> Going to point out the elephant in the room again. It's always the pilot. Always. When I do 50k in a build, a person like tunebreaker would do 150k in it. Simple as that. Gear and ships matter a little, of course, but (ironically) only in the highest echelons of the deeps players, where the full potential of the ship and gear can be assumed to have been maxed out already (and thus the difference in gear would start to show up a bit).
While I haven't been able to do 150k post S13 fun adjustment, and you obviously have done 50k+ (haven't you?), then yeah, essentially this is correct. Gear matters, obviously, but you have to know what you're doing with it.
It's not secret that STO is too damage centric. That's a result of it being an MMO, and cultivating income by selling new consoles and ships that escalate damage.
But it's also a result of some very bad design decisions, in not wrangling buffs and numerical increments to things like statuses, stances and so on. When you allow damage numbers to be cumulative with no regulation, you end up with huge DPS disparities between players of similar levels.
The highest level players usually aren't doing anything any differently than a normal player. In fact, their huge damage values usually is the result of a protected secret, in discovering a bug, exploit or oversight in how STO calculates numbers.
It's not a good system. And STO isn't very well designed, from that standpoint. Most MMO communities balk at even the concept of someone getting a little extra damage from an epic rarity weapon, to the point that damage is carefully regulated and constrained mainly to skill scaling, with gear affecting mostly cosmetics. STO is incredibly backwards in that regard; so much so, it's alarming to anyone that isn't used to playing it.
Sorry to say OP, but that's not going to change. High end builds dealing 150,000 DPS may or may not be brought in line, but "fun" builds that play in a creative way will never be brought up to par. That's just not how STO works as a business model.
"The highest level players usually aren't doing anything any differently than a normal player. In fact, their huge damage values usually is the result of a protected secret, in discovering a bug, exploit or oversight in how STO calculates numbers."
Ugh, people *still* believe that? High DPSers have just learned how to press their abilities in an optimal way and to be in the right place in the right time.
Also, people who you fly with matter a lot. With a really good team, I can do something like 130k in HSE. With a bad team, I see exactly the same build blowing up a few times and end up doing only 65k.
There you go - "well-kept" secret right there. Talking about bugs or exploits - well, there have been instances like that, but you can bet those people will be frowned upon.
In fact, their huge damage values usually is the result of a protected secret, in discovering a bug, exploit or oversight in how STO calculates numbers.
This is not, and has never been the case.
There are certainly bugs and exploits which have been discovered and abused, but the top end players are the ones who discover them and bug report them.
In the mindset of a top performer, achieving results through exploits is considered cheese, and they find it repugnant. Exploits are the tool of marginal wannabes, not top end players, who take pride in being the best.
Every time I see this presented as 'fact' it makes me cringe. This 'fact' is used to explain the gap between top end performers and average guys, but the average guys don't spend months on Tribble working out builds, reading log parsers, and repeating experiments to generate the data they need to see if their results deviate from what Cryptic says they should be.
Playing STO at the top end of performance takes work, not only to find the best gear and skill combinations, but to hone player reflexes and timing, and time to develop tactics which best benefit from all the basic research. These guys take pride in their effeorts, and they put a lot of effort in it. One might demonstrate an exploit for others to test and confirm his results, but he doesn't post the results as a personal achievement. He has pride, and posting cheese will get him laughed out of the exclusive top performers' club.
Every time I've played STO I run into the same problem, I make up a starship build that I have a lot of fun with, and then I find out that it simply doesn't scale up to the hardest content. That basically ends the fun right on the spot.
My good sir (or madam, as the case may be), please post your Build.
Give us your Ship, your Weapons, your Bridge Officer Abilities, your Active Space Duty Officers, and your Traits. With that information we can help you.
MeiMei is right: it is the pilot that is going to make that massive jump in DPS. However, even a poor pilot should have little trouble with Advanced Difficulty (Elite is a whole different ball game). You may have an issue with your Traits or your Duty Officer set-up that is dragging you down. So if you tell us what you have, we can give you the tweaks that could correct those boo-boos that flew under the radar.
EDIT: It occurs to me that one of the main issues that you might have without realizing it is that the Cluster Torpedoes are classified on the backend as Mines. They are not torpedoes. So if you are slotting Traits and Bridge Officer Abilities that buff Torpedoes then they are not doing anything for your Cluster. Mine and Projectile Consoles will effect it.
Balance doesn't mean a level 60 NPC should be easily beatable in a T4 starship using common MXVII gear.
Where can I get some of that level 1017 gear?
I outfitted an Enterprise-era Enterprise with a reasonable set of MkXIV stuff and it's acceptable--but not spectacular. It's fun as a challenge, and I flew it in some group settings to see how well I fared. I wasn't utterly useless in it (or if I was, the rest of the group was polite enough not to say anything).
As far as the OP's original comment goes--yeah, play whatever ship you want any way you want, because it's your nickel, and your definition of "fun." You make a mindful choice to try a thing--and you find out what happens. I keep a fairly large stable of ships at hand, and I fly the most powerful one against the big stuff, and sometimes I just bop around in the "fun" ships. If someone calls me for one of those Death on Stick Dipped in Chocolate missions, I tell them I need to change ships first.
One day I'm gonna take down a Borg Tac Cube in a shuttle without blowing up several times during combat.
but lets be real if you wanna do any kind of medium or high level content in this game your random tossed together ship won't cut it.
Yea, but the thing is, my ship is not randomly tossed together. My skills, consoles, weapons, traits, are all chosen to support the build. I have a fully upgraded Vaadwaur Cluster Torpedo, orange item, two consoles that boost Tricobalt weaponry by 40%, Phasic Artillery, Multipurpose Combat Console, Omega Kinetic Shearing, Pre-Fire Sequence, Even a Duty Officer who gives me a reduction in torpedo reload so I can chuck more of them out there. I've not skimped on any part of the build, I've unlocked my 5th trait slots, I've thought it all through and made sure it's coherent, and it just does not matter.
Yeah, but you can't flip pancakes with a spoon, no matter how gold-plated it is. As that guy put it in the shark movie: you're gonna need a bigger boat.
Yea, but why put a gold plated spoon in a game about flipping pancakes? For that matter, why build the game that doesn't become all about flipping pancakes until you're 100+ hours in and then scoff at people who picked the spoon? That's simply bad design and it should be rectified.
Yeah, but you can't flip pancakes with a spoon, no matter how gold-plated it is. As that guy put it in the shark movie: you're gonna need a bigger boat.
Gah! Roy Scheider as chief Brody and it was Jaws. Stop making me feel old!
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Of course build matters, but if you don't understand power management and skill stacking, build won't matter much.
I'm not saying those are the OP's problem; I only use them as generic examples. To discover his true problem, whatever it may be, will require a ride-along with someone who is competent with the chosen style. I would make a horrible coach for this player because I'm only barely proficient in science vessels and have never played a carrier, for example. But a player who has experience making a similar ship work can, in a few STF runs, start the OP on the road to recovery.
In any complex game that has difficulty levels some tactics that work on 'easy' don't work on 'normal' or 'hard'. The OP could have saved themslves a lot of time had they asked if tric weaponry is any good or 'why don't I see much use of trics'.
@tunebreaker I hear what you say about using powers/abilities effectively and I'd like to learn more. Do you know of any good guides, posts etc. on the subject?
The highest level players usually aren't doing anything any differently than a normal player. In fact, their huge damage values usually is the result of a protected secret, in discovering a bug, exploit or oversight in how STO calculates numbers.
This is one of the dumbest things that has ever been vomited onto the forums.
I hope he doesn't mind me using his name here, but I run missions with @peterconnorfirst all the time. We use very similar builds yet he easily doubles my DPS. Why? Because he's a good pilot and I am not.. that simple. We use the same gear, I understand the build just as well as he does.. he's just simply better. To try and claim that the DPS guys 'protect' any knowledge is absolutely absurd and your saying it just shows how incredibly clueless you are.
Guys like Connor, @tunebreaker and others are some of the most helpful and quick to share knowledge of anyone you will find. To imply that they only get their numbers because they horde knowledge of how to cheat and exploit the game really shows how little you understand not just about them, but about the game in general.
If this is really what you believe, then by all means.. feel free to wallow in your delusion, but don't peddle your TRIBBLE here.. it's not going to fly. Those guys spend a lot of time helping people get better performance and you just come along and try and TRIBBLE all over it.. not going to happen.
So, I finally devised the tactic of approaching from abeam, and hitting him with a subnucleonic beam so I could engage. I hit him with a full alpha strike, Mk XII photon torpedoes, Mk XI phaser beams and a Breen torpedo, then turned and hit him again. As I approached, I also hit him with a tachyon beam and a gravity well.
well, that's your problem right there...you used a tactic that, against ANY other enemy probably would've shown results - but tzenkethi ships have super-strong shields on every arc EXCEPT the forward one
so you're going to have to try and adapt to those torpedo spreads, because the only way you're going to be dealing any noticeable damage against their shields is by hitting them head on
and as i recall, they use tetryon-based energy torpedoes, so you're going to need strong tetryon resist instead of kinetic resist
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
"The highest level players usually aren't doing anything any differently than a normal player. In fact, their huge damage values usually is the result of a protected secret, in discovering a bug, exploit or oversight in how STO calculates numbers."
Ugh, people *still* believe that? High DPSers have just learned how to press their abilities in an optimal way and to be in the right place in the right time.
Also, people who you fly with matter a lot. With a really good team, I can do something like 130k in HSE. With a bad team, I see exactly the same build blowing up a few times and end up doing only 65k.
There you go - "well-kept" secret right there.
Talking about bugs or exploits - well, there have been instances like that, but you can bet those people will be frowned upon.
Some people still believe the Earth is flat so....
It's a product of poor information dissemination. The absence of info from within the game opens up an avenue for conspiracy theories like that to proliferate.
To be fair, there are some "exploits" used by some people too. See the top SCM parses for ISA and HSE (which will be wiped anyway) for examples of exploits/bugged mechanics. These are probably not used intentionally (I don't think the guy at the top of ISA knows or thinks he is using an exploit/bugged item) or used to prove a point that the items are broken (as in the case in HSE).
The highest level players usually aren't doing anything any differently than a normal player. In fact, their huge damage values usually is the result of a protected secret, in discovering a bug, exploit or oversight in how STO calculates numbers.
Yeah, no. And LOL.
For starters, top players, foremost, understand synergy. They don't just push the FBP button, or HY, but buff it, in a very specific order, so as to achieve often extreme looking results. And the order of things matters, of course, and starts with something as simple as, What do I push first, Tactical Team or an Attack Pattern? Or maybe an EPtW first? Often (especially with the Science powers) buffing abilities properly can get rather complex (way above my pay-grade), but is not based on 'secrets' (paranoia much?); on esoteric knowledge maybe, yes -- which is just the result of people being, you know, knowledgeable.
Then there's timing. Just 'spacebarring' severely disrupts your weapon cycles. Ideally, you only ever activate a power when your weapons cycles are refreshing. That's generally a very small window (and endlessly harder to achieve when you have different types of weps, like torps and beams). That's usually where I mess up: I'm simply not coordinated enough to make it happen properly. Btw, just because you don't see the 'spacebarring' disruptions in your firing cycles, doesn't mean they're not there.
Knowledgeable ppl generally are also the ones who find the bugs (duh). Most people are pretty honest about it, I must say, and report the bug. Bugs I would myself never even notice, or know how to activate (like the recent Refrequencer bug). That's because I know sh*t. But those who do, they can assuredly show you all corners of the map, without the occassional bug they run into.
I hope he doesn't mind me using his name here, but I run missions with @peterconnorfirst all the time. We use very similar builds yet he easily doubles my DPS. Why? Because he's a good pilot and I am not.. that simple.
Yeah, same with WoW, I've had better gear than some other guy by a few ilvls and he's doing 2-3 times what I do because I just don't run feral druid very much. It's amazing what hitting the right button at the right time can do.
I'm OK in STO dps-wise, but I don't really try too much space magic builds; especially now that every mob ignores the pull of grav well unless you have 500 points into it.
the pull of grav well unless you have 500 points into it.
It's not that bad if you use GW3. I only have 208 points of CtrlX unbuffed but it is enough to pull everything in an 8.2km radius into a nice neat clump. It doesn't pull as hard as it used to (pulls a bit slower) but it gets the job done.
@tunebreaker I hear what you say about using powers/abilities effectively and I'd like to learn more. Do you know of any good guides, posts etc. on the subject?
You can always join us at "The Science Channel" in-game if you are on PC. Also, if you are interested in Sci-Torp builds I did a rather lengthy video on how I fly them:
the pull of grav well unless you have 500 points into it.
It's not that bad if you use GW3. I only have 208 points of CtrlX unbuffed but it is enough to pull everything in an 8.2km radius into a nice neat clump. It doesn't pull as hard as it used to (pulls a bit slower) but it gets the job done.
I'm a cruiser driver, so sadly GW3 isn't available.
and wow, e30ernest, that's a lot of thought put into a game that people just mash spacebar for pew pew!
Comments
> Going to point out the elephant in the room again. It's always the pilot. Always. When I do 50k in a build, a person like tunebreaker would do 150k in it. Simple as that. Gear and ships matter a little, of course, but (ironically) only in the highest echelons of the deeps players, where the full potential of the ship and gear can be assumed to have been maxed out already (and thus the difference in gear would start to show up a bit).
While I haven't been able to do 150k post S13 fun adjustment, and you obviously have done 50k+ (haven't you?), then yeah, essentially this is correct. Gear matters, obviously, but you have to know what you're doing with it.
P.S. I really appreciate the compliment.
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.
But it's also a result of some very bad design decisions, in not wrangling buffs and numerical increments to things like statuses, stances and so on. When you allow damage numbers to be cumulative with no regulation, you end up with huge DPS disparities between players of similar levels.
The highest level players usually aren't doing anything any differently than a normal player. In fact, their huge damage values usually is the result of a protected secret, in discovering a bug, exploit or oversight in how STO calculates numbers.
It's not a good system. And STO isn't very well designed, from that standpoint. Most MMO communities balk at even the concept of someone getting a little extra damage from an epic rarity weapon, to the point that damage is carefully regulated and constrained mainly to skill scaling, with gear affecting mostly cosmetics. STO is incredibly backwards in that regard; so much so, it's alarming to anyone that isn't used to playing it.
Sorry to say OP, but that's not going to change. High end builds dealing 150,000 DPS may or may not be brought in line, but "fun" builds that play in a creative way will never be brought up to par. That's just not how STO works as a business model.
Ugh, people *still* believe that? High DPSers have just learned how to press their abilities in an optimal way and to be in the right place in the right time.
Also, people who you fly with matter a lot. With a really good team, I can do something like 130k in HSE. With a bad team, I see exactly the same build blowing up a few times and end up doing only 65k.
There you go - "well-kept" secret right there.
Talking about bugs or exploits - well, there have been instances like that, but you can bet those people will be frowned upon.
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.
This is not, and has never been the case.
There are certainly bugs and exploits which have been discovered and abused, but the top end players are the ones who discover them and bug report them.
In the mindset of a top performer, achieving results through exploits is considered cheese, and they find it repugnant. Exploits are the tool of marginal wannabes, not top end players, who take pride in being the best.
Every time I see this presented as 'fact' it makes me cringe. This 'fact' is used to explain the gap between top end performers and average guys, but the average guys don't spend months on Tribble working out builds, reading log parsers, and repeating experiments to generate the data they need to see if their results deviate from what Cryptic says they should be.
Playing STO at the top end of performance takes work, not only to find the best gear and skill combinations, but to hone player reflexes and timing, and time to develop tactics which best benefit from all the basic research. These guys take pride in their effeorts, and they put a lot of effort in it. One might demonstrate an exploit for others to test and confirm his results, but he doesn't post the results as a personal achievement. He has pride, and posting cheese will get him laughed out of the exclusive top performers' club.
My good sir (or madam, as the case may be), please post your Build.
Give us your Ship, your Weapons, your Bridge Officer Abilities, your Active Space Duty Officers, and your Traits. With that information we can help you.
MeiMei is right: it is the pilot that is going to make that massive jump in DPS. However, even a poor pilot should have little trouble with Advanced Difficulty (Elite is a whole different ball game). You may have an issue with your Traits or your Duty Officer set-up that is dragging you down. So if you tell us what you have, we can give you the tweaks that could correct those boo-boos that flew under the radar.
EDIT: It occurs to me that one of the main issues that you might have without realizing it is that the Cluster Torpedoes are classified on the backend as Mines. They are not torpedoes. So if you are slotting Traits and Bridge Officer Abilities that buff Torpedoes then they are not doing anything for your Cluster. Mine and Projectile Consoles will effect it.
Yea, but the thing is, my ship is not randomly tossed together. My skills, consoles, weapons, traits, are all chosen to support the build. I have a fully upgraded Vaadwaur Cluster Torpedo, orange item, two consoles that boost Tricobalt weaponry by 40%, Phasic Artillery, Multipurpose Combat Console, Omega Kinetic Shearing, Pre-Fire Sequence, Even a Duty Officer who gives me a reduction in torpedo reload so I can chuck more of them out there. I've not skimped on any part of the build, I've unlocked my 5th trait slots, I've thought it all through and made sure it's coherent, and it just does not matter.
Gah! Roy Scheider as chief Brody and it was Jaws. Stop making me feel old!
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Take a slapstick build into Battle of Korfez or Hive Elite and let me know how irrelevant it is...
I'm not saying those are the OP's problem; I only use them as generic examples. To discover his true problem, whatever it may be, will require a ride-along with someone who is competent with the chosen style. I would make a horrible coach for this player because I'm only barely proficient in science vessels and have never played a carrier, for example. But a player who has experience making a similar ship work can, in a few STF runs, start the OP on the road to recovery.
This is one of the dumbest things that has ever been vomited onto the forums.
I hope he doesn't mind me using his name here, but I run missions with @peterconnorfirst all the time. We use very similar builds yet he easily doubles my DPS. Why? Because he's a good pilot and I am not.. that simple. We use the same gear, I understand the build just as well as he does.. he's just simply better. To try and claim that the DPS guys 'protect' any knowledge is absolutely absurd and your saying it just shows how incredibly clueless you are.
Guys like Connor, @tunebreaker and others are some of the most helpful and quick to share knowledge of anyone you will find. To imply that they only get their numbers because they horde knowledge of how to cheat and exploit the game really shows how little you understand not just about them, but about the game in general.
If this is really what you believe, then by all means.. feel free to wallow in your delusion, but don't peddle your TRIBBLE here.. it's not going to fly. Those guys spend a lot of time helping people get better performance and you just come along and try and TRIBBLE all over it.. not going to happen.
well, that's your problem right there...you used a tactic that, against ANY other enemy probably would've shown results - but tzenkethi ships have super-strong shields on every arc EXCEPT the forward one
so you're going to have to try and adapt to those torpedo spreads, because the only way you're going to be dealing any noticeable damage against their shields is by hitting them head on
and as i recall, they use tetryon-based energy torpedoes, so you're going to need strong tetryon resist instead of kinetic resist
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
It's not like people post 90k ISA capable builds anywhere at all.
Nor is it like game mechanics aren't explained anywhere.
Some people still believe the Earth is flat so....
It's a product of poor information dissemination. The absence of info from within the game opens up an avenue for conspiracy theories like that to proliferate.
To be fair, there are some "exploits" used by some people too. See the top SCM parses for ISA and HSE (which will be wiped anyway) for examples of exploits/bugged mechanics. These are probably not used intentionally (I don't think the guy at the top of ISA knows or thinks he is using an exploit/bugged item) or used to prove a point that the items are broken (as in the case in HSE).
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
Yeah, no. And LOL.
For starters, top players, foremost, understand synergy. They don't just push the FBP button, or HY, but buff it, in a very specific order, so as to achieve often extreme looking results. And the order of things matters, of course, and starts with something as simple as, What do I push first, Tactical Team or an Attack Pattern? Or maybe an EPtW first? Often (especially with the Science powers) buffing abilities properly can get rather complex (way above my pay-grade), but is not based on 'secrets' (paranoia much?); on esoteric knowledge maybe, yes -- which is just the result of people being, you know, knowledgeable.
Then there's timing. Just 'spacebarring' severely disrupts your weapon cycles. Ideally, you only ever activate a power when your weapons cycles are refreshing. That's generally a very small window (and endlessly harder to achieve when you have different types of weps, like torps and beams). That's usually where I mess up: I'm simply not coordinated enough to make it happen properly. Btw, just because you don't see the 'spacebarring' disruptions in your firing cycles, doesn't mean they're not there.
Knowledgeable ppl generally are also the ones who find the bugs (duh). Most people are pretty honest about it, I must say, and report the bug. Bugs I would myself never even notice, or know how to activate (like the recent Refrequencer bug). That's because I know sh*t.
Yeah, same with WoW, I've had better gear than some other guy by a few ilvls and he's doing 2-3 times what I do because I just don't run feral druid very much. It's amazing what hitting the right button at the right time can do.
I'm OK in STO dps-wise, but I don't really try too much space magic builds; especially now that every mob ignores the pull of grav well unless you have 500 points into it.
It's not that bad if you use GW3. I only have 208 points of CtrlX unbuffed but it is enough to pull everything in an 8.2km radius into a nice neat clump. It doesn't pull as hard as it used to (pulls a bit slower) but it gets the job done.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
You can always join us at "The Science Channel" in-game if you are on PC. Also, if you are interested in Sci-Torp builds I did a rather lengthy video on how I fly them:
Sorry for the self-plug.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
I'm a cruiser driver, so sadly GW3 isn't available.
and wow, e30ernest, that's a lot of thought put into a game that people just mash spacebar for pew pew!
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!