at the enemy that is also seen on ST TV shows. The maelstrom's long cooldown but high damage tries to incentivize you to use that torpedo in that way to supposedly get the most out of it. However in practice, trying to use maelstrom this way is not always the better decision. Fast time to kill, torpedo travel time and build archetypes and mechanic constraints, and that some enemies can regenerate a decent portion of their shield facing in a rather short amount of time are some of the hindering factors. However, before the nerf, this issues are not really of concern thanks to the torpedo's huge spike damage; you are likely going to ignore needing to fire the torpedo only when shields are down, and simply firing it regardless anyway. For most DEW builds, you will be using maelstrom alongside with torpedo spread, most likely torpedo spread 3 if possible. Under torp spread 3, its potential to massively damage or out-right one-shot multiple enemies is high pre-nerf. The nerf robbed the maelstrom of half of its potential spike damage, which is a straight downside to all kinds of builds, to give players the capability to let off another round of the torpedo in what is essentially a "less charged up state". I question the actual usefulness of that. Take for example a maelstrom spread 1 that does 2x hits to 3 enemies each at 5000 damage per hit. You have 2 groups of enemies, each with 3 enemies and 1000 shield facing and 5000 hull. For the sake of simplicity, bleedthrough is ignored in this example. Within 29seconds, a pre-nerfed maelstrom spread 1 that is currently at 1 charge would do to 3 targets each 1000 shield damage for the first hit due to shields, taking its entire facing down, then dealing 1000 hull damage (1000/0.25 is 4000, shields reduce kinetic damage by 75%, remainder of the 1000 damage in full to hull), the second hit will then deal 5000 hull damage, killing all 3 targets. Since each charge is at 30 seconds, it will deal no damage to the 2nd group of enemy as you have no charges to fire by 29 seconds. Its total damage after 29 seconds is 21000 damage with 3000 of the damage being overkill (7000 damage x3). A post-nerfed maelstrom torp that is currently at 1 charge would do to 3 targets each 625 shield damage for the first hit due to shields. Because its shield facing is still up, the 2nd hit would deal 375 shield damage, and then 1000 hull damage (2500x0.25 is 625, remainder shield at 375, 375/0.25 is 1500, remainder 2nd hit at 1000 (2500 - 1500) damage directly to hull). The 3 targets of the first group is still alive, you are unlikely going to sit and wait 15s while doing nothing for its next charge, and likely will kill the targets with your other weapons. The same is then repeated on the 2nd group of enemies 15s later after firing the maelstrom for the first time. This bring the total damage done by maelstrom for this scenario after 29 second to be 12000 damage (2000 damage x3 x2 groups). So even though the base damage was halved but the cooldown was also halved which was supposed to retain the same overall DPS, in practice it does not due to the various factors. This example shows why for this kind of charge up style of equipment, you are better off waiting until that equipment is charged up further, instead of letting it off as soon as it gain a charge. In practice, take for example the VAQ console from the Texas ship, similar to this, you are better off waiting until it has gain a bit more charge before firing than letting it go off the moment it has gained 1 charge, although most people are going to fire it off the moment it has 1 charge, not for the reasons of efficiency but in order to refresh the duration of the starship trait Universal Designs, as well as some people will spam fire anything they use regardless.
Here are some build archetypes and its constraints on the use of maelstrom on them.
Fire at will (FAW) DEW builds:
The priority is to keep uptime on FAW as high as possible, it is done through 2 ways , with the starship trait entwined tactical matrices (ETM) or redirecting arrays. ETM is preferred as the minimum cooldown of FAW is 20s, and redirecting arrays only allows up to a 15s long FAW. ETM requires you to slot a torpedo, and fire it off consistently so that you can consistently activate further torpedo spreads which gives you more activations of FAW, allowing for potential for a full 20s of FAW back to back. Because you cannot activate torpedo spread again if there already is a torpedo spread that is currently, you are incentivized to have a torpedo launched nearing the 8-10 second mark regardless. in order to maintain 2 10s long FAW back to back and repeat it. This means that the minimum recharge time your torpedo needs outside of torpedo reducing stuff is at least 10s. Unless you are consistently able to let off your torpedo right at the moment it recharges at 10s, a slightly short torpedo recharge is more ideal. Most people slot in dark matter quantum torpedo for both having a 8s recharge and for the 2pc bonus from the lorca's ambition set. This means that by default on a 8 weapon ship, 1 weapon is already reserved to a torpedo instead of beam array. Because each charge is 15s post-nerf, replacing that torp with maelstrom will not work, so you are left with the choice to lose another beam array for the maelstrom. On more general content, there is less to no need to slot in CF3 on the build for torpedoes as targets do not live for long, while in elite content, slotting in CF3 to recharge the torpedo is more ideal. FAW targets 2 targets at random to hit, not even guaranteeing the current target you are targeting to be hit with FAW, making controlling which target's shield or hull to deplete less consistent. However this matters little in the first place as torpedo spread is generally the most useful way to use maelstrom, and you are not likely to wait for a moment where you have ensured multiple enemies shields are down before firing it and fire it regardless. Additionally since most people prefer FAW builds with beam arrays instead of dual beam banks, the ship is in a broadside state which means additional delay before being able to fire your maelstrom from needing to turn the ship to face enemies. Post-nerf, on general content you lose damage in the charge-based efficiency example as explained above, and on elite content, slotting CF is now appealing and its loss in massive spike damage while still being unable to be recharged from CF is a huge downside.
Beam overload (BO) / Surgical Strike (SS) / Reroute reserves to weapon (RRTW)
These builds generally work in a similar fashion, the constraints for slotting maelstrom here is down to how these builds function fundamentally. They do big single target DPS at the expense of loss of AOE/multitarget damage. On most of these builds on general content, you are able to one shot most frigates in a single salvo, and on more well meta equipped builds, can one shot cruisers and even battleships. This make the concept of attempting to shoot its shield down and then fire a torpedo at it rather moot. What maelstrom offers in these builds is that on say a 5/3 ship, losing 1 front dual beam bank for a maelstrom, can be a useful alternative, giving what is usually a only single target DPS build the capability to deal AOE/multitarget damage once in a while, further more the high spike damage pre-nerf made it likely to one shot the enemies the maelstroms hit, making it unlikely that you would need to spend further BO salvos on each enemy. Post nerf, this benefits have been drastically reduced, and if each enemies are still alive after the maelstrom salvo, and you would still need to individually target them and put in them a BO salvo anyway, then its usefulness basically got reduced to near zero, as its only usefulness that remains is to be used on single target HP enemy that can well survive many BO salvos. Keep in mind that on such builds, the vast majority of your consoles would be ideally only boosting DEW damage, and maelstrom itself is relying entirely on itself that is buffed mainly only from your bridge officer (BOFF) skills, and not your passive stats. In elite scenarios, its unlikely that you would sacrifice 2 front weapon for a torpedo for these kinds of builds as optimal single target builds for these archetypes puts dual beam banks at a higher priority, that cannot be slotted in aft slots, and if its forward facing build, slotting the maelstrom aft is not ideal either, so you would either pick a torp that can have its CD reduced for sustained fire under CF3, or the maelstrom, of which post-nerf similar to FAW, a massive lose in spike damage is a huge downside in this scenario.
Full torpedo boats
Pre-nerf maelstrom use on torpedo build is a straight addition and upgrade due to how torpedo builds work. Slotting more torpedoes doesn't equal that each torpedo has equal distributed additional usefulness. With CF3 being the ultimate choice in elite content, while multiple projectile torpedo DOFFs being preferred in use on non-elite content, maelstroms only improve torpedo builds because torpedo special attacks are not spread out equally among all the torpedoes equipped, they are focused only a few or even just one torpedo at a time, which is why beyond enhanced biomolecular photon (EBM) torpedo, which is the only non targetable AOE torpedo under HY, every other torp is better slotted with quantum's, as the longer cooldown can be greatly mitigated while providing straight up bigger damage; EBM and your strongest quantum will be priority for torpedo special attacks. Because the other torpedoes equipped are less useful, instead they can be replaced with maelstrom, offering greater overall efficiency and DPS. Under CF3, a quantum under constant fire would out DPS a maelstrom, so its spike DPS is its only benefit, the faster the content is, the bigger of portion the usefulness of maelstroms will be. Post-nerf, this improved efficiency and DPS has been straight out halved, as on torpedo boats, its directly tied with the relation explained earlier above since all your front weapons are basically torpedoes; the closer the maelstrom gets to a regular quantum, the less useful it will be.
Full support builds
Support builds can simply be characterized like this: deal as little damage as necessary while improving the damage of the main DPSer as much as possible. This is done basically from tactical damage and debuffs. A better tactical damage comes from doing as much damage in little time as possible, while also ignoring the need to have high overall averaged / sustained DPS, as doing high DPS overall is detrimental to the main DPSer, for the purpose of dealing just enough damage to certain enemies. Though technically this is taking damage away from the main DPSer, it can massively improve the main DPSer's overall DPS by going after where its least efficient for the main DPSser to focus on (eg, main DPSer is a BO build, biggest weakness is in the lack of AOE/multitarget damage. Additional smaller targets with low HP can reduce the main DPSer overall DPS, the support can cover for that instead so the main DPSer doesn't have to, improving overall DPS). The maelstrom easily sits as the number one tactical damage at the moment that you can use on a support build, and post-nerf, the effectiveness of that has also been straight out halved.
Full EPG builds
To keep this short, weapons on science builds are generally not effective in dealing damage, and weapon slots are mainly used for set bonuses to further boost science damage. Maelstrom can replace some of that to a decent degree in usefulness. Post-nerf, that usefulness has also been halved.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Part 2 directly continues from Part 1 and is linked here: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1271235/the-major-nerf-to-maelstrom-torpedo-part-1
Overall, the changes to maelstrom has simply downgraded the effectiveness of it in almost all scenarios, both in casual / general use, and in min-maxing scenarios. This leads to multiple doubts as to why this change was needed in the first place. If the goal was to improve its use among general use, it doesn't seem to make sense. Not only is it less effective, but you a have also taken away a large aspect of the fun of it, which is its massive spike damage. If there was a fear that this torpedo would basically become the one and only way to play STO, replacing all other ways of diversity, this is clearly not the case. I play both general and high end, and well essentially min-maxed scenario right at the very top if I can say so myself. For general content, I have builds thats designed to be as effective as possible in general content, with the goal instead of DPS-chasing being replaced with speed, where instead of how much overall end DPS you did, its simply how fast you can finish the match for the benefit of yourself and others in the match as well (faster rewards). None of those builds have maelstrom slotted, because I understand its strength and weakness, and its clearly not a 1-weapon-all-builds-must-use scenario. Then theres also the idea that this was done because torpedo builds are too strong. Torpedo builds is not the most meta for general content, and DEW/EPG builds are still the meta for general content, but flipped wise, Torpedo builds will start to overtake the DPS of DEW/EPG in elite content, and in maps like ISE where DPS chasers are extremely familiarized with it, it has been optimized and pushed to always be significantly ahead of DEW/EPG. And in the first place the nerf reduces the maelstroms effectiveness on both Torpedo and DEW builds.
This leads to the uncomfortable possibility, that it was mostly intentionally reduced in effectiveness for high-end use; that it was far too overpowered. Is the maelstrom considered OP? For the sole goal to get the highest DPS possible, it definitely is. Is that reason alone good enough to reduce its use? I don't think so, not in STO. Beyond the idea that "its a PVE game, it doesnt affect other people", STO itself as you know is inherently massively imbalanced for a myriad amounts of reasons. But this itself creates its own fun culture, where it becomes fundamentally an ultra casual game, and you can decide to either use that characteristics to explore a diverse way to customize your playstyle or build your ship, because all them will more or less "work", or take advantage of that characteristics to find the most optimal (meta; most effective tactic available) way to do damage. Both ways are fun, and because of its inherently casual characteristics, both ways can co-exist without ruining the other one. Its already explained how the maelstrom doesn't destroy build diversity, it in fact enhances it to me, and how its less effective in general builds / non elite content (less sustained overall dps) while performing better in the opposite.
I will bring up the last time a major nerf was done by cryptic. Back near around September 2022, when the console from the Adamant, the Agony redistributor, along with the Webspinner and neutronic eddy was nerfed. The nerf to neutronic eddy was not that big, although if that is the case its a wonder why it was even touched at all. Webspinner essentially was reduced by some 60-75% in its effectiveness, but most prominently the agony redistributor was nuked. When the console first came out, it was legitimately broken, it was triggering a bug that allowed it to essentially do 5m damage on its own to anything within 5km radius, insta-killing everything with no effort. This was eventually mostly fixed, to the point where it was very hard to trigger the bug again. In its un-bugged state, it was still incredibly powerful. I myself have pushed the console further than anyone and have pushed its characteristics to my advantage to get the highest un-bugged agony redistributor damage ever. But this means that similar to how long and complex it takes to explain just the maelstrom as per this writeup, it would require another very long writeup on the agony redistributor console which I will not be doing for the moment. But the big issue for the agony console, was that the nerf that it got was massively overblown. I have gotten as high as 30m damage in one use of agony redistributor, only in the most min-maxed niche scenario. (here's the link to the video of how it look like: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tVh61jDBAY9gTPKX1V_wtSlJTo1uVRWf/view?usp=sharing I'm not sure if this looks "easy" to replicate, it is not, it is very very hard) Knowing how the mechanics of it work, the console functions extremely poorly in general content due to a myriad of factors, as said above, I don't want to write another long article to explain all the details, but in short, the biggest reason is due to how the damage ceiling of agony is influenced compared to almost everything else in the game, where most stuff has its damage buffed by equipment and traits, the agony redistributor potential damage is dictated by the HP of the enemy your shooting at, which changes the way it performs depending on where you play (eg, you can bring a very high damage build and it will deal high damage regardless of how much HP the enemy has, but the same can't be said for the agony redistributor console). The end result, is that depending on where you measure, it has gotten a huge nerf if you were always using it on general content, even though it was already bad at it (also the passives on the console don't give some basic damage boost). However, if you measure it for use in elite content, up to the point of the min-maxed that I was able to push it to, it effectively received a 99% damage nerf. And since it was mostly a console that was only used in elite / DPS chasing, this made a lot of people unhappy, to me it was one of the bigger points in the game that this has turned people away. Furthermore, in reality Cryptic does not hand out nerfs often, its rare in-fact. But this one nerf has created a huge fear among people on the STO stuff they buy with real or in-game money. Till today, that fear is still well present and people talk about powerful stuff as if its going to be nerfed any day even though in reality nerfs are rare. This brings up the possibility of how the absurd justification for the severity of its nerfed was decided. One of the possibilities, is that, the developer (Borticus at the time) used the highest parsed record for certain DPS maps (possibly even a parse where agony was bugged), along with the decent amount of complains that the console was doing too well, both in combination for its justification for its -99% in effectiveness. Cryptic later rebuffed agony...by a bit, essentially making the new effective nerf from -99% to -95%. The point if this is true, would be that you cannot use the highest parsed record as the simple justification for a massive nerf. DPS chasing, and I'm pretty much top of that if I can say so myself, is an obsessive...well, chasing of damage, in the shortest amount of time possible, very similar to speed running, but instead of only purely speed, its damage and speed in combination, to the detriment of everything else. Value, practicality, cost (both $$ and time) are all sacrificed to push the number up as high as theoretically and humanely possible. To simply equate that to conclude that its not good if it stays that way is not how something should be balanced. I cannot say I know what Cryptic's priority are when it comes to how it should be balanced, but what was done in the end was simply straight up wrong. Then there is also the possibility that if there is simply too much people complaining, it will be nerfed regardless of its actual performance or influence in gameplay. If this was also part of the reason, it's also wrong. There will always be people that will complain, for a variety off reason, they may simply not understand the game enough to have a proper opinion, they can be jealous. If this is a way to get things nerfed, you will essentially create a culture where people will try to hide information from others, to not prop something up to feed "mob mentality", which in a way is also detrimental to STO as you simply have less people marketing for the item. Meanwhile, people that actually enjoy the new additions, and have nothing against it, remain in the "silent majority", and in this case, it was quite noticeable that a lot of people enjoyed the new maelstrom torpedo when it came out.
Its notable in the current predicament, that you (Jonathan), when you came in, you have made a lot of great new additions that is actually useful and not automatically "another useless thing", and that you have created the perception that you are more knowledgeable than your predecessor in the game mechanics, as well as that you are going to take a very cautious approach when it comes to balancing, specifically when it comes to nerfs. On the other hand of balancing you have greatly improved certain things that was underperforming. To the point where people finally thought that they can finally trust that when things come out they come out in a good state.
Unfortunately, the recent patch has basically destroyed the streak of that, and essentially brought back the perception of overblown nerfs that was created back when agony redistributor was nerfed. In fact, since maelstrom essentially was performing better than an un-bugged agony redistributor was, this nerf would almost be the new largest nerf ever, were it not for that you did not completely destroy the effectiveness of the maelstrom torpedo. Its to be noted, that at this point, you have added many additions to the game, that because its actually useful, its effectiveness is actually comparable to an unbugged agony redistributor, and that you should not take the comparison to an unbugged agony redistributor as an immediate case for its overperformance, as there are simply things that will always perform way better in the DPS maps than other things, and agony was simply the newest and highest of that at that time, and that also overtime, DPS chasers have also found better and more efficient ways to improve overall DPS, no matter what they use.
Lastly, there is the issue of the concept of "bait and switch". Completely independent of how the maelstrom is performing before and after the nerf, the justifications behind it, you simply cannot release something that you know is good, and only tune it after a very long time. While it is a large improvement that the agony redistributor took 7 months before it got tuned, and this one took 3 months, its still absolutely unacceptable. There are people who bought it on day 1, there are people who bought the bundle after a week or a few, seeing if anything is going to change for it. I have invested beyond just the cost to obtain the item, an incredible amount of time and effort tweaking builds to maximize its effectiveness around the maelstrom. Not to mention, that every time after a major nerf, the community DPS tables has to be wiped again, not that that is anything of Cryptic's fault, but this is very detrimental to the community as if all the shenanigan it comes with isn't bad enough already.
In conclusion, you made essentially one of the best tactical tools in the game, which I loved that its performance varies a lot depending on how strategic you used it, and that it can potentially be pushed very high if you are well versed with the game's mechanics. A torpedo that incentivizes a more tactical use (don't spam it) through its inability to have its recharge reduce, as well as having a minimum fire rate of a slow once every 30s, and in this nerf, you essentially taken that effectiveness away drastically, as well as taking the fun of using it away also. As a DPS min-maxer, I cannot deny, that its still technically optimal for pushing DPS, so it still has appeal to me, meanwhile for the vast majority of people, who isn't going to figure out how to push mechanics to save 1 second of time, I can't say that appeal stays. Its quite obvious, especially explained in the mechanics above, why people like the maelstrom torpedo, and I don't think this is going to be stay that way anymore, and possibly even for future variants of the maelstrom that you are planning to make (notice how nobody bothers anymore about the fix for the webspinner giving bonus damage to controlled targets only applying to EPG stuff and not all stuff after it was nerfed). I still feel pain in my heart knowing just how much effort I've put pushing maelstroms for use on support build utlity wise to its absolute extreme and it is beautiful, and now knowing its pretty much all gone down the drain. (In the current number 1 ISE parse, which is soon to be wiped, thanks alot Jonathan).
In my opinion, this change made the game worse, and you should revert this change. But even better, if for some reason you really doubled down on the idea that people really are going to spam it and automatically assumed it would be better to reduce its CD per charge and also reducing its base damage, to the detriment of all other characteristics of the torpedo, you could instead not just revert it, you can simply just raise the max charge it can store at the moment for 3 to 6 charges. Not only will doing resolve all issues, it goes from a major nerf, to instead an improvement, as it becomes a serious charge-based mechanic tool that players can decide if they want to spam it as much as possible, or utilize its only strength, which is in its high spike damage. Although you have to factor in, that maybe it should retain its long cooldown to emphasize on its tactical-oriented use instead of a somewhat-do-it all (still cannot reduce its CD).
Edit: If you had had went in with a -25% or -30%, it would have made more sense. Such a round number at 50%? I don't know what kind of data gathering you did but to me its clear this was an over-nerf and should be reconsidered. You also may have to accept that low time to kill and high damage is here to stay with or without maelstrom and unless you plan on going on a nerf-streak with countless of things in the game, you may need to swallow that some one-shotting is going to happen more often than not. Like, look at ground meta, if its already not an instant kill fest even on elite difficulty.
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However, they reduced the cooldown, this is a BUFF, and they reduced the damage to compensate so you still got the same DPS...... so not a actually a nerf. The usefulness has not been halved one iota.
They also said when they first released the torp that it WOULD be adjusted. They don't want you one shotting enemies, which is what they said in the updated patch notes.
The cooldown was too long. This change is a huge buff, you'll still be able to obliterate the enemy.
My thoughts: it was grossly overpowered (1) and post-'nerf', it's still a very potent weapon.
A correction was necessary, it was silly how OP this weapon was.
(1) To illustrate how OP it was:
I was destroying entire groups in TFO's
in their non-upgraded form
with one spread
even before reaching level 30 - e.g., with a ship that barely had any relevant gear on it
Or another example: disabling shields on a tactical cube (that's a dreadnought level-enemy) with Carrier waved shield hacking or the Titan's opening salvo allowed me to destroy that cube with just a single high yield III. This weapon almost consistently dealt over a million damage by itself.
There's nothing wrong with correcting that.
How does it make the bundle not worth buying?
I seriously doubt that anyone was buying the bundle just for those two torpedoes.
You still get two very potent weapons that can, even after equipping and upgrading, be shared across your account. I just played on my favorite torpedo toon and it was still doing hundreds of thousands of damage per shot. Maybe no longer over a million, but as noted in the post you quoted, you do get to fire it more often in return.
Spencer did some test with the maelstrom on livestream post patch. It is not looking good. A lot of things can be worked out with theory crafting and math to see how it will pan out even before testing it, assuming the new data is correct (new base damage). Today it was confirmed the base damage was essentially halved.
There is still some spike damage, its still higher than what other torpedoes can do, but its been drastically reduced. I'm only seeing use for it under very high-end min maxed scenario where its down to the highest efficiency. I have no intention of slotting this torpedo anymore outside of that.
From the stream it already performs drastically worse under CF3 compared to other torpedoes, and outside of CF3, with torpedo spread, it still also loses to DMQ, which was and still is one of the most commonly used torp on DEW builds due to the 2pc bonus. Over time its use is going to be diminished to either novelty or only in scenarios where every bit of efficiency counts.
Literally everything that is added has the stipulation that stats are subject to change. That's the nature of an MMO. Collected data shows how something is performing, and if adjustments need to be made one way or the other they are. Its not "we made it and its set in stone forever".
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I just don't need an 'I win'-button to enjoy this game. Like I said, before you could destroy entire groups. That's still possible and even if it weren't - that's an unreasonable criterion to judge things by anyway.
based on the reports and the original intention of this Torpedo to be hard hitting to match the feeling of it we get from the Movie torps, It achieved that now because of its charge Mech. allowed it to hit that hard. The issue at hand is dmg reduction was too heavy handed and because of the changes that were made resulting dmg reduction is as high as 70% nerf. In theory if you have the dmg spread out still results in only the base damage being the same but you did not reflect on the results when buffed from consoles such as Space Membrane console, which only works in a burst damage vs damage that is drawn out over the course of the fight, or encounter.
They may change it again after gathering more data. Don't forget this is the first Maelstrom Torpedo we have so they're going to be going over it a lot more than the stock Quantum Torpedo.
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If the developers are going to go back and forth tweaking it, that would be fine. The problem is that historically, that doesn't really happen for STO. I remembered when DICE nerfed the M16A3 back in BF3. I remembered when gearbox nerfed the Bee shield in Borderlands 2. I've been through many games lifespan and seen the developers constantly tweaking things. The issue for STO that makes it different than other games is that it seems very likely that it could really just be left out in the cold right from this point onward, and STO fundamentally does not have a much more balanced grounds for how everything else works and also that this one cost decently more in terms of money. There are a lot of older consoles and trait that came out and its just...bad, from the start. The starship trait on the emerald chain juggernaut for example. And nothing is done to them. And so I and I suppose others, would cherish the much more standout items more than others. And due to the much more imbalanced grounds that the meta is at the moment, the changes end up looking more like knee-jerk reactions or quick fixes that end up drastically changing the performance of those cherished stuff. Take for example, when the lower decks portable phaser cannon, it was a very good ground weapon. It received a 15% damage nerf and it received it fast within a week, unlike other nerfs, there was no outcry, because from launch it came out good, and post change it still remains very good and till this days is one of the top ground weapons to use. The agony redistributor however, got reduced so hard, and the later patch that rebuffed it barely did anything to, and then got left out in the cold. Till this day the console is...I really don't know what to say if people cannot see that the console is just really really performing extremely bad now. The plasma explosive threat console...I don't know anybody that uses them. Feedback pulse in pve...still a novelty today.
Also why I really had to bring myself to write that whole thing as soon as I pointed my mouse over the tooltip and confirmed the new base damage. If no attention is brought fast enough, could just be left out from here onwards.
I can't speak about buffs or nerfs in other games. I never played Battlefield so that goes over my head. And my approach to any nerfs or buffs in STO is to honestly let things play out and see how it feels over time. Let the Devs gather their data and see if things need to go one way or the other.
I admit I'm no mechanics god. I can't min/max to the last decimal point. And honestly that's not my style anyways. A lot of things mentioned earlier I don't use myself. So I can't really give very good feedback on the numbers side of things. Just how things FEEL, which is subjective to each and every player. One person can feel a difference, another might not.
So I take a wait and see approach to most of these things.
in my experience the Maelstrom Quantum Torpedoes did what they said it would. And they were POWERFUL. Seeing a torp spread take out an entire group was satisfying. However I believe the stated intention was to have it be a more strategic weapon. Knowing WHEN to use it. And since it is the first Maelstrom Torpedo, its a prototype that is going to be continually tweaked until they feel its where it should be. And the Devs have expressed interest in making more types of Maelstrom Torpedoes, which means its not going to be left by the wayside anytime soon.
Call me an optimist, but I'm trusting in the system on this one. Its a long process, but I am confident we'll reach a balance point for the Maelstrom Quantum Torpedo in time. They just need more data to compare to. And any constructive feedback they can get is a good thing. What players feel works, what doesn't... its more information to work with. Just crying foul and raging doesn't give them any data other than x individual is angry.
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I've seen another player fire three beams into Terok Nor and get it to 0% in less than 3 secs. I've seen Tzenkethi dreanoughts taken out in less than a second. In Azure Nebula the Tholian Tarantula have been taken out by a single player in one shot. Are they getting nerfed, no.
Admittedly this is by people who have both time and money to create builds that are capable of dealing such incredible damage at such an incredible pace; and that is the culmination of their efforts and they deserve to be rewarded with such devistating weaponry. But The Maelstrom torpedo gave players that don't have the time need to research and procure all the sometimes hard to get consoles and other items to create such builds. Sure the Maelstrom torpedo was powerful but it took quite some time to build up to three charges and even then one shotting your enemies was never a sure thing. Sometimes the torpedoes did no damage at all, something that really annoyed me given how long I waited for it to get to full charge. (I think that was a bug as there was also no animation of the torpedoes firing, yet it used up all 3 charges and went on cool down, I may post that in the bug section later)
It just seems like a real kick in the teeth again for casual players getting nerfed yet again after finally getting something that gave us a little bit of joy. As I said in my previous post, I knew before I even got the bundle that the torpedo would end up getting nerfed and I'm just annoyed for not listening to myself and wasting money on something I knew would have the fun taken out of it within a short time, no ones fault but my own for not following my own instincts.
Again....the DPS has not changed, as per the patch notes. You're still get the same bang per second. They said the base damage was reduced....that is the damage per torpedo, but again the DPS is still the same. They reduced the base damage on purpose because it was one shotting bosses even with their shields up! The majority of Torps don't one shot BOSSES with their shields up, nor are they supposed too.
It's not 'if they go back and forth', this is something that they have done numerous times. They don't need anyone's permission to alter something, they do it on a weekly basis and it states as much in the ToS. This change is not 'knee-jerk', it was made abundantly clear when the weapon released a change would happen.
Again, base damage was reduced, BUT the DPS was not. It's the DPS that is the main measuring stick for weapons. You are complaining because you can no longer kill a 'mouse' by dropping Earth on it, but you can still drop Mars on it!
This is just lack of understanding of mechanics and I'm actually disappointed that the patch notes putting that "overall dps unchanged" is basically straight up misleading people because I've seen quite a number of comments like this.
You do realize right now that if the maelstrom torpedo were to receive another reduction in cooldown to have a 10s recharge (-33%) and have its base damage reduced by another (-33%) to "compensate", it would still have the same "overall dps unchanged" as when the maelstrom was launched, and the torpedo would be rendered useless?
And its not like before the maelstrom even existed, that bosses weren't being vaporized in seconds already.
As in so many other cases though, there's a difference between having a powerful ship that quickly vaporises an enemy - and only needing a single weapon (or ability) to do so. The former is a result of synergy between different build elements, serious investing in a ship, coming up with the build in the first place, piloting, team-wide debuffing of enemies etc.
The latter is an 'I win'-button.
This is an exaggeration. Unless you are flying on a build thats basically empty and alone, you are essentially already using the maelstrom already with so called "different build elements, serious investing and team wide debuffing", the only difference is to what extent. Because you do not just slot maelstrom in an empty build and do 14m damage in 1 salvo. If you do not understand the why behind it, you cannot just say you slotted maelstrom and suddenly it becomes an "i-win" button not knowing where and how it comes from.
Maelstrom under 3 charges that takes 90s to recharge, fired under HY3 is simply just firing around 7 quantum HY3 at once in what is still divided into 4 shots. That will scale proportionately with buffs or debuffs that you would otherwise get or not. HY1, especially on some torp, is very similar in damage to HY3. And firing 7 HY1, especially in 90s, is very easy.
That is why this change has drastically reduced its usefulness, because now the max you can fire is basically just the equivalent of around 3.5 HY3 at once.
I'd suggest the fault here lies with population distribution, making *big* alpha strikes problematic (in too easily killing bosses with the standard already being at instant-vaporization with similar levels of synergy) because appropriately balanced targets to those extreme builds are being made less available through elite TFO throttling. It's hell finding matches there, even with the population bump from advanced consoles we're enshrining the terrible dynamics in match finding that RTFO's were created to solve in the first place (and have been a VERY proven solution to). So folks looking to *play the game* under the highest difficulty setting consistently available naturally gravitate to advanced content rather than elite, creating wide issues as too much power is being levied at enemies not scaled appropriately to those builds.
Cryptic, you have systemic problem here in how you're managing population demographics. By refusing to implement Elite RTFO's because of an ideal (players *should* create new elite-grinding friend circles to be able to consistently find a match for them, random groups aren't something we want to encourage) which is refuted on a daily basis (players succeeding in random groups under existing parameters, looking for matches without fundamentally changing who they hang out with in and around STO) you manufacture problems of excessive power being applied to lower content because that's where your viable game is. Cue one-shotting bosses by this or other means (which has also resulted in additional negative player feedback from those feeling marginalized by over-powered players. The consequences here aren't restricted to somewhat incendiary nerfs trying to manage the worst excesses of mismatched players to difficulty settings. It's affecting the whole end-game.)
The Maelstrom torp one-shotting bosses isn't a problem of the singular torp, it's a problem of the bosses themselves and how you're managing your population demographics, Cryptic. You have a faulty paradigm with how elite TFO's are managed and its resulting in friction both directly (players trying, failing to get into Elite because of the lack of RTFOs) and indirectly (balance making unusual compromises to try mitigating edge-case behavior in lower difficulty content that is brought about by the practical unviability of regular elite TFO play.) Bosses aren't living up to boss status because of how player populations are sorting out, the maelstrom's problematic impact being tied to the greatest mismatches (beyond what even I can bring to the table per power as one yardstick for invested, high performing but not top tier players).
Don't blame the item, think through the ecosystem you've created and respond to a constructive human conversation that's trying to tell you what the problem is from the end-user perspective.
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It is NOT misleading. Like every other weapon, the DPS and damage per shot are shown in the tool tip (depending on your current location) which is the raw DPS and damage per shot, which is often much higher after buffs and affected by resistances, and in the case of torps, shields. You're complaining because the dev's have seen fit to correct the damage output to be a little more realistic and so shields are of some use again now you can't alpha bomb it. It's not a lack of understanding the mechanics on their part, it's that they've seen what the mechanics are doing and gone 'well, that's not right', and it's also your lack of understanding the weapon still is OP despite the buff to it's cooldown and reduction of it's damage per shot.
That is unlikely. They've been gathering data since the day they introduced the Maelstrom Torpedo.
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What we talk about isnt the number in your tooltip, it's real DPS.
You can go to patrol and test , The Maelstrom Torpedo has a massive DPS lost.
Nobody care the tooltip DPS, it's useless.
You can only gather data from try not see.After all, true knowledge comes from practice.