Let's focus on the skills. With all due respec-t, you need a respec. You put a lot ln Engineering Systems. Which is good, of course, but you did so at the expensive of Tactical Systems -- and a bit too much, IMHO. And some of it just really doesn't make sense. Let's take a look at some of these:
* You maxed out Starship Energy Weapons (good), but have nothing in Starship Energy Weapon Specialization. That, in itself, in not a big deal per se; except when you have 6 points in Starship Projectile Weapon Specialization, but NONE in Starship Projectile Weapons itself (is that a new thing or something, do a lot of 'crit', but no dmg?). So, since you seem to like BO and BFAW, I'd switch those 6 points in Starship Projectile Weapon Specialization over to Starship Energy Weapon Specialization, pronto.
* You have nothing in Starship Attack Patterns. Not a 'must-have' skill per se; but especially for us engineers, who can't do a lot of native dmg to begin with, having at least 3 points in it would help.
* You favor Starship Threat Control over Starship Maneuvers. Nothing wrong with that -- a choice.
Now, onto Engineering Systems itself:
* Lose Driver Coil, in its sorry entirety. It's the least useful skill of them all. And unless you plan to fy around doing the Tour of the Universe thingy a lot, ditch it for something far more useful.
* While it is true that maxing out everything into the reds is often excessive (after all, reds only give you an extra 5% each), Starship Electro-Plasma Systems, however, is generally considered a 'core' skill: you'll want 9 in that.
* Starship Engine Performance you can safely blank for your line of work (cruiser pilot).
* Starship Impulse Thrusters, I'd say, are a bit of must, especially for slow-turners. I'd max that.
* Starship Hull Plating and Starship Armor Reinforcements all maxed out seems good for tanking; but you can already tank very well. I gave each 6 points as a result (especially, considering you're spending no less than 9,000 (!) xp on those extra 3 reds for Starship Armor Reinforcements).
* Personally, I have zero in Starship Auxiliary Performance: we don't really need a lot surpus aux, we're engineers, not sci officers. If you absolutely must, I'd say no more than 1 or 2 points.
* As a Golden Rule, it is generally believed you can suffice having 6 points in Starship Warp Core Efficiency, but that you absolutely must have 9 in Starship Warp Core Potential. And this because Starship Warp Core Efficiency only kicks in when you're below 75% subsystem power levels, whereas Starship Warp Core Efficiency affects ALL your power levels, all the time (the metric may change if you do a lot of BO. In that case, having 9 in Starship Warp Core Efficiency is advised too).
* Get Starship Shield Performance to max. Preferably Starship Weapon Performance too; but, as I'm fond of saying, you can't have it all.
Now, as for Science and Operations Systems:
* Looks good. You have nothing in Starship Power Insulators, though. That can be dangerous, but it's not a deal-breaker per se.
Basically, as an engineer you want to find a good balance between what you were made for (tanking) and doing some stuff on the offensive too. I'd say, have a look at my own skills loadout:
Sci folk will, no doubt, have more in the Starship Particle Generators and Starship Graviton Generators departments and such; but for an engineer, I'm overall happy with my skill plan.
Ok first of all, the proj weapons was a brain TRIBBLE, I meant for that to go into Energy weapons lol... (it was 1 AM when I did that, brain not necessarily working at 100% at the time).
And now for the reasoning behind it.
Starting off at driver coil: yes, I do the tour the galaxy a lot (it's essentially a free 1 mil ECs).
The EPS skill, I found out that maxed out only gives a +1 bonus to EPtX powers at level 9 compared to level 7, and the transfer rate only increases by .7%. So maxing it really doesn't seem necessary to me, since I can get about 95% of the bonus and save on 4k skill points.
Impulse thrusters maxed only gives .4-.8 additional turn at 9 points as opposed to 7. So again, I figured save on 4k skill points and lose that tiny bit (which would be barely noticeable to begin with).
Warp Core Potential only gives an additional +1 power when maxed as opposed to the 7 points, so you save on 2k skill points and only lose out on 1 power. Basically the reason I don't have shield and weapons maxed is again because I would only gain +1 power by maxing them instead of leaving them at 7 points, so I decided to relegate those points to other things.
As for the Armor reinforcements, you're right it's a little much, so I have removed two points from that and put it into energy weapons specialization (I'll lose 1.1% resist, which is fine, but gain gain 3.8% crit damage and .3% crit hit chance). But I would prefer to leave the SIF maxed out, since at max it gives 30% extra hp, and if I removed points down to 6 it would reduce that bonus down to 27%, and when you have 42k base hp, 3% is an additional 12-1500 hp, and that's another hit I can take, so I would prefer to leave it as is. Heck even removing 1 point is a 1% drop, that's 420 hp. I would prefer to keep it.
I also removed 2 points from hull plating, so I lose 1.1% damage resist to energy weapons (acceptable, since it gives me 5k more skill points to allocate somewhere else).
Also you are correct, warp core efficiency should be lowered slightly to 6, since it actually gives NO bonus at 7 from 6, and at 9 only gives 1 additional power. So that was altered.
Lastly, I removed 1 point from each of my tier 1 skills that I had maxed because maxing them out was inefficient, at most it gave a 1% increase to the powers enhanced, so losing 1% won't hurt too much and it gave me 3k skill points to work with.
After reducing energy weapons by 1 (1% loss in overall strength, acceptable), I now used my newly freed up skill points and put 6 points into power insulators and 5 points into attack patterns. Some utility and offensive power (actual gain put below).
Also on two points you brought up, the Aux and Engines, as much as I respect your opinion, here you and I differ. I want the engine power because it enhances both turn rate and move speed, something a cruiser needs badly, and the borg engines aren't enough, so I figure give myself an additional 8 power just for that little boost. And as for aux, I need it for my heals (both to myself and to allies). So not putting any points there is a really bad idea to me. 8 power to aux is another 2-300 per heal, and it also allows me to get to around 130 aux power when I pour all my energy into aux with my 25/50/25/100 power setup which is what I pop to when I really need a strong heal (basically I use my EPS captain skill, pop to that power loadout, wait about 2 seconds, pop my heal(s) on either myself or the target, then go back to either my attack or defensive layout). I did some tests, and 122 compared to 130 is a HUGE difference of about 300 hp on Aux2SIF, and a massive 800 on HE1. Only about 20 points on TTS1 & 2 (30 points), but the regen drops by about 15 on TTS1 and 20 on TTS2. So not as noticeable on that skill, but for the hull heals it's rather large. In addition you lose out on about 5 resist on Aux2SIF, and 2 resist on HE1. So with all due respect, I would rather keep those skills as is.
So after my mods, I lost 2 power to every system (warp core potential and X performance) from max, roughly 2-4% weapons damage (starship weapons, energy weapons) from max, .7 warp in sector space (not gonna hurt that much in TG event), <1% hull and shield repair ability, 1.1% loss to energy and kinetic resist (gotta give a little to get a little).
What I gained:
30% bonus to attack patterns (all of them), 42% resist to shield and power drain, 3.8% Crit damage on energy weapons + .3% crit chance (man I feel like a nerd, with all these numbers and calculations I just did lol).
And now for my really big question. What am I supposed to do with that extra tac ensign? I don't need him for another TT courtesy of my DOffs, so what do I do with it?
EDIT: My skill planner was being wacky, so it might not be what I said in text... just a word of warning, also the link may not work, if it doesn't lemme know, I'll recreate it and post it up again. Also the table I am using for numbers to supplement my testing with the skills and how skill points affect abilities/performance: http://home.comcast.net/~amicus/Skill%20Point%20Effects.htm
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
Didn't say cruiser were overall less accurate (in fact, currently all ships are equally accurate, as ship accuracy doesn't exist yet). I was merely suggesting it makes sense for bigger ships, that carry big-ship, high-DPS guns, to be less accurate against smaller targets (i.e.: you can't hope to target and hit a mosquito with a cruise-missile). And, likewise, that it makes sense for smaller ships, with itty-bitty guns on them, to hit less hard, but be more precise.
Personally I could live with this quite happily although I think that Acc mods could use a de-nerf if they were to implement this, so that you could get a fair chance of hitting an escort from a cruiser even if it's only 50-75% chance to hit
So how do the devs come to the idea of making Escorts powerful like that and why did they use a Stone/paper/scissor mechanic in the first place?
Was it just to make it easy for MMO players to get attuned to Star Trek ships regardless that it doesn't suit to that universe at all?
It must have been obvious from the very first, that they made a completely wrong representation of Star Trek ships.
I just can't follow their motivations....
There was just ONE type of escort like ships in Star Trek EVER. Making it a whole branch of superior spaceships, (even much superior than ships that are 5 times as big and powerful) reads like a bad joke.
Seeing Star Trek and creating a game where "escorts" dominate all other ships is something i just can't understand. It's completely atypical and feels like made up out of thin air.
The longer they ignore that, the lower i do estimate their determination to create a serious and good star trek game.
I've got another more complete post on this coming but in short the Akira, Defiant, and Sabre seem to have been the primary inspirations. They where all cannoniclly much more powerful than any non-sov cruiser at the time of their introduction, yet where a fraction the size. They'e high firepower, high speed ships. And thats how cryptic initially set them up. And thats how they work till certian factors come into play, then suddennly they get a big dose of tankness and it all falls down.
I also mostly disagree on tac slots. If tac team wasn't so "OMG I MUST HAVE" you'd have plenty of tac ability acess. lt Cmdr tac abilities should be a speciality of specific special ships.
The underlying 'problem' is that STO is essentially a dummied-down EVE Online variant. And in some areas, like with the escort, you're simply feeling the flaw in that approach the most. In EVE the smaller ships can't even load the big-ship weapons and mods (or, if so, only smaller variations thereof). And the bigger weapons do more DPS, but are less accurate. That creates auto-balance, as it were. In dummied-down STO those concepts went completely out the door. So. now we have escorts carrying the exact same mods and weaponry as cruisers... only with 5 tact consoles. THAT is the real problem.
Funny thing is, that the game wouldn't even need a drastic overhaul of all weapons and mods to change to support 'EVE-like' balance. All you'd basically need is 2 extra ship database stat entries: a global dmg modifier (in which smaller ships do innately less dmg, sorry), and one for global accuracy (in which bigger ships are less accurate). And working so that more dmg = being less accurate. And, for the record, when I say 'less accurate,' I don't mean accuracy in terms of chance (like in STO), where cruisers would always hit less often. No, I mean proper accuracy, based on your opponent's sig (like in EVE), where a cruiser would be perfectly able to hit bigger things all the time, but do poorly against ships with a small signature.
That would be much better than that bizarre escort-fanboy "balance" we have now! :cool:
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
So long as people continue to play the game, and even more importantly, pay them money for NEW SHIPS IN A SHIP BASED GAME.(can you honestly take a step back and wrap your head around that concept for a minute?)
...Then things will never change and this game will bar any legitimate attempt by future or current companies from making a true STO experience now or in the future due to this bomb.
hereticknight085, i fully support you in this (as per your original post), although i have to state that Tac in a cruiser needs to have some clue as to what they are doing to be effective. Having watched 3 Tacs in cruisers today going at a raptor in a csn run (yes I know norms are a learning base) and failing miserably, i feel the need to stress that have a clue portion. I play all three "classes" and I find myself on my engi the most lately and have resigned myself to primarily fly the Excelsior Retrofit because none of the other cruisers i've used have compared, and that includes the dreadnought. I did however pick up a Hvy Cruiser retrofit (non fleet version) today and evne though the hull and shields are a bit lower than the Excelsior it holds up just about as well under fire (I'm spec'd for tanking). Overall yes the cruisers all need some sort of dmg boost wheather in the form of a buff, or a lowered energy cost for beams, or something.
And now for my really big question. What am I supposed to do with that extra tac ensign? I don't need him for another TT courtesy of my DOffs, so what do I do with it?
It might be better to simply use 2 TTs and use the 2 doff slots for something else? maybe some of the energy weapon doffs?
EDIT: My skill planner was being wacky, so it might not be what I said in text... just a word of warning, also the link may not work, if it doesn't lemme know, I'll recreate it and post it up again. Also the table I am using for numbers to supplement my testing with the skills and how skill points affect abilities/performance: http://home.comcast.net/~amicus/Skill%20Point%20Effects.htm
Thanks for the skill planner link, with its help, I created these builds:
The space skills are largely the same, minus a few points from space on the tac so I could get the six into all the tac ground specific skills, which should only result in a 1 point power reduction across the board compared to the engi space skill setup.
The space skills are largely the same, minus a few points from space on the tac so I could get the six into all the tac ground specific skills, which should only result in a 1 point power reduction across the board compared to the engi space skill setup.
My only real gripe with your builds are that there are no skill points geared towards armor or hull plating.
Also since I don't plan on using torps much, you and I would differ greatly there as well, since I would take all the points you put into torps and put it in the hull plating and armor reinforcements. But other than that, I don't have any major issues with your skill setup.
Viable.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
Cruisers in general just got alot weaker and escorts much stronger. Look at the new patch notes.
I swear if I win the lottery I'm going to buy Cryptic from PWE, fire the entire staff of Cryptic to wipe the slate clean and start Star Trek Online 2.0 and this time...DO IT RIGHT.
Cruisers in general just got alot weaker and escorts much stronger. Look at the new patch notes.
I swear if I win the lottery I'm going to buy Cryptic from PWE, fire the entire staff of Cryptic to wipe the slate clean and start Star Trek Online 2.0 and this time...DO IT RIGHT.
i looked at the patch notes...nothing there that would suggest your claim is valid. And if you mean patch notes from nearly 2 years back...well, get over it.
Cruisers in general are not weak...only some are just too specialized for tanking and support. If you chose those for playing...thats your own fault, might want to switch to a cruiser with less than 7 engi slots, and you will see that cruisers are not that weak at all.
cryptic did actually a fairly good job for the developement time of 2 years. Sure a lot of bugs are still around and they could have made things a lot better, but ship balance is not an important issue IMHO...you can allways change ship. Thats actually their main business model, that you have multiple ships that you need to buy. Thats why some are just total TRIBBLE ships, and others shine.
i looked at the patch notes...nothing there that would suggest your claim is valid. And if you mean patch notes from nearly 2 years back...well, get over it.
Cruisers in general are not weak...only some are just too specialized for tanking and support. If you chose those for playing...thats your own fault, might want to switch to a cruiser with less than 7 engi slots, and you will see that cruisers are not that weak at all.
cryptic did actually a fairly good job for the developement time of 2 years. Sure a lot of bugs are still around and they could have made things a lot better, but ship balance is not an important issue IMHO...you can allways change ship. Thats actually their main business model, that you have multiple ships that you need to buy. Thats why some are just total TRIBBLE ships, and others shine.
lol if you don't see how putting EmptS, RSP and ES on the same cooldown, forcing you to be without shield resistances is not making you weaker, i suggest you read the patchnotes again.
Cruisers were a joke, because their awesome healing was no longer required, instead of nerfing TT and BFI, they decided to make cruisers the biggest "target me OMG NOOBZ" sign in the game.
Cruisers were a joke, because their awesome healing was no longer required, instead of nerfing TT and BFI, they decided to make cruisers the biggest "target me OMG NOOBZ" sign in the game.
Absolutely right.
I mean cruisers where already just big flying bricks with a huge bullseye painted on it, it's not even funny anymore.
Do they want to p**s off even the last Trek fan? What's the point of all this?
They just don't seem to have any grasp about Star Trek ships at all. Is it because they apparently WANT to do anything wrong or are they just incompetent in doing a good Star Trek game?
I don't know and by now i don't care anymore.
At least they should be honest enough to delete the "Star Trek" from their game entirely.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
lol if you don't see how putting EmptS, RSP and ES on the same cooldown, forcing you to be without shield resistances is not making you weaker, i suggest you read the patchnotes again.
Cruisers were a joke, because their awesome healing was no longer required, instead of nerfing TT and BFI, they decided to make cruisers the biggest "target me OMG NOOBZ" sign in the game.
just cry a little louder maybe somebody will come to your aid.
No srsly...it is a good change, since cruiser were actually indestructable...and the patch affects escorts aswell...since EPtS and RSP are on most escorts anyway.
in return, PH and HE do not share CD anymore...i would say hull tanking became more viable.
Ofcourse weak cruisers will pop now even faster...frankly i dont care, really good cruisers which were indestructible i some cases may go down now eventually.
escorts no longer benefit of (insane) ES cross heals, making them vulnerable.
i can't seem to understand how this patch would benefit escorts. Honestly that is just a typical cry out, because an ability people use on their cruisers got nerfed automatically means cruiser got nerfed, when in fact all ship classes use those abilities. (yes some armitage in pvp actually uses ES, and it is freaking awesome to see escorts crossheal like cruisers...)
My only real gripe with your builds are that there are no skill points geared towards armor or hull plating.
Also since I don't plan on using torps much, you and I would differ greatly there as well, since I would take all the points you put into torps and put it in the hull plating and armor reinforcements. But other than that, I don't have any major issues with your skill setup.
Viable.
Yes, many people opt out of torpedoes entirely... which is sad. Not because torpedoes in the game are so useful and they are missing out, but because torpedoes are clearly not what they should be. And while I'm not certain as to how useful I find torpedoes, I think I'd rather not pigeonhole myself into just energy weapons, especially if they release a torpedo update.
I had a few, less-drastic ideas regarding game balance. If they halved the cool time on skills like beam array fire at will and torp spread, then a cruiser with just two tac skills could at least use those two skills rather efficiently. I use those two as examples, I would propose applying the change to beam target subsystem, overload, torp high yield, etc.
Escorts would see a benefit from this as well, for they would be able to carry more abilities. For example, an escort could carry cannon rapid fire AND cannon scatter volley where they might have only had two copies of cannon rapid fire (or any other skill.) Thus making the escort more versatile. Of course, they would have to adjust the cool on sci and engineer skills too, it would be rather unfair to only do that for tac skills... though honestly, I'd be so happy with the change, I'd probably accept them only modifying tactical skills.
I know they've put out doffs for cool time reductions, but if they refuse to make changes to the system and just perpetually attempt to compensate with different doffs and adding more and more things instead of changing what they've got, the'll paint themselves into a corner while overwhelming the game with tons of TRIBBLE without really fixing the problem. And if they were to alter the cool times, invalidating the doffs, they could put into place an exchange program so that people who might have spent millions of EC for those doffs can turn them in for any other doff of that quality. They could perhaps limit it by department. i.e. if it's a purple tac doff that's now useless, you may exchange it for any other purple tac doff. That would be a way of quelling rebellion over the change. Hopefully without disastrous consequences, like letting everyone exchange their less valuable doffs for super expensive subnuc doffs or something... lol.
This, of course, would also necessitate removing tac team as an absolute necessity. I'm not saying remove tac team from the game, I mean give sci and engineering the ability to withstand escort grade damage without using tac team. I'm not sure how to do that exactly... attaching auto shield distribution to eng team and sci team would likely make them way overpowered. Making constant auto shield distribution an inherent ability of all starships would provide the same overpoweredness.
I think maybe making manual distribution work as quickly as tac team could be the solution. They could make it so if you select a shield facing for reinforcement, the ship constantly attempts to keep that facing at max while evenly distributing any left over power amongst the other three facings. It would have to be semi-automatic, distributing power as you say until you say otherwise... otherwise manual shield distribution would be too involving on top of everything else one has to do.
I think this system would work quite well: If you tell the ship to reinforce a shield facing, it does its best to keep that facing at 100%, drawing power from other facings to that end, at the same speed as tac team distribution. The strength of this setting is that you are well equipped to absorb high burst damage with this facing, for example, the strike of a borg high yield torp. The weakness would be that all the other facings, provided your shields are not at full, would have less power in them, and thus make you more vulnerable to high burst damage from other angles.
I would propose that when you select a shield facing for reinforcement, when taking damage on one of the other three facings, the ship would still distribute power evenly amongst those three facings to compensate, but would not draw power from your primary facing. I.E. If you take damage to the aft facing while the forward facing is set primary, the ship will pull power to that facing from the two other non-primary facings to the point of maintaining equal power amongst the three non-primary facings.
If you instruct the ship to constantly evenly distribute shields, you would have equal power in all facings. This setting would be strongest for taking damage from multiple angles, but would have the weakness of no facing being at full to absorb high burst damage, again, the example of a borg high yield torp. Of course, that wouldn't be a concern if you see the torpedo coming and select to reinforce that facing before impact, provided you have enough power to distribute to absorb it.
With the changes I propose, I think tac team could reasonably, relatively, stay the same. The point of it being that with escort's speed and maneuverability, they are constantly exposing different facings to different enemies. Such rapid turning would make effective manual distribution difficult, so the auto distribution is there so they can just hit a button and focus on other stuff.
I think these changes would also make escorts happy, as more cruisers would probably opt to use manual distribution so they could exchange their tac teams for more attack skills. Without tac team cruisers would become more vulnerable to tactical debuff skills like attack pattern beta and fire on my mark. It would also allow escorts to benefit from their speed and maneuverability by being strategic and working together to attack from weak shield facings.
People that can't handle/don't like manual distribution, or wish to have tac team on standby "just in case," perhaps to counter boarding parties, could, of course, opt to retain tac team rather than exchange it for another attack skill. But with my proposed changes, they would then have the option of relying more on manual distribution while using their eng team and or sci team skills when the situation suits them to do so, with tac team as an available option, rather than the critical necessity it currently is.
Of course, these changes would also enable escorts to manually distribute their shields while using a sci team or eng team to restore themselves, thus making a 'gap' between uses of tac team less potentially devastating. So all around, no matter one's captain or ship type, I think these changes would be beneficial to everyone in the game, and would go quite a ways toward providing balance by reducing the critical dependence on tac team.
Honestly that is just a typical cry out, because an ability people use on their cruisers got nerfed automatically means cruiser got nerfed,
when in fact all ship classes use those abilities. (yes some armitage in pvp actually uses ES, and it is freaking awesome to see escorts crossheal like cruisers...)
a) if you nerf 4 eng abilties OF COURSE the ship with the most eng BO slots sufferes the most =cruiser escorts being better healers since PH, HE, TT, TSS, APO, none of it shared any cd, is the problem. Escorts are dmg dealers, a few post back someone called them glass cannon. HOw is making escrt healing stronger not a kick to the healing class.
c) with tanking skills, there is no defense of a cruiser to defend against and secort parkin on it's rear side taking down the one shield facing. It has now become even easier for all those wanna be fail topguns to take down a cruiser. i m sorry if you couldn't dmg a cruiser before, maybe now you ll have that pleasure, next up blowing up a tac cube, or getting the optional in normal STFs.
a) if you nerf 4 eng abilties OF COURSE the ship with the most eng BO slots sufferes the most =cruiser escorts being better healers since PH, HE, TT, TSS, APO, none of it shared any cd, is the problem. Escorts are dmg dealers, a few post back someone called them glass cannon. HOw is making escrt healing stronger not a kick to the healing class.
c) with tanking skills, there is no defense of a cruiser to defend against and secort parkin on it's rear side taking down the one shield facing. It has now become even easier for all those wanna be fail topguns to take down a cruiser. i m sorry if you couldn't dmg a cruiser before, maybe now you ll have that pleasure, next up blowing up a tac cube, or getting the optional in normal STFs.
ALL HAIL ESCORTS
you count 4 engi abilities...i count 3 epts, rsp, es...2 are seen on escorts aswell
to B: anything you list is available to cruisers aswell...APO not for all, but atleast on 5 cruisers available to feds (counting atrox, but oddy as one)
to c: there is plenty...actually listed before in this thread somewhere. if the cruiser is any good there was only a slim chance for a single escort to take out a cruiser.
As i see it, as a cruiser you will make a choice now, if you waste your ES on a friendly target or you save the CD for yourself. nerfing crossheal, which actually made premade PVP an endless zergfest with battles lasting nearly one hour.
PS: whats the deal with the green color? A different color doesn't make your posts more important than others, it only shows that you think your opinions are more important, which is really not the case.
It is no surprise actually to use color to draw attention to a post, if the content itself can not.
you count 4 engi abilities...i count 3 epts, rsp, es...2 are seen on escorts aswell
to B: anything you list is available to cruisers aswell...APO not for all, but atleast on 5 cruisers available to feds (counting atrox, but oddy as one)
to c: there is plenty...actually listed before in this thread somewhere. if the cruiser is any good there was only a slim chance for a single escort to take out a cruiser.
As i see it, as a cruiser you will make a choice now, if you waste your ES on a friendly target or you save the CD for yourself. nerfing crossheal, which actually made premade PVP an endless zergfest with battles lasting nearly one hour.
PS: whats the deal with the green color? A different color doesn't make your posts more important than others, it only shows that you think your opinions are more important, which is really not the case.
It is no surprise actually to use color to draw attention to a post, if the content itself can not.
I actually find the green easier to read... but that might just be me, lol.
The cruisers are pretty much relegated to being heal boats, and now they've reduced some of their ability to heal... so yeah, it's pretty much a giant kick to the cruiser's giant, un-turnable TRIBBLE.
I don't find myself too concerned with the change, I only tend to use emergency power to shields or emergency power to shields and reverse shield polarity... though the forced 15 second delay between using emergency power to shields and reverse shield polarity will now prevent me from popping emergency power, realizing it won't be enough, and immediately popping reverse shield polarity.
Cruisers don't usually have very many sci spots either, usually two, so the de-bind of those sci skills isn't really that useful. Most will still use transfer shield strength and hazard emitters or have sci team in there for when subnuked.
It's possible that the delay to be able to use reverse shield polarity might make escorts more destructible, but it's more likely to make cruisers easier to pop. Cruisers are slow and bulky and the escort can easily put max damage on a cruiser, while a cruiser will have trouble doing damage in general, let alone keeping the escort in its best arcs.
All in all, this seems like a massive nerf to what was already a sad, pitiful, beached whale.
I recently got 3 purple quality flight deck doffs so I could pop out pets faster, with three of them, I could basically pop them out back to back, no matter what pet I was using. Now with THREE PURPLE DOFFS I can only take my cool from 32 seconds on danubes to 17 seconds if I pop the hangars back to back (for some reason, popping two hangars at once produces a better cool reduction than just one hangar.) I could pop them out something like ever 12-15 seconds when I only had 3 green doffs. Also, the doffs aren't even functioning properly as 32 minus 12 should be 20 seconds, but when one hangar cools, it goes from 32 to 24 seconds.
I got the three purple doffs because I was aiming to get a heavy escort carrier. The three purple doffs would have allowed me to pop out danubes every 15ish seconds with the one hangar on the heavy escort carrier, the same speed my atrox could pop them out (popping two hangars at once) with three greens, and my atrox could now pop out pets pretty much 2 seconds apart (double hangar pop).
Seriously, WTF?! With how fighters instapop when someone scatter volleys or fires at will, carriers pretty much NEED to be able to pop out fighters back to back... without fighters/pets, carriers are pretty much useless.
Ok so they've reduced our ability to tank and to cross heal... it's not as if either of these functions are needed when you can kill stuff as fast as an escort can.
Ok so they've reduced our ability to tank and to cross heal... it's not as if either of these functions are needed when you can kill stuff as fast as an escort can.
so hey, cruisers, who needs em?
Cruisers can still tank, now you just have to use shield heals and hull heals to stack resists to do so.
What a Cruiser can't do anymore is Extend Shields to a player and Shield Tank at teh same time.
You can still Extend Shields to a player (use the ExtS DOff for an extra % damage resistance) or use RSP on yourself and use your Hull Heals to stack resists to survive while you are healing or extending or using RSP on yourself.
Its a change in procedure of the timing and application of healing or tanking not the end of it.
What has happened is that Escorts will not be able to pop RSP in combat and loiter ignoring damage with EPTS cycling until they are ready to attack again.
Now if an Escort pops RSP to save itself from sudden death on losing shields it must leave combat unless it too stacks Hull resists to allow it to loiter.
@Bitempew: Overal this change won't affect my PVE escort buuild at ALL. It will however destroy my PVE cruiser. In fleet events there are several situations where i am forced to tank damage, (and so need the heals and resistances from EPTS), at the same time as healing somthing else, (And so need ES). Now i can't do both, at which point my usefulness just dropped through the floor.
Cruisers can still tank, now you just have to use shield heals and hull heals to stack resists to do so.
What a Cruiser can't do anymore is Extend Shields to a player and Shield Tank at teh same time.
You can still Extend Shields to a player (use the ExtS DOff for an extra % damage resistance) or use RSP on yourself and use your Hull Heals to stack resists to survive while you are healing or extending or using RSP on yourself.
Its a change in procedure of the timing and application of healing or tanking not the end of it.
What has happened is that Escorts will not be able to pop RSP in combat and loiter ignoring damage with EPTS cycling until they are ready to attack again.
Now if an Escort pops RSP to save itself from sudden death on losing shields it must leave combat unless it too stacks Hull resists to allow it to loiter.
Yes, and since a cruiser can't extend shields while shield tanking at the same time, once you extend shields, you are open to get blown right out of the sky, so who's gonna want to extend their shields knowing it will be the end of them? And lets face it, there's no such thing as "hull tanking" an escort. So if a cruiser can't shield tank while healing others anymore, it's pretty much useless.
Cruisers are too slow and lumbering to use eject warp plasma effectively, aceton beam doesn't seem to do anything, and good luck aiming it on a cruiser anyway. The supposed boost to shield penetrating damage of directed energy modulation is laughable, and frankly, doesn't do anything/isn't worth replacing other skills with.
Cruisers were basically healing environmental hazards, they fly around, constantly firing at will, not really doing any damage, mostly just being annoying, while being super hard to kill and super annoying by keeping their escort buddy alive while he pwns your face. Now they've been nerfed even more? Really? And now that my carrier/planned future escort carrier have been totally made undesireable to me, I dunno... the game all around has lost any appeal, flying a cruiser is sad and boring, my carriers, catian or otherwise, have been declawed, and I don't really care for escorts so.... yeah.
Yeah, I read that, but like I said in my post on that thread, the fact that they tried to fix balance by further nerfing cruisers just shows they have no flipping idea what they're doing.
And unless they post somewhere else that they are gonna de-nerf the flight deck doffs, my carriers are pretty craptastic now. And who the F uses boarding parties? everyone has constant tac team if they have any hope of surviving, so boarding parties are completely useless.
Yes, and since a cruiser can't extend shields while shield tanking at the same time, once you extend shields, you are open to get blown right out of the sky.
I would attempt it without hesistation in a fight.
In lets say a Fleet K'Tinga if I noticed my team mate was being attacked and needed some shield heals and a ES to survive I would, assuming I am at full shiels and unattacked in the begining;
Pop a ES on him/her and follow it with a ST if needed.
<15 second CD starts on EPTS1>
Switch my power setting to a High Aux/High Shield setting, possibly pop a AuxBattery and keep my fingers ready to hit PH for the 15 second all damage resist + HE for the 15 second all damage resist + Aux to Structual for the 10 second all damage resist.
Ride out the 15 seconds of EPTS CD and if I gain attention from an unfriendly, call for support and make ready to move quick if need by through iether EVM, EngineBatt or a Duetburn.
If I did not need to use ST on my team mate then I can save TT and TSS for a quick shield buffing if I get noticed and attacked. In a pinch pop a Shield batt.
EPTS off CD, start rotating again. Keep same power setting. Only switch if team gets upper hand, otherwise keep a healing set-up.
If I'm running a DPS Cruiser then this is a moot point as I will not be using ES in the build.
Will it work, can it work? possibly. Like every change that has came and went, this one can be adapted to as well I feel.
Since the change has been hanged back, its alla moot point.
Now of course I await for the next change that gets everbodies knickers twisted.
Who knows IT may even bunch mine a little tighter.
Comments
Ok first of all, the proj weapons was a brain TRIBBLE, I meant for that to go into Energy weapons lol... (it was 1 AM when I did that, brain not necessarily working at 100% at the time).
And now for the reasoning behind it.
Starting off at driver coil: yes, I do the tour the galaxy a lot (it's essentially a free 1 mil ECs).
The EPS skill, I found out that maxed out only gives a +1 bonus to EPtX powers at level 9 compared to level 7, and the transfer rate only increases by .7%. So maxing it really doesn't seem necessary to me, since I can get about 95% of the bonus and save on 4k skill points.
Impulse thrusters maxed only gives .4-.8 additional turn at 9 points as opposed to 7. So again, I figured save on 4k skill points and lose that tiny bit (which would be barely noticeable to begin with).
Warp Core Potential only gives an additional +1 power when maxed as opposed to the 7 points, so you save on 2k skill points and only lose out on 1 power. Basically the reason I don't have shield and weapons maxed is again because I would only gain +1 power by maxing them instead of leaving them at 7 points, so I decided to relegate those points to other things.
As for the Armor reinforcements, you're right it's a little much, so I have removed two points from that and put it into energy weapons specialization (I'll lose 1.1% resist, which is fine, but gain gain 3.8% crit damage and .3% crit hit chance). But I would prefer to leave the SIF maxed out, since at max it gives 30% extra hp, and if I removed points down to 6 it would reduce that bonus down to 27%, and when you have 42k base hp, 3% is an additional 12-1500 hp, and that's another hit I can take, so I would prefer to leave it as is. Heck even removing 1 point is a 1% drop, that's 420 hp. I would prefer to keep it.
I also removed 2 points from hull plating, so I lose 1.1% damage resist to energy weapons (acceptable, since it gives me 5k more skill points to allocate somewhere else).
Also you are correct, warp core efficiency should be lowered slightly to 6, since it actually gives NO bonus at 7 from 6, and at 9 only gives 1 additional power. So that was altered.
Lastly, I removed 1 point from each of my tier 1 skills that I had maxed because maxing them out was inefficient, at most it gave a 1% increase to the powers enhanced, so losing 1% won't hurt too much and it gave me 3k skill points to work with.
After reducing energy weapons by 1 (1% loss in overall strength, acceptable), I now used my newly freed up skill points and put 6 points into power insulators and 5 points into attack patterns. Some utility and offensive power (actual gain put below).
Also on two points you brought up, the Aux and Engines, as much as I respect your opinion, here you and I differ. I want the engine power because it enhances both turn rate and move speed, something a cruiser needs badly, and the borg engines aren't enough, so I figure give myself an additional 8 power just for that little boost. And as for aux, I need it for my heals (both to myself and to allies). So not putting any points there is a really bad idea to me. 8 power to aux is another 2-300 per heal, and it also allows me to get to around 130 aux power when I pour all my energy into aux with my 25/50/25/100 power setup which is what I pop to when I really need a strong heal (basically I use my EPS captain skill, pop to that power loadout, wait about 2 seconds, pop my heal(s) on either myself or the target, then go back to either my attack or defensive layout). I did some tests, and 122 compared to 130 is a HUGE difference of about 300 hp on Aux2SIF, and a massive 800 on HE1. Only about 20 points on TTS1 & 2 (30 points), but the regen drops by about 15 on TTS1 and 20 on TTS2. So not as noticeable on that skill, but for the hull heals it's rather large. In addition you lose out on about 5 resist on Aux2SIF, and 2 resist on HE1. So with all due respect, I would rather keep those skills as is.
So after my mods, I lost 2 power to every system (warp core potential and X performance) from max, roughly 2-4% weapons damage (starship weapons, energy weapons) from max, .7 warp in sector space (not gonna hurt that much in TG event), <1% hull and shield repair ability, 1.1% loss to energy and kinetic resist (gotta give a little to get a little).
What I gained:
30% bonus to attack patterns (all of them), 42% resist to shield and power drain, 3.8% Crit damage on energy weapons + .3% crit chance (man I feel like a nerd, with all these numbers and calculations I just did lol).
Here's the new skill tree:
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=TacOddyUpdate_0 <-- hopefully link works.
MOAR INPUT PLOX. Lol...
And now for my really big question. What am I supposed to do with that extra tac ensign? I don't need him for another TT courtesy of my DOffs, so what do I do with it?
EDIT: My skill planner was being wacky, so it might not be what I said in text... just a word of warning, also the link may not work, if it doesn't lemme know, I'll recreate it and post it up again. Also the table I am using for numbers to supplement my testing with the skills and how skill points affect abilities/performance:
http://home.comcast.net/~amicus/Skill%20Point%20Effects.htm
Personally I could live with this quite happily although I think that Acc mods could use a de-nerf if they were to implement this, so that you could get a fair chance of hitting an escort from a cruiser even if it's only 50-75% chance to hit
I've got another more complete post on this coming but in short the Akira, Defiant, and Sabre seem to have been the primary inspirations. They where all cannoniclly much more powerful than any non-sov cruiser at the time of their introduction, yet where a fraction the size. They'e high firepower, high speed ships. And thats how cryptic initially set them up. And thats how they work till certian factors come into play, then suddennly they get a big dose of tankness and it all falls down.
I also mostly disagree on tac slots. If tac team wasn't so "OMG I MUST HAVE" you'd have plenty of tac ability acess. lt Cmdr tac abilities should be a speciality of specific special ships.
Why dont we buy out PWE?
USS WARRIOR NCC 1720 Commanding Officer
Star Trek Gamers
It might be better to simply use 2 TTs and use the 2 doff slots for something else? maybe some of the energy weapon doffs?
Thanks for the skill planner link, with its help, I created these builds:
Engineer:
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=wipengibuild_0
Tactical:
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=wiptacbuild_0
The space skills are largely the same, minus a few points from space on the tac so I could get the six into all the tac ground specific skills, which should only result in a 1 point power reduction across the board compared to the engi space skill setup.
My only real gripe with your builds are that there are no skill points geared towards armor or hull plating.
Also since I don't plan on using torps much, you and I would differ greatly there as well, since I would take all the points you put into torps and put it in the hull plating and armor reinforcements. But other than that, I don't have any major issues with your skill setup.
Viable.
I swear if I win the lottery I'm going to buy Cryptic from PWE, fire the entire staff of Cryptic to wipe the slate clean and start Star Trek Online 2.0 and this time...DO IT RIGHT.
i looked at the patch notes...nothing there that would suggest your claim is valid. And if you mean patch notes from nearly 2 years back...well, get over it.
Cruisers in general are not weak...only some are just too specialized for tanking and support. If you chose those for playing...thats your own fault, might want to switch to a cruiser with less than 7 engi slots, and you will see that cruisers are not that weak at all.
cryptic did actually a fairly good job for the developement time of 2 years. Sure a lot of bugs are still around and they could have made things a lot better, but ship balance is not an important issue IMHO...you can allways change ship. Thats actually their main business model, that you have multiple ships that you need to buy. Thats why some are just total TRIBBLE ships, and others shine.
lol if you don't see how putting EmptS, RSP and ES on the same cooldown, forcing you to be without shield resistances is not making you weaker, i suggest you read the patchnotes again.
Cruisers were a joke, because their awesome healing was no longer required, instead of nerfing TT and BFI, they decided to make cruisers the biggest "target me OMG NOOBZ" sign in the game.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
I mean cruisers where already just big flying bricks with a huge bullseye painted on it, it's not even funny anymore.
Do they want to p**s off even the last Trek fan? What's the point of all this?
They just don't seem to have any grasp about Star Trek ships at all. Is it because they apparently WANT to do anything wrong or are they just incompetent in doing a good Star Trek game?
I don't know and by now i don't care anymore.
At least they should be honest enough to delete the "Star Trek" from their game entirely.
just cry a little louder maybe somebody will come to your aid.
No srsly...it is a good change, since cruiser were actually indestructable...and the patch affects escorts aswell...since EPtS and RSP are on most escorts anyway.
in return, PH and HE do not share CD anymore...i would say hull tanking became more viable.
Ofcourse weak cruisers will pop now even faster...frankly i dont care, really good cruisers which were indestructible i some cases may go down now eventually.
escorts no longer benefit of (insane) ES cross heals, making them vulnerable.
i can't seem to understand how this patch would benefit escorts. Honestly that is just a typical cry out, because an ability people use on their cruisers got nerfed automatically means cruiser got nerfed, when in fact all ship classes use those abilities. (yes some armitage in pvp actually uses ES, and it is freaking awesome to see escorts crossheal like cruisers...)
Yes, many people opt out of torpedoes entirely... which is sad. Not because torpedoes in the game are so useful and they are missing out, but because torpedoes are clearly not what they should be. And while I'm not certain as to how useful I find torpedoes, I think I'd rather not pigeonhole myself into just energy weapons, especially if they release a torpedo update.
I had a few, less-drastic ideas regarding game balance. If they halved the cool time on skills like beam array fire at will and torp spread, then a cruiser with just two tac skills could at least use those two skills rather efficiently. I use those two as examples, I would propose applying the change to beam target subsystem, overload, torp high yield, etc.
Escorts would see a benefit from this as well, for they would be able to carry more abilities. For example, an escort could carry cannon rapid fire AND cannon scatter volley where they might have only had two copies of cannon rapid fire (or any other skill.) Thus making the escort more versatile. Of course, they would have to adjust the cool on sci and engineer skills too, it would be rather unfair to only do that for tac skills... though honestly, I'd be so happy with the change, I'd probably accept them only modifying tactical skills.
I know they've put out doffs for cool time reductions, but if they refuse to make changes to the system and just perpetually attempt to compensate with different doffs and adding more and more things instead of changing what they've got, the'll paint themselves into a corner while overwhelming the game with tons of TRIBBLE without really fixing the problem. And if they were to alter the cool times, invalidating the doffs, they could put into place an exchange program so that people who might have spent millions of EC for those doffs can turn them in for any other doff of that quality. They could perhaps limit it by department. i.e. if it's a purple tac doff that's now useless, you may exchange it for any other purple tac doff. That would be a way of quelling rebellion over the change. Hopefully without disastrous consequences, like letting everyone exchange their less valuable doffs for super expensive subnuc doffs or something... lol.
This, of course, would also necessitate removing tac team as an absolute necessity. I'm not saying remove tac team from the game, I mean give sci and engineering the ability to withstand escort grade damage without using tac team. I'm not sure how to do that exactly... attaching auto shield distribution to eng team and sci team would likely make them way overpowered. Making constant auto shield distribution an inherent ability of all starships would provide the same overpoweredness.
I think maybe making manual distribution work as quickly as tac team could be the solution. They could make it so if you select a shield facing for reinforcement, the ship constantly attempts to keep that facing at max while evenly distributing any left over power amongst the other three facings. It would have to be semi-automatic, distributing power as you say until you say otherwise... otherwise manual shield distribution would be too involving on top of everything else one has to do.
I think this system would work quite well: If you tell the ship to reinforce a shield facing, it does its best to keep that facing at 100%, drawing power from other facings to that end, at the same speed as tac team distribution. The strength of this setting is that you are well equipped to absorb high burst damage with this facing, for example, the strike of a borg high yield torp. The weakness would be that all the other facings, provided your shields are not at full, would have less power in them, and thus make you more vulnerable to high burst damage from other angles.
I would propose that when you select a shield facing for reinforcement, when taking damage on one of the other three facings, the ship would still distribute power evenly amongst those three facings to compensate, but would not draw power from your primary facing. I.E. If you take damage to the aft facing while the forward facing is set primary, the ship will pull power to that facing from the two other non-primary facings to the point of maintaining equal power amongst the three non-primary facings.
If you instruct the ship to constantly evenly distribute shields, you would have equal power in all facings. This setting would be strongest for taking damage from multiple angles, but would have the weakness of no facing being at full to absorb high burst damage, again, the example of a borg high yield torp. Of course, that wouldn't be a concern if you see the torpedo coming and select to reinforce that facing before impact, provided you have enough power to distribute to absorb it.
With the changes I propose, I think tac team could reasonably, relatively, stay the same. The point of it being that with escort's speed and maneuverability, they are constantly exposing different facings to different enemies. Such rapid turning would make effective manual distribution difficult, so the auto distribution is there so they can just hit a button and focus on other stuff.
I think these changes would also make escorts happy, as more cruisers would probably opt to use manual distribution so they could exchange their tac teams for more attack skills. Without tac team cruisers would become more vulnerable to tactical debuff skills like attack pattern beta and fire on my mark. It would also allow escorts to benefit from their speed and maneuverability by being strategic and working together to attack from weak shield facings.
People that can't handle/don't like manual distribution, or wish to have tac team on standby "just in case," perhaps to counter boarding parties, could, of course, opt to retain tac team rather than exchange it for another attack skill. But with my proposed changes, they would then have the option of relying more on manual distribution while using their eng team and or sci team skills when the situation suits them to do so, with tac team as an available option, rather than the critical necessity it currently is.
Of course, these changes would also enable escorts to manually distribute their shields while using a sci team or eng team to restore themselves, thus making a 'gap' between uses of tac team less potentially devastating. So all around, no matter one's captain or ship type, I think these changes would be beneficial to everyone in the game, and would go quite a ways toward providing balance by reducing the critical dependence on tac team.
Thoughts?
a) if you nerf 4 eng abilties OF COURSE the ship with the most eng BO slots sufferes the most =cruiser
c) with tanking skills, there is no defense of a cruiser to defend against and secort parkin on it's rear side taking down the one shield facing. It has now become even easier for all those wanna be fail topguns to take down a cruiser. i m sorry if you couldn't dmg a cruiser before, maybe now you ll have that pleasure, next up blowing up a tac cube, or getting the optional in normal STFs.
ALL HAIL ESCORTS
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
you count 4 engi abilities...i count 3 epts, rsp, es...2 are seen on escorts aswell
to B: anything you list is available to cruisers aswell...APO not for all, but atleast on 5 cruisers available to feds (counting atrox, but oddy as one)
to c: there is plenty...actually listed before in this thread somewhere. if the cruiser is any good there was only a slim chance for a single escort to take out a cruiser.
As i see it, as a cruiser you will make a choice now, if you waste your ES on a friendly target or you save the CD for yourself. nerfing crossheal, which actually made premade PVP an endless zergfest with battles lasting nearly one hour.
PS: whats the deal with the green color? A different color doesn't make your posts more important than others, it only shows that you think your opinions are more important, which is really not the case.
It is no surprise actually to use color to draw attention to a post, if the content itself can not.
I actually find the green easier to read... but that might just be me, lol.
The cruisers are pretty much relegated to being heal boats, and now they've reduced some of their ability to heal... so yeah, it's pretty much a giant kick to the cruiser's giant, un-turnable TRIBBLE.
I don't find myself too concerned with the change, I only tend to use emergency power to shields or emergency power to shields and reverse shield polarity... though the forced 15 second delay between using emergency power to shields and reverse shield polarity will now prevent me from popping emergency power, realizing it won't be enough, and immediately popping reverse shield polarity.
Cruisers don't usually have very many sci spots either, usually two, so the de-bind of those sci skills isn't really that useful. Most will still use transfer shield strength and hazard emitters or have sci team in there for when subnuked.
It's possible that the delay to be able to use reverse shield polarity might make escorts more destructible, but it's more likely to make cruisers easier to pop. Cruisers are slow and bulky and the escort can easily put max damage on a cruiser, while a cruiser will have trouble doing damage in general, let alone keeping the escort in its best arcs.
All in all, this seems like a massive nerf to what was already a sad, pitiful, beached whale.
I thought they put each other on CD?
R.I.P
I recently got 3 purple quality flight deck doffs so I could pop out pets faster, with three of them, I could basically pop them out back to back, no matter what pet I was using. Now with THREE PURPLE DOFFS I can only take my cool from 32 seconds on danubes to 17 seconds if I pop the hangars back to back (for some reason, popping two hangars at once produces a better cool reduction than just one hangar.) I could pop them out something like ever 12-15 seconds when I only had 3 green doffs. Also, the doffs aren't even functioning properly as 32 minus 12 should be 20 seconds, but when one hangar cools, it goes from 32 to 24 seconds.
I got the three purple doffs because I was aiming to get a heavy escort carrier. The three purple doffs would have allowed me to pop out danubes every 15ish seconds with the one hangar on the heavy escort carrier, the same speed my atrox could pop them out (popping two hangars at once) with three greens, and my atrox could now pop out pets pretty much 2 seconds apart (double hangar pop).
Seriously, WTF?! With how fighters instapop when someone scatter volleys or fires at will, carriers pretty much NEED to be able to pop out fighters back to back... without fighters/pets, carriers are pretty much useless.
read the patch notes, they just unbound them.
so hey, cruisers, who needs em?
Cruisers can still tank, now you just have to use shield heals and hull heals to stack resists to do so.
What a Cruiser can't do anymore is Extend Shields to a player and Shield Tank at teh same time.
You can still Extend Shields to a player (use the ExtS DOff for an extra % damage resistance) or use RSP on yourself and use your Hull Heals to stack resists to survive while you are healing or extending or using RSP on yourself.
Its a change in procedure of the timing and application of healing or tanking not the end of it.
What has happened is that Escorts will not be able to pop RSP in combat and loiter ignoring damage with EPTS cycling until they are ready to attack again.
Now if an Escort pops RSP to save itself from sudden death on losing shields it must leave combat unless it too stacks Hull resists to allow it to loiter.
R.I.P
Yes, and since a cruiser can't extend shields while shield tanking at the same time, once you extend shields, you are open to get blown right out of the sky, so who's gonna want to extend their shields knowing it will be the end of them? And lets face it, there's no such thing as "hull tanking" an escort. So if a cruiser can't shield tank while healing others anymore, it's pretty much useless.
Cruisers are too slow and lumbering to use eject warp plasma effectively, aceton beam doesn't seem to do anything, and good luck aiming it on a cruiser anyway. The supposed boost to shield penetrating damage of directed energy modulation is laughable, and frankly, doesn't do anything/isn't worth replacing other skills with.
Cruisers were basically healing environmental hazards, they fly around, constantly firing at will, not really doing any damage, mostly just being annoying, while being super hard to kill and super annoying by keeping their escort buddy alive while he pwns your face. Now they've been nerfed even more? Really? And now that my carrier/planned future escort carrier have been totally made undesireable to me, I dunno... the game all around has lost any appeal, flying a cruiser is sad and boring, my carriers, catian or otherwise, have been declawed, and I don't really care for escorts so.... yeah.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=6032821#post6032821
Yeah, I read that, but like I said in my post on that thread, the fact that they tried to fix balance by further nerfing cruisers just shows they have no flipping idea what they're doing.
And unless they post somewhere else that they are gonna de-nerf the flight deck doffs, my carriers are pretty craptastic now. And who the F uses boarding parties? everyone has constant tac team if they have any hope of surviving, so boarding parties are completely useless.
R.I.P