After doing some Elite STF's last night I am just reminded of how weak beam arrays are in comparison to DHC's. In the last few patches the Borg spheres got harder with mobs and there HP rating was raised. Thats fine and dandy, but if you raise the hp of NPC's to make more of a challenge for cannon using ships, then doesn't that make it harder for beam firing ships to keep up? I was part of a put together team, that had mostly cruisers and one brand new carrier. I took us forever to beat "Infected" space last night. Beams take too long to do any damage to the hulls of the sphere mobs while trying survive. They are killing you faster than you can kill one of them. Beams DPS rating need to be raised to at least the cannons' level. Its like Elite PVE and PVP is only made for cannon firing ships to enjoy.

Firepower is the key to balancing the game for all types of players can enjoy, and not just certain types.

Beams have suffered becuase the NPCs HP and other stats where raised becuse even beam boats at the time found the Borg too easy to kill.

Follow that change with the changes made to Bfaw and beams in general from the Accuracy miss changes, and thats why beams now fall short in DPS unless you buff them with overclocked weapons power, nadion inversion, EPS transfer, DEM, BO or any of the Tac Captain powers.

Beam arrays at mk12 white have a damage profile of 220 DPV / 176 DPS with a 250 firing arc.
Single cannons at mk12 white have a damage profile of 159 DPV / 212 DPS with a 180 firing arc.

Boosting the DPS of BA to near cannon quality means you would have to lose something in the trade like firing arc or DPV.
Or boost single cannons up to a higher firing arc and buff DPV?

I agree that beams are weak damage-wise, but they kind of compensate in other areas. I mean after all, they have the most stable damage/distance ratios (lose out on not a whole lot of firepower in comparison to other weapons, namely cannons), and they have the largest firing arcs (270 degrees. I can't see any complaints that are valid to that). Imagine buffing the damage on that? That would make beam arrays stupidly overpowered. They are supposed to be sustained pressure damage, not "Let's be like Kirk and blow it away in one salvo" damage.

Now to your post. "Beams DPS rating need to be raised to at least the cannons' level." No. Just... no. I mean seriously think about that one. You have a weapon with a 270 degree firing arc. That means with a cruiser you can have 8 of them hitting a target simultaneously. That would be a little too powerful. And if you read a bunch of other posts I have put up in a lot of cruiser threads, you will see that beams can be used to deal a ton of damage. I run 6 beams and 2 torps, and I can usually keep my average damage per hit at around 8-900. If I then blow certain cds, I can raise it to over 1k pretty easily, and peak at around 1200. Which is more than enough sustained damage to demolish ANY borg ship.

Another quote that I found a little confusing "They are killing you faster than you can kill one of them." If you're in a cruiser and dying to spheres, that's not the game, that's you doing something wrong. Majorly wrong. You said you had a 4 cruiser 1 carrier team. That's a ton of tankiness. I mean, the carrier alone could probably endlessly dance with 2 spheres and never have to worry. You have enough cross-healing ability (I assume you cross-healed since it was a premade team) that it's probable that not even the gate should have been able to kill any of you. And even if you don't cross heal, most tier 5 and up cruisers have enough self-sustain that they can easily take on a sphere or three without ever losing their shields (or if they do then without dying).

You were correct on one thing though, the ESTFs and other PvE content are a little too damage based. Massive dps spurts are really the only thing that seem to matter, sustained DPS isn't a requisite anymore, just spike damage on stationary... unshielded... stupidly high hp targets. So again, you're right, an adjustment needs to be made there, but not really by buffing the damage on beams.

An alternative to buffing beam damage would instead be to reduce power usage of those beams so you can use them without having to constantly buffer your power. That I would stand behind.

I'd love to give it a go, I love a good challenge (they make life more fun), it will involve me putting my tac back in their escort mind... but that's not a problem, as for the STFs, it would be a pleasure

I still want to watch this. And kill the survi... err I mean give you guys a good outside PoV on the fight =D

Perfect.
Feel free to throw a friend-invite my way so we can fix the date and details.
@-name = forum-name

I can live with that 180 fire arc as l long as I get the damage. Or they can replace single cannons with beams ,since they are not used that much. DHC's are more commonly used to deal damage. If you get rid of single cannons and put beams at the DPS rate of single cannons that would help even the gap between DHC's and beams.

If you were in a 5 man team, 2 dropped out and it takes an hour or more to beat Elite Infected with beams, when the last time you played with just 3 in a team while using cannons it took 30 mins or less to beat the same scenerio, wouldn't you notice the difference? The difference is too great to make an excuse for it. On top of that, beams comming from a Galaxy-R is that much more weaker than other cruisers. It's like the Galaxy-R is a tier 5 ship with tier 4 power.

I'd be with upping the single damage potential. They don't really hold much of much of a candle to most of the weapons (shy turrets and mines) except for critting because of the damage resistance being applied to every shot fired, they end up less damaging than ba's.

You will just have to wait to see if they do something about this don't you think or am i wrong here? Coz i do not at "ALL"

In all fairness I did take my engi out in their Excelsior on Tribble and did the first part of a borg encounter solo (defeat 4 groups) and if the bloody command ship didn't spawn stuff and put out grav well 3s I might have beaten that too