Because the power is completely broken. While playing in PvP last night with my fleetmates we were in a FvK arena match when one of our members was hit with a VM II. Guess what happened? That's right...not a thing. No subsystems went down. We zone-chatted with the Klinks and agreed to meet at the top of the Cracked Planetoid for some PvP testing. Both Science ships had a version of Viral Matirx ( a II and a III) and proceeded to use it on each other. There was no subsystem interruption and the powers consisted of a mere purple light show with no other discernable effect.
Don't know if others are experiencing this issue but it's pretty sad that on top of a "nerf" to the powers to satiate QQ'ing forum nerd-ragers your version of the power now doesn't even work...:rolleyes:
PS...Props to Quagmire and Kek for being excellent opponents and assisting in the testing process. Two very cool Klingons.
You know, I didn't really think about it that much at the time because there was a lot going on but I can't honestly say as I recall seeing any kind of effect when I got tagged a few times last night either. I'd like to know more about this too...
It seemed to work two weeks ago on tribble. I saw ships stop moving and stop firing (not at the same time mind you). Tried it out yesterday and found it ineffective as well. I swapped out BO's and no longer am messing with it. Something got broken in the last week before the migration to the holodeck.
A LCDR/CDR slot power should be a lot better than what it currently is. Hope they take a look at it or it will become just another MES.
The original VM would have been fine once they fixed SNB (well now its broken in a new way) and if science team always cleared VM and prevented VM instead of being hit or miss.
there have been times that i was hit with a VM and that im sure i didnt see any effect. i even instantly checked my power settings to see if those got effected. nothing.
there have been times i was hit with VM and nothing happened accept the computer told me my shields whent down. all shields where still up and my shield power setting was also still up. so either it didnt do anything again or the effect weares off in 0.01 seconds.
then their have been times that i just stopped, and i see my engine power is down. i either got hit with Target engines or VM wouldnt know.
just dont think VM is working as intended right now.
This has been said before by others, and I agree 100%. Remove VM, SNB, and FBP from the game and been done with it.
Uhhhh...no. I was making the point that VM was not working as intended and is currently bugged. No one in this thread wants any of the Big 3 removed from the game. In fact, I think they did a great job with them. SNB is now a tactically applied skill with specific counters (Science Team and Photonic Officer). FBP can still be death to Escorts at Level III but the rest of the versions aren't the insta-pop "I Win" buttons they were before. And the iteration of VM on Tribble was nasty...it just doesn't work here on Holodeck for some reason.
Uhhhh...no. I was making the point that VM was not working as intended and is currently bugged. No one in this thread wants any of the Big 3 removed from the game. In fact, I think they did a great job with them. SNB is now a tactically applied skill with specific counters (Science Team and Photonic Officer). FBP can still be death to Escorts at Level III but the rest of the versions aren't the insta-pop "I Win" buttons they were before. And the iteration of VM on Tribble was nasty...it just doesn't work here on Holodeck for some reason.
Maybe no one in this short thread doesnt want to see them removed, but there are those that do see problems with them. I even have a Science character and see problems.
First you say the Science Team is a counter. That is true, but with all the Teams on the same timer many times the Teams are on cool down. Be it you countered a boarding party, healed your shields, or countered something else. As for Photonic, I have not tested it myself. I have seen people say in game and the forums that they dont see any change.
Another problem is having a skill that removes buffs in a buff heavy game. So for example take an escort that its primary job is DPS. Now take away the buffs from a glass cannon all you have left is glass. Then throw in FBP all you have left is shattered glass.
But it isnt just this, there are other things that cause balance issues in PvP. To have an ability in game that allows you to basically be stealthed to another ship while you rip them apart is no different than VM was. Counters are great, but when they share cool downs it makes them useless a larger part of the time.
Cryptic should have kept VM as it was as a hold, while changing SnB to its current state. In addition make it so ST gives a guarentee of breaking the hold instead of a percentage chance.
No more SnB+vm combo spam, and a skill thats easy to counter and still useful!
Maybe no one in this short thread doesnt want to see them removed, but there are those that do see problems with them. I even have a Science character and see problems.
First you say the Science Team is a counter. That is true, but with all the Teams on the same timer many times the Teams are on cool down. Be it you countered a boarding party, healed your shields, or countered something else. As for Photonic, I have not tested it myself. I have seen people say in game and the forums that they dont see any change.
Another problem is having a skill that removes buffs in a buff heavy game. So for example take an escort that its primary job is DPS. Now take away the buffs from a glass cannon all you have left is glass. Then throw in FBP all you have left is shattered glass.
But it isnt just this, there are other things that cause balance issues in PvP. To have an ability in game that allows you to basically be stealthed to another ship while you rip them apart is no different than VM was. Counters are great, but when they share cool downs it makes them useless a larger part of the time.
The problem with this example is that it is true only in a narrow field of time. You are looking at a skill which is available every couple of minutes. One, which needs to be saved for decisive strokes or it is wasted. How can you compare that to an escort/bop's ability to do a HY3/CRF3 every 30 seconds?
They are glass cannons, this is true. But they still have max weapon power and are firing off 3 DHC's and put out a massive amount of firepower. The only difference is that they can't explode a ship in a single pass when you strip the buffs. Couple the fact that I don't often see a tac ship without RSP and most likely they didn't have RSP up when you stripped them of their offensive buffs means that they are going to be fine.
Why are so many science skills stuck on a shared cool down when none of the juicy tac skills are? If you use one of the dish skills, snb goes on the global. We cannot run a tychen's rift/syphon combo. Due to the shared cool downs, Sci ships don't have many combo's that they can use. But it is perfectly acceptable for a tac to chain their alpha combo.
We require Aux to get the most of many of the upper tier skills including SNB. But those skills often require a forward 90 degree arc. Aux no longer affects turn rate which makes it much more difficult to bring those skills to bear in a turning fight.
We also live by our shields in sci ships. In a defensive fight, higher shield settings coupled with with sci teams keeps us alive. You have to be very careful swapping to high aux lest you get hit with a BTSS and find your shields completely down.
I have tried VM, Photonic Officer and FBP3 after 1.1. They are no longer on my action bars. I don't find any of them to be effective. FBP3 and VM3 are both Commander skills so you could only have one or the other even when they were effective. I have yet to see a cruiser stop firing on me with FBP3 up. I went back to try it again yesterday in FvK. The universal slots allow BoP's to run a LCDR or CRD Sci BO so they can easily run HE and ST to ignore the FBP.
As I said before, VM is not the skill I tested out on tribble. It sure feels like something changed when it went to live.
VM before 1.1 really wasn't what the problem was. The true problem was IMO two-fold. One, many people didn't understand that when you stacked a sensor scan or a jam with a VM, you protected the VM. So everyone thinks the counters were not working. Secondly, if you hit the target with SNB, you shut down the target's ability to use the counter. That was what really needed to be fixed. By changing SNB like they did, they could have left VM alone as long as they ensured that the counter of ET would ensure VMs removal when debuffs were stacked.
All Sci ships can now do is to strip buffs every couple of minutes. There isn't any effective crowd control anymore.
Let's not get misty eyed over the old VM: It completely disabled you except for the team skils, which only had a chance of removing it. If sci team was on cooldown, or if it failed to clear it, you died. Just like that.
Let's not get misty eyed over the old VM: It completely disabled you except for the team skils, which only had a chance of removing it. If sci team was on cooldown, or if it failed to clear it, you died. Just like that.
It wasn't that bad. Most people had two escapes. So, at worse, you should never have had to wait longer than a global cool down to fire off a second ST, ET or APO. It was the SNB that put you on a 30+ second cool down which made it abusive.
When I died to a VM, it was usually because I was either in a pug where no one would toss a ST to get me out of it, I was focused or I was solo. Sometimes you would find yourself getting it by more than one player. It happened but wasn't that big of a deal. The guys that complained the most were those that charged ahead to a cap point at full impulse and then wondered why they got caught with their pants down.
Either way it isn't as bad as the escort/bop that loads up his alpha and blows through your shields before you can react. That really is "dying just like that."
If they kept VM the same and made it so it cleared regardless of how many debuffs you had stacked, it would be fine with the current SNB. All you really have to do now is swap power over to full shields for the resists and spam the current facing. Thats what I do now when I get snbed with ST's on CD.
The problem with this example is that it is true only in a narrow field of time. You are looking at a skill which is available every couple of minutes. One, which needs to be saved for decisive strokes or it is wasted. How can you compare that to an escort/bop's ability to do a HY3/CRF3 every 30 seconds?
So you pick 2 abilities that have a 30s cooldown, how about the others that take a minute plus? In a buff heavy game it is big for all ships. To extend the cooldowns is one thing, but to totally take thier buffs away is a bit much.
They are glass cannons, this is true. But they still have max weapon power and are firing off 3 DHC's and put out a massive amount of firepower. The only difference is that they can't explode a ship in a single pass when you strip the buffs. Couple the fact that I don't often see a tac ship without RSP and most likely they didn't have RSP up when you stripped them of their offensive buffs means that they are going to be fine.
Of course they are set at max weapons power. They are meant to DPS and that is what increases that. So like you mention later in post about using aux. to bolster your abilities. Many players that play escorts swap power settings during a fight too. So dont think Science Vessels are alone there. As for RSP, it is not always a safe your TRIBBLE ability. You have to remember Escorts only have rank 1. Besides that you already took the main tools away from the escort to do thier job.
Why are so many science skills stuck on a shared cool down when none of the juicy tac skills are? If you use one of the dish skills, snb goes on the global. We cannot run a tychen's rift/syphon combo. Due to the shared cool downs, Sci ships don't have many combo's that they can use. But it is perfectly acceptable for a tac to chain their alpha combo.
I have a Science toon and I dont have those problems. But I dont try and use 2 drain powers, instead I try to use a bigger variety of skills. As for the alpha strike, I have 3 skills that I use. 1 that increases damage, 1 that debuffs resist. I have another that I use after the fight begins to help protect against holds. I will say this though, I do think damage needed to be toned a tad. Just not the way they did went about trying to do so. They reduced players ability to survive as well. If anything I think there are things that should be done to improve shields/defense/ability to survive for some ships. Science vessels are tougher than the carrier is and its used as a Science Vessel, not to mention its bigger and has more crew.
We require Aux to get the most of many of the upper tier skills including SNB. But those skills often require a forward 90 degree arc. Aux no longer affects turn rate which makes it much more difficult to bring those skills to bear in a turning fight.
We also live by our shields in sci ships. In a defensive fight, higher shield settings coupled with with sci teams keeps us alive. You have to be very careful swapping to high aux lest you get hit with a BTSS and find your shields completely down.
So other ships dont survive by thier shields? So your worried about a 90 degree arc, try a 45. As an escort power is sunk in weapons, and not engines for turn rate. Sorry vessels lost thier advantange of having turn rate and boost to skills at the same time.
I have tried VM, Photonic Officer and FBP3 after 1.1. They are no longer on my action bars. I don't find any of them to be effective. FBP3 and VM3 are both Commander skills so you could only have one or the other even when they were effective. I have yet to see a cruiser stop firing on me with FBP3 up. I went back to try it again yesterday in FvK. The universal slots allow BoP's to run a LCDR or CRD Sci BO so they can easily run HE and ST to ignore the FBP.
As I said before, VM is not the skill I tested out on tribble. It sure feels like something changed when it went to live.
VM before 1.1 really wasn't what the problem was. The true problem was IMO two-fold. One, many people didn't understand that when you stacked a sensor scan or a jam with a VM, you protected the VM. So everyone thinks the counters were not working. Secondly, if you hit the target with SNB, you shut down the target's ability to use the counter. That was what really needed to be fixed. By changing SNB like they did, they could have left VM alone as long as they ensured that the counter of ET would ensure VMs removal when debuffs were stacked.
I do agree VM and Photonic are worthless. That just adds to why I think VM should be done away with. lol. I think Cryptic screwed the abilities up. Puting skills on a short cool down was fine, VM was fine. As you said players stacked debuffs. BUT guess what. They still do. They should have left those skills alone and fixed it so teams dont share cool downs. As for FBP, yeah it should work against all energy damage.
All Sci ships can now do is to strip buffs every couple of minutes. There isn't any effective crowd control anymore.
Yeah cause science players should spend time healing, atleast many dont anyhow. So a couple of skills are worthless now science players have nothing to do.....
It wasn't that bad. Most people had two escapes. So, at worse, you should never have had to wait longer than a global cool down to fire off a second ST, ET or APO. It was the SNB that put you on a 30+ second cool down which made it abusive.
Personally, I hated it. Immensely. Rancor might be the word, I think. Of course, if the new vm isn't doing anything, that's kind of a problem. What I saw on tribble looked annoying as TRIBBLE without completely stopping the enemies input if they failed to have that magic counter off cooldown.
I have yet to see a cruiser stop firing on me with FBP3 up.
I'm pretty sure a cruiser's now the worst ship to "attack" with FBP--their damage is relatively low, hull is high, and they're extremely likely to have healing skills. Escort type ships are hurt much worse by it, because of their high damage and relatively low survivability. It may still not even insta-pop them, but it will almost certainly strip the facing shield right off.
And if a BoP is negating the damage with hazard emitters/science team, they're sacrificing something for support/survivability (i.e., they will have less debuffs or crowd control). Also, seriously, that's healing that *would* have been negating your weapon attacks. That bop's now less able to deal with actual enemy weapons fire against him or a teammate because he's having to deal with his cannons eating into his own hull.
So you pick 2 abilities that have a 30s cooldown, how about the others that take a minute plus? In a buff heavy game it is big for all ships. To extend the cooldowns is one thing, but to totally take thier buffs away is a bit much.
Of course it isn't. Escorts and Bops commonly run with 3 DHC's and a torp. The rediculously over-powered alpha chain isn't even needed to blow through most everything. The benefit of the chain alpha means 100-0 in 2-3 seconds. And SO's are green with envy not having "minute plus" abilities that Tacs have. If you can't kill a ship with the ridiculous amount of firepower with out stringing together a CRF/HYT3/AP combo, then the player in question should not be pvping.
How about the fact that every Tac ship has access to +30 damage consoles? You can stack 3-4 phaser consoles. A sci ship no longer has access to +30 sci consoles. And the consoles you do have can't be focused like a Tac ship. Our skills don't benfit from a single ability like weapons do.
Of course they are set at max weapons power. They are meant to DPS and that is what increases that. So like you mention later in post about using aux. to bolster your abilities. Many players that play escorts swap power settings during a fight too. So dont think Science Vessels are alone there. As for RSP, it is not always a safe your TRIBBLE ability. You have to remember Escorts only have rank 1. Besides that you already took the main tools away from the escort to do thier job.
Are you really comparing a escort or BoP's turn rate to a 1.1 RSV's with out the aux turn help that we no longer have? Tacs do not have to change power to get their offensive skills to bear. As I said above, if a tac can't kill with the plethora of high DPS he has without a chained alpha, he is doing something wrong. I have an advanced escort for my fed admiral SO. I stopped playing it because its too easy.
And FYI, sci ships only have access to the same RSP1. And SNB is a once in a two minute ability. Please, don't compare it to a 30 second CRF/HYT3 which is available to use so frequently.
I have a Science toon and I dont have those problems. But I dont try and use 2 drain powers, instead I try to use a bigger variety of skills. As for the alpha strike, I have 3 skills that I use. 1 that increases damage, 1 that debuffs resist. I have another that I use after the fight begins to help protect against holds. I will say this though, I do think damage needed to be toned a tad. Just not the way they did went about trying to do so. They reduced players ability to survive as well. If anything I think there are things that should be done to improve shields/defense/ability to survive for some ships. Science vessels are tougher than the carrier is and its used as a Science Vessel, not to mention its bigger and has more crew.
You miss the point. All of those abilities I mentioned are on the same cool down. I can't use SNB and Tychens, or a tractor and a syphon. What variety of upper tier abilities do you refer to? Lets look at the CDR skills:
Charged Patricle Burst- meh damage, not worth the slot
Energy Siphon-Good power. I am having success with this power
Feedback Pulse- Severely gimped. Hasn't stopped me from firing on nor really deterred me from taking fire.
I have used this in an RSV and a BoP from both sides.
Gravity Well- Very underwhelming power
Photonic Shock Wave- Again another meh power that doesn't do much for the slot
Scramble Sensors- Better off grabbing the lower tiered versions
Tractor Beam Repulsors- No need to even comment here
Tyken's Rift-Decent power. Works well with BTSS
Viral Matrix- its simply broken on live.
A lot of those skills are on shared cool downs. Most are simply weak skills. If you are truly interested in learning something about all of these options, take a look at this thread. http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=154687 Akumarev really nailed it on his analysis.
So other ships dont survive by thier shields? So your worried about a 90 degree arc, try a 45. As an escort power is sunk in weapons, and not engines for turn rate. Sorry vessels lost thier advantange of having turn rate and boost to skills at the same time.
I have tried them, both BoPs and Escorts. Both are stupid easy to fly. Now try the same on the RSV without the aux turn benefit. It is far more difficult to get the 90 skills and dual beams off in a turning fight than the 45 degree arcs required in an escort/bop.
I do agree VM and Photonic are worthless. That just adds to why I think VM should be done away with. lol. I think Cryptic screwed the abilities up. Puting skills on a short cool down was fine, VM was fine. As you said players stacked debuffs. BUT guess what. They still do. They should have left those skills alone and fixed it so teams dont share cool downs. As for FBP, yeah it should work against all energy damage.
No, it shouldn't be done away with. At the very least, it should be fixed. As I showed above, there are precious few skills that are worthwhile.
And no, you are wrong. They shouldn't take teams off shared cool downs. Its already too easy to stack. What they needed to do was simply made it so VM could not be hidden under another debuff. Thats all they needed to do. Although I thought it was wrong a ST 1 could remove a VM3 as long as there wasn't a stacked debuff. Lower tiered counters shouldn't be as good as the upper tiered ones.
I don't think you have a T5 science officer which is the only way to know if FBP3 is any good. I was shocked yesterday how easy it was to ignore it in my BoP. HE and St made fbp a joke.
Yeah cause science players should spend time healing, atleast many dont anyhow. So a couple of skills are worthless now science players have nothing to do.....
Cruisers are simply better at healing. Transfer shields is a joke compared to Extend shields. I can and do use ST and HE to help my teammates. I will also use extend shields in my single LT eng slot. I have never seen one escort drivers use an extend shields. You guys all save the slot for RSP. The world is totally different on the KDF side. I don't even have RSP on my BoP. Instead I use the slot for an extend. A lot of Klinks do the same.
Its not just that "So a couple of skills are worthless...", its that there is very little that is worthwhile. And the skills that are left are often on the same cool down. What would you say if CRF and AP's were on shared cool downs. For that matter, why are the debuffs even tac skills in the first place?
Personally, I hated it. Immensely. Rancor might be the word, I think. Of course, if the new vm isn't doing anything, that's kind of a problem. What I saw on tribble looked annoying as TRIBBLE without completely stopping the enemies input if they failed to have that magic counter off cooldown.
Dont know why you had my name in that quote, because I didnt say that.
It wasn't that bad. Most people had two escapes. So, at worse, you should never have had to wait longer than a global cool down to fire off a second ST, ET or APO. It was the SNB that put you on a 30+ second cool down which made it abusive.
Of course it isn't. Escorts and Bops commonly run with 3 DHC's and a torp. The rediculously over-powered alpha chain isn't even needed to blow through most everything. The benefit of the chain alpha means 100-0 in 2-3 seconds. And SO's are green with envy not having "minute plus" abilities that Tacs have. If you can't kill a ship with the ridiculous amount of firepower with out stringing together a CRF/HYT3/AP combo, then the player in question should not be pvping.
I do agree that it needs to be toned down a tad, but only if escorts get a little boost to shields/defense. That is the trade off for high DPS, low defense. If you think your going to take down a well played cruiser or vessel without buffs in a single pass your wrong.
How about the fact that every Tac ship has access to +30 damage consoles? You can stack 3-4 phaser consoles. A sci ship no longer has access to +30 sci consoles. And the consoles you do have can't be focused like a Tac ship. Our skills don't benfit from a single ability like weapons do.
You can stack for one type of damage, but I dont advise it. I split between cannons/type of weapons/torpedos. Its been talked about that stacking has a penalty, not tested myself but its in my future plans. A science can stack for a single ability, but again I dont advise it. Sciense does have consoles that boost 2 or more skills at once.
Are you really comparing a escort or BoP's turn rate to a 1.1 RSV's with out the aux turn help that we no longer have? Tacs do not have to change power to get their offensive skills to bear. As I said above, if a tac can't kill with the plethora of high DPS he has without a chained alpha, he is doing something wrong. I have an advanced escort for my fed admiral SO. I stopped playing it because its too easy.
No, you thrown in BoPs. Escorts cant turn like BoPs. So again dont act like vessels are the only ones that has to boost engine power to gain some turn to give chase to other ships. Didnt say a tac couldnt kill, but again your only seeing the skills that boost dps being removed by SNB. Your leaving out resist debuff and turn rate buffs that helps escorts give chase to BoPs. You see things in a narrow point of view.
And FYI, sci ships only have access to the same RSP1. And SNB is a once in a two minute ability. Please, don't compare it to a 30 second CRF/HYT3 which is available to use so frequently.
CRF is up for 15s with a 1m cool down. APA has a 1m30s cooldown. APB has a 1m cooldown. APO has a 1m cool down. GDF has a 5m cooldown. True Fed science vessels only have access to RSP 1, but doesnt matter as your shields are stronger than escorts and BoPs.
You miss the point. All of those abilities I mentioned are on the same cool down. I can't use SNB and Tychens, or a tractor and a syphon. What variety of upper tier abilities do you refer to? Lets look at the CDR skills:
Charged Patricle Burst- meh damage, not worth the slot
Energy Siphon-Good power. I am having success with this power
Feedback Pulse- Severely gimped. Hasn't stopped me from firing on nor really deterred me from taking fire.
I have used this in an RSV and a BoP from both sides.
Gravity Well- Very underwhelming power
Photonic Shock Wave- Again another meh power that doesn't do much for the slot
Scramble Sensors- Better off grabbing the lower tiered versions
Tractor Beam Repulsors- No need to even comment here
Tyken's Rift-Decent power. Works well with BTSS
Viral Matrix- its simply broken on live.
A lot of those skills are on shared cool downs. Most are simply weak skills. If you are truly interested in learning something about all of these options, take a look at this thread. http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=154687 Akumarev really nailed it on his analysis.
I do agree that science needs some adjusting, but still doesnt mean there should be a skill that removes the buffs from a ship in a buff heavy game. Yes there is some weak skills. I am currently teasting GW myself, but when used on me and seen it used against the enemy it does eat shields. Maybe not that noticable in a cruiser or vessel, but in a escort or BoP its very noticable. Also after more game play VM does work. I have noticed that it is a poor skill against a cruiser though.
I have tried them, both BoPs and Escorts. Both are stupid easy to fly. Now try the same on the RSV without the aux turn benefit. It is far more difficult to get the 90 skills and dual beams off in a turning fight than the 45 degree arcs required in an escort/bop.
Sure they have a better turn rate, but vessels still turn better than carriers used a science ship. IMO I would be using beams and turrets rather than dual beams.
And no, you are wrong. They shouldn't take teams off shared cool downs. Its already too easy to stack. What they needed to do was simply made it so VM could not be hidden under another debuff. Thats all they needed to do. Although I thought it was wrong a ST 1 could remove a VM3 as long as there wasn't a stacked debuff. Lower tiered counters shouldn't be as good as the upper tiered ones.
Really...too easy to stack? Oh, you mean like stacking debuffs on ships so when they use a team they only remove 1 debuff, but still stuck with the others like say SNB or the way VM use to work. Sure, I bet you would love if lower tier counters didnt work so good being some ships cant get the higher tier counters.
I don't think you have a T5 science officer which is the only way to know if FBP3 is any good. I was shocked yesterday how easy it was to ignore it in my BoP. HE and St made fbp a joke.
I am working on my last tier of science. So yes I have tested most of the science skills and just respect to test the higher tier versions and a couple I have not tested yet.
Cruisers are simply better at healing. Transfer shields is a joke compared to Extend shields. I can and do use ST and HE to help my teammates. I will also use extend shields in my single LT eng slot. I have never seen one escort drivers use an extend shields. You guys all save the slot for RSP. The world is totally different on the KDF side. I don't even have RSP on my BoP. Instead I use the slot for an extend. A lot of Klinks do the same.
I wouldnt expect a escort to extend shields, I would expect them to start DPSing the target firing on thier team mate. Beyond that though, a bigger reason escorts use RSP so much is Klings focus fire on them.
Its not just that "So a couple of skills are worthless...", its that there is very little that is worthwhile. And the skills that are left are often on the same cool down. What would you say if CRF and AP's were on shared cool downs. For that matter, why are the debuffs even tac skills in the first place?
Are you serious? Why are attack patterns escort skills? The 1 debuff escorts have tied to attack patterns on a offensive ship you find a problem with. That would be like me saying why do science ships have damage included with skills that debuff.
I do agree that burst damage needs a little adjusting, but in return escorts and BoPs should have a slight adjustment to defense. If debuffs can be stacked then so should counters. Yes there are skills that need adjustment. Beyond that there still should not be a skill that takes the buffs away from a ship in a buff heavy game.
This has strayed a bit from Bounty's original topic which is that VM is broken and worthless. I will take some of the blame for this by my comment that VM wasn't as bad as the escort's Alpha strike.
The fact remains, it doesn't seem to be working even as well as it did on tribble three weeks ago. Its a high tier skill and it currently is not worth using. No one wants it to be overpowered, but it needs to work.
Yahto, I had a response set to go when I realized we were straying into another timezone. If you want to start a new topic, we can continue debating there. Apologies to Bounty for the temporary hijacking of this thread.
This has strayed a bit from Bounty's original topic which is that VM is broken and worthless.
Ok so let's get back on topic then with this ....
I disagree that it's broken and worthless.
It's not as good as the old VM certainly but I have seen it function as intended.
It's an "ok" power but it's no longer outrageous vs. Cruisers like it had been in the past.
You can't have that many CC abilities linked to one type of Team Ability since there is a 20 sec GCD and since Team abilities do not have a chance to remove CC's every "tick" like the original design.
This has strayed a bit from Bounty's original topic which is that VM is broken and worthless.
The only reason I find it worthless is if it is broken. I'm getting reports that it works for some people and not for others. As I stated in my original post, there were three distinct players (two Klinks and a Fed) who had it in their builds, used it on each other, and received NO effect. No subsystems went down. No power levels were affected. No systems stopped functioning (weapons could fire, shields were up, ships kept flying). This was with versions II and III. If there was some effect it was of such a trivial nature and so slight that it would render the power indeed useless.
From the original description provided prior to the new VM being released to Tribble it was supposed to function as sort of a mini-Boarding Party with random subsystems being taken offline for the duration of the power. Once it hit Tribble it was bugged and had issues with Engineering Team clearing one effect and having another immediately pop up or the same one recurring. All-in-all a nightmare and the power/counter codes were revised prior to patching Holodeck. My concern is if others are experiencing this as well...
Are you guys suffering any effects from VM? If so, what are they? Have you used it with success? If so, what effects are you seeing on your targets? Trying to collect and compile info for the DEV's to review...
I'm certainly not terrified by the purple mist surrounding my ship, other than I'm not sure how a virus is supposed to make my ship all misty and purpley.
Another example. I was playing CNH with the fleet last night. I was hit with a VM 3. I know because I asked the guy afterwards. It slowed me down, for 3 seconds. I did not stop, my weapons were never effected nor was my aux effected. I know I was watching. VM is a total joke.
Comments
Purple is just that awesome of a color!
A LCDR/CDR slot power should be a lot better than what it currently is. Hope they take a look at it or it will become just another MES.
there have been times i was hit with VM and nothing happened accept the computer told me my shields whent down. all shields where still up and my shield power setting was also still up. so either it didnt do anything again or the effect weares off in 0.01 seconds.
then their have been times that i just stopped, and i see my engine power is down. i either got hit with Target engines or VM wouldnt know.
just dont think VM is working as intended right now.
Uhhhh...no. I was making the point that VM was not working as intended and is currently bugged. No one in this thread wants any of the Big 3 removed from the game. In fact, I think they did a great job with them. SNB is now a tactically applied skill with specific counters (Science Team and Photonic Officer). FBP can still be death to Escorts at Level III but the rest of the versions aren't the insta-pop "I Win" buttons they were before. And the iteration of VM on Tribble was nasty...it just doesn't work here on Holodeck for some reason.
Maybe no one in this short thread doesnt want to see them removed, but there are those that do see problems with them. I even have a Science character and see problems.
First you say the Science Team is a counter. That is true, but with all the Teams on the same timer many times the Teams are on cool down. Be it you countered a boarding party, healed your shields, or countered something else. As for Photonic, I have not tested it myself. I have seen people say in game and the forums that they dont see any change.
Another problem is having a skill that removes buffs in a buff heavy game. So for example take an escort that its primary job is DPS. Now take away the buffs from a glass cannon all you have left is glass. Then throw in FBP all you have left is shattered glass.
But it isnt just this, there are other things that cause balance issues in PvP. To have an ability in game that allows you to basically be stealthed to another ship while you rip them apart is no different than VM was. Counters are great, but when they share cool downs it makes them useless a larger part of the time.
No more SnB+vm combo spam, and a skill thats easy to counter and still useful!
There, problem solved.
Ps. Once you go purple, you never go back!
The problem with this example is that it is true only in a narrow field of time. You are looking at a skill which is available every couple of minutes. One, which needs to be saved for decisive strokes or it is wasted. How can you compare that to an escort/bop's ability to do a HY3/CRF3 every 30 seconds?
They are glass cannons, this is true. But they still have max weapon power and are firing off 3 DHC's and put out a massive amount of firepower. The only difference is that they can't explode a ship in a single pass when you strip the buffs. Couple the fact that I don't often see a tac ship without RSP and most likely they didn't have RSP up when you stripped them of their offensive buffs means that they are going to be fine.
Why are so many science skills stuck on a shared cool down when none of the juicy tac skills are? If you use one of the dish skills, snb goes on the global. We cannot run a tychen's rift/syphon combo. Due to the shared cool downs, Sci ships don't have many combo's that they can use. But it is perfectly acceptable for a tac to chain their alpha combo.
We require Aux to get the most of many of the upper tier skills including SNB. But those skills often require a forward 90 degree arc. Aux no longer affects turn rate which makes it much more difficult to bring those skills to bear in a turning fight.
We also live by our shields in sci ships. In a defensive fight, higher shield settings coupled with with sci teams keeps us alive. You have to be very careful swapping to high aux lest you get hit with a BTSS and find your shields completely down.
I have tried VM, Photonic Officer and FBP3 after 1.1. They are no longer on my action bars. I don't find any of them to be effective. FBP3 and VM3 are both Commander skills so you could only have one or the other even when they were effective. I have yet to see a cruiser stop firing on me with FBP3 up. I went back to try it again yesterday in FvK. The universal slots allow BoP's to run a LCDR or CRD Sci BO so they can easily run HE and ST to ignore the FBP.
As I said before, VM is not the skill I tested out on tribble. It sure feels like something changed when it went to live.
VM before 1.1 really wasn't what the problem was. The true problem was IMO two-fold. One, many people didn't understand that when you stacked a sensor scan or a jam with a VM, you protected the VM. So everyone thinks the counters were not working. Secondly, if you hit the target with SNB, you shut down the target's ability to use the counter. That was what really needed to be fixed. By changing SNB like they did, they could have left VM alone as long as they ensured that the counter of ET would ensure VMs removal when debuffs were stacked.
All Sci ships can now do is to strip buffs every couple of minutes. There isn't any effective crowd control anymore.
It wasn't that bad. Most people had two escapes. So, at worse, you should never have had to wait longer than a global cool down to fire off a second ST, ET or APO. It was the SNB that put you on a 30+ second cool down which made it abusive.
When I died to a VM, it was usually because I was either in a pug where no one would toss a ST to get me out of it, I was focused or I was solo. Sometimes you would find yourself getting it by more than one player. It happened but wasn't that big of a deal. The guys that complained the most were those that charged ahead to a cap point at full impulse and then wondered why they got caught with their pants down.
Either way it isn't as bad as the escort/bop that loads up his alpha and blows through your shields before you can react. That really is "dying just like that."
If they kept VM the same and made it so it cleared regardless of how many debuffs you had stacked, it would be fine with the current SNB. All you really have to do now is swap power over to full shields for the resists and spam the current facing. Thats what I do now when I get snbed with ST's on CD.
So you pick 2 abilities that have a 30s cooldown, how about the others that take a minute plus? In a buff heavy game it is big for all ships. To extend the cooldowns is one thing, but to totally take thier buffs away is a bit much.
Of course they are set at max weapons power. They are meant to DPS and that is what increases that. So like you mention later in post about using aux. to bolster your abilities. Many players that play escorts swap power settings during a fight too. So dont think Science Vessels are alone there. As for RSP, it is not always a safe your TRIBBLE ability. You have to remember Escorts only have rank 1. Besides that you already took the main tools away from the escort to do thier job.
I have a Science toon and I dont have those problems. But I dont try and use 2 drain powers, instead I try to use a bigger variety of skills. As for the alpha strike, I have 3 skills that I use. 1 that increases damage, 1 that debuffs resist. I have another that I use after the fight begins to help protect against holds. I will say this though, I do think damage needed to be toned a tad. Just not the way they did went about trying to do so. They reduced players ability to survive as well. If anything I think there are things that should be done to improve shields/defense/ability to survive for some ships. Science vessels are tougher than the carrier is and its used as a Science Vessel, not to mention its bigger and has more crew.
So other ships dont survive by thier shields? So your worried about a 90 degree arc, try a 45. As an escort power is sunk in weapons, and not engines for turn rate. Sorry vessels lost thier advantange of having turn rate and boost to skills at the same time.
I do agree VM and Photonic are worthless. That just adds to why I think VM should be done away with. lol. I think Cryptic screwed the abilities up. Puting skills on a short cool down was fine, VM was fine. As you said players stacked debuffs. BUT guess what. They still do. They should have left those skills alone and fixed it so teams dont share cool downs. As for FBP, yeah it should work against all energy damage.
Yeah cause science players should spend time healing, atleast many dont anyhow. So a couple of skills are worthless now science players have nothing to do.....
I'm pretty sure a cruiser's now the worst ship to "attack" with FBP--their damage is relatively low, hull is high, and they're extremely likely to have healing skills. Escort type ships are hurt much worse by it, because of their high damage and relatively low survivability. It may still not even insta-pop them, but it will almost certainly strip the facing shield right off.
And if a BoP is negating the damage with hazard emitters/science team, they're sacrificing something for support/survivability (i.e., they will have less debuffs or crowd control). Also, seriously, that's healing that *would* have been negating your weapon attacks. That bop's now less able to deal with actual enemy weapons fire against him or a teammate because he's having to deal with his cannons eating into his own hull.
I got hit by it in Kerrat when my ET was down (soloing) and I can tell you it worked fine.
Cryptic is moving away from having everything linked to ONE type of team ability.
They also are moving away from stunlocks (which did happen in solo pugging a lot for Cruisers).
Cryptic had too many complaints so when approaching the issue I would keep that in mind.
I doubt Cryptic will ever go back to that type of spam hold system.
How about the fact that every Tac ship has access to +30 damage consoles? You can stack 3-4 phaser consoles. A sci ship no longer has access to +30 sci consoles. And the consoles you do have can't be focused like a Tac ship. Our skills don't benfit from a single ability like weapons do.
Are you really comparing a escort or BoP's turn rate to a 1.1 RSV's with out the aux turn help that we no longer have? Tacs do not have to change power to get their offensive skills to bear. As I said above, if a tac can't kill with the plethora of high DPS he has without a chained alpha, he is doing something wrong. I have an advanced escort for my fed admiral SO. I stopped playing it because its too easy.
And FYI, sci ships only have access to the same RSP1. And SNB is a once in a two minute ability. Please, don't compare it to a 30 second CRF/HYT3 which is available to use so frequently.
You miss the point. All of those abilities I mentioned are on the same cool down. I can't use SNB and Tychens, or a tractor and a syphon. What variety of upper tier abilities do you refer to? Lets look at the CDR skills:
Charged Patricle Burst- meh damage, not worth the slot
Energy Siphon-Good power. I am having success with this power
Feedback Pulse- Severely gimped. Hasn't stopped me from firing on nor really deterred me from taking fire.
I have used this in an RSV and a BoP from both sides.
Gravity Well- Very underwhelming power
Photonic Shock Wave- Again another meh power that doesn't do much for the slot
Scramble Sensors- Better off grabbing the lower tiered versions
Tractor Beam Repulsors- No need to even comment here
Tyken's Rift-Decent power. Works well with BTSS
Viral Matrix- its simply broken on live.
A lot of those skills are on shared cool downs. Most are simply weak skills. If you are truly interested in learning something about all of these options, take a look at this thread. http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=154687 Akumarev really nailed it on his analysis.
I have tried them, both BoPs and Escorts. Both are stupid easy to fly. Now try the same on the RSV without the aux turn benefit. It is far more difficult to get the 90 skills and dual beams off in a turning fight than the 45 degree arcs required in an escort/bop.
No, it shouldn't be done away with. At the very least, it should be fixed. As I showed above, there are precious few skills that are worthwhile.
And no, you are wrong. They shouldn't take teams off shared cool downs. Its already too easy to stack. What they needed to do was simply made it so VM could not be hidden under another debuff. Thats all they needed to do. Although I thought it was wrong a ST 1 could remove a VM3 as long as there wasn't a stacked debuff. Lower tiered counters shouldn't be as good as the upper tiered ones.
I don't think you have a T5 science officer which is the only way to know if FBP3 is any good. I was shocked yesterday how easy it was to ignore it in my BoP. HE and St made fbp a joke.
Cruisers are simply better at healing. Transfer shields is a joke compared to Extend shields. I can and do use ST and HE to help my teammates. I will also use extend shields in my single LT eng slot. I have never seen one escort drivers use an extend shields. You guys all save the slot for RSP. The world is totally different on the KDF side. I don't even have RSP on my BoP. Instead I use the slot for an extend. A lot of Klinks do the same.
Its not just that "So a couple of skills are worthless...", its that there is very little that is worthwhile. And the skills that are left are often on the same cool down. What would you say if CRF and AP's were on shared cool downs. For that matter, why are the debuffs even tac skills in the first place?
Dont know why you had my name in that quote, because I didnt say that.
I do agree that it needs to be toned down a tad, but only if escorts get a little boost to shields/defense. That is the trade off for high DPS, low defense. If you think your going to take down a well played cruiser or vessel without buffs in a single pass your wrong.
You can stack for one type of damage, but I dont advise it. I split between cannons/type of weapons/torpedos. Its been talked about that stacking has a penalty, not tested myself but its in my future plans. A science can stack for a single ability, but again I dont advise it. Sciense does have consoles that boost 2 or more skills at once.
No, you thrown in BoPs. Escorts cant turn like BoPs. So again dont act like vessels are the only ones that has to boost engine power to gain some turn to give chase to other ships. Didnt say a tac couldnt kill, but again your only seeing the skills that boost dps being removed by SNB. Your leaving out resist debuff and turn rate buffs that helps escorts give chase to BoPs. You see things in a narrow point of view.
CRF is up for 15s with a 1m cool down. APA has a 1m30s cooldown. APB has a 1m cooldown. APO has a 1m cool down. GDF has a 5m cooldown. True Fed science vessels only have access to RSP 1, but doesnt matter as your shields are stronger than escorts and BoPs.
I do agree that science needs some adjusting, but still doesnt mean there should be a skill that removes the buffs from a ship in a buff heavy game. Yes there is some weak skills. I am currently teasting GW myself, but when used on me and seen it used against the enemy it does eat shields. Maybe not that noticable in a cruiser or vessel, but in a escort or BoP its very noticable. Also after more game play VM does work. I have noticed that it is a poor skill against a cruiser though.
Sure they have a better turn rate, but vessels still turn better than carriers used a science ship. IMO I would be using beams and turrets rather than dual beams.
Really...too easy to stack? Oh, you mean like stacking debuffs on ships so when they use a team they only remove 1 debuff, but still stuck with the others like say SNB or the way VM use to work. Sure, I bet you would love if lower tier counters didnt work so good being some ships cant get the higher tier counters.
I am working on my last tier of science. So yes I have tested most of the science skills and just respect to test the higher tier versions and a couple I have not tested yet.
I wouldnt expect a escort to extend shields, I would expect them to start DPSing the target firing on thier team mate. Beyond that though, a bigger reason escorts use RSP so much is Klings focus fire on them.
Are you serious? Why are attack patterns escort skills? The 1 debuff escorts have tied to attack patterns on a offensive ship you find a problem with. That would be like me saying why do science ships have damage included with skills that debuff.
I do agree that burst damage needs a little adjusting, but in return escorts and BoPs should have a slight adjustment to defense. If debuffs can be stacked then so should counters. Yes there are skills that need adjustment. Beyond that there still should not be a skill that takes the buffs away from a ship in a buff heavy game.
LOL, np. I can understand that.
The fact remains, it doesn't seem to be working even as well as it did on tribble three weeks ago. Its a high tier skill and it currently is not worth using. No one wants it to be overpowered, but it needs to work.
Yahto, I had a response set to go when I realized we were straying into another timezone. If you want to start a new topic, we can continue debating there. Apologies to Bounty for the temporary hijacking of this thread.
Ok so let's get back on topic then with this ....
I disagree that it's broken and worthless.
It's not as good as the old VM certainly but I have seen it function as intended.
It's an "ok" power but it's no longer outrageous vs. Cruisers like it had been in the past.
You can't have that many CC abilities linked to one type of Team Ability since there is a 20 sec GCD and since Team abilities do not have a chance to remove CC's every "tick" like the original design.
Jam Sensors + VM was just plain stupid pre 1.1.
The only reason I find it worthless is if it is broken. I'm getting reports that it works for some people and not for others. As I stated in my original post, there were three distinct players (two Klinks and a Fed) who had it in their builds, used it on each other, and received NO effect. No subsystems went down. No power levels were affected. No systems stopped functioning (weapons could fire, shields were up, ships kept flying). This was with versions II and III. If there was some effect it was of such a trivial nature and so slight that it would render the power indeed useless.
From the original description provided prior to the new VM being released to Tribble it was supposed to function as sort of a mini-Boarding Party with random subsystems being taken offline for the duration of the power. Once it hit Tribble it was bugged and had issues with Engineering Team clearing one effect and having another immediately pop up or the same one recurring. All-in-all a nightmare and the power/counter codes were revised prior to patching Holodeck. My concern is if others are experiencing this as well...
Are you guys suffering any effects from VM? If so, what are they? Have you used it with success? If so, what effects are you seeing on your targets? Trying to collect and compile info for the DEV's to review...
You're probably in a Cruiser that uses ET a lot.
Raptor.
It doesn't appear to be working.
Ah. You have a Cruiser pet spamming ET on you.