test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Vesta Science builld - Help me out!
soundwisdom
Member Posts: 248 Arc User
Just bought a vesta(was running a free ship for years now..) and I'm looking for a good build. I googled and browsed the forums, but most vesta builds are 6+ months old. Since then a lot of changes have happened(as well as new rep system and a whole new season) so was looking for an updated build.
I'm max tier all rep, and can get access to most top tier holdings. I play a more DD oriented style(IE: I'm not overly fond of healing). Although I'm up for a change of pace to something else if it's exponentially better.
Any help greatly appreciated
I'm max tier all rep, and can get access to most top tier holdings. I play a more DD oriented style(IE: I'm not overly fond of healing). Although I'm up for a change of pace to something else if it's exponentially better.
Any help greatly appreciated
Post edited by soundwisdom on
0
Comments
Cannon
Beam
(This requires cooldown reduction doffs for EPtX to run and preferably TT cooldown reducers)
The beam build will do more on parsers than the cannon one and gives more manoeuvrability options thanks to the wider arcs. If you run the QFFP then you should run more particle generators and use phaser weapons over plasma as both consoles buff it.
I'm sure there are better builds out there but these will certainly perform quite well.
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/index.php?build=reikouvesta_1552
The Vesta is extremely flexible and can perform a variety of functions for all 3 classes. What works for me, may not work for others, but it's always worth giving a look.
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
I suppose the beam build could use the Nuke console over the RCS, I confess I forgot about that :rolleyes:
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
Requires the following doffs:
3 x purple technician
1 x purple tractor beam officer (adds shield drain to tractor beam)
1 x purple gravimetric scientist (chance to create aftershock gravity well)
I've put regular AP mag regulators in the tactical slots, but ideally you want fleet spire ones with increased crit chance.
The build lacks TT, but with a high shield mod and a pair of field generators you're looking at a significant amount of shielding, so having shield redistribution on your keybind is more than adequate in all but the toughest of situations (where TT is unlikely to save you anyway).
A single copy of A2B with 3 purple techs is 30% across-the-board cooldown reduction approx. every 27s, putting all of your abilities at or close to their global cooldowns whilst still allowing you to maintain high aux almost 2/3 of the time.
It's somewhat of a toss-up between the obelisk warp core and a fleet [AMP] one - I've picked the obelisk one here because allows a 135 aux cap, which narrows the downtime between energy syphon activations, and further boosts the kinetic damage of GW1 & TB2. Best thing to do is play around with the cores you think will fit your personal take on this build best.
Between ES2 & Plasmonic Leech - assuming you've got 6 in flow caps - your power levels should be at or close to maximum a lot of the time. You want to be firing off ES2 at maximum aux to get the duration as high as possible - which is where the obelisk core helps a little more.
I've put adv. delta flyers in the hangar because they're sturdy and come with tachyon beam to help crack shields more quickly. There are other good options though - scorpion fighters for more damage, runabouts for more control - so pick what suits you best.
TBR3 is typically best used during your A2B uptime, since aux only affects the repel strength and you'll be using it for the damage component. The repel can be effectively used with a fresh GW1 to clump enemy ships together, but this can take a little practice to get right.
GW1 is another optional that you can switch out - I recommend either Tyken's Rift 2 or Photonic Shockwave 1 as decent alternatives. Shockwave is another ability you want to use during A2B uptime, since like TBR it's the repel strength that's determined by your aux level, not the damage.
I wish they would do a full release of 360 beams - that single turret in the back is annoying. It wouldn't be a massive DPS gain, but having 4 beams gaining BFAW instead of 3 would be a small improvement nonetheless.
Ill run with Romulan Plasma beam build - with (5x) +9.6% Plasma Dmg Embassey consoles w PG (for GW and FBP).
Love a hull crushing GW
I used to use breen cluster as well, but with all the wells witht he voth it means its just a wasted cooldown.
Personally, I run this build on my space science character: http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=vestaseason8build_0
Please note that the "unique" photon torpedo in fore is actually the Dyson Gravimetric Torpedo, which is not on the build planner yet.
For duty officers I am using 3x Projectile Weapon Officer (Torpedo cooldown reduction), 1x Gravimetrics Scientist (Gravity Well Aftershocks), and 1x Tractor Beam Officer (Strips shields with tractor beam). When my fleet reaches Tier III spire, I will add in a Photonic Studies Scientist for a higher uptime on Photonic officer. The build here is a Torpedo boat, which means you can set power levels to Weapons: 15, Shields: 50, Engines: 40, Auxiliary: 95. Also, if you aren't going to be running in PvP, swap out that Omidirectional Beam Array for the Nukara Reputation's Hyper-Refracting Dual Tetryon Beam Bank, that weapon is very nice. While you will be dealing a good portion of damage with torpedoes and science abilities, it wouldn't hurt to have an "Attack" weapons preset of Weapons: 75, Shields: 15, Engines: 15, Auxiliary: 95.
The Gravimetric Torpedo damage scales on Particle Generators and the duration of the rift scales on Graviton Generators. A science vessel fully loaded out with Particle Generator consoles can get 2,000 shield bypassing damage in a 1km per rift. If you toss in the Romulan Hyper Plasma Torpedo you are going to average about 1 Gravimetric Torpedo every 2-3 seconds, which means a guaranteed rift at least every 9 seconds. With a 5 second rift duration there will be times where two rifts are active on a single target.
The Nukara Web actually scale off of Auxiliary power. A ship with maximum Auxiliary will gain about +2% damage per point in Auxiliary above 50, which makes the weapon ideal for a science vessel, as the ship already requires maximum auxiliary power.
The Romulan Hyper Plasma Torpedo is a great "siege" weapon. The Hyper Torpedo is capable of dealing about 8,000 Damage/Second alone alone and unbuffed by any Tactical abilities.
I also use the Kinetic Cutting Beam and the Omega Force Torpedo in the aft section. Both weapons are very effective and the three piece set bonus they provide is rather nice.
On the abilities side, you have Gravity Well and Tykens Rift to contain enemy ships. Gravity Well will clump up the enemy ships and does high shield bypassing damage when specced for science damage. If you are a science officer, get the Conservation of Energy trait, this trait is a flat +30% All damage with science abilities boost when your ship takes enemy fire. Tykens Rift is an ara of effect power drain ability that also does high shield bypassing damage when specced. Against most ships, this ability also has a chance to drop a target's shields or knock their weapons offline. If the shields go, your torpedoes will make even shorter work of their ship. The best use for these abilities is to pop Gravity Well, wait for the end to the shared cooldown, and then pop Tykens Rift. Gravity Well will pull the targets together and Tykens Rift will drop their power levels.
Tractor Beam I and II may be spammed liberally. Not only will it deal high damage from the Particle Generator Spec, but it will also strip shields via the duty officer. With 2 copies of tractor beam you will also have full uptime when Photonic Officer is online.
Which brings us to the next point, Photonic Officer. This ability instantly reduces all of your cooldowns by 32% and lasts for 1 minute.
If you are looking for a pure science vessel vesta build, this will work very well for you.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
I am closing in on T5 omega (finally) and was planning on what others had suggested in the past as far as what space set to go with: Borg deflector/Borg engines/MACO shields. But after trying to look at pros and cons, I'm wondering about pure MACO?
I play healer/cc'er primarily (not a torpedo boat). Any (new) suggestions on space sets to match the great advice posted earlier in this thread?
Thanks
The Obelisk core is pretty neat, but I run Aux cannons fore with turrets and Cutting Beams aft with an [A->W] core currently, and the extra Aux doesn't boost the Aux cannons enough to offset the Weapon power drop in DPS aft(even with Nukara Rep). If you're going Torp boat or just mines aft, it's great, with giving more Aux which, even without Nukara Rep, buffs the Dyson Sci console procs. I still don't like mixing energy damage types, so I'm not using the 360 AP beam with Aux Phaser cannons.
I'm still playing with Dyson stuff on another char, but not seeing anything 'must have' from either Dyson set for my Vesta.
@ majortiraomega: It honestly isn't painful at all - that's what I currently run on my science officer. One copy still leaves you with nearly 2/3 aux uptime, which is more than enough to fire off aux-based sci boff & captain abilities whenever you need them. That single copy also allows you to make excellent usage of abilities like TBR3 (and PS if you take it) vs. clusters of ships, without scattering them all over the place.
@ cmdrscarlet: You can put together a similar build using any lockbox science vessel, or pretty much any of the fleet science vessels. The Fleet Reconnaissance Science Vessel in particular has the same console layout as the Reconnaissance Vesta, and the only boff-related difference is an ensign Tac slot at the expense of the ensign Eng one.
@ cowdoc0077: Whilst the MACO set items are good individually and the 2-piece bonus is decent, the 3-piece bonus is somewhat lackluster. If you need to use the shield because you don't have a plasmonic leech console, then I would suggest going with either the borg deflector/engine as you referenced, or the adapted MACO deflector/engine which gives another nice 2-piece bonus (less so if you're running a primarily broadsiding beamboat with no torp at all)
I could take a Lt. Engineering station, three of my duty officer slots, and all of my auxiliary power for a significant amount of time in exchange for a 30% cooldown reduction. Or I could run Photonic Officer II, taking up one Lt. Commander science slot and one duty officer slot (optional, for longer uptime) in exchange for a 32% cooldown reduction. On a science vessel, Photonic officer is superior to Auxiliary to Battery. 3 of a Science officer's 5 innate Science abilities run on Auxiliary Power levels. With the exception of 3 Science Bridge officer abilities, everything runs on Auxiliary Power. A Science officer does not want to lose his Auxiliary power levels, ever. Losing that system alone is very painful. Losing three duty officer slots and the ability to slot auxiliary to structural integrity field severely limits surviability of the science vessel. All it takes is one Subnuke Beam to harm an Auxiliary to Battery Science Vessel. You may not have seen it yet, but the Voth are very fond of spamming Subnuke Beam.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
A 32% reduction which only works whilst PO2 is active, and there's significant downtime on it - the minimum being 60s which requires 2 purple photonic studies scientists to achieve. If you don't use any doffs you're stuck with 1/3 uptime.
On the other hand, you can run a single copy of A2B for a consistent 30% cooldown reduction every 27s, putting all of your boff abilities at or near global all the time, and still maintain maximum aux nearly 2/3 of the time you're flying. PO may be your preference, but it certainly isn't superior - even on a science vessel. In fact, there are several threads discussing PO, its overall redundancy, and how it should offer a more consistent A2B-like cooldown reduction to make it actually worth using.
I am well aware of this. They also have quite long cooldowns, and only take an aux snapshot at the time of activation - just as all aux-based powers do.
As I've already said, you're getting nearly 2/3 aux uptime, and aux-based sci boff and captain abilities only snapshot aux at the time of activation. Plus you can slot sci abilities that compliment DPS well - particularly in many STFs vs. the array of stationary, shieldless objects that you have to destroy - but only derive repel strength from aux, which is something you often want to minimise to avoid scattering ships.
Not really. The borg 2-piece bonus offers a regularly proccing hull HoT that heals for around 2k per tic. That alone is enough for the majority of hull-healing needs, leaving HE1 as primarily a debuff cleanser, and a backup hull HoT if really necessary. Furthermore, science vessels are designed primarily to take advantage of the ability to shield-tank - hence the high shield mod and generally low hull strength.
So far as cooldowns are concerned yes, but the deleterious effects of subnukes are easily negated by slotting science team instead of TSS2. Subnukes also strip the PO buff unless something's changed.
Thanks talaj; Alas, I do not have a Plasmonic leech console. I have read varying things on the heavy graviton beam from the full MACO set. I have used the Breen torpedoes a lot, but as it has been seen, the Voth tend to shoot those down quite often, so I may pull those out; therefore I'll have to weigh the +torp damage and +7 aux power of the adapted maco vs. the Borg-chance at a hull heal/resist buff.
I'll probably go with the Borgx2 + MACO shield.
Thanks for the input.
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=fedjoinedtrillengscivesta_99
For my DOFFs:
2 Deflector Officers (the purple Vulcan ones from the star cluster DOFF missions)
1 purple Conn Officer for the TT cooldown
1 purple Damage Control Engineer
1 purple Warp Core Engineer
Let's see, 50% uptime on Auxiliary to Battery or 50% uptime on Photonic Officer. The uptimes are identical, it's just one has a longer uptime and a longer downtime, yet both have a 50% downtime in the long run. You don't need 2x Photonic studies scientist to lower the cooldown, there is also Elite Fleet Deflectors or the MACO two piece to help with that issue.
I wouldn't mind having a shorter cooldown and shorter duration, but for now the ability works fine in it's current state. The 1 minute cooldown is fine if you time your science abilities correctly. You can chain Tykens Rift II and Gravity Well III perfectly with a Photonic Officer II ability. The chaining will even persist up until right before Photonic Officer II falls back off cooldown.
As for the Borg set, I'm not suprised, a lot of player rely on that two piece set with it's broken hull regeneration. (The passive regeneration, not the +X healing/second proc) +0.35 passive regeneration on any ship is too high, though it was worse back at Season 7 when human bridge officers were +0.1 each. You could get over 200% in combat hull regeneration per minute back then. Right now it's possible to get about 100 in combat regeneration with most ships.
As for slotting science team...you wouldn't in most cases, it would disrupt your Tactical team cycle. Science Team also does not provide HoT level healing. Photonic Officer is a "blue" buff, Subnuke beam cannot clear Photonic Officer.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=myscivesta1_0
A2B's cooldown reduction is flat and upon activation, so it's 30% every 27s - that puts all of your major boff cooldowns at or close to global throughout the entire encounter. With PO you get a 32% reduction for the 60s that it is active, then you've got at least 60s of downtime with absolutely no reductions before you can activate it again. So whilst you're waiting to get PO going again, I've still got everything at or near global cooldown.
Yes you're right, I had forgotten that PO affects its own cooldown for the duration, so one purple doff puts it more or less at global. Personally, I wouldn't equip a elite fleet deflector because it's more effective in general to use an elite fleet shield alongside a rep deflector/engine 2-piece - and the stats on rep deflectors tend to be more appropriate. Regarding MACO, I could do the same with a single copy of A2B if I wanted, and guarantee global cooldown on all abilities, all the time.
It's not just about chaining targetable AoE CC - the gap between other DPS-oriented cooldowns is exacerbated whilst not under the effects of PO, meaning less consistent DPS over time.
You could take the hull regeneration away from the borg 2-piece, and the HoT would still do the job very nicely. As to whether the bonuses are "broken" or not, that's a matter of opinion and not really relevant here.
My linked build doesn't include TT, though I do have science-heavy builds with both TT & ST, and find no issue keeping TT strictly as an emergency shielding redirect, using manual redistribution to deal with the majority of incoming damage.
Also, whilst ST might not provide the overall healing and shield resistance buff that TSS does, it is more than sufficient alongside EPtS to cover any of the current content - and more importantly it's a science debuff cleanse with a short cooldown.
I stand corrected.