test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Options
Varna us fleet support vessel
simeion1
Member Posts: 898 Arc User
I am currently working on a build for my science toon on the KDF, currently flying a Varanus fleet support vessel. I love the lay out of BOFFs but I am not happy with my DPS. I ran a Romulan patrol with ACT and I only averaged around 3,300. I play mostly science toons and I want to try something different on this character.
I run four advance disruptors two forward and two aft with a adavnce photon torpedo and the Breen cluster torpedo.
Run the full Borg set.
Currently bridge officer layout is:
Commander sci: GW3, PS1, TSS2, PH1
Lt com: CPB2, HE2, ST1
Lt tac: TS1, FAW2
Lt eng: A2Sif1, EPtS1
Ensign: EPtS1
I enjoy running a gravity well build, but no opposed to trying something different the only consule I am opposed of getting rid of is Plasmonic Leech, I want to keep. I was thinking about running transphasics mines and torps and running APB1 along with DEM1.
I am open to any suggestions. I am not going to space PvP with this toon so everything is open to suggestions.
I run four advance disruptors two forward and two aft with a adavnce photon torpedo and the Breen cluster torpedo.
Run the full Borg set.
Currently bridge officer layout is:
Commander sci: GW3, PS1, TSS2, PH1
Lt com: CPB2, HE2, ST1
Lt tac: TS1, FAW2
Lt eng: A2Sif1, EPtS1
Ensign: EPtS1
I enjoy running a gravity well build, but no opposed to trying something different the only consule I am opposed of getting rid of is Plasmonic Leech, I want to keep. I was thinking about running transphasics mines and torps and running APB1 along with DEM1.
I am open to any suggestions. I am not going to space PvP with this toon so everything is open to suggestions.
Post edited by simeion1 on
0
Comments
Ok, you asked for it.
Forget Photonic shockwave, Charged Particle Burst and Science team.
In their place you put FeedBack Pulse, Tractor Beam, and another Gravity Well.
In the ENG Ensign you swap the Emergency power to shields with Emergency power to weapons.
Throw into the bank the Breen Cluster and switch to full quantum.
On the front switch to 2x dual beams instead of 2x beam arrays.
As science consoles switch to full dyson consoles, forget the repair platform or other consoles. Ideally it'd be great having 2x Shield refrequencer [GravGen] and 2x Shield refrequencer [PartGen].
As engineering consoles, get 2x neutronium with HullRep bonus, and the third one get a dyson fleet console with bonus to Aux power OR a third neutronium with turn bonus.
As tactical console you can keep the plasmonic, but stitch together either the Nukara Particle Converter (bonus to beam accuracy and particle generator) and a fleet tac console, or put there 2x Fleet tac console with bonus to critical chance for disruptor weapons.
This is the best i can come up with knowing both the Varanus (unfortunately i don't have and can't have the fleet one) and it's console-wise equivalent on the fed side (the fleet nova).
P.S.: You typo'ed the thread title :P
Alexvecci's advice is probably the best general dps you'll get out of the ship. However, I'd also like to throw in the idea of dyson science consoles with the Flow Capacitors mod alongside Tetryon weapons. It compliments the useage of torpedos very well. Otherwise, Particle Gens will be more useful than Gravity Gens for raw damage(especially as a science captain with the Exotic damage trait).
But having said that, you can get some pretty good numbers from the Varanus with some focus. It has a really good sci layout for control, and it handles extremely well, and KDF has some good resources that you can draw on to boost damage some more. Its a really really good offensive support ship, that can be squeezed for damage.
The way I do it with my fleet varanus is focus my sci on stripping the target shields as quickly as possible and use energy weapons for hull damage (my build). DOFFs include Tractor Beam shield-stripper, Diplomat that gives chance to drain power from any ships that shoot me, Gravwell aftershock, Sensors officer that debuffs damage output on sensor scan (temp), and a Maintenance doff that boosts battery (temp).
Assuming a group of targets, I will drop a Gravwell to clump them up, followed by a Tyken's Rift to drain them all of power. The polarized disruptors (with poloaron proc) and the plasmonic leach drain them further and give some of that power back to me. Usually the targets are out of power at this point but if there is a boss that doesnt want to cooperate then tractor beam will drain the current shield facing the rest of the way (and do some kinetic damage to hull), and the built-in Target Subsystem Shields can temporarily knock the whole shield system off-line (not always). Only the elite bosses have shields left after all that.
Once the shields are out of the way, the disruptors and the KCB can do the hull damage that gets the cookie. The disruptor proc lowers their resists which buffs the damage on weapon and spells (including GW and TB). My crew is one Romulan embassy tac and the rest are Nausicaan for the Pirate trait damage buff. I have [AMP] and [Wcap] on the warp core to further buff weapon damage.
After all that I'm up to about 6k in regular damage (not counting additional buffs from teammate APB). which is respectable for Sci+Sci.
Couple of other things. You could try to use torpedoes to shoot hull through the shield facing, but the single Lt Tac station will make it difficult to build out. You could also theoretically slot EPtW somewhere in there, but with only one Tac Team available to balance shelds I try to keep EPtS running full time, so I would not advise it. The only sci abilities that do any real hull damage anymore are tractor beams, and if you debuff the target's resists and buff your partgens and stack 2x TBs you can eat through hull very quickly, but it is pretty much limited to single target attack. If you really want to blow stuff up fast by yourself, you need a more tactical-oriented ship with more consoles and boff seats, and then just use the fewer sci seats for simple control methods.
I tend to favor simple builds over really complex ones. *shrug*
Another thing you can do is to buy the new Tractor Beam Repulsor Doff, Falla Okev for KDF. It's about 1 mill EC now, but it's great. TBR can do crazy damage and that doff lets you use it as a mass hold rather than a push so you can combine it with GW and FAW for a great AOE combo
Lastly, I would get the Gravaton Photon torpedo from the Voth rep. Unbuffed the little gravity wells do about 1k damage with only 6 pts into particle gens.
I run a similar build on my varanus and it's great. Lots of CC and Great shield bypassing damage
So.... make sure you're spec'd out for grav well. As a sci it's your duty to make your skill tree give you the most. If that means less weapons accuracy, less weapons crit, so be it. Get full points in grav and part skills under the science tree.
Then always run full aux when firing off your sci skills. If that means popping a battery first before doing it, or stocking emergency power to aux, do it. Or run full aux and run emergency power to weapons and shields to keep them at higher levels. Higher aux means more damage, more healing, more whatever. It makes ALL sci skills better, justabout.
On a ship with more weapons slots, the breen cluster torp is a great aft-mounted mine. It has 10 warheads, and if one crits they ALL crit. That means I can get 10x 1400 damage onto a single target in short order. I do quite regularly. However, on a 3/3 sci ship layout, I don't think you can really spare the weapons slot. You could do DBBs to get a little extra forward power, or do full broadside (6 BAs) for even more. A DBB has more DPS than a BA, but an aft turret has just about the same amount of DPS LESS than a BA, so if you're facing forward with 1 DBB and 1 turret, you're doing roughly the same damage as broadiding with 1 fore and 1 aft BA.
There are other considerations, but I'm just saying you can pull off beam boat pretty easily. My fed avenger seems to get better damage with 8x BAs than with 5x DHCs and 3 turrets.
For your science consoles, you want particle generators. As high a level as you can get. Part Gens increase DAMAGE from grav well (and many other sci skills). If you want to increase the PULL and SLOW effects you go with graviton consoles instead, but they don't increase damage, which is what you need as a sci. Don't use the dyson mixed skill consoles. They only give you HALF of what a console normally gives for one of the skills (whatever it may have) and the other skill (shield refrequencer) is absolutely TRIBBLE. Either run 1 field generator for more capacity or shield emitter amplifier and 3 part gens, or just run 4 part gens. These are the equivelant of your tactical consoles boosting your disruptor damage. You can't afford to load those slots with much else. Having good shields with a very high shield modifier means you often don't even need shield consoles there.
After that plasmonic leech in one of the eng slots and maybe a fleet armor with some extra bonus like hitpoints, hull repair, or power transfer (useful for scis). Maybe aceton assimilator or even isometric charge. Very useful for groups you trap in grav wells, all nice and close together. Or even theta radiation. Something to help you nail them while they're caught.
DOFFS: Doffs can make or break a sci setup. Aftershock is nice, but I find other important stuff gets in the way of me using more than 1. I used to run 3, but have learned since then.
First, there's a new doff, mentioned above, from the new drop boxes or the voth rep or something, that turns tractor beam repulsors into a pull force. VERY nice. You drag ships instead of push. I haven't got it myself, but heard from a guy that did and it was a great innovation. If you run TBR (and on such a sci ship, it is a MUST) try to get this doff. Beware, it's expensive on exchange.
Second, you can get away with 2 blue (or better 2 purple) damage control doffs to reduce EPT power recharge. However, maybe 1 purple will do. You stock more not to get more cooldown, but to increase chance of cooldown. Cooldown is the same, you just increase proc chance. However, if there's a little downtime between the EPT power, it's only 15 seconds. You can live with 15 seconds of lower power as long as it's NOT in your aux bank. I'd only run one purple if you can.
Third, sci team is awesome. Instant shield heal. Clears debuffs, including subnuc. Not just a gentle shield regen buff like TSS. Use it like you use EPTS on a cruiser. Use it for shield heals. There are doffs to reduce the recharge rate on ST. Get a couple purples. You may have some already. Just hit this thing all the time and your shields will stay up. Use it for main heal and EPTS for secondary (as needed) boost, or something.
That leaves 1, maybe 2 doff slots left depending on your fleet spire rank.
You can stock a "reduce beam attacks" doff -- to speed up FAW. Very useful in ships with few tac boff skills. You can stock aftershock, but I wouldn't suggest more than 1. Make him purple for best effect. but, one of the more interesting you can get is photonic officer doff that reduces cooldown on photonic officer skill -- not a %, not a proc, just a hard reduce CD. Then run PO2 (or PO1, but it has less benefit) to reduce your cooldown on photonic shockwave, grav well, and some other things. The boff cools down PO, and PO cools down your sci skills. Some of them. Then you just keep hitting the PO whenever it's ready. It's like the A2Bat for SCI's, only not quite as effective.
Any of those 3 will be useful for you. There are others, naturally, but that's my suggested setup. If you want to skip the tac skill "Tac Team" you can run TSS and stock a boff to clear boarding parties with TSS, too, but it's not a sure thing. May be better to just run TT and FAW, or FAW and APB1, and just suffer through boarding parties.
I run both Mk XII Nukara space sets, with the Nukara beams (and the special DBB up front), and have the rep maxxed out, too. This lets me use a grav well, fly into the cluster, use an Isometric Charge, Tetryon Cascade, the Elachi area-effect lockbox console, and Web Mines in their midst. It tends to obliterate said group of NPC's, and my teammates can finish up any stragglers in a second or two.
While these abilities are recharging, I keep my distance, run crowd control, spam Attack Pattern Beta at whatever my allies are shooting, and heal them when they need it. Overall, it works great...and I'm pretty picky about my builds.
I would like to see someone make this kind of build and test it. Sadly I am tapped out on all resources to even contemplate this with say a Kar Fi carrier ... not to mention all the grinding necessary to make this happen at end game (including reps).
- Judge Aaron Satie
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Fleet_Corsair_Flight_Deck_Cruiser_Retrofit
Something I've been thinking about, not anytime soon though. I'm sure somebody else has done it already.
Have you tried switching your loadout to work with a single facing, or at least so you won't have to point both your front and your rear at the enemy? I've always found it to be rather annoying, if not inefficient to use narrow-angle weapons on my slower turning, broadsiding ships, especially on Science ships with forward-facing Sci abilities. The rear-facing weapon barely got off any shots during a PvE event.
This is the build I'm currently using on one of my Sci toons running a DSSV, which has the same Boff setup as the Varanus, a similar console setup (Fleet Varanus gets +1 Eng, Fleet DSSV +1 Sci console) and similar turn-rates.
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=fraghuldssv_0
Doff wise I'm running TT-Conn, Beam-Energy Weapon, Grav-Well Gravimetric and Graga Mal (turn push into pull on TBRs).
If I were to replace one of the beams with a kinetic weapon, it' probably be a KCB on the rear and/or a slow-reloading torpedo on the front, that doesn't profit from a boff ability, perhaps either the Breen Cluster or a Hargh'peng.
Wrong, Fleet Varanus has 1+ Tac console respect to standard varanus.
Console-wise it's closer to the Fleet Nova than the DSSV.
The only things the DSSV and the Varanus share are the eng-focused BOff layout.
and things like turn-rate, hull, inertia, approximate crew size etc...
performance-wise, the Fleet nova is far away from both the Varanus and the DSSV. If someone is comparing the Nova to the Varanus and is claiming that those ships are similar, than that person clearly hasn't flown either of them. Heck, even the Intrepid or a Recon sci or even the D'Kyr are closer to the varanus in ingame performance than the Nova...
Did i mention the word "Performance" in my post?
Reading this i think not.
And FYI i own both the Fleet Nova AND the Varanus, so i know the very least of what i'm talking aobut, and infact i said console-wise, not performance-wise.
So in other words you just wanted to be a bean counter, rather than contribute anything relevant?