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Romulan Kits [MAJOR BALANCE ISSUE!]
pug02
Member Posts: 17 Arc User
So we are getting new kits through our embassy. The tactical officers will receive a new FireTeam kit, the engineers Fabrication Specialist, and Science Xenobiologist.
Fireteam kit is getting Motion Accelerator which makes Engineer roots impossible and allows tactical officers to run into weapon range and out of weapon range fast. This is a very powerful kit that is becoming even more powerful. GREAT!
The Xenobiologist is a horrible kit to begin with. For clearing exposes the Medic kit is by far the better choice. At Mk X the Fireteam kit gets a Plasma Grenade IV where as at MK X the Xenobuilogist gets nothing new. At Mk XI it receives Tachyon Harmonic but this ability has been broken since the launch of S7. This kit doesn't help do damage or reduce damage in any significant way. Stasis field is easily resisted these days. The Physicist kit would have been a better choice!
The engineer got shafted some time ago and with Fabrication Specialist, they receive a Turret IV at the Fabrication Specialist Mk X kit. Some improvement, but this doesn't mean much when your on the move. Most engineers have suffered dramatically with DPS, if they are running Fabrication Specialist. Gaining Quick Fix for to fix turrets and mortars that are around the corner doesn't do much. Most encounters occur on the move and building a bunker of some sort does nothing to help DPS these days. On my engineer I have stopped running Fabrication Specialist for some time now and I easily get DPS numbers far above any other engineer. On STFs I usually run around 110 DPS sustained now.
It is clear that Tactical Officers got a great boost in Season 6 with the Cryo Pulsewave that they can Super Buff. Now in Season 7 they receive a boost to one of the most powerful kits. Engineers and Science officers on the other hand receive pointless kits, with broken and useless abilities. Why not create an open kit system that can be crafted? This is a great injustice that has been done to the balance. Why would anyone want to play anything other than a tactical officer now?
Fireteam kit is getting Motion Accelerator which makes Engineer roots impossible and allows tactical officers to run into weapon range and out of weapon range fast. This is a very powerful kit that is becoming even more powerful. GREAT!
The Xenobiologist is a horrible kit to begin with. For clearing exposes the Medic kit is by far the better choice. At Mk X the Fireteam kit gets a Plasma Grenade IV where as at MK X the Xenobuilogist gets nothing new. At Mk XI it receives Tachyon Harmonic but this ability has been broken since the launch of S7. This kit doesn't help do damage or reduce damage in any significant way. Stasis field is easily resisted these days. The Physicist kit would have been a better choice!
The engineer got shafted some time ago and with Fabrication Specialist, they receive a Turret IV at the Fabrication Specialist Mk X kit. Some improvement, but this doesn't mean much when your on the move. Most engineers have suffered dramatically with DPS, if they are running Fabrication Specialist. Gaining Quick Fix for to fix turrets and mortars that are around the corner doesn't do much. Most encounters occur on the move and building a bunker of some sort does nothing to help DPS these days. On my engineer I have stopped running Fabrication Specialist for some time now and I easily get DPS numbers far above any other engineer. On STFs I usually run around 110 DPS sustained now.
It is clear that Tactical Officers got a great boost in Season 6 with the Cryo Pulsewave that they can Super Buff. Now in Season 7 they receive a boost to one of the most powerful kits. Engineers and Science officers on the other hand receive pointless kits, with broken and useless abilities. Why not create an open kit system that can be crafted? This is a great injustice that has been done to the balance. Why would anyone want to play anything other than a tactical officer now?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by pug02 on
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It isn't the best kit for PvE. Enemy Neutralization is the best. You can pump out much more damage and stay mobile. There is an easy way to demonstrate this. (which I have tested). One engineer runs one kit while the other runs a different kit and we can do an STF. The final DPS makes it clear that Enemy Neutralization by far out does the damage of Fabrication Specialist. With a team that moves fast (which my fleet does) the mortars and turrets will maybe get one volley off by the time the group dies. They will be out of range for the second group and you still won't have the ability to place more down.
Just to let you know, we drop Armek in under 20 seconds, including all of his talking. Most people running Fabrication Specialist might do about 40 DPS. I can sustain 110 DPS. I am sorry, this use to be a decent kit when you could kit switch. But running with a good group, that is outputting solid DPS numbers, makes this kit pathetic. Mortars tend to miss, since the group is dead before the mortar hits.
And then you wonder why we all complain about Science captains always getting the short end of the stick.
A science DOFF amongst these gives Stasis Field some electrical damage, and an operations DOFF gives some kind of cooldown reduction on consumable pets or something, pretty much both worthless. Not to mention being stupid expensive, particularly at the blue and purple level.
But yeah, that Super-Fire Team kit and that Security DOFF certainly don't help the balance between the three classes on the ground at all. That very nearly gives tacs the 'end all' kit just about. They gain everything from it, and lose nothing really, compared to the other two.
Not sure where you get 40dps from. In 20 seconds that?s 24 shots from 3 morters at 622.5 damage per shot. So that?s 14,940 damage in 20 seconds or 747dps without crits. Are you playing Elite as I rarely have morter miss's on Elite.
Morters have such long range they will hit far more then 1 volly and 1 group. Turrets I agree are hard to use with fast teams but morters you just dump on ground and use them for the next 3+ rooms.
I was hoping for some more variaty.
As it has already been said, the Tactical one is a major improvement.
The Science one is based on one the worst Sci Kit available.
The Engineering one is somewhere in the middle. But you try making a bunker in an STF for example.
By the time you put down all your stuff your team has run off to the next room.
It has it's uses, but more variaty would have been nice.
Vornek@oberlerchner123 - Join Date: July 2008
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Turrets are meh, they're mostly used by noobs in pve and will never OS a stack of mobs like a good lay of mines can, but at least noobs will do better since they love this kit, probably because it's funny to use these toys with flashing lights. It's mostly useless since mortars disappear now when you remove the kit but there's still the 5-10% of situations where it can have some use (i'm thinking to nukara interior hard for instance, where you're stuck at your console).
Xenobliologist, on the contrary... it's the worst sci kit ever. No one with some understanding of the game's mechanics would ever use that, seriously. Even with the doffs, unless they OS your target with stasis field, but it would be surprising since scis never get much love on ground. When i saw that on tribble it's been very disappointing, since my main char is a sci. Geologist would have been understandable, it has some interesting abilities, medic would have been great, but I know no good sci using that TRIBBLE.
It looks really unfair since we can't even customize our kits and use the powers we like at rank IV, and I don't get why tacs would gain some of the most useful abilities when scis get the most crappy ones buffed.
Why is it the worst kit? Because all holds are fragile on ground, which make these abilities extremely weak since you don't queue to watch mobs in stasis while your team is struggling to fight them. Stunds and holds shouldn't be fragile to make them useful but it's not the case. Until then this kit is just plain and simple trash and i think scis would legitimately ask for another one.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
The embassy is the first new holding they are adding but they said they want to do many more, so expect all the kits to get added eventually.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Hive has a lot less run to the next room than most STFs. Mine Trap has sector defense. So static emplacements are AWESOME!
My character Tsin'xing
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
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I've heard all the arguments as to why the EN Kit is "soooo much better"
It's all situational, lets face it, when you need to stay ranged the EN kit falls short of the Fab. The EN kit is great for aggressive gameplay, but, you're pretty much useless throughout most of IGE. It's great in CGE... both the Fab and EN kits do fine in KAGE, EN being better on the nodes and Fab being better in the room.
Just to add the EN kit is almost useless on Rebecca, whereas the Equipment Technician really shines in this room.
Again all just opinion.....
DPS this, DPS that.... argument is invalid when you think utility and what's the most useful at the given point of the mission.
I find that the Mortar/Turret kit is a smidge sloppy for lack of a better term. It's range can draw aggro from mobs that a group isn't ready to handle yet (see: Colony Invasion).
Yes they can crank out DPs, thats for certain, but Enemy Neut kit is more directed, and has quicker results. It also gives 2 very valuable debuffs.
On a semi-related note, a larger concern for me lies in the fact that something obvious, like an explosives expert doff - doesn't have ANY effect on the transphasic bomb or chrono mine skill. I am baffled as to why there is no buff for these...
Good points, but Fuse Armor and Weapons Malfunctions does work on her. She however, has 2 attacks, so it only shuts down one of them....
Also, you can get some use from a transphasic if you just run close to her and plant it, lol
Tactical is the most gimped on the ground and gets the largest buff
Sci gets TRIBBLE as they already insane on the ground (broken abilities aside)
Eng gets a moderate boost to a moderately useful kit. They are still insanely over powered with enemy neutralization.
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Just stop. You're only embarrassing yourself.
Fuse Armor doesn't stop or slow her, but still deals a bit of damage. Shield Recharge and Equipment Diag are the main reasons I prefer this Kit in her room.
Cover Shield, Shield Recharge, RP2S, ESC (MACO Set Power), and a nice corner.
It's really not as "amazing" as DPS mongrels would have you believe
You are assuming you have several minutes to pull out 3 support drones, 3 turrets and 3 mortars. With my fleet, we move so fast, with such high DPS, that we can finish IGE, KAGE, and CGE in 30 min. We never stop running in an STF. My tac averaged 239 DPS through out a full Colony Invasion mission. He can averages 170 DPS in an STF. I can't get it higher because the borg are too far apart.
Yes, the situation can determine what is best and it was very useful until they removed the gains from kit switching. I am really not interested in going into the specifics but trust me. Enemy Neutralization with a good team can deal 20K damage in 20 seconds, on the move. Massive spike damage but you are VERY dependent on a tactical officer helping you. You also have control on where you want the damage to be. So with the right team Enemy Neutralization becomes very powerful.
I understand how the fabrication kit is great when you are pugging it. It helps you sit back and avoid the majority of the damage, since your pets have massive "Threat Generation" and they get the focus fire. But with a well balanced team you will hardly be doing anything with a fabrication kit, since the team moves so fast!
40dps comes from logs and yes Elite is all we do. Well Mortars are slow in their fire rate. They usually pick the closest target first and the closest target gets dropped first, by your team. By the time the Mortars acquire the next target, your team is already clearing that group. In a slow pugging group this can still work. But in a fast and powerful team your mortars will hardly be doing anything.
To give you an idea, in IGE, we split up in the Queens room, 3 people go left and 2 people go right and each group drops 2 generators. This is usually a great place to have mortars. They can clear platforms, BUT, with my group we drop the generators and the Queen in about 1 min flat. No amount of mortars will keep up with that pace and be effective. Again, great for slow groups, horrible for groups packing a punch.
But high end PvE missions are done as a team not as an individual.
Squad leader is a great kit, but in no way does it match up to fireteam kit for its diverse abilities. Squad Leader use to be alot more useful, before we all started running with Mk XII armor, but the diminishing returns really hit us hard.
I have done the math on this and Squad Leader doesn't offer as much as it appears to. But your play style will affect the usefulness. If you are pugging it then Squad Leader might be a more comfortable kit. Same goes with Operative.
But Fireteam kit, with a fast moving team, and Tactical Officers with 6 or more in Squad Command, will yield top end DPS values with crazy survivability. Suppressing fire stacks AND gets buffed as you buff up. Super Buffed suppressing fire from several tactical officers, with a Science officer's dampening field, will make Armek look like a kid's toy. Imagine Pulsewave hits in the 4K range and Plasma grenades in the 3K range. Imagine chaining this kind of damage throughout an STF. With the new fireteam kit, on my tac, I can now close those big gaps between borg groups and get out even higher sustained DPS values.
I am going to love the new fireteam kit, but the engineer kit and the science kit will leave A LOT to desire. I won't be playing my Sci or Engi that much, if at all.
Just for interest sake: The Survivability/DPS combination of the tactical officer is superior to that of the science and engineer, at this point in the game, in a PvP situation. I am listing the PvP situation since it is the easiest method to directly compare the classes to each other. This was tested by Person A and Person B each playing their Sci and Engineer against the opponents tactical officer. The Tactical officer won the most often. With both player A and B playing all 3 classes, it avoided one player being better than the other in one class, affecting the results. So as it stand in the game at the moment, the Tactical Officer is contributing the most in a PvE senario, a balanced team can still be more effective than a pure Tactical Officer Team. Motion Accelerator and Plasma Grenade IV is going to out perform what Engineers and Science officers are receiving on their kits.
Sorry for the long winded reply but since I am the OP, I felt that unexplained points in my OP needed to be addressed. If anyone is interested in how to output high sustained damage as a team with great survivability you can PM me @Pug01. I am more than willing to demonstrate the "secrets" to perfecting your ground game, OR you could show me what you feel is effective in your playstyle. I am always willing to learn something new about the ground game. I have pure ground toons of each class with each kit and just about every type of gun or device.
I'm definitely not talking about a full team of tacs (that's a weird team anyway); with enemy neutralization tacs won't do any damage anyway because the eng will already wipe out the most dangerous targets and the sci will debuff it like mad. My main char is a sci and trust me when i debuff something or someone it doesn't last long.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Science officers are the masters of debuffs. Their captain skills can combined do more than -100 Damage resistance and negative resistance does not have diminishing returns. So if an enemy starts at 0 resistance, say to plasma, and you debuff them with -100 damage resistance, they will end up having -100% damage resistance to plasma. Now you are doing double plasma damage. It is something to consider in any team makeup. Another 50% damage increase at the top end, might not be as useful as another 50% debuff on your target. The new science kit has nothing to do with this though.
But lets do the math on the diminishing returns on the tactical officer side. Squad Leader has Rally Cry and Overwatch. If your resistance starts at about 44%, which is common if you are running Maco or Omega sets. Here is what happens when you run these two Buffs:
No Buffs: 44%
Rally Cry: 48.7%
Overwatch: 52.4%
Rally Cry + Overwatch: 54.6%
So at best you are looking at a 10% damage resistance increase, yielding a 10% damage reduction. We will look at the healing benefit a bit later.
Rally Cry lasts for 15 seconds but has a 2 minute cooldown. Under Tactical Initiative it doesn't allow you to chain it for a period of time. Instead you can go 15 seconds on and 15 seconds off, then 15 seconds on again under one tactical initiative. Not the most ideal for peak attack times.
Overwatch lasts for 30 seconds with a 1 minute 30 second cooldown. Under one Tactical Initiative it can be chained for 60 seconds. GREAT!
Lets look at just one skill from the fire team kit. When I buff up my Suppressing fire, on my Fire Team kit, Suppressing fire reaches -67% damage reduction to all enemies that I hit. At its lowest my Suppressing Fire is -30% damage reduction. Compared to the 10% you gain from above, the suppressing fire is a lot better when you are looking at the resulting hit point hits. Furthermore: With a good spec you can chain Suppressing fire indefinitely, without tactical initiative. So as a tactical officer, you are helping your team survive MORE with a solid buffed Suppressing fire. This is why I like the Omega gun. Quite often I will burn my Ambush with suppressing fire on a whole group, just so that the whole group of borg won't do any damage. Keep in mind, this is an ALL DAMAGE reduction. The borg's Fuse Armor also does less damage. Ever survived an assimilation because your health didn't go low enough, and you are running around with a green glow on you? Well Suppressing Fire and Dampening field are the two skills that can facilitate this.
To avoid the long post you can stop reading this post at this point. The remained of the post is a combination of bragging/details on how we run and problems I foresee:
Even if you add in the Rally Cry's heal, you will still not do as much damage mitigation as a Suppressing Fire. Furthermore Rally Cry's heals, with its long cooldown is really sad. I do like the Crit Chance and Crit Severity, but with the correct gear and team we already run above 30% crit chance. This in un-buffled! In fact with my one setup I run at a 49.4% crit chance, un-buffed! With my team buffed up we run at 56% crit chance. This is without Rally Cry and is using gear, and Captain skills. I don't want to stretch out the post further by going into the math for damage increase resulting from Rally Cry's crit boosts compared to Fire Team kit boosts. The main idea you can take away from it is that you can achieve crit damage from other gear and kit and then use your kit powers to gain focused and controlled damage. If I want to kill a specific boss fast, I can do it by timing my ambush strike, Fire on my Mark, Battle Strategies. On top of this my crit boosts are still in affect and might allow the drop to happen even faster. But I don't have to rely on my crit.
As a tactical officer you should be carrying Hypos and in an STF, also Immunosupport Nanites. Those should be the main source of keeping your hit points up. In a balanced team, your healer should be responsible for the remainder of your hit points.
Just from last night's STF run we had 3 tacs doing way above 100 DPS. We had over 7 minutes left on Infected Ground Elite optional. We ran a full Tactical Team. No Science or Engineer. 2 of the Tacs were dedicated to Supressing Fire Spray, therefore shutting down all incoming DPS. Give me motion accelerator and 7 minutes will become a joke. We are dropping Borg so fast that we are eating into each other's DPS at the moment. I cannot get to the next borg fast enough to kill them. Seriously, Yoda's light saber don't do much compared to where I will be with motion accelerator! I am going to love it!
What will Science officer and Engineers have to offer with Xenobiologist and Fabrication kit? They won't even be in the same room as me, since I will be 3 rooms ahead. Don't think this is a rare thing. We have several players with Tactical Officers that can pull this off. Min Maxing your build is looking at where the over all resulting damage increase occurs and where the over all damage reduction occurs. It would be better if they start putting groups of Elite Tactical Drones into STFs. That way pure DPS stomping won't be so simple and instead we will need those Science and Engineer officers. BUT, They will still not do well with the kits listed above. More than ever the Engineer will need that WM. Under Tactical Initiative an Engineer can let loose a WM every 4 seconds.
With the Enemy Neutralization Kit you can control where your dps is and deliver a high spike to the borg and continue on your way as well as you don't have agro that is not wanted, that can happen from the Fab Kit.
Fire Team Kit is an awesome enhancement very dangerous now if you want to plow through stfs and farm them like studs, now all we need is for the rest of the kits from the sci and engi's to catch up for me to have a reason to dust off my toons.
Xeno kit is super lame, always will be lame, nothing else needs to be said about it, come on cryptic give us kits that are more useful to us or give us all types of kits that can be made by the romulans. These that are here range from great fire team 12, mediocre Fab Kit 12, and straight useless Xeno 12. Give us the variety of kits and some different mods on them, or do you want us all to run the same kits, personally variety is much better, but that is just me.
Fabrication seems to be the best simply because it gives you awesome crowd control. It's simple really, drop turrets then you have less to worry about from that side.
Other kits with turrets are good too.
worst?
Enemy Neutralization isn't worst. Mines work fine on vamps, but you can only use them on a few enemies at a time. Enemy debuff kits get the worst simply because only Alphas and Betas are tough enough for it to not be a total waste of time. With adults and hatchlings, just kill it and go find another(usually finding another takes about 0-3 secs).
My character Tsin'xing
We can do 6 minutes left on IGE with squad leader kits. Your post was really really... Bickering. This kit is a great STF one, period. You can buff your team instad of buffing yourself. Engs deal damage, scis have to debuff and tacs buff the team. It works pretty well and i'm ready to prove it to you whenever you want.
Fire team with motion accelerator might be better though, but it'll take some time to see it in game.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Now this is what I am really interested in. I know the math, and I attempted to show it in the previous post. Even with all my logs and the data to back it up I might still be wrong, SO in the end someone might have a better way of using a kit AND that does interest me. We can both put a 4 man team together with the other person in the 5th spot (not allowed to do anything) and run an IGE, for example. I will capture logs and we can evaluate.
OR, we can do it PvP style. I know a lot of people don't like this method, but it is quick, dirty, and very effective in looking at DPS/Survivability blends.
Keep in mind that I am not saying Squad Leader is a bad kit, I am trying to point out that it isn't the best kit. Especially for a fast moving group. Grenade Satchel would be a bad kit.....
PM me in game, Pug01.
We could do that. I'm not saying a full team with squad leader is better, but a tac with squad leader in the team will benefit to the team instead of just buffinf himself. Other tacs can use fire team or operative, since the team bonuses given by this kit don't stack.
This kit isn't a pvp one though, it's a purely pve one. In pvp you don't have to face sustained, constant (and scripted) fire, you're facing people who can OS you and you need an instant dps instead of some more team resistance. With several tacs in the team the typical configuration is one with squad leader and the other one with operative/fire team. Against the borg it's a great combo.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
I have attempted to locate you in game. Let me know how you want to do this.
Pug01