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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Do not bring dishonor to your name and shame upon your family for generations by showing up to ground combat with poor weapons or poor tactics. Follow this guide and send your enemies to Sto'Vo'Kor ahead of yourself.
1) USE YOUR MINIMAP.
You have a map. It is mini. It shows you where your teammates are. You should try to find them. Finding your teammates takes priority over finding enemies unless you are winning by a lot. You should pay close attention to this as just because your teammates were following you a couple seconds ago doesn't mean they still are. Many a warrior's last words were, "There they are. Let's get em! ... Guys? .... Guys??"
2) Get a split beam rifle. (and upgrade your outdated ground gear)
(Disclaimer: Weapon balance is changing in Update 1. I will edit this once that is out and I've had a chance to play with it. Split beams will become the #2 damage weapon when hitting a single target instead of being tied for #1 with the sniper rifle.)
What weapon are you using right now? Unless you said, "Split Beam Rifle", throw it into the dumpster. I don't care if it's a purple dual pistol drop that you paid 2 million credits for. It's rubbish. Get a split beam rifle. If you're tactical with a lot of ground combat training (T3+) get two.
The sniper rifle is superior in a 1v1 fight. Are you fighting 1v1? No, because you heeded my advice and met up with your teammates, as did your opponent. So get a split beam as your exploit weapon.
For your second weapon you might want a good expose weapon. I personally suggest a stun pistol (which has good range on the special attack) or a "full auto" weapon. The other pistols don't have enough range to do what you need them to do and the cylinder AE weapons don't hit enough targets (although they do good damage). My advice is to get a good long range cone AE expose weapon to go with your good long range cone exploit weapon. Or, as mentioned, just get two good exploit weapons, especially if you're Tactical or if you have a lot of kit-related expose abilities and therefore don't really need an expose gun.
Don't bother with melee unless you are winning by a lot. It's really not worth taking up one of your weapon positions with a melee weapon on the off chance that you might someday need it. Keep a bat'leth in your inventory and if you come across a team that's really hitting you with Weapons Malfunction nonstop, just swap in the bat'leth next time you die. It's better than nothing but it's still a terrible way to fight.
If you really want to know about melee combat, read this:
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=97085
It's a great guide but bear in mind that melee is something you mainly only do when winning. By a lot. Because it's fun and more sporting.
Note regarding weapon preference:
There are cases where other weapons could be superior to the split beam rifle. In a wide open map with lots of enemies to shoot at, the split beam assault weapon might be superior with its wider angle and greater number of beams. In very close quarters the wide angle expose pistols can be great. Unfortunately, maps like that just don't exist for PvP at the time of this writing. All of the current ground maps have narrow but fairly lengthy corridors with no more than 5 enemy players. It's right in the sweet spot for the Split Beam Rifle.
3) Get the proper kit.
Engineers! Listen up. DO NOT USE DEPLOYABLES IF YOU AREN'T SINKING SKILL POINTS INTO THEM. Medical and shield repair deployables will suck regardless of how you skill them up but the phaser turrets can be pretty dangerous if you've been spending points on them and keeping your kit up to date. If you aren't spending points on ground combat, though, do not bother with deployables. Stuff like weapon malfunction will be a great ability whether you skill up in it or not. Mines are pretty good, as the snare effect is annoying. Engineer shield heals (not the deployable one) can be helpful too. Note that even fully trained up, I don't think deployables are a good choice for engineers right now. Wait for Cryptic to buff the utility deployables (or to release an objective based ground map) and use another kit in the meantime.
Scientists! Actually none of your kits are awful but I suggest you go for the kits that do the most number of AE exposes. Think of an expose attack as an ability that says, "10% chance to allow you one-shot your opponent". Get those. The heals can be helpful too but you're rarely going to have the reaction time to cure an expose so I think the usefulness is fairly limited. If people want heals they can carry hypos.
Tacticals! Most of your kits are good. I'd stay away from Close Combat kits because melee is mostly just silly but cloaking can be a good way of dashing behind an enemy group and getting some great flanking shots. I personally like the Security kits because of the resist buffs for your teammates and the "fake expose" which causes enemies to waste their special attacks (and also further buffs your allies' resists). The Fire Team and Operative and Squad Leader kits are all handy too. Just make sure you keep your buffs up all the time.
4) Medium/Large Hypos. Stock up.
Find the vendor that sells T1 ground equipment for cash. He'll sell small, medium and large hypos. T2 and beyond you'll have plenty of money to blow on these things. Every slot on your character and in your inventory should be filled with these things. They cycle fast, they're big heals, they're cheap, there's no reason not to carry a hundred of them. There are also +damage expendables you can use that are on a separate timer from the hypos. There are also shield heal expendables but I don't find them that useful because shields heal so fast anyway.
You make yourself massively harder to kill by using hypos. (In fact, it's probably impossible to kill a hypo user with melee, short of getting a good expose/exploit combo on them.)
5) Take cover!
Rolling ups your defense. Sprinting ups your defense. Roll and sprint more! If you're taking fire, get behind cover ASAP so your shields have a chance to recharge. Don't just stand there in the open trading shots until someone falls over because the person falling over first is probably going to be you.
6) Deal with melee spam.
If someone gets in your face, either get away from them or spam your rifle melee attack until they get exposed, then disintegrate them. If you don't do it to them, they'll certainly do it to you. (I usually sprint backwards away from these people because I'd rather bet that I can kill them with gunfire than take the 50/50 chance on melee spam to see who can expose who first).
7) Learn what the "expose" symbol looks like.
It's a red rotating circle type thing. If you see it on yourself then you're probably dead. In the unlikely event you can actually move, hide behind cover until it goes away. Don't rely on science officers to cure you because by the time they see it on you and manage to clear it, the enemy has had ample opportunity to just shoot you.
Being exposed by most sources will cause a 10 second hold which means you won't be able to do anything except wait to die. It sucks. I agree. You'll just have to deal with it like everyone else.
8) Target Next Exposed
There is a keybinding for this. By default I believe it's bound to "G". It targets the next exposed person. This is very handy. Although your split beam rifle will tend to guarantee that you can hit exposed people without aiming at them, targeting them first will guarantee the hit.
9) Adjust your controls.
Did you know you can turn off that "zoom" feature when you go into aim mode? Makes ground combat soo much more enjoyable, in my opinion.
I also personally have my ground controls set up so that I never "automatically face off screen targets" (which will get you killed) and so that nothing I do will cause me to select a target unless I actually hit TAB. Normally I just hit "fire" and let it shoot whatever is in front of me. With my awesome split beam it really doesn't matter that much what I'm targeting anyway because I'm going to hit everything in a cone in front of me. Sometimes I will target someone to make sure I can chase them down and finish them off but I rarely find this to be necessary because so many people just stand in the corridor in the open and trade shots until they die.
10) Other gear.
Basically, keep your gear up to date. You want a top notch shield and armor. For armor selection, I say go with the one that grants maximum energy resists. Melee/kinetic resists aren't that useful and bonuses to your DPS aren't worth the tradeoff in survivability, in my opinion. For the shield, I get the one with the maximum hit points. In higher ranks you'll see more choices in getting shields with lower hit points but higher regen or shields that pulse an AE knockdown when you get hit, but basic shields regen very fast anyway and melee range combat isn't that great anyway so the AE knockdown won't be that useful. Just go for maximum HP.
That will help you survive those exploit shots, too. With up-to-date gear and maybe some resist buffs from your allies it starts becoming entirely possible to survive an exploit attack, especially from a non-Tactical.
Now, go forth and suck no more.
1) USE YOUR MINIMAP.
You have a map. It is mini. It shows you where your teammates are. You should try to find them. Finding your teammates takes priority over finding enemies unless you are winning by a lot. You should pay close attention to this as just because your teammates were following you a couple seconds ago doesn't mean they still are. Many a warrior's last words were, "There they are. Let's get em! ... Guys? .... Guys??"
2) Get a split beam rifle. (and upgrade your outdated ground gear)
(Disclaimer: Weapon balance is changing in Update 1. I will edit this once that is out and I've had a chance to play with it. Split beams will become the #2 damage weapon when hitting a single target instead of being tied for #1 with the sniper rifle.)
What weapon are you using right now? Unless you said, "Split Beam Rifle", throw it into the dumpster. I don't care if it's a purple dual pistol drop that you paid 2 million credits for. It's rubbish. Get a split beam rifle. If you're tactical with a lot of ground combat training (T3+) get two.
The sniper rifle is superior in a 1v1 fight. Are you fighting 1v1? No, because you heeded my advice and met up with your teammates, as did your opponent. So get a split beam as your exploit weapon.
For your second weapon you might want a good expose weapon. I personally suggest a stun pistol (which has good range on the special attack) or a "full auto" weapon. The other pistols don't have enough range to do what you need them to do and the cylinder AE weapons don't hit enough targets (although they do good damage). My advice is to get a good long range cone AE expose weapon to go with your good long range cone exploit weapon. Or, as mentioned, just get two good exploit weapons, especially if you're Tactical or if you have a lot of kit-related expose abilities and therefore don't really need an expose gun.
Don't bother with melee unless you are winning by a lot. It's really not worth taking up one of your weapon positions with a melee weapon on the off chance that you might someday need it. Keep a bat'leth in your inventory and if you come across a team that's really hitting you with Weapons Malfunction nonstop, just swap in the bat'leth next time you die. It's better than nothing but it's still a terrible way to fight.
If you really want to know about melee combat, read this:
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=97085
It's a great guide but bear in mind that melee is something you mainly only do when winning. By a lot. Because it's fun and more sporting.
Note regarding weapon preference:
There are cases where other weapons could be superior to the split beam rifle. In a wide open map with lots of enemies to shoot at, the split beam assault weapon might be superior with its wider angle and greater number of beams. In very close quarters the wide angle expose pistols can be great. Unfortunately, maps like that just don't exist for PvP at the time of this writing. All of the current ground maps have narrow but fairly lengthy corridors with no more than 5 enemy players. It's right in the sweet spot for the Split Beam Rifle.
3) Get the proper kit.
Engineers! Listen up. DO NOT USE DEPLOYABLES IF YOU AREN'T SINKING SKILL POINTS INTO THEM. Medical and shield repair deployables will suck regardless of how you skill them up but the phaser turrets can be pretty dangerous if you've been spending points on them and keeping your kit up to date. If you aren't spending points on ground combat, though, do not bother with deployables. Stuff like weapon malfunction will be a great ability whether you skill up in it or not. Mines are pretty good, as the snare effect is annoying. Engineer shield heals (not the deployable one) can be helpful too. Note that even fully trained up, I don't think deployables are a good choice for engineers right now. Wait for Cryptic to buff the utility deployables (or to release an objective based ground map) and use another kit in the meantime.
Scientists! Actually none of your kits are awful but I suggest you go for the kits that do the most number of AE exposes. Think of an expose attack as an ability that says, "10% chance to allow you one-shot your opponent". Get those. The heals can be helpful too but you're rarely going to have the reaction time to cure an expose so I think the usefulness is fairly limited. If people want heals they can carry hypos.
Tacticals! Most of your kits are good. I'd stay away from Close Combat kits because melee is mostly just silly but cloaking can be a good way of dashing behind an enemy group and getting some great flanking shots. I personally like the Security kits because of the resist buffs for your teammates and the "fake expose" which causes enemies to waste their special attacks (and also further buffs your allies' resists). The Fire Team and Operative and Squad Leader kits are all handy too. Just make sure you keep your buffs up all the time.
4) Medium/Large Hypos. Stock up.
Find the vendor that sells T1 ground equipment for cash. He'll sell small, medium and large hypos. T2 and beyond you'll have plenty of money to blow on these things. Every slot on your character and in your inventory should be filled with these things. They cycle fast, they're big heals, they're cheap, there's no reason not to carry a hundred of them. There are also +damage expendables you can use that are on a separate timer from the hypos. There are also shield heal expendables but I don't find them that useful because shields heal so fast anyway.
You make yourself massively harder to kill by using hypos. (In fact, it's probably impossible to kill a hypo user with melee, short of getting a good expose/exploit combo on them.)
5) Take cover!
Rolling ups your defense. Sprinting ups your defense. Roll and sprint more! If you're taking fire, get behind cover ASAP so your shields have a chance to recharge. Don't just stand there in the open trading shots until someone falls over because the person falling over first is probably going to be you.
6) Deal with melee spam.
If someone gets in your face, either get away from them or spam your rifle melee attack until they get exposed, then disintegrate them. If you don't do it to them, they'll certainly do it to you. (I usually sprint backwards away from these people because I'd rather bet that I can kill them with gunfire than take the 50/50 chance on melee spam to see who can expose who first).
7) Learn what the "expose" symbol looks like.
It's a red rotating circle type thing. If you see it on yourself then you're probably dead. In the unlikely event you can actually move, hide behind cover until it goes away. Don't rely on science officers to cure you because by the time they see it on you and manage to clear it, the enemy has had ample opportunity to just shoot you.
Being exposed by most sources will cause a 10 second hold which means you won't be able to do anything except wait to die. It sucks. I agree. You'll just have to deal with it like everyone else.
8) Target Next Exposed
There is a keybinding for this. By default I believe it's bound to "G". It targets the next exposed person. This is very handy. Although your split beam rifle will tend to guarantee that you can hit exposed people without aiming at them, targeting them first will guarantee the hit.
9) Adjust your controls.
Did you know you can turn off that "zoom" feature when you go into aim mode? Makes ground combat soo much more enjoyable, in my opinion.
I also personally have my ground controls set up so that I never "automatically face off screen targets" (which will get you killed) and so that nothing I do will cause me to select a target unless I actually hit TAB. Normally I just hit "fire" and let it shoot whatever is in front of me. With my awesome split beam it really doesn't matter that much what I'm targeting anyway because I'm going to hit everything in a cone in front of me. Sometimes I will target someone to make sure I can chase them down and finish them off but I rarely find this to be necessary because so many people just stand in the corridor in the open and trade shots until they die.
10) Other gear.
Basically, keep your gear up to date. You want a top notch shield and armor. For armor selection, I say go with the one that grants maximum energy resists. Melee/kinetic resists aren't that useful and bonuses to your DPS aren't worth the tradeoff in survivability, in my opinion. For the shield, I get the one with the maximum hit points. In higher ranks you'll see more choices in getting shields with lower hit points but higher regen or shields that pulse an AE knockdown when you get hit, but basic shields regen very fast anyway and melee range combat isn't that great anyway so the AE knockdown won't be that useful. Just go for maximum HP.
That will help you survive those exploit shots, too. With up-to-date gear and maybe some resist buffs from your allies it starts becoming entirely possible to survive an exploit attack, especially from a non-Tactical.
Now, go forth and suck no more.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Even I was guilty of not knowing the "G" key function. Until I switched out my "Z" to something else.
But now that you've been nice enough to mention it here on the forums I'm sure everyone will return the favor by macroing in a way to hotswap through a dozen rifles just chain firing the secondaries. It'll usher in a new age of sucking for ground pvp.
Thanks for that, really.
The developer starts off by saying you're "not supposed" to be able to switch weapons like that but later, after the problem has been spelled out, goes on to say:
So the developers are still not sure it's an issue.
In the meantime, rest assured that people like Roy will be using it against you. For this guide to be complete, it has to cover all the ways to be a top performer, even the ones I think are stupid and need to be changed. Cryptic isn't calling it an exploit, so prepare to use it or prepare to have it used against you.
I feel MUCH better now, thanks Cryptic!
Seriously will someone who lives near these guys go over there and explain what an 'MMO' means? Or 'PvP'. Or 'finished product'. Or hell, about a billion other things, you'd better just bring a dictionary and a few changes of clothes, you might be awhile.
Stasis Field is incredibly powerful since it is one of the only abilities that can completely remove a target from the fight for a good ten seconds. How can you say no?
I didn't realize this, but I somewhat suspected it could happen. I really hope they "fix" this, otherwise the whole concept of cooldowns on the special abilities is pointless.
we should keep this thread to advice and tips for ground pvp not a discussion on what dev's think about this or that.
To be honest, I'd rather they add hold/root protection after each hold/root (with parity to the hold that expired) more than this. Yes, it can be frustrating to constantly be hit with specials, but at least they have to wait until the .5 - 1 second "reset" (the delay before the cooldown actually starts) of the activated special before they can swap weapons. Chain holds in ground combat are incredibly frustrating, and currently completely unavoidable, while gun fire is not if you stay mobile.
So you can get chain-held so long as the new hold comes in before the old hold ends.
It can be very annoying.
I think the hold protection should also be a factor of how long the hold was. Say, make the resistance timer be 4x the hold timer. e.g., 2 second hold -> 8 second resistance. 5 second hold -> 20 second resistance.
In addition, that 10-second hold that comes as part of being Exposed has GOT to be removed from the game. It's just ridiculous.
I could very well be mistaken, but this has not been my experience. I have been held, survived the initial onslaught, broken free, run for a second or so, and then get held again.
Edit: I'd like to see something like the mez resistance from CO here, honestly. All mez powers give a similar resistance after they expire, which often cancels "stacked" mezes. This would be, in my oppinion, a VERY welcome edition to ground combat (although I can already hear some Science Officers frothing
Agreed, although the circumstances that this occurs seems a bit sporadic. There have been times that I've been held from and expose attack on a weapon, and other times that I have not -- it seems a bit hit and miss (I suspect it has something to do with weapon exposes that also have secondary affects [ie. knockback, stun, etc.]).
Perfect.
My own personal thoughts on the secondary cooldown workaround aside, well done, Slamz! This guide needs a sticky!
*goes off to buy an arsenal of split beam rifles and hypos*
Basically you can carry several weapons in your inventory, and when you use the secondaries on the two you have equipped, you can equip the ones in your inventory WHILE IN COMBAT and use the secondaries on those as well. I tried it out, just to see how useful it was, and it wasn't very easy to do while on the move. Now, maybe there's a way to equip inventory items with hot keys, but I really have no idea how you'd do that, so I was using the mouse to double-click equip them. It was too much hassle.
We've been noticing lately that engineers who actually have lots of points trained into deployables can do some good damage with the phaser turrets, though it seems like medical and shield repair deployables are still useless regardless of how you spec. (When they buffed everyone's hit points in beta, they didn't buff engineer deployables to keep pace.)
I'm still pretty dubious about the effectiveness of phaser turrets, though, just because they don't move, so it's not exactly difficult to avoid them. Maybe if we had some actual objective maps...
Meh. Turrets can do ok damage if they're thrown down in the middle of a skirmish. The problem, as you note, is that they don't follow the skirmish, so as soon as one side retreats, they become less effective. The real bonus to using deployable stuff is the targeting spam, which can delay those who tab-target quite a bit. Back when I used the bunker fabrication stuff (I unfortunately still have a significant amount of skill points allocated in those skills), the turret was always my "go to" skill, with the others used as afterthoughts (with the exception of forcefield dome, which I used to block areas to delay or route enemies -- I'm glad to see more and more people using it in this manner). I've fiddled with the Fabrication Specialist kit a bit, as well, but the mortar seems to be sub-par to the turret, with its only advantage being the indirect fire (it seems to be able to target even from behind cover -- even though it has a small knockback and AoE effect, the damage is negligible and you can easily see where they are firing and move out of the way). I WILL say that a group of 5 engineers skilled in turrets, and deploying a line of them can be quite devastating; they appear to hit harder than the average normal attack, and can eat through shields in a single volley if they all focus on the same target.
With a G15 type device, almost certainly. Hmmm.
I have noticed that drones can hurt a lot. It isn't fun to have three drones chasing you down and nearly killing you...
I'll update the guide for this when it goes live. I'm hoping to test it on Tribble if there's ever a time when enough people are playing on there...
Test notes also indicate a number of changes in weapon DPS (split beam nerfed, which it needed, other AOE weapons buffed, which they also needed). Once I get a chance to look at them and play with them some more I'll update weapon selection too.
Split Beam rifle is still the #2 straight damage weapon (meaning it does the 2nd highest damage and it hits 4 targets) but it has fallen behind the sniper rifle by a meaningful amount for single target damage.
I would suggest that when the 45 day patch goes live, you'll see the following best choices for your PvP exploit weapon:
* Sniper rifles for trying to focus down one target
* Split beam for spreading the love around even though it now does less single target damage.
* Compression bolt pistol --
The compression bolt pistol isn't that far behind the Split Beam now in terms of single target damage and it has a 6 second recycle time, which makes it interesting.
Since all weapons will share a timer on their exploit attack, arming yourself with a split beam or sniper rifle can mean you'll miss a chance to exploit someone, since you'll only have the one exploit gun available to you. Using a Compression Bolt Pistol means you'll be far more likely to actually hit someone with an exploit when you need to.
The split beam assault weapon still has the same tradeoffs versus the split beam rifle -- less damage, wider angle, hits one more target. Might still not be a bad choice due to the wider angle but you're really paying a toll in single target damage for this.
I didn't look too hard at the expose weapon stats.
I still can't figure out what the Dual Pistols has over the Wide Beam though. They do the same DPS, have the same angle, have the same cooldown, the pistols hit 1 more target and the wide beam hits way harder in a single shot while the dualies hit softly for several shots. The only real advantage to the dualies over the wide beam seems to be that it looks cooler... (IMO, dualies should cycle faster while wide beam hits more targets, just to differentiate them more)
Thinking of making a pure PvP character for ground. I doubt my main would be any good on the ground due to most skill points in the space trees.
Hmm...I guess I will just have to pop an energy cell before using the split beam now if it turns out to not be enough to reliable kill an exposed target. I have been considering this anyway, so I might give it a try here soon in order to get in the mode.
How is this good again? The way it is, without the inventory exploit, is fine.
-ken
I think it would be an improvement. In my opinion, it's overpowered for me to be able to carry two sniper rifles or two split beam rifles and hit someone with the special attack back to back. When I'm on my Tactical with full ground combat training, that alone will slap a great deal of health off of someone even without an expose. My Tactical gets probably 9 out of every 10 kills without an expose just from swapping between two dual beams.
I also think that sharing cooldowns would help diversify weapon selection.
But if I read correctly, what's coming to live with the Big Patch is a shared 3-second cooldown. Meaning you can still do back to back shots but you have to wait 3 seconds between.
Which is fine, I guess. It'll give people a chance to duck. But I'll still carry 2x exploit weapons on my Tactical and just switch between them for pure DPS. (I might go sniper rifle after the patch, though. I didn't play with it much on Test but I did see that split beam took a sizable damage hit.)