Marza Dreadnought Missile Barrage

yeah it is. though some say it is OP. but it has been debated to death

When I read the subject I was thinking "oh no, not another 'nerf the damn marza'- thread". But now... there is actually someone who likes the Missile Barrage just as much as I do  

I like it even more then the Vasari Starbase or the Advent Ilum. So thumbs up for you and every other thread not nagging about this and that  

Lol thanks Extremor! I actually think it's great. I don't think they should change it at all, for one reason: it takes FOREVER for you to reach the upgrade level/antimatter reserves to use it.

Well...kinda sorta and not really. In most games you pretty much have a good chance of getting at least 1 cap to level 6.

i mostly play tec, and my marza always have enough AM to cast barrage, basiclly i just use AM to erase planets and i quite never use radiation bomb against ships. the few time i use it it's because i m isolated far away from my fleet, busy in a desperate 1v1 against another cap ship or agaisnt  mass scout.

i dont use it because i dont found the "radiation " effect very effective.

a good point is that i always have enough AM when come the time to click the "help me to win button"

Once the Marza hits level 6 it is a good advice to turn off autocast of all abilities anyway. that way the owner has it in its own hands to have enough AM in reserve when the cooldown of MB expires.

I don't play online, but I am pretty sure it is only a "help me win"-button against "i don't care losing"-players   

Well, you know, being a TEC player and all, I liek it.

I like MB as it is.  Aside from a better grahic, I'd say its perfect.

As far as the Marza being the best ship the TEC have, not necessarily.

Akkan: Can stop MB in its tracks and works well with LRM's.

Dunov: Great support ship.  Can repair shields, destroy shields, or use magnetize which is a cool ability.  Top all that with flux field, and you just got a great synergy for the Kol.

Kol: The hardest ship in the game to kill.  It neutralizes phase missiles, has a damage redux, insane health, and good shields.  Then you get Flak burst which shreds enemy SC, you have four weapon banks, GRG which synergizes with flux field to create an attack that can destroy enemy capitals very quickly.

Marza:

Radiation Bomb: Good for tight fleet formations.  The radiation affects all nearby enemy ships, so make sure to keep that in mind.

Raze Planet: Great bombing ability.  Only second to The Egg's vacuum cleaner.

Incendiary Rounds: Decent DoT.  It doesn't do much since the Marza's weapons like to focus their fire.  Really, it just increases your DPS by x amount.  Its a nice boost, but not what you want to put your points in.

Missile Barrage: The most devastating multi-target attack.  (CB is the best vs a single target/few targets.)  It can be stopped by a lot of things though.  Obviously, Ion Bolt, Phase out Hull, the advent's equivalent that I can't think of the name of, Detonate Antimatter, and some others.  The point is, unchecked, this destroys fleets, but all you have to do to survive is use shield restore (if Advent) or just move.  That's it.  If Vas, you can get out of there really quickly.  The AoE is relatively small, so you will only get so many targets against someone who knows what they are doing.

That's the thing.  You can just leave, you can just suck up the damage with SR, or stun the Marza.  Its not terribly hard to stop.  Besides, a level 6 Marza is going to die before any other level 6 ship that a TEC player could possibly put on the field.

Your points are valid.

You're right, the Kol is awesome. First of all, it looks like an enormous fish with cannons.

Yeah Marza is great, just needs something so your opponent can watch his fleet being destroyed, instead of being "uh, whered my fleet just go?" Cuz right now you have to be pretty close to the action to see it.

well, when all your ships in the empire tree suddenly start flashing red, its preety obvious what is going on... and you can be building trade ports in a different gravity well to see it go off... and then just hit the "1" key (you know, when you selected your capital ship and hit ctrl+1 to bind 1 to select your capital ship) hit "w" (the usual key for interupt ablitiy... you did get a capital ship with an interupt, right? (or shield restore) and click on the marza in the empire tree... problem solved.

Eventhough I know I should, I don't stare at empire tree when battling, I'd rather watch all the cool stuff going on, and manage my ships movement. Plus a lot of the time I have the tree stacked, making it difficult to tell if all my ships are under fire or just the ones on top of the stacks. I recall a time this fellow came at me with 80+ lrms and a lvl7 Marza. I had he fleet outmatched and my Revelation selected and ready and was moving it aournd and away from the lrms that wanted to ff it out of existence, i kept my eye on both his marza and my revelation, but alas, I was too far zoomed out to see those tiny little red missiles. I just think something that powerful should be pretty visible. Yeah there was a bunch of stuff I could have done differently, hindsights a bitch y'know, but I thought I was doing the right thing being ready to pounce on that Marza the second I saw a volley of missiles come out. Bummer, I couldn't see em, and my fleet was wiped out right under my nose. I mean most AOE effects are pretty visible, why should the second most powerful one in the game be any different?

Second?

The best offensive AoE's are (but not necessarily in this order): MB, FB, Tele Push, AEAura, Malice, and Cleansing Brilliance (if you want to call it that...)

I didnt say offensive, I just said in the game(and meant in Entrenchment), which the big red button holds the title of most deadly. Oh and Meteor storm has to fit in there somewhere.

True...  I wasn't including SB's in there...  But of course the BRB is the most deadly.  You just blew up a structure hundreds of kilometers in length.  Its not going to be pretty for anything around it...

The big red button is awesome.

A question: is the missile barrage good for assaulting starbases?

Not really.  MB deals 150 per wave.  If I remember right, this damage is dealt to all enemy ships within the radius per wave.  Now, with 25 waves, you end up with 3750 damage per enemy ship.  For this reason, it is great for taking out frigates, decent versus carriers, poor versus caps, and negligible versus an SB.  All the armor and mitigation an SB has reduces the usefulness of MB by a long shot.  Lets say the SB in question has 20 armor (for easy math) and has a max mitigation of 50% (once again, for easy math).  Now, each armor point essentially decreases damage received by 5%.  With 20, that would look like 100%, but because of the way it is calculated, it ends up reduces damage by 50%.  That means that all damage received will be reduced by a total of 75%.  So, only about a thousand damage would actually hit it.  Its not very efficient as far as SB killing goes.

Radiation bomb on the other hand is single best TEC ability vs a starbase.

it all depends astax if you have ceiloes you can use the second ability (its name escapes me right now) 40% dmg increase takes down a SB pretty quickly with anything you have.

Ah, I see!

@Astax:

Not really...  Rad bomb only does 375 damage and some slight DoT.  Its really not all that good versus a single target.  Its benefits come from use against battleballs where the enemy is extremely close together so the DoT affects a good chunk of their fleet...

Corection:

120 per wave over 25 waves for a total of 3000 dmg that gets mitigates at each wave. Before it was 150 dmg over 20 waves for 3000 damage mitigated at each wave.

As for using it to kill Starbases it help it will deall the 3000 dmg to the SB but you might be better off keeping it for fleets.

The problem with radiation bomb is that the effect is so short that teh damage the ships recived form it gets repair in no time. And that when the Target that was irradiated dies the rediation stops on all other ships that were contaminated. How ever it does have a relatively nice impact on the target. But the Kols Gauss Raill Gun is a better choise for that. I prefer incendiary shells over radiation bomb since it deal extra damage to the target my marza is trying to kill and it doesnt compete for AM with Raze planet and Missile Barrage.

Well, incendiary payloads isn't all that good either...  It just increases your max DPS by x amount.  And that is only a max of six.  For a ship that already does 60-some odd damage at level one, its not a big difference.  It doesn't even buff all its weapons, just missiles and autocannons.  Plus, the thing's weapons are all forward facing, so it decreases the worth of it even more...  If this was on the Kol, this would be far more effective due to the Kol's four weapon banks which would increase the value of this by 300% which would yield a 24 DPS buff.  That is a good buff...

Indeed how ever I still prefer it for no competed for AM with raze planet and MB. 2 Abilaties I always want to have more then enought spare AM to use. If I use RB it does do more bang then IS how ever I can'T use it all time or very offten were IS is always there. Int he long run for me and my style of play over time I dela more DMG with IS then with RB.

Hmm... Someone really should test the effectiveness of these things...  If only I played online...  I guess I could try it versus militia, but I won't be able to test it till later...