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Fleet Excelsior Build help needed
chris919uk
Member Posts: 189 Arc User
Hi.
I just got myself a Fleet Excelsior today. I'd really like some help with a good budget build if anyone could help please. For PVE not PVP.
My character is a Tac and while I know people would say fly an escort I don't want to. I like cruisers. However my Tac does need a complete respec which I already have the token purchased for, so I could use some skill help advice too.
I am in a Federation fleet with access to Advanced weapons not Elite versions. Still if I could do a budget build via items from the exchange I'd prefer that. I currently have the complete Aegis set and the Plasmonic leech. Working on getting the assimilated module next.
Any help would be appreciated, thank you.
Oh and this is for my Fed alt. In case the KDF sig and avatar had you wondering. lol
I just got myself a Fleet Excelsior today. I'd really like some help with a good budget build if anyone could help please. For PVE not PVP.
My character is a Tac and while I know people would say fly an escort I don't want to. I like cruisers. However my Tac does need a complete respec which I already have the token purchased for, so I could use some skill help advice too.
I am in a Federation fleet with access to Advanced weapons not Elite versions. Still if I could do a budget build via items from the exchange I'd prefer that. I currently have the complete Aegis set and the Plasmonic leech. Working on getting the assimilated module next.
Any help would be appreciated, thank you.
Oh and this is for my Fed alt. In case the KDF sig and avatar had you wondering. lol
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon, taH pagh, taH be"
"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon, taH pagh, taH be"
Post edited by chris919uk on
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of the pages that came up I think these are worthy ...
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=791791
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=583401
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=799211&page=2 - heavy duty cruiser build discussion = 100 pages BUT many Excelsior builds are posted.
"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon, taH pagh, taH be"
Here's a build to do good dps and keep ya alive.
The skill tree needs a some work though, too annoying doing it on my phone. Good luck.
The marion doff will do well for ya
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
You're welcome! Those are the links I've poured over so I was being selective. But I agree that finding a build without the best gear is challenging ... or impossible.
As frustrating as that can be, I figure to get gear that is reasonably attainable to get "close enough for government work" should carry me until I'm able to get the uberleetzomgpewpewkapow stuff.
Which goes without saying.
A build without end game gear isn't too difficult but few people are willing to list them either because "my fleet is level x y z"or the assumption that people know what to substitiute, the excelsior really just has one big question to answer and that's beams or cannons, single cannons are powerful and less power demanding.
With a Tac that would make me lean towards cannons(I actually used them prior to EPS manifold efficency)
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=cannonfahcr_0
This build is based on my own excelsior which is in turn based on the dragon build of ages past(before the A2B madness, it takes advantage of using EPTx every 15 seconds to maintian both high shield and weapon power during operations
A few doffs could be used to enhance this, conn officers can be used to reduce the cooldown on Tac team, Attack pattern beta1 or both and the same goes for ET, a warp core doff can be used to offer a temporary across the board boost on use of any emergency power as well.
as far as equipment goes, both netroniums should be replaced with fleet and the RCS droped in favor of the romulan console but this is fully functional till then, the assimilated set is going to be this builds best choice as well for all 3 parts. Romulan plasma is a drop in upgrade for the weapons shown in this build and would be advised as well for all(including the torp) to give the +plasma dmg set bonus
This build will get you killed a lot
Shields = alive
No shields = dead
No shield heals = no shields = death!
Otherwise, a standard build would be using damage control engineers to lower the cooldown on EPTx abilities. Incidently, that might actually be pricier than trying to get technicians. You can get 1 DCE from hitting tier IV engineering commendation, and you can make a holographic one when you hit that too. I'm not sure how many you need though.
Nothing wrong with cruisers, and Fed-side you picked one out of two really good ones (the other being the Regent/Sovvie-retrofit).
Skill advice? Max these 6 skills: starship manoeuvres, targeting systems, structural integrity, hull repair, shield emitters and shield systems. These skills boost defence, accuracy, both kinds of hp and both kinds of heals (shield and hull). You can't get enough of any of that, so the more the merrier. Flow caps can be maxed if you use plasmonic leech.
Everything else is where you refine your build to whatever role you want it to fulfill. In general though, 6 points is enough to spend in a skill. The diminishing returns from going past 6 points is too high to justify the cost in skill point investment. Basically, to take a skill up to 9 means you have fewer points left to take another skill up to 6, so that's why you shouldn't max most skills. Take a look at this: http://home.comcast.net/~amicus/Skill%20Point%20Effects.htm
I'd recommend 6 points in power insulators if you're going to do eSTFs. Because ******n, borg tachyon beams are damn effective, and keeping shields up is a necessity.
Advanced weapons x2 (acc) and x2 (dmg) are absolutely fine. Probably a little expensive, but you can work towards it. Honestly though? You could do endgame content with white gear, or greens and blues you get off the exchange. High-end gear is for people with money to burn. ;D
Aegis is fine for starting out. It's a purely defensive set, so you won't be kicking TRIBBLE with it but hopefully you won't be getting your TRIBBLE kicked either.
edit: wrong link
a very offensive build but cannon fodder in most situations better suited for an escort/hybrid like the dkora
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=rcktacfahcrevs_0
Good for 10K+ consistently and will allow you to tank any NPC in the game.
BTW, if you were looking for a Tac cruiser platform, you couldn't have picked a better one. FAHCR rocks, especially running Aux2Bat and an all-beam load out. You'll learn to love this ship...
RCK
so... what did the build look like before you had all that fancy rep gear and expensive doffs?
Many thanks. I like the build and its certainly within budget. Only real issue I have with it is getting over the whole running cannons on a cruiser feeling. I'm old school Trek and while I'll happily run DHC's on my Fleet K'tinga which suits the ship. On a Federation cruiser any type of cannon build makes me think I'm playing Abrams Trek.
Of course I could just try ignoring that feeling.
Second question. Since you only have the one rapid fire skill and most escorts typically work best with two copies, or 1 CRF and 1 CSV, does that one RF skill dish out enough DPS to be really worth it on a cruiser? Especialy considering you're already giving up an engineer console for one RCS console and the ability to turn somewhat faster. I'm not saying its wrong at all, just interested in your choices.
Definately see some real advantages having the turrets mind you. Especially if replacing one later with the Borg cutting beam. 360 degree fire is nice to have and I certainly wouldn't have to broadside targets anymore. Bad side of that is broadsiding is part of the Cruiser feel for me, old ships of the line style. I really need to overcome my traditionalist ideas and accept these modern ideas. :P
"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon, taH pagh, taH be"
I did my respec before I read your post. However I did remember your advice from my K'tinga thread so 6 points in insulators was always going to happen. As for my other skills I went for balance as opposed to min/max since I fly more than one type of ship. Will post up skill layout later.
rck01. Thanks. I did read this build in the other thread that cmdrscarlet linked me too. As a true beam cruiser I do like it a lot and my current build is similar in terms of boff abilities. The problem is the amount of high end gear it uses. I suspect if I tried to use less powerful gear on it then the ship would be lacking to say the least.
Other main issue is the technicians required for an effective Aux2batt build. At present I only have one blue and one green. Doing B'tran to get others takes a while. I'm confident 3 blue techs would be passable and now and again I see someone post a blue tech for 50K so maybe if I can get them. In the meantime I may have to try emperordeslok's cannon build as a compromise until I have the higher end gear and the techs.
One question. Why no hazard emitters in your boff skills?
"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon, taH pagh, taH be"
It's a placeholder for the romulan torp later on to take advantage of the set bonus(+plasma dmg) and to help with energy weapons, i've found that 8x energy weapons is a lot of simultanious drain, especially without some of an engineering captains skills and traits(you get 3 abilitys by being an engineer to counteract that)
you can go with beams 3/4 but their drain is even higher and you would see rather low damage output without those engineering abilities or an aux2batt build, that would change later once you get you hands on some rep/exchange gear (romulan experimental plasma pulls no power and plasmonic leech is a good thing to have)
I left the engine ect open since those should be the assimilated set but i'm not sure of you current omega rep level.
The RCS is another placeholder really, I run my excelsior without one but i run the rom rep console in it's place for the damage boost, single cannons have a 180* arc so keeping on target with or without that RCS isn't a big deal.
as far as the CRF question, cycling CRF1/2 or CSV1/2 is an option for sustained damage, you'll get a better burst damage mixing APB1 with CRF2 but with a lower overall dps either will work and neither is wrong(note aux2batt could sustain global on APB1 and CRF/CSV2 for some really impressive numbers)
also consider APD1 in place of APB for it's bonus resist if you find yourself holding too much agro as it provides a damage resistance bonus while active(but requires you be shot to debuff your targets resistance, for the same value as APB however)
Thank you for explaining everything, much appreciated.
I think I'll definately give your build a try. I like the idea of mixing it up a little with the aux2batt, APB1 and CRF. As for the equipment its a very good budget build and thats kind of my main priority at present. Thanks a lot.
"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon, taH pagh, taH be"
no problem, if you have any questions you can always send me a pm @emperordeslok
The planner doesn't seem to let me add them. lol
The Threat Scaling Console is Plasma DoT so I get a plasma burn for my Antiproton weapons and then I have 2 of the Reman set to boost my hyperplasma build.
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=excelsiorpve_2583
Here are my comments re: your build
- Good balance between Energy / Kinetic weapon mix, your 6 Beam weapons pull 50 in weapons power, which is manageable given that the invisible power cap is at 150 so you should be able to fire any 3 of them at maximum power at any given time
- Reman 2 piece set bonus enhances your HY Romulan Plasma Torp III's speed and defense, which makes them even more fearsome
- Adapted MACO Shield's ultra-high shield capacity, combined with innate resistance to Plasma is excellent in STF and PvE in general
- Consistency in Energy Weapon type (Antiproton) making it easier to synergize via one type of Tactical Console
- The ship has high shield capacity but very limited shield heals, which will make it hard for it sustain long under heavy fires (EPtS I being the only heal is insufficient)
- Very good hull heal capabilities, likely a durable tank
Comments re: your Skill Tree
- You do not have any attack pattern skills, no sense in investing points there if you are not going to use it
- There is zero point into power insulation, which is very risky for both STF and PvP. Power Insulation helps a great deal when Borg Shield Neutralizer is thrown at you - without it, your shield will dissipate in a blink of an eye. In PvP, many Federation Science vessels specialize in energy & shield drain (e.g. here ), everything from the energy weapon type, tractor beam, plasmonic leech and etc. have drain written all over the place - not to mention Klingons with their Aceton Assimilators, Siphon Drones and etc. Your cruiser can be easily crippled without power insulation
- There is zero point into subsystem repair - another questionable move in that Subsystem repair protects you against the effect of Viral Matrix, which more and more NPCs (e.g. Elachi & Tal Shiar) use, in addition to being somewhat popular in PvP due to the increase of cloakers. You are also susceptible to subsystem disables via Phaser and/or subsystem targeting. The latter can last 10+ seconds. Can you survive with your shields offline for 10+ seconds?
- Your Eng. Commander station is used for Warp Plasma III but your Particle Generator skill = 0 ???
- I see you invest heavily in Starship Hull Plating and Armor Reinforcement, in addition to having two Neutronium Alloy MK XII (very rare). It occurs to me perhaps you are not aware hull damage resistance has very high diminished return. Here is how it works, for example, with Armor Reinforcements : Kinetic Resistance Calculation
Additional Comments
At 99 points in Armor Reinforcements, you merely add +14.85 DRM to your Kinetic damage resistance. Note DRM is not % of damage resistance. Each bonus point increases the DRM (Damage Resistance Magnitude) for kinetic damage by the amount of the bonus divided by 20 and multiplied by 3. At rank 6, for example, the DRM will increase to 12.6 (84/20*3). Before investing heavily in this skill, it is advisable to experiment with Armor Consoles because DR (Damage Resistance) suffers from diminishing returns as DRM increases. So, if you equip 4 Neutronium Alloy MXII Very Rare consoles (+80 DRM), the added benefit of maxing out this skill only provides an additional 3.2% DR (+80+14.85 DRM = 46.3% DR verses +80 DRM = 43.1% DR).
So with 2 Neutroniums, they add +40 DRM, in addition to your 14.85 DRM from 99 points into Armor Reinforcements, which means you add about 8% of kinetic damage resistance by spending 27,000 skill out of 300,000 points into Armor Reinforcement for 7 ~ 8% more in kinetic damage resistance. Can't possibly find a better way to waste skill points than this.
For comparison, a tiny Science vessel with Polarize Hull II and Aux = 130 will easily produce +85 DRM against all Energy Types and Kinetic Damage in one swoop, resulting in a damage resistance % of 44% across the board, far more than your 2 Neutroniums Mk XII (very rare) + 9 points into Hull Plating & Armor Reinforcements combined.
It's extremely important to understand how hull damage resistance works in a cruiser or else you'd be wasting a lot of skill points for nothing.
For a cruiser with limited maneuverability, the dual beam bank is not recommended. Your best arc is your broadside but the DBB will just sit there doing nothing due to its limited arc.
Two of your hull heal powers are highly dependent on Auxiliary power but you invested very little into Aux, which make them very vulnerable. Without AUX, you can't cleanse via HE because your forward Romulan Plasma Torp has a very high risk of doing splash damage to yourself and your Aux to SIF is inoperable without AUX power.
For a Cruiser, you have no defense against Tractors/Slow/Held and does not have EptE which means enemies can easily sneak behind your and tractor you. What do you do when a Borg Tactical cube holds you in a Borg tractor beam and you have little to none power insulation?
I have updated my skill planner now.
The gear is high-end but all "grindable" over time. Aside from the unique consoles, there's nothing all that special. The Fleet Polarons are a bargain if you have access to them - you could easily outfit a full 7x array in a week or so of converting Dil and running ESTFs + fleet marks missions. The KCB is a Tier 2 Omega Rep weapon, so something you can strive for in tandem with the Fleet gear. The Borg Def/Eng set is nice but not necessary - you could supplement your hull with inexpensive Neutroniums, which is what I did for a long time while running MACO space gear without any hull heal procs.
Note: My son is just starting to build his FAHCR, and yet he still gets good results with generic gear by following the aux2bat "best practices."
So even with generic gear/weapons, as long as you put the right *kinds* of pieces in place, you can still get a good result. I would focus more on the Doffs for now since they can be had for free if you crit B'Tran. It's a pain going down there every day to look for the repeatable mission but it's well worth the effort. I've got three "10 of 10" Doffs that way - just put your best (blue/purple) officers into the mission, even if that means pulling them "off the line" for 4 hours while the mission completes.
In order of things to grind for, I would go: Leech, FC consoles (Embassy, if possible), additional unique consoles (Nukara, Borg, ZP), then work on weapons and finally shield/def/eng. You'll get an almost immediate boost from the Leech, and if used in conjunction with the FC consoles and aux2bat cycling, you'll have a surplus of power flowing into everything.
That overflowing power excess is the secret to aux2bat and the FACHR. It's what keeps your shields up and your weapons hitting as hard as they can. Anything that boosts those levels - especially the Leech and FCs - will have a dramatic impact on overall combat performance.
As for why no HE, I find that PH and TSS are more useful/effective. When I do need heals I use ET - that, plus the innate hull healing procs of the Borg Def/Eng set and also my Embassy FC's [HuH] modifier. In fact, I no longer feel the need to slot *any* armor consoles since I'm so rarely taking catastrophic damage due to the aux2bat power surge.
RCK
Many thanks for the detailed response. In fact before you posted I did realise I could happily grind some items. Others I just got lucky with today on the exchange. A couple more blue technician doffs at a cheap price. Plus I really love Fire at Will 3 and aux2batt boosts. Ok so 3 blue techies is a poor mans Aux2batt but I seem to be ok.
Now to be fair I did also try emperordeslok's build, which is an excellent budget build for around 500K. Plasma infusers being the obvious expensive items. Thankfully I had enough EC to do both builds. I like them both on their own merits to be honest and both are equally enjoyable with their own playstyles.
For now I want more of the cruiser beam boat feeling so my build is currently based on rck01's but I have the gear to happily swap to the other build.
My Plasma build is identical to emperordeslok's. So no point me reposting that.
My rck01 style build the only real difference is my weapon type and what I had to hand in loot from my KDF characters. Will have Mk X MACO shield and Cutting Beam tomorrow. Obviously I'll upgrade this over time.
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=fleetahcrearlyversion_0
My skills are kind of general because I do fly other ships. I also like torps just not with this ship.
Things are working out fine for me in Elite STF's. So I'm happy. Many thanks to emperordeslok, rck01 and everyone else for the helpful advice. Cheers.
"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon, taH pagh, taH be"
I have several Isises, Berlinghoff Rasmusens, Parnell, and a few other blue and purple temporal box doffs. But it's a lottery. You either win big or you don't.
I still think points in subsystem repair are a waste. Viral matrix gets cleansed with engineering team, in fact all subsystem disablers can get cleansed by that (possibly not the phaser proc, but that happens so rarely to me that it's not an issue). Also batteries can restore a damaged subsystem instantly.
If it's for PVP, then maybe it would be worth the investment. For PVE, it definitely isn't. I get by with 0 points and some human boffs and if a subsystem goes offline it's back on a couple of seconds later. Even my klingon characters who don't have access to human boffs get by without that skill. I do acknowledge that PVP might be a different beast altogether, but my point is that there are better ways of negating subsystem disablers than speccing into subsystem repair.
I have to disagree with your sense of worth here. 10 Master Keys at 1125 Zen which is roughly eight pounds or whatever that is in dollars at present. 10 random lottery lucky dips in which you may win.
1. A mini doff pack. Wow wanted one of those.
2. A few lobi crystals
3. You may get a rare lockbox ship. Oh yeah at 0.005% chance or whatever it is.
4. That purple doff you really needed if you're lucky.
5. A cuddly toy.
6. A picnic hamper.
7. A modern vacuum cleaner.
Sorry you will have to forgive my humour.:D Truth is I don't play the lottery game. If people want to thats fair enough but I know my own luck and its just not that lucky.
However keys sell from anywhere between 1.4-1.6 million EC at present. So a ten pack is a good 14-16 million EC and that would be the 100% certain way to get the doff but I still wouldn't buy it for that price. I could gear a small squadron of ships with that much EC.
"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon, taH pagh, taH be"