Clarion shields

[Greezt]

A question regarding the clarion builds I see posted on the forums.

 

I see that all the builds use directional shields on their clarion, and no one uses projectors. Obviously, Directionals are much better in mitigating damage, but as a true support build wouldn't projectors be preferable? They seem to me (only by feeling, no math here) to pair extremely well with repair probes, and are a good team utility (correct me please if I'm wrong).

 

Are they not worth it mathematically?

 

I'm currently building my own clarion, and would like to know before wasting my requisition on the wrong type...

 

Thanks

[OKonst]

I think the main problem with shield projector - apart from the fact that shields always regenerate on their own and hull doesn't, which makes the shield boost on repair drones somewhat less useful than ammo refill for teammates - is its limited area of effect and the lack of visual feedback on the GSF-Interface.

 

I personally place it into the same category as Combat Command: COULD be useful IF the effect hits multiple teammates. As there is almost no way (apart from looking at the minimap) to determine when best to use this ability, most of the time there won't be enough people around in close proximity to warrant gimping your own survivability in exchange for a questionable team-buff.

Also, you can't target teammates to find out who would benefit most from the extra shield regeneration. If you use it and there is noone in range who would really need that boost, it is essentially a wasted component.

 

That's only my personal opinion though, I'm sure the real experts can delve even deeper into the matter of your question

Edited October 2, 2015 by OKonst

[ALaggyGrunt]

Not really, no.

1: Short range. You would have to be pretty much in the middle of a very tight furball to project to more than one or two allies. Oh, and if there's a gunship pointed at the furball? It will be aiming at you because you're in a low-evasion build so it can splash everything else.

2: Shield transfer is slow. When everyone's already using burst damage builds, that's a problem because you can't heal through anything meaningfully.

3: Everyone's shields already regenerate pretty quickly out of combat, so putting everyone back in formation isn't going to help..

4: Shields aren't worth that much anyway. Half of the things everyone likes to use pierces them, and a bunch of them snare which enables the first half to work a lot more efficiently.

Edited October 2, 2015 by ALaggyGrunt

[Greezt]

Huh, guess I'll go with directionals then... Thanks

[Lavaar]

The best use of shield projector is when things get really hairy underneath a satellite while you already have at least one T1 bomber under there with you. Even then, you usually require VOiP to know when to use it. It CAN be useful when building it specifically for this purpose, but in that situation you could arguably have access to better choices of ships that may do a better job at keeping that sat green.

 

So for your situation I would recommend directionals, because they are great, and I am sure pretty much everyone here knows that I am a directional shields cheerleader

Edited October 2, 2015 by Lavaar

[Greezt]

The best use of shield projector is when things get really hairy underneath a satellite while you already have at least one T1 bomber under there with you. Even then, you usually require VOiP to know when to use it. It CAN be useful when building it specifically for this purpose, but in that situation you could arguably have access to better choices of ships that may do a better job at keeping that sat green.

 

So for your situation I would recommend directionals, because they are great, and I am sure pretty much everyone here knows that I am a directional shields cheerleader

 

Well, I already use directionals on my pike and star guard, but projectors seemed like a better support option.

[tunewalker]

Well, I already use directionals on my pike and star guard, but projectors seemed like a better support option.

 

keeping yourself alive longer, keeps you in the fight longer, allowing you to use more Repair probes and Missiles and lasers as support. "The group does best when everyone in the group does what is best for themselves, and the group" Being a little greedy is the most efficient way to help a group. Save yourself, so that you can save more people.

[nyghtrunner]

I'll just toss out another option.

 

I prefer Charged Plating on my Clarion, and then stack Deflection Armor, and a defensive crew mate that gives the extra armor (Not Nullify, but the actual + to stat. I forget who it is Pubside, but I get the guy that gives + to shield pool, and + to armor), then run Kendra for Running Interference to help out the evasion and survivability.

 

This build isn't good for Gunships, and it dies pretty quickly to burst scouts, but to be honest, a Strike against those 2 is already pretty rotten potatoes, so I figure I'm not really losing much by running this way.

 

The reason I run this build is that I can hold nodes quite well vs bombers of all sorts. I can face tank Seismic, Concussion, and Interdiction mines all day long, hold the node, LOS the GSers as much as possible, and heal up any allies coming around, while also adding to their evasion. My build is kind of a dom specialist, with Thermites for the bombers, and I really did outfit it to be able to at least hang with bombers on a node. At the very worst, I can pop CP, run through a node before my squad gets there, and actually clear out the bombs about as effectively as an EMP can, and without gimping the ship for extremely sub-optimal components. Then just PDie away, swing around, come back, and face tank any new mines bombers have dropped.

 

Don't mistake me, this isn't really a meta build, but I don't consider it a meta ship. But I like CP and getting 94% damage reduction is a huge game against anything without armor pen. And I've never liked they cyclical nature of Directionals. If there were a good way to be able to swap from back to front to back without having to cycle through, I wouldn't mind them, but the timing on directionals just always felt so awkward to me having to "reset" it with every cycle. There's also like a .5s CD. It might even be as low as .25, but you can't just quick tap "2" twice, and set them where you want them. Sounds like you're already comfortable with the mechanic, though.

[tunewalker]

I'll just toss out another option.

 

I prefer Charged Plating on my Clarion, and then stack Deflection Armor, and a defensive crew mate that gives the extra armor (Not Nullify, but the actual + to stat. I forget who it is Pubside, but I get the guy that gives + to shield pool, and + to armor), then run Kendra for Running Interference to help out the evasion and survivability.

 

This build isn't good for Gunships, and it dies pretty quickly to burst scouts, but to be honest, a Strike against those 2 is already pretty rotten potatoes, so I figure I'm not really losing much by running this way.

 

The reason I run this build is that I can hold nodes quite well vs bombers of all sorts. I can face tank Seismic, Concussion, and Interdiction mines all day long, hold the node, LOS the GSers as much as possible, and heal up any allies coming around, while also adding to their evasion. My build is kind of a dom specialist, with Thermites for the bombers, and I really did outfit it to be able to at least hang with bombers on a node. At the very worst, I can pop CP, run through a node before my squad gets there, and actually clear out the bombs about as effectively as an EMP can, and without gimping the ship for extremely sub-optimal components. Then just PDie away, swing around, come back, and face tank any new mines bombers have dropped.

 

Don't mistake me, this isn't really a meta build, but I don't consider it a meta ship. But I like CP and getting 94% damage reduction is a huge game against anything without armor pen. And I've never liked they cyclical nature of Directionals. If there were a good way to be able to swap from back to front to back without having to cycle through, I wouldn't mind them, but the timing on directionals just always felt so awkward to me having to "reset" it with every cycle. There's also like a .5s CD. It might even be as low as .25, but you can't just quick tap "2" twice, and set them where you want them. Sounds like you're already comfortable with the mechanic, though.

 

Run something similar, might I suggest you change your crewman to have + deflection and + evasion if you are going to have Running Interference, I highly doubt the extra 10% shield strength is doing all that much for you utilizing a shield with 20% bleed through and that you have specifically chosen for nodes. while the extra 5% evasion could be the difference between a missed slug and a hit slug when you pop your RI....

[Greezt]

keeping yourself alive longer, keeps you in the fight longer, allowing you to use more Repair probes and Missiles and lasers as support. "The group does best when everyone in the group does what is best for themselves, and the group" Being a little greedy is the most efficient way to help a group. Save yourself, so that you can save more people.

I thought that would only work as an attack ship... I suppose that goes for support as well.

 

I'll just toss out another option.

 

I prefer Charged Plating on my Clarion, and then stack Deflection Armor, and a defensive crew mate that gives the extra armor (Not Nullify, but the actual + to stat. I forget who it is Pubside, but I get the guy that gives + to shield pool, and + to armor), then run Kendra for Running Interference to help out the evasion and survivability.

 

This build isn't good for Gunships, and it dies pretty quickly to burst scouts, but to be honest, a Strike against those 2 is already pretty rotten potatoes, so I figure I'm not really losing much by running this way.

 

The reason I run this build is that I can hold nodes quite well vs bombers of all sorts. I can face tank Seismic, Concussion, and Interdiction mines all day long, hold the node, LOS the GSers as much as possible, and heal up any allies coming around, while also adding to their evasion. My build is kind of a dom specialist, with Thermites for the bombers, and I really did outfit it to be able to at least hang with bombers on a node. At the very worst, I can pop CP, run through a node before my squad gets there, and actually clear out the bombs about as effectively as an EMP can, and without gimping the ship for extremely sub-optimal components. Then just PDie away, swing around, come back, and face tank any new mines bombers have dropped.

 

Don't mistake me, this isn't really a meta build, but I don't consider it a meta ship. But I like CP and getting 94% damage reduction is a huge game against anything without armor pen. And I've never liked they cyclical nature of Directionals. If there were a good way to be able to swap from back to front to back without having to cycle through, I wouldn't mind them, but the timing on directionals just always felt so awkward to me having to "reset" it with every cycle. There's also like a .5s CD. It might even be as low as .25, but you can't just quick tap "2" twice, and set them where you want them. Sounds like you're already comfortable with the mechanic, though.

Wouldn't ramparts be a problem for such a build? I mean, heavy lasers and concussion mines pack quite a punch against reduction.

[nyghtrunner]

Run something similar, might I suggest you change your crewman to have + deflection and + evasion if you are going to have Running Interference, I highly doubt the extra 10% shield strength is doing all that much for you utilizing a shield with 20% bleed through and that you have specifically chosen for nodes. while the extra 5% evasion could be the difference between a missed slug and a hit slug when you pop your RI....

True. Never really ran the numbers, just looked at the size of the shields and figured that the extra 10% shield would be not terrible, and that the evasion wouldn't really be worth it, since I wasn't stacking on the armor slot or anything. I'll have to give that a try, or maybe actually crunch some of the numbers.

[nyghtrunner]

Wouldn't ramparts be a problem for such a build? I mean, heavy lasers and concussion mines pack quite a punch against reduction.

Concussion mines don't really do anything to reduction, since there's no 100% armor pen on concussion mines, just the Concussion missiles for the top option if you take that skill in the tree. There's an additional 16% to armor you can do at T5 of concussion mines, but that's totally not the same thing. Getting to 94% DR with your self heals turns this thing into a really tough cookie vs anything that doesn't have either BLCs or a Slug Railgun, and by and large, no single bomber will be able to keep you out of the area. You can't really kill a CP bomber unless you land a Thermite, but they can't really kill you either, and you will force them to move, or die to Thermite.

 

The armor pen on the heavies can be a bit of a threat, but honestly, the biggest "threat" is getting tagged by an Interdiction mine and getting slowed to a crawl. With this build, the bombers are typically not the things you need to worry about (And if you hit the bomber with a Thermite, you can usually kill them with Quads in short order), but getting slowed while leading a burst scout or getting caught in the LOS of a Slug throwing GS will kill you. But that happens even if you're on a bomber yourself. With the Clarion, you have PDie, which can move you around the node, and quickly LOS a bomber that has you slowed much more efficiently than you could do if you were in a bomber. If you get slowed in your bomber in a bad position with the offending bomber having a good bead on you, you're going to die. With the Clarion, PDie gives you a chance to get away, readjust, and make them find another line on you. By the time they do that, your engine is up again.

 

Just look at it this way, I guess. Perhaps the single most effective ship on a node in a Dom is a T1 Bomber, and the most successful builds of those stack their DR to 99%, and often run Hydro-Spanner. With the Clarion, you're losing 5% DR, but your self heal is SO MUCH better than Hydro-Spanner, you get RI, you're more mobile, you have an Engine component. Any damage you take, you can heal, whereas most times, the T1 bomber simply dies over time to attrition (which is why they take Hydro-spanner so many times).

 

This ship isn't a killer, and as I say, it's not what I consider a meta ship. But if you play it correctly, it can be really tough to tear away from a node, and with PDie, even if it becomes necessary, you can almost always run away. With your build, Seismics can be problematic, because they don't care about your shields. My build laughs at Seismics, Concussions, and largely Interdiction Mines. The slow effect is real, and can kill you, but the mine itself won't hurt you.

 

But also, do keep in mind that I endorse this build in "fun" matches, where you don't need to do damage or actually mine up a node. It's support all the way, and just happens to be really good at eating the adds on nodes while shrugging off the explosions.

 

I built this version for a single purpose, really. To be able to dislodge the tick bombers if needed. It's pretty good at that. Otherwise, it's just kind of fun to fly.

Edited October 2, 2015 by nyghtrunner

[Greezt]

keeping yourself alive longer, keeps you in the fight longer, allowing you to use more Repair probes and Missiles and lasers as support. "The group does best when everyone in the group does what is best for themselves, and the group" Being a little greedy is the most efficient way to help a group. Save yourself, so that you can save more people.

I thought that would only work as an attack ship... I suppose that goes for support as well.

 

I'll just toss out another option.

 

I prefer Charged Plating on my Clarion, and then stack Deflection Armor, and a defensive crew mate that gives the extra armor (Not Nullify, but the actual + to stat. I forget who it is Pubside, but I get the guy that gives + to shield pool, and + to armor), then run Kendra for Running Interference to help out the evasion and survivability.

 

This build isn't good for Gunships, and it dies pretty quickly to burst scouts, but to be honest, a Strike against those 2 is already pretty rotten potatoes, so I figure I'm not really losing much by running this way.

 

The reason I run this build is that I can hold nodes quite well vs bombers of all sorts. I can face tank Seismic, Concussion, and Interdiction mines all day long, hold the node, LOS the GSers as much as possible, and heal up any allies coming around, while also adding to their evasion. My build is kind of a dom specialist, with Thermites for the bombers, and I really did outfit it to be able to at least hang with bombers on a node. At the very worst, I can pop CP, run through a node before my squad gets there, and actually clear out the bombs about as effectively as an EMP can, and without gimping the ship for extremely sub-optimal components. Then just PDie away, swing around, come back, and face tank any new mines bombers have dropped.

 

Don't mistake me, this isn't really a meta build, but I don't consider it a meta ship. But I like CP and getting 94% damage reduction is a huge game against anything without armor pen. And I've never liked they cyclical nature of Directionals. If there were a good way to be able to swap from back to front to back without having to cycle through, I wouldn't mind them, but the timing on directionals just always felt so awkward to me having to "reset" it with every cycle. There's also like a .5s CD. It might even be as low as .25, but you can't just quick tap "2" twice, and set them where you want them. Sounds like you're already comfortable with the mechanic, though.

Wouldn't ramparts be a problem for such a build? I mean, heavy lasers and concussion mines pack quite a punch against reduction.

[havokhead]

Directionals are more useful overall for sure but as stated above Shield Projector is good for in-tight fighting around sats. Of course shields regen steadily out of combat but when a sat is under heavy pressure with wave after wave of enemy swarms coming in, sometimes you don't get that break in fighting so Projector can be powerful paired with repair probe. Keeping squadmates fully healed, fully armed and full shields is the very definition of support.

 

I use protorps with this build because you can hit foes at extreme range without abandoning the satellite and thus abandoning your support role. Protorps in this situation are pretty effective against approaching bombers who can't break the missile lock and even if the protorp hit doesn't outright kill the bomber, it'll be so damaged that it won't last very long regardless. The T3 fighter is a very slow ship and if you're out chasing kills then you're doing your squadron a disservice by being out of position to provide in-close support.

[tunewalker]

True. Never really ran the numbers, just looked at the size of the shields and figured that the extra 10% shield would be not terrible, and that the evasion wouldn't really be worth it, since I wasn't stacking on the armor slot or anything. I'll have to give that a try, or maybe actually crunch some of the numbers.

 

personally I dont use RI on the ship at all, because of that whole "not stacking enough evasion" thing, but if you are going to use the crew ability it helps to make it a little bit more effective, just my thoughts on the matter.

[Verain]

I hate shield projector. This thread has mostly explained why, but I don't want to miss the boat on complaining about it.

 

 

Charged Plating: This has a specific purpose- it's very good at chilling on a node. It can't really hurt bombers on nodes, but it can intercept them, and it can devour mines and drones. Like all strikes, it's generally not quite optimal, but we've seen it used effectively in a couple serious games. With enough situational awareness, this ship requires either snares or a scout to kill, as it will remain LOS of gunships and can heal through anything a bomber will deal out. This is a secondary and interesting build, but it seems to not quite be good enough to play- but it is close.

 

Directionals: This standard build is a support ship that is maybe worth playing one of in serious games. It suffers from the standard problem of strikes- it can't devour any target quickly, loses to scouts (but not instantly), and can't really push a bomber away from a setup. I don't see this ship queued on serious nights, and we have tried it- it just plays a "slow" game without the tools of the other ships that do this (bombers), and while it can deroost gunships, it cannot escape from the rest of the team like a scout could, nor can it persue any ship to exhaustion, as it lacks the close range weapons needed to destroy a ship running away. Still, it has a ton of shields, it can hide the shields from ions by taking the ion to the hull, and then switching back to mostly ignore slug or plasma, it can tank a bit of seismic if it needs to, and the repair probes are genuinely helpful and stack with repair probe healing, as well as refilling the ammo on any scouts.

 

 

Why you shouldn't take shield projector:

 

> Shield projector gives you 540 less shields than Directionals, on each arc.

> Shield projector loses the ability to instantly buttress a single arc. This is the most potent feature of directionals. If you are dealing with damage incoming from a direction, shield projector gives you close to two thousand less health to work with, and almost all damage is predictable to a direction in some way.

> Shield projector loses the ability to rebalance shields. If you take 1000 with directionals, a couple globals later you are down to 500 lost from each side (assuming you want balanced shields because damage could come from anywhere). This means that after taking 1000 shield damage and pressing 2 a few times, your shields are down to where shield projector STARTS- well not all the way, but almost there.

> Shield projector doesn't regenerate shields until 6 seconds after being fired on. This means that in most situations, you will regain a lot less shields over time with shield projector than you will with directionals, and that's silly given that shield projector is supposed to be good at regenerating shields.

> Shield projector has a really trashcan active. When you activate it, you begin healing shields. Strike fighters, including you, gain 864 shields on each arc over 10 seconds. Bombers gain 720, Gunships gain 816, and Scouts gain 624. But you'll notice that this is only for ships that start and end within the radius, a microscopic 3000m.

In order for shield projector to matter to an ally:

1- That ally must have less than max shields.

2- That ally must not be capable of getting his shields back to full on his own before he takes more damage.

AND

3- The shield amount must actually prevent the ship from dying for at least one shot.

This all essentially never once happens. While you can and will run into a dogfight and press shield projector, this is almost never going to help, because the targets will either have been fine without your shield projector, or will die even with it- and EVEN WHEN IT HELPS, you still have to weigh it versus your play if you had directionals. When you enter melee as a Clarion, you are almost assuredly not going to be doing your most helpful actions. If you had charged a gunship with good directional play, you are more likely to have saved the scout. If there's a bomber killing the scout, the shields you give him won't help, and you might have been better off trying to lock a thermite and forcing him to change sides to a place where the scout could kill him before dying. Many times you are better off NOT joining a melee on a Clarion, because it's not like you have bursts and clusters or whatever.

 

So it sucks for pretty much every possible reason. It's actually hard to make it much better- the best suggestions I've seen are to increase the radius a lot, but then I bet you could actually exploit it somehow. It might have some game as a fortress shield gunship / girl bomber tender, but that's an odd stack that we haven't really seen work in practice. I think the devs buffed it to a reasonable amount, with the 50% buff uptime and stuff, but it's just hard to make this move good.

 

 

So don't take it!

[RickDagles]

The charged plating clarion is quite good but it's straight up worse than the charged plating rampart. You give up interdiction mines, seismic mines, and hyperspace beacon for what? Repair probes and power dive? It's not a good trade-off. I would argue that a well flown rampart has better survivability on the node than the clarion. Your interdiction mines keep you alive against BLC scouts that would tear a clarion apart in seconds. And both ships are about equally capable of LoS. Clarion might slightly edge out the rampart when interdicted. However, the rampart can smash off the satellite and incur less damage.

 

The directional shields clarion is a pretty cool ship in all game modes. IMO it is one upgrade away from being meta. Regen thrusters or cluster missiles would make it worth using against the GS/bomber ball. Verain nicely described its current limitations. It doesn't have enough gas or dps to really seriously threaten gunships. And while it can escape safely from an attack without dieing, an evasion scout does the job a lot better. The only advantage to using the clarion is that it laughs at railgun drones.

 

Perhaps the best role for the clarion is for beacon hunting in domination mode. But a laser/pod novadive is better here since it has TT range boost. And better dps.

Edited October 3, 2015 by RickDagles

[Ramalina]

It's basically Quick Charge Shields but slightly worse at recovering from burst damage before the next burst arrives and also without the engine efficiency bonus that is a significant redeeming feature for QCS.

 

Over the long term average it is theoretically a slightly tankier shield than QCS, but pretty much every component balanced around long term averages underperforms significantly because GSF success revolves around how individual instances of burst damage get resolved. Either you survive the burst or you don't, so the average case winds up being irrelevant, unless you're talking average chance of survival (as opposed to average damage done/taken).

 

That said, the shield is typically one of the last things I typically swap out and upgrade on a T3 strike because it's pretty damn tanky even with the baseline Shield Projector.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

IMO it is one upgrade away from being meta. Regen thrusters or cluster missiles would make it worth using against the GS/bomber ball. Verain nicely described its current limitations. It doesn't have enough gas or dps to really seriously threaten gunships. And while it can escape safely from an attack without dieing, an evasion scout does the job a lot better. The only advantage to using the clarion is that it laughs at railgun drones.

 

Honestly I think if it just had thrusters instead of sensors it might earn a place in the meta. Throw in HLC & concs and I think you'd definitely have a meta worthy recipe (if I could only choose one of the two I'd go with HLC since it would synergize really well with torps + CP/directionals as a bomber hunter).

 

Would it make the other strikes automatically inferior ships? Possibly. Is that inherently bad? IMO no. You already have battlescouts with optimal component choices so why shouldn't strikes have a model that has all optimal component choices too? (Plus the Clarion is the coolest looking strike so is anyone really going to complain that the most common strike model is an X-Wing/ARC-170 hybrid?).

[FlavivsAetivs]

Directionals: This standard build is a support ship that is maybe worth playing one of in serious games. It suffers from the standard problem of strikes- it can't devour any target quickly, loses to scouts (but not instantly), and can't really push a bomber away from a setup. I don't see this ship queued on serious nights, and we have tried it- it just plays a "slow" game without the tools of the other ships that do this (bombers), and while it can deroost gunships, it cannot escape from the rest of the team like a scout could, nor can it persue any ship to exhaustion, as it lacks the close range weapons needed to destroy a ship running away. Still, it has a ton of shields, it can hide the shields from ions by taking the ion to the hull, and then switching back to mostly ignore slug or plasma, it can tank a bit of seismic if it needs to, and the repair probes are genuinely helpful and stack with repair probe healing, as well as refilling the ammo on any scouts.

 

I thought I'd chime in as the Clarion pilot on Jedi Cov.

 

A Clarion can absolutely wreck an enemy team with the right knowledge of how to use asteroids/debris/whatever for cover and knowing when to attack. On a good day I come out on top of the leader board with ~15 kills in a match. Most days I'm usually in top 3 (and lots of assists... damn gunships stealing my kills). Most Bombers, scouts, or whatever don't stand much of a chance. Directional shield + Elara's damage reduction buff make you able to take most enemies head on, then the trick is hoping a proton torpedo locks in time and snapping it off before they pass you in the joust. The repair probe is there to keep you alive and wear enemies down by attrition when you're up against the annoying ones like BLC scouts or Tenebrious ( <- anyone who plays on Jedi Cov will get that).

 

People use Clarion in a support role when really it's a mix of an offensive and defensive ship. Your only real problem is facing more than one gunship and BLC scouts. Skill ultimately is what beats it.

 

More gun damage, a faster Torpedo lock, and more engine power would make a Clarion virtually unstoppable in the right hands. Then the trick is to not dodge missiles and smack into an asteroid! xD

Edited October 4, 2015 by FlavivsAetivs

[Greezt]

I thought I'd chime in as the Clarion pilot on Jedi Cov.

 

A Clarion can absolutely wreck an enemy team with the right knowledge of how to use asteroids/debris/whatever for cover and knowing when to attack. On a good day I come out on top of the leader board with ~15 kills in a match. Most days I'm usually in top 3 (and lots of assists... damn gunships stealing my kills). Most Bombers, scouts, or whatever don't stand much of a chance. Directional shield + Elara's damage reduction buff make you able to take most enemies head on, then the trick is hoping a proton torpedo locks in time and snapping it off before they pass you in the joust. The repair probe is there to keep you alive and wear enemies down by attrition when you're up against the annoying ones like BLC scouts or Tenebrious ( <- anyone who plays on Jedi Cov will get that).

 

People use Clarion in a support role when really it's a mix of an offensive and defensive ship. Your only real problem is facing more than one gunship and BLC scouts. Skill ultimately is what beats it.

 

More gun damage, a faster Torpedo lock, and more engine power would make a Clarion virtually unstoppable in the right hands. Then the trick is to not dodge missiles and smack into an asteroid! xD

 

I chose thermites over protons, but other than that I tried your way, and I find it much more fun.

 

Thanks!

[FlavivsAetivs]

Another tip: On Domination, don't chase bombers around the capture point. Go straight down about 8000 meters and come up from below where they can't break missle lock or hide. As they fly in a circle underneath it they stay entirely in your targeting reticule too. I can kill 2 bombers, sometimes three, hiding around a capture point that way, or kill anything that chases me.

 

~ Eudoxia

Edited October 5, 2015 by FlavivsAetivs

[Verain]

The charged plating clarion is quite good but it's straight up worse than the charged plating rampart. You give up interdiction mines, seismic mines, and hyperspace beacon for what? Repair probes and power dive? It's not a good trade-off. I would argue that a well flown rampart has better survivability on the node than the clarion.

 

I think this sums up why not to fly the charged plating clarion- generally, you're better off on a boy bomber. The clarion flight is different, and accomplishes generally lesser results. I do disagree about survivability on the node- if the boy bomber doesn't have repairs, he ends up a lot more limited in where he can go. The clarion has more shields that regenerate faster, and his lesser hull still has the rolling repair probes to help. You miss out on "deploy mine into railshot", a huge defensive trick, and of course, you can't push anyone OFF the node, which is IMO the reason why this ship doesn't have much of a job. Yes, you CAN dive a gunship a little better than the bomber, but it's just like... does that help? The Clarion that dives gunships still isn't that great at it.

 

 

However, the rampart can smash off the satellite and incur less damage.

 

True, but there's powerdive to consider.

 

The directional shields clarion is a pretty cool ship in all game modes. IMO it is one upgrade away from being meta.

 

Completely concur. It so almost works. By having repair probes, secondary armor AND shields, and power dive, it's the top strike fighter, and almost has a job. I get why they didn't give it the weapons capable of making it a specialized killer, and it seems to be balanced mostly along the same way that the other strikes are- to a lower bar, probably because of assumptions that weren't quite true on live.

 

 

Perhaps the best role for the clarion is for beacon hunting in domination mode. But a laser/pod novadive is better here since it has TT range boost. And better dps.

 

In theory it would be a close competition between the long legs of the novadive, the ability to apply tensor and drop a repair probe of the spearpoint, and the ability to cast repair hots on friendly ships and dive out of danger after taking out the beacon. But even with beacon control so important, we don't normally have the ability to run any of these things. Certainly, I wouldn't want a ship to have this job as full time anyway, and as you say, the type 1 scout would be best at getting to and eliminating those targets.

 

 

The beacon is practical to deploy with a coordinated respawn, which is at least SOME of beacon deployments- those can be countered by everyone looking at it, but not in all cases. If that was changed (say the activation time was tripled or something), such that ALL beacons were offnode, then this would be more important. And hey, maybe this is a role on denon. That map is Beacon Heaven.

[Verain]

People use Clarion in a support role when really it's a mix of an offensive and defensive ship. Your only real problem is facing more than one gunship and BLC scouts. Skill ultimately is what beats it.

 

I don't think having to have a skill delta between yourself and the other ships is a good measure. First, of course that works, second, you can't generate a sizable enough skill delta in all cases, and finally, the pilots who seem to be towards the top of the stack aren't choosing the Clarion, despite a game-wide love of the ship- if the ship shined, we'd see it shining.

 

If I'm on a type 1 gunship and a Clarion is diving me, I'll normally wind up an ion and release somewhere before full charge. If I think he won't aim his directionals away, I'll give him the full slug. If I can actually get him in space with no boost, I'll slug him to death. But in a tough game, I'm much more likely to ion him once and then ignore him- he won't be a threat in the next 5-15 seconds that can actually kill me if he's at 8k+, and meanwhile there's scouts and gunships playing a very "fast game"- they have to be handled in seconds or we lose ships or objectives. Meanwhile, the Clarion has a year to lock a missile. He's playing a slower game. I can't kill him instantly, but neither can he do the same to me. A burst scout in the same situation can't be ignored or tanked- I must switch to him, flee, pop cooldowns and flee, or fly to a nest. The battle scout is making me change my play NOW, the Clarion is pushing my actions into the future. Sure, it will take me more resources to kill him or handle him later (a ton of energy, a lot of charge time), but the fact that I can put him on the credit card and pay him off once I've affected the game board makes him a lot worse at this.

 

I don't often go against Clarions on a battle scout, but when I do I can chase the Clarion. He immediately has to make the game "slow". If he's not at optimal resources when I swap, he'll definitely die, and if he is, he can probably escape (and if I chase it's because I'm ok playing a "slow" game at the moment- he won't be affecting game state, and I'm ok joining that cause to get him back to spawn or to another node). I certainly don't see a type 3 strike being able to kill a battle scout almost ever- the Clarion is almost uniquely unsuited to the task, with no booster component to maintain a chase, no fast locking missiles to get him to use his cooldowns, and no weapon capable of surprising him or causing him to run. I don't even think this is a flaw- I think that the devs probably didn't think scouts would be as dominate over strike fighters, but I'm pretty sure that the battle scout was literally meant to own the command strike. The command strike seems like he would be great in a large ball of fighters, handing out a group buff and trying to help focus on a ship that is weak, and hoping that the ball will resolve in his team's favor *despite* his lesser power at melee, and *because* of his superior powers as a Leader Totem. If the meta was sustained fighter balls, then I think we'd actually see this sort of happen.

[FlavivsAetivs]

I don't think having to have a skill delta between yourself and the other ships is a good measure. First, of course that works, second, you can't generate a sizable enough skill delta in all cases, and finally, the pilots who seem to be towards the top of the stack aren't choosing the Clarion, despite a game-wide love of the ship- if the ship shined, we'd see it shining.

 

True, very few people fly a Clarion other than me. And I am by no means the best pilot in the game.

 

If I'm on a type 1 gunship and a Clarion is diving me, I'll normally wind up an ion and release somewhere before full charge. If I think he won't aim his directionals away, I'll give him the full slug. If I can actually get him in space with no boost, I'll slug him to death. But in a tough game, I'm much more likely to ion him once and then ignore him- he won't be a threat in the next 5-15 seconds that can actually kill me if he's at 8k+, and meanwhile there's scouts and gunships playing a very "fast game"- they have to be handled in seconds or we lose ships or objectives. Meanwhile, the Clarion has a year to lock a missile. He's playing a slower game. I can't kill him instantly, but neither can he do the same to me. A burst scout in the same situation can't be ignored or tanked- I must switch to him, flee, pop cooldowns and flee, or fly to a nest. The battle scout is making me change my play NOW, the Clarion is pushing my actions into the future. Sure, it will take me more resources to kill him or handle him later (a ton of energy, a lot of charge time), but the fact that I can put him on the credit card and pay him off once I've affected the game board makes him a lot worse at this.

 

Also a fair point but that also depends on when you're being attacked. I encourage you to come to Jedi Cov and find out the hard way what ignoring me can do to you. Also a fully charged railgun slug is exactly why I recommended the Elara/whoever else damage resist. I can survive your ion and your slug and by that time I've fired a missle and in guns range, and then I can keep you running cause I'll still have more than half my engines left, while you gotta keep moving to get away and get off a second slug or turn on me with BLC which allows me to target you with a torpedo again if you dodged the first one.

 

If you're targeting scouts rather than me, that's even more of an advantage to me because I don't have to use my engine boost since you can't see me coming in range or are ignoring me. And the time I spend chasing you is time you could be killing scouts/whatever else.

 

I don't often go against Clarions on a battle scout, but when I do I can chase the Clarion. He immediately has to make the game "slow". If he's not at optimal resources when I swap, he'll definitely die, and if he is, he can probably escape (and if I chase it's because I'm ok playing a "slow" game at the moment- he won't be affecting game state, and I'm ok joining that cause to get him back to spawn or to another node). I certainly don't see a type 3 strike being able to kill a battle scout almost ever- the Clarion is almost uniquely unsuited to the task, with no booster component to maintain a chase, no fast locking missiles to get him to use his cooldowns, and no weapon capable of surprising him or causing him to run. I don't even think this is a flaw- I think that the devs probably didn't think scouts would be as dominate over strike fighters, but I'm pretty sure that the battle scout was literally meant to own the command strike.

 

This is what I meant by saying BLC scouts are a pain in the ***. Although I can kill one if the scout screws up or takes me head on from a significant range and I can get off the missle before he passes me (sometimes it's so close range by then he doesn't have time to dodge). Then I can use repair probes, damage resist, shields, and engine power to survive long enough for someone to get him off me, or run away into friendly gunships.

 

The command strike seems like he would be great in a large ball of fighters, handing out a group buff and trying to help focus on a ship that is weak, and hoping that the ball will resolve in his team's favor *despite* his lesser power at melee, and *because* of his superior powers as a Leader Totem. If the meta was sustained fighter balls, then I think we'd actually see this sort of happen.

 

It is a team factor. If I've got a capable team then I do extremely well, but that's true of almost any match and any kind of ship.