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DEVS: Suggstions for FAW
logicalspock
Member Posts: 836 Arc User
PvP used to take teamwork, even on a PuG, with everyone concentrating fire on the same target. Now it primarily seems to be people setting up builds that can spam fire at will with almost no cycle-break. I've posted on this topic before, and the problem has only gotten worse. Here are my updated suggestions:
1) Activating FaW clears any immunity to confuse and increases the duration of any confuse ability 100%.
2) Add feedback pulse mines to the game. These would work just like acetone assimilators except they would have FBP III turned on permanently. Alternatively, add a DOFF that gives acetone assimilators feedback pulse as well.
This would keep Fire-at-Will as a useful skill in the game while adding more effective ways to counter builds that rely on it to spam damage in PvP.
1) Activating FaW clears any immunity to confuse and increases the duration of any confuse ability 100%.
2) Add feedback pulse mines to the game. These would work just like acetone assimilators except they would have FBP III turned on permanently. Alternatively, add a DOFF that gives acetone assimilators feedback pulse as well.
This would keep Fire-at-Will as a useful skill in the game while adding more effective ways to counter builds that rely on it to spam damage in PvP.
Post edited by logicalspock on
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Use Attack-Pattern Delta, Reverse Shield Polarity and Feedbackpulse, there shouldn't be a problem anymore.
If Star Trek Online was an Open-Source (GPL) Game, we would have a low-grind fork.
This is a thread about how to balance the game, not a thread about build suggestions. If I thought that feedback pulse and reverse shield polarity, as they stand, were a balanced counter to fire at will, I would not have made the thread. Please let us try to keep on topic.
Being able to keep feedback pulse up with almost no downtime (like you can with FaW) would be an effective counter, but it is not possible as the game stands right now and, just like allowing people to run FaW with virtually no downtime had negative implications for balance, I think allowing people to run feedback pulse constantly would have negative implications. Not to mention, not every build has access to feedback pulse.
Doesnt work vs DEM
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
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- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
Oh creepy. Keepin' my eye out for you now. :P
See you on the battlefield, I usually use a fail build, so beware
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
i think his post is not about how to counter, the counters are know by everyone. He is trying to find a way of put teamwork back in the picture, the current state of the metagame is worst than ever, everyone using FaW ruins casual pvp, is boring as hell.
Vin Naftero@playhard88 - FED Sciencie
K'tan@playhard88 - KDF Tactical
Argento@playhard88 - RRF Tactical (FED)
Limit the stacking of elements. Rather, treat certain elements as options.
Where currently one might reap the benefit of using X + Y to do something, instead have it so the person can select either X or Y...or that the combination of X + Y provides a reduced effect to what's going on than it currently does.
Generally, the better of X + Y would apply if somebody was attempting to use both X & Y...if it were not a case of there being a limited benefit from using both.
Simply trying to add more in here or there, would do nothing to alleviate this core symptom that raises its ugly head in many facets of the game.
I'm trying to concentrate the discussion on just the one power here. I agree that the game mechanics, as a whole, need some serious revamping, because effective PvPers obviously are not exploiting one single ability but rather the interaction of multiple abilities, but I think that is a little beyond the scope of the discussions.
I did not really intend this to be a "nerf FaW" thread because I think FaW adds some interesting dynamics to the game. I just think it is incredibly unbalanced at the moment because five people spamming FaW is more effective in general than five people working together to concentrate fire, which is just plain bad for the whole concept of Star Trek PvP.
So rather than to make another "nerf FaW" thread, I want to make suggestions about how FaW can be balanced by adding counters to it.
Right now, I think confuse immunities and feedback pulse mines are a good start. You could also have acetone assimilators do double damage when struck by a FAW beam, or something like that.
FAW has at best 50% uptime. Irritates me to no end I can make a simple TT>APB>CRF and double up the line but in a FaW boat the timing gets messy.
I have seen people making builds in practice that have, at best, 5-10 seconds of cooldown time between spamming runs. I am not sure how they are doing it, but I suspect it has something to do with DOFF cooldown stacking.
having two copies of FAW or one copy with a2b
- Gohan (House of Beautiful /Sad Pandas)
Explain to me how then because when you activate one copy of FaW the other goes into a 20 second cooldown period I just wasted two minutes of my time testing to confirm. A2B does not circumvent the standard limitations the only thing that could is if the Energy Weapon Doff is bugged that I cannot test. Oh and 10 seconds between would be...active 50% of the time.
This is a matter of perspective. A team is queing up with builds that complement one another that are easy to make and co-ordinate. Of course they will stomp a team that requires more co-ordination to be effective or that does not have proper synergy.
Take that FaW boat spam team against another team packing GW/TR/Polaron and most importantly APD with a subnuke or two and why not throw in a few Iso charges for giggles and see what happens.
Or a team sporting a pair of doffed VM supports to create chaos with a 1 tac 2 sci escort burst kill team.
Naturally they would be packing a few armor consoles, PH, +heal proc consoles/rep passives, among other fun things. Like HG shields for placate insanity. *edit* Actually on that note how does placate effect FaW?
I wrote that I have seen it done on multiple occasions. I did not write that I knew how it was done or had done it myself. I also never stated that it was impossible for a team to destroy a bunch of FaW spam-boats. Rather, I wrote that the skill was unbalanced, was negatively impacting the need for teamwork, and needed some more widely-available, balanced counters.
being pared with turrets are a killer for any weapon. but beams by comparison, wile their DPS isn't the highest unbuffed, have a slower rate of fire so their per shot damage can be pretty high. something like FAW that adds another shot, and can turn a 4 shot per cycle weapon into a 10 shot per cycle weapon blows DPS the hell up.
white mkX
array DPS-160 =100%
turret DPS-120 =75%
single DPS-192 =120%
DBB DPS-208 =130%
DC DPS-232= =145%
so typical cruiser= 8 beams= 1280dps/800%
or
single cannon cruiser= 4 singles, 4 turrets= 1248dps/780%
typical escort= 4 DC+3 turrets= 1288dps/805%
or
3DC, 1 DBB, 3 turrets=1264dps/790%
is it just me or are arrays and the combination of heavy cannons and turrets WAY to close together BASE damage wise? and whats with there being no disadvantage to runing single cannons, a weapon that has less effective firearc then beams wile dealing less damage?
maybe these values need a rebalance, something like this, turrets buffed by 10 DPS, and everything else but beams buffed 5%
white mkX
array DPS-160 =100%
turret DPS-136 =85%
single DPS-200 =125%
DBB DPS-216 =135%
DC DPS-240= =150%
so typical cruiser= 8 beams= 1280dps/800%
or
single cannon cruiser= 4 singles, 4 turrets= 1344dps/840%
typical escort= 4 DC+3 turrets= 1368dps/855%
or
3DC, 1 DBB, 3 turrets=1343dps/790%
maybe thats to much. maybe turrets should jut get a 10% boost, and leave the rest of everything alone. its not like we need everything chewing up ships as fast as FAW scimitars
I'll keep posting it since the information isn't taking hold on the forums yet, Weapon Power overcapping only affects BAs & DBBs.
DBBs cap out around 145 for benefit.
Extreme Overcapping is showing something on the order of +16% improvement.
Multiple sources of "always on" weapon power drain resistance, are also causing huge gains.
Marion does nearly nothing with the above being used.
Should beam arrays, and only beam arrays really be getting something like +20 to +24% improvement from a combination of Overcapping & Drain resistance?
The problem is not BFAW.
In fact, before there was such a plethora of ways to overcap & cushion drain (adapted omega 2 piece, more people running EPTW, Plas Leech Proliferation, Weapon System Efficiency) - running BFAW was a nightmare on your weapon power.
Take those two combined, and then lap ontop of it all of the flat damage boosts we've had introduced and the reason why BAs are performing as they are becomes very clear.
Bareel is correct. FAW has a global cooldown of 20 seconds. One copy or two copies, it doesn't matter, it can only be used every 20 seconds. All the cooldown stacking will not bring it below that. the 5-10 seconds of cooldown time you have seen are either observational error or someone has found an exploit. And I do not mean A2B or DOff cooldown reduction; those are game mechanics even if they are viewed as OP right now.
So beam attack or similar DOFF's don't reduce the cooldown at all? I know I have seen cruisers firing a lot more than five shots at two targets with less than 10 seconds between cycles.
A single FAW ability has a cooldown of 30 seconds. FAW, regardless of how many you have slotted, has a global cooldown of 20 seconds. The beam attack DOffs have a chance to reduce the cooldown of a single FAW ability. So, if it that DOff activates, it would reduce the 30 second cooldown. The same applies for the Tech DOffs, it reduces the 30 second cooldown. The 20 second global cooldown cannot be reduced, except from passage of time. This has nothing to do with seeing anyone firing more than five shots at two or more targets. I believe it was DDIS who posted observing the same thing, but again it has nothing to do with the cooldown.
And according to the STO wiki (http://sto.gamepedia.com/Ability:_Beam_Array:_Fire_at_Will): This ability applies to both Beam Arrays and Dual Beam Banks. A standard beam attack cycle is four attacks against a single target. After activation, all beam weapons will randomly select up to two targets within their arc and attack them five times each (for a total of 10 beam attacks per cycle). The effect will apply to any firing cycle that begins during the ability's duration. If only one target is present, only five attacks are performed. This ability is effective in delivering sustained fire against a few ships or for taking out fighter swarms and targetable projectiles.
30s cool down
20s global
15s up time
A2B reduces to global
Doffs (Energy wep) RNG... or simply having 2 copies.
15s up
5s down
15s up
5s down
That's how it works.
Fixed a few bits there.
FAW has 50% maximum up-time.
Devs, the real fix to Overpowered FAW / beam boats:
- make nukara console effect beam overload only (which was the real intend before LOR, faw/normal beam firing doesnt need more accuracy
- nerf cutter drain resistance proc
- nerf overcapping, a clear broken mechanic
- fix dem/tet glider applying their damage twice per damage shot.
its pretty clear these factors are the main culprit atm, not even necessarily faw itself, which is just icing on the cake.
Do the tests yourself. lets compare a beam boat capped exactly at 125 without overcapping, no cutter proc, no nukara, versus 175 overcap, cutter, and nukara.
in real life pvp environment you will most likely see up to 50% flat damage imcrease just by these broken factors.
And just for comparison
CRF and CSV have a 66.67% maximum uptime
BO, THY, TS, and TSS have a 6.67% maximum uptime. (Going by 1 sec to fire for every 15 seconds)
So pretty much nerf everything that beams have going for them?
I do agree that if dem/tet glider are applying there damage twice that should be fixed.
Overcapping benefiting only beams isn't right, it should be all or nothing. However, if overcapping is removed completely, AND drain resistance is also nerfed; beams will be back to being ineffectual. It is the combination of the two that has given beams the boost. Please lay off the Nukara Console, it doesn't really add that much accuracy to beams to cry for a nerf. In parsing combat logs, my accuracy with it only went up about 3%.
All good points.
Just think about that for a second.
Think about the fact that CSV has a 66.67% uptime vs. FAW's 50%.
Yet FAW builds in PvE are completely dominant when it comes to overall DPS scores.
That's how bad the power creep is right now.
Mostly the issue with FAW is the same with several mechanics: stacking effects create outliers that limit the already borked attempts to balance the game. There are already existing counters, as previously mentioned, though these require specific setups to function correctly. Then again, FAW boats require specific setups to function correctly.
I'm not sure we can introduce specific weaknesses in a single ability that already has three very specific weakness and call it balance. What I refer to is: 1) you cannot designate your target using FAW, FAW designates it for you; 2) you cannot interrupt FAW, FAW fires for you; 3) you have less uptime than the other two sustained attack modifiers (20 sec global rather than 15 sec global). Rather than a nerf to FAW, or suggestions to fix FAW, I think virusdancer hit the nail on the head as far as nerfing the underlying mechanics that broke FAW in the first place. Though, this would likely upset a great many folks using the same underlying mechanics on non-FAW setups...
I thought faw was still 15s up... and cannon skills where changed to 10s. Could be wrong haven't been in a game in a few days.