Engineer Captain revamp Rotate Shield Frequency

redwren89 · August 2018

Ability: Let's begin with the obvious. With shield resistance limits being reached easily without the use of captain abilities, Rotate Shield Frequency becomes almost useless.

Background: so during VOY: Equinox and TNG: Generations, shield modulation is matched when the doctor transmits new shield modulations and when Geordi shows the Duras gals 1701-D shield modulation. To counter this, shield frequency must be rotated to make shields effective again.

Suggestion: can we make Rotate Shield Frequency reduce all extra shield bleed through for the duration of the ability, or bring a doff out for it. Given the current state of relevance of the game power, and actual star trek references, this ability should focus on reducing bleed through. Also, given the fact that tactical captain powers are all 'bonus' additions, why don't resistance bonuses of the survival classes get these?

What do Trekkers think of this? Will the devs sort out this almost irrelevant skill?

casualsto · September 2018

I also would think that reworking that skill is a great idea.

Damage reduction : 25%
Reduce shield bleedthrough to 0% during the buff duration.
A decent amount of shields restored every second.
Shields offline for a second at the end of the buff.

where2r1 · September 2018

Yeah, throw learning defense techniques and make healing even more useless. Go ahead and ADD another immunity.

Cryptic...seriously, you need to revisit this immune/immunity TRIBBLE in this game.

dracounguis · September 2018

Shields go down so fast now I can't see how any buff to them qualifies as being good thing. (Unless it's just stupidly strong.) Now if the Rotate Shield Frequency also did a nice hull resistance buff too, then it'd be better.

The whole Hull Tanking thing is kinda backwards. As you stated in Generations, w/o effective shields the Enterprise was getting creamed. Shields going down shouldn't be something that happens 3 seconds into a fight, it should be the thing that happens 3 seconds before you explode!

tobywitczak · September 2018

When STO first started the thought was the classic Tank, Healer + Buff/Debuff and DPS Dealer but over time all battle just became about dealing DPS. The fact that www.sto-league.com only outlines TAC and SCI builds more or less proves that if you want to complete on the same level then go with TAC or SCI only builds.

You can create a Full Science Build (27 Points in the SCI Tree) and get good buff/debuff to create high DPS
You can create a Full Tactical Build is (27 Points in the TAC Tree) and well everting is for DPS
A Full Engineering Build (27 Points) is the black sheep, being a member of the STO Academy I posted this https://forum.stoacademy.com/showthread.php?tid=5104 Basically no one has any real idea on how to make this work and be even somewhat competitive to the TAC or SCI. All Engineering Builds I have seen will put all the points into the SCI or TAC tree.

On that note, I was thinking of ways to make the tank into a DPS machine like

Reflection Tank, a percentage of incoming fire you receive is redirected towards a target on top of the damage that you are doing. So if you are doing 1000DPS and then receive a hit for another 1000DPS with a 20% Reflection you are now dealing 1200DPS, and this should stack for each ship attacking you. Now the tank has a reasons to take as much fire as possible. (Side note, before the revamp I seem to recall this was a real build)
Extended Range Tank: All weapons and sensor can hit from 15km not the current 10. Basically giving the player a 50% bump to damage at the beginning.

casualsto · September 2018

tobywitczak wrote: »

When STO first started the thought was the classic Tank, Healer + Buff/Debuff and DPS Dealer but over time all battle just became about dealing DPS. The fact that www.sto-league.com only outlines TAC and SCI builds more or less proves that if you want to complete on the same level then go with TAC or SCI only builds.
You can create a Full Science Build (27 Points in the SCI Tree) and get good buff/debuff to create high DPS

You can create a Full Tactical Build is (27 Points in the TAC Tree) and well everting is for DPS

A Full Engineering Build (27 Points) is the black sheep, being a member of the STO Academy I posted this https://forum.stoacademy.com/showthread.php?tid=5104 Basically no one has any real idea on how to make this work and be even somewhat competitive to the TAC or SCI. All Engineering Builds I have seen will put all the points into the SCI or TAC tree.

On that note, I was thinking of ways to make the tank into a DPS machine like
Reflection Tank, a percentage of incoming fire you receive is redirected towards a target on top of the damage that you are doing. So if you are doing 1000DPS and then receive a hit for another 1000DPS with a 20% Reflection you are now dealing 1200DPS, and this should stack for each ship attacking you. Now the tank has a reasons to take as much fire as possible. (Side note, before the revamp I seem to recall this was a real build)

Extended Range Tank: All weapons and sensor can hit from 15km not the current 10. Basically giving the player a 50% bump to damage at the beginning.

The range extension for threat builds could be an amazing addition, but the first concern would be making sure that tacs won't run that with cannons...

But it's totally an amazing idea.

And I got something to it:
Extend Beam arrays range to 12/15 km and increase their weapon cost from 10 per beam to 12/15 per beam. This way you'll have to be an Engineer in a cruiser to mitigate them effectively.
And hold the damage drop range of 10km for 10km or more.

redwren89 · September 2018

Those ideas all seem amazing, without thinking about each of their ramifications.

I guess I enjoyed the simple life of having only 10% shield bleed through on my standard shields. I just want rotate shield frequency to do a better job of returning bleed through to the base amount given the name of the ability and current climate of shield bleedthrough all over the place.

If engineers concentrate on survival, let's change this ability to work as shields were intended.

tobywitczak · September 2018

I somehow get the feeling that at some point we will get a tech tree 3.0. However first Cryptic really needs to decide on how the game should be played. If it’s all about DPS then the items above make sense, If they try to go the classic Tank, Healer + Buff/Debuff and DPS Dealer, then that will require a rethink of how all the underlying skill and tech work. And didn’t they hire someone to start doing the statistics of STO about a year ago?

Example of some obvious things tanks should survive: The crystalline catastrophe during the Pulse every engineer ship should have natural immunity but it does not. You can get some abilities reduce or block the effect, but there again it can be used by everyone.

Effectively the ENG, SCI, TAC has more or less become, pick your color.

Sorry about hijacking the thread.

redwren89 · September 2018

> @tobywitczak said:
> I somehow get the feeling that at some point we will get a tech tree 3.0. However first Cryptic really needs to decide on how the game should be played. If it’s all about DPS then the items above make sense, If they try to go the classic Tank, Healer + Buff/Debuff and DPS Dealer, then that will require a rethink of how all the underlying skill and tech work. And didn’t they hire someone to start doing the statistics of STO about a year ago?
>
> Example of some obvious things tanks should survive: The crystalline catastrophe during the Pulse every engineer ship should have natural immunity but it does not. You can get some abilities reduce or block the effect, but there again it can be used by everyone.
>
> Effectively the ENG, SCI, TAC has more or less become, pick your color.
>
> Sorry about hijacking the thread.

Some of those colours have 0 useful returns on their captain abilities. But there are a lot of universal abilities narrowing classes differences in effectively and appropriately tackling game content.

It'll be nice to see moreeee creative thinking when it comes to rethinking certain captain abilities.

Something tells me that cryptic staff are very busy working on content and spread very thin across their departments. Live long and patience.

Engineer Captain revamp Rotate Shield Frequency

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