THat's the beauty of it. Why does every power have to be a reactive power and not a proactive one? You can already negate alphas by:

1. Good battlefield sense
2. Knowing the enemies (that includes what individual players do)
3. Have tac team, shield hardening powers, hull hardening powers, omega, ID, or any combination of this
4. Have teammates that know wtf they're doing and can support you. If you pug, know the limitations of the pug

Also, not everyone should be able to counter everything by themselves at all times. If someone doesn't want to, or can't, load up two omegas and an Aux to ID (for example) then they might have to rely on someone else to save their bacon. There is nothing wrong with that and it's how it should be really.

Because that's how the rest of the game works?

Sure, you can keep EPt(whatever) chained if you are smart enough to do so... but other than that all the defensive powers are focused on *reacting* to a threat. Their up-times are too short and their cooldowns are too long to be used in a proactive manner. PSW was supposed to be a defensive power in the first place, but the LC Sci slot on BoPs and MVAMs lets it be exploited as an offensive power... which is why there is no real way to *react* to it. All in all the best tool for avoiding PSW is staying out of range, which can't always be done.

Good situational awareness will certainly help you in a battle, however there is relatively little a cruiser can do when a MVAM or BoP appears out of the furball and pops PSW right on your tail. We've got no hope of outrunning or outmaneuvering them and all our tanky powers just got taken offline. If we were lucky enough to have a large number of defensive buffs going we might get through it, but otherwise it's goodbye b/c we have no way to react.

Because it's the only stun in game. If you become stunned, it's your own fault for letting yourself be stunned when there's powers you can take to easily negate it.

EDIT: Ah... a zombie cruiser pilot. Here's a tip, chain 2 copies of aux to ID to be invulnerable to shockwaves.

LOL the borg it it it spread on me. LOL

Some one was mentioning the HY 1 to 2 issue....

The reason HY 1 is better then 2 has to do with Base dmg.

HY 1 increases the base dmg of each of the 2 torps slighly.
HY 2 gives you 1 more torp... but reduces the Base dmg for all 3.

What that means is
HY 1 torps will crit for 15-30k in the case of a quantum.
HY 2 torps will only crit for 10-15k.... with lower numbers being common.

In general when you go through combat logs HY 1 will out dmg HY 2.... HY 3 does do more dmg then HY 1.... unless you get lucky, the HY 1 crits are still higher.

Actually a zombie cruiser wouldn't be a zombie cruiser with 2 copies of Aux2ID. Because one of the best hull heals/resist is Aux2SIF which Aux2ID shares CD with. PSW is really the only power available to everyone that has a preemptive counter. but no while stun counter.


Your argument is flawed because most escorts can only slot one so you are saying they deserve to be stunned half the time

You haven't seen some of the escorts that use EPTS1 + ID + Omega + dual tac teams + TSS? There's a ton of counters to an alpha.

Just like reactive counters, proactive counters shouldn't have a 100% uptime, although this one nearly has with the 2 aux to ID.

We should however have a period of immunity say 10 seconds to prevent chain shockwaves.

I agree about the immunity but aux2id requires a great amount of "ESP" to use to negate a PSW. Personally PSW should be targettable use because just like SS it is an AoE that requires every ship in the AOE to have that power slotted and to use or its AOE needs to be reduced. Sci skills do have a lot of counters but half of which are not desirable because there are better things to slot. If I do not want to get stuck I can run PH or APO as an escort which is actually a better skill, APO. But the crux is science has more skills that have the same counter stuck in GW,TR,TB use APO, PH or EM, you will find more GW, TR, TB on the battle field than you will find APO or PH.

Point being the balance int he game has made the science ships and class the most deadliest. It is no longer Rock<paper<scissors. Given I haven't played since the the first night of the latest patch but if the 8-10 matched I was in was a snapshot of what it is like now, arenas 4 SV 1 escort (MVAM) - LuLz TB, CPB, PSW, TS throw in a few SNBs and sensor scan for good measure, rinse and repeat.

Actually, it's not available to "everyone"... there is no cruiser with a LC Sci slot, therefore cruiser captains can't use it.

Exactly.

With proper balance every ability should have a counter ability. But science has been given so many awesome powers lately it has really taken over the battlefield.