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My views on the Engineering Captain Power Disparity (in space)
happyblobfish
Member Posts: 46 Arc User
It has come to my attention that engineering captain abilities in space are extremely lackluster when compared to their science and tactical counterparts. Toward the endgame, being an engineer can be especially redundant due to the fact that all their captain abilities can be replicated by a sci or tac by some way, shape, or fashion.
When I first started STO, I chose the engineering class because I wanted a class that could both do decent damage and survive decently well. While that is mostly true about the engineer, they will simply get overshadowed by tacs and scis later on due to the abundance of abilities players will unlock that mimic nearly all of the engineering captain abilities including specialization tree abilities, starship traits, and consoles.
For example, take Miracle Worker, the engineering ‘OH SH*T!’ button. This ability can be directly replicated by other careers through Continuity, Regenerative Integrity Field (The Samsar Console), Invincible (the Zahl Starship trait), and Desperate Repairs (the Guardian starship trait). Even Rally Point Marker, Hazard Emitters 3, and Engineering Team 3 are able to outheal it. You can tell something is wrong when even a Lt. Cmdr boff ability can outperform a captain ability. Miracle worker is supposed to be a ‘miracle’ ability, but right now there is nothing miraculous about it at all. The other engineer heal ability, Rotate Shield Frequency, is just straight out useless; as of its current state it does virtually nothing in space combat.
Engineers are also supposed to be the masters of subsystem power level control. However, there is little use for these abilities when other classes are able to maintain the max 125 subsystem power for most of the duration of queues even without them. Plasmonic leech and Supremacy directly mimic the power boost from EPS Power Transfer while the Marion Doff along with the KCB+AM set allow for similar if not greater power drain resistance granted from Nadion Inversion.
This is what I think should be done to rebalance engineers. Feel free to discuss about your opinion on these ideas
Miracle Worker: A slightly larger heal, +DRR rating, and +x to engineering skills for 30 seconds or +x% to energy damage (make it a miracle!)
Rotate Shield Frequency: I’m not sure about this one, though a larger heal would be a decent start.
EPS Power Transfer: Raise the maximum subsystem power level caps by +10 for the duration of the ability
Nadion Inversion: This is fine as it is imho.
All three classes were designed so that they could excel at certain roles and have their own ways of buffing their performance within combat: tacs through direct damage buffs, scis through debuffs and support abilities, and engineers through power manipulation and heals. However, now, tacs and scis are able to fill the roles engineers are supposed to be the best at, leaving engineers unable to truly shine at any role at all (except for perhaps pure healing, which isn’t really needed in the current game). Look at tanking for example. Engineers are supposed to be the ‘gold standard’ of tanking in STO. Now however, not only can tacs and scis out dps engineers due leading to more threat but they are also able to heal just as well thanks to the abundance of heals available. While engineers can still kick TRIBBLE, scis can tacs can simply do it better and with more efficiency. The increasing powercreep in this game has made it so that engineers do not fit into the meta at all and I, along with many others, feel like their powers need a buff so that they can once again be competent in end-game play.
Thanks for reading and here are the links to the posts that my friend Jayiie (@alcaatraz) made on reddit regarding this matter:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/4vw8lx/the_captain_power_disparity_followup/
https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/4u8nuo/on_the_captain_power_disparity/
When I first started STO, I chose the engineering class because I wanted a class that could both do decent damage and survive decently well. While that is mostly true about the engineer, they will simply get overshadowed by tacs and scis later on due to the abundance of abilities players will unlock that mimic nearly all of the engineering captain abilities including specialization tree abilities, starship traits, and consoles.
For example, take Miracle Worker, the engineering ‘OH SH*T!’ button. This ability can be directly replicated by other careers through Continuity, Regenerative Integrity Field (The Samsar Console), Invincible (the Zahl Starship trait), and Desperate Repairs (the Guardian starship trait). Even Rally Point Marker, Hazard Emitters 3, and Engineering Team 3 are able to outheal it. You can tell something is wrong when even a Lt. Cmdr boff ability can outperform a captain ability. Miracle worker is supposed to be a ‘miracle’ ability, but right now there is nothing miraculous about it at all. The other engineer heal ability, Rotate Shield Frequency, is just straight out useless; as of its current state it does virtually nothing in space combat.
Engineers are also supposed to be the masters of subsystem power level control. However, there is little use for these abilities when other classes are able to maintain the max 125 subsystem power for most of the duration of queues even without them. Plasmonic leech and Supremacy directly mimic the power boost from EPS Power Transfer while the Marion Doff along with the KCB+AM set allow for similar if not greater power drain resistance granted from Nadion Inversion.
This is what I think should be done to rebalance engineers. Feel free to discuss about your opinion on these ideas
Miracle Worker: A slightly larger heal, +DRR rating, and +x to engineering skills for 30 seconds or +x% to energy damage (make it a miracle!)
Rotate Shield Frequency: I’m not sure about this one, though a larger heal would be a decent start.
EPS Power Transfer: Raise the maximum subsystem power level caps by +10 for the duration of the ability
Nadion Inversion: This is fine as it is imho.
All three classes were designed so that they could excel at certain roles and have their own ways of buffing their performance within combat: tacs through direct damage buffs, scis through debuffs and support abilities, and engineers through power manipulation and heals. However, now, tacs and scis are able to fill the roles engineers are supposed to be the best at, leaving engineers unable to truly shine at any role at all (except for perhaps pure healing, which isn’t really needed in the current game). Look at tanking for example. Engineers are supposed to be the ‘gold standard’ of tanking in STO. Now however, not only can tacs and scis out dps engineers due leading to more threat but they are also able to heal just as well thanks to the abundance of heals available. While engineers can still kick TRIBBLE, scis can tacs can simply do it better and with more efficiency. The increasing powercreep in this game has made it so that engineers do not fit into the meta at all and I, along with many others, feel like their powers need a buff so that they can once again be competent in end-game play.
Thanks for reading and here are the links to the posts that my friend Jayiie (@alcaatraz) made on reddit regarding this matter:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/4vw8lx/the_captain_power_disparity_followup/
https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/4u8nuo/on_the_captain_power_disparity/
Post edited by happyblobfish on
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While I generally prefer my Science captains I do run all three and my first was an engineer. And during STF's miracle worker has let me fly into the thick of enemy formations. Unload on them and come out the other side alive. (Most of the time.) The trick is it isn't as flashy as photonic fleet.
Now the ground effect to call in orbital strikes. . . Can the NPC's not instantly know about those and run out of the area? It makes it a redundant ability.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Sci and Tac both have very good speed increase modules
Some how Engineer toons have no module to expose targets, maybe one but it isnt on the desription
Heck, I remember times when the best PvP healer was a guy flying Cruisers with a Science Captain. That is really long ago, though, it predates a ton of the power creep and special ability consoles, traits and sets we got since then, but even at that point an Engineering Healer wasn't the best pick, one has to wonder if there isn't something wrong.
But you don't even need that many heals, that's at least one problem, and no matter how you shuffle things around, you can't really get more (relevant) damage boosts by slotting more non-healing abilities.
I can definitely see the angle from which you're looking at it. However, the problem with miracle worker right now is it is very, very weak. Even with the trait 'Grace Under Fire' you're still looking at at most around 35% of hull restored when in space combat. In contrast, abilities such as Continuity and the Samsar console just simply vastly outperform it. For example, in my most recent ISA parse, 3 abilities surpassed miracle worker in terms of healing:Regenerative integrity field (a console), Desperate Repairs (a starship trait), and Ablative Shell (a space trait). I think that Captain abilities should be more effective than traits and consoles that replicate those abilities, not vice versa. The problem is that while this applies to other careers, it does not apply to engineers due to the number of healing abilities that have been implemented in the game. For example, the Adaptive Emergency Systems console directly mimics the functionality of the Tactical Captain ability Go Down Fighting. If Miracle Worker is looked at the same way, then it should be stronger than Regenerative Integrity Field along with the other abilities that I have mentioned. I'm proposing for miracle worker to be a more powerful heal so that engineers are able to have more flexibility in their console, boff, and specialization tree layouts.
Tacs and scis are able to do that to the same degree of effectiveness or even better thanks to the number of heal over time abilities that stack with damage (something an engineer is extremely lacking of). They are also able to blow up the mob faster because they can output much more damage. If there is one thing an engineer lacks, it's direct damage buffs as currently, engineers do not have any abilities that buff damage (except for perhaps EPS Power Transfer, but that ability is extremely redundant as other classes are able to maintain maximum power levels too now).
I feel that engineers are fine on the ground :P
As for Space, I agree with the OP. I've got Tac and Science officers and I see what he is talking about. Every time I hit Miracle Worker and receive that oh so very small heal to hull and shields, I wonder why it's such an important part of our build...like that's all I can give my ship as an Engineering Captain? The same goes for RSF, how often are we in combat and shields at a level that it even matters? It's always too little and too late. And EPSPT...It's a great skill and I loved it, until everyone was able to get the same effect for a few mil EC. Heck, I even run PL and find myself running so high on power levels and I don't even bother with EPSPT and keeping it on cooldown as it's just wasted.
The bigger problem is that Engineers where intended to be the tanks of the game in space and there is just simply so very little need for that with so many doing DPS tanking. To make engineering effective, they have to give us a reason to exist as engineers and to use those skills for what they were intended, but that would mean shifting the game away from being all about DPS and that's a shift to the entire playerbase, which is probably a bit much to ask.
An idea I would really like to see is a new Trait for Engineers ONLY that allows them to mount multiple Omni-Beams on their ships. An Engineer could have up to 8 Omni-Beams on a Cruiser, allowing the Engineers to have a better DPS advantage than what they had before, especially if they are tanking.
I would also add another Trait that for Engineers ONLY that would allow any mounted torp to have a 180-arc range, similar to the Wide-Angle Torp. Again, this would help Engineers get higher DPS in their Cruisers.
Just a couple ideas I really think Engineers could use at this point in the game.
I feel like the whole "Miracle Worker" aspect of the class is under-represented in space. It's not just about bringing systems back online, supercharging system power, and repairing stuff that's broken. It's also kludging together system modifications to make the systems do things they don't ordinarily do. I feel that piece of it, where the Chief Engineer (a la Geordi LaForge) invents a solution on the fly, is not well-represented.
I think there's a whole range of possible buffs and modifiers that are missing from the engineer's repertoire, that wouldn't necessarily duplicate a skill from one of the other classes (but might be similar to some other effect that already exists in the game).
I also think either NI or EPS should be a direct counter to abilities like the EMP probe. After all, aren't engineers supposed to be the guys you call when you want your ship to not be vulnerable to a certain attack? I'd rather an engineer captain be good at countering an enemy rather than being a space healer.
The best solution is to remove classes and have everyone start off neutral and have a skill/career spec tree that lets you train in the science,engineer,tactical fields and unlock the captain skills, but that being said everyone would just spec tactical anyway as again the game is all about the DPS now.
I was watching a youtube video the other day of people clearing task forces in 2/4 seconds this just shows how broken end game content is.
While it's true that an engineer can't out dps a tactical (and they're not meant to), the problem here is that engineers don't have any 'unique attributes'. Anything an engineer can do can easily be done by a tac or a sci, if not better because while the ideas behind the engineering powers are great, they're simply too weak in combat. Tacs and scis don't need miracle worker or rotate shield frequency as they can use Regenerative Integrity Field (which scales with damage), Desperate Repairs, or Continuity. All three of those are great heals that surpass Miracle Worker in terms of effectiveness. However, any engineer who wants to tank semi-advanced content would have to run RIF or something similar to it too because miracle worker simply cannot heal enough to sustain him. While Grace Under Fire helps a little bit, that also gimps engineers out of a space trait that could be used to more effective purposes and even then, it's extremely underwhelming. Also, engineers are also supposed to bring great power levels to a starship, but non-engineering captains can easily maintain very high subsystem power levels too through Plasmonic Leech and Supremacy while nadion inversion can be replicated through cruiser commands, greedy emitters, Marion+DEM, and the kinetic cutting beam+assimilated module set. Engineers need something that can distinguish them from others because right now, their abilities are just weaker versions of already existing consoles, starship traits, doff combos, and specialization tree abilities.
Secondly, us Engineers deserve an offensive ability, and not just heals. Something like an innate Structural Integrity Collapse, or something otherwise typically Engineery which debuffs hull.
Thanks for the update!
No, I think you misunderstood. The point that I was trying to make is actually the exact opposite; right now, both tacs and scis can tank better than an engineer can, leaving engineers to have no actual role left in the game. The consensus here is that engineering captain abilities are extremely redundant in space and too weak at endgame levels.
well, since Engineering Team 3 out heals Miracle Worker and has a way shorter cool down, anyone can fit the tank roll better than an Engineer. The problem is when powers were scaled to level 60, captain powers didn't scale that much. That's no biggie for science and tactical captains since their powers are unique and still potent but for MW and RSF, normal boff powers out perform them. Also EPS Power Transfer is still nice but it's pretty easy for a lot of people to fill their power bars.
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The only item that I mentioned that might not be available to everyone is the Samsar Console. Even for those who don't have the console, the Temporal spec tree ability (Continuity), Desperate Repairs, Ablative Shell, and even boff abilities such as Engineering Team 3, Rally Point Marker, and Rotate Shield Polarity have made Miracle Worker and Rotate Shield Frequency just two more typical heals with no unique or defining high end characteristics. As for maintaining full power levels, Plasmonic Leech is hardly a 'special' console. For Fed players it's only around 10 mil on the exchange and it's absolutely essential in nearly all energy weapon builds anyway. Leech, OSS, KCB+AM combo, the Marion doff, the Emergency Power abilities, and even cruiser commands make EPS Power Transfer and Nadion Inversion extremely redundant. Due to the vast number of hull healing and power boosting abilities in the game that overshadow and replace engineering captain abilities, engineers are no longer 'unique' in what they can do. However, tacs and scis remain unique in their powers; for example while there are a number of damage boosting abilities in the game, none even come close to the magnitude of Attack Pattern Alpha.
I disagree with your assessment of who can tank best. My main is an ENG and I run a tank setup. Neither my Science character nor my Tactical characters can get the same level of aggro and take the same level of punishment as my ENG. Same player, using a lot of the same ships, a lot of the same consoles and a lot of the same traits. But the ENG gets aggro easier, and takes punishment/absorbs damage better.
I think ENG, in terms of what the supposed "role" is, has kept up just fine. What the ongoing problem still happens to be, is that the other two professions can build for damage easier, and can take damage well enough that the difference doesn't have as large an impact. Or in other words, yeah, my ENG tank can tank better, but there just aren't enough maps where that makes a difference.