I guess I could agree with this on principle. A weapon is a weapon, if an ensign knows a few beam tricks at their rank it makes sense they'd know something about cannons as well. As far as they are concerned it's just pressing a fire button anyway.
But from a gameplay perspective, isn't it a bit pointless? Ships with limited Tac seating would be those that generally can't equip cannons, or perhaps shouldn't. I'm not sure what ships would really benefit from such a change.
I guess I could agree with this on principle. A weapon is a weapon, if an ensign knows a few beam tricks at their rank it makes sense they'd know something about cannons as well. As far as they are concerned it's just pressing a fire button anyway.
But from a gameplay perspective, isn't it a bit pointless? Ships with limited Tac seating would be those that generally can't equip cannons, or perhaps shouldn't. I'm not sure what ships would really benefit from such a change.
Four levels of each Boff power to be used as follows;
Ens slot: Lvl I
Lt slot: Lvl I & II
Cmdr slot: Lvl I, II & III
Capt slot: Lvl I, II, III & IV
Lvl's I through III would be available at the starbase vendor as now for I & II, Lvl IV would be available via crafting, converting unused Boffs or on the Exchange, as now. Or alternately, make Lvl IV use Dilithium to purchase instead of EC,...
This would allow far more mix & matching, fine tuning of abilities and diversity. I'd do the same for all ground/kit powers.
That's what I would do. What I think they should do with all the new stuff.
"Go play with your DPS in the corner, I don't care how big it is." ~ Me "There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
At the risk of repeating myself, there's, objectively, simply no valid reason (any more) for cannon abilities not to be ranked the same way their beam counterparts are. Imagine the rage if beam users had to give up APO3, just so they could use their BFAW3! Yet this is precisely the situation cannon users are in.
If you're looking closely, you can already see signs Cryptic is trying to promote the use of cannons again (like the bug-ship Trait). Nothing short of ranking cannon abilities equal to beam abilities will ever really do the trick, IMHO.
And, lastly, to all you detractors, be honest to yourself, and ask yourself when the last time was that you used CRF3?! (And if you did, you did it wrong, LOL)
... Imagine the rage if beam users had to give up APO3, just so they could use their BFAW3! Yet this is precisely the situation cannon users are in.
[...]
And, lastly, to all you detractors, be honest to yourself, and ask yourself when the last time was that you used CRF3?! (And if you did, you did it wrong, LOL)
Sounds a bit like you're making an argument for nerfing Attack Pattern: Omega.
And, lastly, to all you detractors, be honest to yourself, and ask yourself when the last time was that you used CRF3?! (And if you did, you did it wrong, LOL)
The last time I flew a raider I was packing CRF3, BO3 and TS3.
Two reasons. I'd never used them before and it was just ridiculous seeing a little BoP vomit so much firepower. It was good fun :P
And, lastly, to all you detractors, be honest to yourself, and ask yourself when the last time was that you used CRF3?! (And if you did, you did it wrong, LOL)
I alternate CRF3/CSV3...though, I don't run an AP.
CRF3 + APO1 = 165% DPS
CRF2 + APO3 = 165% DPS
APO3: +37.4 All DRR, +44.9% Defense
APO1: +22.4 All DRR, +26.9% Defense
But, that's ignoring the CDs and durations.
CRF's 10s up, 20s down or 20s up, 40s down over a 60s period.
APO's 15s up, 45s down or 15s up, 45s down over a 60s period.
So it gets a bit more complicated.
CRF3 + APO1 = 1 + 0.165 + 0.0375 = 1.2025
CRF2 + APO3 = 1 + 0.132 + 0.0625 = 1.1945
But it gets a bit more complicated still. Even before one gets into the various means of CD reduction, there is still the manner in which one can increase their Starship Attack Patterns and how that will affect the damage from the APO3/APO1 there.
But it gets a bit more complicated still. Even before one gets into the various means of CD reduction, there are still the different types of cannons and their procs to consider - since there will be that minor increase to probability that will take place with the overall shorter durations of the cycles.
Then say we get into the CD reduction...getting it down to the min for them, eh?
I do agree that a changes must be made to balance cannons and beams, and if possible, some changes made even inside the same category, for example between single cannons, dual cannons and dual heavies.
Its pretty clear that the major factor in the change in this balance was the continuous increase in power levels, without changes to the drain mechanics of weapons.
If you remmember the change from cannons to beams as the preferred weapon type, more or less coincided with the introduction of the plasmonic leech console in the lock boxes, and its availability to all factions.
Made even more noticeable because even though the kdf had previous access to it, its benefits weren't so obvious, because kdf players traditionally prefered cannons to beams, and cannons do not benefit from weapon power overcaping as beams do.
Compounding on the leech console, there are multiple universal consoles, set bonuses, warp/sing cores and traits that boost even further ships power levels and or minimize power drain.
Power levels are nowadays so ridiculously hight that a major gameplay mechanic in many games is a 1 time affair in the STO.
We set power levels when we first build the ship and never again have to mess with it.
When ship power was limited, a more strategic gameplay was necessary, with power balance being a integral part of any space fight.
That not only influenced the beam/cannon balance but also made 2 engineering captain abilities much less important than they were before.
Now we players and devs need to decide which way we could bring back some balance with the least complication and consequent introduction of bugs.
Attacking the root cause of the problem is now unreallistic due to the amount of items that are involved and all the investment, made by the players to get those items.
The op idea to change to the bridge officer ability availability, could infact be a very easy way to balance canons vs beams with minimal coding changes and minimal risk of introduction of bugs.
The other obvious ways to go at it would be:
- Changes to the weapon drain tables - minimal coding needed, it would be easy to tweak as time goes on and more powers are added and it would allow not only to balance beams vs cannons but also the individual weapon types in each category.
- Changes to weapon damage drop off distance to target. - As for the previous solution, minimal coding would be necessary and easy to further tweaking
- Standardization of to the travel speed of cannon bolts vs beams.
Currently beams hit the target instantly while cannons have a significant time delay between when they are fired and when they hit the target.
This represents a major damage loss for cannons, especially in high dps teams and in missions with many weak enemies.
This is not a factor in single player missions, but it contributes for the perception that cannons are weak due to their absence from the highest scores on the dps tables.
This change could be somewhat harder to code depending on how the damage computing is done.
- Changes to the weapon boosting abilites could bring further balance but those are definitely harder to balance and code
Surgical Strikes (Restricted)
Torpedo: Transport Warhead (Restricted)
Reroute Reserves to Weapons (Restricted)
Beam: Overload
Beam: Fire at Will
Cannon: Rapid Fire
Cannon: Scatter Volley
Torpedo: High Yield
Torpedo: Spread
Dispersal Pattern Alpha
Dispersal Pattern Beta
And it's like almost everything else - though it usually ended up as a console, set bonus, or the like...but requests to balance out the various things tends to result in Cryptic deciding to take those suggestions instead to produce something else they can sell...
Requests for some form of Beam Rapid Fire? Surgical Strikes, Reroute Reserves to Weapons, eh?
Requests to address Torps vs. Shields? Transport Warhead, eh?
Rather than every tweaking anything at the base, they'll just pile things on that might not address the concerns or will even increase the problems raised by the concerns.
It's like they put random ideas on velcro darts and toss them at a cubicle wall...whatever sticks they do.
Surgical Strikes (Restricted)
Torpedo: Transport Warhead (Restricted)
Reroute Reserves to Weapons (Restricted)
Beam: Overload
Beam: Fire at Will
Cannon: Rapid Fire
Cannon: Scatter Volley
Torpedo: High Yield
Torpedo: Spread
Dispersal Pattern Alpha
Dispersal Pattern Beta
And it's like almost everything else - though it usually ended up as a console, set bonus, or the like...but requests to balance out the various things tends to result in Cryptic deciding to take those suggestions instead to produce something else they can sell...
Requests for some form of Beam Rapid Fire? Surgical Strikes, Reroute Reserves to Weapons, eh?
Requests to address Torps vs. Shields? Transport Warhead, eh?
Rather than every tweaking anything at the base, they'll just pile things on that might not address the concerns or will even increase the problems raised by the concerns.
It's like they put random ideas on velcro darts and toss them at a cubicle wall...whatever sticks they do.
Ive said it for years, fully support moving cannons down a level. Never saw a reason that cannons should have been higher boff level in the first place.
If you move the skills down, there are still plenty of options at Cmdr level; Beta, Omega, Delta, Dispersal Pattern Alpha, Beta. They are also adding new skills in. It's not too hard to imagine they could do that again if they perceive a lack of useful Cmdr-level abilities.
Those were the original intentions of the restrictions, yes. But we've moved so far beyond the original game design and meta that they're hardly even the same game. The fact that Leech and +75 consoles exist is proof of that alone; +7 Power consoles were nerfed to half relatively soon after launch because +7 power gave "too much power, too easily" (to a single subsystem, mind you), as were +30 Sci consoles because they were also deemed OP.
Escorts can, do, and will continue to do burst damage. If they're meant to do burst damage (as I will agree with), don't you find it odd that so many Escorts nowadays are using Dual Beams and FAW (outside of PvP), for high pressure damage? Dual (Heavy) Cannons are the highest burst weapons in the game, and they're still tied to Escorts. As are 5 forward weapons (minus a few exceptions like the Avenger and Scimi). Scis and Cruisers are still hampered by all of the same restrictions you mentioned; low turn rate and Single Cannons only.
This change actually has the least to do with Escorts; it's more about Sci and Cruisers. Will they benefit from it? Sure, but not as much as everyone else. Plus it'll even throw a wrench into some builds, require some work, as evidence by Virus' post below this.
Before telling someone to L2P, maybe L2Comprehend, mmkay?
Pretending that making just one change to two BOff skills will solve the problem is massively naive and galactically stupid. L2P still applies to advocates of this fail suggestion. There's more than one issue creating the current situation. The suggested change would require a complete overhaul of all BOff space skills combined with a complete pass over every single ship in the game.
Ive said it for years, fully support moving cannons down a level. Never saw a reason that cannons should have been higher boff level in the first place.
It also makes absolutely no sense whatsoever that cruiser-sized 'escort' ships have turn rates three times higher than similarly sized cruisers. But that's how the game currently works.
Ive said it for years, fully support moving cannons down a level. Never saw a reason that cannons should have been higher boff level in the first place.
I could see the reason when it was 2012 and "Escorts online", but not these days. Though these days is as much "BFAW online" as 2012 was "Escorts online".
I really like the idea of changing BA:FAW to reduce the amount of damage each beam does while FAW is active (that's the opposite of the current buff) so that the total damage output is equal to a standard beam cycle, but add +threat to each beam so that BA:FAW serves as an AoE aggro skill. That's a change that would address the concerns of FAW being the skill most desired by parsing lemmings. This would, however, require the Cryptic devs to think of STO as an MMO.
Oddly enough, I agree with the premise that beams and cannons abilities should be equal...but I think it should be equal by making beam abilities go UP a slot. We need to reduce some of the silly power creep in this game and that would be one way to do it.
Interesting idea... But then only escorts could run beam effectively, kind defeats the purpose.
Pretending that making just one change to two BOff skills will solve the problem is massively naive and galactically stupid. L2P still applies to advocates of this fail suggestion. There's more than one issue creating the current situation. The suggested change would require a complete overhaul of all BOff space skills combined with a complete pass over every single ship in the game.
No, it won't.
We still have to deal with Overcapping, range drop offs, arcs, and FAW's magical "Do It All" capabilites.
But those aren't going to be solved overnight, or with 1 change. If anything, they keep increasing the capabilities of Beams.
And those changes would be the ones requiring a complete overhaul. Which, unless we see evidence to support otherwise, we can assume they're not going to do.
These changes, compared to other possibilities, are relatively simple to implement and would change the nature of Cannons dramatically while leaving Beams the way they are.
You've yet to provide any other alternatives nor point out why these are so "galactically stupid", while saying I need to L2P. Do you have any other ideas (or a basis for saying why these are bad), or are you simply just assuming that I'm stupid and have learned nothing from PvP'ing since Open Beta?
Ive said it for years, fully support moving cannons down a level. Never saw a reason that cannons should have been higher boff level in the first place.
It was originally because Dual and Dual Heavy Cannons were limited to Escorts, and Escorts only. They also were originally designed to, and did, have a large advantage over Beams for damage.
But so much has changed since those ideas were put in place - DCs and DHCs have opened up a lot more, Beams have taken the lead due to a few questionable design choices, and Single Cannons/Turrets (available to all, from the beginning) have fallen far behind everything else.
Pretending that making just one change to two BOff skills will solve the problem is massively naive and galactically stupid. L2P still applies to advocates of this fail suggestion.
Whence this totally unnecessary hostility?! All the man did was make a well reasoned-out proposal as to why he wants to see cannon abilities go down a rung. I happen to agree. If you have anything to contribute, pro or against, other than to say you think it's "massively naive and galactically stupid," I'll be glad to hear it.
I really like the idea of changing BA:FAW to reduce the amount of damage each beam does while FAW is active (that's the opposite of the current buff) so that the total damage output is equal to a standard beam cycle, but add +threat to each beam so that BA:FAW serves as an AoE aggro skill. That's a change that would address the concerns of FAW being the skill most desired by parsing lemmings. This would, however, require the Cryptic devs to think of STO as an MMO.
FAW makes absolutely no sense in that it's an AoE that not only does more damage than a standard firing cycle, it also does more damage to your single target while also dealing extra damage elsewhere - and if you use it against only 1 target, it does more damage than a standard firing cycle anyways.
I have never seen a game where an AoE does more for a single target as well as extra damage. The Devs have rationalized it as "You should never see a decrease in your damage if you use a buff." ... but then we have things like Reroute Power to Life Support.
I like your idea, though - use FAW as an aggro tool. Heck, even if they left it as it is and added aggro scaling to the amount of damage it puts out, it'll go a long way to help mitigate it's ubiquity and make people think twice about making totally DPS FAW-based "glass cannons" that aren't so "glass."
FAW makes absolutely no sense in that it's an AoE that not only does more damage than a standard firing cycle, it also does more damage to your single target while also dealing extra damage elsewhere - and if you use it against only 1 target, it does more damage than a standard firing cycle anyways.
Well, the latter kinda makes sense. If you see BFAW as a form of rapid-fire, I can see it do more dmg against a single target (BFAW is, after all, a weapon-enhancing ability). But Physics totally negates the former. Which is to say, if you're spreading your energy thin, each recipient should incur substantially less dmg than the full amount (logically, the amount of total energy divided by number of targets).
Instead of moving cannon abilities down a rank, remove the "beam" and "cannon" parts from the abilities. Make it so that FaW fires all energy weapons (cannon and beam) at every target in weapons range. (I also like the increased threat generation idea, and think it should apply to scatter volley as well.) And do similar to BA:O, scatter volley, and rapid fire. (Rapid fire could use a buff though, but not entirely necessary.)
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
...if you're spreading your energy thin, each recipient should incur substantially less dmg than the full amount (logically, the amount of total energy divided by number of targets).
Thing is, BFAW working in a funky way does not detract from the OP's proposal to move cannon abilities down a rung. It does distract from the OP's proposal, though.
TS3 is at Lt. Cmdr, BFAW3 is at is at Lt. Cmdr; and it makes logical sense to have CRF3/CSV3 reside at a Lt. Cmdr position too.
Instead of moving cannon abilities down a rank, remove the "beam" and "cannon" parts from the abilities. Make it so that FaW fires all energy weapons (cannon and beam) at every target in weapons range. (I also like the increased threat generation idea, and think it should apply to scatter volley as well.) And do similar to BA:O, scatter volley, and rapid fire. (Rapid fire could use a buff though, but not entirely necessary.)
Now this is a better solution.
Right now the bulk of players go with only one type of energy weapon such as all beams or all cannons.
If they removed the weapon type from the skill this would make it more viable to mix cannon and beam. So you could effectively have a more iconic weapon load out.
They sort of did this with reroute reserves to weapons and surgical strikes. As they effect beams and cannons, but both those skills are single target skills not aoe.
Thing is, BFAW working in a funky way does not detract from the OP's proposal to move cannon abilities down a rung. It does distract from the OP's proposal, though.
TS3 is at Lt. Cmdr, BFAW3 is at is at Lt. Cmdr; and it makes logical sense to have CRF3/CSV3 reside at a Lt. Cmdr position too.
Butttt, CSV3/CRF3, are not lt. cmdr skills, they are cmdr skills!
And, if BFAW worked like it does in the case of BFAW1 & TS2 - 3, than for the AOE ability, it would actually, lower the dmg per strike but, BFAW2 - 3, instead increase the dmg per strike.
Butttt, CSV3/CRF3, are not lt. cmdr skills, they are cmdr skills!
And, if BFAW worked like it does in the case of BFAW1 & TS2 - 3, than for the AOE ability, it would actually, lower the dmg per strike but, BFAW2 - 3, instead increase the dmg per strike.
This would also reduce the penalty for not using Antiproton where you can have an extra 360 beam, vs. all other types where you can't -- so a Phasers or Disruptors build could put in a turret and have FAW work for it too.
(Of course the devs should also let us equip more than one crafted 360 in the aft slots .... )
I have never seen a game where an AoE does more for a single target as well as extra damage. The Devs have rationalized it as "You should never see a decrease in your damage if you use a buff." ... but then we have things like Reroute Power to Life Support.
Fury Warriors for long chunks of WoW's history.
There's not necessarily a reason to make people choose to have lower DPS when using AoE attacks. AoE can be optimal DPS although the appropriate balance then is probably to give single target attack upgrades debuffs/movement control/temp hitpoint generation/threat drops/etc. which may provide technical non-DPS advantage in a system where AoE is the optimal DPS strategy.
Really a single revamp of threat mechanics with a BFAW damage nerf could do a LOT, particularly if you assign different threat values to different KINDS of attacks, even when the damage is equal, and have incoming damage perhaps scale in some ways based on threat gen.
This would also reduce the penalty for not using Antiproton where you can have an extra 360 beam, vs. all other types where you can't -- so a Phasers or Disruptors build could put in a turret and have FAW work for it too.
(Of course the devs should also let us equip more than one crafted 360 in the aft slots .... )
Beams have a wide variety of advantages over cannons, currently.. including this and the arc limitation on Cannon Scatter Volley which is not therefore equivalent to Beam Fire at Will.
What one sees as a disadvantage, others might see as an advantage. CSV is awesome because you can better control what you're shooting at, whereas FAW pisses off everything in sight. Yes, there are plenty of times when you might want tighter control over what you're shooting at.
Comments
But from a gameplay perspective, isn't it a bit pointless? Ships with limited Tac seating would be those that generally can't equip cannons, or perhaps shouldn't. I'm not sure what ships would really benefit from such a change.
Everyone.
All ships can use single Cannons and turrets.
Lag Watch:
Delta Rising: Warning
Anniversary Event: Severe
Iconian Season: Critical
Four levels of each Boff power to be used as follows;
Ens slot: Lvl I
Lt slot: Lvl I & II
Cmdr slot: Lvl I, II & III
Capt slot: Lvl I, II, III & IV
Lvl's I through III would be available at the starbase vendor as now for I & II, Lvl IV would be available via crafting, converting unused Boffs or on the Exchange, as now. Or alternately, make Lvl IV use Dilithium to purchase instead of EC,...
This would allow far more mix & matching, fine tuning of abilities and diversity. I'd do the same for all ground/kit powers.
That's what I would do. What I think they should do with all the new stuff.
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
If you're looking closely, you can already see signs Cryptic is trying to promote the use of cannons again (like the bug-ship Trait). Nothing short of ranking cannon abilities equal to beam abilities will ever really do the trick, IMHO.
And, lastly, to all you detractors, be honest to yourself, and ask yourself when the last time was that you used CRF3?! (And if you did, you did it wrong, LOL)
Sounds a bit like you're making an argument for nerfing Attack Pattern: Omega.
The last time I flew a raider I was packing CRF3, BO3 and TS3.
Two reasons. I'd never used them before and it was just ridiculous seeing a little BoP vomit so much firepower. It was good fun :P
I alternate CRF3/CSV3...though, I don't run an AP.
CRF3 + APO1 = 165% DPS
CRF2 + APO3 = 165% DPS
APO3: +37.4 All DRR, +44.9% Defense
APO1: +22.4 All DRR, +26.9% Defense
But, that's ignoring the CDs and durations.
CRF's 10s up, 20s down or 20s up, 40s down over a 60s period.
APO's 15s up, 45s down or 15s up, 45s down over a 60s period.
So it gets a bit more complicated.
CRF3 + APO1 = 1 + 0.165 + 0.0375 = 1.2025
CRF2 + APO3 = 1 + 0.132 + 0.0625 = 1.1945
But it gets a bit more complicated still. Even before one gets into the various means of CD reduction, there is still the manner in which one can increase their Starship Attack Patterns and how that will affect the damage from the APO3/APO1 there.
But it gets a bit more complicated still. Even before one gets into the various means of CD reduction, there are still the different types of cannons and their procs to consider - since there will be that minor increase to probability that will take place with the overall shorter durations of the cycles.
Then say we get into the CD reduction...getting it down to the min for them, eh?
CRF3 + APO1 = 1 + 0.335 + 0.075 = 141%
CRF2 + APO3 = 1 + 0.268 + 0.125 = 139.3%
So it would get back to how much SAP is in play vs. working probabilities and so forth....
...so er, it's one of the older debates out there. The answer is the same now as it was then.
It depends.
Even with taking into consideration how the increased Def could help with Reciprocity...Reciprocity is a Fed only Trait.
So one would have to take a look at their build and decide what's best for them.
I'm quite happy with the TT1, TS2, KLW3, CSV3 personally...but to each their own, most definitely - have to decide what works best for their build.
Before FAW became "supper bosted"...APO was definitely a primary target for some balancing outside of the debuff stacking circles.
Its pretty clear that the major factor in the change in this balance was the continuous increase in power levels, without changes to the drain mechanics of weapons.
If you remmember the change from cannons to beams as the preferred weapon type, more or less coincided with the introduction of the plasmonic leech console in the lock boxes, and its availability to all factions.
Made even more noticeable because even though the kdf had previous access to it, its benefits weren't so obvious, because kdf players traditionally prefered cannons to beams, and cannons do not benefit from weapon power overcaping as beams do.
Compounding on the leech console, there are multiple universal consoles, set bonuses, warp/sing cores and traits that boost even further ships power levels and or minimize power drain.
Power levels are nowadays so ridiculously hight that a major gameplay mechanic in many games is a 1 time affair in the STO.
We set power levels when we first build the ship and never again have to mess with it.
When ship power was limited, a more strategic gameplay was necessary, with power balance being a integral part of any space fight.
That not only influenced the beam/cannon balance but also made 2 engineering captain abilities much less important than they were before.
Now we players and devs need to decide which way we could bring back some balance with the least complication and consequent introduction of bugs.
Attacking the root cause of the problem is now unreallistic due to the amount of items that are involved and all the investment, made by the players to get those items.
The op idea to change to the bridge officer ability availability, could infact be a very easy way to balance canons vs beams with minimal coding changes and minimal risk of introduction of bugs.
The other obvious ways to go at it would be:
- Changes to the weapon drain tables - minimal coding needed, it would be easy to tweak as time goes on and more powers are added and it would allow not only to balance beams vs cannons but also the individual weapon types in each category.
- Changes to weapon damage drop off distance to target. - As for the previous solution, minimal coding would be necessary and easy to further tweaking
- Standardization of to the travel speed of cannon bolts vs beams.
Currently beams hit the target instantly while cannons have a significant time delay between when they are fired and when they hit the target.
This represents a major damage loss for cannons, especially in high dps teams and in missions with many weak enemies.
This is not a factor in single player missions, but it contributes for the perception that cannons are weak due to their absence from the highest scores on the dps tables.
This change could be somewhat harder to code depending on how the damage computing is done.
- Changes to the weapon boosting abilites could bring further balance but those are definitely harder to balance and code
Torpedo: Transport Warhead (Restricted)
Reroute Reserves to Weapons (Restricted)
Beam: Overload
Beam: Fire at Will
Cannon: Rapid Fire
Cannon: Scatter Volley
Torpedo: High Yield
Torpedo: Spread
Dispersal Pattern Alpha
Dispersal Pattern Beta
And it's like almost everything else - though it usually ended up as a console, set bonus, or the like...but requests to balance out the various things tends to result in Cryptic deciding to take those suggestions instead to produce something else they can sell...
Requests for some form of Beam Rapid Fire? Surgical Strikes, Reroute Reserves to Weapons, eh?
Requests to address Torps vs. Shields? Transport Warhead, eh?
Rather than every tweaking anything at the base, they'll just pile things on that might not address the concerns or will even increase the problems raised by the concerns.
It's like they put random ideas on velcro darts and toss them at a cubicle wall...whatever sticks they do.
Sounds about right.
It also makes absolutely no sense whatsoever that cruiser-sized 'escort' ships have turn rates three times higher than similarly sized cruisers. But that's how the game currently works.
I could see the reason when it was 2012 and "Escorts online", but not these days. Though these days is as much "BFAW online" as 2012 was "Escorts online".
Interesting idea... But then only escorts could run beam effectively, kind defeats the purpose.
No, it won't.
We still have to deal with Overcapping, range drop offs, arcs, and FAW's magical "Do It All" capabilites.
But those aren't going to be solved overnight, or with 1 change. If anything, they keep increasing the capabilities of Beams.
And those changes would be the ones requiring a complete overhaul. Which, unless we see evidence to support otherwise, we can assume they're not going to do.
These changes, compared to other possibilities, are relatively simple to implement and would change the nature of Cannons dramatically while leaving Beams the way they are.
You've yet to provide any other alternatives nor point out why these are so "galactically stupid", while saying I need to L2P. Do you have any other ideas (or a basis for saying why these are bad), or are you simply just assuming that I'm stupid and have learned nothing from PvP'ing since Open Beta?
It was originally because Dual and Dual Heavy Cannons were limited to Escorts, and Escorts only. They also were originally designed to, and did, have a large advantage over Beams for damage.
But so much has changed since those ideas were put in place - DCs and DHCs have opened up a lot more, Beams have taken the lead due to a few questionable design choices, and Single Cannons/Turrets (available to all, from the beginning) have fallen far behind everything else.
Whence this totally unnecessary hostility?! All the man did was make a well reasoned-out proposal as to why he wants to see cannon abilities go down a rung. I happen to agree. If you have anything to contribute, pro or against, other than to say you think it's "massively naive and galactically stupid," I'll be glad to hear it.
FAW makes absolutely no sense in that it's an AoE that not only does more damage than a standard firing cycle, it also does more damage to your single target while also dealing extra damage elsewhere - and if you use it against only 1 target, it does more damage than a standard firing cycle anyways.
I have never seen a game where an AoE does more for a single target as well as extra damage. The Devs have rationalized it as "You should never see a decrease in your damage if you use a buff." ... but then we have things like Reroute Power to Life Support.
I like your idea, though - use FAW as an aggro tool. Heck, even if they left it as it is and added aggro scaling to the amount of damage it puts out, it'll go a long way to help mitigate it's ubiquity and make people think twice about making totally DPS FAW-based "glass cannons" that aren't so "glass."
Well, the latter kinda makes sense. If you see BFAW as a form of rapid-fire, I can see it do more dmg against a single target (BFAW is, after all, a weapon-enhancing ability). But Physics totally negates the former. Which is to say, if you're spreading your energy thin, each recipient should incur substantially less dmg than the full amount (logically, the amount of total energy divided by number of targets).
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
Thing is, BFAW working in a funky way does not detract from the OP's proposal to move cannon abilities down a rung. It does distract from the OP's proposal, though.
TS3 is at Lt. Cmdr, BFAW3 is at is at Lt. Cmdr; and it makes logical sense to have CRF3/CSV3 reside at a Lt. Cmdr position too.
Now this is a better solution.
Right now the bulk of players go with only one type of energy weapon such as all beams or all cannons.
If they removed the weapon type from the skill this would make it more viable to mix cannon and beam. So you could effectively have a more iconic weapon load out.
They sort of did this with reroute reserves to weapons and surgical strikes. As they effect beams and cannons, but both those skills are single target skills not aoe.
Butttt, CSV3/CRF3, are not lt. cmdr skills, they are cmdr skills!
And, if BFAW worked like it does in the case of BFAW1 & TS2 - 3, than for the AOE ability, it would actually, lower the dmg per strike but, BFAW2 - 3, instead increase the dmg per strike.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
This would also reduce the penalty for not using Antiproton where you can have an extra 360 beam, vs. all other types where you can't -- so a Phasers or Disruptors build could put in a turret and have FAW work for it too.
(Of course the devs should also let us equip more than one crafted 360 in the aft slots .... )
Fury Warriors for long chunks of WoW's history.
There's not necessarily a reason to make people choose to have lower DPS when using AoE attacks. AoE can be optimal DPS although the appropriate balance then is probably to give single target attack upgrades debuffs/movement control/temp hitpoint generation/threat drops/etc. which may provide technical non-DPS advantage in a system where AoE is the optimal DPS strategy.
Really a single revamp of threat mechanics with a BFAW damage nerf could do a LOT, particularly if you assign different threat values to different KINDS of attacks, even when the damage is equal, and have incoming damage perhaps scale in some ways based on threat gen.
Exactly, the diversity would be much better imo!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!