With medium DPS, you should hold the nanites back in case somebody starts lagging.
The guard spheres are a petty annoyance for anyone with TT (and seriously, who DOESN'T run TT???). There's really no point to your strategy, it provides very minor benefits while greatly increasing the likelihood of some hyper-elite dude exploding in rage.
Going to point out that my medium tactic has so far not failed the optional. And then sheepishly raise my hand for the same Atrox build that is using GW and not TT. Though I think every other build I have uses it.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Going to point out that my medium tactic has so far not failed the optional. And then sheepishly raise my hand for the same Atrox build that is using GW and not TT. Though I think every other build I have uses it.
Well then you've been pretty darn lucky.
And yeah, the Atrox is pants for tac, but it's in the unique position of seldom drawing enough aggro to NEED TT.
No that is a medium DPS group that has taken the generators down swiftly. GW pulls the spheres that can disrupt things into the target area.
In a high DPS group I am supplemental fire and toss what ship heals I have.
In low DPS I am usually using the GW and tractors to stop nanites till the transformer pops.
Different tactics for different scenarios. Most medium to high DPS don't need the nanites held back as the transformer will go down well before they are in range.
And now imagine that first transformer goes down as planned. They go to second trans, generators pop in a jiffy, guard spheres jump in, you toss grav well on trans. So far so good. Then 2 guys get distracted by who knows what and use HY/CRF on spheres instead of trans, since they are all in one place and for them its confusing. Or the other two start poking nanite spheres just arriving from the gate. Or the guy who was actually dragging them (8k dps followed by two 3k ones) needs to answer the phone, so he just goes AFK.
I pug ISE all the time. I have a pretty collection of screenshots of me poking the gate while 4 remaining players are dead. I saw pairs of players, using quite decent rep gear, losing to single spheres.
Point is, there are no rules in pugging. Even if its going awesomely well one second, does not mean it will not become a dragged out session of teeth pulling in the next second. Hell, the smoother it goes, the more I expect it to go south. If you have a grav well thats not really needed at the moment, save it because there is a really good chance it will make a difference between a neat run and a jumbled mess just moments later.
Want a real hair-pulling challenge? Go for eSTF round on weekend Eurozone prime time. You will see wonders beyond your comprehension.
Maybe you will meet that guy in 10-injuries A2B Obelisk running Type 8s.
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"
Okay, this isn't a worst by any means...it was just kind of a funny one, imho.
I get hit by a HY3 Plasma torp - dead.
21s later, another guy gets hit by a Plasma torp - dead.
19s later, a third guy gets hit by a Plasma torp - dead.
Up until that point, it was just folks flying around going wheee - no 10s rule here, pop one - pop two - pop three - pop four - pop the Trans - repeat on the other side...obliterate the Gateway.
And then having three folks drop like that, lol...was kind of funny, imho.
"Hello, my name is Inigo of Borg. You killed my Gateway. Prepare to die."
Maybe I should be asleep...but I thought it was a trip.
edit: Meh, it was only a 200603 raw torp that popped me...had hoped it was a 300k+ one. But looking at the actual parse was funny, because one of the guys managed to shoot the fourth HY which would have popped him.
Originally Posted by feiqa View Post
No that is a medium DPS group that has taken the generators down swiftly. GW pulls the spheres that can disrupt things into the target area.
In a high DPS group I am supplemental fire and toss what ship heals I have.
In low DPS I am usually using the GW and tractors to stop nanites till the transformer pops.
Different tactics for different scenarios. Most medium to high DPS don't need the nanites held back as the transformer will go down well before they are in range.
See to me this looks like a tactic that could work well in some instances but has a huge chance to go horribly wrong.
What if the guys killing the transformer are not paying attention and the nanite spheres get close enough to be caught in the GW's pull? Then you've just hoovered up all the NPC's you were supposed to keep away from the transformer so they are now right on top of it.
Some people have grav wells with enormous ranges on them so you can't guarantee what you'll catch with it.
I think using it to keep things away from the transformers is a far better tactic. In ISE or KSE grav wells are there for crowd control, leave the damage dealing to those with the heaviest weapons.
lordsteve: That's where common sense and good judgment comes into play. You judge the team by how coordinated it is. You see how fast the cube and spheres are taken out in the initial attack. You see how fast and/or how evenly the 4 corners go down. You use your judgment if you think the group is on the ball or not.
If yes: GW that transformer. If no: Save it just in case.
It's the same as any other boff ability. You use CSV at the wrong time you'll get dead really fast sometimes. If you use all your heals on a friendly when you have 5% hull and are losing 1000 per tick, you'll get dead soon. Common sense and good judgment are key. Though, granted, this can be totally absent in some pugs.
notoryczny: Losing to single spheres isn't the player's fault many times. The borg have been buffed repeatedly over the past couple years. The spheres often do more damage than gateways now. Further, if the server is crapping bricks instead of running properly, it can give them 100k uber-hit ability with every shot. If, as you say, they had good gear then I wouldn't necessarily blame them unless it was 100% user error. There's just too much BS programming with the spheres to lay that solely on the player in 99% of cases.
notoryczny: Losing to single spheres isn't the player's fault many times. The borg have been buffed repeatedly over the past couple years. The spheres often do more damage than gateways now. Further, if the server is crapping bricks instead of running properly, it can give them 100k uber-hit ability with every shot. If, as you say, they had good gear then I wouldn't necessarily blame them unless it was 100% user error. There's just too much BS programming with the spheres to lay that solely on the player in 99% of cases.
I never underestimate spheres, they can very quickly overpower anyone who isn't paying attention or players who think they can ignore them because they aren't big enough.
Just because they aren't capital ships doesn't mean they are not dangerous. A cube will normally fire a couple of its weapons at a time at you, but if you get swarmed by 5+ spheres then that is a whole lot more shots they are putting out and targeted only at you.
My take on it is if it's shooting me I kill it, unless it's a single smaller npc who I can ignore or heal from until my main target is down.
lordsteve: That's where common sense and good judgment comes into play. You judge the team by how coordinated it is. You see how fast the cube and spheres are taken out in the initial attack. You see how fast and/or how evenly the 4 corners go down. You use your judgment if you think the group is on the ball or not.
And this really is where the better players show through. A lot of the poorer quality players will just spam abilities without really thinking, rather than timing things properly.
I'm not saying the original suggestion of grav wells on the transformer was totally wrong but in the wrong hands it could be really bad, a poor quality player wouldn't know how best to use the ability.
You see similar problems with people spamming torps at shielded targets. A high quality player will time a torp volley exactly when the shields drop for maximum impact.
notoryczny: Losing to single spheres isn't the player's fault many times. The borg have been buffed repeatedly over the past couple years. The spheres often do more damage than gateways now. Further, if the server is crapping bricks instead of running properly, it can give them 100k uber-hit ability with every shot. If, as you say, they had good gear then I wouldn't necessarily blame them unless it was 100% user error. There's just too much BS programming with the spheres to lay that solely on the player in 99% of cases.
I was talking about 2 players with decent to good gear who lost to single sphere. One was in an Intrepid, ran MACO (used 3-pc once or twice) and didn't redistribute his shields or heal anything, nor use any sci magic either. Just used that boat for kirking. Other guy was a vorcha engie who died when anything looked in his direction, judging by visuals he had KHG shield. Sphere that did them in had about 70% hull and 2 facings up.
That case was pretty clear.
Anyway, I see "players" like that all the time. New trend is for 5-second tanks, they go in fully specced in threat control and pop at best 20 seconds after respawn. Luckily, I see less and less 3-4k dps scims in ISE pugs.
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"
Speaking of Grav Well and ISE, I've recently been running some (EDIT) pugged (/EDIT) STFs to get the speedy Assimilated engines for my alt 'serviceman' account and saw a very well thought out attack.
First of all, both of the chars were flying more or less rainbow Risian cruisers with equipment only from drops (except for the shields, mostly around mk X common junk), barely any drops, no rep traits ..., so I was nowhere near good performance. Still I managed to get better than the average joe's numbers not to mention the loads of healing the build could do. Also the special console ain't entirely useless to control nanites in ISE.
In one of those runs that was going rather slowly, I was getting ready to 'escort' the coming spheres away, as there was still even a generator standing as they approached. Sadly, the generator in question was the one closest to the spheres and as it was being blown up (and I was just starting a run on the spheres to get them far away), someone casted a strong Gravity Well on it. Of course, it immediately attracted the spheres and the optional was lost a fraction of a second after the transformer was finally freed for destruction.
Pretty sad.
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
This thread will be a rreally crowded place soon. Due to queued events dilithium rewards nerf, all those guys who show up only to get dil will migrate to new elite queues, where failing optional equals going home emptyhanded. All that against extra-buffed enemies. Also, those guys will stop improving due to removal of gear rewards from queues.
Raising difficulty and moving current rewards to that level will not make average pugger a better player. Just the opposite.
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"
the new elites will cause a torrent of stf casualties with the objectives, this thread will really start filling up real fast with the horror stories come delta rising
"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
the new elites will cause a torrent of stf casualties with the objectives, this thread will really start filling up real fast with the horror stories come delta rising
That will be the first 2-3 weeks tops.
Either until people get used to the new difficulty or until people complained enough for the new elite content to be hit with the nerf hammer.
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.
That will be the first 2-3 weeks tops.
Either until people get used to the new difficulty or until people complained enough for the new elite content to be hit with the nerf hammer.
Way more than 2 weeks. Elite STFs are open to griefing in a way no STF has ever been. No optional means no reward. Someone wants to TRIBBLE up your STF because he doesn't need the piddly 960 dilithium? Easy to do.
I already see people royally TRIBBLE up current elite STFs, sometimes so bad I swear they're doing it on purpose (but they never speak so who knows). You'll have to run elites in a premade group, and why bother when the reward is even worse than now. At now we get random drops along with our 960 dil. After the 14th you'll get less reward for harder content that takes longer to do. Yay, just what everyone's been asking for. Oh, and you're open to griefing if you choose to pug.
the new elites will cause a torrent of stf casualties with the objectives, this thread will really start filling up real fast with the horror stories come delta rising
That will be the first 2-3 weeks tops.
Either until people get used to the new difficulty or until people complained enough for the new elite content to be hit with the nerf hammer.
forget the new elites, the pain of the optionals in ISE becoming required is gonna kill........
New HSE is apparently a nightmare, with cubes that have 3.2 million HP and take ~7 million damage to go down with a team of 5 with an average of 20k DPS.
These are guys who can solo ISE. And even THEY failed the first optional.
New HSE is apparently a nightmare, with cubes that have 3.2 million HP and take ~7 million damage to go down with a team of 5 with an average of 20k DPS.
These are guys who can solo ISE. And even THEY failed the first optional.
Nightmare mode indeed. I am SO in for this!
so in addition to being massive bloated sacks of HP, they also have somewhere in the neighborhood of 55% resist to everything...well, science will have fun with that - a fully buffed sensor scan alone strips somewhere close to 70% resist
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.
so in addition to being massive bloated sacks of HP, they also have somewhere in the neighborhood of 55% resist to everything...well, science will have fun with that - a fully buffed sensor scan alone strips somewhere close to 70% resist
I'm making a science toon with a Sci Vesta and making it the perfect debuffer.
Then I'm going into HSE. And I will PWN.
Looks like at least 2 40k DPS scimitard beamboats are needed, along with one sci debuffer, one Recluse with max threat grab and tholian fighters to tank, and probably a Mat'Ha raptor specced for maximum forward firepower.
I'm making a science toon with a Sci Vesta and making it the perfect debuffer.
Then I'm going into HSE. And I will PWN.
Looks like at least 2 40k DPS scimitard beamboats are needed, along with one sci debuffer, one Recluse with max threat grab and tholian fighters to tank, and probably a Mat'Ha raptor specced for maximum forward firepower.
Should be fun.
and mine only does 20K...looks like i've got some serious work to do
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.
and mine only does 20K...looks like i've got some serious work to do
Yeah, and that sci ship needs to be parsing 12-15k at least. The Recluse needs to parse 20k, minimum, without pets, AND be able to take at least 1 THY3 plasma torp and one heavy plasma bolt at once without dying. Lots of MK 14 gold fleet neutroniums seem likely. I'm thinking the Mat'Ha or other forward-damage 'scort should parse a bare minimum of 50k DPS.
Possible with MK 14 gold gear and t5u or t6 ships, at least. Given the numbers I've seen for MK 14 tac consoles and weapons...we're looking at a single DHC on a well-specced DHCmitard parsing 2.5k DPS even before adding boff abilities, skills, and the weapons power factor.
New HSE is apparently a nightmare, with cubes that have 3.2 million HP and take ~7 million damage to go down with a team of 5 with an average of 20k DPS.
These are guys who can solo ISE. And even THEY failed the first optional.
Nightmare mode indeed. I am SO in for this!
HSE has been as close as totally abandoned for a long time.
It's still one of the most bug ridden queued missions, most PUG lose 1-2 members during play and if you want any sort of reliable group you have to put up with elitist a-holes from DPS channels.
Wat is going to happen is that for the first 1-2 weeks after launch of DR is the once people hit level 60 they will test every elite queue and if the new HSE is as rough as rumored then people will simply not play it after that.
There will be plenty of moaning and either it'll get nerfed (12-15k dps needed, perhaps less) or "removed because it didn't fit the new standards".
Either way it'll be nothing to worry about.
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.
HSE you can do nowadays nearly alone and quite ok in a pug, if (great if^^) you abandon some DPS for sturdiness. If you find the middleway, and have some sense of strategy, its a wonderful piece of game.
Of course, in a dps group its laughable easy, but then again, only in a pug you can call it a challenge, eh.
I thought I read somewhere (do not ask me where I can not seem to find it now) that a Dev said that the new elite will not get nerfed and that they were worried that some of them were going to be too easy for the difficulty they want and that those ones would get boosted, but again I cannot seem to find the reference anywhere.
I thought I read somewhere (do not ask me where I can not seem to find it now) that a Dev said that the new elite will not get nerfed and that they were worried that some of them were going to be too easy for the difficulty they want and that those ones would get boosted, but again I cannot seem to find the reference anywhere.
That's the ongoing story, but i have my doubts about the no-nerf policy.
Either DR is going for a power jump (more than the 20% extra damage going from MK XII to Mk XIV) or the elite content will only be available for the top 5% of the players.
In addition i doubt that the rewards will completely scale according to the difficulty (240-480-960 for the dilithium) and if the new Elite is as difficult as rumored then even the top 5 will not find playing those time efficient and as a result the Elite queues will go barren.
The devs want their new content to be played and thus i believe that the base line for the toughest Elite (rumored HSE) will likely be 18-20K instead of the 30k DPS I've seen mentioned.
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.
Comments
Going to point out that my medium tactic has so far not failed the optional. And then sheepishly raise my hand for the same Atrox build that is using GW and not TT. Though I think every other build I have uses it.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Well then you've been pretty darn lucky.
And yeah, the Atrox is pants for tac, but it's in the unique position of seldom drawing enough aggro to NEED TT.
except for the boarding parties. . .
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Doffed Transfer Shield Strength.
And now imagine that first transformer goes down as planned. They go to second trans, generators pop in a jiffy, guard spheres jump in, you toss grav well on trans. So far so good. Then 2 guys get distracted by who knows what and use HY/CRF on spheres instead of trans, since they are all in one place and for them its confusing. Or the other two start poking nanite spheres just arriving from the gate. Or the guy who was actually dragging them (8k dps followed by two 3k ones) needs to answer the phone, so he just goes AFK.
I pug ISE all the time. I have a pretty collection of screenshots of me poking the gate while 4 remaining players are dead. I saw pairs of players, using quite decent rep gear, losing to single spheres.
Point is, there are no rules in pugging. Even if its going awesomely well one second, does not mean it will not become a dragged out session of teeth pulling in the next second. Hell, the smoother it goes, the more I expect it to go south. If you have a grav well thats not really needed at the moment, save it because there is a really good chance it will make a difference between a neat run and a jumbled mess just moments later.
Want a real hair-pulling challenge? Go for eSTF round on weekend Eurozone prime time. You will see wonders beyond your comprehension.
Maybe you will meet that guy in 10-injuries A2B Obelisk running Type 8s.
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 get hit by a HY3 Plasma torp - dead.
21s later, another guy gets hit by a Plasma torp - dead.
19s later, a third guy gets hit by a Plasma torp - dead.
Up until that point, it was just folks flying around going wheee - no 10s rule here, pop one - pop two - pop three - pop four - pop the Trans - repeat on the other side...obliterate the Gateway.
And then having three folks drop like that, lol...was kind of funny, imho.
"Hello, my name is Inigo of Borg. You killed my Gateway. Prepare to die."
Maybe I should be asleep...but I thought it was a trip.
edit: Meh, it was only a 200603 raw torp that popped me...had hoped it was a 300k+ one. But looking at the actual parse was funny, because one of the guys managed to shoot the fourth HY which would have popped him.
See to me this looks like a tactic that could work well in some instances but has a huge chance to go horribly wrong.
What if the guys killing the transformer are not paying attention and the nanite spheres get close enough to be caught in the GW's pull? Then you've just hoovered up all the NPC's you were supposed to keep away from the transformer so they are now right on top of it.
Some people have grav wells with enormous ranges on them so you can't guarantee what you'll catch with it.
I think using it to keep things away from the transformers is a far better tactic. In ISE or KSE grav wells are there for crowd control, leave the damage dealing to those with the heaviest weapons.
If yes: GW that transformer. If no: Save it just in case.
It's the same as any other boff ability. You use CSV at the wrong time you'll get dead really fast sometimes. If you use all your heals on a friendly when you have 5% hull and are losing 1000 per tick, you'll get dead soon. Common sense and good judgment are key. Though, granted, this can be totally absent in some pugs.
notoryczny: Losing to single spheres isn't the player's fault many times. The borg have been buffed repeatedly over the past couple years. The spheres often do more damage than gateways now. Further, if the server is crapping bricks instead of running properly, it can give them 100k uber-hit ability with every shot. If, as you say, they had good gear then I wouldn't necessarily blame them unless it was 100% user error. There's just too much BS programming with the spheres to lay that solely on the player in 99% of cases.
I never underestimate spheres, they can very quickly overpower anyone who isn't paying attention or players who think they can ignore them because they aren't big enough.
Just because they aren't capital ships doesn't mean they are not dangerous. A cube will normally fire a couple of its weapons at a time at you, but if you get swarmed by 5+ spheres then that is a whole lot more shots they are putting out and targeted only at you.
My take on it is if it's shooting me I kill it, unless it's a single smaller npc who I can ignore or heal from until my main target is down.
And this really is where the better players show through. A lot of the poorer quality players will just spam abilities without really thinking, rather than timing things properly.
I'm not saying the original suggestion of grav wells on the transformer was totally wrong but in the wrong hands it could be really bad, a poor quality player wouldn't know how best to use the ability.
You see similar problems with people spamming torps at shielded targets. A high quality player will time a torp volley exactly when the shields drop for maximum impact.
I was talking about 2 players with decent to good gear who lost to single sphere. One was in an Intrepid, ran MACO (used 3-pc once or twice) and didn't redistribute his shields or heal anything, nor use any sci magic either. Just used that boat for kirking. Other guy was a vorcha engie who died when anything looked in his direction, judging by visuals he had KHG shield. Sphere that did them in had about 70% hull and 2 facings up.
That case was pretty clear.
Anyway, I see "players" like that all the time. New trend is for 5-second tanks, they go in fully specced in threat control and pop at best 20 seconds after respawn. Luckily, I see less and less 3-4k dps scims in ISE pugs.
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"
First of all, both of the chars were flying more or less rainbow Risian cruisers with equipment only from drops (except for the shields, mostly around mk X common junk), barely any drops, no rep traits ..., so I was nowhere near good performance. Still I managed to get better than the average joe's numbers not to mention the loads of healing the build could do. Also the special console ain't entirely useless to control nanites in ISE.
In one of those runs that was going rather slowly, I was getting ready to 'escort' the coming spheres away, as there was still even a generator standing as they approached. Sadly, the generator in question was the one closest to the spheres and as it was being blown up (and I was just starting a run on the spheres to get them far away), someone casted a strong Gravity Well on it. Of course, it immediately attracted the spheres and the optional was lost a fraction of a second after the transformer was finally freed for destruction.
Pretty sad.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
Toiva: See my comment to notoryczny
Raising difficulty and moving current rewards to that level will not make average pugger a better player. Just the opposite.
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"
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
That will be the first 2-3 weeks tops.
Either until people get used to the new difficulty or until people complained enough for the new elite content to be hit with the nerf hammer.
Way more than 2 weeks. Elite STFs are open to griefing in a way no STF has ever been. No optional means no reward. Someone wants to TRIBBLE up your STF because he doesn't need the piddly 960 dilithium? Easy to do.
I already see people royally TRIBBLE up current elite STFs, sometimes so bad I swear they're doing it on purpose (but they never speak so who knows). You'll have to run elites in a premade group, and why bother when the reward is even worse than now. At now we get random drops along with our 960 dil. After the 14th you'll get less reward for harder content that takes longer to do. Yay, just what everyone's been asking for. Oh, and you're open to griefing if you choose to pug.
forget the new elites, the pain of the optionals in ISE becoming required is gonna kill........
These are guys who can solo ISE. And even THEY failed the first optional.
Nightmare mode indeed. I am SO in for this!
May be fun...
#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!"
I'm making a science toon with a Sci Vesta and making it the perfect debuffer.
Then I'm going into HSE. And I will PWN.
Looks like at least 2 40k DPS scimitard beamboats are needed, along with one sci debuffer, one Recluse with max threat grab and tholian fighters to tank, and probably a Mat'Ha raptor specced for maximum forward firepower.
Should be fun.
#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!"
Yeah, and that sci ship needs to be parsing 12-15k at least. The Recluse needs to parse 20k, minimum, without pets, AND be able to take at least 1 THY3 plasma torp and one heavy plasma bolt at once without dying. Lots of MK 14 gold fleet neutroniums seem likely. I'm thinking the Mat'Ha or other forward-damage 'scort should parse a bare minimum of 50k DPS.
Possible with MK 14 gold gear and t5u or t6 ships, at least. Given the numbers I've seen for MK 14 tac consoles and weapons...we're looking at a single DHC on a well-specced DHCmitard parsing 2.5k DPS even before adding boff abilities, skills, and the weapons power factor.
Should be fun.
HSE has been as close as totally abandoned for a long time.
It's still one of the most bug ridden queued missions, most PUG lose 1-2 members during play and if you want any sort of reliable group you have to put up with elitist a-holes from DPS channels.
Wat is going to happen is that for the first 1-2 weeks after launch of DR is the once people hit level 60 they will test every elite queue and if the new HSE is as rough as rumored then people will simply not play it after that.
There will be plenty of moaning and either it'll get nerfed (12-15k dps needed, perhaps less) or "removed because it didn't fit the new standards".
Either way it'll be nothing to worry about.
Of course, in a dps group its laughable easy, but then again, only in a pug you can call it a challenge, eh.
That's the ongoing story, but i have my doubts about the no-nerf policy.
Either DR is going for a power jump (more than the 20% extra damage going from MK XII to Mk XIV) or the elite content will only be available for the top 5% of the players.
In addition i doubt that the rewards will completely scale according to the difficulty (240-480-960 for the dilithium) and if the new Elite is as difficult as rumored then even the top 5 will not find playing those time efficient and as a result the Elite queues will go barren.
The devs want their new content to be played and thus i believe that the base line for the toughest Elite (rumored HSE) will likely be 18-20K instead of the 30k DPS I've seen mentioned.