As it is now, for several powers the T2 is almost never used.
I get the feeling the rank 3 abilities that were only trainable by captains were meant to be sort of reserved for those captains initially. That during development and a speedy launch that concepts were left half finished and launched with whatever would make them work.
The whole boff training by trading then trading back etc seems very strange, like they wanted certain abilities to be locked to classes. Then they changed their minds but because it may have been a core part of the code it was too much work to change it in the deadline so a quick fix was made.
I do agree some do need dropping and a general shuffle, perhaps it might come if we get a boff change in terms of traits and ability training etc.
Btw what about increasing the duration and global of A2B to 20s so that the low aux period is much longer?
That and nerf APB3 stacking, that one skill is turning PvE into worse than a joke, I mean, seriously we were both there ultimatum, the Borg might as well have just blown up and handed us their dilithium.
Tiniest? No, the price tag of that Doff is clearly not indicative of tiny
Price on the Exchange shouldn't be used as a measure of anything because of the various factors that could be involved.
You've got folks that control the market, you've got rarity, you've got perceived benefit, etc, etc, etc...
Heck, somebody seeing the price after hearing about it - would likely have an increased perception of the benefit it provides...without actually taking a look at it compared to other mechanics in the game to see where it most likely falls...
I mean, c'mon...lol...look at how much folks pay for a VR Mk XII console over a VR Mk XI. The understanding of the benefit the VR Mk XII provides...is massively misunderstood.
A2b needs a second look. It is unrivaled and untouchable in pve when the above formula comes into play.
Easiest fix? Only ships with commander sci or commander engineer may use it...ships that have few tactical slots are what needs this capability, not ones that can borderline exploit it
I think you're typing this out out of some mistaken belief that this is somehow becoming a super escort thing. Aux2bat is usable by... what, 2 escorts that I can think of? The Mobius and the Bugship, although I may be a little fuzzy on the latter. Aux2Batt, coupled with consistently high weapon power and the extra hits from DEM are a cruiser phenom. There may be some sci ships that can use it as well but it tends to go against sci vessels reliance on high aux for their space magicks.
TL;DR : Aux2Bat is really only usable by cruisers, all cruisers can use it for very effective dps, even the much maligned galaxy. Aux2batt is not a new build or new idea, my own engi cruiser alt has been using it for at least 2 seasons and it was themain reason why experienced players tended to laugh at players demanding cruisers get a buff and instead were told to l2p. However, the power creep and build refinement that has gone on lately has made Aux2Bat gone from "much better than average" to "very clearly OP". the recent cruiser auras for example, are completely unnecessary; now and back when they were first dreamt up.
I get the feeling the rank 3 abilities that were only trainable by captains were meant to be sort of reserved for those captains initially. That during development and a speedy launch that concepts were left half finished and launched with whatever would make them work.
The whole boff training by trading then trading back etc seems very strange, like they wanted certain abilities to be locked to classes. Then they changed their minds but because it may have been a core part of the code it was too much work to change it in the deadline so a quick fix was made.
Are so saying that they might've run across and bug and decided to call it a feature instead?
That sounds way uncharacteristic.
...
Does feel like a very clunky system of doing things though, that's for sure.
No Twam, I'm saying that due to the rushed release the full design may not have been implemented so a it could have been rushed so it at least worked even if it is clunky.
If anyone at Cryptic does see this, I would love to get more of these special lockbox and Zen boffs but 2 things stop me:
1) Bound to character so I can't train them in something I want half the time. So I only get one of the same career as my captain.
2) Ground only special traits. If a balance pass comes to boff traits they're gonna be either left in the dust or relegated to ground only where sadly there's very little need.
Maybe we should have a discussion about APA + APO + FOMM + EptW + BO3 + DEM + Marion + Wep Batt + EWO Doff + Elachi Proc + CRF + Decloak + Rom Boff Stacking?
Oh no, of course we cant do that. This is still Escorts Online of course. Everything else must be nerfed.
Maybe we should have a discussion about APA + APO + FOMM + EptW + BO3 + DEM + Marion + Wep Batt + EWO Doff + Elachi Proc + CRF + Decloak + Rom Boff Stacking?
Oh no, of course we cant do that. This is still Escorts Online of course. Everything else must be nerfed.
Hypocrites.
That's in fact insanely powerful too.
I think one of the main issues is that we've seen a bad spiral of OP-ness, where offensive OP mechanics urged addition of defensive stuff, which prompted more op-ness to be stacked to existing issue, etc, etc. And now we only have a couple of OP stacking methods available to get any decent effort/kill ratio, and we see more traditional layouts sadly trailing behind.
I mean, I do think A2B doffs should be nerfed, but I also think cruisers need to get a little something to compensate if that happens, in terms of damage output. Just like I do have problems with escorts both doing insane (spike) damage, but also (speed) tanking the hell out of everything.
Through the way stuff stacks in STO, both offensively and defensively and including all the rep passives and gear/doff procs, a situation has been created where single powers or simple combinations of 2-3 powers have become laughable.
Sadly, it could be disastrous if any specific issues were addressed without also addressing all the other ones. Instead, we'll probably keep seeing more stuff added that stacks with existing boni, in an attempt to achieve some sort of balance. Leaving vanilla builds in the dust and making top-tier builds insanely expensive in terms of time and money for new players/characters.
I think one of the main issues is that we've seen a bad spiral of OP-ness, where offensive OP mechanics urged addition of defensive stuff, which prompted more op-ness to be stacked to existing issue, etc, etc. And now we only have a couple of OP stacking methods available to get any decent effort/kill ratio, and we see more traditional layouts sadly trailing behind.
I mean, I do think A2B doffs should be nerfed, but I also think cruisers need to get a little something to compensate if that happens, in terms of damage output. Just like I do have problems with escorts both doing insane (spike) damage, but also (speed) tanking the hell out of everything.
Through the way stuff stacks in STO, both offensively and defensively and including all the rep passives and gear/doff procs, a situation has been created where single powers or simple combinations of 2-3 powers have become laughable.
Sadly, it could be disastrous if any specific issues were addressed without also addressing all the other ones. Instead, we'll probably keep seeing more stuff added that stacks with existing boni, in an attempt to achieve some sort of balance. Leaving vanilla builds in the dust and making top-tier builds insanely expensive in terms of time and money for new players/characters.
I totally agree. You cannot just nerf Aux2Bat builds without addressing other issues. It really is not just Aux2Bat but many others. Its all the new things that have been added that is pushing it to "OP" levels. This is the inevitable result of power creep. One way to lessen the extremes is to prevent stacking of some powers...for example APB. One the reasons of extreme DPS numbers is the multiple stacking of APB. Perhaps limit it to only the strongest version to be applied to target at a time. I have a fully loaded Aux2Bat Fleet Regent and I usually get 10 to 12K max in PUG fleet actions or ESTFs. When you're in a team with multiple APB stacking...it can go more than double my numbers. I heard people getting up to 30K....now that is crazy.
That said, despite the high DPS numbers in PvE, my build does not translate well into PvP. I still get high DPS but I have a hard time killing other players as a lone Aux2Bat/FAW tactical. The high DPS I get with FAW is not necessarily effective DPS. I've seen Escorts with lower overall DPS get way more kills than me....because it is all about spike damage is still king in PvP vs pressure damage. So while this build is very effective in PvE, it certainly is not in PvP, unless you have a well cooridinated team of this build. Then again, a team of 5 of the any same effective builds can seem overpowering unless you know how to counter them.
Over-capping has been a mystery mechanic that Cpt. Gecko has only just recently confirmed not only existed but how he remembers it working...except it only works for Beams and not other weapons.
It's not that mysterious as it is easy to test (you just need 2 weapons and nothing to interfer with your power tank). I have only tested beam arrays and DHCs but these 2 weapons work the same way regarding weapon drain mechanism.
When the weapon drains your power you will generate X amount of additional power every .5s presumably depending on your power transfer rate (and max total power depends on how much overcapped power you have).
Now the 2 differences affecting power mechanism i can think of are (not talking about 10 vs 12 drain) :
-DHCs cycles are much shorter than beams.
-For some reason DHCs drain your power during their downtime (between 2 cycles).
I'm not sure what are the conclusions to take regarding power drain but imo if anything adds tons of damage to beams and benefits less DHCs it is the omega amp proc.
+10 instant power and massive drain resist for a short time helps a lot when beams are firing but not DHCs.
1. It further reduces the need for science ships/captains. Why bother with crowd control when you can just AOE blow everything to dust in seconds. (at least with tacscorts its a slower process via COE vs raw AOE)
2. There is a loss of people "skilling up" as they play, they get so used to automation (spacebar bash 101) doing it all for them, that the moment something changes (see EPtE at LOR launch), everything goes to hell in a handbasket for most people.
3. It pushes toward homogenization in builds. Why use anything but a bfaw beamboat spacebar basher when you dont need anything but? No diversity = cookie cutter.
How to fix the issue?
1. Give technican doffs a cooldown timer on their procs (say one time every 2 minutes). That way you can reset your CDs once, just like miracle worker with grace.
2. Set a hard cap for how high debuffs can stack. One APB, one sensor scan, etc. You can stack any buff that is different, but no more 5 stacks of APB on one target.
3. Give Marion a chance to proc, not a guaranteed effect.
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1. It further reduces the need for science ships/captains. Why bother with crowd control when you can just AOE blow everything to dust in seconds. (at least with tacscorts its a slower process via COE vs raw AOE)
I've been slaughtering STF spawns with CSV/TS in escorts for as long as I can remember and any needed CC has always easily been covered by TBR or a simply GW1 many escorts/destroyers can carry.
2. There is a loss of people "skilling up" as they play, they get so used to automation (spacebar bash 101) doing it all for them, that the moment something changes (see EPtE at LOR launch), everything goes to hell in a handbasket for most people.
This is nothing new
3. It pushes toward homogenization in builds. Why use anything but a bfaw beamboat spacebar basher when you dont need anything but? No diversity = cookie cutter.
This is also nothing new
How to fix the issue?
1. Give technican doffs a cooldown timer on their procs (say one time every 2 minutes). That way you can reset your CDs once, just like miracle worker with grace.
2. Set a hard cap for how high debuffs can stack. One APB, one sensor scan, etc. You can stack any buff that is different, but no more 5 stacks of APB on one target.
APB needs hit with the nerfbat, period. Reduce it's effect by half and it might still be the best tool in the toolbox.
3. Give Marion a chance to proc, not a guaranteed effect.
Who needs marion with auras, 2pc omega weapon set, and the new warp cores around the corner?
Thoughts in red but at the end of the day it is simply the new FOM like the DHC monster escort was. When content lacks complexity the optimum method for bashing it will always be discovered and embraced.
Price on the Exchange shouldn't be used as a measure of anything because of the various factors that could be involved.
You've got folks that control the market, you've got rarity, you've got perceived benefit, etc, etc, etc...
Heck, somebody seeing the price after hearing about it - would likely have an increased perception of the benefit it provides...without actually taking a look at it compared to other mechanics in the game to see where it most likely falls...
I mean, c'mon...lol...look at how much folks pay for a VR Mk XII console over a VR Mk XI. The understanding of the benefit the VR Mk XII provides...is massively misunderstood.
Thanks, saves me the time of typing it all out.
8s out of every minute, on what is a consistent DPS build.
It's not that mysterious as it is easy to test (you just need 2 weapons and nothing to interfer with your power tank). I have only tested beam arrays and DHCs but these 2 weapons work the same way regarding weapon drain mechanism.
When the weapon drains your power you will generate X amount of additional power every .5s presumably depending on your power transfer rate (and max total power depends on how much overcapped power you have).
I'm not saying your testing isn't sound, but the fact that you actually had to test it at all makes it by definition "a mystery". :P
Anyway, thanks for putting up the links to the testing you did - I'll sit down and go over it when I have a bit more time. Looks interesting.
Thoughts in red but at the end of the day it is simply the new FOM like the DHC monster escort was. When content lacks complexity the optimum method for bashing it will always be discovered and embraced.
The DHC escort is designed to be a top end damage dealer. I'm not sure why this is so hard for players to come to terms with.
What we have here is something that does more output than that, with less effort and more survivability.
Are you really so biased that you can't see that those factors make this a significantly worse situation than the one we had before?
We still have damage being king, the only thing that has changed is which ship gets to be king while doing it.
Healing, Tanking & Control as roles are still wholly irrelevant in this 99% of this game's PvE content. How is this a good thing?
Weapon Drain resistance is still a, relatively, new addition to the game only a little more than a year old (Marion - Temporal lockbox, Sept 2012. Omega Rep 2 Piece Bonus, S7 Oct 2012).
Tiniest? No, the price tag of that Doff is clearly not indicative of tiny
The price of Marion is mostly indicative of its rarity. We're talking about a specific purple DOff that's rewarded from a critical success on an Temporal Beacon assignment from a Temporal lockbox.
There's roughly an 11-12% chance of a Temporal Beacon dropping from the lockbox, and a critical success only has what looks like a 10% chance of dropping Marion instead of another purple or blue DOff.
That's like a 1% chance for each Temporal Lockbox opened.
I actually got one from doing the Temporal Beacon assignment a long while back, and never used it because DEM had such a ridiculous cooldown on the standard cruiser build (Dragon) back then. Carried Aux2Struct3 instead, and tanked Borg cigars.
Ok.. Well here's some medicine with a spoonful of sugar. Geko's first half interview before the Oct 24 airing on Priority One has him talking about how he is just starting to "view the player as a customer." This is him admitting that he went from thinking of every toon as a customer to the player itself as a customer. That made my IQ fall a couple points just listening to. As if that was a challenge to overcome? Really?
I mention it because with that logic in mind (As if you'd need to glean that concept over years to begin with).. I went into a newbie zone randomly just to test the ascertainment of just where PVE knowledge on broken systems exist with those players.. Only spent a good handful of hours so this is by no means empirical data but to put it short, half of the players behaved like white bunnies in a field of ever green grass and were mindlessly content with what they know. The other half were starkly in modes of frustration over how easy it was that BFAW was to use and your usual mention of how lame extinct dinos in space were. Those folks were quick to say that they were backseat driving their ships through most encounters.
In that same interview Geko claims that players take the path of least resistance in regards to which PVE round they want to play. However his obviously skewed focus on which PVE to play was not the issue at all. It's ANY path of least resistance period. So why year after year is he dropping one machine-wrenching component after the other?
So how much sense does it make that he's lead on design and yet he fails to see the obviousness of it all? This greatly concerns me because I expect a lead on any project (yard work or game design) to be able to speak to the obviousness of any situation.
If I hired a crew to come into my yard and the lead was talking about the color of my dandelions instead of how to remove them(if I didn't want to make the roots into tea) I'd be shaken with a lack of confidence period.
The fact that Geko won't talk about the obviousness in mind is very telling to me. That's pretty much looking into his eyes and seeing two $ $ for pupils. Honestly the team needs to be lead by somebody who isn't quick to shaft the community with nonsense like a JJ Abrahams incident.
I am going to tell you all exactly why FaW / Beams is OP these days, most goes for both PvP and PvE.
Facts:
1. Beam damage drop off over distance is much less penalizing then DHC's.
2. Beam wider arc makes it possible to exploit the well known Z-axis.
3. Nukara console boosts all weapons on a full beam boat with 10% accuracy, only partly on a escort with a single DBB for an overload.
4. Marion is not the issue, of a boat that can sustain maximum drain resistance for every second of a minute you should probably blame that on the borg cutter which on a full beam boat pretty much kicks in 90% of the time ^^
Again cutter and borg console resist proc does significant drain resist for beam boats, it does almost nothing for dhc/turret builds.
5. Tons easier to use, less problematic to aim because weapon arcs are alot wider. It nullifies the use of specialized builds that do heavy directed damage to single targets.
6. Aux2bat has very little to do with anything, its quite easy to make a non aux2bat scimitar with full uptime beta3 or on global omega3, still retaining FaW3/2, 2xEptW and 2x EptS, and yes 2x dem, even if the marion is the least of such build's problems. So, em aux 2 bat isnt all that great its mainly for noobs who do not know how to make a build without it. Not even talking about the loss in aux which makes you drop 5 to 6% flat damage boost from nukara tier 4 passive. some people use TBR for the dmg and the push is pretty much non existend only to boast scoreboard numbers a bit more.
7. FaW itself has been half broken for years, devs have never properly balanced it out, it was once a spam. clearer and a low to average non directed pressure damage ability. Its more of a directed damage multiple target incineration ability where well timed beam overloads and other weapons that need great timing are almost totally nullified. (im sorry dear people, i forgot PVE didnt need timing on dumb and senseless mobs/npcs so i guess i have nothing to complain)
8. oh yeah, beams can so called intentionally be overcapped according to a dev, after 3 years of silence about it, altho most ppl knew about this possibility way back in the days, anyway conclusion is, beams can, cannons/turrets cannot benefit from another beam-only buff.
Once broken it was 100% accurate, again its close to being 100% accurate (in pvp at least) with the right traits/build/acc3 weps.
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I am going to tell you all exactly why FaW / Beams is OP these days, most goes for both PvP and PvE.
Facts:
1. Beam damage drop off over distance is much less penalizing then DHC's.
2. Beam wider arc makes it possible to exploit the well known Z-axis.
3. Nukara console boosts all weapons on a full beam boat with 10% accuracy, only partly on a escort with a single DBB for an overload.
4. Marion is not the issue, of a boat that can sustain maximum drain resistance for every second of a minute you should probably blame that on the borg cutter which on a full beam boat pretty much kicks in 90% of the time ^^
5. Tons easier to use, less problematic to aim because weapon arcs are alot wider. It nullifies the use of specialized builds that do heavy directed damage to single targets.
6. Aux2bat has very little to do with anything, its quite easy to make a non aux2bat scimitar with full uptime beta3 or on global omega3, still retaining FaW3/2, 2xEptW and 2x EptS, and yes 2x dem, even if the marion is the least of such build's problems. So, em aux 2 bat isnt all that great its mainly for noobs who do not know how to make a build without it. Not even talking about the loss in aux which makes you drop 5 to 6% flat damage boost from nukara tier 4 passive. some people use TBR for the dmg and the push is pretty much non existend only to boast scoreboard numbers a bit more.
7. FaW itself has been half broken for years, devs have never properly balanced it out, it was once a spam. clearer and a low to average non directed pressure damage ability. Its more of a directed damage multiple target incineration ability where well timed beam overloads and other weapons that need great timing are almost totally nullified.
Once broken it was 100% accurate, again its close to being 100% accurate (in pvp at least) with the right traits/build/acc3 weps.
I'm just convinced this build cheapens the experience for PVE.. I built one because like all temptations, it was simply there and now I'm bored beyond belief. That is certainly a fact too.
Once you BFAW the world of cryptic, it's all a matter of cruise control.
The price of Marion is mostly indicative of its rarity. We're talking about a specific purple DOff that's rewarded from a critical success on an Temporal Beacon assignment from a Temporal lockbox.
There's roughly an 11-12% chance of a Temporal Beacon dropping from the lockbox, and a critical success only has what looks like a 10% chance of dropping Marion instead of another purple or blue DOff.
That's like a 1% chance for each Temporal Lockbox opened.
I actually got one from doing the Temporal Beacon assignment a long while back, and never used it because DEM had such a ridiculous cooldown on the standard cruiser build (Dragon) back then. Carried Aux2Struct3 instead, and tanked Borg cigars.
Dem doff is relatively rare, yet its pretty much nerfed in half when they nerfed the so called 'double tap' tactic used by spike escorts.
( in case you have no idea what im talking about, it was since season3 and earlier, possible to stack two different ranks of beam overload, and fire them both pretty much within a few seconds depending if you used one or two dbbs)
This made spike builds go through the roof, and even I admitted it was a bit TOO powerful, unfortunately FaW in this state is pretty much on the same level.
Anyway, it was of MUCH greater use for spike escorts to shoot ppl to death within seconds with relative easy, they nerfed beam overload, no longer able to be stacked, marion got nerfed in half in that regard.
Ok, so seeing as 8 seconds for a full uptime pressure build seems pretty low, and considering the fact that the combination of cutter and borg console and the significant procrate on a broadsiding beam boat, we can pretty much conclude that cutter proc is the big culprit here which really makes faW builds excel these days. +500 drain resist and +10 to weapons for even more overcaping makes it 10 times as powerful then marion for these faw builds these days.
Devs: How to resolve the whole FAW fiasco:
1. Cutter should be nerfed with the drain proc.
2. Overcapping beams should be fixed, its NOT working as intended, devs simply dont want to fix it.
3. Nukara console 10% accuracy should only apply to beam overloads, as this was discussed before nukara rep was released, devs wanted to buff beam overloads with a bit more accuracy, insteaqd they gave a console to us that simply buffs FAW too, all beam attacks, biggest mistake ever. (note this mostly affects pvp only, has virtually no effect on PVE so dont start crying too hard guys)
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The DHC escort is designed to be a top end damage dealer. I'm not sure why this is so hard for players to come to terms with.
agree with you: dhc escort is designed to have the best dps, BUT the game is broken... in pve all that matter is dps. healling, tanking, Crowd control, debuffing are useless nowdays in stfs.
in additional the dhc escort healling pretty well, tanking too, crowd control with gw1 better than science officers and debuffing with apb and/or disruptors or other things.
I am pretty sure BFAW breaks proc rates by counting a shot twice - it has been confirmed using DEM and seems to do the same for the Valdore console as well. It either does this, or doubles total DPS by hitting 16 targets at once with 8 beams or 8 targets twice, which I didn't think it did.
The DHC escort is designed to be a top end BURST/SPIKE damage dealer. I'm not sure why this is so hard for players to come to terms with.
Fixed it for you, and they still are. Seriously take 5 escorts with every single shiny item in the game with a well co-ordinated group and they will bash any content just as fast, if not faster, than the FAW boats will.
I can still kill all the sphere spawns in ISE in 15-30 seconds by myself in my escort. I can still pop 4 nanite probes and guardian spawns by myself in CSE before a second set of BoPs get halfway to Kang.
PvE always has been a joke if you flew a properly setup escort. Now the cruisers can do it as well and people cry. In six months Science Vessels will be able to as well so you may as well accept it.
PS: Their may infact be bugs that need fixed, such as A2B not tanking your aux power properly. But beyond bugs unless you want a boatload of unintended effects to occur it should not be touched especially considering it is not OP.
PPS: The only OP things in the equation are APB + APA even if few wish to admit it. Oh and Rommie boffs but those are only OP because they have little to no competition in the active space trait boff department.
I understand what you are getting at, but NI is irrelevant because its not gear or DOFFs that are career agnostic.
Meaning you could not combine NI with APA.
I know its fun to nitpick, but try to focus on the target here.
As someone who primarily plays an Engineering Captain, that sounds rather specifically like a Tactical Captain ability issue.
It's not nitpicking, being able to answer questions about your point only serves to strengthen it. APA doesn't occur to me because I don't play Tac captains. (I can't give up my turret/drone army for Ground, especially since I hate Ground. :P )
I am pretty sure BFAW breaks proc rates by counting a shot twice - it has been confirmed using DEM and seems to do the same for the Valdore console as well. It either does this, or doubles total DPS by hitting 16 targets at once with 8 beams or 8 targets twice, which I didn't think it did.
The second one. It doesn't "break" proc rates, it just hits twice as many targets. So yes it doubles DPS, but in no more of a way than CSV triples it by hitting multiple targets.
But beam array damage doesn't exceed DHC damage until you're 9.5km out...
That is unfortunately correct, the other part of that is for some god forsaken reason beam damage is at its highest up to 1km.......after that it starts dropping.
Inertia just means you can do Powerslides in you carrier!
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From what I've read in this thread (about half of it) there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Aux2Bat builds broken:
Beam weapons benefit from extra damage when they go above 125 power levels.
Getting your weapon power as high as you can and keeping it there is what causes those 40K dps builds to work.
There are no consistent 40K dps builds. If you thinks there are, show me one. You cannot.
Played thousands of hours never seen one. For short time period ships can do 40K+ dps (mine does). And sure ships can do 20K+ average encounter dps in e.g. a complete CSE session (by FAW at everything even).
From what I've read in this thread (about half of it) there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Aux2Bat builds broken:
Beam weapons benefit from extra damage when they go above 125 power levels.
Getting your weapon power as high as you can and keeping it there is what causes those 40K dps builds to work.
No, no, I really think you missed something, too.
Sure, what you're saying is an element of brokenness, as weapon drain was meant as a balancing mechanism, which can now be evaded. But there's plenty of other ways to do this.
But the technician doffs definitely exacerbate the situation. I doubt anybody would ever dream of running an Aux2Bat build without technician doffs - because these doffs allow you to either (depending on your perspective) double up on your boff abilities or replace some 8-15 other doffs, some of which don't actually exist. These doffs totally bork another core balancing mechanism of this game: recharge timers.
Just by adding a single Aux2Bat + doffs I added half the existing DPS to an already decent Dhelan build, the other day, without sacrificing much of anything. And that was most definitely not all due to overcapping, as that build didn't have a whole lot of trouble with weapon drain before, between regular overcapping and the resistance provided by the OWA. It had more to do with doubling up the use of APB3 and FAW3, freeing up space for another damage boost, while also axing the recharges on my heals and Gravity Well.
Reliance on a small segment of abilities like Tac Team or A2BBuilds, or the selection of powers, doffs, etc is a BAD design mechanic. It only leads to must have situations.
The only outcome is regimental, linear, dare I even say cookie-cutter. All this translates into a mediocre gameplay experience and boredom for a few moments of "Look'i'me".
But hasn't the cookie cutter "dual heavy cannons in the front, turrets in the rear and all the tactical buffs you can muster, plus cannon rapid fire, been the "must have build" for some time now?
Haven't beam weapons always been considered a joke up until just recently ?
Case in point, In PVE, or more explicitly STFs, it's dominated things for quite some time, in fact why should you need healers when 5 tac captians in escorts, with that narrow little build, were able to dominate those missions so effectively? You didn't really need the other two career captains, or any other ship class other than escorts.
Now they've introduced these new cruiser abilities...to help other players, in the hopes that maybe someone may want cruisers around. :rolleyes:
Science Captains like myself have been frustrated because NPC's high resistances made a mockery of most of my science abilities. (like gravity well, shield drain ect.), But give one control ability, like gravity well a needed boost and ........... http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=900781
Star Trek has usually featured cruisers, (not just escorts) so fans come to the game looking to play those iconic cruisers naturally, only to be mocked at in STFs, because everyone who "knew what they were doing" was playing escorts and saw cruisers as someone who was a noob, and who wasn't contributing enough of the all mighty DPS to the team. (It's not their fault either, who needs the other classes ! Why would you fly something other than an escort?)
Hasn't this added to the boredom to people who want to fly ships other than just escorts ?
Personally, I foresaw this problem back when the skill trees were changed to a vanilla, universal approach. Suddenly everyone could be good at anything.
Maybe because this is a game and EVERYONE needs to enjoy themselves while playing?
You know, make an STF too easy and everyone complains, so they make big bad bosses with huge hit points and resistances, who can ignore any control abilities, (Donatra) because people like the challenge, but buff gravity well and give cruisers some teeth and all of a sudden it's a **** storm because everyone is flying cruisers for a change and using a science ability that up until just recently, everyone considered useless.
But hasn't the cookie cutter "dual heavy cannons in the front, turrets in the rear and all the tactical buffs you can muster, plus cannon rapid fire, been the "must have build" for some time now?
Ayup. And for that matter, any time you're dealing with a situation where you need to shoot only one thing, it's STILL better than this.
And frankly, I think that's a good thing. Cruisers SHOULD be capable of greater damage rather than being anemic, useless bricks, and yet escorts retain their role in the rapid killing of a single thing. Like, say, someone. Now we just need Sci to get a bit more attention.
But the technician doffs definitely exacerbate the situation. I doubt anybody would ever dream of running an Aux2Bat build without technician doffs
That is because without the technician doffs, Aux2Bat is an utterly worthless, TRIBBLE ability that negatively affects your ship's functionality. Even WITH the Tech doffs, it's still a negative in the package, just one you suck up because of what the Tech doffs do. Its entire purpose for existing is the Tech doffs. The fact that the ability itself is garbage is pretty much why the doffs got attached to it.
Comments
I get the feeling the rank 3 abilities that were only trainable by captains were meant to be sort of reserved for those captains initially. That during development and a speedy launch that concepts were left half finished and launched with whatever would make them work.
The whole boff training by trading then trading back etc seems very strange, like they wanted certain abilities to be locked to classes. Then they changed their minds but because it may have been a core part of the code it was too much work to change it in the deadline so a quick fix was made.
I do agree some do need dropping and a general shuffle, perhaps it might come if we get a boff change in terms of traits and ability training etc.
Btw what about increasing the duration and global of A2B to 20s so that the low aux period is much longer?
That and nerf APB3 stacking, that one skill is turning PvE into worse than a joke, I mean, seriously we were both there ultimatum, the Borg might as well have just blown up and handed us their dilithium.
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.
Price on the Exchange shouldn't be used as a measure of anything because of the various factors that could be involved.
You've got folks that control the market, you've got rarity, you've got perceived benefit, etc, etc, etc...
Heck, somebody seeing the price after hearing about it - would likely have an increased perception of the benefit it provides...without actually taking a look at it compared to other mechanics in the game to see where it most likely falls...
I mean, c'mon...lol...look at how much folks pay for a VR Mk XII console over a VR Mk XI. The understanding of the benefit the VR Mk XII provides...is massively misunderstood.
I think you're typing this out out of some mistaken belief that this is somehow becoming a super escort thing. Aux2bat is usable by... what, 2 escorts that I can think of? The Mobius and the Bugship, although I may be a little fuzzy on the latter. Aux2Batt, coupled with consistently high weapon power and the extra hits from DEM are a cruiser phenom. There may be some sci ships that can use it as well but it tends to go against sci vessels reliance on high aux for their space magicks.
TL;DR : Aux2Bat is really only usable by cruisers, all cruisers can use it for very effective dps, even the much maligned galaxy. Aux2batt is not a new build or new idea, my own engi cruiser alt has been using it for at least 2 seasons and it was themain reason why experienced players tended to laugh at players demanding cruisers get a buff and instead were told to l2p. However, the power creep and build refinement that has gone on lately has made Aux2Bat gone from "much better than average" to "very clearly OP". the recent cruiser auras for example, are completely unnecessary; now and back when they were first dreamt up.
Are so saying that they might've run across and bug and decided to call it a feature instead?
That sounds way uncharacteristic.
...
Does feel like a very clunky system of doing things though, that's for sure.
If anyone at Cryptic does see this, I would love to get more of these special lockbox and Zen boffs but 2 things stop me:
1) Bound to character so I can't train them in something I want half the time. So I only get one of the same career as my captain.
2) Ground only special traits. If a balance pass comes to boff traits they're gonna be either left in the dust or relegated to ground only where sadly there's very little need.
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.
Oh no, of course we cant do that. This is still Escorts Online of course. Everything else must be nerfed.
Hypocrites.
That's in fact insanely powerful too.
I think one of the main issues is that we've seen a bad spiral of OP-ness, where offensive OP mechanics urged addition of defensive stuff, which prompted more op-ness to be stacked to existing issue, etc, etc. And now we only have a couple of OP stacking methods available to get any decent effort/kill ratio, and we see more traditional layouts sadly trailing behind.
I mean, I do think A2B doffs should be nerfed, but I also think cruisers need to get a little something to compensate if that happens, in terms of damage output. Just like I do have problems with escorts both doing insane (spike) damage, but also (speed) tanking the hell out of everything.
Through the way stuff stacks in STO, both offensively and defensively and including all the rep passives and gear/doff procs, a situation has been created where single powers or simple combinations of 2-3 powers have become laughable.
Sadly, it could be disastrous if any specific issues were addressed without also addressing all the other ones. Instead, we'll probably keep seeing more stuff added that stacks with existing boni, in an attempt to achieve some sort of balance. Leaving vanilla builds in the dust and making top-tier builds insanely expensive in terms of time and money for new players/characters.
I totally agree. You cannot just nerf Aux2Bat builds without addressing other issues. It really is not just Aux2Bat but many others. Its all the new things that have been added that is pushing it to "OP" levels. This is the inevitable result of power creep. One way to lessen the extremes is to prevent stacking of some powers...for example APB. One the reasons of extreme DPS numbers is the multiple stacking of APB. Perhaps limit it to only the strongest version to be applied to target at a time. I have a fully loaded Aux2Bat Fleet Regent and I usually get 10 to 12K max in PUG fleet actions or ESTFs. When you're in a team with multiple APB stacking...it can go more than double my numbers. I heard people getting up to 30K....now that is crazy.
That said, despite the high DPS numbers in PvE, my build does not translate well into PvP. I still get high DPS but I have a hard time killing other players as a lone Aux2Bat/FAW tactical. The high DPS I get with FAW is not necessarily effective DPS. I've seen Escorts with lower overall DPS get way more kills than me....because it is all about spike damage is still king in PvP vs pressure damage. So while this build is very effective in PvE, it certainly is not in PvP, unless you have a well cooridinated team of this build. Then again, a team of 5 of the any same effective builds can seem overpowering unless you know how to counter them.
When the weapon drains your power you will generate X amount of additional power every .5s presumably depending on your power transfer rate (and max total power depends on how much overcapped power you have).
Now the 2 differences affecting power mechanism i can think of are (not talking about 10 vs 12 drain) :
-DHCs cycles are much shorter than beams.
-For some reason DHCs drain your power during their downtime (between 2 cycles).
I'm not sure what are the conclusions to take regarding power drain but imo if anything adds tons of damage to beams and benefits less DHCs it is the omega amp proc.
+10 instant power and massive drain resist for a short time helps a lot when beams are firing but not DHCs.
PS : sry if my English is not perfect.
EDIT : here are my results posted in another thread (but went unnoticed) :
beams http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=13017551&postcount=47
cannons http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=13020851&postcount=69
1. It further reduces the need for science ships/captains. Why bother with crowd control when you can just AOE blow everything to dust in seconds. (at least with tacscorts its a slower process via COE vs raw AOE)
2. There is a loss of people "skilling up" as they play, they get so used to automation (spacebar bash 101) doing it all for them, that the moment something changes (see EPtE at LOR launch), everything goes to hell in a handbasket for most people.
3. It pushes toward homogenization in builds. Why use anything but a bfaw beamboat spacebar basher when you dont need anything but? No diversity = cookie cutter.
How to fix the issue?
1. Give technican doffs a cooldown timer on their procs (say one time every 2 minutes). That way you can reset your CDs once, just like miracle worker with grace.
2. Set a hard cap for how high debuffs can stack. One APB, one sensor scan, etc. You can stack any buff that is different, but no more 5 stacks of APB on one target.
3. Give Marion a chance to proc, not a guaranteed effect.
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Thoughts in red but at the end of the day it is simply the new FOM like the DHC monster escort was. When content lacks complexity the optimum method for bashing it will always be discovered and embraced.
Thanks, saves me the time of typing it all out.
8s out of every minute, on what is a consistent DPS build.
Think about it people.
I'm not saying your testing isn't sound, but the fact that you actually had to test it at all makes it by definition "a mystery". :P
Anyway, thanks for putting up the links to the testing you did - I'll sit down and go over it when I have a bit more time. Looks interesting.
The DHC escort is designed to be a top end damage dealer. I'm not sure why this is so hard for players to come to terms with.
What we have here is something that does more output than that, with less effort and more survivability.
Are you really so biased that you can't see that those factors make this a significantly worse situation than the one we had before?
We still have damage being king, the only thing that has changed is which ship gets to be king while doing it.
Healing, Tanking & Control as roles are still wholly irrelevant in this 99% of this game's PvE content. How is this a good thing?
What about Nadion Inversion?
The price of Marion is mostly indicative of its rarity. We're talking about a specific purple DOff that's rewarded from a critical success on an Temporal Beacon assignment from a Temporal lockbox.
There's roughly an 11-12% chance of a Temporal Beacon dropping from the lockbox, and a critical success only has what looks like a 10% chance of dropping Marion instead of another purple or blue DOff.
That's like a 1% chance for each Temporal Lockbox opened.
I actually got one from doing the Temporal Beacon assignment a long while back, and never used it because DEM had such a ridiculous cooldown on the standard cruiser build (Dragon) back then. Carried Aux2Struct3 instead, and tanked Borg cigars.
I mention it because with that logic in mind (As if you'd need to glean that concept over years to begin with).. I went into a newbie zone randomly just to test the ascertainment of just where PVE knowledge on broken systems exist with those players.. Only spent a good handful of hours so this is by no means empirical data but to put it short, half of the players behaved like white bunnies in a field of ever green grass and were mindlessly content with what they know. The other half were starkly in modes of frustration over how easy it was that BFAW was to use and your usual mention of how lame extinct dinos in space were. Those folks were quick to say that they were backseat driving their ships through most encounters.
In that same interview Geko claims that players take the path of least resistance in regards to which PVE round they want to play. However his obviously skewed focus on which PVE to play was not the issue at all. It's ANY path of least resistance period. So why year after year is he dropping one machine-wrenching component after the other?
So how much sense does it make that he's lead on design and yet he fails to see the obviousness of it all? This greatly concerns me because I expect a lead on any project (yard work or game design) to be able to speak to the obviousness of any situation.
If I hired a crew to come into my yard and the lead was talking about the color of my dandelions instead of how to remove them(if I didn't want to make the roots into tea) I'd be shaken with a lack of confidence period.
The fact that Geko won't talk about the obviousness in mind is very telling to me. That's pretty much looking into his eyes and seeing two $ $ for pupils. Honestly the team needs to be lead by somebody who isn't quick to shaft the community with nonsense like a JJ Abrahams incident.
I understand what you are getting at, but NI is irrelevant because its not gear or DOFFs that are career agnostic.
Meaning you could not combine NI with APA.
I know its fun to nitpick, but try to focus on the target here.
Facts:
1. Beam damage drop off over distance is much less penalizing then DHC's.
2. Beam wider arc makes it possible to exploit the well known Z-axis.
3. Nukara console boosts all weapons on a full beam boat with 10% accuracy, only partly on a escort with a single DBB for an overload.
4. Marion is not the issue, of a boat that can sustain maximum drain resistance for every second of a minute you should probably blame that on the borg cutter which on a full beam boat pretty much kicks in 90% of the time ^^
Again cutter and borg console resist proc does significant drain resist for beam boats, it does almost nothing for dhc/turret builds.
5. Tons easier to use, less problematic to aim because weapon arcs are alot wider. It nullifies the use of specialized builds that do heavy directed damage to single targets.
6. Aux2bat has very little to do with anything, its quite easy to make a non aux2bat scimitar with full uptime beta3 or on global omega3, still retaining FaW3/2, 2xEptW and 2x EptS, and yes 2x dem, even if the marion is the least of such build's problems. So, em aux 2 bat isnt all that great its mainly for noobs who do not know how to make a build without it. Not even talking about the loss in aux which makes you drop 5 to 6% flat damage boost from nukara tier 4 passive. some people use TBR for the dmg and the push is pretty much non existend only to boast scoreboard numbers a bit more.
7. FaW itself has been half broken for years, devs have never properly balanced it out, it was once a spam. clearer and a low to average non directed pressure damage ability. Its more of a directed damage multiple target incineration ability where well timed beam overloads and other weapons that need great timing are almost totally nullified. (im sorry dear people, i forgot PVE didnt need timing on dumb and senseless mobs/npcs so i guess i have nothing to complain)
8. oh yeah, beams can so called intentionally be overcapped according to a dev, after 3 years of silence about it, altho most ppl knew about this possibility way back in the days, anyway conclusion is, beams can, cannons/turrets cannot benefit from another beam-only buff.
Once broken it was 100% accurate, again its close to being 100% accurate (in pvp at least) with the right traits/build/acc3 weps.
Alexia - Tovan - Yakor
I'm just convinced this build cheapens the experience for PVE.. I built one because like all temptations, it was simply there and now I'm bored beyond belief. That is certainly a fact too.
Once you BFAW the world of cryptic, it's all a matter of cruise control.
Dem doff is relatively rare, yet its pretty much nerfed in half when they nerfed the so called 'double tap' tactic used by spike escorts.
( in case you have no idea what im talking about, it was since season3 and earlier, possible to stack two different ranks of beam overload, and fire them both pretty much within a few seconds depending if you used one or two dbbs)
This made spike builds go through the roof, and even I admitted it was a bit TOO powerful, unfortunately FaW in this state is pretty much on the same level.
Anyway, it was of MUCH greater use for spike escorts to shoot ppl to death within seconds with relative easy, they nerfed beam overload, no longer able to be stacked, marion got nerfed in half in that regard.
Ok, so seeing as 8 seconds for a full uptime pressure build seems pretty low, and considering the fact that the combination of cutter and borg console and the significant procrate on a broadsiding beam boat, we can pretty much conclude that cutter proc is the big culprit here which really makes faW builds excel these days. +500 drain resist and +10 to weapons for even more overcaping makes it 10 times as powerful then marion for these faw builds these days.
Devs: How to resolve the whole FAW fiasco:
1. Cutter should be nerfed with the drain proc.
2. Overcapping beams should be fixed, its NOT working as intended, devs simply dont want to fix it.
3. Nukara console 10% accuracy should only apply to beam overloads, as this was discussed before nukara rep was released, devs wanted to buff beam overloads with a bit more accuracy, insteaqd they gave a console to us that simply buffs FAW too, all beam attacks, biggest mistake ever. (note this mostly affects pvp only, has virtually no effect on PVE so dont start crying too hard guys)
Alexia - Tovan - Yakor
in additional the dhc escort healling pretty well, tanking too, crowd control with gw1 better than science officers and debuffing with apb and/or disruptors or other things.
Fixed it for you, and they still are. Seriously take 5 escorts with every single shiny item in the game with a well co-ordinated group and they will bash any content just as fast, if not faster, than the FAW boats will.
I can still kill all the sphere spawns in ISE in 15-30 seconds by myself in my escort. I can still pop 4 nanite probes and guardian spawns by myself in CSE before a second set of BoPs get halfway to Kang.
PvE always has been a joke if you flew a properly setup escort. Now the cruisers can do it as well and people cry. In six months Science Vessels will be able to as well so you may as well accept it.
PS: Their may infact be bugs that need fixed, such as A2B not tanking your aux power properly. But beyond bugs unless you want a boatload of unintended effects to occur it should not be touched especially considering it is not OP.
PPS: The only OP things in the equation are APB + APA even if few wish to admit it. Oh and Rommie boffs but those are only OP because they have little to no competition in the active space trait boff department.
So I would assume that if it were borked they would have seen it.
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As someone who primarily plays an Engineering Captain, that sounds rather specifically like a Tactical Captain ability issue.
It's not nitpicking, being able to answer questions about your point only serves to strengthen it. APA doesn't occur to me because I don't play Tac captains. (I can't give up my turret/drone army for Ground, especially since I hate Ground. :P )
But beam array damage doesn't exceed DHC damage until you're 9.5km out...
Thanks for the explanation!
The second one. It doesn't "break" proc rates, it just hits twice as many targets. So yes it doubles DPS, but in no more of a way than CSV triples it by hitting multiple targets.
That is unfortunately correct, the other part of that is for some god forsaken reason beam damage is at its highest up to 1km.......after that it starts dropping.
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Beam weapons benefit from extra damage when they go above 125 power levels.
Getting your weapon power as high as you can and keeping it there is what causes those 40K dps builds to work.
There are no consistent 40K dps builds. If you thinks there are, show me one. You cannot.
Played thousands of hours never seen one. For short time period ships can do 40K+ dps (mine does). And sure ships can do 20K+ average encounter dps in e.g. a complete CSE session (by FAW at everything even).
No, no, I really think you missed something, too.
Sure, what you're saying is an element of brokenness, as weapon drain was meant as a balancing mechanism, which can now be evaded. But there's plenty of other ways to do this.
But the technician doffs definitely exacerbate the situation. I doubt anybody would ever dream of running an Aux2Bat build without technician doffs - because these doffs allow you to either (depending on your perspective) double up on your boff abilities or replace some 8-15 other doffs, some of which don't actually exist. These doffs totally bork another core balancing mechanism of this game: recharge timers.
Just by adding a single Aux2Bat + doffs I added half the existing DPS to an already decent Dhelan build, the other day, without sacrificing much of anything. And that was most definitely not all due to overcapping, as that build didn't have a whole lot of trouble with weapon drain before, between regular overcapping and the resistance provided by the OWA. It had more to do with doubling up the use of APB3 and FAW3, freeing up space for another damage boost, while also axing the recharges on my heals and Gravity Well.
Haven't beam weapons always been considered a joke up until just recently ?
Case in point, In PVE, or more explicitly STFs, it's dominated things for quite some time, in fact why should you need healers when 5 tac captians in escorts, with that narrow little build, were able to dominate those missions so effectively? You didn't really need the other two career captains, or any other ship class other than escorts.
Now they've introduced these new cruiser abilities...to help other players, in the hopes that maybe someone may want cruisers around. :rolleyes:
Science Captains like myself have been frustrated because NPC's high resistances made a mockery of most of my science abilities. (like gravity well, shield drain ect.), But give one control ability, like gravity well a needed boost and ...........
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=900781
Star Trek has usually featured cruisers, (not just escorts) so fans come to the game looking to play those iconic cruisers naturally, only to be mocked at in STFs, because everyone who "knew what they were doing" was playing escorts and saw cruisers as someone who was a noob, and who wasn't contributing enough of the all mighty DPS to the team. (It's not their fault either, who needs the other classes ! Why would you fly something other than an escort?)
Hasn't this added to the boredom to people who want to fly ships other than just escorts ?
Maybe because this is a game and EVERYONE needs to enjoy themselves while playing?
You know, make an STF too easy and everyone complains, so they make big bad bosses with huge hit points and resistances, who can ignore any control abilities, (Donatra) because people like the challenge, but buff gravity well and give cruisers some teeth and all of a sudden it's a **** storm because everyone is flying cruisers for a change and using a science ability that up until just recently, everyone considered useless.
And frankly, I think that's a good thing. Cruisers SHOULD be capable of greater damage rather than being anemic, useless bricks, and yet escorts retain their role in the rapid killing of a single thing. Like, say, someone. Now we just need Sci to get a bit more attention.
That is because without the technician doffs, Aux2Bat is an utterly worthless, TRIBBLE ability that negatively affects your ship's functionality. Even WITH the Tech doffs, it's still a negative in the package, just one you suck up because of what the Tech doffs do. Its entire purpose for existing is the Tech doffs. The fact that the ability itself is garbage is pretty much why the doffs got attached to it.