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GDF & Last Ditch Effort: Need a Re-think & Re-design
ussultimatum
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
GDF & Last Ditch Effort: Need a Re-think & Re-design
Go Down Fighting
Go Down Fighting, prior to LoR, was already a very situational use ability on an extended (4 minutes) cooldown.
Post LoR it is now situational in the extreme, in that it is both conditionally locked with a 50% or lower hull requirement while retaining its extended cooldown.
Go Down Fighting at 50% or lower hull already means you are in a precarious situation to use it.
While the benefit (damage buff) is good, most good Tac pilots would not choose to activate APA at 50% hull out of a risk of being killed/SNBd and thus losing the buff.
Better to die, and use the buff after the respawn.
This poses two main issues:
1) Activation of the ability is not guaranteed (requires 50% hull or less).
2) Full use (1 min duration) of the ability is also not guaranteed due to spike damage or subnuc.
What that means:
GDF is now a power you can stop thinking about.
Simply keybind to spacebar or WASD.
What should be a captain tier power, with a dramatic effect, is now relegated to a no thought required quasi-random spacebar mash.
This also removes real choice and thought from the player, which is a poor thing for a mechanic to do.
Last Ditch Effort (LDE)
Whether LDE was added to cushion the blow of the nerf, or is the reason why the nerf was implemented is anyone's guess because the devs have not deigned to give us an explanation.
LDE is a trait, that:
1) Requires stacking, while you are being killed. This alone is laughable.
2) Has no tooltip information on what conditions allow for stacking.
3) Stacks unreliably.
4) Provides a meagre resistance bonus, that will be unlikely to save you in the exact circumstances you would use GDF.
Main problems:
LDE says it grants "100%" resistance, and stacks up to 3x.
1) In practice the amount seems to be more like +10 resistance bonus per stack and is subject to HDR diminishing returns.
*If anyone has better testing on this, feel free to correct me. At 4 minute cooldown my ability & patience to test this is limited.
2) Stacks unreliably. At one point during testing, with GDF active, a full 25s of firing directly on the target's hull passed with zero stacks of LDE ever taking place!
What this means is that nearly half of GDF buff disappeared with zero stacks of LDE appearing. The target died and LDE never kicked in.
In summary:
GDF now requires less thought, allows for less choice is extremely situational and requires the target to be in a precarious position in a game that has rampant spike damage, one-shots and the ultimate pvp trump card of Subnucleonic beam.
LDE is a trait that has minor benefits, and most likely will not save you in any situation where you were pushed to activate GDF in the first place.
Even activating GDF + LDE is no guarantee that LDE will actually stack.
Unanswered questions:
GDF is now present even after death, with no communication from the systems team on whether or not this behavior is intended (it was reported during LoR beta).
Why were these changes made, why was the trait added and why was the trait implemented in this fashion (stacking buff while you are being killed that can take 25s or more to actually see a single stack), will we ever know?
I think this power, and the accompanying trait, need a redesign.
Go Down Fighting
Go Down Fighting, prior to LoR, was already a very situational use ability on an extended (4 minutes) cooldown.
Post LoR it is now situational in the extreme, in that it is both conditionally locked with a 50% or lower hull requirement while retaining its extended cooldown.
Go Down Fighting at 50% or lower hull already means you are in a precarious situation to use it.
While the benefit (damage buff) is good, most good Tac pilots would not choose to activate APA at 50% hull out of a risk of being killed/SNBd and thus losing the buff.
Better to die, and use the buff after the respawn.
This poses two main issues:
1) Activation of the ability is not guaranteed (requires 50% hull or less).
2) Full use (1 min duration) of the ability is also not guaranteed due to spike damage or subnuc.
What that means:
GDF is now a power you can stop thinking about.
Simply keybind to spacebar or WASD.
What should be a captain tier power, with a dramatic effect, is now relegated to a no thought required quasi-random spacebar mash.
This also removes real choice and thought from the player, which is a poor thing for a mechanic to do.
Last Ditch Effort (LDE)
Whether LDE was added to cushion the blow of the nerf, or is the reason why the nerf was implemented is anyone's guess because the devs have not deigned to give us an explanation.
LDE is a trait, that:
1) Requires stacking, while you are being killed. This alone is laughable.
2) Has no tooltip information on what conditions allow for stacking.
3) Stacks unreliably.
4) Provides a meagre resistance bonus, that will be unlikely to save you in the exact circumstances you would use GDF.
Main problems:
LDE says it grants "100%" resistance, and stacks up to 3x.
1) In practice the amount seems to be more like +10 resistance bonus per stack and is subject to HDR diminishing returns.
*If anyone has better testing on this, feel free to correct me. At 4 minute cooldown my ability & patience to test this is limited.
2) Stacks unreliably. At one point during testing, with GDF active, a full 25s of firing directly on the target's hull passed with zero stacks of LDE ever taking place!
What this means is that nearly half of GDF buff disappeared with zero stacks of LDE appearing. The target died and LDE never kicked in.
In summary:
GDF now requires less thought, allows for less choice is extremely situational and requires the target to be in a precarious position in a game that has rampant spike damage, one-shots and the ultimate pvp trump card of Subnucleonic beam.
LDE is a trait that has minor benefits, and most likely will not save you in any situation where you were pushed to activate GDF in the first place.
Even activating GDF + LDE is no guarantee that LDE will actually stack.
Unanswered questions:
GDF is now present even after death, with no communication from the systems team on whether or not this behavior is intended (it was reported during LoR beta).
Why were these changes made, why was the trait added and why was the trait implemented in this fashion (stacking buff while you are being killed that can take 25s or more to actually see a single stack), will we ever know?
I think this power, and the accompanying trait, need a redesign.
Post edited by ussultimatum on
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Comments
Its sad.
And the new trait works like dogsh*t.
The biggest issue here is not the relegation of a profession specific ability to the woodshed shared by Ramming Speed, Abandon Ship and Fleet Support (don't get me wrong, it's a serious problem), but instead the complete and utter lack of reasoning for the change.
If anyone on the Dev team actually had a reason for this, stand up and spit it out. Have the dialogue with your players that has resulted in a multitude of improvements and averted disasters instead of hiding.
those are not unanswered questions.They like stunts.They do big stunts with each big update.s6 with dilithium and reputation and now this.In all cases nothing is said till the last moment.
1. GDF wasn't nerfed- it was fixed to ensure it's being used as a LAST DITCH EFFORT power instead alpha strike buff, and many are butthurt they can't exploit the power any longer.
2. LDE is simply broken.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
What is there to ensure that a Sci captain can't use SNB + SS at the same time to both remove all of a player's buffs as well as place a significant hull debuff on them?
What is there to ensure, internally, that an Engineer does not stack all of their mitigating powers at once to become nearly invincible vs. raw damage for a short period?
What prevents any player from stacking all of the available defensive & mitigating buffs available to counteract incoming damage?
Your reasoning is faulty, but is welcome, because it allows me an opportunity to point out its flaws.
Removing tactical usage of primary career skills in favor of spacebar mashing is poor design.
Why is everyone so afraid of damage, in a game that is ruled by healing?
On top of all this, your post misses the point.
If "stacking" damage is the issue than this nerf only makes it a random event, it does not prevent it.
Hence the title, that GDF needs a redesign.
So using GDF @ 100% hull instead of less than 50% counteracts that ?
<facepalm>
I see the 'new' GDF as the compliment to Ramming speed- 2 powers, 2 options : Fight or Flight.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
and you decide less than 50% because?
are you inventing numbers for the sake of it?
and yes GDF should be used as buff for apa same as Photonic fleet is used at the same time with subnuc or how mw is used with any engineering power ...at any moment in game (you can even use those powers more because their traits allow you to do that)
if you start with "omg tacs are op because they destroy borg" ...what is the dps class in game?
Your post reminds me of a joke Steve Martin used to tell when he was doing stand up, when he was on the college football team as a quarterback. He says he couldn't understand why the coach thought he was a bad QB because he liked to punt on first down.
Now go read the OP, adults are talking here.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
you meant trolling.
btw at 12 you are not an adult.
The 50% requirement must be removed.
Nerf its damage bonus at higher hull rates if the devs must, but at least leave it available.
Science:
Dampening Field: just plain worthless, if you're taking hull damage you're dead regardless.
Sensor Scan: acceptable, but underwhelming due to the short uptime (note that FomM is better in this regard).
Photonic Fleet: probably the best of the bunch here, gives the player a bit of extra damage for a while, but with a fairly long CD.
Subnucleonic Beam: almost worthless, very very few enemies have a buff that's worth stripping, particularly for a 2 minute CD (may be acceptable in niche content like PvP).
Science Fleet: good shield resistance buff for the whole team, but made mediocre overall by long cooldown and short uptime.
Engineering:
EPS Power Transfer: decent buff to power levels, but the short duration and the fact that you'll already have your important levels high makes it weak.
Nadion Inversion: nice counter to weapon drain, particularly with beams, but not really enough to provide a major damage buff.
Miracle Worker: powerful emergency heal, but the long cooldown makes it a little questionable (if you can't dump threat you'll be back in the same boat soon).
Rotate Shield Frequency: nice shield resistance buff, can't rely on it too much since the uptime is limited but still pretty good.
Engineering Fleet: long cooldown and minimal benefits.
Compare that to Tactical:
Attack Pattern Alpha: huge damage buff, with decent uptime and a relatively short cooldown, excellent anytime.
Fire on my Mark: nice debuff, uptime a bit limited but still valuable.
Tactical Initiative: hugely powerful, CD a little long but still manageable, very nice ability.
Tactical Fleet: powerful team damage buff, long cooldown, call it decent overall.
Go Down Fighting: previously just a powerful damage buff with a rather long cooldown, now made situational and with a damage resistance buff added.
So with GDF nerfed tacs still have the best set of captain abilities by a significant margin. Now, let's talk about how LoR has made GW and most other CC utterly useless, rather than just too weak as it previously was.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
So thats all you got ?
Did you read the OP, and does my 50% quote now appear less 'made up' ?
All I meant by my wise crack was for you to actually know what your talking about before assuming people are making stuff up. Now that we're finished with the meet-and-greet pleasantries do you have something to contribute to the conversation or not.
BTW, sorry if I offended you by the adults comment, it was meant to be funny. It's become rather hard to keep a sense of humor with all the server issues lately, I was trying to help keep a jovial atmosphere here on the forums since we haven't had our daily emergency yet.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Somebody completely missed the point. The issue at hand is not the effectiveness of GDF. The issue is that the player now has zero choice as to when to deploy it, and the activation threshold is so narrow as to be effectively zero.
So you'd be happy if it could be activated anytime but only did anything when the player's hull gets below 50%? Because that's not the impression I'm getting from the rest of the posts in this thread, and any other discussion has to be well aware of the context I provided, which makes it quite clear that tac captain abilities retain a clear advantage.
Yes, and my first guess is that you do not PvP and only PvE and therefore have an extremely skewed view of how Career powers are balanced.
That's not your fault. PvE in this game is extremely warped to be really easy, and allow any team composition to complete it. So naturally damage ends up being the most useful.
Nerfing GDF will not improve the design of PvE, nor the non-existant roles of Control, Support or Tanking that are completely unneeded in STO's PvE environment. Please stop blaming Tacs for the poor design of PvE content.
In PvP, the landscape is quite different.
ENG: Has all sorts of issues, I am in favor of several ENG improvements that I won't detail for the sake of brevity. Full agreement.
SCI: The single most powerful captain type for PvP. Every single power is some kind of a force multiplier, this means it benefits your entire team, culminating in the king of all powers: SNB.
TAC: A largely situational toolset with one excellent power (APA) and other situational, or marginalized powers.
APA: Works great.
FOMM: Massive issues in PvP due to the ubiquity of Tac team. You will be lucky to get more than 5s of value every 2 minutes out of this power against any player or team that is not a completely hopeless individual.
Tac Initiative: Borderline pointless on 99% of all optimized PvP builds that already have built-in redundancies or CD Doffs that do a better job of being TI than TI does.
GDF: See OP.
Tac Fleet: Useful, but on a humongous cooldown of 5 minutes. Also does not provide a flat damage bonus, but rather boosts the damage of the base (which means its inferior to other types of damage boosts). Sci fleet is leaps and bounds more useful and powerful than this.
Suddenly, Tac powers look situational and marginal at best. Only APA is universally usable.
Of course, if you actually want APA to do anything useful against a real, skilled team you need SNB.
Coming from the person who argued that an ability that reduces hull damage is:
That statement is just adorable. But hey, a least you're up front about your double standards. That's more than most folks around here manage to admit.
You mean like GDF being to locked to 50% or lower hull with a trait that depends on those circumstances?
A trait that is random, can not be boosted by Aux, only affects self and is linked to a power on a 4 minute cooldown?
You've basically painted yourself into a corner on this one, and stirling has made an astute observation of this complete lapse on your part.
Let's cover the good parts of Dampening Field.
1) Can be used anytime you like. You know, like before big torpedos hit you or your friends.
2) Is on a 3 minute cooldown.
3) Provides truly MASSIVE hull resistance at full aux, seriously go try this even though you probably run around with max power to weapons.
4) Is an AoE power, therefore force multiplier.
5) Is a better Eng fleet than Eng fleet.
1) Has a shorter cooldown than FOMM.
2) Is not cleared by Tac team.
3) Is a giant AoE (force multiplier), and not relegated to 1 target (like FOMM)
4) 2+3 = You need 5 Sci Teams to clear your entire team of Sensor Scan.
5) Is a more powerful debuff than FOMM at high Aux. Feel free to test this.
It's not really that strong, but at least unlike GDF it has a trait that makes it available anywhere from 2x to 3x more often!!
Isn't it nice to have your powers available!
The single most powerful captain ability in the entire game in PvP.
Underutilized in PvE because of the design of PvE content.
The best available "Fleet" power among the careers. All of them have long cooldowns and short uptimes, so your point is moot.
I just caught this.
Sorry for not responding to you earlier.
I'll test this to confirm, but I'll assume your correct.
In which case, this trait makes even less sense.
I mean, if I'm being focus fired and I'm down to 50% hull in the first place my reaction is to take defensive action - not turn around and fire on people to get a free neutronium console buff.
Oh wait, nothing in this game is ever designed with PvP in mind.
Only PvE where you sit still in your ship and fire on 1.5 million hull+, stationary or nearly stationary NPC targets.
Got it, how silly of me to forget. :rolleyes:
Heh, if you turn tail and run everytime you're at 50% or less hull I don't want you on my team.
:cool:
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Hi, nice strawman.
Is that the best you can do? Put words into people's mouths and twist what's written without adding anything to the thread?
Here's what was said, since you seem to lack proper reading skills.
Not sure how you managed to translate that as "turn tail and run".
So first things first, remove the currently low and silly resistance boost and replace it with a bonus defense buff of 5% per scaling up to 15% at three stacks (all numbers soley for illustrative purposes).
Secondly atleast increase the window of activation to 75% hull. Or if you really want to get silly let it go back to activating at any time but change the scale of the buff down to something really low at full hull like 20%.
Bareel and I agree on something.
Excuse me a moment, while I check the night sky to make sure an asteroid isn't about to annihilate the Earth...
Not bad.
I think your idea on 75% is a good compromise.
I also think the other idea of usable at 100% but with much reduced benefit is good as well (although I thought the damage boost was fairly low at 100% previously, but perhaps my memory is fuzzy).
Honestly, all solutions aside, at this point we have had almost zero communication from the Devs on this issue.
It forces me to assume that they either don't care, or they think everything is fine, or this is still under their radar even though there have been 3 long threads on this (including the one in Tribble feedback).
I'd rather have at least some indication they are actually looking at this power in play to see what value it has in its current form and whether they feel this nerf or the weak and relatively useless trait are really equitable considering the realities of this game's PvE and PvP environments.
The difference is that Dampening Field has only one use: making you able to hull tank, and it cannot do it, nothing can. GDF, on the other hand, is primarily a damage buff, so it can do its thing very well if you manage to restore shields. So GDF is worthwhile, if highly situational, while Dampening Field is useless. To your other points:
1) Since it doesn't do anything except when you're taking hull damage, who cares?
2) So is Tactical Initiative, so that's not an unusual thing.
3) But still not enough to matter to anything (and I'm actually running an Aux cannon Vesta on my main, so...).
4) But the AoE radius is so small allies tend to be outside it, even on a small map like ISE, so it's not much of a team buff.
5) I already noted that Eng Fleet is terrible (and actually it doesn't have the radius issue).
1) False, both use a 2 minute CD, and FomM lasts 50% longer.
2) But is cleared by Sci team, which is actually used by more NPCs.
3) True, but that doesn't make it a great ability, and note that I never said FomM was that great either.
4) If you are all within the small radius and are up against an enemy that uses it, I suppose that's true.
5) Again, I never said that FomM was that great.
The trait does not make it available 3x more often, in fact you'll be struggling to get to 2x. 3x more often would be an 80 second CD instead of the normal 240, and the trait applies a 15 second CD reduction once every 10 seconds when you use a sci ability. 80/10=8, 8*15=120, so it can never be available 3x more often, it's simply not mathematically possible, the best you could possibly achieve is a 100 second CD, and that would require a build and playstyle optimized for nothing else. Is the science trait a bigger buff to the class, yes, but that doesn't outweigh the other imbalances.
So in other words, highly situational and usually useless. That's pretty much what I said to begin with. Remember, PvP is only a tiny subset of the content in this game, and since it has minimal rewards it is entirely optional, so abilities have to be analyzed in that full context, otherwise you're breaking most of the game for the sake of PvP (oh wait, that's right, that's exactly what you people have been doing).
I noted the long cooldown and short uptime of the other Fleet powers in my analysis of them, but your claim that Sci Fleet is the best of the three is laughably wrong. Tac Fleet is easily superior simply because it is a damage buff rather than a resistance buff, and so it is useful to all team members instead of the 1 under fire at the time. Furthermore, extra damage is always useful, while a decent player can survive most things without the extra resistance from Sci Fleet (and a bad player can seldom be saved).
And in all of that you barely mentioned Engineering abilities, so yeah, I'm sticking with my statement that the changes are headed in the right direction for game balance. The simple fact is that if they removed GDF entirely Tac captains would still get better abilities than the other classes.
them pandas are some of the best pvp players in game like it or not and be sure they know more about pvp ballance than the person who blocked GDF.If he tells you that GDF damage resistence is sheet be sure that damage resistence is sheet ,I dont think has any reason to lie .You say its important because you never checked how that damage resistence stacks in game .That damage resistence is useless and blocking the power is taking away a decision from the player ...having all powers for spacebar spam is not fun.
Subnuc is not the GDF sci version ,photonic fleet is and that got a trait that makes possible to spam it 2-3 times more than before.Same for MW.
No thanks.
I have a question for the people crying nerf and wanting it back.
Do you PvP or do you PvE?
I can see the case for PvP where your alpha strike is key, but if you were using your GDF simply to add to your alpha strike in STFs then you were doing it wrong, and need to learn how to use GDF properly.
This change hasn't really affected me much being a predominantly PvE player, where the fun of STFs is flying into warp core explosions to get your hull down to 20% to pop a GDF before frantically trying to heal up again. Given that in good runs you can only use it once anyway, using it at 100% hull is a complete waste of time.
I'm happy with the change, the FIX (I won't call it a nerf because I always thought it was stupid that you could use it at 100% hull anyway)
Kirk's Protege.