Been seeing a lot more really awful escort pilots lately. I'm talking Escorts that can't hack having an Infected Cube or a gateway shooting at them at all, (literally they go from full hull and shields to nothing in 10 seconds), Hell i'm seeing cruisers doing the same, and thats just awful.
.
Well honestly since S9 came in, I've almost given up on my Escort builds... what used to be survivable encounters are now "pop-goes-the-escort" 2 shots to death type encounters even with all BOFF/traits active. Even relatively easy STFs like ISE are like that now... and things like Breech are like watching a video of my ship exploding on repeat
Even my previously tanky Fleet Ambassador build is now getting exploded far more often than prior to S9... I'm still learning the new balances, and I'd guess almost everyone else is too.
For me the worst thing lately is running into the same afker in ISE repeatedly. Seen him yesterday, seen him today. Named after a TOS character (with a typo), and with enough unspent skill points that if I focus on him he shows as a lieutenant. Sits in spawnzone in his Enterprise or Gal-X. Thats my 3rd encounter with that fkin leecher in 2 days.
May 2013, automatic permanent ban for mentioning gold-seller sites pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should. moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
I use Cure Space Normal to test alterations to my builds or new ships.
I gave in and finally bought the Mobius from the Lobi Consortium for my Fed sci toon, built it up to a good spec using fleet AP and entered CSN.
One guy sat on the spawn point and another charged off towards the spawns coming from the middle dock, stoped dead and that was it.
Me I headed towards the left cube, targeting the BoP spawns barely making a scratch in their shields:eek:.
Knowing the DPS I should have generated I retreated to check my build only to discover my power was distributed to everything but weapons:o. Redistributed my power and went back in killing the BoP, Raptors, Probes and Cube.
To add insult to injury the guy at the spawn point called me a AFKer:rolleyes:
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
A guy who was doffed apding neverything pug ISE I went into with my rommies romplas beam boat of doom. He got his doffed and to me.... everything starts shooting me... I proceed
To call jimbus, fleet support, and destroy everything. Fail lol.
The boss being a gigantic Winter Epohh Researcher. As you lay waste to the Epohh Horde, she can occasionally cry out things like, "Didn't you want an Epohh friend?"
A guy who was doffed apding neverything pug ISE I went into with my rommies romplas beam boat of doom. He got his doffed and to me.... everything starts shooting me... I proceed
To call jimbus, fleet support, and destroy everything. Fail lol.
I am so confused...
We still live!!!!! Hahahahahahahahaa! We live and we will conquer!!!!! Hahahahahaaha!
-Roach, when asked about Klingon extinction!
"Recently I took it upon myself to venture solo into an Elite Space instance of the mission 'Infected', with a ship I have taken the time to outfit with 'Romulan Plasma' beam weaponry. In there I met a chap who was attempting to tank everything via the use of the ability "Attack Pattern Delta".
Unfortunately for this fellow, his vessel exploded and I started drawing the attention of the various enemy spaceborne cretins. I managed to survive via copious usage of abilities, many of which I usually hold in reserve.
"Recently I took it upon myself to venture solo into an Elite Space instance of the mission 'Infected', with a ship I have taken the time to outfit with 'Romulan Plasma' beam weaponry. In there I met a chap who was attempting to tank everything via the use of the ability "Attack Pattern Delta".
Unfortunately for this fellow, his vessel exploded and I started drawing the attention of the various enemy spaceborne cretins. I managed to survive via copious usage of abilities, many of which I usually hold in reserve.
so basically, the person using it was a griefer, getting everyone blown up, and tried to get the poster blown up as well, but he spammed reinforcements and took out the borg instead
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
i would have said 'pot, kettle, black...welcome to GM report and ignore, hypocrite' and then did just those things
LoL
Just added him to my ignore list, not fond of using reports as I don't think they are taken seriously
Did a elite PUG one time where three sat at the spawn point, the other player left, optional went boom. Reported, met at least 2 of them over the next week in PVE doing the same.
Just added him to my ignore list, not fond of using reports as I don't think they are taken seriously
Did a elite PUG one time where three sat at the spawn point, the other player left, optional went boom. Reported, met at least 2 of them over the next week in PVE doing the same.
they are taken seriously, but the GMs won't take any action unless a player has several reports filed against them from different players (they probably check IP addresses against the reports as well, so someone can't just create multiple accounts and file multiple reports against a single player)
obviously, that's in place to prevent any single person from abusing the system by reporting players for any old thing and trying to get them suspended or banned
needless to say, if that person has done that before, s/he probably already has several flags on his/her account, and yours might've been the one to tip the scales had you made it
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Is it me or is the number of people who don't know basics such as to heal injuries in Elite STF on the rise?
In the Undine infiltration i often see people beam in with a handful (sometimes even critical) injuries and in Infected and Vortex i notice more and more people who are stacked with injuries.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Wonder how it interacts with Threat Consoles and Cruiser abilities... (not that APD's uptime is magnificent or that my Escort usually has issues surviving having to tank things... but every little bit helps!) :P
Just PUGged ISE on my alt. Avenger battlecruiser (9-console), with the VATA, ZPEC, and Rommie supertorp. DBB/turret build otherwise.
Rest of the team: two scis in sovvies, one dude in a RA patrol escort (I think), and a mirror ha'feh. Only the last guy has any DPS to speak of.
I lag while shooting the spheres on the left, so no optional. We finally get that mess cleaned up, rommie and I leave the others to mop upspheres and kill right spawns while we nuke the right.
Idiots just sit there. Two sovvies, just sitting there.
We finally kill the transformer, after a death on my part and two on the rommie, then the tac cube spawns and kills everyone off one by one. Repeatedly.
Rommie guy and I are the only ones with above 1k DPS. I kid you not.
Is it me or is the number of people who don't know basics such as to heal injuries in Elite STF on the rise?
In the Undine infiltration i often see people beam in with a handful (sometimes even critical) injuries and in Infected and Vortex i notice more and more people who are stacked with injuries.
Hence when I take fleet cadets onto elite stfs, I always make sure they are fully stocked up on repair parts before i put us into a game, it saves headaches later
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Just PUGged ISE on my alt. Avenger battlecruiser (9-console), with the VATA, ZPEC, and Rommie supertorp. DBB/turret build otherwise.
Rest of the team: two scis in sovvies, one dude in a RA patrol escort (I think), and a mirror ha'feh. Only the last guy has any DPS to speak of.
I lag while shooting the spheres on the left, so no optional. We finally get that mess cleaned up, rommie and I leave the others to mop upspheres and kill right spawns while we nuke the right.
Idiots just sit there. Two sovvies, just sitting there.
We finally kill the transformer, after a death on my part and two on the rommie, then the tac cube spawns and kills everyone off one by one. Repeatedly.
Rommie guy and I are the only ones with above 1k DPS. I kid you not.
Takes 15 minutes to bet the STF.
Ugh. What a mess.
Outside of well-known channels the DPS has certainly decreased due to S9.
Outside of well-known channels the DPS has certainly decreased due to S9.
Yeah, but my DPS is still about the same.
This isn't a fantastic build; maybe 8k DPS? Spikes to 12k. The mirror ha'feh was putting out something similar, but the escort and the two cruisers had neither DPS nor survivability.
This isn't a fantastic build; maybe 8k DPS? Spikes to 12k. The mirror ha'feh was putting out something similar, but the escort and the two cruisers had neither DPS nor survivability.
So totally normal pugs I like those teams, lets me have a piece of challenge.
Weird ISE last night. Everything mostly went okay although the nanite spheres got a little close for comfort on the second transformer. I blame my targeting ****ing up to where I kept clicking the gate instead of the generator. (Seriously, why isn't that set up so that you click the object in the front?)
But then the tac cube shows up. Mostly okay -- we still got the optional -- except at one point two of us got randomly one-shotted by plasma torpedoes that came out of frakking nowhere. I know for a fact I had nearly full shields and hull hovering around 80% (granted, it's a Tor'Kaht with something of a fragile build) and suddenly WTFBOOM.
Then while I wait to respawn the other cruiser dies and the player goes, "What the hell?"
I'm like, "You too, huh?"
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
So, a couple nights ago I was doing the rounds with my Rom toon and popped into an in-progress Crystalline Catastrophe Elite. In-progress, as most folks know, usually means something has gone haywire along the way (often, but hardly always, as a result of folks attempting content that's just beyond their capabilities). Well, standard practice for such a non-standard situation is, natch, to take stock of the situation. Y'know, make sure you have a grasp on what your ship's doing, figure out what the status of your allies are, and check the state of the mission objectives.
With this being CCE, it's a simple matter of checking the the Entity's health to see how it's going. 36%, after which it promptly heals up to 42%. Oh dear, and it looks like it has around 90 stacks of the damage boost to its beam attack. This is going to get painful, and quickly. Ok, so I look around, notice a message in the chat by one of my, now warped out, teamates that says something to the effect of "We quit because the other team is afk'ing so it's now impossible to beat the Entity. Sorry for TRIBBLE you over." Yeah, thanks for that. I look over my powers list, yep, sure enough, I've got Charged Particle Burst 3 and Tachyon Beam 3, taking care of the beam attack's power ups aren't going to be a problem. Now it's time to check the AFK team... which appears to be 5 Vo'quvs circling the Entity at about 13km-14km from it, never really farther or closer to it. Anytime one of the carriers gets pulverized by Tholians, the other carriers heal it up. One of the players in this group of carriers responds to the now left teamates of mine with the line "Not exactly AFK," which, well, watching all, and I do mean all, of their BoP's fighting as pretty much a coordinated Squadron pretty much makes that clear. I figure maybe only one of that group speaks English or something to that effect and that they're on comms together. They're pretty much fighting like you'd expect real carriers to, using their fighter wings and avoiding direct engagement.
So, taking the above I plan out my moves, once I get the Entity's death beam under control, I'll for help from Vo'quvs, if I get a positive (if not immediate) response, I'll stick it out, that many BoP's will put out a pretty reasonable amount of firepower, and I can magnify that Sensor Scan, I'll worry about doing damage later, keep SA stacked up on the Entity to keep its healing from errant shards in check, and see if I can draw the large shards onto my tail, and circle near the bottom of it while the BoP's come in from above, as the Vo'quvs were circling a ways above its mid section.
I made the call for help, got the response that I'd have help as soon as they got the Tholians were under control (they seemed like somewhat squishy carriers to me, but eh, that's how it goes sometimes), and I set about getting the Entity under control. Well, I did, I popped a couple times, I admit, and once was responsible for its health going back up to 42%~ health having not realized I hadn't allocated quiet enough engine power to staying ahead of the large shards, c'est la vie. The BoP's came over after a few minutes and started ripping into it, never once did the shards target them, the beam was nerfed to less than useless, and we killed it with what amounts to a modicum of headache.
Afterwards, I talked with the other speaking player, and it turns out they were experimenting with multi-boxing in STO, and regularly ran ESTF's with the 5-Vo'quv team solo, rather than pugging it with one ship and 4 other players. Either way, it was probably the most fun I've had with CCE in the whole of its existence since being redesigned.
If you feel Keel'el's effect is well designed, please, for your own safety, be very careful around shallow pools of water.
-to pug ISE and at the moment the 4th generator pops, discover that all 4 teammates chose to chase spheres instead of shooting at transformer. Yes, all 4 of them.
May 2013, automatic permanent ban for mentioning gold-seller sites pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should. moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
Weird ISE last night. Everything mostly went okay although the nanite spheres got a little close for comfort on the second transformer. I blame my targeting ****ing up to where I kept clicking the gate instead of the generator. (Seriously, why isn't that set up so that you click the object in the front?)
But then the tac cube shows up. Mostly okay -- we still got the optional -- except at one point two of us got randomly one-shotted by plasma torpedoes that came out of frakking nowhere. I know for a fact I had nearly full shields and hull hovering around 80% (granted, it's a Tor'Kaht with something of a fragile build) and suddenly WTFBOOM.
Then while I wait to respawn the other cruiser dies and the player goes, "What the hell?"
I'm like, "You too, huh?"
Like that?
(Ugh just realized I forgot to block out the names on the screen not just the team table. **** it, its not like Im naming and shaming that was a good group out of PublicESTF)
Course I cant prove it, havent managed to catch the Gateway being able to crit again. This was over a year ago but it looks like this update brought back the BS crits. I thought only Tac Cubes and Borg Dreads(The V'ger) ones could crit.
-to pug ISE and at the moment the 4th generator pops, discover that all 4 teammates chose to chase spheres instead of shooting at transformer. Yes, all 4 of them.
Nah it was a very real thing. You'll be happily along in an ESTF pounding away at a Cube/Tac Cube and then suddenly you explode for no reason with a Giant Block 50k+ floating above the dust field that was your ship.
You look at your combat log because "What the hell did I just get hit by. Why did I explode straight through my shields and full hull?"
"Borg heavy 2? But... I didnt even SEE a borg torpedo hit me and I was watching the cube the whole time."
It got fixed for a time or at the very least mitigated when Cryptic made it so that Gateways and Cubes cant crit any more, only Tac Cubes, Diamonds and the Command Ships could (as befitted their tough natures) So the TRIBBLE Super Stealth Torpedo was defeated.
Or so we thought.
Now that S9 is here... The BSST is back again in all of its BS crit ability.
I dont mind dieing to Plasma torpedoes. As long as I see it coming. i see the plas torp and all my heals on cooldown. Fine thats bad luck.
Or Im burning to death and my hazards are cooling down. Fine thats on me for hitting it too soon.
But never seeing it coming so I can brace or top off to stop it?
Or never being able to stop it in the first place(Oh yes Please tank 70k+ damage please.)?
My worst is being unable to acquire in any way shape or form a Solanae Overcharged Warp Core
Goto dilithium store, special items and boxes to reclaim it.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
To be honest i feel my DPS has increased.
Probably one of the advantages of having a torpedo heavy build.
Let me rephrase that: The difference between players (and therefore pugs) got wider with S9. You now have more bad teams and "more" (compared to pre-S9, but still way less then bad ones^^) good teams, because the knowledge of gamemechanics is now even more important. In S8 you had more mid-ranging teams, but thanks to rep-system-changes they split up in good and bad.
In the last week I had a lot more 2k-teams than in a month of S8^^
Let me rephrase that: The difference between players (and therefore pugs) got wider with S9. You now have more bad teams and "more" (compared to pre-S9, but still way less then bad ones^^) good teams, because the knowledge of gamemechanics is now even more important. In S8 you had more mid-ranging teams, but thanks to rep-system-changes they split up in good and bad.
In the last week I had a lot more 2k-teams than in a month of S8^^
That i can agree with. But to me this means PUG-ing a STF finally has an element of surprise and somewhat of a challenge again. Though frequently having to guard both side for probes and cubes in Vortex elite tends to grow a bot old after a few runs.
With the trait system instead of the solid reputation bonuses many are being forced into a crash course of how to use what you have correctly.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
well, someone talked me into trying Breach Elite.... just to see if it was bugged....
yeah.... it's a trap!!!!! I think we spent 15 minutes on the Voth dreadnaught alone.... I think I lost upwards of 200 Obelisk drones... good thing hangar bays don't have charges.... I have no idea how I ended with only 3 injuries. Even with tanking like my life depended on it, I got splattered all over the ship... It started reasonably well, I took it slow flying down my channel, then when I got to the node... Lag SPIKE! Surprise you're dead! ugh.... It got worse fromt here... got blown up almost a dozen times on the Voth hangar. for whatever(probably buggy ) reason even the Voth frigates were hitting hard enough that I needed to tank.... and it gets worse from there..... most annoying was when the power core closed on me... it was literally impossible for me to get out before I got crushed. The power core was actually the easy part. I had EptS and EngTx2 so I was able to fix the shield overload status almost as quick as I got it. It was just a matter of shooting it until it broke... then trying to get out... I was doing well then too until a lagspike made me fly into a wall... and for whatever reason I just couldn't slow down...
Comments
Well honestly since S9 came in, I've almost given up on my Escort builds... what used to be survivable encounters are now "pop-goes-the-escort" 2 shots to death type encounters even with all BOFF/traits active. Even relatively easy STFs like ISE are like that now... and things like Breech are like watching a video of my ship exploding on repeat
Even my previously tanky Fleet Ambassador build is now getting exploded far more often than prior to S9... I'm still learning the new balances, and I'd guess almost everyone else is too.
pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should.
moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
I gave in and finally bought the Mobius from the Lobi Consortium for my Fed sci toon, built it up to a good spec using fleet AP and entered CSN.
One guy sat on the spawn point and another charged off towards the spawns coming from the middle dock, stoped dead and that was it.
Me I headed towards the left cube, targeting the BoP spawns barely making a scratch in their shields:eek:.
Knowing the DPS I should have generated I retreated to check my build only to discover my power was distributed to everything but weapons:o. Redistributed my power and went back in killing the BoP, Raptors, Probes and Cube.
To add insult to injury the guy at the spawn point called me a AFKer:rolleyes:
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
To call jimbus, fleet support, and destroy everything. Fail lol.
I am so confused...
We still live!!!!! Hahahahahahahahaa! We live and we will conquer!!!!! Hahahahahaaha!
-Roach, when asked about Klingon extinction!
Translation:
"Recently I took it upon myself to venture solo into an Elite Space instance of the mission 'Infected', with a ship I have taken the time to outfit with 'Romulan Plasma' beam weaponry. In there I met a chap who was attempting to tank everything via the use of the ability "Attack Pattern Delta".
Unfortunately for this fellow, his vessel exploded and I started drawing the attention of the various enemy spaceborne cretins. I managed to survive via copious usage of abilities, many of which I usually hold in reserve.
Also, I do not know what 'DOFF' stands for."
so basically, the person using it was a griefer, getting everyone blown up, and tried to get the poster blown up as well, but he spammed reinforcements and took out the borg instead
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
We still live!!!!! Hahahahahahahahaa! We live and we will conquer!!!!! Hahahahahaaha!
-Roach, when asked about Klingon extinction!
LoL
Just added him to my ignore list, not fond of using reports as I don't think they are taken seriously
Did a elite PUG one time where three sat at the spawn point, the other player left, optional went boom. Reported, met at least 2 of them over the next week in PVE doing the same.
obviously, that's in place to prevent any single person from abusing the system by reporting players for any old thing and trying to get them suspended or banned
needless to say, if that person has done that before, s/he probably already has several flags on his/her account, and yours might've been the one to tip the scales had you made it
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
In the Undine infiltration i often see people beam in with a handful (sometimes even critical) injuries and in Infected and Vortex i notice more and more people who are stacked with injuries.
Oho, another new toy!
Wonder how it interacts with Threat Consoles and Cruiser abilities... (not that APD's uptime is magnificent or that my Escort usually has issues surviving having to tank things... but every little bit helps!) :P
Rest of the team: two scis in sovvies, one dude in a RA patrol escort (I think), and a mirror ha'feh. Only the last guy has any DPS to speak of.
I lag while shooting the spheres on the left, so no optional. We finally get that mess cleaned up, rommie and I leave the others to mop upspheres and kill right spawns while we nuke the right.
Idiots just sit there. Two sovvies, just sitting there.
We finally kill the transformer, after a death on my part and two on the rommie, then the tac cube spawns and kills everyone off one by one. Repeatedly.
Rommie guy and I are the only ones with above 1k DPS. I kid you not.
Takes 15 minutes to bet the STF.
Ugh. What a mess.
Hence when I take fleet cadets onto elite stfs, I always make sure they are fully stocked up on repair parts before i put us into a game, it saves headaches later
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Outside of well-known channels the DPS has certainly decreased due to S9.
Yeah, but my DPS is still about the same.
This isn't a fantastic build; maybe 8k DPS? Spikes to 12k. The mirror ha'feh was putting out something similar, but the escort and the two cruisers had neither DPS nor survivability.
So totally normal pugs
But then the tac cube shows up. Mostly okay -- we still got the optional -- except at one point two of us got randomly one-shotted by plasma torpedoes that came out of frakking nowhere. I know for a fact I had nearly full shields and hull hovering around 80% (granted, it's a Tor'Kaht with something of a fragile build) and suddenly WTFBOOM.
Then while I wait to respawn the other cruiser dies and the player goes, "What the hell?"
I'm like, "You too, huh?"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
With this being CCE, it's a simple matter of checking the the Entity's health to see how it's going. 36%, after which it promptly heals up to 42%. Oh dear, and it looks like it has around 90 stacks of the damage boost to its beam attack. This is going to get painful, and quickly. Ok, so I look around, notice a message in the chat by one of my, now warped out, teamates that says something to the effect of "We quit because the other team is afk'ing so it's now impossible to beat the Entity. Sorry for TRIBBLE you over." Yeah, thanks for that. I look over my powers list, yep, sure enough, I've got Charged Particle Burst 3 and Tachyon Beam 3, taking care of the beam attack's power ups aren't going to be a problem. Now it's time to check the AFK team... which appears to be 5 Vo'quvs circling the Entity at about 13km-14km from it, never really farther or closer to it. Anytime one of the carriers gets pulverized by Tholians, the other carriers heal it up. One of the players in this group of carriers responds to the now left teamates of mine with the line "Not exactly AFK," which, well, watching all, and I do mean all, of their BoP's fighting as pretty much a coordinated Squadron pretty much makes that clear. I figure maybe only one of that group speaks English or something to that effect and that they're on comms together. They're pretty much fighting like you'd expect real carriers to, using their fighter wings and avoiding direct engagement.
So, taking the above I plan out my moves, once I get the Entity's death beam under control, I'll for help from Vo'quvs, if I get a positive (if not immediate) response, I'll stick it out, that many BoP's will put out a pretty reasonable amount of firepower, and I can magnify that Sensor Scan, I'll worry about doing damage later, keep SA stacked up on the Entity to keep its healing from errant shards in check, and see if I can draw the large shards onto my tail, and circle near the bottom of it while the BoP's come in from above, as the Vo'quvs were circling a ways above its mid section.
I made the call for help, got the response that I'd have help as soon as they got the Tholians were under control (they seemed like somewhat squishy carriers to me, but eh, that's how it goes sometimes), and I set about getting the Entity under control. Well, I did, I popped a couple times, I admit, and once was responsible for its health going back up to 42%~ health having not realized I hadn't allocated quiet enough engine power to staying ahead of the large shards, c'est la vie. The BoP's came over after a few minutes and started ripping into it, never once did the shards target them, the beam was nerfed to less than useless, and we killed it with what amounts to a modicum of headache.
Afterwards, I talked with the other speaking player, and it turns out they were experimenting with multi-boxing in STO, and regularly ran ESTF's with the 5-Vo'quv team solo, rather than pugging it with one ship and 4 other players. Either way, it was probably the most fun I've had with CCE in the whole of its existence since being redesigned.
I used to think the invisitorp was a myth/something fixed before I really got into elite STFs. Not anymore, not since S9 dropped.
-to pug ISE and at the moment the 4th generator pops, discover that all 4 teammates chose to chase spheres instead of shooting at transformer. Yes, all 4 of them.
pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should.
moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
Like that?
(Ugh just realized I forgot to block out the names on the screen not just the team table. **** it, its not like Im naming and shaming that was a good group out of PublicESTF)
Course I cant prove it, havent managed to catch the Gateway being able to crit again. This was over a year ago but it looks like this update brought back the BS crits. I thought only Tac Cubes and Borg Dreads(The V'ger) ones could crit.
Nah it was a very real thing. You'll be happily along in an ESTF pounding away at a Cube/Tac Cube and then suddenly you explode for no reason with a Giant Block 50k+ floating above the dust field that was your ship.
You look at your combat log because "What the hell did I just get hit by. Why did I explode straight through my shields and full hull?"
"Borg heavy 2? But... I didnt even SEE a borg torpedo hit me and I was watching the cube the whole time."
It got fixed for a time or at the very least mitigated when Cryptic made it so that Gateways and Cubes cant crit any more, only Tac Cubes, Diamonds and the Command Ships could (as befitted their tough natures) So the TRIBBLE Super Stealth Torpedo was defeated.
Or so we thought.
Now that S9 is here... The BSST is back again in all of its BS crit ability.
I dont mind dieing to Plasma torpedoes. As long as I see it coming. i see the plas torp and all my heals on cooldown. Fine thats bad luck.
Or Im burning to death and my hazards are cooling down. Fine thats on me for hitting it too soon.
But never seeing it coming so I can brace or top off to stop it?
Or never being able to stop it in the first place(Oh yes Please tank 70k+ damage please.)?
No. thats not difficult thats being cheap.
To be honest i feel my DPS has increased.
Probably one of the advantages of having a torpedo heavy build.
Goto dilithium store, special items and boxes to reclaim it.
Let me rephrase that: The difference between players (and therefore pugs) got wider with S9. You now have more bad teams and "more" (compared to pre-S9, but still way less then bad ones^^) good teams, because the knowledge of gamemechanics is now even more important. In S8 you had more mid-ranging teams, but thanks to rep-system-changes they split up in good and bad.
In the last week I had a lot more 2k-teams than in a month of S8^^
That i can agree with. But to me this means PUG-ing a STF finally has an element of surprise and somewhat of a challenge again. Though frequently having to guard both side for probes and cubes in Vortex elite tends to grow a bot old after a few runs.
With the trait system instead of the solid reputation bonuses many are being forced into a crash course of how to use what you have correctly.
yeah.... it's a trap!!!!! I think we spent 15 minutes on the Voth dreadnaught alone.... I think I lost upwards of 200 Obelisk drones... good thing hangar bays don't have charges.... I have no idea how I ended with only 3 injuries. Even with tanking like my life depended on it, I got splattered all over the ship... It started reasonably well, I took it slow flying down my channel, then when I got to the node... Lag SPIKE! Surprise you're dead! ugh.... It got worse fromt here... got blown up almost a dozen times on the Voth hangar. for whatever(probably buggy ) reason even the Voth frigates were hitting hard enough that I needed to tank.... and it gets worse from there..... most annoying was when the power core closed on me... it was literally impossible for me to get out before I got crushed. The power core was actually the easy part. I had EptS and EngTx2 so I was able to fix the shield overload status almost as quick as I got it. It was just a matter of shooting it until it broke... then trying to get out... I was doing well then too until a lagspike made me fly into a wall... and for whatever reason I just couldn't slow down...
My character Tsin'xing