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Why BFAW?
jestersage
Member Posts: 8 Arc User
I will not disagree with the fact that BFAW will give the highest DPS in numbers alone. However, I am wondering: Why should I do that?
Here's my issues at hand:
1) If I am using Beam array, effectively I am attracting every enemy within a sphere of 10km radius. In short, unless I am a cruiser, it's the last thing I want.
2) If I am using DBB, I will not be as effective to kill the single enemy I want to kill. Wouldn't Beam overload be beter?
So in terms of actual mission effectiveness, in both PvE and PvP, how good is BFAW actually?
Here's my issues at hand:
1) If I am using Beam array, effectively I am attracting every enemy within a sphere of 10km radius. In short, unless I am a cruiser, it's the last thing I want.
2) If I am using DBB, I will not be as effective to kill the single enemy I want to kill. Wouldn't Beam overload be beter?
So in terms of actual mission effectiveness, in both PvE and PvP, how good is BFAW actually?
Post edited by jestersage on
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That sort of mentality
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
As far as aggro in PvP, FAW is meaningless as the targets are player-controlled rather then AI - so they attack whomever they wish to attack rather then just some guy using FAW. It is up to the player - Carrier guy might want to drop FAW guy ASAP while Cruiser guy could not care less.
But yes, Beam Overload is the single-target variant.
But burst dmg is always something hard to balance...
BO decreases dps, compared to using no skill at all.
Also, when people say 2-piece borg, do they mean the console set or the deflector sets?
I've always figured BFAW as a kind of hybrid of both CSV and CRF, but for beams. If there's only the one target, BFAW will still do more damage per shot as well as firing more rapidly. As there will only be 1 target in the hypothetical battle, the 1 target is going to be the recipient of every single shot from the beams.
Does that make any sense?
Unless you kill that single target with 1 shot with BO... if the target is weak enough to kill in one shot, why would you want to kill it that badly?
Could be both, they probably meant engine and deflector, but kcb set is also 2 piece, and referred to as such by some.
But this is where it gets stupid:
If nothing else is around, BFAW will quickly catch up to the damage a BO will do on a single target.
Most people I know refer to the deflector set as the "borg" set and the KCB/Console/Omega torp as either the "borg console" set, the "KCB set" or the "omega torp set". Some even call it the "omega set" despite there already being an "omega" set!
Dead targets don't shoot back. Also dropping shields to land a torpedo is not a concern as torpedoes are not necessary your beams will shred the hull just fine.
You have to keep in mind, you are talking about three different games right now.
PvP Game where agro doesn't matter and heavily focusing your fire on a single PC target along with allies can be effective. For that game BO can be superior to FaW depending upon your team's composition and tactics.
PvE Optimal Game where the goal is speed. Get the content done fast, make sure your boat and that of your allies is properly min/max to both the content and in general. For this crowd in most content FaW is the optimal choice as when used properly you can simply destroy every NPC in range in seconds. Honestly the NPCs are destroyed so fast a torpedo does not even manage to close the distance between the ship launching it to hit a target before the beams destroy said target.
PvE Average Joe Game which I shall assume you are currently playing. In this game it depends. If your ship is built well enough you can simply FaW melt most things without concern, or you can have fun with your shield blasting BO / torpedo follow up. Doesn't really matter. Just have fun.
As for the borg 2 pc they are either talking about the engine/deflector combination which basically ensures your hull stays healthy, or the cutting beam/assimilated console combination which helps reduce the previously crippling weapon power drain associated with beam weapons. Both are really good standard cookie cutter things to use.
I'm also using Borg Engines and Deflector with Fleet Shield along with Cutting Beam and Assimilated Module.
Again for a cruiser BFAW is a great skill prefer it to BO as it drains less power and my regular beams just keep a harassing DPS on target.
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Having said that, if you are using a Rom toon with Sing powers ... The Weapon Amplifier is absolutely froicken awesome! It's like BO III (or CRF III for cannon builds) but lasts for several seconds (5? 10?), so pretty much ALL of your BA's get the boost, and THAT does some serious damage!
i think i read somewhere that BFAW will perform best when there are more than 1 and less than 4 targets around. has something to do with the fireing cycles i think.
each beams fires 1 additional shot at 2 targets additionaly to the shot the beam would fire without BFAW. So if there is only 1 target you only get 2 shots...the 3 would be fired at the second target. so basically 1 shot is lost entirely.
not really sure about the numbers though, but i'm absolutely sure that if there is only 1 target, BFAW is not used a 100%.
similar to scatter volley...if there is only 1 or 2 targets, dps on the 3rd is completely lost.
Uh... I dunno about you but my BO's can range from 60K to over 100K damage on crits for the ships I have that use them... So they may not be all that "weak" to die in one shot.
As for the OP... I have generally found BFAW to be useless. It is generally ONLY good in PvP and then ONLY to knock down the MASSIVE spam that players put out (Carriers, Mines, High Yields, etc...). BO is much more useful for actually killing enemies and you can mitigate that silly power drop pretty easily. Of course BFAW's biggest problem is that to be most effective you need to have 6 to 8 beam arrays all on a target. Mitigating that power drain can be a lot more difficult and beam arrays are so weak in general that it makes it very hard to really get the damage you want. Worse is that once you have lots of targets you start to slowly rip apart shields across a lot of targets. This means your DPS is extremely high but because you cannot focus your fire you end up failing to really kill anything and only scratch the hulls.
Don't know if they made a change, but several try later I was to the point I skipped this power because it was more than useless, it was dropping my DPS.
Doubt I'll stick with it too long, I like firing torps at things that annoy me :P
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Avg bfaw to unshielded target about 2k for 10 seconds...20k x5 targets 100k
Ive found BO to be pretty useless in pve
you can get crit for more damage but you will get more crits with bfaw
beams dont have anything else to use really except target subsystems ......and most ships cant afford a tac slot for something thats ...............useless like that lol
Beams need more choices
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Erm.. 2k per beam hit on FAW?? are you sure?? dude, thats pretty much lol. :P, so a beam hit in FAW mode is stronger than a regular beam??? lol. Never imagined that..
BOIII applies an 8.5 times multiplier to the damage of a single shot. But prevents the other beams on your ship from firing for the duration and kills your weapons power for the next couple of cycles. You effectively lose damage equal to 2 cycles of damage to get one cycle a cycle earlier. It's not even close to matching normal fire.
FAWIII on the other hand boost damage output 40% for 10 seconds, (8 salvos), but spreads each banks shots randomly amongst 2, (also randomly selected), targets. FAW craps on BO so hard it's not funny.
Also the only reason FAW is he Flavor of the month is the extreme amounts of power overcapping available these days. Without heavy overcapping he excessive drain of beams compared to DHC's and the higher damage output of cannons in general makes a cannon escort TRIBBLE all over a beam cruiser. Don't believe me, look back over the forums history to around the time of the release of fleet starbases, back then cruisers where considered jokes and escorts the only things worth flying.
All versions of FAW boos RoF by 20%, but II and II also boost damage per beam by a small amount. Check the wiki for specifics.
During the test, I timed how long it takes to kill multiple targets, and single targets by myself, with no help from any other players, or NPC like pets. The locations for this were the Elite STFs. I did The Cure, Vortex, and Conduit.
In The Cure, I handled one shipyard, the BOP that spawned, probes, cube, as well as the ships that spawn after taking one of the probes on the top row out.
In the Vortex, I handled the nanite generators, transformers, and cubes on both sides by myself, while someone else did nothing but the probes.
And in the Conduit, I did the cube on one side, and when the generator was down, everyone ran to the other side, and let me handle the spheres. They just waited on me to finish with the spheres so that I could test the weapons each time.
I was not using anything that kept up with the amount of DPS I was putting out. Since the test was done in the same way with each weapon setup, and the enemies were the same each time I went into the STFs, I only timed how long it took to take down the enemies.
The results were not kept, however they showed me that using an A2B build with all three of the weapon types to maximize on healing abilities, and tac skills (since I only needed one of each, but the DOFFs allowed me to use them all just as fast as if I had two of all of them), that when attacking a single target, the Dual Heavy Cannons killed the enemies faster every time. However, in PVE you are not just facing a single target all the time, and the Cannon Scatter Volley was only effective with no more than 3 targets. Even then, it was best to try to stick to a single target.
Skills used for DHC were Cannon Scatter Volley 1, and Cannon Rapid Fire 2. I did this because my ensign slot is always Tactical Team, and the Commander skill is always Attack Pattern Omega 3. When switching to beams, I used Beam Overload 2, and Beam Fire at Will 3.
For the Beam Arrays, they were good at knocking out a group of small enemies pretty quick, and did good against a single target when broadsiding. It did have the result of drawing agro from pretty much everything around using FAW. The Beam Overload skill did help with a single target, and using a weapons battery right after it's use meant that the weapons power drain affected the damage of the weapons so little, it was not noticeable. Also, it only meant that BFAW was not used for about 15 seconds at most when BO was used. I only used it about 4 times in each STF, and at the same time each time to better gauge the effects of it, without loosing BFAW after every other cycle.
Last, the DBB were tested. I found that with them, I can actually kill a group of enemies faster (as long as they were in my firing arc, which was no problem), than I could with the Beam Arrays, and DHC. I have also found that if I use the correct combination of BO, weapons battery, and BFAW, I can kill single targets faster with DBB on the front, and the cutting beam and turrets on the back.
The combination was like this, I activate BO before I get to the target, then open with it to either tear through the shields quickly, or take a big chunk out of them. Then, I pop a weapons battery as soon as it fires. Then I wait till BFAW is up, and use it. I cycle through BFAW, and if it is a cube, or something with high hull strength, I might pop it with BO again to take out the hull faster.
Even without a weapons battery, or Plasmonic leech, it doesn't take my weapons power but a few seconds to replenish, while still firing. This is because I am using DBB. This allows for a very small window when no beams are firing. Whereas I didn't have that with beam arrays while broadsiding. They were cycling almost all the time.
I did keep the cutting beam on all of the weapon setups, each weapon was the same energy type, and they all had the same things in the [].
Also, another note to keep in mind is that when I did this test, I was using the Scimitar on my Rommie, and on my Feds, I was using the Breen Raider. This is important because on both ships there are more weapon slots on the front than on the back. I haven't tested it on a cruiser, or any other ship that has the same number of weapon slots on the front as on the back. Having the same number on both may affect the results slightly.
I didn't use a program that will calculate the amount of DPS because I have read my own combat log, and have seen where firing only a single weapon at a single target has not had that weapon to show up in the combat log all the time. Sometimes it even says that I did a certain amount of DPS with something that was unknown. And this was with no skills activated at all, and no traits.
Another reason that I didn't use one of those programs is because when using BFAW, if you hit a target that has a nanite generator, or transformer healing it, all you do is rack up DPS. I even ran a test with some friends before in the Vortex. We all agreed to this before we went in.
After the tactical cube was destroyed, I then moved my Scimitar below one of the gates, targeted the gate, and just sat there hitting nothing but it the whole time. I was activating all of my skills as if I was actually trying to kill it. By the end of the STF, one two of the programs they use to read the combat log showed that I had done over 12,000,000 DPS. However, I only helped to kill the gate I was under, and Donatra. I killed nothing else. Therefore, one of those programs wouldn't have told me anything.
I wanted to find out what killed faster, not what I could get the highest DPS with. The two don't always go hand in hand.