Heretic,

Since subsystem targeting is being "changed" will the Energy Weapons DOff be changed as well? Since subsystem targeting will no longer be stacking? I'm not sure if the reduced cooldown timer proc is really going to amount to much unless you are just lucky enough to get a system shutdown proc off. Just wondering if you had any plans for this.I wouldn't be opposed to change on this DOff for something a bit more useful.

Shutting down subsystems is pretty significant, in the grand scheme of balancing, but because it is so boolean (on/off) it is challenging to get a balance point that both feels useful but is not overpowered.

That being said, I am not against looking at this some more when I can find some time, and seeing if there are any appropriate adjustments that could be considered. I do, however, want to retain the focus on subsystem targeting for this ability, although if we get to putting additional variant powers on existing specializations, the energy weapons could certainly get a variant as well that did not involve subsystems.

After pondering about this some more I'm starting to think that the reduced cooldown on at least the part of Target Shields which does shield damage might possibly still hold some value to players. How much value, I do not know yet. I wouldn't mind seeing a low percentage to proc any one subsystem offline to the target for an acceptable amount of time when slotting this DOff. That's just my 2 cents.

Thank you for the response

Think you miss the whole pictuer here a bit. One thing target sub was very useful for, was to reduce shield resistances by reducing the energylvl of the system. The offline proc was nice, but basically everyone had counters for it anyways. The shield energy drain wasn´t recognized by most ppl, and helped to bring down shields faster cause of the resistances. Or the target engines slowed the enemy down so you could hit it better. With the way lower drain the target subs have now it is practically useless. You just can hope now for a lucky shot. I mean it already got nerfed when you guys changed the skilltree, but now it is just useless.

I would really like to know if anyone of the devs ever played a sci, cause it doesn´t seems so. The patch before with the shield console was already a big nerf for sci, cause all other classes can just stack the shield consoles in their sci slot, because they don´t need the sci consoles, but now the class is just useless, or at least sci ships are just useless.

I understand if you change things that got op, but that wasn´t the case for most the things you changed with the last patches. It isn´t just the target sub, it is the whole sci class. I know that was a bit off topic now, but cause i saw you were actually reading the stuff i thought we might got heard about that also. Seems no one is really looking in the other threads.

I really liked the game, but the direction it is going now i don´t like it anymore, atm it highly favours tac/eng escorts and cruisers.

A number of the recent changes were done to fix systemic issues and inconsistencies; for example, resistances were not applying to places where they should have been. The issue became that the systemic fixes were pushed prematurely before the compensatory adjustments were made for powers that had been balanced in the previously inconsistent state.

The push to fix some issues has recently led to some things being rushed too much, and that is a problem we are aware of.

We are working on the issue and will be addressing the situation.

Another issue is the insanely large amount that resists are being allowed to get to. Up to 75% is far too high. Compensating the powers will help but the % resistance they still come up against is ridiculous.

On the flipside, imagine what will become of a ship that hasn't properly spec against those powers (once they've been compensated for) and the wide gap that will be created there.

What does this have to do with Doffs? Did the mean PvPers scare you off again? :p

I could see it making a lot of sense for the variant version to buff either Beam Overload or Fire at Will. Honestly, Fire at Will be would an insanely useful DoFF power buff to have.

75% resistance is fine if the magnitude of the drains/damage is increased to compensate. That just means that someone fully trying to thwart you will have somewhere in the neighborhood of "current/previous" damage drains, and it'll hit people that totally ignore those resistances even harder.


Exactly. People that totally ignore resistances will be taking a calculated risk as a tradeoff for other power.

But what would the actual buff be? Decrease cooldown? Increase duration? Buff the DPS even more? Hmm... maybe reduce the power drain per beam fired? Actually, that last one sounds awesome.