Beam Fire At Will gives you no control over what you aim at, and becomes far less effective with each additional enemy that is within targeting range. Cannon Scatter Volley does not suffer from these flaws and more importantly, does not appear to have a cap on the maximum damage it is capable of dealing. The damage potential is already quite a bit higher in the first few seconds than Beam Fire At Will. It's just a much better ability overall, even though Beam Fire At Will can potentially be more useful in some situations than it.
I would also like to add that since the ability makes the escorts so damn efficient at killing mobs, it also obviates the need for crowd control abilities.
While Beam Fire at Will will allow cruisers to attack stuff without even targeting it, it will likely end up missing pets, torpedoes, and mines or otherwise fail to neutralize them in the same way that a properly handled Scatter Volley could. It doesn't target everything so much as it targets anything, and the odd thing is that Scatter Volley is much better in that respect because it is much easier to prioritize targets with it.
Also, there's nothing that says that a cruiser can't have scatter volley, in which case the point about it being a "defensive ability" better suited for escorts is moot. When combined with DEM and cannon/turret (or even just turrets), CSV is far better at neutralizing pet and projectile spam than Beam Fire At Will, especially since it won't have to rely on Nadion Inversion to keep damage from dropping into the crapper.
IMO, which will of course be ignored, all beams need are some adjusting with the power drain and shield penetration properties, and they'd be fine. Beams will never be as powerful as cannons, and that is by design. The greater the firing arc, the less the damage. That's called balance.
By the way, my eng toon flies a Galor beam boat ( seven spiral waves and a cutting beam) and I do just fine with it. It takes a little longer to make things go boom, but that's a trade off for fact that I don't go boom.
If you choose to use beam arrays thats how they unfortunately work until the beam power drain mechanic is addressed in a useful way by the devs, but according to posts I have seen it is the dreaded "Working as Intended" response. The way I personally use to keep the damage up when my engy is in his Galor is: a Purple space battery cool-down doff and being specced into "Batteries" skill, but I'm also running a dual aux2bat build on it with a wide-angle quantum torpedo (with torpedo spread-3) , BFAW 1and 2, cutting beam and 6x Spiral waves with Dem-3 and Tractor Beam repulsors for pure hull dmg since repel factor is non-exsistant with 5 aux.
But to address your point:
If scatter volley was dropped to 5 sec then the "escort" could just drop scatter volley and replace with torpedo spread-2 which is how i run my escorts usually and it clears spam just fine and if I feel I need a proc ..... throw on a mk xii chroniton, plasma or transphasic though quantums and the Romulan hyper-plasma torp are my personal favorites at present.
I'd rather not have to play the game with one arm behind my back, which is how I feel about what you have to go through just to get Federation cruisers to output enough damage to be threatening. One of the things that I've found out when I gave up beams was just how damn effective CSV could be on a cruiser, more so than Fire At Will.
That's probably all they need. Strange that proposals for such changes, simple as they are, are also ignored in equal measure. In any case, the point of my suggestion was not to make beams as powerful as cannons, but to carve out a niche for beams in which they do perform better than cannons at.
The thing about balance is that at present, the concept of a damage/firing arc trade-off doesn't seem to be quite applicable now, primarily because the weapons with more damage/smaller firing arc are the ones that are actually capable of dealing damage. I'd like to fly the Galor as well, but I think that the choice of such belies some of the points I've been making regarding Federation cruisers, including the tactically-oriented ones.
Beams already have niche where they perform better than cannons. Their DPS drop over distance is considerably less.
And the galor is functionally not much different than the Excelsior.
If you choose to use beam arrays thats how they unfortunately work until the beam power drain mechanic is addressed in a useful way by the devs, but according to posts I have seen it is the dreaded "Working as Intended" response. The way I personally use to keep the damage up when my engy is in his Galor is: a Purple space battery cool-down doff and being specced into "Batteries" skill, but I'm also running a dual aux2bat build on it with a wide-angle quantum torpedo (with torpedo spread-3) , BFAW 1and 2, cutting beam and 6x Spiral waves with Dem-3 and Tractor Beam repulsors for pure hull dmg since repel factor is non-exsistant with 5 aux.
But to address your point:
If scatter volley was dropped to 5 sec then the "escort" could just drop scatter volley and replace with torpedo spread-2 which is how i run my escorts usually and it clears spam just fine and if I feel I need a proc ..... throw on a mk xii chroniton, plasma or transphasic though quantums and the Romulan hyper-plasma torp are my personal favorites at present.
Good Hunting
First reasonable counter-response in this entire thread.
At present, it seems that Engineering captains have to go through a lot of arm-twisting just to get anywhere with their cruisers, other than tanking. In my mind, this seems to point to a problem with their captain powers, entire ship category, BOff powers, and the like.
It's not so much that I see Scatter Volley as being overpowered, so much as seeing that again, it obviates the use of Beam Fire At Will in terms of spam clearance. For me, the issue has more to do with "cannons being better than beams at everything where it counts", and that the only areas in which beams are actually good at involve only require one beam weapon of any kind to be equipped.
The point about scatter volley being dropped in favour of torpedo spread is something that I did not quite think of until immediately after I posted the topic. Even then, I consider that something of a good thing, since at least people will bother with torpedoes, instead of using their cannons for everything.
Beams already have niche where they perform better than cannons. Their DPS drop over distance is considerably less.
And the galor is functionally not much different than the Excelsior.
Which would actually mean something if that margin weren't so small, or that the beams still suck at damage regardless.
And the Galor has better mobility, a very strong shield modifier, and a better BOff layout. In fact, the BOff layout is something that I would point to as being a particularly important (and sore) point for cruisers.
Beam Fire At Will gives you no control over what you aim at, and becomes far less effective with each additional enemy that is within targeting range.
Let me put it this way.
You don't understand why BFAW exists.
It is a tanking tool, it clears spam and helps drawing multi-target aggro.
Beams are not designed to do the focused damage that Cannons are, they are designed as wide arc tools.
Cruisers are designed as Tanks/Healers, the sooner you understand this the sooner you will be happier with your cruiser or the sooner you will swap to a ship or weapon loadout that suits what you want to do.
What you want to do seems to be damage, so swap to cannons or swap to escort with DC/DHCs.
It is a tanking tool, it clears spam and helps drawing multi-target aggro.
Beams are not designed to do the focused damage that Cannons are, they are designed as wide arc tools.
Cruisers are designed as Tanks/Healers, the sooner you understand this the sooner you will be happier with your cruiser or the sooner you will swap to a ship or weapon loadout that suits what you want to do.
What you want to do seems to be damage, so swap to cannons or swap to escort with DC/DHCs.
This.
All these nerf threads will either go ignored (Hopefully), or they will nerf the tacticals so that STFs will be harder for everybody.
OP, why don't you try to see how you can improve the beams, instead of wrecking other's people's stuff just because your own is not to your liking?
Or are all these nerf threads made just to troll the escort captains? I have a feeling this may be true.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
It is a tanking tool, it clears spam and helps drawing multi-target aggro.
CSV is better at multi-target threat generation because it actually deals appreciable damage and can be directed, while increasing the damage dealt to the primary target. FAW clears spam and then tickles the enemy. You'll generate enough threat to pull targets away only if nothing else is shooting at them.
CSV does more damage than normal to each target. FAW does more damage than normal overall, but divided across multiple targets. If all FAW was designed to do was clear spam, then TBR would be a better choice since it doesn't require a to-hit roll.
The only advantage FAW has compared to CSV is the increased targeting arc. The latter can stand in for CRF as a DPS-boosting tool, the former only increases DPS if the primary target is the only one in range.
Cruisers are designed as Tanks/Healers, the sooner you understand this the sooner you will be happier with your cruiser or the sooner you will swap to a ship or weapon loadout that suits what you want to do.
Except that "tanking" requires a lot more setup when you have neutered damage. The best way to generate Threat is to deal damage. If you're not generating enough Threat to draw targets away from Escorts, you're not tanking.
It is a tanking tool, it clears spam and helps drawing multi-target aggro.
Beams are not designed to do the focused damage that Cannons are, they are designed as wide arc tools.
Cruisers are designed as Tanks/Healers, the sooner you understand this the sooner you will be happier with your cruiser or the sooner you will swap to a ship or weapon loadout that suits what you want to do.
What you want to do seems to be damage, so swap to cannons or swap to escort with DC/DHCs.
I agree.
In Cryptics devs opinion, a cruisers job is to clear the way and help their beloved escorts.
So they gave them Fire at will, so they are able to destroy Mines, fighter ships and to get the beating of enemy ships, so Escort jockeys don't have to be bothered with annoying stuff like that.
In order to make your Cruiser effectively use their already way too few tactical BOFF slots, i would recomend to use single Cannons and Turrets.
At least for me it works much better, since you can focus all your weapon power on one single (CRF) or at least very few (CSV) enemy ships.
Personally, i don't really understand why they couldn't just make all energy weapons BOFF powers availlble for all energy weapon types.
Maybe it would have made flying Starfleet cruisers not boring enough for them, so their beloved Escorts wouldn't be popular enough in STO.;)
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
It is a tanking tool, it clears spam and helps drawing multi-target aggro.
Beams are not designed to do the focused damage that Cannons are, they are designed as wide arc tools.
Cruisers are designed as Tanks/Healers, the sooner you understand this the sooner you will be happier with your cruiser or the sooner you will swap to a ship or weapon loadout that suits what you want to do.
What you want to do seems to be damage, so swap to cannons or swap to escort with DC/DHCs.
What I want is for beams to not feel as pointless as they currently are. Why the hell would I want to draw aggro in Starbase 24 without doing as much damage in return? It's also not exactly an effective spam-clearer either: I can generally get better overall results through Scatter Volley and DEM. And I'm not sure that you've noticed this quirk, but Cannon Scatter Volley also increases the effective firing arc of weapons. Point is, I get better results either way with Scatter Volley, both in terms of drawing fire, clearing spam AND actual damage.
If cruisers are designed as "tanks/healers", then why the hell are there eight weapon slots on them? Why the hell are there tactically oriented cruisers like the Sovereign refit and the Excelsior, and why the hell should I bother with weapons at all if I'm not meant to deal damage? That's why I went with the whole "Unarmed Cruiser" deal and rolled with it until I found that carriers were better at the healing and tanking business while being able to do more.
All these nerf threads will either go ignored (Hopefully), or they will nerf the tacticals so that STFs will be harder for everybody.
OP, why don't you try to see how you can improve the beams, instead of wrecking other's people's stuff just because your own is not to your liking?
Or are all these nerf threads made just to troll the escort captains? I have a feeling this may be true.
If I was trolling, I'd put in the bare minimum to keep the thread going and wouldn't care about my arguments in the long term. That being said, I am continually surprised at how easy it is to provoke others on this for no other cause than "oh no, somebody has said something that may affect me in a bad way".
I put this up because what I want to see is some sort of differentiation: that beams are good at some things and cannons are good at others. That is not the case at present, with cannons being good at anything that matters and beam arrays having limited possibilities in that respect. The only things beams are good at require only one beam on a ship.
I could suggest how beams could be improved, but all the ways that they could simply be just a bit better than now have been ignored. Worse, some people actually shoot them down, just on the basis that it alters how they perceive as how the game should work. I make a suggestion about fitting in 2 universal BOff stations and a universal console slot to every Federation cruiser, and what I got is a whole lot of booing. I don't think a lot of people appreciate just how restrictive an Engineering focus really is.
Nope Cannon scatter volley isn't OP, beams and FAW are, it needs to be nerfed. Reduce its dps, increase its power drain, and make it last only 5 seconds.
There is about as much justification for my proposal as there is for the OP's.
CSV is better at multi-target threat generation because
CSV is limited to 3 targets.
But if you think it's a better tool, great!
Go ahead and slot it. Every cruiser can slot single cannons.
So slot those single cannons, and rock on.
The rest is nothing new, I have 2 full on tank builds.
And yes, you can hold aggro with beams and a full on threat load out.
With the threat control skill, threat consoles, fleet +threat deflector and attack pattern delta dominion doff with +100% threat for 15s (you can stack THREE of them) there are enough threat generation tools available.
If you are unable at that point to hold aggro with an Eng/Cruiser it means, most likely, one of two things:
1) You need to try harder.
2) You are grouped with PvPers that probably also have threat control for the resistance bonus.
If cruisers are designed as "tanks/healers", then why the hell are there eight weapon slots on them?
Have you seen an alpha strike bop kill in kerrat?
BoPs only have 6 weapons.
How many weapon slots you have is not an indication of your role.
What kind of weapons you can slot, your hull & shield mod, your ship's console layout, your ship's boff layout - especially number of Tac powers and what your CMD is, demonstrate your role to you.
Why the hell are there tactically oriented cruisers like the Sovereign refit and the Excelsior, and why the hell should I bother with weapons at all if I'm not meant to deal damage?
Why the hell are there Escorts with a Ltc Eng or Sci?
It's called flavor, with a slightly different boff layout for a slightly different playstyle slant.
That Ltc Tac on the Excelsior? It doesn't turn you into an escort, any more than Ltc Eng on the Armitage turns it into a Cruiser.
Who said you shouldn't do any damage?
Not doing any damage =/= Doing some sustained damage =/= Doing high, focused spike & sustained damage
...and that has nothing to do with poor ship or ability design? Perhaps being useless in that particular instance should mean something about the value of "aggro control" in the game.
Even with a tactically-oriented cruiser, I still would encounter problems dealing damage unless I switch over to a Auxiliary to Battery build. Only by switching to cannons do I notice a considerable improvement in all relevant factors. As for drawing heavy aggro from multiple targets, that is only particularly relevant in one instance, and completely irrelevant in PvP. Either way, the ability is still useless.
As for escorts that have a Lt Cmdr Eng slot? It actually does something for them because they are already good at something else. This is because Engineering tree as a whole is designed for damage-resistance buffing and repairs, which is nice to have for any ship but means that an excessive focus (like what you'd see in a cruiser) makes a ship no more than a brick. Even with an Lt Cmdr of another type, you will find that dealing damage in a cruiser is very difficult unless you go for a specific build (which involves considerably more expense just to get at a decent level).
The cruiser statline is also terrible for just about anything: being built for "tanking" and for "healing" does not explain the awful turn rate, especially with the weapons that are supposedly designed for cruiser use. Furthermore, the whole point of being "good at tanking" or whatnot starts getting pointless when carriers come into the picture.
While Beam Fire at Will will allow cruisers to attack stuff without even targeting it, it will likely end up missing pets, torpedoes, and mines or otherwise fail to neutralize them in the same way that a properly handled Scatter Volley could. It doesn't target everything so much as it targets anything, and the odd thing is that Scatter Volley is much better in that respect because it is much easier to prioritize targets with it.
Also, there's nothing that says that a cruiser can't have scatter volley, in which case the point about it being a "defensive ability" better suited for escorts is moot. When combined with DEM and cannon/turret (or even just turrets), CSV is far better at neutralizing pet and projectile spam than Beam Fire At Will, especially since it won't have to rely on Nadion Inversion to keep damage from dropping into the crapper.
well...
if you think so, why don't you try flying an escort and using CSV as an anti-spam?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
Faw fires all your beams in all directions that is their arc...scatter still in a small lil firing arc. Yah so op LOL. troll go home bro, learn the game some more before you cry nerf, people like you that destory the game that obviously know nothing.
well...
if you think so, why don't you try flying an escort and using CSV as an anti-spam?
I have, actually.
For the first time, I've actually managed to score first in SB24, instead of just second or third. Speaking of which, I only started regularly scoring second or third after I refitted my cruiser with cannons/turrets.
Faw fires all your beams in all directions that is their arc...scatter still in a small lil firing arc. Yah so op LOL. troll go home bro, learn the game some more before you cry nerf, people like you that destory the game that obviously know nothing.
Not so little an arc, because the CSV gives your firing arc a pseudo-extension. Combine it with cannon/turret, and it becomes irrelevant...
why don't you wait for them to fix the bfaw skill before insinuating that a working skill be nerfed to the level of a currently acknowledged broken skill's level? currently, bfaw does not apply the correct weapons modifiers to the attacks, thus losing out on a good chunk of dps. if you really wanted to improve bfaw, you'd argue that it's multiple copy cooldown be reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
Beam: Fire at Will is now capable of benefiting from weapon modifiers such as [Acc], [CrtH], etc.
The energy drain inflicted by Fire at Will activation now only happens if you are actually able to fire upon an enemy
regardless of what happens, there will never be parity between escorts and non escorts in this dps heavy game. unless a significant change is made to the pve experience, escorts and their cannons will reign supreme... maybe. could be ranked behind escort carriers like the jemmy and the armitage. but either way, you get the point.
As I understand it, CSV is limited to 3 targets per volley, meaning that if it clears spam in the first volley, it can select two different targets in the next. Its damage is enough that it will generally clear spam targets in each volley.
I personally don't think that neutering CSV (i.e. knocking it down to 5s, which is a nearly useless buff period for EPtW and isn't any better for CSV... it's more-or-less bringing it down to a single volley) is the solution, but I do think that either it needs a tweak, or beam powers do.
Go ahead and slot it. Every cruiser can slot single cannons.
So slot those single cannons, and rock on.
I don't want to use single cannons. Cryptic, in their infinite wisdom, decided that single cannons should fire from the same hardpoints as turrets. This looks stupid on a Cruiser. Part of the reason I bought the Regent was to stop having all my rear weapons fire from a single point, I don't want to switch to a build where all my weapons fire from one or two points.
I honestly would rather have the entire system reworked so that the optimal solution for DPS would be to carry a mix of cannons, beams, and torpedoes, but that isn't going to happen.
With the threat control skill, threat consoles, fleet +threat deflector and attack pattern delta dominion doff with +100% threat for 15s (you can stack THREE of them) there are enough threat generation tools available.
If you are unable at that point to hold aggro with an Eng/Cruiser it means, most likely, one of two things:
1) You need to try harder.
2) You are grouped with PvPers that probably also have threat control for the resistance bonus.
I can hold threat. The problem is, I need to invest in a lot of my resources to get it away from the Escorts, then get little to no recognition for it. I stopped using FAW in most cases because it doesn't provide threat control, it just aggravates everything that the Escorts aren't shooting unless there's only one target in the area. The changes on Redshirt help, but FAW will remain a situational power in my book... the changes mostly just improved it within those narrow situations (mostly, clearing spam). CSV, on the other hand, is a workhorse power that improves the power of an attack run by not only increasing the damage on the main target, but also by copying the damage over to the auxiliary targets, with no drawback other than that it deals less bonus damage than CRF against the primary target.
Faw fires all your beams in all directions that is their arc...scatter still in a small lil firing arc. Yah so op LOL. troll go home bro, learn the game some more before you cry nerf, people like you that destory the game that obviously know nothing.
Except that FAW has each beam target opponents individually, meaning that its power on any one opponent is reduced the more are in the firing arc. CSV has the cannon spread essentially copy itself over to each target, dealing the full damage to each of the targets in range.
For the first time, I've actually managed to score first in SB24, instead of just second or third. Speaking of which, I only started regularly scoring second or third after I refitted my cruiser with cannons/turrets.
this is not what I asked for... I asked you to use CSV as anti-spam. I know well that CSV is intended to be an attack ability to be used by attack ship.
The fact you want BFaW to be an attack ability alternative to CSV means only that you do not have understant the different role of cruisers/beams array and escorts/cannon.
If you want to deal damage, you have to fly attack ships, if you want to tank/heal you have to fly cruisers... You can't have a tanker/healer ship plus the damage of an escort as much as escort's captain can't have the power of an escort and the tank/healing capacity of a cruiser...
Not so little an arc, because the CSV gives your firing arc a pseudo-extension. Combine it with cannon/turret, and it becomes irrelevant...
OMG... are you insinuating that CSV give cannons a better firing angle? what's the proof, the visual effect? lol
sorry man I do not want hurting you, but I think you are just one who fly cruisers because he can't survive with escort instead of asking for advise and try to learn how better players can do what you can't. If you want to deal damage, fly escorts and if you do not know how to survive with escorts, ask for advise. There are a lot of player better than me that can explain how to fly escorts.
And if you want to fly a cruiser there are again a lot of player that can explain you how a cruiser can be really usefull and powerfull.
I don't know if it's been said here or not (I didn't care to read through some of the bigger text walls), but here goes.
Escorts and their abilities don't need a nerf. Cruisers and their abilities (such as beam array power drain) need a buff.
I do not think cruisers need a buff... If you play pvp you can see how a cruiser can be hard to destroy and how much it can help another ship. I simply belive that many player fly cruisers thinking to have the final ship: high survaival, high attack power... a sort of "god mode" that let you do everything on your own.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
I do not think cruisers need a buff... If you play pvp you can see how a cruiser can be hard to destroy and how much it can help another ship. I simply belive that many player fly cruisers thinking to have the final ship: high survaival, high attack power... a sort of "god mode" that let you do everything on your own.
My point is, people cry that cruisers are unbalanced vs escorts. So instead ruining escorts, do something about cruisers. However I do see many, many, many people who try to use cruisers as escorts, and obviously that is a big fail.
The main issue people have with cruisers is that alone they can't hurt you for their life.
this is not what I asked for... I asked you to use CSV as anti-spam. I know well that CSV is intended to be an attack ability to be used by attack ship.
The fact you want BFaW to be an attack ability alternative to CSV means only that you do not have understant the different role of cruisers/beams array and escorts/cannon.
If you want to deal damage, you have to fly attack ships, if you want to tank/heal you have to fly cruisers... You can't have a tanker/healer ship plus the damage of an escort as much as escort's captain can't have the power of an escort and the tank/healing capacity of a cruiser...
OMG... are you insinuating that CSV give cannons a better firing angle? what's the proof, the visual effect? lol
sorry man I do not want hurting you, but I think you are just one who fly cruisers because he can't survive with escort instead of asking for advise and try to learn how better players can do what you can't. If you want to deal damage, fly escorts and if you do not know how to survive with escorts, ask for advise. There are a lot of player better than me that can explain how to fly escorts.
And if you want to fly a cruiser there are again a lot of player that can explain you how a cruiser can be really usefull and powerfull.
CSV is better at killing the pet spam, rather than simply just touching it and going away. 2-3 seconds under concentrated fire will end up popping multiple little ships, whereas even 10 seconds with Beam Fire At Will won't guarantee that they're all gone. I really hope you understand the simple logic of that. And yes, it really does provide something of a better firing angle. I would also like to add that the spread for the ability seems to work rather differently with cannons/turrets than it does for dc/dhc.
I know damn well how to fly a cruiser thank you very much. I think you need to try and fly a cruiser some time. As an Engineer. If you ever try exploring any other captain type outside of it, you'll realize just how limited your character is. And if you have actually tried flying a cruiser instead of accusing others of not knowing how to fly their vessels, you will realize just how stupid it is to take damage but not deal it. As for healing and support, it is a TRIBBLE-boring and thankless job that sees you only stuck to PvP or the unwinnable scenario. Speccing for that task specifically is not an option.
CSV is better at killing the pet spam, rather than simply just touching it and going away. 2-3 seconds under concentrated fire will end up popping multiple little ships
except pets have to be in front of you... and that is why CSV is not an anti-spam.
I know damn well how to fly a cruiser thank you very much. I think you need to try and fly a cruiser some time. As an Engineer.
I do... and as escort captain I can see what a good cruiser can do!
And yes, sometime flying a cruiser can be boring to me too, but that is not a good reason to do what you are asking for.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
except pets have to be in front of you... and that is why CSV is not an anti-spam.
I do... and as escort captain I can see what a good cruiser can do!
And yes, sometime flying a cruiser can be boring to me too, but that is not a good reason to do what you are asking for.
I know I said that the last post would be my last...
Except that such a limitation is null when speaking of cannons and turrets. In which case, you are very very efficient at clearing spam of all sorts, while not being totally gimped against larger ships.
As a cruiser captain who has also flown a escort, I can tell you that cruisers are imbalanced because of their excessive focus on Engineering abilities, and that said Engineering capabilities in no way seriously justify their lack of mobility or near-complete lack of non-defensive capabilities. You can very easily build an escort to take damage: it certainly won't last until the crack of doom, but you're in a position where you can actually defeat an opponent before you die.
Why not ask for a buff? You know, just for a change of pace for once.
Do you ask your boss for a raise or do you ask him/her to take a pay cut?
I do ask for buffs quite often, and I meet with just as much scorn as this topic. Either that, or I get people posting their alternative views on how change should be implemented, or affirmations that don't really do anything. If anything, this topic has been far more productive in that it has attracted considerably more attention than otherwise. Challenging the status quo with a potential for loss seems to be far more effective than proposing a bevy of solutions that are unlikely to be heeded, because then it gets everyone involved. Including those that do not give a sot about cruisers, beam weaponry, and the like.
I may have missed a post mentioning this. I apologise if I have.
CSV2throws less DPS out than CRF1, although not by much, oh and it attracts a huge amount of attention in PvE (and PvP at times).
To the OP, you seem to want beams or skills involving beams to be as powerful or more so than an already powerful weapon and skill set that is made for a single reason. The whole point of cannons is to go teh pew pew and blow stuff up.
The whole point of an engineer is to make sure tacs in escorts doing teh pew pew dont go pop.
The fact that anything more than 5km away, CSV is pretty useless.
The fact that anything more than 5km away, CSV is pretty useless.
So much so that a good Beam Fire at Will will do more damage.
The only reason Scatter Volley does more damage in the first place is because Dual Heavy Cannons do that much more damage than Beam Arrays baseline and that it's less likely to 'waste' shots on targets that are immune/immediately heal up any and all damage.
Comments
If you choose to use beam arrays thats how they unfortunately work until the beam power drain mechanic is addressed in a useful way by the devs, but according to posts I have seen it is the dreaded "Working as Intended" response. The way I personally use to keep the damage up when my engy is in his Galor is: a Purple space battery cool-down doff and being specced into "Batteries" skill, but I'm also running a dual aux2bat build on it with a wide-angle quantum torpedo (with torpedo spread-3) , BFAW 1and 2, cutting beam and 6x Spiral waves with Dem-3 and Tractor Beam repulsors for pure hull dmg since repel factor is non-exsistant with 5 aux.
But to address your point:
If scatter volley was dropped to 5 sec then the "escort" could just drop scatter volley and replace with torpedo spread-2 which is how i run my escorts usually and it clears spam just fine and if I feel I need a proc ..... throw on a mk xii chroniton, plasma or transphasic though quantums and the Romulan hyper-plasma torp are my personal favorites at present.
Good Hunting
Beams already have niche where they perform better than cannons. Their DPS drop over distance is considerably less.
And the galor is functionally not much different than the Excelsior.
I bet some of you don't like me saying that, so why not stop saying CSV should be nerfed too.
First reasonable counter-response in this entire thread.
At present, it seems that Engineering captains have to go through a lot of arm-twisting just to get anywhere with their cruisers, other than tanking. In my mind, this seems to point to a problem with their captain powers, entire ship category, BOff powers, and the like.
It's not so much that I see Scatter Volley as being overpowered, so much as seeing that again, it obviates the use of Beam Fire At Will in terms of spam clearance. For me, the issue has more to do with "cannons being better than beams at everything where it counts", and that the only areas in which beams are actually good at involve only require one beam weapon of any kind to be equipped.
The point about scatter volley being dropped in favour of torpedo spread is something that I did not quite think of until immediately after I posted the topic. Even then, I consider that something of a good thing, since at least people will bother with torpedoes, instead of using their cannons for everything.
And as for the other posters...
Which would actually mean something if that margin weren't so small, or that the beams still suck at damage regardless.
And the Galor has better mobility, a very strong shield modifier, and a better BOff layout. In fact, the BOff layout is something that I would point to as being a particularly important (and sore) point for cruisers.
I don't mind your spite as much as you mind my opinion.
Let me put it this way.
You don't understand why BFAW exists.
It is a tanking tool, it clears spam and helps drawing multi-target aggro.
Beams are not designed to do the focused damage that Cannons are, they are designed as wide arc tools.
Cruisers are designed as Tanks/Healers, the sooner you understand this the sooner you will be happier with your cruiser or the sooner you will swap to a ship or weapon loadout that suits what you want to do.
What you want to do seems to be damage, so swap to cannons or swap to escort with DC/DHCs.
This.
All these nerf threads will either go ignored (Hopefully), or they will nerf the tacticals so that STFs will be harder for everybody.
OP, why don't you try to see how you can improve the beams, instead of wrecking other's people's stuff just because your own is not to your liking?
Or are all these nerf threads made just to troll the escort captains? I have a feeling this may be true.
CSV does more damage than normal to each target. FAW does more damage than normal overall, but divided across multiple targets. If all FAW was designed to do was clear spam, then TBR would be a better choice since it doesn't require a to-hit roll.
The only advantage FAW has compared to CSV is the increased targeting arc. The latter can stand in for CRF as a DPS-boosting tool, the former only increases DPS if the primary target is the only one in range. Except that "tanking" requires a lot more setup when you have neutered damage. The best way to generate Threat is to deal damage. If you're not generating enough Threat to draw targets away from Escorts, you're not tanking.
In Cryptics devs opinion, a cruisers job is to clear the way and help their beloved escorts.
So they gave them Fire at will, so they are able to destroy Mines, fighter ships and to get the beating of enemy ships, so Escort jockeys don't have to be bothered with annoying stuff like that.
In order to make your Cruiser effectively use their already way too few tactical BOFF slots, i would recomend to use single Cannons and Turrets.
At least for me it works much better, since you can focus all your weapon power on one single (CRF) or at least very few (CSV) enemy ships.
Personally, i don't really understand why they couldn't just make all energy weapons BOFF powers availlble for all energy weapon types.
Maybe it would have made flying Starfleet cruisers not boring enough for them, so their beloved Escorts wouldn't be popular enough in STO.;)
What I want is for beams to not feel as pointless as they currently are. Why the hell would I want to draw aggro in Starbase 24 without doing as much damage in return? It's also not exactly an effective spam-clearer either: I can generally get better overall results through Scatter Volley and DEM. And I'm not sure that you've noticed this quirk, but Cannon Scatter Volley also increases the effective firing arc of weapons. Point is, I get better results either way with Scatter Volley, both in terms of drawing fire, clearing spam AND actual damage.
If cruisers are designed as "tanks/healers", then why the hell are there eight weapon slots on them? Why the hell are there tactically oriented cruisers like the Sovereign refit and the Excelsior, and why the hell should I bother with weapons at all if I'm not meant to deal damage? That's why I went with the whole "Unarmed Cruiser" deal and rolled with it until I found that carriers were better at the healing and tanking business while being able to do more.
If I was trolling, I'd put in the bare minimum to keep the thread going and wouldn't care about my arguments in the long term. That being said, I am continually surprised at how easy it is to provoke others on this for no other cause than "oh no, somebody has said something that may affect me in a bad way".
I put this up because what I want to see is some sort of differentiation: that beams are good at some things and cannons are good at others. That is not the case at present, with cannons being good at anything that matters and beam arrays having limited possibilities in that respect. The only things beams are good at require only one beam on a ship.
I could suggest how beams could be improved, but all the ways that they could simply be just a bit better than now have been ignored. Worse, some people actually shoot them down, just on the basis that it alters how they perceive as how the game should work. I make a suggestion about fitting in 2 universal BOff stations and a universal console slot to every Federation cruiser, and what I got is a whole lot of booing. I don't think a lot of people appreciate just how restrictive an Engineering focus really is.
There is about as much justification for my proposal as there is for the OP's.
I would agree totally...
***Disenchanted***
Real Join Date: Monday, 17 May 2010
CSV is limited to 3 targets.
But if you think it's a better tool, great!
Go ahead and slot it. Every cruiser can slot single cannons.
So slot those single cannons, and rock on.
The rest is nothing new, I have 2 full on tank builds.
And yes, you can hold aggro with beams and a full on threat load out.
With the threat control skill, threat consoles, fleet +threat deflector and attack pattern delta dominion doff with +100% threat for 15s (you can stack THREE of them) there are enough threat generation tools available.
If you are unable at that point to hold aggro with an Eng/Cruiser it means, most likely, one of two things:
1) You need to try harder.
2) You are grouped with PvPers that probably also have threat control for the resistance bonus.
Why the hell are you even bringing a beam cruiser with aggro control to this? It's poorly designed content, it is what it is.
Then, um, continue to do that?
Maybe beam arrays are not for your playstyle.
Have you seen an alpha strike bop kill in kerrat?
BoPs only have 6 weapons.
How many weapon slots you have is not an indication of your role.
What kind of weapons you can slot, your hull & shield mod, your ship's console layout, your ship's boff layout - especially number of Tac powers and what your CMD is, demonstrate your role to you.
Why the hell are there Escorts with a Ltc Eng or Sci?
It's called flavor, with a slightly different boff layout for a slightly different playstyle slant.
That Ltc Tac on the Excelsior? It doesn't turn you into an escort, any more than Ltc Eng on the Armitage turns it into a Cruiser.
Who said you shouldn't do any damage?
Not doing any damage =/= Doing some sustained damage =/= Doing high, focused spike & sustained damage
...and that has nothing to do with poor ship or ability design? Perhaps being useless in that particular instance should mean something about the value of "aggro control" in the game.
Even with a tactically-oriented cruiser, I still would encounter problems dealing damage unless I switch over to a Auxiliary to Battery build. Only by switching to cannons do I notice a considerable improvement in all relevant factors. As for drawing heavy aggro from multiple targets, that is only particularly relevant in one instance, and completely irrelevant in PvP. Either way, the ability is still useless.
As for escorts that have a Lt Cmdr Eng slot? It actually does something for them because they are already good at something else. This is because Engineering tree as a whole is designed for damage-resistance buffing and repairs, which is nice to have for any ship but means that an excessive focus (like what you'd see in a cruiser) makes a ship no more than a brick. Even with an Lt Cmdr of another type, you will find that dealing damage in a cruiser is very difficult unless you go for a specific build (which involves considerably more expense just to get at a decent level).
The cruiser statline is also terrible for just about anything: being built for "tanking" and for "healing" does not explain the awful turn rate, especially with the weapons that are supposedly designed for cruiser use. Furthermore, the whole point of being "good at tanking" or whatnot starts getting pointless when carriers come into the picture.
well...
if you think so, why don't you try flying an escort and using CSV as an anti-spam?
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
I have, actually.
For the first time, I've actually managed to score first in SB24, instead of just second or third. Speaking of which, I only started regularly scoring second or third after I refitted my cruiser with cannons/turrets.
Not so little an arc, because the CSV gives your firing arc a pseudo-extension. Combine it with cannon/turret, and it becomes irrelevant...
source:
Updated Fire at Will:
Beam: Fire at Will is now capable of benefiting from weapon modifiers such as [Acc], [CrtH], etc.
The energy drain inflicted by Fire at Will activation now only happens if you are actually able to fire upon an enemy
regardless of what happens, there will never be parity between escorts and non escorts in this dps heavy game. unless a significant change is made to the pve experience, escorts and their cannons will reign supreme... maybe. could be ranked behind escort carriers like the jemmy and the armitage. but either way, you get the point.
Escorts and their abilities don't need a nerf. Cruisers and their abilities (such as beam array power drain) need a buff.
I personally don't think that neutering CSV (i.e. knocking it down to 5s, which is a nearly useless buff period for EPtW and isn't any better for CSV... it's more-or-less bringing it down to a single volley) is the solution, but I do think that either it needs a tweak, or beam powers do. I don't want to use single cannons. Cryptic, in their infinite wisdom, decided that single cannons should fire from the same hardpoints as turrets. This looks stupid on a Cruiser. Part of the reason I bought the Regent was to stop having all my rear weapons fire from a single point, I don't want to switch to a build where all my weapons fire from one or two points.
I honestly would rather have the entire system reworked so that the optimal solution for DPS would be to carry a mix of cannons, beams, and torpedoes, but that isn't going to happen. I can hold threat. The problem is, I need to invest in a lot of my resources to get it away from the Escorts, then get little to no recognition for it. I stopped using FAW in most cases because it doesn't provide threat control, it just aggravates everything that the Escorts aren't shooting unless there's only one target in the area. The changes on Redshirt help, but FAW will remain a situational power in my book... the changes mostly just improved it within those narrow situations (mostly, clearing spam). CSV, on the other hand, is a workhorse power that improves the power of an attack run by not only increasing the damage on the main target, but also by copying the damage over to the auxiliary targets, with no drawback other than that it deals less bonus damage than CRF against the primary target. Except that FAW has each beam target opponents individually, meaning that its power on any one opponent is reduced the more are in the firing arc. CSV has the cannon spread essentially copy itself over to each target, dealing the full damage to each of the targets in range.
this is not what I asked for... I asked you to use CSV as anti-spam. I know well that CSV is intended to be an attack ability to be used by attack ship.
The fact you want BFaW to be an attack ability alternative to CSV means only that you do not have understant the different role of cruisers/beams array and escorts/cannon.
If you want to deal damage, you have to fly attack ships, if you want to tank/heal you have to fly cruisers... You can't have a tanker/healer ship plus the damage of an escort as much as escort's captain can't have the power of an escort and the tank/healing capacity of a cruiser...
OMG... are you insinuating that CSV give cannons a better firing angle? what's the proof, the visual effect? lol
sorry man I do not want hurting you, but I think you are just one who fly cruisers because he can't survive with escort instead of asking for advise and try to learn how better players can do what you can't. If you want to deal damage, fly escorts and if you do not know how to survive with escorts, ask for advise. There are a lot of player better than me that can explain how to fly escorts.
And if you want to fly a cruiser there are again a lot of player that can explain you how a cruiser can be really usefull and powerfull.
I do not think cruisers need a buff... If you play pvp you can see how a cruiser can be hard to destroy and how much it can help another ship. I simply belive that many player fly cruisers thinking to have the final ship: high survaival, high attack power... a sort of "god mode" that let you do everything on your own.
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
My point is, people cry that cruisers are unbalanced vs escorts. So instead ruining escorts, do something about cruisers. However I do see many, many, many people who try to use cruisers as escorts, and obviously that is a big fail.
The main issue people have with cruisers is that alone they can't hurt you for their life.
CSV is better at killing the pet spam, rather than simply just touching it and going away. 2-3 seconds under concentrated fire will end up popping multiple little ships, whereas even 10 seconds with Beam Fire At Will won't guarantee that they're all gone. I really hope you understand the simple logic of that. And yes, it really does provide something of a better firing angle. I would also like to add that the spread for the ability seems to work rather differently with cannons/turrets than it does for dc/dhc.
I know damn well how to fly a cruiser thank you very much. I think you need to try and fly a cruiser some time. As an Engineer. If you ever try exploring any other captain type outside of it, you'll realize just how limited your character is. And if you have actually tried flying a cruiser instead of accusing others of not knowing how to fly their vessels, you will realize just how stupid it is to take damage but not deal it. As for healing and support, it is a TRIBBLE-boring and thankless job that sees you only stuck to PvP or the unwinnable scenario. Speccing for that task specifically is not an option.
That's all I have to say on the topic.
except pets have to be in front of you... and that is why CSV is not an anti-spam.
I do... and as escort captain I can see what a good cruiser can do!
And yes, sometime flying a cruiser can be boring to me too, but that is not a good reason to do what you are asking for.
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
I know I said that the last post would be my last...
Except that such a limitation is null when speaking of cannons and turrets. In which case, you are very very efficient at clearing spam of all sorts, while not being totally gimped against larger ships.
As a cruiser captain who has also flown a escort, I can tell you that cruisers are imbalanced because of their excessive focus on Engineering abilities, and that said Engineering capabilities in no way seriously justify their lack of mobility or near-complete lack of non-defensive capabilities. You can very easily build an escort to take damage: it certainly won't last until the crack of doom, but you're in a position where you can actually defeat an opponent before you die.
tsk, tsk.
Why not ask for a buff? You know, just for a change of pace for once.
Do you ask your boss for a raise or do you ask him/her to take a pay cut?
You last visited: 12-31-1969 at 04:00 PM
I do ask for buffs quite often, and I meet with just as much scorn as this topic. Either that, or I get people posting their alternative views on how change should be implemented, or affirmations that don't really do anything. If anything, this topic has been far more productive in that it has attracted considerably more attention than otherwise. Challenging the status quo with a potential for loss seems to be far more effective than proposing a bevy of solutions that are unlikely to be heeded, because then it gets everyone involved. Including those that do not give a sot about cruisers, beam weaponry, and the like.
CSV2throws less DPS out than CRF1, although not by much, oh and it attracts a huge amount of attention in PvE (and PvP at times).
To the OP, you seem to want beams or skills involving beams to be as powerful or more so than an already powerful weapon and skill set that is made for a single reason. The whole point of cannons is to go teh pew pew and blow stuff up.
The whole point of an engineer is to make sure tacs in escorts doing teh pew pew dont go pop.
The fact that anything more than 5km away, CSV is pretty useless.
So much so that a good Beam Fire at Will will do more damage.
The only reason Scatter Volley does more damage in the first place is because Dual Heavy Cannons do that much more damage than Beam Arrays baseline and that it's less likely to 'waste' shots on targets that are immune/immediately heal up any and all damage.