Atleast for the most part the game is a lot better with systems than it was a year ago especially KDF side with a b'rel that was almost unusable.
Yeah, the B'rel is better now. But I'd rather have a single ship broken than an entire class of ships any day of the week. The truth is that the B'rel was broken for far too long, and the amount of time science ships have been broken has gotten ridiculous.
Edit: Let's not forget that the B'rel had fundamental issues with the cloak that required real programming to fix. Science powers and resists probably also needs some amount of programming, but you could at least temporarily make science powers usable in the meantime (though perhaps not ideal) just by boosting the values sufficiently. Why Cryptic hasn't done this yet (and has now decided to do the exact opposite) is beyond me. It's what any competent PvPer would do within a week if they were put in charge, and it's not exactly rocket science either. How is it that the systems team can't wrap their heads around these amazingly simple concepts???
The BOff skills, though... every time I have to load out a Sci ship it's just a nightmare, it's so difficult to make anything have any synergy and you end up with a bunch of heals you don't even want because none of the offensive powers either work for you or work full stop.
So true.
There was still an offensive power that worked.... unfortunately Einstein decided that there was a math error in it, and he fixed it
Now we are all healers, i suppose.
I agree about the Sci Skill tree and boff powers generally speaking.
But, as someone who has and plays w/a Sci Captain often I disagree w/the idea of them not being of value. They come w/2 AoE defensive boosts, 1 AoE resist debuff, and not the least of them SNB. Photonic Fleet is the only dicey Sci Captain power.
Also, I've seen in my combat logs where 3 of 5 shots from the same player were TSSE. Not that I want to encourage it, but it appears Sci Ships w/Doffs are capabable of applying constant pressure to a target's subsystems. Not to mention the buffs to mines since most sci ship builds focus on projectile damage. Now add VMs ...
For those playing Feds AMS + SS can be very annoying to face and a solid counter to pet spams.
TBR still does solid support damage and w/repel not being aux dependent you can avoid a strong push if you'd like.
2 player TBs are nearly chainable. TB3 lasts 17 seconds, the cooldown starts when TB starts. This means there's only 3 seconds between TB3 and the next TB you use.
H.E and TSS are of the the best support skills since they have high value HoT and high resist boosts. Sci Team3 best spike shield boost in game.
Again, not that things don't need to be reworked, but there's still a few ways to make the Captain class, Boff abilities, and ships viable.
May I suggest for when Sci does get reworked, you build into it a simple way of tweeking ratios of effectiveness. It'd be easier to maintain balance if a Dev had only to change a couple of values in 1 place compared to what you guys seem to need to do now.
99% of the time when its mentioned that science is broken. it refers to the ships and their bridge officer powers. not the captain or ground.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
I think CC is incredibly fun when you have two good premades fighting it out. Without CC the game becomes only about damage and healing, which becomes boring fast. CC adds that extra dimension that requires teams to be coordinated and adaptive to do well against other teams.
As far as team comp goes, I think a lot of teams are now flying two escorts. The reason you're starting to see some science ships popping up again (and also teams with more escorts popping up) mainly has to do with FAW becoming even more broken. Another reason is that power creep has resulted in some more healing oriented science ship layouts that weren't previously possible. Most players flying science vessels nowadays are using it to fill a HoT healing role instead of a CC one. The saddest thing is that the Cmdr. science slot is now less useful (to me at least) than an Ensign slot. Comparing an extra tractor beam, hazard, or TSS that can be used in a lower level slot really makes that Cmdr. sci spot feel weak in comparison. That's wrong on so many levels.
The only CC that's ever really bothered me is tractors (or tractor-related, even if in the case of Danublets they're distant cousins). I come from a game where the best, most powerful possible stun still doesn't come anywhere near to the ten seconds that an Ensign-level tractor does. In said game five seconds is more than enough to be a complete death sentence.
I mean, I wouldn't even be opposed to stuns that hard if they only came on dedicated CC ships or you had to spec hard into them. But what in Cryptic's right mind makes them think it's logical that a fully decompiled PSW3 is a substantially weaker form of CC than a tractor beam that any podunk Miranda can take?
The only CC that's ever really bothered me is tractors (or tractor-related, even if in the case of Danublets they're distant cousins). I come from a game where the best, most powerful possible stun still doesn't come anywhere near to the ten seconds that an Ensign-level tractor does. In said game five seconds is more than enough to be a complete death sentence.
I mean, I wouldn't even be opposed to stuns that hard if they only came on dedicated CC ships or you had to spec hard into them. But what in Cryptic's right mind makes them think it's logical that a fully decompiled PSW3 is a substantially weaker form of CC than a tractor beam that any podunk Miranda can take?
See reply from similar complaint in another thread:
Also, TBs aren't stuns they're movement debuffs there's a large difference from having movement debuff and not being able to do anything but use a Team Boff power.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Wow, so Cryptic takes time to fix something that didn't require fixing, as it was *balanced* in relation to the rest of the game, and then the only response to the outcry is "well, we just don't have time to balance the skill now that we fixed the bug that didn't require fixing." Congratulations, Cryptic, this is why the game has been reduced to tanking and dps. Are you guys even trying to bring in new customers, or are you just trying to milk dry those that stick around because of the Star Trek IP?
If you "fix" something that causes imbalance, you don't just push the "fix" live without addressing the imbalance; the anger of the community is rightfully pointed at y'all because you didn't even bother with the main part of making a game. You know...balance! :mad:
Also, TBs aren't stuns they're movement debuffs there's a large difference from having movement debuff and not being able to do anything but use a Team Boff power.
Well, yes, I was the one who posted about this just a few days ago.
In a way, the fact that they're movement debuffs is actually worse than if they were flat stuns, because if they were stuns I could take a counter and I'm good to go... however, since they're really just extremely heavy slows, it takes more resources to counter them than it would if I could just be granted immunity.
Well, yes, I was the one who posted about this just a few days ago.
In a way, the fact that they're movement debuffs is actually worse than if they were flat stuns, because if they were stuns I could take a counter and I'm good to go... however, since they're really just extremely heavy slows, it takes more resources to counter them than it would if I could just be granted immunity.
I listed 20 different ways to get out of a TB, and there are more. If the issue is pet debuff spam that's one thing, but there are ways to deal w/tbs.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
For the record, I agree, too. Finding time in the schedule to do so is ... non-trivial.
Ugh, science ships are 1/3 of your ship classes.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
For the record, I agree, too. Finding time in the schedule to do so is ... non-trivial.
Finding some time for probably more than 1/4 of your players is "non trivial"? :P
Now the only usefull science ability is the tractor beam or tractor beam repuslor. Do you plan to nerf it too because poor escorts complain again and again because "omg I can't move and use my uber-build"?
Come on, science powers don't need to do more damage, the CDs are far too long for more DPS to make any sense. If you want to increase the DPS you would have to do make it so significant other careers would cry out loud as usual. Science powers just need to be reinforced. Power drain to effectively drain power. Shield drain to effectively drain shields. Disabling powers to disable for maybe more than 2 seconds a more limited amount of ennemies but with a bigger range. And tractor beams to get a more important range.
I find it rather obvious that the devs have a lot of bugs to fix in the game, like the one Borticus explained here. There seem to be errors in the application of the game rules. And they absolutely need to be corrected first.
First have the game work as it is supposed to. Then think about how it should be supposed to work, so that any future changes actually do what they should.
The devs are doing the right thing here, setting the correct priorities.
Under normal circumstances I would agree. But in this instance I absolutley disagree.
That is all well and good, if the rebalancing is happening a few days after the fixing.
In this situation (Power is technically 'broken' but stillfairly well balanced and the rebalancing maybe going to possibly get a brief glance from a dev sometime in the future, maybe a year or more away) these issues should be fixed internally, then rebalanced with the fix in place, then put to tribble for testing and feedback, then, and only then, put to live.
In an ideal world, that is how it should happen. But there is a saying: "If you only do things if you can do them completely right, you end up not doing a lot of things."
So let them make small steps forward. It is the right direction.
There is also another saying: "No good deed goes unpunished". If i knew about that "tight schedule excuse" I wouldn't bug report it in the first place. :rolleyes:
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
i think all science powers need a general buff.
maybe bumping up the multiplyer for the shockwaves with each version is in order? have 1 bbe 100%, 2 be 125% and 3 be 150%?
if 2 and 3 are too close in damage thered be no need for 3 since they take up the same commander slot.
I bet that the original developer had the same thought, for this reason there was a double multiplier on the PSW 3.
Then another developer came in, and this very good idea became a "math error" and "illogic".
I bet that the original developer had the same thought, for this reason there was a double multiplier on the PSW 3.
Then another developer came in, and this very good idea became a "math error" and "illogic".
That's like scratching your head with you feet. If someone wanted (which i doubt) to boost only PSW3, he would most certainly double the base dmg of the power, not add strange multiplier to it. There is no conspiracy there :rolleyes: just bug.
As much as I do not like the current science situation , there is no excuse for bugs.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
That's like scratching your head with you feet. If someone wanted (which i doubt) to boost only PSW3, he would most certainly double the base dmg of the power, not add strange multiplier to it.
THAT would be wrong, because it would give to ALL science ships a big damage boost without compensating with heavy investment in skill tree or consoles!!!
What i'm saying is exactly what happened at the beginning of the game: at that time photonic shockwave base damage was more or less the same as today (before the infamous patch, 8K), and that made it useful against small crafts but not lethal.
BUT if you wanted a build focused on that skill, you had to invest skill points in a Sci-Only Tier 5 skill named "photonic-something", that only boosted:
-photonic shockwave
-photonic fleet
There was also a photonic console that only boosted the same things.
With 9 points in "photonic-something" and with 4 consoles your PSW3 could reach 19K, more or less the same damage of today-before-the-patch.
Then the T5 "photonic-something" skill got merged in the T2 "Particle Generators".
That made sense if you think about it:
- tac captains invested their T5 points in their energy-type damage
- sci captains invested their T5 points in shockwave OR charged particle burst, that also had his T5 dedicated skill but at least it worked well.
That was the sense of the multiplier, a reward for investing in that skill sacrificing every other damage type.
And now it's a math error.
Well with your logic, the same would apply to PSW1 and PSW2, but only PSW3 had that error.
"Cryptic Studio’s Jack Emmert (2010): Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
Well with your logic, the same would apply to PSW1 and PSW2, but only PSW3 had that error.
No, because the three versions of this ability had different purposes.
PSW1 was basically a stun, with little damage. It was used on the ltc slot by science ships to stun the team target and later by escorts\bops in stun-and-kill builds.
PSW 2 was the only option for science captains that did not had 9 points in the T5 "photonic-something" skill, that was the requirement to train PSW3. It was a longer stun with little more damage than PSW1, but with 4 consoles was acceptable.
PSW 3 was a powerful stun with powerful damage, but required a high skill point price (9 T5 points!) at the expense of every energy damage. It was that+cpb OR raw energy damage, you could not have both. And the game, for a while in season 1.2, was balanced.
Then came the new skill tree and CPB became useless, and also drains and stuns.
Shockwave was still balanced, until today fix, and that's the opinion of everyone in this thread except you and borticus.
just /faceroll and take it. Oh but keep opening your wallet to a bunch of incompetents!
Jman, I know this is hard for you. Cause you don't pvp, and don't wanna ever learn.
Here's a thought, before neutering something, how about asking us how we would feel first.
PSW3 like it or not in bugged form was pretty much the only viable sci cmdr skill left for feds. You could have easily held off on the fix until you buffed the skill, which you guys nerfed so unecessarily 2 times now running that I'm amazed no one's mail bombed you over it yet.
Bug fix or not, you just completely phased PSW out of pvp. Long live the Dumb TRIBBLE Extend Chain Snorefests and Cruisers Online.
the sinlge most important reason shockwave 3 was needed to stay at such a high damage. it killed most pets (without shields) when it hit them. now it doesnt.
shockwave 3 was a great npc controller. now its not, pet spam will once again rule the battlezone.
Comments
Yeah, the B'rel is better now. But I'd rather have a single ship broken than an entire class of ships any day of the week. The truth is that the B'rel was broken for far too long, and the amount of time science ships have been broken has gotten ridiculous.
Edit: Let's not forget that the B'rel had fundamental issues with the cloak that required real programming to fix. Science powers and resists probably also needs some amount of programming, but you could at least temporarily make science powers usable in the meantime (though perhaps not ideal) just by boosting the values sufficiently. Why Cryptic hasn't done this yet (and has now decided to do the exact opposite) is beyond me. It's what any competent PvPer would do within a week if they were put in charge, and it's not exactly rocket science either. How is it that the systems team can't wrap their heads around these amazingly simple concepts???
So true.
There was still an offensive power that worked.... unfortunately Einstein decided that there was a math error in it, and he fixed it
Now we are all healers, i suppose.
99% of the time when its mentioned that science is broken. it refers to the ships and their bridge officer powers. not the captain or ground.
Yeah, but http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=5300241&postcount=18 and the post after were about the captain class itself.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
I mean who doesnt like to be drained/scrambled/subed/stunned/prodded and shocked?
Tell me, if sci is so poor why do premades run 2-3 of them allong with 2-3 eng and no more than 1 tac
As far as team comp goes, I think a lot of teams are now flying two escorts. The reason you're starting to see some science ships popping up again (and also teams with more escorts popping up) mainly has to do with FAW becoming even more broken. Another reason is that power creep has resulted in some more healing oriented science ship layouts that weren't previously possible. Most players flying science vessels nowadays are using it to fill a HoT healing role instead of a CC one. The saddest thing is that the Cmdr. science slot is now less useful (to me at least) than an Ensign slot. Comparing an extra tractor beam, hazard, or TSS that can be used in a lower level slot really makes that Cmdr. sci spot feel weak in comparison. That's wrong on so many levels.
I mean, I wouldn't even be opposed to stuns that hard if they only came on dedicated CC ships or you had to spec hard into them. But what in Cryptic's right mind makes them think it's logical that a fully decompiled PSW3 is a substantially weaker form of CC than a tractor beam that any podunk Miranda can take?
vids and guides and stuff
[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
See reply from similar complaint in another thread:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=354871&page=3
Also, TBs aren't stuns they're movement debuffs there's a large difference from having movement debuff and not being able to do anything but use a Team Boff power.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
If you "fix" something that causes imbalance, you don't just push the "fix" live without addressing the imbalance; the anger of the community is rightfully pointed at y'all because you didn't even bother with the main part of making a game. You know...balance! :mad:
Well, yes, I was the one who posted about this just a few days ago.
In a way, the fact that they're movement debuffs is actually worse than if they were flat stuns, because if they were stuns I could take a counter and I'm good to go... however, since they're really just extremely heavy slows, it takes more resources to counter them than it would if I could just be granted immunity.
vids and guides and stuff
[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
I listed 20 different ways to get out of a TB, and there are more. If the issue is pet debuff spam that's one thing, but there are ways to deal w/tbs.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Ugh, science ships are 1/3 of your ship classes.
Finding some time for probably more than 1/4 of your players is "non trivial"? :P
Now the only usefull science ability is the tractor beam or tractor beam repuslor. Do you plan to nerf it too because poor escorts complain again and again because "omg I can't move and use my uber-build"?
Come on, science powers don't need to do more damage, the CDs are far too long for more DPS to make any sense. If you want to increase the DPS you would have to do make it so significant other careers would cry out loud as usual. Science powers just need to be reinforced. Power drain to effectively drain power. Shield drain to effectively drain shields. Disabling powers to disable for maybe more than 2 seconds a more limited amount of ennemies but with a bigger range. And tractor beams to get a more important range.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Under normal circumstances I would agree. But in this instance I absolutley disagree.
That is all well and good, if the rebalancing is happening a few days after the fixing.
In this situation (Power is technically 'broken' but stillfairly well balanced and the rebalancing maybe going to possibly get a brief glance from a dev sometime in the future, maybe a year or more away) these issues should be fixed internally, then rebalanced with the fix in place, then put to tribble for testing and feedback, then, and only then, put to live.
There is also another saying: "No good deed goes unpunished". If i knew about that "tight schedule excuse" I wouldn't bug report it in the first place. :rolleyes:
posted in wrong thread
what he said
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
I bet that the original developer had the same thought, for this reason there was a double multiplier on the PSW 3.
Then another developer came in, and this very good idea became a "math error" and "illogic".
That's like scratching your head with you feet. If someone wanted (which i doubt) to boost only PSW3, he would most certainly double the base dmg of the power, not add strange multiplier to it. There is no conspiracy there :rolleyes: just bug.
As much as I do not like the current science situation , there is no excuse for bugs.
THAT would be wrong, because it would give to ALL science ships a big damage boost without compensating with heavy investment in skill tree or consoles!!!
What i'm saying is exactly what happened at the beginning of the game: at that time photonic shockwave base damage was more or less the same as today (before the infamous patch, 8K), and that made it useful against small crafts but not lethal.
BUT if you wanted a build focused on that skill, you had to invest skill points in a Sci-Only Tier 5 skill named "photonic-something", that only boosted:
-photonic shockwave
-photonic fleet
There was also a photonic console that only boosted the same things.
With 9 points in "photonic-something" and with 4 consoles your PSW3 could reach 19K, more or less the same damage of today-before-the-patch.
Then the T5 "photonic-something" skill got merged in the T2 "Particle Generators".
That made sense if you think about it:
- tac captains invested their T5 points in their energy-type damage
- sci captains invested their T5 points in shockwave OR charged particle burst, that also had his T5 dedicated skill but at least it worked well.
That was the sense of the multiplier, a reward for investing in that skill sacrificing every other damage type.
And now it's a math error.
No, because the three versions of this ability had different purposes.
PSW1 was basically a stun, with little damage. It was used on the ltc slot by science ships to stun the team target and later by escorts\bops in stun-and-kill builds.
PSW 2 was the only option for science captains that did not had 9 points in the T5 "photonic-something" skill, that was the requirement to train PSW3. It was a longer stun with little more damage than PSW1, but with 4 consoles was acceptable.
PSW 3 was a powerful stun with powerful damage, but required a high skill point price (9 T5 points!) at the expense of every energy damage. It was that+cpb OR raw energy damage, you could not have both. And the game, for a while in season 1.2, was balanced.
Then came the new skill tree and CPB became useless, and also drains and stuns.
Shockwave was still balanced, until today fix, and that's the opinion of everyone in this thread except you and borticus.
Well if that is the case who is your direct superior so we can make our petition for your time to him / her ?
just /faceroll and take it. Oh but keep opening your wallet to a bunch of incompetents!
Jman, I know this is hard for you. Cause you don't pvp, and don't wanna ever learn.
Here's a thought, before neutering something, how about asking us how we would feel first.
PSW3 like it or not in bugged form was pretty much the only viable sci cmdr skill left for feds. You could have easily held off on the fix until you buffed the skill, which you guys nerfed so unecessarily 2 times now running that I'm amazed no one's mail bombed you over it yet.
Bug fix or not, you just completely phased PSW out of pvp. Long live the Dumb TRIBBLE Extend Chain Snorefests and Cruisers Online.
PSW3 was nice as it could be used in some occasions to actually deal damage too besides only knocking extend shields etc. down.
Once again an update that makes pvp so much better?
shockwave 3 was a great npc controller. now its not, pet spam will once again rule the battlezone.
vids and guides and stuff
[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples