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Revisiting old skills ?

vanhyovanhyo Member Posts: 229 Arc User
I cant help but notice there are many old useless skills, that nobody in his right mind will ever use, or maybe just do so as some sort of role playing thing, let me point out few as examples:

*Surgical Strikes III compared to overload III is a joke, overloads deals double, if traited it shoots for 15 seconds, not to mention SG shares CD with cannon skills which in turn allows only for a single protomatters proc chance.

*Redundant Sensors II (from intel skill spec) i assume this is a pvp skill since nowhere in pve placate troubles you, and in pvp you get so many placate all over your face that make this skill look silly useless. It will make more sense if it guarantees resist every 30 seconds or just remove the internal CD, so these 20% really count every time.

*Reroute power from life support - that skill is a suicide, its too much trouble to lock yourself for 10 seconds, or to use on regular basis. I understand that there needs to be some kind of RP penalty but let it be more symbolic, not such overkill.

*The entire temporal seating spec is a joke, even that command skill that stack 30% of your damage is not really that good,probably not bad, its just meh...

Many old skills need to be reworked in order to make more sense, be more useful or competitive, i am not saying that everything must be super-super strong, but due to the aging of the game, many skills ended up unpractical or useless or obsolete.

Think of this next time when you want to sell that new shiny ship with obsolete seatings.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments

  • garaffegaraffe Member Posts: 1,353 Arc User
    *The entire temporal seating spec is a joke, even that command skill that stack 30% of your damage is not really that good,probably not bad, its just meh...

    By temporal seating spec, do you mean Temporal Specialization for captains, or do you mean Temporal BOFF abilities?

    I use both to great affect, so I am not sure what you mean by the skills being a joke.

    What does a command skill have to do with Temporal spec?
  • rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 57,973 Community Moderator
    This is probably a case of "to each their own". Not everyone is going to agree.
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  • vanhyovanhyo Member Posts: 229 Arc User
    > @garaffe said:
    > By temporal seating spec, do you mean Temporal Specialization for captains, or do you mean Temporal BOFF abilities?
    >
    > I use both to great affect, so I am not sure what you mean by the skills being a joke.
    >
    > What does a command skill have to do with Temporal spec?

    I mean the boffs, the captain spec is ok and useful. By "command" i mean commander seating.

    > @rattler2 said:
    > This is probably a case of "to each their own". Not everyone is going to agree.

    Math doesnt ask for agreement, if you are looking to extract performence, your options are very narrow. But i suppose there are plenty of players who are satisfied with avarage performence and wouldnt be bothered.
  • garaffegaraffe Member Posts: 1,353 Arc User
    edited March 2021
    I actually quite like temporal op seating because there are a lot of really nice exotic damage skills, especially for single target DoTs. What I don't like however are the healing abilities being tied to entropy.

    Frankly, I think the whole entropy system needs a rework.
    1. temporal ships should automatically apply a stack of entropy to a random nearby target once every second,
    2. get rid of the 5 entropy cap
    3. instead, each ability can have a cap on the number of stacks it can remove, capping its damage
    4. abilities that create entropy should be converted to consume it instead. In particular:
    (a) entropic redistribution should be renamed "entropic collection" and should wipe the entropy from nearby ships and
    transfer that entropy to the target while damaging the nearby ships based on how much entropy was removed from
    them.
    (b) Channeled deconstruction should keep channeling until the target has no entropy left, removing one stack of
    entropy every half second, increasing its damage based on channel time up to a given cap.
    (c) Heisenburg amplifier should apply its affect once to every enemy ship in its radius that has entropy, removing one
    stack of entropy from each affected foe in the process.
  • foxrockssocksfoxrockssocks Member Posts: 2,482 Arc User
    Temporal has weak abilities and strong, but Recursive Shearing is definitely in the strong category. However its generally useless for anything but a boss/dreadnought class target. For sure the entropy mechanic is terrible.

    Certainly most of Intel and Command are terrible these days, and always were. Surgical strikes in particular used to be useful but as you note definitely not now with the change to BO as well as everyone's generally higher crit chance available. But as you should glean from that, they do actually change powers now and then. Not nearly as often or as timely as they should, but they do. Someday Command and Intel and Temporal will hopefully get reworked to make them work as real options in the game and it won't be MW over everything.

    Placates are actually used a lot by certain NPCs and they are quite obnoxious if you don't have a science team handy. Most common groups don't use them, though, so you don't notice it in STFs.
  • alcyoneserenealcyoneserene Member Posts: 2,412 Arc User
    The whole boff specialist seats could be broken down into very few boff abilities that are either good or still worth slotting in some builds. All of STO suffers from this.
    garaffe wrote: »
    I actually quite like temporal op seating because there are a lot of really nice exotic damage skills, especially for single target DoTs. What I don't like however are the healing abilities being tied to entropy.

    They are a lot of fun on sci ships, though sadly they don't work with secondary deflectors to my knowledge, not that it matters all that much as even a sci boff selection designed to maximize secondary deflector will lose out what it gains due to having to use weaker things like tachyon beam, tractor beam, energy siphon etc. Indeed the healing aspect is so situational and time-limited it just never works as a reliable source of it. I only pair 2 boff abilities for the limited debuff effect on non-sci ships or non-exotic damage support.
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  • garaffegaraffe Member Posts: 1,353 Arc User
    One of the issues with things like secondary deflectors and traits that either buff or proc off of {vague category of abilities}, is that as they have added new abilities to the game, they seem to have completely forgotten to update these categories. There are some traits and DOFFs that are supposed to affect "damaging, non-weapon abilities" or proc off of "control abilities" that have not been updated as new abilities that fit those categories have been added into the game.
  • fleetcaptain5#1134 fleetcaptain5 Member Posts: 4,754 Arc User
    I also think that there's little reason to use surgical strikes. The slowing effect means that I wouldn't even consider it on anything else than regular beams.

    And even those beams benefit a lot more from overload indeed.

    The fact that they don't benefit from traits, is a widespread issue. See for other examples all sorts of doffs that apply to things like exothermic induction field or hyperonic radiation but not to reputation and event variations of those powers.

    Cryptic tends to come up with a new shiny thing and then forgets (assumption here, but the alternative explanation would be that they don't care for making new powers competitive) to look back and see what the things they replace interacted with.
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  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    vanhyo wrote: »

    Math doesnt ask for agreement, if you are looking to extract performence, your options are very narrow. But i suppose there are plenty of players who are satisfied with avarage performence and wouldnt be bothered.

    While I agree with you completely, our perspective is not particularly welcomed here. Nothing you're saying is wrong, but this isn't the place for this discussion, I would suggest you move this discussion to reddit or some other more objective community.

    On this forum, math is your opinion and stating otherwise gets you branded an 'elitist.' :lol:
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  • vanhyovanhyo Member Posts: 229 Arc User
    @foxrockssocks said:
    > Temporal has weak abilities and strong, but Recursive Shearing is definitely in the strong category. However its generally useless for anything but a boss/dreadnought class target. For sure the entropy mechanic is terrible.
    >

    That was my previous opinion, until i tested it and it was surprisingly bad compered to how good it sounds on paper, in reality is something like 1 additional BO attack for lt.commander slot, 2x BOs if commander slot. The reason why its not impressing is because although the skill itself is not mitigated by resists or shields, your attacks are mitigated by them so they are not stacking hard enough to make a noticeable and satisfying boom.

    For a moment the Universe Temporal Heavy Dreadnought Cruiser was tempting me for a beamster, but then i decided it is not worth it, and command's Reroute power from life support is suicide compared to override subsystem safeties which is just easier, more reliable and simply superior.

    > Certainly most of Intel and Command are terrible these days, and always were. Surgical strikes in particular used to be useful but as you note definitely not now with the change to BO as well as everyone's generally higher crit chance available. But as you should glean from that, they do actually change powers now and then. Not nearly as often or as timely as they should, but they do. Someday Command and Intel and Temporal will hopefully get reworked to make them work as real options in the game and it won't be MW over everything.

    intel Boff are probably the most well aged apart from surgical strikes which is just awful bad. But yeah, the whole system can use improvements.

    Also, i think the commander specialization seat should be something like the crown of your build, you should really desire that seating for whatever you are doing, it is a good design to want a special seating ship. Right now is meh whatever...
  • vanhyovanhyo Member Posts: 229 Arc User
    vanhyo wrote: »

    Math doesnt ask for agreement, if you are looking to extract performence, your options are very narrow. But i suppose there are plenty of players who are satisfied with avarage performence and wouldnt be bothered.

    While I agree with you completely, our perspective is not particularly welcomed here. Nothing you're saying is wrong, but this isn't the place for this discussion, I would suggest you move this discussion to reddit or some other more objective community.

    On this forum, math is your opinion and stating otherwise gets you branded an 'elitist.' :lol:

    lol B)

    I wouldn't identify myself as elitist actually, i am the kind of a person who enjoys extracting maximum performance out of something garbage and then surprising the elisitst.

  • alcyoneserenealcyoneserene Member Posts: 2,412 Arc User
    The fact that they don't benefit from traits, is a widespread issue.

    Yes, this, nor doffs that reduce cool-down, on top of clashing with cool-downs from other firing modes. I would try to use SS if maybe paired with mixed armaments (beams & cannons for set bonuses) but all that's a little much.

    SS used to be strong with DR but then it was apparently nerfed too. Gotta make way for the new power sell, Q forbid lateral specializations.
    On this forum, math is your opinion and stating otherwise gets you branded an 'elitist.' :lol:

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  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    edited March 2021
    vanhyo wrote: »

    I wouldn't identify myself as elitist actually, i am the kind of a person who enjoys extracting maximum performance out of something garbage and then surprising the elisitst.

    Same here. :smile:
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  • garaffegaraffe Member Posts: 1,353 Arc User
    I quite agree that all the old specializations need to be reworked and brought up to speed with the rest of the game, especially when it comes to synergizing with traits, DOFFs, gear, etc. It really seems like the mentallity of Cryptic is always to release a brand new shiny to becomes mandatory for META build without any regard for how the new shiny will synergize with older skills, traits, gear, etc. It really makes the end game progression feel very 1-dimensional in my opinion.
  • peterconnorfirstpeterconnorfirst Member Posts: 6,225 Arc User
    edited March 2021
    Im not certain if a buff to recursive sharing is a good idea at the moment. Temporal spec especially in light of its synergies with exotics via traits is in a rather good shape in general.

    While it is highly team and map dependent I got some cool figured (50kish) out of recursive sharing in ISE. I have seen others do like 100k with it.
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  • szerontzurszerontzur Member Posts: 2,723 Arc User
    ..And here I was expecting things like Mask Energy Signature, Jam Sensors, Boarding Party, and Extend Shields were going to be mentioned.. (I probably would have included Tachyon Beam in the list, but I recently discovered how amazing Improved Tachyon Beam is; the trait completely changes the purpose of the skill, but it's probably one of the best shield-heals in the game in terms of raw throughput - basically a full shield heal to 20 friendly targets within a 10km bubble of the target.. every 20s.)

    I do agree there are a lot of 'lemons' in most specializations.. some from their release, some from being powercrept. I don't really agree about the entirety of Temporal abilities needing rework though. There are some interesting synergies, but they're not particularly obvious.

    Unfortunately, they don't really seem to be interested in revising most of these because they cannot monetize it..
  • alcyoneserenealcyoneserene Member Posts: 2,412 Arc User
    Secondary deflector does not trigger on improved tachyon beam except on initial target, while a few other AoE sci powers (charged particle burst/photonic shockwave depending on 2nd deflector type) do trigger it on every ship hit. Thought that would have been a nice combination but nope. Don't recall the rule for which triggers only per initial target so will have to observe and record all over again.
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  • chastity1337chastity1337 Member Posts: 1,606 Arc User
    N.B. DSecDef = Deteriorating Secondary Deflector

    It's from a year ago, but this post on reddit has some good info. There's a lot of math, (I skimmed that part), but the part about what does and doesn't proc the Deteriorating Secondary Deflector is easy to understand.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/c6ngnf/revisiting_exotics_part_1_deteriorating_secondary/

    This part in particular really caught my attention -

    When you look at the magnitude of the increases from Mk XII to Mk XV, it's very sharply non-linear. A Mk XV DSecDef has almost double the base damage and the equivalent of 300 more EPG.

    Let me put it another way: A ship with 0 EPG and a Mk XV DSecDef outdamages a ship with 500 EPG and Mk XII DSecDef in terms of secondary deflector damage, and it's not close.


    That and the list of what procs are the big takeaways for me. They list seven things that proc the DSecDef. Four of those they show as AOE. The one that jumped out at me is Tyken's Rift.

    I just watched somebody insta-pop a Voth Heavy Cruiser in Storming the Spire, and there were two Tyken Rifts. But the damage from DSecDef is a DOT, which isn't usually conducive to insta-kill, so I don't know. I have long dismissed TR as worthless, but perhaps I was wrong. I'm a GW nutjob, and I use the other SecDef, the Inhibiting, which this reddit thread dismisses as a POS.

    It's a fascinating topic, but the more I learn, the less I feel certain I have a firm grip on the issue. In the end the damage parser is the final arbiter, but we need a certain minimum level of understanding in order to setup the right experiments. Trial and Error won't find us an optimal config if that optimal config depends on something we never thought to try.
  • vanhyovanhyo Member Posts: 229 Arc User
    edited March 2021
    Im not certain if a buff to recursive sharing is a good idea at the moment. Temporal spec especially in light of its synergies with exotics via traits is in a rather good shape in general.

    While it is highly team and map dependent I got some cool figured (50kish) out of recursive sharing in ISE. I have seen others do like 100k with it.

    Thats cool, i did 160 000 yesterday, BO hits were like 110k each as engineer. Basically little more than a BO attack in an ideal (target smacking) situation.


    I am willing to accept that temporal spec is ok since i do not have any high end science toon (i just dont know), maybe there is some kind of trick, thats ok. This doesn't change my point that there are many old under performing skills that need to be improved.
  • peterconnorfirstpeterconnorfirst Member Posts: 6,225 Arc User
    edited March 2021
    > @vanhyo said:
    > Thats cool, i did 160 000 yesterday, BO hits were like 110k each as engineer. Basically little more than a BO attack in an ideal (target smacking) situation.
    >
    >
    > I am willing to accept that temporal spec is ok since i do not have any high end science toon (i just dont know), maybe there is some kind of trick, thats ok. This doesn't change my point that there are many old under performing skills that need to be improved.


    Roger. I can’t disagree to that. :)
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  • lianthelialianthelia Member Posts: 7,820 Arc User
    Go back and buff old skills? Don't be silly...the only time the revisit old things is to nerf them! Why would they buff old skills when they can sell you new more powerful ones?!?

    As silly as this may sound and as much of a joke I'm trying to make, this is their design philosophy
  • vanhyovanhyo Member Posts: 229 Arc User
    lianthelia wrote: »
    Go back and buff old skills? Don't be silly...the only time the revisit old things is to nerf them! Why would they buff old skills when they can sell you new more powerful ones?!?

    As silly as this may sound and as much of a joke I'm trying to make, this is their design philosophy

    I don't know what their design philosophy is, i am already accessing the goods as a freebie player and the 2021 year reward looks very good.

    Probably not a good point.
  • szerontzurszerontzur Member Posts: 2,723 Arc User
    I just watched somebody insta-pop a Voth Heavy Cruiser in Storming the Spire, and there were two Tyken Rifts. But the damage from DSecDef is a DOT, which isn't usually conducive to insta-kill, so I don't know. I have long dismissed TR as worthless, but perhaps I was wrong. I'm a GW nutjob, and I use the other SecDef, the Inhibiting, which this reddit thread dismisses as a POS.

    Tyken's Rift does pretty obscene damage(always has, but it's pretty wild in the land of Mk15 gear). Even on my Drainlayer build, TR will melt most targets before it takes their shields completely offline(and anything bigger will get the titan console thrown at them).

    It's always had a stigma because it shares a cooldown with GravWell. Ironically, there are finally some decent alternatives to GW these days, although they're not as smooth/hassle-free as Improved GW. We're still missing a cornerstone trait for Tyken's Rift, but I'm a big proponent of not overlooking the skill.
  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    vanhyo wrote: »
    lianthelia wrote: »
    Go back and buff old skills? Don't be silly...the only time the revisit old things is to nerf them! Why would they buff old skills when they can sell you new more powerful ones?!?

    As silly as this may sound and as much of a joke I'm trying to make, this is their design philosophy

    I don't know what their design philosophy is, i am already accessing the goods as a freebie player and the 2021 year reward looks very good.

    Probably not a good point.

    It actually is a pretty valid point.

    It's very rare that changes to current abilities are an actual buff. Cryptic very seldom goes back any significant amount of time to review the viability of any old ability unless they are looking to reduce it's effectiveness. The general design philosophy is that if the ability is considered lackluster by the bulk of the player base then the players simply won't use it. They have not really shown any interest in going back and making those abilities more competitive. Look at Surgical Strikes as an example, they went back and nerfed that ability into being completely unusable.. and then just left it that way. They are fine if it's ineffective, they are only concerned when they feel an ability over performs.

    Simply put, whatever idea they might have to buff an old ability, they will just use that idea to create a new ability instead. I am not saying I agree, I am just saying what I have observed. I would certainly not count on any changes being made.
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  • lianthelialianthelia Member Posts: 7,820 Arc User
    edited March 2021
    vanhyo wrote: »
    lianthelia wrote: »
    Go back and buff old skills? Don't be silly...the only time the revisit old things is to nerf them! Why would they buff old skills when they can sell you new more powerful ones?!?

    As silly as this may sound and as much of a joke I'm trying to make, this is their design philosophy

    I don't know what their design philosophy is, i am already accessing the goods as a freebie player and the 2021 year reward looks very good.

    Probably not a good point.

    I'm guessing you're new to STO

    I've been around since before it was even free to play...there are abilities that have been next to useless since even back then. Have the devs even looked at them through multiple revamps and made any attempt to fix them? Nope

    Do the devs introduce powerful new abilities and eventually nerf many of them? Yup
    And when those things are nerfed, are they nerfed into the ground to the point of being practically unusable? Yup

  • telbasta7386telbasta7386 Member Posts: 761 Arc User
    Add Aceton Beam to the list. That is one of the most worthless skills i've ever seen.

    Engineering in general could really use some more offensive oriented skills.
  • garaffegaraffe Member Posts: 1,353 Arc User
    Add Aceton Beam to the list. That is one of the most worthless skills i've ever seen.

    Engineering in general could really use some more offensive oriented skills.

    Agreed. Aceton needs something like spread mechanic or whatever, like a lot of single-target abilities, because the just don't work in the mass-destruction AoE bonanza that is STO's space combat.

    This is so true. Single target abilities are next to worthless until they hit really hard.
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