At this point I just laugh. I've felt for years that the DEVS don't even play the game, or at least don't know how the player base plays the game. They don't care.
This is the correct answer I feel. At times some of the designs and choices made feel malicious but I think it is simply no one on the systems team understands what is good and what isn't.
Fire Everything! can easily be fixed or even given additional gameplay clearly distinguishing bomber because the term Fire Everything! is much too clear and creates an obvious inconsistency remember the episode dyson sphere where captain sho has a tactical skill that squarely defines Fire Everything! 😂
C-Store. Event ships should only feature things like that if they're repeatable and, ideally, with non-event ways to get them. Withering Barrage has a few ways to get it, only one of which is the evet ship.
IMO, between beams and cannons, beams are what everyone sees in their mind when they think of Star Trek. For that reason alone beams should be on par with cannons and thus their firing modes should be as well.
I can understand why beams don't do as much damage as cannons directly, since they can fire over a wider arc and thus keep the target in range longer, plus they can overlap their fields of fire, meaning you can get more beams on a target than you ever can with cannons (and turrets don't do a fraction of anything, really). That being said, i do agree that the firing modes should be on par with each other, especially since beam overload (which I view as equivalent to cannons rapid fire) is...kinda useless imo, since it's impossible to ever really get enough omni-beams to do a forwards target annihilation build the same way you can with cannons, and when you build a broadside build you *want* that experience of just lighting up the sky and hitting as many things as possible.
@@luciussvartwulf6630 The issue with Beam Overload isn't omnis. With dual beam banks and 2 omnis, it's better than Cannon Rapid Fire by more than the base damage difference between cannons and beams, especially if Recursive Shearing is involved. Its issue is that Cannon Scatter Volley is so incredibly good as soon as you're hitting 3 targets that no other firing mode (except Reroute Reserves to Weapons, which is a lot harder to build around) really compares.
This was my logic for using FaW over Beam Overload when I started playing. I didn't like that Beam Overload super-sized my beams, it didn't look like anything we see on the shows. I would probably enjoy a Surgical Strikes build, but it's not available for any of the ships I like.
@@luciussvartwulf6630 honestly thats realy not true, u can put 2 omnis on any ship, so a 5/3 can have 2 Omnis in the back and the Omega Cutting Beam if u realy need 100% 360° beams, but me personally i rather have a torp in the back for the times after u fly past an enemy, and often times u just cant stop or u get anihilated (talking elite pugs, since i dont fly premade 5 man Elite TFOs)
Just want them to give us an Intel with MW Spec'd Sovereign, 5/3 weapon layout, 4/2/5 Console layout, FaW 5s Extender trait. Also make it a Mirror Sovereign, this way we'll have a Mirror version of...I think.... every Hero ship. It would make some sense since during Nemesis(i think) they had to fire there Phasers rapidly in a sphere to find the Scimitar while it was cloaked. So many people would buy it!
I want a terran intel/cmd warship sovereign 5/3 , with 5 engi 5 tactical slots 1 sci. I would take intel/MW but I would like to have a ship I can stack Override Subsystem Safeties 3 + Reroute Power from Life Support 3. I of course would need more power cooldown to offset but imagine the burst potential lol.
To lay my cards out on the table as an in-canon ship builder, I want to take a slightly different angle on this. I think a proper FAW extension trait would be absolutely worthwhile, but not because I personally want or need it. It's worthwhile because having that level of variety for in-canon players to decide how their ship plays is simply wonderful. I personally use BO for a number of reasons - firing beams all at once in every direction like FAW doesn't seem as Starfleet since most ship engagements are one at a time. Plus it fits my personal playstyle more (I love broadsiding and maneuvering around ships) and it generates less threat which helps survivability a lot. That being said, I can completely see why someone would think of FAW as being more consistent with the shows and movies. The smaller beams can look more similar to the firing patters in the shows than BO, and the term FAW exists in-universe so it makes perfect sense to put that emphasis there. Anyone who creates builds that are in-canon should be able to play around the ships and styles that most resonate with them while still being competitively viable. While I might see Cryptic/DECA's worries about FAW in the past and the potential for the meta to shift in that direction as opposed to other firing modes, there are enough stable players in this game that the profits won't likely change much just by adding a FAW extention trait. And when folks are sometimes spending several hundred to kit out a build and perform well, they should be able to have the right to have fun however they ultimately want to with their builds. After all, isn't having fun what this is all about in the first place?
Yes! Thank you! Especially for that last part about why we play STO to begin with! We are here to *have fun!* So I say yes, a thousand times *YYYYEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!*
@capledbetter "After all, isn't having fun what this is all about in the first place?" Live Service Video Games haven't been about fun for, at least, the last decade to decade and a half. It's been all about Hyper-Monetization aka "How Much Money Can We Squeeze Out Of The Poor Saps That Play Our Game?" Where have you been? 😏
Even though CSV is considered OP it is still essentially a forward facing mode. FAW is practically 360' so an extenstion trait would just end up with FAW boats doing cirlces on a map and vaping everything on screen, just like they did a decade ago :)
It's high time FAW went back to the standard 15 second global cooldown. It wouldn't eliminate ETM's utility, as it could still be used as a free torpedo spread, freeing the slot for people who don't want to slot a torpedo spread. Or to keep FAW going for people who don't have all the expensive cooldown reduction. As for promo ships, we all hate them. But enough people buy into it, because they wouldn't make the damn things if nobody bought them.
Since everyone is dreaming, I'd like a Warbarge for my KDF main. Make it a dreadnought with hangar and give it FAW focus instead of cannons which suck on Dreads anyway. Extension Trait and a nice console along the Excelsior thing, just for 'ruptors. And lots of little animated turrets...
110% agree with this. I want them to make firing at multiple targets a priority. Otherwise its a waste of the ability and at this point, other than beam overload, its a waste of omni's IMO.
Stu1701-I can honestly say, that after watching your FAW builds with the Lexington, and testing a variation of that on my Odyssey/Typhoon ships recently, I can definitely understand the frustration. I would love to see if: A. I wonder if they are waiting for a 5/3 Odyssey/Sovereign before an extension for FAW is actually created. B. If one is created, and if it’s a trait, I think that it should be similar in look to either Nemesis (when Picard ordered FAW) and beams came out from all phaser arrays in a fashion almost like the Excelsior II console; or when the Enterprise-D took out a whole group of smaller ships when they took on the Lysian Alliance ships. C. You mentioned something in this video, that I didn’t know but now makes sense… ETM-the one true drawback of it, (hence the reason I noticed that in most of your build videos, that the DMQ is in there as it has a 8 second recharge), that ETM will not work as well as the Maelstroms take 25 seconds for a spread vs most of the other torpedoes. In conclusion-I agree with you, and understand the frustrations with this. I have been trying different variations on this and yeah, I got the same conclusions. ETM - Close but not close enough. Go for the Kill - Makes sense on a RF build. Withering Barrage - Useful Maybe they are waiting for a 5/3 Sovereign/Odyssey variant to use that platform as a test bed for a trait that would first address the FAW extension that would be a standalone that only affects the beams only and no other weapon like ETM would with Torp Spread and second instead of FAW having the standard 85% damage, that the extension trait would also buff the power of FAW, 130% of beam damage and will continue for +2 seconds with repeated kills or critical hits?
What if they made a proper FAW extension trait, but called it Fire At Wil? As in Wil Wheaton. You eject Wil Wheaton into the cold vaccuum of space and fire at him as he flails all about and the duration lasts until Wil is killed by enemies, making it wise to slot defense for pets or something. "Shut up, Wesley!" etc.
Oh, we know why the tooltips were left out. It's the same reason some studios don't want reviews of their game posted before release dates- disclosure of such colossal mediocrity would have hurt sales.
I think the easiest way to handle this situation would be to simply make a consoles with these abilities as passives. Like reduce firing mode cools down by X amount depending on Y for beams and then just make consoles account locked not character locked. They can keep doing what they are doing and players will have less issues with them.
So I usually play a mix of torpedoes and beams, plus the Overload-linked quad phaser cannons. I've never needed an extension trait because I alternate between Overload and Fire At Will for beams, High Yield and Spread for torpedoes. I also pair them up so that I always use one beam mode with its' corresponding torpedo mode. Pairing Beam Overload with Torpedo High Yield, and Beam Fire at Will with Torpedo Spread. By the time Beam Overload + Torpedo High Yield have completed their firing cycles, Fire at Will and Spread are off cooldown. I've never parsed it, but I am able to do considerable damage in all directions, completely annihilating Cruiser-rank enemies.
@@siosilvar It's only two Tactical slots. Or one Tactical and one Universal, and the second can go as low as Ensign-rank in both cases. The two torpedo modes are for versatility. Sometimes you want a single-target, high-damage barrage, while other times you want to kill a lot of enemies very quickly. Hence, one mode for single-target (BO/THY), and the other for anti-swarm (BFAW/TS). I also run Tactical Team I and Augment Boarding Party to fill those Ensign rank slots if possible, though Tactical Team also has the benefit of redirecting my shields, removing enemy boarding parties, defeating Borg assimilation, etcetera. it also takes advantage of the global shared cooldown to reduce the cooldown to its' minimum by activating a different firing mode.
I wouldn't mind another xindi lobi ship getting a FAW extender trait. Then there would be the excuse to make a legendary xindi ship. That, or do some Excelsior II variants, one of which has FAW extender trait, and then do a legendary version of that. Heck, I'd love an "Overload at Will" and "Rapid Volley" traits (and a heavy spread trait) Edit: or just imagine a pair of traits that mixed with "mixed armaments synergy" that worked with all (or most) of the firing mode traits in some way
My guess about FAW not getting extended would be that it fosters a playstyle that requires little flying skill. Other AoE skills at least require you to point your nose at a target to best utilize them, while FaW is just fly around and hitting targets no matter where they are in relation to your ship. That would be my guess anyways. In terms of why it was nerfed so hard, my guess is that Jack was still in Cryptic when they did it and he is behind it. In CoH he did a number of nerfs that were game breaking for certain power sets (notably fire tanks) in order stop a practice he didnt like. He took fire tanks from the best farming tank to being dumped and left collecting dust on your character select screen. They didnt get fixed till after he left the CoH team. My feeling is that FaW always felt like a tanking ability as you are trying to get threat on alot of mobs, no matter where they are in relation to you. So for me I think a better nerf would have been lower damage but it increases threat and fc haste. Balance out the damage vs haste to make it viable but not optimal if you arent the tank. The added threat would also mean that you want to be fairly tanky if you are going to use it on a regular bases. Then increase the duration as an added Suppression Barrage perk. Maybe add 0.5-1 sec for every target hit by SB to the duration of FaW.
The devs may hate fire at will but I LOVE IT!!! That being said the devs I believe has a super love for DS9 so cannons and the defiant got the most love at launch and the longest time was really the only thing they focused on took years before cruisers got any love.
honestly its beyond me how anyone on the Dev team thought this trait was Promo ship worthy... even the console and pets are rather average at best... so its 100% a space barbie ship like u predicted on the first vid. fine by me, its money and time saved for me personally * *^^* *
I’ll take a spin on the speculation wheel. I think that they believe if they were to offer a proper FAW 100% uptime trait, everyone in the game would use FAW. Or most would. I think they’re trying to protect the viability of other firing modes, like BO, SS, etc. And arguably CSV. People like beams for immersion; the reason they don’t use them for DPS is because they underperform compared to cannons. If they give you FAW3 on 100% uptime, I think they believe people will start to ignore the other stuff. Sounds stupid, but I really think that’s where they’re coming from
They should just revamp Redirecting Arrays to be the FAW counterpart of withering barrage with just a flat 4-5 second duration increase. Also bring that 20s shared cooldown to 15. Problem solved.
If fire-at-will got the normal weapon mode cooldown and a proper extension trait like others have (most literally just a blatant time extension), then it would be POWERFUL. I already use it all the time on my Odyssey build and my updated Jupiter build, and almost every other cruiser, carrier, and dreadnought build I've made. On normal difficulty, it still absolutely wrecks. But... everything does on normal, and scatter volley still blows it out of the water. Please, at least reduce the damn cooldown. Bring it in line with the other modes. That would give it a big buff alone, even without a trait.
If DECA really understood economics they'd make lots of things in STO more affordable. Because the result would be that more people would play and they would actually Make More Money.
To be fair I have given up on expecting any form of love towards FAW builds. Honestly given the way things are going I'm not expecting much of anything in the future as I have the feeling that DECA is going to finish up whatever Cryptic had in the pipeline and then switch to life-support mode. The game may be profitable, but I don't think the growth is there for Embracer to want to throw any more resources at expanding the game. I really think the upcoming content that we are getting will likely be the last of new content we see, and after that I worry the game will only stay online for as long as it is in the black.
Very good question, everything else gets love. Not like FAW would break the break the game if it lasted a few extra seconds. Beam arrays aren't that powerful nor the 360s. Hell, turrets got some love with the Typhon. Madness.
For 200-300 dollars its just i dont see any value here IMO with that said if they actually used the trait to extend faw3 then the ship has the value to equal the price point
Always feel that the R&D promo should be account unlock, just because it’s so expensive, even by Infinity ship standards. Hopefully Deca will be able to help create a more balanced system in time. Also, can you explain in layman’s terms why there is someone hoarding/able to hoard over 11million Zen on the exchange. Really don’t understand it, & like many who are waiting for dil to zen purchases to happen, why make it take 28+ days before releasing a minuscule amount? I know you can explain it
I've stopped using faw on my ships bc of the short duration and I'm not keen on the drop in outgoing damage BO is slowerr but the damage is better imo then again I run cannons on my Intel warbird still need surgical strikes 3 tho
*Toy Story meme* Fire At Will. Fire At Will. Everywhere! Fire At Will has been done to death! Too many people use it, can’t handle the +threat it generates and die moments later because they don’t have the buffs to counter the aggro. There’s also the visual spam! If you’re teamed with 2+ people with FAW or worse, their pets have FAW, my god it’s horrendous! Extending FAW will put even more threat on players who do not spec a counter for it and people will complain ‘I’m too squishy!’
Gonna take it a step further and say that FAW should have it's damage brought in line with CSV as well which does 100%, 105%, and 110% depending on rank, but FAW brings it down to 90% for all 3 ranks and each beam hits one less target than CSV
I'd say 95%, 100%, 105%. FAW has the advantage of being a tier down in each rank. So unless they drop CSV (The real best answer here, along with bringing damage to parity), FAW SHOULD have tier parity per rank.
There is also the issue why would FAW, which is firing every energy weapon on a ship, in all directions, only hit two targets. CSV can hit three targets from the restricted arc of cannons.
I think they are afraid of FAW for the same reason they are afraid of EPG. It has too much potential to upend the meta, and could easily just end up overpowered. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see broadsides become a thing again.
Clearly the devs hate Fire-at-Will because they hate both fun and Federation cruiser design. It is the trait that looks most like a Galaxy Class casually thrashing an entire wing of Dominion warships over Cardassia. Their beloved CSV on the other hand looks like someone forgot to properly align the cannons. To add further insult, people forget that Entwined Tactical Matricies gives you a CSV 1 as well and this overpriced new trait works with BO. So only Redirecting Arrays works JUST with FAW! In other news, that console would have been interesting... if it had been a free-floating console in the Prodigy Lockbox and could be bought on the Exchange.
I honestly feel like the entire combat system needs a rework. I don't have a suggestion on how that would be done or what it would look like but I just know it was becoming not fun anymore and I went back to other mmos 😮💨
I still dont understand why they are still against omni beams, we get all these new weapons with no omni or we can only equip one. Then i can run a ship with full turrets and thats fine? Like why.
Omnis are significantly better than turrets. Like, 25-33% better (more, for the new Pahvan Proton one). It's not really an issue unless you really want to run *only* beams and not be a broadside build.
Somewhat off topic, but from a lore nerd perspective, I really dislike that FAW and CSV are actual primary firing modes. Not to mention that current way almost all group content is designed makes doing AoE damage by far the best way to go. FAW at least looks cool, unlike CSV which just looks silly, but too bad both firing modes aren't just a long cooldown hero ability that you want to bust out at certain oh shit moments.
Until Firing modes revamp, Fire at Will was a meta for an awful long time, nothing could match it. I think it's good these flying disco balls are gone.
They don't like FAW because if they made it strong like the other weapon type, when top end player min-max their builds, they won't need anyone in Elite TFOs, lol. It's not personal, they just don't want the gam to be so easy that they have to rebuild all their content... already people can solo Elite TFOs, but if everyone could do it, it would be game breaking, hahaha
Why not use the trait with beam overload? IT does say "BEAM FIRING MODE" Top players should get more damage out of beam overload 1 than players like me with beam overload 3.
Yall dont pvp enough for it. This trait will help a new pay to play but not you og op players. I think the new devs know that they only have to be better than no mans sky as far as campaign content. They can not build foward without fixing the bugged past. Yours truly, The Tetryon Don😎
Because the previous BFAW meta wasn't just 'the meta' as we understand it today, it was the ONLY meta. Some of you younglings don't quite remember what this game was like back then. BFAW was the ONLY meta. There wasn't any torpedo meta, there wasn't a Cannon Scatter Volley meta, there wasn't a Specialisation Firing Mode meta (lol), none of that. It was just BFAW plus Embassy plasma consoles plus Feedback pulse. And the way that BFAW works is if you aren't at least 'tank capable' you tended to attract too much aggro on Advanced queued content and got chewed up really fast. But it was also the only build people would point to 'that meant a damn' for endgame. Literally. I'm not joking or exaggerating. They had to nerf this specific combination for people in the community to try out something different and they had to spend literal years developing the other firing modes alternatives to the point where we have now different playstyles incorporated. Torpedoes used to be a niche build. Beam Overload builds weren't a thing because Beam Overload wasn't a thing. It went through multiple design passes before settling on what we have now. NONE of the specialisation firing modes were EVER a thing, up until very, very recently (like in the last couple of years at best recent. Remember Intel had to get revamped before anyone even LOOKED at Surgical Strikes, and Vanguard Specialists had to come out for it to even compete with the Beam Overload meta). Cannon Scatter Volley was always better than Cannon Rapid Fire, and still is to this day, but it wasn't until BFAW got nerfed that people 'discovered' cannon sv builds. So yeah that's why. I don't know what they should do now and I'm not a developer or systems designer but the above is pretty much the reason why BFAW is the way it is now. And even then, it's STILL best in slot for tank builds. So yeah, there you go.
i think the reason that faw doesn't get buffed more is because its so powerful it turns ur ship into a 10km aoe machine nothing else comes close i would be gratefull they havent nurfed it more
Yea faw has sucked since nerfagedon when they said they didnt want people to feel like they were playing the game wrong but nerfed the meta into the ground which pretty much told us we were playing the game wrong they also said they didnt want people to feel like they had to have certain thing in their builds but emergency weapons cycle colony deflector competitive engines disco shield dprm dinamo are still must haves years later they nuked faw plasma consoles feedback pulse the science ultimate and threat tanking for no reason because currently torp boat overload boats sci boats mine boats surgical strike boats canon boats are way stronger than the old faw meta for some reason omni beams faw and pet builds are a no no
Galaxy Grammar Police checking in. The statement "I literally cannot use [Maelstrom torpedoes] on a Fire at Will build..." is false. You "literally" can. What you mean to say is that you "effectively" or "optimally" cannot use Maesltrom torpedoes. Now that I've met my daily quota on the proper use of "literally", I'll see myself out.
I mean everyone bitching about this trait but this trait was never meant to be a FAW trait no where in the trait does it say FAW. People need to stop thinking this is and was meant to be a trait to make FAW have a 100% uptime it was not made to do that. But yes why do the DEV hate FAW make FAW great again. FAW great again would make 4,4 ships good again and would in turn make 4.4 ships sell way better so making FAW great again just makes them more $$$$$
"Why Do the Star Trek Online Devs Hate Fire at Will?" The question is not "why hate fire at will?" it's "why the fuck doesn't FAW fire at will anything except god damn beams? Back in the day someone real braindead had to go "you know what would be cool? If we made an ability called fire-at-will... which only works on beam energy weapons!" because you knwo someone said "*whew* good thing you specificied beam energy weapons because what would happen if we created some stupid kinestic weapon? Oh shit. Then what?" CSV, FAW, BO, CRF, HYT, TS should've been two abilities - FAW (everything) and Concentrate fire. But no, why be clever when you can create an off-spec ability only certain ships can use called "concentrate firepower" which debuffs a single target where a random attacker get a HYT once among them every 2, 4, or 6 seconds (though that doesn't mean anything because of how weapons cycle). Honestly, the ability system in the game is so abominably underwhelming that it's not god damn surprise the title still looks like a mock-up render.
LOL Think like a Dev. Why would they buff the mot lazy, brain-dead skill in the game? Blow up everything in 360 degree angle with 100% up time you want? Devs won't allow it. STO would be too easy. The game easy enough with you guys using scripts, spam bars, and whatever automated method you guy have. If the Devs gave you what you want, they'll nerf the damage of FAW by 80%. Remember the Tricobalt weapons. Nerfed 12 years ago and never recovered. Let's not do that to FAW. You know how the devs are.
FAW is my favorite as well. While I like the idea of BO, RF, and CSV, there are far better reasons and more instances then not where you have multiple enemies to deal with. Attempting to 1v1 in STO doesn't make much sense as you're getting beat on by everything else. I feel RF and BO are PVP whereas FAW, CSV, and SCI builds are best for PVE.
At this point I just laugh. I've felt for years that the DEVS don't even play the game, or at least don't know how the player base plays the game. They don't care.
This is the correct answer I feel. At times some of the designs and choices made feel malicious but I think it is simply no one on the systems team understands what is good and what isn't.
DECA, do the right thing and put a proper FAW extension trait on the winter even ship this year. You'll get in many people's good graces with this.
Fire Everything! can easily be fixed or even given additional gameplay clearly distinguishing bomber because the term Fire Everything! is much too clear and creates an obvious inconsistency remember the episode dyson sphere where captain sho has a tactical skill that squarely defines Fire Everything! 😂
That might be a little far to reach for them to give it away for free. But on a legendary bundle like STU recommends? That could happen.
or a 3000z ship like the cannon scatter volley extend trait
C-Store. Event ships should only feature things like that if they're repeatable and, ideally, with non-event ways to get them. Withering Barrage has a few ways to get it, only one of which is the evet ship.
Everyone's good graces now, future players less so when they have to buy it from Mudd's... But thta is probably a win for Deca too
IMO, between beams and cannons, beams are what everyone sees in their mind when they think of Star Trek. For that reason alone beams should be on par with cannons and thus their firing modes should be as well.
I can understand why beams don't do as much damage as cannons directly, since they can fire over a wider arc and thus keep the target in range longer, plus they can overlap their fields of fire, meaning you can get more beams on a target than you ever can with cannons (and turrets don't do a fraction of anything, really).
That being said, i do agree that the firing modes should be on par with each other, especially since beam overload (which I view as equivalent to cannons rapid fire) is...kinda useless imo, since it's impossible to ever really get enough omni-beams to do a forwards target annihilation build the same way you can with cannons, and when you build a broadside build you *want* that experience of just lighting up the sky and hitting as many things as possible.
@@luciussvartwulf6630 The issue with Beam Overload isn't omnis. With dual beam banks and 2 omnis, it's better than Cannon Rapid Fire by more than the base damage difference between cannons and beams, especially if Recursive Shearing is involved. Its issue is that Cannon Scatter Volley is so incredibly good as soon as you're hitting 3 targets that no other firing mode (except Reroute Reserves to Weapons, which is a lot harder to build around) really compares.
I couldn't agree more!
This was my logic for using FaW over Beam Overload when I started playing. I didn't like that Beam Overload super-sized my beams, it didn't look like anything we see on the shows. I would probably enjoy a Surgical Strikes build, but it's not available for any of the ships I like.
@@luciussvartwulf6630 honestly thats realy not true, u can put 2 omnis on any ship, so a 5/3 can have 2 Omnis in the back and the Omega Cutting Beam if u realy need 100% 360° beams, but me personally i rather have a torp in the back for the times after u fly past an enemy, and often times u just cant stop or u get anihilated (talking elite pugs, since i dont fly premade 5 man Elite TFOs)
Just want them to give us an Intel with MW Spec'd Sovereign, 5/3 weapon layout, 4/2/5 Console layout, FaW 5s Extender trait. Also make it a Mirror Sovereign, this way we'll have a Mirror version of...I think.... every Hero ship.
It would make some sense since during Nemesis(i think) they had to fire there Phasers rapidly in a sphere to find the Scimitar while it was cloaked.
So many people would buy it!
I want a terran intel/cmd warship sovereign 5/3 , with 5 engi 5 tactical slots 1 sci. I would take intel/MW but I would like to have a ship I can stack Override Subsystem Safeties 3 + Reroute Power from Life Support 3. I of course would need more power cooldown to offset but imagine the burst potential lol.
To lay my cards out on the table as an in-canon ship builder, I want to take a slightly different angle on this.
I think a proper FAW extension trait would be absolutely worthwhile, but not because I personally want or need it. It's worthwhile because having that level of variety for in-canon players to decide how their ship plays is simply wonderful. I personally use BO for a number of reasons - firing beams all at once in every direction like FAW doesn't seem as Starfleet since most ship engagements are one at a time. Plus it fits my personal playstyle more (I love broadsiding and maneuvering around ships) and it generates less threat which helps survivability a lot.
That being said, I can completely see why someone would think of FAW as being more consistent with the shows and movies. The smaller beams can look more similar to the firing patters in the shows than BO, and the term FAW exists in-universe so it makes perfect sense to put that emphasis there. Anyone who creates builds that are in-canon should be able to play around the ships and styles that most resonate with them while still being competitively viable.
While I might see Cryptic/DECA's worries about FAW in the past and the potential for the meta to shift in that direction as opposed to other firing modes, there are enough stable players in this game that the profits won't likely change much just by adding a FAW extention trait. And when folks are sometimes spending several hundred to kit out a build and perform well, they should be able to have the right to have fun however they ultimately want to with their builds. After all, isn't having fun what this is all about in the first place?
Yes!
Thank you! Especially for that last part about why we play STO to begin with!
We are here to *have fun!*
So I say yes, a thousand times *YYYYEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!*
@capledbetter
"After all, isn't having fun what this is all about in the first place?"
Live Service Video Games haven't been about fun for, at least, the last decade to decade and a half. It's been all about Hyper-Monetization aka "How Much Money Can We Squeeze Out Of The Poor Saps That Play Our Game?" Where have you been? 😏
Even though CSV is considered OP it is still essentially a forward facing mode. FAW is practically 360' so an extenstion trait would just end up with FAW boats doing cirlces on a map and vaping everything on screen, just like they did a decade ago :)
...no? You're still restricted to the firing arc of the beams you were already using
It's high time FAW went back to the standard 15 second global cooldown. It wouldn't eliminate ETM's utility, as it could still be used as a free torpedo spread, freeing the slot for people who don't want to slot a torpedo spread. Or to keep FAW going for people who don't have all the expensive cooldown reduction. As for promo ships, we all hate them. But enough people buy into it, because they wouldn't make the damn things if nobody bought them.
Since everyone is dreaming, I'd like a Warbarge for my KDF main. Make it a dreadnought with hangar and give it FAW focus instead of cannons which suck on Dreads anyway. Extension Trait and a nice console along the Excelsior thing, just for 'ruptors. And lots of little animated turrets...
110% agree with this. I want them to make firing at multiple targets a priority. Otherwise its a waste of the ability and at this point, other than beam overload, its a waste of omni's IMO.
Deca! Put a proper FAW extention trait on a legendary negh'var and my life is yours!
Stu1701-I can honestly say, that after watching your FAW builds with the Lexington, and testing a variation of that on my Odyssey/Typhoon ships recently, I can definitely understand the frustration. I would love to see if:
A. I wonder if they are waiting for a 5/3 Odyssey/Sovereign before an extension for FAW is actually created.
B. If one is created, and if it’s a trait, I think that it should be similar in look to either Nemesis (when Picard ordered FAW) and beams came out from all phaser arrays in a fashion almost like the Excelsior II console; or when the Enterprise-D took out a whole group of smaller ships when they took on the Lysian Alliance ships.
C. You mentioned something in this video, that I didn’t know but now makes sense… ETM-the one true drawback of it, (hence the reason I noticed that in most of your build videos, that the DMQ is in there as it has a 8 second recharge), that ETM will not work as well as the Maelstroms take 25 seconds for a spread vs most of the other torpedoes.
In conclusion-I agree with you, and understand the frustrations with this.
I have been trying different variations on this and yeah, I got the same conclusions.
ETM - Close but not close enough.
Go for the Kill - Makes sense on a RF build.
Withering Barrage - Useful
Maybe they are waiting for a 5/3 Sovereign/Odyssey variant to use that platform as a test bed for a trait that would first address the FAW extension that would be a standalone that only affects the beams only and no other weapon like ETM would with Torp Spread and second instead of FAW having the standard 85% damage, that the extension trait would also buff the power of FAW, 130% of beam damage and will continue for +2 seconds with repeated kills or critical hits?
What if they made a proper FAW extension trait, but called it Fire At Wil? As in Wil Wheaton. You eject Wil Wheaton into the cold vaccuum of space and fire at him as he flails all about and the duration lasts until Wil is killed by enemies, making it wise to slot defense for pets or something. "Shut up, Wesley!" etc.
Oh, we know why the tooltips were left out. It's the same reason some studios don't want reviews of their game posted before release dates- disclosure of such colossal mediocrity would have hurt sales.
I think the easiest way to handle this situation would be to simply make a consoles with these abilities as passives. Like reduce firing mode cools down by X amount depending on Y for beams and then just make consoles account locked not character locked. They can keep doing what they are doing and players will have less issues with them.
I don't mind the single character unlock. However, they can upgrade the lifetime subs with a lockbox character unlock feature.
So I usually play a mix of torpedoes and beams, plus the Overload-linked quad phaser cannons. I've never needed an extension trait because I alternate between Overload and Fire At Will for beams, High Yield and Spread for torpedoes.
I also pair them up so that I always use one beam mode with its' corresponding torpedo mode. Pairing Beam Overload with Torpedo High Yield, and Beam Fire at Will with Torpedo Spread.
By the time Beam Overload + Torpedo High Yield have completed their firing cycles, Fire at Will and Spread are off cooldown. I've never parsed it, but I am able to do considerable damage in all directions, completely annihilating Cruiser-rank enemies.
That is a lot of tac power slots. Preferential Targeting would make sense, but I don't see why you'd want two torpedo modes.
@@siosilvar It's only two Tactical slots. Or one Tactical and one Universal, and the second can go as low as Ensign-rank in both cases.
The two torpedo modes are for versatility. Sometimes you want a single-target, high-damage barrage, while other times you want to kill a lot of enemies very quickly. Hence, one mode for single-target (BO/THY), and the other for anti-swarm (BFAW/TS).
I also run Tactical Team I and Augment Boarding Party to fill those Ensign rank slots if possible, though Tactical Team also has the benefit of redirecting my shields, removing enemy boarding parties, defeating Borg assimilation, etcetera.
it also takes advantage of the global shared cooldown to reduce the cooldown to its' minimum by activating a different firing mode.
I wouldn't mind another xindi lobi ship getting a FAW extender trait. Then there would be the excuse to make a legendary xindi ship.
That, or do some Excelsior II variants, one of which has FAW extender trait, and then do a legendary version of that.
Heck, I'd love an "Overload at Will" and "Rapid Volley" traits (and a heavy spread trait)
Edit: or just imagine a pair of traits that mixed with "mixed armaments synergy" that worked with all (or most) of the firing mode traits in some way
My guess about FAW not getting extended would be that it fosters a playstyle that requires little flying skill. Other AoE skills at least require you to point your nose at a target to best utilize them, while FaW is just fly around and hitting targets no matter where they are in relation to your ship. That would be my guess anyways.
In terms of why it was nerfed so hard, my guess is that Jack was still in Cryptic when they did it and he is behind it. In CoH he did a number of nerfs that were game breaking for certain power sets (notably fire tanks) in order stop a practice he didnt like. He took fire tanks from the best farming tank to being dumped and left collecting dust on your character select screen. They didnt get fixed till after he left the CoH team.
My feeling is that FaW always felt like a tanking ability as you are trying to get threat on alot of mobs, no matter where they are in relation to you. So for me I think a better nerf would have been lower damage but it increases threat and fc haste. Balance out the damage vs haste to make it viable but not optimal if you arent the tank. The added threat would also mean that you want to be fairly tanky if you are going to use it on a regular bases. Then increase the duration as an added Suppression Barrage perk. Maybe add 0.5-1 sec for every target hit by SB to the duration of FaW.
Amount of uptime or reduction we get as a wizard on space magic.
I 💯% agree with this rant.
Give them more pew.. pew pew!
They could bring in the Narada from the kelvin timeline and give it a FAW trait called fire everything
The devs may hate fire at will but I LOVE IT!!!
That being said the devs I believe has a super love for DS9 so cannons and the defiant got the most love at launch and the longest time was really the only thing they focused on took years before cruisers got any love.
Bah!
Formatting is everything. They needed to change that comma to a colon.
"Once every 30 seconds:
-Sci buff
-Eng buff
-Tac buff"
Cross faction flying should apply to ALL ships they could increase the price in zen store and it would still be worth it
Fire at will is also the only firing mode that reduces you weapon damage when you activate it
Stu1701 could you do a video about why sto has single character unlocks in the first place and also why its still a thing now a days???
honestly its beyond me how anyone on the Dev team thought this trait was Promo ship worthy... even the console and pets are rather average at best... so its 100% a space barbie ship like u predicted on the first vid. fine by me, its money and time saved for me personally * *^^* *
I’ll take a spin on the speculation wheel. I think that they believe if they were to offer a proper FAW 100% uptime trait, everyone in the game would use FAW. Or most would. I think they’re trying to protect the viability of other firing modes, like BO, SS, etc. And arguably CSV. People like beams for immersion; the reason they don’t use them for DPS is because they underperform compared to cannons. If they give you FAW3 on 100% uptime, I think they believe people will start to ignore the other stuff. Sounds stupid, but I really think that’s where they’re coming from
The Lamarr has one thing i like Sovereign+ Hanger anything else space Barbie is in cool too but the price and the single character unlock...
The Anti-BFAW stance still in the game has to be a Bort thing. Cryptic's been purged but Bort is still there.
If Deca won’t then just reverse the nerf on Faw
They should just revamp Redirecting Arrays to be the FAW counterpart of withering barrage with just a flat 4-5 second duration increase. Also bring that 20s shared cooldown to 15. Problem solved.
They probably like Will Riker so much that they don't want players to fire at him too often. :)
If fire-at-will got the normal weapon mode cooldown and a proper extension trait like others have (most literally just a blatant time extension), then it would be POWERFUL.
I already use it all the time on my Odyssey build and my updated Jupiter build, and almost every other cruiser, carrier, and dreadnought build I've made. On normal difficulty, it still absolutely wrecks. But... everything does on normal, and scatter volley still blows it out of the water.
Please, at least reduce the damn cooldown. Bring it in line with the other modes. That would give it a big buff alone, even without a trait.
Ah, those scary shapeshifters and their Dominoin. 🤪
If DECA really understood economics they'd make lots of things in STO more affordable. Because the result would be that more people would play and they would actually Make More Money.
I know they aren't as good, but my Orion Pirate loves the pirate fighters because of the free loot.
To be fair I have given up on expecting any form of love towards FAW builds. Honestly given the way things are going I'm not expecting much of anything in the future as I have the feeling that DECA is going to finish up whatever Cryptic had in the pipeline and then switch to life-support mode. The game may be profitable, but I don't think the growth is there for Embracer to want to throw any more resources at expanding the game. I really think the upcoming content that we are getting will likely be the last of new content we see, and after that I worry the game will only stay online for as long as it is in the black.
Very good question, everything else gets love.
Not like FAW would break the break the game if it lasted a few extra seconds. Beam arrays aren't that powerful nor the 360s.
Hell, turrets got some love with the Typhon. Madness.
For 200-300 dollars its just i dont see any value here IMO with that said if they actually used the trait to extend faw3 then the ship has the value to equal the price point
Always feel that the R&D promo should be account unlock, just because it’s so expensive, even by Infinity ship standards. Hopefully Deca will be able to help create a more balanced system in time. Also, can you explain in layman’s terms why there is someone hoarding/able to hoard over 11million Zen on the exchange. Really don’t understand it, & like many who are waiting for dil to zen purchases to happen, why make it take 28+ days before releasing a minuscule amount? I know you can explain it
The needs of the many pew pew outweigh the needs of the few pew pew or the one pew just give us more pew pew.
A simple extension to FaW could be fun.
Maybe the new devs will have pity on us. I want to fire beams everywhere with my Legendary Bortasqu
And I like toon Stu.
Because Will started suing them after he got shot at the 3rd time
I've stopped using faw on my ships bc of the short duration and I'm not keen on the drop in outgoing damage BO is slowerr but the damage is better imo then again I run cannons on my Intel warbird still need surgical strikes 3 tho
*Toy Story meme*
Fire At Will.
Fire At Will. Everywhere!
Fire At Will has been done to death! Too many people use it, can’t handle the +threat it generates and die moments later because they don’t have the buffs to counter the aggro. There’s also the visual spam! If you’re teamed with 2+ people with FAW or worse, their pets have FAW, my god it’s horrendous!
Extending FAW will put even more threat on players who do not spec a counter for it and people will complain ‘I’m too squishy!’
Gonna take it a step further and say that FAW should have it's damage brought in line with CSV as well which does 100%, 105%, and 110% depending on rank, but FAW brings it down to 90% for all 3 ranks and each beam hits one less target than CSV
I'd say 95%, 100%, 105%. FAW has the advantage of being a tier down in each rank. So unless they drop CSV (The real best answer here, along with bringing damage to parity), FAW SHOULD have tier parity per rank.
There is also the issue why would FAW, which is firing every energy weapon on a ship, in all directions, only hit two targets. CSV can hit three targets from the restricted arc of cannons.
I think they are afraid of FAW for the same reason they are afraid of EPG. It has too much potential to upend the meta, and could easily just end up overpowered. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see broadsides become a thing again.
Honestly, I'd rather they pull back on the power creep and do a big rebalancing to get dps under control. Of course that will probably never happen.
Clearly the devs hate Fire-at-Will because they hate both fun and Federation cruiser design. It is the trait that looks most like a Galaxy Class casually thrashing an entire wing of Dominion warships over Cardassia. Their beloved CSV on the other hand looks like someone forgot to properly align the cannons.
To add further insult, people forget that Entwined Tactical Matricies gives you a CSV 1 as well and this overpriced new trait works with BO. So only Redirecting Arrays works JUST with FAW!
In other news, that console would have been interesting... if it had been a free-floating console in the Prodigy Lockbox and could be bought on the Exchange.
I’m going to laugh if the power recharge speed is supposed to recharge this 30 sec recharge speed by 50%
Yeah it’s honestly annoying I like beams over cannons I had high hopes for this ship.
Legendary Negvar + FAW extender please
Which one is Will?
promo ships are all about exclusivity. If you want the same treit on all charcters you buy mudds bundles.
I honestly feel like the entire combat system needs a rework. I don't have a suggestion on how that would be done or what it would look like but I just know it was becoming not fun anymore and I went back to other mmos 😮💨
IMO ETM would be fine if the minimum CD would be 15 instead of 20 sec.
I still dont understand why they are still against omni beams, we get all these new weapons with no omni or we can only equip one. Then i can run a ship with full turrets and thats fine? Like why.
Omnis are significantly better than turrets. Like, 25-33% better (more, for the new Pahvan Proton one). It's not really an issue unless you really want to run *only* beams and not be a broadside build.
@@siosilvar or theme builds trying to be accurate
I have noticed from 2012 that it seems to me that the Devs go way out of their way to irritate the players. Is this just me?
Was it OP at some point in it's history and now because of that they are scared to buff it again?
CORRECT!
Will must be highly loathed.
Somewhat off topic, but from a lore nerd perspective, I really dislike that FAW and CSV are actual primary firing modes. Not to mention that current way almost all group content is designed makes doing AoE damage by far the best way to go. FAW at least looks cool, unlike CSV which just looks silly, but too bad both firing modes aren't just a long cooldown hero ability that you want to bust out at certain oh shit moments.
Until Firing modes revamp, Fire at Will was a meta for an awful long time, nothing could match it. I think it's good these flying disco balls are gone.
I think they are afraid to go back to the time when FAW was meta.
Fire At Will has always been...underwhelming.
I've always preferred Beam Overload. It's easier to build for and scales decently.
FAW used to be meta
They don't like FAW because if they made it strong like the other weapon type, when top end player min-max their builds, they won't need anyone in Elite TFOs, lol. It's not personal, they just don't want the gam to be so easy that they have to rebuild all their content... already people can solo Elite TFOs, but if everyone could do it, it would be game breaking, hahaha
Why not use the trait with beam overload? IT does say "BEAM FIRING MODE" Top players should get more damage out of beam overload 1 than players like me with beam overload 3.
Superweapon Ingenuity is much cheaper to get and gives you 100% uptime with BO with no hoops to jump. Why bother with something worse?
@@siosilvar ya i know i have it on two toons i think. thanks to the events. got two vengence class ships too.
Yall dont pvp enough for it. This trait will help a new pay to play but not you og op players. I think the new devs know that they only have to be better than no mans sky as far as campaign content. They can not build foward without fixing the bugged past. Yours truly, The Tetryon Don😎
Because the previous BFAW meta wasn't just 'the meta' as we understand it today, it was the ONLY meta. Some of you younglings don't quite remember what this game was like back then. BFAW was the ONLY meta. There wasn't any torpedo meta, there wasn't a Cannon Scatter Volley meta, there wasn't a Specialisation Firing Mode meta (lol), none of that. It was just BFAW plus Embassy plasma consoles plus Feedback pulse.
And the way that BFAW works is if you aren't at least 'tank capable' you tended to attract too much aggro on Advanced queued content and got chewed up really fast. But it was also the only build people would point to 'that meant a damn' for endgame.
Literally. I'm not joking or exaggerating. They had to nerf this specific combination for people in the community to try out something different and they had to spend literal years developing the other firing modes alternatives to the point where we have now different playstyles incorporated. Torpedoes used to be a niche build. Beam Overload builds weren't a thing because Beam Overload wasn't a thing. It went through multiple design passes before settling on what we have now. NONE of the specialisation firing modes were EVER a thing, up until very, very recently (like in the last couple of years at best recent. Remember Intel had to get revamped before anyone even LOOKED at Surgical Strikes, and Vanguard Specialists had to come out for it to even compete with the Beam Overload meta). Cannon Scatter Volley was always better than Cannon Rapid Fire, and still is to this day, but it wasn't until BFAW got nerfed that people 'discovered' cannon sv builds.
So yeah that's why. I don't know what they should do now and I'm not a developer or systems designer but the above is pretty much the reason why BFAW is the way it is now. And even then, it's STILL best in slot for tank builds. So yeah, there you go.
i think the reason that faw doesn't get buffed more is because its so powerful it turns ur ship into a 10km aoe machine nothing else comes close i would be gratefull they havent nurfed it more
FAW, the ginger stepchild.
Firing modes should be toggles.....
Fire at will isn't that great. It isn't necessarily the strongest attack and it just aggros everyone.
cause will didnt do anthing to anyone so why fire at will!!!
Yea faw has sucked since nerfagedon when they said they didnt want people to feel like they were playing the game wrong but nerfed the meta into the ground which pretty much told us we were playing the game wrong they also said they didnt want people to feel like they had to have certain thing in their builds but emergency weapons cycle colony deflector competitive engines disco shield dprm dinamo are still must haves years later they nuked faw plasma consoles feedback pulse the science ultimate and threat tanking for no reason because currently torp boat overload boats sci boats mine boats surgical strike boats canon boats are way stronger than the old faw meta for some reason omni beams faw and pet builds are a no no
Galaxy Grammar Police checking in. The statement "I literally cannot use [Maelstrom torpedoes] on a Fire at Will build..." is false. You "literally" can. What you mean to say is that you "effectively" or "optimally" cannot use Maesltrom torpedoes. Now that I've met my daily quota on the proper use of "literally", I'll see myself out.
I mean everyone bitching about this trait but this trait was never meant to be a FAW trait no where in the trait does it say FAW. People need to stop thinking this is and was meant to be a trait to make FAW have a 100% uptime it was not made to do that. But yes why do the DEV hate FAW make FAW great again. FAW great again would make 4,4 ships good again and would in turn make 4.4 ships sell way better so making FAW great again just makes them more $$$$$
"Why Do the Star Trek Online Devs Hate Fire at Will?"
The question is not "why hate fire at will?" it's "why the fuck doesn't FAW fire at will anything except god damn beams?
Back in the day someone real braindead had to go "you know what would be cool? If we made an ability called fire-at-will... which only works on beam energy weapons!" because you knwo someone said "*whew* good thing you specificied beam energy weapons because what would happen if we created some stupid kinestic weapon? Oh shit. Then what?"
CSV, FAW, BO, CRF, HYT, TS should've been two abilities - FAW (everything) and Concentrate fire. But no, why be clever when you can create an off-spec ability only certain ships can use called "concentrate firepower" which debuffs a single target where a random attacker get a HYT once among them every 2, 4, or 6 seconds (though that doesn't mean anything because of how weapons cycle).
Honestly, the ability system in the game is so abominably underwhelming that it's not god damn surprise the title still looks like a mock-up render.
LOL Think like a Dev. Why would they buff the mot lazy, brain-dead skill in the game? Blow up everything in 360 degree angle with 100% up time you want? Devs won't allow it. STO would be too easy. The game easy enough with you guys using scripts, spam bars, and whatever automated method you guy have. If the Devs gave you what you want, they'll nerf the damage of FAW by 80%.
Remember the Tricobalt weapons. Nerfed 12 years ago and never recovered. Let's not do that to FAW. You know how the devs are.
Hence one of the reasons I've quit playing. Good luck Stu
the winter event ship is gonna be ugly on the eyes,just you w ait. prove me wrong deca
Bold of you to assume they know these traits are bad…
FAW is my favorite as well. While I like the idea of BO, RF, and CSV, there are far better reasons and more instances then not where you have multiple enemies to deal with. Attempting to 1v1 in STO doesn't make much sense as you're getting beat on by everything else. I feel RF and BO are PVP whereas FAW, CSV, and SCI builds are best for PVE.