I'll throw in my 2EC's worth although I'm by no means an expert.
To ask the question broadly of what energy type is best will yield a broad range of opinions as we have seen so far. So, let's be more specific. We need to ask what is the best energy type for various purposes throughout the game? What is the best energy type for my at the stage I'm at?
So while Anti-Proton might be ideal it's worthless if you can't afford to build for it. It's the same for any energy type really. People slap the flavor of the day on their ship and expect to be king of the hill only to find out they're doing worse than before.
So, here's what little I know about it.
Anti-Protons are truly amazing purely from a mathematical perspective. You don't have a 2.5% change to do extra damage, you have whatever change your critical hit rating gives you. Which means you need to get your crit rate as high as possible.
Which is not as easy as it might sound. You would have to put 9 points into energy weapons and also maybe in projectile weapons. Why? Because doing so gives you 2% improved crit rate. Then there's rep consoles, embassy boffs and some other things that gives minor bonuses. Romulan T2 rep gives you another 3% via the rep skill unlock.
So yes, if you're an established endgame player who's done the needed rep grinds and can get to all the crit goodies then Anti-Proton is very good in PvE where things don't have much shields.
Effectiveness in PvP would perhaps be less certain. Under the right conditions (meaning you catch your opponent with his pants down and no RSP up and you hit him with a superb Alpha strike while de-cloaking) it can be good.
If you're a cruiser with no stealth or huge spike damage then you're maybe better off with Plasma or Polaron for sustained damage while being useful to your team mates. Sure Plasma DoT can be easily cleaned but your job as a cruiser is to apply pressure. The more you make the enemy worry about the little things like plasma burns the less they notice your buddies sneaking up on them.
So yeah, when choosing an energy type first make sure you know exactly what you need to do to make it work and then either change your build or wait until you can. Personally I use Polaron on my engineer cruiser because I can get the most out of it right now. And I love the energy syphon. But that's just me.
If I spend the zen on an Ar'kif..... can I rip off the plasma Quad cannons and put them on my Fleet Avenger?
I have opted to take the long route and equip my Avenger with as much good and nifty gear as I can. I just started on this quest, but this is what I am trying for.
The cloak from the tactical retrofit. (Yes it is handy in missions),
A set of quad cannons, (when my weapons fire I can watch my weapons power drop like a stone; so I want to see if I can use my engine power to keep that from happening),
An equipment set that will compliment those cannons,
4 Dual Heavy cannons in the fore
1 Torpedo in the fore (Hargh'Peng, or Hyper Plasma?)
2 turrets in the rear
1 mine in the rear
- I happen to like to DOT from the Hargh'Peng, yes i have heard that the quantum torpedo is better but I disagree. I have seen my torps do 3000 damage right off the get go, then they do DOT, then they do a burst of DMG in the 3000-4000 range........ Boom! Nice!
- It seems like there is no set for phasers yet; so thats why I am trying to figure out if it is possible to equip the Romulan Quad Plasma Cannons, on the Federation Fleet Battle Cruiser.
- If the "Plasma Quad Cannons" work on the Fleet Avenger then the "Romulan Singularity Harness" would also be nice, right?
- if I can do this I will switch all of my weapons to Plasma.
- I have used the cloak to circumnavigate enemy forces in missions and to gain a tactical advantage.
I am new, and I am poor; but I have lots of free time. I have no idea if this is a good idea, but I think there are a lot of stack-able plasma TAC consoles and set bonuses.
I currently have a mix of poloron and protonic poloron dua heavy cannons mk XII purples and blues
I have the same thing for turrets in the rear 3 poloron.
I have not finished the missions yet, still working on the romulus episodes. Still working on rep tier 5 on romulan, borg and nurkura. I am tier 5 in the Dyson sphere rep.
I am a member in Si-9 a fleet that is lvl 15? I think?...... sigh working on that. I am the highest rank in my fleet that I can obtain, and have access to everything fleet related that we have available to us; shops, etc.
I am so confused and I don't want to waste any more money, I already spent on a tactical retrofit defiant, and earned the Avenger with Dilithium---> Zen, i wnat to earn more Zen But I want to know what I should buy.
Really I just want a ship that wont blow up often, but will be able to demolish attackers....... since you cant reason with any of them....... What happened to diplomacy?
If I spend the zen on an Ar'kif..... can I rip off the plasma Quad cannons and put them on my Fleet Avenger?
I have opted to take the long route and equip my Avenger with as much good and nifty gear as I can.
Unfortunately, you cannot equip Plasma Quads on the Avenger. The Ar'Kif is a Warbird, and can only be requisitioned by Romulan players, meaning a Federation player in an Avenger cannot claim them. In reverse, the Avenger is a T5 Federation ship, meaning that a Romulan player cannot claim it to use with the Quad Cannons.
I think that phasers are just a gimmick. They don't do any damage and they're pretty useless. Polaron is also a gimmick (unless it's Polarized Disruptor or some other mix.).
Currently running Phased Polarons on my Avenger, with Embassy Science Consoles to add the Plasma Proc. as well ...
The DHC's are pretty cheap, but the BA's and Turrets are expensive (as are the Consoles!!!) but it melts most targets in seconds with A2B (or other power booster) CRF3 and APO ...
Their only drawback is that they have really tiny bullets ... Can give you pewpewpew envy vs other weapon types, because it "looks" like all you are shooting is turrets, but watching the numbers drop so rapidly means you can be comfortable in your damage output.
I think that phasers are just a gimmick. They don't do any damage and they're pretty useless. Polaron is also a gimmick (unless it's Polarized Disruptor or some other mix.).
Are you kidding. Phasers do the same base damage as every weapon and if yoo hit critical and deactivate te Shields or Weapons for a few seconds it might be enough to finish an enemy off. Same for polaron. no you dont to all th Crit. damage but Crit is useless if you dont have a perfectly tuned and skilled ship. Polaron takes 25% of every subsystem if you hit critical. that doesnt leave much for the enemy.
Plasma is also unseful in PvE and also is Tetryon because it can take the shields down faster and then ist just the Hull.
You cant measure weapons on how they work in PvP because there are too many possibilities, your skills, consoles, systems,
I have a Tactical officer in a Excelsior with Tetryon Beam Array's and I have never had a problem contributing. Without Critical I manage 1100 to 1300 on average per beam. With critical hits I am within range of 1900 to 2400 per shot/array. I don't have hard data but I have run Tetryon for while and my number's have stayed within that range. Mind you, my gear is not the best it could be on my ship yet.
I have come to like Tetryon and don't really want to use anything else now. Yes, they are not a DPS monster weapon type but working in unison with another ship they are more than effective. I can't say how much fun it is to shred through a massive ship's shield within seconds so that the other's can tear up the hull.
I like to think of Tetryon as the support ship weapon type.
i use phaser weps on my feds cos it suits their faction idiom, and that susbystem disable proc is NOICE. but i do stick coverage weapons on, so my ships have KCB and Omni APB on the TRIBBLE for that 360 beaming.
and my new favourite toy is to replace the standard photon / quantum raw dps tor foreward i have with the gravimetric phton simple for the grav shears from HYT and ts.
klinks i use disruptors for that dame resist debuff passively stacking greater and greater dps on my side.
and rommies, plasma, because hey, plasma dots. and who doesn't LOVE setting things on fire.
and on fire
and on fire. and on fire, and on fire...
With crit rates as high as they are, Antiproton is now the king of all the damage types, bar none.
You simply cannot beat out +20critD with a 20+ percent chance vs a 2.5 percent chance for "something" to happen.
.
this is absolutely wrong, you, just one of those guys who thinks they know something but cannot calculate probabilities.
the chance is not 2.5%, " 2.5% chance per weapon" and a T5 ship have at least 6 weapon, that makes at least 15% chance of process.
let me guess you have a romulan toon, maybe a scimitar with 20+% crit, 20% more critD only add 20% more to your damage with 20% chance of happening. thats great, but only on your romulan scimitar. now a drain boat science ship with polaron weapon have 15-20% chance to drop feo power levels on all subsystem by 50-70 power base on you consols and skills . that means half of your subsystems are shut other half is useless. now which weapon is better?
you cant just say this weapon is boss mode, that weapon is TRIBBLE mode. every weapon is made for a certain build and situation.
So what's this about AP not being the best against shielded enemies? I have no problem in PvP or PvE with it, then again I use DEM 3 on all but my escort builds.
speaking from a PvE standpoint and not a pvp standpoint
As a fleet weapon used by everyone in your fleet group
Romulan Rep plasma weapons are king
you maintain plasma burn and disruptor breech on the target for the entire team not just your ships doing much more dps as a team
plasma hyper flux.........melts everything and adds more plasma damage 7.5% i believe so do romulan science consoles blues 9.6 %
phasers are the worst weapon its proc has no real effect in pve so it basically has no proc
all the rest are inbetween AP being number 1 for a pug/solo builds
Ap are also much better on romulans who have a much higher crit rate
as a team build for pve polarons may be better because a ship without power cant hurt you or move
5 people with drain builds using polarons could possibly do hive elite in record time... I dont think the pvp timers work on a lot of the Npcs
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Having used them all, and most of the variants thereof, I'd have to rate them, most effective to least:
Antiproton
Tetryon/Polaron/Plasma
Disruptor
Phaser
Antiproton has the built in critical severity, which equates to bigger damage and faster victory, regardless of the field of battle.
Tetryon and plasma need to be the only weapons on your ship to maximize the chance of their respective proc triggering; even with the hull/shield heals being ridiculous, draining a few more points of hull or shield can be useful. Polaron works best against anyone who hasnt invested a lot of points or consoles into power output/drain resist.
Losing damage resistance looks mean, but ask anyone who plays DnD- it's pointless. By the time you get enough together to negate moderate DR, you've specialized to the point you can't function outside that litte area.
The phaser proc is more annoying than useful, especially with batteries and boff skills that instantly repair offline systems.
Stuff dies faster for me with AP. My Mobius has Elachi DHCs with Nanite and polarized Disruptors and while it does great spike damage, my AP Beam Avenger still blows it out of the water. My Sci has a Vesta with the Nukara Weapon Set 3 piece to accompany the projectile build. It does the least DPS but is probably the most fun. Not to mention, I find it hilarious when I pull agro in it. Plus switching to the refracting DBB I essentially get 5 abilities because of subsystem targeting and BFAW 1.
From a PvE standpoint Romulan Plasma, Antiproton, and the various flavors of Disruptor are all very good. On the TRIBBLE side Phasers are pretty useless, which is unfortunate since that's what we all saw flying out of our favorite fedships on the tv and movie screens.
Phasers are not really useless, just many don't now how to use em right they are used to take sub systems if your guns are knocked out you cant shot me and I can pound you to death. Only reason the others got so popular is cause they buffed the TRIBBLE out of theme cause bad players cried foul and then threw a fir thill they got what they wanted instead of adapting and learning lol.
yes this is all very nice in theory, but the reality is, that when you'd want the shields to go offline, the aux goes offline...when you want weapons to go offline, schields do...and even IF you hit the jackpot, it is offline for less than 5 seconds with a 10 second immunity.
so, utterly useless for PVE...semi cool for PVP, when you hit the jackpot, which is the right subsystem offline at the right time. That is a 25% chance out of a 2,5% chance...
Phaser proc is the most inconsistent weapon type proc out there, and the proc itself is not even usefull for PVE. Engine offline? well, NPCs tend to move so slow that you barely recognize if their engines fail.
shields offline? normaly the first salvo ripps through NPC shields and 50% of their HP
weapons offline? that would actually be cool against boss mobs
aux offline? utterly irrelevant in PVE
and no, more than 3 players in a PVP match using phasers could cripple a player completely before the nerf. That's why they introduced the immunity for 10 seconds. Personaly i think they overdid the nerf. But phasers were really badass PVP weapons.
i rather want phasers only proc for weapon subsystem, so that it is more constant and, atleast for me, more canon.
also it should be important to mentione that the power of a weapon type depends also hugely on the possibilitys of buffs you can get for the weapon beyond tac consoles. Like sets, other consoles, ...
plasma and AP had an edge over phasers until season 9.
at last i want to point out, that the difference between the weapon types is rather small, but it has been shown in many parsers of many people that Rom. plasma, plasma, AP and disruptors are the better weapon types for dealing dmg in STO and polaron works better in taking sub systems offline than phasers, because they are more consistant and can the drain can be buffed with skills.
this is absolutely wrong, you, just one of those guys who thinks they know something but cannot calculate probabilities.
the chance is not 2.5%, " 2.5% chance per weapon" and a T5 ship have at least 6 weapon, that makes at least 15% chance of process.
Sorry that isn't how you calculate probabilities either... Google binomial distribution. (assuming all 6 beams firing, chance of getting at least one proc per cycle 14.09%, chance of 2+ procs per cycle 0.8%)
...and the proc cycle is independent of the firing cycle.
Ex - DHC fires 2x in 3 sec, DC fires 4x in 3 sec, either weapon will only proc once in 3 sec. DHC and DC have the same tool tip DPS but DHC is favored because the proc cycle is the same and DHC benefit from increased CrtD due to higher volley damage.
IMHO procs are trivial. When they work, great, when they don't, then it doesn't matter. What it boils down to for me is how much damage they can do consistently given what gear Cryptic has thrown at us. Personally for me I rate them as follows
1) AP + 2-piece Obelisk
2) Plasma + 2-piece Romulan + Sci Embassy consoles
3) Polaron + 2-piece Jem'Hadar
4) Phaser + whatever that gives the 7 or so % phaser dmg boost
5) everything else
Comments
To ask the question broadly of what energy type is best will yield a broad range of opinions as we have seen so far. So, let's be more specific. We need to ask what is the best energy type for various purposes throughout the game? What is the best energy type for my at the stage I'm at?
So while Anti-Proton might be ideal it's worthless if you can't afford to build for it. It's the same for any energy type really. People slap the flavor of the day on their ship and expect to be king of the hill only to find out they're doing worse than before.
So, here's what little I know about it.
Anti-Protons are truly amazing purely from a mathematical perspective. You don't have a 2.5% change to do extra damage, you have whatever change your critical hit rating gives you. Which means you need to get your crit rate as high as possible.
Which is not as easy as it might sound. You would have to put 9 points into energy weapons and also maybe in projectile weapons. Why? Because doing so gives you 2% improved crit rate. Then there's rep consoles, embassy boffs and some other things that gives minor bonuses. Romulan T2 rep gives you another 3% via the rep skill unlock.
So yes, if you're an established endgame player who's done the needed rep grinds and can get to all the crit goodies then Anti-Proton is very good in PvE where things don't have much shields.
Effectiveness in PvP would perhaps be less certain. Under the right conditions (meaning you catch your opponent with his pants down and no RSP up and you hit him with a superb Alpha strike while de-cloaking) it can be good.
If you're a cruiser with no stealth or huge spike damage then you're maybe better off with Plasma or Polaron for sustained damage while being useful to your team mates. Sure Plasma DoT can be easily cleaned but your job as a cruiser is to apply pressure. The more you make the enemy worry about the little things like plasma burns the less they notice your buddies sneaking up on them.
So yeah, when choosing an energy type first make sure you know exactly what you need to do to make it work and then either change your build or wait until you can. Personally I use Polaron on my engineer cruiser because I can get the most out of it right now. And I love the energy syphon. But that's just me.
I have opted to take the long route and equip my Avenger with as much good and nifty gear as I can. I just started on this quest, but this is what I am trying for.
The cloak from the tactical retrofit. (Yes it is handy in missions),
A set of quad cannons, (when my weapons fire I can watch my weapons power drop like a stone; so I want to see if I can use my engine power to keep that from happening),
An equipment set that will compliment those cannons,
4 Dual Heavy cannons in the fore
1 Torpedo in the fore (Hargh'Peng, or Hyper Plasma?)
2 turrets in the rear
1 mine in the rear
- I happen to like to DOT from the Hargh'Peng, yes i have heard that the quantum torpedo is better but I disagree. I have seen my torps do 3000 damage right off the get go, then they do DOT, then they do a burst of DMG in the 3000-4000 range........ Boom! Nice!
- It seems like there is no set for phasers yet; so thats why I am trying to figure out if it is possible to equip the Romulan Quad Plasma Cannons, on the Federation Fleet Battle Cruiser.
- If the "Plasma Quad Cannons" work on the Fleet Avenger then the "Romulan Singularity Harness" would also be nice, right?
- if I can do this I will switch all of my weapons to Plasma.
- I have used the cloak to circumnavigate enemy forces in missions and to gain a tactical advantage.
I am new, and I am poor; but I have lots of free time. I have no idea if this is a good idea, but I think there are a lot of stack-able plasma TAC consoles and set bonuses.
I currently have a mix of poloron and protonic poloron dua heavy cannons mk XII purples and blues
I have the same thing for turrets in the rear 3 poloron.
I have not finished the missions yet, still working on the romulus episodes. Still working on rep tier 5 on romulan, borg and nurkura. I am tier 5 in the Dyson sphere rep.
I am a member in Si-9 a fleet that is lvl 15? I think?...... sigh working on that. I am the highest rank in my fleet that I can obtain, and have access to everything fleet related that we have available to us; shops, etc.
I am so confused and I don't want to waste any more money, I already spent on a tactical retrofit defiant, and earned the Avenger with Dilithium---> Zen, i wnat to earn more Zen But I want to know what I should buy.
Really I just want a ship that wont blow up often, but will be able to demolish attackers....... since you cant reason with any of them....... What happened to diplomacy?
Unfortunately, you cannot equip Plasma Quads on the Avenger. The Ar'Kif is a Warbird, and can only be requisitioned by Romulan players, meaning a Federation player in an Avenger cannot claim them. In reverse, the Avenger is a T5 Federation ship, meaning that a Romulan player cannot claim it to use with the Quad Cannons.
The DHC's are pretty cheap, but the BA's and Turrets are expensive (as are the Consoles!!!) but it melts most targets in seconds with A2B (or other power booster) CRF3 and APO ...
Their only drawback is that they have really tiny bullets ... Can give you pewpewpew envy vs other weapon types, because it "looks" like all you are shooting is turrets, but watching the numbers drop so rapidly means you can be comfortable in your damage output.
Are you kidding. Phasers do the same base damage as every weapon and if yoo hit critical and deactivate te Shields or Weapons for a few seconds it might be enough to finish an enemy off. Same for polaron. no you dont to all th Crit. damage but Crit is useless if you dont have a perfectly tuned and skilled ship. Polaron takes 25% of every subsystem if you hit critical. that doesnt leave much for the enemy.
Plasma is also unseful in PvE and also is Tetryon because it can take the shields down faster and then ist just the Hull.
You cant measure weapons on how they work in PvP because there are too many possibilities, your skills, consoles, systems,
I have come to like Tetryon and don't really want to use anything else now. Yes, they are not a DPS monster weapon type but working in unison with another ship they are more than effective. I can't say how much fun it is to shred through a massive ship's shield within seconds so that the other's can tear up the hull.
I like to think of Tetryon as the support ship weapon type.
and my new favourite toy is to replace the standard photon / quantum raw dps tor foreward i have with the gravimetric phton simple for the grav shears from HYT and ts.
klinks i use disruptors for that dame resist debuff passively stacking greater and greater dps on my side.
and rommies, plasma, because hey, plasma dots. and who doesn't LOVE setting things on fire.
and on fire
and on fire. and on fire, and on fire...
this is absolutely wrong, you, just one of those guys who thinks they know something but cannot calculate probabilities.
the chance is not 2.5%, " 2.5% chance per weapon" and a T5 ship have at least 6 weapon, that makes at least 15% chance of process.
let me guess you have a romulan toon, maybe a scimitar with 20+% crit, 20% more critD only add 20% more to your damage with 20% chance of happening. thats great, but only on your romulan scimitar. now a drain boat science ship with polaron weapon have 15-20% chance to drop feo power levels on all subsystem by 50-70 power base on you consols and skills . that means half of your subsystems are shut other half is useless. now which weapon is better?
you cant just say this weapon is boss mode, that weapon is TRIBBLE mode. every weapon is made for a certain build and situation.
As a fleet weapon used by everyone in your fleet group
Romulan Rep plasma weapons are king
you maintain plasma burn and disruptor breech on the target for the entire team not just your ships doing much more dps as a team
plasma hyper flux.........melts everything and adds more plasma damage 7.5% i believe so do romulan science consoles blues 9.6 %
phasers are the worst weapon its proc has no real effect in pve so it basically has no proc
all the rest are inbetween AP being number 1 for a pug/solo builds
Ap are also much better on romulans who have a much higher crit rate
as a team build for pve polarons may be better because a ship without power cant hurt you or move
5 people with drain builds using polarons could possibly do hive elite in record time... I dont think the pvp timers work on a lot of the Npcs
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Antiproton
Tetryon/Polaron/Plasma
Disruptor
Phaser
Antiproton has the built in critical severity, which equates to bigger damage and faster victory, regardless of the field of battle.
Tetryon and plasma need to be the only weapons on your ship to maximize the chance of their respective proc triggering; even with the hull/shield heals being ridiculous, draining a few more points of hull or shield can be useful. Polaron works best against anyone who hasnt invested a lot of points or consoles into power output/drain resist.
Losing damage resistance looks mean, but ask anyone who plays DnD- it's pointless. By the time you get enough together to negate moderate DR, you've specialized to the point you can't function outside that litte area.
The phaser proc is more annoying than useful, especially with batteries and boff skills that instantly repair offline systems.
There are my two bits, for what they're worth.
yes this is all very nice in theory, but the reality is, that when you'd want the shields to go offline, the aux goes offline...when you want weapons to go offline, schields do...and even IF you hit the jackpot, it is offline for less than 5 seconds with a 10 second immunity.
so, utterly useless for PVE...semi cool for PVP, when you hit the jackpot, which is the right subsystem offline at the right time. That is a 25% chance out of a 2,5% chance...
Phaser proc is the most inconsistent weapon type proc out there, and the proc itself is not even usefull for PVE. Engine offline? well, NPCs tend to move so slow that you barely recognize if their engines fail.
shields offline? normaly the first salvo ripps through NPC shields and 50% of their HP
weapons offline? that would actually be cool against boss mobs
aux offline? utterly irrelevant in PVE
and no, more than 3 players in a PVP match using phasers could cripple a player completely before the nerf. That's why they introduced the immunity for 10 seconds. Personaly i think they overdid the nerf. But phasers were really badass PVP weapons.
i rather want phasers only proc for weapon subsystem, so that it is more constant and, atleast for me, more canon.
also it should be important to mentione that the power of a weapon type depends also hugely on the possibilitys of buffs you can get for the weapon beyond tac consoles. Like sets, other consoles, ...
plasma and AP had an edge over phasers until season 9.
at last i want to point out, that the difference between the weapon types is rather small, but it has been shown in many parsers of many people that Rom. plasma, plasma, AP and disruptors are the better weapon types for dealing dmg in STO and polaron works better in taking sub systems offline than phasers, because they are more consistant and can the drain can be buffed with skills.
Sorry that isn't how you calculate probabilities either... Google binomial distribution. (assuming all 6 beams firing, chance of getting at least one proc per cycle 14.09%, chance of 2+ procs per cycle 0.8%)
...and the proc cycle is independent of the firing cycle.
Ex - DHC fires 2x in 3 sec, DC fires 4x in 3 sec, either weapon will only proc once in 3 sec. DHC and DC have the same tool tip DPS but DHC is favored because the proc cycle is the same and DHC benefit from increased CrtD due to higher volley damage.
1) AP + 2-piece Obelisk
2) Plasma + 2-piece Romulan + Sci Embassy consoles
3) Polaron + 2-piece Jem'Hadar
4) Phaser + whatever that gives the 7 or so % phaser dmg boost
5) everything else