I should clarify the terminology here, as well... this isn't just +10 Damage Resistance, which is subject to diminishing returns.
This is 10% damage reduction to all shield damage.
This, in essence, works the same as the bonus applied to JH and MACO shields.
Quick question: Is that value additive or multiplicative with the value from JH and MACO shields?
Either way, the issue isn't that an 8 second 10% straight damage reduction isn't good -- it is. The issue is that you can't use the ability situationally, at least not if you're healing properly.
If I'm running extends, I'm not going to wait for myself to get focused before I use it -- I'm going to use it as soon as someone else gets focused, or I will use it to pre-buff a squishier teammate. In either case the chances that I get focused in those initial eight seconds are extremely thin, small enough that it doesn't make sense to slot the ES doff over practically any other doff that benefits my build.
Additive. And I understand your point. I still think it can be used to great effect.
For instance, if you are being focused and have a teammate nearby, throw out an Extend as part of your "save your butt" buffs. You benefit from the 8sec of shield damage reduction, and your teammate benefits from 30sec of an Extend Shields buff as an extra bonus.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
For instance, if you are being focused and have a teammate nearby, throw out an Extend as part of your "save your butt" buffs. You benefit from the 8sec of shield damage reduction, and your teammate benefits from 30sec of an Extend Shields buff as an extra bonus.
I'm not likely to be sitting on an extend for more than a few seconds, because I'm a good healer :P
Even if I was sitting on it for situational use, targeting a team mate to send out an extend -- and then re-targeting myself to send myself heals -- is a losing proposition against spike damage. It just takes too much time. I could just hit the extend button without selecting a target, but it would likely go to a mine or NPC. I could heal myself fist before sending out the extend, but by the time I do that I'm probably already out of the 'danger zone'.
On the same topic, how about changing the way ES works so it targets team mates first when you fire it off without a friendly selected?
Weird... I thought I had pressed "send" like an hour ago or so. Anyway, here it goes:
Giving a selfresist to Extend means that the fact that ES sends RSP into cooldown becomes significantly less important since the proposed 8s duration of the effect is already half the system cooldown. The magnitude of the doff effect needs to take that into account.
I have parsed some of the longer pvp matches and calculated the average resist level. These are at ~40%. We don't need more long-duration resists that will further invalidate pressure damage and force us to focus even more on SNB-assisted 100%-to-0% kills in a five second window.
Therefore I think that a short duration with an at best modest resist is the way to go.
(I mean really, ES boosting your own shields makes no sense whatsoever from an in-universe pov.)
Given how you've explained the functionality, I'd say a 5% reduction for the duration of the Extend, or even the 15-second global with RSP would be worth slotting.
Given how you've explained the functionality, I'd say a 5% reduction for the duration of the Extend, or even the 15-second global with RSP would be worth slotting.
Hmmm, that just gave me an idea. Could you change the Doff so that it removes (or significantly lowers) the GCD with RSP instead of giving additional resistance?
Ok, that Extend doff is OP. I'll admit that. Gonna nerf him soon, no questions about it. Enjoy it while it lasts!
Don't nerf it. Jeeze. It's not like you guys think anyway when you do things. of all the TRIBBLE that came out in this last patch this should be at the bottom of your to do list.
Additive. And I understand your point. I still think it can be used to great effect.
For instance, if you are being focused and have a teammate nearby, throw out an Extend as part of your "save your butt" buffs. You benefit from the 8sec of shield damage reduction, and your teammate benefits from 30sec of an Extend Shields buff as an extra bonus.
hmm, ES is a very situational power, or its on all the time, theres no real middle ground like this. blowing ES on someone between times were he might need it in a casual pug fight would be like using miracle worker on yourself when you just got a shield facing shot down and a bit of hull damage from an alpha strike. you would use TT and A2S in a situation like that.
when defending ones self, first there is always EPtS running, then if heavy fire is incoming TSS and TT. when your shields are just about down to nothing its BFI doff proc time, and if that doesn't make you invincible for 15 seconds, RSP.
if im in a situation were i need emergency shield resistance, id use TSS, if i need emergency shield Resistance and my health is low, im not gonna put RSP on its system cooldown by using ES on someone.
if this resistance is the same as maco resistance, i say make it 2-5% and last 30 seconds. making it situational with only 8 seconds, i just cant see a place for it in the typical shield defense strategy.
Don't nerf it. Jeeze. It's not like you guys think anyway when you do things. of all the TRIBBLE that came out in this last patch this should be at the bottom of your to do list.
today has been a very harmonious and productive day actually, the snb doff will soon not be as game breaking, BFI doff is going to get adjusted, DEM is gonna get checked out, and this 20% thing is getting kicked in the teeth. even you have got to give bort some credit for all this.
shield resists need some sort of diminishing returns like hull resists.
In principle, I agree, but that's going to be a huge undertaking. You would need to find all new values for every power that boosts shield resistance, and you would need lower damage across the board to compensate for weaker shielding. There are more important things to focus on right now, like siphon drones.
In a sense shield resists have diminishing returns. They stack multiplicatively instead of additively. But it is rather easy to get to the 75% resist cap with varying combinations of borg proc, bfi, extends and high-level epts.
shield resists need some sort of diminishing returns like hull resists.
Shield resist do not need a nerf unless escort DPS is getting nerfed at the same time. As is an escort can still kill a ship with capped shield resist if they're lucky and good. Luck wouldn't even factor into the equation anymore if shield resist suddenly took a nose dive.
I was going to make a thread, but I saw that this was here, and thought it'd be easier to just make a post since it is here.
I think the new Systems Engineer needs some adjustments, I did read this thread, but I saw the main focus was on the Extend Shields DOFF in the posts so far.
Anyways...the DEM DOFF isn't very good for a cruiser honestly. It lasts only 8 seconds, and gives more Drain resistance than even Nadeon Inversion 3. Plus you can stack 3 of them together, which I did. It feels more like a DOFF for an alpha-striking, tac in an escort, than it does a cruiser-friendly ability. Yes, I know Nadeon is an engineer captain ability, but the fact that it (like the SNB DOFFs) pretty much makes that whole ability worthless, is extremely annoying to put it mildly.
Enough complaints from me I guess, here's what I did:
I was on a fed engineer, in a D'kora, using Dual heavy cannons, turrets, and a DBB. I equip three of the new DEM DOFFs, and go into a private, 1v1 match against a friend.
When we got there I tested out the new ability. I shoot him normally, and then unload a BO 3, while the DOFF ability is running, between all my weapons (3 DHCs, 3 turrets, and the BO 3 from the DBB) firing...I lost maybe...10-20 weapons power total? I shot again shortly later, using only the BO 3, and firing nothing else, losing about 6 power from firing the BO 3.
I was using no other DOFFs, no buffs like EPS or Nadeon, only the DOFF.
So, again, feels much more like an alpha strike DOFF, than a cruiser DOFF. Because you can use it with DEM 1, a Lt. level ability, thus ANYBODY can give that up, and slap on 3 of those DOFFs, hitting with almost max weapons power for a volley or two with ALL weapons guaranteed.
If you don't mind a suggestion, something more like this would better suit cruisers:
No more than 50 resistance per DOFF, thus it's only a fourth of what it does now, so it's not totally ruining an eingineering captain ability, and make it last as long as DEM does, or a little bit shorter.
That way, even though anybody could still use it, it'd still be useful for cruisers, because broad-siding can be a really big weapons drain, what I said above, would help ease that burden, especially for something like a DEM/FAW combo.
Just giving a little direct in-game info on one of em at least.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
Additive. And I understand your point. I still think it can be used to great effect.
For instance, if you are being focused and have a teammate nearby, throw out an Extend as part of your "save your butt" buffs. You benefit from the 8sec of shield damage reduction, and your teammate benefits from 30sec of an Extend Shields buff as an extra bonus.
Except that isn't really how it's used. Either it's constantly cycling on a team mate if they are primary, or if I'm being called primary I won't use extends since it as a global with RSP and I will need RSP to fill any resistance "holes" I may get on my rotation.
I have to agree with Jorf. It was too good before, but useless with that change. It's really tough to find some way to encourage pvers to to use it. A smaller resistance for for the duration or half the duration would be more encouraging.
This is closer to the actual effect. However, several other factors can improve your innate Perception distance.
It should affect the viewable distance to teammates.
It would be good if there was an easy to understand basic-link between "perception" and an item of equipment. Go on, add "sensor array" items to the game.
that alone supports the cause for all this stuff going on tribble 1st. why did nothing from the new box get tested on tribble properly 1st??
I'm guessing they think that if they let people try things in advance they will be less likely to buy them since the "newness" of the item is lessened.
I'm guessing they think that if they let people try things in advance they will be less likely to buy them since the "newness" of the item is lessened.
yeah maybe. but seeing $$ signs can seriously harm this game. by pushing untested/fix it later content out to live. tribble is there for a reason. they will expect us to test season 7 no doubt but seems they should have lockbox test weekends. so these problems are less likely to have a negative impact on the live game.
everything should be tested properly is what i'm saying in short and then about 90% of the problems might not become problems. i can't personally see how testing box contents on tribble can actually damage the crazy ammount of money they are making from selling keys on holodeck.
In my opinion if your gonna nerf this doff... nerf the percentage not the duration.
8 sec window after activation is way to small to change the course of an engagement.
PLEASE don`t nerf the duration, or they WILL become useless.
In my opinion if your gonna nerf this doff... nerf the percentage not the duration.
8 sec window after activation is way to small to change the course of an engagement.
PLEASE don`t nerf the duration, or they WILL become useless.
So you'd rather have another idiot proof doff that will be a "must have" rather then somthing that is balanced and temping to take but not a "must have"....
Well, whether or not they becomes useless depends on two factors: the duration and the magnitude of the buff. The values proposed by Borticus will indeed make the doff worthless, at least to me (and if it's worthless to a min/maxer like myself, it's worthless for practically any competitive PvPer), but that's due to the combination of both values. It is possible to have an eight second duration and still have the doff worthwhile, but you need to up the magnitude.
So you'd rather have another idiot proof doff that will be a "must have" rather then somthing that is balanced and temping to take but not a "must have"....
Riiiiight
Its not idiot proof with something like borticus mentioned, its worthless. 8 secs after activation is not worth it. at all. 15-20 secs after activation is useful but not overpowered. Thats being said, reduce the percentage, not the duration (at least not completely).
Whats wrong with it being considered a must have? If your concerned about haveing to overcome the ability, use intereupts, photonic shackwave, or anything else with a disable effect, once the power is off so is the resist. I wish folks would learn to adapt more than cry for a nerf so often.
I thought that only applied to hull resist and shield resist were additive up to the cap as their own separate system. What you're saying makes sense and seems to collaborate some of the things I've seen people do to my shields in PVP, but wasn't what I learned from other sources.
The decloak B:O3 combo doing dropping my Ody's shields which should be 12,000 thick with 75% resist always amazed me and is the best supporting evidence I've seen for your argument.
It may be supportive but its not proof positive that your shielding may be circumvented unfairly due to faulty game mechanics.
A good BO3 pop can easily do more than 25k+ points of damage in a burst.
Comments
This is 10% damage reduction to all shield damage.
This, in essence, works the same as the bonus applied to JH and MACO shields.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Quick question: Is that value additive or multiplicative with the value from JH and MACO shields?
Either way, the issue isn't that an 8 second 10% straight damage reduction isn't good -- it is. The issue is that you can't use the ability situationally, at least not if you're healing properly.
If I'm running extends, I'm not going to wait for myself to get focused before I use it -- I'm going to use it as soon as someone else gets focused, or I will use it to pre-buff a squishier teammate. In either case the chances that I get focused in those initial eight seconds are extremely thin, small enough that it doesn't make sense to slot the ES doff over practically any other doff that benefits my build.
For instance, if you are being focused and have a teammate nearby, throw out an Extend as part of your "save your butt" buffs. You benefit from the 8sec of shield damage reduction, and your teammate benefits from 30sec of an Extend Shields buff as an extra bonus.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
I'm not likely to be sitting on an extend for more than a few seconds, because I'm a good healer :P
Even if I was sitting on it for situational use, targeting a team mate to send out an extend -- and then re-targeting myself to send myself heals -- is a losing proposition against spike damage. It just takes too much time. I could just hit the extend button without selecting a target, but it would likely go to a mine or NPC. I could heal myself fist before sending out the extend, but by the time I do that I'm probably already out of the 'danger zone'.
On the same topic, how about changing the way ES works so it targets team mates first when you fire it off without a friendly selected?
Giving a selfresist to Extend means that the fact that ES sends RSP into cooldown becomes significantly less important since the proposed 8s duration of the effect is already half the system cooldown. The magnitude of the doff effect needs to take that into account.
I have parsed some of the longer pvp matches and calculated the average resist level. These are at ~40%. We don't need more long-duration resists that will further invalidate pressure damage and force us to focus even more on SNB-assisted 100%-to-0% kills in a five second window.
Therefore I think that a short duration with an at best modest resist is the way to go.
(I mean really, ES boosting your own shields makes no sense whatsoever from an in-universe pov.)
Hmmm, that just gave me an idea. Could you change the Doff so that it removes (or significantly lowers) the GCD with RSP instead of giving additional resistance?
Don't nerf it. Jeeze. It's not like you guys think anyway when you do things. of all the TRIBBLE that came out in this last patch this should be at the bottom of your to do list.
hmm, ES is a very situational power, or its on all the time, theres no real middle ground like this. blowing ES on someone between times were he might need it in a casual pug fight would be like using miracle worker on yourself when you just got a shield facing shot down and a bit of hull damage from an alpha strike. you would use TT and A2S in a situation like that.
when defending ones self, first there is always EPtS running, then if heavy fire is incoming TSS and TT. when your shields are just about down to nothing its BFI doff proc time, and if that doesn't make you invincible for 15 seconds, RSP.
if im in a situation were i need emergency shield resistance, id use TSS, if i need emergency shield Resistance and my health is low, im not gonna put RSP on its system cooldown by using ES on someone.
if this resistance is the same as maco resistance, i say make it 2-5% and last 30 seconds. making it situational with only 8 seconds, i just cant see a place for it in the typical shield defense strategy.
today has been a very harmonious and productive day actually, the snb doff will soon not be as game breaking, BFI doff is going to get adjusted, DEM is gonna get checked out, and this 20% thing is getting kicked in the teeth. even you have got to give bort some credit for all this.
extend stacking as an idea is fine.
shield resists need some sort of diminishing returns like hull resists.
In principle, I agree, but that's going to be a huge undertaking. You would need to find all new values for every power that boosts shield resistance, and you would need lower damage across the board to compensate for weaker shielding. There are more important things to focus on right now, like siphon drones.
Shield resist do not need a nerf unless escort DPS is getting nerfed at the same time. As is an escort can still kill a ship with capped shield resist if they're lucky and good. Luck wouldn't even factor into the equation anymore if shield resist suddenly took a nose dive.
I think the new Systems Engineer needs some adjustments, I did read this thread, but I saw the main focus was on the Extend Shields DOFF in the posts so far.
Anyways...the DEM DOFF isn't very good for a cruiser honestly. It lasts only 8 seconds, and gives more Drain resistance than even Nadeon Inversion 3. Plus you can stack 3 of them together, which I did. It feels more like a DOFF for an alpha-striking, tac in an escort, than it does a cruiser-friendly ability. Yes, I know Nadeon is an engineer captain ability, but the fact that it (like the SNB DOFFs) pretty much makes that whole ability worthless, is extremely annoying to put it mildly.
Enough complaints from me I guess, here's what I did:
I was on a fed engineer, in a D'kora, using Dual heavy cannons, turrets, and a DBB. I equip three of the new DEM DOFFs, and go into a private, 1v1 match against a friend.
When we got there I tested out the new ability. I shoot him normally, and then unload a BO 3, while the DOFF ability is running, between all my weapons (3 DHCs, 3 turrets, and the BO 3 from the DBB) firing...I lost maybe...10-20 weapons power total? I shot again shortly later, using only the BO 3, and firing nothing else, losing about 6 power from firing the BO 3.
I was using no other DOFFs, no buffs like EPS or Nadeon, only the DOFF.
So, again, feels much more like an alpha strike DOFF, than a cruiser DOFF. Because you can use it with DEM 1, a Lt. level ability, thus ANYBODY can give that up, and slap on 3 of those DOFFs, hitting with almost max weapons power for a volley or two with ALL weapons guaranteed.
If you don't mind a suggestion, something more like this would better suit cruisers:
No more than 50 resistance per DOFF, thus it's only a fourth of what it does now, so it's not totally ruining an eingineering captain ability, and make it last as long as DEM does, or a little bit shorter.
That way, even though anybody could still use it, it'd still be useful for cruisers, because broad-siding can be a really big weapons drain, what I said above, would help ease that burden, especially for something like a DEM/FAW combo.
Just giving a little direct in-game info on one of em at least.
More buffer, less sustain. Worked well in several other competitive pvp games...
Except that isn't really how it's used. Either it's constantly cycling on a team mate if they are primary, or if I'm being called primary I won't use extends since it as a global with RSP and I will need RSP to fill any resistance "holes" I may get on my rotation.
I have to agree with Jorf. It was too good before, but useless with that change. It's really tough to find some way to encourage pvers to to use it. A smaller resistance for for the duration or half the duration would be more encouraging.
Nixus
It would be good if there was an easy to understand basic-link between "perception" and an item of equipment. Go on, add "sensor array" items to the game.
that alone supports the cause for all this stuff going on tribble 1st. why did nothing from the new box get tested on tribble properly 1st??
and this kinda is what 90% of what is released feels like.
A very smart reply, I like it.
I'm guessing they think that if they let people try things in advance they will be less likely to buy them since the "newness" of the item is lessened.
yeah maybe. but seeing $$ signs can seriously harm this game. by pushing untested/fix it later content out to live. tribble is there for a reason. they will expect us to test season 7 no doubt but seems they should have lockbox test weekends. so these problems are less likely to have a negative impact on the live game.
everything should be tested properly is what i'm saying in short and then about 90% of the problems might not become problems. i can't personally see how testing box contents on tribble can actually damage the crazy ammount of money they are making from selling keys on holodeck.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=400561&page=12
8 sec window after activation is way to small to change the course of an engagement.
PLEASE don`t nerf the duration, or they WILL become useless.
So you'd rather have another idiot proof doff that will be a "must have" rather then somthing that is balanced and temping to take but not a "must have"....
Riiiiight
Its not idiot proof with something like borticus mentioned, its worthless. 8 secs after activation is not worth it. at all. 15-20 secs after activation is useful but not overpowered. Thats being said, reduce the percentage, not the duration (at least not completely).
Whats wrong with it being considered a must have? If your concerned about haveing to overcome the ability, use intereupts, photonic shackwave, or anything else with a disable effect, once the power is off so is the resist. I wish folks would learn to adapt more than cry for a nerf so often.
It may be supportive but its not proof positive that your shielding may be circumvented unfairly due to faulty game mechanics.
A good BO3 pop can easily do more than 25k+ points of damage in a burst.
R.I.P