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Science nerf incoming
genemorph
Member Posts: 404 Arc User
Notes from tribble:
The scaling aspects of most powers that benefit from Skills have been altered and normalized.
This will have the most notable impact on powers that benefited from Particle Generators (now called “Exotic Particle Generators”) and Profession-specific Ground Skills (now consolidated as “Kit Performance”).
Some powers will have gained effectiveness, while others have had their skill contributions reduced.
This will require additional ongoing attention and tuning, as we discover abilities that either were not properly adjusted, or have gained/lost too much core effectiveness from this change.
The benefits gained from Shield Subsystem Power and Auxiliary Subsystem Power have been altered.
Benefits gained from Shield power have been reduced, but new Skills have been introduced that allow these benefits to increase beyond their previous caps.
Benefits gained from Auxiliary power have been rescaled, so that low-Aux grants more benefit and high-Aux grants less benefit.
This new scale pivots around 100 Aux Power, at which point no differences are present.
This sounds like a nerf to me. Despite not mentioning which Part Gen powers will be affected and possible readjustments, a change to high Aux alone will reduce damage output. Why is this necessary? The top damaging ships at the moment are cannon tac ships and beam cruisers, not pure science ships. WTF.
The scaling aspects of most powers that benefit from Skills have been altered and normalized.
This will have the most notable impact on powers that benefited from Particle Generators (now called “Exotic Particle Generators”) and Profession-specific Ground Skills (now consolidated as “Kit Performance”).
Some powers will have gained effectiveness, while others have had their skill contributions reduced.
This will require additional ongoing attention and tuning, as we discover abilities that either were not properly adjusted, or have gained/lost too much core effectiveness from this change.
The benefits gained from Shield Subsystem Power and Auxiliary Subsystem Power have been altered.
Benefits gained from Shield power have been reduced, but new Skills have been introduced that allow these benefits to increase beyond their previous caps.
Benefits gained from Auxiliary power have been rescaled, so that low-Aux grants more benefit and high-Aux grants less benefit.
This new scale pivots around 100 Aux Power, at which point no differences are present.
This sounds like a nerf to me. Despite not mentioning which Part Gen powers will be affected and possible readjustments, a change to high Aux alone will reduce damage output. Why is this necessary? The top damaging ships at the moment are cannon tac ships and beam cruisers, not pure science ships. WTF.
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I'm reading some skills will get a buff, and some you'll have to spend less skill points on.
I'm not exactly sure how this translates to a science nerf.
I guess we're gonna have to judgement till it's tested more. But I certainly understand that all this change could make one anxious.
That's true. Some of the PrtG skills stayed the same, some got buffed and some got a slight reduction.
It's the aux scaling that's a bit off. I'm not sure if it is a bug or not, but at 125 aux, some skills are seeing a reduction of as much as 40% effectiveness vs the live server. I'm waiting to see how they will adjust it but if it goes out to live like that, everything that scales with Aux (from damage to drain and healing) will get a pretty substantial hit.
That said, I do not see why they would need to adjust Aux. If they did make it scale, I'd say let the intersection point (to the current system) be at 125. That is unless they plan to do this scaling across the board (weapons power included).
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Nothing must get in the way of FAW I guess.
I thought your spreadsheet might be very useful, but it basically just describes the basics. The interesting part is how it affects each skill in practice.
Borticus mentioned somewhere (I believe it was the podcast) that the changes to the Aux scaling had some ripple effects because the use of the method that determines the effect of Aux was not always used straightforward in the calculation of some powers.
Even more reason why not to adjust it for now. They're changing a lot of stats in the game with the skill revamp. I think the adjustment of aux scaling opens up more potential problem areas.
If it's a question of balance, I don't think it's Aux that needs scaling...
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Yeah, the P1 podcast. Hearing him say that has me somewhat cautiously optimistic, but I really think the aux scaling was completely unnecessary to begin with.
yeah I got the same thing while listening to the P1 podcast. It seems like we should now treat underperforming powers as bugged rather than screaming about a nerf.
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Agreed. Why did they decide to change the aux stuff and science abilities anyway? Isn't specialisation a good thing? So why punish the players who specialise in sci builds and remove or reduce any benefits they might have once their Aux power exceeds 100 or 125?
Granted, there are some pretty powerful sci builds, but those builds can only be made by specialisation. It requires ships with high sci stations, completely different skills, traits etc.
This will only make the B:FAW cruisers more attractive and other options less interesting. Players shouldn't be punished for exploring alternative ways of building their ships. Even if the nerf on Tribble is toned down, it's still punishment imo. If they wanted to nerf entire builds, I can think of better candidates to start with.
Yup, that's how I see it too.
The change to certain skills that use (what is now called) particle generators may be good or not, it's too early to determine that I think.
But removing or reducing the benefits of having auxiliary power above 100 is most definitely a nerf. And why only target auxiliary? Why not make the same changes to Weapons?
You doom people are beginning to annoy me.
"Don't have that high aux that a dedicated science build sacrifices for? No problem! We'll drop the bonus for those builds, and balance everything around your lower aux level!"
I don't know if they're trying to sell more science vessels to tac captains or what, but this has had me scratching my head.
Doesn't really matter. The whole idea of changing how auxiliary power works seems unnecessary to me. Unless I'm missing some important details of why they changed this, but I'm assuming that they changed it because it was overperforming in some way. Well, there's plenty of things that are overperforming so why start adressing these issues by targeting Auxiliary? Why not change the Weapon subsystem power first? There's plenty of people who've pointed out that the issues with overcapping weapon power are far more serious.
No one is preaching doom here. But I think in-lieu of any other information that science folk should be concerned if they have decided to mess around with Aux and Part Gens at the same time without saying why or what their ultimate goal is.
Who in the hell PVPs? and why should I suffer because a handful of people like doing it?
A great deal of science abilities are either ridiculously underpowered, or completely useless in PVE. Balancing anything around the tiniest, most ignored subsection of the game would be remarkably dumb.
A lot of non-damage science powers used to be absolutely amazing, but PvP crybabies got them completely destroyed.
Every major upgrade since they introduced the new crafting system's either had problems, or caused problems. It'd be really cool if they took their time to get it right, but dollars to donuts, Borticus has a hard date to go live by, and nothing short of the update setting the servers on fire AND flooding the Underdark with tribbles can stop it.
Gankers in Ker'rat. And I would appreciate it if they weren't handed more broken stuff with which to troll me as I am scanning encryption nodes and destroying repair hulks. :mad:
Concerning PvE, if you need broken OP cheese to beat the average NPC, I suggest your piloting skills may need more practice.
Because simply flying in circle using BFAW spam and buffs is clearly something hard to do? More options=good. Always. Right now, a great deal of science abilities aren't even close to being a viable alternative to "weapon buff+circle+heal self+repeat."
You can start crying doom. It wasn't just part gens that got a "rebalance". Energy Siphon and Tachyon Beam got hit hard by the hammer. The veredict is still out for grav well's reach.
On a positive note, viral matrix seems to have been left untouched which under the new tree gets to scale well.
If you think trolling doesn't occur in PvP zones, I suggest you educate yourself before you respond again.
Every broken ability ever has been exploited in PvP zones for weeks to months before anyone gets around to fixing it, done for the express purpose of annoying other players over the safety of an internet connection. TROLLING.
All that takes to stop it is not go into a Player VS Player zone, yeah? If you're not expecting to be "ganked," then I suggest you educate yourself before you respond again. People complain about this in EVERY GAME. And they're always wrong.
PvP= Player VS Player. That means anyone and everyone has the right to attack you with impunity as much as they want in that zone.