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Too many counters to the new Boff Abilities, please remove.
thissler
Member Posts: 2,055 Arc User
Subtlety isn't this forums strong point. Just mentioning that.
This is not about pay to win. You could use the facts in here to support your stance on pay to win or not. Regardless, pay to win does exist. No other aspect of pay to win will be discussed here.
Good. Moving on.
If you play a federation character and if you have all three federation t6 ships and if you have maxed out the ship mastery you have nothing to fear from any of the new bridge officer boff abilities.
Just take for a moment and think that it's taken this long for people to think that surgical strikes might be good and it says right on the label that it boosts certain traits by 20/30%. Just as a 'for instance'. It certainly is a good ability but change happens very slowly in the ultra conservative land of pvp.
Well if you've done what I said you have 4 direct counters to that particular power with very little effort on your part.
How can that be good?
Of course this brings its own dynamic to serious team play. Of course it does. Of course there are counters to the counters.
Just mentioning that there is a HUGE difference between offensive t6 and the defensive t6 options.
Cheers.
This is not about pay to win. You could use the facts in here to support your stance on pay to win or not. Regardless, pay to win does exist. No other aspect of pay to win will be discussed here.
Good. Moving on.
If you play a federation character and if you have all three federation t6 ships and if you have maxed out the ship mastery you have nothing to fear from any of the new bridge officer boff abilities.
Just take for a moment and think that it's taken this long for people to think that surgical strikes might be good and it says right on the label that it boosts certain traits by 20/30%. Just as a 'for instance'. It certainly is a good ability but change happens very slowly in the ultra conservative land of pvp.
Well if you've done what I said you have 4 direct counters to that particular power with very little effort on your part.
How can that be good?
Of course this brings its own dynamic to serious team play. Of course it does. Of course there are counters to the counters.
Just mentioning that there is a HUGE difference between offensive t6 and the defensive t6 options.
Cheers.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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After achieving level 5 in your Phantom Intel Escorts Starship Mastery, you will unlock the Reciprocity starship trait. While this trait is slotted and an enemy misses you in combat, you have all of your Tactical and Intelligence bridge officer ability recharge times reduced slightly. This reduction can happen every few seconds, and it cannot reduce an ability's recharge time below its group cooldown.
Battle Ready
After achieving level 5 in your Eclipse Intel Cruisers Starship Mastery, you will unlock the Battle Ready starship trait. While this trait is slotted, each time you use an Engineering or Intelligence bridge officer ability you gain a Defense and Damage Resistance Rating buff for a short time. This buff stacks up to 3 times.
Emitter Synergy
After achieving level 5 in your Scryer Intel Science Vessels Starship Mastery, you will unlock the Emitter Synergy starship trait. While this trait is slotted, each time you use a Tactical or Intelligence bridge officer ability you gain a small bonus to both Exotic Damage and Shield Healing. This bonus stacks up to 3 times.
Desperate Repairs
After achieving level 5 in your Guardian Cruisers Starship Mastery, you will unlock the Desperate Repairs starship trait. While this trait is slotted, each time your starship is critically hit you receive a Desperation counter. Immediately upon receiving a third Desperation counter you will receive a large hull and shield heal and will be unable to gain Desperation counters for a while.
Radiant Nanite Cloud
After achieving level 5 in your Experimental Science Vessels Starship Mastery, you will unlock the Radiant Nanite Cloud starship trait. While this trait is slotted, all hull heal bridge officer abilities will heal for an additional 25% over 4 seconds in a 3 km radius.
Advanced Firing Solutions
After achieving level 5 in your Qib Intel Battlecruisers Starship Mastery, you will unlock the Advanced Firing Solutions starship trait. While this trait is slotted, each time a cannon weapon is fired your starship will gain a small amount of bonus turn rate and accuracy for a short time. This bonus stacks up to 10 times.
Overwhelming Force
After reaching level 5 in your MatHa Raptors Starship Mastery you will unlock the Overwhelming Force starship trait. While this trait is slotted your Beam Overload attacks will create a reduced radius Charged Particle Burst at the target's location. Your High Yield Torpedo attacks will create a reduced radius Photonic Shockwave at the target's location.
Tactical Retreat
After achieving level 5 in your Faeht Intel Warbird, you will unlock the Tactical Retreat starship trait. While this trait is slotted, gain a large defense and flight speed buff for a short time after being knocked below 25% hull strength. You also become untargetable for 2 seconds and have all enemy threat reduced to zero. Tactical Retreat can be triggered once every 60 seconds.
Warp Shadow Decoy
After reaching level 5 in your Aelahl Warbird Battlecruisers Starship Mastery you will unlock the Warp Shadow Decoy starship trait. While this trait is slotted cloaking will cause a Warp Shadow to appear near your location, causing enemy NPCs to attack your decoy instead of attacking you. This effect cannot trigger more often than once every thirty seconds.
Predictive Algorithms (Intelligence Officer)
Activating any Weapon Enhancement Ability (such as Torpedo Spread or Beam Overload) will remove one Debuff from self, and grant a short-duration Accuracy boost.
Pedal to the Metal (Pilot)
Gain a stacking damage bonus for each second you remain at high speed. All stacks are lost if your speed drops for any reason.
Demolition Teams (Commando)
While within short range of an enemy starship, periodically beam over clusters of explosives to their interior. After several charges are placed, they will be automatically detonated, dealing kinetic damage that bypasses shields.
Load Viral Torpedo (Benthan Assault Cruiser)
Engineering, Science, Tactical and Intelligence Team now load a Viral Torpedo. This causes your next Torpedo attack to disable your target(s) for a short period of time. This can occur once every 20 seconds.
Partners In Arms (Hazari Destroyer)
Your ally targeted heals and buffs now provide you with a boost to all damage for a short time. This buff stacks up to 3 times. (Does not trigger when healing/buffing self.)
I don't think that's the only thing wrong with them.
*Looks at reciprocity*
i'm so old-school
all this new sh** only ruins pvp if u let it. mostly it's just like an overboarding topping on the pyramid of pew, the crown of stupidity. though there's a hell lotta more that goes hand in hand with all the news, so what is more worst: new intel stuff or a2b/drain/fbp/party-gen boats? of course it sums up, though it all fits the pattern. so, what gives? enjoy the ride or jump the train
btw: virus sig-madness, i love it. may i have a zip with every single one?
Reciprocity however....the only balance I see to this is that Romulans get (in a pve sense here cuz thats all cryptic considers) 5 tac console 5-2 scims and the ability to boat SRO's. This is basically the only trait thats gonna give a fed captain a chance in hell at keeping up with a rommie in pve, so while it may be a bad idea for pvp, cryptic doesn't care about pvp. Kdf's shockwave torp trait is actually pretty niche pvp useable. The ability to defeat R'n'R is rather nice to have when your gameplay setup on kdf is majority vaper/hit and run style ships (minus lockboxes)
If anything, the trait imbalances will finally see a reason to play different factions rather than our current system of:
1. Is it pve? You go rom tac
2. Do you wanna RP the Evul Klinks? Thats ok cuz we got lockbox ships to cover the lackluster selection
3. Do you wanna play the generic faction? Starfleet it is.
If anything, we need more of this to actually diversify builds/ships/etc we get to see. Considering high level pvp up until DR was essential 2 Xindi + 3 Temporal (or 2+1 palisade) it really didnt matter what captain you were unless you were boating rommie SRO's.
Change is good.
Okay. First part. Where exactly are you getting those numbers? Romulan hypercloaking should have them way ahead of the pack with up to what, 25% defense that can't be stripped as its from passives/boffs. 170% bonus defense would mean 270% total defense. Is that what you're saying, or do you mean to say something different?
And you're correct in that I've actually not said anything is game breaking. I'm just pointing out that there are some counters out there that aren't being discussed. For instance Evade Target lock and Battle Ready essentially negate the bonus effects of Surgical Strikes. And of course that Battle Ready LESSENS the previous gap between defense across the factions. So maybe you and I are on the same page here?
Curious on that part. The middle not so much. Like reciprocity. Only works if you're being fired on. So for PVE where someone else is getting all the threat because they're a beast that can be problematic. Other PVE situations maybe it is great. (it is)
As to your closer. Absolutely agree. That's why I chose to deem that what we're actually looking at here is an attempt by the devs to encourage emergent gameplay rather without complete breaking from the basic design of the game.
Change is good.
Thanks again for reading and replying:D
Well, then I completely took what you were saying in the wrong way, and yes we are on the same page basically.
On the subject of bonus defense, when you start compounding all the **** that got piled on us via the spec tree, you're going to start seeing fed ships (mostly of the science variety) boating rommie boffs for the passive defense buff, spec tree passive buffs, spec tree passive while being shot on rear arc buffs, xindi traits, and finally battle ready to an insane theoretical cap of around 200-215% bonus defense. Which is good because lets be frank, there is a lot of acc buffs on the spec trees, in ship masterys, epic 5x acc mod weapons, rep traits, etc.
Going off the assumption of leaving all the "on event" bonus defense stacks out, such as being shot on rear arc, r'n'r's after effect, etc, you're looking at fed ships riding around with 130-170% bonus defense nearly 100% consistantly, with the possibility of going even higher based on procs. Rommie/KDF dont get battle ready, which is 7.5% per stack to 3 stacks, so were really only going to see about a 22.5% disparity in theoretical maximum and sustained average. Not huge, but, its a step in the right direction of the age old Are you romulan? Do you have 5 SROs? method.
What would be nice is to see Rom/Kdf get their own specific science ships now, even if they are essentially scryer clones, because the wells is showing its age vs what a scryer can cheese with...fleet scryer is pretty much gonna be the final nail in the coffin. KDF/Rom really need -something- with a cmd level sci/intel to keep up.
The main issue for PvP is the same as it always has been.
The difference between buffed and Not buffed... is stupid.
It has always been a problem... at this point its pretty insane. No new player stands a chance in pvp at this point. If there not rocking crazy defense someone is going to one shot them every time... and on the reverse side people that know the system and how to ekk out 200+ defense numbers are going to be darn near unkillable... right up until there nuked and then they pop like a zit in one hit like the noobs do.
We'll see how it shakes out in a month or so when good numbers of people have full spec trees and what ever gear they want... but my guess is the game is going to be the same as it ever was only more Yo Yo like. Pugs will be ruled by silly vapor teams... and Team games will be ruled by the same circle jerking as ever where games are decided by proper use of nukes.
and yet in pve, there is no buffed state, there is basically just baseline, and nothing to debuff. yet they keep making toys that would ONLY mater in game play were hit points are tiny and buffs mean everything.
they are so schizophrenic over there, 1 needs to be made more like the other, and it should be npcs that rely more on abilities then built in hitpoints and resists. then debuffs would mater, then disabling their ability to fire off abilities would mater, then something besides pure DPS would mater. 2/3 of the classes and ship types are supposedly not about DPS at all, how could they start with that, and end with npc as they are now? npc's in this game, especially now with elite and advanced difficulty, is a crime against fun, and what could be made within the game engine.
And...I want to give this SOME weight, but not a crazy amount. What you say here is true. And among other things that have been danced around, this is the heart of game play (the actual mechanics) in STO.
This is why the skill bar in STO pvp is so high. Sure you can macro a really nice sequence of abilities and with the proper doffs and passives it works fantastic. Zero skill involved. And as you yourself point out, the Nuke proves the Noob. A skilled player (read and understand that as experienced and practiced, not 'elite') has a chance of pulling that out and surviving precisely because of that skill bar.
I think the 'problem' lies in that most people don't fully grasp the implications of your statement. They just don't 'get' how powerful the situation you describe is. Maybe it seems to simple.
Anyways, the following;
So far from what I'm seeing on the forums, the boat is being missed. Even by, and maybe especially by, those who are having great success offensively with the new abilities.
And this time I really don't feel like coming out and pointing at exactly what I'm thinking. I'm preferring right now to instigate some conversation on it and giving a nudge or two.
TY for the reads and replies!:)
I left the interesting part. Yes. You can see some instances in the new content where NPC's subnuc and debuff you as well as NPC's that use abilities. Very interesting and small steps.
Much more difficult and to some frustrating gameplay. Simply because NPC's are better at it than most humans. I imagine its a nightmare to tune. Can't have NPC's nuke chaining. Can't have every NPC with multiple CRF. But I think that that is coming and that they are taking measured steps in that direction.
And as far as the rest, why do you think the DPS kings only parse ISA? It isn't because it's hard.
So I do agree that most of the new abilities seem to have immediate impact and use in PVP and for PVE it is more subtle.;)
:eek:
Oh Men a lot of BS Traits.. hate this P2W. You must buy all this ships.. lvl all this TRIBBLE.. no fun.
*** R.I.P. ***
It feels like there are:
1) Similar to X, but weaker.
2) Similar to X, with a mix of weaker and additional stuff.
3) Similar to X, but way better.
Some items feel like, hey - here's a way to give something that may not have been available because of BOFF seating otherwise...but it's just not going to be as good as the original if you could have slotted it.
You've got the above, where it is somewhat balanced to be on par as the original because of the addition of other effects.
But then you've got the this is better to slot even if you can slot the original going on as well, which just look nifty compared to #2 while #1 is just lolwhy?
The downside is that I DON'T like the thought of others being marginalized or otherwise pushed out of PVP. But's that's a P2W ethics discussion for a different thread.
Even so TY for reading and the reply and I certainly hate P2W as well.
In aggregate I think you'll find that they are all number 3. For instance there's a thread on ship mastery. There's a thread on Boff abilities. Oddly I don't see one on Gather Intel. Personally I think that ability is bugged as it isn't purging enemy buffs as it should be. So why bring this up?
Here's why. In another thread when I pointed this out a poster said.."well that's an entirely different thing that he didn't want to get into'. And I'm not saying that he was wrong to think that way but I am saying that it won't help him any either. Mastery, and yes the elephant in the room is reciprocity, is a huge multiplier here. Just consider that with that a 'normal' T6 ship can spam all the tac it would ever want to, as well as Evade and Intel Team.
So there's a large number of interactions that just haven't even been mentioned yet and it also seems like there is a push by the dev's in a new direction.
TY for reading and replying!
At least bugged in a way that with all the abilities to activate nowadays combined with the activation lag/delay there is no room anyway to activate gather intel every 5 seconds
@rudiefix Feds: Rudiefix / Thron / Opa
@rudiefix KDFs: Lill / Xifeidur / Dehr / Ugly
@rudiefix Roms (KDF alligned): Chicita
Well it is a toggle. And it is an awful toggle. And it would be 15 seconds after you were able to activate the toggle that your target would be exposed. And then assuming nothing goes wrong you could choose an ability and use it to clear off any buffs of a particular class.
Except last I checked, it only clears off some of them. A very small number of them actually.
There's a small sliver of hope that they will upgrade the UI for both SA and GI. They are at least aware that it is wonky.