Alpha on Messenger ready in 5....Messenger sub'ed and scanned...Alpha out *silence*
Like shooting messengers bort? The resists from Power insulators are to high and cheap. The constant addition of free susbsystem power, since the removal of +subsys power engie consoles, like team batteries, shield procs, warp cores, etc ... Those two are the problem.
Tykens has multiple counters:
Drain resists (PI, OWA, MACO PROC, LEECH, EPS, Batteries), Softcounters aka Fly Out of it (EmptE, APO, jump consoles, singularity powers, Batteries...)
Also it has competition: ES3, Leech, siphon drones.
so you've got to make it worthwhile with its long cooldown. It has to to do something substantial.
Just look at the nukara web mines when you released them, or the last uni consoles. I m sorry how does your powerful -10 to subsystems fare in comparison?
The right way to fix this would be to make PI a T5 skill. You could tweak its lower its effectiveness across the board. BUt i doubt this will happen so here is a few ideas in no particular order.
Add a debuff element[-s?] to Tykens.
Route A: Subsystem energy buffs:
If you've been affected by it, the secondary bonus from EptX (maybe only Weapons and engines, leaving shields and aux to Gravity Well) or consumables (batteries, Red matter, ...) is strip and cannot be applied for the duration of the rift.
Why: this would take care of the problem that people will never sit in a tykens rift, but it still has an effect. Subsytem energy drain would be a secondary in PvP, while pve would see it more fully. (you just added a counter to empte spheres, while making Gravity well the npc probe preventer of choice).
EPS and NI should be a hard counter. For once NI should do what it tooltip says and make engies immune to this.
EPS rate and Nergy consumption:
Make tykens lower EPS rate and increase Weapons energy drain. While you sit in it it, it drains your subsystems as usual (-10 oh the horror) but it also debuffs your offensive abilities by increasing weapons energy drain, if you don't stop shooting to let them come up, you're doing it wrong and your dps is being punished.
Why:
it seems thematically appropriate, and will help tykens do its job, without turning a target into a sitting duck. Forcing people to use a battery, introduces counter play, without being OP.
Route B: Movement debuff
Make it's pull stronger (likewise GW).
Make it a movement debuff, by letting it clear APO movement boost, as well as epte, engines warpcore clicky (engines performance amplifier?), deuterium surplus consumable, etc...
why:
Its to easy to negate the effects of tykens by flying out of it, this will make that more difficult. It will force people to move around against breen NPCs and make the skills worhtwhile in pvp, if not for the drain (thats ES3) but for the debuff.
Route C: Damage
Tykens could see a substantial damage increase vs. unshielded hull, while Gravity Well remains the damage master against shielded targets.
Why:
This way PvE will see bigger damage from TR, while PvP sees more from GW. Adding variety, which is nice.
Route Rule of cool Should TR 3 and GW3 become as universally useful as APO3, hence a lot more dangerous and significant then they are now, make (only some of their effects?) indiscriminate to friend and foe.
Why:
Add smart player choices into the equation, don't just spawn your well anywhere whenever you can. Thinking about where and how to do it right is fun.
Route E: Energie Cap Debuff Let the effects of tykens be determined by the length of time an enemy has been within its radius. For discussions sake let's say ever 3s a new debuff level is achieved. Put a new Hard cap on all energy subsystems of the target. Eg. 120, 105, 95, 75. Even when you've cleared the rift, the cap stays active for the duration of the rift.
To be clear. You stayed in the rift for 3 s, you're flying around with a hard cap on all subsytems of 120, you stayed for 15s you only get 75...
EPS remains a hard counter. Batteries, EptE etc will boost you energy levels, but spike out at the tykens imposed hard cap.
TL;dR
Make it a debuff, maybe add certain affects to Tykens 3 that 2 and 1 don't have, similar to what you have with APO3 vs apo1.
EPS and NI should be hard counters, engies need the love, and its partially in the tool tip, would be nice if for once they did that.
Some effects should linger on, even if you have flown out of tykens, otherwise the skill will always be too expensive to spec into while people can all of its effects, 98% of the time.
TR and GW need a reason to be applied to NPC spawn swarms, Players, and large NOC stationary targets without shields. Add multiple effects to them to make sure they are useful no matter when and where they come of CD.
An escort, especially a decloaker, can destroy a target in 5 seconds flat, without giving them a chance to fight back. And that's okay.
But if a science ship can destroy a target in 40 seconds without giving them a chance to fight back, that's not okay?
Because that's what it seems like. You say that GW3 being able to destroy a group of frigates on a dedicated build was "too strong" so you nerfed the high-end of the damage output. You say Tyken's is too strong on the high end so you nerf that too.
If drains actually drained the target properly, if holds actually held the target properly, if high-end exotic damage sources actually did high-end damage, you'd have both Tacscorts and Sci-Sci's capable of taking out targets without them being able to fight back. The only difference being that a Tacscort can do it in 5 seconds, while Science needs 20-40 seconds.
Or do people just hate CC so much they'd rather die in 5 secs flat than be left floating helplessly for half a minute before dying?
An escort, especially a decloaker, can destroy a target in 5 seconds flat, without giving them a chance to fight back. And that's okay.
But if a science ship can destroy a target in 40 seconds without giving them a chance to fight back, that's not okay?
Because that's what it seems like. You say that GW3 being able to destroy a group of frigates on a dedicated build was "too strong" so you nerfed the high-end of the damage output. You say Tyken's is too strong on the high end so you nerf that too.
If drains actually drained the target properly, if holds actually held the target properly, if high-end exotic damage sources actually did high-end damage, you'd have both Tacscorts and Sci-Sci's capable of taking out targets without them being able to fight back. The only difference being that a Tacscort can do it in 5 seconds, while Science needs 20-40 seconds.
Or do people just hate CC so much they'd rather die in 5 secs flat than be left floating helplessly for half a minute before dying?
This ^
/10char
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
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The CRF 3 usually has other buffs stacked together to make it hurt.
I do understand that the combinations for Sci aren't nearly as straightforward but CRF 3 on it's own really doesn't do all that much.
etc.
It was an example. And the big difference is, most sci skills can be easy countered with things like HE or sci team (in most cases), which is bascially 1 click.
Against raw dmg you have to heal constantly and trying to keep the resistences up.
On a Tykens you hit he and fly out of it (if you even have to do use HE) cause it won?t follow you, like a player does. And i am pretty sure, that you will recognize a crf atk more then a stationary hazard which you can escape quite easy.
Now ofc. you will say lets combine it with grav well or EWP. Ewp is cleared by he also, so you can dly out of it... And grav well, you just need to pop an add polarized hull or apa (if you are in an escort and have less sci slots) to get out of it fast.
Same when you use tractorbeam to hold the target. Which is as i already stated not really that great if you consider that your initial skill was an aoe and not a single target skill.
So it is kinda pointless if you need single target skills to keep 1 target out of lets say 2 or 3 in the hazard, whiel the rest is flying away more or less unharmed.
Not to forgetting all the power boosting consoles and stuff we have menawhile that makes it way easier to reach max power in several systems or even overcap them, then before.
Reynolds/Thokal
U.S.S. Helios -Vesta Class/R.R.W. Dark Science - Dyson Surveillance Science Destroyer U.S.S. Donut - Fleet Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit TheWiseGuys
I think there's a few misconceptions. Tykens rift 2 with 224 in flow caps drained 60 power on a target with a 42% resistance to drains.
It does not only drain 10 power but 60 power.
Another thing worth pointing out is Iskandus' maximum drain build. He has forgone a lot of damage boosts and has heavily specced into flow caps to drain shields and subsystems to help kill targets fast. Even he's saying drains aren't very effective in PvP due to insulators.
What's worse than having control taken from you as a player? Having your abilities being meaningless either through ineffectiveness or by being outclassed by other alternatives.
I mean look at that video of ISE done in 1m30s. In what way would any science vessel be of any use to that team? Non. In what way would tykens rift 3 help? Non. You might argue it's the wrong ability for the job but short of subsystem targetting abilities any and all tactical and engineering alternatives are applicable to the mission and could help at worst they will make it take a little bit (~30s) longer.
Is everyone doing it in that time, no. However when I do runs with my fleet we finish in about 3 minutes. How many tykens rift 3 can I use in that time? 3 and with lucky procs on some duty officers 6. Is that better or the same than using say a comparable ability like attack pattern beta 3 which I can use 12 times and keep on targets >90% of the time? No, it's not even close to the same effectiveness, especially when enemies just fly away and some enemies it's not even effective on (structures).
When a science ship builds to be good at a science aspect it gives up survivability AND weapon damage in a lot of ways. They have to run high aux which reduces the power in weapons and as you're fond of quoting -10 weapon power = 20% less damage, so imagine how under powered science vessels are with energy weapons?
An answer to keeping enemies in the tykens isn't to say use warp plasma, very few non premium science ships can even use that ability so making it required to make another ability function is just bad. Not to mention it has a long cooldown and is a Lt.Commander ability in and of itself.
You can use a tractor beam but then if I'm only focussing on 1 target why am I picking tykens rift when I can choose a subsystem targetting and energy syphon with the same or higher uptime? Last I checked tykens was an AoE drain.
From what Scruffy5 said about tykens 3 and my own testing on 2 it seems 3 is as good as it should be but something needs to be done to make sure people don't just fly out of it and largely ignore it. Perhaps increasing the range so it is a very large AoE and much harder to escape fully and thus require an escape ability might be an answer. It would certainly be useful in PvE if it had a 7.5-10km range and it would be a big hazard in PvE forcing large amounts of players to scatter or use hazard emitters early.
TLDR:
Make Tykens rift bigger to make escaping it require more than just full power to engines. TR1 = 5km area, TR2 = 7.5km area, TR3 = 10km area or perhaps make them all 10km wide hazards. Keep drain as is. Keep Secondary rifts as is, test and lets get feedback.
There is a reason people are asking for science abilities to be as OP as they are asking for them to be. A lot of the people are getting to the high end of the PvE experience and are waking up to extremely high damage builds. Please take a look at this 2 minute video.
This just shows how much "dps" and damage especially romulan tactical captains with tactical heavy ships are running away with your game.
Well, since you decided to post it.
Here are the problematic things going on in that video: 1) Weapon Power Subsystem "Overcapping":
- This is either a bug or WAI, we don't know because the devs have never told us.
- It allows Beams & Dual Beam Banks to benefit from power set much higher than 125 by cushioning the low end to the point where Weapon Power Drain impact can be minimized. I'll guess most of the ships in that video have their weapon power set to an invisible 150 to 175 to cushion their drain on the low end, thus increasing output dramatically.
- The result is pretty clear, all of the highest DPS parsings are with Beam Arrays and Dual Beam Banks. 2) Pets spamming Force Multipliers.
- Just as PvPers have been complaining endlessly about, pet hangars spamming Force Multipliersis a really bad idea. It's unbalanced, and allows for ships with hangars to spam "free" Tet Warp Plasma, Tractor Beams, Power Drains, etc.
- What do we see in this video? Elite Mesh Weavers spamming and stacking copies of Attack Pattern Beta 3 with BFAW 3 to spread it around.
- Multiply that by 4 Mesh Weavers per recluse (2 in that video) for 8 Mesh weavers spamming Attack Pattern Beta 3... 3) PvE Encounter Design: This is an issue myself and others have constantly brought up: The design of the PvE environment only favors one captain type.
So while yes, PvE has long been dominated by straightforward damage builds because that's all the encounters require - we are also seeing the culmination of several problematic mechanics being optimized & utilized.
TL;DR:
1) Overcapping Beams probably needs to be looked at.
2) Elite mesh weavers probably need to be looked at.
3) PvE environment needs to create role space for all 3 captain types.
Actually there's only 1 recluse there. Yes it helped and the elite mesh weavers essentially mean 1 recluse and a scimi is equal to the other 3 scimis on the other side.
The real issue is the force multiplier attack pattern beta 3 stacking. If you noticed the other 3 scimitars were killing ridiculously fast without those pets. Having a huge force multiplier like attack pattern beta usable by the one class of ship that can pack the most damage boosting skills and most damaging weapons is the real problem. In other words putting what is the best force multiplier (in uptime with 2nd highest debuff) only usable by the class of ship that makes the most of it isn't a good idea.
I agree the missions themselves are flawed in that they require to kill in X time and offer no reason for using science or even engineering abilities. My fleet and I though have had no problems doing missions like this in 3 minutes without elite pets, or that specific method of splitting in two or cutting it to the wire. All of which have either used cruisers doubling up on their Lt.Commander tactical abilities via aux to battery + 3 technicians or escort/destroyers doing the same with commander level abilities. Or just plain using attack pattern cooldown doffs.
At the end of the day something does need to be done about this because at the moment science boff abilities either need a huge buff to be competitive in PvE or tactical boff abilities will need a huge nerf.
Also these builds are becoming much, MUCH more common and every other average player I find in the PublicEliteSTF channel is running a build like those. All this is marginalising support cruisers and the whole class of ships called science vessels.
Ways to solve it:
Prevent beta from stacking or limit the number of stacks.
Remove beta from the game. <--- most rage option.
Move beta so it's only usable by a ship class that benefits the least (by themselves) from it.
Give beta a big drawback like delta does (need to be fired upon).
Give a lot of enemies tactical team.
As far as I know beta isn't used much in PvP dues to the prevailance of tactical team. What would you do about it ultimatum baring in mind that 5 scimitars would probably only take an extra 30s ontop of that time?
Oh and before you mention my recluse, yes it's powerful but it has trouble turning inside the same map!! The pets are powerful but you do lack the manoeuvrability to actually get there easily. If beta was removed, I would want the pets to get something significant in return to make them perform well. The recluse on it's own isn't that powerful, it's the pets that make it powerful.
Actually there's only 1 recluse there. Yes it helped and the elite mesh weavers essentially mean 1 recluse and a scimi is equal to the other 3 scimis on the other side.
The real issue is the force multiplier attack pattern beta 3 stacking. If you noticed the other 3 scimitars were killing ridiculously fast without those pets.
Well, yes, but part of that is als the Beam Array/Dual Beam Bank weapon power over-capping issue.
It only works for beams/DBBs, it only works with BFAW, with BFAW hitting everything in either massive 90 degree Arc/Cone (DBBs) or a full 360 degree arc (BAs) - So everything gets tagged with Beta, everything takes damage.
Something tells me that mechanic is not WAI, but either the devs haven't looked at it or have been willing to look the other way.
The other issue?
Stationary hull hulks, that don't even fight back.
NPCs that do either one-shots or tickle, making both healers and tanks generally pointless.
NPCs that have minimal shields, minimal self buffs making SNB pointless.
Steal away my friend. My goal is easier readability, so I'm happy if others use some of the formatting as I will also steal when I find formatting things I like. :P
From a stat perspective, I really like the new Tykens Rift ability. The tooltip lists -8.6 power/second for 17 seconds at base, but it can be pushed to about -15 power/second with skill points. Now here is where this gets interesting. The power drain stacks twice, thus that -15 power/second is actually -30 power for the duration, which is a very significant debuff in PvE. The damage from Tykens rift is also a very nice extra feature. Now in PvP, this ability is still not going to have much effect on players. Power insulators needs to have some serious look put into the scaling of the effects. Emergency Power to Engines needs to be scaled down by 75% (and a large turn rate bonus needs to be added). However, that's a separate issue entirely, Tykens Rift finally has a place in PvE again.
There is already a turn rate buff power, Aux to Inertial Damps.
Right now:
EPTE provides a lot of speed, and can boost defense.
Aux to ID provides better turn, and adds resistance.
Personally, I like that these two powers provide very different effects with regards to movement.
EPtE's main problem is that that +40 speed persists no mater what, and is immune to any speed reducing debuff. even if your engines are disableed, you still are moving due to that bonus speed. if your engines are gummed up because of EWP, you still fly through it thanks to that bonus speed. if a tractor beam isn't super overkill strong vs you, you keep moveing due to that bonus speed.
basically, that speed bonus needs to not be immune from all anti speed debuffs if it has full up time potentual. thats the imbalance the current EPtE has created
EPtE's main problem is that that +40 speed persists no mater what, and is immune to any speed reducing debuff. even if your engines are disableed, you still are moving due to that bonus speed. if your engines are gummed up because of EWP, you still fly through it thanks to that bonus speed. if a tractor beam isn't super overkill strong vs you, you keep moveing due to that bonus speed.
basically, that speed bonus needs to not be immune from all anti speed debuffs if it has full up time potentual. thats the imbalance the current EPtE has created
That's generally a better summary that what most people are asking for.
It wasn't more than a few months ago that people basically laughed at EPTE for being "useless", and with EPTS still being #1 for most ship builds and +10% to +16.6% flat damage boost being a very strong competitor so any tweaks to EPTE need to be done with a light hand or it will quickly be off the plate for builds again.
A note on EPTW 1 > 2 > 3
EPTW 1 = 10% flat boost vs. 16.6% flat boost with EPTW 3
An extra 6.6% flat boost is about as much as a full MK XI Purple Tac console.
So EPTW 3 over EPTW 1 is a choice between adding 1.5 Tac consoles or 2.5 Tac consoles, with EPTW 2 adding around 2 full Tac consoles. (+the added power to system, obviously).
That's generally a better summary that what most people are asking for.
It wasn't more than a few months ago that people basically laughed at EPTE for being "useless", and with EPTS still being #1 for most ship builds and +10% to +16.6% flat damage boost being a very strong competitor so any tweaks to EPTE need to be done with a light hand or it will quickly be off the plate for builds again.
A note on EPTW 1 > 2 > 3
EPTW 1 = 10% flat boost vs. 16.6% flat boost with EPTW 3
An extra 6.6% flat boost is about as much as a full MK XI Purple Tac console.
So EPTW 3 over EPTW 1 is a choice between adding 1.5 Tac consoles or 2.5 Tac consoles, with EPTW 2 adding around 2 full Tac consoles. (+the added power to system, obviously).
Also don't forget about the overcapping and the way power is refunded during the cycle. Most notably affects beams. The increase in power from EptW3 over EptW1 might be enough to negat -10 in power which we all know is a large boost as well.
I fully agree with DDIS btw. Take off your engines in sol and hit EptE...you fly as if you had engines. That my friends is not cricket.
On topic as well. What do you both think of increasing the area of tykens to be much larger thus allowing for it to at least be an AoE hazard even if it is easily avoided/flown away from by an engine battery?
Also don't forget about the overcapping and the way power is refunded during the cycle. Most notably affects beams.
It almost only affects beams.
Neither Over-capping nor Weapon Drain Resistance (Omega Weapon AMP or Marion+DEM) have shown any significant improvements for any of the tests I've done on DHCs (1% or less).
On topic as well. What do you both think of increasing the area of tykens to be much larger thus allowing for it to at least be an AoE hazard even if it is easily avoided/flown away from by an engine battery?
That sounds reasonable, as long as it's not OMG Humongous like the Black Hole (SIC) console, especially with the DOFF that allows multiple rifts on procs.
light hand my TRIBBLE, currently EPtE coupled with APO, evasive, and the doffs/traits that reduce those cooldowns is creating ships that:
1. Are so fast if you blink they are 20k away, and were 20k away before you blinked, except for in that time they zipped in and dumped 50+k damage on you.
2. Cannot be stopped/slowed
3. Can do this virtually indefinitely
The only counter is to do it your damn self, which is a ridiculous counter. I dont like railroad builds.
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 think (testing will verify) that ya'll may be reading too much in the boosts to the low-end scales of Tyken and GravWell. While they are definitely improvements for ships that are completely unskilled for the use of these abilities, they are not intended to make the powers superior to the versions used by properly geared/specced ships and players.
One of the purposes behind shoring up the bottom end of these abilities is so that we have a more solid, predictable level of impact being witnessed by all players and critters when the abilities in question are used in combat. Without these changes, the variance in effectiveness from the low-end to high-end was simply far too wide for us to even begin balancing the ability to any sort of standard use cases. There was no 'average' that could be used as a meaningful metric for establishing the power's overall effectiveness, and the existing range was too large to establish expected results.
In other words, these changes lay the ground work for us to be more capable of tuning and tweaking the abilities in meaningful ways that will lead to more predictable results in the long run. Players have been clamoring for Science improvements for years now, and this is the first step towards being able to deliver on those requests with fixes that aren't just band-aids.
If the same logic were applied to weapon power levels, DHCs, tac consoles and other tac buffs, I would be less skeptical and be trying harder not to see this as a stealth tac buff. While no-one is asking for Sci to do DHC level damage, High Aux and High Science skill specs should, in my opinion, have the same scaling mechanics as stacked-to-the-nines energy DPS builds. If not, give all sci ships 4 forward weapons, the ability to load cannons, and have done with it as it is my understanding that the space magic is precisely why they don't have these things. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.
I do, however, welcome any work on and investigation into the mechanics of sci powers and I am glad this discussion is being had.
Please get this and GW right before release to holodeck. We can wait, and it's not going to lose anyone any money.
"So my fun is wrong?"
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
Here's a thought. How about just giving powers that are man-made, instead of the ability to recreate extraordinary phenomenon like Tyken's Rift.
Want a gravity well? Drop a graviton beam on a spot... we dont need to recreate a phenomenon we can just create a simple man-made phenomenon that is confined in power to our limits and abilities
Same thing for Tyken's Rift, stop trying to replicate the massively powerful phenomenon (not possible to do so and keep any kind of balance), and instead use man-made technology to create an effect which actually can be balanced in a sensible sort of way.
I understand the desire to bring the TV shows into the game universe but it seems like the stuff has to be so severely downgraded that it is no longer recognizable as the same thing, meaning that it cant be done. Why not just do it ourselves instead.
The only thing I can think of is perhaps separating the shared CD with GW this way at least in PvE you could use the two of them as a nice 1 > 2 punch. (although a few DOFFs would need re-tuning)
PvP is a single target focused environment, I don't feel needing a TB to make TR work is unreasonable.
The CRF 3 usually has other buffs stacked together to make it hurt.
I do understand that the combinations for Sci aren't nearly as straightforward but CRF 3 on it's own really doesn't do all that much.
Passive shield regen actually does quite a lot.
You do know that at 125 shield power, that you are getting 4x the listed Regen correct?
+your T4 Omega rep passive
+Any bonus regen from EPTS
+Any bonus regen from Extends
etc.
It still takes 6 SECONDS to get that amount of shield health back though. Its not continuous over 6 seconds its 5 seconds of nothing then the amount on the 6th second. doesnt matter if its 900 shields per 6 seconds you can still be killed in 6 seconds you know what I mean?
In PvP you can be dead in 6 seconds. End of story.
As someone who only plays PvE, I mostly wish Sci abilities functioned as crowd control.
The problem I have with Tyken's Rift is that it is stationary and critters (especially Borg Spheres in ESTFs) can fly away from it.
How to fix Tyken's? Any one or more of the following mixed in various degrees:
* Get rid of the dmg TR causes and give it some sort of hold. Tykens can have hold with a side of drain, Grav Well can have hold with a side of exotic dmg.
* Make Tyken's effect burst onto anyone in its AoE and "stick" to the affected target(s) so that even if they move outside the Rift, they're affected for X seconds. Consider limiting the number of TR debuff stacks either so only 1 or 2 can be in effect at a time, and/or additionals have diminishing returns.
* Remove (or considerably reduce) the cooldown between TR and GW. That way a single ship can apply both to the same crowd... GW to hold them in the TR for their drain, while both do their damage each.
An escort, especially a decloaker, can destroy a target in 5 seconds flat, without giving them a chance to fight back. And that's okay.
But if a science ship can destroy a target in 40 seconds without giving them a chance to fight back, that's not okay?
Because that's what it seems like. You say that GW3 being able to destroy a group of frigates on a dedicated build was "too strong" so you nerfed the high-end of the damage output. You say Tyken's is too strong on the high end so you nerf that too.
If drains actually drained the target properly, if holds actually held the target properly, if high-end exotic damage sources actually did high-end damage, you'd have both Tacscorts and Sci-Sci's capable of taking out targets without them being able to fight back. The only difference being that a Tacscort can do it in 5 seconds, while Science needs 20-40 seconds.
Or do people just hate CC so much they'd rather die in 5 secs flat than be left floating helplessly for half a minute before dying?
Agreed 100%
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
The only thing I can think of is perhaps separating the shared CD with GW this way at least in PvE you could use the two of them as a nice 1 > 2 punch. (although a few DOFFs would need re-tuning)
PvP is a single target focused environment, I don't feel needing a TB to make TR work is unreasonable.
The CRF 3 usually has other buffs stacked together to make it hurt.
I do understand that the combinations for Sci aren't nearly as straightforward but CRF 3 on it's own really doesn't do all that much.
Passive shield regen actually does quite a lot.
You do know that at 125 shield power, that you are getting 4x the listed Regen correct?
+your T4 Omega rep passive
+Any bonus regen from EPTS
+Any bonus regen from Extends
etc.
Thanks for forum policing to keep people on topic, and their feedback constructive, buddy.
So now that the changes are live, what do you think about BOrts attention to this thread. Tykens is still a joke, low specced damage has been buffed, non of the counters to tykens been addressed.
Somehow, i have this uncontrollable urge to just say:
Well, yes, but part of that is als the Beam Array/Dual Beam Bank weapon power over-capping issue.
It only works for beams/DBBs, it only works with BFAW, with BFAW hitting everything in either massive 90 degree Arc/Cone (DBBs) or a full 360 degree arc (BAs) - So everything gets tagged with Beta, everything takes damage.
Something tells me that mechanic is not WAI, but either the devs haven't looked at it or have been willing to look the other way.
The other issue?
Stationary hull hulks, that don't even fight back.
NPCs that do either one-shots or tickle, making both healers and tanks generally pointless.
NPCs that have minimal shields, minimal self buffs making SNB pointless.
This all falls under PvE design issues.
Every class of ship has several variants that can carry Beta.
Quick solution?
Give NPCs Tac Team x 2 and constantly cycle them.
Watch how fast those Attack Pattern Beta builds disappear.
Watch how quickly PvE Tac captains complain that FOMM is now irrelevant.
Give BOSS NPCs a massive list of BUFFs to use and cycle through - watch as SNB becomes more important.
Other NPC changes:
> Add higher consistent DPS, at least 4x current output,
> Lower their high end single shot spike, to at least 1/2 of now
What this will incentivise:
A) Pushes all out offense builds (like in that video) to slot for more mitigation again Bring a Tank
C) Bring a Healer
Steal away my friend. My goal is easier readability, so I'm happy if others use some of the formatting as I will also steal when I find formatting things I like. :P
Dual heavy cannons do such ridiculous damage that it's great that they can't energy overcap and get even more epic damage, if this is in fact the case. Beams do low damage or "pressure" damage (spike is necessary to do most anything in this game with all the passive regens/resistances/heals available) and if one uses high levels of emergency power to weapons and batteries and whatnot, they can actually get beams to do some decent, yet still not as much damage as dual heavy cannons and you think that should be nerfed? LMAO.
Aside from all of this, I would like it if they would rebalance all weapons to compensate and get rid of weapon energy drain altogether. The drain mechanic is odd, you don't have to deal with it on any other subsystem, you set weapon power to 100 and the tool tip tells you that you will do 1000 damage per second, unless you fire more than one weapon at the same time, then the tool tip starts having an epileptic fit of what your damage is. Additionally, weapons subsystem is the only one in which overcapping is useful. if you put more than the cap in aux, it doesn't give you anything, shields? engines? nothing. Only in weapons where you have to fight with the stupid drain mechanic. Let the devs give engineers some other useful skill in place of nadeon inversion and lets get rid of that nonsense.
Now, as to tyken's rift, I like the idea of making the rift bigger, if it has lower drain because it affects multiple targets, let it REALLY affect multiple targets. i actually think the minimum radius of effect even on tyken's one should be 10km with maybe a max aux tyken 3 able to get to a max of 20km. If you make the effect large enough, people basically have to stop the fight and evacuate the area to get out of it, so more than likely they'll just have to fight through it, or the counter will actually be necessary.
As for power insulators, why not make them give a minimum power guarantee rather than a drain resistance? e.g. If max power insulators gave a minimum power protection of 50 power in each subsystem, then it wouldn't matter how many tykens rifts or pol procs or energy siphons are on you, your power insulators guarantee 50 power in your subsystems, 50 power insulators gives you a minimum of 25, and no power insulators guarantees 5. That way no one gets knocked completely offline, (which would be incredibly OP, especially when coupled with an escort attacking you) the more you invest in it, the more power you are guaranteed to have, but this would mean that instead of these abilities typically only pulling a little out of someone's subsystems, they actually really get hit quite hard, but never to the point that they are absolutely helpless.
Point of clarification: if you have a guaranteed power drain protection of 50% power in every subsystem, which would require 6 points of investment into power insulators, if you have only allocated 45 power in that subsystem (efficiency boosts and all) then that subsystem isn't affected at all by drains as you are guaranteed to 50 and are below it, however, if that subsystem had 55, it could be knocked down to the 50, or if you had an overcap of 175, it could still be knocked down to that 50.
This would shore up the bottom line making it easier for people to guarantee "minimum" or "normal" operation of their ship, but allow power drains to be very effective for taking off the edge.
Ok I'm going to be the first one to say a 10-20km radius would mean 20-40km effective diameter. In other words it would take up half the map used in most cases. This is undoubtably the worst case of someone wanting it an iWin button.
5km radius might be big enough maybe not to the one target but it's an effective 10km diameter which is huge and used right can cause someone to be separated from their team and afford for a bit more tactics. Still think it might be too big but as it is, the drain is pretty good and I hear no one complaining too much about it in PvP except how easy it is to clear and get away from.
Ok I'm going to be the first one to say a 10-20km radius would mean 20-40km effective diameter. In other words it would take up half the map used in most cases. This is undoubtably the worst case of someone wanting it an iWin button.
5km radius might be big enough maybe not to the one target but it's an effective 10km diameter which is huge and used right can cause someone to be separated from their team and afford for a bit more tactics. Still think it might be too big but as it is, the drain is pretty good and I hear no one complaining too much about it in PvP except how easy it is to clear and get away from.
The opportunity cost of flying a ship with a commander science boff is huge. A commander boff on tac can have omega 3, beta 3 or crf 3 all of which do a heck of a lot more than gw or tr. even engineers can slot DeEM 3 which is a lot more useful.
Now a 10km radius is silly big and definitely not the answer. But tr needs some secondary effects like slow ship by 50% with enough power to aux.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
The problem I have with Tyken's Rift is that it is stationary and critters (especially Borg Spheres in ESTFs) can fly away from it.
Use something to keep them in it.
One of the problems I find is that many players, both PvE and PvP players, very frequently want 1 single power to do everything.
Nothing works this way, not DHCs, not Tac Powers, not other BOFF powers.
If you want to create a strong effect sometimes you need to combine a few things for it.
I've been playing around with EWP + Tykens or GW + Tykens in different combinations at the moment. For those inclined there are also control based pets, and control based special consoles.
I do think you're ideas are solid in that removing the damage component to give it a hold/pull component would be interesting.
Thanks for forum policing to keep people on topic, and their feedback constructive, buddy.
So now that the changes are live, what do you think about BOrts attention to this thread. Tykens is still a joke, low specced damage has been buffed, non of the counters to tykens been addressed.
Somehow, i have this uncontrollable urge to just say:
Told you so!
I'm watching GW and Tykens both be used to good effect in PvP - do they completely hold/drain/kill players? No, nor should they IMO.
No one single power should be able to kill or debilitate another opponent on its own.
Are you just hoping clicking Tykens 3 will completely disable an opponent?
Sci BOFF powers are a lot less straightforward, but the combinations are there.
I've already seen a few iterations of builds using both Tykens and GW to good effect for harassment/control.
So the only thing you've told me is that you either haven't sorted out a build like that or you expect "1 click" of a power to do all of the work for you.
Right now Beam Arrays & DBBs (if you can slot 5 of them Fore) are top DPS in PvE - 20k minimum, can break 30k+ with a top end build and good piloting.
A few select builds can also pump out a tremendous amount of damage in PvP as well that will be effective vs. all but coordinated opposing teams with good cross-healing.
I agree with you ultimatum about the combining aspect but it's the amount of combining etc that makes a difference.
I fire off CSV2 with APB1 on my bop earlier and it was mincing things with DHCs very fast, 2 abilities and 4 weapons (well 5 technically but 1 turret was neither here nor there) to pretty much wipe the floor with large numbers of frigates.
I fire off GW3 which is a higher ability slot and I can only have 1 copy of, use sensor scan, FAW2 and APB2 and I may get the same result after massively having to buff my weapons through embassy consoles and set bonuses and take a bit longer. Yeah I go plasma for that too because it's the only way I could make up for the lower number of damage boost slots.
How often can I use each of them? Well without doffs, on an escort or my bop I double up on the abilities and I have CSV2+APB1 chained for 66% of the time. For my GW+sensor scan+APB2+FAW2 combo, well that's at least 1 minute with GW3. I can put down some moderate damage during that time but I'm in no way competing with the BoP or an escort.
I know what you're gonna say, escorts are damage dealers. Yes and no. They the weapons specialist damage dealers, hence why they get more damaging front weapons, more frontal weapon slots, more tactical ability slots which mostly all buff, you guessed it, weapons.
Tykens rift works pretty well in PvE if you invest in it, you can suck slow enemies dry on power making shields blink off for a few seconds for a good torp attack if you time it right. Should you have to bunch them in it? Maybe but the multi target ability for that shares a cool down so unless someone else is flying a science ship you need to be very quick on the trigger with tykens.
What sort of ships do you tend to fly? Have you tried flying a science ship with the high or even moderately high dps people in PvE before the changes to GW and tykens? Before you generally felt useless, now with these changes science ships feel a lot more useful packing these two abilities. I personally am fine as is but the feedback in the PvP forums on tykens say it needs a little bit of fairy dust to make it shine so I try to make sure that is heard.
Part of me thinks it's draining too much on PvE enemies but then I think of how often you can not use it, how much you have to put into it to get that and consider if acting alone it makes you on par with other ship classes. When I consider all that I'm more inclined to leave it as is, if only for the fact it will help keep the class and by extension game alive longer.
I know what you're gonna say, escorts are damage dealers. Yes and no. They the weapons specialist damage dealers, hence why they get more damaging front weapons, more frontal weapon slots, more tactical ability slots which mostly all buff, you guessed it, weapons.
They are damage dealers, as are Raiders, some destroyers, hybrid ships and battlecruisers, etc.
I know a lot of players would like Sci to be "exotic damage dealers", but unless the devs decide to revamp all of Sci to reduce the control and add more damage, I just don't see this happening.
I've boiled it down to 3 PvP focused characters at this point and those are 2 Tac/Warbirds and 1 Sci/Sci Ship.
You should try PvP sometime, because I think you'd be really pleasantly surprised just how effective a good Sci - or even better a good team of Scis - can really be.
However until the rep system overload started, I have 2 to 3 of each career laying around somewhere. I've played every ship type there is to some extent.
The problem with Sci ships and some Cruiser designs is that PvE does not have a space for them.
So while most players just want everything to be reshaped into some flavor of "damage dealer", I'd much prefer the game actually have endgame content that required more than smashing your spacebar.
Yeah I've tried some PvP in a science ship, it's nice, especially funny crippling a JHAS making them go WTFBBQ!?!
As I said in other threads I don't PvP for a number of reasons, primarily the ego and the gear (though that has come down a lot) but also that I'd have to have 2 completely different set ups ontop of the 3 I already have for PvE.
I also know where you're coming from in terms of this rep stuff. Almost got a character at full rep but it's a secondary thing for my others.
On topic of damage dealers. In some ways I don't think that science ships should be exotic damage dealers though they should always do the most exotic damage out of the few exotic damage options. The way I see science ships is that they're weaker on the weapons due to lower weapon power most of the time and lower consoles but they're supposed to make up for that by weakening the enemy to make their weaker hits hit harder.
It would be nice if we had some clarification on just what the ship classes are supposed to perform like. Are they all supposed to be able to do about the same damage (with escorts being a bit ahead) over the course of the PvE mission or is it supposed to play like the trinity everyone keeps saying? (healer, tank damage dealer)
I mean at the moment my captains all perform pretty well in the same ships with my tactical being ahead by a fair bit due to high damage from everything. However they also all perform pretty poorly in a science ships in comparison to other carriers and heavy tactical seating ships either due to a lack of punch or just that the abilities don't really help get the job done.
Exception being Gravity Well and Tykens Rift as they are now. They're fantastic and help my science ships feel useful again.
Comments
Seriously, some science captains have no concept of balance.
Even -30 for a high end power is too much. There's enough drains in this game as it is.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Like shooting messengers bort? The resists from Power insulators are to high and cheap. The constant addition of free susbsystem power, since the removal of +subsys power engie consoles, like team batteries, shield procs, warp cores, etc ... Those two are the problem.
Tykens has multiple counters:
Drain resists (PI, OWA, MACO PROC, LEECH, EPS, Batteries), Softcounters aka Fly Out of it (EmptE, APO, jump consoles, singularity powers, Batteries...)
Also it has competition: ES3, Leech, siphon drones.
so you've got to make it worthwhile with its long cooldown. It has to to do something substantial.
Just look at the nukara web mines when you released them, or the last uni consoles. I m sorry how does your powerful -10 to subsystems fare in comparison?
The right way to fix this would be to make PI a T5 skill. You could tweak its lower its effectiveness across the board. BUt i doubt this will happen so here is a few ideas in no particular order.
Add a debuff element[-s?] to Tykens.
Route A: Subsystem energy buffs:
If you've been affected by it, the secondary bonus from EptX (maybe only Weapons and engines, leaving shields and aux to Gravity Well) or consumables (batteries, Red matter, ...) is strip and cannot be applied for the duration of the rift.
Why: this would take care of the problem that people will never sit in a tykens rift, but it still has an effect. Subsytem energy drain would be a secondary in PvP, while pve would see it more fully. (you just added a counter to empte spheres, while making Gravity well the npc probe preventer of choice).
EPS and NI should be a hard counter. For once NI should do what it tooltip says and make engies immune to this.
EPS rate and Nergy consumption:
Make tykens lower EPS rate and increase Weapons energy drain. While you sit in it it, it drains your subsystems as usual (-10 oh the horror) but it also debuffs your offensive abilities by increasing weapons energy drain, if you don't stop shooting to let them come up, you're doing it wrong and your dps is being punished.
Why:
it seems thematically appropriate, and will help tykens do its job, without turning a target into a sitting duck. Forcing people to use a battery, introduces counter play, without being OP.
Route B: Movement debuff
Make it's pull stronger (likewise GW).
Make it a movement debuff, by letting it clear APO movement boost, as well as epte, engines warpcore clicky (engines performance amplifier?), deuterium surplus consumable, etc...
why:
Its to easy to negate the effects of tykens by flying out of it, this will make that more difficult. It will force people to move around against breen NPCs and make the skills worhtwhile in pvp, if not for the drain (thats ES3) but for the debuff.
Route C: Damage
Tykens could see a substantial damage increase vs. unshielded hull, while Gravity Well remains the damage master against shielded targets.
Why:
This way PvE will see bigger damage from TR, while PvP sees more from GW. Adding variety, which is nice.
Route
Should TR 3 and GW3 become as universally useful as APO3, hence a lot more dangerous and significant then they are now, make (only some of their effects?) indiscriminate to friend and foe.
Why:
Add smart player choices into the equation, don't just spawn your well anywhere whenever you can. Thinking about where and how to do it right is fun.
Route E: Energie Cap Debuff
Let the effects of tykens be determined by the length of time an enemy has been within its radius. For discussions sake let's say ever 3s a new debuff level is achieved. Put a new Hard cap on all energy subsystems of the target. Eg. 120, 105, 95, 75. Even when you've cleared the rift, the cap stays active for the duration of the rift.
To be clear. You stayed in the rift for 3 s, you're flying around with a hard cap on all subsytems of 120, you stayed for 15s you only get 75...
EPS remains a hard counter. Batteries, EptE etc will boost you energy levels, but spike out at the tykens imposed hard cap.
TL;dR
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
An escort, especially a decloaker, can destroy a target in 5 seconds flat, without giving them a chance to fight back. And that's okay.
But if a science ship can destroy a target in 40 seconds without giving them a chance to fight back, that's not okay?
Because that's what it seems like. You say that GW3 being able to destroy a group of frigates on a dedicated build was "too strong" so you nerfed the high-end of the damage output. You say Tyken's is too strong on the high end so you nerf that too.
If drains actually drained the target properly, if holds actually held the target properly, if high-end exotic damage sources actually did high-end damage, you'd have both Tacscorts and Sci-Sci's capable of taking out targets without them being able to fight back. The only difference being that a Tacscort can do it in 5 seconds, while Science needs 20-40 seconds.
Or do people just hate CC so much they'd rather die in 5 secs flat than be left floating helplessly for half a minute before dying?
This ^
/10char
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
It was an example. And the big difference is, most sci skills can be easy countered with things like HE or sci team (in most cases), which is bascially 1 click.
Against raw dmg you have to heal constantly and trying to keep the resistences up.
On a Tykens you hit he and fly out of it (if you even have to do use HE) cause it won?t follow you, like a player does. And i am pretty sure, that you will recognize a crf atk more then a stationary hazard which you can escape quite easy.
Now ofc. you will say lets combine it with grav well or EWP. Ewp is cleared by he also, so you can dly out of it... And grav well, you just need to pop an add polarized hull or apa (if you are in an escort and have less sci slots) to get out of it fast.
Same when you use tractorbeam to hold the target. Which is as i already stated not really that great if you consider that your initial skill was an aoe and not a single target skill.
So it is kinda pointless if you need single target skills to keep 1 target out of lets say 2 or 3 in the hazard, whiel the rest is flying away more or less unharmed.
Not to forgetting all the power boosting consoles and stuff we have menawhile that makes it way easier to reach max power in several systems or even overcap them, then before.
U.S.S. Helios -Vesta Class / R.R.W. Dark Science - Dyson Surveillance Science Destroyer
U.S.S. Donut - Fleet Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit
TheWiseGuys
Make it strip, as in remove, a targets EPtX buff(s).
It does not only drain 10 power but 60 power.
Another thing worth pointing out is Iskandus' maximum drain build. He has forgone a lot of damage boosts and has heavily specced into flow caps to drain shields and subsystems to help kill targets fast. Even he's saying drains aren't very effective in PvP due to insulators.
What's worse than having control taken from you as a player? Having your abilities being meaningless either through ineffectiveness or by being outclassed by other alternatives.
I mean look at that video of ISE done in 1m30s. In what way would any science vessel be of any use to that team? Non. In what way would tykens rift 3 help? Non. You might argue it's the wrong ability for the job but short of subsystem targetting abilities any and all tactical and engineering alternatives are applicable to the mission and could help at worst they will make it take a little bit (~30s) longer.
Is everyone doing it in that time, no. However when I do runs with my fleet we finish in about 3 minutes. How many tykens rift 3 can I use in that time? 3 and with lucky procs on some duty officers 6. Is that better or the same than using say a comparable ability like attack pattern beta 3 which I can use 12 times and keep on targets >90% of the time? No, it's not even close to the same effectiveness, especially when enemies just fly away and some enemies it's not even effective on (structures).
When a science ship builds to be good at a science aspect it gives up survivability AND weapon damage in a lot of ways. They have to run high aux which reduces the power in weapons and as you're fond of quoting -10 weapon power = 20% less damage, so imagine how under powered science vessels are with energy weapons?
An answer to keeping enemies in the tykens isn't to say use warp plasma, very few non premium science ships can even use that ability so making it required to make another ability function is just bad. Not to mention it has a long cooldown and is a Lt.Commander ability in and of itself.
You can use a tractor beam but then if I'm only focussing on 1 target why am I picking tykens rift when I can choose a subsystem targetting and energy syphon with the same or higher uptime? Last I checked tykens was an AoE drain.
From what Scruffy5 said about tykens 3 and my own testing on 2 it seems 3 is as good as it should be but something needs to be done to make sure people don't just fly out of it and largely ignore it. Perhaps increasing the range so it is a very large AoE and much harder to escape fully and thus require an escape ability might be an answer. It would certainly be useful in PvE if it had a 7.5-10km range and it would be a big hazard in PvE forcing large amounts of players to scatter or use hazard emitters early.
TLDR:
Make Tykens rift bigger to make escaping it require more than just full power to engines. TR1 = 5km area, TR2 = 7.5km area, TR3 = 10km area or perhaps make them all 10km wide hazards. Keep drain as is. Keep Secondary rifts as is, test and lets get feedback.
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.
Well, since you decided to post it.
Here are the problematic things going on in that video:
1) Weapon Power Subsystem "Overcapping":
- This is either a bug or WAI, we don't know because the devs have never told us.
- It allows Beams & Dual Beam Banks to benefit from power set much higher than 125 by cushioning the low end to the point where Weapon Power Drain impact can be minimized. I'll guess most of the ships in that video have their weapon power set to an invisible 150 to 175 to cushion their drain on the low end, thus increasing output dramatically.
- The result is pretty clear, all of the highest DPS parsings are with Beam Arrays and Dual Beam Banks.
2) Pets spamming Force Multipliers.
- Just as PvPers have been complaining endlessly about, pet hangars spamming Force Multipliers is a really bad idea. It's unbalanced, and allows for ships with hangars to spam "free" Tet Warp Plasma, Tractor Beams, Power Drains, etc.
- What do we see in this video? Elite Mesh Weavers spamming and stacking copies of Attack Pattern Beta 3 with BFAW 3 to spread it around.
- Multiply that by 4 Mesh Weavers per recluse (2 in that video) for 8 Mesh weavers spamming Attack Pattern Beta 3...
3) PvE Encounter Design: This is an issue myself and others have constantly brought up: The design of the PvE environment only favors one captain type.
So while yes, PvE has long been dominated by straightforward damage builds because that's all the encounters require - we are also seeing the culmination of several problematic mechanics being optimized & utilized.
TL;DR:
1) Overcapping Beams probably needs to be looked at.
2) Elite mesh weavers probably need to be looked at.
3) PvE environment needs to create role space for all 3 captain types.
The real issue is the force multiplier attack pattern beta 3 stacking. If you noticed the other 3 scimitars were killing ridiculously fast without those pets. Having a huge force multiplier like attack pattern beta usable by the one class of ship that can pack the most damage boosting skills and most damaging weapons is the real problem. In other words putting what is the best force multiplier (in uptime with 2nd highest debuff) only usable by the class of ship that makes the most of it isn't a good idea.
I agree the missions themselves are flawed in that they require to kill in X time and offer no reason for using science or even engineering abilities. My fleet and I though have had no problems doing missions like this in 3 minutes without elite pets, or that specific method of splitting in two or cutting it to the wire. All of which have either used cruisers doubling up on their Lt.Commander tactical abilities via aux to battery + 3 technicians or escort/destroyers doing the same with commander level abilities. Or just plain using attack pattern cooldown doffs.
At the end of the day something does need to be done about this because at the moment science boff abilities either need a huge buff to be competitive in PvE or tactical boff abilities will need a huge nerf.
Also these builds are becoming much, MUCH more common and every other average player I find in the PublicEliteSTF channel is running a build like those. All this is marginalising support cruisers and the whole class of ships called science vessels.
Ways to solve it:
Prevent beta from stacking or limit the number of stacks.
Remove beta from the game. <--- most rage option.
Move beta so it's only usable by a ship class that benefits the least (by themselves) from it.
Give beta a big drawback like delta does (need to be fired upon).
Give a lot of enemies tactical team.
As far as I know beta isn't used much in PvP dues to the prevailance of tactical team. What would you do about it ultimatum baring in mind that 5 scimitars would probably only take an extra 30s ontop of that time?
Oh and before you mention my recluse, yes it's powerful but it has trouble turning inside the same map!! The pets are powerful but you do lack the manoeuvrability to actually get there easily. If beta was removed, I would want the pets to get something significant in return to make them perform well. The recluse on it's own isn't that powerful, it's the pets that make it powerful.
P.S. I like the editing, I might steal it =P
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.
I stand corrected.
Well, yes, but part of that is als the Beam Array/Dual Beam Bank weapon power over-capping issue.
It only works for beams/DBBs, it only works with BFAW, with BFAW hitting everything in either massive 90 degree Arc/Cone (DBBs) or a full 360 degree arc (BAs) - So everything gets tagged with Beta, everything takes damage.
Something tells me that mechanic is not WAI, but either the devs haven't looked at it or have been willing to look the other way.
The other issue?
Stationary hull hulks, that don't even fight back.
NPCs that do either one-shots or tickle, making both healers and tanks generally pointless.
NPCs that have minimal shields, minimal self buffs making SNB pointless.
This all falls under PvE design issues.
Every class of ship has several variants that can carry Beta.
Quick solution?
Give NPCs Tac Team x 2 and constantly cycle them.
Watch how fast those Attack Pattern Beta builds disappear.
Watch how quickly PvE Tac captains complain that FOMM is now irrelevant.
Give BOSS NPCs a massive list of BUFFs to use and cycle through - watch as SNB becomes more important.
Other NPC changes:
> Add higher consistent DPS, at least 4x current output,
> Lower their high end single shot spike, to at least 1/2 of now
What this will incentivise:
A) Pushes all out offense builds (like in that video) to slot for more mitigation again
C) Bring a Healer
Steal away my friend. My goal is easier readability, so I'm happy if others use some of the formatting as I will also steal when I find formatting things I like. :P
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
There is already a turn rate buff power, Aux to Inertial Damps.
Right now:
EPTE provides a lot of speed, and can boost defense.
Aux to ID provides better turn, and adds resistance.
Personally, I like that these two powers provide very different effects with regards to movement.
EPtE's main problem is that that +40 speed persists no mater what, and is immune to any speed reducing debuff. even if your engines are disableed, you still are moving due to that bonus speed. if your engines are gummed up because of EWP, you still fly through it thanks to that bonus speed. if a tractor beam isn't super overkill strong vs you, you keep moveing due to that bonus speed.
basically, that speed bonus needs to not be immune from all anti speed debuffs if it has full up time potentual. thats the imbalance the current EPtE has created
That's generally a better summary that what most people are asking for.
It wasn't more than a few months ago that people basically laughed at EPTE for being "useless", and with EPTS still being #1 for most ship builds and +10% to +16.6% flat damage boost being a very strong competitor so any tweaks to EPTE need to be done with a light hand or it will quickly be off the plate for builds again.
A note on EPTW 1 > 2 > 3
EPTW 1 = 10% flat boost vs. 16.6% flat boost with EPTW 3
An extra 6.6% flat boost is about as much as a full MK XI Purple Tac console.
So EPTW 3 over EPTW 1 is a choice between adding 1.5 Tac consoles or 2.5 Tac consoles, with EPTW 2 adding around 2 full Tac consoles. (+the added power to system, obviously).
Also don't forget about the overcapping and the way power is refunded during the cycle. Most notably affects beams. The increase in power from EptW3 over EptW1 might be enough to negat -10 in power which we all know is a large boost as well.
I fully agree with DDIS btw. Take off your engines in sol and hit EptE...you fly as if you had engines. That my friends is not cricket.
On topic as well. What do you both think of increasing the area of tykens to be much larger thus allowing for it to at least be an AoE hazard even if it is easily avoided/flown away from by an engine battery?
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.
It almost only affects beams.
Neither Over-capping nor Weapon Drain Resistance (Omega Weapon AMP or Marion+DEM) have shown any significant improvements for any of the tests I've done on DHCs (1% or less).
That sounds reasonable, as long as it's not OMG Humongous like the Black Hole (SIC) console, especially with the DOFF that allows multiple rifts on procs.
1. Are so fast if you blink they are 20k away, and were 20k away before you blinked, except for in that time they zipped in and dumped 50+k damage on you.
2. Cannot be stopped/slowed
3. Can do this virtually indefinitely
The only counter is to do it your damn self, which is a ridiculous counter. I dont like railroad builds.
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
If the same logic were applied to weapon power levels, DHCs, tac consoles and other tac buffs, I would be less skeptical and be trying harder not to see this as a stealth tac buff. While no-one is asking for Sci to do DHC level damage, High Aux and High Science skill specs should, in my opinion, have the same scaling mechanics as stacked-to-the-nines energy DPS builds. If not, give all sci ships 4 forward weapons, the ability to load cannons, and have done with it as it is my understanding that the space magic is precisely why they don't have these things. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.
I do, however, welcome any work on and investigation into the mechanics of sci powers and I am glad this discussion is being had.
Please get this and GW right before release to holodeck. We can wait, and it's not going to lose anyone any money.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
Want a gravity well? Drop a graviton beam on a spot... we dont need to recreate a phenomenon we can just create a simple man-made phenomenon that is confined in power to our limits and abilities
Same thing for Tyken's Rift, stop trying to replicate the massively powerful phenomenon (not possible to do so and keep any kind of balance), and instead use man-made technology to create an effect which actually can be balanced in a sensible sort of way.
I understand the desire to bring the TV shows into the game universe but it seems like the stuff has to be so severely downgraded that it is no longer recognizable as the same thing, meaning that it cant be done. Why not just do it ourselves instead.
It still takes 6 SECONDS to get that amount of shield health back though. Its not continuous over 6 seconds its 5 seconds of nothing then the amount on the 6th second. doesnt matter if its 900 shields per 6 seconds you can still be killed in 6 seconds you know what I mean?
In PvP you can be dead in 6 seconds. End of story.
The problem I have with Tyken's Rift is that it is stationary and critters (especially Borg Spheres in ESTFs) can fly away from it.
How to fix Tyken's? Any one or more of the following mixed in various degrees:
* Get rid of the dmg TR causes and give it some sort of hold. Tykens can have hold with a side of drain, Grav Well can have hold with a side of exotic dmg.
* Make Tyken's effect burst onto anyone in its AoE and "stick" to the affected target(s) so that even if they move outside the Rift, they're affected for X seconds. Consider limiting the number of TR debuff stacks either so only 1 or 2 can be in effect at a time, and/or additionals have diminishing returns.
* Remove (or considerably reduce) the cooldown between TR and GW. That way a single ship can apply both to the same crowd... GW to hold them in the TR for their drain, while both do their damage each.
Agreed 100%
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Thanks for forum policing to keep people on topic, and their feedback constructive, buddy.
So now that the changes are live, what do you think about BOrts attention to this thread. Tykens is still a joke, low specced damage has been buffed, non of the counters to tykens been addressed.
Somehow, i have this uncontrollable urge to just say:
Told you so!
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Dual heavy cannons do such ridiculous damage that it's great that they can't energy overcap and get even more epic damage, if this is in fact the case. Beams do low damage or "pressure" damage (spike is necessary to do most anything in this game with all the passive regens/resistances/heals available) and if one uses high levels of emergency power to weapons and batteries and whatnot, they can actually get beams to do some decent, yet still not as much damage as dual heavy cannons and you think that should be nerfed? LMAO.
Aside from all of this, I would like it if they would rebalance all weapons to compensate and get rid of weapon energy drain altogether. The drain mechanic is odd, you don't have to deal with it on any other subsystem, you set weapon power to 100 and the tool tip tells you that you will do 1000 damage per second, unless you fire more than one weapon at the same time, then the tool tip starts having an epileptic fit of what your damage is. Additionally, weapons subsystem is the only one in which overcapping is useful. if you put more than the cap in aux, it doesn't give you anything, shields? engines? nothing. Only in weapons where you have to fight with the stupid drain mechanic. Let the devs give engineers some other useful skill in place of nadeon inversion and lets get rid of that nonsense.
Now, as to tyken's rift, I like the idea of making the rift bigger, if it has lower drain because it affects multiple targets, let it REALLY affect multiple targets. i actually think the minimum radius of effect even on tyken's one should be 10km with maybe a max aux tyken 3 able to get to a max of 20km. If you make the effect large enough, people basically have to stop the fight and evacuate the area to get out of it, so more than likely they'll just have to fight through it, or the counter will actually be necessary.
As for power insulators, why not make them give a minimum power guarantee rather than a drain resistance? e.g. If max power insulators gave a minimum power protection of 50 power in each subsystem, then it wouldn't matter how many tykens rifts or pol procs or energy siphons are on you, your power insulators guarantee 50 power in your subsystems, 50 power insulators gives you a minimum of 25, and no power insulators guarantees 5. That way no one gets knocked completely offline, (which would be incredibly OP, especially when coupled with an escort attacking you) the more you invest in it, the more power you are guaranteed to have, but this would mean that instead of these abilities typically only pulling a little out of someone's subsystems, they actually really get hit quite hard, but never to the point that they are absolutely helpless.
Point of clarification: if you have a guaranteed power drain protection of 50% power in every subsystem, which would require 6 points of investment into power insulators, if you have only allocated 45 power in that subsystem (efficiency boosts and all) then that subsystem isn't affected at all by drains as you are guaranteed to 50 and are below it, however, if that subsystem had 55, it could be knocked down to the 50, or if you had an overcap of 175, it could still be knocked down to that 50.
This would shore up the bottom line making it easier for people to guarantee "minimum" or "normal" operation of their ship, but allow power drains to be very effective for taking off the edge.
5km radius might be big enough maybe not to the one target but it's an effective 10km diameter which is huge and used right can cause someone to be separated from their team and afford for a bit more tactics. Still think it might be too big but as it is, the drain is pretty good and I hear no one complaining too much about it in PvP except how easy it is to clear and get away from.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
The opportunity cost of flying a ship with a commander science boff is huge. A commander boff on tac can have omega 3, beta 3 or crf 3 all of which do a heck of a lot more than gw or tr. even engineers can slot DeEM 3 which is a lot more useful.
Now a 10km radius is silly big and definitely not the answer. But tr needs some secondary effects like slow ship by 50% with enough power to aux.
- Judge Aaron Satie
Use something to keep them in it.
One of the problems I find is that many players, both PvE and PvP players, very frequently want 1 single power to do everything.
Nothing works this way, not DHCs, not Tac Powers, not other BOFF powers.
If you want to create a strong effect sometimes you need to combine a few things for it.
I've been playing around with EWP + Tykens or GW + Tykens in different combinations at the moment. For those inclined there are also control based pets, and control based special consoles.
I do think you're ideas are solid in that removing the damage component to give it a hold/pull component would be interesting.
I'm watching GW and Tykens both be used to good effect in PvP - do they completely hold/drain/kill players? No, nor should they IMO.
No one single power should be able to kill or debilitate another opponent on its own.
Are you just hoping clicking Tykens 3 will completely disable an opponent?
Sci BOFF powers are a lot less straightforward, but the combinations are there.
I've already seen a few iterations of builds using both Tykens and GW to good effect for harassment/control.
So the only thing you've told me is that you either haven't sorted out a build like that or you expect "1 click" of a power to do all of the work for you.
Right now Beam Arrays & DBBs (if you can slot 5 of them Fore) are top DPS in PvE - 20k minimum, can break 30k+ with a top end build and good piloting.
A few select builds can also pump out a tremendous amount of damage in PvP as well that will be effective vs. all but coordinated opposing teams with good cross-healing.
I fire off CSV2 with APB1 on my bop earlier and it was mincing things with DHCs very fast, 2 abilities and 4 weapons (well 5 technically but 1 turret was neither here nor there) to pretty much wipe the floor with large numbers of frigates.
I fire off GW3 which is a higher ability slot and I can only have 1 copy of, use sensor scan, FAW2 and APB2 and I may get the same result after massively having to buff my weapons through embassy consoles and set bonuses and take a bit longer. Yeah I go plasma for that too because it's the only way I could make up for the lower number of damage boost slots.
How often can I use each of them? Well without doffs, on an escort or my bop I double up on the abilities and I have CSV2+APB1 chained for 66% of the time. For my GW+sensor scan+APB2+FAW2 combo, well that's at least 1 minute with GW3. I can put down some moderate damage during that time but I'm in no way competing with the BoP or an escort.
I know what you're gonna say, escorts are damage dealers. Yes and no. They the weapons specialist damage dealers, hence why they get more damaging front weapons, more frontal weapon slots, more tactical ability slots which mostly all buff, you guessed it, weapons.
Tykens rift works pretty well in PvE if you invest in it, you can suck slow enemies dry on power making shields blink off for a few seconds for a good torp attack if you time it right. Should you have to bunch them in it? Maybe but the multi target ability for that shares a cool down so unless someone else is flying a science ship you need to be very quick on the trigger with tykens.
What sort of ships do you tend to fly? Have you tried flying a science ship with the high or even moderately high dps people in PvE before the changes to GW and tykens? Before you generally felt useless, now with these changes science ships feel a lot more useful packing these two abilities. I personally am fine as is but the feedback in the PvP forums on tykens say it needs a little bit of fairy dust to make it shine so I try to make sure that is heard.
Part of me thinks it's draining too much on PvE enemies but then I think of how often you can not use it, how much you have to put into it to get that and consider if acting alone it makes you on par with other ship classes. When I consider all that I'm more inclined to leave it as is, if only for the fact it will help keep the class and by extension game alive longer.
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.
They are damage dealers, as are Raiders, some destroyers, hybrid ships and battlecruisers, etc.
I know a lot of players would like Sci to be "exotic damage dealers", but unless the devs decide to revamp all of Sci to reduce the control and add more damage, I just don't see this happening.
I've boiled it down to 3 PvP focused characters at this point and those are 2 Tac/Warbirds and 1 Sci/Sci Ship.
You should try PvP sometime, because I think you'd be really pleasantly surprised just how effective a good Sci - or even better a good team of Scis - can really be.
However until the rep system overload started, I have 2 to 3 of each career laying around somewhere. I've played every ship type there is to some extent.
The problem with Sci ships and some Cruiser designs is that PvE does not have a space for them.
So while most players just want everything to be reshaped into some flavor of "damage dealer", I'd much prefer the game actually have endgame content that required more than smashing your spacebar.
As I said in other threads I don't PvP for a number of reasons, primarily the ego and the gear (though that has come down a lot) but also that I'd have to have 2 completely different set ups ontop of the 3 I already have for PvE.
I also know where you're coming from in terms of this rep stuff. Almost got a character at full rep but it's a secondary thing for my others.
On topic of damage dealers. In some ways I don't think that science ships should be exotic damage dealers though they should always do the most exotic damage out of the few exotic damage options. The way I see science ships is that they're weaker on the weapons due to lower weapon power most of the time and lower consoles but they're supposed to make up for that by weakening the enemy to make their weaker hits hit harder.
It would be nice if we had some clarification on just what the ship classes are supposed to perform like. Are they all supposed to be able to do about the same damage (with escorts being a bit ahead) over the course of the PvE mission or is it supposed to play like the trinity everyone keeps saying? (healer, tank damage dealer)
I mean at the moment my captains all perform pretty well in the same ships with my tactical being ahead by a fair bit due to high damage from everything. However they also all perform pretty poorly in a science ships in comparison to other carriers and heavy tactical seating ships either due to a lack of punch or just that the abilities don't really help get the job done.
Exception being Gravity Well and Tykens Rift as they are now. They're fantastic and help my science ships feel useful again.
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.