test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
So... about Science...
priestofsin420
Member Posts: 419
WARNING: WALL OF TEXT AND EXCESSIVE PARENTHETICAL STATEMENTS BELOW!
TL;DR: Science needs a DPS boost. Our primary damage "thing" (exotic) is pathetic and lame, especially compared to the DPS available to BFAW builds. It is my dream for it to be a big deal with an enemy slips into a Tyken's Rift or Gravity Well, hopefully by boosting exotic damage. This is even more of an issue with the new content.
There are three professions in this game: tactical, engineering, and science. Upon first picking up the game awhile ago, I assumed that it was the standard trinity: tank (engineering), spank (tactical), and heals or CC (science). After playing awhile (especially after doing the new content), it has become clear that the developers do not want a "trinity" styled game, but would rather have every class doing as much DPS as possible. This is fine, since I normally sway towards the min/max mindset in MMOs anyway, and had no trouble creating both a tactical and an engineer with hilariously inflated DPS potential (with the help of Aux2Bat). I am having trouble, however, creating a science officer with similar DPS potential. Allow me to explain.
With a tactical, one can achieve high DPS just by using the skills native to you. In fact, a tactical aux2bat will be able to achieve higher DPS than a non-tactical, even if only by a little. Even without aux2bat cheesebuilds, you can just double-stack a cannon skill and some attack patterns and blow everything up without much issue. I know, since I was able to get around 15k DPS without aux2bat on my Defiant, of all things.
With an engineer, one can achieve high DPS with a standard "dragon" build, again something available to most engineering ships, and tailored to the engineer's native abilities. An engineer will be able to get similar DPS to the tactical, but with the added benefit of having emergency heals at the cost of slight DPS. The engineer is also capable of performing the aux2bat build without sacrificing any of his native flavor, and get massive DPS.
With a science officer, one can achieve HORRIBLE dps with the skills native to us. One might argue that science skills such as Tyken's Rift and Gravity Well are supposed to be weak, since they are a control and a drain first and foremost, and it would destroy PvP and make it deader than it already is (hint: it's dead, Jim). I say this is bullplop, and here's why: Gravity Well and Tyken's Rift are the two most effective DPS abilities in PvE, bar none. But Gravity well is only good if the enemies do not have a means of quick escape from it (they almost always do in STFs), since a science officer must endure a lengthy cooldown before he or she can cast it again. And Tyken's Rift, which feels like the butter to gravity well's bread, shares that lengthy cooldown with gravity well. You cannot cast both of them at the same time. Why? I don't know, it's not like Tyken's Rift does a particularly brutal amount of damage to enemies, and since the enemies apparently do not have subsystems, then it's utility is gone. All other science skills are mostly devoted to draining (useless in PvE) and healing (players can usually take care of themselves, since they pack their own heals, or are so stupidly suicidal that it would be an exercise in frustration to even attempt to heal them).
The cooldowns, the shared cooldowns, the ineffectiveness versus an enemy's subsystems, all this could be forgiven if a science officer's abilities did a good deal of exotic damage. But you know what? Even if you somehow get your exotic damage up to high levels, gravity well and tyken's rift STILL don't do jack to the enemy hitpoints, because exotic damage is garbage, and those skills simply don't do ENOUGH. It sucks having your doff proc and having a cluster of enemies trapped in three gravity wells and a tyken's rift, only to notice that there are FRIGGING 23's PROCCING ON THEM. There is no reason why a science officer shouldn't be able to make them horribly devastating by speccing into Exotic Damage.
Here's my proposed solution: Make exotic damage not factor into ANY resists against PvE monsters. If Gravity Well III does 500 exotic damage per second, then you are going to see 500 points of their health tick away each second. Secondly, decrease cooldowns on Tyken's Rift and Gravity Well by 5 seconds each, so that it's easier to follow up with them. Thirdly, make Tyken's Rift NOT share a cooldown with Gravity Well. They belong together like Sunny and Cher. Finally, give all weapons equipped on a science vessel a 20% chance to deal X exotic damage, with X linked to Aux power.
Thanks for reading my wall of text if you did. Sincerely:
One frustrated science captain who kills things but not as fast as he should.
TL;DR: Science needs a DPS boost. Our primary damage "thing" (exotic) is pathetic and lame, especially compared to the DPS available to BFAW builds. It is my dream for it to be a big deal with an enemy slips into a Tyken's Rift or Gravity Well, hopefully by boosting exotic damage. This is even more of an issue with the new content.
There are three professions in this game: tactical, engineering, and science. Upon first picking up the game awhile ago, I assumed that it was the standard trinity: tank (engineering), spank (tactical), and heals or CC (science). After playing awhile (especially after doing the new content), it has become clear that the developers do not want a "trinity" styled game, but would rather have every class doing as much DPS as possible. This is fine, since I normally sway towards the min/max mindset in MMOs anyway, and had no trouble creating both a tactical and an engineer with hilariously inflated DPS potential (with the help of Aux2Bat). I am having trouble, however, creating a science officer with similar DPS potential. Allow me to explain.
With a tactical, one can achieve high DPS just by using the skills native to you. In fact, a tactical aux2bat will be able to achieve higher DPS than a non-tactical, even if only by a little. Even without aux2bat cheesebuilds, you can just double-stack a cannon skill and some attack patterns and blow everything up without much issue. I know, since I was able to get around 15k DPS without aux2bat on my Defiant, of all things.
With an engineer, one can achieve high DPS with a standard "dragon" build, again something available to most engineering ships, and tailored to the engineer's native abilities. An engineer will be able to get similar DPS to the tactical, but with the added benefit of having emergency heals at the cost of slight DPS. The engineer is also capable of performing the aux2bat build without sacrificing any of his native flavor, and get massive DPS.
With a science officer, one can achieve HORRIBLE dps with the skills native to us. One might argue that science skills such as Tyken's Rift and Gravity Well are supposed to be weak, since they are a control and a drain first and foremost, and it would destroy PvP and make it deader than it already is (hint: it's dead, Jim). I say this is bullplop, and here's why: Gravity Well and Tyken's Rift are the two most effective DPS abilities in PvE, bar none. But Gravity well is only good if the enemies do not have a means of quick escape from it (they almost always do in STFs), since a science officer must endure a lengthy cooldown before he or she can cast it again. And Tyken's Rift, which feels like the butter to gravity well's bread, shares that lengthy cooldown with gravity well. You cannot cast both of them at the same time. Why? I don't know, it's not like Tyken's Rift does a particularly brutal amount of damage to enemies, and since the enemies apparently do not have subsystems, then it's utility is gone. All other science skills are mostly devoted to draining (useless in PvE) and healing (players can usually take care of themselves, since they pack their own heals, or are so stupidly suicidal that it would be an exercise in frustration to even attempt to heal them).
The cooldowns, the shared cooldowns, the ineffectiveness versus an enemy's subsystems, all this could be forgiven if a science officer's abilities did a good deal of exotic damage. But you know what? Even if you somehow get your exotic damage up to high levels, gravity well and tyken's rift STILL don't do jack to the enemy hitpoints, because exotic damage is garbage, and those skills simply don't do ENOUGH. It sucks having your doff proc and having a cluster of enemies trapped in three gravity wells and a tyken's rift, only to notice that there are FRIGGING 23's PROCCING ON THEM. There is no reason why a science officer shouldn't be able to make them horribly devastating by speccing into Exotic Damage.
Here's my proposed solution: Make exotic damage not factor into ANY resists against PvE monsters. If Gravity Well III does 500 exotic damage per second, then you are going to see 500 points of their health tick away each second. Secondly, decrease cooldowns on Tyken's Rift and Gravity Well by 5 seconds each, so that it's easier to follow up with them. Thirdly, make Tyken's Rift NOT share a cooldown with Gravity Well. They belong together like Sunny and Cher. Finally, give all weapons equipped on a science vessel a 20% chance to deal X exotic damage, with X linked to Aux power.
Thanks for reading my wall of text if you did. Sincerely:
One frustrated science captain who kills things but not as fast as he should.
Sardak (Science Officer): Captain of a 23k DPS R'Mor Temporal Science Vessel, R.R.W. Vathos
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
Post edited by priestofsin420 on
0
Comments
sadly in their infinite wisdom cryptic decided to make exotic damage kinetic instead of its own type.
this meant that tacts could buff this damage realy well and when i say that i mean it.
imagine photonic shockwave doing 25k in one hit and grav wells 5k-7k per tick.
(back in those days wells were harder to escape!)
so instead of turning exotic back to its own damage type they left it boostable by tacts and lowered its damage numbers but they did not give science an extra beam to compensate.
for now we still have use in lower dps teams to delay nanitespheres and protect kang by delaying the npcs getting to them.
though this means you are obsoleted if your fleet or group has high dps.
Yeah... I understand that my role is largely one of control in STFs, but whenever I fly my science, I can't help but wonder why I didn't just hop in my Aux2Bat dreadnought and lol bfaw the STF with them. It'd take less time and be infinitely more effective than my space magic.
Cryptic really can't into balance, can they?
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
ive played since season 1.2 i remember science being wonderfuly evil.
i used to make escorts disapear in my gravwells and never come back.
cruisers well i just turned them off and let my team poke their squishy hull but now none of that is possible.
science is relegated to a gameplay that is more or less not needed im going to log in contact me in game and ill help you out a bit. andy@andy30
I'm at work at the moment and can't log in, but I'll friend you and talk to you a little later if I see you online.
God I would love to make escorts disappear into gravity wells...
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
Mask Energy Signature
Tachyon Beam
Charged Particle Burst
Feedback Pulse
Photonic Officer
Photonic Shockwave
Viral Matrix
Every single one of the effects of these skills can and are brushed aside by regular trash mobs in tier 1 difficulty missions and foundry missions. They are easily the worst science skills in the game and have never been changed despite years of requesting it. None of them have doffs that are useful. FBP for example does have a minor resist reduction but this does nothing against the ability of shields being able to reduce the damage output of any PVE skill like GW3.
I've posted multiple times how they can improve these skills how they need to add other skills to the game that are absolutely science based and that do exotic damage. I've also posted how they can improve the PVE portion of the game by making the mobs weak vs exotic damage types but no one listens.
What's worse however is the fanboys many of which are in your thread now, who think that just because it might work a little bit in PVP that this somehow makes everything fantastic in the PVE world. They troll every single thread on the subject instead of helping their science captains out by agreeing because they too know it doesn't work well for PVE on science characters even though they might play mostly PVP and won't admit it. They will no doubt point out that science ships with builds similar to what Tactical or Engineer use will allow science to do close to the same damage but that's not the point of this thread. The point of this thread is that Science skills are weak against PVE mobs and this needs to be adjusted and these skills need to be finally at long last updated. We've had two science themed expansions now, Dyson and Voyager and still no update!
The skill list for this career path is stuck in the trinity, Science used to be all about CC and heals originally, Science had shield and hull heal bonuses whereas engineer only had hull for the most part originally. They need to take the time to adjust how much damage reduction the tiny sliver of shields that enemies have left often in PVE protects them from the huge barrage of torps and the exotic abilities because as we all know, it's not where it's at now and the mobs IE the enemies of STFs and Personal Missions need to be adjusted so that science doesn't suffer in PVE simply because it works well in PVP and the PVP community needs to finally at long last get on board with this fact.
Because it would violate Borticus's famous "It can kill 5 frigates" test? <- Still annoyed at how GW2/3 got fixed and nerfed at the same time because of this dumb test.
As for DPS with sci, part gens and exotic damage are the only things that works for sci, and everything else is pure garbage for PvE. Tachyon Beam 2/3 used to function fine pre-DR if you used a high flow caps drain build, but now it's just 100% pure garbage as shields have gone crazy high.
You mean devs with their nerf bat which has been swinging way too much lately.
Word, I'd appreciate any advice, since I feel like I'm hitting my head against a brick wall here. I'm half-tempted to reroll my science officer into a fed, if only to gain access to more ships.
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
Science captain abilities are amazing, conservation of energy trait allows them to compete with tactical for exotic damage, and engineer captain abilities are mostly useless as extra survivability is not very important and you can itemize away any power drain or power level problems.
Tactical beam boat cruisers outperform nearly anyone because they manage to get the best 'options' and have heavily hybrid boff seating arrangements. Aux2Batt is the poor man's AP doff and only considered OP because of availability.
I suggest you either seek out build help from the build subforum or even the pvp subform for a sci exotic damage build and I can promise if you have an open mind and follow the right advice you will out damage 90% of the players in pugs.
i have just given up totaly like you i gave suggestions and many of my threads ended in several of those people you speak of telling me basically i was an idiot and that science didn't have the right to do damage and that tact buffs are supposed to buff ALL damage not just weapons.
sadly gecko the main dev does not like science and will not allow it to be brought back hes said stuff to that nature in the podcasts.
i hope they eventualy realise that science is suffering the same way cruisers were but atlass hope is lost
It was already weak before DR now it's simply stupid.
FBP was actually a little bit useful for FAW builds with Torp AOEs but now it's ridiculously low both on damage output and on the sheer lack of resistance debuff functionality. Photonic officer is completely useless as it's cooldown is way way overboard compared to the more easily optainable A2B Doff setup.
They need to do an overhaul it's that bad at this point.
And these jokers who keep insisting everything is fine need to be reminded that science has a large number of skills that AREN'T Anomolies that need to be looked into. It's not just all anoms here folks cmon. Support your science PVE diversity in DR and quit making excuses the Devs do that enough.
Glad to see I have people who share my thoughts. When will Cryptic see that exotic damage needs to be it's own thing? When will they see that all monsters in PvE need to be specifically weak to science, so as not to render us pointless? Because in the age of BFAWAux2Bat, we are.
Are there soft caps to particle gens? Would it be a good idea to stack 5x of the fleet ones for lulz?
I already outdamage 90% of the players in pugs. People in pugs normally do 5k or less DPS, my science vessel clearly goes past that. What I'm saying is that my science abilities are pointless compared to what a tactical and engineer can achieve with much less effort.
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
over time they have released thigns that allow you to do more damage with weapons and kinetic damage the rest of the skills use their own math and thus only science can buff them but people complaied they were too powerful in pvp thus they got hit with a dual nerf both the resist skills in the tree at the same time as damage nerfs to those abilities
feedback pulse can be buffed to 300% reflect by a proper tact captain in a science ship science officers still can only manage 220% so yea for those that think conservation of energy helped well it didnt realy.
and yes there is stacking penalties not sure what the optimal number was someone else could leave that number im sure.
so we can only hope to be made whole in this game the devs hath given us
A sci captain in a tac ship is just like the engineer: able to do slightly less dps than the tac but able to summon a photonic fleet which does OK dps and able to debuff with scan, etc.
A sci captain in SOME tac ships can even slot a ltcmdr sci and pop a GW to do some CC. Of course tacs can do that too -- its the SHIP not the class that provides officer seats.
The primary problem with science is not our damage from officer skills like GW. The primary problem is the SCI SHIPS. You can't do damage in a ship with 2 or 3 tac consoles and 6 weapons when you are being compared to 5 tac console 8 weapon ships. It cannot be done. GW will never be able to overcome this without being so stupidly OP as to be game-breaking.
The dyson sort of gave me hope, but so far, they have not come full circle. A next generation sci ship needs to have 4 tac consoles at least, 4 sci at least, 2 eng, and at least a 4/3 or 5/2 weapon layout, along with a secondary deflector. It needs to have a ltcmdr and lt tac to go with its cmdr sci and ltcmdr sci and say ensign engineer.
A few ships offer close to these things but never quite nailing it. The closest currently is the t5-U norgh BOP, which can seat cmdr sci, ltcmdr tac, and still has a ltcmdr uni and lt uni to play with, 4 tac consoles and 3 sci. The officer seating allows for 2 or 3 good setups like ltcmdr sci X2 with cmdr tac, or cmdr/ltcmdr with tac, or one of each to pick up engineering. But its down 1 sci console and is still a 6 weapon ship (but a little stronger with a 4/2 layout and flanking / cloak). And prior to the update the thing only had 3 tac consoles --- its short 1 for a fleet ship due to a dated design.
And I am making do in an adapted cruiser, 8 weapons but only 3 tac consoles, and using the unis for cmdr sci / ltcmdr sci means limited tac skills.
I think you answered your own statement with your own reply?
Cryptic can't design anything decently, is the answer to just give eng and sci more DPS? Of course not, the answer is to fix the game, but they can't do that, they really have no clue how.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
Shim / heavy beam boat style being the highest if you have it setup right.
Here is what you need to know to do high DPS in a science ship.
1) Exotic dmg is boosted by Particle Generators... your science consoles slots NEED to be filled with P Gen consoles. Just like DPS energy ships need to fill there tac slots with tac dmg consoles. Also like High dps energy builds you need to load all the +pgen items you can just like they have to grind out things like Undine 2 pieces to boost dis/phaser dmg ect.
Yes this means things like 60+ G gen boosting crafted sci consoles... and Crafted RCS consoles that boost Pgen... and running Pgen boost deflectors ect.
2) You MUST unlock Science R&D crafting trait "Particle Manipulator" This skill will give you 25% crit chance for every 100 Pgen skill points you have. (with a fully geared 5 console science ship this will mean 100% critical chance on all exotic dmg)
3) Tractor Beam repulsors is "Science Faw" you will need a Tractor Beam Repulsors reversal doff.
4) Trait properly... science toons gain Bonus exotic dmg by taking fire. Yes I know crazy right... really set you sci ship up to tank somewhat and spec into threat. -threat is NOT your friend. If you do this you will have +30% exotic dmg ALWAYS on. Also slot some of the newer lockbox traits like Feedback loop that will boost your exotic further. If you are a fed buy the Scryer science ship even if you plan to run a wells so you can unlock its bonus Exotic dmg mastary as it will give you another 22.5% always on exotic dmg boost. (also unlock the phantom scort trait for a very very huge boost to your tac skill reload and intel skills if you fly a t6)
5) DROP your energy weapons you are sci dmg you will not need energy dmg... run torps for the procs and expect to dmg things with your Exotic dmg skills.
Here is a PVE Scryer build for you... this WILL = all but the very best of the energy builds out there.
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=scryerpveish_0
(this is intended for a science toon... I notice I didn't change the captain type)
In that build you want to set you energy to 15 wepaons... and 100 in aux... with the rest split shields and engines. (set it up so you can get a 3 system always on bonus from a Fleet AMP mod core)
Ideally you want to unlock the following mastaries.
1) Scryer + Exotic
2) Eclipse + defense
3) Phantom +recharge time on tac and intel skills with you are missed (you will have LOTS of threat if you load all +threat consoles and lots of defense from traits so the npcs will miss a lot and keep your intel and tac skills at global)
4) T6 lockbox Bethan cruiser trait... VM torpedo.
Trait wise... only ones you will want to get to fully min max would be feedback loop and the sci captain trait conversion of energy.
Doffs you want to run;
2 Dmg control - 1 Anti matter (aux to damp resistance and uptime doff)
for the final 3... any combo of Projectile and/or Deflector doffs
That's about it... work toward that and you will watch NPCs take 20k crits from your TBRs... and 10k+ ticks from your GW... throw in the debuffs and disables and proper timing on sensor scans ect and you will see up to double that.
PS cause someone is going to stupidly say it NO this will not do more DPS with a tac in it... not by a LONG shot. Conversion of energy is your friend take fire if you have -threat consoles vendor them right now. +30% exotic dmg ALWAYS on is > then attack pattern alpha. Sensor scan in the current meta is > go down fighting or Fire on my mark. Tactical boosts are more burst bent and with NPCS with 1mil+ HP being a better pressure dmg ship is far better... use GW and the TBR pull proper and sensor scan 5-6 enemies at once get them in an Ionic dance cloud and Sci Faw them to death pretty fast.... still the always on buffs and extended multi mob hitting sensor scans will win out in a parser if you care about that.
The other problem as has been noted is that they've made science skills buff-able by tactical captains which have stupid effects on it. This is a 'feature' that really doesn't help science powers in the hands of their natural users.
Short of making exotic it's own type again I'd like to reverse the current science buffing model so that damage itself has very little to do with it but that it benefits a LOT from skill points and even more from power aiming to give science around 3k per tick from GW3 with decent speccing into it, while tacs with similar spec should get around 5 to 6k from it.
Tykens rift likewise should give 1.5 to 2k for a sci and 3k for the similarly specced tac, this should also result in 500 to 750 per tic tractors about 1k in the hands of the tac.
I'd like bring the cooldowns on TR and GW brought down to 30 seconds while leaving the shared at 15 seconds.
I may have to reun the parsers on my Nova again, the last time I did I did it in CSE and scored 5k.
I own a wells, but am unfortunately romulan. Sigh... time to reroll?
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel
There was a fairly long time where Tachyon Beam, Charged Particle Burst and Photonic Shockwave had a good use in PvP. Shield Draining used to be a viable career path, and coupled with PSW and Tri-Cobalts, you could be a real asset to your team. But then, Cryptic added drain resistances to players. I think that was fundamentally not the bad idea, the bad idea was giving nothing to CPB and TB that allowed them to counter it again.
And in PvE, the powers were mostly irrelevant, since NPCs are bag of shield and hit points and the major benefit of shield drains - being able to avoid shield damage reduction - was irrelevant.
Photonic Shockwave's stun was often a critical part in spiking an enemy player, making him unable to activate the usual array of self-heals and buffs, or for delaying the team healer's response.
I don't really know what happened to PSW there, but I don't think it was ever very intersting in PVE.
But I think Gravity Well is still pretty powerful and incredibly useful in many of the STFs where you really need crowd control - and the damage against groups is pretty good. Against solo enemies, it is not so impressive.
I think Science needs some powers that are more effective against single target enemies. Maybe higher levels of Tractor Beam need to deal far more damage then now, and Tachyon Beam and Viral Matrix also need some extra buff.
What always helps both you as science player as well as your allies can be resistance penalties. If for example Viral Matrix did also provide a debuff to damage resistance, it could be pretty neat damage multiplier.
Well if all you care about is pve no you can make a wells work on a rom right now...
Just make sure you load the temporal backstep console (which is now 2min cool down) and a full TIF set.
Full tif can keep you spitting gravity wells and TBR. (TBR will even keep channeling as your backstep which is always hillarious)
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=rmorpveish_0
Almost the exact same deal... Torp spread 3 you can slot on the wells which I find works out well in pve. You can't run the Reprocity (phaton scort master) but you can just slot 2 torp spreads.
Mastary wise...
You can still slot the Lockbox T6 Viral torp... and the Romulan low hull save trait isn't horrible if you have the ship anyway.
Doff wise I would run the dmg control and antimatter a2d doff... with at least 2 deflector doffs and perhaps a GW aftershock. Yes you won't have projectiles flying as much between spreads... but with room for the tykens instead of the intel debuffs you can proc the deflector doffs more and keep your GW at cool down that way... with the aftershock... pve wise honestly its easier to get higher dps with the wells over the scryer. The Scryer with its intel debuffs is I think capable of more... but the wells is can be more consistant with GW/TYkens + defelector doffs. (although thinking about it you can likely go 2 projectile doffs + an aftershock and perhaps do more DPS... I haven't parsed it or anything but the backstep + TIF would likely do enough now with the cool down changes to keep the GW cooled down with out deflector doffs at all)
Both do very well in pve.
For pvp ya its hard to beat the intel stuffs right now... T5 is dead in terms of pvp.
^ this, so long as DPS is all that matters.
This is space mind you, ground is a different story. MAny of the sci ground abilities rock......can strip shields from targets do large amounts of thermal and kinetic/exotic damage.... love doing my sci captain on ground.... it's fun without the tedious struggle of massive HP NPC targets with minimum DPS capacity and a handful of fancy abilities which do absolutely nothing to the NPC's in the game
Yep. Have fun doing the daily R&D for 3 months before you even think about dealing real damage with a sci ship.
3 months if your lazy sure.
1) why are people even playing sci if they don't already have this unlocked or been working on it at least (unless they just installed the game) ... only reason I can think of is they listened to all the people that QQed for weeks that it was impossible.... based on there flawed math of months of grind (Which it isn't if you actually do it)
2) it does not take anywhere close to 3 months unless your being a goof and just starting the 20hr when you log in.
Bottom line if you play a sci... and you want to play "dmg sci" Then yes this trait is required. Its free... compare that to traits that you are almost required to spend 100s of millions of ec on to make a top of the line energy build and its not that bad.
What you do is start the 20hr... on enough schools that you unlock 4 slots. The second you unlock 4 slots... you start the 20 hr sci school... and then do nothing but craft Science stuff in the 3 other slots.
There is no excuse not to... you can craft mk 4 for peanuts. Really you can play pve and earn enough ec in the time it takes to craft a mk 4 to build the next 40. If you already have EC (which most long time players do) craft the best mark you can afford. WHEN you log out. Craft mk 4 while your playing, the crafting XP you earn is the same... so craft mk 4 while your on and craft something like a mk x when you log out for the day.
Doing that and with out spending and extra D you will be done in less then one month. Hardly a big its not any more of a big deal to tick off then a Tier 5 rep.
Now, to STO science captains. What works quite well for me is a drain/exotic hybrid with max aux, max flow caps and particle generator as high as possible (for damage and crit chance from particle manipulator). The tactic is: activate EPtAuxI or II (more aux, more particle gen, more grav gen, buffed with Xindi doff), activate Target engine, sensor scan, fire Grav well I (without gravimetric scientist doff that spawn more of them, because we want to keep the target in place; buffed with xindi doff (disables engine)), attack, energy siphon (buffed with subsystem disable Doff), Tykens Rift III --> shield should be down by now, fire high yield torpedo or torpedo spread, collect loot.
Since Xindi-box/DR scientists got some nice buffs: particle manipulator, pos feedback loop, ship traits, particle consoles with up to 75 part gens, some nice Doffs,...
Unfortunately, some of these things are very expensive, especially the DOFFs or the console. Thus, the STO scientist needs the same thing as the real life scientist: passion and lowered expectations
My character Tsin'xing
iif those skills did benefit from the ship's crit severity %, and the particle manipulator skill is in effect, it would be a lovely boost that im sure all science captains would welcome.
Also, they need to lower the CD on sensor scan to 45 seconds so we could have a skill that rivals APA
Just my 2cents.
Honestly thinking about throwing in the towel on this character, and starting over on a Fed. Seems like the feds get all the good stuff.
Odan Brota (Science Officer): Captain of a 28k DPS Scryer Intel Science Vessel, U.S.S. Kepler
Patiently waiting for a Romulan Science Vessel