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How to promote diversity in STFs
captgriffen
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Right now, there really is zero reason to run anything other than an escort in an STF. Specifically, a tac/escort. You'll very rarely die (pretty much never in a decent team now they fixed the critting torpedoes on one shot doom Negh'vars had), and do the most DPS possible to make the optionals and finish.
Sci's pretty useless. Shield stripping? No shield resistances, so escorts do it WAY better, and aren't then useless vs other things. Defensive debuffs/heals? Well, since you cannot really die to anything anyway, fairly useless (escorts can run HE1/TSS2, enough to cross heal sufficiently). Offensive debuffs? Well, they can't run AP:B3/AP:B2, so they're awful at this compared to escorts. Sustained damage wise, sci ships are pretty awful.
Cruisers are pretty useless as well. Less damage, and the extra healing capability doesn't help because escort can already cross heal enough (assuming no one is derp derp and not using 2xEPtS). As for cruiser tankiness, cruisers have a nice advantage in hull tanking, but for shield tanking, they aren't that much better as the extra defence score of escorts reduces damage by a lot (I assume because the borg have awful accuracy - going from say 40% hitting to 30% hitting is only 10% more defence, but 25% damage reduction, which with healing might give three times the survival time).
But hey, cruisers can make it up in the hull tanking right? No. They can't, because the borg torpedoes are pumped up hard to be able to punch straight through shields, which means on hull, even for a cruiser, it's likely to be a one hit kill. Shield tanking is vastly, vastly superior in STFs due to the massive kinetic spike damage, vs relatively low energy damage.
So how to fix it?
1) Add shield resistances, more shields, and less hull strength (aim for an escort to take about the same length of time to kill it as before, maybe a bit more without sci support). This will a) make sci shield stripping abilities actually worth something, and b) nerf Attack Pattern: Beta, which is just the most obscenely powerful buff in STFs at the moment (first guy using AP:B3 gives 50% extra damage to everyone hitting the target - not 50% of base, 50% of actual damage).
2) Give borg ships more energy weapons, and tone down the torpedoes. This will shift the balance of tanking ability away from escorts towards cruisers, by lessening kinetic damage. It will also reduce the amount of annoying one shot kills (particularly from torpedoes you normally can't see).
3) Give weapons to the transformers and make it so you can't shoot the gateway with impunity. This will give healing more of a role - right now, for the vast majority of an STF, you just sit there and shoot at something without moving or needing to heal. That's also really, really dull.
The results of these pretty simple changes:
- Shield stripping abilities cease to be useless.
- Aceton beam, extend shields, and other engineering abilities becomes a lot more useful, and, by extension, cruisers.
- Cruisers become the most effective tanks again for STFs.
- Science debuff abilities such as tyken's rift become more useful (drop shields -> easy kill on spheres, for example).
- Less time being bored shooting at stationary targets that don't shoot back.
More diversity is a good thing. People would play more other toons and ship types if they weren't downright inferior for endgame PvE.
Costs would be adding a few abilities, adding a few beam arrays, and doing a bit of testing. The code is all there. Don't worry too much about getting balance perfect, since it's right now pretty awful (no reason to fly anything other than escort). Ideally, add it as a new difficulty to avoid whining about making it harder for the escorts, who would likely be a little weaker (maybe Expert or something, ideally with heroic that's even harder above that :P). That might take some more coding though, dunno how hard it is to do a CnP and add an extra button. :P
Oh, and if they played other toons and ship types, you'd sell more cruisers, sci ships, and carriers. So it'd make you money, Cryptic/PWE.
Thoughts? I'd prefer a complete overhaul of STFs, since the design of them has some serious issues, but that isn't going to happen, so I wanted to suggest a low cost way to at least make other ship types more comparable in utility and promote diversity (eg: right now, not running AP:B3/B2 on an escort is always sub-optimal in STFs).
Sci's pretty useless. Shield stripping? No shield resistances, so escorts do it WAY better, and aren't then useless vs other things. Defensive debuffs/heals? Well, since you cannot really die to anything anyway, fairly useless (escorts can run HE1/TSS2, enough to cross heal sufficiently). Offensive debuffs? Well, they can't run AP:B3/AP:B2, so they're awful at this compared to escorts. Sustained damage wise, sci ships are pretty awful.
Cruisers are pretty useless as well. Less damage, and the extra healing capability doesn't help because escort can already cross heal enough (assuming no one is derp derp and not using 2xEPtS). As for cruiser tankiness, cruisers have a nice advantage in hull tanking, but for shield tanking, they aren't that much better as the extra defence score of escorts reduces damage by a lot (I assume because the borg have awful accuracy - going from say 40% hitting to 30% hitting is only 10% more defence, but 25% damage reduction, which with healing might give three times the survival time).
But hey, cruisers can make it up in the hull tanking right? No. They can't, because the borg torpedoes are pumped up hard to be able to punch straight through shields, which means on hull, even for a cruiser, it's likely to be a one hit kill. Shield tanking is vastly, vastly superior in STFs due to the massive kinetic spike damage, vs relatively low energy damage.
So how to fix it?
1) Add shield resistances, more shields, and less hull strength (aim for an escort to take about the same length of time to kill it as before, maybe a bit more without sci support). This will a) make sci shield stripping abilities actually worth something, and b) nerf Attack Pattern: Beta, which is just the most obscenely powerful buff in STFs at the moment (first guy using AP:B3 gives 50% extra damage to everyone hitting the target - not 50% of base, 50% of actual damage).
2) Give borg ships more energy weapons, and tone down the torpedoes. This will shift the balance of tanking ability away from escorts towards cruisers, by lessening kinetic damage. It will also reduce the amount of annoying one shot kills (particularly from torpedoes you normally can't see).
3) Give weapons to the transformers and make it so you can't shoot the gateway with impunity. This will give healing more of a role - right now, for the vast majority of an STF, you just sit there and shoot at something without moving or needing to heal. That's also really, really dull.
The results of these pretty simple changes:
- Shield stripping abilities cease to be useless.
- Aceton beam, extend shields, and other engineering abilities becomes a lot more useful, and, by extension, cruisers.
- Cruisers become the most effective tanks again for STFs.
- Science debuff abilities such as tyken's rift become more useful (drop shields -> easy kill on spheres, for example).
- Less time being bored shooting at stationary targets that don't shoot back.
More diversity is a good thing. People would play more other toons and ship types if they weren't downright inferior for endgame PvE.
Costs would be adding a few abilities, adding a few beam arrays, and doing a bit of testing. The code is all there. Don't worry too much about getting balance perfect, since it's right now pretty awful (no reason to fly anything other than escort). Ideally, add it as a new difficulty to avoid whining about making it harder for the escorts, who would likely be a little weaker (maybe Expert or something, ideally with heroic that's even harder above that :P). That might take some more coding though, dunno how hard it is to do a CnP and add an extra button. :P
Oh, and if they played other toons and ship types, you'd sell more cruisers, sci ships, and carriers. So it'd make you money, Cryptic/PWE.
Thoughts? I'd prefer a complete overhaul of STFs, since the design of them has some serious issues, but that isn't going to happen, so I wanted to suggest a low cost way to at least make other ship types more comparable in utility and promote diversity (eg: right now, not running AP:B3/B2 on an escort is always sub-optimal in STFs).
Post edited by captgriffen on
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All classes are fun to play in STF, just the roles are different.
sci is great for sensor scan with 125 aux power... I use karfi for it, as it dishes enough dps.
engi is great for survavivability and a competent engi in a cruiser can make your life a lot easier with heals/extend shields.
That's one of the problems in STFs ... it's easier to go BIG BOOM ... and destroy anything in sight in seconds, before it even has the chance to attack you.
I play engi/cruiser a lot, and I like tanking, but actually I can ignore my mates the whole time and just try to hold aggro on anything in sight and heal myself ... and still my mates who have aggro on the other side of the show don't explode ... makes me a bit sad
I seriously don't get this "If you aren't playing a tac/escort in STFs, you aren't playing right."
@abcde123123:
The Kar'fi is rather a special case. It is a carrier with good tactical slots, good sci, an extra weapon/tac console slot, and it can mount cannons.
Except that even in a party of all tac/escorts, no one's going to die if people are competent. So if you already have enough healing, why transfer damage output to healing?
@kalavier:
It's not that you can't play anything else and do fine, but that anything else is sadly sub-optimal. I'd like to be able to play different setups without feeling like I'm gimped or letting the team down.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
I pug only, did it premade only once.
When it fails (which happened not very often) its mostly due to really bad play of more than one player.
@kalavier:
It's absolutely fine to play the way you want, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it (as said, I like playing eng/cruiser).
But from the mechanics side of any STF, everything can be boiled down to a simple rule:
Shoot the hell out of the Cube.
And Escorts are in Advantage on this shipwise.
I only used public q once in last 2 months. when we didn't find another two in my premade team channel. now its private games mostly since we recruited and trained enuff folks we only need 1 or 2 from certain stf channel.
our latest results...
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21529625/STO/ISE3.jpg
As for argument, op was saying "you can only use escorts in STF". and I contradicted "no, karfi is great fun" and I personally own a brel as well
As for cruisers, there were one guy in Bortas in one of our ISE games, so while 4 of us were killing the cube he took care of the gate. On his own. That's about 1.2M damage in roughly 30 seconds. Unfortunately he left too quickly so I didn't catch him to pick his build details.
So my point is there are good captains and ships and builds out there, it's only a matter of finding what works for you and playing it.
I got 10 toons, and keep 1 ship per captain. tacs get escorts, sci get carrier, engis get cruisers. that way you don't have to jump ships and retrain every 2 weeks...
you need the cruiser the sci and the carrier to carry on while you are show boating
and you know it
It also lets me be mmore useful since in adition to sustained DPS I can heal others and use GW and TBR to keep nanite spheres, Negvar/raptors, and probes away.
My KDF Tac in a Vor'cha Retro using DHCs up front seems to be pretty good for sustained dps to, and doesn't die as much and does support healing too.
As for other ships like Galaxy, Star Cruiser, Oddysey, and non carrier sci ships, they do seem to be lacking a little perormance in STF.
I've done CSE with the optional with 5 Cruisers...
Never seen a tactical cube drop faster than with 5 science ships..
Destroyed Donatra in an all Carrier group in KASE before she even had time to cloak once....
There is no perfect setup of classes and ships... its the pilot
I'm saying escorts are by far optimal, and everything else sub-optimal. Other ships are great fun, which is precisely why I want the STF balance issues addressed, so all ship and captain types are useful.
Although, you do have a point on bortases, since they really can pump out escort like damage in PvE (extra weapon slot, dual cannons, extra tactical console, and disruptor autocannon). They're completely different to any federation cruiser though. Plus, building a cruiser as an escort and then saying, "look, you have variety!" is just...well, misleading, don't you think?
@sollvax
No offence, but if you think 5 competent escorts won't be perfectly fine without a cruiser/sci ship, then you don't really know what you're talking about. EPtSx2 (cycled), keeping moving when being shot at, and HE/TSS with cross healing is more than enough to avoid deaths.
@marc8219
What build are you using for your defiant? My tac/defiant does way more damage than any cruiser build I've ever made (including the same toon in a lucky ferengi ship I got)?
Klingon cruisers with DC/DHCs can definitely do good DPS in STFs, since mobility isn't really a factor, but the main way they lose out is on those AP:Betas which add SOOO much damage.
For example: Five escorts doing equal DPS. None of them using FOMM or AP:Beta. One of them uses AP:B3. Adds 50% DPS to everyone - effectively does 3 and a half times as much damage, nearly as much as the rest of the team combined.
My Defiant build
3x Mk XII AP DHC [Borg] 1x Mk XII Quantum [Borg]
4x Mk XII AP turrets [Borg]
4x Mk XI rare tac console
CMDR Tac- TT1 THY2 CSV2 CRF3
LTC Tac TT1 APB APO
Ensign Tac TS1
Lt Eng EPTS1 EPTS2
Lt Sci HE1 TSS2
The fact that it's silly to run anything other than AP:B3/B2 is something shifting the focus to shields would help with too (particularly as it's annoying to have to have completely different setups for PvE and PvE, but I guess that's to encourage buying BOff slots).
I could try switching the APB1 and CSV2 around to APB2 and CSV1, but I am hesitant to give up my main spike damage skill CRF3 to get APB3, especially since I have no extra Boff slots and APB pvp usefulness is limited, so i like to try make this build for PVE/PVP without needing to switch BOFF out.
In all MMOs, there are forum braggarts with exagerated claims like "I never die <glass cannon class>" or "my <tank> class outparses the DDs" or "my <buff/debuff class> can outheal the pure Healers".
I fly all ship types, I believe my Escort build to be rather good and I explode frequently in Elite STFs.
EPTS, High-Aux HE/TSS/AuxToSIF, purple DOFFs (a Shield Distribution or Warp Core Engineer proc can be very nice for survival), Borg set procs, MACO XII Shields&Deflector, the Subspace Field Modulator... it still doesn't take long to be forced to flee or die.
Can I tank a Gate or Tac Cube from 100% to 0%? Yes, if the group's DPS is very good and/or I get lucky with the aforementionned procs.
But certainly not consistently.
Funny how often Escort Defense is brought up on the forums, given that:
1. ALL ships can get the same Defense. As long as you get 24+ movement Speed (easy on any ship type), you max Defense from Speed and the only ways to add more are Elusive, Aegis bonuses and points in Maneuvers (and a fortiori Reman Engines); all of which are availlable to all Ship types.
Escorts do have a Speed Bonus (.2 Impulse Modifier, most other Ships have .15), but it's complete overkill as far as Defense is concerned.
2. You don't have high Defense on an Escort in STFs.
Unless you just fly at the target at 24+ Speed, then away, turn around and repeat?
In that case, I understand why you don't die. By cutting your DPS roughly in half (since you have your back turned half the time), you're not outparsing the good Cruisers.
You might think your awesome Defense saves you when, in fact, you're just not being fired at.
Not true. I get quite careless on my Bortas when a Torpedo is incoming (on my Escort or SV, I shoot it down ASAP) because they very rarely one-shot me.
As for your fixes: they wouldn't work.
Cryptic has already tried to nerf Escort to get Cruisers to tank and SVs to heal, that's what the stacking death penalty was about... do more Cruisers tank now? Do more SVs heal? Not that I noticed.
We need a mentallity shift: the problem lies in that everyone is DPS-obsessed, regardless of Ship. Obviously, if everyone wants to DD, the DD class dominates.
A SV captain shouldn't care that much about DPS, just crowd control, debuffs and healing.
A Cruiser captain shouldn't laugh at his teammates dying while he's avoiding fire from anything dangerous but should instead make sure fire is concentrated on him.
Quite a lot of difference, due to the reduction from the boff (6 to 1 second instead of 8 to 3), combined with the 1k bonus damage (which doesn't work against all enemies, mainly seemed to be klingon borg last time I checked, I should recheck that and make a thread on it).
Sadly seems to be some issues with torpedoes not autofiring properly/very slowly, which is rather annoying at times.
It does add a lot of damage from PvE, but if you do really any PvE and don't want to change, I'd say setup for PvP. PvE's relatively easy. :P
Do you keep moving when under fire? Do you avoid cubes' torpedo arcs (either above or below is easiest)? It's not just about build.
Tac cube can be tough to tank as a tac/escort, they'll eventually wear you down (eng/escort though can tank it indefinitely). Five escorts that cross heal is a totally different story (ie: if the other players are competent and paying attention).
Why are you tanking a gateway though? There's very little need to.
I think you'll find escorts have a 10% innate defence bonus, unless they've changed that.
I out damage pretty much everyone I've ever combat logged an stf in (unless I was doing something like probe duty).
99% of the time in an STF, you aren't getting shot at, or just rocking back and forth is sufficient to avoid dying.
Of that 1% of the time, some of it is when spheres gang up on you, at which point I can just switch targets between spheres based on who is in my sights - almost no DPS is wasted. The rest is on tactical cubes, and you can maintain high defence while shooting them (just fly on top of them in a circle).
Sure, the hull helps if you have some shields to absorb the spike damage, but enough to offset the innate defence bonus helping with shield tanking and the tactical buffs like AP:B3 that you're giving up on? Bortasq or however you spell it is probably the best cruiser for STFs, because it can do decent damage, but for fed cruisers, definitely not worth it.
I'm not really suggesting nerfing escorts but in making the other ship types comparable in effectiveness, and in giving more options for effective builds.
My engineer escort tanks just as well if not better than my engineer cruiser, and does a lot more damage. When I want to tank, I jump in my escort. My changes would fix that. If engineers could tank better, they might start running more boarding parties (particularly with enemies running EptS), aceton beam (since energy weapons not kinetic the key), and maybe even extend shields.
SVs aren't mainly healers, but debuffers. Changing the focus to shields and energy weapons would make power drains more useful. Adding EPtS, shield resistances, and moving the emphasis from hull to shields would make shield stripping useful.
Plus hopefully everyone would heal more if a) they were less worried about spike damage, and b) people didn't die so fast to spike damage, but to more sustained fire.
I'm curious what you think you're going to achieve by saying, "we need a complete redesign of the STFs". It isn't going to happen. We need to actually be realistic here. People have been complaining about the DPS-fest that STFs are for ages, with nothing to show for it, because it'd take too much resources to fix.
Seriously, this line ties into what I was saying. By saying playing my carrier, or cruiser, I'm being sub-optimal and letting the team down makes my mind click of "If you aren't a tac in an escort, you suck/aren't playing as well as you should/are a disappointment to team"
I also don't imagine that many tacscorts pack APB:3.
My next one will be an eng Hegh'Ta with a wildly inefficient build
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