it looks like people are coming around to how antiquated fed cruisers are finally. even if they can produce ok dps, dps at that level and pace is irreverent. only 4 DHC bug DPS can shoot through your entire shield hitpoints faster then you can easily reinforce them. with ever boost to healing spike and timing become more important, as well as debuffs and sci captions. theres no longer a point to firing beam arrays nearly at all. even in my not much of a healer fed tac cruiser builds, i almost cant even drive escorts away, let alone kill them in an isolated fight.

since the ambassador came out, ive really been attempting to put something together with them that has some kind of use at all, its not happening. but then i can jump on my kdf cruiser and practically be another escort, wile having twice the durability. theres no reason why kdf cruisers should be nearly as good of healing platforms, and have 10x as much tactical potential.

and theres only 1 reason why that is, DHC useability. DHCs with CRF can single out a shield facing for damage, and deal damage through it faster then shields can automatically distribute. thats why TT is critical, or there would be no stopping DHC firepower. with every other weapon, you have to shoot entirely through someones shields befor you even start to do hull damage, that requires time, and on a team with cross healing, you will never get someone to that point with non DHC weapons.


as for FAW, fixed it will just make target able objects as nonviable as they used to be. FAW3 currently does only about 3/4 the damage per shot an unbuffed shot will. so even if its accurate, and theres only 1 target to hit, your lowering your dps by using it. idk wtf happened there, but thats crazy. of course wile its on it doesn't list DPS too.

when FAW was at its worse, it was like fireing 3 shots every shot as long as there was 3 targets, 5 times a cycle. and it was proboly 100% accurate too. now it only deals 5 shots per cycle randomly, and FAW3 even it its most ideal single target situation might be dealing less dps then unbuffed, to say nothing of FAW1&2. beam arrays have never been this low, and have had so many factors stacked against them.

at this point i really think DHCs TT, and ES should be removed from the game completely. it would be interesting to see some premades face off banning these things and to see what they think.

Different things over time:

Removed near 100% Acc using FaW

Buffs to shield and hull ship mods. This led to higher base shield HP and Regen and hull HP buffer.

Buff to ship movement (mainly C-Store).

Buff to C-Store console layout.

Buff to power (mainly via doffs but also for KDF plas leech). This leads to higher power levels and therefore shield resists.

Buff to gear, 1st STF than Fleet lead depending on the set higher resists/power levels, higher HP cap, better movement/regen.

1st Borg "nerf" tended to trigger repairs when they were needed most for those who used them.

Shield Distro Doffs/Hazzard Doffs, the 1st shield distro doffs had higher repair than TSS3, hazzard doffs like slotting resist console when using BFI or Ram speed.

1st iteration of Maint doffs, reduced cooldown to all teams and only needed a couple to reach cap.

More Hybrid Boff layouts allowed for more self reliance on repairs and CC/debuff counters on ships w/o Raider reduced defensive attributes.

1st iteration of conn officer doffs allowed for 15 second cooldown on evasives.

On the otherhand they did fix the shield regen bug/exploit and added Tet glider which at 1st did over 100+ drain per hit depending on the build.

Skill revamp made it easier to spec into Tac skills and have plenty left over for eng resists and Sci debuff resists. Power skill point investment not as important as it used to be imo.

There's been a lot more, but basically there's been a push for hybrid Kirk like abilities on all ship types and a blurring of the original game design playstyles between factions.

Except for Galaxy and its derivates, all cruisers are fine. There is nothing wrong with them. It's the escorts. Stacking passives / doffin now allows for much resilient builds.

Galaxy is fail, because of the combination of heavy engy layout, useless engi consoles, and crappistic turn rate with loathose inertia AND the most important aspect - Gecko personally hates it.

Just would like to point out, that for crappy turn cruiser it is much harder to point 70 degree full broadside, than the 45 degree on escort. In a hypothetica cruisers vs. escort fight. The only time it is not problem, is when the escort is sure he will survive and does not bother to maneuaver behind.

In a 1v1 sure.

But more often than not an Escort won't primary a cruiser in an Arena, but another more nimble target instead. Even if an Escort is on his rear, the cruiser just goes to a stop and turtles while his teammates ff on the escort who will be at a near stop if he's not bothered to move on. All the while the cruiser can attack another target that's in it's full broadside, or even evasives reverse EWP on the what should be disabled Escort behind him and position then to a full broadside.

It's not designed to be a 1v1 ship, it's designed to support in a group.

There have been plenty of hybrid ships added to the game for 1v1 matches.

You sure about this ? I checked the FAW3 tooltip today, and my FAW3 hit has higher base dmg than regular hit and it is a volley of 5 instead 4.

i took another look and strangely enough its not quite as bad as i thought. still, FAW3 is the only one that does more damage per shot

1081 standard, 4324 max for a cycle

1020 faw1, 5100 max for a cycle

1078 faw2, 5390 max for a cycle

1143 faw 3, 5715 max for a cycle


FAW3 is actually a slightly nonlinear bump vs the other 2. version 1 or 3 then always imo. i also checked to see if the tool tip for other weapon types was lowered when faw was on, and it didn't lower what was listed for a single cannon, so that might be fixed.


still, FAW is in the zone of worthless damage still. if there was anyone around for cross healing it would be shooting all over still too. only in long encounters were theres every opportunity to run easily do arrays eventually do dangerous damage. and thats only if you go all out to deal damage with them

It should do more damage, but doesn't because of the ACC bug. Don't forget that FAW increases weapons power drain too.

I know that, just saying the tooltip wasn't that bad as he said it is. Anyone tried FAW3 on the Bug ? or other 5 tac console ship ?

If they're running with two copies of APO and have the proper Doff's, there's no such thing as a disabled Escort and that's part of the problem imo.

?

It's still got a cooldown even with AP doffs.