From today's patch notes:
Level 63 captain powers:
Co-opt Energy Weapons:
Duration increased from 5 seconds to 15 seconds.
Radius increased from 3km to 5km
Healing percentage increased from 10% to 25%
Intrusive Energy Redirection:
Duration increased from 10 seconds to 15 seconds
Base power drained from targets increased from 10 to 25
Base power gained changed from 5-21 to 10-25 based on targets hit
Bonus weapon damage is now 10% per target hit from 5%
Bonus weapon damage now affects all weapons
Vulnerability Assessment Sweep:
Vulnerability Assessment Sweep no longer debuffs foe's Damage Resistance Rating
It now gives the player and nearby allied players Armor Penetration for 15 seconds, based on the number of allies hit.
The eng and sci powers both got huge buffs, but the tac one looks rekt. Not only does it swap a res debuff for armor pen which I believe was ruined back in season 13, but it now depends on number of allies, so in a single player mission it won't get scaled. KHAAAAAAN
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Comments
Huh.
Yes, at level 63, you get one of those spiffy powers mentioned in the OP, depending on your profession. They're quite nice, actually.
And the tac one works fine, I was using it today.
A majority agreed giving a science captain ability to a tac captain, who already does massive damage and DRR was silly. This one, is overall a bit more balanced.
The science & Engineer ones, badly needed some increases or improvements. Time will tell if the changes are good. I think it was Borticius on reddit several weeks ago who confirmed for us he was looking at the powers. Because i remember the thread discussing the engineer captain ability in the eyes of alot of engineer captains was that crappy and bad, it was almost an insult.
If I am going to be blunt, I don't like an elitist reddit clique determining what needs to be nerfed. Devs should post on their official forum, and not be egged on by 150k+ DPS-ers, in a corner of reddit somewhere, who won't ever feel the nerfs they propose.
A lot of the people commenting where not high DPSers, but a decent section of the building community. Also, you think these DPSers on purpose tell devs to do certain nerfs in their opinion because they wont feel it. Alot of the redditors are decent people who will give cryptic hell for a mistake, and give their honest opinions, based on facts.
The Tac Captain power ability originally was far too much. We told the devs during our tribble testing, as well as expressed our concerns regarding the science and engineer powers which needed some love. Judging by things, and potentially looking at their own numbers, looks like the devs agreed with us.
While some high DPSers are arses, i dont count the group on reddit as those types. Additionally, we are more than willing to really give it to the devs if we feel they have made a mistake.
I would suggest going over there and reading several of the threads, especially on reddit/sto builds, and see with your own eyes exactly what these people are like.
Fair enough, I suppose. I just don't like cliques.
In all honesty, though, first day that vulnerability sweep was introduced, I immediately thought "Yeah, that's really what Tact Captains need, yet another major hull debuff!" Thematically, I've always felt hull debuffs are the domain of Engineers; so I'd like to see some of these powers shifted to them, instead.
I dunno. In-game, things like DRB and such are Sci powers. But stuff that deals with undermining the structural integrity of a ship (as well as reenforcing it) , that just feels like the domain of an Engineer. At least SIC is an Engi power.
Good.
It’s always a question as to how you want to set up a character. DRR debuffs are well spread between tactical and science boffs powers by now, some even engineering.
The really only thing which is class related or indicates anything in the direction of trinity are the few handful of captain’s powers. But even here we get the debuffs for tacs as well as scis.
With the additional space captains abilities I was hoping that cryptic would make the three different classes a bit more pronounced but instead we got a random mix.
Would be easy for cryptic to direct DPS related tac captains power to weapons related dps only, make similar adjustments to epg for scis and perhaps further emphasis on +/- threat mechanics for engineers to give them easier means to tank. But no.
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Tacs are already the recommended class for anything because the damage buffs of the class are more valuable than the other powers usually. And Engineers really need more help, too.
Science Captains... I am not really interested in what I got and would probably also prefer some offensive oriented debuff or buff, but so be it. But most of my characters are already science, so they don't seem to be doing so bad or in need of it.
'Oh TRIBBLE going to die, click the thingy!'
ability, but if you clicked it while the enemy was more then 3km from you it wasn't going to help.
The concept of a very short duration 'Oh TRIBBLE!" ability isn't actually a bad one for a scientist running a mega well build. That moment when you put down the hurt on all of the things within a 24km diameter murder ball and they all hate you can certainly benefit from it. The range just wasn't sufficient.
Still what i really would have liked would have been something to boost debuff powers. Because lets face it, anything worth debuffing, over outright nuking, is either highly resistant or immune. A debuff to your target that gives them -200 CtrlX and -200 DrainX would have made me super happy.
Though I know such an ability would be meaningless for the DPS folks.... still they are mostly playing tacs any way so I doubt they would have minded.
But now the name doesn't make one lick of sense...I mean, who's vulnerability are you assessing if it scans your allies?
Sci has already that skill - called Sensor Scan.
Now you can properly stack those two without hitting a res debuff hardcap.
To be fair, the people you have an issue with are the ones out there doing the math, parsing abilities and sending data to Cryptic. They're the ones out there actually figuring out how well things do and do not work. DPS players don't cry for nerfs, usually quite the opposite, but they do report when something is massively over powered or simply doesn't make any sense.
The reddit base is no different then any other public forum, it's a mix of all types of players from the most casual to the 'best of the best.' The thing is, the DPS crowd is the one gathering the hard research and the core numbers that Cryptic needs to analyze how something is (or isn't) working. They make this information freely available to everyone and frequently help players to improve their game if they want that.
I'm not sure how that classifies as 'elitist.'
What matters is that the end result is where it should be.
If the Science and Engineering Captain abilitiess were underperforming then give them a buff.
If the Tactical Captain ability was overperforming then give it a nerf.
Nothing wrong with that.
Just as if the Tac ability was underperforming it should get a buff and if the Eng and/or Sci ability was overperforming then they would get a nerf.
It's all just part of the process.
And that's the real issue.
We always have this process because nothing is properly tested before being implemented. They use the live server as the test bed and 'adjust as they go.'
The issue here is that players often re-adapt their builds to certain abilities only to then later have them changed. The only part that annoys me is that if this ability was so badly over performing, why was it implemented in the first place?
Original STO beta tester.
Yeah, I was having a bit of knee-jerk reaction to Reddit. Just disregard that post, please.
No worries.. all good!
The next big rebalance better find a way to bring those buttons down to a more reasonable level. And if it's just giving us the console auto-trigger abilities. (Preferably unbugged.)
Agreed.
There are really only three kinds of buttons. Those for killing the enemy, Those to not be killed by the enemy and those to get to or from the enemy... wait hold on theirs a fourth type too... ah yeah fireworks. I like that one.
Sadly as of this time there is no button for the parana tank. But I have heard that it is going to be installed tuesday.
Sadly not. There was an issue with the parana tank, so installation has been delayed. Something about a cat failing into the tank, or not seeing their tail was in the tank while they sat on the edge having lunch