2.1k shield heal per second for 30 seconds with 44% resistance down to 208 shield heal per second with 42% shield resistance is quite the nerf. Suffice it to say i will no longer be using this skill as we cannot even see what the soft cap for shield resistance is and even if we could it wont even at the full 42% its more likely to add 20% given the diminishing returns. Anyways gg on nerfing one of the best support abilities in the game I guess my cruiser will just have to stock up ion self heals nows.

i still use it. its a great combo skill. transfer shield+extendshields+hazzard emitters+science team makes me a happy healer.

Perhaps it may be somewhat useful for a science ship with high aux and some shield power but imo for a cruiser imo that was our main support ability besides eng team.. The devs seem to be cementing roles for escorts and science ship with the recent changes but cruisers more and more seem to be an unknown role. Before i was thinking it was a support damage role where cruisers would hug the escorts using extend shields and eng teams while doing damage. Now our main support skills have basically been nerfed. Now we still have a good array of self heal skills with all the eng slots but we cannot tank as (i could be wrong) aggro seems to go to those who deal the most damage. Imo cryptic needs to have a good long look at how they want cruiser to function as. I probably only say this because my main ship is a cruiser as they were my favorite type of ship in ST, but what exactly are they suppose to excel at? escorts = dps, science= heals + cool now useful abilities, cruiser= ? good soloing?

Sorry for the rant but with extend shields being nerfed the the cruiser no longer really fits into a support role imo.

When I'm in a fleet, I depend on the cruisers to tank "more" than the other ships (but not totally take all DPS from a mob), deal continuous beam DPS (you gotta lotta slots for beams and torps), and throw out what heals you have. Be that Engineering team, Power to Structural Integrity Field (wasn't this made into a sharable power with 1.2?), Aceton field to reduce DPS towards other team ships, Boarding Party to take out an enemy subsystem (very similar to science subsystem targeting skill and has benefit for the group on battleships and dreadnaughts). Also, don't forget that you can still carry Science Team II and/or Transfer Shield Power (the science share-shield ability) due to your science slots.

It seems we all have some adjustments to make. My observation is that 1.2 provided for PvP and taketh away from PvE, but after a few weeks I may get used to the changes and enjoy them. We shall see.


Thanks,
McPhearson

omg... i just hate people defending nerfs with statements that show they have NO IDEA what they're talking about.... Sure, you could stack ALL your powers on healing one ship, TSS2 and HE1 and eng.team2 on top of ext shields, and even if you run all your power to aux, it will be a VERY mild heal. On top of that, all your heals AND resists will be on CD for the next minute...

OK, if you're running DSEs or Explores on normal, they ARE good enough, but on those healing isn't even neccesary...

Understandable.

I myself have a few notable pet peeves. Like how everyone claims X, Y or Z is "now worthless."

And yet usually their posts never really show any sense of value or metric to measure worth, so we can see how X, Y or Z is or has become worthless.

It ends up making the word lose its value. Worthless is fast becoming worthless due to overuse and overreaction.

Ironic I guess.

im not saying to stack all the healing skills onto one player, im saying its great in combo with some sort of instaant shield heal. (science team being ideal since it no longer gives resitance) extend shields is no longer a healing power but a "itll help you not die faster" type of power.

the only thing i wish is that instead of the regen rate being related toshield power, just have it regen what the shields you have equiped would regen (making this power plus regen shields the best).

And here i thought i did

Extend shields in the past 2.1k healing per second with 44% shield resistances for 30 seconds at 121 shield power = about 61k shield heal in 30 seconds

Extend shields now 208 shield heal per second with 42% shield resistance for 30 seconds at 121 shield power = about 6.2k shield heal in 30 seconds

The past version you could keep an escort up in an STF which has drawn aggro for a good amount of time even from multiple sources. This was imo the bread and butter of some pvp groups who knew how to support other ships in battle. It would be like "O an escort is killing my escort extend shields + eng team. "

Now in an STF "o the escort is dying extend shields, eng team, transfer shields strength, aux to struct o wait nm hes already dead."

And if those examples arent enough tell me how much of that 42% are you really getting? I am guessing it actually around 20% with the soft cap on resistances.

Before the resistance was a nice bonus to a good shield heal but it wouldnt really have mattered if it was there or not. Now the shield heal is suppose to be the bonus the the resistance which was originally just a nice bonus to have but could do without.

So tell me from 61k shield heal with about 20% shield resistance to 6.2k shield heal with about 20% shield resistance. I do not know what metric you run on or like to use but for someone who was doing a support attack cruiser it is now quite worthless.

And if you still dont think it isnt worthless why dont you go try it out.

Imo cruisers are now forced to try to be mild dps/tank or mild support. I say either or as unless you run both high shields and high aux your support skills will be marginally effective. And if you do this your weapons power will be quite low and you will have to resort to being a torpedo mine launcher boat for dps as you can probably only support 2-4 beam weapons. And if you do go the tank route your team member which is an escprt will always out damage you and die constantly even if you are doing steady damage. The burst damage of an escort has not really changed at all and will dwarf your damage in a matter of seconds.

What made extends so amazing was that it essentially made the recipient unkillable. Here's the math:
2k per face per second and 50% shield mitigation for 30 seconds
shield mitigaion is a flat % without diminishing returns
opponents had to deal approximately 3k dps per second to break a single face
opponents had to deal approximately 10k dps per second to break a face being balanced (transfer limits)
if an opponent deals less than the needed damage to stop the regeneration it is stored in he shields to further mitigate damage.

Right there is why is was so powerful. It was essentially a 30 second rsp against all but the most coordinated spikes and against those it was an extremely potent protective skill that severely humped incoming damage. Extend shields and rsp were the original reasons that TSS became popular. An effective cutting agent was needed to break them.

Now shield healig is pretty dull. Resistance stacking for shields is very hard and there are a variety of skills that punch through the shields without doing actual damage. For the most part, healing is largely "go hull or go home" with only minor attention to shields. There is no a2sif for shields for the active shield healing that science so desperately wants. Just passive heals and science team (which is largely used now almost soley for removing debuffs)

writing this from my iPod. Sorry for any spelling mistakes

Nope. All you've done is demonstrate it has less worth than it did previously.

That doesn't demonstrate it now lacks worth completely.

There is a difference.

The context of the current power within the framework of other changes (read: The change to Emergency Power to Shields) means that things are not quite as you present them to be.

Especially for cruiser captains.

Sorry. It was a nice read. But again, framing the change around the word "worthless" is definitely a reactionary tactic that has little use to any sort of meaningful discussion.