Issue: Does not apply to Breen 'Rapid Reload' Transphasic Launcher, despite being a of a 'standard torpedo type'.
Profession: Engineer
Issue: Powers don't level up to/synergize well enough compared to other professions. Engineer is flown on the merit that it has the least to lose in certain ships (ie: Cruisers) compared to eng and tac professions.
And by 'least to lose' we mean 'doesn't have much to begin with, so you aren't wasting your potential... because you have no potential'
Powers: All Powers (although specifically, all non-targetting self-buff or team buff powers)
Issue: Inability to set powers to autocast/autoactivate gives unfair advantage to users with gaming keyboards/mice that allow the setting of macros to auto-activate their powers.
Solution: Allow for powers to be set to auto-fire like ship weapons can be, leveling the playing field.
I was able to take some time today to go over this list, and figured I could offer some quick updates.
Items that are not listed below are either not currently under review, or we have no productive feedback to offer at this time.
"Under review" only means that - we are planning to review the referenced power/mechanic within the next month or two. This is not a promise of a fix, change, or further information. Our review may, in fact, lead us to conclude that the referenced item is working as intended.
02. Item: Tachyon Mines
Issue: Seem to be too powerful at stripping shields and hampering shield repair / regen
Under review.
03. Ability: Crits
Issue: If you get 1 mine to crit, they all crit I.e. Breen cluster torp and tricobalt mines with dispersal patterns.
This is a bug central to our Combat Evaluation code, and affects far more than just Mines. It requires Software assistance, which has been requested. Further updates are out of the hands of the Systems team.
04. Weapon: Antiproton
Issue: All other weapons have [ACC]X3 why not antiproton?
[Acc]x3 Antiproton weaponry does exist, but is not currently available in-game. In fact, no Antiproton weaponry drops at all, and is only available from Vendors.
It should be a simple matter to add it. However, the philosophical question of "should we" is still unanswered. Currently, we agree that Accuracy is a better weapon enhancement than Dmg or Crit in almost every possible circumstance, and it's a good idea to attempt to address this discrepancy before reinforcing it with new weapons that capitalize upon it.
05. Weapon: Phaser
Issue: Has the best PvP orientated proc and makes the other procs seem inferior
This was altered once before to include a target-based immunity period. We feel this is sufficient for the time being, and that opinions of the relative power of Phasers, compared to other Energy Weapon Procs, are largely based on learned biases from the powers' original state. Phasers also benefit from being the most dramatic weapon proc in the game, causing a level of confirmation bias among players looking for a reason to dislike its current state.
That said, this isn't a wholesale dismissal of the complaint. Further changes are, however, unlikely to happen over any short-term period.
06. Ability: Aceton Beam
Issue: cool down too long to be a valid ability in PvP
Under review.
08. Bridge Officer: Human Bridge Officer
Issue: Multiple human bridge officers seem too effective compared to other bridge officers
Under review.
09. Item: Aceton assimilator
Issue: Too many copies of it can be deployed on a map leading to an unfair advantage
Under review.
12. Item: Siphon Drone
Issue: Leaves target completely drained of all energy and totally defenceless
Are these complaints based on recent play experience? The functionality of Siphon Drones' drain was drastically altered a few months ago.
13. Ability: Charged Particle Burst
Issue: No longer a viable offensive sci ability due to super resistances
Under review.
14. Ability: Photonic Shockwave
Issue: No longer a viable science based kinetic damage solution based on the "fix" it had
Under review.
15. Ability: Tachyon Beam
Issue: No longer a viable offensive sci ability due to super resistances
Under review.
16. Doff: Sub Nucleonic DOFF
Issue: Still feels too overpowered
Not likely to be changed from its current state. Its relative value in combat scenarios is felt to be more-or-less on par with other professions' Captain Powers, such as Attack Pattern Alpha, Go Down Fighting, Miracle Worker and Rotate Shield Frequencies.
21. Profession: Engineers
Issue: Lack of profession specific abilities which are castable on team mates (MW and RSF)
Under review.
24. Ability: Mask Energy Signature
Issue: I can't think of a use for this in any part of the game. The cloak's low value can be seen even by NPCs from far off
Under review.
25. Ability: Photonic Officer
Issue: Woefully underpeforming compared to advertised rates, long cool down. The ability seems to scale very little between tiers
Under review. Likely to be completely re-designed.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
27. Effect: Cooldown Recharge Debuff (e.g. SNB, Temporal Inversion Field)
Issue: The cooldown debuff also affects DHC cooldowns. (But it doesn't affect beams iirc.)
Under review.
29. PVP Arena: Ships glitch into ceiling
Issue: On use of jump console, ships get glitched in ceiling and cant move
I hadn't heard this one before. Is it only when using Subspace Jump?
31. Weapon: Tricobalt
Issue: Torpedo does friendly damage, mine doesn't
Under review.
32. Boffs / Gear / Reputation: Various things
Issue: There are many shipclass-agnostic things that provide a huge amount of innate resists and regeneration (both hull and shields) to any ship that equips them which completely negate pressure damage and lead to a situation where the only kills in a premade vs premade situation are super spike kills from 100% to 0% health that happen with tons of tac buffs and multiple subnukes in a timeframe of just a couple of seconds. This invalidates any damage-dealing builds that are not based on SNB or massive spike damage
This sounds like a complaint that is exclusive to 1v1 scenarios, and PvP is not and cannot be effectively balanced around duels when we have 5v5 (or more) arenas as the standard match. If you are in a team environment, the combined damage of coordination is likely to outstrip an enemy's ability to counter.
Teamwork is OP, but we have to assume that everybody uses it.
33. Ensign Space Abilities: Tactical Team 1, Polarized Hull 1, Tractor Beam 1, EPT Aux 1,EPT Engines 1
Issue: Listed powers all provide enough of a buff at an Ensign slot invalidating higher tier versions
Under review.
34. Ability: Nadion Inversion
Issue: Becomes disabled when weapons go offline. Seems underpowered based on in game description
First I'd heard of this. Under review.
36. Item/Power: Vent Theta Radiation
Issue: Even if Hazard emitters is applied to clear the effect, your crew will still die and never recover until you are removed from combat. This renders both the skill Subsystem Repair, and the power Boarding Party useless
Under review.
37. Ability: Item/Power: Anti-matter Spread
Issue: Regardless to the amount of points placed in Sensors, the Jam Effect will remain for the full duration, even if the Scramble clears much sooner
Under review.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Not likely to be changed from its current state. Its relative value in combat scenarios is felt to be more-or-less on par with other professions' Captain Powers, such as Attack Pattern Alpha, Go Down Fighting, Miracle Worker and Rotate Shield Frequencies.
The question was about the Doff, but it sounds like you're talking about the captain ability.
Not to push you too hard Bort, but I really recommend taking a look at #38. There appears to be no real cap on CD debuffing via the various DOffs and timeship powers, leaving a lot of room for potential abuse, and the way they interact with each other seems very glitchy and unlikely to be working as intended.
I think that the b'rel Enhanced Battle Cloak should be added to this list because its a very very bad pro vs con of using it since there are multiple abilities that can decloak a ship and on top of that the only real viable torpedo to use is the plasma ones but in pvp and to a lesser extent but not far off is pve where the cons of using it as a torpedo boat outweigh the actual usage of it.
Many have stated because you have no shields especially in PvP since most ppl would be using this for plasma you can pretty much use Hazard Emitters and make yourself immune to this ships main attraction/ability. I understand the concept of certain skills for instance like viral matrix decloaking the ship but even if you tried using transphasics the torpedo is so low on damage you would be virtually decloaked forever trying to kill something with them. Plus the fleet version is a Tier 5 shipyard which takes billions upon billions of EC worth just to be able to buy it and then not really useful and you'd have to use it like any other bop which to me and no offense is redundant to even purchase something that really isn't an upgrade.
My proposed solution is if you own the regular B'rel offer some kind of green rarity torpedo for EC in the shipyard on Qo'nos, then a Blue rarity torpedo in the D-store, and then if you own a Fleet B'rel a very rare torpedo in the D-store that benefits the ship in able to use something like these 2 versions of the b'rel for the intended version of the ship from the franchise. Another suggestion is making it work as it does with skills that currently decloak it fully for the 2-3 seconds but if it is fireing torpedoes or mines to give it a flash of the color of the torpedo its using. From both sides of the fence according to uses of the KDF for the ship and then the federation side they have a c-store console to decloak ships this would actually put value in that console for pvp not to mention the decloaking abilities but KDF Generals on the most part from personal experience and hearing other KDF players who want to use this ship its just unbalanced for us to use them in PvP much less it being a Tier 5 shipyard ship if its not going to be changed at all I would basically suggest taking it down to a tier 1 or tier 3 shipyard.
Edit: Oh as far as "data" with this is like driving along a bridge over a river and then realizing the middle of it is gone as you plummet down to the bottom of the river. In a nutshell though I believe the B'rel should be made something at a middle ground ship that you have to use tactics to make it a decent torpedo boat but not some i win just by spamming attack keybinds. As it is right now pvp or pve how ever you look at it is not where it should be.
The question was about the Doff, but it sounds like you're talking about the captain ability.
right,
unless he intends to mean that a single duty officer ability should be equal to a captain ability. in which case i think he seriously needs to relook at the game and tell us to our faces that, that is a good idea.
This was altered once before to include a target-based immunity period. We feel this is sufficient for the time being, and that opinions of the relative power of Phasers, compared to other Energy Weapon Procs, are largely based on learned biases from the powers' original state. Phasers also benefit from being the most dramatic weapon proc in the game, causing a level of confirmation bias among players looking for a reason to dislike its current state.
That said, this isn't a wholesale dismissal of the complaint. Further changes are, however, unlikely to happen over any short-term period.
Hi Bort, thanks for stopping by with status updates.
I think the dramatic effect is the actual issue.
Suddenly losing your shields or engines, is easily stronger than anything any other proc is realistically capable of - immunity period or no.
We also now have several sources of phaser procs, which has grown to include Phased Tetryon & Phased Polaron.
Not likely to be changed from its current state. Its relative value in combat scenarios is felt to be more-or-less on par with other professions' Captain Powers, such as Attack Pattern Alpha, Go Down Fighting, Miracle Worker and Rotate Shield Frequencies.
The issue is with the Energy Weapon DOFFs that have a SNB like proc, not the actual SNB Captains power.
Weapon: Tetryon Issue: Proc seems to be underperforming, is relatively weak to start and is also further resisted by PI. Status: To be advised by Cryptic
Skill: Starship Sensors
Issue: Starship Sensors appropriately cuts the time down for skills such as Scramble Sensors - but has zero effect on the duration of AMS. I tested this personally by having AMS cast on me 5 times in a row in a controlled testing situation using Scramble as the control (Opponent had a 32s scramble which was reduced to 18s each time from 6 ranks in sensors - which equates to 42% resistance, similar to PI). Status: To be advised by Cryptic
Weapon: Tetryon Issue: Proc seems to be underperforming, is relatively weak to start and is also further resisted by PI. Status: To be advised by Cryptic
Skill: Starship Sensors
Issue: Starship Sensors appropriately cuts the time down for skills such as Scramble Sensors - but has zero effect on the duration of AMS. I tested this personally by having AMS cast on me 5 times in a row in a controlled testing situation using Scramble as the control (Opponent had a 32s scramble which was reduced to 18s each time from 6 ranks in sensors - which equates to 42% resistance, similar to PI). Status: To be advised by Cryptic
Its aux powered and its actually gets higher duration last time I checked it with Starship Subspace Decompiler. On my main sci's vo'quv carrier I got scramble sensors 3 to somewhere near 25 seconds with around 100+ aux power.
Thanks Bort for coming in with the information you provided. It makes me EXTREMELY happy to see so many powers that really do have lowball issues or nerfed due to resists being labeled in the Under Review category.
Which makes me wonder......May's update is being called so big it's not a Season..
Does that mean that the reason those effects are being Under review with Photonic Officer possibly being rebuilt they are going to come out in May or some time after... almost making May a HUGE power/balance redo? And in turn with some of the suggestions about a PVP Rep system making May's Update a true PVP update?
If that's the case.. I'll be dancing on cloud 9... especially if it improves the game play even more!
You think that your beta test was bad?
Think about this: American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
Its aux powered and its actually gets higher duration last time I checked it with Starship Subspace Decompiler. On my main sci's vo'quv carrier I got scramble sensors 3 to somewhere near 25 seconds with around 100+ aux power.
You misunderstand.
Starship Sensors resists skills like Scramble, the same way that Power Insulators Resists energy/shield drains.
And while it is working properly, reducing the duration of Scramble Sensors - it is not reducing the duration of AMS, which is in the same category of confuses/placates.
The reason for my post is AMS not being cut in duration, Scramble was used as an example.
Weapon: Phased Tetryon weapons Issue: tet proc is only half as strong as the tet proc of stranded tetryon weapons. no other procs on hybrid weapons have reduced magnitude like this. its at the same level it was at before it and the other procs got a balance pass a wile back. Status: bugged Jesse Heinig on opvp about it a few times, he said he'd pass it along
Starship Sensors resists skills like Scramble, the same way that Power Insulators Resists energy/shield drains.
And while it is working properly, reducing the duration of Scramble Sensors - it is not reducing the duration of AMS, which is in the same category of confuses/placates.
The reason for my post is AMS not being cut in duration, Scramble was used as an example.
Yeah I understand that but for time being I just mentioned it incase you didn't know because lots of pressing issues like this and the b'rel never get looked into
Edit: as well those science resists are bad enough before they gave even more resists to an already over nerfed area...
Could these not be nerfed too much until MORE ensign level powers are available to choose from? Right now they still trigger the shared cooldown and DO have some difference between them and their higher tier counterparts. Unfortunately it's not like we can slot Photonic Officer I or Some other such power in an Ensign slot.
Ages ago there was a discussion that more powers were getting put into the Ensign range of stations. Is that not happening now?
Skill: Directed Energy Modulation Issue: Provides substandard direct to hull damage ( up to 30 - 40 dmg per pulse) with beam weapons. DEM2 and especially DEM3 are seemingly useless for cruisers. Cruisers are highly unlikely to directly take down another players shields. Applying direct to hull damage seems like a great way to side step that problem, but at <40dmg per pulse, with beams its not enough to make an escort player twitch let alone another cruiser or Sci ship. Perhaps the skill needs to be based on a percentage of weapons damage, that way skills and buffs increase its bleed through damage too and doesn't make it dependant on the number of pulses to be effective.
Perhaps the skill works well with cannons (lots of pulses) haven't tried, but Cruisers are typically (and should) be using regular beams (not many pulses) and so with DEM3 in your COM level boff slot and 6+ beams the skill ends up pretty underwhelming for a top tier skill.
As to the SNB Doffs: It's my opinion that in their current state, they're actually rather ineffective in PVP, to the point that I've ditched them in favour of other doffs. Why? Very simply, this is due to the elite fleet shields that provide a large number of short-duration buffs, which tend to act as 'shields' against SNB doffs that are quickly replaced. I imagine that this is a completely unintended consequence of the mechanical implementation of the new shields, but it's there.
Question for Borticus: Are the additional resistances from the proc on the Elite Fleet Shields subject to diminishing returns in the same way that emergency power to X, TSS, etc. are? I've been trying to calculate some stuff, and assuming that they are not affected by diminishing returns, the Elite Fleet Shields have more HP than the Mk. 12 Maco when resistances are taken into consideration, effectively making the Maco shields useless despite being far more difficult to obtain.
Not sure if it's much of an issue, but I've noticed that the rewards for winning any pvp arena/capnhold/assault are pretty much identical to losing. I mean sure I want to reward players on both sides for a game well fought, but it'd be nice to see some increase in rewards for winning.
Issue: There are many shipclass-agnostic things that provide a huge amount of innate resists and regeneration (both hull and shields) to any ship hat equips them which completely negate pressure damage and lead to a situation where the only kills in a premade vs premade situation are super spike kills from 100% to 0% health that happen with tons of tac buffs and multiple subnukes in a timeframe of just a couple of seconds. This invalidates any damage-dealing builds that are not based on SNB or massive spike damage.
This sounds like a complaint that is exclusive to 1v1 scenarios, and PvP is not and cannot be effectively balanced around duels when we have 5v5 (or more) arenas as the standard match. If you are in a team environment, the combined damage of coordination is likely to outstrip an enemy's ability to counter.
Teamwork is OP, but we have to assume that everybody uses it.
Lecturing me about the powers of teamwork... yeah, that inspires confidence in your knowledge of the game.
No, this complaint is not rooted in 1v1 experiences. On the contrary, it comes from 5v5 premade matches.
A full team has a maximum sustained raw damage output against a single target of maybe 20k dps if we're generous. Now add in resists only from EPtS1 (18%), shield power (let's assume effective 80 power after EPtS), elite fleet shields (10*2% + 15% from resa/b) and for fun throw the player a single ES2 with 30% resist, then multiply all these together and you arrive at 70% resist - from stuff that ANY ship can carry + a single ES2 (it's 56% without the ES2; and all ships can carry higher levels of EPtS than just lvl 1 if they like).
Okay, back to the damage. 20k against a single target? 5% = 1k is bleedthrough (assuming resilient shields) and gets soaked up by leadership and the borg hull heal. 5% is simply absorbed by the resilient shield. 90% is shield damage. Now factor in resists. This leaves us with 5.4k dps. From a couple of short tests it looks like a sci ship with T4 passives will have something like 1k+ innate shield regen. EPtS is another 180+ healing per second. A TSS2 with medium aux is something like 300 hps (assuming a 45s cooldown; and we aren't even factoring in the additional resist), the ES2 gives another 400 hps (with a 45s cooldown). So we have easily something like 1.9k shield hps from the ship. (If we add heals among all the ships, we can get above the 5.4k dps, so focus fire without Alpha/SNB support won't get us anywhere.)
Let's assume we want to do something other than alpha/snb kills with a window of opportunity of just 2-3 seconds. Like pressure damage to soften up a target for a target switch of the remaining dps. Take 2 players firing at the target. We have 5.4k total, so two players will do ~2.1k dps. Subtract the 1.9k hps and we have 200 dps. A ship has something like 40k to 60k+ total shield capacity. So it takes us more than 200 seconds to wear down the shields of a single ship with TWO ships attacking a single ship that receives only an ES2. But then there is that teamwork you mentioned, which means the ship will certainly receive an additional heal or two in 200 seconds and we can't do anything to soften up the target. If we just send a single dps to pressure a healer (possibly with RSF+MW), nothing will happen at all. This used to be different.
(And don't forget: achieving this healing is significantly easier to do than dealing the assumed 20k dps.)
You may have noticed that there weren't any significant assumptions about the ship being of a specific class or captain type. I guess innate regen will vary a little, but for example escorts will receive better defense scores to compensate that. So the numbers are more or less shipclass-agnostic.
Now maybe you disagree with my figures. Let's hear yours. What are the dps/hps figures around which you balance the abilities?
Oh, and just for fun: What is the average resist that you suspect is currently the norm in somewhat organised pvp matches?
Hilbert is spot on, Bort clean you googles and read again. Pressure damage used to have a role, it really doesn't any more.
and please Bort, a doff being as powerful as a cpt. power is working as intended?? You have got to be joking?!? Why then keep sci cpts in the game at all, their most powerful and defining function is available to all??
Scis have the only useless captain ability: photonic fleet. This fleet dies easily, warps out too soon - as soon as there is no enemy in range, and it's the only summon ability working like that -, does almost no damage (hits between 20 and 100 damage), and has a super long CD. All other captain abilities are extremely powerful, but this one is completely useless.
This ability is vastly inferior to any other summons such as the romulan reinforcements, but still it's a captain ability.
Lecturing me about the powers of teamwork... yeah, that inspires confidence in your knowledge of the game.
No, this complaint is not rooted in 1v1 experiences. On the contrary, it comes from 5v5 premade matches.
thanks to a certain tool, i can see that its at least as bad if not worse then you outlined.
for me, maco+ ~80 shield power +EPtS1 gives over 50% resist. its in the 60% range with EPtS3. EPtS1 and 125 shield energy with a fleet elite shield with resA/B slams against the resist cap easily.
there is no longer pressure damage in game any more, in pvp the only energy weapons that have an effect against anyone who knows how to play is DHCs. all the other weapons, hardly worth firing.
Weapon: Tetryon Issue: Proc seems to be underperforming, is relatively weak to start and is also further resisted by PI. Status: To be advised by Cryptic
+1 to this, tetryon need some love. Maybe a better scaling with flow capacitors.
29. PVP Arena: Ships glitch into ceiling
Issue: On use of jump console, ships get glitched in ceiling and cant move
Status: I hadn't heard this one before. Is it only when using Subspace Jump?
Yes it is Bort - Every good PVP match that hits the ceiling is affected by this. It is as if you jump outside the ring and can't get back in
This one can be fixed by jumping out 2 minutes later, but it is a really annoying glitch. Happened to me at least twice.
31. Weapon: Tricobalt
Issue: Torpedo does friendly damage, mine doesn't
Status: Under review
As far as I know, isn't this an issue with every mine/torp. Where basically torps AOE kinetic/proc, and mines only hit the enemy?
Other than that, my only concern is if their is going to be a balance pass on the amount of spam that can be thrown out. I've noticed it becomes very hard to keep target on my enemy when they are running High Yield Omega torpedos and the Romulan Crit Perception ability. Add some pets in their, and its like they get an AOE shield.
Sorry, I misread the SNB topic. I thought the issue was in reference to the Captain Power, and responded as such. The SNB Doff is not currently under review, so let's move that back to a "pending" status.
The Subspace Jump = out of bounds issue is one that I believe can be addressed quickly, as I just had to repair something else similar on another power (raycast vs. collision detection). It sounds like this power has no collision detection built-in, and needs a failsafe state. Call it "Under Review."
Phased Tetryon = Under review.
As for the issue raised/responded-to by Mancom... Honestly, I probably should not have replied to that one just yet, as my reply didn't offer much in the way of constructive feedback, or a step toward resolution. It's a many-faceted issue that can't accurately be boiled down to a single variable. I can see how Resists/Regen can appear to be the issue, but there's just as much of an argument to be made that they NEED to exist in their current state BECAUSE spike damage builds and SNB coordination strikes exist.
Somebody asked for a general time frame on all of these "Under Review" issues... I'm afraid I honestly cannot give one at this time. I can say, however, that our schedule leading up to our next update is pretty tight, and anything associated with that update will take priority over balance concerns like those raised in this thread. So it wouldn't go amiss to assume that many of these won't be addressed until the months following that update. That said, we hope to get to them sooner than that, if possible.
Naz, if you're willing and able to continue maintaining the first few posts of this thread, it will make tracking the issues, and informing the community about progress, that much easier.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
I can see how Resists/Regen can appear to be the issue, but there's just as much of an argument to be made that they NEED to exist in their current state BECAUSE spike damage builds and SNB coordination strikes exist.
How exactly is massive healing over time helping against spikes? It only devalues pressure damage.
Maybe I'm missing something, but what did you add to the game in recent times that has significantly increased dps? I don't think that there has been any addition that even remotely compares to the increase in healing and passive resists (which totally killed any positive steps you took with rebalancing the BFI doff and effectively reducing the 3-part borg proc by splitting the set).
The game has moved from a state where pressure and spike damage coexisted and both were valuable to a state where only spike damage has any meaning at all. Is this intentional?
Comments
Issue: Does not apply to Breen 'Rapid Reload' Transphasic Launcher, despite being a of a 'standard torpedo type'.
Profession: Engineer
Issue: Powers don't level up to/synergize well enough compared to other professions. Engineer is flown on the merit that it has the least to lose in certain ships (ie: Cruisers) compared to eng and tac professions.
And by 'least to lose' we mean 'doesn't have much to begin with, so you aren't wasting your potential... because you have no potential'
Powers: All Powers (although specifically, all non-targetting self-buff or team buff powers)
Issue: Inability to set powers to autocast/autoactivate gives unfair advantage to users with gaming keyboards/mice that allow the setting of macros to auto-activate their powers.
Solution: Allow for powers to be set to auto-fire like ship weapons can be, leveling the playing field.
Not yet....
Items that are not listed below are either not currently under review, or we have no productive feedback to offer at this time.
"Under review" only means that - we are planning to review the referenced power/mechanic within the next month or two. This is not a promise of a fix, change, or further information. Our review may, in fact, lead us to conclude that the referenced item is working as intended.
Under review.
This is a bug central to our Combat Evaluation code, and affects far more than just Mines. It requires Software assistance, which has been requested. Further updates are out of the hands of the Systems team.
[Acc]x3 Antiproton weaponry does exist, but is not currently available in-game. In fact, no Antiproton weaponry drops at all, and is only available from Vendors.
It should be a simple matter to add it. However, the philosophical question of "should we" is still unanswered. Currently, we agree that Accuracy is a better weapon enhancement than Dmg or Crit in almost every possible circumstance, and it's a good idea to attempt to address this discrepancy before reinforcing it with new weapons that capitalize upon it.
This was altered once before to include a target-based immunity period. We feel this is sufficient for the time being, and that opinions of the relative power of Phasers, compared to other Energy Weapon Procs, are largely based on learned biases from the powers' original state. Phasers also benefit from being the most dramatic weapon proc in the game, causing a level of confirmation bias among players looking for a reason to dislike its current state.
That said, this isn't a wholesale dismissal of the complaint. Further changes are, however, unlikely to happen over any short-term period.
Under review.
Under review.
Under review.
Are these complaints based on recent play experience? The functionality of Siphon Drones' drain was drastically altered a few months ago.
Under review.
Under review.
Under review.
Not likely to be changed from its current state. Its relative value in combat scenarios is felt to be more-or-less on par with other professions' Captain Powers, such as Attack Pattern Alpha, Go Down Fighting, Miracle Worker and Rotate Shield Frequencies.
Under review.
Under review.
Under review. Likely to be completely re-designed.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
PART DEUX!
Under review.
I hadn't heard this one before. Is it only when using Subspace Jump?
Under review.
This sounds like a complaint that is exclusive to 1v1 scenarios, and PvP is not and cannot be effectively balanced around duels when we have 5v5 (or more) arenas as the standard match. If you are in a team environment, the combined damage of coordination is likely to outstrip an enemy's ability to counter.
Teamwork is OP, but we have to assume that everybody uses it.
Under review.
First I'd heard of this. Under review.
Under review.
Under review.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
The question was about the Doff, but it sounds like you're talking about the captain ability.
vids and guides and stuff
[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
Many have stated because you have no shields especially in PvP since most ppl would be using this for plasma you can pretty much use Hazard Emitters and make yourself immune to this ships main attraction/ability. I understand the concept of certain skills for instance like viral matrix decloaking the ship but even if you tried using transphasics the torpedo is so low on damage you would be virtually decloaked forever trying to kill something with them. Plus the fleet version is a Tier 5 shipyard which takes billions upon billions of EC worth just to be able to buy it and then not really useful and you'd have to use it like any other bop which to me and no offense is redundant to even purchase something that really isn't an upgrade.
My proposed solution is if you own the regular B'rel offer some kind of green rarity torpedo for EC in the shipyard on Qo'nos, then a Blue rarity torpedo in the D-store, and then if you own a Fleet B'rel a very rare torpedo in the D-store that benefits the ship in able to use something like these 2 versions of the b'rel for the intended version of the ship from the franchise. Another suggestion is making it work as it does with skills that currently decloak it fully for the 2-3 seconds but if it is fireing torpedoes or mines to give it a flash of the color of the torpedo its using. From both sides of the fence according to uses of the KDF for the ship and then the federation side they have a c-store console to decloak ships this would actually put value in that console for pvp not to mention the decloaking abilities but KDF Generals on the most part from personal experience and hearing other KDF players who want to use this ship its just unbalanced for us to use them in PvP much less it being a Tier 5 shipyard ship if its not going to be changed at all I would basically suggest taking it down to a tier 1 or tier 3 shipyard.
Edit: Oh as far as "data" with this is like driving along a bridge over a river and then realizing the middle of it is gone as you plummet down to the bottom of the river. In a nutshell though I believe the B'rel should be made something at a middle ground ship that you have to use tactics to make it a decent torpedo boat but not some i win just by spamming attack keybinds. As it is right now pvp or pve how ever you look at it is not where it should be.
right,
unless he intends to mean that a single duty officer ability should be equal to a captain ability. in which case i think he seriously needs to relook at the game and tell us to our faces that, that is a good idea.
Do you even Science Bro?
Hi Bort, thanks for stopping by with status updates.
I think the dramatic effect is the actual issue.
Suddenly losing your shields or engines, is easily stronger than anything any other proc is realistically capable of - immunity period or no.
We also now have several sources of phaser procs, which has grown to include Phased Tetryon & Phased Polaron.
Yes, based on current play experience.
The changes that were made months ago saw Plasmonic Leech and Siphon Drones be resisted less than actual BOFF powers by PI.
The issue is with the Energy Weapon DOFFs that have a SNB like proc, not the actual SNB Captains power.
Interesting.
Issue: Proc seems to be underperforming, is relatively weak to start and is also further resisted by PI.
Status: To be advised by Cryptic
Skill: Starship Sensors
Issue: Starship Sensors appropriately cuts the time down for skills such as Scramble Sensors - but has zero effect on the duration of AMS. I tested this personally by having AMS cast on me 5 times in a row in a controlled testing situation using Scramble as the control (Opponent had a 32s scramble which was reduced to 18s each time from 6 ranks in sensors - which equates to 42% resistance, similar to PI).
Status: To be advised by Cryptic
Its aux powered and its actually gets higher duration last time I checked it with Starship Subspace Decompiler. On my main sci's vo'quv carrier I got scramble sensors 3 to somewhere near 25 seconds with around 100+ aux power.
Which makes me wonder......May's update is being called so big it's not a Season..
Does that mean that the reason those effects are being Under review with Photonic Officer possibly being rebuilt they are going to come out in May or some time after... almost making May a HUGE power/balance redo? And in turn with some of the suggestions about a PVP Rep system making May's Update a true PVP update?
If that's the case.. I'll be dancing on cloud 9... especially if it improves the game play even more!
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
You misunderstand.
Starship Sensors resists skills like Scramble, the same way that Power Insulators Resists energy/shield drains.
And while it is working properly, reducing the duration of Scramble Sensors - it is not reducing the duration of AMS, which is in the same category of confuses/placates.
The reason for my post is AMS not being cut in duration, Scramble was used as an example.
Issue: tet proc is only half as strong as the tet proc of stranded tetryon weapons. no other procs on hybrid weapons have reduced magnitude like this. its at the same level it was at before it and the other procs got a balance pass a wile back.
Status: bugged Jesse Heinig on opvp about it a few times, he said he'd pass it along
Yeah I understand that but for time being I just mentioned it incase you didn't know because lots of pressing issues like this and the b'rel never get looked into
Edit: as well those science resists are bad enough before they gave even more resists to an already over nerfed area...
Could these not be nerfed too much until MORE ensign level powers are available to choose from? Right now they still trigger the shared cooldown and DO have some difference between them and their higher tier counterparts. Unfortunately it's not like we can slot Photonic Officer I or Some other such power in an Ensign slot.
Ages ago there was a discussion that more powers were getting put into the Ensign range of stations. Is that not happening now?
Link to what I posted in other PvP balance thread
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=7760541#post7760541
Skill: Directed Energy Modulation
Issue: Provides substandard direct to hull damage ( up to 30 - 40 dmg per pulse) with beam weapons. DEM2 and especially DEM3 are seemingly useless for cruisers. Cruisers are highly unlikely to directly take down another players shields. Applying direct to hull damage seems like a great way to side step that problem, but at <40dmg per pulse, with beams its not enough to make an escort player twitch let alone another cruiser or Sci ship. Perhaps the skill needs to be based on a percentage of weapons damage, that way skills and buffs increase its bleed through damage too and doesn't make it dependant on the number of pulses to be effective.
Perhaps the skill works well with cannons (lots of pulses) haven't tried, but Cruisers are typically (and should) be using regular beams (not many pulses) and so with DEM3 in your COM level boff slot and 6+ beams the skill ends up pretty underwhelming for a top tier skill.
Question for Borticus: Are the additional resistances from the proc on the Elite Fleet Shields subject to diminishing returns in the same way that emergency power to X, TSS, etc. are? I've been trying to calculate some stuff, and assuming that they are not affected by diminishing returns, the Elite Fleet Shields have more HP than the Mk. 12 Maco when resistances are taken into consideration, effectively making the Maco shields useless despite being far more difficult to obtain.
No, this complaint is not rooted in 1v1 experiences. On the contrary, it comes from 5v5 premade matches.
A full team has a maximum sustained raw damage output against a single target of maybe 20k dps if we're generous. Now add in resists only from EPtS1 (18%), shield power (let's assume effective 80 power after EPtS), elite fleet shields (10*2% + 15% from resa/b) and for fun throw the player a single ES2 with 30% resist, then multiply all these together and you arrive at 70% resist - from stuff that ANY ship can carry + a single ES2 (it's 56% without the ES2; and all ships can carry higher levels of EPtS than just lvl 1 if they like).
Okay, back to the damage. 20k against a single target? 5% = 1k is bleedthrough (assuming resilient shields) and gets soaked up by leadership and the borg hull heal. 5% is simply absorbed by the resilient shield. 90% is shield damage. Now factor in resists. This leaves us with 5.4k dps. From a couple of short tests it looks like a sci ship with T4 passives will have something like 1k+ innate shield regen. EPtS is another 180+ healing per second. A TSS2 with medium aux is something like 300 hps (assuming a 45s cooldown; and we aren't even factoring in the additional resist), the ES2 gives another 400 hps (with a 45s cooldown). So we have easily something like 1.9k shield hps from the ship. (If we add heals among all the ships, we can get above the 5.4k dps, so focus fire without Alpha/SNB support won't get us anywhere.)
Let's assume we want to do something other than alpha/snb kills with a window of opportunity of just 2-3 seconds. Like pressure damage to soften up a target for a target switch of the remaining dps. Take 2 players firing at the target. We have 5.4k total, so two players will do ~2.1k dps. Subtract the 1.9k hps and we have 200 dps. A ship has something like 40k to 60k+ total shield capacity. So it takes us more than 200 seconds to wear down the shields of a single ship with TWO ships attacking a single ship that receives only an ES2. But then there is that teamwork you mentioned, which means the ship will certainly receive an additional heal or two in 200 seconds and we can't do anything to soften up the target. If we just send a single dps to pressure a healer (possibly with RSF+MW), nothing will happen at all. This used to be different.
(And don't forget: achieving this healing is significantly easier to do than dealing the assumed 20k dps.)
You may have noticed that there weren't any significant assumptions about the ship being of a specific class or captain type. I guess innate regen will vary a little, but for example escorts will receive better defense scores to compensate that. So the numbers are more or less shipclass-agnostic.
Now maybe you disagree with my figures. Let's hear yours. What are the dps/hps figures around which you balance the abilities?
Oh, and just for fun: What is the average resist that you suspect is currently the norm in somewhat organised pvp matches?
not the kerrrat troll that i ve been looking for?
Hilbert is spot on, Bort clean you googles and read again. Pressure damage used to have a role, it really doesn't any more.
and please Bort, a doff being as powerful as a cpt. power is working as intended?? You have got to be joking?!? Why then keep sci cpts in the game at all, their most powerful and defining function is available to all??
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Scis have the only useless captain ability: photonic fleet. This fleet dies easily, warps out too soon - as soon as there is no enemy in range, and it's the only summon ability working like that -, does almost no damage (hits between 20 and 100 damage), and has a super long CD. All other captain abilities are extremely powerful, but this one is completely useless.
This ability is vastly inferior to any other summons such as the romulan reinforcements, but still it's a captain ability.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
thanks to a certain tool, i can see that its at least as bad if not worse then you outlined.
for me, maco+ ~80 shield power +EPtS1 gives over 50% resist. its in the 60% range with EPtS3. EPtS1 and 125 shield energy with a fleet elite shield with resA/B slams against the resist cap easily.
there is no longer pressure damage in game any more, in pvp the only energy weapons that have an effect against anyone who knows how to play is DHCs. all the other weapons, hardly worth firing.
+1 to this, tetryon need some love. Maybe a better scaling with flow capacitors.
Naz can u add it to the list?
Vin Naftero@playhard88 - FED Sciencie
K'tan@playhard88 - KDF Tactical
Argento@playhard88 - RRF Tactical (FED)
Thanks for the feedback Borticus. Is this how you want it to be maintained going forward?
This one can be fixed by jumping out 2 minutes later, but it is a really annoying glitch. Happened to me at least twice.
As far as I know, isn't this an issue with every mine/torp. Where basically torps AOE kinetic/proc, and mines only hit the enemy?
Other than that, my only concern is if their is going to be a balance pass on the amount of spam that can be thrown out. I've noticed it becomes very hard to keep target on my enemy when they are running High Yield Omega torpedos and the Romulan Crit Perception ability. Add some pets in their, and its like they get an AOE shield.
The Subspace Jump = out of bounds issue is one that I believe can be addressed quickly, as I just had to repair something else similar on another power (raycast vs. collision detection). It sounds like this power has no collision detection built-in, and needs a failsafe state. Call it "Under Review."
Phased Tetryon = Under review.
As for the issue raised/responded-to by Mancom... Honestly, I probably should not have replied to that one just yet, as my reply didn't offer much in the way of constructive feedback, or a step toward resolution. It's a many-faceted issue that can't accurately be boiled down to a single variable. I can see how Resists/Regen can appear to be the issue, but there's just as much of an argument to be made that they NEED to exist in their current state BECAUSE spike damage builds and SNB coordination strikes exist.
Somebody asked for a general time frame on all of these "Under Review" issues... I'm afraid I honestly cannot give one at this time. I can say, however, that our schedule leading up to our next update is pretty tight, and anything associated with that update will take priority over balance concerns like those raised in this thread. So it wouldn't go amiss to assume that many of these won't be addressed until the months following that update. That said, we hope to get to them sooner than that, if possible.
Naz, if you're willing and able to continue maintaining the first few posts of this thread, it will make tracking the issues, and informing the community about progress, that much easier.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Maybe I'm missing something, but what did you add to the game in recent times that has significantly increased dps? I don't think that there has been any addition that even remotely compares to the increase in healing and passive resists (which totally killed any positive steps you took with rebalancing the BFI doff and effectively reducing the 3-part borg proc by splitting the set).
The game has moved from a state where pressure and spike damage coexisted and both were valuable to a state where only spike damage has any meaning at all. Is this intentional?