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BFAW is 100% accurate... WHY?
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I've noticed, while playing my beam BoP, that EVERY SINGLE BEAM FROM FAW HITS EVERY TIME.
while in pvp, or pve, BFAW does not take into account the target's defense value. The result? Faw does ridiculous amounts of damage because it both boosts the damage from individual beams, and makes more hit.
take an escort, normal defense value 90* (I have a fed escort, and that's my standard defense value)
*due to game mechanics, the actual value cannot go above 75, but the excess prevents [acc] and accurate traits from having an effect.
normally, 1/4 shots hit it, say 1000 damage each. from an 8-beam broadside, thats 2k. survivable.
with BFAW, 25% increase to damage + 100% hit rate = 8 x 1250 = 10,000. Big difference?
thats BFAW 1, increasing damage by 400% (for 500% of original). WTF?
and don't get started about BFAW 2 and 3....
EDIT: And I haven't even factored in the INCREASE IN THE AMOUNT OF SHOTS! you are probably getting more than 500% damage!
while in pvp, or pve, BFAW does not take into account the target's defense value. The result? Faw does ridiculous amounts of damage because it both boosts the damage from individual beams, and makes more hit.
take an escort, normal defense value 90* (I have a fed escort, and that's my standard defense value)
*due to game mechanics, the actual value cannot go above 75, but the excess prevents [acc] and accurate traits from having an effect.
normally, 1/4 shots hit it, say 1000 damage each. from an 8-beam broadside, thats 2k. survivable.
with BFAW, 25% increase to damage + 100% hit rate = 8 x 1250 = 10,000. Big difference?
thats BFAW 1, increasing damage by 400% (for 500% of original). WTF?
and don't get started about BFAW 2 and 3....
EDIT: And I haven't even factored in the INCREASE IN THE AMOUNT OF SHOTS! you are probably getting more than 500% damage!
Post edited by Unknown User on
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And I thought STO was supposed to be pvp-oriented... well, at least HALF of it...
for the increase in number of beams fired....
take 8-beam broadside. each beam fires 4 times, doing 1k each time. 32k total, but only 8k hits target.
add FAW
8-beams + 5 shots each + 1250 per shot = 50000 damage!
now, I can't figure out the power drain effect, and this assumes all 8 beams have you in their firing arc, and all 8 target you
this also does not take into account shield resistance.
if a cruiser can put out 50k damage in one broadside, an escort should be able to put out... 300k in a firing run? Let me see that, and faw boats wouldn't be the weapon of choice anymore!
Tried to do a png of what i parsed showing bfaw 3 from a Althena mission
It might also explain the "death by decloak" issue for Bird of Preys. They will usually also have a 80-90 % defense bonus and if that is totally ignored, they are bound to get hit more often, and take nastier critical hits. All while being unshielded.
While FAW apparently has 100% accuracy (and no crits according to the combat log parser), beam arrays without FAW seem to be in the 97%-100% range iirc.
My experience as well.. When fighting a ship that uses FAW in a 1v1, I only take damage slightly faster than usual.. Its only when facing 3-4-5 of them that I melt even before Im fully decloaked.
FAW might have some sort of hidden accuracy bonus.. Perhaps because it was hard to use prior to the first "fix" on it..
Edit:
Dassem posted some parser data, that is interesting:
Interesting that you see a damage bonus of 160% when shooting at just 1 more target.
No wonder multiple ships running FAW rips through everything.. 5 guys shooting FAW have damage matching 12-13+ people.
I lol'ed. Does this mean FAW is broken?:p
I think he meant "used to be"
The original FAW, while having bogus bonuses, was everything but "easy" to use when used as a single target DPS.. Particulary on cruisers sporting arrays, but DBB escorts wasnt a walk in the park either.
My mistake, I though SteveHale was speaking of the current FAW when he said , " so complicated to use."
I am well aware of how difficult it was to Single-shot it against opponents in pvp, having died to it in the past many times.
At least the new FAW keeps that symmetry going, as I have died to it as well, even though it has changed.
I'm still of the mind that the new FAW needs to be countered not by changing it ( ok maybe reduce the 100% strikes) but by boosting other skills to help defend against it possibly.
/signed make SS a map wide skill.
While you are it make AF more efficient against beams only because for those of you that think it is a good counter against BFaW last night I was hit with AF3 6 times in a CnH and the DoT was ridiculously low I mean I was at 85% hull by the time I destroyed the ship that applied it. I am an escort running cannons. It does more damage to an escort because they fire more often.
Then you need to improve cannons as well.. Currently arrays outperform the choice DPS weapons (DC and DHC) by quite a margin, when we're talking groupfights.
In short term testing, the findings of the OP did stand up. However, on long term testing, FaW will miss, not much but will miss. I then tested just beams (no FaW and no BO), short and long term again on NPCs and v other players and got the same results. It seems beams, themselves, have an inherent accuracy built in and that's where these test results are coming from.
There were several on from the 12th tac division and we all started a discussion on FaW, again in TS. This culminated in a private match of 3 v 3. 1 sci ship/ 2 escorts v 2 beam boats (1 set up for primary healing and my boat set up for DPS) and 1 escort. The match ended in a 15 to 9, they won. The high DPS on 1 of the escorts, in the other team, was over 700K while the sci ship healed for 1.2 mil. Our healing "beam-boat" did 1.3 mil healing and my crusier went up to 640K healing and they still won. DPS seemed to be the factor, however the fights seemed to last longer which was a lot more fun than just 1-shot kills anyway and tended to leave room for more group tactics.
It seems that escorts with a sci in the group, in the 12th anyway, have figured out how to overcome FaW to no end. They targeted me, when ever I was close since I was the "big DPS FaW boat", putting me more on defense and droped my DPS numbers from my usual 450-500K down to 380K. Most of them had scramble and saved it for when the beam boats used FaW and we tended to kill off ourselves with really no way to stop hitting members of our own team. I have to admit that these tactics and counters was/is very effective against FaW and beam boats in general. I didn't have sci team on my list of powers last night, in favor of another tanking skill, but after that, I have it now. That might let me kill off 1 scramble, but with multi ships having it, it would only be a short stop-gap measure, but 1 I felt was necessary and worth giving up some tank to get.
While your testing seems sound it does little to to dispel the myth FaW is fine because of the scale of it. A total of 32 total beams spread across 3 targets is lets say 11 strikes on targets which is not too much more than a regular Beamboat. BFaW gets progressively OP'd the more ships have it equipped. I was in a CnH last night where there was a 10 man fed ball with 7 ships spamming fire at will everything with in 10 KM was getting smoked. A 3 v 2 is inaccurate and I hope you understand how the skill scales to OP'dness
While SS is great to counter now it just makes another broken skill a legitmate skill. Now I am seeing matches where when I am not be FaWked up I am scrambled more than an egg and would need more copies of ST then I could reasonably use.
Beams as a whole or Beams coupled with FAW?
If beams as a whole then thats news to me as last I checked this was not the case, DHC's still did more up front damage while beams are better overtime, considering a vessel is defended well enough to live for an extended period of time.
If Beams coupled with FAW then raising cannons up in performance would only insight riot among the strictly beams users whom will want beams buffed leading to FAW being even more effective.
Before raising cannon damage to match what beams may be doing, I would look at increasing the firing rates first for all cannon types. Possibly the cannons can be better if they are just able to fire faster.
Ok that saddens me to hear. I had more hope for AF against the BFAWboats.
As too SS being even larger in AoE, those last night in CnH would've been most upset by that.:p
While I had typed 3 v 2, or made it sound like that, that was actualy a mis-type. I just can't quite gets the audacity to ask the sec to ck my forums posts, yet. lol The match was 3 v 3. Again, 2 esorts - 1 sci v 2 beam boats - 1 escort. The escort on the team I was in, it seemed, I was killing the most due to SS. So bad, that I finaly asked him on TS to get out of my range.
My point being, there are active counters/tactics that can be used against a 5 or even 10 man "fed ball" FaW beam-boat team. I would imagine that the LOLzed would be just as pleasing watching them all kill off each other as a 1 shot kill would be.
In the 12th private last night, FaW was effectivly neutralized. It's certainly not unsurpassable. And to be perfectly honest, ANY pre-made using the same exact power would seem OP. I've been on the other side of that equation with 5-? man SV teams and it wasn't pretty.
Yeah Aceton field was always more of an anti-cannon weapon because it applies a DoT based on rate of fire. The 50% reduction of damage is meh because I think the math is off, when I was unbuffed the numbers were about 50% but when I buffed up it was only like 25%. Not to mention it is easily cleared with HE which almost every cruiser is running. to top it of AF3 is a skill that can only be gotten through a BOff.
There are very few skills an escort can use to combat BFaW even SS1 doesn't even do a good job of confusing a BFaW monkey boat. I do not recommend jam sensors unless you really hate your team mates.
The only ones I have seen to be effective is SNB, SS3, and PSW. 2 of 3 being only effective at high level. Dampening field is a joke against that much fire. So I guess we will be seeing a ALL BFaW teams and ALL SS teams in PvP now.
The funny little tidbit is the KDF side doesn't seem to have the prominence of BFaW teams, I am sure there are some but the majority are on the fed side, just saying.
I was, in fact, referring to the incredible skill set the user of our current BFAW demands. I mean, we aren't talking your average chimps here. We are talking about NASA chimps.
Anything else?
Maybe BFaW should also SUMMON 5 NPC Dreadnoughts, you know, to counter SPAM a bit more...
Okay, did some extensive testing on this in the past few days (ironically enough, we were actually testing other things, but the parser data came in quite handy, when looking for evidence of this)... The results were pretty startling...
1st Scenario: 2 v 2
Team A: 1 Tactical - Excelsior (TT1, FAW2, FAW3); 1 Science - Prometheus (Cannons/DBB/Torp, no FAW)
Team B: 1 Engineer - Star Cruiser (Healer); 1 Science - Prometheus (Cannons/DBB/Torp, no FAW)
2nd Scenario: 2 v 2
Team A: 1 Engineer - Excelsior (TT1, FAW2, FAW3); 1 Tactical - Fleet Escort (Cannons/DBB, no FAW)
Team B: 1 Engineer - Star Cruiser (Healer); 1 Science - Prometheus (Cannons/DBB/Torp, no FAW)
Both Excelsiors were running same Engineering power setups: (DEM3, EPS3, ASIF1 (Tac) ET2 (Eng), EPW1; RSP1, EPW1; EPS1)
Both Excelsiors were running 2 x DBB's and 6 x BA's (Phaser)
Testing was done in both Live Fire (both sides fighting to the fullest) and Data Generation (Excelsior attacking, teammate passive, watching Buff durations and benchmarking; opponents running full defensive suites, but not attacking)
Series of 5-minute tests, 10 rounds per setup.
Interesting Results (extrapolations, won't bore you with the 'extensive' raw numbers):
Conclusions:
If there are any questions, I will do my best to answer them.
-Big Red
I know its deffinately opened up my ability to multitask while I power level an alt to LG. I can play STO, do my bills, answer emails, finally type that simian rendition of "Much Ado about Nothing" and complete several other small tasks all at the comfort of my desk.
And I'm just running a single copy of BFAW2 combo'ed with BOL1 on a carrier.
I won't say its OP, but it does make gaming life simplier.
Thrown under the bus how? I don't ask out of sarcasm but out of curiuosity on something I may not see clearly. Rebuffing the Vov carrier to its "buffed" glory was another idea that I've heard of that may counter the FAW cruiser teams.
I was hoping that the higher rate of fire demostrated by BFAW would've made AF more effective against it.
AF3 is BOff only, that explains why those BOff sold so quickly. AF3 is the power most often seen on my engie BOffs I get as rewards.
I agree it is most often seen on the feds, mainly due to them being heavy in cruiser/beam use I would think., the ease at which a cruiser team can effectively use FAW and cross heal and its really good effects in PvE. As the KDF is more cannons with vessel designs that allow thier use, it is seen less.
That is a lot more testing than i can get done, glad to see more data on it. I am curious that the parsing i do in game always shows me that FAW doesn't miss, is that a limit on my parser or is there something more i haven't reproduced or induced?
I imagined that the Engy would have better dps stats over the course of the fight and the TAC would have better spike DPS due to skills. Does GDF, Tac Init and AP-A 3 spike and give a run for the Engy's money using EPS, Nadion and the same tac-engy abilities?
The composition of teams....team 1 has a sci-scort (?) and then scenarios 2 team 1 gets a TAC fleet escort. Did this change damage #'s since SNB and FOMM/AP-A 3 with the escort alphas?
On another note....Roach. His tag isn't blue, Avatar is gone and banned. Is this inferring he is leaving for a bit?