The problem with dropping shields to forfeit a match is - everyone could do this for any reason. There aren't any objective criteria to base it on. If things don't get my way, I just throw myself on the ground and hammer my fists on the ground until I get what I want?

It is dangerous. Just as dangerous unfortunately as using the power, "I am just an ****** because the Devs made this mistake" is bad too. Unforuntately, "Let's not use this power and then no one will complain and it will forever be ununusable by any decent human being" is not good, either.

Maybe the best thing is to do to really act according to own ideals of behavior. I find using broken abilities wrong. And I will not use them. I trust that there will be enough other people not up to my standards of behavior that the ability will be abused enough to bother people.

In the end- being beaten 15-0 by TSI or QEW means little, that would probably have happened with or without the broken ability. So does it really achieve anything? Or will people just assume: "TSI is always using the latest broken stuff, don't bother?"

There are no ideal solutions. The only thing that could help would be a consistent dialog with the Devs, consistent evaluation of server statistics on build choices and results before and after patches.

FAW has already driven away a large number of pvp'ers, with its huge increase in numbers of people using it, it will just get worse as the only people leaving are the none FAW users.

It'll only be FAW v FAW pretty soon.

RIP STO PvP, it was fun while it lasted.

You have to go to LA, on the corner of Cryptic Studios there is a green mailbox...

I have no idea where to vote, so I vote everywhere!

I was thrilled to see JHenig's response in Mustrum's other thread about forming a consensus. Personally, I'd like to see BFAW turned into the MODERATE damage target clearing ability that it had been. Beams have enough skills that add their own flavor to the game without needing one that does high damage and high speed. I am worried though, that whatever we do manage to get fixed is going to need yet another adjustment whenever Cryptic can get around to fixing spam.

For example, how would a new(er) FAW work if down the road object spam (heavy torps, small mines, etc) was given a standard defense rating so that they would still take only one hit to kill but shot could actually miss? Is the current BFAW mechanic ok if a) the secondary pulses did significantly less damage, and b) those secondary pulses had a chance to miss (like everything)?

This is not the time to start first-guessing ourselves!

Old FAW was proven not OP, I think reverting to it can be done safely. Also, tieing the original damage to the primary target does not raise any problems that I can see...

Maybe it's selfish of me to say since I don't use BFAW, but I'm all for reverting it back to the last bit. I'm just trying to be thorough, lol.

If it gets reverted, it ought at least to have a damage bonus against mines and pets.

Damage bonus against mines? Huh? I think 1 point of damage is enough to destroy a mine...

How it works now is perfectly fine, minus the damage bonus.

It is by far the best spam clearing ability, and the fire rate is quite in line with what we saw the Enterprise do in several TNG episodes. The only thing that can't be justified is the damage boost to every beam it fires. It's wrong when I can do more damage in a short amount of time with my escort's 3 aft beam arrays using FAW than I can with my 2 heavy cannons and dual beam forward.

It would be fine if every shot did standard beam damage, so long as the power drain stays the same. But this line of thinking also goes into setting a true hard cap on weapon power...it's absurd that a cruiser can get away with running 140 power to weapons without suffering a severe deficiency in shield/engine power.

Yeah...but imagine what we can do, if we can do 2 points of damage to a mine :p