i am finding all my builds moving away from any kind constantly high "grind you down" energy weapons damage to a more subtle "damage spike here on this shield facing" mentality.

is this something you guys have seen as we roll with the pvp punches? maybe its just since the "damage from nowhere damage from everywhere" faw balls kinda slowed down that ive noticed this.

but in every ship, escort, sci, and cruiser i play way more defensive than ever before, spiking damage in a timely manner on an appropriate target. i do less damage, more kills, more healing, less deaths

my question then i guess is, how important is that constant dps out there? vs an escort that can decloak, strip a shield facing and plant 4 quants on your hull... or a sci ship that runs full shields and aux creeping in slow to trac beam you, tachbeam3, cpb3...and land 3 torps on your hull....both seem to happen very fast.

im rambling, but does anyone know what i mean here?

Constant DPS: Pressure. It forces your enemies to use heals to not get whittled down. But he can use heals and will survive (at least once we are at Tier 3 or so).
Burst: Burst is what you use to break through all the healing. You have an easier time bursting if someone put out pressure, so you can wait for the heals and resistance buffs to be on cooldown - but if you can burst enough, it might not be necessary. (But I don't think that's really realistic in Tier 5 PvP.)

It clear, the game is completely focused on DPS, it is totally unnecessary to make a full tank build. For the simple reason that you do not tanking enough.

If you want do pvp you just have to be in escort + Alien race for the +10% bonus defence = extra dps and best tanking = 90% bonus defence : O.M.G

Lol. Yeah those bonus alien traits. If I only knew that when I started. But I do understand the value and necessity for both, just wondering peoples thoughts on team makeups.

Constant DPS can still be viable, altho, like has already been stated, it is more pressure (for your group) than seeing things go boom via an alpha strike/ massive face-roll.

Tanking builds, at least the builds I've been able to get so far, have topped out at about 3 ships on focus fire. 5 ships all targeting the same will get just about anyone. I can tank just about 3 while still pumping out some decent DPS in an excel. There are some ships that can tank a little better, but for my playstyle, tanking with some amount of DPS, the excel seems to be the best I've found as yet.

Sustained DPS is the name of the game for DPS cruiser, but the most effective escorts/raptors/etc are able to maintain solid DPS between their alpha strikes.

Both.

Keep DPS high between alphas, and when it's time to layon the hurt out the torps rush.

Defenses are very important in pvp, which is why it's so important for Escorts to have external heals flying their way. (To a lesser extent sci's too) However, the ability to keep the pressure on, and deliver well timed bursts is equally important.

Its a combination of Energy Weapons (Combination), Power level, Timing and Abilities really. Thats all

You can have both indeed. You can decide when to burst, and when to sustain.


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Exactly that.

In general, escorts are most useful for burst damage. Sustained dps is more suited to cruisers because they don't have to run, and all too often your lawltank pug team needs that extra burst spike to finish off a target before it gets healed back to full.

On the recieving end, historically ive been better at managing burst DPS than sustained DPS. Of course everything is situational