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Advice wanted on building end game capable ship
maphisto86
Member Posts: 32 Arc User
I know I am late to the game but I have run into a figurative wall with Star Trek Online. With the level increases over the years, the weapons, deflectors, shields, etc you get when you become a Fleet Admiral are woefully under-powered compared to the enemies you face. I know this is to encourage research and development, reputation missions, etc but it seems like quite the grind to even have a moderate chance in missions or PvE. I managed to get to level 60 pretty fast but ran into the wall while still doing the normal campaign. Know my weapons don't even phase enemy ships or anything. Is there any chance a big re-balancing could come sometime the near future or am I hoping in vain? Or some way to at least get Mk XIV level gear easier?
Post edited by maphisto86#2647 on
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You have R&D, Phoenix Upgrades (And Upgrade Weekends) and Re-Ing... what else do you want??, it's incredible easy not only to get good gear, but also to make good gear!, have you tested the Pavho Regenerative shield?? the one you get in the latest episodes?, it's amazing once upgraded! and the Exchange is full of good equipment at good Price, so it's not a great effort, also, if you want good gear, well fleet equipment is available..
Message me in-game (@tm706) for help
1st Alpha Quadrant Fleet
If you play your cards right, you can get a basic cohesive build put together using only free items without having to touch EC at all. In fact myself and several others routinely give advice on builds and piloting here on the forums via PM when requested. Feel free to PM me and I will gladly help you out.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
I would suggest you start first by checking out some of the Cheap Starter Builds over at the DPS League. That should give you some ideas on where to start.
If you have questions on a specific ship please feel free to ask, but the problem definitely isn't the power level of gear.
Build synergy: How equipment, skills, traits, BOFF & Captain abilities, etc, go together makes up for so much. For the vast majority of this game, you can do extremely well with mediocre equipment. With mediocre gear, it only becomes "iffy" when you're trying the hardest difficulty instances, etc.
There was someone in my Fed Fleet that had tremendous problems not long ago. He had trouble surviving and doing damage in his Warbird. He was flying the Hakona Adv.Warbird and should not have issues surviving. He didn't know how to put the build together. There was no synergy. He didn't even have any Emergency Power to X abilities nor barely any hint of hull or shield repair. There was no HE to take care of some critical dots / effects.
After reviewing his build, traits, etc, I had him go get some cheap equipment off the Exchange as well as stuff I looted from Argala recently. The point was to get him a sound, fundamental base to do what he wanted: Survive and Hit back. It took a long time but it was cheap. The longest part was explaining why I chose the equipment I had him get. Telling someone what to get, showing them some build template and what gear to throw on is only part of the problem. But getting them to know WHY that build is the way it is, is the hardest part. And if they can tell you in the end what they need to do to improve from that foundation that doesn't only encompass "Getting this item to Epic," then I did my job.
My playtime with STO is not what it's used to be. I am not in the know of cutting edge "meta" knowledge, but I still know how to put together a decent ship that can contribute to the team.
You can do well in this game with Mk X-XII gear, even up to Uncommon, Rare quality, etc. Build synergy and playing to its strengths is more important.
The problem is that this is becoming the norm now and the developers are responding by lowering the bar. It's an overall lazy approach.. instead of trying to work some type of system into the game that teaches people how to play, they just go in and drag a slider over to reduce enemy effectiveness and call it a 'fix.' It's not the players fault of course, it's not on them that the game makes them come to other players for help.. it's just a shame that so little is being done from the developer side to teach people proper build fundamentals.
And before someone blasts me (they will anyway) I am not talking about teaching people the current 'meta' or how to 'DPS or GTFO' I mean just basic build synergy that should be inherent in any descent ship build.
A lot of wisdom in this post, well said.
Again OP, none of this is in any way intended as a shot against you.. I don't blame new players for this trend. If there is any help you need, please feel free to ask and we will do our best to provide it.
Don't give up though!
New enemies are more simply a case of learning the new gimmick such as the kethi need hit in the face or that the hurq swarmers like to explode in your tailpipe. They're tricky the first time around but once you spot that single racial quirk they're not really any different from the previous group of victims.
Also, run the Delta patrol mission.....which slips my mind atm.....you can a) level a ship to tier 5 spec in about 4-5 runs and b) get 150k - 400k ec from just discarding the drops. Just remember to only destroy through wave 4, (if you destroy the 5th wave it triggers the cool down) and then warp out. Restart. Should take about 5-6 min per run.
I've even seen this with some fellow fleet members who declare they must need 'a bigger more powerful ship with more powerful weapons'. We see this here in the forums regularly as well.
Even after receiving crafted 'technically perfect max for their level gear' from fellow fleet members it really does make very little to no difference until they learn how to use it.
That's all you really need. Find the weapon set you like best and get them to Mk15. Doesn't really matter if they turn Epic.
Get a set of the Spire Consoles and you're going to have enough pew-pew to get the job done.
Youtuber called Timberwolf does epic and budget build videos for STO. Even budget builds can do 30k.
And make sure you are on normal difficulty. Advanced and Hard make npcs die alot slower.
If you like, head over to the STO Academy Skill Planner, and fill in the build you're currently using. Save the build and post a link here so we can see what ship you're using and with what gear. Maybe we can help you make some changes to your build and explain along the way why we're making the changes we're making.
It might be a bit of a pain to fill all that in over at the skill planner, but it will be worth it as it will really help us help you out.
Thanks for lending me a hand. I will post my updated build list soon and post it here. I had a previous build list that I can base my current one on. My biggest problem right now is trying to upgrade my gear that is all Mk. XII stuff. The Mk.XII weapons I am using on my ship for example barely make a dent in most NPC's shields except for the smaller ships.
Because Thanos wiped out half of our engineers and scientists.
I look them over from time to time those cheap starter builds, but personally i tend to find them rather unimaginative.
Maybe that's because i primarily look at builds from an engineering class perspective with a high science focus.
Done and done. Apologies for the initial rant. I have since updated most of my build at STO Academy's Skill Planner. Here is the link: Mevarius 1. I do not have all my ground info updated yet but my issues are mostly with the space combat. Ground combat is not awesome but it is fair.
Ok, well.. not great, but not nearly as bad as I was expecting.
I think we can work with it, just if you could.. a couple questions..
We need to up some of your gear. There is a lot of pretty good stuff available just from mission rewards so how far a long are you in the story?
Generally, I find with Torps, they're great in all torp builds.. but they detract from overall effectiveness in an energy weapon loadout. Now, that doesn't mean they won't work or that they 'suck,' just that we can give you a little more kick if we drop them. How set are you on using Torps?
Lastly, what is your budget as far as EC and Dilithium goes? Do you have access to the reputation system? No matter how we rebuild the ship, rather it's an Aux2Bat or a standard Drake layout.. we're going to need some duty officers to make it work that you might have to buy.
If you can just give me a bit of an idea, we can start to see what we can do.
Thank you very much. I see the thread has been moved to a more appropriate location.
I actually leveled up pretty quickly even though I am not even done the basic story for my Romulan character. I am on the mission "Frozen" during the last chapter of the initial Romulan story line, "Freedom". Already the difficulty has shot through the roof since I passed level 60. I have not a lot of dilithium but I can farm that by going to my fleet's mine. I don't have exact numbers but I have a few thousand dilithium and around 800,000 energy credits. Of course I can always up the EC by buying ten master keys and selling them on the exchange, but I would rather not pay real money for now.
Based on the initial tutorials for my characters, I was under the impression that projectiles are good for kinetic damage against hulls. This is not the case then? I always figured a good Trek ship should have some torps but in this game maybe not. I am not a torpedo essentialist so I can ditch them from my build. I just want a solid ship that I can survive in and dish out some damage in order to get more stuff in missions.
You mentioned duty officers and they are the aspect of the game I am least proficient in. I bought some research lab scientists to help with leveling R&D and have recruited some junior officers but that is about it. What kind of roster do you think I will need?
https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/24pn8o/highly_logical_dragon_and_drake_and_aux2batt/
Might be useful.
Also note that there are missions that have sets that start at mk XII purple as well, such as Dust to Dust with the Kobali set. IMO Kobali's pretty decent if you can get the full set, as it comes with a shield heal off the warp core and has a decent HoT for the set bonus on top of being relatively easy to obtain.
The rest comes down to BOff abilities and tactics.
Ok, I went ahead and made some suggested alterations to your build. Before I post the link though, some explanation will be required.
Torpedoes are not 'bad,' but in a build like this you will simply get more use out of having all 4 forward weapons be cannons. Torps do reduce damage against shields, so you really want to hit with them when the shields go down. The thing is, 4 dual cannons will likely rip the hull apart before the Torp even gets to the target, so for this reason we are removing the torp from this build. This also let us re-allocate 3 skill points as they are no longer needed in Kinetics.
I re-did the skill layout in the new build to reflect this. This is simply how I suggest you do skill points, if you don't like it..that's cool.
The key to performing well is that you need to have maximum uptime of your abilities. The biggest problem with your build outside of gear is you have nothing to handle cool downs so when you use a power you have to wait a long time for it to become available again. There are many ways to handle cool downs, one is with an Aux2Bat build, but that doesn't fit this ship. What we're going to do instead is a standard Drake style build using Damage Control Engineers. You will want to assign 3 of them to your active roster. Purple rarity is the most desirable, but since we are on a budget here, you can use Green or Blue Quality. You might have some on your roster already, you can get some from Lt Ferra at Star Fleet Academy (assuming you're fed) or you can buy cheap ones off the exchange. If you really can't find any and you're on PC, I can probably send you some. What these will do is that every time you activate either Emergency Power To Weapons (EPTW) or Emergency Power to Shields (EPTS) there is a percentage chance to reduce cool down on the power you didn't use. What this means is that you can use EPTW and often have EPTS available while the effects of EPTW are still active allowing you to stack them. All you have to do is put 3 Damage control engineers on duty and then just click away.. nothing else needed.
We also have a Warp Core Engineer slotted, this guy has a chance to boost all your power levels, any time you use an Emergency Power. Since you're going to be spamming these, this guy really helps you keep your power levels up. Purple is ideal, but use a Green or Blue in a pinch. You can get one for free from completing one of the Duty Officer schools, see Ferra at ESD and look through the shop.
The last active officer is a Fabrication Engineer. We have included an ability called 'Reverse Shield Polarity' which is your 'panic button' ability. When you're under heavy fire and think you might go down, you can pop this and it makes you near invincible for a very short period of time. The Fabrication Officer extends the duration of this ability. Now, sadly.. the Purple Quality ones are extremely expensive, so go with a Blue Quality if you can.. otherwise, use a Green one.
As for your Tactical Abilities, we don't have the benefit of any type of global cool down reduction so we're using the age old method of 'duplication.' Simply put, if you have 2 copies of Scatter Volley and you click one, the ability you clicked will go on 30 second cool down.. meaning you cannot use that ability again for 30 seconds. The second copy however, goes onto a 15 second cool down, so that means that in 15 seconds you can simply click the 2nd copy to keep it going. You can never reduce cool down below 15 seconds, this is called the 'global cool down.' In the build I am going to give you, I double up your best tactical abilities to give you the chance to just spam them like crazy. Usually when you attack you first activate EPTW, then you hit an attack pattern.. in this case Attack Pattern Beta (APB) and then you will hit Scatter Volley (CSV) to spread the love to everything on the screen. That's what we'll be doing in this build.
We have no build in cooldowns here for Science, so use those sparingly. The build contains Hazard Emitters which you can use to clear damage over time effects and provide some hull healing. You will also have Engineering Teams and Reactive Armor Catalyst batteries for hull healing. The Reactive Armor Catalysts are available free as a mission reward for the mission 'Broken Circle.' Once you complete it, you can craft as many as you want. For Shield heals, we're using Transfer Shield Strength and we also have Science Team that heals shields and clears negative debuffs.
Without further adeu, here is the revised build - Mevarius 2.
The Plasma Cannons have been upgraded to Mark XII Very Rare. You should be able to acquire these fairly cheap on the exchange. You can buy the cheapest Mark XII VR and re-engineer the mods of you need. You can also use Plasma Cannons from your Fleet Starbase if that's easier. Those come at Mark XII Ultra Rare Quality.
The 4th Plasma Cannon is the Advanced Piezo Dual Cannons from the Lukari Reputation Store. If you need to build up to get these, you can slot another cannon of your choice in the mean time. We are also using the console from this set. The Console gives +30% Plasma Damage and using the Cannon gives us a 2pc bonus for another 15% giving you a total of +45% Plasma Damage from these two items.
The Deflector, Impulse Engines and Shield are all from the Quantum Phase Set. These are given out free for completion of the Mission 'Stormbound.' It's a great early set that's free and gives some nice defense and as well as another 5.4% Weapon damage. With the set above, we're at +50.4% damage.. not bad.
The Warp Core is available from your Fleet Spire. If you need to save up, use the best Warp Core you have in the mean time. You can even just run 'Stormbound' one more time and use the Quantum Phase Core for now.
The Turrets in the back are from the exchange just like the cannons. You can also substitute them for Fleet Cannons if that's easier.
Consoles, we have a mix of stuff. The Piezo console we addressed earlier.
We're using the Plasma Wave Console for it's +20% Plasma Damage Boost. The 'clicky' power on this console is terrible, I wouldn't use it.. for this reason, the console is cheap on the exchange. I might even have an extra one if you can't get it. Just slot it for the passive.
The Assimilated Module is from the Omega Repuation and gives some nice bonuses.
The Plasmonic Leech Console should be cheap on the exchange. It gives a small boost to all your power levels, very useful for Romulans who tend to have Power Issues.
The Dynamic Power Redistributor Console is basically the best console in the game. When you click it, you become super tanky and put out massive damage for a short period of time. Romulans can usually pick this up pretty cheap on the exchange. For now, it might be a bit out of your price range, if so you can substitute it for something else.. maybe the Sustained Radiant Field from the Iconian Reputation is a cheaper option.
Last, is a console for Romulans called the Shield Absorptive Frequency Generator. This is an AMAZING console that can be used on any Romulan Warbird. Basically.. when you shoot people, you heal your shields. It's amazing.. and it's from a T3 Ship, the Valdore Heavy Warbird. If you like Romulans, it's worth it to pick this up if you can, the console is great for making you tougher.
The Tactical Consoles.. again, exchange. Try to get Purple if you can, if not.. you can use Blue ones for now.
The battle plan with this ship is simple. Cloak.. move in.. activate Emergency Power to Weapons, Attack Pattern Beta, Tac Team, and Cannon Scatter Volley. Uncloak and unleash hell. As soon as those powers are available again, repeat the rotation. Make sweeping passes, do a huge burst of damage.. swoop past and come around again. Avoid the 'park and shoot' method when you are heavily outnumbered.. but you can use this tactic when it fits you. When you start to take too much damage, reverse shield polarity and use your Evasive Maneuvers to get out of range.. heal up, cloak.. and got back in again.
Sorry for the long post, but there was a lot to cover. Please let me know if you have any questions or if you find any of the items particularly hard to acquire and I'll see if I can find something else.
Good luck!