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Best TAC DPS KDF crusier - Fleet Ktinga or TorKaht (fleetvorcha)
sgtciscoinsa
Member Posts: 56 Arc User
So I was curious what the community thought. I am leaning more toward Ktinga but I love the firepower of the Fleet Vorcha.
Post edited by sgtciscoinsa on
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The only thing that I am scared of is a good player in a jem bug ship. Everything else I can handle with skill and the right setup.
I am curious if anyone else has had the blessing to afford to play both Fleet ships with a TAC.
Its really fun.
I'm loving the Fleet Tor'Kaht Vor'cha with my Tac Captain in Fleet PvE and STFs. It has a fair mix of both tanking and firepower. It has little trouble lining up targets in it's 45 degree arc of my DHCs in Fleet PvE(No worse than my Patrol Escort or Raptor, IMO, and those have 5 more turn). I haven't taken it out in PvP, but I'd bet a good build of it could do well.
The Fleet K't'inga looks interesting to me, but it's down low on my list of ships to grab. One of my fleet mates really likes his, though. I'd like it just to have an end-game capable D7 (from TOS).
All of these ships are cruisers, which means that they have to survive in any case, even against an elite tac cube, the gate of infected space elite without any trick, or 3-4 cubes and 5-6 spheres at the same time and for an unlimited amount of time. Any cruiser unable to do this is junk. This means that you need the engineer "miracle worker", especially with these ships. In pvp it also means that you have to spare some heals for your allies too.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
I can do pretty much all that with a Tac captain in a Fleet Tor'Kaht. About the only time I have to back down is when the Borg hit me with something to put my powers into cooldown, or dealing with spheres and the gate at the same time and them doing nice combos of their abilities. The only trick I use is getting above the Tac Cube, where it can't fire HY Plasma Torps, but it can still throw a lot of other stuff at you and I can tank most all of it. This is without the recommended DOffs too. Though, this character is Skilled for cruisers much more than the average Tac captain.
But at some point you'll need the miracle worker, rotate shield frequency (nice emergency tanking skill to give some more shield to friends without any shared CD with your TSS) and the nadion inversion to fire so many weapons at the same time.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Your definition of cruiser is just... yours. The fleet Tor'Kaht has excellent damage output very close to an escort. The additonal tank allows me to survive hits my Raptor cant take. At least for me, there is no reason to ever touch my Raptor again.
Cubes, gates or Negh'vars ? No issue anymore. So yes, the ship is completely fine for a tac captain.
Sure, to make it really shine it takes some expansive doff's. But then it's worth every penny.
As far as I'm concerned, the fleet Tor'Kaht is one of the best acquisition I ever made in STO.
Hello, I'm a Tactical Captain in a Cruiser and have no trouble tanking the following:
Any Gate (KASE, ISE), any Cube (KASE, ISE, CSE), any Tactical Cube (ISE, KASE), and Donatra.
Even better, it is generally easy-peasy to hold aggro over all but the most ridiculously hard-hitting escorts out there thanks to Threat Control and Mines that are doing 150k damage every thirty seconds or so (usually, one hit from those seals the deal and I have aggro forever) all in the Regent, to boot.
Now, maybe I'm just doing it wrong, and need to go commit suicide or something. I dunno. But I'm just here to say that the idea that the idea that Tactical Captains only belong in escorts is so ridiculously fallacious that you should be ashamed of the constantly saying only Engineers belong in Cruisers. You Captain choice accounts for almost exactly one-third of your ships capabilities and not an iota more. The bulk of its capability comes from, amazingly, your ship choice. A cruiser is always going to be a tough, healing-and-tanking oriented ship. A Sci ship is always going to be (barring the quirky Nebula) a ship with an emphasis on CC-and-healing with amazing shields, poor-to-ok hull, and middle-of-the-road handling. And, without question, every Captain is always going to do more damage in an Escort in anything else because that's what escorts do.
I'll make it even more clear for you, diogene0.
Tactical Captain + Escort: Highest damage output possible, some survival issues (3 Purple BFI DOffs almost wholly negate them).
Tactical Captain + Science Vessel: Strong crowd control, decent-to-good potential damage output, greatly improves damage dealing ability of offensive science powers, ok ability to serve as an off-healer.
Tactical Captain + Cruiser: Greatly improves damage output of cruisers (particularly due to the ease of surfing your HP down to charge up GDF before going right back to full health), higher damage output (particularly with threat control) makes getting and holding aggro much easier, can still heal team members effectively with powers like Aux2SIF 3, Extend Shields, and Engineering Team 3 (last is really really tricky as must be careful not to deprive yourself of TT and an inopportune moment).
Engineering Captain + Escort: Massively improves the durability of escorts by boosting power levels (particularly shields and Aux without reducing speed/maneuverability to compensate), greatly mitigates weapon drain caused by things like Dual Cannons and Beam Overloads making heavy use of them even more practical, and adds two additional survival skills for yourself in the form of Rotate Shield Frequency and Miracle Worker.
Engineering Captain + Science Vessel: Makes their already impressive shields almost completely impenetrable. Can make a solid healer and crowd controller, though with the extremely low damage output, you'll struggle to be useful in STF's when DPS is called for (which is, frankly, most of the time).
Engineering Captain + Cruiser: You make what are, basically, the toughest ships in the game tougher, bring every little to its damage output, and can lose aggro surprisingly easily to your Escorts even when spec'ed heavily into Threat Control. Making a tough ship tougher isn't that useful when it's already tough enough to do the job it came to do in the first place. The only real saving grace here is that you can take things like the Odyssey and Regent and really go hog-wild with Tactical BOff's to augment your team's DPS (with Attack Patterns Beta and Delta) without completely crippling your durability.
Science Captain + Escort: Every minute and a half you get to boost your team's (and your own) DPS nicely with Sensor Scan (especially nice for CC situations), Scattering Field helps to reduce the incoming energy weapon damage you'll be taking, and Science Fleet is a great Shield Regen boost. Sub-Nucleonic Beam is handy for cracking targets that are running defensive buffs or pre-empting abilities like THY and Torp Spread. Many enemies in STF's, however, don't use defensive abilities, so aside from Cubes and Donatra, Sub-Nuc is of very limited value. Hey, at least the cruisers will probably be able to keep aggro off you!
Science Captain + Science Ship: The master of Debuffing... for all that's worth (little, really, as AI doesn't really act in a reactive manner, so using your wide variety of hindering power to cause them to pop defensive abilties that you can then Sub-Nuc isn't all that useful). You're not significantly improving your already low damage output, but you are able to improve your durability through Science Fleet and Scattering Field, and the likelihood of already having Aux cranked up to 11 just makes Scattering Field even nicer.
Science Captain + Cruiser: Has really good team healing/defense synergy thanks to have really powerful hull heals (Aux2SIF, Haz Em, and ET) augmented by really powerful shield boosting and healing abilities (Sci Fleet, Scattering Field, Extend Shields, Transfer Shield Strength), and you have a somewhat nice group damage buff in the form of Sensor Scan. All-in-all as a healer, this is a more useful combo than Eng/Cruiser as it brings quite a bit more to the group dynamic.
There, I've said my piece on that.
Regarding the Fleet Vor'cha vs the Fleet K'Tinga, I think as a Tactical captain you'd probably get a little more mileage out of the extra ENG capability and turn rate of the F-K'Tinga over the F-Vor'Cha. JM2c, though. The Vor'cha is a toothy powerhouse to be sure. It's bascially a super heavy escort (not as tough as Escorts, though, with less Defense and lacking the cruiser's Eng BOff abilities to offset that fact with heals and resists). 100% viable in pretty much any content, so don't get the idea that you're TRIBBLE yourself over if you go out with it.
you forgot to add that it only might be able to deal the same damage over time as a tac/(kdf)cruiser, and also have less burst then a tac/(kdf)cruiser. really not that great.
i have both F ktinga and F vorcha, each on their own character, and have been using basically nothing else since them, they are both so fun to play. i would suggest doing similar, these single character ships deserve thier own character. you wasted your money if you ever bench a fleet ship imo. if you use them on anything but a tac captain you are doing it wrong. they are both built to take advantage of their ability to use DHCs, ether with the tac stations to support them or the turn rate to support them. with 2 turn consoles they turn in the mid 20s with minimal engine power, the ktinga is noticeably better at turning, that 1 more bace makes a huge difference when all the modifiers are added up.
which deals more damage? its actually hard to say. i think im better at getting kills in my ktinga honestly. the trick with both ships is to have at least 3 blue quality damage control doffs and 1 copy of EPtS3 an 1 copy of EPtW1. with those doffs you can have 95% up time on both with only 1 copy of each
this is a huge relief on the vorcha's limited engineering powers, and opens up many many eng options to the ktinga. my ktinga with 3 particle gen consoles can deal between 600 and 1200 DOT with EWP3 depending on tac buffs, and it acts like a snare too. running a tractor beam is recommended too, you dont turn quite like an escorts, but with several snares that becomes less and less of an issue. on the ktinga still still have room for several of the rest of the important eng powers like RSP A2S, DEM, ET and ES. the ktinga can tank like crazy, burst very well with 3 DHCs and a DBB for BO1, support the team with hull and shield heals, have 2 snares, and do a bunch of shield bypassing plasma damage all at the same time, it is a force, and my personal favorite.
plus the 'inferior' fleet ships have a better then advertized shield mod, instead of .94 its 1.07. another example is the somraw that has a .935 shield mod instead of .71. i can confirm the saber's in the same boat, and likely all others. the ships that were at tier 5 that have a fleet version now are correct and as advertized. don't let that advertised shield mod scare you away from any of those newly tier 5 fleet ships.
on the fleet vorcha there are not enough eng stations to use EWP, ive tried it and the survivability is too lacking. the vorcha can certainly spike harder though, during an alpha it can use BO3 instead of only 1 like the ktinga, or run omega for an excellent maneuverability buff, and run 4 DHCs with an escort's CRF up time. the ship is an inferior cruiser and inferior escort though. a pure example of each can do ether the healing or damage dealing much better. but its a hell of a lot of fun to use
here is my ktinga build
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=5453761&postcount=178
and my fleet vorcha build. its a bit outdated, i need to update it some time. i wouldn't run an engineering setup other then this on it though
COM eng- EPtW1, RSP1, EPtS3, A2S3
ENS eng- ET1
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=5083471&postcount=109
et1, aux2damp1
epts1,
epts1, rps1, dem2, aux2sif3
tt, cvs1, apo
tt, cvs1
I use(abuse) tet glider and plas leech w/this build. Solid turnrate w/2 rcs in lows, gets squishy when i put plas leech and borg consoles there as well. But, it's 2 xtra slots to boost flow caps.
I'll update how the aux2batt tech doff build pans out after I run it some.
Edit Current Aux2Batt:
Dem3, EPTS3, Aux2Batt, ET
APO, CVS1, TT
APD, TT
HE2, TB
EPTW1
All DHCs and Turrets.
The main problem w/aux2batt&tech doffs w/this build is the 2nd Ens Eng and Tac slots are not very usefull. I picked EPTW incase the battery was on cooldown and I want to save ET and someone dropped my weapons. But, really it's something to use if you don't need to run ETPS and won't bump heads w/Aux2Batt atm. You could also slot a 2nd ET if facing heavy VM.
It's not designed to be tanky, but just enough to apply high pressure AoE DPS w/Tet glider and Dem3 and CVS. You should be able to hit and run w/it while chaining the AoE DPS if you're not chased away. Since by in large the raiders and escorts for KDF are being left in the dust I'm trying to build it to fill that role as best I can.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
One of my chars is a tac on a fleet Qin raptor. This beast is wuite tanky but it's clearly not enough to resist to anything. In many instances I try to stay close to my team mates to get some extra heal if they notice that the escort in the team isn't in a good shape, and since my raptor is DSP oriented with a tac in it, pulling all the aggro isn't rare.
The fact is that tacs in cruisers are spending all their available time taking pleasure (if you know what I mean) watching their dps instead of healing those who can punch through ennemies. And the poor escorts have to find their way to survive, fly in escape mode pretty often because none of these genius had the idea to send an extra heal they probably don't have since their primary objective is to "pull the aggro for themselves" and to "dps a lot". When I say that in weeks I've NEVER recieved a heal from tacs on cruisers you can believe me. They must be too busy doing laughable "dps".
I don't mind if they survive more honnestly, they will never pull the aggro away from my raptor and will never send extra heals they don't have to allow those who have real dps (and not slightly improved puny dps) to survive.
Maybe you think that being a healer isn't funny, but then you may choose another ship to be usefull. I don't use my eng on his galor (which is the fed genuine battlecruiser) that often because I don't enjoy healing poorly skilled tacs in pve. This is understandable, but it can't justify the fact that you're neglecting your team mates.
BTW my maiin (fed) is a sci and healing is in no way the primary objective of scis. The sci has to controll stuff, and the eng in his cruiser has to heal everyone on the map, even if he's alone (he should be able to do this anyway).
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
what the hell are you talking about? nothing about an eng captain makes it so he can support his team better then a tactical can. an engineer can deal a quarter of the damage a tac can in exchange for 2 self heals, big deal. tacs in cruisers being distracted and not throwing heals has everything to do with how poorly skilled the player is and nothing to do with the captain/ship combo. engineers have literally no redeeming value, they are like this game's easy mode, extra hard to kill so pve'ers don't have an immersion break.
i cant think of a more wasteful choice then sticking an engineer in a fleet vorcha, you cant do an engineer's or cruiser's job in one, they don't have enough engineering stations to do any meaning full support. theres just enough to keep yourself alive, and a plethora of offense skills to deal damage. no engineer should ever fly a cruiser that doesn't have COM and LTC engineering stations, all the other cruisers are built for tacs.
I'm talking about cruisers in general, not about a specific KDF cruiser anyway. 99% of tacs on cruisers are noobs anyway, they play for themselves only and don't care about the rest of the team, so it proves my point.
And if you want to speak more specifically about the fleet vo'cha, no tac captain can fully support the power use of 7 or 8 turrets and cannons with CRF. The eng can, with EPS power transfer and nadion inversion (it's not supposed to lower the power use of weapon but it's a pretty efficient bug), and constantly maintaining power levels above 110-120 is always more important than the 15s dps boost from an attack pattern alpha.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Hmmm....first off, the Galor is not 'the fed genuine battlecruiser', as it is not a Fed ship at all. Fed and KDF characters have exactly the same access to the ship (which is to say, none without spending real money and getting lucky), and its stats aren't that different from an Excelsior or Regent in any event. Your understanding of where ships fit in the game seems lacking.
Second off, you assume Engineers in cruisers heal other ships. I have found that the ship type has no effect on which characters heal others, and ninety-five percent of those who could heal others do not do so. While the ship selection can make it easier to heal, the decision to heal is entirely the player's. My Tac in his K'tinga heals others quite regularly because I choose to set the ship up that way. I have been in a great number of STFs and Fleet missions, and few if any Engineers have healed anyone, regardless of their ships. People are generally too busy fighting their own ships and only concerned with what they are doing, and won't take time to be the healer unless the player is interested in that beforehand.
If a player wants to be the healer in a group, the Cruiser will give them the best ability to do that, regardless of their profession, and they will likely still do it in whatever ship they fly. If they don't want to be, then it doesn't matter what they are in. On the flip side, Tac captains will always do more damage than other professions in whatever ship they fly, just as Eng captains will heal more of their own damage than other professions. So, your argument would only be valid if you had said "A Tac captain in a cruiser is a waste because they can't keep themselves alive as long as an Eng captain, and damage isn't as important to me as personal survivability".
I normally only fun Tacs in Escorts/Raptors/Raiders but Kevaas is an exception. The Fleet Vorcha from it's stats looks ideal for a Tactical Officer with the high Tactical station.
diogene0, Tacticals in Cruisers on the Federation sides are as you say, the KDF side I find is more flexible, thanks to several factors including the higher turn rates, DHC's plus the +10 Power to weapons. I'm not saying every Cruiser is right for a Tactical but the Galor and from what it looks like the Fleet Vorcha seem to work well.
If you need an Engineer to do those things that's a statement about your abilities, or rather inabilities.
So speak for yourself, since quite a lot of us can do that with any captain in a well-built cruiser.
On top of that any Tac, or even Sci, captain in a Cruiser with the same or similar ranks in threat control will always out-threat you - leaving you following along, your special abilities largely unused as all of the tanking gets done by another ship.
Don't mistake poorly built ships and bad players you meet in the PUG queue as the final word on what can be done in a Cruiser.
Saved me the need to post. QFT.
CommanderDonatra@Capt.Sisko: ahhh is it supposed to do that?
Norvo Tigan@dontdrunkimshoot: hell ya, maybe
Nadion and EPS mean absolutely nothing in the face of Tac Damage buffs - it's not even remotely close and your idea of "15 extra DPS" is so far off the mark as to just come across as silly.
It's some Cruiser/Escort Hybrid. With that kinda turn you can put Front Arc weapons, So you equip it like an escort. But why? Just get in an escort and do proper damage.
With the hybrid you waste a slot or two for an RCS to make turn more like an escort. Again why? Get in an esort. lol
Just IMO, but to me it feels like doing half a job.
In a word...flexibility.
Specialization is fine when you have players who are willing to fill specific roles in the battle, such as in an established group who configure their ships knowing what the other members of their team will be fitting on their ships. This maximizes efficiency at the cost of having each member dependent on the others to be alive to accomplish the goal.
However, when you don't have that, or don't know what ships and/or professions will be on your team, there is strength in being able to switch instantly between multiple roles. This is especially true in PUGs. Being in an Escort is nice, until you realize no one is healing the ships you need to be escorting, and you fail because everyone thought DPS was the way to go. With a hybrid, you may not have the full abilities of specialization, but you can switch to be that healer when you find you need to be, and go back on attack as soon as that is done. Also as a hybrid, you can fill in for a ship that goes down so that the entire team doesn't get into trouble when one member is destroyed.
Sometimes, doing half a job is better than doing a full job at the wrong thing.
i actually think theres more eng noobs then tac noobs in cruisers these days. only about 1 out of 10 players is smart enough to ever throw heals unfortunately, again regardless of ship or captain type.
the engineers energy buffing abilities might be considered useful IF there was a weapons energy hard cap of 125. but there isn't, with just EPtW1 and about 130 base power i can do an all DHC/turret CRF strike and not drop below 90 power or so.
also the difference between keeping your energy level high to get the max damage buff from energy and the damage buff you get from APA, GDF, and TF is so astronomical that 1 is literally twice the damage of the other, even if your energy level dips quite a bit. with that must boosted damage, you can spike and thats how you get kills. the damage an engineer can deal can be tanked indefinitely.
I can hold aggro from Donatra without a single point in thread control. Mostly with MK XI dispruptors. That I can do with my Raptor, too.
Then I can kite (and tank !) her till she pops. Can't do that with my Raptor, nor have I ever seen a "tanky" cruiser holding aggro vs. my Raptor.
For PvE, you just need "enough" tank. No brownie points for overtanking. On the other hand, you can never have too much damage.
An engineer with thread control may be able to tank and hold aggro, but he will do less damage.
The (sad) truth for PvE is, you don't need a specialized tank class to hold aggro and stay alive. You don't need a specialized healer class either.
Same can be applied to the probes in cure. With an escort/BoP I position myself carefully below the cube, so it can't hit me. With my battlecruiser, I just tank the fecking cube and use the full potential of my cannons at short range.
Since I run mostly with PuG's, I don't count on support from teammates.
I'm a tac in cruiser, and I do more damage than most engineers in escorts. What do you play ? :P
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=5498871&postcount=12
To include Aux2Batt build.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
To much loss of survival skills.
And call me a heretic, but i think in general the fleet vor'cha boff layout is horrible in general.
To separated, no focus.
I think the normal vor'cha retrofit is a better choice for a tac captain, while the fleet vor'cha is a better choice for a eng captain. Each augmenting the individual ships weaknesses, retrofit firepower, fleet survival.
If all you do is PvE the fleet is a very nice ship. It gets a lot more tricky with PvP however.
I still wish we could have the boff layout of the retrofit on the fleet version, with one change, shift the ensign tac over to the lt tac to make it a lt com tac.
if there weren't boffs in this game, i would agree with you. thanks to the right ones my fleet vorcha build is just as durable as my fleet ktinga/vorcha R build, it just has to gives up more team focused abilities. what it is is an escort with less spike potential and a worse turn rate but with durability an escort could only dream of. its like this
escort
firepower 6
defense 2
cruiser
firepower 3
defense 5
fleet vorcha
firepower 5
defense 4
its score total is 1 better, but that extra damage the escort can is what gives it a lot of its kills, and that extra defense in the normal cruiser is what keeps the team alive under the most intense pressure.
i have had extreamly good success in pvp with it, getting a ton of kills from alpha striking like an escort and being so durable that i cant be pressured to ever disengage. i could basically do what im doing now in a raptor as far as damage dealing goes, but the durability from full time EPtS3 and A2S3 make an absolutely huge difference.
In pve the thing can take down one sides probes in Khitomer after all the gens are down, solo cubes, and shrug off one shots like it was nothing when you activate the proper buffs. On cure i fly right next to the nanites and tank the cube till all low tier nanites are dead without letting a Bop get close to the Kaang.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCJZ5FBJ9bFaZ6yAFiNpZiRQ/featured?view_as=subscriber
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I disagree. I'm doing fairly well as a TAC in my Fleet Torkhat.
The BOF setup only has one flaw, instead of ENS Eng I would prefer a ENS Tac.
My Loadout ist:
EPTW1, RSP1, EPTS3, Aux2SIF3
TT1, CRF1, APO
TT1, CRF1
HE1, TSS2
4 DHC Accx2
3 turrets Accx2
1 Chroniton mine launcher
Using it with 3 blue engeneering DOFs to permanently maintain EPTW1 and EPTS3., which allows me to maintain 125+ weapon and 125 shield power.
The only problem I have is against very fast moving targets, because of the turn speed.