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Aoe Dps Vs St Dps
zero2362
Member Posts: 436 Arc User
I love dishing out damage to multiple targets with AOE skills and did just fine with an AOE A2B Fleet Patrol escort before DR landed.
With the buffs to enemy health and regen in advanced STFs brought by DR however I am left wondering if AOE is really all that effective anymore. Is it better in the current game to concentrate all my firepower on a single target.
Any thoughts?
With the buffs to enemy health and regen in advanced STFs brought by DR however I am left wondering if AOE is really all that effective anymore. Is it better in the current game to concentrate all my firepower on a single target.
Any thoughts?
Post edited by zero2362 on
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if your talking scatter volley or rapid fire..scatter wins.
FAW vs BO...FAW wins
torp spread vs High Yeild...not sure..this i think can go either way depending on the torp used.
Granted this only PvE, its quite the opposite in PvP
Regardless of the new HP, if your looking to crank out DPS numbers......AoE instead of single is the ticket.
EDIT: I should have noted, if you really want to crank out the numbers, Full A2B is not a good choice. If your running the T4 Nukara traits you will get an offensive and defensive bonus that scales with how much Aux power you have. This alone is worth getting away from A2B setups.
For dps AOE will always win, that's the way of things but the OP is right, with the increased HP and shield hardness of NPCs in higher level content AOE is being made ineffective which is a problem for beams given that CRF works great as a method of applying large amounts of damage to a single target but BO isn't and as such realistically is still loses out to FAW.
The way to fix BO for the current endgame meta would be to make it work in much the same way as CRF, even if it supplied the current damage buff on all beams for one shot, it would certainly apply similar levels of damage to the increase rendered by CRF.
We used Mark XII Very Rares against Level 50 enemies. Now we're 10 levels higher and often still have mostly mark XII very rares.
Does anyone still remember how combat was with mark X Gear at Level 50?
Pretty much this, together with most people still have a fair amount of specialisation points to go.
I would also posit that there are some who mix AOE and single target. I do. I run a wide arc DHC and 2 DHC's with a dual beam bank. two copies of APB, two copies of CSV and two copies of BO.
Seem's to be doing the trick for me in PvE atm.
Uber-rich Min maxers who can throw enough money at the game to make Lucas drool with FAW scimitars all going faw at once may not be the norm for this pay to win game.
Though If you are a tac, you can just have both and use Tactical recharge halving ability when you really want to spam one set.
Yea the standards have changed, it's the cost now holding people back.
Pretty damn easy actually.
Putting damage where it's needed at the time its needed against the specific targets that need to be destroyed at that time. That's "Effective" damage.
Spamming beam fire everywhere sometimes at targets that are either immune to the effects or barely scratched by the few beams out of the bunch that actually hit them. That runs up "DPS" numbers, but is not necessarily "Effective" dps.
Consider 10 targets all with the same HP values. You can have 5 targets dead. or 10 targets at 50% health. Same DPS, the first is "Effective" dps, the second is not. First is 5 targets that are no longer shooting back, second is 10 targets still alive and kicking.
So yeah meta might, and I think SHOULD evolve away from mass aoe spam. To single target slicing. AOE needs to be reserved for Cruisers to generate threat, and for Science Ships to mass crowd control with Gravity Well, Graga Mal Tractor Beam Repulsors, Photonic Shockwaves, Singularity Jumps and other stuff like that. Pin them down, and then let cannon ships slice off one guy at a time and vaporize them. It will give a role back to science ships, and escorts.
It will also benefit from co-ordination "Tractoring this target" "Stacking Sensor Analysis" then cannon focus-fire on that target to maximize the Zero-Defense-vs-Mass-Accuracy thing. I really think that will make the game much more fun. You will have guys designated to pin targets, draw fire, slice and kill targets, etc.
How long did it actually take people the first time to get to Mark XII Very Rares, complete with sets and reputation bonuses? And how much did it cost them?
Timing how long an encounter takes to clear with a set team is a better judge overall.
Using meters in certain benchmarking scenerios was a better way to use that metric imo. Prior to the expansion my fave was th assimilated carrier in CSE. Everyone generally knew the spawn point and had time to get in position. There were also bop spawns to register some portion of aoe. My meters always recorded that encounter separately.
Striking the proper balance of aoe to single target is key and timing the event is it's best judge.
Great topic OP
Basically this, it does depend on what I'm doing but generally I like to have high single target damage with the facility to spread that over multiple targets.
This, really....... your tactics need to adjust based upon the enemies and the group you're fighting with. If you only fight with select teams of peole and control the group you're with.... AOE can be handy. If you do random matches with various people with no consideration to build it may not. In the first case specialization is key, in the second case generalization is key.
This is a false dichotomy. AoE attacks always do more total damage against groups, it would never be "half dead vs all at half helath" because it's not the "same DPS". CRF3 is +50% vs one target, CSV3 is +25% vs three random targets in the cone.
CRF3, -50% each tick:
T00: 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 10 Alive
T01: 50, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 10 Alive
T02: 0, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 9 Alive
T03: 0, 50, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 9 Alive
T04: 0, 0, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 8 Alive
T05: 0, 0, 50, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 8 Alive
T06: 0, 0, 0, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 7 Alive
T07: 0, 0, 0, 50, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 7 Alive
T06: 0, 0, 0, 0, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 6 Alive
T07: 0, 0, 0, 0, 50, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 6 Alive
T08: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 5 Alive
T09: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 50, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 5 Alive
T10: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 4 Alive
T11: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 50, 100, 100, 100 - 4 Alive
T12: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 100, 100, 100 - 3 Alive
T13: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 50, 100, 100 - 3 Alive
T14: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 100, 100 - 2 Alive
T15: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 50, 100 - 2 Alive
T16: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 100 - 1 Alive
T17: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 50 - 1 Alive
T18: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 - 0 Alive
Incoming fire: 2(10+9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1) = 110
CSV3, -25% to 3 targets each tick, everything alive as long as possible:
T00: 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 10 Alive
T01: 75, 75, 75, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 10 Alive
T02: 75, 75, 75, 75, 75, 75, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 10 Alive
T03: 75, 75, 75, 75, 75, 75, 75, 75, 75, 100 - 10 Alive
T04: 50, 50, 75, 75, 75, 75, 75, 75, 75, 75 - 10 Alive
T05: 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 75, 75, 75, 75, 75 - 10 Alive
T06: 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 75, 75 - 10 Alive
T07: 25, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50 - 10 Alive
T08: 25, 25, 25, 25, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50 - 10 Alive
T09: 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 50, 50, 50 - 10 Alive
T10: 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25 - 10 Alive
T11: 0, 0, 0, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25 - 7 Alive
T12: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 25, 25, 25, 25 - 4 Alive
T13: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 25 - 1 Alive
T14: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 - 0 Alive
Incoming fire: 11(10)+7+4+1 = 122
CSV3, -25% to 3 targets each tick, everything dead as fast as possible:
T00: 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 10 Alive
T01: 75, 75, 75, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 10 Alive
T02: 50, 50, 50, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 10 Alive
T03: 25, 25, 25, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 10 Alive
T04: 0, 0, 0, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 7 Alive
T05: 0, 0, 0, 75, 75, 75, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 7 Alive
T06: 0, 0, 0, 50, 50, 50, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 7 Alive
T07: 0, 0, 0, 25, 25, 25, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 7 Alive
T08: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 100, 100, 100, 100 - 4 Alive
T09: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 75, 75, 75, 100 - 4 Alive
T10: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 50, 50, 50, 100 - 4 Alive
T11: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 25, 25, 25, 100 - 4 Alive
T12: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 100 - 1 Alive
T13: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 75 - 1 Alive
T14: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 50 - 1 Alive
T15: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 25 - 1 Alive
T16: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 - 0 Alive
Incoming fire: 4(10+7+4+1) = 88
CSV average incoming fire: (122+88)/2 = 105
Average enemy composition at T08: 7 Alive at 57% health.
CSV will result in the ten enemies dying an average of 3 ticks faster than with CRF. It will also result in the enemies dealing an average of 5 attacks less.
In PvE, CSV on average outperforms CRF in both DPS (which you claim is not "effective" DPS) and in reducing damage dealt by the enemies. There needs to be 2 or less enemies for CRF to pull ahead of CSV, as even at 3 enemies it takes CRF longer to kill them, allowing for the same number of incoming attacks.
This is even ignoring the fact that CSV will automatically deal with things like enemy hangers and high yield torpedoes. Additionally, 10 enemies is one of the optimal enemy numbers that favors CRF - with one less enemy the kill time for CSV decreases much more than with CRF, and with one to two more enemies the kill time for CSV increases much less than with CRF.
hate to poke holes in your work but you didn't take regen into account. Don't know if that would alter anything but I felt I should point it out
I run groups in the 20k bracket and have been specifically looking at single target dmg instead of overall. For most content overall Dps will be better but for any content with targets that have to die NOW a single target SS build is superior.
I won't name any names but checking the logs of any of the 40-50k Dps players shows their single target hovering around 20-25k.
I conversely usually pull 24-28k in these groups but checking the "dmg to" tab I see my single target Dps vs hard targets like cubes and gates hovers around 35k, and against targets that gotta drop NOW I can spike upwards of 66k single target dmg.
Once content warrants it I can see pro groups wanting at least one single target build in the group for taking hipri targets down.
It's pretty cool that my ability to do great Dps is not reliant on how many targets are available and I pull 20k solo - no need to stack crazy amounts of APB and resist debuff from party- between fomm+apb+ionic turb+expose defenses I can handle that quite efficiently by myself.
In PvE, it wouldn't matter unless the targets happen to have exactly that much health, so that the little regen they get means the 2nd/4th attack doesn't destroy them, leaving them with the 1% or whatever they regenerated.
The only things that I've noticed really heal (aside from nanites, obviously) are the Hazari ship pairs. In which case AoE is much better than single target, because with a single target they'll heal whichever one you're currently attacking.
That's actually one of the major reasons I switched away from SS back to FAW - it was a huge PitA to constantly try and hit the ship that was healing rather than being healed. Hitting both at once means I'm always able to hit the healer.
Ideally you can do both if your ship is designed for dps --- a tac ship can more than comfortably seat 2 rapids and 1 scatter, for example. And having at least one aoe skill has a lot of merits --- fighter swarms or deathtorps can be shot down with it much more easily.
The trouble with aoe is that if the aoe is not STRONG the aoe will simply draw fire from everywhere while not killing anything. Which works if the player can tank it up and his buddies kill the ships one by one quickly while he "tanks". If you can't take the abuse, aoe on a group can be a fatal mistake, and one we see happen a lot in pugs.
Also teamwork matters. Everyone going after one ship and killing it fast works great. Everyone dumping aoe onto a pile of enemy trapped in a GW works great. Everyone doing random things does not work so well.
Crf add %50 more dps but only hits one target
Csv adds %25 more dps but hits upto 3 targets at once.
For crf you will do %150 of you damage to 1 target and that its for csv you will do %125 of your damage to each target upto 3 meaning anywhere from %125-%375.
Since most stf have more then 1 target at a time csv will do more dps. The few times you encounter a single target that is strong enough to last for more then a few seconds (think gateway or tac cube on advanced) crf will pull ahead by 25%.
Now personally i use both and they can be used to great effect with the right combo.
Get someone to throw a gravity well down then get your team to use aoe abilities like csv/faw to drop the shields of the enemy and then use crf to focus down 1 enemy and use the warp core explosion as a chain reaction killing the whole group.
Whoops.
Totally overlooked the fact that you're still dealing your base damage to the various targets, and was just looking at the bonus damage.
Sto is a little weird in the fact that you get a dps boost and the ability to hit multipe targets.
Unlike most games which give you a dps loss but allow you to hit multipe targets. Such as if csv make you do 25% less damage but allow you to hit 3 targets at once which would mean crf would be the clear winner vs 1 target about equal for 2 targets and behind at 3 targets.
I'm not talking about your theoretical number crunching, I'm talking about how the combat plays out, in the game, in real time.
You didn't take accuracy into account, or the fact that targets often stray out of your Scatter Volleys. That you're sometimes not going to be able to get all 8 beams from FAW onto the given targets you're counting.
Also didn't take "Missing" into account, or that abilities only last so long. Your basic attacks will still be single-target attacks, and come into play between uses of abilities. Or the fact that your randomly-chosen targets for your FAW or CSV might be choosing things like, Oh I dunno, Voth Cruisers with their shields up instead of the Frigates you can actually kill. or ACETON ASSIMILATORS THAT GET YOUR ENTIRE TEAM KILLED.
Further, you didn't take into account abilities that amplify damage to a single target. Fire On My Mark, Sensor Analysis, Tractor Beam, Target Subsystems Engines, the fact that it's much easier to get the flanking bonus against one target than it is 4-5, and that you can tractor them in place and FORCE it to stay. The fact that Tachyon Beam can just turn off a shield facing and nullify the shields on your target. You have three guys firing at the same singled out, target that has these debuffs on it. Magnifying everyone's damage on that target.
Also you may be wasting fire at will shots on MISSES due to the high defense values of Fighters and some High Yield torpedos? Or even if you hit them these massive cannon shots wasted on things you could one-shot with a turret or one tick from a gravity well?
Ever been in Tau Dewa Carraya Patrol? Seen all but one torpedo out of a gravimetric torpedo spread hit incoming High Yield plasmas that you can just photonic shockwave? I never see my High Yield Torpedos go at ANYTHING other than what I point them at.
Further, that any aoe ability that can be used to amplify damage, Sensor Scan, Attack Pattern Beta, Gravity Well, Etc. Will also work on any single target you desire to kill?
Of course AOE does more damage, that's why DPS TRIBBLE spam it. Cause look I did more numberzzzzzzzz... But there IS a difference between Damage and "Effective" damage.
Suppose there's 4 nanite spheres and 6 regular spheres, the random rolls are going to put 60% of your damage on targets that aren't priorities. Yeah I may do lesser damage, but 100% of my damage was against the desired objective. My Cannon Rapid fire hits WHO I DECIDE for iit to hit. So while you might do more 'damage' 100% of my lesser dps goes EXACTLY where I want it. That's the difference.
Oh please, the same tired excuses about "effective DPS". There's nothing wrong with CRF/BO, but don't pretend it's more effective in PvE. It's always the same baseless and completely unsubstantiated assertion that "Your +30k DPS doesn't count!", and always the same inability to explain why this DPS that "doesn't count" finishes content twice as fast.
Every objection you have is either a problem with you, or irrelevant.
Accuracy? Firing arcs? I have a consistent hit rate of over 99.5%, and I've never had trouble broadsiding even when I was a newish player ~2 years ago, when Oddys were the only T5.5 ships out.
Normal attacks are single-target? So 50% of the time we have to hit a single target... unlike with CRF, where 100% of the time you're hitting a single target? How is that supposed to be some kind of objection to CSV/FAW?
Single target debuffs? Flanking? What, so they magically don't apply when you use CSV/FAW instead of CRF, but the AoE debuffs apply to CRF? While you're doing 150% to that debuffed target, the other abilities are doing 125% to that debuffed target and 125% to everything else.
The fact that you mention fighters and high yield torpedoes as issues is probably the single most hilarious fault with your entire post. Do you even realize that fighters and high yield torpedoes are completely and utterly inconsequential to someone using CSV/FAW? They are literally barely noticed, because they don't last any appreciable amount of time. They are automatically dealt with by the AoE abilities, and that includes the invisible Borg OHK torpedos (which are supposedly fixed, now). Heck, on any T6 Intel ships, the AoE abilities mean you get to stay locked onto the target of your Gather Intel, without having to switch out to something else.
Ridiculous. You're free to play whatever the hell you want, but don't post misleading and utterly incorrect assertions to justify your choice to yourself. Every single time some CRF-warrior starts spouting this stuff, it sounds like they're trying to convince themselves. "Yes, by all objective measurements of DPS and time required, it's the worse choice, BUT <insert something completely unfalsifiable>."
Sounds like someone is upset.
May I point out that effective arc for CRF is 45*, and FAW is 180*? Factor IN time on multiple targets.
Flanking? Go straight to the center of a cluster and that's FAW flanking. Everything scatters. Everywhere is flank.
Photonic Shockwave for torpedoes? what....really.....?....Please equip GW.
If you miss at all your accuracy is low. So your accuracy is low. Fix that, don't rag on us who don't miss. You'll waste time with CRF switching from individual target to target.
CRF is worse than BFAW, much worse than CRF when your dps is where it should be. Low dps? Yeah CRF will win. IMHO with 15k+ base dps it's well worth destroying as many targets as you can, rather than one at a time. My Chel beam boat usually wipes out sphere and probe clusters in one shot of FAW2 in advance stfs.
What's neat about FAW is that the targets are randomly selected, which means if you have one or two targets, they get all of the force. On single large targets FAW still works ie,. the large target now receives all of the beams.
In elite or advanced CE I'm ranking in the top 3, no fail, even using FAW with all the little flotsam and jetsam rolling about.
All that is without factoring APB, if I see CRF players on my team I think, what a waste. Team wide DPS drops when you can't keep debuffs up on all targets. Yeah sure that one player will do slightly more spike damage, compare that with the same increase team wide and the math works against using "CRF for the team."
Want to fly a team ship? Fly a Recluse with APB3, FAW3, GW1. Run Elite Weavers and everything in range all of a sudden has FIVE stacks of APB3 on it. Watch the other players DPS rise to 20-60k ranges. Recluse, 15-25K DPS on its own with that build.
Ranting about other players using CSV or FAW exclusively, without them your own "effective" DPS is less than theirs.
In PVP I wouldn't even run a DPS build. Shutdown or PartG Bypass is my flava flave
Bottom line, DPS is DPS. Less DPS is less DPS, more DPS is more DPS. If you want to rant against someone, rant against Cryptic and how they design content around time on targets, but don't say that players who out-DPS you are wrong because they use CSV or FAW. This is a DPS game now. You can't justify low DPS because the fact others do more damage means they pull more of the team. A lack of DPS drags down the team.
The only way to fix power creep is to take science skill cool downs out of the 60 second range, and all skills get a 45 second max srv. Preferably 30 second globals across the boards. You'd see much more variety of applicable skills being used...it makes no sense to have the skills that deal damage, deal more damage than the heals skills can heal.
I am far from 'top gear yet' but here is my experience. I have both KDF T6 ships, when I am running the T6 Mat'Ha Raptor it has it's standard AOE plus its own unique AOE, which makes it reasonable damage even for my engy build. I am running 4 dual cannons 1 dual beam bank front and 1 360 beam rear (borg cutting beam, wanting a second 360 beam when I have the money) at the moment the final slot is a turret on the rear.
So that gives me the cannons improved turn rate from the Qib Intel Battlecruiser mastery which I am running with it.
I tend to outdamage everyone normal not the min maxers, (even with my engy build) on the crystaline mission as I can just keep firing with the Qib single target, and not really care about being hit. However with the smaller Mat'Ha, I tend to find it works better for AOE damage, even if I have to go point blank on a big ship to focus fire it all at the times when there is only one target.
Using the Beam AOE, the Cannons AOE and the Mat'ha's AOE, all in all, it does quite well vs multiple targets, till they realise and start shooting at you