So far, I'm seeing a couple of constant responses here:
1) Tactical Team 1 is as good as Tactical Team 2 or 3, rendering those useless.
Its good because what nearly everyone wants is the shield distribution, there's also very little chance that anyone would sacrifice skills like APO 2 or 3, CRF 2 or 3, CSV 2 or 3, TS 2 or 3 for a higher version of TT.
2) Tactical Team is better than Science Team or Engineering team, rendering those useless due to shared cooldown.
3) The standard Shield-Distribution abilities via Arrow buttons/Distribute Shield power are NOT effective enough compared to Tactical Team, rendering them useless.
I think its in a position of opportunity on escorts:
1) They dedicate all of their higher tac powers to dealing damage.
2) Team abilities don't play nice with each other on cooldown.
3) Sci & Eng team 1 have serious competition from much better skills in their own profession, Tac team 1 has next to nothing competing with it within tactical. The things that do compete are for edge case builds and are unlikely to be found in any high end Escort build.
4) Manual shield distribution is terrible.
Well of course I'd use all those with a Fleet Escort, and one less EPtS with a Defiant or Advanced/MVAM Escort.
But without tactical team, an Escort dies VERY quickly even with those skills. Its the combination of them PLUS Tactical Team that allows an Escort to tank effectively, even without flying around in circles at high speed.
And an Escort dies very quickly even with just Tac team but not those other skills. That's the point.
You're making a case about tac team based on tac team + a handful of other shield heal powers.
Try Tac team all by itself on an STF, the results will not be so stellar.
I also think we have a different concept of "tanking".
If you mean surviving the aggro you generate, that differs from my view of tanking (which this game seems to have little of, admittedly - but a lot of that is lack of player ability and skills that may or may not be WAI).
My view of tanking, is when 1 player soaks damage intended not just for them-self, but for other characters as well.
Why is it a design flaw on the Pilot's part? They did not design the BOFF layout. They did not design the skills to be so limited for Tactical officers. You would perhaps want them to add a Beam to use a few other types of Tactical Abilities but that would Lower their Overall DPS both in terms of bad power utilization (Beams are the least efficient Energy Weapon and YES it does make a BIG difference) and in terms of raw damage. So why trash their DPS just to have something else for their BOFFs to be doing?
I generally fill my upper slots with Attack Patterns, Torpedo Skills, and Cannon Skills. I repeat them a bit but not enough to cause a problem because as one is in cooldown another is available. The real problem with a full Cannon Build is that they drain so much power that they make the additional Cannons worthless. There is a certain point where you break even on when adding a new Energy Weapon helps as oppose to has no effect or actually hurts your DPS. It is somewhat complicated but there is a great guide here on the forums which will explain it. Also loosing out on the enormous damage spike of Torps is simply ill-advised.
So at first you seem to be suggesting that using 7 Tactical Abilities and leaving the 8th blank (which is what you are doing with a Defiant running all cannons) is some how more efficient than figuring out how to use all 8 Tactical skills? And then in the next few lines you point out the flaws of such a build. If you say so. To be clear, I'm not trashing anyone. I'm just saying that it is their choice and in my opinion it's a flawed one. No hard feelings or bad mojo to anyone... It would be interesting to see CSV take a slight damage reduction and be dropped down a tier to solve the all Cannon Escort "problem" but then again the player could just as easily use a torpedo.
Of course, none of this really has anything to do with the issue of Tactical Team 1 being too efficient at what it does for too long. Nor does it address the fact that there is no good reason to take a higher tier of Tactical Team as they currently exist.
Really, it would be nice if the basic direction shield redistribution was better (certainly not on par with Tactical Team but better than it is now). You don't really lose anything by simply redistributing to all facings as opposed to manually directing shield power to the facing under attack (which should be more efficient since more power is going to one facing rather than 4). Tactical Team's redistribution should be better than manual redistribution but there shouldn't be such a huge gap nor should low level Tactical Team do it as well as it currently does. Give an incentive to use high tiers and then it won't be quite such a boost to Cruisers and Science ships that already have high survivability.
For me, I use teams 1 & 2 combined with EPT-2 and TSS-3 in my Intrepid. My damage mitigation is very good using resilient shields, but all that is useless when hit with a single BOP with Theta Vent. Without shields my 33k hull is gone in seconds. :eek: If you're going to nef anything, please let it be Theta Vent.
I miss that from SFC. You could reinforce one shield facing and it would draw power from the other facings to do it. That would be a great change in STO.
no.
In SFC, shield reinforcement worked as follows:
IF you had excess power available, you could divert that power to create a BUFFER on top of your shields (the shield facing in fact were fixed and regenerated SLOWLY at a fixed amount depending on your ship). Said buffer would catch incoming damage up until its points were used up. Then damage went onto the shields.
How thick the buffer was depended on over how many facings you applied said reinforcements, naturally putting all power into one facing created a BIG buffer, often leading big ships like dreads and BB's capable to fully blunt an lesser ships firepower when they where engaged on their own terms. (basically if the smaller didn't try to outmaneuver the reinforced facings).
Its the same mechanic that made many cruiser and less based tactics combat ineffective vs high tier ships.
Proxy photons stand off attrition? Lol. Disruptor dance? hehehe.
But beware the close in plasma torp bull rush XD. keep the weasel ready.... ah i digress.
Simply put: STO has absolutely nothing to do with the slower and much more deliberate combat of SFC.
In fact, STO has NOTHING in common with either SFC, Starfleet academy, Klingon academy and Bridgecommander aside from the fact that they all are star trek games.
Starfleet academy and its successor klingon academy had vastly superior combat mechanics compared to sto, as did bridge commander.
STO is based on the typical mmo combat engine. that is still the biggest flaw. and an unredeemable one.
The fact still remains that any changes made to tactical team still results in escorts being the best at using it, because it is a tactical ability and they have the greatest amount of those available.
For the sake of cruisers being able to tank at all, I'd leave it where it is.
The fact still remains that any changes made to tactical team still results in escorts being the best at using it, because it is a tactical ability and they have the greatest amount of those available.
For the sake of cruisers being able to tank at all, I'd leave it where it is.
If they fixed it so that it scaled at all 3 tiers (rather than being the same as they are now) then at least there would be a real and significant cost benefit situation. Escorts would give up high burst powers and attack patterns for a bit of survivability is all. Only tier 3 Tactical Team wouldn't be available to every ship and even then the Excelsior and some Oddy variants would be able to use those.
Cruisers are the best at using Aux to SIF 2 and EPtS3 while Science ships would still be the best at using Transfer Shield Strength 3 and Hazard Emitters 3. Is that inherently unfair to the Escort or a reasonable trade off. Cruisers and Science ships already have powerful healing abilities and they currently benefit more than any other ship in the game by there being no significant difference between Tactical Team 1 and Tactical Team 3.
i have tt 1 & 2 but concidering putting ts 2 to replace tac 2 to have quantum torps for more dps. besides people here that are saying tt1 has no rivals in their respective spots will et and st do have rival at ensign lvl. If they change it to it could scale and making worth it to have at the higher slots.
You know, maybe the problem isn't that so much that tactical team is too good, because let's face it, it is a go-to power.
Maybe it's that the other two teams are underpowered by comparison. I mean, I never really use Sci team unless I want to remove science debuffs or as a quick shield recharge, and eng team is really only used to put disabled systems back on line or as an emergency heal when HE and A2SIF aren't quite enough to heal me up. Those two skills, as mentioned previously in the thread have only 2 effects: clear debuffs and Heal.
Tac team on the other hand, has 3: Shield Rebalance, Damage buff and Boarding Party/tac debuff removal.
My question is, why should tactical team be the only one that has sustained shield defense abilities?
If all three teams were given similar defensive enhancements such as rebalancing shields, I'd imagine they'd be used more often and tac team would no longer be necessarily the only choice. I really think balancing out the X Team abilities would be a better answer than nerfing tac team into oblivion. Give more choices, not fewer.
I agree, that's a good point how TT has 3 critical functions and the other two teams only have 2. Having all three teams auto redistribute to the facing taking damage like TT is a great idea for flexability among the teams.
You're still stating that this is Tac Team all on its own, without the use of other shield heals.
You're using powers in combination, the effect is strong. We both agree on that.
But you are pinpointing the survivability on only 1 half of the combination.
Please use Tac Team on its own with no other shield buffs/heals to "tank the world", and let us know the results.
No, I'm saying that without Tactical Team, ANY combination of shield heals isn't effective. Its the use of Tacitcal Team that puts it over the top.
Using tactical team alone however, is actually MORE effective than using a single shield heal.
And I agree with making TT2 and 3 more effective than TT1, which would force Escorts to use lower level canon/torpedo skills if they want their current survivability. This would lower their DPS and make them not so uber if they want to go the Escort-tank route.
The fact still remains that any changes made to tactical team still results in escorts being the best at using it, because it is a tactical ability and they have the greatest amount of those available.
For the sake of cruisers being able to tank at all, I'd leave it where it is.
true ,but you conclusion is flawed:
because since tac slots are so much more important, one might think the other power "sets" need some retooling.
Why there is no engineer based ability to put your weapons to overdrive, or a sci ability to put some adaptive something something that increases <insert combat relevant stuff here>.
no doing anything is wrong.
Just nerfing it is wrong.
putting some work into this effed up situation is right.
Tac Team should be left alone and is working well. I bet it is mostly doubled up on with escorts and I have no problem with that. In an escort you generally have to maneuver or die. Tac team means you don't have to be a keyboard wiz or chain your shield distribution to other abilities. You still have a shield cap penalty and you still die when faced with competent opponents...it just removes some of your frustration because you are less likely to be insta-killed PVE or PVP and have a chance to survive a big hit without the emergency button. On other class ships I don't find more than 1 copy necessary and many times don't even use it.(PVPing excluded but PVP depends on your role) In science and cruisers you usually move slower, can distribute shield easier yourself, and have a higher shield cap.
So a tac ability used preferentially on tac ships to very briefly cover a ship class weakness...how is this not working as intended? You think remembering to buy components is important now...
I agree, that's a good point how TT has 3 critical functions and the other two teams only have 2. Having all three teams auto redistribute to the facing taking damage like TT is a great idea for flexability among the teams.
I actually like this idea. Have all of them redistribute shields as a basic function. That would give me another tactical ability slot I can actually use offensively.
because since tac slots are so much more important, one might think the other power "sets" need some retooling.
What? No. (Also, weapons to overdrive? Looked at Emergency Power to Weapons?)
Tac slots don't play well together. There's a good reason 95% of birds of prey don't run two tactical Boffs. If you're tactical and you have a copy of CRF, a torpedo, tac team and omega, you don't need anything else, because you have tactical initiative and can chain them to their global cooldowns.
It's nice to be able to run something unimaginative like TT/TT/THY/THY/CRF/CRF/APO, but as a tactical captain that pretty much obsoletes one of your captain abilities, and if you don't then you're not CRFing when it's down and you need to be doing that. (Though BoPs can get away with it because they can bugger off to wait out their cooldowns.)
Beam overload 1 is a joke, higher levels conflict with other skills, you can only ever run one torpedo skill at any given time, and cannons are either CRFing or CSVing, never both. Yet you can run EPTS 1, 1, and EPTW 1 with aux2SIF or dampeners chained together because they don't conflict with each other, and if they do their global cooldowns allow themselves to be cycled. None of those stop you from using reverse shield polarity, and while yeah attack pattern omega is great and all but so is extend shields, albeit you can't use it on yourself. Cross-heal with a friend, acquire invulnerability.
If a ship could have a commander tac, ltcmdr sci, two lieutenant and an ensign engineer, I would guarentee it would be wildly overpowered. Low level engineer slots are the most versatile and valuable to have in large numbers, and do little at higher levels Re: Self buffing. Tac boffs aren't exactly weak but I wouldn't call them much more important by any stretch of the imagination.
All I read from people complaining about how "op" tac team is in pvp is... "I can't play well enough to get around tac team, and don't know how to strip shields as a sci officer." If you can't strip shields and buffs from a target as a sci captain, you need to learn to play. Also, whomever is claiming to tank everything at once non stop in an escort simply because of tac team and shield heals is blowing smoke out of their rear.
I can guarantee that you aren't staying in range 100% of the time and rather are allowing some time for abilities to run their cd's to fly in and dps for a bit more time, rinse and repeat. If you deny otherwise - you are a liar. You don't stay in range 100% of the time and you don't tank everything non-stop in an escort no matter your skill build. Stop stretching the truth simply to make your end of the argument look more convincing. Also claiming that borg energy weapons (from the big ships, spheres certainly not) on elite aren't dangerous is a lie, and a dishonest exaggeration to try to invoke support for your point of view.
Tac cubes do some pretty high damage with their energy weapons (unless power siphoned or debuffed - without these a tac cube on elite does some pretty severe damage with its energy weapons). You can avoid the torpedo 1 shot all together, as a tank I fly 7km above the cube and never get 1 shot, hold aggro the whole fight and none of the other dps ever even have to worry about taking hits aside from a shot or 2 when it uses BFAW. While flying above it, unfortunately, you are in the arc of all it's beam arrays - at that point it's energy weapons become an issue, which is why having team mates that also heal the tank (amazing concept I know . . .) and debuff the cube (yet another amazing concept . . . ) is perfect and my pre-made group runs them flawlessly every time. I use tac team to cleanse the borg assimilation debuff, without that cleanse I would be shut down into oblivion.
It's a shame more people don't see good eng-cruiser tanks. 1 eng, 1 sci 3 tac, or 1 eng 4 tac is my usual team setup with my friends. The tac captains never have to worry about aggro because I always have it (Threat control is useful now), thus -they don't need to run, turn, die (all of which take away from their dps) or anything they can just keep dpsing and throw me the occasional support heal when needed. The stfs are cleared very quickly with no complications.
On a side note: On KA or Cure space (yes both on elite), I am more than able to stop probes on one side on my own, and protect the Kang from BOPS on my own, cruiser pilots that can't (regardless of captain-class) are doing it wrong. I run a heavy tank build and still have the dps to keep probes at bay in KA and BOPS from the Kang in Cure - all on elite. While I'm at it I even clear the generators and solo the cube that spawns without issue and keep probes at bay. If you fail at keeping probes cleared or BOPS from the Kang in a Cruiser - you may want to evaluate your build.
And I agree with making TT2 and 3 more effective than TT1, which would force Escorts to use lower level canon/torpedo skills if they want their current survivability. This would lower their DPS and make them not so uber if they want to go the Escort-tank route.
The typical escort has 4 powers or so that are specifically dedicated to damage dealing: 2 torp skills and 2 cannon skills.
TT & APO, very common on builds, also grant a damage increase - but that's not what anyone typically uses them for.
That's 4 out of 12 available skills on an Escort dedicated to dealing damage - and you want to reduce that?
The other team abilities are very good at what they do already. Plus with the appropriate Doffs they are even better. Tactical Team just happens to be too good at what it does. Even if they separated the Shield Distribution from the other aspects that it does so well, the Shield Distribution power should still be tiered so that you get some benefit from using a higher level.
OMG People Drop this Nonsense talk.. I agree the different levels of tac team are ridiculous and no real point to have a tac team 3.. But FFs it is not an I win button.. far far from it.. lol if you all keep this talk up they will make this ability what it once was.. damn near completely useless..
The whole approach to skills is just borked. Under the circumstances, and albeit I never saw Worf sending Security teams to boost shields from one side to another during a battle, I will have to agree with some that it works well to limit the mess of Balance that the game has at this point.
OMG People Drop this Nonsense talk.. I agree the different levels of tac team are ridiculous and no real point to have a tac team 3.. But FFs it is not an I win button.. far far from it.. lol if you all keep this talk up they will make this ability what it once was.. damn near completely useless..
Its not an "I WIN" button, its almost as good as RSP at times.
Earlier today, I was playing the new FE mission, and you end up fighting a TRIBBLE LOAD of Jem'hadar ships.
Several times I was hit with Subnucleonic beam, killing my shield buffs (I replayed this with 6 different charecters, in 6 different ships, some escorts some cruisers and even a bird of prey). Every time that happened, Tac Team is usually the first defensive skill I would have available. Meanwhile, while I had NO skills available, I'd take a beating, but as soon as I hit Tac Team I just won't die.
Do the shields drop a bit from other facings due to redirecting shield power? Yes, but at a VERY low rate, and I never died even when I'd loose a shield facing and get down to like 25% hull. As soon as tac team pops up, you survive until you have ZERO shield strength left, which is pretty rare if you use a 3 piece Borg set or any other shield skill in conjunction with Tactical Team which everyone does as has been stated.
In my Opinion Tac Team is not OP, but "distribute shield power" should be much more faster.
I am ok, with Tac team, it is a important tool to keep a Escort alive, but cruisers and Sci ships shouldn't have to rely on that power.
The problem is they need TT too. (ok if you are masochistic you can do PvP without tac team, but don't expect to stand a chance against a Escort attack.)
My point is that either "distribute shield power" should become more powerful, or the other Team powers (engineereing Team, science team) should also distrubute the ships shields to a certain degree, just like Tac Team.
Comments
Its good because what nearly everyone wants is the shield distribution, there's also very little chance that anyone would sacrifice skills like APO 2 or 3, CRF 2 or 3, CSV 2 or 3, TS 2 or 3 for a higher version of TT.
I think its in a position of opportunity on escorts:
1) They dedicate all of their higher tac powers to dealing damage.
2) Team abilities don't play nice with each other on cooldown.
3) Sci & Eng team 1 have serious competition from much better skills in their own profession, Tac team 1 has next to nothing competing with it within tactical. The things that do compete are for edge case builds and are unlikely to be found in any high end Escort build.
4) Manual shield distribution is terrible.
And an Escort dies very quickly even with just Tac team but not those other skills. That's the point.
You're making a case about tac team based on tac team + a handful of other shield heal powers.
Try Tac team all by itself on an STF, the results will not be so stellar.
I also think we have a different concept of "tanking".
If you mean surviving the aggro you generate, that differs from my view of tanking (which this game seems to have little of, admittedly - but a lot of that is lack of player ability and skills that may or may not be WAI).
My view of tanking, is when 1 player soaks damage intended not just for them-self, but for other characters as well.
So at first you seem to be suggesting that using 7 Tactical Abilities and leaving the 8th blank (which is what you are doing with a Defiant running all cannons) is some how more efficient than figuring out how to use all 8 Tactical skills? And then in the next few lines you point out the flaws of such a build. If you say so. To be clear, I'm not trashing anyone. I'm just saying that it is their choice and in my opinion it's a flawed one. No hard feelings or bad mojo to anyone... It would be interesting to see CSV take a slight damage reduction and be dropped down a tier to solve the all Cannon Escort "problem" but then again the player could just as easily use a torpedo.
Of course, none of this really has anything to do with the issue of Tactical Team 1 being too efficient at what it does for too long. Nor does it address the fact that there is no good reason to take a higher tier of Tactical Team as they currently exist.
Really, it would be nice if the basic direction shield redistribution was better (certainly not on par with Tactical Team but better than it is now). You don't really lose anything by simply redistributing to all facings as opposed to manually directing shield power to the facing under attack (which should be more efficient since more power is going to one facing rather than 4). Tactical Team's redistribution should be better than manual redistribution but there shouldn't be such a huge gap nor should low level Tactical Team do it as well as it currently does. Give an incentive to use high tiers and then it won't be quite such a boost to Cruisers and Science ships that already have high survivability.
I don't think that is necessarily due to Tac team though, a good pilot is a good pilot.
We could give your ship and build to a lot of PUG players, and not see the same results at all.
Its painfully obvious how effective it is considering the 5 seconds between not having it is the only time I have any problems tanking the world.
You're still stating that this is Tac Team all on its own, without the use of other shield heals.
You're using powers in combination, the effect is strong. We both agree on that.
But you are pinpointing the survivability on only 1 half of the combination.
Please use Tac Team on its own with no other shield buffs/heals to "tank the world", and let us know the results.
no.
In SFC, shield reinforcement worked as follows:
IF you had excess power available, you could divert that power to create a BUFFER on top of your shields (the shield facing in fact were fixed and regenerated SLOWLY at a fixed amount depending on your ship). Said buffer would catch incoming damage up until its points were used up. Then damage went onto the shields.
How thick the buffer was depended on over how many facings you applied said reinforcements, naturally putting all power into one facing created a BIG buffer, often leading big ships like dreads and BB's capable to fully blunt an lesser ships firepower when they where engaged on their own terms. (basically if the smaller didn't try to outmaneuver the reinforced facings).
Its the same mechanic that made many cruiser and less based tactics combat ineffective vs high tier ships.
Proxy photons stand off attrition? Lol. Disruptor dance? hehehe.
But beware the close in plasma torp bull rush XD. keep the weasel ready.... ah i digress.
Simply put: STO has absolutely nothing to do with the slower and much more deliberate combat of SFC.
In fact, STO has NOTHING in common with either SFC, Starfleet academy, Klingon academy and Bridgecommander aside from the fact that they all are star trek games.
Starfleet academy and its successor klingon academy had vastly superior combat mechanics compared to sto, as did bridge commander.
STO is based on the typical mmo combat engine. that is still the biggest flaw. and an unredeemable one.
For the sake of cruisers being able to tank at all, I'd leave it where it is.
Cruisers are the best at using Aux to SIF 2 and EPtS3 while Science ships would still be the best at using Transfer Shield Strength 3 and Hazard Emitters 3. Is that inherently unfair to the Escort or a reasonable trade off. Cruisers and Science ships already have powerful healing abilities and they currently benefit more than any other ship in the game by there being no significant difference between Tactical Team 1 and Tactical Team 3.
I agree, that's a good point how TT has 3 critical functions and the other two teams only have 2. Having all three teams auto redistribute to the facing taking damage like TT is a great idea for flexability among the teams.
Using tactical team alone however, is actually MORE effective than using a single shield heal.
And I agree with making TT2 and 3 more effective than TT1, which would force Escorts to use lower level canon/torpedo skills if they want their current survivability. This would lower their DPS and make them not so uber if they want to go the Escort-tank route.
true ,but you conclusion is flawed:
because since tac slots are so much more important, one might think the other power "sets" need some retooling.
Why there is no engineer based ability to put your weapons to overdrive, or a sci ability to put some adaptive something something that increases <insert combat relevant stuff here>.
no doing anything is wrong.
Just nerfing it is wrong.
putting some work into this effed up situation is right.
So a tac ability used preferentially on tac ships to very briefly cover a ship class weakness...how is this not working as intended? You think remembering to buy components is important now...
I actually like this idea. Have all of them redistribute shields as a basic function. That would give me another tactical ability slot I can actually use offensively.
Tac Team 2 could have a .5 sec delay
Tact Team 3 could be instantaneous as now
What? No. (Also, weapons to overdrive? Looked at Emergency Power to Weapons?)
Tac slots don't play well together. There's a good reason 95% of birds of prey don't run two tactical Boffs. If you're tactical and you have a copy of CRF, a torpedo, tac team and omega, you don't need anything else, because you have tactical initiative and can chain them to their global cooldowns.
It's nice to be able to run something unimaginative like TT/TT/THY/THY/CRF/CRF/APO, but as a tactical captain that pretty much obsoletes one of your captain abilities, and if you don't then you're not CRFing when it's down and you need to be doing that. (Though BoPs can get away with it because they can bugger off to wait out their cooldowns.)
Beam overload 1 is a joke, higher levels conflict with other skills, you can only ever run one torpedo skill at any given time, and cannons are either CRFing or CSVing, never both. Yet you can run EPTS 1, 1, and EPTW 1 with aux2SIF or dampeners chained together because they don't conflict with each other, and if they do their global cooldowns allow themselves to be cycled. None of those stop you from using reverse shield polarity, and while yeah attack pattern omega is great and all but so is extend shields, albeit you can't use it on yourself. Cross-heal with a friend, acquire invulnerability.
If a ship could have a commander tac, ltcmdr sci, two lieutenant and an ensign engineer, I would guarentee it would be wildly overpowered. Low level engineer slots are the most versatile and valuable to have in large numbers, and do little at higher levels Re: Self buffing. Tac boffs aren't exactly weak but I wouldn't call them much more important by any stretch of the imagination.
I can guarantee that you aren't staying in range 100% of the time and rather are allowing some time for abilities to run their cd's to fly in and dps for a bit more time, rinse and repeat. If you deny otherwise - you are a liar. You don't stay in range 100% of the time and you don't tank everything non-stop in an escort no matter your skill build. Stop stretching the truth simply to make your end of the argument look more convincing. Also claiming that borg energy weapons (from the big ships, spheres certainly not) on elite aren't dangerous is a lie, and a dishonest exaggeration to try to invoke support for your point of view.
Tac cubes do some pretty high damage with their energy weapons (unless power siphoned or debuffed - without these a tac cube on elite does some pretty severe damage with its energy weapons). You can avoid the torpedo 1 shot all together, as a tank I fly 7km above the cube and never get 1 shot, hold aggro the whole fight and none of the other dps ever even have to worry about taking hits aside from a shot or 2 when it uses BFAW. While flying above it, unfortunately, you are in the arc of all it's beam arrays - at that point it's energy weapons become an issue, which is why having team mates that also heal the tank (amazing concept I know . . .) and debuff the cube (yet another amazing concept . . . ) is perfect and my pre-made group runs them flawlessly every time. I use tac team to cleanse the borg assimilation debuff, without that cleanse I would be shut down into oblivion.
It's a shame more people don't see good eng-cruiser tanks. 1 eng, 1 sci 3 tac, or 1 eng 4 tac is my usual team setup with my friends. The tac captains never have to worry about aggro because I always have it (Threat control is useful now), thus -they don't need to run, turn, die (all of which take away from their dps) or anything they can just keep dpsing and throw me the occasional support heal when needed. The stfs are cleared very quickly with no complications.
On a side note: On KA or Cure space (yes both on elite), I am more than able to stop probes on one side on my own, and protect the Kang from BOPS on my own, cruiser pilots that can't (regardless of captain-class) are doing it wrong. I run a heavy tank build and still have the dps to keep probes at bay in KA and BOPS from the Kang in Cure - all on elite. While I'm at it I even clear the generators and solo the cube that spawns without issue and keep probes at bay. If you fail at keeping probes cleared or BOPS from the Kang in a Cruiser - you may want to evaluate your build.
I don't find this is true at all.
And my statement still stands, please use TT alone to "tank the world" as you put it.
Otherwise, its just hyperbole.
The typical escort has 4 powers or so that are specifically dedicated to damage dealing: 2 torp skills and 2 cannon skills.
TT & APO, very common on builds, also grant a damage increase - but that's not what anyone typically uses them for.
That's 4 out of 12 available skills on an Escort dedicated to dealing damage - and you want to reduce that?
Earlier today, I was playing the new FE mission, and you end up fighting a TRIBBLE LOAD of Jem'hadar ships.
Several times I was hit with Subnucleonic beam, killing my shield buffs (I replayed this with 6 different charecters, in 6 different ships, some escorts some cruisers and even a bird of prey). Every time that happened, Tac Team is usually the first defensive skill I would have available. Meanwhile, while I had NO skills available, I'd take a beating, but as soon as I hit Tac Team I just won't die.
Do the shields drop a bit from other facings due to redirecting shield power? Yes, but at a VERY low rate, and I never died even when I'd loose a shield facing and get down to like 25% hull. As soon as tac team pops up, you survive until you have ZERO shield strength left, which is pretty rare if you use a 3 piece Borg set or any other shield skill in conjunction with Tactical Team which everyone does as has been stated.
I am ok, with Tac team, it is a important tool to keep a Escort alive, but cruisers and Sci ships shouldn't have to rely on that power.
The problem is they need TT too. (ok if you are masochistic you can do PvP without tac team, but don't expect to stand a chance against a Escort attack.)
My point is that either "distribute shield power" should become more powerful, or the other Team powers (engineereing Team, science team) should also distrubute the ships shields to a certain degree, just like Tac Team.
Live long and prosper.