guys ... cut the TRIBBLE , they cant code FAW as it is , and you want another mechanic for it ? Nerfing is the only logical thing to do . Its common sense ffs.
guys ... cut the TRIBBLE , they cant code FAW as it is , and you want another mechanic for it ? Nerfing is the only logical thing to do . Its common sense ffs.
Won't someone think of the poor DPS leagues? They'll have to redo all their tables. They suffer enough already with toiling through arduous sub-minute completion times.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Careful here. As much as I am for nerfing BFAW, comparisions with Beam Overload can be misleading.
Beam Overload affects only a single beam - this might seem like a drawback, until you realize you can integrate a single Beam or Dual Beam Bank on a ship with non-beam weapons (cannons or torps) and use Beam Overload still to full effect.
This is not the most interesting option on a ship with a low number of tactical bridge officer skills, but if you have many, all the shared cooldowns between powers means that you might not normally be unable to use all of them at the same time. If you add in a single beam, you can now use another up to Lt.Cmdr level power and come out ahead to using another torp or cannon. cannon rapid fire or cannon scatter volley likely do not buff a single cannon as much as beam overload buffs a single beam.
Same thing is true for the torpedo and torpedo buffs.
This. I also saw someone saying they have to wait 15 seconds for BO, I think it may be an argument on base recharge because on a vape build BO can take as long as 5 seconds after activation and even that can be cut down. Not to mention the DOFFs and weapon mods that add to BO usefulness.
I dont mean to deter from the argument though. It was just funny that I saw someone else acknowledge the kind of destruction that can be had with BO/CRF+FAW1/2 builds. Not as efficient as Kemo/Plasma laced BFAW, but against a target of my choosing.. heh.
Careful here. As much as I am for nerfing BFAW, comparisions with Beam Overload can be misleading.
Beam Overload affects only a single beam - this might seem like a drawback, until you realize you can integrate a single Beam or Dual Beam Bank on a ship with non-beam weapons (cannons or torps) and use Beam Overload still to full effect.
This is not the most interesting option on a ship with a low number of tactical bridge officer skills, but if you have many, all the shared cooldowns between powers means that you might not normally be unable to use all of them at the same time. If you add in a single beam, you can now use another up to Lt.Cmdr level power and come out ahead to using another torp or cannon. cannon rapid fire or cannon scatter volley likely do not buff a single cannon as much as beam overload buffs a single beam.
Same thing is true for the torpedo and torpedo buffs.
This. I also saw someone saying they have to wait 15 seconds for BO, I think it may be an argument on base recharge because on a vape build BO can take as long as 5 seconds after activation and even that can be cut down. Not to mention the DOFFs and weapon mods that add to BO usefulness.
I dont mean to deter from the argument though. It was just funny that I saw someone else acknowledge the kind of destruction that can be had with BO/CRF+FAW1/2 builds. Not as efficient as Kemo/Plasma laced BFAW, but against a target of my choosing.. heh.
I am currently on a torpedo trip (it would really be a shame flying a Defiant without torps), but my go-to build before was CRF+BO+APO on Escorts, so I am quite familiar with the build. But there isn't much need for burst damage in PvE, which is what this kind of build excels at.
This might be another aspect of the balancing situation.
If you look at some powers - who needs scramble sensors? Just blow your enemies up, don't waste time watching them shoot each other. Unless you can't actually blow them up that quickly even with optimized builds, and you really just want a quite few seconds for a mission-critical interact - then maybe an ability like Scramble Sensors could be of more use.
Objectives along those lines where "more DPS" just doesn't work anymore could help.
But unfortunately I am honestly not sure if a BO/CRF build could actually out-spike a BFAW build, giving similar investment in min/maxing it.
But if it is, I could imagine scenarios where a single target build would be preferable - by putting in a single target that needs to go down quickly, without any "adds" that need killing, too. Maybe even something where positioning is important (something like the Planet Killers that have only one penetrable facing, but smaller, so there is less exposed surface), to give Escorts a stronger role there.
A mission with multiple phases like that could encourage many different builds. Even if not every (Queue) mission is like that, more would help.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
These threads about everything being so OP really need to stop its an MMO for crying out loud. DPS is the name of the game in every MMO. It's what wins the battles the higher the DPS the quicker you can move onto the next.
With that out of the way FAW does not need to be nerfed it is functioning fine as it is. Your problem is that cannon builds have become non-existent due to player base play style. In order to fix this cannons need to become one of the viable builds. They need a buff and not a damage buff they have fairly high damage to begin with. There are two things that steer me away from cannons. One is the damage drop off is pretty pathetic and since your engaging at range you will never get that high damage especially using DHCs. The damage drop off on arrays is fairly small but that makes sense its a constant beam of energy from the source. The biggest problem with cannons is they are a line of sight weapon which means your heavies have to be within 45 degrees to do any real damage which requires the sit and shoot technique which never really ends well unless you have good inertia to get that throttle up.
There was a time I ran an Andorian escort with full heavies and did a good 20k DPS. Problem was being blown to pieces because of invisible Borg torpedoes and just overall low HP. Beams are becoming more viable because you can stay on the move with the 250 degree firing arc and have much more HP.
There are few things that can be buffed to help cannons become the more viable build:
Decrease damage drop off significantly
Increase DHC firing arc to 90 degrees
Increase the cyclic rate (ROF) of the cannons
Improve scatter volley to compete more with FAW increase its damage buff
Improve rapid fire instead of bursts just full on automatic for using this buff
The point I'm trying to make is that everyone is always screaming nerf this and nerf that instead of looking at what could be improved to help counter this potentially overpowered ability. These threads do not help developers in improving problems or fixing them. If you scream for nerf and you get it 95% of the time you regret it and most developers will not revert it unless it ties into revenue. So be careful for what you wish for this little thread does not even by a long shot represent the massive player base of STO. Everyone has the same ability to get and use FAW so to be honest I really don't see what the problem is. If people want to crack Infected in under 5 minutes or less then let them. Just because you think it's overpowered it doesn't mean it really is. A lot of these threads over the last few months is just based on perception of a small group of people and its always the same thing nerf it all. Quite frankly I don't want to end up playing a Nerf Trek Online.
These threads about everything being so OP really need to stop its an MMO for crying out loud. DPS is the name of the game in every MMO. It's what wins the battles the higher the DPS the quicker you can move onto the next.
While I respect your effort to make a logical and reasoned contribution on the subject, I would argue that this statement is the basis of a huge flaw in the logic applied.
To you this is the name of the game and while that certainly has become the case in many MMOs, STO included, that is a failure of the design not a strength of it, in my opinion. The reason simply being that if this is all there is, there will always be two thirds to three quarters of all the options available that simply will not ever be worthwhile or viable. And that is fundamentally counter to the proposed value of the games play experience.
The general antipathy towards nerfing has always been unwarranted, triggered mostly because people lose a favorite strategy or exploit that grants them a level of unassailability compared to other options. And there is no question that it can often be badly handled or swing the pendulum too far in the other direction. Bringing the spike case into line with other stable cases, the functional, rational process of doing good game balance efforts, is grossly misconstrued as nerfing which was, originally, intended ONLY to describe the over-balance technique; that of reducing the element in question to the effectiveness of a nerf weapon. Instead, it gets bandied about as the descriptor for ANY change that is a reduction in power level and that is, in my opinion, misguided and misleading, say what you will about it.
B: FAW is only part of the overall DPS chase problem STO currently has in spades, but it is a clearly evident component in a large number of the edge cases. As such, if bringing it back into line with other abilities is a one touch versus many touch solution, then it should be regarded as an intelligent action, imho.
Me, I'd have liked to have seen ability stacking and diminishing returns implemented a long time ago to stabilize the situation. The current state of affairs is uninteresting and entirely counter to the spirit of what I once found a compelling, unique offering in STO, that of interesting group ship battles, be it PvE or PvP.
As long as DPS, as you claim, is the name of the game, there is no game really worth playing as the statistical number crunch trumps all other variables.
Apologies for singling your comment out janeway and I do respect you are trying to make a point you feel strongly about; but that quote above to me summed up neatly the point of view I've been trying to get my head around, minus the DPS league overtones.
"The only thing mankind learns from the study of history is that mankind does not learn from the study of history." ~G. Santayana
guys ... cut the TRIBBLE , they cant code FAW as it is , and you want another mechanic for it ? Nerfing is the only logical thing to do . Its common sense ffs.
Won't someone think of the poor DPS leagues? They'll have to redo all their tables. They suffer enough already with toiling through arduous sub-minute completion times.
These threads about everything being so OP really need to stop its an MMO for crying out loud. DPS is the name of the game in every MMO. It's what wins the battles the higher the DPS the quicker you can move onto the next.
I put this one up to "HERO" status. In most games or mmo's peeps cheer for the dps guys, no one cheers for the dedicated tank who was facerolled for 2+min or the healer for making sure the party didn't get smashed. It's always the dps'rs that saved the day. One thing is for sure though, if that party does die it's the tanks or healers fault, never the dps.
While I don't think bfaw is the problem, since I see it as a way for tanks (engineers) to acquire massive threat. I think the problem lies in the stacking of abilities/spec and so on. What benefit does a dhc gain from pilot spec trait, not much since you need to be at full throttle, which beam arrays benefit from nicely.
While I could see some improvements on other weapons, some reduction in stacking for beams would help as well. I'd hate to see another DR hp boost, Tholian Turantula zomg......
I think something does need to be done about FAW, It's an AOE thats more powerful than any other hit whether on a single target or multiple. Normally in games an AOE is weaker but hits more targets.
Also what advantages does an escort have compared to a cruiser for example? I don't see any. It can't out-DPS a cruiser (unless it uses beams and FAW) and it hasn't got the HP to tank. Its speed (and its defense increase) isn't enough to make up for the cruisers HP/tankiness.
So you have cruiser with more DPS and more HP/shields/tankiness than an escort which leaves the DPS class ship without its advantage.
Also I don't think FAW looks good on screen, canon-wise or not. When we've seen FAW on screen I think the most beams we see fired at once is 2 or maybe 3, not the lightshow we have now.
As well as that is the fact that enemy ships don't use FAW but only fire singularly, but do big damage (when you have your ship set up so as not to be OP*) and then the players ship which is firing its TRIBBLE off but only do a tiny bit more damage.
*at least the way I set my ship up, I like a challenge so I don't make my ship do too much damage, and I don't make my escort be too tanky.
I'm not sure that I'd say 'nerf it' as they always seem to do it heavy handedly but I feel it does need changing in some way. I'm mainly a cannon user, yeah I'd like to see cannons buffed but I do think if that happened there'd be a good chance that we would see another increase in mobs HP pools.
First up - 'balance' between the various weapon types is at best, a misnomer. We can argue that this weapon does better than that weapon in certain circumstances. But in truth, it's how it's used that counts.
The same goes for the ships and the builds. It's all about how the pilot uses them. And best of all - that framework is always evolving.
Over time the weapons and abilities have changed. In a way, it's a representation of the game as a whole. Every new system impacts those already in place. Sometimes the effect works as planned. Sometimes there are unintended consequences. As we can't test everything as if it were on Holodeck, more often than not things creep into the game that become part of the games fabric - good and bad.
Some players adjust to it. Others don't. The reality is the game is in a constant state of change. The game used to be called 'escorts online' long before it was 'bfaw'. A year from now it might be 'gravwell or bust'
I know players with single cannon builds who do more DPS than 95% of the game. I also know players who if I armed them with a potato gun, they'd find a way to make it [Dmg]x3 [Pen] before the end of the week. OdenKnight would most certainly find a way to stack it's damage without the necessity of using excessive cheese
My point is this: It's the player, not the ship, gear or build that's key to being effective. As it should be.
More low performance players making snide remarks about dps league players.
Let me grant you passive aggressive posters a cluepon:
Dps league people for the most part probably care more about FAW being the go-to than you ever will. We would love to have more variety to test and see what performs.
And also, we will still be better players than you. It's not about the FAW, it's about the drive to better than we were before. Whatever tools we have we will make that happen, regardless of any nerfs.
So if and when the FAW nerf comes, we will adapt or will have adapted preemptively. It won't matter to use because it was never about FAW, it was about performance and tweaking.
I'd love to see FAW knocked down a peg. Variety is the spice of life, and the passive aggressive rudeness to league players completely misses the mark and stereotypes a community unjustly.
The tryhards will crash and burn, find the next meta to blame for why some players are better than them, and we can start this whole process again.
More low performance players making snide remarks about dps league players.
Let me grant you passive aggressive posters a cluepon:
Dps league people for the most part probably care more about FAW being the go-to than you ever will. We would love to have more variety to test and see what performs.
And also, we will still be better players than you. It's not about the FAW, it's about the drive to better than we were before. Whatever tools we have we will make that happen, regardless of any nerfs.
So if and when the FAW nerf comes, we will adapt or will have adapted preemptively. It won't matter to use because it was never about FAW, it was about performance and tweaking.
I'd love to see FAW knocked down a peg. Variety is the spice of life, and the passive aggressive rudeness to league players completely misses the mark and stereotypes a community unjustly.
The tryhards will crash and burn, find the next meta to blame for why some players are better than them, and we can start this whole process again.
Well said. I run plenty of pug STF's with players using FAW who couldn't shoot their way through wet tissue paper, and this is on normal difficulty where most NPC's are weaker than wet tissue paper. I stopped pugging advanced as having to solo a lot of maps was just not worth the time-reward ratio. You occasionally get a decent team from time to time.
BFAW is a tool like any other in this game, i'll admit it has had more toys and shiny's given to it than any other, but like any tool its who wields it that makes it so potent. Some can and by my experience of playing STF's in the public queue some can't.
I don't have any issues getting DPS out of using Cannons, however the things that put me off Cannons are the firing ARC. I takes a lot of skill to pilot a Cannon build as all DPS is within that 45* Arc its just a pain so i take the easier option and use beams. Plus it feels more "cannon" to use beams on my starships unless i decide to take a Defiant or B'rel out for a spin
If you are asking for ingame mechanics modelled after canon, then watch your own clips again. They prove that the current meta is TRIBBLE from a lore point of view. Engagements were usually head2head and not 2 ships flying alongside each other exchanging broadsides.
Fed ships had maximized firing arcs for their energy weapons. And even they had most of their firepower concentrated in the frontal arc. The torpedo tubes were way more important, than they are ingame.
Ships like the Galor had strictly forward firing beams. Klingon and Romulan ships didn't broadside on screen. They had cannons or heavy forward firing beams and cloaks to avoid long range engagements.
But what do we see ingame ? Defiants and Scimitars spamming BFAW.
Und who should blame them ? It is both an offensive as well as defensive ability, it provides top DPS and doesn't even require an active target.
More than enough reason to bring it in line with other abilities.
I don't have any issues getting DPS out of using Cannons, however the things that put me off Cannons are the firing ARC. I takes a lot of skill to pilot a Cannon build as all DPS is within that 45* Arc its just a pain so i take the easier option and use beams. Plus it feels more "cannon" to use beams on my starships unless i decide to take a Defiant or B'rel out for a spin
I think the smaller arc is what makes using cannons fun, having to strafe the target seems so much better instead of having wide arc cannons and flying my ship almost how you would a cruiser. To increase the arc would be to make escorts more like cruisers.
I think something else needs to be done to cannons to improve them (like the damage drop-off).
If you are asking for ingame mechanics modelled after canon, then watch your own clips again. They prove that the current meta is TRIBBLE from a lore point of view. Engagements were usually head2head and not 2 ships flying alongside each other exchanging broadsides.
Fed ships had maximized firing arcs for their energy weapons. And even they had most of their firepower concentrated in the frontal arc. The torpedo tubes were way more important, than they are ingame.
Ships like the Galor had strictly forward firing beams. Klingon and Romulan ships didn't broadside on screen. They had cannons or heavy forward firing beams and cloaks to avoid long range engagements.
But what do we see ingame ? Defiants and Scimitars spamming BFAW.
Und who should blame them ? It is both an offensive as well as defensive ability, it provides top DPS and doesn't even require an active target.
More than enough reason to bring it in line with other abilities.
If you are asking for ingame mechanics modelled after canon, then watch your own clips again. They prove that the current meta is TRIBBLE from a lore point of view. Engagements were usually head2head and not 2 ships flying alongside each other exchanging broadsides.
Fed ships had maximized firing arcs for their energy weapons. And even they had most of their firepower concentrated in the frontal arc. The torpedo tubes were way more important, than they are ingame.
Ships like the Galor had strictly forward firing beams. Klingon and Romulan ships didn't broadside on screen. They had cannons or heavy forward firing beams and cloaks to avoid long range engagements.
But what do we see ingame ? Defiants and Scimitars spamming BFAW.
Und who should blame them ? It is both an offensive as well as defensive ability, it provides top DPS and doesn't even require an active target.
More than enough reason to bring it in line with other abilities.
You are arguing from a mistaken premise.
Most of the engagements featured in Star Trek were against single targets and head on.
If you really watched the clip you would see that when faced with multiple targets the Enterprise D was capable of an impressive rate of fire and directing its phasers at multiple targets. Against single targets such as the Borg cube the clip clearly shows an impressive rate of fire as well. BFAW is canon like it or not. Watch the clip again and count the phaser strikes.
Just because the Galor is poorly designed doesn't invalidate BFAW as canon.
As far as other ships go...
Threads like this confuse me. Can someone explain to me exactly how BFAW is "broken". I've been playing the game since the end of May and would consider myself a bit above average I suppose. But I don't see it. What I do see is that those that have spent mountains of EC/Dil to get everything max'd out and have every trait they can to boost DPS, can melt things in seconds. But then again those sorts of players seem to be able to do that with torps, DBBs and cannons as well. So if you take all that other stuff out of the equation, since the vast majority of players aren't going to have all that, in what way is BFAW broken?
Threads like this confuse me. Can someone explain to me exactly how BFAW is "broken". I've been playing the game since the end of May and would consider myself a bit above average I suppose. But I don't see it. What I do see is that those that have spent mountains of EC/Dil to get everything max'd out and have every trait they can to boost DPS, can melt things in seconds. But then again those sorts of players seem to be able to do that with torps, DBBs and cannons as well. So if you take all that other stuff out of the equation, since the vast majority of players aren't going to have all that, in what way is BFAW broken?
You don't NEED mountains of stuff. Okay get some AP fleet tact consoles. Get a few fleet plasma consoles. Do whatever you want with your engineer slots (use none fleet if you don't have a good fleet). Grab AP beams with critdx2 pen for almost nothing off the exchange and get them all to mk XIV. max weapons energy and space bar your way to BFAWing and melting anything in normal. Oh you are a tact captain...okay you can melt advanced too if you use AO omega. On your are a romulan tact captain and have some doffs...okay...yeah you win with JUST this. This isn't even going into anything special or hard to get. You can have this ship of death with just 6 months of play as a brand new player. Maybe a year if you don't get good advice.
Well, I remember what it was like when I got to Level 50, was using BFAW, had all blue dmg stuff as my CritH wasn't high enough. I had read a ton of stuff about builds and so ended up with a dragon build on a Rom eng using plasma, cause it's Trek. Couldn't afford to get all SRO Boffs. Couldn't afford to get fleet stuff. Couldn't afford to upgrade stuff. Couldn't afford to buy purple DOFFs etc etc etc. I would go into Borg and Tholian red alerts and die often. I'd have to follow others as I couldn't take out anything on my own unless I limited myself to 1 or 2 targets only. I kept hearing how this game is soooo easy using BFAW and you can do any content with nothing special. While that was "mostly" true for story mission (Vaadwar and Heralds will kick your TRIBBLE if you just play "hitting space bar"), that was not my experience at all for anything outside of that.
It's not until the last upgrade weekend, when I've spent over a million Dil (granted, some of that was for ground equipment and some other sets as well) getting most things to Mk XIV but only a few consoles to Epic, got the iconian set, got some CrtDx4 and CrtDx3 Pens, the rom console, omega console, cutting beam, bought SRO BOFFs, all purple DOFFs and fleet stuff etc, that I can now do very well. It took months and a hell of a lot of EC to be able to get those things and I often wondered why the hell I was doing it. I wasn't playing the game, I was almost exclusively playing EC Tycoon and hating it.
I've done one ISA to see where I was at and was 2nd with 23k. The only special traits I have are the Nandi one and reciprocity although that 23k was before I got reciprocity. The only stuff I really "melt" is storyline stuff on normal. So I still don't see how BFAW is broken as I don't believe what I've done is anywhere near what an "average" player would do. It required all that other stuff to get my BFAW to the state it is. So again. How exactly is BFAW on it's own broken.
Some players adjust to it. Others don't. The reality is the game is in a constant state of change. The game used to be called 'escorts online' long before it was 'bfaw'. A year from now it might be 'gravwell or bust'
I know players with single cannon builds who do more DPS than 95% of the game. I also know players who if I armed them with a potato gun, they'd find a way to make it [Dmg]x3 [Pen] before the end of the week. OdenKnight would most certainly find a way to stack it's damage without the necessity of using excessive cheese
My point is this: It's the player, not the ship, gear or build that's key to being effective. As it should be.
Granted, there are aspects/traits/abilities in this game that do favor one weapon category (aka Energy, and, by extension, one weapon firing mode, FaW), but that does not mean that it is impossible to use the other weapon categories (Kinetic, Science, & Engineering) in some combination to be effective (even competitive).
Since LootCritter has provided me with a Spud Launcher, it has a Kinetic base |=). I just need to petition the Dev's to fix the (lack of) interaction with +Torp consoles, set bonuses, and the like, and then take it into Hive Space Elite for a test drive.
Comments
Won't someone think of the poor DPS leagues? They'll have to redo all their tables. They suffer enough already with toiling through arduous sub-minute completion times.
This. I also saw someone saying they have to wait 15 seconds for BO, I think it may be an argument on base recharge because on a vape build BO can take as long as 5 seconds after activation and even that can be cut down. Not to mention the DOFFs and weapon mods that add to BO usefulness.
I dont mean to deter from the argument though. It was just funny that I saw someone else acknowledge the kind of destruction that can be had with BO/CRF+FAW1/2 builds. Not as efficient as Kemo/Plasma laced BFAW, but against a target of my choosing.. heh.
This might be another aspect of the balancing situation.
If you look at some powers - who needs scramble sensors? Just blow your enemies up, don't waste time watching them shoot each other. Unless you can't actually blow them up that quickly even with optimized builds, and you really just want a quite few seconds for a mission-critical interact - then maybe an ability like Scramble Sensors could be of more use.
Objectives along those lines where "more DPS" just doesn't work anymore could help.
But unfortunately I am honestly not sure if a BO/CRF build could actually out-spike a BFAW build, giving similar investment in min/maxing it.
But if it is, I could imagine scenarios where a single target build would be preferable - by putting in a single target that needs to go down quickly, without any "adds" that need killing, too. Maybe even something where positioning is important (something like the Planet Killers that have only one penetrable facing, but smaller, so there is less exposed surface), to give Escorts a stronger role there.
A mission with multiple phases like that could encourage many different builds. Even if not every (Queue) mission is like that, more would help.
With that out of the way FAW does not need to be nerfed it is functioning fine as it is. Your problem is that cannon builds have become non-existent due to player base play style. In order to fix this cannons need to become one of the viable builds. They need a buff and not a damage buff they have fairly high damage to begin with. There are two things that steer me away from cannons. One is the damage drop off is pretty pathetic and since your engaging at range you will never get that high damage especially using DHCs. The damage drop off on arrays is fairly small but that makes sense its a constant beam of energy from the source. The biggest problem with cannons is they are a line of sight weapon which means your heavies have to be within 45 degrees to do any real damage which requires the sit and shoot technique which never really ends well unless you have good inertia to get that throttle up.
There was a time I ran an Andorian escort with full heavies and did a good 20k DPS. Problem was being blown to pieces because of invisible Borg torpedoes and just overall low HP. Beams are becoming more viable because you can stay on the move with the 250 degree firing arc and have much more HP.
There are few things that can be buffed to help cannons become the more viable build:
The point I'm trying to make is that everyone is always screaming nerf this and nerf that instead of looking at what could be improved to help counter this potentially overpowered ability. These threads do not help developers in improving problems or fixing them. If you scream for nerf and you get it 95% of the time you regret it and most developers will not revert it unless it ties into revenue. So be careful for what you wish for this little thread does not even by a long shot represent the massive player base of STO. Everyone has the same ability to get and use FAW so to be honest I really don't see what the problem is. If people want to crack Infected in under 5 minutes or less then let them. Just because you think it's overpowered it doesn't mean it really is. A lot of these threads over the last few months is just based on perception of a small group of people and its always the same thing nerf it all. Quite frankly I don't want to end up playing a Nerf Trek Online.
That depends on how much of a buff it is to the critical damage that is applied, and what kind of additional drain on the weapon power it has.
While I respect your effort to make a logical and reasoned contribution on the subject, I would argue that this statement is the basis of a huge flaw in the logic applied.
To you this is the name of the game and while that certainly has become the case in many MMOs, STO included, that is a failure of the design not a strength of it, in my opinion. The reason simply being that if this is all there is, there will always be two thirds to three quarters of all the options available that simply will not ever be worthwhile or viable. And that is fundamentally counter to the proposed value of the games play experience.
The general antipathy towards nerfing has always been unwarranted, triggered mostly because people lose a favorite strategy or exploit that grants them a level of unassailability compared to other options. And there is no question that it can often be badly handled or swing the pendulum too far in the other direction. Bringing the spike case into line with other stable cases, the functional, rational process of doing good game balance efforts, is grossly misconstrued as nerfing which was, originally, intended ONLY to describe the over-balance technique; that of reducing the element in question to the effectiveness of a nerf weapon. Instead, it gets bandied about as the descriptor for ANY change that is a reduction in power level and that is, in my opinion, misguided and misleading, say what you will about it.
B: FAW is only part of the overall DPS chase problem STO currently has in spades, but it is a clearly evident component in a large number of the edge cases. As such, if bringing it back into line with other abilities is a one touch versus many touch solution, then it should be regarded as an intelligent action, imho.
Me, I'd have liked to have seen ability stacking and diminishing returns implemented a long time ago to stabilize the situation. The current state of affairs is uninteresting and entirely counter to the spirit of what I once found a compelling, unique offering in STO, that of interesting group ship battles, be it PvE or PvP.
As long as DPS, as you claim, is the name of the game, there is no game really worth playing as the statistical number crunch trumps all other variables.
Apologies for singling your comment out janeway and I do respect you are trying to make a point you feel strongly about; but that quote above to me summed up neatly the point of view I've been trying to get my head around, minus the DPS league overtones.
But.....but.... muh deepz!
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
I put this one up to "HERO" status. In most games or mmo's peeps cheer for the dps guys, no one cheers for the dedicated tank who was facerolled for 2+min or the healer for making sure the party didn't get smashed. It's always the dps'rs that saved the day. One thing is for sure though, if that party does die it's the tanks or healers fault, never the dps.
While I don't think bfaw is the problem, since I see it as a way for tanks (engineers) to acquire massive threat. I think the problem lies in the stacking of abilities/spec and so on. What benefit does a dhc gain from pilot spec trait, not much since you need to be at full throttle, which beam arrays benefit from nicely.
While I could see some improvements on other weapons, some reduction in stacking for beams would help as well. I'd hate to see another DR hp boost, Tholian Turantula zomg......
Also what advantages does an escort have compared to a cruiser for example? I don't see any. It can't out-DPS a cruiser (unless it uses beams and FAW) and it hasn't got the HP to tank. Its speed (and its defense increase) isn't enough to make up for the cruisers HP/tankiness.
So you have cruiser with more DPS and more HP/shields/tankiness than an escort which leaves the DPS class ship without its advantage.
Also I don't think FAW looks good on screen, canon-wise or not. When we've seen FAW on screen I think the most beams we see fired at once is 2 or maybe 3, not the lightshow we have now.
As well as that is the fact that enemy ships don't use FAW but only fire singularly, but do big damage (when you have your ship set up so as not to be OP*) and then the players ship which is firing its TRIBBLE off but only do a tiny bit more damage.
*at least the way I set my ship up, I like a challenge so I don't make my ship do too much damage, and I don't make my escort be too tanky.
I'm not sure that I'd say 'nerf it' as they always seem to do it heavy handedly but I feel it does need changing in some way. I'm mainly a cannon user, yeah I'd like to see cannons buffed but I do think if that happened there'd be a good chance that we would see another increase in mobs HP pools.
The same goes for the ships and the builds. It's all about how the pilot uses them. And best of all - that framework is always evolving.
Over time the weapons and abilities have changed. In a way, it's a representation of the game as a whole. Every new system impacts those already in place. Sometimes the effect works as planned. Sometimes there are unintended consequences. As we can't test everything as if it were on Holodeck, more often than not things creep into the game that become part of the games fabric - good and bad.
Some players adjust to it. Others don't. The reality is the game is in a constant state of change. The game used to be called 'escorts online' long before it was 'bfaw'. A year from now it might be 'gravwell or bust'
I know players with single cannon builds who do more DPS than 95% of the game. I also know players who if I armed them with a potato gun, they'd find a way to make it [Dmg]x3 [Pen] before the end of the week. OdenKnight would most certainly find a way to stack it's damage without the necessity of using excessive cheese
My point is this: It's the player, not the ship, gear or build that's key to being effective. As it should be.
Let me grant you passive aggressive posters a cluepon:
Dps league people for the most part probably care more about FAW being the go-to than you ever will. We would love to have more variety to test and see what performs.
And also, we will still be better players than you. It's not about the FAW, it's about the drive to better than we were before. Whatever tools we have we will make that happen, regardless of any nerfs.
So if and when the FAW nerf comes, we will adapt or will have adapted preemptively. It won't matter to use because it was never about FAW, it was about performance and tweaking.
I'd love to see FAW knocked down a peg. Variety is the spice of life, and the passive aggressive rudeness to league players completely misses the mark and stereotypes a community unjustly.
The tryhards will crash and burn, find the next meta to blame for why some players are better than them, and we can start this whole process again.
Well said. I run plenty of pug STF's with players using FAW who couldn't shoot their way through wet tissue paper, and this is on normal difficulty where most NPC's are weaker than wet tissue paper. I stopped pugging advanced as having to solo a lot of maps was just not worth the time-reward ratio. You occasionally get a decent team from time to time.
BFAW is a tool like any other in this game, i'll admit it has had more toys and shiny's given to it than any other, but like any tool its who wields it that makes it so potent. Some can and by my experience of playing STF's in the public queue some can't.
I don't have any issues getting DPS out of using Cannons, however the things that put me off Cannons are the firing ARC. I takes a lot of skill to pilot a Cannon build as all DPS is within that 45* Arc its just a pain so i take the easier option and use beams. Plus it feels more "cannon" to use beams on my starships unless i decide to take a Defiant or B'rel out for a spin
If you are asking for ingame mechanics modelled after canon, then watch your own clips again. They prove that the current meta is TRIBBLE from a lore point of view. Engagements were usually head2head and not 2 ships flying alongside each other exchanging broadsides.
Fed ships had maximized firing arcs for their energy weapons. And even they had most of their firepower concentrated in the frontal arc. The torpedo tubes were way more important, than they are ingame.
Ships like the Galor had strictly forward firing beams. Klingon and Romulan ships didn't broadside on screen. They had cannons or heavy forward firing beams and cloaks to avoid long range engagements.
But what do we see ingame ? Defiants and Scimitars spamming BFAW.
Und who should blame them ? It is both an offensive as well as defensive ability, it provides top DPS and doesn't even require an active target.
More than enough reason to bring it in line with other abilities.
I think the smaller arc is what makes using cannons fun, having to strafe the target seems so much better instead of having wide arc cannons and flying my ship almost how you would a cruiser. To increase the arc would be to make escorts more like cruisers.
I think something else needs to be done to cannons to improve them (like the damage drop-off).
What's this about Klingon ships not really broadsiding? And, mainly cannons or heavy forward firing beams?
Looks like the Negh'Var had a huge array of beam weapons, perfectly capable of broadsiding if needed!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Thats not the Negh'var, that's regent Worfs ship from the mirror universe.
You are arguing from a mistaken premise.
Most of the engagements featured in Star Trek were against single targets and head on.
If you really watched the clip you would see that when faced with multiple targets the Enterprise D was capable of an impressive rate of fire and directing its phasers at multiple targets. Against single targets such as the Borg cube the clip clearly shows an impressive rate of fire as well. BFAW is canon like it or not. Watch the clip again and count the phaser strikes.
Just because the Galor is poorly designed doesn't invalidate BFAW as canon.
As far as other ships go...
Good find shadowwraith77.
Yes, which was a klingon negh'var battle cruiser, or are you unfamiliar with what 1 looks like?
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Well, I remember what it was like when I got to Level 50, was using BFAW, had all blue dmg stuff as my CritH wasn't high enough. I had read a ton of stuff about builds and so ended up with a dragon build on a Rom eng using plasma, cause it's Trek. Couldn't afford to get all SRO Boffs. Couldn't afford to get fleet stuff. Couldn't afford to upgrade stuff. Couldn't afford to buy purple DOFFs etc etc etc. I would go into Borg and Tholian red alerts and die often. I'd have to follow others as I couldn't take out anything on my own unless I limited myself to 1 or 2 targets only. I kept hearing how this game is soooo easy using BFAW and you can do any content with nothing special. While that was "mostly" true for story mission (Vaadwar and Heralds will kick your TRIBBLE if you just play "hitting space bar"), that was not my experience at all for anything outside of that.
It's not until the last upgrade weekend, when I've spent over a million Dil (granted, some of that was for ground equipment and some other sets as well) getting most things to Mk XIV but only a few consoles to Epic, got the iconian set, got some CrtDx4 and CrtDx3 Pens, the rom console, omega console, cutting beam, bought SRO BOFFs, all purple DOFFs and fleet stuff etc, that I can now do very well. It took months and a hell of a lot of EC to be able to get those things and I often wondered why the hell I was doing it. I wasn't playing the game, I was almost exclusively playing EC Tycoon and hating it.
I've done one ISA to see where I was at and was 2nd with 23k. The only special traits I have are the Nandi one and reciprocity although that 23k was before I got reciprocity. The only stuff I really "melt" is storyline stuff on normal. So I still don't see how BFAW is broken as I don't believe what I've done is anywhere near what an "average" player would do. It required all that other stuff to get my BFAW to the state it is. So again. How exactly is BFAW on it's own broken.
Granted, there are aspects/traits/abilities in this game that do favor one weapon category (aka Energy, and, by extension, one weapon firing mode, FaW), but that does not mean that it is impossible to use the other weapon categories (Kinetic, Science, & Engineering) in some combination to be effective (even competitive).
Since LootCritter has provided me with a Spud Launcher, it has a Kinetic base |=). I just need to petition the Dev's to fix the (lack of) interaction with +Torp consoles, set bonuses, and the like, and then take it into Hive Space Elite for a test drive.
Aggronauts, Assemble!
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
" Nerf it, nerf it alllllll"