what they said and what's really there are two different things. crystalline entity used to have around 1 million hp on elite. now it has 21 million on advanced. are you sure that's a similar level of challenge?
Don't forget the 70%+ energy resistance. Oh and recrystallization can only be removed with tachyon beam, well some of em and nothing else. Shareds also heal the CE by 500k a pop, and that's mainly a result of the ridiculous high hp.
As it currently stands these Advanced STF's will and probably already have chased players away.
Nobody wants to sit mashing their space bar for 30 mins to get an NPC down to 50% health and then have people give up and leave. If you do somehow complete a mission you've taken 30 mins or more to get 480 dilithium - hardly worthwhile use of time.
Many of the queues are now dead as the payout is so poor compared to the amount of time you need that people are not interested.
Also I personally see little reason to even upgrade my ships now or buy a T6 ship because unless the upgrade means they can put out insane amounts of DPS to combat the huge HP's of the NPC's it's money down the drain.
I mean I watched 5 players smashing borg BOP's and it took all of us to kill one enemy after around a minute.
I know there are players out there who have ships doing 20, 30, 40, 50K+ DPS but those are not the average player base. Your average Joe is going to be hard pushed to handle these new missions without a min/max ship and lots of shinnies bought with real world cash.
The STF's have become gone what I hoped they never would - combat itself is now a grind.
Just did a CC Advanced. What a mess. Large shards had 170k+ hp, about 50% or so effective DR. I didn't see this "shards spawning on you" thing some people have been talking about. I think the truth of it is it's just leftover swarms of shards from someone who died or caused them to reacquire aggro. Actually killing the damned things is extremely difficult. It can be done, but doing it will literally take forever. Advanced formerly known as elite? A lie. Such a horrible, horrible lie.
Just did a CC Advanced. What a mess. Large shards had 170k+ hp, about 50% or so effective DR. I didn't see this "shards spawning on you" thing some people have been talking about. I think the truth of it is it's just leftover swarms of shards from someone who died or caused them to reacquire aggro. Actually killing the damned things is extremely difficult. It can be done, but doing it will literally take forever. Advanced formerly known as elite? A lie. Such a horrible, horrible lie.
what they said and what's really there are two different things. crystalline entity used to have around 1 million hp on elite. now it has 21 million on advanced. are you sure that's a similar level of challenge?
not only that... some borg ships tank too much: ex. in cure space advanced destroying bops is much more difficult (may be too much difficult) than destroying cubes.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
On ISE, my first pass through was a completed mission with optional. It was a PUG full of heavy hitters, and though the sphere swarms were tough, we managed to pull it off with less than 2min to spare. Since then, I've done CSE and took one more pass at ISE - both fails.
In CSE, the Bops are sporting 650K hulls, the spheres 800K, but the probes below the cubes are as squishy as before. So the strategy there should be CC around Kang while 2-3 guys focus on the probes/cubes, which should come down fairly easily.
Note: The new meta definitely favors Particle Gen builds. I can kill stuff that many other players can't because my TBR damage (backed by the PM trait and close to 400 int PG skills) goes straight to hull. Combined with the pull doff and some debuffing, I can slowly wear down groups of spheres or bops...it just takes a LONG time.
Yes running elite/advanced is ' required ' to move on in the rep system to the next tier...not even talking about gear here just the rep system tier. Normal rewards what...15 rep if that at best? And no special items at all. So telling people to stick with normal until they are better geared WONT happen due to income constraints. 15 best vs 135 best. But a fail in advanced now...that has changed, was only like 30, it's now 10.
Getting gear above very rare mk XI with out spending tech upgrades, maxing crafting, or having a tier 3 fleet....the quickest for solo and new is rep system.
This following right here is caused by a combination of PWE and the STO community. One thing leading to another.
Ground STFs basically stopped once they put in the rep system due to reward vs work. Space is easier then ground, so people started spamming space. Hardly no one in normal, so everyone goes elite. Why do something that wont happen when there is something that will because there is 100's of people spamming it.
STF's are not there for Dilth...they're there for Rep. And being the rep rewards have not changed with DR's release, no one will be doing normal due to economic reasons. And now no one is doing advanced due to time input vs reward. So simply put STFs will NOT be being done until things are fixed.
Here is another thing. ALL sources of rep for Romulan outside of doing the on-planet and patrol stuff is gone, there are a couple STFs but people either don't do them (Mine Trap) or reward too little (nebula rescue).
you're forgetting the daily bonus box. That gives 55 marks added onto whatever you get from the STF. Also, the reward box you get for filling a rep xp project, might have a BNP or whatever, not often , but it can happen.
In CSE, the Bops are sporting 650K hulls, the spheres 800K, but the probes below the cubes are as squishy as before. So the strategy there should be CC around Kang while 2-3 guys focus on the probes/cubes, which should come down fairly easily.
This is where I think the tactics need to go if the mission stays like this. The move to intel ship types and generally a less confrontational method of attack seems to be much more likely to succeed. Seems to suggest the full on "in your face" attack is not going to work here.
You need a few good crowd control or general "mess with the enemy" guys to keep the NPC's off the Kang whilst some of the more tactical guys hammer the probes and cubes to death.
They already have your money silly lifer.... You leaving just reduces the requirements to run the server.
Difficulty got cranked to 11. Looks like it made about 5 people happy, but most players are just pissed off.
Well considering that I have gotten 500 free zen each month, since launch, and I purchased it cheaper than the sales now, I think it was a good investment. The nerfing/NPC over-buffing for the new money grab is the problem. The majority of my fleet has stopped playing all together in protest and will probably move on to a newer space game where the game actually makes sense for the gamers.
LMAO maybe you should consider saving the Advanced until your gear is better. My fleetmates and I love the new difficulty and were having fun all day. Sure we failed a few and marveled at the difficulty. But we changed tactics, balanced the teams and started winning who knew. Keep everything where its at....All I know is that my Aux to Batt build is sidelined for a moment cause my phantom out preforms it.
And for those who didn't see it. Gecko has already stated that they will probably make advanced a little easier but he also said that they will be upping the difficulty of the eliete queues significantly. he so much as admitted that most ppl will fail them.
I think they did a great job and am looking forward to more.
Only problem then will be, how do they think should new players or even new chars get repgear because repgear still needs items that just drop on elite or sometimes from a box when you start the hourly. Not to speak about the "many" marks you get from normal or even advanced.
They build the rep system because they wanted to remove the randomness that was there for XII borg gear.
They caped the max amount of active rep abilitys because "new" level 50 players where much weaker then "old" ones.
Now we get the skillpontsystem past level 60 where you will need 70? points to max it out while you only get 10 until 60.
In other words, why should something be true i said yesterday. I won't even try to rep up my twinks now.
I completed the crystalline advanced. This took about 1/2 hour. I would describe it as roughly 10 times more difficult - mostly in terms of crystalline hitpoints, though he also does a cool dance and maybe throws some abilities.
I can see many groups not being able to hurt him more than it heals. It's healing like a champ. It was fun but I don't see running this more than once a week or so. I had done it daily on 4 characters.
If they stick to this difficulty it's safe to say there will be a lot less dilithium in the game - or at least people will have to seek alternate sources.
Basically everyone will be at the Voth ground battlezone and the Undine Space Zone when grinding dil. Having advanced be this hard is absurd.
LMAO maybe you should consider saving the Advanced until your gear is better. My fleetmates and I love the new difficulty and were having fun all day. Sure we failed a few and marveled at the difficulty. But we changed tactics, balanced the teams and started winning who knew. Keep everything where its at....All I know is that my Aux to Batt build is sidelined for a moment cause my phantom out preforms it.
And for those who didn't see it. Gecko has already stated that they will probably make advanced a little easier but he also said that they will be upping the difficulty of the eliete queues significantly. he so much as admitted that most ppl will fail them.
I think they did a great job and am looking forward to more.
Once again people are totally missing the point.
The HARDEST difficulty in the game should be SUPER HARD. It should require everything you wrote in your post (and more)
BUT, the difficulty BELOW the hardest should not be facepalm hard with enemies who have super HP buffs. How is that hard to understand?!
OH NO!!!!! THE POWERCREEP AND AUX TO BATT DOESNT WORK ANYMORE!!!!!!! I think im going to enjoy experimenting......my escort is relevant again which make me happy. and people have to rely on sci and tanks again OH THE HORROR.
I used to do CCE multiple times a day across multiple alts, 4 of which routinely got 1st. My main ship (a vesta with all elite gear) only failed to get 1st if I got disconnected mid match. Now that it's a T-5U, with an HP upgrade and all the same equipment as before, I cant even manage to scratch it before I'm obliterated. I'm going to assume that the 'advanced' we're seeing is what was intended as the new elite difficulty level, otherwise elite would be unbeatable even to the best builds possible.
OH NO!!!!! THE POWERCREEP AND AUX TO BATT DOESNT WORK ANYMORE!!!!!!! I think im going to enjoy experimenting......my escort is relevant again which make me happy. and people have to rely on sci and tanks again OH THE HORROR.
Actually those power creep keep-up builds are the ones that work best now. Not like they ever weren't obviously. But now they're less of an excess and more of a baseline requirement.
Some further thoughts on ISE Advanced after running through it several times (and beating it about half of those):
1. Crowd Control (CC) is now MANDATORY. You need at least one (preferably, two) players who have CC skills slotted. This includes GW, EWP and (with the reverse doff) TBR. Once the generators are down, there's simply no way to bring down the transformer before the nanite spheres arrive. And one touch from a nanite sphere = instant mission fail. More people need to be made aware of this fact.
2. Particle Gens Rule. With their bloated hit points and high shield resists, the new spheres take FOREVER to kill - especially if you're doing it the old fashioned way and blasting through with energy weapons. Direct to hull damage - through TBR, GW and EWP - is the way to go. I will no longer fly my FAHCR FAW/Beam Boat into these missions because (to quote the late, great Telly Savalas in "Battle of the Bulge"), it's like "hitting 'em with tennis balls."
Note: This was a ship that used to do 20K+ easily in the old ISE. Now it's all but useless - my Reman toon flying a R'mor with 2x TBR and maxed out Part Gen skills does more damage and can also fill the CC role at the same time. And with Particle Manipulator (which I got to sample thanks to the trait bug they're just now fixing), I'm hitting at a 70% crit rate on all Particle attacks - just insane carnage.
3. The Optional is now just that - OPTIONAL. As it stands, simply managing to not fail the mission should be the goal, especially for PUGs. I see too many groups trying to overpower stuff only to find that their weapons are now anemic and that, while everyone was "kirking" the transformer, nobody bothered to do something about the wave of nanite spheres rolling towards them (remember, one touch = mission over). So. Much. FAIL!
Anyway, my two-cents. Now back to my R&D grind so I can get PM back (and so Cryptic can't take it away with a patch).
Some further thoughts on ISE Advanced after running through it several times (and beating it about half of those):
1. Crowd Control (CC) is now MANDATORY. You need at least one (preferably, two) players who have CC skills slotted. This includes GW, EWP and (with the reverse doff) TBR. Once the generators are down, there's simply no way to bring down the transformer before the nanite spheres arrive. And one touch from a nanite sphere = instant mission fail. More people need to be made aware of this fact.
2. Particle Gens Rule. With their bloated hit points and high shield resists, the new spheres take FOREVER to kill - especially if you're doing it the old fashioned way and blasting through with energy weapons. Direct to hull damage - through TBR, GW and EWP - is the way to go. I will no longer fly my FAHCR FAW/Beam Boat into these missions because (to quote the late, great Telly Savalas in "Battle of the Bulge"), it's like "hitting 'em with tennis balls."
Note: This was a ship that used to do 20K+ easily in the old ISE. Now it's all but useless - my Reman toon flying a R'mor with 2x TBR and maxed out Part Gen skills does more damage and can also fill the CC role at the same time. And with Particle Manipulator (which I got to sample thanks to the trait bug they're just now fixing), I'm hitting at a 70% crit rate on all Particle attacks - just insane carnage.
3. The Optional is now just that - OPTIONAL. As it stands, simply managing to not fail the mission should be the goal, especially for PUGs. I see too many groups trying to overpower stuff only to find that their weapons are now anemic and that, while everyone was "kirking" the transformer, nobody bothered to do something about the wave of nanite spheres rolling towards them (remember, one touch = mission over). So. Much. FAIL!
Anyway, my two-cents. Now back to my R&D grind so I can get PM back (and so Cryptic can't take it away with a patch).
RCK
I think most of all that it's completely stupid that a 30-40k DPS boat cannot carry a bad team in ISA anymore.
It's not the players fault either, it is simply hard to get those numbers. If you have a team that is not laser focused on DPS I fear that no amount of carrying can be sufficient.
It's like they are punishing the players who actually invest a lot of time and money into DPS production forcing them not to PUG anything, and leaving the queues as a play place for only the DPS elite.
No normal sto player with 5k DPS is going to sit in a match firing their weapons for 45 minutes on hard hitting meatbag NPCs just to get something like 480 dilithium. The kind of rewards the queues give now for the amount of damage you have to give and take is completely insulting.
No, those players will head to the Dyson Battlezone which is now the only intact and efficient way of getting dilithium via combat.
I tryed CSA with my rommy that once did CSE with a 2 man team with 3 mins on the left on the optional clock. At the time my char had only rare mk xii tac consoles and did not have a full boff team of the crit hit boffs that it does now.
Now im in the new 5 tac consoles intel rom ship with all consoles fleet upgraded to mk xiii and it takes me as much time to kill a BoP as it did a negh in the old CSE
Advanced missions sould be the old CSE the new one should be the new CSE.
As it stands at the moment new lvl 50 chars wont be able to get the NP for the rep gear
Posted this Comment on Facebook to but of Course they Deleted it 5 Mins later, you dont like the Reality / Facts do you Cryptic / PW? You can Delete my and others Posts, but that will not make ALL the Hords of ENRAGED Players (many of them Rage Quited your Game now anyway) Silent, they WILL Continue Complaining, the Forums will also be filled more and more with Complains and hate towars the Ridicilous Changed that you made, Taking away the Purple Mk XI / XII Rewards from the STFs, Cutting their Dill Reward by Half?! (While at the same time bringing more Dill Sinks into the Game) rising up the Dificulty to a ABSURD Level? Many People asked for more Challenging STFs......so the best thing to do would be LEAVE Normale as it is, Rename the old Elite to the new Advanced and other than that also LEAVE IT as it was, and add the new Elite with much higher Difficulty, THERE YOU GO, Everyone is happy! But NO you totaly Smashed everything left right and Center and Changed a Running System for People ( the Majority) who Liked it, just to Satisfy a Small to Mid Sized Group of total Elitist wo want that Extreme Challenge! With Season 7 You Nerfed the Game Heavily, than People where OUTRAGING, so you changed things Partialy back, so why do you assume that they (me included) will like those Changes now?! Why are you always try to Anger your Playerbase?????I Thought this Game is for US your Players, than why those Moves????? WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DESTROY THE GAME THAT WE LOVE BIT BY BIT?!!!!!! I started the Game a little before Season 7, and Since than, Spend a Tremendous Amount of Time Playing it (around 16 Hours per day, 32 LEVEL50 Chars) and some good Money (Just Spend 50 a few weeks agoo for the Bortasque 3 Pack and iam a Lifer) Star Trek Online is my Favourite Game and the Favourite Game of many of my Contacts ( Including my Fiancee that i meet in this Game from Canada i Live in Germany!) DAMN i build up a Second Live in Star Trek Online, now i have to Watch how you Guys DESTROY my Second Home / Life / Experience, WHATS WRONG WITH YOU???? Yea with Delta Rising (also Called Dilithium Rising by many People) you gave us some nice new Story Missions, and other Nice Goodys = GOOD, but on the other Hand you NERF the Game and take away things from us = BAD, i ask you again WHY?! Dou you hate your Player Base that Much that you have to do this whenever you Bring some new Content (like Expensions) to the Game??? Dont you Realize that you Drive more and more Players away from the Game? and not just Casual Gamers, no ELITE Players who like me Spend Huge Time and also Money over the Years Rage Quited the Game in Sheer Numbers because of your NEGATIVE Changes over and over again, is that your Goal? Trying to get rid of as much Players as Possible? DIE Hard Fanboys will stay much longer (iam a HUGE Star Trek fan.....would explain why iam still here even with all your Torture Changes) but even they will sooner or Later, turn their Backs on you and look for another Place to Spend their Money and Time, will you than Realize the ERROR of your Actions? Yea? FYI That will be TOO Late! WAKE UP CRYPTIC AND PW, the Path you Choose is the WRONG ONE, you are out of TRACK better make an U TURN before its to late, at least if you have the slightest Love for the Game and care at least a little Bit for the Playerbase!
1. Crowd Control (CC) is now MANDATORY. You need at least one (preferably, two) players who have CC skills slotted. This includes GW, EWP and (with the reverse doff) TBR. Once the generators are down, there's simply no way to bring down the transformer before the nanite spheres arrive. And one touch from a nanite sphere = instant mission fail. More people need to be made aware of this fact.
The big problem with the CC method is that there's just too many spheres spawning to lock them all down. TBR only affects 3 at a time, and they are picked at random. So you can fly through and drag off a few, but inevitably at least one slips past. EWP+GW keeps them huddled together for a bit, but ultimately the combo ends, and you are left with them still on cooldown as the spheres march along. The other issue is, every ship devoted to CCing spheres is not DPSing the transformer. So you are delaying the spheres, but you are also delaying the transformer's destruction.
This is all compounded by the fact that again, this is supposed to be "like the old elite". It's absolutely not. The old elite did not require pre-arranged team tactics and full team DPS powerhouses to complete. That was what the new elite was supposed to be. It all really seems to stem from the scaling of NPC space defense stats from 50-60. Even in normal space missions, the HP jump is silly, and the shields never go down. I'm thinking of just losing any focus on energy weapons on my ship and going a transphasic torp boat, only keeping energy stuff for set bonuses, since bleedhtrough seems to be the answer to everything.
And also let us not forget, even though the missions are many times harder to complete with a PUG, and across the board LONGER to complete in general, the rewards have been HALVED.
The big problem with the CC method is that there's just too many spheres spawning to lock them all down. TBR only affects 3 at a time, and they are picked at random. So you can fly through and drag off a few, but inevitably at least one slips past. EWP+GW keeps them huddled together for a bit, but ultimately the combo ends, and you are left with them still on cooldown as the spheres march along. The other issue is, every ship devoted to CCing spheres is not DPSing the transformer. So you are delaying the spheres, but you are also delaying the transformer's destruction.
This is all compounded by the fact that again, this is supposed to be "like the old elite". It's absolutely not. The old elite did not require pre-arranged team tactics and full team DPS powerhouses to complete. That was what the new elite was supposed to be. It all really seems to stem from the scaling of NPC space defense stats from 50-60. Even in normal space missions, the HP jump is silly, and the shields never go down. I'm thinking of just losing any focus on energy weapons on my ship and going a transphasic torp boat, only keeping energy stuff for set bonuses, since bleedhtrough seems to be the answer to everything.
And also let us not forget, even though the missions are many times harder to complete with a PUG, and across the board LONGER to complete in general, the rewards have been HALVED.
TBR affecting only three at a time isn't a problem of you slot the standard push and position yourself correctly. I run both that and grav well on my sci ship and so far I've been able to keep the nanite spheres locked down indefinitely by interposing myself between the gate and transformer when I light off TBR. Even if they come at you in a giant deathball, having repulsor on push ensures that you end up checking the entire group since if one gets pushed out of range, it retargets to the next closest one. Combine with a speed boost from evasive maneuvers or epte and you can easily buy the precious seconds you need to drop another tarpit on them with grav well.
Just try to keep your fingers next to a panic button in case the gate decides it doesn't like you and starts shooting. Tac team can usually buy you enough time to finish setting up your cc but having a defense or armor booster helps. I haven't failed an ISA pug yet playing CC in this manner.
My favorite CC technique is to wait for the first spheres to appear through the gate, then fly straight at them, activating EWP and TBR (with pull doff) at 5K range. I then fly *through* the mob, grabbing whomever happens to get caught by TBR and leaving the rest mired in a stream of "warp poo." When TBR finally expires, I'm usually 70-80K or more away from the transformer. I then swoop back to remaining spheres using Evasive and scoop them up with my second copy of TBR.
Depending on how weak my PUGmates are, I may have to rinse/repeat several times. In the end, I'm usually alone, high above the spawn point, with 8-10 nanite sphere "buddies" who I then "entertain" with a combination of more EWP, TBR and lots of Particle Emission torps. Since I'm flying a PvP-spec'd R'mor, tanking the damage from the mob isn't a problem. And if the Particle Manipulator gods are smiling, I'll have killed about half of them by the time my PUGmates arrive to assist.
But again, this requires a dedicated teammate focusing solely on CC (when I've tried to join in on the transformer the spheres inevitably break through and end the mission). I don't mind playing this role - it's kind of fun spinning the mob in circles and generally make life miserable for the NPCs. And with the R'mor (now updated to T5-U status), it's a very OP feeling.
Note to PUGmates: If your ISA mission is a success, remember to thank your friendly CC player.
Comments
Don't forget the 70%+ energy resistance. Oh and recrystallization can only be removed with tachyon beam, well some of em and nothing else. Shareds also heal the CE by 500k a pop, and that's mainly a result of the ridiculous high hp.
Nobody wants to sit mashing their space bar for 30 mins to get an NPC down to 50% health and then have people give up and leave. If you do somehow complete a mission you've taken 30 mins or more to get 480 dilithium - hardly worthwhile use of time.
Many of the queues are now dead as the payout is so poor compared to the amount of time you need that people are not interested.
Also I personally see little reason to even upgrade my ships now or buy a T6 ship because unless the upgrade means they can put out insane amounts of DPS to combat the huge HP's of the NPC's it's money down the drain.
I mean I watched 5 players smashing borg BOP's and it took all of us to kill one enemy after around a minute.
I know there are players out there who have ships doing 20, 30, 40, 50K+ DPS but those are not the average player base. Your average Joe is going to be hard pushed to handle these new missions without a min/max ship and lots of shinnies bought with real world cash.
The STF's have become gone what I hoped they never would - combat itself is now a grind.
and now imagine elite difficulty.
not only that... some borg ships tank too much: ex. in cure space advanced destroying bops is much more difficult (may be too much difficult) than destroying cubes.
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
In CSE, the Bops are sporting 650K hulls, the spheres 800K, but the probes below the cubes are as squishy as before. So the strategy there should be CC around Kang while 2-3 guys focus on the probes/cubes, which should come down fairly easily.
Note: The new meta definitely favors Particle Gen builds. I can kill stuff that many other players can't because my TBR damage (backed by the PM trait and close to 400 int PG skills) goes straight to hull. Combined with the pull doff and some debuffing, I can slowly wear down groups of spheres or bops...it just takes a LONG time.
RCK
Getting gear above very rare mk XI with out spending tech upgrades, maxing crafting, or having a tier 3 fleet....the quickest for solo and new is rep system.
This following right here is caused by a combination of PWE and the STO community. One thing leading to another.
Ground STFs basically stopped once they put in the rep system due to reward vs work. Space is easier then ground, so people started spamming space. Hardly no one in normal, so everyone goes elite. Why do something that wont happen when there is something that will because there is 100's of people spamming it.
STF's are not there for Dilth...they're there for Rep. And being the rep rewards have not changed with DR's release, no one will be doing normal due to economic reasons. And now no one is doing advanced due to time input vs reward. So simply put STFs will NOT be being done until things are fixed.
Here is another thing. ALL sources of rep for Romulan outside of doing the on-planet and patrol stuff is gone, there are a couple STFs but people either don't do them (Mine Trap) or reward too little (nebula rescue).
My character Tsin'xing
This is where I think the tactics need to go if the mission stays like this. The move to intel ship types and generally a less confrontational method of attack seems to be much more likely to succeed. Seems to suggest the full on "in your face" attack is not going to work here.
You need a few good crowd control or general "mess with the enemy" guys to keep the NPC's off the Kang whilst some of the more tactical guys hammer the probes and cubes to death.
Well considering that I have gotten 500 free zen each month, since launch, and I purchased it cheaper than the sales now, I think it was a good investment. The nerfing/NPC over-buffing for the new money grab is the problem. The majority of my fleet has stopped playing all together in protest and will probably move on to a newer space game where the game actually makes sense for the gamers.
You where all able to know what is comming for you
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1238261
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1230241
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1231481
And cryptic knew the reaction before the release. Now we got the mess.
And for those who didn't see it. Gecko has already stated that they will probably make advanced a little easier but he also said that they will be upping the difficulty of the eliete queues significantly. he so much as admitted that most ppl will fail them.
I think they did a great job and am looking forward to more.
They build the rep system because they wanted to remove the randomness that was there for XII borg gear.
They caped the max amount of active rep abilitys because "new" level 50 players where much weaker then "old" ones.
Now we get the skillpontsystem past level 60 where you will need 70? points to max it out while you only get 10 until 60.
In other words, why should something be true i said yesterday. I won't even try to rep up my twinks now.
Basically everyone will be at the Voth ground battlezone and the Undine Space Zone when grinding dil. Having advanced be this hard is absurd.
Once again people are totally missing the point.
The HARDEST difficulty in the game should be SUPER HARD. It should require everything you wrote in your post (and more)
BUT, the difficulty BELOW the hardest should not be facepalm hard with enemies who have super HP buffs. How is that hard to understand?!
Actually those power creep keep-up builds are the ones that work best now. Not like they ever weren't obviously. But now they're less of an excess and more of a baseline requirement.
1. Crowd Control (CC) is now MANDATORY. You need at least one (preferably, two) players who have CC skills slotted. This includes GW, EWP and (with the reverse doff) TBR. Once the generators are down, there's simply no way to bring down the transformer before the nanite spheres arrive. And one touch from a nanite sphere = instant mission fail. More people need to be made aware of this fact.
2. Particle Gens Rule. With their bloated hit points and high shield resists, the new spheres take FOREVER to kill - especially if you're doing it the old fashioned way and blasting through with energy weapons. Direct to hull damage - through TBR, GW and EWP - is the way to go. I will no longer fly my FAHCR FAW/Beam Boat into these missions because (to quote the late, great Telly Savalas in "Battle of the Bulge"), it's like "hitting 'em with tennis balls."
Note: This was a ship that used to do 20K+ easily in the old ISE. Now it's all but useless - my Reman toon flying a R'mor with 2x TBR and maxed out Part Gen skills does more damage and can also fill the CC role at the same time. And with Particle Manipulator (which I got to sample thanks to the trait bug they're just now fixing), I'm hitting at a 70% crit rate on all Particle attacks - just insane carnage.
3. The Optional is now just that - OPTIONAL. As it stands, simply managing to not fail the mission should be the goal, especially for PUGs. I see too many groups trying to overpower stuff only to find that their weapons are now anemic and that, while everyone was "kirking" the transformer, nobody bothered to do something about the wave of nanite spheres rolling towards them (remember, one touch = mission over). So. Much. FAIL!
Anyway, my two-cents. Now back to my R&D grind so I can get PM back (and so Cryptic can't take it away with a patch).
RCK
I think most of all that it's completely stupid that a 30-40k DPS boat cannot carry a bad team in ISA anymore.
It's not the players fault either, it is simply hard to get those numbers. If you have a team that is not laser focused on DPS I fear that no amount of carrying can be sufficient.
It's like they are punishing the players who actually invest a lot of time and money into DPS production forcing them not to PUG anything, and leaving the queues as a play place for only the DPS elite.
No normal sto player with 5k DPS is going to sit in a match firing their weapons for 45 minutes on hard hitting meatbag NPCs just to get something like 480 dilithium. The kind of rewards the queues give now for the amount of damage you have to give and take is completely insulting.
No, those players will head to the Dyson Battlezone which is now the only intact and efficient way of getting dilithium via combat.
Now im in the new 5 tac consoles intel rom ship with all consoles fleet upgraded to mk xiii and it takes me as much time to kill a BoP as it did a negh in the old CSE
Advanced missions sould be the old CSE the new one should be the new CSE.
As it stands at the moment new lvl 50 chars wont be able to get the NP for the rep gear
Paragraphs are your friend! Walls of text are not!
The big problem with the CC method is that there's just too many spheres spawning to lock them all down. TBR only affects 3 at a time, and they are picked at random. So you can fly through and drag off a few, but inevitably at least one slips past. EWP+GW keeps them huddled together for a bit, but ultimately the combo ends, and you are left with them still on cooldown as the spheres march along. The other issue is, every ship devoted to CCing spheres is not DPSing the transformer. So you are delaying the spheres, but you are also delaying the transformer's destruction.
This is all compounded by the fact that again, this is supposed to be "like the old elite". It's absolutely not. The old elite did not require pre-arranged team tactics and full team DPS powerhouses to complete. That was what the new elite was supposed to be. It all really seems to stem from the scaling of NPC space defense stats from 50-60. Even in normal space missions, the HP jump is silly, and the shields never go down. I'm thinking of just losing any focus on energy weapons on my ship and going a transphasic torp boat, only keeping energy stuff for set bonuses, since bleedhtrough seems to be the answer to everything.
And also let us not forget, even though the missions are many times harder to complete with a PUG, and across the board LONGER to complete in general, the rewards have been HALVED.
TBR affecting only three at a time isn't a problem of you slot the standard push and position yourself correctly. I run both that and grav well on my sci ship and so far I've been able to keep the nanite spheres locked down indefinitely by interposing myself between the gate and transformer when I light off TBR. Even if they come at you in a giant deathball, having repulsor on push ensures that you end up checking the entire group since if one gets pushed out of range, it retargets to the next closest one. Combine with a speed boost from evasive maneuvers or epte and you can easily buy the precious seconds you need to drop another tarpit on them with grav well.
Just try to keep your fingers next to a panic button in case the gate decides it doesn't like you and starts shooting. Tac team can usually buy you enough time to finish setting up your cc but having a defense or armor booster helps. I haven't failed an ISA pug yet playing CC in this manner.
Depending on how weak my PUGmates are, I may have to rinse/repeat several times. In the end, I'm usually alone, high above the spawn point, with 8-10 nanite sphere "buddies" who I then "entertain" with a combination of more EWP, TBR and lots of Particle Emission torps. Since I'm flying a PvP-spec'd R'mor, tanking the damage from the mob isn't a problem. And if the Particle Manipulator gods are smiling, I'll have killed about half of them by the time my PUGmates arrive to assist.
But again, this requires a dedicated teammate focusing solely on CC (when I've tried to join in on the transformer the spheres inevitably break through and end the mission). I don't mind playing this role - it's kind of fun spinning the mob in circles and generally make life miserable for the NPCs. And with the R'mor (now updated to T5-U status), it's a very OP feeling.
Note to PUGmates: If your ISA mission is a success, remember to thank your friendly CC player.
RCK