when you have autofire on, shooting the fake cores is unavoidable...and it's not a big deal anyway - they can't kill you and the disable goes away after 5 seconds
You mean it is avoidable, but turning off autofire, recalling all pets, and suffering the oppressive burden of actually thinking before you shoot. The disable goes away, but it also takes you out of full impulse and possibly the cloak. It's annoying and entirely avoidable, so why be that guy? ARGH!
Why remove the subcore? Isn't it easy enough to spot the fakes? I like that the fake cores make you watch your fire. If it were me I'd make the fake ones hit harder or severely debuff whoever shoots at it.
Everything in this game is easy. Too easy.
And the fake cores don't make you watch your fire. Some less-than-informed player, or a hangar pet, or those useless NPCs people waste time on rescuing will shoot it anyway. Might as well just shoot it yourself and pop science team to clear the debuff right away instead of trying to delay the inevitable.
But playing whack-a-mole with a teleporting magic crystal is genre-inappropriate. It belongs in the lair of some crazy wizard in fantasy land, not the reactor core of an alien starship. Here, it's just the kind of silly videogame archichitecture that makes a mission impossible to take seriously.
Just imagine the Enterprise's warp core teleporting randomly between three rooms.
You mean it is avoidable, but turning off autofire, recalling all pets, and suffering the oppressive burden of actually thinking before you shoot. The disable goes away, but it also takes you out of full impulse and possibly the cloak. It's annoying and entirely avoidable, so why be that guy? ARGH!
Due to a new bug that makes controlling hanger pets even more difficult, hanger pets quite often completely ignore all commands you give them and never return to your ship. The only way to get rid of them is to remove them from your ship and re-equip, which is what I do.
In any case, you can activate any power that makes you immune to damage, like the delta recruit trait or rock and roll, and the disable from the fake cores does nothing and only briefly puts you in combat iirc.
I generally like challenges. But the Voth dread isn't a challenge, it's cheating.
Everyone gets downscaled, and then the Voth dread is suddenly 10 levels above everyone else.
It's not smart use of abilities, those spatial charges are just ridiculously powerful because they're coming from a level 60-ship where everyone else is level 50. For comparison: before the level cap increase, we had some missions where the enemies would be level 52 or 54. And those would be quite difficult.
Their charges are also near impossible to see, half the time they hit, they'll just hit you out of nowhere. I've seen charges dealing over 80k damage straight to my hull. The combined power of Aux to SIF, Brace for impact and engineering team could not negate it.
You're simply dead before you can do anything to counter it. All counter measures, if you're not flying a very fast escort that is, are almost useless. Cause even if you manage to recover from one charge and not get killed almost instantly, the next one will hit you before you can do anything.
I suppose you could heavily invest in Kinetic resists, but even then I doubt it's going to work. It shouldn't be necessary anyway, not for normal difficulty. Advanced and above, fine, but this amount of cheating and powerful abilities on normal level just shouldn't be happening.
I mean, compare this dread to the dreads in the Contested Zone. Those in the CZ are not that powerful, because they're at the same level as the player is. That is why people are having trouble with it: not because it presents a challenge, but because there's simply little you can do against ships that are 10 levels higher. Unless you want to completely change your build for a normal mission, but again, that shouldn't be necessary.
None of what you say here makes any sense to me. To start with the latter, the Citadels in the Contested Zone are much more dangerous!
And, like I said, I've never done any TBA run, ever, where it took us longer than 30 secs or so to off the Citadel. The thing is a joke. Deflection shield goes up (I usually taunt it a bit, to do so); you wait a few seconds, it goes off again, and then the Citadel dies soon thereafter. I usually activate a BFI, or a Deploy Countermeasures when needed (for a short Kinetic immunity). And FBP.
And I don't even play TBN any more (did it once, but it was too ridulously easy for words). I'd say the ships inside the initial Breach room are generally more dangerous. The neutered Citadel, however, is a cakewalk.
I generally like challenges. But the Voth dread isn't a challenge, it's cheating.
Everyone gets downscaled, and then the Voth dread is suddenly 10 levels above everyone else.
It's not smart use of abilities, those spatial charges are just ridiculously powerful because they're coming from a level 60-ship where everyone else is level 50. For comparison: before the level cap increase, we had some missions where the enemies would be level 52 or 54. And those would be quite difficult.
Their charges are also near impossible to see, half the time they hit, they'll just hit you out of nowhere. I've seen charges dealing over 80k damage straight to my hull. The combined power of Aux to SIF, Brace for impact and engineering team could not negate it.
You're simply dead before you can do anything to counter it. All counter measures, if you're not flying a very fast escort that is, are almost useless. Cause even if you manage to recover from one charge and not get killed almost instantly, the next one will hit you before you can do anything.
I suppose you could heavily invest in Kinetic resists, but even then I doubt it's going to work. It shouldn't be necessary anyway, not for normal difficulty. Advanced and above, fine, but this amount of cheating and powerful abilities on normal level just shouldn't be happening.
I mean, compare this dread to the dreads in the Contested Zone. Those in the CZ are not that powerful, because they're at the same level as the player is. That is why people are having trouble with it: not because it presents a challenge, but because there's simply little you can do against ships that are 10 levels higher. Unless you want to completely change your build for a normal mission, but again, that shouldn't be necessary.
None of what you say here makes any sense to me. To start with the latter, the Citadels in the Contested Zone are much more dangerous!
And, like I said, I've never done any TBA run, ever, where it took us longer than 30 secs or so to off the Citadel. The thing is a joke. Deflection shield goes up (I usually taunt it a bit, to do so); you wait a few seconds, it goes off again, and then the Citadel dies soon thereafter. I usually activate a BFI, or a Deploy Countermeasures when needed (for a short Kinetic immunity). And FBP.
And I don't even play TBN any more (did it once, but it was too ridulously easy for words). I'd say the ships inside the initial Breach room are generally more dangerous. The neutered Citadel, however, is a cakewalk.
Perhaps it's not making sense to you because you seem to have trouble paying attention to what I said. You're playing it on Advanced. You don't get downscaled to level 50 there. So of course the issue is less serious on that difficulty.
I must admit, I've only played this event on my alts, not on my better geared main space characters. That doesn't change anything about the fact that it's not correctly scaled however. And that, based on multiple fights, this is responsible for most of the deaths I've seen and suffered. Charges that hit for 85k damage while completely ignoring shields shouldn't be happening on normal difficulty. The fact that you or elite channel members have little problems with that is good for you, but this is written from the perspective of someone who's been playing this mission on average characters.
I can certainly understand that people are having problems with this thing, given that it's simply not scaled as it should be.
Not so simply put, removing parts of the mission does not teach players anything. Lets say someone does it on normal, breeze through and want to try advanced. Having the dreadnought pop up without warning to the player would be pretty unfair, right?
I ran this map a ton when it was new, and dug it back then. I'm only running this event on 3 characters (1 on my main to get the card, and 2 others to get them the dilithium so I can get them some rep set pieces easy). So for me, I'm having a blast with the breach. I like the dreadnought. I've had two runs where it was taking forever. But other than that, it's been smooth and easy. I try not to think too hard about the scale and the storyline of what's taking place, else I really start to question the validity of all this. But I've always enjoyed the "trench run" feel of the first part, the fight with the dreadnought and the disappearing core. The part I dislike the most is the final fight part. But the "escape now" part of the very end makes up for it.
So I'd say I'm not keen on changing or removing the dreadnought. I use BFAW on it with 2 of the characters that fight it. It's never been a problem for me. My other toon is a science toon and he eats that dreadnought for breakfast. He's very undergeared as he's an alt that I've only recently taken an interest in, but he does far better in this map than he does on the regular Borg maps that I run him through to get through that first (and easiest) rep.
Weaker players need to learn some time, the game is far to easy as it is for them.
Quite frankly normal level 50 queues should be balanced around people having Mk XII gear at least and players who have not bothered to upgrade their gear and are still flying around in Mk VIII or IX stuff should absolutely have their asses handed to them.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
And FFS, people, just because YOU have no problem with it doesn't mean everyone can handle it. Maybe you're just too damned good to be in a Normal run in the first place, and most of you probably are. The forum tends to be populated with better, more experienced players. That doesn't invalidate the fact that weaker players DO exist and they shouldn't be punished on the easiest difficulty setting.
I will admit some of the posts/responses in this thread to your idea have been very hostile. And that has added a layer of tension that I think overlooks the general theme they are trying to put forth. I have been on two runs during this event where the Dreadnought has been a bottleneck that has killed me and the team many many times and it's taken a long time to get past. So I understand what it is that is driving you to make the thread. However, what a lot of others are getting at is, this dreadnought is different. It's not a stationary gateway, or nanite transformer. It's not a bunch of spheres protecting a Cube. It's trickier. And can be problematic, but it's a decent learning experience for players that don't have that experience. Heck with the way exotic damage works, it's even a bit easier for under-geared players to have a bigger impact on this particular boss than it is in other queues.
So while I do understand the point you are making, I tend to agree with the majority of respondents here in that the dreadnought is a different boss, that needs different tactics. And this event can have some very frustrating runs, but I think is a great chance for people to steap away from Infected Conduits and try something different.
I think the complaint is about his shield and whatever heavy damage blast he can do. For the shield I admit I ignore it and keep shooting until it comes down. I do wait to use exotics until he starts taking damage. I haven't been seriously harmed by his blast - sometimes to 50% health. I notice he does heal some also. Still, should be no problem to solo with say 10k dps. Should the group be asked to do 2000 each for normal? That sounds reasonable?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Due to a new bug that makes controlling hanger pets even more difficult, hanger pets quite often completely ignore all commands you give them and never return to your ship. The only way to get rid of them is to remove them from your ship and re-equip, which is what I do.
Difficult for pets to follow you from the previous room anyway. Simply refraining from launching pets in the sub-power core room would remove 99% of them from the equation.
In any case, you can activate any power that makes you immune to damage, like the delta recruit trait or rock and roll, and the disable from the fake cores does nothing and only briefly puts you in combat iirc.
Assuming that's not all on cooldown. Why not just show a tiny measure of consideration and not inflict that on your teammates? Is it really so difficult to stop brainlessly FAW-ing for a couple of minutes?
I have run this, all on Normal, 31 times on three Science Characters in a Mobius, a Charel, and a Krenim Warship and have never failed. Last night we started with four but one dropped out in the Citadel room. It took a bit longer but perseverance is key. I guess the guy who left thought it was going a bit slow.
I did notice that for a few times on Sunday and Monday the initial Trench run ended just as we were taking out the first Shield Node. So it's impatient cheaters.
I don't care for a challenge when I am trying to just get through the bloody Event. The PVE is fine but don't want to waste extra time if I could avoid it. All of these 14 day Events I do at Normal for the most part, except sometimes CC is done on Advanced as it is ridiculously fast there anyway and normally do it that way anyway.
The Queue doesn't need to be changed but the explanations of the Citadel being at 60 while we are scaled down to 50 because that's what is normally done for Bosses in MMOs doesn't really hold much water in THIS MMO. Given past track records it could be an oversight that they really don't want to/need to address based upon their metrics.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I generally like challenges. But the Voth dread isn't a challenge, it's cheating.
Everyone gets downscaled, and then the Voth dread is suddenly 10 levels above everyone else.
It's not smart use of abilities, those spatial charges are just ridiculously powerful because they're coming from a level 60-ship where everyone else is level 50. For comparison: before the level cap increase, we had some missions where the enemies would be level 52 or 54. And those would be quite difficult.
Their charges are also near impossible to see, half the time they hit, they'll just hit you out of nowhere. I've seen charges dealing over 80k damage straight to my hull. The combined power of Aux to SIF, Brace for impact and engineering team could not negate it.
You're simply dead before you can do anything to counter it. All counter measures, if you're not flying a very fast escort that is, are almost useless. Cause even if you manage to recover from one charge and not get killed almost instantly, the next one will hit you before you can do anything.
I suppose you could heavily invest in Kinetic resists, but even then I doubt it's going to work. It shouldn't be necessary anyway, not for normal difficulty. Advanced and above, fine, but this amount of cheating and powerful abilities on normal level just shouldn't be happening.
I mean, compare this dread to the dreads in the Contested Zone. Those in the CZ are not that powerful, because they're at the same level as the player is. That is why people are having trouble with it: not because it presents a challenge, but because there's simply little you can do against ships that are 10 levels higher. Unless you want to completely change your build for a normal mission, but again, that shouldn't be necessary.
None of what you say here makes any sense to me. To start with the latter, the Citadels in the Contested Zone are much more dangerous!
And, like I said, I've never done any TBA run, ever, where it took us longer than 30 secs or so to off the Citadel. The thing is a joke. Deflection shield goes up (I usually taunt it a bit, to do so); you wait a few seconds, it goes off again, and then the Citadel dies soon thereafter. I usually activate a BFI, or a Deploy Countermeasures when needed (for a short Kinetic immunity). And FBP.
And I don't even play TBN any more (did it once, but it was too ridulously easy for words). I'd say the ships inside the initial Breach room are generally more dangerous. The neutered Citadel, however, is a cakewalk.
Perhaps it's not making sense to you because you seem to have trouble paying attention to what I said. You're playing it on Advanced. You don't get downscaled to level 50 there. So of course the issue is less serious on that difficulty.
I must admit, I've only played this event on my alts, not on my better geared main space characters. That doesn't change anything about the fact that it's not correctly scaled however. And that, based on multiple fights, this is responsible for most of the deaths I've seen and suffered. Charges that hit for 85k damage while completely ignoring shields shouldn't be happening on normal difficulty. The fact that you or elite channel members have little problems with that is good for you, but this is written from the perspective of someone who's been playing this mission on average characters.
I can certainly understand that people are having problems with this thing, given that it's simply not scaled as it should be.
Perhaps my words are not making sense to you because you seem to have trouble paying attention to what I said. I said I usually play it on Advanced, where it already is way too easy, and that I played it on Normal once (literally only once), but never again, as on Normal it doesn't even offer a 'suspension of disbelief' of a challenge. So, yeah, to hear you say it's so hard, especially on Normal, is just something that utterly baffles me.
As to he perspective of 'playing this mission on average characters,' not sure what that means exactly. I'm nothing special, DPS-wise, and certainly not part of any alleged elite.
Me, I'd rather want the old Breach back, with Bulwarks over the turret groups, and where you actually *could* die if you weren't careful. I understand they had to make it a little easier, because it's now an Event. But make it any easier, and they might as well just deposit the daily rewards straight into your pockets.
@ltminns There's no need to change the queue, agreed with that. No need to remove anything either, but enemies should be at the same level as the players. We're specifically downscaled because we shouldn't be too strong on a level 50-map. And then the next thing that happens is that one of those enemies gets upscaled to level 60. That makes little sense to me.
The moment players have to deal with Kinetic charges that deal more damage than the average player ship has hull points, something is wrong. It hasn't prevented me from completing this mission yet, not even on my not-so-good alts, but it is quite annoying to randomly blow up because none of your defenses work and you're just hit by something out of nowhere.
It's the same thing as the Borg Instakill torpedoes. I think most people were agreed that those weren't exactly 'fun' either.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
On advanced/elite, are players scaled to 50 still? And what level is the dreadnought at those difficulties?
That is actually the problem the OP is really having, but may not be realizing it, and I think many posting here don't either. At Normal difficulty, everything is scaled to level 50. Except, for some reason, the Dreadnought. It's level 60, 10 above the effective player level.
It doesn't need to be removed. Just fix that problem.
But - even with that quirk, the mission is definitely doable. I only run the mission on two characters usually, one on Advanced, one on Normal, because I can't spend all that much time on the game at the moment. Or rather, I don't want to.
---
I think the most boring part is the fight against the final core. Pure slugfest, the only interesting part might be the two shield sections that you need to avoid. But there is otherwise nothing going on. Would be cooler if there was more variation in there.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I generally like challenges. But the Voth dread isn't a challenge, it's cheating.
Everyone gets downscaled, and then the Voth dread is suddenly 10 levels above everyone else.
It's not smart use of abilities, those spatial charges are just ridiculously powerful because they're coming from a level 60-ship where everyone else is level 50. For comparison: before the level cap increase, we had some missions where the enemies would be level 52 or 54. And those would be quite difficult.
Their charges are also near impossible to see, half the time they hit, they'll just hit you out of nowhere. I've seen charges dealing over 80k damage straight to my hull. The combined power of Aux to SIF, Brace for impact and engineering team could not negate it.
You're simply dead before you can do anything to counter it. All counter measures, if you're not flying a very fast escort that is, are almost useless. Cause even if you manage to recover from one charge and not get killed almost instantly, the next one will hit you before you can do anything.
I suppose you could heavily invest in Kinetic resists, but even then I doubt it's going to work. It shouldn't be necessary anyway, not for normal difficulty. Advanced and above, fine, but this amount of cheating and powerful abilities on normal level just shouldn't be happening.
I mean, compare this dread to the dreads in the Contested Zone. Those in the CZ are not that powerful, because they're at the same level as the player is. That is why people are having trouble with it: not because it presents a challenge, but because there's simply little you can do against ships that are 10 levels higher. Unless you want to completely change your build for a normal mission, but again, that shouldn't be necessary.
None of what you say here makes any sense to me. To start with the latter, the Citadels in the Contested Zone are much more dangerous!
And, like I said, I've never done any TBA run, ever, where it took us longer than 30 secs or so to off the Citadel. The thing is a joke. Deflection shield goes up (I usually taunt it a bit, to do so); you wait a few seconds, it goes off again, and then the Citadel dies soon thereafter. I usually activate a BFI, or a Deploy Countermeasures when needed (for a short Kinetic immunity). And FBP.
And I don't even play TBN any more (did it once, but it was too ridulously easy for words). I'd say the ships inside the initial Breach room are generally more dangerous. The neutered Citadel, however, is a cakewalk.
Perhaps it's not making sense to you because you seem to have trouble paying attention to what I said. You're playing it on Advanced. You don't get downscaled to level 50 there. So of course the issue is less serious on that difficulty.
I must admit, I've only played this event on my alts, not on my better geared main space characters. That doesn't change anything about the fact that it's not correctly scaled however. And that, based on multiple fights, this is responsible for most of the deaths I've seen and suffered. Charges that hit for 85k damage while completely ignoring shields shouldn't be happening on normal difficulty. The fact that you or elite channel members have little problems with that is good for you, but this is written from the perspective of someone who's been playing this mission on average characters.
I can certainly understand that people are having problems with this thing, given that it's simply not scaled as it should be.
Perhaps my words are not making sense to you because you seem to have trouble paying attention to what I said. I said I usually play it on Advanced, where it already is way too easy, and that I played it on Normal once (literally only once), but never again, as on Normal it doesn't even offer a 'suspension of disbelief' of a challenge. So, yeah, to hear you say it's so hard, especially on Normal, is just something that utterly baffles me.
As to he perspective of 'playing this mission on average characters,' not sure what that means exactly. I'm nothing special, DPS-wise, and certainly not part of any alleged elite.
Me, I'd rather want the old Breach back, with Bulwarks over the turret groups, and where you actually *could* die if you weren't careful. I understand they had to make it a little easier, because it's now an Event. But make it any easier, and they might as well just deposit the daily rewards straight into your pockets.
I never said it was hard. Learn to read.
I said that things are occuring at normal difficulty such as spatial charges dealing over 85k damage which shouldn't be happening on normal difficulty because most players don't even have that amount of hull points. That's not making it hard, that's just making it plain annoying when you blow up out of nowhere, just like the Borg instakill torpedoes were annoying.
The fact that Advanced may be easier is because you are at the same level as the Dread there, I assume. On normal, you get downscaled and its charges are thus more powerful than anything else on the map.
I also never said you were special, but you are above average since I know you're a member of the 30k DPS channel. Of course it's easy for you, but again, this isn 't about you, I'm talking about a feature of the mission, a mission that's intended for below average players.
Spatial charges don't just appear out of nowhere and are nothing like the borg instakill torpedoes, there are nice prominent targeting icons that start appearing near your ship which gives you a few seconds to get out of there fast. Even the vaadwuar can totally toast your ship with their artillery strike if you do not get out of the way on Normal difficulty.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
Me, I'd rather want the old Breach back, with Bulwarks over the turret groups, and where you actually *could* die if you weren't careful. I understand they had to make it a little easier, because it's now an Event. But make it any easier, and they might as well just deposit the daily rewards straight into your pockets.
Actually the Bulwarks do appear over the turret groups on Elite difficulty.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
AFAIK completing the exterior does, in fact, reward 5 marks. Regardless, players can get a lot of progress leveling up a ship out there, so even if you don't care about gimping marks, you are also gimping XP by bypassing the exterior.
"Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell BAD." - Spock
I generally like challenges. But the Voth dread isn't a challenge, it's cheating.
Everyone gets downscaled, and then the Voth dread is suddenly 10 levels above everyone else.
It's not smart use of abilities, those spatial charges are just ridiculously powerful because they're coming from a level 60-ship where everyone else is level 50. For comparison: before the level cap increase, we had some missions where the enemies would be level 52 or 54. And those would be quite difficult.
Their charges are also near impossible to see, half the time they hit, they'll just hit you out of nowhere. I've seen charges dealing over 80k damage straight to my hull. The combined power of Aux to SIF, Brace for impact and engineering team could not negate it.
You're simply dead before you can do anything to counter it. All counter measures, if you're not flying a very fast escort that is, are almost useless. Cause even if you manage to recover from one charge and not get killed almost instantly, the next one will hit you before you can do anything.
I suppose you could heavily invest in Kinetic resists, but even then I doubt it's going to work. It shouldn't be necessary anyway, not for normal difficulty. Advanced and above, fine, but this amount of cheating and powerful abilities on normal level just shouldn't be happening.
I mean, compare this dread to the dreads in the Contested Zone. Those in the CZ are not that powerful, because they're at the same level as the player is. That is why people are having trouble with it: not because it presents a challenge, but because there's simply little you can do against ships that are 10 levels higher. Unless you want to completely change your build for a normal mission, but again, that shouldn't be necessary.
None of what you say here makes any sense to me. To start with the latter, the Citadels in the Contested Zone are much more dangerous!
And, like I said, I've never done any TBA run, ever, where it took us longer than 30 secs or so to off the Citadel. The thing is a joke. Deflection shield goes up (I usually taunt it a bit, to do so); you wait a few seconds, it goes off again, and then the Citadel dies soon thereafter. I usually activate a BFI, or a Deploy Countermeasures when needed (for a short Kinetic immunity). And FBP.
And I don't even play TBN any more (did it once, but it was too ridulously easy for words). I'd say the ships inside the initial Breach room are generally more dangerous. The neutered Citadel, however, is a cakewalk.
Perhaps it's not making sense to you because you seem to have trouble paying attention to what I said. You're playing it on Advanced. You don't get downscaled to level 50 there. So of course the issue is less serious on that difficulty.
I must admit, I've only played this event on my alts, not on my better geared main space characters. That doesn't change anything about the fact that it's not correctly scaled however. And that, based on multiple fights, this is responsible for most of the deaths I've seen and suffered. Charges that hit for 85k damage while completely ignoring shields shouldn't be happening on normal difficulty. The fact that you or elite channel members have little problems with that is good for you, but this is written from the perspective of someone who's been playing this mission on average characters.
I can certainly understand that people are having problems with this thing, given that it's simply not scaled as it should be.
Perhaps my words are not making sense to you because you seem to have trouble paying attention to what I said. I said I usually play it on Advanced, where it already is way too easy, and that I played it on Normal once (literally only once), but never again, as on Normal it doesn't even offer a 'suspension of disbelief' of a challenge. So, yeah, to hear you say it's so hard, especially on Normal, is just something that utterly baffles me.
As to he perspective of 'playing this mission on average characters,' not sure what that means exactly. I'm nothing special, DPS-wise, and certainly not part of any alleged elite.
Me, I'd rather want the old Breach back, with Bulwarks over the turret groups, and where you actually *could* die if you weren't careful. I understand they had to make it a little easier, because it's now an Event. But make it any easier, and they might as well just deposit the daily rewards straight into your pockets.
I never said it was hard. Learn to read.
I said that things are occuring at normal difficulty such as spatial charges dealing over 85k damage which shouldn't be happening on normal difficulty because most players don't even have that amount of hull points. That's not making it hard, that's just making it plain annoying when you blow up out of nowhere, just like the Borg instakill torpedoes were annoying.
The fact that Advanced may be easier is because you are at the same level as the Dread there, I assume. On normal, you get downscaled and its charges are thus more powerful than anything else on the map.
I also never said you were special, but you are above average since I know you're a member of the 30k DPS channel. Of course it's easy for you, but again, this isn 't about you, I'm talking about a feature of the mission, a mission that's intended for below average players.
I think any problem, if it even exists, stems from ppl pugging this. The one time I did this on Normal, it was also via DPS channel. When you pug it, however, you may be drawing too much aggro. I get this on CSA's I pug: when the rest is significantly weaker, all attention gets focussed on you, and you're constantly fighting off plasma burns. I suspect, on a pug, something similar may be going on with the Dread when you're the strongest player in the room, by far. But all being scaled down to 50, even when we ran the TBN, wasn't a problem at all (didn't even notice it, tbh).
Spatial charges don't just appear out of nowhere and are nothing like the borg instakill torpedoes, there are nice prominent targeting icons that start appearing near your ship which gives you a few seconds to get out of there fast. Even the vaadwuar can totally toast your ship with their artillery strike if you do not get out of the way on Normal difficulty.
There are times when you see those targeting icons indeed, but they're not always appearing. They're much harder to detect than the Vaadwaur artillery strikes.
So much visual spam (in general) and the things you actually need to see are almost invisible, compared to the Vaadwaur abilities for example
Even on Advanced, the Citadel takes what, 30 secs, tops?! Requests like these alone make me want to ask for 2 Citadels in Normal. :P
Also, it's a Deflection shield (kinda like a FBP); aka, don't fire at it while it's up, or flank it.
I am pretty certain that the shield protects from all direction, but you can still exercise some fire discipline... And I think it doesn't deflect torpedo damage to you, so torpedo/science builds that don't have much weapon power might not worry either way.
I just checked again; and, indeed (though it's hard to get a good angle on the whole of the ship), this one seems to have a full coverage Deflector shield. I'm pretty sure the Citadels in the Contested Zone don't. Strange.
No it doesn't. You can still go behind it to attack it safely. I do it on every run.
It's a completely standard Citadel.
It's not invincible, flank it when that shield goes up and stop firing when the aceton cheese starts to appear, open up when the aceton cheese goes
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I generally like challenges. But the Voth dread isn't a challenge, it's cheating.
Everyone gets downscaled, and then the Voth dread is suddenly 10 levels above everyone else.
It's not smart use of abilities, those spatial charges are just ridiculously powerful because they're coming from a level 60-ship where everyone else is level 50. For comparison: before the level cap increase, we had some missions where the enemies would be level 52 or 54. And those would be quite difficult.
Their charges are also near impossible to see, half the time they hit, they'll just hit you out of nowhere. I've seen charges dealing over 80k damage straight to my hull. The combined power of Aux to SIF, Brace for impact and engineering team could not negate it.
You're simply dead before you can do anything to counter it. All counter measures, if you're not flying a very fast escort that is, are almost useless. Cause even if you manage to recover from one charge and not get killed almost instantly, the next one will hit you before you can do anything.
I suppose you could heavily invest in Kinetic resists, but even then I doubt it's going to work. It shouldn't be necessary anyway, not for normal difficulty. Advanced and above, fine, but this amount of cheating and powerful abilities on normal level just shouldn't be happening.
I mean, compare this dread to the dreads in the Contested Zone. Those in the CZ are not that powerful, because they're at the same level as the player is. That is why people are having trouble with it: not because it presents a challenge, but because there's simply little you can do against ships that are 10 levels higher. Unless you want to completely change your build for a normal mission, but again, that shouldn't be necessary.
None of what you say here makes any sense to me. To start with the latter, the Citadels in the Contested Zone are much more dangerous!
And, like I said, I've never done any TBA run, ever, where it took us longer than 30 secs or so to off the Citadel. The thing is a joke. Deflection shield goes up (I usually taunt it a bit, to do so); you wait a few seconds, it goes off again, and then the Citadel dies soon thereafter. I usually activate a BFI, or a Deploy Countermeasures when needed (for a short Kinetic immunity). And FBP.
And I don't even play TBN any more (did it once, but it was too ridulously easy for words). I'd say the ships inside the initial Breach room are generally more dangerous. The neutered Citadel, however, is a cakewalk.
Perhaps it's not making sense to you because you seem to have trouble paying attention to what I said. You're playing it on Advanced. You don't get downscaled to level 50 there. So of course the issue is less serious on that difficulty.
I must admit, I've only played this event on my alts, not on my better geared main space characters. That doesn't change anything about the fact that it's not correctly scaled however. And that, based on multiple fights, this is responsible for most of the deaths I've seen and suffered. Charges that hit for 85k damage while completely ignoring shields shouldn't be happening on normal difficulty. The fact that you or elite channel members have little problems with that is good for you, but this is written from the perspective of someone who's been playing this mission on average characters.
I can certainly understand that people are having problems with this thing, given that it's simply not scaled as it should be.
Perhaps my words are not making sense to you because you seem to have trouble paying attention to what I said. I said I usually play it on Advanced, where it already is way too easy, and that I played it on Normal once (literally only once), but never again, as on Normal it doesn't even offer a 'suspension of disbelief' of a challenge. So, yeah, to hear you say it's so hard, especially on Normal, is just something that utterly baffles me.
As to he perspective of 'playing this mission on average characters,' not sure what that means exactly. I'm nothing special, DPS-wise, and certainly not part of any alleged elite.
Me, I'd rather want the old Breach back, with Bulwarks over the turret groups, and where you actually *could* die if you weren't careful. I understand they had to make it a little easier, because it's now an Event. But make it any easier, and they might as well just deposit the daily rewards straight into your pockets.
I never said it was hard. Learn to read.
I said that things are occuring at normal difficulty such as spatial charges dealing over 85k damage which shouldn't be happening on normal difficulty because most players don't even have that amount of hull points. That's not making it hard, that's just making it plain annoying when you blow up out of nowhere, just like the Borg instakill torpedoes were annoying.
The fact that Advanced may be easier is because you are at the same level as the Dread there, I assume. On normal, you get downscaled and its charges are thus more powerful than anything else on the map.
I also never said you were special, but you are above average since I know you're a member of the 30k DPS channel. Of course it's easy for you, but again, this isn 't about you, I'm talking about a feature of the mission, a mission that's intended for below average players.
I think any problem, if it even exists, stems from ppl pugging this. The one time I did this on Normal, it was also via DPS channel. When you pug it, however, you may be drawing too much aggro. I get this on CSA's I pug: when the rest is significantly weaker, all attention gets focussed on you, and you're constantly fighting off plasma burns. I suspect, on a pug, something similar may be going on with the Dread when you're the strongest player in the room, by far. But all being scaled down to 50, even when we ran the TBN, wasn't a problem at all (didn't even notice it, tbh).
I'm all too aware that being the only one to aggro things is generally not a good idea. Happens often in ISA for example. But at least there you won't be hit with such powerful charges. It doesn't really matter who's being hit by those; if I'm not taking the hits, someone else has to deal with them. That might solve the problem for me, not for the other guy of course
Normal missions should be PUGable. They just need to make sure that the values for those charges are normalised a bit.
Not so simply put, removing parts of the mission does not teach players anything. Lets say someone does it on normal, breeze through and want to try advanced. Having the dreadnought pop up without warning to the player would be pretty unfair, right?
Destroying an inactive one (with a dialogue pop-up of "we have to destroy it before it gets its systems online!") at the easy difficulty and having to fight an active one in the advanced difficulty makes perfect sense.
And FFS, people, just because YOU have no problem with it doesn't mean everyone can handle it. Maybe you're just too damned good to be in a Normal run in the first place, and most of you probably are. The forum tends to be populated with better, more experienced players. That doesn't invalidate the fact that weaker players DO exist and they shouldn't be punished on the easiest difficulty setting.
You kind of did not go after the point I made. Taking out an inactive one does nothing to teach players how to face it.
Comments
You mean it is avoidable, but turning off autofire, recalling all pets, and suffering the oppressive burden of actually thinking before you shoot. The disable goes away, but it also takes you out of full impulse and possibly the cloak. It's annoying and entirely avoidable, so why be that guy? ARGH!
Everything in this game is easy. Too easy.
And the fake cores don't make you watch your fire. Some less-than-informed player, or a hangar pet, or those useless NPCs people waste time on rescuing will shoot it anyway. Might as well just shoot it yourself and pop science team to clear the debuff right away instead of trying to delay the inevitable.
But playing whack-a-mole with a teleporting magic crystal is genre-inappropriate. It belongs in the lair of some crazy wizard in fantasy land, not the reactor core of an alien starship. Here, it's just the kind of silly videogame archichitecture that makes a mission impossible to take seriously.
Just imagine the Enterprise's warp core teleporting randomly between three rooms.
Due to a new bug that makes controlling hanger pets even more difficult, hanger pets quite often completely ignore all commands you give them and never return to your ship. The only way to get rid of them is to remove them from your ship and re-equip, which is what I do.
In any case, you can activate any power that makes you immune to damage, like the delta recruit trait or rock and roll, and the disable from the fake cores does nothing and only briefly puts you in combat iirc.
None of what you say here makes any sense to me. To start with the latter, the Citadels in the Contested Zone are much more dangerous!
And, like I said, I've never done any TBA run, ever, where it took us longer than 30 secs or so to off the Citadel. The thing is a joke. Deflection shield goes up (I usually taunt it a bit, to do so); you wait a few seconds, it goes off again, and then the Citadel dies soon thereafter. I usually activate a BFI, or a Deploy Countermeasures when needed (for a short Kinetic immunity). And FBP.
And I don't even play TBN any more (did it once, but it was too ridulously easy for words). I'd say the ships inside the initial Breach room are generally more dangerous. The neutered Citadel, however, is a cakewalk.
Perhaps it's not making sense to you because you seem to have trouble paying attention to what I said. You're playing it on Advanced. You don't get downscaled to level 50 there. So of course the issue is less serious on that difficulty.
I must admit, I've only played this event on my alts, not on my better geared main space characters. That doesn't change anything about the fact that it's not correctly scaled however. And that, based on multiple fights, this is responsible for most of the deaths I've seen and suffered. Charges that hit for 85k damage while completely ignoring shields shouldn't be happening on normal difficulty. The fact that you or elite channel members have little problems with that is good for you, but this is written from the perspective of someone who's been playing this mission on average characters.
I can certainly understand that people are having problems with this thing, given that it's simply not scaled as it should be.
Not so simply put, removing parts of the mission does not teach players anything. Lets say someone does it on normal, breeze through and want to try advanced. Having the dreadnought pop up without warning to the player would be pretty unfair, right?
So I'd say I'm not keen on changing or removing the dreadnought. I use BFAW on it with 2 of the characters that fight it. It's never been a problem for me. My other toon is a science toon and he eats that dreadnought for breakfast. He's very undergeared as he's an alt that I've only recently taken an interest in, but he does far better in this map than he does on the regular Borg maps that I run him through to get through that first (and easiest) rep.
Quite frankly normal level 50 queues should be balanced around people having Mk XII gear at least and players who have not bothered to upgrade their gear and are still flying around in Mk VIII or IX stuff should absolutely have their asses handed to them.
I will admit some of the posts/responses in this thread to your idea have been very hostile. And that has added a layer of tension that I think overlooks the general theme they are trying to put forth. I have been on two runs during this event where the Dreadnought has been a bottleneck that has killed me and the team many many times and it's taken a long time to get past. So I understand what it is that is driving you to make the thread. However, what a lot of others are getting at is, this dreadnought is different. It's not a stationary gateway, or nanite transformer. It's not a bunch of spheres protecting a Cube. It's trickier. And can be problematic, but it's a decent learning experience for players that don't have that experience. Heck with the way exotic damage works, it's even a bit easier for under-geared players to have a bigger impact on this particular boss than it is in other queues.
So while I do understand the point you are making, I tend to agree with the majority of respondents here in that the dreadnought is a different boss, that needs different tactics. And this event can have some very frustrating runs, but I think is a great chance for people to steap away from Infected Conduits and try something different.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Difficult for pets to follow you from the previous room anyway. Simply refraining from launching pets in the sub-power core room would remove 99% of them from the equation.
Assuming that's not all on cooldown. Why not just show a tiny measure of consideration and not inflict that on your teammates? Is it really so difficult to stop brainlessly FAW-ing for a couple of minutes?
I did notice that for a few times on Sunday and Monday the initial Trench run ended just as we were taking out the first Shield Node. So it's impatient cheaters.
I don't care for a challenge when I am trying to just get through the bloody Event. The PVE is fine but don't want to waste extra time if I could avoid it. All of these 14 day Events I do at Normal for the most part, except sometimes CC is done on Advanced as it is ridiculously fast there anyway and normally do it that way anyway.
The Queue doesn't need to be changed but the explanations of the Citadel being at 60 while we are scaled down to 50 because that's what is normally done for Bosses in MMOs doesn't really hold much water in THIS MMO. Given past track records it could be an oversight that they really don't want to/need to address based upon their metrics.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Perhaps my words are not making sense to you because you seem to have trouble paying attention to what I said. I said I usually play it on Advanced, where it already is way too easy, and that I played it on Normal once (literally only once), but never again, as on Normal it doesn't even offer a 'suspension of disbelief' of a challenge. So, yeah, to hear you say it's so hard, especially on Normal, is just something that utterly baffles me.
As to he perspective of 'playing this mission on average characters,' not sure what that means exactly. I'm nothing special, DPS-wise, and certainly not part of any alleged elite.
Me, I'd rather want the old Breach back, with Bulwarks over the turret groups, and where you actually *could* die if you weren't careful. I understand they had to make it a little easier, because it's now an Event. But make it any easier, and they might as well just deposit the daily rewards straight into your pockets.
The moment players have to deal with Kinetic charges that deal more damage than the average player ship has hull points, something is wrong. It hasn't prevented me from completing this mission yet, not even on my not-so-good alts, but it is quite annoying to randomly blow up because none of your defenses work and you're just hit by something out of nowhere.
It's the same thing as the Borg Instakill torpedoes. I think most people were agreed that those weren't exactly 'fun' either.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
It doesn't need to be removed. Just fix that problem.
But - even with that quirk, the mission is definitely doable. I only run the mission on two characters usually, one on Advanced, one on Normal, because I can't spend all that much time on the game at the moment. Or rather, I don't want to.
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I think the most boring part is the fight against the final core. Pure slugfest, the only interesting part might be the two shield sections that you need to avoid. But there is otherwise nothing going on. Would be cooler if there was more variation in there.
I never said it was hard. Learn to read.
I said that things are occuring at normal difficulty such as spatial charges dealing over 85k damage which shouldn't be happening on normal difficulty because most players don't even have that amount of hull points. That's not making it hard, that's just making it plain annoying when you blow up out of nowhere, just like the Borg instakill torpedoes were annoying.
The fact that Advanced may be easier is because you are at the same level as the Dread there, I assume. On normal, you get downscaled and its charges are thus more powerful than anything else on the map.
I also never said you were special, but you are above average since I know you're a member of the 30k DPS channel. Of course it's easy for you, but again, this isn 't about you, I'm talking about a feature of the mission, a mission that's intended for below average players.
Actually the Bulwarks do appear over the turret groups on Elite difficulty.
I think any problem, if it even exists, stems from ppl pugging this. The one time I did this on Normal, it was also via DPS channel. When you pug it, however, you may be drawing too much aggro. I get this on CSA's I pug: when the rest is significantly weaker, all attention gets focussed on you, and you're constantly fighting off plasma burns. I suspect, on a pug, something similar may be going on with the Dread when you're the strongest player in the room, by far. But all being scaled down to 50, even when we ran the TBN, wasn't a problem at all (didn't even notice it, tbh).
There are times when you see those targeting icons indeed, but they're not always appearing. They're much harder to detect than the Vaadwaur artillery strikes.
So much visual spam (in general) and the things you actually need to see are almost invisible, compared to the Vaadwaur abilities for example
It's not invincible, flank it when that shield goes up and stop firing when the aceton cheese starts to appear, open up when the aceton cheese goes
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I'm all too aware that being the only one to aggro things is generally not a good idea. Happens often in ISA for example. But at least there you won't be hit with such powerful charges. It doesn't really matter who's being hit by those; if I'm not taking the hits, someone else has to deal with them. That might solve the problem for me, not for the other guy of course
Normal missions should be PUGable. They just need to make sure that the values for those charges are normalised a bit.
You kind of did not go after the point I made. Taking out an inactive one does nothing to teach players how to face it.