Im just wondering if there are plans to help make plasma weapons more viable when season 7 comes out?
With the maco, honor guard and omega plasma resistance plasma has been put into that little box of pure pve and as such people wont go out of there way to get plasma weapons if they are wanting to do any form of pvp.
With the new romulan plasma weapons (just unlocked em and very nice btw
) availiable from the rep system are there any plans to address this at all?
Comments
Archoncryptic talks about the new science consoles available at the Romulan Embassy here:
Category 3c is where you'll get an extra damage proc if you're already using plasma. I don't think it's quite what you're after, but it's probably the only improvement we'll see at launch.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
^ This - since the Borg use the same plasma type as what's available to us, any direct buff to plasma would buff the Borg's plasma weapons as well, which would mean even bigger crits from high yield plasma torps in Elite STFs! In order to give us a buff, and not the borg, Cryptic would need to make a "Borg Plasma" weapon type exclusive to them. IIRC a developer already mentioned that it would take too much effort to make something like that, so I doubt we'll ever see the base plasma weapons get a buff.
Honestly, until Cryptic starts making true "end game" item sets that aren't STF/Borg specific (Borticus has gone on record to say that the Breen, Jem'Hadar, and Aegis aren't meant to be "end game" sets) and give us more end game variety, plasma will never be a viable alternative. Perhaps the updated Reman and new Romulan sets are end game (you can get mark XII versions, so this is likely the case)? I haven't seen the exact stats to see if they're competitive or not, but we can hope!
For example the M.A.C.O. Resilient Shield Array could be something like;
Reduces [Borg Plasma] Damage to Shields by 20%
Maybe the popularity of plasma might increase if there was a separate plasma energy type for players and borg. Because all of the end game sets grant resistance to plasma what is the point in having MKX - MKXII plasma weapons?
Why would I want to buy/waste the dilithium on the new Romulan reputation weapons from a system that was designed for end game when the weapons themselves are useless for end game play?
So easiest way I see from a balance of powers (definatly not code) to fix it is to do the change along the lines of borg shoot Borg type damage and stf gear resists borg. Code wise thats probly a pain to change if I had to make a guess.
Other than that my guess would be lower the amount the Dot gets boosted from certain sci consoles and increase its proc rate for the energy weapons and take a pass at the mine damage dot(just a very small one, might not be needed if the boost from consoles is reduced.). Idea being you can make a burn build with something other than just torps and mines and it work well.
- i've done something stupid
- there's lag.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Plasma weapons being "useless" is largely perpetuated by the PvP crowd as in PvP against the end-level gear they typically use it is far less useful. Against NPCs it's just as viable as any other weapon type and actually tends to be cheaper to max out until you have ground out enough EDCs or Rare Salvage drops to outfit your ship with [Borg] gear of some other damage type given just how cheaply plasma tends to sell on the exchange as compared to other damage types.
What we need is not a buff to plasma weaponry but a "debuff" to other weapons types in the form of new sets that provide comparable performance to the MACO/Omega/KHG sets while giving resistance to other, non-plasma, damage types.
I've noticed that space STFs are super easy since season 6... the ground STFs are another story. Elite Tacs and their stupid one hit **** cannon :P Still fun though.
I mean that the Borg doesn't deal enough damage to put my escort in danger at any time, unless I do something stupid. My escort can tank in any STFs without sacrificing dps, and of course without any team support (which is the true meaning of "pug").
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
We al have different playstyle, and the best PvP teams are team that have a good combination of those. This is reflected first in the professions. We then have the choice of several alien races, each with different advantages and disadvantages. Next we have three basic classes of ships, and a few more specialized ship designs. Lastly, we have energy types, each with their own procs, and different distribution systems (or weapon platforms) for these energy types. Just for icing on the cake we have some VERY neat specialized weapons.
Plasma is the only one of the energy types to have DoT. I for one am a big fan of DoT. In all the games I have played I have learned to use it to my advantage and make it a part of the way I fight. So in the perfect team, I have a spot with a plasma build.
STF sets negate a whopping 20% (1/5) of the shield damage from plasma weapons. Most buffs and debuffs in this game are 2.5%, 5% even 10%, but WOW, 20%. (imagine how many top PvP players would be just screwed if I walked into Arena with 20% Phaser resist)
My solutions? Cut the plasma resist on STF sets to 10%. IMHo this would still be enough for an anti borg buff, and would just about balance it for PvP.
Any thoughts on the 10% suggestion from other players or devs?
B...B...BUT...IT'S NOT INTENDED AS ENDGAME GEAR!!!111!! NEITHER is the AEGIS!!!!!!111!!"
Whatever
+1
I think that is a great idea. would be a really balancing factor in PvP. It could even be coded exactly the same way into all the sets (include Aegis, Breen etc.) and all the sets would have more usages. It seems to me like they did a great job of making all these types of equips differnt and interesting, but dropped the ball with the huge plasma resist to the STF shields. (and not scaling the other great sets up to MK XII)
(an another note to the devs: Thank you so much for making the Honor Guard sets available to feds. That alone is going to drag my Fed Tac Captain back into STFs. I was honestly very disappointed with the MACO Ground set weapon, set together is nice otherwise, but if I can carry a Honor Guard Rifle as my second gun that will be an amazing setup! Also am drooling over the thought of my Armitage with the Honor Guard Space set .... he he he he he he)
((could also make the (borg) proc also apply to any PC regardless of race and suddenly the STF Weapons including plasma become VERY relevant to PvP))