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Tetryon Types - which one isn't fail?
eagledraco
Member Posts: 340 Arc User
Came back to STO after almost a year off - noticed devs made several attempts at making new Tetryon Space Weapons. Obviously because this was the least popular and most underutilized energy type in the game.
After doing lots of forum searching, here is what I understand:
Standard Tetryon - Fail / unpopular as always / actually has lower DPS to hull
Polarized Tetryon - Better (but still fail) / 10% chance of shield damage vs 2.5%
Destabilizing Tetryon - Interesting (but still fail) / Shield DoT
Refracting Tetryon - Interesting / Damage jumps to nearby enemy / Good with Grav Well
Phased Tetryon - Better / Can disable subsystems like Phasers.
Piercing Tetryon - Best One Yet? / Chance to Ignore Shields / Players want Piercing Beams added / Devs may even nerf?
I also understand the Nukara Space Set boosts Tetryons, but Tetryon Weps from Nukara Rep aren't recommended. So which one has DPS that is on-par with other energy types? I'd like to make a Tetryon build with some input.
After doing lots of forum searching, here is what I understand:
Standard Tetryon - Fail / unpopular as always / actually has lower DPS to hull
Polarized Tetryon - Better (but still fail) / 10% chance of shield damage vs 2.5%
Destabilizing Tetryon - Interesting (but still fail) / Shield DoT
Refracting Tetryon - Interesting / Damage jumps to nearby enemy / Good with Grav Well
Phased Tetryon - Better / Can disable subsystems like Phasers.
Piercing Tetryon - Best One Yet? / Chance to Ignore Shields / Players want Piercing Beams added / Devs may even nerf?
I also understand the Nukara Space Set boosts Tetryons, but Tetryon Weps from Nukara Rep aren't recommended. So which one has DPS that is on-par with other energy types? I'd like to make a Tetryon build with some input.
Post edited by eagledraco on
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My Chel Grett ran plain old tet dual heavy cannons and turrets from the minute I got the ship until about the time the Romulans appeared (with the arrival of Piercing Tetryon). It got the job done and was great for shredding shields on NPCs and even surprised a few players in Kerrat (as many don't put on armour or shields against tetryons but did against plasma, disruptors, polaron, phaser and antiproton. With the advent of ResAll shields, this is not as easy now).
Okay, so against unshielded opponents tetryon loses out as its proc of shield damage is moot, but the thing I've read time and again is that all weapon types with the same modifiers (DMG, CrtD, etc.) do the same DPS just with a different proc and it's the choice of proc that puts people off tetryon.
Since Piercing tetryons, I've gone and bought a load of phased tetryons, for the susbsystem proc, and I kill things as quickly with that set-up as another, almost identical, Chel Grett run on a my fed eng running vanilla phasers and another on my KDF tac running disruptors and then polarised disruptors.
I think the only set-up I've seen which has me thinking tets are not the "best" is watching my wife in her fed tac Chel Grett run with plasmas and just kill stuff like a boss.
The thing of it is, if you want to run a tetryon build then go for it... the tets are some of the cheapest on the exchange and you'll not run into any difficulty beating 99% of the game with them on elite setting, you can even earn some good tetryon weapons with extra "toppings" from missions like "The New Link" and some of the Nukara missions.
Jo Cox 22.6.1974 - 16.6.2016
Don't get me wrong, but yeah - you can beat 99% of the game with COMMON Mk XI Anything. Even in shuttles! LOL
So, that's not really what I'm getting at in the OP. The mathematician min-maxers have done numbers crunching on these weapons and found reasons to back up why they are the least popular energy type.
The devs knew this too and thus why they tried so many times to make Tetryons that are on-par and relevant as other energy types. I even forgot to mention some kind of Tetryon Space Sniper they added in order to make these desirable.
I know you can use anything you want in PvE, but I'd like to know which of these new Tetryon types have succeeded with the min-maxers. After my forum searching I'm guessing Piercing or Phased yield better results than the others.
BTW I use Phased Tetryon Ground Weapons, and personally I think they are fantastic, thye not only damage shields, but also slow opponents, and as mentioned above, the Base Damage, is as good as any other weapon.
Still, since i really need to give tetryon a chance, i left the tetryon beams (cant remember what type, the only thing i know, is that i have 2 different tetryon beams) to serve as a shield drainer, and transphasics to do damage to hull. I think two of my tetryon beams are destabilizing ones, but im not sure. I also tried with 3 turrets on the back.. well i removed em 2 days after. If turrets are useless in normal circunstances, tetryon turrets are, well , dont even waste 1 second of em, not even in 3 at a time.
So this post will be useful for me as well. I plan to add the Nukara set, to give the tetryon the boost, and i dont care about the Nukara set being the worst of the reps, since i play for fun. I plan to mix the breen set (for the trans boost) and the nukara set for the tetryon boost. If i cant do this, well im afraid i will need to find another one or just discard tetryon for good.
Lets see if other people can throw more light about this. Tetryon is a cool energy type, it looks cool and it sounds great (at least the cannons and beams..) and it is a shame that nobody uses it cuz it takes ages to kill any enemy.
I also use a destabilizing sniper tetryon in ground, and honestly its great, i mean, i guess tetryon weapons are treated in a different way if we talk about ground or space.
Then you have the APEX predator SET, that gives you extra tetryon damage, BUT, 600 lobi for those 2 weapons and the console... erm. Too expensive, honestly. And the long-range cannon is stupid and useless. When i first bought it lol, i thought it will be like any other cannon but with special abilities, nah, its another useless cryptic-invention that actually does nothing. So, actually we only have the Nukara set (as far as i know) to boost tetryon damage.
Before, Elachi weapons had a chance to bypass 100% of the enemy's shields and 50% of their damage resistance, however there was a 5 second lockout on that proc.
Piercing Tetryon weapons have a chance to bypass only 50% of the target's shields, however, there is no lockout on that proc.
Now that Elachi weapons have no lockout, and may proc as much as possible, they've become blatantly more powerful than the Piercing Tetryon. The only difference between them now is that one bypasses all shields and 50% resist, while the other is just at 50% shields.
I personally use Polarized Tetryon Beams in addition to high-damage [CrtH]/[CrtD] torps and the new Omega Kinetic Shearing trait. With 7 beams each with 10% chance to drain shields, well, I'm almost always guaranteed that my torpedo will hit against bare hull. With things like the Omega Torpedo and 180 Quantum, even a good old Tricobalt, things really do melt.
As for just using a Tetryon build, as stated before, the Refracting Tetryon and Grav Well is a sight to see. I'm not sure if the secondary AoE proc scales with Particle Gens or Flow Caps, but I think it might.
But still, even if tetryon weapons are "designed" to get rid of shields, it takes the same time or even more to get the target's shields off than using any other beam weapon.
This is what i dont understand.
Tetryons are a fail weapon in PvP because their shield drain is completely useless. You try to improve the drain, you loose out on DPS and/or survivability. No matter what you try, improving the weapon's drain is < than the DPS they put out. Hence why they are considered a fail weapon. I run a heavy drain build, and tried it, and DPS always beats the shield drain. The 10% proc tetryon weapons WITH tatryon glider is the closest you can get to beating DPS, but only in PvE. You want better shield drain? Use Tachyon Beam 2 or 3. Much better results than tetryon weapons always.
FYI, I use either polarized disruptors, phased polaron, or protonic polarons, they actually get better results than tetryons.
Nukara, mine and console boost the tets. But that wastes an aft weapon slot, so it depends on what ship you are in whether that is viable. Whichever tet guns you select, the damage type BEGS you to use a torp with it. The idea being that you aoe down all the shields in a hurry and then lob your TS at the exposed hulls. It also plays into sciencey ships --- GW *seems* (not actually 100% sure) to do better once shields are down. Also note that shield damage is keyed off science abilities anyway ... I think mine do between 700 and 800 per proc. If you build this way, other shield stripping sci abilities might be worth looking at....
so my take on it would be a cannon ship with 10% proc type X3 forward and a nasty torp, like the dyson gravity or maybe a nasty plasma. Aft, turret, cutting beam, web mine. GW, scatter fire, torp spread, loot.
BTW tet weapons do JUST AS MUCH dps to a hull as phasers, or disruptors, or anything else. Their proc is worthless once the shields go down, yes.
Losing a turret to the mine is not a huge loss of dps.
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STO player since November 2013
Not a pvp expert but the dps boosting stuff and the drain boosting stuff do not overlap much. A pvp ship probably *should* have solid flow caps stat, which is what affects the drain portion -- and flow caps help the leech console and other useful things. I am not recommending stacking 5 flow caps consoles but if you can work it onto the deflector and your captain traits any loss of dps is and durability should be minor. Oddly the proc seems to range from 500 - 800 on a log curve. So just modest flow cps gets you 700 & change drain per proc, at almost no cost. Breaking 850 takes an unholy amount of caps (talking 5 fleet caps consoles or something) and if you go *there* your build is indeed going to have to sacrifice something for sure.
But do the math and you see the fail.
2.5 % chance per shot to drain 700 off a 12k and up constantly being healed shield??
On the average you need 10 procs to make a significant dent. That is 500+ shots. In that timeframe, a pvp target will mash a shield heal button. Even more telling, in that timeframe 500 shots of *anything* with a decent build would have stripped the shileds off and probably killed the opponent just from damage: an AP weapon set or phasers or whatever would have stripped the shields just as fast. The only noticeable difference is the tet weapons hit all 4 facings, which over a long duel could begin to wear on the opponent, a little, esp if the weapon dps is substantial to go with the drain.
It "just barely" works to drain shields in PVE and then it is mostly effective against elite solo fights or in aoe clusters. Its enough to have fun with, but the proc rate is simply too low to really shine.
I use tet cannons on my Armitage, which I fly mainly in queued fleet events and NWS. The idea is to spray clusters of enemy ships with tet fire using CSV, hope/expect that they proc at least once, then nail them with the Armitage's Torpedo Point Defense. Usually this destroys at least one ship in the cluster, but even when it doesn't, it still softens up the entire group enough for my teammates to quickly finish off.
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In the remaining cases, you are usually better off disabling the shield subsystem than draining the shield health.
Yeah, if I slot mine, the drain reads over 1K for mk XII, but with a pitiful damage value. FYI, it's a linear equation. Whatever value you get for destabilized tetryon weapons (over the course of its effect), it's 50% below that value for the same MK weapons.
By the way, about the drain:
Destabilized Tetryon = Tetryon proc * 150% (But delivered over time and cleared by HE)
Tetryon Glider = Tetryon proc * 184% (84% or 87%, can't find my old post so I don't remember the exact amount)
In conclusion, just use the 2 piece Omega set bonus if you want to strip shields and pick some other weapon type. Phased polarons combined with tetryon glider offer the best 3 disabling procs combined in your weapons.
The tetryon glider formula:
Base drain = 16.23
Drain = (Base Drain*5)/1000*Flow Caps+Base Drain
Other Exceptions:
Draining the shield power to zero
Using an over-the-top tachyon beam 2 or 3
The Refracting Tetryons are the most useless of the bunch. Even on a ship with 2 Grav-Wells and in encounters with large amounts of bunched enemies, (SB24, old Mirror, ISE etc...) the impact of the refracting proc is almost non-existent.
I parsed a few events for another thread:
I've run and parsed dozens more events since then and the results stayed about the same.
Not true. These tetryon's chance to proc IS 10% or even more than that. With 4 of these my recluse can tear apart all shields facings of the cubes in vortex/conduit almost instantly with little help from TB3/CPB2 and pets.
So far the best tetryon close to the cannon TV show are the polarized ones due to their high chance to give this proc. Also you need to be a sci with 230+ flow caps in order to benefit at max, giving you ~750-800 all facings per proc, which is approximately 1600 per sec with BAW due to the high chance.
I dont know why people hate tetryon when they do realise its not an energy type for damage, but utility. Unbuffed tetryons of 350 drain with 2.5% chance to proc are indeed useless but nobody would do that on normal non-sci ship...Same goes for TB/CPB abilities, indeed they are weak if used wrong but they can give good results if used right.
TB3 can drain around 7000 shields all/CPB2 -4000 all/polarized tetryon damage of 1200+800 proc per hit...well together they do their job well, at least they are working for me as intended and sometimes I can even handle alone whole Vortex Gate site while 4 ppl dps the other one.
Because even if the only purpose is to drain shields, the problem of tetryon weapons is, it takes even more time to drain shields of the target and it doesnt matter how much flow capacitors you have or what boost yo have. Just using regular weapons dealing damage to the shields, you will drain em far before using any tetryon weapon. Thats the reason tetryon weapons are useles, no matter what type. Hell, i use a phaser + quantum build and my phasers drain the shields of my enemies faster than using tetryon weapons... that saids it all. With my Bortasqu, using a disruptor beam overloaded II, in just one shot i drain all my targets facing shields instantly. You cant do that with any tetryon weapon, no matter what.
You're completely overestimating the value and impact of those energy weapon procs. If you're able to one-shot something with a disruptor, you'll also be able to do so with Tets, Phasers or any other weapon of the same type and quality.
Unless you are a fan of sacrificing damage output for colour.
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What about cannons? Do you know if the chance to refract occurs per cycle or per shot? Cannons with their higher fire rate might get more procs in. On that note, that seems like an obvious area to buff these, 2.5% to hit nearby enemies seems low....especially since the radius is small iirc.
Lol, this is the only reason i tried to use tetryon weapons, because i loved the color and the sound of the cannons.. and i tried every boost and set i could to make the weapons worthy. But i just got tired and ended replacing em. I am sad, but well, even if i dont play to have the best weapons and best everything, using tetryon weapons makes me feel i am really throwing away a lot of time i could use doing other things lol.
Hail phasers!
My character Tsin'xing
Chances in a game such as this are done using a random number generator (I'm thinking, anyway, no actual idea... but the mathematics of computer programming make a random number generator the more likely). It might be set to proc each time a "3" shows up in the number generator. The thinking is that if the number generator uses 0123456789 as all possibilities, then the "3" has a 10% chance of showing up. However, the random number generator might send the set: 0124567890 yielding a 0% proc for a given run. It might then send a set 0313234353 yielding a 50% proc for a separate run. It still doesn't change the fact that there is only one "3" in the first ten digits of our number system...
There are a few posters here who actually have the right grasp... When all is said and done, if you can one-shot an NPC or PvPer with one weapon type, chances are you can do the same with a different weapon type. Everything in this game has been nerfed to the point that each weapon type is pretty much equivalent to another, given the proper setup and accompanying abilities and buffs.
What it boils down to is, "I can't stand the look and sound of an antiproton beam, but I really like the sound and look of the tetryon, and it makes me happy... So I'm going to focus on the best Tet build I can and I'll be just about as good as the guy with the AP beams..."
This game is supposed to be fun. I don't PvP because other players are not fun to play against (speaking to those who send random invites in orbit of ESD thinking they're gonna be able to one-up me). But I'll tell you what, my All-Nukara Tetryon Odyssey with my Sci Captain and my GW3 and Tachyon Beam make PvE and STFs as well as any replay episode a hell of a lot of fun! And that's what matters to me...
CM
EDIT: Perhaps it was fixed and not in the patch notes but I would like to see some testing and evidence.