It also leads to very frustrating gameplay for the victim, though, especially when it is some combination of heavy controls. I think synchronizing _diverse_ powers should be were teamwork excels at, and just everyone stacking the same lame debuffs should not be rewarded. This also has the advantage that in a tema setup, some "weaker" powers become more interesting, since they don't have to compete with he best power in isolation, but only with the best power after it has been applied already.

I am not talking about a generic "science resist", of course, but a power or effect-specific one. E.g.

• Confuse Resists
• Stun Resists
• Shield Drain Resists
• Energy Drain Resists
• Repel Resists
• Immobilize Resists

Yes, part of this is about protecting the innocent PUG from the evil Premades, but I really believe gameplay suffers when it is all about stacking similar powers. Even it requires skill to pull off. Running from being shield drained and then stopped dead in your tracks while your allies are repelled away so you're alone with low shields is a little more fun experience then being constantly gravity welled and or constantly scrambled.

I think almost nobody even noticed that it worked against kinetic damage.

It is basically impossible to avoid hitting an RSPing target at least a little bit with energy damage because of firing cycles, faw, pets, etc and the shield heal from that was usually enough to make a follow-up attack with only kinetic damage impossible since kinetic damage is essentially useless against even weak shields.

It's not useless, it just must deal with 75% resist. That is, 25% of the kinetic damage go through. Now, with RSP no longer working against kinetic damage, having at least some torpedos is even more important. Or so I would expect.

No. Because when your opponent pops RSP he gets a nearly instantaneous full shield heal, and torps are terrible vs. even a small amount of shields. In a 5v5 arena match it's almost impossible that the target isn't being hit by energy weapons. Even if you switch away from the target the instant they pop RSP you still need to finish the firing cycle and bolts that are in mid air still need to land. A tiny fraction of a second is all it takes for a focused enemy to regen full shields after he pops RSP.

I can see it now.

Before
1. sees escort buff up
2. escort lights up
3. rsp
4. (escort sez" ill be back in 6 seconds ****)

Now
1. sees escort buff up
2. escort lights up
3. rsp
4. (escort sez " *** no subnuc" cant hang around for 19 secs" bails the faw ball.

That's not how it woks, as I understand it.

Most shields have a 10% bleedthrough, so the BEST a torp could hope to do is 10% of it's damage to the hull. So a 4,500 dmg torp can't possibly do more than 450 dmg to a hull, and that's before resists. I least, that's how I understand it.

But even if it was 25%, that's still not very much. 1,125 dmg to a 40,000 hull cruiser takes the hull down to only 97%. And again that would be before resists. Like the others are saying, torps against even a tiny bit of shields are useless.

if you use rsp as a alpha strike blocker, you are doing it wrong, and almost guaranteeing you will be dead soon after rsp ends unless you can kill or drive away the escort first. rsp should ONLY be used after you have next to no shield hitpoints in any facing and no other available shield heals coming off cooldown.

and this is why torpedoes are nearly useless in game. their firing rate, fireing arc and their volume of fire unbufed is so low its not even on the radar compared to energy weapons that can hit multiple times a second.

cutting the fireing rate in half is a good start, bumping the fireing arc to 180 on this tracking weapon only makes perfect sense, and allowing multiple equipped torpedo's to launch at the same time would be good too. energy weapons fire practically at once contently, and most ships have multiple launchers. all that and an unbuffed launch, at least at level cap, launching 3-5 torpedoes, each doing full damage, would make them as useful as an energy weapon in any situation. this would also not change in the slightest how an escort would use torpedoes, it would just make them a more viable option for cruisers, ships that should be launching a ton of torpedoes.

HY should just be a buff to each torpedo you fire's damage, spread should explode around the target and create a short stun, and more kinetic damage shield bleed from the explosion outside the shield. when a tropedo hits a shield, the explosion is absorbed as instantly as its created, leaving little actual kinetic damage compared to it exploding near the shield. less total hit point loss, but higher bleed %.

I think the issue a lot of players have with a lot of these seemingly gratuitous changes is that there's often no explanation of the "why". For instance, was TSS: Shields being abused in some fashion to necessitate this change? I don't understand.

It seems that there's an increasing trend of nerfing and changing as band-aid workarounds rather than putting the nose to the grindstone and debugging.

Ehum, for some of these changes to skills i'd say... why even bother touching it.