...Science in STO is a Cryptic fabrication. Most of it is actually Tac/Eng with some Science...which in turn, in trying to fit things in - led them to doing what they did, eh?
I'm not even sure where to start in trying to reply to that...your reply to that part reminds me of that old joke, the one that goes something like - don't you hate when somebody starts to say something, and right when they start to get to octopus....
GW2 and GW3 were underperforming. But evaluating the performance of this ability across all ranks has caused us to tune them all, including an increase to GW1's performance under certain circumstances.
More details on those exact changes after these other questions are answered.
To clarify, the fact that GravGen skill had a negligible impact on the Repel value was not a bug - this was working as designed. So making changes to that would not be a "fix" - they are tuning changes.
That said, two things are being changed:
1) Graviton Generators will have a much larger impact on the Radius of Gravity Well.
2) Graviton Generators will now effect a very small increase to the periodic Repel that the Well exerts. Although the tooltip won't show much change, it should be noticeable in practice since it's applied every second that the well exists.
Related to #2, I'm investigating getting decimals added to the Repel value on this power, so that the effects of Skill are more evident in the tooltip. No promises, though, as those figures are automatically generated. I'm not sure which part of our UI/Software controls it, or if it can be easily modified.
I'm unclear on your definition of "the mechanic." But I can tell you that the changes we're making to this ability will only affect Gravity Well, and nothing else.
I'll get into a little more detail below.
We have a revision checked in already, and are awaiting QA review. I can't make any firm promises on when these changes will go live, but I think it's safe to estimate a 2-3 week timeframe.
NOW, onto the meat of the changes being made...
* Ranks 2 and 3 now properly benefit from the user's AuxPower and Graviton Generators skill.
This means that, aside from any further tuning mentioned, these powers will see a universal increase in effectiveness for players that fly with 50+ Aux, and have any skill points in Graviton Generators.
* The Repel values of all ranks of Gravity Well can now be improved slightly with Graviton Generators skill.
The value shown on the tooltip will only change by about -1 or -2 with very high skill, but since this small change is applied every second, it will add up.
* The Radius bonus gained by Graviton Generators has been increased.
Double the previous bonus, at all ranks. Whereas it previously only granted up to 0.25km additional range, it will now extend the range by 0.5km at 100 Skill, and further if you manage to have higher skill than that.
* The amount of bonus damage that Aux Power and Particle Generators give to this power have been decreased.
This was done because they scaled too aggressively at the high end, when using GW3 with Full Aux and 150 GravGen.
** In order to offset this decrease, the base damage has been increased by a good amount across all ranks. This should result in a notable increase to baseline performance, and a decrease to high-end performance.
All of the core, unskilled damage values of Gravity Well will be getting an increase of about 40-50%. So if you never used high-Aux or high-Skill with your builds, your GravWell (all ranks) is about to become far more potent.
We reduced the multiplier that Aux applies to this core damage value. Where it previously scaled from 33%-100% multipier, it now only applies a 33%-66% multiplier. Meaning, again, that only high values will see any significant impact.
We also reduced the multiplier given by Particle Generators Skill. Attempting to give you the actual % values would be useless here because of the overall order of operations, but suffice it so say that it's been reduced. So, again, high-end users may see a decrease in the damage dealt by their Gravity Wells when combining high Skill levels with high Aux levels.
---
I hope that fills in all of the cracks for this discussion. Again, I can't confirm any sort of date that this will go live, as it has only just been sent to QA for review, and I don't know what their scheduling commitments look like right now.
To be more specific, Gravity Well 2 and 3 will benefit from Aux power and Graviton Generators skill now -- previously they didn't. The amount that they benefit, though, is being reined in from what it would have been if the powers weren't bugged.
In testing, just making GW2 & 3 benefit from Aux and GravGen allowed a science ship with 135 Aux and 150 GravGen to use GW3 against a group of five frigates and snare and destroy all of them. This is a bit over the top.
Borticus has been tweaking the formulae so that the power will be useful, and you will see improvements in your Gravity Wells from increasing Aux or GravGen, but it won't be over the top.
All other stats being equal, GW2 & 3 will be more powerful than GW1.
Lots of dev posts in there. Basically the issue was found and corrected on their internal build and should be going live soon-ish. The same issue was effecting Tyken's Rift, so that will be getting fixed up as well.
Hrrm, call me a noob, but I can't see how a change that devalues an intensive Sci skill point investment (higher base effectiveness) is any sort of benefit to Sci captains?
Doesn't the proposed change merely mean that any old captain will now be able to use GW with pretty good effectiveness if they happen to be rocking an Aux battery?
I mean, yeah, the ability was bugged before and wasn't working properly at all, so it's nice that it's being looked into.
But if the proposed change provides no more than a relatively minor benefit to heavy Science skill investment, but a relatively major benefit to all captains regardless of Science skill investment, then it's not exactly something to give Sci captains any cheer, is it?
Hrrm, call me a noob, but I can't see how a change that devalues an intensive Sci skill point investment (higher base effectiveness) is any sort of benefit to Sci captains?
Doesn't the proposed change merely mean that any old captain will now be able to use GW with pretty good effectiveness if they happen to be rocking an Aux battery?
I mean, yeah, the ability was bugged before and wasn't working properly at all, so it's nice that it's being looked into.
But if the proposed change provides no more than a relatively minor benefit to heavy Science skill investment, but a relatively major benefit to all captains regardless of Science skill investment, then it's not exactly something to give Sci captains any cheer, is it?
You're confusing science captain with science SHIP captains. Captains and their captain abilities are not affected by this nor will the interactions between them. Engineer captains will have the least damaging GW followed by science captains then at the top will be the tactical elite.
Otherwise yes, the other thread highlights this issue of it possibly getting less of a buff from skill investment from before it was underperforming. We will have to wait and see how it plays out on tribble.
Why was this thread moved from the PvP Gameplay section to the Builds, Powers, and Game Mechanics section without any comment? The vast majority of this thread is about Gravity Well and how it affects PvP. Later it went on about Tykens Rift and the PvP impact of the ability. Can the moderator that moved it please move it back. Thanks
Yes, hopefully this will be the case. I have builds that use both Gravity Well I and III and I noticed that they seem about equal in terms of hold and damage. I never thought to check into it being a bug and assumed it was working as intended.
Hopefully, they will consider also increasing the hold. It is a commander level power. It should at least have as much hold as tractor beam I if 130 AUX is put into it.
And a big thank you for finding this bug.
I know I'm way late to this party but why are you running 2 versions of Gravity Well?
A few months back I tried running Gravity Well 1 and 3 with my Recluse but quickly dropped GW1 when I noticed that the cool down for the 2 levels were virtually identical.
When I used GW3 the shared cool down with GW1 lasted for the same length of time has the cool down on GW3 so I just ended up running with GW3.
I have not been spending any time playing STO lately so I'm unaware if the shared cool down with Gw1 and Gw3 has been adjusted.
I'm glad that someone is finally fixing the abomination that is Gw3; it?s woefully underpowered when compared to Gw1.
Is there any news on when this fix is finally going live, I can't wait to have a useful Gw3 again!
On another note is anything being done for Gravity Wells twice removed Cousin Tyken's Rift; all versions of it seems like they are underperforming.
One of the main reasons that I'm becoming more and more disenchanted with STO is that fact that I enjoy playing Science' however, Science skills seem incredibly underpowered and new End game Level True Science Vessels are few and far between.
It seems like Science and Engineering Captains are being forced to use Tactical heavy ships that can be hybridized to slot some of their classes skills.
I'm hoping we get a useful Gravity Well 3 and some new Science vessels that can slot that level of the skill
Changes are extremely, underwhelming, at first glance.
Aux power used to multiply damage by 1% per point, now it seems to be closer to 2% per 3 points roughly I think, too late to do math.
Additionally at 130 AUX each point of particle gen only adds 1.05 damage to GW3.
Conclusion: 130 AUX + 142 PG gravity well 3 only deals 1,026.6 DPS which IMHO is too low for that level of investment considering I can get eject warp plasma higher without wasting AUX power and it has the bonus effect of completely removing a target's bonus defense where GW lacks that extra utility. At the end of the day my ships sporting a Gravity Well 1 will see a minor boost whereas the others will stick to their current GW1+EWP3 combo or TBR 3 for reasonable non weapon damage. It might be respectable damage with APO or that sci trait at 3 stacks but that's about it.
Changes are extremely, underwhelming, at first glance.
Aux power used to multiply damage by 1% per point, now it seems to be closer to 2% per 3 points roughly I think, too late to do math.
Additionally at 130 AUX each point of particle gen only adds 1.05 damage to GW3.
Conclusion: 130 AUX + 142 PG gravity well 3 only deals 1,026.6 DPS which IMHO is too low for that level of investment considering I can get eject warp plasma higher without wasting AUX power and it has the bonus effect of completely removing a target's bonus defense where GW lacks that extra utility. At the end of the day my ships sporting a Gravity Well 1 will see a minor boost whereas the others will stick to their current GW1+EWP3 combo or TBR 3 for reasonable non weapon damage. It might be respectable damage with APO or that sci trait at 3 stacks but that's about it.
Thanks for performing the check bareel. Unfortunately my heart just sank. I get 960.8 damage/second with Gravity Well I and about 229.6 in particle generators. Would you be able to check the number for around that area as well as the maximum particle generators?
The current maximum is 310.5 without any external abilities. I am curious to see just how high Gravity Well III can reach when fully specced.
To reach 310.5 in particle generators you need:
5 Fleet Embassy Particle Generator Consoles
1 Nukara Particle Converter
1 Adapted MACO Deflector
1 Astrophysicist Trait
1 Joined Trill trait
9 Points in Particle Generators (if you only have 6 you can substitute in EPtA II for +15)
Because as of right now, it looks like my Gravity Well I on holodeck deals barely less damage than the "new and improved" Gravity Well III. And the current Gravity Well I barely scratches the surface of NPCs.
Changes are extremely, underwhelming, at first glance.
Aux power used to multiply damage by 1% per point, now it seems to be closer to 2% per 3 points roughly I think, too late to do math.
Additionally at 130 AUX each point of particle gen only adds 1.05 damage to GW3.
Conclusion: 130 AUX + 142 PG gravity well 3 only deals 1,026.6 DPS which IMHO is too low for that level of investment considering I can get eject warp plasma higher without wasting AUX power and it has the bonus effect of completely removing a target's bonus defense where GW lacks that extra utility. At the end of the day my ships sporting a Gravity Well 1 will see a minor boost whereas the others will stick to their current GW1+EWP3 combo or TBR 3 for reasonable non weapon damage. It might be respectable damage with APO or that sci trait at 3 stacks but that's about it.
Since they locked out Tribble and Redshirt doesn't have the changes, I can just comment on what has been reported. If at 130 Aux + 142 PG GW3 deals 1,026.6 DPS then the changes suck. Using those exact stats, this is what's shown for the current broken version: http://tinypic.com/r/2duck6e/5
So in conclusion, if the comments above are true, non-sci captains using GW1 got extra DPS as a gift, and heavily invested sci captains got a nerf hidden as a fix.
I love science. But am I alone in not realy caring about how much damage gravity well does? I don't fly science to do damage and I don't use gravity well for it, I also don't care to use gravity well for damage.
What I want from gravity well is pull and lots of it. I want a **** tun of pull and I would be very happy to sacrifice damage entirely to get it. I want a Well that sucks up enemies over a space of 10k wether they have EP2E or not. I don't expect to get it. I think it would be horribly OP, but I still want it.
What I want to know is weather we can get the pull of a grav well to have any noticeable effect on people in pvp with these changes and weather I can increase its range enough to grab more enemies in PVE.
Nothing fills me with love for science more then a nice big group of enemies forced into a confined space with a couple of their friends who are about to suffer a catastrophic warp core failure.
Damage is king in this game, though. It has become pretty commonplace in the PvE community to overlook anything that isnt pure DPS specced, and maybe sometimes a little crowd control for infected.
While grav well does fill that role, it needs damage to really shine as a skill.
I am finding these numbers being posted really disheartening. I had high hopes for this change =/
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
I just tested GW III some, at 125 power and 227 skill points it was doing about 1800 damage per sec.
Tool tip was only 1080ish not sure what is going on there.
Sadly I did not actively test that I prefer to have my wife help me do such tests with her account to keep it pure of outside influences and she cannot go on tribble right now. If the tooltip indeed lies then I have no idea.
I don't care about the damage either. Good chunk of us use it as CC to buy some time; damage is nice, but not important.
Can someone that isn't focused on uber damage test if the thing actually pulls the enemy in? Large ships like Battle Cruisers and NOT little ships like Frigates. Thank you kindly.
I love science. But am I alone in not realy caring about how much damage gravity well does? I don't fly science to do damage and I don't use gravity well for it, I also don't care to use gravity well for damage.
What I want from gravity well is pull and lots of it. I want a **** tun of pull and I would be very happy to sacrifice damage entirely to get it. I want a Well that sucks up enemies over a space of 10k wether they have EP2E or not. I don't expect to get it. I think it would be horribly OP, but I still want it.
What I want to know is weather we can get the pull of a grav well to have any noticeable effect on people in pvp with these changes and weather I can increase its range enough to grab more enemies in PVE.
Nothing fills me with love for science more then a nice big group of enemies forced into a confined space with a couple of their friends who are about to suffer a catastrophic warp core failure.
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure players will still be able to escape the GW the same easy way they do now. At least with the extra DPS, it would have hurt the few moment they were in there.
Here are her Gravity Well III stats based on the Tooltip:
Holodeck GWIII:
-0.57 Repel
1,156.9 Kinetic Damage per second (Ignores Shields) (increases closer to center)
Tribble GWIII:
-0.24 Repel
899.5 Kinetic Damage per second (Ignores Shields) (increases closer to center)
On both Tribble and Holodeck, when I removed/added-back consoles (I have 1xGravG and 2xPartG) and/or adujusted Aux power up/down the damage numbers changed accordingly, but Repel stayed the same.
It appears in both cases that either the Tooltip is broken and/or the supporting stats have no affect on Repel.
In either case (assuming this part of the Tooltip is functional), the build on Tribble is a NERF to my GWIII's damage.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
In either case (assuming this part of the Tooltip is functional), the build on Tribble is a NERF to my GWIII's damage.
I am guessing they fixed the ability on tribble but not the tool tip. Best way to test this would be to take a 5 science console slot ship into a dual with a willing test subject and ask them to report on the effect upon them when you do and do not use the consoles.
No need to repeat the test on holodeck. Doesn't matter how high your graviton generators skill is there is no noticeable effect on a player. So if its noticeable on tribble its better.
Best way to test would be to use GW on a ship with absolutely no kinetic damage protection (skill or console wise). Sucks they haven't put the changes up on Redshirt. Hope this doesn't make it to Holodeck on 9/26 without proper testing.
It's worth mentioning that the tooltip and what you actually get are completely different. I have yet to test on holodeck as there's too many numpties on holodeck in the area I do tests. All in all I could get 4k per tick from GW3 stacking various things on my sci/sci.
When I can compare GW3 tribble to my holodeck performance I can say whether it's a nerf or a buff but atm I'm inclined to say it's a buff, just not quite the buff some people wanted.
And good news, buffing a GW1 as much as you can in a tacscort should not result in higher damage per tick than a science ship that knows what they're doing. Will need to transfer over my tactical with a vesta (I Know ) and GW1/2/3 to really see how far I can push it but science and tactical captains look like they will get more or less the same out of it. Poor engies are left out.
Comments
Um, not in the least. That's why I went on to explain why I asked...
Perverted notion? Um...everything tactical?
I know that folks like to harp on the public school system, but did you even try to read what I said?
Go look at your toon's skills, those are the three categories. It is what it is.
As for the Tac and Eng being part of Operations?
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Starfleet_division
Command, Operations, and Sciences
So you click on Operations...
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Operations_division
...and you see:
"Operations officers included engineers, security and tactical, and some service specializations such as communications."
Show us on the dolly where the mean ol' Tac touched you...seriously, try reading instead of having some kind of PTSD moment.
I'm not even sure where to start in trying to reply to that...your reply to that part reminds me of that old joke, the one that goes something like - don't you hate when somebody starts to say something, and right when they start to get to octopus....
When will I be able to use them again?
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
I don't come to forums since the change to PW much.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=846611
Lots of dev posts in there. Basically the issue was found and corrected on their internal build and should be going live soon-ish. The same issue was effecting Tyken's Rift, so that will be getting fixed up as well.
Mine Trap Supporter
Yea right, I'll believe it when I see it. That has been broken for, what? Over a year or more???
[/SIGPIC]
Doesn't the proposed change merely mean that any old captain will now be able to use GW with pretty good effectiveness if they happen to be rocking an Aux battery?
I mean, yeah, the ability was bugged before and wasn't working properly at all, so it's nice that it's being looked into.
But if the proposed change provides no more than a relatively minor benefit to heavy Science skill investment, but a relatively major benefit to all captains regardless of Science skill investment, then it's not exactly something to give Sci captains any cheer, is it?
You're confusing science captain with science SHIP captains. Captains and their captain abilities are not affected by this nor will the interactions between them. Engineer captains will have the least damaging GW followed by science captains then at the top will be the tactical elite.
Otherwise yes, the other thread highlights this issue of it possibly getting less of a buff from skill investment from before it was underperforming. We will have to wait and see how it plays out on tribble.
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.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
I know I'm way late to this party but why are you running 2 versions of Gravity Well?
A few months back I tried running Gravity Well 1 and 3 with my Recluse but quickly dropped GW1 when I noticed that the cool down for the 2 levels were virtually identical.
When I used GW3 the shared cool down with GW1 lasted for the same length of time has the cool down on GW3 so I just ended up running with GW3.
I have not been spending any time playing STO lately so I'm unaware if the shared cool down with Gw1 and Gw3 has been adjusted.
I'm glad that someone is finally fixing the abomination that is Gw3; it?s woefully underpowered when compared to Gw1.
Is there any news on when this fix is finally going live, I can't wait to have a useful Gw3 again!
On another note is anything being done for Gravity Wells twice removed Cousin Tyken's Rift; all versions of it seems like they are underperforming.
One of the main reasons that I'm becoming more and more disenchanted with STO is that fact that I enjoy playing Science' however, Science skills seem incredibly underpowered and new End game Level True Science Vessels are few and far between.
It seems like Science and Engineering Captains are being forced to use Tactical heavy ships that can be hybridized to slot some of their classes skills.
I'm hoping we get a useful Gravity Well 3 and some new Science vessels that can slot that level of the skill
Aux power used to multiply damage by 1% per point, now it seems to be closer to 2% per 3 points roughly I think, too late to do math.
Additionally at 130 AUX each point of particle gen only adds 1.05 damage to GW3.
Conclusion: 130 AUX + 142 PG gravity well 3 only deals 1,026.6 DPS which IMHO is too low for that level of investment considering I can get eject warp plasma higher without wasting AUX power and it has the bonus effect of completely removing a target's bonus defense where GW lacks that extra utility. At the end of the day my ships sporting a Gravity Well 1 will see a minor boost whereas the others will stick to their current GW1+EWP3 combo or TBR 3 for reasonable non weapon damage. It might be respectable damage with APO or that sci trait at 3 stacks but that's about it.
Thanks for performing the check bareel. Unfortunately my heart just sank. I get 960.8 damage/second with Gravity Well I and about 229.6 in particle generators. Would you be able to check the number for around that area as well as the maximum particle generators?
The current maximum is 310.5 without any external abilities. I am curious to see just how high Gravity Well III can reach when fully specced.
To reach 310.5 in particle generators you need:
5 Fleet Embassy Particle Generator Consoles
1 Nukara Particle Converter
1 Adapted MACO Deflector
1 Astrophysicist Trait
1 Joined Trill trait
9 Points in Particle Generators (if you only have 6 you can substitute in EPtA II for +15)
Because as of right now, it looks like my Gravity Well I on holodeck deals barely less damage than the "new and improved" Gravity Well III. And the current Gravity Well I barely scratches the surface of NPCs.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
Since they locked out Tribble and Redshirt doesn't have the changes, I can just comment on what has been reported. If at 130 Aux + 142 PG GW3 deals 1,026.6 DPS then the changes suck. Using those exact stats, this is what's shown for the current broken version:
http://tinypic.com/r/2duck6e/5
So in conclusion, if the comments above are true, non-sci captains using GW1 got extra DPS as a gift, and heavily invested sci captains got a nerf hidden as a fix.
Tool tip was only 1080ish not sure what is going on there.
This was on Tribble then? You weren't using any debuffs on the target, were you?
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
no debuffs just GW III and then I watched. this was on borg probes.
What I want from gravity well is pull and lots of it. I want a **** tun of pull and I would be very happy to sacrifice damage entirely to get it. I want a Well that sucks up enemies over a space of 10k wether they have EP2E or not. I don't expect to get it. I think it would be horribly OP, but I still want it.
What I want to know is weather we can get the pull of a grav well to have any noticeable effect on people in pvp with these changes and weather I can increase its range enough to grab more enemies in PVE.
Nothing fills me with love for science more then a nice big group of enemies forced into a confined space with a couple of their friends who are about to suffer a catastrophic warp core failure.
While grav well does fill that role, it needs damage to really shine as a skill.
I am finding these numbers being posted really disheartening. I had high hopes for this change =/
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
Sadly I did not actively test that I prefer to have my wife help me do such tests with her account to keep it pure of outside influences and she cannot go on tribble right now. If the tooltip indeed lies then I have no idea.
Can someone that isn't focused on uber damage test if the thing actually pulls the enemy in? Large ships like Battle Cruisers and NOT little ships like Frigates. Thank you kindly.
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure players will still be able to escape the GW the same easy way they do now. At least with the extra DPS, it would have hurt the few moment they were in there.
Starship Particle Generator: 186
Aux: 92
Here are her Gravity Well III stats based on the Tooltip:
-0.57 Repel
1,156.9 Kinetic Damage per second (Ignores Shields) (increases closer to center)
Tribble GWIII:
-0.24 Repel
899.5 Kinetic Damage per second (Ignores Shields) (increases closer to center)
On both Tribble and Holodeck, when I removed/added-back consoles (I have 1xGravG and 2xPartG) and/or adujusted Aux power up/down the damage numbers changed accordingly, but Repel stayed the same.
It appears in both cases that either the Tooltip is broken and/or the supporting stats have no affect on Repel.
In either case (assuming this part of the Tooltip is functional), the build on Tribble is a NERF to my GWIII's damage.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
I am guessing they fixed the ability on tribble but not the tool tip. Best way to test this would be to take a 5 science console slot ship into a dual with a willing test subject and ask them to report on the effect upon them when you do and do not use the consoles.
No need to repeat the test on holodeck. Doesn't matter how high your graviton generators skill is there is no noticeable effect on a player. So if its noticeable on tribble its better.
When I can compare GW3 tribble to my holodeck performance I can say whether it's a nerf or a buff but atm I'm inclined to say it's a buff, just not quite the buff some people wanted.
And good news, buffing a GW1 as much as you can in a tacscort should not result in higher damage per tick than a science ship that knows what they're doing. Will need to transfer over my tactical with a vesta (I Know
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.