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Some thoughts about the balance changes.
tremere12
Member Posts: 477 Arc User
I only recently came back after a 3 month break. Now first of all, I think that adding actual resistance to physical damage has saved PVP entirely. I made an in-depth thesis couple of months ago on the imbalance of space PVP... but really, all there was to it is that the lack of physical res caused the 'pizza cutter' ships to instagib other ships, but that's bygone. Now healer/tanks can actually stay alive without being one-shotted by some tiny ship. I noticed a thread about proton-damage being overpowered, but with enough resistance, my tank build isn't really bothered by it. So I'm neutral on that one.
Yet I disagree with the brutal nerf on abilities like BFAW and Gravity Well (which has a miserable pull effect in most cases, and shares CD with Tyken). Completely uncalled for. These things weren't a problem in PVP at all, and certainly not in PVE.
Also I think Sci's are a bit too strong in ground atm, spamming Cold Fusion flash, Exothermic, Hyperonic and other DoTs at the same time will definitely ensure a nuclear holocaust that would make even the most dps-obsessed tac jealous. But i'm not so uncool as to say "nerf nerf", as the trick is simply to giving other classes a bit more.
Since most PVE queues are really about fast grinding - that is about rushing and direct damage dealing, the engineers especially lag behind. There are some scenario's where engineers are great (hive and khitomer), but they overal don't perform as well. My suggestion is to reduce their cooldowns and increase their damage a bit, or something along those lines.
I like tacs exactly as they are right now though. I believe they need no changes as the spike damage experts of the game.
Yet I disagree with the brutal nerf on abilities like BFAW and Gravity Well (which has a miserable pull effect in most cases, and shares CD with Tyken). Completely uncalled for. These things weren't a problem in PVP at all, and certainly not in PVE.
Also I think Sci's are a bit too strong in ground atm, spamming Cold Fusion flash, Exothermic, Hyperonic and other DoTs at the same time will definitely ensure a nuclear holocaust that would make even the most dps-obsessed tac jealous. But i'm not so uncool as to say "nerf nerf", as the trick is simply to giving other classes a bit more.
Since most PVE queues are really about fast grinding - that is about rushing and direct damage dealing, the engineers especially lag behind. There are some scenario's where engineers are great (hive and khitomer), but they overal don't perform as well. My suggestion is to reduce their cooldowns and increase their damage a bit, or something along those lines.
I like tacs exactly as they are right now though. I believe they need no changes as the spike damage experts of the game.
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People are still able to alpha strike others into oblivion instantly unless they are SPECIFICALLY BUILT for it. Some of us generalists... still get oneshot and still avoid PvP because PvE builds that work for most things STILL suffer from the Alpha Strikers.
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Okay, I have no problem as a tank, but I hear ya. Every build should be viable.
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Yes I am against the "dps everything mentality" , because it destroys gameplay diversity. Healers, tanks, damage dealers or "uncategorized" builds should all have their place.
I made a pretty decent Tetryon build using the full Nukara set, 2 piece weapon/console (As its typically on a cruiser so no dual beam bank), and Krenim set. Put that same build on a Vorgon ship with the Vorgon set... holy buckets! Tetryon for DAYS!
Yet most hardcore players look down on Tetryon because:
They fail to realize that Tetryon STILL does damage even with the shields down, and that maybe Tetryon does damage to the hull sooner because it takes shields down faster. But nope! Meta says Tetyon sucks so Tetryon sucks. GTFO N00B!
Killjoys. >.< Use what you frickin' like and have fun doing it is what I say.
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I rely solely on mission and crafted gear that has been upgraded to Mk XIV to play Advanced space and Elite ground missions.
The only space change that had a substantial affect on me was the nerf to the Plasmonic Leech. For Fed and KDF the nerf to the Leech is not that big of a deal, however, for Romulans commanding any Warbird that uses a singularity warp core it is a rather substantial nerf.
Every build should most definitely not be viable, that's complete nonsense. The whole point of having customizable equipment and skills is to find the combinations that work the best. If everything was to be equal we might as well not have builds at all.
Yeah sure, but you know what I mean - that "dps" is not the only way to go. Intelligent planning should still be a factor.
Wait, it's 'uncool' to call for nerfs?
Just kidding. In all seriousness, a lot of the rebalances were made undone before they ever made it to the live server. Things would have been more... interesting if all the changes from Tribble had actually been brought to Holodeck.
Now some more specific reponses: Gravity Well can still control enemies. You may simply need to focus more on the Control skills. Besides, there are also other abilities that can slow enemies down and keep them from moving (Chronometric Inversion Field for instance, or indeed Tyken's rift). Players shouldn't expect an easy GW to attract all enemies in range when they don't specialise in it; and thus also not expect GW to be an easy solution when you want a specific enemy to be at a specific point.
That's not how Science works, nor how any ability on its own should work. You'll have to dedicate some gear and skill points to the relevant skills.
I do agree that some Sci offensive powers are a bit too powerful, but the same goes for some medic modules (very short cooldowns, instant full health regain in some cases) and tac (especially Strategic) modules. Then again, that's my experience. Some others might say things are just fine and that ground (with the exception of Sompek) isn't way too easy so I have no idea if further rebalancing is needed here.
I'm actually calling for a minor rebalance. Just revert GW and BFAW to their original state, and give the engineers on ground a bit more of a punch, and that's really it. If there's anything else I'm ignorant of, I'd like to hear it.
Ok, then I'll just have to resort to spamming and make another pointless post until they finally fix that.
Changes I wanted to make:
- My Sci Vesta --> My Sci's Vesta
- to use een when --> to use even when
It's not so much a matter of ignorance, I'm just not seeing the problems you seem to see.
Engineers are just fine on the ground.
BFAW was changed very logically. It's still the best ability to use in a target rich environment. I think it is reasonable to have some reduction in Accuracy for an ability that lets you shoot more often and at multiple targets. Reduced accuracy can also be countered but that might of course mean that players have to focus less on just increasing their CritD (which I feel is the real problem for some - they just want to keep their accuracy the same, while firing more often so that all other boosts can go towards CritD).
All other changes (such as reduced damage with increasing distance) to FAW were made to bring it more in line with other abilities. I don't see what's wrong with that.
As for GW: that ability can still be powerful. If the player is prepared to make some sacrifices to make it work, that is. Which is not an unreasonable expectation I think. You'll just have to put some more points in +control skills, or put some extra consoles on your ship. Why should Sci abilities be easily accessible, powerful and easy to use een (sic) when the player does not specialise in these type of abilities? That's basically asking for free damage, or free 'pull power' for lack of a better word right now - basically, a powerful Sci ability without dedicating your skip or skill build towards Sci powers.
Would it be reasonable if I expected my Sci (sic) Vesta's aft polaron beam array to be very powerful, despite me not having any points in energy weapon skills or any regular (as in +polaron damage) tactical consoles?
Yeah just did that. I thought it was all written down - and it was - but then it suddenly disappeared. I really wish they'd finally fix that, capture the monster that's eating forum posts or seal the black hole. Or whatever it is that's causing the loss of posts
Even more ridiculous, sometimes if you retype the eaten post and it's too similar original one, it immediately eats the new post too. This forum software is just crazy.
The infection spreads...
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and yes, they badly over-nerfed grav well; with even a modest investment in CtrlX (i.e. the two nodes in the skill tree for a score of 100) you should see SOME slight pull from even rank 1...but you don't, nor do you see any from ranks 2 & 3 either - in fact, you don't start seeing ANY kind of noticeable effect from 3 until around 300+ CtrlX, never mind the inferior ranks
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GW3 acts just like you describe. GW1 (and allegedly GW2 as well) seem to be utterly borked though - affecting only a single enemy and having severely reduced dmg/pull values (compared to pre-S13) on top of it.
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Leavers or not, at least the game is less embarrassingly structured now, and I prefer that over a fully populated game that's broken. Not ideal, but what's done is done, and I have no regrets.
Yet I still blame the new STF UI to the fullest.
Honestly, I don't attribute the game being "more structured" at this point due to the rebalance. The reality is what you hinted at in your first sentence. The DPS race was dying out since the massive powercreep with the Skill Tree revamp, and S13 put the nail it the coffin.
If there were as much min-max activity as there was a year or so ago, there'd still be several records over 300k. I still think 400k+ could be possible post-S13. Issue is just nobody at that level is doing that type of stuff at all really anymore.
We have significantly less activity in general with parses uploaded to either parser as of S13. Both SCM and CLR have seen ~60-70% less parses so far this season.
Myself, I've swapped my DPS characters mostly over to PvP loadouts and skill trees. At this point, it's so much easier to get into PvP matches than it is to get into high end ISA or HSE runs, which is pretty sad.
Yeah that needs to be fixed. GW1's broken status limits the choices for ships that only have a Lt.Cdr Sci seating. Sci builds in general are still pretty powerful. They are up there with Cannons and Beams in terms of overall effectiveness. Their "DPS" output in advanced may be limited by cooldowns and NPC HP, but they are devastating in Elite runs.
I'm going to put out another possibly unpopular opinion here, but in my opinion, the people who left over the S13 nerfs are overreacting. The pre-S13 levels of damage was unsustainable for the long term. The S13 rebalance was needed and was a good thing. It's unfortunate that people rage-quit rather than adapt.
Players that think that way aren't as smart as they think. They fail to realize how little the various weapon procs actually mean to a build. It's only when you want that last 4% or so to top DPS charts where procs really start to matter.
A lot of builds became pretty competitive with S13, and that's a good thing. Even healer builds are really good particularly in Elite. Of the build archetypes, tanks probably got the short-end of the stick due to how Threat in this game works. I am hoping that with the new spec, tank builds will get some new toys to play with.
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I never really used it much myself, but I guess now it's kind of useless. This ability (for me) was never a problem in PVP, and most certainly not in PVE.
I will repeat that failing to resist physical on entropy together with the constant immunity stacking was the real thing that was killing PVP (space pvp at least). Everything else was not that bad. Fixing this part was the best thing from the balance changes, and it had no impact on PVE. Every other change is hit and miss for me - though mostly hit.
And yes, I agree the whining and ragequitting is so silly. You can still pull off monster-dps on mindles NPC's or whatever nowadays, so I don't see why all the butthurt.
Any other suggestions I'm open to hear.
(Added emphasis).
I agree. There is a lot of overreacting towards the rebalancing and changes were badly needed. The people who are complaining the most are those who are saying in in-game channels 'I went from over 100k to 60k' or things like that. While apparently not realising that that's still more than enough for most content.
Sorry, but if only doing ridiculous amounts of damage with next-to-no effort is keeping them in the game, then I think it was only a matter of time before they moved on. One cannot seriously expect pre-S13 situations to last forever after all.
Rewards getting nerfed? Ok I can understand why people are upset. Basic abilities that newer players also depend on getting nerfed, resulting in things getting more difficult for newer players? Again, I can understand the anger.
But for some reason I don't feel quite as bad for players who are complaining that their damage was cut in half when the remaining portion is still more than sufficient to complete 95% of the game's content - or even solo most parts of it. I just don't see the problem, honestly. They can still play the game with great ease - instead of vaporising enemies in 2 or 3 seconds, it might take them 5 or 6. If such a minor set-back is enough reason to quit the game or quit doing something in general then I would say that the problem is with those who quit indeed. And perhaps it would be wise if those players changed their expectations cause I seriously doubt they will ever appreciate a game for long if one expects pre-S13 situations to last for very long.
No one is entitled to doing 10 times as much damage as necessary, or twice as much as a full team would on average need. Sure, enjoy it while it lasts, I honestly hope you do, but don't be childish about it when it is finally corrected.
I must admit that I'm not very familiar with GW anymore. I stopped using it a while back, going with SSV and TR instead.
And even when I used it, I usually went with GW 3. If it's borked, then it needs to be fixed obviously. But to be fair, I've still seen people use GW and it worked well for them.
As for FAW: I never really used it myself, except when doing missions like the Breach and you'll want to shoot multiple targets quickly. For such things it still works fine, and that's what an ability such as FAW is supposed to do imo.
I think it's logical that more directed energy weapons (such as cannons with a narrower arc) deal more damage. It takes more effort to direct the fire after all so the player should get more out of it in return.