viral matrix just needs to become a actual debuff that has a chance to be reapplied even after the some one reboots a subsystem. It should still be removable though through use of science team or the like.
U try an engi team?
"Frankly, not sure why you're on a one man nerf campaign. "
Mask Energy Signature I would just remove or lower the power debuff.
Mask energy signature is a joke of a boff ability.
I always wondered about this, because, Stealth. Why's that even a thing under the current mechanics? Nobody uses it because the mechanics don't even make it worthwhile near enough anywhere except for cloaks and even then not all that much. Not entirely unlike Sensors, which is really, really weird, more so when you consider the innate ability of Hirogen ships and why that wasn't something that just, was, but with those ships being better than most.
So, like, 'stealth' and 'being stealthy' should make you harder to detect, sure, simple. In most terms for space/scifi/scifantasy-to-some-extent that should mean that whatever it is that's trying to detect you (like sensors) is having a hard time doing so, which would make you difficult to hit you as well. It didn't help that any time I tried to push sensors I didn't have any 'perception stat' to measure but it was pretty clear that there either wasn't a mechanic for passively finding cloaked ships (I know, there is, but this was my perception of what was going on, and: ), or it was remarkably heavily weighted in favour of a cloaked vessel. Which makes some degree of sense, but I think my underlying point is made... Stealth was a one trick pony and it was a bit 'meh'.
With that in mind, and the fact that there are already mechanics for acc adding a small bonus to crit chance, why not add a small boost to accuracy and defense with sensors and stealth respectively? Mask Energy Signature could provide a boost in that regard though I can't think of a sensors ability to actively counter it at the moment, other than Fire On My Mark, which is tac captain only and seems a bit unbalanced.
What everyone buying Zen are really saying while all these bugs are still floating freely:
Stop new content until quality returns
viral matrix just needs to become a actual debuff that has a chance to be reapplied even after the some one reboots a subsystem. It should still be removable though through use of science team or the like.
U try an engi team?
Engineer team would clear A subsystem going down, but science team would remove the debuff that procs them?
but honestly what are you asking ? I was making a suggestion, not a question...
I always wondered about this, because, Stealth. Why's that even a thing under the current mechanics? Nobody uses it because the mechanics don't even make it worthwhile near enough anywhere except for cloaks and even then not all that much. Not entirely unlike Sensors, which is really, really weird, more so when you consider the innate ability of Hirogen ships and why that wasn't something that just, was, but with those ships being better than most.
So, like, 'stealth' and 'being stealthy' should make you harder to detect, sure, simple. In most terms for space/scifi/scifantasy-to-some-extent that should mean that whatever it is that's trying to detect you (like sensors) is having a hard time doing so, which would make you difficult to hit you as well. It didn't help that any time I tried to push sensors I didn't have any 'perception stat' to measure but it was pretty clear that there either wasn't a mechanic for passively finding cloaked ships (I know, there is, but this was my perception of what was going on, and: ), or it was remarkably heavily weighted in favour of a cloaked vessel. Which makes some degree of sense, but I think my underlying point is made... Stealth was a one trick pony and it was a bit 'meh'.
With that in mind, and the fact that there are already mechanics for acc adding a small bonus to crit chance, why not add a small boost to accuracy and defense with sensors and stealth respectively? Mask Energy Signature could provide a boost in that regard though I can't think of a sensors ability to actively counter it at the moment, other than Fire On My Mark, which is tac captain only and seems a bit unbalanced.
While I find mask energy signature a joke, stealth detection on cloaked ships worked pretty well, specially on a Nebula snooper build. Not sure if sensors stay as is in the new system because I've seen some buggy behavior on Tribble with the sensor mod.
I always wondered about this, because, Stealth. Why's that even a thing under the current mechanics? Nobody uses it because the mechanics don't even make it worthwhile near enough anywhere except for cloaks and even then not all that much. Not entirely unlike Sensors, which is really, really weird, more so when you consider the innate ability of Hirogen ships and why that wasn't something that just, was, but with those ships being better than most.
So, like, 'stealth' and 'being stealthy' should make you harder to detect, sure, simple. In most terms for space/scifi/scifantasy-to-some-extent that should mean that whatever it is that's trying to detect you (like sensors) is having a hard time doing so, which would make you difficult to hit you as well. It didn't help that any time I tried to push sensors I didn't have any 'perception stat' to measure but it was pretty clear that there either wasn't a mechanic for passively finding cloaked ships (I know, there is, but this was my perception of what was going on, and: ), or it was remarkably heavily weighted in favour of a cloaked vessel. Which makes some degree of sense, but I think my underlying point is made... Stealth was a one trick pony and it was a bit 'meh'.
With that in mind, and the fact that there are already mechanics for acc adding a small bonus to crit chance, why not add a small boost to accuracy and defense with sensors and stealth respectively? Mask Energy Signature could provide a boost in that regard though I can't think of a sensors ability to actively counter it at the moment, other than Fire On My Mark, which is tac captain only and seems a bit unbalanced.
While I find mask energy signature a joke, stealth detection on cloaked ships worked pretty well, specially on a Nebula snooper build. Not sure if sensors stay as is in the new system because I've seen some buggy behavior on Tribble with the sensor mod.
I thought that was an active ability, it was more passive that I was looking at..?
What everyone buying Zen are really saying while all these bugs are still floating freely:
Stop new content until quality returns
If so, 'players lose nothing' is clearly incorrect.
I don't think I ever read the Devs saying 'players lose nothing'. I can't see how anyone would think that was how it was going to play out when abilities are having their coefficients juggled like brightly colored balls (and chainsaws...).
My understanding was 'you'll be able to reproduce the same skill values.' A statement which is true as far as I can tell. That people read more into it is... typical.
If so, 'players lose nothing' is clearly incorrect.
I don't think I ever read the Devs saying 'players lose nothing'. I can't see how anyone would think that was how it was going to play out when abilities are having their coefficients juggled like brightly colored balls (and chainsaws...).
My understanding was 'you'll be able to reproduce the same skill values.' A statement which is true as far as I can tell. That people read more into it is... typical.
Yeah... that would be an advertising wonk talking out of their butt, I'm sad to say. Because "as much as possible" is a 100% elastic clause that makes everything that comes after it noise. Bad use of a placate when the designers are clearly committed to major housecleaning.
If you're going to nerf Sci, just come out and say you're nerfing Sci. This whole dancing around 'oh, but 1 pt is still 1 pt' is misleading and tiresome.
Frankly, so is the insistence that I'm lying.
Stop misleading and being evasive then?
Okay, let's be direct here.
Is it accurate to say that 1 point of flow caps in the old system which is now 1point of DrainX, equatable to 50% effectiveness in the new system? Ie, half a return of flow caps overall?
Sort of.
What actually seems to be happening, aside from the aux rescaling, is this:
On holodeck, some drain abilities gain 2x benefit per point of Flow Caps. On Tribble, those powers only gain 1x benefit per point of drain expertise.
Yeah... that would be an advertising wonk talking out of their butt, I'm sad to say. Because "as much as possible" is a 100% elastic clause that makes everything that comes after it noise. Bad use of a placate when the designers are clearly committed to major housecleaning.
Yep. And saying both things at the same time. "You lose nothing" with "we changed this, this, and this and that changed this, this, and this and you will see smaller results."
If you're going to nerf Sci, just come out and say you're nerfing Sci. This whole dancing around 'oh, but 1 pt is still 1 pt' is misleading and tiresome.
Frankly, so is the insistence that I'm lying.
Sorry Bort. I was tired when I put the OP together and I guess I invited harsh criticism with it. Really didn't mean to do that, just wanted to convey my emotional reaction to the change, which I hope is actually useful feedback for you. Still there has been some constructive discussion hear at least.
GW was improved not by PartGen or ControlX changes, but from the Aux Scaling (it used a different modifier, which was previously smaller). The radius issue is a bug, though. ControlX is currently not improving its affected radius. That'll be fixed.
I am so glad to hear this. Honestly my love of gravity well stems from its ability to create opportunities to exploit. Given the choice I would far rather loose its damage entirely then its radius and pull.
So what you're saying is that Plasmonic Leech and other drain abilities were more heavily affected by Flow Capacitors than they should've been?
"Should have" isn't really the best term here. But they did benefit more from Skills than other abilities did. We didn't consider this an issue previously, but decided that giving equal Skill benefit to all abilities under the new system was a very good idea so that the mechanics could be more easily communicated to players.
Hear is the thing about normalizing the effectiveness of science builds. You cant really normalize them to the average without nerfing them. Please let me explain.
When a captain uses cannon rapid fire on its global cool down, he gets the benefit of that ability for 2 seconds out of every three. He can pop three or four enemy ships and keep benefiting from that ability the whole time.
When a captain uses tractor beam on its global cool down, he gets the benefit of the ability for only so long as his first target stays alive, then for the next two or three kills he would have been better off with rapid fire.
Now when the game was released, the long reuse time on abilities wasn't so bad, because even the tactical captains might use the full duration of their ability to pop a single target, but we don't live in that STO any more. We have optional timers to beat and STFs with huge numbers of enemies.
To keep up, us science captains have written off a lot of science abilities, normalizing to an average that includes these under performers can only be a nerf because it means bringing the abilities we do use down to meet them.
So what do we use and how do we use it to keep up with the tacticals? Two things, G. Generators and P. Generators. The Key component in a science captians damage arsenal is the gravity well. Not for its damage, that honestly isn't so important. We need the gravity well to overcome the 'Kill one ship, wait for our cool downs' problem.
See those abilities that continue to do damage once the first target is dead are the AoE hazard abilities. As we cant go from target to target individually we instead adopt a 'Hit all of the things with all of the things at once' Strategy. We put the enemies in the same place, hit them with the same things, at the same time, and hope its enough to start a warp core breach chain reaction. Then it doesn't matter that everything is on cooldown and its going to be 40 seconds until we are useful again, because our spike damage was multiplied by the number of things we were able to suck into the well, and hopefully that five to ten seconds of usefulness makes up for the 30 seconds of not so much.
While this strategy is super fun, it is not cheep to implement, and its usefulness is situational. Using the 'hit all of the things with all of the things' strategy dose not work when 'the things' are two spread out, or not present in large enough numbers to get a good multiplication going.
Now, drain builds. I have a question. What would be so bad about normalizing the effectiveness of drain builds to the high end rather then the low end? A high end drain build utilized against a boss should be effective, because the rest of the time in that PVE match I guarantee you it is not pulling its weight. Drain builds require a 'use all of the things on just one of the things' strategy. This strategy dose nothing to compensate for the long cool down waiting game. Its not at all like the previous strategy. If a team carries a drainer to the boss in an STF why shouldn't he get his moment to shine?
Drain builds in PvP. Ok in PvP a drain build can be devilishly difficult to fight, in a one v one. But the increased flow capacitors that are now available to drainers are balanced by the increased power insulators now available to defenders, and in multi participant engagements the drain boat is week and squishy. If you do away with drainers because they are good at one v one engagements and difficult to counter then the vapors have to be next, or your simply picking on science.
What of subspace decompiler? This is meant to buy you a moment of opportunity, but said moment is only valuable if you have the capability to exploit it. Dedicating points and equipment to this stat buys you only fractions of a second more disable time, which can easily be eaten up by interface lag or a bad ping. The best use of decompiler is typically not on a science ship at all but on a bird of prey set up to perform high spike damage during the opportunity created. That's why science ships are typically built to achieve disable through drain rather then photonic shockwave or viral matrix, they simply can not work within the windows of opportunity that said abilities provide.
What of countermeasures? Counter measures don't buy you an opportunity to exploit, they buy you a moment to exploit the enemy's capability's before they stop firing. The control is therefor still in the hands of the enemy. When using a control ability the point is to be the one in control so countermeasures aren't that useful
So Bort. If you want to revamp the skills to make them easier to understand and calculate I think that's really grate. But please preserve the science we have now. It is fun to play, and STO will easily survive a little lite science buffing. There realy isn't any danger that science builds are going to take over from beam fire at will any time soon, and what would be so bad about it if they did?
@pwstolemyname
I think that is a good explanation on how science (vessels) currently work (or not work.)
After Borticus said that currently, the range of Gravity Wells is not correctly affected by skills, I am not really that worried anymore about that part.
The drain builds might still have a problem, of course.
And Placate/Confuse, Subsystem Disables or Stun builds still have no real use. (But we can't expect miracles). (Stun in PvP, perhaps, but PvP I haven't PvPed in such a long time I don't know if that is still a thing. I did PvP a lot in the days of Phontonic Shockwave Bird of Preys, of course.)
I think the problem of these abilities is:
1) Stun is irrelevant if your enemy doesn't really have any abilities he could fire defensive that you're worried about. I suppose you could use it against the Voth special barrier effects, but for that, it's probably too short (and requires a stealth approach).
2) Confuses are not relevant because the enemies damage is usually not notable enough that it would help you if he starts hitting his allies, and the brief time he isn't shooting at you isn't that helpful either.
3) Placates have the problem of the low damage thresholds that are far too quickly broken. But even then - your enemy not shooting at you tends to reduce a lot less damage than you can inflict with an offensive option.
4) Subsstem Disables have a similar problem to stuns and placate/confuses.
Drain and Exotic Damage are the kind of builds that support the party in their effort in taking out the enemy the most. They straight deal damage, or they open enemies up to taking more damage. Drains take time to get there, so it's only really useful against "boss" type enemies, while Exotic tend to rely on AoE and are more useful the more enemies there are around.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
See those abilities that continue to do damage once the first target is dead are the AoE hazard abilities. As we cant go from target to target individually we instead adopt a 'Hit all of the things with all of the things at once' Strategy. We put the enemies in the same place, hit them with the same things, at the same time, and hope its enough to start a warp core breach chain reaction. Then it doesn't matter that everything is on cooldown and its going to be 40 seconds until we are useful again, because our spike damage was multiplied by the number of things we were able to suck into the well, and hopefully that five to ten seconds of usefulness makes up for the 30 seconds of not so much.
This is how I play it and it can be devastating but like you said, it's situational. As Cully said, since I know that the pull zone is not working right, it will come back together when it does. The stats seem to be a shade higher on Tribble than on Holodeck but the synergy is off because the control area is off.
I want to repeat this again in case Bort missed it in the mountains of text in here. The R&D Console - Science - Exotic Particle Focuser with +PGens and +GGens does not seem to be working on exotic damage from the Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo Launcher. When replaced by the older Embassy Console - Science - Plasma-Generating Weapon Signature Nullifier, the exotic damage boost returns. PGens is supposed to be boosting this effect but it currently is not or it is not doing it properly.
Ok, I thought I had parses from Tribble with both. I must have cleaned the log. So I guess this is "To Be Continued..."
Holodeck
229 grav gens
104 flow caps
338 part gens
Tribble
274 ctrlx (Deflector changes)
145 drainx (Deflector changes)
343.7 epg (not sure where, but I gained 4.7 [Hah!])
As a side note, with the battery mastery trait it seems that Hull Patch isn't getting increased healing effectiveness, but the secondary buff is double the length.
Holodeck
Hull Patch: 6,000 hp, +20% hp for 10 secs
Reactive Armor Catalyst: 9,732 hp over 10 secs, 7,873 temp hp for 10 secs.
Tribble
Hull patch: 6,000 hp, +20% hp for 20 secs
Reactive Armor Catalyst: 18,111 hp over 20 secs, 7,873 temp hp for 20 secs.
It would be nice to have hull patch heal twice as much, to make it more like a space Hypo.
Great write up @pwstolemyname. Bort, please take that post into consideration, it pretty much sums up the problems us exotic/drain builders are having with the ability normalization.
My builds are still good, but they're losing effectiveness, and they're already not as effective as simply dealing damage and debuffs with weapons.
Great write up @pwstolemyname. Bort, please take that post into consideration, it pretty much sums up the problems us exotic/drain builders are having with the ability normalization.
My builds are still good, but they're losing effectiveness, and they're already not as effective as simply dealing damage and debuffs with weapons.
I agree with @pwstolemyname too. But he did kinda not mention tyken's rift, which is great group control skill, that can be used against Non boss characters.
I'm saddened by the nerf of breen consoles they were not great overall anyways. Hopefully they and science abilities get buffed abit.
If you're going to nerf Sci, just come out and say you're nerfing Sci. This whole dancing around 'oh, but 1 pt is still 1 pt' is misleading and tiresome.
Frankly, so is the insistence that I'm lying.
Of course players are going to speculate that your request for data is just a thinly veiled attempt to fish for details on what to nerf next.
You have earned a reputation for consistently nerfing anything useful and/or fun then rubbing it in with congratulating yourself on twitter for 'fixing' something that players spent a lot of ec on and/or had some fun with; while still ignoring bugs which persist to this day. Shouldn't you expect cynical responses by now?
As for me, I just want to group chaff enemies together with grav well while keeping my power levels up, then destroy them in one nice cascade of explosions with bfaw. If I can still do that after the latest nerf to science, the game will still be playable.
I have noticed that science captains and science ships in general seem to generate more aggro regardless how many -threat consoles they have. For instance, I have played with a tac with his threat gen maxxed, while I don't have any points in it at all. I'd let him go first, but as soon as I entered into range, enemies would make a beeline for me. Same thing has happened when the roles have been reversed. This was almost unbearable about a year ago, but an overhaul of my character's equipt, abilities and the use of a respec token has compensated.
I like the idea of playing a science captain and most of my characters are science, so I still have hope that the class will remain worthwhile, but I have a romulan tac ready to turn into my main if necessary post-nerf.
100 Aux, 247 Flow Capacitors / Drain:
-1925 Shields on beam overload on Holodeck
-1426 Shields on beam overload on Tribble
100 Aux, 99 FlowCap / Drain
-1325 Shields on beam overload on Holodeck
-1005 Shields on beam overload on Tribble
Huge unjustified nerf to mostly average space trait
ALSO:
Drain infection seems don't work on Plasmonic Leech
Drain infection seems don't work on Tetryon Glider
Drain infection seems don't work on Overwhelming Force Trait (BO part)
Drain infection seems don't work on Destabilized Emitters (Intelligence officer)
Drain infection seems don't work on Tachyon Charges (command officer)
Control Amplification seems don't work on Overwhelming Force Trait (T:HY part)
Control Amplification seems don't work on Viral Torpedo (Trait)
Viral Torpedo is unaffected by control expertise (duration is not increased)
BTW:
Could You add "active buff icon" for Tetryon Glider? It would be nice to know who is using it...
God I'd love if viral torp was affected by control expertise- right now it's useless. I wanted it to be resistable back when it wasn't, but now it doesn't actually do anything because of resists and a lack of skill affecting it. :shrug:.
God I'd love if viral torp was affected by control expertise- right now it's useless. I wanted it to be resistable back when it wasn't, but now it doesn't actually do anything because of resists and a lack of skill affecting it. :shrug:.
Viral torp will be even weaker now, since gaining significant control resistance is much easier now. Im' ok with virals being affected by control resistance, but I don't understand why control skills do not increase ability duration.
Apparently control expertise isn't working at all, that is why grav well's pull is much weaker than on Holodeck. The problem has been acknowledged and there is a fix in the pipeline for it.
Apparently control expertise isn't working at all, that is why grav well's pull is much weaker than on Holodeck. The problem has been acknowledged and there is a fix in the pipeline for it.
Other than that, I have worked out a new build that is as good or better than on Holodeck, two for my science and one for my tac (different builds of course). The engineer didn't much change. But if I put the tac build or the sci build into the engi's tree, it goes up.
I have tentatively created two science builds and need to decide which is better but it needs to wait on GGens to be looked into before I can decide. The tac tree is right as rain and quite a bit more effective than holodeck. A hybrid engi tree is more effective but a recreation from old to new is not.
I'm going to find a way to get the whole skill tree into a single image then will post what I think and maybe we can discuss changes to tweak them. I could do tac and engi now because their control is for mitigation purposes but, like I said, science has to wait for the suck to be turned back on.
I find it slightly hilarious that the tab-like marks at the top and the path progress trackers at the bottom have the correct Klingon Engineering/Science/Tactical icons and the individual skills are all generic Federation mush.
I choose to believe that's a sign they're all place holders for real icons, possibly faction specific .
I don't even know where the particle gen value numbers are on the Tribble ship statistic page ... or stealth values for my B'Rel ... there is very little information posted for ship statistics vs live once the skill points are all spent ... Tribble seems to only display 4 groups of ship statistics, unless it is listed in a different location other than the points allocation area ...
I was messing around with my science build and realised how pointless hull and shield regeneration skills are. Even maxed out they are tiny compared to the amount of damage you can take in 6secs. So if you are struggling for points these are the best places not to put them imo. Running both with no skill points is barely noticeable.
I was messing around with my science build and realised how pointless hull and shield regeneration skills are. Even maxed out they are tiny compared to the amount of damage you can take in 6secs. So if you are struggling for points these are the best places not to put them imo. Running both with no skill points is barely noticeable.
One has to wonder if those aren't a bit of "trap" skills. Innate regeneration for shields and hull is usually not that important. Maybe the regeneration skills should be combined with the restoration skills? But of course, that means "we" need to invent two new skills to take that place.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I was messing around with my science build and realised how pointless hull and shield regeneration skills are. Even maxed out they are tiny compared to the amount of damage you can take in 6secs. So if you are struggling for points these are the best places not to put them imo. Running both with no skill points is barely noticeable.
One has to wonder if those aren't a bit of "trap" skills. Innate regeneration for shields and hull is usually not that important. Maybe the regeneration skills should be combined with the restoration skills? But of course, that means "we" need to invent two new skills to take that place.
That's a good idea to combine them, because as the stand they are pretty pointless. Or the need a massive buff to make them a competitive choice.
Comments
U try an engi team?
I always wondered about this, because, Stealth. Why's that even a thing under the current mechanics? Nobody uses it because the mechanics don't even make it worthwhile near enough anywhere except for cloaks and even then not all that much. Not entirely unlike Sensors, which is really, really weird, more so when you consider the innate ability of Hirogen ships and why that wasn't something that just, was, but with those ships being better than most.
So, like, 'stealth' and 'being stealthy' should make you harder to detect, sure, simple. In most terms for space/scifi/scifantasy-to-some-extent that should mean that whatever it is that's trying to detect you (like sensors) is having a hard time doing so, which would make you difficult to hit you as well. It didn't help that any time I tried to push sensors I didn't have any 'perception stat' to measure but it was pretty clear that there either wasn't a mechanic for passively finding cloaked ships (I know, there is, but this was my perception of what was going on, and: ), or it was remarkably heavily weighted in favour of a cloaked vessel. Which makes some degree of sense, but I think my underlying point is made... Stealth was a one trick pony and it was a bit 'meh'.
With that in mind, and the fact that there are already mechanics for acc adding a small bonus to crit chance, why not add a small boost to accuracy and defense with sensors and stealth respectively? Mask Energy Signature could provide a boost in that regard though I can't think of a sensors ability to actively counter it at the moment, other than Fire On My Mark, which is tac captain only and seems a bit unbalanced.
Stop new content until quality returns
Engineer team would clear A subsystem going down, but science team would remove the debuff that procs them?
but honestly what are you asking ? I was making a suggestion, not a question...
While I find mask energy signature a joke, stealth detection on cloaked ships worked pretty well, specially on a Nebula snooper build. Not sure if sensors stay as is in the new system because I've seen some buggy behavior on Tribble with the sensor mod.
I thought that was an active ability, it was more passive that I was looking at..?
Stop new content until quality returns
I don't think I ever read the Devs saying 'players lose nothing'. I can't see how anyone would think that was how it was going to play out when abilities are having their coefficients juggled like brightly colored balls (and chainsaws...).
My understanding was 'you'll be able to reproduce the same skill values.' A statement which is true as far as I can tell. That people read more into it is... typical.
"Players Lose Nothing – As much as possible, everything available in the current system will be made available under the new system, and investments in equipment and ships retain full value." http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9797693-star-trek-online:-skill-system-revamp
(Unless you use drains, Auxiliary power, and Plasmonic Leech.)
Sort of.
What actually seems to be happening, aside from the aux rescaling, is this:
On holodeck, some drain abilities gain 2x benefit per point of Flow Caps. On Tribble, those powers only gain 1x benefit per point of drain expertise.
Partgens:180, 6 ranks
Gravgens: 142, 7 ranks
Flowcaps: 102, 6 ranks
Tribble
EPG: 186.4 (3 ranks)
ControlX: 173.1 (2 ranks)
DrainX: 152.3 (2 ranks)
Prtg/EPG: 409 410
Gravgens/Control: 29 28,6
Flowcaps/Drain: 133 133,8
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Yep. And saying both things at the same time. "You lose nothing" with "we changed this, this, and this and that changed this, this, and this and you will see smaller results."
Sorry Bort. I was tired when I put the OP together and I guess I invited harsh criticism with it. Really didn't mean to do that, just wanted to convey my emotional reaction to the change, which I hope is actually useful feedback for you. Still there has been some constructive discussion hear at least.
I am so glad to hear this. Honestly my love of gravity well stems from its ability to create opportunities to exploit. Given the choice I would far rather loose its damage entirely then its radius and pull.
Hear is the thing about normalizing the effectiveness of science builds. You cant really normalize them to the average without nerfing them. Please let me explain.
When a captain uses cannon rapid fire on its global cool down, he gets the benefit of that ability for 2 seconds out of every three. He can pop three or four enemy ships and keep benefiting from that ability the whole time.
When a captain uses tractor beam on its global cool down, he gets the benefit of the ability for only so long as his first target stays alive, then for the next two or three kills he would have been better off with rapid fire.
Now when the game was released, the long reuse time on abilities wasn't so bad, because even the tactical captains might use the full duration of their ability to pop a single target, but we don't live in that STO any more. We have optional timers to beat and STFs with huge numbers of enemies.
To keep up, us science captains have written off a lot of science abilities, normalizing to an average that includes these under performers can only be a nerf because it means bringing the abilities we do use down to meet them.
So what do we use and how do we use it to keep up with the tacticals? Two things, G. Generators and P. Generators. The Key component in a science captians damage arsenal is the gravity well. Not for its damage, that honestly isn't so important. We need the gravity well to overcome the 'Kill one ship, wait for our cool downs' problem.
See those abilities that continue to do damage once the first target is dead are the AoE hazard abilities. As we cant go from target to target individually we instead adopt a 'Hit all of the things with all of the things at once' Strategy. We put the enemies in the same place, hit them with the same things, at the same time, and hope its enough to start a warp core breach chain reaction. Then it doesn't matter that everything is on cooldown and its going to be 40 seconds until we are useful again, because our spike damage was multiplied by the number of things we were able to suck into the well, and hopefully that five to ten seconds of usefulness makes up for the 30 seconds of not so much.
While this strategy is super fun, it is not cheep to implement, and its usefulness is situational. Using the 'hit all of the things with all of the things' strategy dose not work when 'the things' are two spread out, or not present in large enough numbers to get a good multiplication going.
Now, drain builds. I have a question. What would be so bad about normalizing the effectiveness of drain builds to the high end rather then the low end? A high end drain build utilized against a boss should be effective, because the rest of the time in that PVE match I guarantee you it is not pulling its weight. Drain builds require a 'use all of the things on just one of the things' strategy. This strategy dose nothing to compensate for the long cool down waiting game. Its not at all like the previous strategy. If a team carries a drainer to the boss in an STF why shouldn't he get his moment to shine?
Drain builds in PvP. Ok in PvP a drain build can be devilishly difficult to fight, in a one v one. But the increased flow capacitors that are now available to drainers are balanced by the increased power insulators now available to defenders, and in multi participant engagements the drain boat is week and squishy. If you do away with drainers because they are good at one v one engagements and difficult to counter then the vapors have to be next, or your simply picking on science.
What of subspace decompiler? This is meant to buy you a moment of opportunity, but said moment is only valuable if you have the capability to exploit it. Dedicating points and equipment to this stat buys you only fractions of a second more disable time, which can easily be eaten up by interface lag or a bad ping. The best use of decompiler is typically not on a science ship at all but on a bird of prey set up to perform high spike damage during the opportunity created. That's why science ships are typically built to achieve disable through drain rather then photonic shockwave or viral matrix, they simply can not work within the windows of opportunity that said abilities provide.
What of countermeasures? Counter measures don't buy you an opportunity to exploit, they buy you a moment to exploit the enemy's capability's before they stop firing. The control is therefor still in the hands of the enemy. When using a control ability the point is to be the one in control so countermeasures aren't that useful
So Bort. If you want to revamp the skills to make them easier to understand and calculate I think that's really grate. But please preserve the science we have now. It is fun to play, and STO will easily survive a little lite science buffing. There realy isn't any danger that science builds are going to take over from beam fire at will any time soon, and what would be so bad about it if they did?
I think that is a good explanation on how science (vessels) currently work (or not work.)
After Borticus said that currently, the range of Gravity Wells is not correctly affected by skills, I am not really that worried anymore about that part.
The drain builds might still have a problem, of course.
And Placate/Confuse, Subsystem Disables or Stun builds still have no real use. (But we can't expect miracles). (Stun in PvP, perhaps, but PvP I haven't PvPed in such a long time I don't know if that is still a thing. I did PvP a lot in the days of Phontonic Shockwave Bird of Preys, of course.)
I think the problem of these abilities is:
1) Stun is irrelevant if your enemy doesn't really have any abilities he could fire defensive that you're worried about. I suppose you could use it against the Voth special barrier effects, but for that, it's probably too short (and requires a stealth approach).
2) Confuses are not relevant because the enemies damage is usually not notable enough that it would help you if he starts hitting his allies, and the brief time he isn't shooting at you isn't that helpful either.
3) Placates have the problem of the low damage thresholds that are far too quickly broken. But even then - your enemy not shooting at you tends to reduce a lot less damage than you can inflict with an offensive option.
4) Subsstem Disables have a similar problem to stuns and placate/confuses.
Drain and Exotic Damage are the kind of builds that support the party in their effort in taking out the enemy the most. They straight deal damage, or they open enemies up to taking more damage. Drains take time to get there, so it's only really useful against "boss" type enemies, while Exotic tend to rely on AoE and are more useful the more enemies there are around.
This is how I play it and it can be devastating but like you said, it's situational. As Cully said, since I know that the pull zone is not working right, it will come back together when it does. The stats seem to be a shade higher on Tribble than on Holodeck but the synergy is off because the control area is off.
I want to repeat this again in case Bort missed it in the mountains of text in here. The R&D Console - Science - Exotic Particle Focuser with +PGens and +GGens does not seem to be working on exotic damage from the Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo Launcher. When replaced by the older Embassy Console - Science - Plasma-Generating Weapon Signature Nullifier, the exotic damage boost returns. PGens is supposed to be boosting this effect but it currently is not or it is not doing it properly.
Ok, I thought I had parses from Tribble with both. I must have cleaned the log. So I guess this is "To Be Continued..."
229 grav gens
104 flow caps
338 part gens
Tribble
274 ctrlx (Deflector changes)
145 drainx (Deflector changes)
343.7 epg (not sure where, but I gained 4.7 [Hah!])
As a side note, with the battery mastery trait it seems that Hull Patch isn't getting increased healing effectiveness, but the secondary buff is double the length.
Holodeck
Hull Patch: 6,000 hp, +20% hp for 10 secs
Reactive Armor Catalyst: 9,732 hp over 10 secs, 7,873 temp hp for 10 secs.
Tribble
Hull patch: 6,000 hp, +20% hp for 20 secs
Reactive Armor Catalyst: 18,111 hp over 20 secs, 7,873 temp hp for 20 secs.
It would be nice to have hull patch heal twice as much, to make it more like a space Hypo.
My builds are still good, but they're losing effectiveness, and they're already not as effective as simply dealing damage and debuffs with weapons.
I agree with @pwstolemyname too. But he did kinda not mention tyken's rift, which is great group control skill, that can be used against Non boss characters.
I'm saddened by the nerf of breen consoles they were not great overall anyways. Hopefully they and science abilities get buffed abit.
Of course players are going to speculate that your request for data is just a thinly veiled attempt to fish for details on what to nerf next.
You have earned a reputation for consistently nerfing anything useful and/or fun then rubbing it in with congratulating yourself on twitter for 'fixing' something that players spent a lot of ec on and/or had some fun with; while still ignoring bugs which persist to this day. Shouldn't you expect cynical responses by now?
As for me, I just want to group chaff enemies together with grav well while keeping my power levels up, then destroy them in one nice cascade of explosions with bfaw. If I can still do that after the latest nerf to science, the game will still be playable.
I have noticed that science captains and science ships in general seem to generate more aggro regardless how many -threat consoles they have. For instance, I have played with a tac with his threat gen maxxed, while I don't have any points in it at all. I'd let him go first, but as soon as I entered into range, enemies would make a beeline for me. Same thing has happened when the roles have been reversed. This was almost unbearable about a year ago, but an overhaul of my character's equipt, abilities and the use of a respec token has compensated.
I like the idea of playing a science captain and most of my characters are science, so I still have hope that the class will remain worthwhile, but I have a romulan tac ready to turn into my main if necessary post-nerf.
Nerfed to ground, but it is ok.
OVERWHELMING FORCE TRAIT
100 Aux, 247 Flow Capacitors / Drain:
-1925 Shields on beam overload on Holodeck
-1426 Shields on beam overload on Tribble
100 Aux, 99 FlowCap / Drain
-1325 Shields on beam overload on Holodeck
-1005 Shields on beam overload on Tribble
Huge unjustified nerf to mostly average space trait
ALSO:
Drain infection seems don't work on Plasmonic Leech
Drain infection seems don't work on Tetryon Glider
Drain infection seems don't work on Overwhelming Force Trait (BO part)
Drain infection seems don't work on Destabilized Emitters (Intelligence officer)
Drain infection seems don't work on Tachyon Charges (command officer)
Control Amplification seems don't work on Overwhelming Force Trait (T:HY part)
Control Amplification seems don't work on Viral Torpedo (Trait)
Viral Torpedo is unaffected by control expertise (duration is not increased)
BTW:
Could You add "active buff icon" for Tetryon Glider? It would be nice to know who is using it...
Viral torp will be even weaker now, since gaining significant control resistance is much easier now. Im' ok with virals being affected by control resistance, but I don't understand why control skills do not increase ability duration.
Other than that, I have worked out a new build that is as good or better than on Holodeck, two for my science and one for my tac (different builds of course). The engineer didn't much change. But if I put the tac build or the sci build into the engi's tree, it goes up.
I have tentatively created two science builds and need to decide which is better but it needs to wait on GGens to be looked into before I can decide. The tac tree is right as rain and quite a bit more effective than holodeck. A hybrid engi tree is more effective but a recreation from old to new is not.
I'm going to find a way to get the whole skill tree into a single image then will post what I think and maybe we can discuss changes to tweak them. I could do tac and engi now because their control is for mitigation purposes but, like I said, science has to wait for the suck to be turned back on.
--- Additions ---
Japori Advanced (It's what I am using to test)
SCM - Combat - [03:11] DMG(DPS) - @battykoda0: 2.92M(16.40K)
Ship is the Kremin Anniversary (My Breen Carrier has a messed up tray and not in the mood to mess with it
(added, might help)
Skill Tree currently.
I choose to believe that's a sign they're all place holders for real icons, possibly faction specific
That's a good idea to combine them, because as the stand they are pretty pointless. Or the need a massive buff to make them a competitive choice.