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Timing revisited
meimeitoo
Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
Earlier, we were talking about timing your abilities. I watched RyanSTO's 'old' videos, back when, and they were quite instructive. One thing I've never seen a good tutorial on, though, is on when abilities take effect. For instance, I know APB's effect is instant (not talking about the short activation lockout, but its effect); but what about APO? Does it take effect while your BFAW is active? Or just on the next cycle? Or the skill boosts from TT even?
Yes, as a veteran player, I should probably know. But, tbh, with most abilities I have no idea. Like I see weapons power (and dmg listed in tooltip on weps) go up when using EPtW; but does it actually take immediate effect? For example, iirc, increased weapons power only actually helps you on your next firing cycle.
Really looking to step up my game a bit. And this is really an area I could definitely use some pointers on. Thanks.
Yes, as a veteran player, I should probably know. But, tbh, with most abilities I have no idea. Like I see weapons power (and dmg listed in tooltip on weps) go up when using EPtW; but does it actually take immediate effect? For example, iirc, increased weapons power only actually helps you on your next firing cycle.
Really looking to step up my game a bit. And this is really an area I could definitely use some pointers on. Thanks.
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For most abilities, this takes effect as soon as the ability ends its 'Activation time'. As I've said before there are 3 periods for abilities:
However, what that ability does depends on the effect. For instance APB activates immediately, but wont take effect until a weapon hits a target (since APB adds an effect to weapons for 10s which debuffs the target that weapon hits for 5s, for an effective duration of 15s if APB is applied for all 10s). APO on the other hand activates and take effect immediately, since its a buff to self.
Looking specificly at TT's order:
1. You First start with hitting the button. This has a 0.5s Activation time, meaning that no other power can be activated for 0.5s.
2. After the 0.5s, Three things will occur:
- TT will appear on your list of Buffs/Debuffs/Status Effects
- TT will start doing its things, + to weapon / Projectile training, automatically redistributes shields, any DOffs / traits or other effects will also apply.
- the activated TT will go on a 30s Cooldown Time (modifier by reductions and readiness) and all other copies of TT will go on a 15s Cooldown Time.
3. This will last for the duration the TT effect is applied, which lasts 10s (unless you have another identical copy placed on you by another player) which will then refresh the count of the effect. So if you are 5s through the duration of the TT active effect and someone places another copy of TT on you, your flag will refresh its time, but will internally still count them down separately. So the 5s remaining on your TT will end after 5s, and there will be a remaining 5s flag left on the TT placed on you.
Like TT, EPtW applies instantly. So you get two effects:
These will both show up after EPtW has taken affect, and will last for 30s.
Weapon power is also instant; if a drain applies from any source, then the tooltips / damage values and effects which scale off it will also be instantly affected. This is branching into the regions of EPS and Overcapping (which I assume you don't want to get into right now, so I won't).
Hopefully that helps; if you need me to clear it up a bit more I can (but this should be good for now I think).
Is it better to click the boost, such as EP2W, before hitting BFAW/CRF, or, better to hit BFAW/CRF then EP2W?
I guess what I'm asking, is does the 'thing' (EP2W/Red Matter Capacitor etc) create a 'reserve' of power which the weapon can then draw on, or does the 'thing' need the weapon to already be active to know what to apply itself to?
I've never had a problem, but just thought I'd ask to be sure
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Logically, you want to use the longest lasting things first, with the shortest lasting things last, to get the greatest advantage of the longer lasting powers while the short ones are up.
Since EPtW is a buff three times longer then BFAW / CRF are by default, its best to use EPtW before Weapon enhancements.
As to power, this is a subject relating to EPS and overcapping, which Ill extend on.
When you talk about power levels you want to understand some terms:
For instance, if you have EPtW3 which gives +40, and you use it when you have 100 power with a max setting of 125, then:
- Your Current would be 125
- Your Target would be 140
- Your Overcap would be 15
When you then have a weapon drain power (-10 because its easy) the numbers would drop; Targe _> 130, Current -> 115. Your current would decrease to 115, then your EPS / Power Transfer Rate would try to recover that power. The default rating is 5 / s but this can be increased (either by the skill or +PTR)
So each second while the beam is firing, your EPS will add into the system (limited to chunks of 5 or lower). A PTR of 7s will give a 5 and a 2 within a 1s period - 10 gives two lots of 5, and so on. So your power would be:
@0s - 125 (before beam)
@1s - 115 (beam fires) -> 120 (EPS kicks in)
@2s - 125 (At this point the target is still 130)
If you fire 2 beams, the order would be 125 -> 115 (weapon drain) -> 120 (EPS) -> 110 (Weapon Drain) -> 115 (EPS) -> 120 (EPS, target reached), since the overall power added is +40 with 20 removed from firing, with EPS kicking in each tick.
After the weapon stop firing (and this ending the drain), EPS will once again try to reach target (Which has been restored to 140), and will do so in lots of the 5 or less; so after firing in this example there will be a single EPS trigger moving power from 120 -> 125 (because max hasn't changed)
Hopefully that makes sense.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
"This is why when you 'mash' a keybind quickly you can skip powers, since the last power that's set to activate while the first power is activating replaces any other queued before it."
This one has me worried, though. So, if I'm activating, say, TT1, followed (too) quickly by APO3, are you saying the activation of TT1 would effectively be canceled/subsumed/whatever by me trying to activate APO3?! That's no good. Didn't even know that was possible. Did a spacebar speed-test once, and it seems you can't activate everything after each other very fast (as if the activation wait time is built-in, as it were). I will need to pay closer attention to this.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Naturally.
I do not think I was clear. Can you write a macro with the pauses to allow activation times?
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
AFAIK, there is no way to build pauses into the keybind, since the keybind needs to be pushed each time an ability is wanted to be activated.