A little build help please

lordmalak1

I've been away for quite some time so my toon stats have all been wiped. I need to skill my Romulan for starters, so here's what I was thinking:
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/b1ad8724c9dac98b4e173b863930ac67

Ship build I can work on later as it's still equipped from before the great wipe. The ship will remain, so I need a Captain build to fly it. I've been running a low yield rravity well forever for crowd gathering, but my purpose isn't a full CC tank or healer- I routinely fall into the escort role, following the gunslingers into the fray and pick off the stragglers. Am playing with some of the pilot skills on my SCI boff, so he's flexible. So is this toon usable ?

Thanks for the critiques in advance.

seriousdave

Almost everything is "useable" but being "effective" is a different matter. Looks decent enough for some jack of all trades character (which I prefer over min/max) but if you wanna go hardcore into some playstyle you'll need a respec.

Though that 3 points in drain expertise might make you shed a tear in the near future. Leech is gonna be nerfed and hard capped in the rebalance. Energy gain will be fixed at +0,75 per stack (+7,5 at 10 stacks) regardless of your stats and the target's drain portion is also being nerfed quite a bit but still scaling with drain expertise.

lordmalak1

Good to know. I was a bit iffy on the drain expertise since I don't drop GW to drain but it was highly recommended just to burn points in the SCI profession so the ultimate abilities can be claimed. At least with the cap coming I can ditch the Leech console and put something useful in it's place. Since I have zero skills atm, a respec isn't needed, the skill tree is only a plan that if works I might use something similar on all my other toons.

Thanks for looking.

mustrumridcully0

I dunno if you should drop Plasmonic Leech. +7.5 to all power is not something any other console can give you. And you're still draining power from your enemy.

lordmalak1

I swapped out the leech for the shielded datacore console and I haven't noticed much difference with power levels, but I'm not as squishy anymore. I'll want to wait a while to see how skills have been changed, and how players builds are changing to compensate before I start allocating points to my capt skills, as I've started spending some of the 30 spec points I have saved and they're keeping me 0 skilled capt alive long enough to get BNP's from some of the STF's.

I just wish more peeps posted their complete builds, not just their ships loadouts.

lordmalak1

So I'm talking with this player in chat last night, and he suggested running the CC set on my fleet Ar'kif. After looking at the set for the first time in a couple years I get to thinking this set got some major buffs since I last played (about 18 months). As the set looks pretty tasty I'm considering it, tho I'm not to sure I wanna run a hyper engine- I'm more of an efficient combat engine flyer so I gotta ask- is the set powers really that good or can I get away with running a 2 or 3 piece setup around the CC gear ?

tom61sto

lordmalak1 wrote: »

So I'm talking with this player in chat last night, and he suggested running the CC set on my fleet Ar'kif. After looking at the set for the first time in a couple years I get to thinking this set got some major buffs since I last played (about 18 months). As the set looks pretty tasty I'm considering it, tho I'm not to sure I wanna run a hyper engine- I'm more of an efficient combat engine flyer so I gotta ask- is the set powers really that good or can I get away with running a 2 or 3 piece setup around the CC gear ?

Unless I missed a S13 buff to it, the CC main set has little to recommend the entire thing. Deflector is a stand-out for torp builds when upgraded to Mk14, but is usually used along with KHG/AMACO shields and engines for that set's torp damage in the two-set. The engines are nice on slow boats with low Inertia rating, like the D'Deridex, but I wouldn't seek it out for a Ar'kif. I can't even remember what special things the shields have.

For an energy build on a Romulan (hopefully running Superior Romulan Operative Bridge Officers), I would strongly consider going with the Nukara Shields and Deflector, which the two-set got a large buff to 5% Category 2 damage boost (much larger than it sounds) with S13, along with the Romulan Engines, which got a indirect buff by changing how much Critical Severity that engine's Skill boost gives, particularly with the higher Critical Hit that Romulans can go to.

You'd probably be better off if you standardized on one weapon type, though, and I'd go with all cannons in your current case. Replace the beam fore with another DHC, and all aft weapons with turrets, even though that'd kill your two-set for Romulan secondary set (its damage increase is Category 1, and pretty ignore-able on a 5 Tac console boat).


Skills are not a huge thing to worry about, IMO, unless you're shooting for the very high-end. Other than going for the Engineering Ultimate, there's few mistakes you can make that are crippling.

Tac Ultimate is interesting and gives a clicky that can give you better DPS on larger enemies, but will leave you a bit more fragile than a balanced or Science Ultimate.

Science Ultimate got nerfed for two of its best nodes, so I'd be hesitant to recommend it for a Tac boat anymore (pre-S13 I ran it on nearly everything).

Engineering Ultimate doesn't seem that great, and going deep into most of the nodes on the Eng side gives little reward, especially for armor with it's rather aggressive diminishing returns curve.

A balanced build, where you take a bit of each of the trees, seems to be a fair compromise and would serve the majority of players just fine. As a general rule, avoid taking the third point of any straight-line skill node cluster, except Long Range Targeting. Warp Core Potential and Efficiency are must-haves on Warbirds. Beyond that, go with what looks good.

lordmalak1

tom61sto wrote: »

snip

Thanks for the insight, thats some pretty useful info.
Am a little bummed reading all the scuttlebutt about SCI ultimate ability getting such a hard nerf, and it's essentially dead as a usable ability- which basically kills any plan I had to make my first Science toon. I've discovered a great calculator on stobuilds that has shown me what I can do to increase my DPS, and it looks promising, I'll be tweeking my posted build later to show what I've learned.

I REALLY don't want to make yet another TAC toon.

I'm leaning toward a 2 piece Nukara / 2 piece Undine set (deflector&core) tho it's an easy swap to the Rom engine and shield if things don't work out. The calculator says I get a bit better weapons boost from the nukara/undine pairing than any pairs with the rom items. *shrug
Yes, I wanna go big SCI, but I just don't have the seat on this boat and I can't even guess how effective a GW1 will work without building my entire toon for nothing but corralling baddies into groups to be canon fodder.

Anyways, I've got a slight math problem with my plans: I've got 2 X Field gens, 2 X neutroniums, and 2 X turn traits I need to condense in order to get another universal console onboard. Currently with the above gear I have about 40% + shield cap, 29% resists, and +30% on turns but I can't find a way to keep he current numbers and free up a console slot. Any ideas ?

tom61sto

Bizarrely, Sci Ultimate wasn't all that useful on a Sci build, as it's entirely possible to have greater than 50% crit hit on Exotics thanks to the level 15 Science Crafting Space Trait combined with your captain/ship's crit rate, and Exotics made up a large chunk of DPS from the average Sci boat. However, 50% crit hit is pretty hard to get close to on normal weapons, so being able to have that for 30 seconds made the Sci Ultimate awesome on Tacs in Battle Cruisers/Dreadnoughts/Warships with 8 weapon slots. I'm pretty sure they didn't want the Sci tree being maxed out being the best option for Tactical chars in non-Sci ships, hence the nerf.

It is still well worth skilling heavily into Sci for a Sci boat, even if maxing out the nodes to get the Ultimate isn't particularly epic.

Interesting on the calculator spitting that out CC def/Nukara two-set being the better option, check to see if it has been updated to S13 though, as S13 does change a few things and S13 is still very new. It's entirely possible that synergy is bigger than my off-the-cuff estimation even when factoring in the changes, so try it if you desire. I wouldn't try going for 2 main sets however, as most anything with a core doesn't have a particularly impressive two-set bonus, IMO. I would go with either a Fleet Spire core for weapon power drain reduction and EPS boost, or the Terran rep core, which increases your maximum power levels while in combat.

Another option for main sets is the Iconian set. It got a pretty big nerf in team damage, and a decent one in single-player, but still should be a solid DPS option still. All the pieces of it are solid durability choices, and durability seems to be an area you're looking for more of.

Gravity Well is decently tuned to where you get pretty good results even with limited skill investment, so give it whirl if you want.

As for the 'math problem', it's possible to solve, but you probably shouldn't. Pull off one of your Neutroniums and note how little your resists change. Standard resists have an extremely harsh diminishing return curve in this game, as they didn't want anyone having 100% resists early on, but for some reason had stackable consoles for it. If you spam your Auxiliary to Structural 2 whenever it's off cooldown, I bet you wouldn't notice the difference with that Neutronium console on or off. When it comes to shields, I'd just wait until you get your desired Rep shields and upgrade them to Mark 13 or 14 for the higher capacity instead of focusing on consoles. As for solving it, there are two craftable consoles that you can get off the Exchange that get mods at Ultra Rare quality, the Conductive RCS (Engineering) for your turnrate boost and Exotic Particle Field Exciter (Science) that boosts shield cap and exotic particle generator skill, which have the possiblity for the mods [ShHP] for more shield cap or [ResAll] for resistances on par a Neutronium console (as well as other Eng or Sci type mods). You'll have to look around to see which combo is cheaper (Conductive RCS [ResAll] was usually more expensive than Exotic Particle Field Exciter [ResAll], but it's been a while since I shopped). Both scale the same for all stats as an item as that mark and rarity for their mods.

lordmalak1

Thanks for the reply tom61sto, but as both my replies just vanished I'll type it up in notepad before I post it next time.

So, as I was saying- I'm definitely taking notes !
I'll check on the calculator to ensure it's up to date. The Exotic Particle Field Exciter [ResAll] has been in planning for over a year now, I just havent had the DOFF to craft it until recently.
I updated the build but think I'll take a point out of defense and targeting expertise and put it into weap spec, and might ditch drain infection as well. The sci ultimate ability is hard to walk away from if the tooltip is correct, but if I can get close to 50% crits without the sci ult, it's useless (as I've been reading).
I traded a couple of heal traits for the Lukari T2 traits, and it was a disaster in the PvP rep arena last night, but the traits appear useful. I just need to get those heals back, and it's prolly gonna cost me dearly to buy the slots from the lab. It's just not something I budgeted for this early on this toon. I just have to keep reminding myself this ship isn't a sci boat no matter how badly I want it to be. Without the cdr sci seat I'm unsure if I can balance the wish for some real drain and control power with raw DPS and durability. I am starting to look at dedicated drainers for inspiration atm, just don't know how realistic I'm being. I'm also looking more closely at the AMP and EPS buffs on the fleet cores too, they're new 'skills' I'm just not familiar with since the skill revamp a few seasons ago. I gotta completely review my gear and see what I can replace with drainx modifiers.

I pulled off one of the neutroniums and replaced it with a trellium-D, a 5+ point resist drop across the board but gained a bit of hull and shield but I'm thinking the resists were more important for durability than the raw hull capacity addition, I absolutely melted under the borg sphere attacks in the arena, and that didn't happen with both Neutroniums onboard. shrug

tom61sto

Yeah, the forum likes eating posts lately. Best bet is to avoid editing, failing that, make sure to not hit the edit button for at least a minute. Also, if you've got a link in it, greater chance of it getting eaten. My guess it's anti-spambot features, where some forums only sanitize links on the first post, so they post something then edit in the link later on.

On the PvP thing, I tend to avoid RPG style PvP so I've not tried the new arena and hybrid PvEvP. I would expect an escort-y warbird to be used mainly as hit and fade, because you're not going to last long in a slugfest. Given the amount of complaining about Tyken's Rift, it sounds like drain is pretty powerful post S13. You'll probably need a lot of DrainX to hit that level, you'll probably want a science warbird, like the Gala, and Fleet Research Lab [DrainX]x2 consoles filling all 5 slots. [amp] is just a tiny damage boost (weapons only IIRC) for every subsystem above 75 power (this is measured live), it used to be bugged to perform a lot better, but now it's only a small thing. EPS helps power flow between subsystems, which helps your mid-cycle power regeneration when firing weapons, particularly if you have more power in the weapons subsystem than the current max active (called 'overcapping'). EPS basically helps your weapons stay at higher power levels when firing, which keeps their damage high.

Odd about the Trellium-D console. Did you just swap the console right before testing? I've had issues recently where my ship drastically under-performed if I changed out gear right before a queue or sometimes even a patrol. I would try that setup again after logging out and back in if that was the case.

lordmalak1

ya, swapped it out as I was waiting in the queue. I want to run it so I'll re-equip it then restart the game to see how it perform. I also wanna try running that hardened datacore console, but I'm not quite ready to surrender a field gen slot (or the leech) to mount it.

Funny, I could've sworn some rep was dropping those plasmatic bio weapons I'm so flush with, I have 6 more in the bank but it's been so long since I played this game I might gone shopping and bought a bunch of them off the exchange before going on vacation. I dunno, they certainly didn't come out of any lockboxes I opened- I don't buy keys.

tom61sto

Plasmatic Biomattter weapons were from the Xindi-2 lockbox, and they were fairly cheap when that box was current from what I recall, so likely something you picked up off the exchange cheaply.

Romulan Plasma is available from the Romulan Reputation, and there's also Caustic Plasma from one of the Romulan faction missions if you're looking for interesting plasma to get more of.

lordmalak1

tom61sto wrote: »

Plasmatic Biomattter weapons were from the Xindi-2 lockbox, and they were fairly cheap when that box was current from what I recall, so likely something you picked up off the exchange cheaply.

Romulan Plasma is available from the Romulan Reputation, and there's also Caustic Plasma from one of the Romulan faction missions if you're looking for interesting plasma to get more of.

Well ya nailed it with the Rom set recommendation, the ingame tooltips indicate it's MUCH more impressive than stowiki shows, so I'm sold. Am reworking the entire skill tree to something more balanced to take advantage of the set, thanks for the wisdom.

lordmalak1

Tree was extensively reworked and I've been running the Rom engine/deflector all weekend with the Koboli shield and core. Am seriously looking at the temporal shield/core pair as a replacement, as well as a switch to caustic plasma, as the Nukara shield gives me no goosebumps. The MACO shield (adapted KHG ?) is another possibility, but I'm not loving the fleet cores mod combos. Honestly, I found a plasma integrated core on the exchange with the combo I want, for next to nothing but I'll have to roll the dice on upgrade weekend and pray for Acap. I don't think it's upgradable to epic tho.