This change is absolute bullcrap. The whole point of tricobalt is big POW for a big timer.

Makes the tricobalt mines worthless to use over transphasic mines. At least those will hit the hull guaranteed for more damage than a half-damage tricobalt.

Changes to the tricobalt torpedoes also makes them pointless to use. Half-damage tricobalt with half-timer? I can still only shoot one of those under any boff power anyway thanks to the stupid shared tric torp cooldown.

The ONLY population these changed benefit greatly is the federation escort players. Imagine the surprise at the bias this dev team shows.

Only fed escorts benefit from per-30 second high damage mines. KDF ships that cloak just don't get the damage benefit from each attack run. No cruiser makes good use of it due to lack of speed, no science ship makes good use of it. Only fed escorts. Maximum benefit now only for them.

Whats next devs? Give the fed escorts the sci ship shields and lance beam weapons?

You might change your mind on the shield heals when you run into more sci ships packing decloaking skills, my setup almost always gives me enough time to survive and cloak again. Also makes it where I don't need to fear sci ships so much and can go straight for them rather then avoid them.

Even with the single commander boff slot I have 2 torp skills. Granted when tac initiative isn't up I might have high yield up when spread would be better or vice versa, but still generally works good enough and doesn't waste a slot for TT when 1 is all I need to survive when decloaked.

Reason PH is better then jam sensors especially in PVE is that borg will recover from it fast anyway. Also the 2 second reveal when you fire a torp is all they need to fire a torp and kill you sometimes. On elite a regular plasma torp fired by a gate or tac cube will usually 1 shot you unless you have a few points in armor reinforcements and 2 or 3 monotanium consoles.
Even with the consoles its still nice to have a hull buff up when firing since you are unshielded, so I always try to have aux2sif, ph or he up while firing at something that will hit back hard, and rarely die in elite stfs in a brel.

This regular plasma torp will not be jammed and still hit you regardless, where as with polarize hull you break the tractor and have hull resists to incoming torpedo and energy damage.

Jam is more just a get away quick skill for bop to use when decloaked in pvp thats all.

Just one last word to the load out.

What I actually use is this:

Quantum MkXII
Breen Transp. Cluster
Bio-neural
Hargh

I just tried the following:

Quantum MkXII
Plasma MkXII
Bio Neural
Hargh

and it just felt that I made less damage with the second, the plasma loadout. On top the plasma loadout has two torps with similar cooldown, and that's bull**** in my opinion.

Opinions? Suggeestions?

The breen cluster does more damage than a plasma torpedo if you're only firing the torps on decloak (aka double charged up high yields/spreads when you fire). Thats why you do less damage. The similar cooldown is your imagination as all torpedoes have 1 second global timer.

My b'rel loadout:

Fore:
Hyper-Plasma torpedo
Currently: Omega Torpedo. Will ditch it for the Temporal Disruptor or the Thermionic when possible.
Harpeng
Bio Neural

Rear: Tricobalt Mk12 and Breen Cluster.

Boff setups: I use three very different setups depending on my level of boredom.

Full torpedo+mine damage setup:

Tac Team 1, High Yield 2, Omega 1, Dispersal 3
High Yield 1, Beta 1, Omega 1
Jam Sensor, Scramble Sensor
Hazard 1, Tractor Repulsor

Fairly easy combat routine. double-buff torps, hit omega+tac team and slam target with triple heavy plasma torps...drop mines as you fly into 1km range and toss the breen cluster on your exit. Breen cluster will deploy numerous mines which will/may distract any area attack beams from hitting the tricobalts. Sensor attacks are used to break from tractor beams, make npcs fight each other and with a doff the scramble sensor can be a pain in the ass in pvp as it adds 10 seconds to all bridge power timers. Its just wicked. Repulsors are multi purpose: They break tractors by pushing target away from tractor range, they do damage (tractor+evasive maneuver and take them for a ride) and they are incredibly useful to fix up screwups from other players in elite STFs.

Engineer Setup: (for lulz)
-Replaces Omega Torpedo with 2nd breen cluster-

Tac Team 1, High Yield 2, Omega 1, Dispersal 3
Emg to Shields 1,Boarding Party 1*,Eject Warp Plasma 1
Emg to Engines 1, Aux 2 SIF 1
Hazard 1, Tractor Beam 2

*= using the doffs that gives extra boarding shuttles + gives them a turret. its hilarious.

This setup is just pure fun to use but its not as effective for damage. Weapon wise the hyper-plasma is enough so only one high yield is needed. Aside from the torpedo damage you also stack plasma burn dot from eject warp plasma, then you add disable and damage from the boarding party shuttles (with turrets theyre really hilarious and do decent damage!) and you have decent hull healing and extra speed from emg to engines.

Science setup: The anti-boss & crowd controller.
Weapon changes from tac version: replace fore omega with 2nd breen cluster, replace rear tricobalt mine with a second harpeng torpedo.

Hazard 1, scramble sensors 1, gravity well 1, Viral Matrix 3
Hazard 1 ,Tachyon Beam 2,Gravity Well 1
Tac Team 1, High Yield 2
High Yield 1, Atk Beta 1

Basically this uses torpedoes as a means to deliver extra punch and dot, uses grav wells to keep target constantly trapped and hull-dot'd, tachyon beam used on initial run approach and viral matrix 3 is reserved for boss ships as it can really screw up a tac cube in elite stf. Beta 1 increases hull dmg from dots. Lt Cmdr slot can be replaced with the engineer Lt Cmdr slot from above setup for a massive dot setup combo as well.

Unfortunately it is not "my imagination". Breen Cluster does not share the same cooldown with quantum, sorry for that. So, when I upgrade my torps via BOFF skills I do have to make a choice between Plasma and Quantum, I can't use them both. If I choose Plasma I can only fire the "normal" unbuffed quantum torp and vice a versa, that's annoying and makes the impression of loosing damage.

On the other hand, you are not using torpedo spread. Why this? What about all those small vessels in endless stfs or events? Mines are not enough.

You can use them both if you use two torpedo buffs. Load up one, wait 15 secs, load the 2nd and you have 15 secs to fire two buffed torpedoes. They will have 1s global timer.

The game fires the torpedoes with 1s global timer even if you dont see the '1s' cycle. If you notice, it will fire the torpedoes usually in order of left to right if you use fire all torps. Of course this changes based on the timers of each torpedo and global timers.

My point is, click fire all torps and your spread/hy quantum fires and then the breen cluster fires. They dont all fire at once like beams/cannons do. There's a delay. The longer the firing animation the longer the delay.

I use high yield because plasma high yield is more damaging in aoe than the spread. HY plasma hits everything in 1km sphere. Granted, it wont be hitting a wide amount of targets all over my frontal aspect... but what I shoot I want dead. Spread does a lot less damage.

HY2 hyper-plasma = ~25k per torpedo. It fires 3. Aka dmg is 75k to one target and anything 1km around it. It also stacks 3 strong plasma dots. Spread will fire regular torpedoes that do much less damage per target and the plasma dot is not stacked and does a lot less damage.

I'm in-game now if you want to talk. forum name is my @handle.

Ok, I will try this setup. Only one HE for heal, but as I am always cloaked it should be fair enough....hopefully.

What torps. would you suggest for someone who has Roms and Omega at Tier 1?

And what about the skills? I would drop every "energy weapons" as well as "shield" skill with this B'Rel. Is this wise?

Since we're talking about the B'rel, I have some torpedo questions.

Right now, I'm running a Hargh'peng MK XI, Quantum MK XI purple (no MK XIIs for sale this week, it seems), 2 Tri-cobalt MK XIIs on the front, and 2 Breen Cluster Launchers on the rear. I like the setup with my BOFFs because I've doubled up on torpedo skills. I can launch either a spread or high yield tri-cobalt every 15 seconds, forever. I just swoop into range, release whatever torpedo I want, then turn around and release a Breen Cluster as I pull away, cloaking more or less instantly. It's a lot of fun. I don't have to think about range too much like I did when I mounted mines.

But I'm wondering about how to change my load out when I get Tier IV with the Borg. How does the Omega plasma torpedo launcher work with the enhanced battle cloak? Should I instead put effort into the just grinding Romulan marks to get the Romulan launcher? Should I mount both if I can get the reputation with both factions? Or would 2 Omega torpedo launchers be better? Or will the high rate of fire on both cancel each other out?

See, the problem is that with my current load out, I don't have to spend a lot of time firing and being visible while putting out decent DPS. But with the chance to fire 1 torpedo a second for 6 seconds with the Omega Torpedo Launcher, I might be better off staying visible longer to put out more firepower. But 6 seconds of vulnerability is enough time to seriously screw me up, even in non-elite STFs.

The problem with you having 2 tricobalts in fore and 2 breens in rear is their timers. You're removing a big amount of damage from your alpha (and in a b'rel you always alpha strike or remain cloaked).

Omega torpedo is garbage. Avoid it. Hyper plasma torpedo is very good, get it asap.

You cannot have more than one omega or hyper plasma equipped.

Try this, since you dont have the faction launchers yet:

Fore:
Two Plasma torp mk 11 blue (or better), One breen cluster torp, one bioneural.
*** if you dont have bioneural you can use a hargpheng torpedo.

Rear:
Hargpheng torpedo, tricobalt mine mk 11 blue or better.


If you use high yield 1 and 2 plus dispersal beta 3 and 2 omega 1's you will do massive damage once per minute, very high damage once every 45 seconds and high damage every 30 seconds.

just be sure to be using the KHG 2 piece set or at least a reman 2 piece set.