AS I've said on other posts. the cruiser is fine, you just need better skills.
I've beaten escorts in my cruisers and it wasn't my best cruiser either. I use beams more than cannons and hardly use TT. I heal myself and when the opprotunity comes up my teammates. It's all in the build, your skills, and understand your ship.
Well in terms of damage, according to the tooltip of my DHC, popping TT1 adds an extra 26 DPS to it's already existing 1300+ DPS. Even if I cast all my damage buffs first it's only around an extra 100 DPS.
I did used to have distribute shields key bound but dropped it as I found tactical team to be almost more necessary at ranges of 2km or less due to range and damage mechanics. I'll give it another look though as I could be mistaken about whether you can distribute fast enough to keep up with damage.
I do have a question to the gentleman with the fleet ambassador, I take it you use the doffs to reduce cool down on emergency to subsystem. Do you use tractor repulsors to augment your damage, gravity well for some CC or just for the better heals and polarise hull? I used repulsors as it meant I could keep enemies from freighters in star base blockade but I hear you can get 1000+ dmg per tick on immovable enemies.
Also another question in regards to tactical team do you still try to keep it on 15s cool down or just take one copy? I find even with distributing shields manually during the 5s TT is not distributing my shields the facing is going down faster than I can make it go up through high heals, well from gateways mainly and some super crits from tac cubes.
As for this thing about TT2 and 3, I use TT1 and am fully aware I can (and do) use it on others but what we're trying to say is that the weapon damage skill boost from 1-3 is an increase of at most 10 points.
While dropping your high level tactical team version to 1 and taking up any other skill will help with DPS a lot more. This is not just from yourself but from others too if you choose an appropriate attack pattern.
But without it, cruisers pretty much pop like balloons.
I don't think anyone wants to get rid of it completely, but right now it's far too powerful as a single ability, and as you say yourself it's pretty much necessary for everyone.
The point of tactical team is supposed to be offence, and my suspicion is that its shield distribution is supposed to be used just to spend a bit more time on target, since escorts have all their real firepower in a single arc, which means that turning significantly reduces their damage output; whereas a beam cruiser can turn and still put out a decent (if not great) amount of damage while they let their flank(s) recover.
I think a good solution to tactical team's shield distribution would be:
Significantly reduce the distribution effect of tactical team (by about half, maybe less reduction for higher level ranks of the ability).
Give access to the same shield auto-distribution to Shield Distribution Duty Officers.
Reduce the spike damage of NPCs.
Apply a diminishing return to the auto-distrubition.
This means that everyone would have access to auto-distribution through a combination of Shield Distribution Officers and tactical teams; cruisers could slot the maximum number to get a constant auto-distribution that would be a bit below the current level that tactical team offers; if they used tactical team it would provide only a minor boost for its duration due to diminishing returns.
Escorts meanwhile would prefer to take Duty Officers for torpedo reload or reload on other damage boosting abilities such as Emergency Power to Weapons, so they would use tactical team to supplement their shield regeneration. They'd still get similar levels to the cruiser above, but only in bursts when they need it most.
Overall the ability to auto-regenerate shields would be lower, but differentiated for tactical and tanking players. Add in fixes for crew repair and cruisers would be much closer to the kind of toughness that they should be.
I did used to have distribute shields key bound but dropped it as I found tactical team to be almost more necessary at ranges of 2km or less due to range and damage mechanics. I'll give it another look though as I could be mistaken about whether you can distribute fast enough to keep up with damage.
I do have a question to the gentleman with the fleet ambassador, I take it you use the doffs to reduce cool down on emergency to subsystem. Do you use tractor repulsors to augment your damage, gravity well for some CC or just for the better heals and polarise hull? I used repulsors as it meant I could keep enemies from freighters in star base blockade but I hear you can get 1000+ dmg per tick on immovable enemies.
Also another question in regards to tactical team do you still try to keep it on 15s cool down or just take one copy? I find even with distributing shields manually during the 5s TT is not distributing my shields the facing is going down faster than I can make it go up through high heals, well from gateways mainly and some super crits from tac cubes.
As for this thing about TT2 and 3, I use TT1 and am fully aware I can (and do) use it on others but what we're trying to say is that the weapon damage skill boost from 1-3 is an increase of at most 10 points.
While dropping your high level tactical team version to 1 and taking up any other skill will help with DPS a lot more. This is not just from yourself but from others too if you choose an appropriate attack pattern.
Hi.
Alright, first thing that pops into my head seeing the term "keep on cooldown" is not how you want to tank. You want to react to damage and be conservative on buffs as much as possible. Surviving the big hits is much harder if everything is on a cooldown or a strict rotation-ie I dont auto bar anything.
Second thing, Sci boff abilities on a pure tank should be all survival related. Tractor beam repulsers are nice, but a TSS or HE is far more important to tanking. Let Bfaw be your heavy plasma torp killer/aggro snatcher.
3 purple shield distribution doffs(9k shield heal per facing when all 3 proc)
1 purple warp core engineer(+25 power for all systems on a proc)
1 Purple Damage Control Engineer(35% recharge)I'm conservative so I don't need it, I use it to help speed up my warp core procs.
3 piece maco12
consoles 1 neut armor, enhanced plasma manifold, borg console zero point console
3 romulan shield emitters(I run plasma beams so I run +plasma damage)
3 plasma infusers.
Torps have no points in them, they are a bit of free damage, I equip them for the set bonus.
I run a typical weapon power setting in stf's. I use Epta on an opening attack and apply a TSS once I see my shields dip about 1500/2000. I am shield distributing constantly. within 15 seconds I will have a 3k per facing shield heal via epts3 but only use it if it will heal considerable damage to my shields-I dont use it to harden my shields. By making the most out of the heal part of shield buffs, I usually have an ace up my sleeve for an emergancy.
A sci ship is suppose to heal players. I can't tell you the last time I got a sci ship to actually throw me a heal. Even the Vesta captains seem to focus on DPS. I can tell you that when I play my sci toon I am an honest to god support player. I keep my team in the fight and only throw a few shots around if everything is taken care of.
Eisaak
Uh, yeah, only one problem there, if you want to actually make a sci char and you don't have any friends who play the game/just want to play solo, then the only way that you're gonna survive ANY of the missions is to focus heavily on dps, sure the grav well, tychen rift etc. are all useful but you're still gonna need high dps output in order to complete the missions, this means that when you come to play fleet actions etc. you're either going to have to respec or you're only really going to be much good at dps and you may as well have gone tac career with an escort.
So let me sum up what that means in real money; use the build that you're used to, meaning you aren't going to be offering much support beyond a couple of barely effective area control abilities, or respec to a build that you're not used to, meaning that you're not going to be much help to anyone because you have no experience playing with the build that you're using.
Here's the solution to the conundrum as far as I can see; respec to a team support build, minimize the chat so that you can't hear the mean things people are saying about you, do your best to get used to the new build, open chat so that you actually know who needs what support, hope you didn't go too far wrong and realise that you're never going to be able to solo anything ever again without another respec.
Additionally, captains, after hearing everyone ******** about not receiving heals, support etc. I have to say this; a support captain can ONLY keep an eye on the few captains in their team, if you're not on a team with the support ship, you're going to have to ask, yes, ask, use the chat box for something OTHER than complaining about how useless your support staff are, stay within range, ask for what you need, keep in mind that the heal or support ability that you require might be on cooldown (someone may have needed it more than you) and trust that your sci/eng teams have half an idea what they're doing, if they don't, be constructive. End of rant. Happy hunting.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I'm not THAT difficult to please, I just have a very low tolerance threshold for stupid BS! - George Carlin.
Comments
I've beaten escorts in my cruisers and it wasn't my best cruiser either. I use beams more than cannons and hardly use TT. I heal myself and when the opprotunity comes up my teammates. It's all in the build, your skills, and understand your ship.
So not so strong.
I do have a question to the gentleman with the fleet ambassador, I take it you use the doffs to reduce cool down on emergency to subsystem. Do you use tractor repulsors to augment your damage, gravity well for some CC or just for the better heals and polarise hull? I used repulsors as it meant I could keep enemies from freighters in star base blockade but I hear you can get 1000+ dmg per tick on immovable enemies.
Also another question in regards to tactical team do you still try to keep it on 15s cool down or just take one copy? I find even with distributing shields manually during the 5s TT is not distributing my shields the facing is going down faster than I can make it go up through high heals, well from gateways mainly and some super crits from tac cubes.
As for this thing about TT2 and 3, I use TT1 and am fully aware I can (and do) use it on others but what we're trying to say is that the weapon damage skill boost from 1-3 is an increase of at most 10 points.
While dropping your high level tactical team version to 1 and taking up any other skill will help with DPS a lot more. This is not just from yourself but from others too if you choose an appropriate attack pattern.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
The point of tactical team is supposed to be offence, and my suspicion is that its shield distribution is supposed to be used just to spend a bit more time on target, since escorts have all their real firepower in a single arc, which means that turning significantly reduces their damage output; whereas a beam cruiser can turn and still put out a decent (if not great) amount of damage while they let their flank(s) recover.
I think a good solution to tactical team's shield distribution would be:
- Significantly reduce the distribution effect of tactical team (by about half, maybe less reduction for higher level ranks of the ability).
- Give access to the same shield auto-distribution to Shield Distribution Duty Officers.
- Reduce the spike damage of NPCs.
- Apply a diminishing return to the auto-distrubition.
This means that everyone would have access to auto-distribution through a combination of Shield Distribution Officers and tactical teams; cruisers could slot the maximum number to get a constant auto-distribution that would be a bit below the current level that tactical team offers; if they used tactical team it would provide only a minor boost for its duration due to diminishing returns.Escorts meanwhile would prefer to take Duty Officers for torpedo reload or reload on other damage boosting abilities such as Emergency Power to Weapons, so they would use tactical team to supplement their shield regeneration. They'd still get similar levels to the cruiser above, but only in bursts when they need it most.
Overall the ability to auto-regenerate shields would be lower, but differentiated for tactical and tanking players. Add in fixes for crew repair and cruisers would be much closer to the kind of toughness that they should be.
Game Balance - Ship Size and Wingmates
But then again, most people here want cruisers to replace escorts in the DPS role, so I just hope Cryptic has more brains then to listen.
Hi.
Alright, first thing that pops into my head seeing the term "keep on cooldown" is not how you want to tank. You want to react to damage and be conservative on buffs as much as possible. Surviving the big hits is much harder if everything is on a cooldown or a strict rotation-ie I dont auto bar anything.
Second thing, Sci boff abilities on a pure tank should be all survival related. Tractor beam repulsers are nice, but a TSS or HE is far more important to tanking. Let Bfaw be your heavy plasma torp killer/aggro snatcher.
My Boff setup is as follows
LT Tac Bfaw1, APD2
Ensign Tac TT1
LT universal HE1, TSS2
LT CMDER ST1, HE2, TSS3
CMDER EPTA1, Extend shield1, EPTS3, Asif3
3 purple shield distribution doffs(9k shield heal per facing when all 3 proc)
1 purple warp core engineer(+25 power for all systems on a proc)
1 Purple Damage Control Engineer(35% recharge)I'm conservative so I don't need it, I use it to help speed up my warp core procs.
3 piece maco12
consoles 1 neut armor, enhanced plasma manifold, borg console zero point console
3 romulan shield emitters(I run plasma beams so I run +plasma damage)
3 plasma infusers.
Omega torp/experimental beam/2 romulan beam arrays
Romulan torp/cutting beam/2 romulan beam arrays
Torps have no points in them, they are a bit of free damage, I equip them for the set bonus.
I run a typical weapon power setting in stf's. I use Epta on an opening attack and apply a TSS once I see my shields dip about 1500/2000. I am shield distributing constantly. within 15 seconds I will have a 3k per facing shield heal via epts3 but only use it if it will heal considerable damage to my shields-I dont use it to harden my shields. By making the most out of the heal part of shield buffs, I usually have an ace up my sleeve for an emergancy.
Uh, yeah, only one problem there, if you want to actually make a sci char and you don't have any friends who play the game/just want to play solo, then the only way that you're gonna survive ANY of the missions is to focus heavily on dps, sure the grav well, tychen rift etc. are all useful but you're still gonna need high dps output in order to complete the missions, this means that when you come to play fleet actions etc. you're either going to have to respec or you're only really going to be much good at dps and you may as well have gone tac career with an escort.
So let me sum up what that means in real money; use the build that you're used to, meaning you aren't going to be offering much support beyond a couple of barely effective area control abilities, or respec to a build that you're not used to, meaning that you're not going to be much help to anyone because you have no experience playing with the build that you're using.
Here's the solution to the conundrum as far as I can see; respec to a team support build, minimize the chat so that you can't hear the mean things people are saying about you, do your best to get used to the new build, open chat so that you actually know who needs what support, hope you didn't go too far wrong and realise that you're never going to be able to solo anything ever again without another respec.
Additionally, captains, after hearing everyone ******** about not receiving heals, support etc. I have to say this; a support captain can ONLY keep an eye on the few captains in their team, if you're not on a team with the support ship, you're going to have to ask, yes, ask, use the chat box for something OTHER than complaining about how useless your support staff are, stay within range, ask for what you need, keep in mind that the heal or support ability that you require might be on cooldown (someone may have needed it more than you) and trust that your sci/eng teams have half an idea what they're doing, if they don't, be constructive. End of rant. Happy hunting.
I'm not THAT difficult to please, I just have a very low tolerance threshold for stupid BS! - George Carlin.