Why the need to make BO always do critical hits??? i dont get it. Seriously.
This is the next step to the power creep scalation?
Or cryptic just wanted to get rid of pvp for good?
A skill that ALWAYS does critical like BO now its a no no. Its insane and ridiculous. But meh, i guess nothing we can think matters. Again, a terrible decision, but who cares anymore, right? lol.
The idea is that this eliminates outliers. They reduced the base damage, but in turn make it auto-crit. So the damage is always high, but it will not reach the old maximums.
The problem may be that the new maximum could still be too high, and the damage neeeds further adjustment.
Another side effect of this is - you can now deliberately trigger crit effects by using Beam Overload. That seems also intended (as adjudicatorhawk brought this up), so if you create a build around crit effects, BO will be a go-to power for you.
I think there is no problem with the base premise of the change, the devil is purely in the details.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The idea is that this eliminates outliers. They reduced the base damage, but in turn make it auto-crit. So the damage is always high, but it will not reach the old maximums.
The problem may be that the new maximum could still be too high, and the damage neeeds further adjustment.
Another side effect of this is - you can now deliberately trigger crit effects by using Beam Overload. That seems also intended (as adjudicatorhawk brought this up), so if you create a build around crit effects, BO will be a go-to power for you.
I think there is no problem with the base premise of the change, the devil is purely in the details.
Well, the problem is, in STO this means nothing because in a power creeped ship, having a weapon that deals MORE damage than normal and not only that, it does criticals everytime, its always bad. No matter what.
I dont mind having these changes in pve, even if i consider em completely unnecessary (as almost everything cryptic does) but it is a game - breaker for pvp.
this wont effect me in the slightest, my main with the excel is focused completely on bfaw anyways, i never saw the point in BO because its like pumping an extra torpedo into the side where as bfaw at close range can cut 1 or multiple enemies to pieces quickly.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Well, the problem is, in STO this means nothing because in a power creeped ship, having a weapon that deals MORE damage than normal and not only that, it does criticals everytime, its always bad. No matter what.
I dont mind having these changes in pve, even if i consider em completely unnecessary (as almost everything cryptic does) but it is a game - breaker for pvp.
It's a special ability that you can use ever so often, not an always on effect. And as such, it can be balanced, with the right stats, or totally broken with the wrong ones. The basic idea is not the problem.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Why the need to make BO always do critical hits??? i dont get it. Seriously.
This is the next step to the power creep scalation?
I think the reasoning is to get people away from the usual same-old consoles that stack up crit chance. You don't need to stack crit chance if your main "thing" is going to be BO, so you will slot other consoles. You won't need Zero Point and Assimilated, you'll look at other options. You won't need "Locator" Fleet consoles, you will stack the CrtD ones instead.
General:
Beam Overload:
Beam Overload attacks are now always a Critical Hit.
Their tooltips have been updated to indicate that they always Critically Hit.
Beam Overload no longer drains Weapon Power.
Beam Overload's base damage has been reduced by 25% under the hood.
Its damage will be higher on average due to 100% Critical chance.
Oh boy, my all-tac Temporal Destroyer will be even more nuts now. Awesome!!
i look forward to the BO change. why? because i got a DBB with severity X3 and after playing two instances where i fired off my BO around 20 times, according to my buddys parcer, my DBB's crit, never activated, not even ONCE! so yea, i look forward to this change, ALOT!
While the 100% crit chance as a liitle bit over the top it's a good thing they got rid of that ridiculous power drain since that was one of the main points that made it useless to begin with. Not sure if it's a good thing for pvp though. It's already a borderline broken one-shot-fest and the new BO will just add to that.
From a practical point of view it does not make sense that BO does not drain additional power.
Energy weapon damage is based on the amount of energy that is being provided to energy weapon emitter itself. The more energy provided to the energy weapon system the more damage it should be able to do.
With the patch change where does that extra energy come from? Does the tactical Boff have an intake on the bridge to TRIBBLE into to provide that extra power for BO to work?
From a practical point of view it does not make sense that BO does not drain additional power.
Energy weapon damage is based on the amount of energy that is being provided to energy weapon emitter itself. The more energy provided to the energy weapon system the more damage it should be able to do.
With the patch change where does that extra energy come from? Does the tactical Boff have an intake on the bridge to TRIBBLE into to provide that extra power for BO to work?
Emergency Power. Just that rather than shunting it into the general weapons system (like EPTW)it's shunted into a specific beam array.
With the patch change where does that extra energy come from? Does the tactical Boff have an intake on the bridge to TRIBBLE into to provide that extra power for BO to work?
Magical unicorn rainbow farts.
And after writing this all I can think of are the sounds of the biomatter phasers from the xindi lockbox. Maybe we're on to something......
BO was always pretty useless to me, the power drain was just unacceptable for the damage it dealt (just fire a THY of the same rank, did about the same damage with no power drain). This new change will hurt critwhore builds a bit who relied on it for a singular massive crit shot, but as the blog states, will up BO's effectiveness for the vast majority of people.
As for BFaW prosed 1v1 nerf, it needs to happen. Sorry, but the torpedo scattershot does LESS damage 1v1 than a normal torp, yet BFaW does more damage (5 shots in the time of 4).
The nerf that really needs to happen is Aux2Bat, not really the ability itself, it's not that good for most ships and works mainly to recover from a particularily draining attack (e.g. BO). It's when paired with a (Purple/Very Rare) DOff (often 3) that reduces BOff cooldowns on activation of a battery (fair seeing as batteries are both consumable and have an unaffected CD period (I assume since they aren't a BOff power)). The problem stems from the fact that these DOffs also fire their ability off when Aux2Bat is used, allowing for someone to say, fire Cannon Rapid Fire, then immediately fire Aux2Bat straight after, buffing their power, and also refreshing their cooldowns to a point that they will be ready to fire again as soon as the 10seconds of CRF expires. This method does work with none Purple/Very Rare DOffs, but not as well due to their bonus not reducing cooldown enough.
As for BO and BFaW, it needs/needed to happen, the Cannon abilities were balanced (1 did more 1v1 damage, the other did more 1vX damage), same with the Torpedoes, but BFaW did both more 1v1 and 1vX, making BO, which barely did more damage than a normal beam attack (when considering the huge power drain effectively halved the damage of all other energy weapons for a while) rather redundant.
P.S. A simple fix for Aux2Bat would be to make the BOff CD effect from the DOff's not work with Aux2Bat.
If you can't solve it logically, solve it like a moron.
51 + 1 Foundry Character Slots is NOT enough. Some of us love our characters. If I want to buy more character slots, why can't I? I couldn't experience the entire Delta Recruitment event without deleting a character.
The Iconians themselves can't time travel because their memories revert, but there is nothing to say an Iconian couldn't write everything she needed to do on a PADD, pin it to herself, travel back, read the PADD, do the tasks and return. Or just get one of her Non-Herald underlings to go back in time for her.
Oh yeah, I do Foundry missions for both KDFs and Feds. Just search KSTF (Short for Kinas Special Task Force, where Kinas is the name of the Admiral you will be serving under). The earlier ones are less story based and more combat based, while the later ones have a much heavier story element, but keep the large battles.
Based on what I've read, BO is being updated to be more effective as a precursor to making FAW less effective on single targets.
That would be stupid.
FAW damage caps at two targets - any additional targets merely divides the damage among them. A third target lowers the damage dealt to each target. Making it less effective on single targets would mean it's ridiculously situational - best results with two targets? Contrast this with CSV, which hits every target in the cone, without dividing up the damage.
If they actually want to re-balance both BO and FAW they should just duplicate the functionality of CRF and CSV respectively. A cone that hits everything equally, and a single target sustained spike. None of which with artificial drain mechanics, drain being a side effect of the weapons firing more.
As for BFaW prosed 1v1 nerf, it needs to happen. Sorry, but the torpedo scattershot does LESS damage 1v1 than a normal torp, yet BFaW does more damage (5 shots in the time of 4).
What? TS1 fires 4 torpedoes at a single target instead of 1, and TS3 fires 8 torpedoes at a single target instead of 1. How is it weaker than a single normal torpedo?
Every single one of the "multi-target" abilities (including CSV) still does more damage on a single target than without.
I think the whole 100% Crit BO is being blown out of proportion, I mean the main stay of PvP and PvE is the Escort, hands down. The Cruiser and Sci class starships are soo far behind that they are still sitting ducks in the PvP arena.
Most players in escorts use cannons, at the most maybe a frontal dual beam alongside their cannons setup. This means even though they are boosting BO, keep in mind the player have to contend with the hit or miss ratio. Like everyone have already stated, both Science vessels and cruisers are far behind in the Tactical department, since most have maximum of 2 Tactical Bridge Officer Slots.
That is further complicated by the fact that there are a minimum amount of Tactical skills that are useful at those lower ranks, that is ensign & Lt.
I think the whole 100% Crit BO is being blown out of proportion, I mean the main stay of PvP and PvE is the Escort, hands down. The Cruiser and Sci class starships are soo far behind that they are still sitting ducks in the PvP arena.
Most players in escorts use cannons, at the most maybe a frontal dual beam alongside their cannons setup. This means even though they are boosting BO, keep in mind the player have to contend with the hit or miss ratio. Like everyone have already stated, both Science vessels and cruisers are far behind in the Tactical department, since most have maximum of 2 Tactical Bridge Officer Slots.
That is further complicated by the fact that there are a minimum amount of Tactical skills that are useful at those lower ranks, that is ensign & Lt.
But that's exactly it. For escorts it is quite easy to evade a BO hit, since they're so fast. There you hit or miss really applies.
But science vessels and cruisers are sitting ducks, as you have said. They don't tend to be as fast as escorts and almost every BO hits them full power. So there is no hit or miss, just hit.
Yes, most players use cannons. But most PvP players have been using DBBs for a long time. Not maybe, almost every one of them. Arenas are not a land of 4 DHC DPS jockeys.
Science for the win. / Czechoslovak Fleet 1st Division
The idea is that this eliminates outliers. They reduced the base damage, but in turn make it auto-crit. So the damage is always high, but it will not reach the old maximums.
The problem may be that the new maximum could still be too high, and the damage neeeds further adjustment.
Another side effect of this is - you can now deliberately trigger crit effects by using Beam Overload. That seems also intended (as adjudicatorhawk brought this up), so if you create a build around crit effects, BO will be a go-to power for you.
I think there is no problem with the base premise of the change, the devil is purely in the details.
So all the episodes of Star Trek either before the introduction of photon torpedoes or just didn't use torpedoes are now not Star Trek
I think it's obvious what he meant..
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
To spell it out for the Pakleds: Was there ever a main ship in a Star Trek series or movie that didn't carry a mix of energy and projectile weapons? Or does anyone seriously think that they uninstalled their torpedoes for every episode where they weren't used? Maybe to make them go?:rolleyes:
FKA K-Tar, grumpy Klingon/El-Aurian hybrid. Now assimilated by PWE.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
Sounds like they've made it act more like the pulse compression wave ability used on DS9. Still, don't really have a great desire to use it even after this change.
To spell it out for the Pakleds: Was there ever a main ship in a Star Trek series or movie that didn't carry a mix of energy and projectile weapons?
The Kelvin (kind of a main until it exploded) which used little pulse phaser things instead, sure as hell didn't look like any type of torpedo.
Plus the Enterprise apparently didn't have torpedoes in Balance of Terror as they had to use proximity phaser blasts and the only weapon they talked about having where phasers.
But that's exactly it. For escorts it is quite easy to evade a BO hit, since they're so fast. There you hit or miss really applies.
But science vessels and cruisers are sitting ducks, as you have said. They don't tend to be as fast as escorts and almost every BO hits them full power. So there is no hit or miss, just hit.
Yes, most players use cannons. But most PvP players have been using DBBs for a long time. Not maybe, almost every one of them. Arenas are not a land of 4 DHC DPS jockeys.
After watching Poster Yuzral video on the Tribble server updates, I recant my opinion on BO being over hyped. I now do feel it is OP and needs a slight re-adjustment. Maybe not 100% Crit, but adjust the % and give it more based dmg.
this wont effect me in the slightest, my main with the excel is focused completely on bfaw anyways, i never saw the point in BO because its like pumping an extra torpedo into the side where as bfaw at close range can cut 1 or multiple enemies to pieces quickly.
The OP quotes Hawk discussing future changes to tweak/nerf/whatever BFAW so this does affect you somewhat slightly.
Even if it would count, the "little pulse phaser things", as Captain Obvious put it so eloquently, are actually supposed to be rapid fire torpedo launchers.
Comments
The idea is that this eliminates outliers. They reduced the base damage, but in turn make it auto-crit. So the damage is always high, but it will not reach the old maximums.
The problem may be that the new maximum could still be too high, and the damage neeeds further adjustment.
Another side effect of this is - you can now deliberately trigger crit effects by using Beam Overload. That seems also intended (as adjudicatorhawk brought this up), so if you create a build around crit effects, BO will be a go-to power for you.
I think there is no problem with the base premise of the change, the devil is purely in the details.
Beam OVERload will no longer drain power? Why call it beam overload anymore?
Keep up that amazing work Cryptic.
/whatever
Well, the problem is, in STO this means nothing because in a power creeped ship, having a weapon that deals MORE damage than normal and not only that, it does criticals everytime, its always bad. No matter what.
I dont mind having these changes in pve, even if i consider em completely unnecessary (as almost everything cryptic does) but it is a game - breaker for pvp.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
It's a special ability that you can use ever so often, not an always on effect. And as such, it can be balanced, with the right stats, or totally broken with the wrong ones. The basic idea is not the problem.
I think the reasoning is to get people away from the usual same-old consoles that stack up crit chance. You don't need to stack crit chance if your main "thing" is going to be BO, so you will slot other consoles. You won't need Zero Point and Assimilated, you'll look at other options. You won't need "Locator" Fleet consoles, you will stack the CrtD ones instead.
Hey, I use subsystem targeting 3. It's actually a swell boff power.
Oh boy, my all-tac Temporal Destroyer will be even more nuts now. Awesome!!
From a practical point of view it does not make sense that BO does not drain additional power.
Energy weapon damage is based on the amount of energy that is being provided to energy weapon emitter itself. The more energy provided to the energy weapon system the more damage it should be able to do.
With the patch change where does that extra energy come from? Does the tactical Boff have an intake on the bridge to TRIBBLE into to provide that extra power for BO to work?
Emergency Power. Just that rather than shunting it into the general weapons system (like EPTW)it's shunted into a specific beam array.
Magical unicorn rainbow farts.
And after writing this all I can think of are the sounds of the biomatter phasers from the xindi lockbox. Maybe we're on to something......
Then do all emergency power abilities go into cool down mode while the ship's warp core and fusion generators replenish emergency power?
Peacekeeper High Command
Scorpius - Zelbinion Mk II
As for BFaW prosed 1v1 nerf, it needs to happen. Sorry, but the torpedo scattershot does LESS damage 1v1 than a normal torp, yet BFaW does more damage (5 shots in the time of 4).
The nerf that really needs to happen is Aux2Bat, not really the ability itself, it's not that good for most ships and works mainly to recover from a particularily draining attack (e.g. BO). It's when paired with a (Purple/Very Rare) DOff (often 3) that reduces BOff cooldowns on activation of a battery (fair seeing as batteries are both consumable and have an unaffected CD period (I assume since they aren't a BOff power)). The problem stems from the fact that these DOffs also fire their ability off when Aux2Bat is used, allowing for someone to say, fire Cannon Rapid Fire, then immediately fire Aux2Bat straight after, buffing their power, and also refreshing their cooldowns to a point that they will be ready to fire again as soon as the 10seconds of CRF expires. This method does work with none Purple/Very Rare DOffs, but not as well due to their bonus not reducing cooldown enough.
As for BO and BFaW, it needs/needed to happen, the Cannon abilities were balanced (1 did more 1v1 damage, the other did more 1vX damage), same with the Torpedoes, but BFaW did both more 1v1 and 1vX, making BO, which barely did more damage than a normal beam attack (when considering the huge power drain effectively halved the damage of all other energy weapons for a while) rather redundant.
P.S. A simple fix for Aux2Bat would be to make the BOff CD effect from the DOff's not work with Aux2Bat.
That would be stupid.
FAW damage caps at two targets - any additional targets merely divides the damage among them. A third target lowers the damage dealt to each target. Making it less effective on single targets would mean it's ridiculously situational - best results with two targets? Contrast this with CSV, which hits every target in the cone, without dividing up the damage.
If they actually want to re-balance both BO and FAW they should just duplicate the functionality of CRF and CSV respectively. A cone that hits everything equally, and a single target sustained spike. None of which with artificial drain mechanics, drain being a side effect of the weapons firing more.
What? TS1 fires 4 torpedoes at a single target instead of 1, and TS3 fires 8 torpedoes at a single target instead of 1. How is it weaker than a single normal torpedo?
Every single one of the "multi-target" abilities (including CSV) still does more damage on a single target than without.
Most players in escorts use cannons, at the most maybe a frontal dual beam alongside their cannons setup. This means even though they are boosting BO, keep in mind the player have to contend with the hit or miss ratio. Like everyone have already stated, both Science vessels and cruisers are far behind in the Tactical department, since most have maximum of 2 Tactical Bridge Officer Slots.
That is further complicated by the fact that there are a minimum amount of Tactical skills that are useful at those lower ranks, that is ensign & Lt.
But that's exactly it. For escorts it is quite easy to evade a BO hit, since they're so fast. There you hit or miss really applies.
But science vessels and cruisers are sitting ducks, as you have said. They don't tend to be as fast as escorts and almost every BO hits them full power. So there is no hit or miss, just hit.
Yes, most players use cannons. But most PvP players have been using DBBs for a long time. Not maybe, almost every one of them. Arenas are not a land of 4 DHC DPS jockeys.
But Crit != Proc.
Or am I misunderstanding you, sir?
So all the episodes of Star Trek either before the introduction of photon torpedoes or just didn't use torpedoes are now not Star Trek
I think it's obvious what he meant..
To spell it out for the Pakleds: Was there ever a main ship in a Star Trek series or movie that didn't carry a mix of energy and projectile weapons? Or does anyone seriously think that they uninstalled their torpedoes for every episode where they weren't used? Maybe to make them go?:rolleyes:
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
Obivously not obvious enough for our Captain Obvious here.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
The Kelvin (kind of a main until it exploded) which used little pulse phaser things instead, sure as hell didn't look like any type of torpedo.
Plus the Enterprise apparently didn't have torpedoes in Balance of Terror as they had to use proximity phaser blasts and the only weapon they talked about having where phasers.
After watching Poster Yuzral video on the Tribble server updates, I recant my opinion on BO being over hyped. I now do feel it is OP and needs a slight re-adjustment. Maybe not 100% Crit, but adjust the % and give it more based dmg.
The OP quotes Hawk discussing future changes to tweak/nerf/whatever BFAW so this does affect you somewhat slightly.
Even if it would count, the "little pulse phaser things", as Captain Obvious put it so eloquently, are actually supposed to be rapid fire torpedo launchers.
Epic fail is epic.