49 - 50 far too big a gap.
 

Greetings all.

49 is relatively easy gameplay in all kinds of missions or PVE engagements

The jump to 50 is too big, this needs to be about 10 levels of content if not more as it is now. Because it is about that big a difference. PVP I expect to die quick till I level up a bit, but as the tank in PVE I expect not to die in 5 seconds or so, whereas pre 50 I was doing expectionally well as a tank.

Are you talking about regular episodic missions or Elite STFs? or something in between that gives you trouble?

What gear are you using?

I've progressed through the levels using the regular gear.

So I've done the episodes with ease.
I've done the PVE fleet actions with ease

Now at 50 I am fodder on the fleet actions, I crumble and the team then has to deal with having no tank, as I cannot tank :). My skills are nearly all tank and my bridge officers are tank orientated, I even twinked the alien race to help - hence I had no problem 1 - 49. At 50 I am one or two shotted on a regular basis.

Personally I wouldn't care but it's a team based game in PVE and PVP too but this is more about PVE, I cannot help the team if I die in 2 shots :). We've just had to abandon too many matches heh.

I think I'm just going to make you angry.

You don't need to try and tank everything. It just doesn't need to be done. If it did, there'd be a subforum for it. And then there'd be one for healers. I'm not going to drag you through all the fleet events, but in some of them you can't tank. You can't because the npc's don't HAVE an aggro table for you to even get on. No aggro, no can tank. There are a handful of events where you can effectively tank. By handful, I mean one. The rescue in the Azure Nebulae. You can 100% tank a group of npcs while someone else disables the tractors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erPP8gt4X7M

Theres a ship with all common gear except the for engines, deflectors, and shields. Those were bought cheaply on the exchange. It's all in the video. There's other videos up there of ships in common quality gear in pve and pvp. Check em out if you like.

So come up with a little more info on what you are trying to do. Are you playing with some friends? Is this just for you to join the random que for pve? What ship do you have? Etc.

Put that stuff up and about a billion piranahs will descend on this thread.

Good times to be had!

Cheers and we all await your reply!

1, If I am not tanking (holding aggro) the escorts die really fast? We lose. Pre 50 I was tanking fire while most ships killed things, this can happen now but is rare that I can hold out long enough.

2, Or the escorts kill things quick enough and I am not needed. This usually means I am with people who are over geared for the STF.

These are the two outcomes I have seen. Thanks for your build I have one of those ships now bought off the z-store with slightly better gear, though I can't see the pictures well enough to tell for certain. I did pick up a few ideas from your duty officers, and can see where I can make improvements :). Most of my abilities are emergancy power to shields, or hull heals, like I say I went full tank as far as was possible and walked teams through 1 - 49.

In conclusion - So what you are telling me is engineers are not really needed and it is a class that in large part is pointless? Not useless, but pointless when compared to either of the other classes in PVE.

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edit

I don't expect in two weeks any of this will be relevant as I will be geared up. Yet right now, as was indicated above, the gap is too big between 49 - 50 stf.

No, it's not. Not in the least. I was running through ESTFs with mk X green gear and doing fine in a cruiser. It was an AC mind you, and I had specced it's abilities towards dealing damage, so I wasn't as tanky as I could be, but this class is far from pointless, and I personally think your thoughts in 49-50 being too hard is largely due to inexperience.

But you will find that many players who level a toon from 1-50 will stumble their first time through, but after a while will get used to it. Then when they do another toon, it's piss easy. If you are well geared (mk X or mk XI green, heck even white works fine), and know what to do, you can basically run ANY ESTF, fleet event, ANY end game content and do fine. You won't excel of course until you get geared up, but you should be fine.

Look at it this way: most mk XI equipment is only 10-15% weaker than mk XI equipment of the same quality. I personally still run mostly mk XI blue because it's cheap, easy to get, and only 10% less effective than it's mk XII counterpart. And I do fine in most STFs, and if I don't do fine, it's because I screwed up, not my ship.

Remember, gear is only 25% of a ship's performance. 50% is the player. 20% is the ship itself and it's BOff setup/DOff setup, and 5% is dumb luck (I blame your invisible pakled BOff).

I know for a fact I can run through an ESTF in mk IX WHITE gear and survive and not drag the team down. I did it a lot until I got what I needed to up my gear. So sorry to say, the gap is not as large as you would want us to believe.

You are an experienced player, so you are already levels above me :).

You know the gear, know the loadouts, know the stf's.

A fresh level 50 player doesn't know any of these things

There is a gap and you are glossing right over it in your post. Given how easy it was to get to 49. You may be saying I am a bad player, you may be right. I placed usually top or 2nd from top in the stf's pre 50 so most players levelling with me are probably under your definition in this case.

As far as engineers go, the last poster before you said tanks were not often needed, so are you saying different? Else what have you done to counter the remark except say how good you personally are?

Tanks aren't needed. So if you insist upon flying a tank class ship, you just spec it towards damage until you get what you need. It's not hard to switch most cruisers from tank to damage dealer. But it's just far easier to use a damage dealing ship (like escorts). The sad part is that end-game content as PvE goes is almost exclusively DPS based. So you just make do with what you got.

A fresh level 50 player who was smart would have gone on the forums and looked at what works and what doesn't. They also would ask questions in game of those who aren't so fresh level 50s. A fresh smart level 50 player would take advantage of the huge resources available to them.

After all, they gorn and went through all that effort, why would they klingon to their old ways when there are those who can give them builds that make their enemies gorn?

Thank you for the advice and compliment as that is exactly what I am doing :).

Though I would say at 50 is 50 levels too much engineer.

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The main improvement over yesterdays play is I now run away a bit more, and time my abilities to do that :)

It's their responsibility to learn. If you jumped right into elites, then you skipped a step, you should be doing normal STFs. If your doing normal STFs and struggling, it's really just an issue with you needing to accept you are bad at the game and that you need to figure out what your doing wrong. That means looking at builds, key binds, game mechanics, etc. there are plenty of sticky guides in the forum that will help you with that.