Engineers [META] Phasing Sequence + Efficient/RapidFire G5 Pulses = Guaranteed 0% hull in 3 minutes.

[KG_Jedi]

Recently I had PvP with my comrad, me in Corvette, he in Anaconda.
Our loadout didn't matter much, we both had tough enough shields to tank each other's constant fire. I got Military Grade Armor with G5 Heavy duty Armor on my ship and 2x5D HRPs. Total of 1500+ armour.
My opponent has mostly laser build, with 2xLarge and 1x Huge Efficient G4 Pulses on fixed mounts. Even though I didn't lose my shield at all, my hull was at 40-50% within 2 minutes of constant fire. Since both ships are quite similar in maneuverability, I couldn't get myself out of his weapons sights, so I had to tank it and hope I can strip his shields faster than he will bring me down.

As a result, our friendly fight ended within 2-3 minutes, with me staying with working shield and hull at 43% and him having 100% and working shield too.
Before this thing becomes new meta, can you guys at FD take a look at it? I didn't pay attention to Phasing Sequence before, but now, when I felt this very thing with my own hull, it feels pretty damn scary.

And that's he had only 3 phasing sequence lasers on his ship. What if someone equips full Phasing Sequence loadout? Well, this happens. As you see, Cutter's armor dropped from 100% to 55% in 3-4 minutes of fight, and that's for ship with hardest armor rating (~70) in-game and military armor. Anaconda or Corvette would lose hull at faster rate.

What happens if you get attacked by a wing of phasing sequence ships? Well, your hull will be at 0% pretty damn soon. In a wing fights, one wing often focuses single target to concentrate firepower of 4 ships on single ship and bring down his shields. However, with this weapon, it'll be quite fast and sad outcome for target.

I know, some people gonna say that we need some weapons to counter that 5k shield ships, and that's right. Let Phasing Sequence do it's job, but maybe tweak it a bit, so target has a chance too? Following tweaks may be applied:
- % of damage that "bleeds" through shield inversely scales with target's shield %. The lower enemy's shield, the more damage is able to bleed.
- Anything FD may come with.

So, if possible, please take a look at this. For anyone who doubts it, try installing full phasing sequence laser build on large ship and fight another large ship. If you have tanky enough build to sustain damage for 2-3 minutes, you pretty much win fight anyway, even if opponent got his shields at full.

 

[SoulScar]

Use mirrored armor with G5 heavy duty upgrade with resistance augmented shield boosters and a few heavy duty to beef up HP. Use 1-2 strategically placed point defence for shield busting torps/missles or an ECM. Don't use dirty drives and if you can get away with power needs make your core mods as heat efficient as possible. Chaff on ships with big surface areas is a waste of time imo. There is a counter for almost every special weapon effect except heat me up Scotties and I think thermal resistance reduces the heat build up but I am not positive as I have not tested it.

If you want to go pure shield or res there are big drawbacks or big advantages depending on the ship/s you face. One shot from a cobra with 4 shield busters will blow your shield generator up even with 6000 hp. I sit at about 2400 HP with 3 G5 HP and 3 G5 res SB on an anaconda point defence top/middle and a heat sink. Cannot cover all bases as you would technically be indestructible. HD G5 upgraded mirrored armor make bleed damage almost irrelevant but once shields are down a multi-cannon with corrosive is gonna make that 2000 armor feel like a sidewinder. Condas, clippers and Corvettes should be difficult to kill not like before engineers when you could crème one in anything bigger than a viper. Yes there are other balancing issues but on the whole I am finding ED more versatile and playable atm. Even with the grind for mats and being forced to mine. A full thermal shock layout is a nightmare for me personally as I have dirty drive upgrades which will be gone as soon as I can get access to G5 thruster engineer.

This is my opinion and I am pretty sure many will have other opinions but its my 2 cents for what it is worth .

 

[Truesilver]

Personally I think phasing is too weak, after trialling it extensively myself.

Against a hybrid shield/hrp build, by definition you're effectively attempting to take down a hull tank, without causing module damage, using a tiny fraction of the DPS of pulse lasers.

Even in the OP's example TTK would have been about 5 mins. Good - that's about where it should be, imo. Except as phasing is a nil burst attack, you can always skeddadle.

I have fought a PvP phasing Corvette in my hybrid Courier and felt no sense of being under threat.

FDev please buff or leave alone!

However, props to the OP for providing an example with plenty of detail to support his contrary opinion, o7

 

[KG_Jedi]

Personally I think phasing is too weak, after trialling it extensively myself.

Against a hybrid shield/hrp build, by definition you're effectively attempting to take down a hull tank, without causing module damage, using a tiny fraction of the DPS of pulse lasers.

Even in the OP's example TTK would have been about 5 mins. Good - that's about where it should be, imo. Except as phasing is a nil burst attack, you can always skeddadle.

I have fought a PvP phasing Corvette in my hybrid Courier and felt no sense of being under threat.

FDev please buff or leave alone!

However, props to the OP for providing an example with plenty of detail to support his contrary opinion, o7

Well, difference here might be that me and my opponent were in pretty similar ships and were fighting face-to-face, that's why my hull went down that fast, even though I had full milspec armor with G5 Heavy Duty on it. Still, probably will wait until more feedback comes about this new meta...

 

[sidvicc]

Well, difference here might be that me and my opponent were in pretty similar ships and were fighting face-to-face, that's why my hull went down that fast, even though I had full milspec armor with G5 Heavy Duty on it. Still, probably will wait until more feedback comes about this new meta...

Mil-Spec and Heavy Duty are not what you need to defend against Phasing. Mirrored and Thermal Resistant is what you are looking for.....but then you will be more vulnerable to kinetic fire if your shields do drop.

It's exactly the type of trade-off that makes a Rock-Paper-Scissor type "balanced" gameplay.

While I like your idea of % bleed from Phase increasing the lower your shields go, I think that should be applied on top of what there is already. Currently Huge Rapid Phase Pulse still put out less thermal damage on shields than Incendiary Multi-Cannons of the same size.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

It's already the new meta which is why I stopped wasting my time here now. Every major update the meta ie altered. First it was heat or multies, now it is pulses and rails and plasmas are still underpowered by far.
Mega shields anyways or hull tanking but then missiles.
Noone dies. 2.0 was a balanced game but now everyone is immortal and PvE turned into a basic MMORPG mob farming game. You could basically bot now.
Engineers screwed all the combat in Elite.
The challenge or level of difficulty has come to an all-time low. It has never been so incredibly easy to destroy an elite Anaconda with a fully modded ship.
Also Horizons is P2W as it includes engineers and vanilla players farm slower and are weaker in general while being pumped with materials they don't need anyways. It's like a material would say: "Buy Horizons so you can use me!"
No that's it. Not going for S3. Definately not.

 

[Redan]

Greetings,

I am Redan, and I am here to bring some friendly facts to your attention:

- It has been known that Phasing Sequence will be part of the new meta since the beta time.

- Mirrored surface does NOT help to counter Phasing Sequence. The damage bleed seems to have no damage type and thus is not affected positively or negatively by the resistance modifiers. Your only salvation is a stacked integrity value via Heavy Duty modifications and HRPs.

- Phasing sequence applies a 10% damage reduction to the weapon module in question. I am of the opinion that the modification does not need any further tweaking.

Thank you for participating.

 

[Muetdhiver]

I think it will be much better overall if the bleed-through damage
was applied to shield boosters instead of the hull.

> no total bypassing of the shields
> but still quite usefull to soften up massively shielded targets.

 

[KG_Jedi]

Mil-Spec and Heavy Duty are not what you need to defend against Phasing. Mirrored and Thermal Resistant is what you are looking for.....but then you will be more vulnerable to kinetic fire if your shields do drop.

It's exactly the type of trade-off that makes a Rock-Paper-Scissor type "balanced" gameplay.

While I like your idea of % bleed from Phase increasing the lower your shields go, I think that should be applied on top of what there is already. Currently Huge Rapid Phase Pulse still put out less thermal damage on shields than Incendiary Multi-Cannons of the same size.

That would work for 1 vs 1 fight. But I'm afraid that phasing sequence will be even deadlier than heat meta in wing fights, because even toughest ship gonna go down very fast if it is targeted by 4 phasing sequence build attackers. Heat Meta was somewhat fixed by adding hard cap for heat weapon effect on target, I wonder if these can be such a workaround.

 

[Mr_Foxhound]

Called it

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

Called it

Does it even qualify as news, though?

It really only helps against super shield tank ships. There needed to be something to deal with 7000hp tank bohemoths. With this, it'll still take 5-7 minutes to actually kill a ship and with a full array of phasing sequence, you'll probably never take the shields down, so you'll never actually kill your opponent. Since Phasing does 0 module damage, you have no way to disable thrusters or FSDs or Power Plants without actually dropping the shields, but the reduced damage sort of means that won't happen either (imo).

In the beta I ran 5x phasing sequence w/ rapid fire on my FdL. I liked it, but it was definitely light in the damage department. I haven't made the same commitment in Live. I think I rolled 3x phasing (2m + 1L) and combo'd with a pair of heat (I think). l

I have 60 articulation motors, so I'll be rolling quite a few more pulses and have rolled maybe 12 grade 5 pulses so far, mixed between overcharged and rapid fire. I might go focused next or something. idunno.

Phasing Sequence has essentially 0 value in PvE, as enemy ship shields will drop before the phasing sequence effect has time to justify its presence. In fact, it may be the most PvP-centric weapon mod of all.

 

[Frenotx]

Does it even qualify as news, though?

It really only helps against super shield tank ships. There needed to be something to deal with 7000hp tank bohemoths. With this, it'll still take 5-7 minutes to actually kill a ship and with a full array of phasing sequence, you'll probably never take the shields down, so you'll never actually kill your opponent. Since Phasing does 0 module damage, you have no way to disable thrusters or FSDs or Power Plants without actually dropping the shields, but the reduced damage sort of means that won't happen either (imo).

In the beta I ran 5x phasing sequence w/ rapid fire on my FdL. I liked it, but it was definitely light in the damage department. I haven't made the same commitment in Live. I think I rolled 3x phasing (2m + 1L) and combo'd with a pair of heat (I think). l

I have 60 articulation motors, so I'll be rolling quite a few more pulses and have rolled maybe 12 grade 5 pulses so far, mixed between overcharged and rapid fire. I might go focused next or something. idunno.

Phasing Sequence has essentially 0 value in PvE, as enemy ship shields will drop before the phasing sequence effect has time to justify its presence. In fact, it may be the most PvP-centric weapon mod of all.

Phasing sequence is only PvP-centric, and particularly strong in general, because of the insane shield values possible with the engineers, and the fact that NPCs don't even near fully utilize this system.

 

[nathdixon92]

Does it even qualify as news, though?

It really only helps against super shield tank ships. There needed to be something to deal with 7000hp tank bohemoths. With this, it'll still take 5-7 minutes to actually kill a ship and with a full array of phasing sequence, you'll probably never take the shields down, so you'll never actually kill your opponent. Since Phasing does 0 module damage, you have no way to disable thrusters or FSDs or Power Plants without actually dropping the shields, but the reduced damage sort of means that won't happen either (imo).

In the beta I ran 5x phasing sequence w/ rapid fire on my FdL. I liked it, but it was definitely light in the damage department. I haven't made the same commitment in Live. I think I rolled 3x phasing (2m + 1L) and combo'd with a pair of heat (I think). l

I have 60 articulation motors, so I'll be rolling quite a few more pulses and have rolled maybe 12 grade 5 pulses so far, mixed between overcharged and rapid fire. I might go focused next or something. idunno.

Phasing Sequence has essentially 0 value in PvE, as enemy ship shields will drop before the phasing sequence effect has time to justify its presence. In fact, it may be the most PvP-centric weapon mod of all.

And even then, it's still incredibly balanced because you don't take module damage, just death by a thousand cuts. If your hull is getting low then surely common sense should dictate that you leave

 

[Derath]

I really haven't played in months so I might be missing something obvious but how can you have a PvP meta based around something that takes several minutes to kill a target? Surely they just leave

 

[Cmdr. Jägermeister]

I have already been wondering when people would start complaining about that. It´s literaly the only way for a smaller ship to do any damage to a ships with redicoulusly (over)engineered shilds + shield cell banks. Getting one of those effects took me weeks. 4 took me until yesterday (since 2.1 release). Having them nerved after months of working towards them would be incredibly unfair!

One should also add,
-that this mod reduces overall damage of your weapons.
- that you get a spoken warning about this kind of attack.
- getting fired on for 4 minutes without realizing you are taking damage seems to me as if this was a user problem and nothing that requires a nerv.

Btw. How come your headline says "Guaranteed 0% hull in 3 minutes" while your text states "2-3 minutes, with me staying with working shield and hull at 43%". What is it now? 43 % or 0 %?

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

And even then, it's still incredibly balanced because you don't take module damage, just death by a thousand cuts. If your hull is getting low then surely common sense should dictate that you leave

Yes I agree. It is well balanced in the way they want heat to be balanced: a way to waddle opponents down and force a fight to end in 4-6 minutes, one way or another.

But yea, this is definitely something that only benefits PvP. If you are interested in PvP or do a good mix of PvP and PvE, roll some of these and some heat as well.

 

[StiTch]

Not noticed it as massively OP and - the real thing here - perhaps mirrored bulkheads/thermal resistant armour+HRPs finally get a use as a mod for backup in case someone does decide to bring phasing to the show. Given we are avoiding shields go down in the current meta anyway, it might actually be favourable to standard hull HP boosting across the board.

Let's face it-reactive/mirrored have been a novelty until now thanks to the overall mix of DPS output in ED. If we see thermal phasing become a thing, even if not full-on top of meta, this might actually be increasing defensive loadout diversity.

Love the post though. I appreciate the effort put in to the work, and seeing new tactics being tried out always gives me hope. Definitely an excellent discussion point.

 

[nathdixon92]

Phasing doesn't count as any type of resistance, it just slowly does damage over time (and really slowly). It's good for those annoying buggers that use ridiculously fast Couriers and eagles as their hull is so weak a few sustained bursts and they're down to 75-80% hull.

I rock Reactive Armour on my big ships because I've seen what penetration torps, cannons, frag cannons and multicannons do to hull. The decrease in thermal is fairly easily mitigated by HRPs whereas if you go up a against a kinetic build and your shields drop, even with HRPs, you're going to feel it in the morning if you use Mirrored

 

[StiTch]

Phasing doesn't count as any type of resistance, it just slowly does damage over time (and really slowly).

Ah seriously? Now that feels a little weak. I can perhaps understand the motivation to try avoid resistances making phasing useless, but by then you've sacrificed mods or equipment you would have otherwise used. Isn't that how diversity happens? -_-

It's good for those annoying buggers that use ridiculously fast Couriers and eagles as their hull is so weak a few sustained bursts and they're down to 75-80% hull.

I rock Reactive Armour on my big ships because I've seen what penetration torps, cannons, frag cannons and multicannons do to hull. The decrease in thermal is fairly easily mitigated by HRPs whereas if you go up a against a kinetic build and your shields drop, even with HRPs, you're going to feel it in the morning if you use Mirrored

...yeah....sorry, one of them iCourier users I give my iCouriers just a bit of bulk actually, partially because of this, partially because I PvE with a wing of chaps I know IRL and with just a bit of HP it can stay in the RES even when the shields drop.

I usually do my best simply to not let shields drop and on smaller ships prefer lightweight bulkheads w/ heavy duty mod, but that's a good shout for the iCutter when I save up for heavier armour.

The exciting stuff in ED just does not pay well...

 

[Truesilver]

I really haven't played in months so I might be missing something obvious but how can you have a PvP meta based around something that takes several minutes to kill a target? Surely they just leave

Lol Derath, the days when you used to surprise a guy and burst his shield down before he could trigger his first SCB by jamming your Python's nose into him and giving him frags/rails/bursts/cannons/whatever the Dread Pirate had fitted that day are long gone.

Nowadays, if someone wants PvP, they diarise the fight and even then abandon it halfway through.

There is no burst now, no TTK. Just TTGG.