Recommendations for Tac Kits/Modules for PVP

raifin1701

Greetings all,

I wanted to get input on Tac captain Kit layouts for Ground PVP, and I didn't see many people talking about them here in the forums.

[Lets just keep this topic about Tactical Kits please.]

Of note, I'm still learning the ins and outs of Ground PVP, and want to make sure I'm not 'forgetting' any modules that are really good in PVP.

I'm running the Romulan Tactical Kit Mk XII with Plasma Grenade, Ambush, Suppressing Fire, Battle Strategies, Motion Accelerator.

(I normal prefer more shooting and less melee, but am looking to hear what you have to say!)

TacPaddy in the STO Academy has a nice table showing the different modules and kits.
http://forum.stoacademy.com/showthread.php?tid=1693

Thank you for your input-

Chris

cerritourug

I need the same thing, trying to make a new tact for ground but I dont really know what to use.

Also any tips on DOFFs, sets and weapons are welcome.

loverofwars

try ambush, plasma grenade, overwatch with advisor doff, rally cry and motion for that kit or plasma grenade, overwatch with doff, rally cry, motion, suppression fire but that second setup would be better with a pistol compression/split beam rifle, you could also use the above two suggestions but replace the grenade with lunge but for that you'd want to look into a different kit frame as it makes your 4th mod on kit grenades 26.2 boost useless.
you could also use battle strat instead of overwatch advantages with shorter cd

side note

as for the romulan kit it self you can put plasma grenade photon grenade active immunity grenade ambush and stealth module into it with its grenade boost lurk around and lob grenades at folks also use adapted/khg pulsewave with grenade and a final spinal lance secondary for a massive boom use every grenade followed by lance for epic fun works best from a roof

majortiraomega

Alright, I'll lay out a few builds here:

Defensive Tactical Officer:

• Armor: Adapted MACO Armor
• Shield: Shattering Harmonics Personal Shield Matrix
• Weapon 1: Adapted M.A.C.O. Phaser Pulsewave Rifle
• Weapon 2: Romulan Plamsa Compression Pistol Mk XII [CritX]x2
• Alternate Weapon 2: Romulan Plasma Split Beam Rifle Mk XII [CritX]x2
• Kit Frame: Either Spire Tactical kit
• Kit Modules: Rally Cry, Overwatch, Draw Fire, Motion Accelerator, and Lunge
• Reputation traits:
  • Indomitable
  • Emergency Fix
  • Regenerative Shield Augmentation
  • Medical Nanites
• Duty officers:
  • 3x Security Officer (Chance for bonus escorts)
  • 1x Sensors Officer (Damage resistance debuff with Target Optics)
  • 1x Biochemist (Hypo/Shield Charge/Power Cell cooldown reduction)
  • 1x Advisor (Cleanse all debuffs from self and three teamates once with Overwatch)
• Devices: Large Hypo, Shard of Possibilities, Frosted Boots, and Large Power Cell

This purely defensive setup has is focused on health tanking and outlasting opponents in engagements. The setup also has a large number of expose methods that may be exploited with Lunge, the Compression Pistol, or the Split Beam Rifle. This setup is capable of tanking and killing a competent Physicist better than any other Tactical combination. However, this setup is fairly weak in a point blank pulsewave fight due to limited healing abilities on a Tactical officer. Remaining between 16 and 25 meters of the target is ideal. The increased use of defensive and team support abilities also demands that the tactical officer use the expose/exploit mechanic to neutralize player targets. A Split Beam Rifle is advisable in fights were combat is mainly happening beyond the range of a compression pistol.

Team Support Tactical Officer:

• Armor: MACO Armor
• Shield: Dyson Reactive Personal Shield
• Weapon 1: M.A.C.O. Phaser Battle Rifle
• Weapon 2: Romulan Plasma Split Beam Rifle Mk XII [CritX]x2
• Alternate Weapon 2: Plasma Pulsewave Assault Mk XII [CritD]x3
• Kit Frame: Tactical Kit Mk XI [Special Forces] [PS Generator] [Squad Command]
  • [4 Strategic Module, 1 Assault Module]
• Kit Modules: Rally Cry, Overwatch, Ambush, Motion Accelerator, and Suppressing Fire
• Reputation traits:
  • Indomitable
  • Empathic Adaptation
  • Regenerative Shield Augmentation
  • Medical Nanites
• Duty officers:
  • 3x Security Officer (Chance for bonus escorts or DoT on Ambush)
  • 1x Sensors Officer (Damage resistance debuff with Target Optics)
  • 1x Biochemist (Hypo/Shield Charge/Power Cell cooldown reduction)
  • 1x Advisor (Cleanse all debuffs from self and three teamates once with Overwatch)
• Devices: Large Hypo, Shard of Possibilities, Ophidian Cane, and Large Shield Charge

This setup is focused on providing team support and enemy suppression. The setup relies on shield tanking in order to make itself more resilient against sniper and pulsewave attacks. Additionally, the setup is capable of more reliably dealing spike damage to enemy targets. However, the build is more vulnurable to Physicist style builds than a defensive tactical officer. This setup also buffs the team as a whole and will prove to be less effective when traveling the map solo.


Stealth Tactical Officer:

• Armor: Omega Armor
• Shield: Omega Force Personal Shield
• Weapon 1: Omega Force Antiproton Autocarbine
• Weapon 2: Plasma Pulsewave Assault Mk XII [CritD]x3
• Alternate Weapon 2: Plasma Compression Pistol Mk XII [CritD]x3
• Kit Frame: Either Spire Tactical kit
• Kit Modules: Ambush, Battle Strategies, Stealth Module, Motion Accelerator, and Lunge
• Reputation traits:
  • Omega Weapon Proficiency
  • Deadly Aim
  • Identify Vulnerability
  • Mental Acuity
• Duty officers:
  • 3x Security Officer (+Critical Chance/Severity with Melee or DoT on Ambush)
  • 1x Sensors Officer (Damage resistance debuff with Target Optics)
  • 1x Biochemist (Hypo/Shield Charge/Power Cell cooldown reduction)
  • 1x Armor Officer (+Duration on Stealth Module damage buff after decloak)
• Devices: Large Hypo, Shard of Possibilities, Frosted Boots, and Large Power Cell

This setup is completely focused on stealth and quickly eliminating targets after decloaking. The setup is capable of dealing very high spike damage, but has an extremely limited amount of self healing. The setup can be one hit killed by most Physicist style builds using Hirogen Hunter Sight or Nukara Shattering Harmonics. It takes a great deal of skill to use effectively, but the build can be very powerful in the right hands.

guriphu

If you're going to be cloaking in PvP, you need Covert. Otherwise you'll die before you decloak. Covert's also awesome in general and I take it on every character, because exploit damage is a big deal.

You said you want to avoid melee, so let's avoid melee. First, however, Lunge is the highest damage power in the game when used with an optimized tac kit and is worth considering, especially for Assault maps where it's pretty much inevitable that you'll end up in knife-fighting range frequently. Grenades allow you a similar damage output (because they don't consume your Ambush buff but benefit from it, so you can grenade and then shoot and both will have Ambush* but they are much more difficult to land effectively, don't do the damage all at once and so can be healed through, and don't have the side effect of letting you run two Expose weapons without sacrificing your access to a high powered Exploit attack. It's also pretty much a no-skill-required power, so if you're a rookie it's a solid starting ability. Getting a grenade + shot oneshot is a tricky combination requiring a specific buff and attack order. Getting a lunge oneshot is "buff up, push lunge button."

*this is probably a bug, but it has been known by Cryptic for literally years without any official comment and is fair play as far as I'm concerned.

I would never build a kit without suppressing Fire. It's the best power in the game bar none. It's a slow, it has a cycle time fast enough to keep the debuff on your target forever, it applies to every damage tick so cleanses don't do much about it, and it will keep you and your team alive better than the best sci medic. I would replace Battle Strategies on Tira's cloaker kit with Suppressing Fire. Motion, Cloak, and Ambush will give you enough damage for a lunge kill on an Exposed target, and Suppressing Fire means that you can debuff the enemy afterwards if you fail to kill them, so that you don't give away an easy return kill. More importantly, Suppressing Fire means that your kit still has team utility when you aren't going in for your one-shot kill. This is essential: every time you are hiding in cloak and maneuvering for a kill, your team is fighting 4v5, so you need to minimize your time spent hiding and maximize your time spent fighting to support your team. A 10/0 kill to death is useless if your absence from a bunch of 4v5 fights costs your team the game.

If you're going with grenades, I'd suggest the Undine Active Immunity grenade. You'll want to pick a target, softbuff, suppress them, superbuff, throw the grenade, tag them with your superbuffed secondary while the grenade is in flight, let the grenade hit for another slow, and finish them while they're slowed to a crawl.

It's also worth having a Plasma Grenade in your inventory in case you need to clear mines. Swap it into your kit if your enemy is bunkering down behind minefields a lot. Use shooter mode to manually aim the grenade on the mines; the mines will trigger because the plasma DoT field is classed as a character.**

**Also probably a bug, but also known for years, and so also fair play as far as I'm concerned.

Ambush is a great power and is worth having if you intend to be a major source of spike damage.

Battle strategies is a solid power and stacks with Ambush. You can also put it on your sci to make their Exothermic Induction Field even more OP.

Overwatch is a great power and is worth having if you intend to protect yourself and your team in an environment where damage resistance debuffs are extremely common. Overwatch and a Suppressing Fire together is already a strong contribution to team survival. Use it with the doff to clear debuffs and improve its utility - a well timed Overwatch clear can stop an enemy advance cold or let your team push through an enemy defense.

Rally cry is a strong power, great with any build or team that's structured around Exploit damage, because Exploit attacks scale off of CritD as well as Exploit Damage Multiplier and they can crit on top of that. The HoT is nice, too.

I wouldn't bother with Draw Fire. Battle Strategies for the extra cleanse has more utility than extra damage resistance, and buffing your damage buffs the effectiveness of your Suppressing Fire, so even if you don't care about damage, damage buffs help your defensive build.

Photon Grenade is great for PvE but not so hot for PvP; extra damage doesn't help if it doesn't hit. Smoke Grenade used to be glitchy such that the debuff was fragile, I don't know if it is any more. The other two Undine kit modules for tac don't have a lot going for them and I wouldn't bother outside of very specific circumstances.

majortiraomega

guriphu wrote: »

I would never build a kit without suppressing Fire. It's the best power in the game bar none. It's a slow, it has a cycle time fast enough to keep the debuff on your target forever, it applies to every damage tick so cleanses don't do much about it, and it will keep you and your team alive better than the best sci medic.

It is also a bit overpowered at the moment because Cryptic removed the ability to cleanse it for 15 seconds with Battle Strategies. This was acknowledged back in Tribble testing with Season 9 and it will more than likely receive an uptime change later on. A good kit ability, but ineffective against anyone using Motion Accelerator.

guriphu wrote: »

I would replace Battle Strategies on Tira's cloaker kit with Suppressing Fire. Motion, Cloak, and Ambush will give you enough damage for a lunge kill on an Exposed target, and Suppressing Fire means that you can debuff the enemy afterwards if you fail to kill them, so that you don't give away an easy return kill. More importantly, Suppressing Fire means that your kit still has team utility when you aren't going in for your one-shot kill. This is essential: every time you are hiding in cloak and maneuvering for a kill, your team is fighting 4v5, so you need to minimize your time spent hiding and maximize your time spent fighting to support your team. A 10/0 kill to death is useless if your absence from a bunch of 4v5 fights costs your team the game.

Suppressing Fire is a viable option, but Battle Strategies can be used from cloak and it now cleanses Tricorder Scan.

guriphu wrote: »

because Exploit attacks scale off of CritD as well as Exploit Damage Multiplier and they can crit on top of that.

Exploit attacks deal a base of +200% damage on exploiting an expose. Covert increases this by +10%, Acute Senses increases this by +10%, Field Researcher increases this by +25%, and Teamwork increases team exploit damage by +5% per copy. Critical Severity is only tied to Critical Hits unless Cryptic stealth changed something.

guriphu wrote: »

I wouldn't bother with Draw Fire.

+88.7 all damage resistance rating for 15 seconds is extremely helpful against Physicists (-40 from biochemist and -62 from Tricorder Scan). If you don't have Draw Fire, then you will take fire and radiation damage with -102 all environmental damage resistance rating. Draw Fire will drop that down to -14 and it will be completely negated if Overwatch or Rally Cry is active at the time. The fact that Physicists can hit for such high damage has made +Damage resistance buffs viable. This is especially true for team wide Biofilter sweep with +53 all damage resistance rating.

guriphu wrote: »

Smoke Grenade used to be glitchy such that the debuff was fragile, I don't know if it is any more.

Smoke Grenade is fixed now and also adds a dodge chance bonus to allies. If only the same could be said for poor Anesthezine Gas Grenade; broken for almost two years now.

dontdrunkimshoot

i dont do much ground, but id like to set up proper kits eventually. sort of waiting for everything to saturate a bit more before i hit the exchange though

p2wsucks

dontdrunkimshoot wrote: »

i dont do much ground, but id like to set up proper kits eventually. sort of waiting for everything to saturate a bit more before i hit the exchange though

Fyi, if you don't mind the replay grind you can get decent rewards from the Assimilation revamped mission (random class specific purple modules).

OT, re-ran the the Borg series (as KDF Romulan) after revamp and was pretty decent update if PvE is your thing.

legendarylycan

majortiraomega wrote: »

*snip for length*

shouldn't you also add skill ranks and personal traits to each of those builds, since those 2 things are just as important to one as gear, mods and rep traits?